The Sexopaths (21 page)

‘... oh… that’s another
low-battery warning… love y-…’

He bounds, sprints, virtually
dives… but just fails to grasp her fingertips before she drops off.  Too
late, he picks up.  He dials her number – it diverts.

***

Adam stares across the litter of
his half-eaten meal, thoughtfully sipping the beer for which his appetite just
holds.  She’s not coming home tonight.  Though the meeting had more
or less run to schedule, she’d said, there’s a strike – wildcat – on
the Paris Metro and trains.  It’s chaos: the Peripherique is gridlocked,
the city paralysed, taxis like gold dust.  She can’t make Charles de
Gaulle in time.  But she’ll catch the red-eye – be home before
daybreak, before he and Camille are even awake – there’s almost no
difference, my darling.  Her mobile is running out of battery – she
doesn’t have her charger as she thought it was just a day-trip.

He wonders, from where had she
called?  It was bustling and noisy – there were voices and music
– more like a lively restaurant than the offices of wherever they’d been
meeting.  And her own voice, tremulous, perhaps layered with
alcohol?  Where would she stay – an airport hotel, for early-morning
convenience?  Or some place else…
‘Don’t worry… I have an apartment… it
avoids the weekday commute… let’s go there for a coffee and make a plan… some
wine?... a cigarette?... relax with a little line of coke?... it’s good, non?…
fucking good.’

Blog by Anonymous – 5

OMG!  A
clandestine rendezvous with M’s husband today (I don’t think I’m giving away
anything by calling her ‘M’… or him ‘A’ come to that).  A – the
sucker – paid a grand for a couple of hours of my time!!  Or maybe
my silence???  But if he thinks I’m going to spill the beans – well,
I’ve told him that’s not how it works.  I surprise myself,
sometimes.  Even Sarah has commented – she said it’s my strong sense
of self-preservation.  I think it was meant as a compliment.  That’s
my motto - need to know.  Funny, though – there’s something A needs
to know.  He claims Sarah – Xara to him (though he guessed her real
name) – told him that
I
was the punter!  Me!  OMG! 
Some secretive female who wants experimental sex, and he’s just helping out
with the threesome – but he’s not to discover her identity!  Pull
the other one – I thought, maybe he’s cooked it up so it doesn’t look
like he’s actually cheating on M (as if being talked into it by Sarah makes it
any less!)  Thing is – he must know I could just ask Sarah –
so why would he invent something so ridiculous?  Perhaps she really did
tell him that.  I could ask her.  But if she wanted me to know she’d
have explained.  Better let sleeping dogs lie.  Need to know?  I
don’t need to know.  Am I bothered?  No.  Why get on Sarah’s
wrong side just to please a punter – even if he is her Special One! 
If she wants me to do a job again with him… I’ll do it.  Though I don’t
think he’s too keen on me.  At least, he’s not too struck on me getting
into M.  And now he’s probably wondering if I’ll tell her about
today.  Another reason to keep in my good books!  I’ll be seeing them
soon enough, anyway – not sure if he knows about that, yet.  Have to
knock him out earlier this time!  Perhaps I should take along something to
do the job!  He said M fancies me.  I was excited to hear that. 
It made me wet in an instant.  Made me bad. Funny thing was – being
with him – it was like M was there.  His after-shave maybe reminded
me – or was it the feeling of him fucking me while I was sixty-nine-ing
M?  And she’s so turned on by what I do – work, I mean.  When I
was telling her stuff on the phone today she was breathing like she was
frigging herself!!!

Morning glory.  It feels
early; Adam half-wakes from an erotic dream he’s loath to exit.  Soft lips
smother his; small careful movements caress him, sleeving him in velvety
muscled warmth.  She’s floating above him, barely touching other than
these two points of essential contact.  In a moment he’ll come – to
hell with the sheets – but consciousness ebbs and flows and the dream is
slipping like a slowly receding tide; he senses all too soon he’ll be beached,
blinking, awake.  Then he realises – there is no dream, only a
familiar smooth, sculpted form in the darkness.  Monique.  With a
rush the warm tide envelops him.

She continues in motion for
another minute or so.  Only now does she press down upon his core, a
restrained crescendo of silent shudders that marks the arrival and passage of
her orgasm.  Finally she releases her full weight upon him.  Hearts
exchanging beats, they lie affixed in the embrace.  Pinned in these
post-coital shallows he waits.  But sleep is not about to return –
instead, thoughts like hungry seagulls begin to circle, their sharp alarm cries
penetrating in the dawn.

