Cathexis (7 page)

Shot by a green bolt; the idea of them in the same bed, but of course – she had no choice. Just as I didn't have the option to stay with her all night.

“I was thinking about you” she continued “and
....and”.

“Go on” I coaxed.

“And, well, I just came”.

“But you don't do that”.

“No, I didn't touch myself, I just imagined you loving me”.

“Wow, good girl” I said with some admiration. “I got your present Nancy, you are amazing and very clever, the locket is beautiful thank you”.

“It's my pleasure” she said. “Minette?”

“Yes?”

“Minette, I love you”.

Dead air for a while. I could hear her breathing, sweat like a hand on my breast bone, the virus in me.

“I love you too” I said.

She groaned
.
“Oh God, this hurts. I'm working on a plan to come home earlier”.

The shriek of children. “Minette ...I think you might be the one”.

A balloon of longing inflating my chest and blocking my throat so I couldn't speak.

“Darling, I've got to go” she whispered. “Bye bye, big kisses”.

Planted on
the sofa, attempting to focus on 'The Horse Whisperer' and re-reading the same two pages as a rogue's gallery of punters ebbed and flowed; it was one of Remy's busy dealing evenings. They nearly always stayed for one. Whether it was a loss leader on Remy's part, or a sociable exchange, I didn't know or care. I knew I had to get out of there though.

Side by side we lay on the mouldy futon in platonic impurity, two wind resistant, ground hugging shapes. I'd stubbornly kept on my reading light, but it made no difference; the Remy bug breathed next to me. I looked at her face in repose. I'd been unkind; in sleep, she looked as we all do, angelic, like one of Toulouse Lautrec's softer paintings. I wasn't staying with her because I was good and didn't want to hurt her. I didn't of course, but I knew what I was: I was greedy, deceitful and a coward to boot. I got up and played Patience on the crusty, itchy carpet, while Nica twitched in dope dreams.

Nancy calling.

“Hey!”

“Hi, I'm coming home”.

“When?”

“Tonight ...it's not working Todor and I ...we fight all the time and I don't want to spoil it for the children any more than I have already”.

“I shouldn't say brilliant should I?” I said. “But brilliant!”.

“Yes, it was my plan. I have done this on purpose ...to come back to you”.

I felt myself shape-shift to accommodate this calculating creature. She wouldn't be back till gone midnight
, so I left bread, milk, cheese and ham and a bottle of Champagne. As I lay on the mouldy futon, I imagined her face, illuminated in the fridge light, her lips moving in thanks. Me a phantom child beside her, hungry and empty.

I came to her each morning and evening. She would throw a bag or package at me and march from the room, it was her way of giving me presents, which I found hilarious. One day, however, she sat down beside me and earnestly placed a small, black velvet box on my knee. “For you” she said, pushing a hank of curls behind her ear. A Russian wedding ring, three interlinked bands of white, red and yellow gold. It was her grandmother's.

“Nancy, it's beautiful but it's too much. I can't take this, it should stay in your family”.

She placed her finger on my lips.

“Don't protest, I want you to have it”. Withdrawing her finger.

“But...”. She quickly replaced it, raising her eyebrows in reprimand.

“Ssss” she said. “I love you, take it”.

The following evening I came to her dog-tired. It was our last before the family regrouped and I prostrated myself on the living room floor, weeping with exhaustion and resentment, head roaring with fatigue and aching in every way.

Taking me by the hand, she led me to the bedroom. While the water thundered in the en suite she peeled off my stiff clothes and examined me closely, turning my hands in hers, inspecting my palms and kissing the calluses, steering me around, kissing every contusion and scrape she could find. There were many and I sat on the bed while her lips found the bruises on my shins, her hair brushing my feet. I remembered the first time she'd examined me, surprised that I shaved my legs, believing all lesbians were politically hairy.

