by Linda Jaivin
Eventually, Philippa approached to ask if Julia wanted to share a taxi home. Philippa lived in the Cross; she could drop Julia off at her warehouse in Surry Hills on the way. In the cab, they talked about the party. Julia neglected to mention her meeting with Jake. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Philippa to know. But she was superstitious about such things and believed that telling tales too early on might put a jinx on the whole enterprise.
Anyway, there they were, five days later, in a discreet Indian restaurant on a side street in Glebe. After a brief stocktake of the dishes to check that nothing edible remained, Jake suppressed a burp and extended his hand across the table to cover hers. She let her middle finger curl lightly into his palm.
“Glad you’re not a vegetarian, Julia,” he said after a silence.
“Why’s that?” Julia asked.
“Oh, I dunno. It’s not really vegetarians I’m afraid of so much as vegans. But maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Not now, anyway.”
“But you’ve got me all curious.”
“Later.”
Oh well. She liked the sound of that word, later. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
She looked down at his hand now. She often marveled at hands—all nerve endings and capillaries, sensation and blood. And those of younger men could be so beautiful, so tender and supple. With her fingertip, she explored and tickled. He shivered, almost imperceptibly, and leaned forward. She kissed him over the table and, under the table, caressed his leg with her foot. After a minute, he whispered, a little hoarsely, “I have a raging erection.” She smiled and caught the attention of a passing waiter. “Could I have the bill, please?” she said.
Chantal smirked. “Lights are on. Anyone at home? Oh, Joo-li-ya!” She sang out Julia’s name, syllable by syllable, re-re-do.
Julia’s eyelids flew open and panic shined briefly in her eyes.
“Well,” asked Philippa after a significant pause, “Did you like my story?” Suddenly self-conscious, she mumbled, “Of course, you don’t have to, you know, say you did if you didn’t.”
Julia caught a quick shuttle back to planet Earth. She blinked. “Uh, yes, of course I did,” she stuttered. “Put it this way,” she continued, slowly, recovering her poise, “I’ve got the cream. All I need now is another cup of coffee. It was orgasmic.”
“You’re not faking it?”
“Fake it? Me? Never.” Julia smiled charmingly.
“Now I’m really worried.” Philippa nibbled at her muffin and frowned. “Do you think ‘no animal fat’ means no butter? How can you bake with no butter?”
Julia scanned the street as she sipped her latte. “Hey,” she alerted the others. “Potential victim.” Taking care not to look too obvious, they turned to look in the direction Julia had indicated and performed a quick inventory.
Lightly tanned skin, disheveled brown hair with big blue eyes half-hidden under dense lashes. Late twenties. White Bond T-shirt. Lightly muscled, well-defined arms. Black jeans covering but not concealing lean, muscular legs.
“Clothes horse.” Helen approved.
“Maybe, but check out the hooves,” observed Philippa. “Think his farrier’s made a bit of a mistake there.”
Docs. Not the boots but the shoes. With white socks.
“Ee-ew,” said Chantal, turning up her beaked nose and patting her champagne blond beehive. She was terribly pleased with the beehive, a new item on her head’s endlessly revised agenda. It came courtesy of her best male friend and confidante, Alexi, a hairdresser. Alexi and she shared stories, news, and views about men. They even gave each other the “All Men Are Bastards” desk calendar each year. Chantal hoped, what with her natural style and ab-fab job with Pulse, Sydney’s bible of style, that she would someday soon become a camp icon. One of her fantasies was to be plucked from the sidelines at the Mardi Gras parade by a floatilla of gorgeous, half-naked men. They would place her on a throne and thrust and grind and gyrate moistly around her while she waved to the crowds like a prom queen in an American movie or, rather, just a queen. They’d think she was the most divine trannie they’d ever clapped eyes on, even more divine than Terence Stamp in Priscilla. Doing nothing to disillusion them, at the postparade party she’d gently push some obliging slave over onto his knees. Steadying herself with one hand on his waist, she would bend over invitingly with her ass in the air. A series of spectacularly muscled and shiny gym queens would then take her from behind. “I want you now, and then you, and then you and you and you,” she’d say, crooking a slender, perfectly manicured forefinger at each in turn.
