The Sexopaths (30 page)

‘Nice?’

He wonders if he dare intimate
about matters of safe sex, but her question quickly scatters such antisocial
thoughts before they can cause uncouth offence.

‘Mmm.  Very.  Thank
you.’

‘It’s
my
thank-you,
remember.’

Shit.  He’s still not asked
about the financial arrangements.  He says, words muffled by the pillow,
embarrassment diffused:

‘Don’t let me forget your fee.’

‘I told you – it’s a
thank-you
. 
And I haven’t finished yet.’

The bluff works.  But he
offers a little prayer that he summoned up the courage to pose the question;
there’s no worse feeling than freeloading.  A distant voice is suggesting
he should leave, though he knows he cannot yet pay it heed – despite his
impression that today they interact as equals, her subtle dominance has not
been fully relinquished; and not just the tight warm bundle of body and limbs
that pin him down, but a metaphysical energy that binds him in her thrall.

Now she whispers:

‘That’s it – just
relax.  There’s no rush.  I’m off duty today.’

Adam nods his acceptance into the
pillow as she continues to envelop him.  She asks:

‘How about you?’

He turns his head to one
side.  ‘You mean work?’

‘Aha.’

‘Oh – it’s okay.  I
don’t really go by regular hours.’

‘Tell me about yourself.’

Adam pictures the photograph on his
desk, he and Monique supporting Camille, up to their collar bones in the warm
blue Aegean; there’s a reflex urge to snap shut like a clam prodded with a
toe.  It’s the first time he can recall that she’s asked him anything
about himself.  His indecision palpable, she politely retreats:

‘You don’t need to say anything
you don’t want to – I respect your privacy.’

‘No… it’s okay.’

He reverts to the employment
fallback, and tries to make his hesitation seem like a pause to construct a
considered reply:

‘People ask me what my job is and
I always struggle to come up with a short answer – you know, like plumber
or teacher or tax inspector.’

She giggles.  ‘That’s a
relief – although I do pay all my dues.’

His mind explores this
side-track: just where on a tax return do you put this kind of thing?  He
remembers Jasmin-Sharon’s remark about the properties – rent is often
paid in cash.  Would the taxman care where the money came from provided he
got his cut?  Or maybe she and her bank manager have a mutual arrangement.

She prompts him lightly with her
fingertips.  ‘You’re involved in the internet?’

A little alarm bell; has he told
her something he doesn’t remember, or has she been doing her research?  He
says:

‘I am, but I think the attraction
is one of a moth to a candle.  You’re the candle.’

The nails press again,
teasingly.  ‘I meant your job, not your hobby.’

‘The two often overlap.’

‘What do you think of
my
website?’

‘You mean your pages on
Angels365
?’

‘No – my own site,
Xara7
.’

He hears
‘Xara’s Heaven’
and thinks the literal connection sounds apposite.  He says:

‘You might not believe this
– but I didn’t know you had one.’  He wonders if such ignorance
might seem a slight.  ‘I’d be happy to look at it for you – if you
want to risk
my
dark arts – no charge of course.’

She affects a laugh; it’s a purr
in her throat.  ‘You’re very generous.’

‘Though, if you don’t mind me
saying – you don’t seem to have a marketing problem.’

That said, it occurs to him that
no mobiles have trilled during his time here. Could she have silenced her
phones for his benefit?  Or maybe she really is taking a day off. 
She’s quiet for a moment, then she hums to the track that’s playing in the
background.  After a pause, she says:

‘Where are you from?’

‘You mean you can’t hear the
twang of Tiger Bay in my accent?’

‘You’re very well spoken.’

‘My pals from back home wouldn’t
approve.’

‘If they could see you now?’

It’s a cheeky retort, accompanied
by pressure in the right places.  Shadowy faces, male and female, flicker
across the retina of his mind’s eye.  Some leer favourably, others frown
their displeasure, reluctantly obliged to look on.  He can’t find he
agrees with any of them.

She adds:

‘Tiger Bay – it sounds
exotic.’

He chuckles.  ‘If
only.  The answer’s Wales.  Tiger Bay is the old port of
Cardiff.  Apparently I’m descended from a long line of smugglers.’

‘It would explain your creative
streak.’

