Heller (17 page)

“And darling,”
she spun to her husband excitedly, clutching his arm, the epitome
of a devoted and loving wife. “You mustn’t mind if I stay out a bit
later tonight. I want Tilly to take me to a show, and then we’ll go
to dinner, and maybe even a very late movie! I can’t wait! We are
going to have such a wonderful time together, aren’t we, Tilly!”
There was a dangerously wild sparkle in her eyes. She could smell
freedom.

Her husband
kissed her indulgently on her cute little nose. “Not
too
late though,” he warned, smiling affectionately at her, patting her
arm. There was a knock on the door. “That will be my driver to take
me to the airport.” They had a touching farewell and then he was
gone.

As soon as the
door shut behind him, Lily jumped up and down gleefully, clapping
her heavily jewelled hands. With a self-satisfied smile at me, she
raced into her bedroom and threw clothes, makeup, shoes and
jewellery into her oversized handbag. While she did, I took a
moment to let Heller know what I was doing. He wasn’t available and
his phone diverted to Daniel, so I let him know instead. He
promised to pass on the message about my change of plans.

We left the
hotel and went straight to her bolthole where she transformed
herself again. I had tried to dress a little less formally in a
trouser-suit and a silk blouse, not really sure where we’d end up,
but not wanting to look overdressed. Although to be honest, anyone
wearing a normal amount of clothes would look overdressed next to
Lily. She chose a deep red micro-dress that barely covered her
butt, so tight I wasn’t sure how she could breathe in it. It was
obvious from its contours that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.
She had the dangly diamond earrings on again and a pair of
teetering sandals consisting of nothing but skimpy red leather
straps that she had bought the day before, costing her a cool
$1500.

“We’ll start
with the casino again,” she demanded. So we did. She attracted a
lot of attention wherever she went, and it thrilled and aroused
her. There was a wildness about her that made me uneasy, and she
knocked back a couple of champagnes in a few minutes as soon as we
arrived. She again threw thousands of dollars at a time at the
gaming tables, laughing joyously whether she won or lost. She
flirted outrageously with every man who crossed her path. So it was
no surprise when after a saucy thirty-minute conversation with a
young croupier on a break, during which she shimmied against him
several times in time with the music, he grabbed her hand and led
her off to a dark stairwell in a service area of one of the
restaurants.

I followed
discreetly and managed to position myself far enough away that I
didn’t have to witness their activities, but unfortunately close
enough to hear every grunt and thump. They were at it for ages. I
was stifling another yawn when they finished with a drawn-out and
what I thought was an unnecessarily overdramatic and noisy climax,
with much screaming and whooping. They finally walked back up the
stairs, both of them smiling. Lily had handed the young man a wad
of cash that he was happily pushing into his trouser pocket. I
wondered briefly if I should tell him he had forgotten to do up his
fly, but couldn’t be bothered. With an affectionate smack of his
arse, Lily sent him on his way. Then she turned to me.

“I want to
dance. Let’s go to a nightclub,” she insisted. I glanced at my
watch and was surprised to see that it was night-time. I couldn’t
believe that we had been at the casino for so long – they really do
distort your sense of time.

I hailed a cab
and instructed the driver to deliver us at a swank, urbane
nightclub that catered specifically for the idle affluent and young
up-comers. I didn’t want to visit another dive and Lily nodded in
approval when we walked in. We danced for hours to the pulsating
techno-beat, sometimes together, mostly with chic, well-spoken
young men. She was drinking glass after glass of champagne and I
tried valiantly to keep an eye on her, a task made difficult by the
flashing, multi-coloured lights and the writhing, drunken
crowd.

I lost her
momentarily and rushed around panicked, trying to spot her in the
happy throng. Eventually I found her in the darkened hallway
leading to the bathrooms, pushed up hard against a wall by a man
with his tongue down her throat and his hand up her dress. I sighed
wearily and leaned on the wall a distance from them, preparing to
wait until their inevitable knee-trembler was over, trying to block
out their animalistic noises. Suddenly the job seemed much less
glamorous than I had imagined, just as Rumbles had warned. My legs
were aching from dancing, I was bone-tired and Lily’s overactive
sex life was increasingly striking me as boringly sordid.

