She pulls her towel around her perfect, slim figure. This annoys you – you don’t want her hidden away from you, now or ever. You want her to be free; you want to let her run while you keep an eye on her.
He walks into the bathroom now, guiding his arms around her waist. You bite your tongue, there’s nothing you can do right now and you know it. It drives you up the wall, it heats the blood in your veins and instead of running cold water over your wrists, you let your blood boil. She arches her back slowly and had your dentist not advised against it, you’d grind your jaw when his hands slide up her thighs.
Those strong, tanned hands… you shake your head to clear it. One at a time.
His tongue and hands are tracing paths under her towel and across her skin; you can see the heat haze where fire strikes up along his touch. It’s your job to extinguish the fire and replace it with your own.
Your court-appointed psychiatrist had wished it were something else entirely. It’s not an addiction to sex, you told her after you fucked her and her career, it’s an addiction to certain types of people.
Then she turns her head and her eyes are with yours and you take your time sliding down the blinds. Most of the time, having deliberately brought the apartment in which your bedroom window faces into her bathroom window causes delightful opportunities. Sometimes it’s a curse.
You finish buttoning your black shirt. The one she likes, the one she says matches your eyes. You shrug on the sky blue blazer, throw on the blue tinted sunglasses, grab your car keys and don’t bother to lock the apartment door behind you.
You only have to wait ten minutes in your car, situated around the corner from their house. He has never seen you coming and waiting there before. If he’s noticed and you didn’t see, then maybe he trusts his best friend sitting in his car near his wife’s house only to speed off to the house when he passes, to check up on her.
No, nobody’s that stupid.
You take the precious second it takes for him to pass you to study his face. You can’t see the emotion in his eyes due to his sunglasses but the smirk on his lips tells you everything you need to know. His strong jaw is freshly shaved and you’d like to run your fingertips down his jaw to become drunk. Slipping your hand into your pants would be a nice substitute, but right now you can’t do that, either.
The driveway is empty, so you park in it. In the back of your mind, you figure you’re a dickhead for parking there rather than parking a bit further down or up the street in case he suddenly returns, but it would be thrilling to have him to walk in and realise what’s going on from just seeing your car in his driveway.
She opens the door seconds after you knock.
You ask why she is dressed before you say anything else. Not that you’re complaining, exactly – how can you when she wears a low cut top and skin-tight leather pants?
Leather. Her smile tells you that she knows leather is a fetish of yours.
She smiles as she slides her hand down to her fly while she asks if you don’t like her choice of clothing. You keep your throat wet.
You slowly walk towards her, pushing her up against the wall. You can feel her body reacting violently to yours as you hover your mouth just over her tall neck, knowing that just your breath on her skin will height her desire. You ask that if she knew you were coming, why she got dressed.
Her voice shudders as you spread her thighs apart so it takes her a few attempts before she can ask how you know she got dressed.
You wonder whether you’ll ever tell her about your apartment and the bedroom window. She’ll probably be angry if you do tell her, but there’s not really a chance in hell she’ll find out because you’d never let her into your apartment. You decide to tell her that it’s morning.
It’s not a complete lie.
You pull away and let a sneer cross your lips. When you tell her to get into her bedroom, it’s an order and not a request.
She smiles a smile that’s reserved for you and you feel triumphant in knowing he doesn’t receive this smile, despite the fact that she defies you.
You grab her harshly around her waist and toss her into the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind you.
Afterwards you lie on your back on the white mattress, half covered by the sheets and your head resting on the only pillow left on the bed. Your broad chest is unveiled for the world and your fingers trace the small crucifix and chain that you had tattooed around your neck when you stopped bothering with a necklace.
You lean over, open the bedside table’s drawer and take his one remaining cigarette and lighter. He always keeps them there and you wonder if he’s even noticed how quickly his supply is disappearing.
From the open doorway, she complains that she doesn’t like people smoking inside. She holds a glass of your usual after-sex brandy, taken from his liquor cabinet, and wears the short, red, satin kimono that you brought her. The red matches her shoulder length, black hair – that was why you brought it. You notice the little things and so does she. That’s why you’re not a match.
You have her hide it when he’s home for the obvious reason that he never shops in Victoria’s Secret and when you’re here, you have her wear it unbelted. You love when she wears it but you don’t want her angelic body trapped inside it. That and you wouldn’t be able to see her.
You sit up, place the burning cigarette on the bedside table and take the brandy she offers. You’re aware of her lying down beside you, her eyes watching you shyly as the kimono slips off her china figure like lava.
The clock catches your eye more than she does. It’s two in the afternoon. Fuck. You’re up and yanking on your underwear and jeans before she sits up, asking where you’re going.
