Cathexis (5 page)

Ensconced on the sofa, she uncorked a bottle of red and we discussed the film.

“I still don't understand how he got that picture in the briefcase” I said. “It was too big”.

“I thought that” she said. “I think he must have broken it”.

The wine making no inroads, she fetched the schnapps, the magma like distillation snaked through my pipework and curled up in my stomach like a cat, purring out its purpose. Stretching and yawning submissively, I sprawled. If she didn't strike soon I would simply nod off.

“At last you're relaxing” she said, stroking my hair. I opened my eyes, her face inches from mine, surveying to see if I was ready; like a soufflé that might as easily collapse as rise. Moving close, she became a blur, just green jack-o-lanterns, serpentine glory and a pouting split cushion of flesh that pressed against my lips in the softest, most artful way I'd ever experienced. Tongue probing tentative. This time the dozing captive below didn't just sit up, but donned its reading glasses. We ran our hands over each other’s’ safe areas, my sandpaper skin snagging her silken lady clothes. Her tongue skilfully toyed with mine, intimating the heavenly havoc it could wreak elsewhere.

Both shaking like we were angry; it was a type of anger. We panted through our nostrils now, as I approached my field of expertise. She allowed me to push her back and assume the lead, but when my hand closed around her small breast, she froze as if hearing a burglar.

Searching her eyes, I understood and retreating placed my hands between my knees, chaste as church.

“I'm sorry” she sighed, her heart beat studding the words. Her chest rose and fell in passion or panic – I couldn't tell.

“I thought I could do it, but I can't”.

The truth is I was relieved, the lid on that can of worms closing.

“I just need to get it out of my system” she said, pulling a cushion to her body. “I'm sure it will pass”.

I concentrated on my steepled fingers as her thoughts moved onto the next place.

“Minette, it's not you, you did nothing wrong”.

“I know” I said. “I'm not a boy”.

Way over the limit, I took a cab home. Remy on the sofa, oblivious to a riotous chat show.

“I'll build one Minsk” she said.

Chapter 8

“Shit!” Up with a start, I'd already reviewed the previous evening's events in case I'd dreamt it. Adrenalin surged as a slide show of Nancy played out in candid stills, progressing to the final shot, a flapping penalty notice on Fritz's windscreen. The clock by the bed blinked 8.15, this hadn't happened yet but it surely would, just like Nancy's notion; she didn’t seem to be the type to fall at the last hurdle, having got up such a head of steam.

I glanced at the Remy chrysalis.  “I'm late for work” I lied, jumping into yesterday's telling pants and hoisting on my jeans. Tearing out of the flat and pelting at a pace towards Seven Sisters, unclear why I running  when I could have caught a bus. Something propelled me, arms and legs pumped by an ulterior
entity like the six million dollar man ('Gentlemen, we can rebuild him').

Stamping pigeons into flurry and vaulting puddles. “Merry Christmas, Shopping Mall!”, I shouted in my head, skirting Nag's Head market. Blackstock Road, a memory in minutes, I pelted up Highbury Hill. Normally I hated running, grinding my knees and juddering my face, but I was bounding boundless, flying in fact, sprinting up Palladian Road, touching Fritz's bonnet for luck.

Slowing to a jog, scaling the steps two at a time, I drew back the heavy knocker, but anticipating the noise, replaced it soundlessly. Inside, stairs clubbed in haste. The front door swung open a crack. A cascade of curly coils showed, then retreated like a sniper.

“Well?” I panted. “Have you got it out of your system?”

“No”, the plaintiff reply. With that, an outstretched hand grabbed the front of my shirt and hauled me in. Bitter coffee and cigarettes as if she'd been up all night. She mauled my mouth ferociously, only pulling away to announce that she couldn't stop thinking about me. She moaned this like an animal.

Pushing me up against the wall with freak strength, she ripped open my shirt, sending buttons skittering to the skirting and a standard lamp crashing to the floor. Mouths locked, we sidled along the hall as if I were feeding her oxygen in an underwater scene. Gathering herself, she led me up the stairs. I reached between her legs and cupped my hand on her crotch and she held it there for the ascent.

Of course I knew what was happening, but still panting from the run a sizeable part of me had yet to catch up. We sat on the bed and she fumbled with my buckle and zip. Yanking at my clothes, she screamed in frustration; her pyjama bottoms and t-shirt had presented no such problems. Now naked before me, her curls falling around her bare shoulders and circling her dark nipple like a monocle.

Her eyes drank in my bra. Tightening her fingers around the fabric, she tugged it down. Her mouth fastened on my nipple, sucking it keenly and helping it with her hand. Now the part of me that had previously been delayed burst into the room, flustered.

We set about each other in a rigorous bout and approximately five minutes later had assumed nearly every position. In the same way a dog can't hold a ball and a frisbee in its mouth at the same time, a decision had to be made.

“Hey, hey” I said, stopping her with my body, pinning her wrists. She bucked beneath me and then eased up against my inertia.

“What?” she said “Am I not sexy?”

I smiled. “You're the sexiest thing I've ever seen, but Nancy, you don't have to set out your stall all at once; it's not the January sales”.

From a pouting zero, her mouth broke into a broad, lascivious smile, dilated pupils contracted, predator like, allowing the green more limelight. Flowing under me.