With a final
grunt of satisfaction, the man collapsed against Lily, breathing
heavily.

“Thanks babe,”
he panted. “That was good.”

“Don’t stop
now, you fucker!” she screamed at him, pummelling his shoulders.
“I’m not finished yet!” He shrugged indifferently, pushed her away
and did up his trousers.

“Yeah, but I
am babe and that’s all that matters to me,” he threw over his
shoulder as he casually sauntered back to the dance floor.

“You fucking
cocksucker!” she shrieked at his retreating back. “You
motherfucking arse-licker!” She leant back on the wall, petulant.
“Let’s go home,” she ordered, pushing past me bad-temperedly.

It took me a
while to hail a cab, and as one pulled up I noticed Lily putting
her phone back into her bag with a satisfied smile. It reminded me
that I hadn’t checked my phone for a while. Oops! Three missed
calls from Heller. I hastily rang him in the taxi on our way back
to the hotel.

“What have you
been doing all night?” he wanted to know.

“Dancing.”

“Who
with?”

“Guys.”

A brief
silence. “What guys?”

“I dunno. Just
guys. In a nightclub. I didn’t ask them their names.”

“Had a good
time?”

“Sure,” I lied
as I yawned.

“What are you
going to do next?”

“Go back to
the other suite. Have a shower. Hopefully get some sleep soon.”

“Okay, I’ll
check on you later.” Another pause. “Take care, Matilda,” he said
softly, before hanging up. I briefly hugged the phone to my chest
before putting it back in my bag.

“Man, I’m
tired!” I yawned again and stretched.

“I’m not. I’m
very unsatisfied. But not to worry,” she smiled wickedly. “I’ve
arranged a treat for us!”

I silently
groaned. What next?

When we
returned to her bolthole, she made an instant beeline for the
shower. When she finally emerged, she was wrapped in one of the
hotel’s luxurious bathrobes. I was about to shower myself, when I
realised that I didn’t have any clean clothes with me. I took a
quick shower anyway, but it’s never nice to get back into your
dirty clothes again afterwards, especially after dancing
energetically in them for hours.

While I was in
the bathroom, I heard voices and when I came out saw that Lily had
ordered two bottles of Dom Perignon from room service.

“More
champagne? Don’t you think you’ve had enough already?”

“No, I don’t!
You sound like my fucking mother-in-law,” she said, sullen.
Defiantly she popped the cork and poured herself a large glass. She
was still in her bathrobe, her feet bare and her long dark hair
hanging down damply around her shoulders. She had removed her
makeup and jewellery and looked fresh and young. Not at all like
the old hag that I was feeling at the moment.

There was a
gentle knock on the door and Lily jumped up excitedly.

“Oh goodie!”
she squealed and rushed to the door to open it. Two tall,
attractive, toned and smoothly brown young men walked in. Both wore
good quality hip clothes. One had wild curly black hair and
startling green eyes and the other had brown hair, sun-kissed with
blond streaks, and soft brown eyes. Lily fussed around them,
stroking their arms and touching their faces. She turned to me,
grinning eagerly.

“I’ve ordered
us some party boys!”

Male hookers!
I stared at them, not sure what to say.
Pleased to meet you?
The black-haired one licked his lips lasciviously while running his
hands down his body.

“You wanna
piece of this?” he asked me, grabbing his crotch and thrusting it
in my direction. I guess he was trying to be seductive, but it came
across as extremely vulgar and off-putting.

“No!” I said,
backing away. Then I remembered my manners. “Thank you.”

“Oh come on,
Tilly,” begged Lily. “I ordered one for each of us. We could have a
foursome. We could do each other. I’d love to do you. I’d love to
watch them doing you. Don’t be such so fucking frigid!”

“I’m not
frigid, Lily,” I protested, secretly repulsed by her suggestion. “I
just know that Heller would be very angry with me if he found me
partying on the job. I’m sorry, but you have to remember that I’m
working.”

“Suit
yourself,” she retorted in a nasty voice. “Leaves more for me.” And
with that, she flounced off to the bedroom, seizing both bottles of
champagne and dragging the two men along with her.