Climbing into the bath behind me, she washed my hair and soaped my body. I leant back on her, it must have been uncomfortable but she held me until I awoke with a jolt, slapping the water with my hand. Then I was in a huge towel, my hands and crevices dried diligently. She shook out a fresh towel on the bed and I collapsed on my front. The whisk of her hands rubbing together, she pushed almond scented oil into my skin, massaging and manipulating each part of me with equal attention, probing and dimpling with finger tips, before her big hands grabbed my buttocks and squeezed and kneaded, spreading them and squashing them together.

“Amazing” I groaned, dribbling onto the pillow. Her oily thumb grazing my anus and I turned my head to the side, where I could see our tableau in the floor to ceiling wardrobe mirror. Her hair tumbled forward, obscuring her face, leaving just the edge of her profile. Kneeling between my legs, rocking as if in prayer, holding my buttocks apart, I could tell she had decided to do something surprising. Her tongue traced the length of my arse crack as she rubbed my sphincter with her thumb.

Not normally a fan of bottom stuff, but her worshipping reflection impaled me with a galvanised horn. She inserted her tongue. God she was dirty
,
but all I felt was a disquieting urge to poo. The image though, captivated me. I blinked slowly like a camera shutter to retain it forever.

“Do you like that?” she breathed into my crack.

“I'd prefer it if your attentions were redirected”.

“But I love to do it” she purred.

“Perv lady” I sighed. She giggled and proceeded to fuck me from behind in the more traditional hole and so unequivocally that I, usually silent in sex, groaned in a sequence of baritone expletives, rising to soprano as I came, colossally.

“Very melodious” she said, pleased with her composition.

The chirping muddle of dawn
,
then muted light. Her face pulled into focus on the pillow, regarding me in green fields.

“You snore” she said. A sleep plumped smile for me which met my lips, my only opportunity to besiege her body in the night squandered, out so cold, oblivious to the warmth beside me
,
but happy at least to have woken to her petals and tangles. I took refuge in the canopy of curls. I'd always have this morning.

Chapter 12

Todor and the children returned and things had to change. I couldn't visit her in the mornings anymore and we had nowhere to go; our affair became tortuous and hard to steer. We found ourselves in a series of difficult situations, at best uncomfortable, at worst untenable, but mostly somewhere in between. It was thus.

Side by side like conjoined twins in front of the kitchen sink, peeling potatoes and looking out on the garden I'd made for her. The children behind us,
Sasha colouring at the breakfast bar, Nikolai on the floor, crashing his cars. Her shoulder and hip lower than mine. Briefly, she inclined her head so that her hair grasped at my arm.

“Mummy” enquired Sasha slyly. “Are you going to kiss Nette?”

Nikolai cracked a munchkin giggle.

“Nette kiss Mummy, Nette kiss Mummy!” he chanted. Sasha joined in, hammering her fist on the breakfast bar.

Camped on the enormous sofa watching 'Charlotte's Web', Nancy covertly holding my hand under her thigh. My arm around Sasha and Nancy cuddling Nikolai.

“Nette?”

“Yes, Sasha”.

“I think you guys are the same”.

A Sunday afternoon in a pub in Primrose Hill. Todor had the children at home. Nancy with my hand under the table moved in to kiss me
.

“Don't” I warned, but it was too late. We'd caught the attention of a group of rugby players who sent forth a labrador puppy as a sweetener. Nancy hugged him, delighted. She liked dogs. One of them drew up his sweat pants over his maturing paunch and sauntered over, clumsy and excitable in much the same way as the puppy.

“Is he yours?” Nancy said. “He's adorable.”

The man hunkered down.

“So are you” he said, swinging his heavy arm around her shoulders. She looked at me pointedly, humouring him, until he placed his meaty paw on her thigh and ran it towards her body, pulling back her skirt as it went. She froze.

“Don't touch her” I said calmly.

He looked at Nancy for confirmation. Moving her leg away, she smoothed her skirt.

“Take your hands off her” I said, now with menace.

Withdrawing his arm, he gathered himself to his full height.

“Fucking dykes” he spat contemptuously. “Come on Snipe”, retrieving the puppy. He was posh.