“Show me” she said.

Three hours later, opposite M8 in Wendyland, our favoured greasy spoon in Hornsey Rise, a parking ticket in my back pocket.

“M8, you are glowing with a bluey whiteness I've never seen before; I trust your assignation went well”. We curdled into giggles over milky coffees.

“Indeed M8, thank you for asking. I'm all of a tizz, on account of just having had the dickens royally fished out of me”.

M8's nose wrinkled, first in a silent guffaw and then in a loud one.

“Oh dear” she breathed, patting her chest, “now I've roughed my throat up”.

Remy watching 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again' through eyelashes. Nica gr
umbled when I parked myself on the sofa. Saturday afternoon and Sunday disappeared down a smoky hole, thinking of nothing but Nancy's hair trailing over my body.

Cha
pter 9

I'd knocked at her door at six Monday morning, unable to contain it. Now naked next to me, her head in the crook of my neck and her hair obscuring my left breast, the span of her thumb and forefinger fitting comfortably under my right, she was telling me in decorous English of her very unladylike want. Her voice resonated in my collar bone and for some reason, I saw a poor old dancing bear.

It had started in February when she'd first seen me, her attraction swiftly crystallising until she was overwhelmed by its intensity. Something bizarre had taken hold, a fixation bordering on madness. She would sit at the window hoping I would go by on my motorbike, oscillating with a desire so profound and manifest she had to wear sanitary towels. In May, the epic self-possession she'd had to muster to look at me with any degree of composure. And now unable to eat or sleep, but strangely focused on her studies and occupied with thoughts of me.

Although this was only our second tryst, we'd covered a lot of ground. Her proficiency in this new craft was awesome, imaginative, dextrous, single-minded and wickedly dirty. During one experiment, I got the disquieting feeling that I was nothing more than an engrossing project, but I didn’t care because her face during our sessions was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Her expression wanton, liberated, charged with desire and at times, a shadow of confusion as if she were emerging from a deep trance. She was months ahead, all the signs were there. Soon, something more would be required of me. “Not yet” I told myself, “not yet”.

She had no qualms about us in the marital bed; there had been no sex there for some years. When quizzed about her 'needs', she maintained she hadn't really had any, she'd never masturbated and was greatly aroused by my insistence on looking at her vagina, point blank, something she said no one else had done. I smiled to myself; it was like her - small, tastefully convoluted and with a surprising capacity.

Aroused again, she straddled my face, lowering herself onto my mouth, my rough hands over her ivory back and porcelain buttocks. She came with a mournful sigh, just as the guttural engine of the Triumph Triple died outside.

Not adept at concealing my emotions, I was worried it was written all over my face.

“Morning, guv” said Quincy, tramping along the basement corridor. Some people, like Quincy and Remy, are oblivious to the nuances of others; either because they occupy their own parameters entirely, or because they choose not to notice.

Clive however took one look at my beatific smile and altered full lips: “The deed is done then” he said, in his creepy old man voice.

Nancy materialised, descending the stairs, her footfall perfectly in sync with the hollow thunking, coming from the garden as Quincy banged out a plastic bucket, dislodging dried cement. An accidentally powerful entrance.

Clive settled his arm across her shoulders. “You're one of the family now” he said. I squirmed at the mawkish comment, but Nancy gazed up at him adoringly. That's how you look at men, I thought.

Secret looks all morning which set off small, lustful rockfalls. At least I had something to do. Clive watched with interest as she became increasingly tactile, interfering with my wrists and face.

Matt was off for two weeks so it was just the three of us. Quincy, unfamiliar with the ways of women, probably perceived mine and Nancy's intimacy as nothing out of the ordinary. Nor did he bat an eyelid when she took my hand.

“Clive, I need to borrow Minette for a while”. Horribly, I sensed he was turned on. I left my boots at the bottom of the stairs in the hallway as it was carpet thereafter.

“We can't make a habit of this in work hours” I said. “It's not fair on the others”. A pathetic, toothless stab at assertion. She tutted and ruffled my hair, giving the comment the short shrift it deserved.

“It makes me feel like a boy when you do that” I said, pawing my hair defensively.

“You are my boy” she said. “My boy with the beautiful breasts”.

A series of approaching coughs. “Oh deary me” he sighed. Quincy's shire horse shamble creaking the stair boards. Another volley of hacking followed by a trumpeting nose blow. We froze mid-fuck. Quincy's relentless, heavy gallows walk now on the carpeted scaffold.

“Why is he coming up here?” she hissed. I knew he was looking for toilet paper having exhausted the supply in the two downstairs loos, investigating the possibility of an en suite in Nancy's bedroom. How many times had I told him to bring his own?

“Twas brillig and the slithey toves!” he boomed, entertaining himself on the climb, trudging in time to his pedantic delivery. He seemed to know the first line of many poems and numerous snatches of Shakespeare. “When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning and in rain?” he announced in a croaky, hag voice. I stared at Nancy in panic and outrage. He had no business being up here. He knew it was wrong. A violent, protracted throat clearing heralded his arrival on the final landing. Whimpering, I ducked under the duvet. He was at the door.

“Quincy” she said calmly. I saw him in my mind's eye, head tilted like some listening Disney dog.

“Yes?” he replied tentatively.

“Go away”.