The Sexopaths (28 page)

‘You know I am superstitious
– especially when we are apart from Camille.’

‘She’s much safer here, though.’

‘I know – I meant if
something happened to us – what would become of our poor baby?’

‘Monique – nothing will
happen – we’ll be staying in a really good hotel – we can get taxis
everywhere – they’ll pay for guides if we want.  China’s dead safe
– we’re probably more at risk sitting here now.’

‘I know… I know – but that
was Sharon on the phone…’

‘What did she say?  I take
it she’s fine now?’

‘Her grandfather died.’

‘Oh – come off it –
do you believe her?’

‘Adam – she is so upset –
of course I believe her!  How can you be so mistrustful?’

‘Okay, okay – I shan’t say
any more.  But I bet she asked about seeing us again.’

Monique doesn’t answer and
instead turns her gaze back to the magazine.  She says:

‘She did… but… only because she
feels so bad about letting us down – and I think she was looking forward
to it as well, so she knows we were disappointed.’

‘I thought we weren’t sure if we
were?’

‘Looking forward to it, or
disappointed, my darling?’

Adam hesitates as he processes
her question.  He says:

‘It’s probably the same
thing.  Anyway, how did you leave it?’

‘I said I will get in touch when
we are back.  Maybe I
can
meet her for a coffee or something, like
we discussed.’

Adam harrumphs.  ‘I think
you should wait and see.  Don’t arrange anything right now.  You’re
feeling sorry for her – too sorry for her, like you don’t want to upset
her – and in a couple of weeks we might feel it’s best we just drop the
whole thing.’

Monique smiles winningly. 
‘My darling – I agree – let’s see how we feel – and make
today a nice sunny Sunday for Camille.  I thought we should all go
swimming this morning after her lesson?’

He nods, grins ruefully.  Of
course, she has all week to exchange texts and calls and even rendezvous
without his knowledge – she has no need to gain his assent, tacit or
otherwise.  Yet ironically
he
will surely see Jasmin-Sharon first
–
‘Meeting pls next Tues 11am Xx’.
  Just how is that going to
play out – now that he has woken with no doubts he will obey the
summons?  Will he get a moment alone with her – a chance to confer
about events as they unfold?  A repeat of the last episode could provide
such an opportunity (although unbeknown to him there could have been a silent
observer in the room).  Or will Jasmin-Sharon, as she suggests, obey
Xara’s every command, taking cover in mute anonymity until the hour’s storm has
blown through?

Curiously he feels a growing
thrill, and a correspondingly diminishing apprehension.  Inexplicably
things seem less complicated now – perhaps some barely perceptible
threshold has been crossed and his will to fight subsumed, bondage now being
his permanent state, the outcome abandoned to fate, his thrall to Xara a parole
that Jasmin-Sharon before him has surrendered to.  So he must attend,
pretend, enjoy – love to live another day.

