Neurotica

by Sue Margolis

  By now, she was begging him to come inside her. To make her point she undid his jeans belt and started to undo his fly buttons.

  Charlie stood up by the side of the bed, and Anna watched him as he pulled his T-shirt up over his head. His upper body wasn't exactly six-pack himbo, but nudging in that direction. He clearly lifted weights when he wasn't landing sick aircraft in out-of-the-way bits of Upper Volta.

  Anna knelt on the bed and helped him to pull down his jeans and black cotton boxers. As his erection—which was large, but not quite of zebra proportions, she noted with some relief—flopped forward, she began stroking the underside of his balls. Slowly, she moved her hand to the base of his penis. As she held it there, she moved her head forward and began licking his erection in long, slow strokes from the base to the head. As she covered the tip of his penis with her mouth and let her tongue run lazily over it, Charlie's breathing became more shallow and he began digging his fingers into her shoulders. Anna took more of his penis into her mouth and continued to caress it with her tongue.

  Charlie closed his eyes and carried on gripping Anna for all he was worth. Anna could tell he was determined not to let himself come. Instead he pushed her head away and told her to lie back down on the bed. Anna whimpered as he finally pulled her pants down to her ankles and slid them over her feet.

  As he ran his tongue along the inside of her thighs, Charlie spread her legs apart. He opened her labia and trailed his forefinger along the folds inside. Then he did the same with his tongue—probing and flicking. After a while, Anna felt his tongue on her clitoris, licking and teasing, hard enough to drive her crazy with excitement but not strong enough to make her come. He brought his head between her legs and pushed his tongue inside her. He started to rub her clitoris with his finger. Once again, it felt as if he could read her mind. She didn't have to tell him precisely where to put pressure. He just seemed to know. He tormented her with touches so light she could hardly feel them and cried out with frustration. Never before had she felt so completely out of control.

  As she got close to orgasm, it was Charlie who orchestrated it, who slowed her down, speeded her up, kept her on the same plateau for minutes on end. When he finally allowed her to come, a wave of seismic activity of Los Angeles proportions shot through her entire body, for which, it seemed, San Andreas was not merely at fault, but was wholly culpable.

  “Blimey, Charlie,” Anna gasped as she officially entered postorgasmic glow. “Have you always been this good at it or is there something extra they put in the Guinness across the water that we don't get over here?”

  Charlie just cradled her and grinned.

  While Anna got her breath back, Charlie stroked her hair and ran his fingers over her face.

  “Don't look too closely,” she whispered. “Last time I went for a facial, they offered to make me boots for all my crow's-feet.”

  “You're a daft girl, you know that, don't you?” Charlie said quietly. “How can you not realize how beautiful you are?”

  “Maybe I haven't had much reminding lately.”

  Anna didn't elaborate. Charlie didn't ask. He looked at her for a while and then, kissing one of her breasts, he said very gently:

  “Come on, roll over.”

  Anna plumped up one of the huge hotel pillows and hugged it as she turned onto her stomach. Charlie ran a finger down her backbone as far as her bottom. She let out a deep sigh into the feather pillow as he brushed past her anus.

  She pulled herself up onto her hands and knees. She knew what Charlie wanted her to do. In the next second, he pushed himself deep inside her. With each slow, penetrating motion she gave a little cry.

  “Anna, it's OK, I won't hurt you. Come on, just relax.”

  He cupped one of her breasts and with the other hand felt for her clitoris, which he stroked with tiny, tight circular movements. A minute later they had turned over and he was on top of her, kissing her neck and mouth, searching for her tongue. Once again he was teasing her—this time by almost completely withdrawing after each thrust. Five, ten minutes went by and Charlie controlled her in his easy, almost leisurely way, just like before. Anna was feeling exceedingly light-headed and floaty. It was as if her entire consciousness was focused solely on the sensations coming from her vagina and clitoris. She was aware of nothing else, nothing else at all.

