Asking For Trouble

by Kristina Lloyd

  Even now, I can hardly believe I did this, but I did. I checked quickly over the other houses, satisfied myself that no one was watching and yanked my top over my head. Beneath was just my purple bra.

  I stood there on my chest-of-drawers stage, T-shirt in hand, my heart drumming wildly. Defiantly, I put back my shoulders. It was my way of saying with my body: ‘So you want entertainment? Well, here it is, mister. You don’t scare me. Now fuck off and leave me alone.’

  It hadn’t occurred to me that he might copy me. But he did.

  After several long, long seconds of looking, he swiftly removed his rollneck. The lines of his naked torso were lean and strong and his skin was nut brown – Mediterranean depth rather than summertime gilding. He held his sweater in his left hand the way I was holding my top in my right. I swallowed hard. My tongue felt thick and heavy. My knees felt watery.

  What was he thinking? Had he done this before? Was this how he got his kicks? And more urgently: it’s my move now. What do I do? Is this dangerous?

  I dropped my T-shirt. He dropped his sweater.

  For some reason, this was worse than all that had gone before, more sinister. A moment’s acute terror crushed a hundred heartbeats into one. I rode the wave – act now, think later – and let my stubbornness surge again. Nervously, I cast my eyes over the high terraces beyond my glass show-case. Just above the rooftops, the sky was pale tangerine, a street-lamp sky. The trees were dark and the windows around me were calm. I had, as far as I could tell, just the one spectator.

  I wasn’t going to be cowed. I was going to outwit him. With trembling hands, I reached behind, unhooked my bra and let it fall. My breasts are firm and high, nicely rounded on the underswell. When I remove my bra, they don’t drop heavily or anything. So I stood proud, my back arched slightly to give them that extra lift.

  He can’t mirror that, I thought, triumphant yet afraid.

  I saw his shoulders heave with a deep-drawn breath and I felt a rush of elation. I was a glorious, bare-breasted Amazon and he, my foolish foe, was awestruck, staring defeat in the face.

  Then, deftly, the guy unbuckled, unzipped, pushed everything down and stood upright to meet my challenge. His cock was erect, angling high from a dark bush of curls.

  I was no Amazon.

  A taxi sped past the bottom of the road.

  I was Beth Bradshaw – stupid Beth Bradshaw with her tits out.

  And I was suddenly very, very frightened.

  I whipped the curtains in front of me and scrambled down from my pedestal. Show over. Clutching my T-shirt to my breasts, I looked frantically around the room – searching for what, or who, I don’t know. Blood pounded in my ears. My skin was on fire, hot with terror and shock. My legs were weak. I rested my arse against the chest of drawers then sank to the floor.

  I didn’t dare move. Half my windows were still uncurtained. The lights were on. He would still be there, watching, waiting. Images of what had just passed churned in my brain. What on earth had possessed me? What the hell had I done?

  For far too long I just sat there, hugging my knees to my naked upper body. Sweat prickled on my burning skin before plunging me into iciness.

  I had to live here, opposite a pervert, a flasher, a voyeur, and I’d just egged him on. Would he be able to see me during the day? Would the muslin be too thin at night? Would he break in when I was sleeping?

  I wished I was back in my old place, safe with Jenny and Clare. I tried to focus on them, probably in the big messy living room right now. They’d be doing ordinary things, perhaps watching TV, or maybe they’d been to the pub and had other people round. I began to feel slightly calmer. Jenny, plump and gorgeous on the sofa, would be skinning up – ‘one last spliff then I’ve really got to crash’.

  Someone moved heavily in the flat above me. It made my ceiling bump, my pulses lurch, my panic rush. Get a grip, I urged myself, it’s only the couple who live there. Stop being foolish.

  Shivering a little, I pulled on my T-shirt and crawled across the floor, switching off the table lamp and the angle-poise. Street lighting added an amber tint to my darkened room. I would be, I hoped, invisible to him now.

  On my knees, I craned my neck, peering out to where he had stood. I sighed with relief to see that his window was a restful square of black. Like mine.

  He’d got bored. It was over. Tomorrow would come and I’d reflect on it as just a weird bit of nonsense. Maybe I’d feel nervy about the prospect of bumping into him, but nothing monstrous was going to happen. I’d just ignore him; no big deal.

