The Sexopaths

  These buzzing irritants he thought he’d dismissed as rogue signals, magnified by his irrational insecurity. Now there’s the hint that he ought to be concerned about someone. Maybe that should be no surprise – after all, he’d observed her in Mykonos, seemingly unfettered by his presence, courted; he could identify with the plays made for her favours; he could feel the brooding, watchful intent. Perhaps he should take seriously the paranoid Belgian woman with her delusions of systematic infidelity? Maybe she was right about Secretary Simone and the French President? He thinks back to a poolside cameo: it was the first afternoon when they’d arrived and straightaway had taken Camille to cool her exuberance. He’d noticed a man and woman emerge from the bar and stroll around the pool in their direction, arms linked, in quiet, apparently intimate conversation. The girl had turned out to be Simone, the guy – older, forty-something, self-assured, hair swept back, nose aquiline, a well-fed bulge beneath a designer polo-shirt above expensive-looking chinos – the French President. Adam had barely paid them a second glance – he’d assumed they were just a couple staying at the hotel. But suddenly Simone had spotted Monique and greetings flowed forth. Monique, clad in a glistening gold bikini, taut over her shapely body, had climbed the chrome ladder beneath their steady gaze and, shaking her hands of water as best she could, kissed them in time-honoured fashion. Adam was supporting a water-wingless Camille, and so was spared the necessity of this formality. He’d waded with her to the side of the pool, but Camille predictably opted for shyness and protests, so he’d retired to the shallows after a brief introduction and a promise to speak properly later, while Monique regaled them with the story of their journey, and they exchanged news of other colleagues’ arrivals.

  ‘Sorry. You made it sound like I should. Worry.’

  ‘Look – I am just trying to be pleasant to everybody. Like I said, the British have not been popular – apparently the French would not even talk to my predecessor.’

  ‘Well, we don’t like the French.’

  ‘Come on – you know we are all good friends. Les Rosbifs et Les Grenouilles. L’Entente Cordialle.’

  ‘The French are perfectly cordial so long as they’re getting their own way.’

  ‘That is what they think of the English. Spoiled and stubborn.’

  ‘The French are arrogant.’

  ‘Same.’

  ‘Well, lucky I’m not English, then.’

  Adam grins and Monique reciprocates – his lines of attack are well rehearsed and she, as always, parries adroitly and gives no quarter in return. There is one thing though, that intrigues him. He says:

  ‘Do they know you’re an imposter?’

  ‘I am not an imposter.’

  ‘Poacher turned gamekeeper, then.’

  ‘I have not made a big thing of it.’

  ‘They must be able to tell. The average Brit doesn’t just roll up and start spouting French like you can.’

  ‘They say I sound like a schoolgirl! They’re teasing, of course – but it is true I don’t have as much business vocabulary.’

  ‘You sounded like you were doing fine to me. I don’t even get ten percent of it.’

  ‘You are a good French speaker, my darling. I think your accent is superior to mine.’

  Adam smiles graciously, but persists with his line of inquiry. ‘So now UK is flavour of the month? Or you are, to be precise.’ He decides doesn’t like the image that accompanies his metaphor.

  ‘But… it feels good that I can make a difference. You don’t see me at work – it is normal that I would treat people how they like to be treated. You are not used to being in a client-facing role. I do it every day of the week, and there are good ways and bad ways to achieve consensus and get your point across. Surely the good ways are best? I even got an email from Lucien saying I had brightened up his morning, and I had only sent him a pack of boring information on the UK education programme. That is progress compared to the deadlock before I took on the role. We are back on the marketing map of Europe.’

  ‘Remind me which one’s Lucien?’

  ‘The President.’

  ‘The boss who’s shafting his secretary.’

  Monique frowns disapprovingly. She says, rather obliquely:

  ‘Between the two of them, they do most of the running of the organisation. Anyway, Simone is not his secretary – she is Secretary to the Board.’

  ‘Do they work together?’

  ‘They are from different companies. Lucien is the CEO of a big agency in Paris. Simone works two days a week for the Board and the rest of the time she has her own consultancy.’

  ‘In Paris, too?’

  ‘Aha. We might visit her. She says we can stay at her apartment when there is a meeting there.’

  ‘Is she married?’

  ‘No, she’s single.’

  ‘What about this Lucien guy?’

  ‘I think someone said he is married, with older kids.’

  Adam nods, as if he’s received enough information, but the vague answer bothers him. He says:

  ‘You said ‘we’ might go to Paris. Are you planning to include me on all these meetings?’

  ‘My darling, of course I want to be there with you. We can have some more nice trips. Otherwise I’m not sure I should give up my time to be on the Board. If there is a meeting in a place that is interesting and you’d like to come, I want you to be with me. Maybe sometimes – if it is just the same day, Brussels, or somewhere not so exciting… London? – you will choose to stay home.’

  Adam gives a shrug of agreement. ‘Look – I’m sorry to go on about it. I suppose it’s just today, I’m a bit over-sensitive, what with you getting your knickers off for that Russian guy.’