Would it?  And how does she
know he might have one?  He says:

‘Well, I suppose it took a
certain talent continually to invent new excuses for the benefit of the
Exciseman.’

‘But you are a Celt?’

He gets her drift.  ‘I guess
so – if there’s such a thing.  I’ve got a pal who works at the human
genetics unit at the university and he insists we’re all Ancient Britons
– English, Scots, Welsh – with a pinch of Genghis Khan thrown in
for good measure.’

‘I think you got more than your
fair share of Mr Khan.’

He feigns a modest shrug beneath
her palms.  She’s massaging him more softly now, a repetitive sweeping
movement that has become the background rhythm to their conversation.  He
says:

‘Of course, you’re far too
good-looking to be descended from the likes of the
Iceni
.’

His question is inadequately
disguised as a compliment, but she appears not to object.  She says:

‘I’m part-Brazilian,
part-Portuguese, part… well… maybe native South American.’

‘If you were a cocktail you’d be
a
C
aipirinha
.
’

‘Are you suggesting I’m
sour-sweet?’

‘All the best cocktails
are.  Life would be so dull, otherwise.’

‘I think you’re right.’

‘Did you grow up abroad?’

‘I’ve moved around quite a
lot.  Some time in London, actually.’

She takes a breath, the kind that
precedes a pronouncement, but then she seems to stifle any words that were
about to break free.  Adam, wishing her to continue, proffers more oxygen:

‘Do you ever tell anyone your
real name?’

Despite his care not to pose the
question directly he immediately senses an impasse, her hands gliding to a
halt, her fingertips playing in light deliberation upon his shoulders. 
She’s silent, for an age it seems – maybe twenty seconds – then he
feels her release the air from her lungs, its passing breeze fluttering across
his body, carrying away the unformed words.  She inhales again and says,
her voice edged with strain, though free of reprimand:

‘It’s best that I don’t.’

‘Of course – I’m sure I’d
feel the same.  You don’t want mad folk like me tracking you down and
stalking you after hours.’

‘You don’t strike me as the
stalking kind.’

‘What kind
do
I strike you
as?’

He aches to ask outright why he
was chosen for the adventures of the past couple of months.  Is he good at
sex, attractive in some way, a boyfriend she can’t have?  Or is it simply
– as Jasmin-Sharon suggests – that his name came first on her list
of candidates, a temporary outlet for her boredom, soon to be dispensed with; next
time she moves and its Buggins’ turn.

But her reply is considered:
‘Creative – like I said.  Intelligent.  Athletic.’

He hangs on every word, but feels
obliged to make light of her accolade.  ‘That needn’t stop me from
stalking you.  It might make me better at it.’

‘That’s true.’  She digs her
nails dangerously into his flesh.  ‘But you might meet your match.’

‘Ouch.  There’s no might
about it.’

‘Sorry – there are just
little marks – they’ll soon disappear.’

‘It’s okay – I quite
enjoyed it, really.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise.  Turn
over.  Quickly.’

There’s something in her tone
that makes him at once comply and harden; she descends, destroying angel, for a
final forbidden act.

***

Adam nods for a moment at the
silver number seven on her door. 
“Xara7”
– of course –
why didn’t he get that earlier?  Becoming conscious of the silence that
wells up around him, he turns and heads for the elevator.  He feels
curiously light, almost gliding, as though her physical demands have drained
away some of his mass.  But he’s depleted in spirit too, as if some
irresistible software has interrogated his system, scanned him for viruses,
leafed at light speed through his secrets.  He reflects, should he expect
some aftershock?  The encounter was unexpectedly amicable; she’d even
hugged him, stepping out across the threshold, risking public exposure in her
flimsy lingerie.  She’d whispered ‘Goodbye Adam,’ kissed him on both
cheeks and then, lingeringly on his lips, before slowly retreating like a
diminishing genie returning to its lamp, her dark eyes fixed upon his –
then one dark eye that finally disappeared unblinking as the crack of the door
dwindled to nothing but a final crushing click that severed the last resisting
strands of what had seemed like a hard-woven union.