When did she last wake him with
sex?  The memory is vivid.  Not since that advertising festival in
Meribel – what,
five
years ago? – when they’d tumbled into
her room and then her bed to make love so drunk on genepi that they’d barely
pulled off their clothes before passing out.  She’d fondled him restlessly
through the night, subduing his resistance with her hot primeval breath of
alcoholic liquorice; it was only a question of time until she would mount
him.  Eventually his insentient form had succumbed to her relentless
probing; head pounding, he’d come-to certain he was going to urinate inside
her.  Instead she became pregnant with Camille.

Afterwards he’d believed some
inner blueprint, one undemanding of her full conscious cooperation, guided her
nocturnal mission.  But what drives her this morning?  As his brain
boots up, the missed flight looms large in his memory.  That tone of
nervous excitement in her voice, her battery conveniently running flat. 
Did
she spend time in illicit company last night?  And then, as home neared
through strained airborne sunrise did remorse contract around her, its creases
and stains pervading yesterday’s slightly soiled clothes?  This act, then
– to cast them off and come to him naked – is it a means to assuage
her sense of guilt, to restore her equilibrium with the recency of his
presence, to flush away the clinging traces of her excesses?

He turns his head as though it’s
a natural waking movement and glances at the clock – it’s almost seven.

He sighs, and says, his voice
tacky:

‘That was nice.’

‘Very nice, my darling.’ 
Her reply is a whisper.

‘How was the meeting?’

‘Quite interesting, by the
end.  But the journeys were awful.  It felt like a day of constant
rushing and constant waiting at the same time.’

‘And now so early.’

‘I tried not to disturb you.’

‘Sorry I woke you the night
before.’

‘It’s okay, my darling.’

Monique inhales as though she’s
going to say something more, but then apparently thinks the better of it. 
Adam says:

‘And sorry I made a bit of a fuss
about that text.’

‘Don’t worry.  They are a
nuisance.’

He senses she’s holding herself
still, as if braced for the next, more awkward question.  He says:

‘It was just the time of night…
and that it had kisses on it.’

Monique shrugs within the
confines of their clinch; though it feels affected.  ‘They are French
– it is usual.  They were wondering where the information was that I
ought to have sent.’

Her calm whispered explanation,
restating the facts she might reasonably have forgotten uttering two nights
ago, may as well have been screamed into his ear – or, at least, the word
‘they’. 
They?
  The committee?  Committees don’t have
mobile phones.  Committees don’t send texts.  Besides, he’d spoken to
‘they’, and they was ‘he’.  Lui.  Lucien.  So why does she shy
away from this glaring detail, especially one of such obvious significance to
him?  If there were nothing to hide why not just tell a diplomatic white
lie: ‘Oh, they say he’s a workaholic, apparently he bugs everybody with texts
and emails at all hours of the day and night.’  Blurring the picture
succeeds only in bringing its subject into sharper focus, the obtuse becomes
acute: she says ‘they’ and Adam hears ‘he’.

Adam tries to persuade himself
this is merely a misguided non-confrontational strategy at work; that she’d rather
skirt around the issue, bury it in the day’s accumulation of minutiae, out of
sight, out of mind.  He realises he’d prefer a more overt approach: some
guy fancies her, so what?  He might be a touch forward in his leanings …
but it’s nothing she can’t handle… it happens all the time… it’s so unimportant
she doesn’t generally come home to report it. 
Forget it, my darling, I
know what best to do, please don’t put me in the difficult position of having
to confront someone who is ‘kind of’ my boss, when there is nothing.

Except
he
has already
confronted her boss.  He says:

‘You know how possessive I am.’

She kisses the side of his
neck.  Then she whispers:

‘I had a more interesting text.’

‘Oh?’

‘I think we are free on Saturday
night,
non?
’

‘Why?’

‘Sharon… Jasmin.  She has
offered to visit.  She called it ‘Happy Hour’ – two for the price of
one!’

‘Like I pay, she gets you free?’

His implied complaint masks an
involuntary pick up in his heart rate.

‘My darling – how can you
say that!’  She kisses the lobe of his ear.

‘Well… you two seem to be getting
on rather agreeably.  Just say if you want me to leave you to it.’

‘I know you are just joking me.’

‘Monique, at the risk of
repeating myself, if you’re not a closet bisexual you’re some actress.’

‘Adam!’  This time she bites
his ear lobe to register her protest.

‘Ouch!’  He jerks his head
away.  ‘Closet vampire as well.  It was a too-convincing lesbian show
you two put on.’

‘My darling – at risk of
repeating
myself
– you had sex with her in front of my eyes.’

‘I was obeying orders.’

‘I should say you went beyond the
call of duty, my darling.’

‘Sorry – I’ll take note for
future reference.’

‘That is okay, my darling. 
And it was very nice – very good bad.’

‘And you’re happy to do it
again?’

She nods into his shoulder,
perhaps a little coyly.  She whispers:

‘Et tu?’

