The Sexopaths

  ‘So what about his family?’

  ‘He has four older children, teenagers.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Yes… and yes – if you are wondering – they are still together.’

  ‘So you were pointing out to him his personal circumstances are not right either?’

  ‘Yes. I make the observation. Politely.’

  Adam had adopted an exaggerated sanctimonious note. ‘Given he’s offering to meet you at the first opportunity – has emailed you straight back on the subject – I don’t get the impression the wife and kids hold a lot of sway.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘So you think he would…?’

  ‘Would what?’

  Her tone had told him she’d understood the question and was only prolonging the inevitable reply. He’d said, patiently:

  ‘Like something to happen between you?’

  ‘I don’t know… I suppose… yes… maybe – but I don’t really know – you know how people can be – it could just be he would like to meet up to chat and have a coffee or lunch… to keep in touch. Who knows?’

  He’d tried not to let the word ‘yes’ derail him. Three letters slipped into a disjointed sentence. That she’d said yes meant the answer was yes, and she knew it, full well. A white hot nucleus of truth that gave an inner opacity to the smokescreen of evasiveness and self-denial that she’d wished to smother it with; for herself perhaps as much as for him. Rocking forward, tapping his bare toes on the floor tiles, through gritted teeth he’d managed to say:

  ‘For a coffee… do you really believe that?’

  ‘It is possible. We all meet business associates informally some time or other. You too.’

  ‘But it’s not very likely in this case, Monique. You both make special trips to London for a coffee?’

  She’d shrugged as if to say what more could she add, then remained silent. During the pause, a question had suddenly struck Adam that, until that moment, had not occurred to him:

  ‘Has he said he’s in love with you?’

  ‘Adam!’ Her retort had been instant, as quick as a reflex, affronted (though now he recalls it, not a denial). She’d continued:

  ‘I am only in love with you, my darling – you are the only one and have been since the first time we were together.’

  These words had worked some magic, causing him automatically to draw her into an embrace, in which they’d remained in thoughtful silence. He’d sensed her body folding gratefully into his; he too was feeling a thousand times better, despite a worm of doubt that gnawed away, deep down inside; his own rotten core, as yet unpurged. After maybe a minute, he’d felt Monique’s hand slide timidly beneath the waistband at the back of his briefs; they were still damp with sweat, and becoming aware of the contracting prickle of dried perspiration that coated his limbs, he’d said:

  ‘I need a shower.’

  ‘Je vous avez besoin de plus, Monsieur.’

  She’d pulled open the gown and drawn him down on top of her, imploring him to take her quickly, rapaciously, calling out loudly, repeating his name, that she loved him, that he felt so big inside her. Now, as they repair together, she has brought to mind such flattery, an observation she hadn’t made for a good few years, he can’t silence the devil’s advocate that says she must be making a comparison – that a recent experience that has suddenly cast him in this different light – not realising her admiration reveals the barely conscious knowledge. He shakes his head to disrupt the cynical voices that echo about the corridors of his mind, looks skywards for distraction: incongruously, overhead a multicoloured pastiche of laundry adorns the boughs of the trees. Monique, meanwhile, has stopped in her tracks, their arms slowly extending to their full reach as he first continues, then is pulled to a halt, like a train stretching its couplings.

  ‘Look – my darling – what do you think is in there?’