And thus he comes away empty
handed.  His wish to understand her strategy, his hope to perceive
something of her motives, lies unfulfilled – as deftly stripped from him
and cast aside as were his shirt, jeans, underwear – now left behind like
the little pools evaporating unnoticed from the shower-room’s soapy
tiles.  Yet there is one thing: in the misty blur that already begins to
fog his precise recollection of what has just passed between them, a shape
takes form, a belief of substance settles in his mind: he
can
trust
her.  Above Jasmin-Sharon she may loom large, appear sinister,
Machiavellian – and perhaps for good reason – but for him she no
longer holds any fear; whatever her intentions, however much witchcraft is
afoot, about him her aura extends warm benevolence.  He no longer needs to
know.

He departs the building, each
step, each cool breath, distancing him further from the detail he might earlier
have wished to evaluate.  He’d kept the appointment, anticipating the worst
on a bi-polar scale of probabilities: either a scolding and immediate exile, or
some depraved and humiliating sexual scenario – yet no such outcome had
materialised.  Instead prevailed a master class, an hour or two (or was it
three?) of paradise unpurchasable, a priceless triptych of passion, his body
her canvas, her lithe self her medium, her domination her art.  In her
final act astride him, like a great spider capable of consuming her mate
mid-coitus, she’d covered his mouth with hers, pinched his nostrils closed,
tempted him with suffocation, annihilation, exploded him into her, at once
absorbing his semen and his breath, capturing his soul; loving him, it felt.

Then tea and biscuits –
enigmatically she’d insisted – such stark contrast to anal sex.  A
pot, china cups and saucers, milk in a small matching jug.  His arsenal of
questions relinquished, like arms yielded up at the threshold in due respect to
the host, he could only watch and wait and stir, feeble and compliant, for
whatever revelation was to be forthcoming, some plan or scheme or demand. 
But… there was nothing.  Instead he sensed as if, in her unilateral giving
of herself, she had intentionally tilted the balance of power through the
horizontal to lie in his favour.  True, she had not enlightened him where
she might have – about Ms Y for instance – but perhaps she gave
ground where she could.   In her demeanour he imagined he detected an
underlying relief – a sense of satisfaction, at the very least – as
if the purpose of today were to put him to the test, to reassure herself that
what she had entrusted in him was safe: perhaps secured by his ignorance, and
if not, then eternally sealed by her love-making.

And thus over tea, back at the
breakfast bar, they’d conversed in bizarre banalities, the fickle Scottish
climate, the intractable Edinburgh roadworks, the burgeoning number of
celebrity chefs based nearby.

He sets off in a randomly chosen
direction, meaning to pace around the irregular block as it presents
itself.  He has no jacket; it’s cold and uncomfortable but he’s not ready
for the claustrophobia of his car, the intrusion of the soundtrack.  The
streets are quiet but for the odd rattling workman’s van.  Palladian-style
former municipal buildings, soot-blackened and smaller than their Edinburgh
counterparts a mile hence, crowd together with abandoned bonds and sixties
flats like rows of uneven teeth; a late-flowering Buddleia springs from a
crumbling sandstone gate-pillar; it’s as if the place survived the Blitz and
then they forgot all about it, left its denizens to get on with their private
lives in dull oblivion.  He finds himself passing a graveyard, a Polish
pub, a body shop, a boxing gym and a tattoo parlour in quick succession; only
in Leith.  And the call girls, of course.  Is it tradition that draws
them to this part of town, with echoes of its once-bustling port and unfailing
flow of seamen?

He wonders why Xara chose the
area as her base.  Maybe in those days she was just another girl trying
her hand at escorting, and went with the crowd.  Or perhaps she had a keen
eye for the anonymity these mean streets provide, for girls and punters
alike.  She seems sure-footed at all times.  He suspects
Jasmin-Sharon has misjudged her mentor, the latter’s motives misinterpreted,
the former’s resentment the misplaced frustration of the subordinate.  And
the split she speaks of – is there some semblance of that irrational fury
of the woman scorned?  He’s in no doubt that Xara is an eminently more
reliable source of reality than Jasmin-Sharon, whose careering progress through
life seems threatened by catastrophic derailment at almost every turn. 
And though he has no evidence of blatant misrepresentation on Jasmin-Sharon’s
part, he finds it hard to comprehend her downward estimation of Xara.