Shirt and jacket. You tell her that her hubby will be home soon and for God’s sake, get out of the gown. He wasn’t home early today, but you’re not going to stick around.
Her eyes sparkle at your back as she asks that whether her getting out of the gown is what you want.
Socks, shoes and sunnies and then you leave the room, telling her not to be stupid.
She calls out behind you. They’re going out tonight.
You leave the house.
You sit across from the hotel in the McDonald’s car park. From your spot behind the tree, the people going in and out of the hotel can’t see you but you can see them.
There’s a gala on tonight. You’re not entirely sure what the gala is for, but you know it’s for a charity case because that’s what they’re always for. It’s just another opportunity for people that look a million bucks to spend those millions and they certainly look a million bucks as they walk into the hotel. Busty young women with high slits in their dresses hang on their elderly husband’s suited arms while the husband talks business to identical couples while rubbing his gloved fingers over the diamond on top of his cane.
Your viewing is interrupted by pack-rat teenagers suddenly walking in front of you, licking fifty cent cones. Compared to the people across the street, they look like they’ve crawled out of a rubbish tip. Move, you shitheads, you yell at them from out your window. They glare at you and one tells you to fuck off, but they move.
Just in time. The couple you’ve been waiting for fall into view across the street and you lean your arms onto your steering wheel to take a better look.
Neither of them look a million bucks, but you know both are worth it. He looks out of place because he’s your age and she looks out of place because she always has. Dinner parties and champagne, that’s what they sing to you separately about this sort of thing, which they have to do for his job. You’ve wondered if either of them sing with song.
They enter and after another few minutes of moving mannequins, the guards look up and down the street, wrinkle their noses at the cheap skates at McDonald’s and shut the gold plated doors, money that could’ve been forwarded to the charity.
This is your moment.
You blend in easily with the mannequins. Back in the depths of your wardrobe was a three-piece suit, presumably once belonging to one of your male lust objects. It fits you and you look the part, so it doesn’t matter really where you got it.
There are many people who’d argue otherwise.
You’ve been unnoticed most of the evening, so luck’s on your side somewhere. You admit that you probably look rather shady, with your hair plastered down onto your forehead making you look not an ounce of the sex god you’re used to looking and you know you’re shady because you don’t have an invitation written on tissue-thin paper in your pocket. But a guard has only caught your eye once and you managed to escape by way of the men’s bathroom, where an elderly mannequin figuratively chewed your ear off about his last quarter on something or other and then literally slobbered all over your ear, leaving you thinking that you’re less irresistible when you’re wiping salvia off your ear with a paper towel.
No one ever looks up at these things, you’ve realised, so standing on the second floor’s walkway leaning down over the balcony is much better than making your way through the chirpy crowd. You are above the smoke cloud and not concerned about the male mannequins dying within a year and female mannequins dying within ten years from lung cancer because none are worth the lust.
They enter and she doesn’t see you. She usually does and the emotion of love in her eyes is so strong it makes you sick, but now she watches feet inside sparkly stilettos that she’ll never own while holding a full glass of champagne. He sees you, though, and tips his head back a little to get a better look of you. His eyes are fiery but the corner of his mouth turns up slightly.
His eyes. He knows what you want him to feel and he knows what you don’t want anyone to feel. He’s anyone. You both know that both you and him fucked up by dropping the relationship and you both know that he’s pissed off about you sleeping with her but you also both know that you can’t be blamed for your addiction to certain types of people and if you were married, he would’ve done the same thing.
It’s moments before he appears at your elbow and drags you back away from the railing to the wall. You want to know how he got rid of her; he tells you that he’s gone for a cigarette.
Good one, you say. You ran out of them this morning.
No, is his pointed reply. You had me run out of them this morning.
Either way, it’s irrelevant because she’ll be gone soon.
He’s always been one to state the obvious as he tells you more than asks you that you’ve stuffed up together and, considering you both only lust, maybe you both should start together again.
Everything’s packed in the trunk and you’re off. The cops will give up as soon as you reach the border.
They want to have a little talk, they tell you. You know better. You know they want to put you away for shoving her over the balcony to her death as they figured out it was deliberate rather than accidental. Good for them.
He knows you’re gone and that if he wants you, he’ll have to come find you himself because you can’t go back, or to the other fifteen or so places you’ve been too with the same agenda.
He tells you to ring from Atlanta and you both know it’s a long drive from Los Angeles to Atlanta.
You know you might just start again instead.
~ Part was read aloud at the Big Read #3, 8th November 2004, at Brett's Cafe Driftwood, Melbourne, Australia
~ To be published in Page Seventeen, issue #1, in May 2005