by Sue Margolis
The words “cook,” “us” and “later” ricocheted around Anna's brain like three baffled bullets. Did that mean he had meant to kiss her; that it hadn't been a faux pas? Was he assuming she was going to spend the night with him at this mate's cottage? Anna wasn't sure whether her sudden light-headedness was a result of lust or Liebfraumilch.
Before she had a chance to ask Ed what, precisely, he had in mind for the rest of the evening, he was on his feet, urgently snapping away at everything as if he were back in Grozny.
“Look, Kelly with the bottle of bubbly is probably our Kelly the butter churner. Why don't we go over and grab her now. You can get a quick interview and I'll take some pictures. I'll take some more while they're throwing their knickers at the Lover Boys. I won't need more than half an hour. Then we can be on our way.”
From what Anna could tell, Ed was making the arrogant assumption that she was coming back to the cottage with him. Despite having the hots for him she was put out that he hadn't had the courtesy to actually invite her. She realized she was severely pissed off with him and told him so.
“Does that mean you won't be coming?” he said, suddenly looking even more miserable than he had on the drive down.
“I didn't say that,” she said, still trying to sound cross, but failing. There was something Anna found intensely appealing about the good-natured way he refused to rise to her anger. As she picked up her notebook and shoulder bag from the table, Ed kissed her very briefly on the back of her neck. He then took her arm and began steering her towards Kelly's table, which was by the fire exit. The drag artist in crimson lamé and big ginger hair had just come onstage to start the second half of his act. Within seconds he was cracking jokes about foreskins, second comings and Chinese restaurants called the Wan Kin.
Anna suspected they could probably hear the laughter as far away as Weymouth.
It's loike we're only doing the same as blokes 'ave done for years. Oi mean, if it's OK for them to watch women strip, why can't we come and see fellas get their clothes arf? And when you go to a Lover Boy show, it's all girls, so you're not getting felt up by fellas every five minutes . . . and there's no husband or boyfriend looking over your shoulder telling you how to behave. I mean, my Dave, he's great an' all that, an' I really loves 'im, but he's a bit old-fashioned, and he don't roight approve of me getting drunk or swearing. He likes me to be a lady. Comin' to a show like this, you can . . . you know . . . let yer hair down and be a bit filthy. S'all about goin' a bit wild with yer mates . . . 'specially with this bein' my last night of freedom an' all. . . .”
While Ed and Anna sat waiting for the Lover Boys to come on, Anna put on her Walkman headphones and listened to the tape of her interview with Kelly.
“There's some great stuff here,” she said to Ed as she took off her headphones. “With a bit of tweaking and tidying up I can get some great quotes out of this.”
“Anna, tell me,” he said, giving her a sexy grin, “have you ever written a piece you didn't make up?”
“Ed, change the record. You were going on about tabloid hacks making it all up when we were on that job two years ago. Stop being such a fucking wind-up merchant . . . the Lover Boys are about to come on. Be a good boy and go and snap something. It's easy, you know.”
“I always love watching the way women's nipples go hard when they're turned on,” he said, still smiling.
“Ed,” she said, sighing with mock weariness, determined not to give him the satisfaction of blushing and slapping her hands to her chest, “the only thing you are doing to my tits right now is getting on them.”
Giving her a look that could have melted frozen Bournville, Ed stood up and slung his camera bag over his shoulder. As he walked over to the butter churners, Anna leaned forward and quickly felt her nipples under the table. They were as hard as walnuts.
After a couple of minutes, the lights went down and the MC picked up his mike from the stand, ready to perform one final act of tantalizing foreplay with the audience.
“They're hunky, they're horny . . . they've got rock-hard bodies that give off more heat than a lava flow. Lie back and get ready for an eruption. They're here, and they're available now. Girls . . . step into your fantasy.”
The women went berserk, to the accompaniment of “When a Man Loves a Woman.” It was all bass and drums, the musical equivalent, Anna decided, of cheap aftershave.
