Quiver (24 page)

Stacey looked across at Humphrey, who glanced at Katherine, who in turn peered up at Sandra. Katherine was trying not to panic; there were too many people in the elevator to be comfortable, even if you did find one of them very attractive. Sandra always embodied such a sensible approach to life,
Katherine couldn’t imagine her ever getting up to any sexually compromising situation, even when trapped in an enclosed space.

Dee glanced at Jerome’s crotch, then looked up at his mouth—blatantly sexual, with heavy lips that seemed to be begging to be corrupted. Dee’s hands tightened around the four bottles of champagne he clutched to his chest. In his jacket pocket there were ten tabs of ecstasy tucked away. He looked back at Jerome’s mouth.

Jerome was used to being looked at by men and women, and he returned Dee’s insolent gaze. Dee didn’t look homosexual; there was nothing feminine about his approach, just a sensual curiosity that intrigued Jerome. He liked Dee’s hands. The long, worn fingers seemed to suggest that his livelihood was working with the soil. He’d never had a man, but he’d fantasized about it and there was a similarity of physique between them that appealed to the narcissist in him.

Deidre was starting to quake internally. The elevator had been stationary for over a minute and she knew that Mischa was waiting for her down in the car park. She had the result of her blood test in her handbag. She was pregnant at last. She glanced down at her mobile. She could always use that if things got worse. The elevator jolted, descended a couple of feet and then with the screeching of metal came to another halt. Jodie, terrified, grabbed hold of Quin, who steadied her with an embarrassed grin.

“Thanks,” she said. He gestured wildly in response, and Jodie realized that he was deaf. Meanwhile, Sandra braced herself against the wall.

“A temporary halt, I hope,” she remarked wryly. They waited in silence for another ten seconds; time seemed to stretch
into infinity. Outside it was summer, and many of them were wearing thin summer dresses or T-shirts under which body hair was visible. Humphrey could see Katherine’s nipples clearly under the silk shirt, her pale skin luminous against her red hair. He wanted to make her blush, he wanted to see crimson seep into those cheeks. He wondered about spanking her, imagining what that flesh would feel like under his palm. He felt a terrible desire to pull her pants down to the ground, to publicly humiliate her in front of all these people.

Dee offered Jerome a cigarette, who smiled and took one.

“No smoking,” Deidre snapped, her hysteria mounting. If only the elevator would move! Dee shrugged and Jerome couldn’t help but notice the beauty of his fingers wrapped around the packet.

The elevator shuddered then dropped several feet in free fall. For a second everyone held their breath, then almost palpably they exhaled together.

“We’re stuck, the elevator’s stuck,” Humphrey announced rather unnecessarily.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Deidre’s voice was tight with tension. Dee pressed the control button; no response. “Well, how long do we wait until it’s official?” Katherine tried to inject some humor into the situation.

“Allow me,” Humphrey squeezed past her, the soft, pendulous weight of her breasts brushing across his chest sending a shudder down to his groin.

Please don’t get an erection, please
, he thought to himself. His cock, ignoring all rational pleas, rose to the occasion and butted its head fast against his trousers.

“If I get to the panel in the ceiling, I might be able to reactivate the elevator. I did a stint many years ago as an
apprentice electrician,” he announced to the rest of them, feeling uncommonly manly. Dee offered to give him a leg up and, with the others pressed against the walls of the elevator, they formed a triangle in the center of the floor. Humphrey stood on top of Dee’s back to lift off the metal panel in the ceiling. With Humphrey thus elevated, his state of excitement was obvious, and made rather a favorable impression on the women, Katherine in particular, who was partial to the larger male.

Humphrey unscrewed the panel with the help of a key ring, shifted it across and stared at the complex junction of colored wires. None of them seemed to enter and exit at any logical point. He pulled tentatively at a green wire. He had been bluffing. The throbbing attraction he felt for the elegant redhead had temporarily sent him into a delusion of grandeur. He would save them all and, forever thankful, she would sink to her knees and throw her head into his lap, sobbing with gratitude. He peered down; her mouth did seem invitingly close to his crotch. His cock rose another ten centimeters. There was an audible sigh of awe that rippled gently but perceptibly through the female onlookers. Dee, kneeling and staring down at the floor, wondered what all the fuss was about, while Quin noticed a definite change in the air pressure. Humphrey pulled at the wire a little more sharply, and suddenly the elevator was plunged into utter darkness.