  ‘Adam - shh!’ She gives his hand a reprimanding tap. ‘I did not take them off for him. What conversation would we be having tonight if the sauna staff were female? I wonder if you would have behaved so well as I!’

  ‘I wonder if you would have behaved even worse.’

  Monique smiles. ‘Well, I certainly should have felt less stressed out.’

  ‘It’s female therapists at your regular place?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Like almost everywhere.’

  ‘And are you naked for the massage?’

  ‘Usually you wear a g-string.’

  ‘And do you think sometimes things happen?’

  ‘Maybe. But I think rarely.’

  ‘Do beauty salons attract girls who like girls?’

  ‘It is possible. I think girls anyway are better at touching one another and better at being touched by a girl. It is more relaxed.’

  ‘And what about the girls who do your massage?’

  ‘It is usually the same one. She is older – the owner – probably not your idea of attractive, my darling.’

  ‘But you like it. Her.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And could you let her make you come?’

  Monique hesitates before answering. ‘Yes.’ She draws the word out, as if she’s still making up her mind about something while she’s saying it.

  ‘Does it ever feel like you might?’

  ‘I feel like it wouldn’t take too much. When she’s doing the tops of my thighs and accidentally brushes a little… close. Especially if I am naked.’

  ‘What about the guy today? Would it have taken much for him to make you come?’

  ‘No.’

  This time her reply comes without hesitation, and she looks him in the eye with a certain audacity. Equally, there’s a message that says ‘See – it didn’t happen.’

  ‘Hmm. Bad girl Monique.’ His tone errs towards the approving. ‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything – that he didn’t touch you… intimately?’

  ‘My darling – I said… it was close a few times. But the excitement was more about the whole bizarre scenario – and that I was naked with a strange guy – it was so weird.’

  ‘So it’s excitement now?’

  ‘You know what I mean… yes, it was
in part exciting – I admit – you have found the same, I am certain. But it does not mean I had to have sex with the guy. It was an exciting situation and not one I would have planned to get into… the unexpectedness of it was part of the thrill, an unplanned encounter.’

  ‘And so you thought you’d make the best of it?’

  ‘No! Well – yes, in a way. Up to a point. It was nice. He made it feel nice. But I wanted to get back to you. After I had finished and you weren’t there I had to go into the shower and make myself come.’

  ‘Jesus, Monique!’

  She seems to be testing, deliciously – perhaps unwittingly – his pain-pleasure threshold.

  ‘Adam! Shh… look – it was nothing.’

  ‘Thanks for waiting.’

  ‘But you didn’t wait… anyway, we soon made up for it didn’t we? And now I’d like to back to our room to make up for it some more. Let’s be very good bad.’

  ***

  Adam enters the room naked except for the taut blindfold. He can smell a scented candle and hear its faint hiss, a tiny signal by which he can navigate. His knees make contact with the foot of the bed and he climbs slowly on, taking care not to put a sudden weight upon an unseen limb. His hands explore and he touches her body: she’s face down as expected, ankles taped, hands – presumably fastened likewise at the wrists – pressed beneath her midriff, hair gathered in by tape apparently covering her mouth. She’s moving, almost imperceptibly, rhythmically. He steadies himself and feels for a point of balance, then kneels behind her with his legs either side of hers. Firmly he lifts her at the hips; she affects to resist but he presses forward, gliding easily between her oiled buttocks and feeling the touch of long smooth nails that seem to guide him. He pushes, she yields, her gag suppressing a moan. Quickly he begins to thrust, deeper and faster, her entire body rocking with each lunge. It’s not long before he comes: role-play subsumed by nature, the leading man deaf to his supporting partner’s muffled protestations. Then just as quickly he extracts himself. She whimpers. He exits.

  ‘What’s taking you so long? Are you masturbating in there?’

  Monique’s bald accusation jolts him from the subconscious act, from the electrostatic memory. The second assignment. The rape fantasy. That he’d again been denied any visual cues had served only to heighten the charge: in his mind’s eye the naked blonde supplicant, her warm flesh prepared; his own arcing excitement tinged with trepidation; permission to execute the visceral deed.

  ‘My client wants something a little different this time. You are to pretend to rape her. I’ll blindfold you now – then fluff yourself while you wait. Enter in five minutes. Make it hard and fast. And it must be real – you have to come inside her. Don’t hold back. Then return and shower and I’ll come for you.’

  ‘But… what about…?’

  ‘You don’t have to worry – there is absolutely nothing that you need fear… I assure you. Okay?’

  ‘Shit. Okay.’

  So he’d done as commanded, already light-headed from travel-fatigue and the draining Mykonos experience. He’d made an excuse to Monique that he wanted to collect a book due for delivery to his office during their trip. She hadn’t demurred, tired herself, and was content to conduct a weakly protesting Camille through her bedtime routine – customarily his job. Heart pounding he’d sped to Leith, arriving just before the clock struck the allotted hour. Fifteen minutes later he’d emerged from the basement condominium into the rain-spattered autumn night like a disoriented drunken sailor turned out of a bar onto the glistening black streets of an unfamiliar port. Such was the speed and efficiency of the whole operation, he’d even had time to visit his office and telephone Monique to inquire if he should bring a takeaway – but she’d answered the call in the negative from their bed.