  I was about to draw the half-fixed curtains when a horrible thought occurred to me: A square of black – like mine. Was his unlit window more copy-cat stuff? Were we still playing our strange game?

  Or could it be worse than that? Was it a sign that he’d left, not merely his window but his flat? Perhaps, right now, he was crossing the street, standing at the communal front door of my house, persuading someone else to buzz him in.

  In the madness of a mind after midnight, in a dark silent room, the latter seemed all the more likely. I scuttled from the living room to my tiny hall. In my imagination I could hear him: ‘Really sorry to wake you . . . key seems to be stuck . . . can you buzz me in . . . cheers, mate.’

  I checked the main door of my flat. Already locked. I double locked it and pressed my ear to the wood, straining to listen. I could hear nothing except, faintly, the noise of someone else’s television. No footsteps. No creaking stairs. No knife-wielding psycho coming to get me.

  I drew steadying breaths, rationality filtering drip by drip into my brain. I was OK, safe. I’d been a bit stupid but there was nothing I could do about it. And I wouldn’t do it again.

  In the kitchen, I poured myself a huge vodka and tonic, then breezed through my living room into the adjoining bedroom.

  My flat’s pretty compact: one room leads more or less to another. In its former life it was probably one massive space – the Drawing Room or the Library, la-di-da. Then someone came along and stuck in lots of walls to divide it all up. They did a sturdy, seamless job, so you can’t tell an old wall from a new one. They’ve all got deep skirtingboards, dado rails and cornices. It’s a good flat. I like it.

  Anyway, I was tight as a coil and nowhere near sleepiness. My bedroom overlooks the other road and it had curtains.

  I sat on my brand-new solid pine bed, resting against the wall, swirling and sipping my vodka.

  Beth Bradshaw: everyone thinks she’s tough and sassy, an independent kind of girl who knows how to handle herself. And sometimes she is. And at other times she’s just a vulnerable nobody in a big, bad world who does some really stupid things.

  The vodka softened my body and began to chill away my fears. Though I was no longer afraid and overwrought, I wasn’t quite relaxed. I was shot through with an undercurrent of energy, a strange animation – something like the feeling you have as a kid just before an exam, in a subject you know you’re good at: excited, nervous; you want it and you don’t.

  I drained my glass and lay, hands behind my head, gazing up to the high ceiling with its blue globe lampshade. Over and over, I replayed the scene: two people swapping secrets in the public arena, stripping off – for each other? At each other? I didn’t know. Had we shared a naughty game, a bit of harmless fun? Or was it more aggressive, territorial, a drawing of swords? Or was it seriously sexy?

  Christ, but he had a nice body. And, I thought smugly, he’d had a hard-on – for me, for whatever it was that had passed between us. With a slight shock, I realised I was aroused, had been for some time. A thrill born of terror was tingling in my cunt. Smiling gently, I nudged up my T-shirt and trailed idle fingertips over my tautly stretched belly.

  I wondered who he was, what would happen when we saw each other again – at our night-time windows or maybe in the street, in a daylight, fully clothed, workaday world. No, I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want workaday. It didn’t make sense. This was madness-after-midnight stuff; it di
dn’t make sense either, but then that didn’t matter.

  My hand slid up and I caressed my breasts with firm self-indulgence. What had he done with his boner? I mused. Had he wanked while thinking of me, of that woman across the street with messy hair, good tits and a face that wasn’t quite balanced?

  But no, we’d been too far away for details, although I was sure I’d recognise him, somehow, if I saw him close up.

  My nipples were tight. I scuffed and tweaked them. Somewhere I had a vibrator, a sleek gold-coated thing that I kept in an empty Glenmorangie tin. But I wasn’t sure where it was. Probably lurking in a taped-up box labelled NOT VERY IMPORTANT BOOKS or OLD PHOTOS AND BAD CROCKERY. It hadn’t exactly seen much action in its time. Shared house, bedroom next door to Jenny’s. Buzz buzz. No thank you.

  I ought to have rooted it out when I first moved in, a present to myself. But then, I thought, the batteries have probably leaked. No matter.

