I Was Waiting for You

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “No,” he muttered.

  “So?” She extended her left arm and her fingers swept across his dry lips.

  “Your woman isn’t anywhere as shy as you are, I see,” she remarked.

  Jack’s heart dropped all the way down to his stomach as he glanced around. Eleonora was now being embraced by the tall stranger, who held her tight against the far wall of the room, his hand burrowing under her dress, his face muzzled into hers. Her eyes was closed.

  “Come,” the woman with the white powdered wig said, taking him by the hand and leading him to a low couch at the opposite end of the room.

  He followed, as if in a trance. Time slowed down to a crawl.

  Her cunt tasted of exotic spices. Pungent, strong, savage. His tongue lapped her generous juices with quiet and studied abandon.

  She spread her legs wider apart and pressed his head down firmer against her. Jack momentarily gasped for breath.

  “Lick me harder,” she ordered him.

  Once she had tired of his worshipping the thick folds of her labia and the invisible radiating heat pulsing through her opening all the way from her innards, she pulled him onto the worn-out couch and firmly pulled his trousers down and began sucking him off.

  Somehow, even though she was talented and imaginative, he failed to get totally hard, and she gave up within a few minutes.

  “No worry,” she said. “It happens.”

  Red-faced, he looked her in the eyes, attempting to guess how old she might be behind that mask. Her skin was spotless and taut and her long, defined legs were those of an athlete at the peak of her form. He gulped and instantly recalled the taste of her and its striking flavours. She had been on her knees and rose to her feet. He just stood there, his black silk trousers bunched around his ankles.

  “Undress,” she said. It was more of an order than a suggestion.

  He meekly obeyed.

  He wanted to turn around and see where Eleonora was. And the tall man. Their own noises had been muted, distant, but nevertheless insidiously present all the while he had been involved with the purple-lipsticked woman. She sensed this.

  “Do so as you are. Don’t turn round,” she said, unclenching the black leather belt that circled her thin waist. “Look down to the floor as you undress.”

  He noticed the smudged purple stains of lipstick on the mushroom tip of his cock, like dried wine against the ridged flesh of his masculinity. He pulled the trousers down over his laced shoes. Then kicked the shoes off and quickly slipped off his socks. Surely there was no more ridiculous sight than a naked man wearing just black socks? He then pulled himself up and began unbuttoning his shirt. As he did so, he saw the woman reach for her matching red handbag, which had been lying on the couch and pull a devious contraption out, all leather straps and ivory trunk, from it.

  His stomach froze.

  There was a faint cry from the other end of the room.

  He was now naked.

  The woman pulled her ruched dress upwards and belted the strap-on to her waist. The artificial cock jutted ahead of her like the prow of a boat. Hard, inflexible.

  “Maybe this will give you a hard on?” she suggested. "Word has it that English men are much appreciative or should I say receptive?"

  He knew he could say no, and just leave the room with no further expressions of protest. But the words wouldn’t pass his lips. And he also knew he could not leave Eleonora here alone anyway.

  She indicated the couch and how he should bend over its sides and she positioned herself behind him.

  Now, through the corner of his eyes, he could finally see Eleonora and the other man. She had also been stripped naked, and wore only the hold up black stockings. The pallor of her body was unbearable to watch. As was the shocking contrast between her skin and the dark-as-night material of the remaining stockings.

  The other man’s cock was thick and dark pink and was ploughing her roughly and systematically, pulling out of her almost all the way with every stroke and then digging back into her up to the hilt with every return thrust. Machine-like, metronomic, like a deadly instrument of war.

  He felt the pain explode through his own body as the woman’s artificial member breached him with one swift movement. He swallowed hard, almost bit his tongue

  As he did so, he realised why Eleonora was so silent. A red handkerchief had been stuffed into her mouth, as her face rhythmically banged against the wall with every repeated movement in and out of her. He couldn’t help noticing the handkerchief was the exact same shade of red as the lipstick she had decided to adorn herself with to attend the party.

  Also, her hands were tied behind her back with brown fur-lined metal cuffs.

  She must obviously have agreed to the restraints.

  There was another huge stab of unbearable pain as the strap on began stretching him and he felt himself being filled like he had never been filled before. For a brief moment, he feared he was going to defecate, as the pit of his stomach went totally numb then perilously loose, but the pressure against his inner walls soon reasserted itself and the pain slowly began to recede. Not that being fucked in this manner gave him any pleasure. He felt as if he was becoming detached from his own body as it was being so cleverly defiled by this woman whose name he didn’t know.

  And his eyes kept on hypnotically watching the abominable movements of the other man’s massive member inside Eleonora, the way the tight skin around her opening creased inwards and then outwards again as she was being implacably drilled, and the eyelet of her anus winked open and shut with every movement below it. There was sweat dripping from her forehead. Her calves tightened, her arse cheeks shook, her hair was undone, her curls spilling in every conceivable direction as if moved by an invisible wind rising from the nearby lagoon and flying over the Giudecca to shroud the city on its way to the marshes and Trieste.

  From the tremors now compulsively coursing through her body, Jack knew Eleonora had come. The stranger had succeeded in raising her senses, playing her like Jack had rarely been capable of doing.

