Sex in the City--London Page 21

  ‘Hallo,’ she makes her voice as seductive as possible. She is sitting alone in high-heeled boots, which normal people don’t do unless they are trying to create a certain impression. She is still at the stage of blotting her face with Clinique powder and applying lipstick whenever she can before Gary gets home.

  At first she doesn’t recognise the voice. Why should she? Then his heavy Berlin accent stabs a frisson of recognition through her, the years peeling back.

  ‘Werner? How did you get my number? In town? No, it’s a bit tricky right now. I’m like working. You don’t get much free time living in the big city. Give me a ring next time, though, yeah?’

  Yeah right. Fuck off. Fuck you. He’d had a slim smooth body with surprisingly thick legs and a wide cock that jutted out apologetically. They’d shacked up together for a week before she found him fucking their landlady in the bathroom. A world she’s run away from.

  Someone is at the door. Thank fuck Werner is off the phone. She quickly erases his number from her phone register. But whoever it is isn’t coming in. Flup . A brown envelope, obviously hand-delivered, funny paper, and oddly enough, her name written on it in slanting ink. Ester goes over to the window and sees the back of a grey-haired man striding purposefully away.

  She starts to tear the envelope, hoping that the contents will allay her fears.

  The door goes again, but this time it’s the sound of a key in the lock. There’s no time to hide. And Gary just stares at her, as if he knows everything.

  He’s had one hell of a day. Andreas has given him a hard time about the expenses on his last sales trip to Kansas. Fucking Germans. It was OK to fly business class and check-in to the Princess Marriott, but God help you if you wanted more than a simple supper. And Andreas hated not being called Herr Schulz, as he was titled in the fatherland. Formality was everything over there, but they thought that they were doing the right thing here using first names with clenched faces. In the end, Gary tried to avoid using their names altogether. Which was a pain. And if he didn’t get his bonus, he might not be able to make the rent for September, even with his overdraft extension.

  But Ester, lovely Ester is there waiting for him. He has pushed this morning’s shock to the back of his mind. He’ll find the money, somehow. But even as he sniffs the lamb au creole opening the door, Ester is standing there …

  ‘What the hell are you doing with my mail?’

  ‘What makes you think it’s yours?’ Ester steps away, holding the envelope to her chest.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry darling.’ He’s thinking on his feet now. ‘You see, I never told you. I had this thing with this Russian girl and she took it rather badly when things didn’t work out. She sends things. Horrible things, always in brown envelopes.’

  ‘Well, this is addressed to me. Do you think you could sit down to dinner now?’

  ‘Sweets, I think you should show it to me. Someone’s just trying to get at you, that’s all. There’s a love.’

  Whilst they’re trying to be polite, their a la carte dinner burns in the oven.

  They open the envelope together.

  Photos. Hundreds of them. Gary loses count of the numerous shots of female genitalia, some he recognises, a tattoo, a reddish tint, the curve of the bikini line. Most of them are a blur. Some of them are the outer limits of breasts, or buttonholes. With time maybe you could pierce them all together. Gary knows he’s fucked them all. They are shot impersonally, almost abstractly. Once he’s looked at one, he can’t stop until he is surrounded by images that look like a mortician’s project for a gynaecologist. They were pussy whores, all of them. And he’d paid, good and hard for the pleasure of sucking and rubbing and looking at them. The agency enticed him with pictures, tempted him to specify red pubic hair, and now they keep on coming, regardless. Even though he’s not used them for months.

  Ester is quiet, like a small stunned child. He can’t look at her, so just stares down at his life before her.

  Gary has freaked out since he’s seen her with the post. He didn’t say anything as they opened the envelope or as he flipped the photos one by one to the floor. She can’t stop thinking that some might be of her. A flash of furry brown foreground, something that might be a door handle; the backgrounds have some kind of peculiar resonance. They remind her of clubs she’s been in, rooms she’s fucked in. Of the feeling of being trapped when the only thing that was free was her breath to suck in or exhale as she pleased. They are the sum of all the places she’s had to put up with to get to where she is now. And the nightmare that Germany became. Two years ago she’d gone there to a New Year’s Eve party and stayed there, almost living in the nocturnal fetish clubs of Berlin. What with the ecstasy tabs and the rubber masks, three months had gone past in a blur. But in the end, she’d had to get out. Before they caught up with her.

