I Was Waiting For You (15 page)

Jack read the address out to the gondolier in his French-accented Italian.

“It's party time,” Eleonora said.

The half-abandoned palazzo dominated the Grand Canal halfway between the Ponte del Rialto and the Ponte dell'accademia, with the Campo San Polo visible from the ornate balconies on the land side of the building.

The tall man who wore the white mask with the elongated beak, similar to the head attire medics had worn in the years of the Plague, when pepper had been lodged into the furthest reaches of the bird of prey-like beak to shield its wearers from the illness, had been hovering near them most of the evening. They had briefly been introduced by Jacopo, earlier on in the festivities. Occasionally he would approach them with new glasses of champagne and would whisper in Eleonora's ears, or casually allow his leather-gloved hands to brush against her bare shoulders. His English was nigh perfect, albeit with West Coast American inflections. Jack couldn't remember his name. Real or otherwise. They had been introduced as Byron and Ariadne. No one here used their real name.

As neither Eleonora or Jack were particularly sociable or voluble, they had been isolated in the margins of the party and its flowing conversations. They had both drunk too much by now. Which meant he was retreating, as he often did, into longer and longer silences, whereas her demeanour was becoming looser, more joyful by the minute. How many times now had she wondered at the sheer elegance of the evening and its incomparable setting, the candles illuminating the cavernous, marble-floored rooms, the gold dishes laden with fruit, the never-ending flow of booze. She was intoxicated by both the alcohol and the sense of occasion. Was this the adventure she always claimed she was seeking whenever he would raise any questions about the future?

A hand took hold of his. Jack turned round. A woman in a red velvet dress and a white powdered wig pulled him a metre or two towards her. He looked up at her. She had endless legs enhanced by thin six inch heels. Behind her mask, he could see her eyes were the colour of coal.

“You are English, no?”

“Indeed,” he answered.

Her scent was sweet, cloying almost.

“So you like our Carnevale?”

“Absolutely,” he responded, ever polite.

Her purple-lipsticked lips moved into the shape of a kiss.

“Is it your first time in Venice?” she asked.

“Not quite,” he answered. “But the first time I've been here at Carnival time, though.”

“Ah …”

She moved nearer to him.

He realised they were now alone in the large room; the woman with purple lips, Eleonora, the tall guy and him. Somehow all the nearby partygoers had drifted out silently into the other neighbouring rooms, leaving faint echoes of conversations and the tinkling of crystal glasses eerily suspended in the tobacco smoke-infested air.

He took a step back.

“Oh … shy?”

“No,” he muttered.

“So?” She extended her left arm and her fingers swept across his dry lips.

“Your woman isn't anywhere as shy as you are, I see,” she remarked.

Jack's heart dropped all the way down to his stomach as he glanced around. Eleonora was now being embraced by the tall stranger, who held her tight against the far wall of the room, his hand burrowing under her dress, his face muzzled into hers. Her eyes was closed.

“Come,” the woman with the white powdered wig said, taking him by the hand and leading him to a low couch at the opposite end of the room.

He followed, as if in a trance. Time slowed down to a crawl.

Her cunt tasted of exotic spices. Pungent, strong, savage. His tongue lapped her generous juices with quiet and studied abandon.

She spread her legs wider apart and pressed his head down firmer against her. Jack momentarily gasped for breath.

“Lick me harder,” she ordered him.

Once she had tired of his worshipping the thick folds of her labia and the invisible radiating heat pulsing through her opening all the way from her innards, she pulled him onto the worn-out couch and firmly pulled his trousers down and began sucking him off.

Somehow, even though she was talented and imaginative, he failed to get totally hard, and she gave up within a few minutes.

“No worry,” she said. “It happens.”

Red-faced, he looked her in the eyes, attempting to guess how old she might be behind that mask. Her skin was spotless and taut and her long, defined legs were those of an athlete at the peak of her form. He gulped and instantly recalled the taste of her and its striking flavours. She had been on her knees and rose to her feet. He just stood there, his black silk trousers bunched around his ankles.