“You’ve got a milk mustache,” Helen informed Julia, who quickly wiped it off with the back of her hand.
“Why do they always put so much froth on lattes?” Julia wondered.
“I’m glad you all think it works, anyway,” inserted Philippa, steering the conversation back to her story.
Chantal tapped another cigarette out of her pack.
“What are you calling it?” asked Helen.
“ ‘Forbidden Fruit and Veg,’ I think. What do you reckon?”
“Bit obvious,” pronounced Julia, after a pause. “You know, Adam, Ava—you might as well call it ‘The Market Garden of Eden.’ ”
Philippa blushed. “You’ve got a point,” she conceded.
Putting her cigarette to lips the color of Courage (from the Poppy collection, of course), Chantal glanced around briefly to see if there was anyone worth bumming a light from. There wasn’t. She fished her lighter out of her purse and lit up. She blew a few smoke rings into the air. “How about—thinking of Jule’s, uh, reaction—‘Crème Fraîche’?” she proposed.
“I’d just call it ‘Eat Me,’ ” suggested Helen.
A rather stunning waiter emerged from the café to deliver another round of coffees—latte for Julia, cappuccino for Helen, short blacks for Chantal and Philippa. As he strode handsomely back inside, Philippa remarked, “Have you ever noticed how all the waiters in Darlinghurst cafés look like supermodels?”
“Yeah, and the ones in Double Bay—or should I say Double Pay—look like bankers and gazumpers,” Helen replied. “No kidding. I went book shopping the other day at Nicholas Pounder’s and then stopped in a café around the corner. It was seriously weird. They even wear striped ties.You expect their mobiles to start ringing while they’re taking your order.”
“The waiters carry mobiles?” gasped Julia.
“Julia, for a photographer, you’re very literal. I meant, they look like the types who would carry mobiles.”
“Oh.”
“Have you shown the story to anyone else?” asked Helen.
“Just Richard.” Richard was the charismatic man who ran the writing workshop Philippa had been attending as faithfully as any churchgoer, every Sunday for years now. None of the others had ever met him, but they felt they knew him. He was Philippa’s guru, her mentor, her confidante, her number one Object of Lust, though, she insisted, she’d never actually Done the Thang with him and probably never would. She wasn’t sure how old he was—he could be anything from twenty-eight to thirty-eight. According to Philippa, he adopted different looks according to the characters he was creating in his work. One summer he was a bleached blond surfie with a tan. By winter he was a pale punk. He was widely published in a variety of obscure literary journals under different pen names, one for each persona. He had, she’d discovered one day when all the members of the workshop went for a walk on the sands of Bondi together, exquisite feet.
Helen had appreciated the detail about the feet. She quite prided herself on her own feet, which were well arched, plump, and smooth. Her boyfriends had always complimented her on her feet. One, who had a bit of a fetish, had enjoyed worshiping them, though, if the truth be told, Helen had never found it easy to relax with a man licking out what she always imagined were the rather feculent spaces between her toes. When one lover commented about her feet that they looked brand new, like they’d never been used, she wasn’t sure how to take it.
“He was really nice about it, actually. He encouraged me to get it published. He suggested one of those women’s mags where they run pics of men with all the dangly bits, you know, dangling?”
“You mean like Australian Women’s Forum. Excellent idea, darling.” Chantal sipped at her coffee. Alexi and she shared a subscription. “Gonna give it a burl?”
“Why not?” Philippa shrugged. “Though I’m also going to try and develop it into a novel.”
“Great,” said Helen.
“The next question, of course, is who provided you with the, uh, ingredients for ‘Eat Me’? It is ‘Eat Me’ now, isn’t it?” Chantal looked to Philippa for confirmation. “Much to my regret, I know it wasn’t me.”
“Don’t look at me like that, Chantal!” cried Julia.
“Nor me!” squeaked Helen. “Strawberries give me hives.”
