Eighty Days Amber (Eight Days)

by Jackson, Vina

  Evidently he was a man who preferred subtleties.

  He would be around for some hours yet, I knew, as I’d noticed his name on several of the lists of authors visiting other stalls later in the day. But even if I managed to steal more than a few minutes of his time, he would quickly be obliged to return to the fray and satisfy the demands of his eager audience, at the service of his publishers and the many local bookstores involved in the event. And having come all this way and agreed to perform Tango again primarily for the sake of an opportunity to learn more about a man who fascinated me, I was not going to blow my hand with a few ill-chosen moments amongst a herd of other women eager for his attention.

  I was hot, sticky and casually dressed in a pair of cotton shorts, flat shoes and a loose blouse. I turned and ambled back down the street towards Plaza Catalunya and stopped to sit and sip an espresso beneath an umbrella on one of the metal chairs at Café Zurich by the square. I was much more comfortable sitting rather than standing in crowds, watching the people go by and amusing myself by wondering what secrets they hid beneath their respectable public veneers. A young woman in a yellow shift dress and matching kitten heels, a red rose tucked into her blonde hair, was rushing back to her overprotective parents as if she was late back after a lovers’ tryst – probably with an unsuitable but terribly good-looking young man who worked in a mail room, I decided, or perhaps with a charming but married company director at her place of employment, or maybe even with the company director’s charming wife. She ran a finger firmly around her lips as she hurried past me, brushing off the stray smears of lipstick that had spread over her mouth during frantic goodbye kisses.

  In traditional Network style, my hotel was both plush and discrete, tucked amongst the stone buildings and wrought-iron verandas that peppered the winding streets of the Gothic Quarter. It might be the last time that I would be put up in such sumptuous surroundings by an employer, so I took every advantage, pouring salted pistachios from the mini bar into a china bowl and taking a large sip of chilled champagne directly from the miniature bottle, coughing as it frothed into my mouth.

  I peeled off my clothes slowly and stood under the showerhead for an age, deliberately making use of every single one of the cosmetic products provided until I was drenched in lather and every fleck of dust gathered during my day’s exertions had run down my body and into the drain.

  Two hours later I was relaxed and ready to strut my stuff, sheathed in a red Roland Mouret dress that I knew clung gently to my shape but also covered my flesh from my neck to my calves so could not be considered distasteful even by the most modest of men. It was the colour of roses, my nod to Sant Jordi.

  The heat of the day had faded and the early-evening light had fallen like a balm over the hustle and bustle of the Ramblas. Many of the stallholders were packing up for the day, no doubt on their way to enjoy further festivities that would continue to burn brightly until another sunset turned into night.

  For a moment I feared that I had left it too late and had missed him as I had passed stall after stall and still saw no sign, but then I spotted him huddled amongst a gaggle of assorted writers and a few of the most patient and enthusiastic readers who had made it to the end of the day and all the way down the queue of stalls.

  He was as handsome as ever, though dressed all in black with no hint to fashion or the Catalan heat. His arms had turned a pinkish copper from a full day sitting unprotected in the Spanish sun and I imagined that when he removed his shirt he would be faced with heavy tan lines marking his English skin.

  ‘You wouldn’t begrudge a friend a signature, no?’ I asked, boldly holding my worn copy of his book aloft through the small throng of people hanging around the stall table to catch his attention. I had been careful to bring it along to Barcelona with me.

  I laughed aloud at his response when he recognised me.

  ‘A friend or a stalker?’ he replied.

  A fleeting expression of fright in his eyes suggested that he wasn’t entirely joking, though he readily agreed to accompany me for a drink. It seemed to me that Monsieur Dominik liked to orchestrate every aspect of courtship, not just the occasional nude public dance. He did not take well to women hitting on him. I remained unaware of the particular circumstances that had drawn Dominik and Summer together, but I would bet my night’s wages that he had made the first move.

  To a private dancer was his inscription. If I had caught him off guard he had quickly regained his footing.