As the stage filled with dry ice, the audience quieted down a little. Then out of the haze came the six dancing Lover Boys, dressed as firemen in yellow helmets, heavy jackets and huge black boots. Each of them was wielding a large plastic axe which looked like something bought in Toys “R” Us.
Somebody yelled, “What a bunch of prats.” Then the entire audience joined in, screaming at them to “Get 'em off” and “Show us yer willie.”
The Lover Boys' dancing talent was nonexistent. They stomped around in their huge black boots, rhythmically hitting the air, stroking their crotches and thrusting their hips, barely trying, Anna thought, to keep time with the music or each other. Nobody seemed to mind because by now the boys were down to their jockstraps. They'd torn off their firemen uniforms in one flamboyant movement. This maneuver was particularly easy because the uniforms were only held together at the seams with Velcro.
A few women couldn't resist the chiseled tanned torsos and concave stomachs. Four of them ran up on stage for a quick feel of pumped-up baby-oiled pec, but were swiftly removed by the MC.
The Lover Boys ended the routine with some simulated masturbation involving firemen's hoses. After a few minutes of rubbing, massaging and rhythmic hip thrusting, there was a perfectly synchronized ejaculation of fireworks. The audience hysteria was eclipsed minutes later when they repeated the performance using banana skins and suntan cream.
For the next half hour or so, the Lover Boys came on dressed as sailors in white suits, Tarzans in leopardskin jockstraps and Aztec warriors in cardboard masks.
Then the pace slowed down and one Lover Boy, bare-chested except for a dinner jacket and bow tie, stood alone in the center of the stage. Behind him was a small table covered with a white cloth. It was laid for two. In the center of the table was a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
Anna, who had become increasingly bored as the Lover Boys segued from one uninspired dance routine into the next, had put on her Walkman headphones again and was going through her interview with Kelly for the second time and taking notes. She realized she had plenty of material to fill the bulk of the piece, but was struggling to find something which would make a strong final paragraph.
She looked up briefly from her note-taking and realized she recognized the Lover Boy standing on the stage from his picture in the program. His name was Tor. According to the blurb he was never happier than when taking a chick out on the back of his Harley.
As Frank Sinatra sang “It Had to Be You,” Tor walked into the audience and told them he was looking for a companion to “take to dinner.” He turned and nodded his head towards the table. The audience screamed with delight. Some poor cow was for it.
Anna missed his announcement because she was listening to Kelly on her headphones and still trying to find a decent quote for the final paragraph. It was a good fifteen seconds before she noticed Tor standing in front of her, holding out his hand. Nauseating as she found men with long blond highlights and sunbed tans, she had to admit he was pretty. She took off her headphones and was about to ask him what was going on when he gave her a Persil-white smile, reached down for her hand and gently pulled her to her feet.
The penny finally dropped that Tor wanted her to go with him onto the stage when she saw Ed bounding back towards their table, bashing into people's chairs en route. Once he'd reached it he positioned himself in front of Anna and Tor and began taking pictures. Anna shot him a horrified pleading look which said, “For Chrissake get me out of this,” but he ignored it and carried on clicking.
“Ed, you bastard,” she hissed. “I'll never fucking forgive yo
u for this.”
A couple of seconds later she was on the stage and Tor was opening the bottle of champagne. Naturally, its contents spurted forth with appropriate magnificence and the audience roared. He poured Anna a glass and then began taking off his jacket and bow tie. She stood sipping it, trying desperately to look as if she were game for a laugh, but finding it impossible to do much more than stare down nervously at her feet. In an exaggerated gesture, Tor threw his jacket onto the floor. He then put one arm round Anna's waist and drew her close to him as he slowly unzipped his fly and stepped out of his trousers. The women in the audience were almost making themselves sick with excitement as he rotated his hips and thrust his well-filled crotch towards her. She didn't know where to put her eyes and did her best to focus on a waitress with long greasy hair who was sulking in the corner.