He’s sensed their mutual relief
at leaving the subject of the text, but now her second little lapse into French
grates in his ear, with its unwelcome suggestion that she’s still subconsciously
working with yesterday’s lingua franca.  Normally he’d savour the little
frisson it carries, but for a second it impedes his reply.  He inhales,
exhales.

‘I suppose… so long as you do.’

‘Are you not sure?’

‘I… just think we need to be a
little bit careful… you know, about how far we let her into our lives. 
I’m not certain she’s the type we’d have as a friend… is she?’

‘I think she is being genuine…
about liking us.’

‘There’s a difference between
liking and stalking. 
You
– I mean.’

‘My darling – she is not
stalking me.’

‘Look – it can’t be usual
to have all these telephone conversations and be sending texts all the
time.  With a call girl?’

‘Can’t it?  How do you
know?’  She gives him another nip, more playful now.

‘I just don’t imagine it, that’s
all.  I think she’s got a bit of a fixation on you and that’s one reason
why she wants to see us.  Who initiated the appointment?’

‘Well – you know we had
both touched upon it.  But… I suppose she did.’

‘When did she contact you?’

He’s wanted to ask this since her
first mention of Jasmin-Sharon’s text.

‘Well – I received the
message after the meeting – but my phone was switched off during
it.  I didn’t check the time.’

It doesn’t escape his notice that
her battery managed to go flat even though her mobile must have been off for
much of the day.  But he’s none the wiser as to whether Jasmin-Sharon sent
the proposal before or after their own meeting.  Either way, though, he
can’t believe that Jasmin-Sharon so brazenly touts for business as a matter of
course – it would be a breach of the protocol to which she claims
strictly to adhere.  This special treatment, he’s certain, is reserved for
Monique.  He sighs.  But what can he do?  While she holds a
candle for his wife, he must awhile uphold the unyoked humours of her
capriciousness.

He asks: ‘Have you replied?’

‘I just… well, I said it would
probably be okay but that I would check with you.’

Adam suspects it’s already a fait
accompli.

‘I can tell her no, my darling.’

‘Well… like I say… obviously it
was pretty mental… pretty amazing… to see you… and everything that happened…’

Monique doesn’t embarrass him by
highlighting his volte-face.  Instead she gets straight down to business.

‘And you want her to bring the…
you know?’

He understands perfectly, but
feels committed to understatement.  ‘Do I?’

‘
Cocaine
.’  Monique’s
voice drops to a melodramatic whisper.  ‘She has ecstasy, too.’

Instead of responding directly,
Adam glances at the clock.  Monique has followed his train of
thought.  She nods even before he says:

‘We’ll need to wake her in a
minute – it’s nearly half-past.’

‘So what shall I tell Sharon?’

He inserts a diplomatic
pause.  ‘Go for it, I guess.’

***

“Oooooh, lucky me! 
Tuesday is usually Tesco and housework day but fortunately the wife announced
last night that she was going shopping with her friends.  Obviously I
couldn't miss such a golden opportunity to see Jasmin and after a quick call
all the necessary arrangements were made.  Jasmin arrived on time and rang
to tell me that she was parked up next to the car park, she asked if I would
meet her there so she could hold on to me once she'd parked.  She told me
that she was wearing new high-heeled shoes and was a little unsteady on uneven
ground making it difficult for her to keep her balance.  I was duly given
the job of supporting her and holding her large handbag.  God only knows
what the concierge must have thought when we entered the apartment
building.  Once inside the shoes were discarded and we arrived at the
apartment without incident.  We sat and chatted for quite some time,
Jasmin is extremely well educated and is comfortable, and more than capable, of
discussing a multitude of subjects with considerable command.  The conversation
flowed effortlessly without any embarrassingly long pregnant pauses, she is
self confident and bubbly.  We inevitably reached the stage where it was
necessary to discuss our mutual likes and dislikes as well as what was allowed
and not allowed.  It seemed clear from the outset that we liked the same
things and as she had no interest in doing anything untoward with my botty the
ground rules were very quickly agreed.  We eventually adjourned to
bed.  I'm no expert in such matters but I'd guess she's late
twenties.  She has a flawless body with no tattoos or piercings and
nothing has been artificially enhanced with so called improvements.  All
in all, I think she has a perfect body which needs no improvement at all. 
We played happily together and I felt both relaxed and at ease in her company.
Although this was our first meeting, she also seemed relaxed and I got the
distinct impression that she enjoyed herself.  Our first meeting was
regrettably short, and I wish I could have persuaded the wife to stay out all
day rather than for a few hours, but there is always next time.  Thanks
for a wonderful few hours, see you again soon.  Lots of Love.  Donald
xxxx”