Cathexis (32 page)

This perfunctory manoeuvre bore fruit: a slow, pelvic dip and a raising of the chin. My folly shifted to surety
...she liked this game. Blind as to where I would strike next, she tensed rigid, like a pop-art coffee table, gasped when I took her nipple in my mouth, squealed when I twatted her twat. “Ouch!” when the clap of my hand on her buttock shocked the walls. A quenched groan when I fed myself to her on my fingers.

“You deviant” I hissed, spitting on her snatch, well into my stride now, greasing her like a horny handed cowboy on a brood mare. Giddy-up.

“Oh you fucking beauty” she rumbled into the pillow, jutting her gist. Smacking her again, her rump a cave of hands, my own hips rocking with the imprinted memory of a penis, though castrated in this incarnation. The bunt of her butt on my loins, my dominion, the sheer mutuality returned to me in a flood. And while fucking her in my woman's way, my retrograde driver remembered the sweet, urgent race and bucking, we came together ...tillsammans.

I anchored her convulsing body, my face in her hair and we drew apart in a sticking plaster sweat.

“Epic” she said breathing hard, the journey still playing out in her event horizon eyes. “You've killed me, Mink” she gasped. “You'll have to apologise to our guests ...you fucked me to death”.

At the door together, the downstairs now a flurry of fairy lights, Bryan Ferry dressed to kill, but dying to an empty room. The barbecue, a benign magma after the acrid fireball drama that singed the wisteria and created a choking black pall which was fended off by neighbours in a bout of angry window slamming. “Sorry!” I shouted into the evening.

“Minky, be nice” Dale said, unlatching the door.

“Hey Dale”. A very tall man stooped to kiss her and held her at arm's length. “You look just the same..”. He didn't, I thought triumphantly. His blonde hair in retreat, his Dale-dazzled eyes darted to me.

“Hello” I said.

“Jason, this is Minette”. Dale seemed to swell. “My partner”.

“Oh” he said, “er ...you”, he motioned his finger between us.

“Yes” said Dale emphatically, drawing me to her side.

“Oh” he said again, “then I suppose a shag's out of the question
?”

I liked him immediately.

“Dale!” I panicked, two unfamiliar shapes populated the squares of stained glass in the front door.

She was out of earshot in the garden. The letterbox rattled again.

“Hell-lye?” it said.

Two soft but substantial women cleaved me to an abundance of bosom. “Daaling, you must be La Minette” said Lola, taking my arm.. She blinked through miniscule specs with kind, Kermit eyes, tufted bleached hair a kooky pink at the ends.

“And oim Tat”. Clearly the result of a genetic coupling of Alice Cooper and Mrs Tiggywinkle. “And oim doying to see the gaadn!” Their marzipan and Marlboro aroma briefly overpowering the residual petrol ponk. They jostled me to the kitchen. “Where's our baby girl?”

The overlapping flapping of shrieked greetings, the house now a hubbub. Sandy Randall, an old flame who would always be Randy Sandals in my book, inexplicably dressed as Charles II, colluding with M8 and Tove over the CDs. Santa strolled up spivvy and tapped her nostril, indicating cocaine and that I should keep it under my hat. A hapless Jason chatting up Frances and Dale's rackety laugh peeled up from somewhere I wasn't. A corrected boom disregarded as M8 adjusted the volume on Patti Smith.

My social minuet to the garden rewarded. Dale on the long bench, the meat in a Tat and Lola sandwich, legs spread wide, unaccustomed to skirts, chewing on a rib like a lonesome cowboy cupping his harmonica. A resolute Prudence heading for the flowers with something in her mouth. Santa caught my eye “Bring Dale” she mouthed.

In the bedroom, three fat lines running parallel to Madame Bovary's dead white body.

“Ladies” said Santa diplomatically leaving after her toot as Dale and I placed our hands on each others' thudding hearts, Dale's eyes like dog stars.

We descended the stairs to a middle-aged mosh.

'Want you! Freaky! Speedball!' We chorused in synchronous pogo, paying no heed to screaming knees and juddering flesh. Afterwards, we all had a nice sit down.

“Any requests?” shouted M8.

“Do you have any Purcell?” enquired Charles II.

An inevitable shower herded people indoors, except for the spliff quorum who blessed me for the half-roof.

My above-average girl, easy to spot, her scrimshaw head a good way above most. But sometimes she sat or squatted, obscured by denim, leather and legs. If she was rapt, my sonar could detect her gentle pulsations. If boisterous, her hoarse klaxon alerted me. Unlocated for a while, I watched her skip down the stairs ahead of Santa, sniffing in stutters, a different dust describing her nostril. I stuck out like a sore thumb, easily floodlit by her super troupers.

In the bathroom, consumed by an imperative, the only light diffuse from the hallway. Her breath tainted formaldehyde, she filled my mouth with her tongue and when I tasted the sour drug in her, she pulled back.

“I'm here” she said, caressing my cheek. “I'm so here, you're so beautiful Minky”. Her eyes, solar eclipses.

“You're so off your nut, baby”, not unkindly.

“I know”. She passed her thumb over my teeth, fascinated. “Forgive me” she said. “You have to because I need you to fuck me ...forgive me”, peeling off her pants. “Forgive me”,bracing her hands against the bath, the favoured position for getting the job done. She flicked her skirt up her back and shook out her shoulders like a sprinter in the blocks. “Forgive me”, presenting herself.