  Gary sits tight-lipped, muscles clenched, drinking whisky in front of Nintendo. He’s so concentrated he looks like an ad for Game Boy. She’s got him a drink, with ice and a slice, the only thing he might touch. She tripped on the kitchen lino bringing it in, almost spilling it on him. He says nothing. The candles burn down to nothing as the forgotten dinner singes through its cardboard in the oven.

  Ester gets tired of staring at him when he’s like this. If she does it too long she might discover that perhaps there’s some aspect about him she doesn’t like, and then the rot will set in. She won’t be able to look at him without thinking about it. And once it starts it will come on more and more.

  And his reaction to the photos, was, well downright weird. Does he relate them to her? She feels like a crack whore with chipped nail polish on the verge of vomiting. Already her body heat is at melting point under the dry-clean-only Whistles dress. Why are sheer nylons so god damn swampy? Her nose is no doubt shining. Worse, she can smell the waft of sweat oozing from her pubic hair and the smell of herself makes her even more paranoid that the photos are some kind of threat to set her closeted skeletons free. What’s this ex-girlfriend thing about? What does she know?

  She has to do something to stop herself succumbing to this icky feeling all over. His face feels curiously calm and dry when she strokes it, like the face of a doll. P uppe, they call it in German, but he doesn’t know she knows that; he only knows the carefully constructed confectionery version of her life. Still he’s a catch, steady, sorted, fanatically obsessed with her. Sometimes, too much so.

  She’s startled when he pushes himself into her lap and hugs her legs. For a minute he is praying to her pussy, and she forces a smile. She can hear him breathing heavily. Maybe crying. She eases him upwards and returns his hug. She kisses his mouth, licking the whisky tang out of his mouth. He sticks his tongue into her mouth and slides his hand between her legs.

  She can feel him stiffen. She pulls him tighter for a few moments then releases and slides her hand into his free one. They undress each other clumsily; one breast spills out of Ester’s bra even before it’s removed. As she kneels down and pulls at Gary’s boxers his cock flicks up and catches her under the chin. It’s bold, surprisingly nubile pink, he has a sweet teenage cock although he’s already thirty-two. She grabs hold, licks then sucks, but stops at the first gasp. She teases him until trickles of pre cum squeeze onto his head. They are both groaning, her pussy twitching. She laps up his juices with her tongue and kisses it into his mouth, then pushes him towards the bathroom.

  Gary isn’t thinking about it any more. He’s lying in the dry bath, naked and expectant. The chill of the bath’s surface is uncomfortable, but he lies back in expectation, his hard-on rampant. This is his moment. Ester always does it like he tells her. She has to tiptoe on the edges of the bath with her crotch straddled in a pyramid form over his face. It’s better when she’s aroused herself first so that he gets his first sight of her pussy already open and pink, rosy he calls it, surrounded by the glorious red pubes. Real red hair is actually the least common of all hair types. He read in some science boffin article that it can only be passed on if both paren
ts have the gene. In fact, they say in fifty years it will be extinct. But what he knows from hard experience is that in all of the thousands of borrowed and bought porno magazines he has consumed, and websites he has clicked on, the combo of red and pink is the least common colour for hot chicks. His favourite is actually strawberry blonde; a fetish torn from a porno book he found deep in the woods when he was six. He never got to see the model’s face, rain and wear took care of that, but the memory of splayed legs revealing their shock of strange flesh and bright hair remained. The magazine was dirty and old and when he took it home he found that it also contained a live slug, but this mystery woman was the first and the last. What a terror and a mystery it is for him still, the shock of splayed strawberry-coloured pussy.