  I was surprised when Dominik asked if he could somehow purchase a ticket to watch me dance later that evening after I’d explained the purpose of my trip to Barcelona. I told him that it was a private party and tickets were not on sale, but that I would be happy for him to come as my own personal guest.

  He flirted politely with me over dinner at the tapas bar we’d stumbled across just off the Passeig de Gracia and expressed an unusual interest in my life and relationship with Viggo – quietly doing research for his latest book, I suspected – but I did not believe that he was angling to get into my bed. I guessed he was still besotted with Summer; or maybe I just wasn’t his type. I shrugged inwardly and slotted him into the category that I kept aside for male friends and acquaintances who were unlikely to become my bedfellows. It made a nice change from being pawed at and propositioned all the time, and if my ego was a little stung then I would soon recover. Before long I would be naked and vulnerable in the arms of Tango and I was more than a little pleased to have someone that I knew and trusted in the audience. Dominik’s presence would help settle my nerves and as a performer I was entitled to bring a guest along whenever I chose, so procuring his entrance would be no problem.

  I did, however, warn him to acquire more formal attire for the occasion as he told me he hadn’t travelled to Spain with much in the way of clothing.

  The chauffeur collected Dominik and I at 10 p.m. sharp and whisked us away in the spacious comfort of a luxury limousine. We barely spoke as we drove along the winding coastline that led to an opulent yacht at the end of the Sitges marina in Aguadolc. A bright full moon shone across the water to our left and I spent the duration of the journey concentrating on the peaceful shimmer of the still ocean in an effort to calm my nerves.

  Dominik sat comfortably in the silence, and I was relieved that he was not the sort of person who felt obliged to release a stream of inane and perpetual chatter to fill a gap in conversation.

  The hostess for the evening, a middle-aged Network matriarch clad in a dark-green velvet evening gown with a white lace collar and a pair of heavy gold tear-shaped earrings, spotted me as soon as I arrived and I was ushered away from the guest area and into a makeshift dressing room in the lower level of the yacht, leaving Dominik to his own devices. He had bought an Armani tuxedo at one of the exclusive stores off the Passeig de Gracia, but still looked out of place, apparently unaccustomed to the sheer scale of the unabashed and often tasteless wealth that surrounded us.

  ‘La Mer’ complemented the setting perfectly and my limbs moved indolently to the rising beat of the music without any accompanying feelings of disgust or shame at the thought of dancing with a total stranger that night in Amsterdam. My bad memories had faded and tonight Debussy was just Debussy.

  When Tango stepped into the spotlight, any remaining tension in my posture relaxed and I slid happily into his arms, relieved to see him again and delighted that the pleasure I had first taken in his body and the delicacy and grace of his skilful movements had returned to me.

  Tango had always been my favourite dance partner. He was the most handsome and the better dancer of the three of my companions, and he was the one that I felt the most warmth towards. He always greeted me with a smile and a wink before putting on a show of domination that matched the routine I had devised and seemed to fool the audience, but that I knew was as theatrical for him as it was for me. Unlike the man that I had danced with in Amsterdam, Tango seemed genuinely to care for me, as much as it was possible for two people to care for each
other in such limited circumstances.

  With Dominik in the audience, I was even more eager to put on a good show. As I imagined his eyes on my body and the arousal that he might feel at the spectacle of my nudity and the athletic public coupling that we were about to present, I felt myself tingle with anticipation.

  When Tango took my hand and pulled me against him, it felt like the first time that we had danced together, thrilling and dangerously erotic. In response, my nipples hardened like beacons and wetness gathered between my thighs, ready for his penetration.

  He inserted himself inside me and I was barely able to control my body enough to continue the routine, so desperately did I want to just pull this tanned and muscular man on top of me and simply fuck him on the hard wooden floor of the yacht, audience be damned. But living with Viggo had taught me that restraint can sometimes be as pleasurable as fulfilment, and besides, I was a professional and here to put on a class act, not an animalistic and pornographic display full of heat and passion, even if that was what I desired at the time.