  But the man did not cease.

  He would visibly continue fucking her until she begged for him to stop.

  Would she ever?

  Back at the apartment, they at first could not bear to look each other in the eyes. They went to bed in total silence, still coated by the dry sweat of their exertions, of their shame.

  They slept late into the morning.

  After breakfast, they took a vaporettoto the Lido and later to the Isola di San Servolo. A trip they had agreed to undertake a few days before they had stumbled across the website which had lured them to the party.

  Over dinner in the San Polo district, they began communicating again.

  “Talk about an experience!’

  “I suppose you could call it that…”

  “Regrets?”

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Were you jealous?”

  “A little, I suppose.”

  “You?”

  “No. It’s… how can I put it… life…”

  “Certainly one way of putting it…”

  They tried to go for coffee at Caffé Florian, but it was closed on Tuesdays in winter. They made their way back to the apartment. There was no power. They tiptoed their way through darkness towards the bedroom.

  “It doesn’t change anything, does it?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, spooning against him.

  It was at that precise moment Jack knew he was about to lose her. First Giulia, now Eleonora. His radar had enough practice.

  That it was too late to plea, beg, affirm his love, however impure it now was.

  He didn’t sleep that night. He stayed awake in the darkness, listening to the vague sounds of the Canal delle Due Torri lapping against the building’s rotting stone facade and the imperceptible melody of her breath, as her chest moved peacefully up and down against him under the duvet.

  He smelled her,
listened to her as if trying to fix these memories in his brain once and for all. All that he would one day be left with.

  Jack finally succumbed to sleep around seven in the morning.

  When he awoke, she had left the apartment.

  The morning went by. He tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate on the lines, whether a week-old newspaper or an anonymous serial killer thriller.

  Eleonora returned at the beginning of the afternoon. She was wearing that black skirt he remembered buying her in Barcelona and which held so many memories. The one with the giant sunflower patch sewn into its flank. And a T-shirt he had once loaned her in the early days of the affair when their lovemaking had proven a tad rough and messy and he had left compromising semen stains across the blouse she had been wearing that day. The T-shirt that advertised McCabe and Mrs. Milleracross the Aubrey Beardsley-like face of a woman.

  He was sipping a glass of grapefruit juice at the kitchen table.

  He welcomed her.

  “Had a good walk?”

  “No.”

  “Oh…”

  A shadow passed across the room shielding her eyes from his examination.

  “I saw him again,” Eleonora said.

  The pain inside returned.

  “Have you fucked him again?”

  “No.”

  “I see.”

  “There is another party tonight. A different palazzo this time, near the Campo San Silvestro. He’s invited me. Wants to introduce me to some of his friends…”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? I still like you, you know.”

  “I know. But liking is not enough. I need a life, you see. Alone. I don’t want to be owned… Anyway, you still think of Giulia, don’t you? Don’t deny it: every time you touch me, when you close your eyes, you think I might be her…”

  “I’ve never tried to own you, you know that. You’re too much of a gypsy to be kept in a cage.” He hadn’t answered her question, as if he already knew she was right.

  Eleonora smiled.

  “You can come, if you wish, I reckon. As long as you promise not to interfere and allow whatever happens to happen…”

  “I don’t think so,” Jack said. “Don’t much care to repeat yesterday’s foursome. Just didn’t feel right to me somehow.”

  “I understand.”

  She walked to the bedroom they had been using; she was holding a large Mondadori canvas tote bag.

  “What have you got there? Been shopping?” he asked.

  She looked away.

  “No…,” she hesitated, then came clean. “Well, it’s the outfit he wishes me to wear tonight.”

  “Can I…”

  Eleonora interrupted him.

  “I’d rather you didn’t see it, Jack.”

  That evening, he left the apartment to wander the narrow streets and have several coffees in a row to allow her to dress in privacy.

  By the time he returned, she had already left for Carnevale or had maybe been picked up.

  She did not return that night or the following day.

  His days and nights were haunted by obscene visions of her with other men, and the abominable images of alien cocks of all shapes, sizes and shades invading her. Her mouth, her cunt, her arse, her hands. Orgasmic flush invading the delicate pallor of her skin. The indelible marks of hands, ropes, whips and paddles across the familiar geography of her body. And the sound of her voice just saying ‘Yes’, ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes’ again, like Bloom’s Molly. And the grateful acceptance of her smile, of her eyes. And then the terrible visions would repeat again and again, as if captive in some infernal porno film loop, and Eleonora’s face would become Giulia’s until Jack could no longer recognise who was who, and they were both determined to be unfaithful to himfor ever, leave him until he burned in hell.

  Finally, she reappeared halfway through Carnevale.

  She looked radiant. More beautiful than ever.

  “You haven’t shaved,” she remarked. “The stubble on your cheeks is so grey.”

  “Couldn’t bother,” he said. “So, you’re back.”

  “Not really,” Eleonora said. “I’ve just returned to pick up my stuff, my clothes and all that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said.

