I stewed in it for a while, wondering what my next move would be and if it would be better if I just turned in. If the night was to continue, I’d have to push on elsewhere. I couldn’t stay at the bloody Toad. But I couldn’t go too far either, could I? I felt like a bloody child, only allowed to venture as far as the end of his own street. The thought of Daryl and his smashed face flashed into my mind. What would it be like facing him the next day? My whole life at Solar Ray had the definite air of disaster about it now.
So anyway, whilst thinking these thoughts, I’d been idly glancing at the blonde lady at the bar, and then, to my surprise, what should happen? She only picked up her drink and walked over, straight towards me. Before I knew it, she was standing right in front of me, at my table, smiling right at me.
“May I join you?” she said with a European accent and an expression that was pure invitation to mischief.
My jaw dropped. Talking of models, she could have easily been one. Stunning. That’s the only truly accurate word to describe her.
“Er,” I said. “Yeah, of course.”
“Thank you,” she said, sitting her gorgeous self down.
Oh my God, I thought. Is this real?
I gave the girl at the bar an evil little look. I couldn’t help it.
See, my look said, you never know.
*****
“So,” said this beautiful lady. “What is your name?”
“I’m Dave. And you?”
“Me?” she purred with a voice that was honeyed and sweet. “My name is Julia. Nice to meet you, Dave.”
She put out a hand for me to take and leaned forwards, fluttering her eyelids. Then she smiled and gave me a little peck of a kiss on both cheeks. More than enough to send me back to La La Land. Wow, I thought. Two times in one day? And Molly’s kiss seemed like a lifetime ago already.
“I couldn’t help overhearing you back there,” she said.
“Oh yeah?” I said, drunk and definitely the slower for it, plus also still just wondering what the hell was going on.
“Yes,” she said. “That… girl was very rude to you. You shouldn’t let a woman speak to you that way. Where I come from, that would not be permitted.”
She shook her head in disgust.
“But you don’t have a girlfriend now, do you?”
“Er…” I stammered.
Was this a dream?
“I hope not,” she continued, drawing circles with a finger on the tabletop. “At least, I hope you are free tonight. I am looking for a man to show me around here, you see, and I was hoping, well…” She let out a little giggle. “Do you think you might be that man?”
This was seduction, pure and simple. The thing is… Well, there’s not much to say, really, is there? An unspeakably hot woman trying to work her feminine wiles on me? Me, with all those thousands of girls chasing me off my feet left, right and centre… Yup, you best believe I was drunk and stupid and fed up enough to believe my luck might change, especially with the day I’d already had. Sometimes in real life people do hit the jackpot, don’t they?
*****
So there I was, sitting with this beauty who’d apparently fallen straight into my lap. My insides wobbled like bags of jelly. All over my face I could feel the beginnings of sweat. I wiped my face but did so as unobtrusively as possible so as to keep as “manly” an outward appearance as possible. I didn’t want to spoil my chances.
Julia sounded Russian to me, though I’m certainly no expert and I frankly didn’t care where she was from. She was definitely a foreigner of some kind, and that probably explained it, I thought. Perhaps she saw me differently to how most English girls seemed to take me: not just some fat slob. I just didn’t know. The main thing was… there she was.
“Don’t be so anxious,” she said. “I don’t bite. Not unless you want me to…”
My God, she was deploying a stratospheric level of flirting on me.
“Where do you come from?” I asked.
“You want to know all about me, do you?”
“Just asking where you’re from.”
“Well, I’m from Russia, but I like to travel. I’ve been in many countries. Germany. France. America.”
“Really?”
“Yes, my honey.”
“That’s cool.”
She shrugged and blinked in a way that said she could take it or leave it.
“So what do you do?” I asked.
“You really want to know all about me!” She laughed as if these basic questions were unexpected, as if I was some kind of an innocent, simple fellow to be asking them.
“Well we’re having a drink together, right?” I said, surprising myself by sounding rather confident. “Isn’t that what people do when they have a drink? Talk? Chat? Shoot the breeze? Find out about each other?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “But I want to know more about you.”
“Me?”
She laughed. “You find it so surprising? I am interested in you.”
I loved the way she said “interested,” as if she had spent many hours repeating it, obsessed with getting every syllable just right.
“Well there’s not much to tell,” I said, almost forgetting that I had just spent almost the entire afternoon making up stories about who I was and that I’d better have a damn good story for her now, unless I wanted to tell her the freakish truth and watch her laugh in my face too—or maybe just watch her call me a nutter and leg it from my table.
“Come on.” She smiled, slapping me on my arm. “There’s everything to tell about you. Every man is a… What is it you say?” She put a hand to her lips and cocked her head to one side. “A riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma?”
She blinked at me. Those lofty words did sound vaguely familiar, though certainly not anything I’d ever say and more than a little over the top when applied to me.
“Er… Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I’m pretty normal, really.”
“Every man is a wonder!” She slapped my arm again. I kind of liked the way she kept doing that. “Every person. And I am interested in you.”
