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“It’s a red day. And there’s no need to get aggressive.”
“I am not getting aggressive! I’m just exhausted. Besides, I’ve got to be in at seven-thirty tomorrow morning. Head office has called an emergency meeting.”
“Don’t you want to have a child?”
“Yes, but not tonight.” There are bags under his eyes, and his hairline seems to have receded further despite the implants. I kiss him, but he tastes bitter. “‘Night, love. I’ll sit up for a while.”
He plods heavily along the corridor as I switch on the television. The party next door thumps through the wall. I haven’t been to a party in ages. The last one was Adrian’s office Christmas party and I was the youngest there by ten years. I get up and dance for a few minutes by myself in the center of the room. I imagine that there is a young dark man leaning into me. He has his knee between my legs and we’re dancing really close. I can smell his thick black hair and his aftershave. He grips my buttocks with his hands as he bites into my neck. He has slicked-back hair and elegant Mediterranean features. I trip over the remote control and knock my head on the side of the sofa. I lie there for a moment, dazed. I can smell the vague scent of aftershave drifting in from the open window. It must be from the party.
Later I go to bed. Adrian is sleeping on his side. The music is still going on next door. I’m wearing the silk nightgown Adrian gave me for my twenty-fourth birthday, hoping that the feel of the silk will inspire him to take me suddenly in the middle of all this thumping darkness.
I lie on my back, staring up at the ceiling. The wind outside blows the gate shut with a bang. I shiver and turn on my side. The smell of aftershave drifts in again. In my half sleep I see a seascape. A tiny bay, untouched by civilization. The clear blue waves creep up the pale sand; the wind brings the smell of cyprus and eucalyptus across my face. I open my eyes with a jolt. The scent of heat and the trees still lingers in the room.
The room has grown darker, and the party next door is over. In the distance the last guest pulls away from the curb.
The room is jet black. I feel his hands move under the silk. They run down my back and creep around to my breasts. I lie there waiting for his usual move, which is to roll me toward him. Instead, he run
s his tongue down the length of my spine. Parting my buttocks he works his way around to my vagina with his mouth, caressing me with his tongue. He hoists himself up through my open legs so that he lies facing me.
My lover is completely silent. His hands feel altered, changed. I can barely see his profile. His eyes are shut, his lips are pulled back in a strange grimace. He takes my hands roughly with one hand and pins them back against the pillow. With the other hand he squeezes my breasts together. His skin is unusually coarse. He smells different, there is musk on his neck. I find myself trying to remember what I washed his shirt in the day before. He lifts my legs high up above his shoulders, holding me open by spreading my thighs. He plunges into me. His violence is infectious. He grasps my buttocks with both hands. He has me pinned. In the darkness I feel as if there are fingers in every orifice, probing, opening me up. We climax together. It is a first.
I made a huge breakfast this morning, all Adrian’s favorites—bacon, eggs and American flapjacks. He just sat there and asked what the occasion was.
“Don’t tease me.” I kissed him on the ear.
He pushed me away and said, “Really. I don’t know.”
“You know, last night.”
“What about last night?”
“You were pretty damned fantastic, that’s what.”
“Was I?”
I kissed his other ear. You know, sometimes he can be really cute, the way he plays games. He went really quiet and didn’t even finish his flapjacks. Male menopause. It makes them so unpredictable. If he doesn’t want to talk about it that’s his prerogative. He’s funny about talking about his emotions. It’s because of Felicity, his first wife. She was a failed jazz singer and an amateur social worker, and she got him to talk about everything. Even when there wasn’t a problem. He hated that. Adrian says that what you see is what you get. He thinks people invent trouble for themselves. He’s a pragmatist, my Adrian. That’s why I haven’t told him about some things—you know, like my second sight. He wouldn’t understand.
That afternoon, I was just in the middle of putting on a customer’s clay face pack when an image suddenly came into my mind from the night before. Adrian’s hand in the dark. I had the definite impression that he was wearing a signet ring on his little finger. And I’m sure it had a ruby in it. The more I stood there with this vision in my head, the more convinced I was. I even let the mask dry over the customer’s mouth by accident. The strange thing is that Adrian doesn’t wear a signet ring, and we made love in total darkness. Maybe it’s because I’m all shook up and jittery today. I hope it’s hormonal. I hope it’s because the chart worked and I conceived.
I found an old war medal behind the chest of drawers later that week. It was made of copper with an embossed boar’s head on it. Adrian thinks it’s from Sicily, from the Second World War. I remember our neighbor telling me that there used to be an old Italian living here before us, that he died in the house. I guess the medal must have belonged to him. I put it in with the wedding dress.
Last night was weird again. I’m getting ready for bed, when he suddenly appears behind me. Strange because I’ve just left him in the study watching TV. So there he is, close enough to feel his breath on my shoulder, and he asks me in this deep voice to put on my corset. The one we used at the beginning, for fun. He’s got this look in his eyes which means business, so I slip it on and add black stockings for effect, but no underpants. He tells me to lie on the bed. Again I feel as if I’m with a stranger. As if all the familiarity, scent, gesture, even the way he walks toward me, is foreign. I lie down on the bed and he turns the lamp so that it’s shining fully down onto my crotch. He reaches under the bed and pulls out a small bowl full of hot water, an old-fashioned shaving brush and a razor.
“What are you doing?”
“I want you clean, like a young girl.”
Shadows fall across the wall, and for a moment I don’t recognize the short black figure crouching over my slender form. He begins to soap me up. Foam covers my cunt. Carefully, with the precision of a doctor, he scrapes the hair off with the razor. Over the top toward my sex mouth, strips of wispy blond hair fall away. I watch fascinated, feeling the air across my newfound nakedness. Then hoisting me up with the help of a pillow, he begins to work on the outer lips, transforming them into virginal pink innocence. The shape of me emerging like a seashell, the ripples, the contours, the ridge of my clitoris rising undeniably. The heat of the lamp turning my thighs rosy.
He stands just inches away from my face. Staring into his eyes I am hypnotized. There is that smell of aftershave again. He drops to the floor, his face hidden. He runs his hands up my legs, between my lips. I can feel his breath as he blows gently. He moves my legs farther apart. He looks down at me, his eyes burning holes through my body. “Look,” he says and holds the mirror up so I can see myself. Pink, innocent, naked, I glisten like a split peach. “Che bella, bellissima Madonna,” he says.
Shocked, I freeze. This isn’t his voice. This isn’t Adrian. “Kneel,” he says. I kneel over his face. My breasts fall heavily out of the corset. He takes me into his mouth, licking furiously. I am just about to come when he sits up and swings me over his knee and begins to spank me hard, the sound of each slap echoing around the bedroom. I try to move away but he has me firmly gripped between his knees. The heat from each spank rises up in between each smack.
“You’re hurting me!”
“Che?”
“Adrian, you’re hurting me!” I feel my flesh redden and grow hot. It begins to turn me on. I want him inside me. I ask him please, now. Do it now! He stops and listens. My voice is suddenly gigantic in the silence.