  Unzipping my trousers, I eased a hand into my knickers. I was silky wet; my clit was hard. I made it harder, circling then rocking until it was fully pumped up and dense with sensation. Hastily, I wriggled my clothes to my ankles so my knees could flop wide, then I drove two fingers into my sweet, slippery pussy.

  In my head, a man with no face fucked me. Violently. He bent me over and took me from behind. We were in a non-place. Windows surrounded us, squares of light and dark flicking on and off like some whizz-bang arcade game. And in those windows were men watching us, men with no faces, all wanking themselves off because I was being fucked senseless. They loved to see me, dirty little bitch on her hands and knees, taking cock from a faceless man.

  I thrust and frigged, arching up from the bed, gasping quick breaths. When I masturbate I think of cheap things and seediness: squalid rooms, Soho neon and crude, lewd adverts. I picture myself as one of those wet and willing porn-mag sluts.

  I made my faceless-man fantasy more concrete. I brought the spectators down from their windows, made them jeer and laugh. They were foul-mouthed and boorish, hungry for a piece of the action, for a piece of me. They were ready to take over once the faceless man had finished. And though I might be wet and willing, there were too many of them for me.

  But they wouldn’t care about that. However exhausted I was, they’d still fuck me in their turn, telling each other, ‘She loves it, she loves it,’ as their arses humped away.

  I came. My orgasm crashed, squeezing spasms around juice-hot fingers. Ah God, was there anything better than coming? The flutters died and, with a sigh, I dropped on to my duvet.

  My populated mind thinned and a tranquil glow crept over me, soothing my body to languor. My mind stayed awake – not alert, more meandering pleasantly. I was dreamy, drifting in and out of fantasy, recalling the night’s events.

  Untouched by anxiety, I mulled over the window game, seeing it in soft focus as if it were a thing I hadn’t quite been involved in. I mused on its consequences.

  We couldn’t end it there; something else had to happen. Should I be passive, I wondered, and simply keep a sharp eye on my view? Or should I take action, go across the road and say – what? – ‘How about it, big boy?’

  I smiled lazily. He could be pig ugly, I thought. But surely not. God didn’t give people great bodies and rotten faces. But then, I told myself, He damn well did. What was he called, the guy Jenny was seeing for a short time? Ages ago. ‘Bag Over’ we called him. Seeing ‘Bag Over’ tonight, Jen? As in ‘Put a bag over his head and you might consider fucking him.’ I thought of bag-faces, the Ku Klux Klan, Marlboro cigarettes, cowboys. My mind grew woolly, slipping in and out of surreal nonsense. I was sleepy, very sleepy.

  I was just trying to cling to the thought that I should get out of my clothes and crawl under the duvet when, in the living room, the phone rang. My heart leapt. After a split-second’s confusion, recognition and memory slammed into my brain. Fear quickly followed. I struggled to reason with it, to calm my fast-beating pulse.

  Let it ring, I said to myself. Phones don’t hurt. Phones don’t expose themselves from across the street.

  I lay there, trying to breathe slowly as I waited for the answerphone to click into gear. Probably Jenny or my mother. They were the only people I knew who called at ridiculous hours.

  ‘Hi, this is Beth,’ said my machine voice, chirpy and stilted. ‘You seem to have caught me out. But you know how the technology works. Beep, message, then I get back to you, ASAP.’

  It beeped. A male voice spoke: ‘What are you doing, Beth? Are you wanking?’

  Long pause. The voice was soft and husky. I didn’t recognise it. It was him, had to be. He knew my name! He had my fucking number!

  A cold dread flooded my limbs. For the second time that night, I held my breath, listening. But this time, I did not have the safety net of ‘just imagination’ to fall into. This was reality: stark, scary, pitiless.

  ‘Sorry if you are. Didn’t mean to disturb you. What do you think about when you touch yourself, Beth? How do you touch yourself?’ Another pause, then: ‘You should call me sometime. We can have a chat.’

  A click, and the tape started to rewind.

  I jumped from my bed and raced to the phone thinking, Please, Mother, please, Jenny, please, wrong-number-person, do not phone me now.

  Snatching up the receiver, I viciously one-four-seven-oned him. I clawed for a newspaper and jotted down the number on the top corner. My hands shook. I tore around my writing and, after a moment’s thought, I labelled it: ‘Him’.