“If you say so—”
“I do say so. There is something special about you, I think…”
Rather than slapping my arm, she now stroked it.
“Really?” I said, wobble in my voice.
“Really,” she said, still stroking me and looking me deeply in the eyes.
“If you say so…” I said again.
I was totally in her power and I didn’t care a jot.
Chapter 14
“Don’t worry,” she said.
“I’m not worried.”
“You look worried.”
“Ah. Well, I suppose I haven’t been with a woman for a while.”
For years, I meant.
“Well, that’s too bad,” she said. “But I think you are an enigma. What was it you told your friend at the bar? You told him you are dating a model, I think. Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“Er…” I could hardly remember the conversation now and honestly didn’t want to.
So I had two choices: lie, badly, or just run with the truth. Lying was probably the better option, but the way she had me all softened up, I wasn’t sure I could manage that.
“It was a lie,” I said. “In my experience, I find lying is often the safest thing to do.”
“I agree.” She nodded. “But let’s have no lies between us, okay?”
“No,” I said. “I won’t lie to you.”
“And what was it you were telling that bliatz?” She gave a contemptuous nod in the direction of the bar.
“Bliatz?”
“Oh, sorry.” She gave a little giggle. “A slip of the mother tongue. You were telling that nasty woman at the bar something strange. I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“Er…”
Did she mean about the basement? About my pee? If she’d overheard that part, surely she must think I was a nutter. And that meant I really did have to
wonder what she saw in me. A free night out, perhaps? A path to a UK visa? Or was she simply a nutter herself? My brain was strongly urging me not to trust her, but she was weaving the kind of sensual web that smothers you all over with magic and makes you feel as though you’re swimming in hot treacle. What the hell did trust matter? I was in such need of attention from the opposite sex I gladly jumped into her wonderful trap. I didn’t give a monkey’s. I welcomed it.
“Something about a basement,” she continued. “And about”—she wrinkled her nose, hesitating for a moment—“acid pee?”
I stared at her in wonder, transfixed. It didn’t seem to shock or disgust or trouble her in the slightest. Any ordinary woman would have run a mile, surely.
“Do you think I was making that up too?” I said.
“A very strange thing to say, no?”
“Do you like strange stories?”
“I do. I adore them.”
Oh my Lord, I was buzzing now.
“I think you are a strange one,” she said. “Very strange. And that interests me. Actually, it more than interests me…”
She looked down at the table, biting her lip.
“Oh?” I said.
She looked up at me, her eyes pleading, hungry, yet somehow laced with shame. I couldn’t look away.
“Would you believe me if I told you it turns me on?”
Shocked, I coughed and spluttered my drink. I tried desperately to dampen the vigorous shaking of my legs.
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at me with complete seriousness. “You turn me on.”
*****
In all honesty, she was too much for me. Way too much. But I felt honour-bound as a lad not to let such a golden opportunity pass. As far as I saw it, the worst that could happen was that she’d get bored of me and change her mind. In the meantime, it was turning into an interesting evening, if nothing else.
I decided to get myself a much-needed breather by ordering us both another drink. She wanted a gin and tonic and I decided to follow suit. I was pissed as a fart already but was vaguely thinking to avoid the need for a wee and the inevitable problem that would present. I had no idea how I was going to deal with that.
“I am going for a cigarette,” she said as I stood to go to the bar. “Would you like one too?”
“Yeah,” I said, actually really wanting one. “I wouldn’t mind. I don’t normally smoke but—”
“It’s okay. You don’t need to explain. You can join me outside.”
She put on her jacket, a high-fashion furry number, and I headed to the bar. For some reason, I was served by a different waitress this time.
*****
Julia was standing and smoking her cigarette against the wall in the seating area out front, arms crossed, blowing out huge gusts of smoke into the frosty air. When I placed the drinks on the nearby table, she had taken out the packet from her handbag and was opening it. I reached to take one.
“No, no, no,” she said, tutting. “That is not the way I do things.”
Instead, she took one out for me and placed it in my mouth, then smiled and lit it for me.
“How do you like that?”
“Oh yes,” I said, taking a puff.
The cigarette was menthol, strongly so, and very thin between my lips, but I didn’t mind.
We stood beside each other against that wall. She wasn’t talking, and I didn’t know what to say.
“It is nice to just be silent sometimes, is it not?” she said.
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“And sometimes it is nice to talk.”
I nodded. She touched me on the arm again, stroking me.
“You don’t mind, do you?” She smiled. “My touch.”
“No,” I said.
“Good.”
She kept on stroking me. I kept on letting her and not worrying what the hell this gorgeous lady was doing seducing a lout like me.
“Tell me what it was you were saying before,” she said. “About the basement. Is it in the building over there?”
The Solar Ray offices stood opposite the pub, so we were facing directly towards them.
“Do you really want to know about that?”
“I told you,” she said. “I like to hear strange stories, especially from those directly involved in them. It is my hobby, I suppose you could say.”