  “It’s the way things are,” Eleonora remarked. “After Carnevale ends, Master has promised me that the adventure will continue. He wants to take me to Mardi-Gras in New Orleans and also the Carnival in Rio one day…”

  “How exciting,” he said bitterly in response.

  “Don’t be like that, please, Jack,” she protested. “You should be happy for me. Respect what I am doing, surely.”

  “I find that difficult, Eleonora. I would have given you everything. Surely you realise that.”

  “I know, but it would never have been enough. You know that. I’m young. I have a life to live. My life.”

  Her skin shone in the pale light coming through the window, the curls in her hair like the gift of Medusa.

  Jack closed his eyes. Promising himself he would not open them until she had left with her belongings.

  Jack never saw Eleonora again. He stayed in Venice until the end of Carnevale. At dinner one evening, he met another woman, a legal interpreter from Arizona. They had a few drinks together and he was pleased to see that he could still chat a woman up, be reasonably witty and seductive. But when he took her back to the apartment and undressed her after some willing fumbling and a cascade of mutual kisses, he wasn’t capable of fucking her. Just couldn’t get hard enough, despite her assiduous ministrations. Lack of inspiration or wrong person, he wasn’t sure.

  The next day as he sat at an overpriced café by the Rialto bridge, he caught a glimpse of a small water cab racing down the Grand Canal. A woman was standing at its prow. For a brief moment, he thought he recognised Eleonora. Same skirt and T-shirt, but the cab was moving too fast for him to be positive it was actually her. At any rate, she was alone on the small boat, standing erect behind the driver, facing the breeze. And for a brief moment, the wind shimmered, the image in his eyes blurred and he thought it maybe was Giulia, not Eleonora any longer. And then his vision blurred and she looked like yet another woman. Unknown, though.

  * * *

  Shortly after, his friends returned from India and he promptly made his way back to London.

  He left the two masks they had worn on that fateful evening behind. Not quite the sort of apparel you could wear for the Notting Hill Carnival.

  Jack would never go back to Venice.

  THE SIMPLE ART OF RETRIBUTION

  IVAN NEVER RETURNED PHONE calls. You had to ring three times at ten minute intervals and leave an identical message and a number where he could call you back. Never on a landline.

  If he was otherwise detained and did not return the call within the hour, you had to repeat the process at the same time on the following day. Those were the rules.

  Cornelia reached New York mid-afternoon and was home by four. It was the best time of day to fly in, when the traffic into the city was still sparse enough. First she showered and then, still dripping water, immediately rang Ivan on a spare cell phone she had acquired at the airport, for which she had picked up a spare SIM card from a small souvenir and touristy bric a brac store on Broadway South of Houston.

  There was no answer, as she expected. She slipped on her dark blue silk kimono, stretched her long limbs, and adjusting a cushion at one end, lay down on the frayed leather sofa on which she liked to do most of her reading and thinking. She tried Ivan twice again, repeating the succinct message. And began her wait. Outside, the sun was setting over the park. She tried to concentrate on a new book she’d been waiting to read by some English crime writer she’d heard good things about. The opening pages grabbed her attention, but soon her tiredness got the better of her and she dozed off.

  She awoke in the dead middle of night. Her kimono’s thin,
tenuous belt had come undone and the flimsy material had parted and the skin across her stomach and thighs was littered with goose bumps. Cornelia shivered and realised with disappointment that it would be at least a further day until matters could move on. Too much time to kill. She moved to the bedroom and slipped between the sheets, shedding the kimono in her stride. She always slept in the nude, no matter the weather.

  It took another three days for Ivan to call back. Maybe he had been out of town.

  “Cornelia?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t realise you were back.”

  “I am. Reporting back like a good little soldier.”

  “So, everything cleared up? I haven’t heard back from my principals. Surprising. I’d assumed they would have told me the matter is at an end. In which case, I’m owed,” Ivan said.

  “Lucky you.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Quite a few as a matter of fact.”

  “Oh.”

  “I think we should speak about it in the flesh. Meet.”

  “That’s quite irregular.”

  “I know. But it’s important, I assure you.”

  “Something the client should know?”

  “Not until you and I have spoken,” Cornelia said.

  “This is most unusual, my dear Cornelia,” he continued.

  “But necessary,” she added. “I insist on meeting.”

  Ivan reluctantly agreed. She would have to come to him.

  It took Cornelia just over an hour from Grand Central Station on the New Haven local train to reach Westport, Connecticut. By then, the sky was already darkening, sombre clouds floating menacingly over the surrounding woods. Ivan had sent a driver to the station to pick her up in a grey four-wheel drive Jeep.

  The metal gates to the property slowly peeled open from the centre as the chauffeur operated a remote electronic switch on the car’s dashboard, drove in, and the gates behind them closed in their wake. The man at the wheel, a short black guy in a green woollen cardigan and heavy brown cord trousers had not spoken a word during the short fifteen-minute journey across the bridge and then through the forest roads and a labyrinth of left-hand turnings which Cornelia memorised carefully. Nor had he even glanced at her in his rear view mirror. She was wearing black from head to toe, a thin cashmere sweater which felt soft against her skin, tailored Armani slacks and flat ballerina slippers.