The rest of
the evening passed very slowly for me. I turned on the TV, flicked
through the channels and found an old Hitchcock movie to watch. But
the laughter, thumping, moaning and orgasmic screaming coming from
the bedroom was very distracting, and I didn’t take in much of the
complicated plot. After a few hours, the brown-haired man staggered
out of the bedroom, completely naked, and flopped down heavily in
one of the armchairs.

“She’s sent me
out to order more champagne. God, she’s draining me dry! I need a
break. She’s completely insatiable.” He slumped back in the chair,
closing his eyes. I felt sorry for him. He looked knackered.

“I was about
to make a cup of tea. Would you like one?” I offered. He nodded
gratefully and I went into the kitchenette to boil the water. My
phone rang. Heller again. Who else rang me ten times a day?

“Hey
Boss.”

“How’s
everything?” he asked.

“I’m making a
cup of tea for a naked man,” I said nonchalantly, reaching for the
mugs and teabags.

A significant
silence. “Why are you with a naked man, Matilda?”

I poured the
boiling water into the two mugs. “You don’t want to know.
Really.”

“I do want to
know. Really.”

“You’ll be
shocked.”

“I’m
impossible to shock.”

“Lily has
ordered up two party boys, and she is, and I quote, ‘draining them
dry’.”

“Oh. I don’t
want to hear any more."

“I told you
that you’d be shocked.”

“I’m not
shocked, I just don’t want to hear any more. You’re not
participating in this, er, activity, I hope?”

“Heller! Of
course not! Why do you think I’m out here making the tea?”

Another pause.
“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow, Matilda.”

We hung up. I
added milk and spooned some sugar in the man’s tea, thought about
it and added a few more spoonfuls. The poor guy probably needed
some glucose. I carefully carried the mugs out.

“Are you going
to order more champagne for her?”

“No,” I
replied. “She’s had enough.”

“You better be
the one to tell her then.”

I nodded and
sipped my tea. There was an awkward silence. “So, have you been in
this line of work for long?” I asked politely.

“Couple of
years,” he said. “The money’s good and it’s not too demanding. I’m
only doing it until I can catch my break as an actor.”

You and me
both, honey
, I thought bitterly. I placed my mug on the coffee
table and leaned forward. “Look, this is a very personal question
and you can just tell me to go jump if you like, but I’ve always
wondered. It’s not, um,
easy
for a man to fake sexual
arousal. Much easier for a woman I would think. How do you . .
.”

“How do I get
it up?”

“Yeah. Sorry,
that’s too personal, isn’t it? You don’t have to answer. I’m far
too nosy for my own good.”

He smiled
nicely. “I don’t mind answering. I’m an actor, right, so I’m good
at faking emotion. I think of it as a test. I pretend it’s a
director telling me to get it up now for a scene, so I get it up.”
I nodded. It made sense. “Also, I’m twenty-two so I’m naturally
horny most of time anyway.” He cocked his head in the direction of
the bedroom. “She’s easy ‘cause she’s young and pretty. It’s the
older ones who are the hardest. I once had this client who had
never had an orgasm in her life and she was about sixty. It took me
all night, but we finally cracked it. She was real grateful. Gave
me a huge tip.”

“I can
imagine! So you do women exclusively?”

“Yeah, I only
do ladies. Neil, the guy in the bedroom, he swings both ways.
Probably gives himself more options that way, but I can’t do guys.
Just not interested. I’ve tried, but –”

There was a
sudden fracas from the bedroom. Lily shrieked in fear, and a man’s
voice rose in anger. I jumped to my feet. I turned to Brown Hair
and ordered him firmly to stay exactly where he was. He wasn’t
inclined to disagree, busy enjoying his tea and enjoying the
break.

I approached
the bedroom cautiously. Lily shrieked again. When I pushed open the
door and walked in, she was cowering naked on the bed. The
black-haired man, Neil, was also naked and was leaning over her
waving a small sharp knife.
Oh shit!
I thought, realising
with panic that it was completely up to me to get this situation
under control. Remembering what Tysen had told me, I tried to
appear authoritative. I held out one palm to Lily and one to Neil,
like a cop directing traffic.

“Whoa!” I said
loudly and decisively. Lily whimpered and curled up further. I
stepped closer to the bed and Neil leapt towards me, waving the
knife threateningly. I stood still. “Everyone stay where they are.
Nice and calm. No sudden moves.”