  Ester straddles his face with just the right distance so that he can see everything. And, oh it’s good, gut ! He inhales the aroma of her sex, nudging his nose in at the tight angle. Everything hangs out for him to ogle at. Her pussy is nothing like the tidy waxed-shut slits that decorate the pages of Playboy . The women there are so airbrushed they are little more than dolls. Ester is more than pretty for his mates to look at, but her real treasure is the stark redness of her sex. The hair, at times fluffy or slicked-up with cum or juices, sweating and palpitating with a life of its own. She is so, well real . Just the sight of her engorged lips, alive, moving, makes him almost lose control then and there. And she’ll let him lick it and look at it again and again. But no, he must pretend to be normal and fuck her with his cock, even though this is relatively such a dulled sensory experience for him compared to the all-consuming pleasure of what he can see with his eyes, actually shafting the goddess hole is like a second-hand experience. But, fuck it, tonight he doesn’t give a shit. He can finger her to orgasm if she wants it. The world opens up for him with his eyes seeing the hood engorged, sensitive. His cock explodes in slow motion. He can feel every part of his cum’s journey ripping into freedom.

  Ester looks down at him, pleased that he’s come, anything to take his mind off the photos. He looks somewhat ridiculous lying in his own spunk. And he’s forgotten that she needs to get off too. No, his finger is there and he’s eyeing up her vagina again. She feels a moment of pleasure slide through her and build up. Now he’s a fuck slave, doing as she ordains. She looks down to watch him more intently and catches sight of her bush. Shit! Too much blonde. Her roots need doing. She prays that he’s too enraptured to notice.

  It was the sort of thing you do when drunk. Her old friend Nina had suggested it as an act of nostalgia, and henna dye more commonly used for Nina’s head found its way much further south. It was a German thing; over 50% of all women there from mädchen to grandmothers sported infinite shades of red hair. It was the new blonde. Inevitably, the girls working the clubs had caught onto the latest trend before anyone else.

  Nina had done Ester’s first pube job. They had giggled and swigged back the vodka and, with slurred mock admiration, paid tribute to each other’s results. Nina had slipped a finger in too and dildo fucked her while she was at it, but that was another story. If it hadn’t been for Gary, this return to things past would have been a one-off. Now it’s a secret. Another discoloured subject not for sharing. The sight of her handiwork had transformed their first night from polite gentle exploration to full-on frenzy. It turned out to be his greatest sexual fantasy to see a real red-head’s piece. He was so obsessed he crawled on the floor for her in slave worship. He was so enrapt if she’d weed on him he would’ve licked it up. And the new-found power was a buzz, more erotic than penetration pranks and the whole suitcase under the bed full-a-toys routine that most guys were into. Her fake pubes are part of what holds them together. And the power of his submission is thrillingly alluring; it takes her back to the doctor and nurse games she played at school when she was in control. Forcing the boys to shut up and watch. It sounds pathetic when she tries to explain the problem to her friends. She is an all-over natural blonde but Gary doesn’t know, not yet. She has to keep the henna powder hidden in an empty Tampax carton along with her film roll. She even uses colour mousse to refresh the shade if she’s desperate. But it’s an extra effort, stretched beyond comfortable management now that they’re living together.

  Gary falls into a deep sleep. A little voice, the one that criticises everything, reminds him of the weight of his problems, and how it feels to keep a secret that threatens to burst his heart. But tonight, the bitch goddess Ester has soothed him, her body has whispered the secrets of the race of men. He imagines her standing over him once more, her pussy hair scarlet like strands of love, spun fiery gold, as essential an element as water. Now her sex is getting bigger, she’s standing taller until the outline of her cleft looms as massive as the bulky face of a cliff, unknowable and timeless. He tries to breathe and her pussy juices suck out all the oxygen, he floats in that web betwixt paradise and dread that even in his dream he recognises as his primal instinct. It gives him an uncomfortable pull that he kicks against. His memory takes him back a step but he doesn’t allow himself to follow that path. He sees a cave with nine passages, all of them stretching out into the distance, and turns and takes the easiest one that leads him to a room where he guesses it must be a birthday party. His party. The room is bright and sparkling and a table bedecked with dozens of platters of food looms in front of his vision. The table is groaning with the weight of the delicacies; it’s all food, but stuff he’s never seen before. Dish after dish is piled high with juicy, ripe, exotic fruits and what looks like jelly. And everything from the table cloth to the glistening, enticing food is red, the colour of a fresh strawberry when stepped upon with a bare foot.