Anna had no idea how he did it, but the next thing she knew, she was on the floor and Tor was kneeling down, pushing her legs apart. Taking his weight on his hands so that their bodies wouldn't actually touch, he then lay himself above her and began moving up and down, in time to the music.
“Come on, sweetheart, relax,” he whispered, seeing the look of abject horror on Anna's face. “Just go with it.”
Her instinct was to hit him, but at the same time she felt she couldn't disappoint the audience, who, judging by all the whistling and wurrgh noises coming from the tables, were lapping it up.
Anna thought this had to be the most degrading thing that had ever happened to her—far worse than when the consultant had come onto the ward with five male students the day after she'd delivered Josh and asked if each of them could take a look at her prolapsed back passage.
By now, Tor had repositioned the pair of them so that his naked rear was facing the audience. He began moving himself along her body until his crotch was over her face, millimeters from her skin. By now her humiliation had turned to fizzing rage. She also felt as if she was about to suffocate.
Tor continued to keep his back to the audience. As a consequence, only he and Anna were privy to what happened next. Anna's anger finally got the better of her and she made a grab for Tor's black leather posing pouch. The amount of adrenaline pumping through her must have given her three or four times her normal strength. The thing simply came away in her hand.
For several seconds, Tor froze and looked helplessly at Anna. Anna froze too, not because she had embarrassed him and felt guilty, but because she couldn't believe her eyes.
Tor, with his huge granitelike torso and thighs which could crush cars, possessed the smallest set of genitals she had ever seen on an adult male. His tiny circumcised penis looked exactly like the top of a roll-on deodorant bottle. She stared at the leather jockstrap. It was stuffed with cotton wool.
In those few seconds, Anna composed her final paragraph.
C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N
WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WHY DID I come back with you? . . . 'Cos I thought we could spend the night sitting here in this cottage, sharing insights into Dorset dairy farming. . . . For Chrissake, Ed, why do you think I'm here?”
“No, that's not what I meant.” Ed gave the pasta a stir and turned to face her. “I think we both know what we have in mind for tonight. What I'm trying to say is that in my experience, happily married women, particularly happily married Jewish ones, don't usually leap into bed with men who aren't their husbands.”
Anna stared into her wineglass and ran her finger round the rim. She said nothing and neither did Ed. She was aware of him backing off, allowing her to get her thoughts together.
She watched him strain the pasta into a red plastic colander. He bent his head into the crook of his arm and wiped the steam off his face with his shirtsleeve.
Anna had assumed that Ed's interest in her didn't extend beyond sleeping with her, so that for a few hours, at least, he could push his pain about his children to the back of his mind. It hadn't entered her mind that he would be curious about her marriage.
“You know you should really rinse the starch off the spaghetti with boiling water—otherwise it goes all glutinous,” she said, dodging his question. She couldn't help wondering if he was genuinely interested in finding out about her, or whether he was merely inquiring out of good manners. After all, she'd spent hours listening to his troubles this afternoon. He was probably doing no more than returning the gesture.
“I know what you're thinking,” he said, piling the spaghetti into bowls. “I'm not asking out of duty and this is not some kind of cynical verbal foreplay. Look, it doesn't take a genius to see that deep down, underneath all the wisecracks, you're pretty fucking miserable.”
Anna looked at him. He had stopped dishing out the pasta and was staring straight into her eyes. Until this minute she had thought she was reasonably happy. After all, she'd had more decent sex in the last few weeks than she'd had in years with Dan. As Ed continued to look at her without saying a word, it struck her for the first time that she had been kidding herself. Ed was right. She was still unhappy. Sleeping with Charlie and Alex hadn't made her problem with Dan go away. How was it possible to fool herself into thinking she was happy, and yet fail to convince somebody she barely knew?
Ed Brzezinski, she realized, not only got inside women's pants, he got inside their minds. She wanted to hump him there and then, until he was nothing but husk.
He walked round to her side of the breakfast bar and stood in front of her.
“Come on. . . .” he said, taking her glass of wine from her hand and putting it on the worktop. “Tell me . . . what is it?”