  Tango squeezed my hand gently in farewell as the music came to a finale and I tiptoed backstage, masked by the sudden cut of the stage light. In the dressing room, I took a few deep breaths and resolved to calm myself down and present a professional front to Dominik. I was not inclined to explain to him the history of my dancing or the feelings that appearing on stage aroused in me, and I had by then decided that I did not want to take him to my bed or pursue him any longer.

  Dominik was apparently shocked and awed by the performance.

  ‘That was beautiful,’ he said as the chauffeur returned us to our respective hotels.

  ‘It was also well paid,’ I replied, even though the money bored me now. I was no longer impressed by the dripping wealth that was always on display at these events and neither did I care if I possessed it or not. I just wanted to dance.

  Dominik kept on asking me question after question about Viggo’s art and music collections until I began to wonder if he’d turned into some sort of amateur sleuth. Or perhaps he had got wind of the disappearance of Summer’s prized violin, which had gone missing the night of Viggo’s charity performance at the Brixton Academy. Did he suspect that Viggo was in some way responsible for it? More likely he was seeking details of real people to hang his latest novel onto. He had told me over dinner that he was writing the story of an instrument and its passage from one owner to the next. A fascinating idea and one that required much ruminating on the subject of collectors. I wondered whether it had occurred to Dominik that he was one of them, a voyeur like any other, wandering the world in search of characters, motives and emotions to snare like butterflies in the net of a lepidopterist and pin down onto a page.

  The Belsize Park mansion was empty when I returned. Summer was still touring. A postcard from Berlin was waiting in the mail box addressed to Viggo and I. She would be home soon, following concerts in cities across Scandinavia – Copenhagen, Oslo and Helsinki – with the tour then ending in Sarajevo and Ljubljana. At this rate, Summer would turn into more of an international wanderer than I.

  Viggo was on his way to join her and Groucho Nights for a special one-off appearance in Stockholm. I had declined the opportunity to go with him. Somehow, even though Finland was geographically nearer, it was too close to Russia for comfort. I knew the feeling was irrational. When I thought of Russia, I thought of St Petersburg and Donetsk and my friend Zosia from the dormitories in the School of Art and Dance, and her sunken face, the thin features of her child and her garden of skeleton trees. It was not a place that I ever wanted to set foot in again.

  Time passed as it always did, but not without the inevitable waves of loneliness that were part and parcel of having virtually nothing to do. Without my dancing, any other form of employment or my two lovers to keep me company, my life took on a certain aimless quality and it was only by immersing myself in the imaginary worlds contained within the books that I found on Viggo’s endless shelves that I was kept from going stir crazy. On one particularly uneventful day I amused myself by attending a cookery class near Oxford Circus, where I irritated the chef by imperiously suggesting that he was far too heavy handed with his macaroons.

  When Summer eventually returned a few weeks later I greeted her with all the enthusiasm of a young lover, but after the initial passion of our reunion she became withdrawn and spent little time at home. She never mentioned Dominik and I did not inform her that we had run into each other in the Catalan capital, seeing little point in causing her pain if thoughts of him touched a nerve.

  Viggo and I were still lovers but our feelings for each other had long since lost their fire and I felt little for him besides a playful friendship. Still, we seemed to draw comfort from each other’s bodies as I woke most mornings tangled up in his arms with Summer a short length away from us curled up alone at the edge of the bed.

  Since her return from the Groucho Nights tour she lived in a permanent state of distraction and had lost her usual joie de vivre for our group lovemaking sessions. Summer had always been the spark that lit our triad’s fire and, without the vision of her pliant body pressed against Viggo’s and the temptation to pull her into one position or another using her mane of fiery hair as a set of reins, I spent more time pleasuring myself alone in the shower or the guest room where I had slept when I first moved in. I always thought of Chey when I masturbated, reliving our time together and imagining the athletic and sometimes perverse sex sessions that I wished we could have.