  They came together, slowly and gradually, in a delicious heap of hot and wet. Afterwards the two of them lay facing each other, smiling in a breathy, comfortable haze. They both felt gloriously and magnificently knackered. Charlie propped himself up on his elbow and trailed a finger down Anna's neck to her breast and told her again how beautiful, wonderful and sexy she was. Anna was about to return the compliment as sexual etiquette demanded and reiterate her sentiments on Charlie's supreme sexual mastery with particular reference to his spectacular tongue and finger work, when she realized she couldn't because somebody had obviously been along and cut her vocal cords while she was thrashing about in midorgasm.

  In fact, Anna's vocal cords were perfectly intact. They were merely suffering from a temporary bout of impotence brought on by shock.

  As she started to come back down to earth, and her eyes slowly began to rekindle their relationship with her brain, she concentrated on focusing properly on Charlie's face. For a moment, she thought all this steamy frenzied passion had been too much for him and given him a nosebleed.

  The moment at which Anna had lost her voice was the same as the one in which she was overtaken by a flash of horrific realization and insight. The appalling truth had dawned on her: the reddish-brown stuff forming a beard over Charlie Kaplan's mouth and chin, not to mention the tip of his nose, was not, as she thought, dried blood, but something quite different.

  How the blue buggering blazes was she going to explain to Charlie that their copious bodily fluids and juices produced during his magnificent cunnilingus had caused her Bush Magic to run?

  C H A P T E R S E V E N

  ANNA LAY WITH HER HEAD ON Charlie's chest. Every so often she would take a quick look up at him and try to prevent her affectionate smile from becoming a grimace. In between looks she kept hoping the dye might magically dissolve or evaporate. It didn't. The lower half of Charlie's face continued to be stained bright bloodred.

  She decided she couldn't bear the humiliation of relating the grim saga of her botched attempt to dye her prematurely graying pubes. Her only option was get the dye off Charlie's face in such a way that he wouldn't realize what she was doing. Short of confessing to a Lassie fetish and licking his face clean during another bout of frenzied sex, which would no doubt be followed by her dropping dead as a result of ingesting some toxic aboriginal ingredient in the Bush Magic, her mind was a blank.

  Anna's minimal brain activity was interrupted after a few minutes by the muffled warble of her mobile phone. The phone was in her handbag, which she'd left on one of the repro occasional tables in the other room. She let out a long, irritated moan.

  “Shit, I thought I'd turned it off.”

  Reluctantly, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  “Stay where you are,” said Charlie. “I'll fetch it.”

  As Anna allowed herself to sink onto the two huge pillows Charlie had just vacated, she suddenly remembered the gilt mirror above the table.

  “No, don't,” she almost shrieked, and launched herself to the foot of the bed in an attempt to pull him back. All she managed to grab was the air. Panic-stricken, she watched as Charlie's toned rear rippled out of the door.

  Two seconds later he was handing her the phone. Judging by his untroubled expression there was no sign that he had looked at himself in the mirror.

  Anna, who was still lying on her front facing the foot of the bed, took the phone and propped herself up on one elbow.

  “Anna, angel . . . Campbell McKee here, babe.” As soon as she heard who it was she raised her eyes heavenwards, mouthing “jerk” as she did so. Charlie laughed and sat himself on the bed behind he
r. He began stroking the inside of Anna's thighs.

  “Listen, doll,” Campbell went on, “I thought we had the Mavis de Mornay story pretty much as an exclusive, but it seems like the whole of bleedin' Fleet Street has suddenly changed its mind and decided to muscle in. Apparently there's been a posse of hacks camped out at the de Mornay house since sparrer's fart. Why the fuck that India girl didn't ring to tell us the gig was starting early and that we'd 'ave competition, I've no idea. Anyway, angel, I think you should get over there postwhatsit. Can't risk you missing the old tart snuffin' it.”

  By now, Charlie was, with the lightest touch, repeatedly running his fingers between Anna's buttocks. Every so often she would slap his hand and flick it away, but a few seconds later it was back again like some horny mosquito.

  “OK, Campbell . . . ummm . . . right . . . I'll be over there . . . in twenty minutes . . . thanks . . . ooh, oooh . . . thanks for letting me know.” Anna finally grabbed Charlie's wrist and did her best to hang on to it, but he pulled himself free. Then he made her turn over, forced her legs apart and pushed his tongue inside her.