Blog by Anonymous – 7

OMG.  I just
discharged myself from hospital.  Some bastard date-raped me.  I just
know it.  I think I must have been out cold for 24 hours.  The police
were coming to interview me this morning.  I had to get out of
there.  I don’t think they’ll track me down.  I never carry any
ID.  The nurse told me the cleaner at the apartments found me and couldn’t
wake me and called an ambulance.  She’s Lithuanian.  Her English
isn’t great but we’ve kind-of got an understanding.  I always leave her a
good tip because of the state of the bed and the bin full of condoms and
whatnot, and she always puts in extra towels when she knows I’ve got a
reservation.  She must have collected my things together and given them to
the paramedics.  I think I was tied up because my arms are sore like
they’ve been wrenched round my back.  And I’m tender you know where. 
God knows what he slipped in my drink – I’ve tried most things but never
that rohypnol – and especially not on top of whatever else I’d had. 
I should know better – it says on all the working girls’ websites never
to accept a drink you’ve not seen opened, nor to take your eyes off it after
that.  He stole my cash and what was left of my gear.  And my
underwear.  Fucking pervert.  Thank God he left my phones – but
they can track them down, can’t they? – from the signals they give
out.  They’ve been vibrating like crazy with calls and texts.  Now
it’s Sunday afternoon and since I escaped I’ve been apologising to one punter
after another.  Or avoiding them.  To be honest, most of last week’s
a blank to me – that shit has really fried my brain.  I can’t
remember who I saw or who I didn’t – I don’t even have a clue who the bad
guy was.  I’ve had to wait until people phoned me up wanting to know why
I’m late and make excuses.  That started in the hospital – God knows
what the other women in the ward thought – you’re not even supposed to
have mobiles.  Right now I feel like I’ve been run over by a double-decker
bus.  The nurse said it can feel the same as when you’ve had a general
anaesthetic.  I was acting like I’d lost my memory (which was almost true)
until I could get my head together and make a plan.  When I say I
“discharged myself” I mean I just did a bunk and got Liz to pick me up at the
front of the hospital.  There were a couple of other taxis there, so she
didn’t look out of place, despite it being 4am or whatever.  And it wasn’t
so difficult to walk out – no different really to walking into a hotel to
meet a punter – and they’re short-staffed, I guess.  I just got
changed in the loo and dumped my gown.  Meanwhile I’m down a load of cash
– and other stuff.  I must have lost out on three grand.  And I
missed out on seeing M.  I’ve thought about telling her.  (I told Sarah
straight out, and she was okay about it; she’s asked me to go round to her
place later.  I’d forgotten I was supposed to see her on Saturday night,
too.  She must be mellowing in her old age.)  But M… she might start
to wonder who she’s getting into bed with.  And she’d probably tell her
bloke and I reckon he’d definitely try to stop her seeing me.  I don’t
know what to do.  I should get out of all this.  I think I might go
to mass tonight.  I need a miracle!

‘It’s just me, I’m afraid.’

‘
Just
you…’  he hopes
his ‘just’ is brightly awed, polished clean of disappointment.  ‘Then I’m
the one who should be afraid.’

She laughs, a light cascade of
notes that recalls the time when she asked him if there was anything he didn’t
do, when he trembled in anticipation of his encounter with the shadowy Ms
Y.  Now, on bended knee at the refrigerator, Xara reaches in for some
obstinate article.  From his vantage point on a stool at the breakfast
pier that divides the kitchenette from a living area – a room he’s never
been privy to before, and which he notes is curiously devoid of personal
effects – Adam assesses the smooth cocoa-butter flesh of her thigh, naked
from ankle to hip, where it is eventually demarcated by the fine line of her
brilliant pink briefs; above these just a short and flimsy clinging slip pays
polite but ineffective lip-service to the protocol of greeting him at her door
in something more than mere bra and pants.  What on earth would a visiting
meter-reader think?

‘Did your… er…
client
call
off?’

He can’t believe he’s asking such
a fraudulent question, but no alternative opening springs to mind.  It
will prove embarrassing, costly even, if she knows he knows.  Yet in one
sense he’s relieved by Jasmin-Sharon’s absence (it makes any conspiracy theory
somehow seem a little less likely), although now he feels a new anxiety –
for what other purpose has Xara lured him here?

She looks up quickly, then stands
and holds a champagne bottle trophy-like, one-handed.  With a quizzical
smile, she says:

‘Didn’t I say?  It was
always just me.’

‘Oh… no… we… I don’t think we
spoke.  I just assumed from your text… I tried your number, but I guess
you were busy.  I couldn’t get through after that.  I thought since
I’d got the date and time, that was all I needed to know.  I didn’t want
to harass you.’

‘Sorry about that.’ 
Gracefully she brings down two fluted glasses from a shelf, taking her time to
place them carefully together on the bar-top.  She says:

‘I don’t normally drink –
would you?’  She hands the bottle to Adam and slides onto a stool facing
him, gently making knee contact.

‘Of course.’

He unscrews the wire and twists
the cork.  It comes away more easily than he anticipated, and he’s obliged
to present the neck urgently to the first glass.  ‘Say when…’

She lets him dispense a generous
measure.  He says, a little apprehensively:

‘Glass half full?’

Again the sweet little
laugh.  ‘That’s my outlook.  I think yours, too.’

Adam hears this as a
question.  He says:

‘I try.  Things can get a
bit blurred at times, though.’