“Undress,” she said. It was more of an order than a suggestion.

He meekly obeyed.

He wanted to turn around and see where Eleonora was. And the tall man. Their own noises had been muted, distant, but nevertheless insidiously present all the while he had been involved with the purple-lipsticked woman. She sensed this.

“Do so as you are. Don't turn round,” she said, unclenching the black leather belt that circled her thin waist. “Look down to the floor as you undress.”

He noticed the smudged purple stains of lipstick on the mushroom tip of his cock, like dried wine against the ridged flesh of his masculinity. He pulled the trousers down over his laced shoes. Then kicked the shoes off and quickly slipped off his socks. Surely there was no more ridiculous sight than a naked man wearing just black socks? He then pulled himself up and began unbuttoning his shirt. As he did so, he saw the woman reach for her matching red handbag, which had been lying on the couch and pull a devious contraption out, all leather straps and ivory trunk, from it.

His stomach froze.

There was a faint cry from the other end of the room.

He was now naked.

The woman pulled her ruched dress upwards and belted the strap-on to her waist. The artificial cock jutted ahead of her like the prow of a boat. Hard, inflexible.

“Maybe this will give you a hard on?” she suggested. "Word has it that English men are much appreciative or should I say receptive?"

He knew he could say no, and just leave the room with no further expressions of protest. But the words wouldn't pass his lips. And he also knew he could not leave Eleonora here alone anyway.

She indicated the couch and how he should bend over its sides and she positioned herself behind him.

Now, through the corner of his eyes, he could finally see Eleonora and the other man. She had also been stripped naked, and wore only the hold up black stockings. The pallor of her body was unbearable to watch. As was the shocking contrast between her skin and the dark-as-night material of the remaining stockings.

The other man's cock was thick and dark pink and was ploughing her roughly and systematically, pulling out of her almost all the way with every stroke and then digging back into her up to the hilt with every return thrust. Machine-like, metronomic, like a deadly instrument of war.

He felt the pain explode through his own body as the woman's artificial member breached him with one swift movement. He swallowed hard, almost bit his tongue

As he did so, he realised why Eleonora was so silent. A red handkerchief had been stuffed into her mouth, as her face rhythmically banged against the wall with every repeated movement in and out of her. He couldn't help noticing the handkerchief was the exact same shade of red as the lipstick she had decided to adorn herself with to attend the party.

Also, her hands were tied behind her back with brown fur-lined metal cuffs.

She must obviously have agreed to the restraints.

There was another huge stab of unbearable pain as the strap on began stretching him and he felt himself being filled like he had never been filled before. For a brief moment, he feared he was going to defecate, as the pit of his stomach went totally numb then perilously loose, but the pressure against his inner walls soon reasserted itself and the pain slowly began to recede. Not that being fucked in this manner gave him any pleasure. He felt as if he was becoming detached from his own body as it was being so cleverly defiled by this woman whose name he didn't know.

And his eyes kept on hypnotically watching the abominable movements of the other man's massive member inside Eleonora, the way the tight skin around her opening creased inwards and then outwards again as she was being implacably drilled, and the eyelet of her anus winked open and shut with every movement below it. There was sweat dripping from her forehead. Her calves tightened, her arse cheeks shook, her hair was undone, her curls spilling in every conceivable direction as if moved by an invisible wind rising from the nearby lagoon and flying over the Giudecca to shroud the city on its way to the marshes and Trieste.

From the tremors now compulsively coursing through her body, Jack knew Eleonora had come. The stranger had succeeded in raising her senses, playing her like Jack had rarely been capable of doing.

But the man did not cease.

He would visibly continue fucking her until she begged for him to stop.

Would she ever?

Back at the apartment, they at first could not bear to look each other in the eyes. They went to bed in total silence, still coated by the dry sweat of their exertions, of their shame.

They slept late into the morning.

After breakfast, they took a
vaporetto
to the Lido and later to the Isola di San Servolo. A trip they had agreed to undertake a few days before they had stumbled across the website which had lured them to the party.

Over dinner in the San Polo district, they began communicating again.