Locked in the bathroom, mouths locked. The children in
Nikolai's room pawing over Pokémon. Nancy rubbing me and pushing inside me. The front door clattered open.

“Where is everyone?” Todor shouted.

At 'Bo Peeps', a lesbian bar in Islington, unable to converse over the U-boat music. Opposite us, a rotund geezer bird was devouring a fake tan femme. We didn't belong here.

Fucking each other awkwardly in the Saab, we'd ended up at Alexandra Palace. The face of an Asian man at the rear window watching us. Nancy fired up the engine and reversed, the tyres spitting up gravel before we lurched off, unsure if we'd run him over.

                                                                                                                                                     Chapter 13

Message. Read now?

“Give me tomorrow afternoon darling. Please x”.

Debating whether to use the keys I still had to let myself in the basement when the Saab pulled up. Nancy hurrying towards me up the steps, fists above her head, roaring a silent yes in triumph and jubilation. Apparently, this was not all about me; she'd just completed her final ‘Focus and Motivate’ session, leaving her animated and hyper, which pleased me as it meant she would have lots of energy.

We kissed in the hallway, long, fat tongued lunges and placed our hands over each others' hearts, seemingly in an act of devotion, but I wondered if Nancy's motive was akin to mine - to check if she still thundered in the same way she always had when we kissed...she did.

“Come” she said, leading me by the hand to the bedroom as usual. She pushed me down on the bed playfully and reaching under it, placed a thick, yellow carrier bag on the duvet.

“Do you love me, Minette?”

I sensed a test. “Yes”.

“Do you trust me?”

“...yes”. The upward inflection betrayed me.

“How far would you go for me?”

I thought about it.

“At least to Nottingham” I said earnestly. She snorted and clouted me with a pillow.

“I'd like to try something different”, her mouth spread in a salacious grin.

“You don't want to whip me do you?” Picking at a callus in trepidation.

“No...” she smiled, “Not today anyway”. Her eyes fell to the yellow bag, inferring I should open it. I pulled out a black, foam block and tugged at the zip that ran around three sides.

“Oh ...my ...God” I said, as a silver camcorder dropped onto the duvet. “Absolutely no way”. My hands in a warding off gesture. But there was that grin again. She moved to the wardrobe and withdrew an assemblage of sticks, which hinged into a tripod.

“No, Nancy, I'm sorry, I can't do it”, shaking my head emphatically.

“I know, I know, it's pervy as you would say, but it's just for me, so I can see you when you're not here”.

“No, Nancy, I can't bear the thought of my stupid faced being filmed in the throes of sex”.

“It's not your stupid face I'd be filming, stupid” she said, kissing me all over my stupid face.

“I can't”.

“Yes, you can. You’re a very beautiful woman, Minette, you have a fantastic body and you must do it for me, for us, for when we're old and saggy so we can see how exquisite we were”.

“I really can't imagine wanting to see that when I'm in my forties. Anyway, you may be exquisite, but I'm not. Plus, the whole point of sex is that you lose yourself. If I'm hyper aware, it won't work. And supposing Todor finds it – or the children”. I was clutching at straws.

“Nobody will find it”. She straddled my lap and ran her thumbs over my nipples, letting her hair engulf my face.

“Come on darling, please ...for me” she whispered.

“Well” I said, exhaling ostentatiously. “I'm going to have to get very drunk then ...but I'm not promising anything”.

“Stay there, I'll get some booze” she said, sprinting off down the stairs.

Mulling the idea over, I remained horrified. Eyeing the tripod sceptically, I nudged it with my toe. I examined the camera, turned it on and pinched off the plastic lens cap, which dangled from a cord and peered through the viewfinder, noting the fully charged battery sign; she had prepared.

