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“I got caught up, that’s all, caught up. It’s the concept behind my September show, the idea that if you make an image of some event or someone, the chances of that event happening or the coincidence of bumping into that person increases to the point where it can no longer be counted as coincidence.”
“You told me before I went on the shoot, but I didn’t think you’d choose some bloke as your subject. Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re telling me you don’t even know this bloke?” And again, he caught himself staring across at the thirty faces and found himself wishing whoever the face belonged to wasn’t that young, handsome, or, for that matter, so well hung.
“I found him in a magazine, a six-month-old issue of French Vogue, in a fashion spread shot in Spain, and he was one of ten men sitting in the background. I will never meet him.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“Toby, it’s an art concept, a device I’m using to build a show on! It’s not life, baby.”
“But why him?”
“That’s exactly my point—why not him? I’ve picked a total stranger randomly and I have mythologized him and he will never know. That’s another aspect of the work.” She started moving toward him now but it wasn’t easy; every step was like wading in treacle. “Sweetheart, I would never be unfaithful; you know I wouldn’t.”
She was now by his side, one hand trying to curl into his, to soften those resisting fingers. But Toby couldn’t meet her gaze and she thought she could smell something different on him, a shift in the prism of his sexuality. “What about you?” It was practically a whisper and she did not expect an answer, both of them knowing the answer already.
“Did you miss me at all?” he asked gruffly, a foil to move away from the dangerous topic of infidelity. To his surprise his voice thickened in sudden desire.
“Yes,” she lied again, “every night.”
Now he looked up and suddenly there was that old heat between them, the flaring from under the belly, a quickening of the heart, and Toby wanted to conquer her all over again, in the same way he’d wanted the first time he’d ever set eyes on her.
He pulled her toward him and they kissed, Toby’s tongue probing her rudely, roughly, as if he had suddenly become a stranger, not caring whether she wanted him or not but out for his own pleasure. His gaze slid away from her face to take in the myriad of porcelain faces staring up at him from the worktable—all the same man, the same image he was now determined to press out of his wife, to pound out of her body. And as they kissed he began to tear off Jennifer’s clothes, the soft cotton of her work apron pushed down to the floor. Feeling the weight of her breasts under the light sweater, he grabbed one, pinching down hard on the nipple, dominant—he wanted to hurt and pleasure; he wanted her wholly present in her body, wholly his. His other hand now pushed down the front of her jeans as, fumbling, she unbuckled her own belt, his cock thick and hard against the linen of his trousers.
They fell back against the wall, a moan escaping from Jennifer that was so strange she didn’t recognize it as her own. He tore down her jeans, which caught at her ankles, almost making her stumble, and she had to steady herself against the edge of a worktable. It shook for a moment, one penis rolling toward another, a nipple rocking on its axis, and she was distracted by Toby’s fingers now plunging violently between her legs, fingering her roughly, with brutal efficiency, no tenderness there, and this new expediency excited her. Distracted by fear for her work, she managed to step out of one trouser leg, but he roughly swung her around and bent her over a chair, forcing her legs and arse apart, trailing the head of his cock from her wet slot to her arsehole, teasing them both, penetrating them both slightly. His other hand curled around under her belly, playing her clit. Her wetness grew against the palm of his hand like a stain, like all the ringing tones he’d listened to pointlessly over the past three weeks—like the stain of others.
And he watched the faces, all of them staring back with their blank white-clay eyes, some smiling sardonically at him, mocking him, as if to say, “We’ve been there before; she is not yours,” and the table of cocks, all longer and thicker than his own. He tried not to think, tried to be there, right there, but it was impossible; jealousy was flooding through him as bitter as bile.
“Who is he?” His voice was loud over their groaning, the creaking of the chair.
“No one,” she said to the floor, and the wood swayed up like the decking of some ship they had unexpectedly found themselves on. He rubbed his cock harder across her, now plunging the tip into her sex. Again she groaned.
“Who is he?” he repeated louder, more aggressively.
“I told you, no one!”
He thrust completely into her, violently, with a frenetic pace that was completely indifferent to her own rhythm, and yet she was close to coming.
“You’re lying,” he almost screamed, then leaned back while he was fucking her so that he could see the little pink button of her arsehole, her parts so much younger and neater than his own. Pushing his thumbs into, it he pushed her buttocks apart, watching his own sex and fingers pumping her as she howled with pleasure.
“See! See what I can do!” he screamed as he came, and she thought he was talking to her.
• • •
That night while Jennifer was in the bathroom applying her face creams and brushing her teeth, Toby went through the laundry basket in one corner of their bedroom. He rifled through a pile of dirty linen, looking for used underpants of Jennifer’s. Finding a handful, he pulled them out and sniffed them methodically, one by one. He was looking for clues, for the scent of another man. He had convinced himself that he had sensed this man’s shape inside his wife, the imprint of another body against her body, perhaps even in his bed. He smelt nothing but the familiar musky essence of her, and it made him hard despite his suspicions.
Meanwhile, in the bathroom Jennifer noticed a miniature soap still in its wrapper on Toby’s soap dish. According to the w
rapper it was from a hotel in Sicily, but Toby hadn’t mentioned anything about going to Sicily. She opened his bathroom cabinet, then paused, listening for movement in the adjacent bedroom; there was none, so she rummaged around at the back of the shelves. Her fingers reached a small pile of condoms that hadn’t been there before.
In bed they lay side by side. Toby, staring up at the ceiling, imagined for a moment the night car horns and chatter that would float up from the Roman streets through the open window of his pensione, while Jennifer, not thinking, was watching the shadows of the tree branches lit by the streetlamp outside dance over the Victorian plaster fresco. Someone had to break the silence.
“It won’t work, you know, your theory. Images don’t make anything happen. You can’t just conjure up events or coincidences. You understand that, don’t you?” Toby finally muttered up into the space above the bed, but even as he said the words he was thinking of something else, of somebody else, and how, in fact, maybe some connections are destined—like the gathering of storm clouds, or the inevitability of having sex with someone, how you do just know, and to deny such knowledge would be as perilous as denying the rules of physics.
Now Jennifer turned toward him and curled up into his armpit, her hand trailing down to the comforting soft knot of his cock and balls, and an equilibrium was momentarily restored.