She sat looking up at him. Her eyes were suddenly glassy with tears.
“You're right . . . I'm not happy.” Her tone was flat. She knew that her promise about not discussing Dan with any of her lovers was about to be broken.
Ed pulled her to her feet, put his arms round her and held her. Anna put her head on his shoulder and sobbed like a child.
When she'd finished, Ed kissed her on the forehead and wiped her tear-stained face with his hand.
“Go and sit in the living room. I'll bring supper in and we can eat and talk in front of the fire.”
Like all the other rooms in the cottage, the living room was tiny. It had a low, beamed ceiling and uneven white walls. Anna sat down on the rug in front of the fire, leaning her back against the navy linen sofa. Graham had left the fire laid in the grate. Ed had lit it when they arrived and now the room was baking.
After a minute, Ed came in and handed her a plate of spaghetti covered in tomato sauce and Parmesan.
“That looks wonderful. I can't remember the last time I ate so late. It must be after midnight.”
“Quarter to,” he said, looking at his watch. He went over to the window and threw it open. Anna felt the rush of cool air on the back of her neck.
Ed sat himself down next to her on the floor.
“So . . .” he said, curling spaghetti round his fork.
Anna talked, almost nonstop, for three hours. Everything just spewed out of her. When she began telling him about Dan's hypochondria and his collection of medical appliances, she was expecting Ed to laugh, but he didn't. He just listened and wiped her face whenever she cried. When she told him that she had lived for years with virtually no sex, he put his arm round her shoulders, drew her close to him and kissed the side of her face. She felt his tears on her skin.
It struck her yet again that Ed was playing the role of counselor and confessor merely to get her into bed, but as the hours went by he didn't attempt to make a move on her. He appeared to be genuinely concerned about her unhappiness.
“Come on,” he said eventually, looking at his watch. “You're knackered. I think all you need tonight is sleep. The beds in both rooms are made up. Take your pick . . . and there should be a full tank of water by now if you want a shower.”
Disappointment went through Anna like a skewer through a kebab. She wanted to run round the room protesting, screaming and proclaiming her wide-awakeness, the way children do when they are orde
red up to bed on a bright summer's evening, but she knew he was just being kind. Begging him to make love to her would be too humiliating.
She had a quick shower to get the remains of the muddy ditch out of her hair, put on one of her baggy T-shirts and fell into bed.
She closed her eyes, assuming that sleep would overtake her in a matter of seconds. It didn't. Five minutes later she was lying on her side, propped up on her elbow, gazing out of the tiny bedroom window. It was almost pitch black outside. She could just make out a couple of branches shaking gently in the breeze.
The reason Anna couldn't sleep was because she was remembering standing in Brenda's kitchen the day six weeks ago she had gone to her and pretty much asked for her permission to take a series of lovers. Her words to Brenda kept going round and round her head. What was it she had said? “I don't want heavy, I'll-show-you-my-angst-if-you-show-me-yours-type relationships and then we fall in love. I just want their bodies.”
Ed had certainly shown her his angst. She had shown him hers. She knew herself well enough to be certain she would never have done that if she didn't feel something for him. Ed was a womanizer and a recovering arrogant git, and yet she had invited him into her mind, into her most private part.
In Ed, unlike Charlie, she sensed a genuine desire for closeness. What scared and excited her at the same time was that she sensed precisely the same desire in herself. She wanted to get to know this man. She felt easy and relaxed with him. She loved the way they teased one another, the way he almost seemed to enjoy it when she got stroppy with him. She remembered the way he'd smiled at her in the Starlight Club when she told him he was getting on her tits.
Anna knew they were two vulnerable, searching souls, hungry for comfort. Ed had lost a wife and might be about to lose his children; she felt she had lost Dan to his neuroses. She knew in the end that they might not be right for each other. She also knew that if she began a proper relationship with Ed, not one based simply on sex, she wouldn't be able to keep it from Dan and her marriage would be over.