  He’d returned home to find the house already dark and silent. Reluctant to chance a wakeful Monique, he’d defaulted softly into his study, quietly switching on the angle-poise and spotlighting his Mac beneath a cone of pale light. He’d sat and flipped open the lid and the screen had sprung into life – to reveal unaccountably and to his horror Xara’s escort page. My God! – he must have forgotten to shut down after he’d logged on to get her number to text his impending arrival. He’d stared at the screen, hardly daring to breathe. Had he even closed the laptop before he left? If not – what had Monique seen? It wasn’t unusual to find her checking something online on his machine. Had she looked tonight? Even just in passing to turn off the lights?

  But, hold on. If Monique had seen the page, wouldn’t she have been onto him in a flash? How could she not have put two and two together? Even the most trusting of wives would have jumped to the obvious conclusion. Yet Monique had made no mention of it when he’d called. And – think about it – even if he’d left the lid open, first the screensaver and then sleep mode would have activated within a few minutes. The Mac would have looked like it had been turned off. He’d checked the history – no other pages had been viewed. Squinting into the blackness beyond his window pane, he’d begun to count his lucky stars. This wasn’t the first disjointed aberration in his normally meticulous attention to detail – the wedding ring, for instance. And there’d been the Post-itâ with a potentially incriminating address left affixed to his dashboard; worst of all, stripping off in a strange and tawdry bathroom, relieving his pockets of his personal possessions, discovering his phone still connected to his last call to Monique’s office, on air throughout the seedy preliminaries.

  ‘Adam, hurry! – I shall go crazy!’ Now her tone takes on some of the insistence she employs with Camille at meal times. ‘Or to sleep.’

  He enters their bedroom. ‘Here I come. You’ll like the oil better now it’s warm. And just lie quietly. Clients don’t usually complain like this, remember – especially if they want the masseur to be gentle.’ He moves about the room, methodically extinguishing lights and all but one candle until darkness is near. He joins her upon the bed.

  ‘Who says I want it to be gentle?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you liked about your Russian friend?’

  Monique evidently doesn’t feel inclined to answer this. She rolls onto her front and settles into the soft bedspread, burying her face in its folds. For a while she’s silent, Adam begins to apply the oil. He wonders if she’s comparing his amateurish strokes with the expert, and considers how – paradoxically – he is the professional as far as Ms Y is concerned.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ It’s Monique that asks the question.

  He can’t tell her what he’s thinking. ‘I’m picturing you in the sauna. Picturing him picturing you. I can’t believe that what I see now is what that Russian creep got to see. And feel.’

  Monique grunts noncommittally, which could just as easily be a reaction to what his fingers are doing as a response to his statement. He reflects upon the similarity of the scene to his last commission with Ms Y. So how does this compare? The answer is unwelcome – there is no comparison. Sure, he is aroused, but conventionally so, and in this respect he is emotionally becalmed. And, while Monique’s body is rewardingly perfect, to the eye, to the touch, to the taste, what drips dopamine into his bloodstream right now is the idea of her arousal by the stranger-sex she’d almost experienced earlier. Almost? Her illicit high at once injures and excites him.

  Now kneeling astride her thighs he continues with the massage. She seems very relaxed, but her breathing is shallow and rapid, and he can sense the raised beat of her heart. He guesses that right now she’s back in the bubbles room, recalibrating fear and desire. What would she do if she returned? Her remark – that second time around would be for only one reason – casts further doubt on the completeness of her account.

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Just like earlier?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  He’d have preferred ‘Better.’

  ‘You know,’ he whispers, leaning over so that his lips are beside her left ear, hair tangling with his lashes, ‘It wou
ld take so little for an innocent massage like this to turn into… this.’

  She groans as he slides inside her and as he quickly thrusts back and forth she reaches down and in seconds she’s coming, loudly and without inhibition.

  They lie in this position, gasping like sprinters who’ve collapsed over the line at the end of a desperately close race. After a minute or so Adam whispers:

  ‘Bad girl.’

  ‘It felt good. Good bad.’

  ‘Mmm.’ It’s his turn to employ the gentle onomatopoeia. But he’s shocked at his own demonstration – just how easily it could have been perpetrated. Again he sees the image of the guy in the tight thong, the proprietorial pull around Monique’s waist, the conspiratorial smile to him, her own words at the time, slightly drunken, unnaturally relaxed. He says:

  ‘I have a fantasy.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’m massaging you, like I just did. Except you’re tied up, spread-eagled, lying on your back, blindfolded. Then I go out of the room – into the bathroom to get more hot oil… you think. And then when I come back… it isn’t me.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Now the sound is the sudden revving of an engine. Adam hastily applies some brakes to the scenario:

  ‘I was thinking it was a girl. And she massages you. And you still don’t know. But maybe you think something. Then she does lots of bad things to you. And you know, but you don’t let on.’

  ‘And you know what, my darling?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I know we’ll do something like that.’