“Well…” I was debating what route to go down. She did seem rather fixated on it. It vaguely crossed my mind that she might have some weird ulterior motive for—
“Dave.” She suddenly stood herself right in front of me. “You can trust me.”
“Can I?”
“Yes,” she said, edging closer, very close, taking the cigarette from my mouth and throwing it to one side. “Here.” She laced a hand around the back of my neck. “Let me show you.”
And she moved in for a kiss. None of that peck-on-the-cheek nonsense either. This was a proper, rock-solid, full to the brim, max-factor, sloppy mouth-to-mouth kiss. Tongue-to-tongue even.
It didn’t make me trust her exactly, but I certainly became a lot more eager to please.
*****
The kiss seemed to go on for ages. I let myself go, just enjoying it. What choice did I have? It was lovely, and sometimes you do just have to go with the flow.
When she finally pulled back, she kept her hand on my neck, stroking me, giving me a searching look in the eyes. She gave me another peck on the lips. Then one more, sighing to herself as if she couldn’t get enough of me. She rounded it off by giving me a little bite on my lower lip.
“Ow!” I said.
She laughed, pulling away, fishing in her bag for another cigarette. I grabbed the glass of gin and tonic and took a big old chug of that. It went some way to calming my nerves, but not far.
She lit her cigarette and looked at me.
“That bite was for not trusting me,” she said. “You do trust me now though, yes?”
“I suppose…” I said.
“Alright,” she said. “And how did you like your taste of me?”
“Er…”
There was something a little distasteful about the way she said that.
“So tell me,” she continued with an air of excitement, flicking her lovely blonde hair over her shoulders. “Tell me your secret. Tell me your story. Tell me everything. Tell me, and I promise there will be plenty more kisses like that. Maybe even more besides…”
“Really?”
She nodded and laughed.
“Really,” she said. “You can have me any way you want me…”
*****
As you can probably imagine, she was making me about as hot under the collar as it’s possible for a lad to get. I mean, this was off-the-charts raciness as far as I was concerned. The stuff of dreams. So of course, I told her the whole thing, ceasing to worry if it would make her run for the hills or not, ceasing to worry about anything, really. Of course, I did know that my contract specifically mentioned not talking about such things, but Daryl had hardly been true to the spirit of that contract. Plus, I’d just lamped the bastard anyway. More to the point, Julia was just so insistent, and she’d already heard bits and pieces, so as far as I saw it, I had no way around it and it made little difference anyway. I put the worries out of mind and gave her the full story, how it went down back in Crawley, how I ended up here, what my life was like at Solar Ray—pretty much everything was blabbed out at speed.
“This is truly incredible,” she said excitedly. “A man able to bring down buildings just with the power of his”—she hesitated—“his urine.”
“I guess so.”
“And for you to be hidden away by this… this company,” she continued passionately. “Keeping you locked away underground like that. It is wrong for a man to be so… cloistered. You have needs. It is repression, I think.”
I nodded. No argument from me there.
“Show me!” she said, grabbing my arm. “Show me your power! I want to see. I have to see. Plea
se.”
“Er…”
“Come on…” She came up close to me again, putting a hand on my chest. “You must! I am”—she searched for the word—“enthralled by you. I want more. I need more. Give me everything there is to give. Everything of Dave.”
Jeez, she was insistent. She was also, as already mentioned, ridiculously hot.
“Alright, alright!” I said.
“Good,” she purred, cosying up close to me, putting her face on my chest and her arms around my waist. “I hope you’re really trusting me now.”
I sighed. I wasn’t sure what I thought about her, but it was the tops to have her clinging to me like that.
“We’ll need be careful,” I said. “Can’t just go around doing it anywhere, can I?”
*****
Minutes later we were walking arm in arm down the street. I was giddy as a schoolboy taking his first girlfriend for a snog behind the bike sheds. At that moment, she was my whole world, the only thing I could see. Everything else was indistinct, just a blur of lights. She had given me plenty of reasons to hope for more from the evening. Plus, I had the total hots for her, so I permitted myself to believe she was just bonkers for a bit of the obscure and happy for the taste of a fat bastard to be thrown into the deal. Perhaps she genuinely had a thing for me. A man can dream.
“Where are you taking me?” she said.
“There’s a square I know,” I said. “It’s got a field in it, I think.”
A park would have been best for a demonstration, a big one, but this was Shoreditch, and there were no parks. I’d passed the square in question once or twice. It wasn’t too far and looked green enough, so sod it, I thought.
“I want a full demonstration,” she said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I don’t want to go bringing down buildings though, do I? This’ll have to do.”
“You can bring down buildings for me, can’t you?”
I gave her a little look, unsure if she was joking or not.
Annoyingly, I hadn’t remembered that the square I had in mind to pee in was one of those private gardens, meaning it was surrounded by a tall, solid line of bolted and locked metal gating. There was no way in without climbing over or breaking in.
“Shit,” I said. “I really need to pee now and all.”
Curse of the Potency Page 13