The Sexopaths

by Beckham, Bruce

  His final slide is the cue for him to announce that he’s been asked to remain on the stage. He is to draw three business cards out of a large ornate bowl that was placed originally at the registration desk, the lucky winners to come up and each receive a signed copy of his book. There’s an uncomfortable silent hiatus – which ideally would be filled with applause for his finale – while the business-suited female compere whose name he has been unable to assimilate rises from her seat at one end of the first row and nimbly ascends the steps to his right. She has a roaming microphone and is followed by a shapely assistant in a figure-hugging traditional red-and-gold cheongsam, bearing the bowl. He allows himself to be guided to the front of the stage, before clumsily reaching across the girl, melodramatically shielding his eyes and mixing the cards as best he can, brushing accidentally against her breasts in the process. As he extracts three cards from the middle of the heap, out of nervousness as much as anything, he says:

  ‘I slipped half-a-dozen of my own in here during the lunch break.’

  The woman says something in Chinese – and suddenly the audience laughs explosively, reminding him of just how many there are out there. Adam hopes it’s not at his expense, and that she has translated his quip as he intended it. He makes a gesture as if he’s understood and that he welcomes their response, and rather awkwardly, wondering if it’s the right thing to do, he carefully examines the cards printed in unintelligible Chinese characters, and passes them in two-handed prayer fashion, according to Lifen’s patient instruction. He senses the woman’s approval. She reads out the first name and after a few moments a rather sheepish young guy comes up to shake his hand, followed by an embarrassed-looking girl who curtseys before receiving her book. He doesn’t know whether to kiss her on the cheeks but leans forward to do it anyway. Belatedly she accepts, much to the interest of the crowd below, and when he looks up to greet the final winner he’s amazed to find Lifen striding confidently towards him, arms swinging and her trademark top-knot swaying like a small spiny creature balancing upon her crown, a brilliant white-toothed smile upon her face. His reaction betrays their acquaintanceship and the compere speaks in Chinese to Lifen, who answers her in kind. She takes Lifen by the hand and announces her to the audience, who break out into spontaneous applause. Adam wonders what’s going on, but the compere, speaking now in English, thanks him for his edifying speech and calls for more applause, to which he leaves the stage and walks with Lifen towards the back of the hall. The lights now come up as there is to be a break for refreshments, laid out in the foyer beyond. Adam has a creepy feeling that he’s being followed. He whispers to Lifen:

  ‘What was that all about?’

  As if sensing what he really wants to know, she says:

  ‘Your speech was excellent. They really like it.’ It’s the first time he’s noticed her deviate from perfect English.

  ‘Thanks – but the business cards – and how come I picked you?’

  Lifen hesitates for a moment, as if considering the advisability of answering his question. She watches him closely as she says:

  ‘The Chinese are very superstitious. That you met me only yesterday and chose me by chance today – and in position number three – it seems to them very lucky. And to me, of course. Thank you.’

  ‘It was a coincidence.’ Adam stresses the was. ‘I had no idea you’d even put your card in the bowl. But I’m the one who should be thanking you for all your help.’ He’s humbled by her reverence.

  ‘You are most welcome. If… there is anything more you wish me to do… at any time during your stay.’ She flashes him a brief sidelong glance, interrogative, then bows her head and, folding the precious copy of his book two-handed into her breast, walks half a step behind him, like a chorister processing along a nave.

  Momentarily flirting with a vague sexual fantasy and thus distracted, Adam reaches the cloth-covered trestle table where cups and saucers are laid out before he can fashion a reply. He sidesteps along to face another of the cheongsam-clad helpers, this one acting as if she’s in charge of a large urn that may hold coffee. He turns to Lifen:

  ‘After you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Speaking in English she requests a coffee and he follows suit. Conscious of her silence, he says:

  ‘I thought eight was the lucky number in China?’

  ‘For us there are many lucky numbers. Three is a lucky number, also.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘The word for three sounds like the Chinese character for birth. Four in Chinese sounds like death.’