  The motivation for Summer’s strange behaviour became clear when I awoke late and bleary-eyed one morning after an evening spent with her and Viggo at a private preview for a photography exhibition on the South Bank close to the hotel where I had bedded my first woman, Florence. Summer and Viggo had gone home early while I stayed for the afterparty, drinking champagne until the wee hours. I’d crawled into the bed we shared blissfully unaware of Summer’s absence and totally ignorant of the events that had unfolded without me.

  When I padded down to the steps to the breakfast bar I found Summer radiantly happy and half naked, her slim waist encompassed by one of Dominik’s arms. His hand strayed only occasionally down to the cleft in her arse and the bare flesh of her thighs, every now and again slipping between her legs and caressing her mound, while Viggo looked on, grinning like a child in a candy store, and Summer blushed a dozen different shades of red despite the fact that Viggo had seen her naked a hundred times and more and touched her in those same places. None of them were yet aware that I was watching from the stairway.

  Dominik was like a different person when he was with her, I observed. Gone was the melancholy man that I had met in Barcelona and in his place was a confident and powerful man whose self-assurance seemed unquestionable. She nestled her head against his shoulder tenderly, apparently inviting him to exert his playful brand of dominion over her. In his presence she lost that hard edge she so often assumed, the veneer of coolness that I had only otherwise seen dissolve when she was playing the violin or having particularly vigorous sex. They were made for each other.

  And Viggo seemed pleased by the whole affair.

  ‘Morning,’ I announced, tightening my satin bathrobe and cruising down the last few steps as though I had only just awoken and as if finding the three of them in various states of undress in the kitchen was not unexpected in the slightest.

  They looked up in unison, each wearing an expression that drifted halfway between happiness and embarrassment.

  ‘Morning, Queen of the Night,’ said Viggo. ‘How is our ethereal mermaid today? Did you leave any ladies at the party unsullied?’

  ‘Only the dull ones.’ I grinned back at him. Actually I had spent the night engaged in only the most mild of flirtations with a pair of girls clad in matching bright satin dresses, but I saw no harm in perpetuating Viggo’s idea that I broke hearts wherever I went. He seemed to take some kind of perverse satisfaction from the thought that every man and woman in the world would happily worship at my
feet given half a chance. It was a fantasy that cemented my status as the jewel in his crown of beautiful things.

  ‘And how were your respective evenings?’ I asked collectively.

  There was a long silence while I wondered whether Viggo, Dominik and Summer had spent the night engaged in a new threesome combination that excluded me. Viggo had previously hinted at the occasional past dalliance with a male lover in his never-ending quest to savour every experience under the sun. I was unsure of Dominik’s persuasion but did not doubt for a second that Summer would have relished an opportunity to be sandwiched between the two men.

  But as it transpired, the nocturnal activities of my three companions were of a quite different nature altogether. I listened as Viggo explained that between the three of them they had managed to track down Summer’s lost Bailly violin and Dominik had apparently risked life and limb to retrieve it.

  ‘So, who was it who had the instrument?’ I asked, perplexed.

  ‘We won’t bore you with the details,’ Dominik replied smoothly. ‘It’s rather complicated and not nearly as exciting as Viggo makes out.’

  ‘But it gave you some good material for your next novel, I hope?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. I don’t like to stray too close to real life.’

  Summer snickered. Dominik smacked her playfully on the backside.

  ‘Shall we leave these two lovebirds to it?’ Viggo asked, offering to treat me to breakfast at a nearby cafe on Hampstead High Street.

  Summer and Dominik were gone by the time we returned, and within two weeks she had collected her few belongings and left the Belsize Park mansion for good in favour of Dominik’s more modest house further up the hill in Hampstead proper. In between shifting boxes and sorting through our joint wardrobe, there were many promises of keeping in touch and seeing each other for dinner and walks on the Heath and so on, but in reality I knew she was happy with Dominik and ready to close the book on this particular chapter of her life.