Philippa smiled. “My writing is purely the product of my imagination,” she said.
“Of course it is, darling.” Chantal giggled.
“And, of course,” Philippa continued, “total attentiveness to the world around me. Speaking of the whirl around me, weren’t you supposed to have a hot date with a cool young man the other night, Julia? How’d that go?”
“Oh, I dunno,” Julia said, shaking her head. That story, she thought, is not going to get into Philippa’s book. She wondered if she was being ungenerous. Philippa wouldn’t really just write up their experiences in her fiction, would she? “Eat Me” didn’t seem to have anything to do with any of them, and that was all she had to go on. In the past, Philippa had been extraordinarily coy about showing her work to her friends. “Eat Me” was the first story she’d ever let them see. It seemed unfair to be overly suspicious. But she decided to play safe. “It was okay, I guess.” Raising the latte to her lips, Julia looked away from the others and slipped back into her reverie.
She’d succumbed to a fit of the giggles as they left the restaurant, for Jake had to bend nearly double in a vain attempt to conceal his condition. He tossed her a doleful look. In the cab, he drew her willing hand to the bulge in his pants and kissed her wetly. He slid his hand into her stretch miniskirt and, as she wriggled encouragingly, into her panties and explored inland with his fingers. He stroked and probed until she was nearly vibrating with pleasure. When she noticed the cabdriver’s eyes glued to the rearview mirror, it only heightened the thrill.
“Mmmm,” exhaled Julia. “Uh, mmmm, right over there, yes, that’s it, yes, oh, yes.” The driver pulled up in front of her block of flats. Jake pulled out of her panties.
As she paid the speechless driver, Jake looked away, as if there were some urgent matter demanding his attention in the opposite direction. He’d vagued out in a similar manner when the restaurant bill had arrived. Julia didn’t really mind. Being a freelance photographer, she was far from rich, but she did well enough and certainly always had money to wine and dine the sweet young things she fancied.
In the bedroom, Julia yanked off Jake’s top and fumbled impatiently with his belt and the buttons of his fly. She was so keen that it caught her a bit off balance when he signaled her to slow down.
He peeled off Julia’s clothes as if they were the leaves of a steamed artichoke, savoring each item with his nose, eyes, and skin, cherishing the tender inner leaves most of all. He pushed her gently onto her back on the bed and, holding down her hands at her side, began to move at a languorous pace down her body, devouring her with his eyes. His gaze lingered over her nipples, noting their fine deep coloring, and rested briefly on the smooth Mediterranean caramel of her belly before proceeding down to the most exquisite savories, the tangle of angel’s hair garnishing folds of moist gravlax.
Having perused the menu, Jake knew what his choice of appetizer would be that evening. He leaned down to taste the inside of her thighs. Ignoring the pleas of her arched back and raised pelvis, he unhurriedly relished the fine skin with his tongue and lips, and only when he was sated with those, did he move up to position himself just a millimeter or so from her deli door. He breathed deeply of the salty, rich aroma it exuded, exhaling little sighs that felt almost like caresses to her. She tried to push herself down the bed and close that tiny gap that separated her anxious sex from his teasing mouth, but he anticipated her movements and kept himself just that teeny bit farther away, pinioning her still by her wrists against the bed. Just when she thought she’d go mad with desire, he parted the rosy curtains with his tongue and partook of her in earnest, poking, prodding, sucking, and stroking until she was thrashing about and gasping for breath. He covered her with his whole mouth and probed deeply with his tongue, which seemed to expand inside her until it was strumming every one of her secret parts. She could feel her body humming and quivering and dancing and flowing. Now, he withdrew to suckle at her clitoris, pulling and sucking with his lips and teeth and gurgling with her juices. She shuddered uncontrollably, enveloped in pulse after pulse of hot sensation.
Nearly delirious, she picked up her head to see his young face rising over her intimate horizon like a new sun, blond dreads emanating like rays from his orb. Cocking one eyebrow, he looked at her questioningly. His chin was streaked with wet. “You faking it?” he asked with a faint smile.