  ‘Just as well I couldn’t fit any more into my case.’

  She nods politely, watching him closely, perhaps unsure of his levity. Adam ponders for a moment, then says:

  ‘Come to think of it, three’s a lucky number in Britain, though I’m not sure why. It’s probably some obscure mathematical model, or astrology maybe.’

  Again she nods, as if hanging on every word of his sage-like utterances. They turn away from the refreshments table, and Adam suddenly realises that what he’d subconsciously been aware of as a queue behind him for drinks is actually a separate line of expectant Chinese faces, waiting hopefully to gain his attention. Among the assemblage of about twenty people he recognises the other two book-winners.

  ‘Wow. What do I do?’ He speaks out of the side of his mouth.

  He’s accustomed to the odd person approaching him afterwards – perhaps to thank him or ask him to sign his book or to request a copy of his slides – but this, in surprising contrast to the vibes he’d picked up during his speech, appears like an organised appreciation society. To his relief Lifen – seemingly comfortable as his unofficial PA – steps into the breach and interrogates the first few bodies in the line. She returns to him and says quietly:

  ‘They would like each to speak with you for just a minute or two. To benefit from your great wisdom. We could sit over there and I can translate if there are any difficulties?’

  ‘Of course – if the ones at the back of the queue don’t mind missing some of the next speaker. I don’t usually get this much interest.’

  ‘Chinese people are always very eager to learn.’

  ‘That’s probably why your economy is booming. Who makes all the pandas, eh?’

  Lifen smiles dutifully. Adam suddenly hopes she doesn’t think it’s some kind of xenophobic gag and is humouring him. As they head across towards an arrangement of lounge-type seating, trailed at a respectful distance by the snaking line of delegates, Adam spots Monique being served with a drink. He says to Lifen:

  ‘I’ll just be a moment.’

  For a fleeting second Adam detects a reaction, a flash of pique in her eyes, then uncharacteristically she barks an order Chinese-fashion, and her new charges obediently shuffle into position against a row of tall windows. Beyond, the view is dominated by university buildings that tower from within their perimeter fencing, separated from the hotel and conference complex by a broad boulevard and junction. Adam crosses to address Monique. He touches her on the arm.

  ‘Hi.’

  She turns with a smile. ‘You are quite the celebrity.’

  He realises she must have been watching him. He shrugs, sheepishly.

  ‘My darling – I am very proud of you!’ She sounds like she thinks he’s misinterpreted her comment as a sarcastic snipe, a potshot loosed off in irritation at Lifen’s eager attendance. He acts to defuse the offending impression, saying:

  ‘Can you believe I picked Lifen? Evidently the audience now think I have special powers. Hence the queue, I reckon.’

  Monique giggles. ‘I did wonder how you fixed it.’

  ‘Straight up, it was pure luck – her card’s written in Chinese. Lucky number three. Apparently it’s got to do with babies.’

  ‘I always thought it was buses.’

  ‘Yeah – and that.’ He smiles and pecks her on the cheek. ‘Look – I’d better get back to that lot. Are you going to listen to the last session?’

&n
bsp; ‘My darling – have you heard to the English translation?’

  Adam nods sympathetically. He’d tried in vain to decipher the curious staccato syntax of an interpreter during one of the morning’s Chinese presentations. The hieroglyphic slides were equally impenetrable, and only the occasional image or video offered any relief. Monique says:

  ‘I think I shall go up to the room to rest for a while. Have a bath. Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course not – just don’t fall asleep else you’ll be awake all night.’

  ‘What time is it in the UK?’

  Adam consults his watch, frowning as he stumbles over the subtraction.

  ‘About seven, I think. We’d just be waking up.’

  ‘Then I shouldn’t feel like sleep, should I?’ says Monique brightly.

  ‘It’s never stopped you yet.’

  She smiles, leans in for a kiss and then gives him a light push on the breastbone. She says:

  ‘You fan club awaits.’

  ‘Thanks – I’ll see you later at the room.’