  It’s 11.36 a.m. and Ester is struggling with a slippery piece of treacherous copy she is attempting to fix on her laptop. Too late for breakfast, but not early enough for lunch, she’s been sucked into one of those pockets of time that lull you into a false sense of security and then pull you way out past your deadline. It’s shit-miserable sitting here on her own at her breakfast table. And something is wrong with the designer kitchen. Under the lino somewhere maybe, but something stinks. Gary left ages ago. He’s still said nothing all night to her that made any sense. Perhaps she should send him an email, maybe one of her X-rated jokes just to nudge him into acknowledging her, while also proving to him she’s up and is working on her laptop. She does it and feels a tinge of apprehension after the image leaves her outbox. Oh well, too late now, it’s gone.

  In what seems like seconds, he replies with ‘Important Date Tonight’ in the subject heading. It crosses her mind that maybe he wants to dump her, to tell her he knows everything and that it’s over. But no, quite the opposite, the strangely formal message reads, ‘I want you to meet my father tonight. Please meet me at the Café Larumba. 8 p.m. Wear something smart.’

  It’s the first time in ages that Gary has set out to meet his father. This time, with Ester in tow, the reality of his exclusive postcode and the German investment bank job in his pocket, he hopes things will be different. He has changed, so at last his father can be proud of him, happy to see him. The restaurant is already buzzing; the clientele look relaxed and sleek, the practiced detachment of the easy rich. Gary hesitates for just a second outside the restaurant window; he has only to go in and it will be perfect, just for once.

  Then he spots a lone figure seated stiff-backed and anxious at the cramped table in the corner. Back to reality. It’s him. He sighs and feels his light mood bounce away from him. His father looks anything but relaxed.

  The expensive black cab is going as fast as it can, but still she will be late. A hurried trip to the hairdressers, and the purchase of the new black dress that she had to iron anyway when she got home, has exhausted the best part of the day. She wants to look elegant smart, intelligent, anything other than a fluffy agreeable blonde.

  The fancy lights of Larumba dazzle her as she makes her escape from the cab. She dives inside, slows down, then makes her way to table thirteen, just as Gary had texted her to e
arlier. The man sitting opposite Gary is fine-boned, grey-haired and bristling with energy, though it is of the anxious kind that pecks at her optimism. And the eyes that sidle into hers when she stops at the table look shocked, panicked. His father looks as if he’s seen a ghost.

  What the fuck is going on?

  But it’s Gary’s expression, when he sees her titian-dyed locks, that frightens her. He drops the glass of red wine he is holding and droplets of incriminating scarlet freckle his face.

  ‘Ester?’ it’s like he doesn’t even recognise her. Waiters appear out of nowhere and rip off the tablecloth, swab down trousers and coats. Ester can feel her heart beating faster; in a minute she’ll probably be able to spit it out on the table for them. They know!

  His father stands up and gazes at her calmly. He offers out his hand.

  ‘Hello, I’m Steve Maddock, Gary’s father.’ His grip is firm. Then she notices the light leather case swinging at his arm.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, sheepishly glancing down, ‘I expect Gary’s already told you I’m a photographer. Human interest. You know, dogs, accidents, that sort of thing.’

  They all sit down, Gary’s face is flushed; he looks drunk already.

  ‘What did you do to your hair?’ his voice is suddenly razor sharp.

  ‘I thought you liked this colour,’ Ester says, pointedly.

  Suddenly his father sits even more upright in his chair, he must be on strings, he’ll be levitating next. Just for a second Ester wonders if he shares his son’s carnal preferences.

  ‘I do, it’s just the first time I’ve seen you. First time …’ he’s slurring now. ‘I’ve seen …’ He reaches over to stroke her hair with a faraway look in his eyes. Ester recoils shocked, and excuses herself to go to the bathroom. She can’t do this any more; she’s left it too late to tell him, even though it wasn’t her fault. Not really.