  “Anna, babe, everything OK from up your end? You sound a bit odd—sure you're not feelin' a bit Tom and Dick?”

  “No . . . no . . . Campbell, my end's fine. Speak . . . speak to you later.”

  As Anna dropped the phone onto the bed, Charlie began kissing her on the mouth. Anna knew she had to leave, but she was no match for her hormones, which appeared to have formed themselves into armored battalions and were driving Chieftain tanks through her willpower. It took a full minute, but finally she was able to pull away from Charlie.

  “Charlie, I really am so sorry,” she said gently, “but I've got to go. That was the features editor at the Globe. I promised to do a story for them today, only it's all happening a bit earlier than we thought.”

  Charlie's crest didn't just fall. It plummeted.

  Anna started stroking his red face and kissing his cheek. She couldn't help noticing his mouth had become even redder in the last minute or so.

  “Listen,” she said, trying to cheer him up, “let's get in the shower.” As she said the words, she realized she had cracked the Bush Magic problem and kicked herself for not thinking of it half an hour ago.

  Charlie's face brightened considerably at the thought of soapy underwater sex. Anna went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. In a couple of minutes steam was filling the room and the huge mirror over the his-'n'-her basins was becoming more and more opaque.

  C H A P T E R E I G H T

  DAN'S CAB DRIVER WAS AN expansive salt of the earth geezer type who kept taking both hands off the wheel to look in the driver's mirror and adjust his ginger hairpiece.

  “Wife got me the syrup for me birthday . . . can't get used to it. I gen'rally buy her slippers and a vibrator. I always tell 'er if she don't like the slippers she can go fuck 'erself.”

  The driver gave another burst of wheezy phlegm-ridden laughter and pulled up at a crosswalk. As he waited he again craned his neck towards the mirror. He saw Dan sitting on the backseat staring blank-faced out of the window. After ten minutes of trying to engage his fare in some lighthearted misogynist banter and getting nowhere, the driver decided to give up.

  Dan was aware of being rude, but was feeling exceedingly nervous and apprehensive and was in no mood to be matey. He was on his way to his first appointment with Virginia Livermead, the pyschotherapist he had found in Time Out. She had finally phoned him at the office late the previous afternoon and said she could see him at six the following evening. Her voice was calm and businesslike. Dan hadn't expected to be offered an appointment so quickly. The same fear that had overcome him a few days ago, of Virginia Livermead discovering he was insane and beyond help, had engulfed him once more and caused him to dither over the phone for a few seconds before accepting. Virginia Livermead then said she charged fifty pounds for an hour's session and was that going to be a problem? Dan gulped and dithered again before lying that this would be absolutely fine. He hoped to God she wasn't going to insist on seeing him three times a week. He wouldn't have a hope of hiding that sort of expenditure from Anna.

  The rush-hour traffic was particularly heavy. The journey from the Vanguard offices to Virginia Livermead's flat, which was somewhere behind Sloane Square, shouldn't have taken more than a few minutes. Dan had been sitting in the cab for more than half an hour. He was going to be late. Once again his anxious stomach shot burning gastric juices into his mouth and he began to cough.

  He had spent most of the journey trying to imagine the questions Virginia Livermead would ask him and recoiling at the thought of her probing endlessly, the way he knew shrinks always did, about his childhood. There were things his mother had done to him that he had never mentioned to a soul, not even Anna. He'd read somewhere that successful psychotherapy depended on patients trusting their therapists and keeping no secrets from them. Did he have the courage to tell a complete stranger about the bucket episode?

  This had occurred a couple of weeks before his bar mitzvah. Dan had been getting a pain in his back passage whenever he went to the loo and was stupid enough to tell his mother. Mrs. Bloomfield dragged him to the doctor. Forgetting that she wasn't speaking to old Dr. Lazarus, who had retired, but to the new doctor from Lahore, his mother explained that her son had a sore tuchas. Dan would never forget the confused expression on Dr. Qureshi's face as he asked, “What please is a tuchas?”

