by Leo Barton
Marie wanted me to try to talk some sense in him.
Maybe I should have been happy. With David out of the way I could pursue Marie. There were now no obstacles in my way, especially if David had dumped her. There could be no guilt on my part - well, apart from that night.
But happy I was not.
Marie's disconsolate state was an indication of how much she cared for David. At best I could be rebound material. I also suspected that, over time, Marie might come to blame me as much as she blamed herself for what had happened and that, far from bringing us closer, David's departure was going to drive us further and further apart.
The next day I called him at his office and arranged to meet him that night. He had sounded friendly on the phone, breezy, light-hearted, both of us having veered away from the subject of my birthday celebration, David's imminent departure, or Marie's grief.
We met in one of our usual Soho pubs.
'Okay, let's get the shit over with first,' David said, even before I had had a chance to say hello. 'First, you and me are mates, all right? I hope that whatever has happened or whatever will happen, we will stay mates. Secondly, I'm going, it's decided. It was decided a month ago. I didn't want to tell you then, because I was told to keep it under my hat. This has nothing to do with her and nothing to do with you. I've had to make some tough decisions. I've always had to make tough decisions. I don't want to stay with Marie any more. Look, there are things you don't know, and things it is no longer my place to tell you. Anyway, there is always a time to move on and this is it. This is a great chance for me. You know that I've always wanted to see Argentina. I've got relatives there. My mother was half-Argentinean, and this is my chance. Also, this company I'm going to work for are going to be big, very big, and I have a chance to be part of it.'
That, in essence, was the tersely delivered speech. There were several things that didn't really fit together. For one, David always told me everything about his career, so I was surprised that I hadn't been told about the Argentinean job. He also knew that I could keep secrets from Marie, so there shouldn't have been any problems about that. Thirdly, he still hadn't convinced me that a job in Argentina, or the filial connections he had with the place, were enough to make him leave his current comfortable position on the ladder of journalistic fame.
'You know something else about that night?'
'What?' I asked cautiously.
'We planned it. I planned it. I asked Marie if she wanted to and she was keen, but it was me who persuaded her. In fact it got to the stage where I almost had to badger her into doing it. I suppose it was a kind of leaving present. I know how much you like her. A kind of handing-over ceremony: I was Britain, you were China, she was Hong Kong. She's all yours now, if you want her.'
I had never thought of David as being so callous. Yes, it was true, as I later learnt from Marie, that David had once asked her what she thought about the idea of all of us having sex together, but it had never amounted to any kind of badgering. It had only meant that because they had so openly discussed it, if she actually initiated it, then maybe David wouldn't be so shocked or offended. And, that night, he certainly hadn't seemed very happy about it.
I was surprised to hear one year after he had departed for Buenos Aires, and for all of his talk of freedom, that he was engaged to be married. I was even invited to the wedding. He always invited me to go to Argentina, in every letter or email he sent, but, short of money and without any great urge to do so, I never went.
David's departure heralded probably the happiest time I had ever known in my personal life. With Marie, I went from platonic consolation to passionate lovemaking in two short weeks. There was no room for her to harbour any grudges against me, so full was her mind of bitterness for the betrayal that David had committed against her. The 'bastard' was seldom allowed to enter our conversations. Nor was much of our previous shared lives together ever mentioned, particularly that night. Our pre-lives were blanked out. They became a forgotten history.
There were - and I don't thank David for this, as I see him as being largely responsible - conditions to my being with Marie. They became apparent in a very short time. There were to be no extra-maritals, because if I was going to have her then we would have to be married. If David hadn't told her about all the things that we had got up to when he was dumping her, then I don't think she would have been so suspicious on that score. I pledged my troth, and six blissful months after David's departure we were wed in a Camden registry office. David, not surprisingly, was not invited to the wedding, but he sent me, at least, good wishes for our future life together.
And yes, the first year of our marriage was fantastic. A fucking bonanza. Every spare hour of our lives saw us screwing, this way and that, exhausting our bodies with carnal pleasure, sating our lusts in some of the most savoury ways possible known to man or beast. Why would I want to look elsewhere? Why would I settle for second-best or second-rate when I had the best, most fuckable woman in my bed every night?
For one thing, I was too tired. Sometimes my cock would scream for rest, for a break from the relentless gymnastics we put it through. She was sexually insatiable.
However, our sex life, although prolific and interesting, was, compared with what I had witnessed on the night of my birthday, largely conventional. Maybe Marie was in some kind of denial, but there were to be no more whips or chains, no more games of submission or dominance. But that didn't matter. I was so happy to at last have the woman I loved. I couldn't believe my luck.
So what happened? How did we go from this glorious honeymoon period of constant sex to the dismal state of sexless stasis that preceded our break up? It certainly had little to do with me. I was, for all the exertion and the demands made on my winking friend, always keen. It was Marie who became disillusioned. Like the old housewife stereotype, she cried off with headaches and tiredness, or cited the demands of her job for lessening her libido.
We would take recuperative holidays on the continent and, for a week, things might return to bliss or at least near-bliss, because we never quite got back to that early stage. Partly because Marie never stopped working. Her laptop, like a needy child that had to be looked after, always accompanied us on our vacations. As soon as we returned normal service would be, or in our case wouldn't be, resumed. And while frequent threats were made to me if I should ever stray from the marital bed, the marital bed ceased to be a fun place to be. However, foolishly, I kept my word. I shouldn't have believed my luck!
I have since realised exactly what my problem was. When I was David's friend, and even after as platonic comforter, my salary bracket or the absence of professional drive or ambition was never a question. The fact that I could make her laugh, care for her and later, when we lived together, fuck her senseless, were considered more pertinent factors in our relationship. But as time wore on and wore us out, my lack of professional success and my apathy began to become an irritant in our relationship.
As she went from one classy magazine to a classier magazine, as her income soared at the same rate as an IMF debt to a developing world nation and mine didn't, she lost interest. It was as simple as that. Power and money and success fired her libido. She was dominated by it in all meanings of the word. That had been the attraction of David.
Regaling her with tales of traffic victims and the tediousness of flower shows did not arouse her. I lost out in the 'being a real man' stakes; my pulling power did not come via a cheque book or the number of people I had under my professional control. On top of that, I was not allowed - although when the sex stopped I constantly dreamt about it - to have anybody else under me or on top of me at all.
All I had wanted was Marie: her mind, her wit, her charm, her pussy, and probably in that order. And what Marie had wanted was a man who could turn her on by dropping the right influential names and by reciting all the noughts in his bank account, whipping her into an orgasmic frenzy as much with h
is power and influence as with, I suppose, his whip.
The last scene I have to painfully recount, the incident of the garden shed, was not about Marie accidentally being found in want of additional attention. It was the clearest, most obvious and degrading way that she could find to tell me I was a loser, that she didn't want me. And what she did want was me, to all intent and purpose, to fuck off tout de suite from her life for ever.
She didn't need to fuck the bald secondary-school teacher from next door at all. As she was to tell me, saving me little of the details, she had already been shafted that day by some go-getting executive who had got from her everything he wanted, and everything I hadn't had for such a long time. Those business trips, increasingly frequent as our relationship wore on, were fatuous excuses for gratuitous and gratifying sex. All this was related to me in the post-match analysis of her tool-shed hump.
It made everything perfectly clear: her reluctance to lie naked with me in bed, the pyjamas necessary, I suppose, to hide her scarred bottom; her constant self-criticism about her clumsiness when I would occasionally find bruises on her body. How naïve I was! How trusting! How stupid!
She knew I would come home at that time. Perhaps it was the Russian roulette turn-on, the fifty-fifty chance that, in early December, I would look for her in the garden shed, that I wouldn't see cardiganed Arthur escort my beloved to the little wooden hut and there on the little workbench that I never used, among rake and hoe and spade and lawnmower, little Arthur would get his biggest surprise since the local authority let him have early retirement at fifty-one, a fact he would laboriously inform me of every time I talked to him.
I saw it all from the bedroom window. I saw them enter and, with the aid of a speedily retrieved pair of binoculars, I saw my girl arch over the workbench and Arthur take his antique cane, bending it slightly, before bringing it down on Marie's aroused flesh. Marie was the embodied reality of thirty years of Arthur's schoolgirl fantasy life. Thwack! His eyes bulged with pleasure. Thwack! Her bottom wriggled before his astonished gaze, her hips pressed against the rough wood of the workbench. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Six of the best.
Marie turned over, pulled down his pants and sucked on his ancient member. Perilously, I had had to balance one foot on the marital bed and the other on the dressing table, to give myself a good view of the little incident.
After she had sucked on him for a good time, she climbed back onto the bench and pulled her skirt up around her waist, giving Arthur the most delicious view of her pantyless crotch. I saw Arthur's eyes taking it all in, basking in the sight of her moist quim, in those beautiful folds of sex-flesh that I not so long ago had lost my mind to. I saw Marie parting the cheeks of her bottom and slipping a finger into her anus, in and out, slowly and patiently for poor Arthur's delectation.
Poor Arthur nothing!
She had never done that for me for three years and, after tonight, she never would.
I saw Arthur slurping on her, her little finger going in and out of her bottom all the time. I saw Arthur sitting on the little stool in the garden shed and Marie planting herself on him, rocking up and down, Arthur's dick going in and out of her wet sex. I saw Arthur's whole body stiffen as he shot his seed into my wife.
In short, I saw enough to never want to see bastard Arthur or my bitch of a wife ever, ever again.
Chapter 8
When I got back from my adventures with Andrea and Claudia, I called on the two English girls, but they were not in their room. I couldn't get any sense out of Señor Albertini, the portly hotel owner. They hadn't vacated the hotel, but he did not know how long they would be gone, or where they had gone. He merely shrugged a lot and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
Neither had David rung, or, if he had, Albertini wasn't saying, the septuagenarian barrel. Even the delightfully saucy chambermaid, usually a ubiquitous presence in the hotel, wasn't around that day.
I spent the next few days alone, wandering the streets of Buenos Aires, having morning coffees in confiterias, afternoon strolls in parks and museums, occasionally taking buses and trains to the outskirts. I sipped on beers in the shade to shelter from the ball-breaking summer heat of the city.
I tried to get to know the city to distract my mind, though it never really worked, from the wealth of beautiful woman who were as ever-present as the sweltering summer heat. I walked into every bookshop, hoping I would meet another Beatrice. In every confiteria I would search for potential pre- or post-prandial lovers. Every street filled my mind with erotic possibility.
So for a few days I was a little sad and lonely, but really I had no reason to be. I had had the best sexual time I could remember. I knew more would follow, that Beatrice might again show, that Andrea definitely would, hopefully with Claudia in tow. Stephanie would be back and, this time, I would give her what she wanted. My chambermaid danced lasciviously before my eyes every day. Surely something more would happen there, too.
Three days passed before I received another telephone call from David:
'Jonathan, you have to hang on. The bastards have got me not knowing if I'm coming or going. I have to fly to Caracas, then to Miami, then I'm in New York for the weekend. I won't be back until next Thursday by the earliest. Sorry, but don't go anywhere. I have plans for you, sunshine. Plans for us. Hey, I've got to go now. Thursday, next Thursday, the twenty-fifth. I'll pick you up in my car, okay? Take it easy. Ciao.'
And that was that.
The next day I had a quick call from Andrea:
'Hi, Jonathan.' Her voice was breathy, sexy, intimating all the pleasures we had had and all the pleasures I still hoped were to come. 'How are you?'