“Ohhhh,” she groaned, collapsing inarticulately back onto the pillow.
He crawled slowly up her body and kissed her deeply. She could taste herself in his mouth. They rolled over until she was on top. “Tell me what you want,” she sighed. “Anything.”
He considered the offer for a moment before making his request. “Some Chocolate Rock.”
Raising herself on her arms, she looked at him with slight alarm.
“It’s a kind of ice cream. Homer Hudson’s Chocolate Rock,” he clarified, insinuating his fingers back into her cunt at the same time. He reached up and took a toffee nipple between his teeth, teased it a bit, and then let it go. “Don’t you eat junk food? How old are you any way, Julia?”
Pretending not to have heard the question and to forestall further interrogation on the subject, Julia quickly slid backward until she could take his dick into her mouth. Soon, the look on his face told her the topic of age was safely buried—for a while, anyway.
Finally, he pulled her head away. “Julia.” He didn’t say her name so much as breathe it. She smiled, reached into the drawer by her bedside, and took out a condom. Watching her extricate it from its wrapper, he grumbled, “I hate condoms.”
“And I hate lingering disease and death,” Julia retorted matter-of-factly, popping it into her mouth and bending down again.
“If you’re going to put it like that. . . .” Jake sighed, not unhappily, as she rolled it down his stiffened cock with her tongue. Jake relished the main course every bit as much as the appetizer. He proved an inventive and playful lover. And very agile. The Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe had nothing on Jake. She wouldn’t have to go to yoga for a week.
At the end of a long and luscious fuck, Jake yawned, looked around, and without pulling out of Julia, reached for the remote control by her bed. He aimed it at the TV. The image that flickered into focus was that of an aging Australian pop star prancing around on stage with a cordless microphone in hand, jowls flapping.
“What a tosser,” he commented and surfed to another commercial channel. The old film Sunset Boulevard was just beginning.
“That’s supposed to be good,” said Julia, twisting her neck to look at the screen.
“What’s it about?”
“Dunno. I just know it’s supposed to be good.”
“Well, you should know. It’s your era, isn’t it?”
Julia gasped. “It is not my era! The 1940s? How old do you think I am!”
“Dunno. I asked but you wouldn’t say.”
“I’m thirty-two! I was born in 1964, okay? My mother was a kid when that movie was made!”
Jake laughed. “Look at you.” He chuckled, pinching her flushed cheeks. “Sensitive, aren’t w
e?” He kissed her on the nose, but Julia, only partially placated, pulled away and rolled off him.
“Don’t you want to know how old I am then?” he asked.
“Not really,” she lied. She’d already checked it on his driver’s license when he’d gone to the toilet. He was twenty-two. “Let’s just watch the movie, all right?”
He shrugged, peeled off the condom, tied it in a knot, and tossed it over his shoulder. It touched down on the floor with a small plop. Julia made a mental note as to where it had landed and what number it was—she’d counted three so far. She liked the speed with which younger men ripped through her condom supply.
They fluffed up the pillows, and she settled cozily onto his chest to watch the film. As the plot unraveled—down-and-out young writer trying to escape from creditors attempting to repossess his car takes refuge in the home and arms of Norma Desmond, an aging actress with money to burn—she felt her cheeks flush. How mortifying! Of course, Norma was a pathetically vain character and, after all, pushing fifty, but still. She was desperate to know what was running through Jake’s mind. Then again, maybe she’d prefer not to know. She lay stiffly in his arms, not daring to meet his eyes. If she had, she’d have seen them occasionally twinkle with mischievous glee. She remained like that even during the commercial breaks, pretending to doze, refusing to look up. After one particularly horrible scene, where the young man, played by William Holden, goes out to a “young people’s party” only to return in the end to Norma’s tomblike mansion, she glanced furtively up at Jake. She was appalled to discover that he was grinning down at her. “Norma,” he cooed, nuzzling her neck. “Oh, Norma.”
She flung herself off him and dove headfirst into her pillow.