The screams and gasps calmed down. Stacey was now beginning to enjoy the drama of the situation. She calmly reached into her large shopping bag for the Christmas candle she’d bought. Holding it up high, she lit it with Jock’s lighter, the one he’d bought her for good luck. The pale light illuminated the faces of the trapped shoppers.

“That should do for a while,” she announced, looking like an oversized angel of mercy towering above the others, beacon held high, radiating calmness.

“Hello? Hello?” A thin voice with an Indian accent piped up from an intercom speaker set in the wall.

“This is a representative from the general office speaking. I just want to let you folks know that we have everything under control. The technicians are working on restoring power within half an hour. We suggest you relax and try not to panic. We will now play some relaxing music to help you with this task.”

The sound of waves crashing and the high sonic booming of whales singing flooded through the elevator. Jodie let go of Quin’s elbow and sank to the floor, resigning herself to a long wait. Dee felt quite elated; he’d taken advantage of the black-out and had run his hand across the front of Jerome’s trousers. Instead of being pushed away, Jerome had pressed his hand down firmly, and Dee had clearly felt his penis hardening under his touch. They now stood chastely side by side peering nonchalantly into the dark. A plan was forming in Dee’s mind. He felt in his pocket—the tabs of ecstasy were still there.

“How about a drink? We might as well make it a party since we’re going to be here for another twenty minutes at least,” his voice sounded warm and inviting in the candlelight. “I’ve got some champagne. French, of course.”

“Sounds civilized.” Sandra needed a drink. There was something about the candle-lit elevator, with the flame reflected a hundred times off the polished steel and the piped music, that was beginning to remind her of the bat caves. They agreed among themselves that champagne would be a good idea. Deidre, finally succumbing to the ambience, had begun to find
Karl’s presence arousing, being especially partial to European looks and manicured fingernails.

Karl began to hum a libretto from
The Magic Flute
, beautifully and in tune. Quin vaguely picked up the vibrations of the tune and rapped out the rhythm with his knuckles on the glimmering wall.

“Stacey. I work as a marketing director for J. P. Motherwell’s Meats.”

“Humphrey. I’m an artist.”

“Sandra. Architect. Married, at least I was when I got on at the sixteenth floor.” Laughter.

“Katherine.”

“Wife to me. Karl. Conductor.”

Dee silently pulled out the tabs of ecstasy and slipped two tabs into each bottle of champagne.

“He’s being too modest. World-famous conductor and pianist.”

“Jodie. I’m a beautician and I’m due next April.”

“Deidre. I’m a friend of Stacey’s and I’m her husband’s stock-broker.”

“Jerome. I sell ice cream to little kids and their hungry mothers. And you?”

Dee turned and smiled, all four bottles were open, with two tabs of ecstasy dissolving in each. “Me? Landscape gardener and general maverick.” He took a swig of champagne and handed a bottle to Sandra, who had produced ten plastic cups with little red Santas printed on the sides.

Jodie spoke for Quin. “And this is…I don’t know, because he’s deaf, but he’s awfully sweet.”

Katherine turned and rapidly signed to Quin, who replied: Q-U-I-N. Quin. Jodie pronounced his name aloud, the word
hanging like shy fruit before the others, who warmed to this smiling, gawky man nodding wildly at them.

Humphrey raised his cup. “I think we should make a toast. To confined spaces and the promiscuity of bats.” And they all drank deeply, for the heat had made them thirsty.

Twenty minutes later the elevator still hasn’t moved. Katherine is feeling relaxed—very relaxed. She leans against the elevator wall and contemplates taking her clothes off. The air, although warm, is not stale, as a slight breeze drifts down from the open panel in the ceiling. Everyone seems to be in an unusually friendly mood. Katherine puts this down to the psychology of being trapped. She vaguely remembers reading that situations such as this can be powerful bonding experiences. Did the article mention whether it would be a strong aphrodisiac? She turns to Sandra to ask her, only to discover that Quin is massaging Sandra’s legs, his long hands deftly working oil into her shapely calves.