“Talk about an experience!'

“I suppose you could call it that …”

“Regrets?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Were you jealous?”

“A little, I suppose.”

“You?”

“No. It's … how can I put it … life …”

“Certainly one way of putting it …”

They tried to go for coffee at Caffé Florian, but it was closed on Tuesdays in winter. They made their way back to the apartment. There was no power. They tiptoed their way through darkness towards the bedroom.

“It doesn't change anything, does it?”

“I don't know,” she replied, spooning against him.

It was at that precise moment Jack knew he was about to lose her. First Giulia, now Eleonora. His radar had enough practice.

That it was too late to plea, beg, affirm his love, however impure it now was.

He didn't sleep that night. He stayed awake in the darkness, listening to the vague sounds of the Canal delle Due Torri lapping against the building's rotting stone facade and the imperceptible melody of her breath, as her chest moved peacefully up and down against him under the duvet.

He smelled her, listened to her as if trying to fix these memories in his brain once and for all. All that he would one day be left with.

Jack finally succumbed to sleep around seven in the morning.

When he awoke, she had left the apartment.

The morning went by. He tried to read, but couldn't concentrate on the lines, whether a week-old newspaper or an anonymous serial killer thriller.

Eleonora returned at the beginning of the afternoon. She was wearing that black skirt he remembered buying her in Barcelona and which held so many memories. The one with the giant sunflower patch sewn into its flank. And a T-shirt he had once loaned her in the early days of the affair when their lovemaking had proven a tad rough and messy and he had left compromising semen stains across the blouse she had been wearing that day. The T-shirt that advertised
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
across the Aubrey Beardsley-like face of a woman.

He was sipping a glass of grapefruit juice at the kitchen table.

He welcomed her.

“Had a good walk?”

“No.”

“Oh …”

A shadow passed across the room shielding her eyes from his examination.

“I saw him again,” Eleonora said.

The pain inside returned.

“Have you fucked him again?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“There is another party tonight. A different palazzo this time, near the Campo San Silvestro. He's invited me. Wants to introduce me to some of his friends …”

“Do you want to go?”

“Yes.”

“Without me?”

“Yes.”

“Why? I still like you, you know.”

“I know. But liking is not enough. I need a life, you see. Alone. I don't want to be owned … Anyway, you still think of Giulia, don't you? Don't deny it: every time you touch me, when you close your eyes, you think I might be her …”

“I've never tried to own you, you know that. You're too much of a gypsy to be kept in a cage.” He hadn't answered her question, as if he already knew she was right.

Eleonora smiled.

“You can come, if you wish, I reckon. As long as you promise not to interfere and allow whatever happens to happen …”

“I don't think so,” Jack said. “Don't much care to repeat yesterday's foursome. Just didn't feel right to me somehow.”

“I understand.”

She walked to the bedroom they had been using; she was holding a large Mondadori canvas tote bag.

“What have you got there? Been shopping?” he asked.

She looked away.

“No …,” she hesitated, then came clean. “Well, it's the outfit he wishes me to wear tonight.”

“Can I …”

Eleonora interrupted him.

“I'd rather you didn't see it, Jack.”

That evening, he left the apartment to wander the narrow streets and have several coffees in a row to allow her to dress in privacy.

By the time he returned, she had already left for Carnevale or had maybe been picked up.

She did not return that night or the following day.

His days and nights were haunted by obscene visions of her with other men, and the abominable images of alien cocks of all shapes, sizes and shades invading her. Her mouth, her cunt, her arse, her hands. Orgasmic flush invading the delicate pallor of her skin. The indelible marks of hands, ropes, whips and paddles across the familiar geography of her body. And the sound of her voice just saying ‘Yes', ‘Yes' and ‘Yes' again, like Bloom's Molly. And the grateful acceptance of her smile, of her eyes. And then the terrible visions would repeat again and again, as if captive in some infernal porno film loop, and Eleonora's face would become Giulia's until Jack could no longer recognise who was who, and they were both determined to be unfaithful to himfor ever, leave him until he burned in hell.