  I sat there for a while, my mind spinning. How, how, how? How did he know who I was? Why did he know who I was? How long had he known? Did I have a stalker?

  Then I one-four-seven-oned again, just to check. On the scrap of paper I wrote the time I was called. I thought: that’ll help the police when someone finds me dead.

  Then I played back his message. Again and again and again.

  Chapter Two

  BODY LANGUAGE.

  It’s Body for the performance art stuff: the dancers, cabaret, weird theatre and so on; and it’s Language for the spoken word: the poets, the writers, the wags and raconteurs. Or at least it was, originally.

  And it was – still is – only part of what I do. I don’t have a career, just a career direction, which is working in the arts for something more lucrative than love. My life’s a patchwork quilt made up of running the club night, writing for a couple of local rags, sporadic voice-over work and, when I’m skint, I can usually find some bar work. Sew it all up and you’ve got something that covers rent, bills, food and leaves me enough to enjoy myself with.

  Anyone with half an eye on the local arts scene knows who I am. I’m a fairly big fish in one of Brighton’s many little ponds. My name’s always in the listings: ‘For more information, call Beth on . . .’; my photo pops up occasionally, alongside interviews or little news items; I’m forever dishing out publicity flyers; and anyone who’s been to a gig will have seen me on stage, introducing the acts, doing my mistress of ceremonies routine.

  That, I reckoned, was how he knew who I was.

  He’d been watching me for longer than I thought.

  After that, I didn’t see him for three or four days. He wasn’t there. His window was dark at night, his blind was permanently down and there was absolutely no movement. He’d gone away, I concluded.

  But even so, every ring of the phone made my heart shoot. I would stare at the phone, fingering the slip of paper with his number on, and my pulse would accelerate. Several times I went so far as pressing in the first five digits, daring myself to tap in that final sixth. Maybe he really was at home. Maybe he’d be walking into his flat as I was letting it ring. Maybe he’d have an answerphone and I’d leave a message. Saying what? Who are you? How dare you? Leave me alone! Kiss me! Fuck me!

  I couldn’t put him from my mind.

  I couldn’t press that final number. I knew he would one-four-seven-one me; he would listen, faceless man, to that staccato nasal voice telling him: ‘The caller – wit
hheld – their number – but the caller – is mildly – obsessed – by you. The caller – is no longer – sane.’

  On the outside, I was fine. I was Beth Bradshaw going about her normal hectic business. On the inside, I was fanciful and pathetic. Our exchange at the window lingered in my mind, vivid and yet nebulous, like a crazy dream.

  But I couldn’t file it in the dream bit of my brain; nor could I file it in the reality bit. It belonged to neither category. So instead it roamed around, restless and haunting, infecting me with its strangeness. If it weren’t for the tape of his voice – that soft, gentle ‘What are you doing, Beth? Are you wanking?’ – I might have forced it into the dream file: subsection ‘tired to the point of delirium; not to be reopened’. But I had the tape; I knew it off by heart. I had reality on record.

  I bought a plant – not because I particularly liked it, but because it needed lots of sunlight and water, love and attention. I moved a small table into one side of the bay window, put my new plant there and smothered it with love.

  Nothing moved in the flat across the road.

  One afternoon, when I was working from home, the entry phone buzzed. I jumped – it’s such an aggressive sound and I was used to a doorbell with a melodic ‘ping-pong’. And in my teenage-fantasy head, my first thought was: It’s him.

  I picked up the receiver, a touch nervous: ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Beth!’ comes a fuzzy intercom voice. ‘Only Martin.’

  Only Martin – so sweetly self-effacing.

  ‘Honey-pie!’ I trilled merrily and buzzed him in.

  I stood in the doorway of my flat, smiling and listening to him clomp up the steps.

  ‘This way,’ I called. Moments later, Martin rounded the corner: mop of black hair, broad cheeky grin, tatty little rucksack hanging from one shoulder; that’s Martin, only Martin.

  As soon as he reached me, he hooked an arm round my back and dramatically pulled me close like we were a couple of cheesy tango dancers. He pressed his lips to mine and we kissed – a long smacker of a kiss ending in a mutual ‘mmwah!’ – a kiss loaded with history.