Someone had said that to me once before. “Forgive me”, as I wound a hank of curls around my hand.

“Enough with the forgive me, already” I said, handling her hankering.

“For...” she began, trapped in a chemically induced mantra. I yanked her mane and pulled out, the lips of her cunt twitched outraged.

“Uh uh uh, don't say it” I warned.

“Come on Mink, just take me over”.

So I did, whipping up a storm of guttural expletives, cooing whimpers and demonic growls. “You dirty fucking bitch” she hissed, so un-Dale-like I had to laugh. She slowed to a canter, riding it out. “Förlåt mig” she gasped. My stubborn, magnificent animal.

The chilly night, punctuated by cab doors and a misguided blackbird broke into song. All dispersed to their respective reflections, except Tat and Lola who had retired to the spare room some hours ago toting a wine bottle. We waved off Randy Sandals and Susie: walking to Dalston before the dawn, dressed as a Stuart monarch took some brass neck.

Dale, a hot duvet depth charge, all flail and fidget.

“Anchor me” she pleaded. I surrounded her, pinning her leg jerks and gripping her wrists, my face in her autumn smoke hair, charnel and incense. I dreamed she was a water baby and I, the sheltering fairy with my diaphanous gossamer wings, spiriting her away from an approaching hovercraft (a persistent police helicopter hanging over Belfry Road, hijacking my dream). Surfacing to a bed, cold and Dale-less, stippling rain draining the light from the morning.

Their voices discernible from the kitchen, I sat above their heads on the toilet. Lola's sonorous drone, Dale's post-carousal huskiness, coffee percolating. I hoped they couldn't hear me weeing. I shifted the blind to spy on t
he dismal day. Tat, in a shawl, armed with a brolly and a cigarette, stalked the garden with Prudence. Her Mrs Tiggywinkle side more prevalent in the cold light of day.

Silence; they were waiting to see if the flushing toilet was my harbinger. I knew these things and hovered behind the kitchen door. Dale continued, not only hoarse but hitching with difficult emotion. She was crying. My heart struggled like a sack of kittens.

“It's crazy, Lo. I can't bear to be away from her”.

“That's love, baby girl, I think it's wonderful”.

“It is” Dale conceded, “but I love her so much it's almost like grief, do you know what I mean?” A deep sigh. “Can you love someone too much?”

“Aah, it'll settle down and then one day you'll wake up to find you've turned into two fat old farts like me and Tat”. Dale giggled. “Sorry, Lo, it's just cocaine comedown. I'm going to see if Mink's awake”.

But before she had the chance, my arms around her and we took on the sway of three days in marathon dancers, her face in my neck.

“I love you too much too” I whispered.

Lola looked on fondly. “Aaah, that's noice”.

“I wonder what we'll be like when we're old?” Dale skinned the pillow and chucked the case at my face, smiling faintly.

“It'll be ace” I said, doing the same back. “We can start drinking after the crossword and spend all day fucking”.

“Do you think we'll ever get fucked out?”

“Nope”.

The bedclothes Tat and Lola occupied retained that odd marzipan smell, maybe something to do with diabetes. They'd moved to their next port of call via Fortnum and Mason, leaving us a signed edition of Tat's latest book, concerning the little known subject of Victorian female pugilists – 'Ladies that Punch'.

My toe nudged something dead. Dabbing about under the bed my hand alighted on my suspicion, its unique bulk and pliance unmistakable.

“What have we here?” I placed the tacky tool on the mattress like a totem.

“Oh my God” giggled Dale. “Go Tat and Lola”.

A large, glittering purple dildo.

“They'll miss this” I said.

“I wouldn't be surprised if they left it on purpose” she chuck
led.

I examined the moulded male mimic. “Hmmm, well, it's not my bag. Besides, it's fucking huge”.

Dale's sirocco swept over me and the polymer playmate.

“Oh God Dale, at least wash it first”.

Safe in the car, shielded from the sizzle streak night. The wipers griping irksome, insufficient rain. She kills them instantly, nothing should irk me.

Her brown hand on the gear stick tremor, idling at the lights, her face underlit blue dash, watching the picture, her left thigh contracting to amber green, her right a fraction later. A wing mirror wince and easing through the cogs (courteous hang back for a hell bent cyclist). She knows I'm watching and she takes a love sick curve, squeezing my thigh when she can between manoeuvres, every minute with her an unbearable wonder, every minute without her unbearable.

She puts her shoulder to the wheel and turns us to the kerb. The car, all turned off now and we sit in the ticks as if we've come a long way. We must unload the shopping before we can fuck, a rule we make and break often. “Oh Mink, we're getting worse” she says.

“No baby”, bringing her fingers to my lips. “We're getting better”.

Chapter 14

Forty one, forty two, forty three: my latest obsession, counting pigeons. The ones that pecked the pavement were easy; it was those perched in trees or flying in flocks that were tricky. My head whipped round to confirm or dismiss each peripheral float and bustle. I disregarded a squadron of screeching parakeets as I cycled past Highbury Fields (only pigeons mattered). I still marvelled at their exotic jubilance faced with the British battleship sky.

By the time I turned into Palladian Road I had sixty one; a tall order to reach my target of a hundred before home. There were some, a good number, swelling and skirting about the uninterested females, not far from Nancy's. Damn, my calculations compromised by a gaggle of teenage girls, coltish, cotton-tailed in collapsed court shoes, the sum of their knowledge swung over their shoulders.