“It’s the massage oil I bought for Brian. I thought it might be fun to try it,” Sandra says, and giggles. Katherine laughs back. It seems perfectly natural that Sandra should let a total stranger massage her legs with her husband’s Christmas present. Katherine takes off her silk blouse and sits there in her lace bra. Karl hardly notices. He seems too caught up in describing the inherent sensuality of Mozart to Deidre. A standard seduction trick of his, this would normally have irritated her, but now she is just amused and pleased for him. The image of Deidre with her hair wild in the throes of an orgasm actually seems mildly erotic to Katherine. In fact she is even finding the styrofoam ceiling erotic.

Humphrey sits opposite her in a corner. She can barely make out his eyes, but she can feel them on her flesh, like probing
fingers. She likes knowing that he finds her attractive. She runs one hand down her breast, baring a nipple for a second. No one is watching except him, but he doesn’t move. She wants him fiercely, wants him to touch her, to show her the cock she’d seen the outline of so clearly before.

Reflected in the metal surface behind Humphrey are Jerome and Dee. They have been avidly talking about the problems of the Chicago Bulls, as if to reassert their masculinity. Dee’s hand is on Jerome’s thigh and has been traveling further and further afield as he describes in vivid detail the sporting injuries of Michael Jordan. Jerome is erect. Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, Dee unzips the fly and pulls out Jerome’s member, the head of it hidden by his palm.

“Great player despite the injuries, you’ve got to admit,” Jerome murmurs with his eyes closed, enjoying Dee’s caress. Dee glances around the lift. In the flickering candlelight he can just make out Karl massaging Deidre’s breasts, while Quin appears to be masturbating Sandra as she kisses Jodie passionately. Humphrey has his head up Katherine’s skirt as she stands spread-eagled against one of the walls, while Stacey, flushed and excited, fumbles with Jock’s Super-8 camera.

“Hope that has a light sensor in it,” Dee says to her, before dropping his head onto Jerome’s crotch and swallowing the whole length of his penis. The piped music shifts slightly to the mating song of the great humpbacked whale; ten versions of the same plaintive set of notes, the hit tune of 1986; ten adaptations by ten lonely male whales who were at the time circling the Atlantic.

The mechanics, working some thirty feet above the lift, notice a sudden lull in the conversation and laughter that has been floating up the elevator shaft.

“Party must be over,” mutters one of them.

“Either that or the bonking’s started,” his mate jokes, preoccupied with the mechanics of the job, both of them resenting a crisis call on Christmas Eve.

Back in the elevator the candle is almost out and the low red emergency light transforms the scene into a Bacchanal orgy of splayed limbs, hair and breasts, all reflected back a thousand times in the silver walls. Deidre had decided an hour ago that the whole experience was a dream. She did in fact feel as if she was functioning in the past tense, which made the outrageousness of her behavior so much more acceptable to herself. She was, at present, crouched on all fours, like the wolf bitch that nursed Romulus and Remus. Karl lay beneath her sucking at her breasts. The strange part was that none of this felt the slightest bit decadent; it just felt incredibly natural. There was nothing in her mind except the extraordinary tingling of pleasure extending down from one nipple directly to her clitoris. Karl sighed and ran his tongue down her belly. Her rich odor excited him greatly, and he thought he might come there and then, his erect cock lying rigid and unattended against his own belly. He rolled his eyes backward and could just make out Katherine. The artist was sucking her off under her skirts.

Humphrey emerged flushed, and slid up her standing figure. He kissed her, pushing her breasts up hard in his large hands. Karl found himself wanting to see Katherine come with this man. It was as if the man’s body was an extension of Karl’s, as if it were he kissing her deeply with the taste of her sex flavoring both their mouths. Meanwhile, in the center of the floor lay Sandra. She felt architecturally magnificent, as if she had become some wonderfully designed building by Gaudi. Quin was kneeling over her, running his cock up the inside
of her thigh and then thrusting in. Her legs were pinned over her shoulders and held by the ankles by Jodie, whose cunt hovered above Sandra’s face. Fascinated, Sandra spread the lips of the younger woman’s sex—the turf of blond hair over the pubis, the inner lips reddening as Sandra ran a finger around the edge and plunged into the moisture inside. She could see Jodie’s thighs quivering in pleasure as she ran her other hand under the buttocks, one finger slipping into the anus, which tightened around her. She pulled the sex to her mouth, surprised by her own mounting excitement, as if this erect clit was her own. Splitting her farther and spreading the outer lips, she could feel Jodie’s mounting orgasm under her tongue. Quin watched Sandra’s mouth suck and lick the sex of the smaller woman, close to coming himself.