  ‘Three-nine-three!’

  ‘Spooky.’

  – the next morning –

  Adam opens his eyes. For a moment he thinks he’s at home and wonders what day it is. Then he sees the willow-pattern-style painting on the wall beyond the foot of the bed and remembers he’s in China. There’s a dazzling brightness; the curtains are open and when he sits up he can see the top of the twin-towers of the university. The entire sky from horizon to zenith is a uniform white that doesn’t look like either cloud or mist. Smog? A great flock of crows swirls across this backcloth, tumbling black shapes that appear to have rained from the heavens. The room is silent now but the electronic ping of something – the doorbell? – has woken him. There’s no sign of Monique. Maybe she’s been down to breakfast and has forgotten her keycard? Naked he pads to the door and peers through the spy-hole. The corridor has the distorted look of a vacant goldfish bowl, bereft of fish or human. Cautiously he opens the door to check if something’s been left outside, but there’s nothing. He closes it and heads towards the bathroom. Then he notices Monique’s handset charging on the unit beneath the willow-pattern artwork. Beside it on a hotel notepad is a penned message: ‘Gone with Lifen to tour factory. Did not want to wake you, sleepy head! – il y a des croissants!! Will call soon. Love you. MX.’ He rubs his eyes. How will she call if she’s left her phone? The LED on the tv reads ten seventeen – minus eight means two seventeen a.m. at home; no wonder he feels queer. He recalls coming back to the room after the conference had finished; Monique was sound asleep – so deeply that he was unable to rouse her; he’d intended for them to join some of the other speakers for a drink; he wonders how long Lifen had waited, thinking they might reappear. But he must have dropped off himself. Did he wake in the night and undress? And how long has he slept? It must be more than twelve hours. He looks at the beds – they each have a double set apart from one another by the width of a narrow nightstand – Monique’s white duvet lies in a heap on the floor, along with two of her pillows and a large towel, and he can see the cord of her bathrobe trailing out from the ensuite. He’s always intrigued that, for one so persistently tidy at home, she trashes hotel rooms with a certain careless abandon. Then he spots the breakfast tray on a low table beyond her bed, below the window. There are two silvered domes and a collection of matching jugs, flasks and cutlery. He pokes and clangs about and discovers the wherewithal for a tepid coffee, eats a couple of chewy croissants thinking he ought to be absolutely starving; indeed they both missed having any dinner last night. He wonders where he’s left his conference file – Lifen’s business card will be inside it, and perhaps Monique has assumed he’ll get in touch via her mobile should the need arise. Wiping butter from his fingers with a napkin he rounds the bed to check in the wardrobe – as he does so, close at hand there’s a repeat of the electronic ping: of course, it’s a message coming in on Monique’s handset – the email alert. He picks it up and taps at the touchpad: it’s just a junk e-shot, selling wrinkle-free promises… but beneath… he sees the name Lucien Décure… he taps again, smoothes his fingers across the screen… words appear, enlarging and shrinking rebelliously beneath his ineffective touch, swimming wildly before his eyes, blurred and confused and all mixed up with his suddenly racing heart and the rising tide of nausea from his midriff…

  ‘… a difficult decision…. sorry to miss you… am sorry we met in these circumstances and in our personal circumstances…’

  Stricken by these sickening phrases, infirmity grips his legs and he sinks down onto the end of Monique’s bed. Staring fearfully at the handset he tries to make out what Lucien is saying to his wife, his wife. Now he inadvertently increases the text size and gigantic pixelated obscenities scream out from the tiny screen. After a few moments he gets it working, squeezing his forefinger and thumb across the surface. He scrolls up and down and realises the section of the message he’s been reading is not in fact to Monique, but from her – to Lucien. It begins ‘Hey Lucien…’ (a phrase that jars – why not ‘Hi’ like she says to him?) and ends: ‘…arrived safely, thank you… see you soon… Monique XXX.’ Adam bites his lower lip until it hurts. Three kisses. In its minutiae her language is alien to him. He’s trembling, the handset shakes; he fights to calm himself, to think: the electronic bleep that woke him some minutes ago must have indicated an incoming reply – but at what early small hour, local time? It would have been after three a.m. in France. He pictures Lucien, late back from Brussels or maybe from a Parisien club (or date?), returning in the early hours to Adam’s imagined eighth arrondissement pied-a-terre, chic, minimalistic, where he now reclines amidst a static haze of cigarette smoke, one languid eye upon a late-night porn channel, the other overseeing his casual sex, the messaging of females of his current acquaintance. Now Adam scrolls down to the foot of the thread. It begins with a message from Lucien:

  ‘Hey – the Board is pretty dull without you. Hope you make it to China okay. See you. Let me know.’

  Now the crows squawk confusion as they flutter about Adam’s head. Which is it: let me know if you ‘make it to China okay’… or ‘see you’ (soon), let me know’? If he calculates correctly, the European Board meeting that Monique had opted to miss would have taken place while they slept last night. He guesses Lucien probably emailed after the meeting. Monique must have replied this morning while he was sleeping. Hardly daring to look, but knowing he has to, he scrolls up. What does Monique mean ‘in our personal circumstances’? What is she doing having this kind of conversation with someone she has insisted is no more than a colleague? Is he reading between the twisted lines of an affair? And again it strikes him as strange – two people who could be liaising in French doing so instead in English. What does that tell him? Is it Monique’s choice, or does Lucien just prefer the graphic freedom and ambiguity it affords? Now he reaches Lucien’s reply – the one that woke him – ‘We have good party. I can be in London? Lucien. XXX.’ Now the Frenchman reciprocates Monique’s three kisses. And what does ‘good party’ mean? Is it a coded euphemism for Monique’s consumption? And what inference should he draw into the tense – or lack of? Is it party past, or party future? – a party to mark some event at the Board meeting… or a private party in London with Monique as sole guest?

  Adam gets up and slides unsteadily to the window. His eyes follow the ant-like columns of students below, orderly regiments advancing across life’s educational battlefield, but his mind sees only Monique, a chaise longue, a fervent embrace, mouths affixed, moans thus nasal and suffocating, outerwear pushed aside, underwear pulled asunder – the urgency too great – the shadowy monochrome world of the French movie. Afterwards her briefs sticky, oozing, damp.

  He rests against the cool glass, rotates his forehead to ease the hurt; how can she be so outwardly normal towards him – loving, caring, affectionate, admiring – and yet pursue in parallel some other allegiance? He agonises – has Jasmin-Sharon been the salve poured upon her consc
ience, the special treat for him, the naïve reward of illicit sex for his unwitting compliance with her own infidelity? Could that be the idea Monique has fashioned, convincing herself such a tit for tat is permissible, equitable, guilt assuaging? He groans out loud – but why would she do such a dumb thing as leave her handset on display – surely she has learnt that lesson by now – indeed he suspects she’s deleted messages since the incident of the midnight text… and now they’ve moved to email. He wonders, perhaps the battery was on its last legs, then maybe Lifen called up from the lobby and so she just forgot it in her hurry to leave? Or is she willing him to discover the exchange? – guessing he’ll check her messages while she is gone – creating a breathing space between the revelation and the inevitable interrogation that will follow – choosing a place five thousand miles from home – safely away from Camille and the domesticities that may pluck against her heartstrings?

  A long line of single-decker buses, white adorned with citrus-green graphics, has moved to fill the road in front of the pillared fencing of the university campus – he’s reminded of Monique’s comment about threes… but in China it seems they come by the dozen. He watches, drills his fingers into his temples, rubbing in circles as if to erase the unwelcome itinerant scrawls from the canvas of his mind. Then he breaks away determinedly and locates Lifen’s card. Using the hotel telephone, he taps out her number, his heart pushing up into his throat like a live creature that he’s swallowed and now it’s trying to find an escape route. Little warning voices tell him to cut off the call, but Lifen answers: