Shadow Girl

by Mael d'Armor

  ‘Oomph,’ snorts Sandra, failing to see the appeal of the buxom toon figure on her chest. The glossy-haired, wasp-waist stunner is posing in a tiny cocktail dress under the caption ‘Maid in Heaven.’ ‘C’est pas du meilleur goût.’ Definitely not in the best taste, she adds privately to stress her point.

  ‘And I can see your French has improved,’ says Jenny with an impish look.

  ‘Tu n’as pas répondu à ma question.’

  ‘Ah yes, your chicken licken question. Well, that’s a long story and . . .’

  Jenny throws Yaouen a side glance. She seems to be waiting for a signal from him but his gaze remains locked on Sandra. And the smile floating on his lips suggests he is rather enjoying the moment.

  ‘Explanations can wait,’ he says at last. ‘But just so you know, Jenny has been working for me.’

  ‘Elle bosse pour toi?’ repeats Sandra, eyes widening. She cannot believe her ears. ‘Mais c’est quoi cette histoire?’

  ‘English please.’

  She looks peeved.

  ‘Jenny comprend le français, non?’

  ‘She does. And she speaks it more than commendably, but I think you need the practice. Best to create the right sort of mood for the final recovery phase, don’t you think?’

  ‘Okey-donkey,’ she says, articulating, ‘but I need an explicational.’

  She turns to Jenny.

  ‘I wank to know what the hellabaloo you’re booing here and how cum you are chummy yummy with Youyouen. I wank to know if you’ve been spying on me eensy weensy spider like. And I wank to know the where and the whyfore of all this.’

  Jenny’s face goes through various shades of disbelief, then amusement, but she manages not to laugh.

  ‘I love your T-shirt, but I love your English even more.’

  Yaouen has moved to Sandra’s side and murmurs in her ear.

  ‘As I said, we’ll talk later. We have more pressing business at hand. Be patient.’

  She would like to insist but seems unable to open her mouth. His words have trickled into her like some strange paralysing poison. Her body goes limp against his and her resolve to get answers drains away, leeched by his touch.

  Clearly, the guy has got under her skin in a major bad way.

  Yaouen has turned back to Jenny.

  ‘You had something to show me. Of the utmost importance, you said.’

  Jenny flashes Sandra a broad smile, then flips a tablet out of her bag and points to the screen.

  ‘Let’s make this a tad bigger, shall we?’ says Yaouen.

  He brings the tablet to his lips, whispers something inaudible and blows softly on the screen. With the faintest hush, the page sweeps out of the device and floats up to eye level, shining brightly. It has blown up to poster-size.

  ‘Much, much better.’

  Sandra is staring in surprise at the large electronic canvas before her. If a jaw was made of rubber, hers would have dropped to her neckline. How the heck, she marvels, did Yaouen pull that stunt?

  ‘How the heckle and jeckle did you do that?’ she asks.

  Yaouen shushes her with a raised finger.

  As for Jenny, she does not seem the slightest bit put out by the floating page. She points at the photo in the middle.

  ‘Latest news, fresh off the Web.’

  The image inflates to fill up the whole frame. An impressive sight, as it turns out. There, hanging in midair in the hotel room, is a sculpture looming high over a sea of dark rooftops. There is no mistaking what it portrays. This is not your standard abstract or symbolist concoction. No bizarre blend of cow, corkscrew and crop-duster.

  ‘That’s a hellava woman,’ commends Yaouen.

  His eyes seem to glisten more than ever as they appraise the nude, which is glowing in the twilight with the colours of earth and fire.

  Sandra takes a step forward to peer at the picture. She has forgotten all about her silly T-shirt and not wearing any panties. She is tempted to reach out for that luminescent skin.

  It is hard to tell what the statue is made of. Marble maybe, for it looks so polished as it radiates in the light of dawn. But the tones are not quite right.

  ‘Wood. It is made of wood,’ mutters Yaouen. He appears to have read her thoughts.

  Although this is a still image, the figure appears — oddly — to be pulsing.

  A snap of Yaouen’s fingers. The camera zooms in on the artwork, then begins a meticulous scan of its features.

  Head thrown back, almond eyes half closed, full lips parted in a silent moan. The woman is frozen in provocative abandon. She has thrust out her voluptuous breasts, arched her back in wanton disregard of the laws of rectilinear decorum and pushed up her flowing hair to reveal the lines of a perfect neck. Her other hand is splayed provocatively over the curve of a smooth pubis, daring anyone to follow its fingers to the darkness of the mons.

  There is something infinitely beautiful, and outrageously lewd, and terribly otherworldly about the figure. As though she had not sprung from the chisel of man but grown like a plant from the earth. From some deep, shadowy pit where grace and power conspire in ruthless sympathy.

  Even thousands of miles away, Sandra feels the pull of the mystery nude. She is drawn to its primal inevitability, to its potent allure, displayed in counterpoint to the zillion houses and composites of modernity. Her eye follows the sleek waves from neck to breast, from hip to thigh, from thigh to calf — then is halted by the splayed hand.

  With some alarm, she senses her demon stirring again.

  She tightens her grip on her shirtfront.

  ‘Fascinating, most fascinating,’ mumbles Yaouen, still in earnest contemplation.

  Another snap of his fingers. The vista widens, bringing the city back into view. He continues his silent survey. Jenny too is keeping quiet.

  Sandra forces her gaze away from the figure and looks at the buildings. A European city, most likely. There is something familiar about it. She has seen that spread of roofs before, at least in photographs. Rome perhaps, or Barcelona. But no, it cannot be. There is no sign of the Colosseum or Gaudi’s immense Sagrada Familia.

  Then she notices a hill in the distance, far beyond the carved figure. A small knob of earth lost in the urban sprawl and also covered with buildings. On cue, it seems, a framed window opens where the hill is standing, to afford a blow-up of the area. Yaouen too has turned his attention there.

  She examines the vignette. The mount is crowned by a lofty basilica. A mix of Western and Eastern style, would be her best guess. Massive white dome, quartet of cupolas. Sloping lawn at the front. Two long ribbons of steps on either side. A tall thin tower at the back. She has definitely seen this before but can’t quite place the monument. A picture glimpsed in a book? In the window of a travel agency? Then she gets it. The poster on Dr Leclaire’s office door. She can still see its caption spread out in large white capitals: le Sacré-Coeur.

  She is looking at Montmartre.

  She stares at the vignette a little longer, then redirects her attention to the cityscape.

  ‘So then, this is . . .’

  ‘Paris,’ says Yaouen, his eyes boring through the picture.

  ‘Porous,’ she echoes. She should have known.

  But mixed with the recognition is the instant awareness that there is something wrong with the scene. That sculpture. The giant woman shouldn’t be there. And where on earth is the . . . ?

  And then she has another jaw-dropping moment.

  This time, it is Jenny who fills in the blank.

  ‘The French have just woken up to this. The Eiffel Tower’s gone. Vanished, vaporised. And this is what they’ve found instead. They are terribly upset.’

  She pauses, then adds mischievously, ‘At least some of them are.’

  12

  ‘Where are we going walkies to?’

  It is the third time she has asked the question, but neither Yaouen nor Jenny is in a hurry to clarify, though they are both in a hurry to get somewhere.

 
‘Just round the corner,’ says Yaouen at last, powering along like a beach buggy. ‘A place I know. I have some urgent business there.’

  Urgent business? She snorts dismissively. What can be more urgent than going to get her some proper clothing? Right now, she is feeling horribly self-conscious and she lays the blame for this squarely at his feet. Didn’t he drag her out of the hotel before she had something sensible to wear?

  Inexplicably, the clothes she had worn to her tryst had vanished somewhere in that Bermuda triangle between the bed, the couch and the bathroom — Yaouen swore he had nothing to do with this — and the last-minute replacement turned out to be appallingly minimal: a white clingy crop top that was so clingy and so cropped it must have been designed for a twelve-year-old, and a pair of denim shorts that had evidently been gnawed, shredded and frazzled into near oblivion by a family of starving rodents.

  Jenny had flipped both items out of her bag with a triumphant smile and a flourish — tada! — and a comment that she’d got these at the market yesterday. Turned out she also had some flimsy thong panties packed in that bag, which was just a little too convenient when you thought about it.

  Oh my, this so-called Best Friend would have some mega serious explaining to do as soon as they got a moment together.

  And then she took one look at those shorts and said forget it, she wasn’t wearing those even if you paid her. Jenny had said shorts hadn’t she, not a flipping G-string. Jenny did not seem to understand her so she repeated it three times, flipping G-string, flipping G-string, flipping G-string, just to make sure, though unfortunately she still had no idea what she sounded like.

  But she could only guess it wasn’t spot on from the way those two Judases were biting their lips and scrunching up their faces trying not to laugh but failing mostly.

  Finally Jenny clicked about the G-string but said how much fabric could you expect for a 70 per cent discount, or was it 80 she couldn’t remember, and beggars can’t be choosers or something idiotic like that, and Sandra should be thankful she had at least something to cover the bare essentials rather than have to walk around in that silly T-shirt with her buns showing at the back for everyone to gawk at.

  Naturally, such utter tosh from Jenny did not amuse her in the slightest and in a last effort at modesty, she growled that she wasn’t a bloody beach bimbo. She was a career woman, she said, at least she was in that past life which was receding at the speed of light, but she still had a bit of her pride left even if it wasn’t much and she just couldn’t be seen like that in public. That was non-negotiable. She emphasised that last term, pretending for a moment she was back at a business table having it out with a tough client.

  By then, however, Jenny was on the floor in stitches, which had no doubt something to do with how the words had just come out of her mouth. She was quite miffed by this and started a tirade about friendship etiquette except this time Yaouen stopped her in her tracks with one of his dark and brooding looks. And he said there was nothing to be ashamed of and yes she could — be seen like that in public that is — and he would appreciate it if she stopped behaving like a baby, for there were portentous things brewing that weighed far more in the overall scheme of things than the size of her garments.

  Now that really infuriated her, because hadn’t he just waltzed into her perfectly good life — correction, her perfect life — and made a complete mess of it in less time than it takes to say ‘drop that business skirt’? And so she was screwed in more senses than one because there was no way she could just pick up the threads and breeze back into Mark’s arms or her office in Globalscope. Not speaking the way she did she couldn’t. And certainly not feeling the way she did.

  She had a totally unhealthy crush on Yaouen, she could see. The sort of crush that turns your heart to jelly and your brain to goo. Perhaps addiction was a better word. Christ, was it what she was — addicted to him? Maybe. Probably. Almost certainly.

  Which left her where? Even if she could fix her comic-book English and zip over to France, how the hell could she see through any kind of deal in Toulouse? She could not even begin to imagine not spending her entire business meets fantasising about his smooth tongue and great hip moves. Damn it. Her concentration was shot. And with that gone, so would her credibility and dreams of professional glory.

  Anyway, what was the point of even thinking about France? The suave bastard probably wouldn’t let her go there in the first place. No, she just wasn’t getting the right vibes no matter what he said about her being free as a bird when they were through with the language lessons. He had her over a barrel, he knew it and she knew it — and he might literally strap her over one at their next session. Bastard. She hated him for what he was doing to her. He had no right.

  But the worst thing about all this — the absolute worst — was that her anger was more theoretical than actual because one touch from him and one look from his intense sexy eyes and she was freaking putty in his hands again, and that submissive thing between her thighs wanted to please him so much it was pathetic but there was not a damn thing she could do about it.

  So of course, in the end, she squeezed her body into that tiny kit and even wiggled and paraded her tits and butt for him like that bloody beach bimbo she did not want to be. Sickening really how she was cooing and fussing and enjoying every moment of it, and all the while growing wetter and hornier.

  Now she is trailing him and Jenny on the footpath, skipping like a little girl every few steps to keep up with them. As they cross a street, she catches her reflection in a large glass panel opposite, and gets a shocking confirmation of her hotel suspicions: she looks almost naked.

  She pivots a quarter turn to recheck the effect, out of a perverse curiosity to assess how thoroughly she has been stripped of her better judgment. Seen from the side, the shorts reveal so much of her curvy bum cheek you might be excused for thinking they do not exist — were it not for the frayed edges fringing her hip.

  And her breasts are bursting out of her top like two vanilla scoops about to fall off their waffle cone. Her hair, which still bears the marks of her latest rough-and-tumble, is spilling down her neck and shoulders in wild waves.

  Everything about her yells out not just blatant sexiness, but rampant take-me-nowness. She must be a walking magnet for every drooling caveman within a two-mile radius. And the awful truth is, she does not know whether to cringe in shame and run for the nearest cover, or throw modesty to the wind and take credit for what she has to admit is a damn hot look.

  In the end, her scanty shorts help her decide. The denim crotch is pressing against her like a lover’s finger, and rubbing insidiously with every step she takes. Yes, she might as well take the credit for her look. Or rather let the credit take her, for she knows she has a say in the matter approaching zero when that lascivious thing starts fawning — which it is doing at this point to great effect.

  Her eyes stray to Yaouen’s appetizing bum, wrapped taut in his stylish trousers. She could so sink her fingers into that tight arse. The anger and frustration she felt a moment ago have completely evaporated.

  So has her focus. She is gliding along in a haze of gratification and would no doubt be lurching into passers-by if it weren’t for her guide leading the way. She tries hard to stay in his charmed wake.

  She hardly hears the wolf-whistle when it comes. It is followed by a one-liner that has about as much wit as you can find hair on a Shaolin monk’s head.

  ‘Hey sexy, I’d love to stick it up ta ya!’

  The tradie grinning on the scaffolding across the street is determined to catch her eye and cat-calls again. ‘Come on princess, give us a smile and bend over like a good girl, will ya?’

  Sandra finally registers what is being hurled at her from above. The sort of crap she gets occasionally, despite her efforts not to show too much skin in public.

  She looks up uncertainly at her admirer. Last time she bore the brunt of such poetic attention, she was quick to sling back one or two barbed comments.
Immediate return to sender, she calls it.

  This time though, nothing whatever pops into her mind and so nothing makes it past her lips, bar a surprised gasp. In fact, she hates to admit it but she is oddly gratified by the jibe as if, in some twisted way, it validated something in her. Christ, there is something seriously wrong with her.

  Awash with mixed emotions, she does not notice Yaouen casting the tradie a rather scathing look. Neither does she spot his forefinger tracing discreet figures in the air.

  What she does see, however, is her caller being swooped by a flock of angry crows that seems to have materialised out of thin air. Caught off guard, the man breaks into an awkward jig and starts punching the air like a marionette joggled by an epileptic handler.

  Within seconds, he is reeling on one unsteady foot at the edge of the scaffolding. Reeling, and cursing, and flailing his arms around in a bid both to fight off his attackers and restore his balance.

  ‘Give us a smile, honeypot!’ shouts Jenny, her mouth bracketed by her palms. ‘Rip off that shirt and show us your manboobs, will ya?’

  The strained look on the man’s face indicates he is in no mood or position to oblige. Soon, he loses the contest against birds and gravity, and swearing one last time with a quaint but curiously appropriate choice of words — ‘stone the bloody crows!’ — he topples hard hat over heels into the street below.

  His landing would no doubt have rearranged his face and other parts of his physique, had not his fall been arrested inches before impact.

  For a moment, the man appears to be floating above the footpath like a human hovercraft, belly up and looking bewildered. A subtle wave of Yaouen’s finger, and he is repositioned over a vat of freshly poured concrete, then allowed to complete his dive with no further hindrance. He crashes into the goo with a heavy plop but considerable less speed than would have been the case given the verticality of his drop.

  Yaouen allows himself a smirk and a nod.

  ‘All ye who blaspheme shall come to a sticky end.’

  As for Sandra, her hand is still cupped over her mouth in disbelief.