  The new GP diagnosed a small tear in Dan's rectum caused, he thought, by constipation, and prescribed a steroid ointment. Mrs. Bloomfield allowed Dan to use the ointment, but she had her own ideas for curing his problem. Mrs. Bloomfield prescribed Jewish penicillin.

  The following afternoon when Dan got home from school she decided to administer the first dose. He was sprawled on the sofa in the lounge, eating mashed egg and salad cream sandwiches, when he became aware of his mother rooting around in the cupboard under the stairs and pulling out what sounded like a metal bucket. Curious, and not having the blindest notion of what lay in store, Dan got up and watched her put the bucket on the kitchen floor. Then, using both hands, she heaved a huge saucepan off the gas cooker. Sighing with exertion, she took this over to the bucket, which she then filled almost to the top with hot, steaming chicken soup. That done, she proceeded to balance an ancient wooden lavatory seat on top of the bucket. She carried out these maneuvers while at the same time conducting an animated and involved conversation with Aunty Esther, who had come over for tea to discuss the seating plan for Dan's bar mitzvah. Mrs. Bloomfield broke off from listing her reasons why Maisie and Burt should be excluded from the top table and turned to face her son, who was standing in the doorway looking perplexed.

  “Come on, Daniel,” she said, putting the saucepan back on the stove and sounding slightly breathy because she was overweight and unused to sudden physical exertion. “Don't let the soup get cold. Pull your trousers and pants down and sit on the bucket. The vapor from the chicken soup is good for you. It will take away the pain you get when you do your business. What are you waiting for? You think your Aunty Esther hasn't seen a schmekel before?”

  Dan did as he was told. He had never been able to work out why. At thirteen he stood nearly a foot taller than his mother. Had he refused to obey her, she wouldn't have possessed the strength to force him.

  He sat on the bucket with his back to his mother and aunt, tears streaming down his purple face. As the two women continued to stuff great chunks of honey cake into their mouths they concluded their discussion of top-table politics and went on to consider the likelihood of Phil Jaffa and his Jazzmen being available the Sunday after next.

  By the time the taxi pulled up, Dan was sweating with relived humiliation. The driver turned around and slid back the glass partition.

  “Sorry, mate,” he shouted at Dan, who didn't seem to have registered their arrival. “Can't get any closer. Bloomin' great television van parked in the way. If I double-park I'll be holding up the traffic. The
house you want is just a couple of doors down.” The driver lowered his window and stretched his arm back to the passenger-door handle.

  Dan came to suddenly as the door swung open. He got out of the cab and handed the driver the fare along with a ridiculously overgenerous tip, partly to apologize for being so silent and rude. In return, when he asked for a receipt, the driver flicked through his pad and tore off half a dozen blanks and passed them to Dan through the window. Dan and the driver nodded to each other in a way that indicated that both their backs had been appropriately scratched.

  The cabby sat with his engine running while he clipped his receipt book to the sun visor and took out the notes in his money bag to count them.

  Dan began walking down the street, which formed one side of a square of intimidatingly grand creamy-white Victorian villas, a few hundred yards, as the Sloane strides, from Peter Jones. Even the houses which had been converted into flats, or embassies serving little-known African dictatorships, retained an air of dowagerlike haughtiness, almost daring would-be visitors who lacked independent means to approach.

  It was a couple of seconds before Dan noticed the television outside-broadcast van. He thought little of it until he saw the group of people standing around on the pavement ten or so yards ahead of him. They were eating pizza out of flat cardboard containers. Dan recognized at least half the hacks and photographers. He was just trying to work out what story they could be on, when, to his complete horror, he caught sight of Anna. She was standing in her best blue dress and coat drinking from a can of Coke, which she then handed back to a girl from the Mail. Suddenly the penny dropped. They were all here to cover the Mavis de Mornay story Anna had been going on about. Dan knew the way these sordid occasions worked. De Mornay had probably snuffed it a few minutes ago and the hacks, not content with their gruesome deathbed harvest of snaps and quotes, had decided to hang around for another couple of hours in case her children turned up to pay their respects.