Panning across the room, a brief blur while the autofocus kicked in. There was me, sitting cross legged on the bed, reflected in the wardrobe mirror, autofocus sighing as I zoomed in on my face. The top of the tree outside the window, the sky blue today. There were my boots, casually kicked off on the floor by the door. I really loved them, they were Blundstones. And here was Nancy, standing in the doorway, holding two hi-ball glasses and a bottle of schnapps, autofocus wheezing as I captured her dirty mouth. She poured a copious amount of schnapps into each glass.

“Down your hatch” she cried and knocked it back in two gulps, making a face like a hissing cat, eyes filling with water.

“Now you” she gestured. I dropped the camcorder on the bed. “OK”. She poured another generous measure. “Each time we take a drink, we must remove a clothing”. After three, we were down to our underwear. She snatched the camera. “Before I get too pissed” she said, grappling it into the tripod and angling it down towards the bed. She patted the duvet.

“Lay down”.

Belligerently, I pulled off my socks. She ordered me on my back and parted my knees. I took a swig from the bottle, the autofocus wind adjusting itself to film the gusset of my pants with optimum clarity.

“Perfect”. She nestled on the floor at the end of the bed and ran her hands over my thighs. Grabbing a pillow, I pressed it over my hot, flustered face and clamped my legs together. I might see if I could pretend I wasn't here. Remember a happy time, a sunny place, but I was unable to conjure any such memory. She prized my knees apart, her hair tickled and I let out a muffled scream, my sense of touch anticipation heightened by my blindness. She stroked the fabric of my pants and blew on me. I screamed again, but reluctantly yielded.

“That's good” she soothed. “See, it's not so bad”. She pulled the crotch of my pants to one side and continued to breathe on me. 

“So pretty and if I'm not mistaken, yes ...wet”. I squirmed in shameful arousal as she addressed me adroitly, sometimes in her mother tongue – describing, encouraging, praising.

I wondered what she thought of herself now. The calculated risk she'd taken, so many variables and unknowns, a lot at stake. She'd set her sights and bagged me. What now? The gathering merry-go-round between my legs reminded me I was having sex, or rather being sexed. Not being able to see her was odd – I'd normally watch intently, reliant on her sheer beauty, but now all I had to go on was her touch, her voice and her concept. My orgasm disappeared around the corner ahead of me in a game of cat and mouse. Coming, a complex task: you had to bliss out on the physical, but all the while track that elusive creature until it looked back, roared and fell upon you. I couldn't nail it, not anchored in the moment unless I could see her. The pillow fell to the floor. Looking down on her kinky hair, she was rapt, a stunner from any angle. Her search lights swept up my body, locating me completely and I came under her gaze.

Close on a bench in Clissold Park, hyphenated by a dolly, while the children, stoked up on cola and Hula Hoops, scaled cargo nets and glided imperially down slides. Today I was particularly struck by Nancy's beauty, dressed in jeans, a black t-shirt and my green, checked shirt. Although she had adjusted her style, which now fell more in line with mine, she remained unequivocally feminine. She leaned forward, her elbows resting on parted knees, cowboy fashion. Her eyelashes so lengthy they cast a sickle across her cheek in the late summer light, which charged her eyes brass and chartreuse, the breeze jealously attempting to make off with her curls, which the sun also blessed bronze and char shadow. I could smell it, implacably fresh like cut grass but with an undercurrent of Magdalene's oil.

Her large hands hung unguessed between her legs. My God, where they had been, what they had wrought. Much more than her lips had uttered, even though they'd spoken of the 'love' thing. The vocabulary was somehow insufficient. Anyone can say anything; the veritas lies 'in manum'.

I looked at the children, not just a mother's prerogative.

Sasha batted her hand at me as she obsessively mounted the ladder to re-slide. I set mine over my eyes against the glare and waved back. Nancy levelled her mouth to my shoulder. “Minette”,she whispered, “you're beautiful”.

I looked to the ground and wrung my hands between my knees, not knowing how to field a compliment.

“No I'm not” I replied, not bashfully; I knew it wasn't true – she was making fun of me. Crappy tears threatened my eyes. A turbine groan and an aeroplane winked the sun. With it her expression altered and she looked at me with new sympathy.