She doesn’t respond to his
tentative allusion to the mists and vapours that seem slowly to strangle
him.  Either she declines the invitation to elaborate, or simply doesn’t
recognise his coded plea.  Instead she rises beaming over the glass’s
horizon.

‘Cheers.’

He clinks.  ‘Cheers.’

‘Here’s to the future.’

‘The future.’  Why?

He meets her eye as they drink,
but then averts his gaze, as if returning her dark probing stare will unlock his
thoughts, lay them open to her scrutiny, reveal his guilty secret, stir her
wrath.  Yet this sugared overture bears no foretaste of an imminent
disciplinary move on her behalf, a bitter reprimand, a punishment for his
disruptive behaviour – his clandestine meetings out-of-school with her
protégée, his discovery that their little business arrangement isn’t all she
would have him believe – however inadvertently disclosure came upon
him.  Perhaps Jasmin-Sharon has held her tongue, shrinking from the inevitably
condemned role of cowering messenger.  He ponders the probability of her
non-attendance being accounted for by her supposed bereavement – it would
appear an obvious explanation… if it weren’t for Xara’s matter-of-fact
statement that the appointment was always going to be to see her alone. 
Suddenly it strikes him that she might be expecting him to pay.  He fights
a moment of panic – he has some cash in his wallet but nothing like the
figure she charges, even for half an hour – how will he engineer an opening
to present the question, make his excuses?  But hold on – it was not
he that made the appointment; he has no designed intentions.  This counter
argument brings him back round to wondering what fate awaits him today. 
If Jasmin-Sharon is to be believed, Xara is a scheming manipulator who preys
upon others for her own ends.  Clearly it doesn’t make sense that she has
enticed him here for a normal punter’s paying visit.  Isn’t it more likely
that some plan involving Jasmin-Sharon has gone awry, and now she is
improvising?  Yet… why didn’t she text him to call it off, or turn him
away at her door?

As if she’s reading his thoughts,
she says:

‘I wanted to thank you.’

Still he feels she draws his
guard.  Defenceless, unable to parry, he awaits some lethal thrust, but
her softened features and gentle smile epitomise sincerity.  Rather
feebly, he says:

‘You mean about… the thing with
your female client?’

‘Well… kind of, yes.  You’ve
been very,
very
helpful.’

‘It’s been my pleasure.  You
must have noticed?’

She giggles.  ‘And mine.’

‘Honestly?’  He lays his
cupped hands on the bar-top, Oliver fashion.

‘Of course.’

Surprise – he has asked for
more and she has obliged.  He’s baffled; instead of taking up the leash,
roles of mistress and slave reinstated, she fosters an unexpected
equality.  It almost seems as if they’re dancing around one another,
neither quite willing to make a first definitive move.  He asks:

‘Does that apply with…
all
of your clients?’

‘Not necessarily.’

He realises he doesn’t know her
well enough to allow silence to winkle out her thoughts.  In any case, his
nervous anxiety strains to fill the void.  He says:

‘It can’t be easy.  You must
like some more than others?’

‘That’s true.  But I try to
be…
polite
at all times.  And who doesn’t like sex?’

She takes a mouthful of champagne
– more than a delicate sip, he notes – and slides a thigh against
his.  She swallows, wide-eyed as if to say ‘oops’, then her gaze seems to
relax a little.  He wonders is this courtesy leading to some request,
demand – or is there… could there be… a special affection for him? 
But no – he can’t be lulled into thinking this kind of thing. 
Remember – there’s still a game of cat-and-mouse afoot, and she is the
feline, claws on his tail.  The proof?  He might have disabused
himself of Ms Y’s identity, but Xara shows no inclination yet to release her
grip on this same score.  He says:

‘You certainly win a lot of
plaudits for your GFE.’

It’s a reference he knows she’ll
understand.  She gives a modest shrug.  ‘And what do you think?’

Adam smiles.  Girl Friend
Experience.  He’s read it a score of times in her reviews – it must
be the number one abbreviation used by her followers, the ultimate accolade
apparently, the kite mark that denotes satisfaction guaranteed.

‘They’re right, obviously.’ 
He’s quick to answer lest she thinks he doesn’t mean it, though he feels clumsy
in his choice of words.  Then, more carefully, he says:

‘But, to be honest… the idea… it
beats me a little.’