'Fine, and you?'
'Busy, busy, busy. Look, I am in town today. Would you like to meet? I have got a couple of hours. In the Tortoni, yes?'
Yes, please!
Andrea looked as stunning as she always did, casually dressed in a white T-shirt, tightly stretched across her breasts, the delicate lace of her bra visible beneath, her mouthwatering nipples prodding through. A navy blue mini-skirt highlighted the natural sheen of her slender legs.
What impressed me less was the scruffy twenty-year-old pony-tailed youth who was sitting beside her, his dark eyes fixed exclusively on Andrea. It was only when she stood to greet me that he slipped out of his reverie and glanced at me.
'Hello, Jonathan,' Andrea said, before reaching over and kissing me on both cheeks. I felt the suppleness of her breasts momentarily pressing against my chest. 'This is Rodolfo. He's my student. A great tango dancer. Do you remember meeting Claudia?' she asked, without any trace of irony. Andrea, I was beginning to understand, for all her natural charm, was a consummate actress as well as a skilful dancer.
'Oh yes, Claudia.' Of course I remembered Claudia.
'Rodolfo is her boyfriend.'
Rodolfo stood up clumsily, betraying all the youthful gaucheness of an adolescent, which, if Andrea's description of him was accurate, miraculously disappeared once he began to dance.
'Hello, sir. Pleased meeting you,' Rodolfo spoke in his faltering English. 'I am sorry sir, but I must to depart now. I have a date with, with...'
'Your girlfriend.' Andrea helped him out.
'Si, my girlfriend.'
'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.' It sounded as if I was sorry to hear he was seeing his girlfriend. Some Freudian slip, perhaps! I didn't like the idea of Claudia, or for that matter, Andrea, playing with this boy, when my prick was itching to get into both their pussies again. Of course I wasn't at all sorry to see Rodolfo go. I wanted to get him out of the way as quickly as possible. I wanted Andrea exclusively to myself.
After Rodolfo had, as clumsily as he spoke and stood up to greet me, rather over-theatrically kissed Andrea on the cheek, he departed. I turned to her, held her hand in mine and asked, 'Does Rodolfo know?'
'Come, Jonathan, do you think I would tell it to him? Of course he doe
s not know. Although he may be a little suspicious if she practices some of the things that we taught her. We did not leave any marks, did we?'
'I don't think so.'
Andrea smiled at me before she continued, 'But also perhaps Claudia may be suspicious too.' Andrea winked at me saucily.
'You mean, you've been giving him some lessons, too?'
'I am a teacher, Jonathan. I love my job muchissimo. There is much satisfaction to know that as they have sex tonight, they will perform so much better, thanks to me. I will have brought a lot of pleasure to both of them. Rodolfo has natural potential, but he did not know how to - how do you say? - stay the course. Now he is a little better.'
'Of course, you know he's infatuated with you. I could see it in his eyes, the way he looks at you.'
'Well, it is nice to know, Jonathan, that as he makes love to his girl, he will give a thought to his teacher. Infatuated though, no. He loves Claudia. I know it. There is also a professional interest here, as well. Those two could be the greatest tango dancers in Argentina. They have much talent: much, much talent. The better they make love together, and the more they learn about the discipline, then the better they dance.'
It was a great feeling to be pulling that stretched white T-shirt over her head, and then to unhook her bra, exposing once again those fantastic breasts. It was great to lift each juicy sphere to my lips, to take them in turn into my mouth, to flick my tongue all over the flesh and then take her nipples between my teeth, making them wet and hard. It was great to feel the pressure of Andrea's hand on my neck, pulling me closer and closer to her heartbeat. And it was great to hear her sighs and moans as she enjoyed every teasing nip and tug on her teats.
We hadn't stayed in the Tortoni for very long. She had a treat for me, she had said, producing a key to an apartment one of her friends owned, but seldom used. The flat was on Callao, in the heart of the city.