“You really can't see it can you?”

I couldn't corral the flow. Her eyes widened, hard wired to the life coach’s foe …disabling influences.

“Wow. She really fucked you up didn't she?”

I pursed my lips, pressing my fingertips to my eyeballs, legs juddering as if to run from this microscope.

“Do you ever see your mother now?” she ventured. I shook my head and wiped my eyes, smiling, harnessing control. She mustn't see I'm a nutter. Nancy was beautiful and I was not and that was just one of the reasons she would eventually go. Regarding me in a sort of disbelief, ransacking my psyche no doubt.

“I'm sorry” she said. “I had no idea you were so fragile”.

No one ever does I wanted to say, but instead I maintained I was premenstrual and I smiled to make it alright.

“Anyway” I said, “you're gorgeous”. She leant into me conspiratorially and looked around.

“I know” she said, “I could have anyone so why would I want to be with an ugly bird, huh?” She chucked me under the chin like a gangster.

“Perhaps you love me for my brain?” I said, feeding her a line.

“No, I love you for your tits” she said, taking it.

Languishing on the
sofa, fixating on Remy's hand, which intermittently morphed into a claw. Plucking the spliff from its talons, I brought the bitter roach to my lips. It crackled, shedding a glowing seed that tumbled down my top and settled on the highly flammable sofa. I batted it feebly, Remy looked on, inert and unconcerned.

“You alright Minsk?” I was on the brink of being rumbled – she never asked questions. The air between us had changed.

“Yeah” I managed.

“I miss you”. A single tear rolled down her cheek. “I'm worried about you” she added.

“I know, I'm sorry. I'm so busy, what with Clive being away and everything”. Jesus, I was a shit. She laid her head back and nodded as if she'd made up her mind about something. Nica glowered, reproachful. My phone beeped and Remy eyed it with lassitude. Pressing 'Read now', I smiled.

“Good news?” she asked sardonically.

“Yes” I said, saving the message. “Clive's coming back next week”.

It was Nancy.

'You are beautiful! x’.

Chapter 14

My mouth opened to accept the dripping slice of tomato Nancy was offering. I hated tomatoes to the point of vomiting, but allowed her to push it between my lips and thumb away the juice trickle.

Sasha
's sandals drumming the side of the breakfast bar as she drew.

“Don't do that please”. Nancy frowned.

“Mummy I was drawing this for you, but now I've decided to give it to Nette”. She twisted herself around and climbed backwards off the stool. Her blonde mop bobbed along the side of the work surface.

“Look Nette”.

I examined the picture; at first glance, a typical six year old girl's rendering of the world – an arcadia of flowers with faces and stripey, cigar shaped bees. Still of the age when she hadn't figured the sky meets the land. A blue strip at the top and the grass at the bottom. In between, a white no man's land where three figures hovered, celebrated by a flotilla of jubilant butterflies.

“It's you guys” she said, jabbing the paper emphatically.

There was Nancy's hair, radiating in black springs. Some heavy felt tip make-up applied to her giant apple green eyes. And there was me, custard yellow hair, wearing a checked shirt that I actually wished I had and stout brown boots. We were floating above the ground, holding hands in what looked to be some sort of wedding arrangement.

“That's beautiful Sasha” I cooed. “But what's this little creature here with the horns?”

“That's Daddy” she said blithely.

“Oh” I said, “but why has he got horns?”

“Dunno” she shrugged. “I just felt like it”.

The following afternoon Nancy was hyper in a weird way. Flapping a fan of leaflets in front of my face, she slammed them down on the coffee table, so agitated that her fingers shook as she chewed on a nail. She fixed me fretfully and turned to the window. Screams and fierce recriminations erupted from the garden. I could tell she was peeved by the position of her feet. I stirred the leaflets.

'Thinking of getting divorced?'

'Divorce, what you need to know'

'Helping you through divorce'

This wasn't about me. I was a catalyst, but the responsibility scared me nonetheless. Stepping up behind her, I spread my hands on her shoulders.