  He follows the line of her indication across the street to what appears to be some kind of open-fronted indoor market, where scores of milling Chinese are carefully examining wares laid out beneath hanging aluminium parabolic lamps. They cross and enter the building; though the only Europeans, no one seems to pay them any heed. Adam realises in fact it’s a large covered courtyard, its roof a Heath-Robinson affair of stanchions and clear corrugated plastic. Traders operate from trestle tables, while others squat on the concrete floor surrounded by their goods, some of these as yet unpacked from polystyrene cool-boxes, those on sale spread about their ubiquitously sandaled feet. The product, whatever it is, seems homogenous at first sight: hundreds and hundreds of round white pill-boxes each about the size of a teacup, with silvered metal lids. Prospective customers – all male – are taking one container at a time, gingerly opening them, lifting them up to their faces and prodding the contents with a small stick. Generally dissatisfied, it seems, they move on to the next box and repeat the little ritual. Adam, aware he’s too obviously a tourist who isn’t here to buy, doesn’t feel able to pry himself, but being taller than the entirety of the intensely preoccupied clientele he manages to steal a glimpse over a particularly short Chinaman’s shoulder. He turns to Monique, whom he notices is more preoccupied with her open-toed shoes and the less-than-hygienically maintained underfoot conditions. He hisses:

  ‘Crickets.’

  ‘Pardon, my darling?’

  ‘They’re buying crickets.’

  ‘Yuk - to eat, do you think?’

  ‘Hardly, one at time. They’d be here all day at this rate.’

  ‘For a love potion, perhaps?’ She giggles.

  Again it’s a remark that jars his still-tender sensibilities. He says:

  ‘I think they’re listening to them.’

  Monique looks nonplussed. ‘Lifen will tell us. And we must remember to ask her if those DVDs are okay to buy.’

  Adam nods in assent, but as he does so the Chinaman over whose shoulder he’d towered turns triumphantly, clutching a pill-box between both hands as if it’s a much-wanted trophy. He catches Adam’s eye as he squeezes past and, confirming Adam’s theory, quips in English:

  ‘Beautiful song.’

  ‘Congratulations. Cliff Richard.’

  Monique casts a worshipful glance at him as he takes her hand and begins to tow her through the crowd back in the direction of the street. He says:

  ‘Where the Spanish do canaries, the Chinese do crickets – must be a lot cheaper to keep.’

  She affects a shudder. Adam is familiar with her uneasy relationship with household bugs, and he’s a little surprised she didn’t make a more rapid exit when he announced they were surrounded by thousands of live creepy crawlies. Now, their short but congested escape route takes them past bowls teeming with paddling terrapins of many varieties, caged birds that look suspiciously like the local house sparrows, and rabbits in containers so small that he guesses the unfortunate creatures are not destined for careers as domestic pets. Monique is evidently thinking along similar lines; she says:

  ‘Remember we have promised Camille a rabbit for her birthday.’

  Adam nods. He’d originally protested the impracticalities to Monique, and had hoped the pledged bunny would become usurped in Camille’s wish-list by some more salient and self-reliant must-have electrical item. Now he feels strongly and urgently that he wants to buy Camille a pet. A puppy perhaps? He pictures the three of them huddled before the flickering hearth on Christmas morning, Camille ecstatically nursing her tiny tail-thumping charge, Monique looking on dewy eyed. Stepping back from this imagined scene of family bliss, he realises his motivation is not of altruism towards Camille, but in order vicariously to cement the bonds between Monique and himself. As they emerge back into natural light and turn along a line of open-fronted shops and stalls displaying mainly practical goods, housewares, ironmongery, he says:

  ‘That guy – he doesn’t care about Camille.’

  ‘What are you talking about, my darling?’

  ‘The French guy.’ Adam doesn’t even want to say
the name Lucien, as if it’s an admission of him into their private circle, recognition that he has a place within their lives, a status approaching that of a former lover or ex-partner that he doesn’t wish to grant. ‘Your President.’

  Monique looks at him with a questioning, though openly pained expression in her eyes, as if he’s directly accusing her of inflicting harm upon her precious child. He wonders if it’s an insight that until this moment hasn’t formed in her consciousness. She doesn’t reply directly, so Adam elaborates.

  ‘Does he care if Camille’s mummy and daddy split up? Does he care about me? No way. You – does he care about you? Causing an irreparable fracture – something that would do that to your life?’ If Monique hasn’t looked at it this way before, then neither quite has he – and his inadvertent use of the nouns for himself and Monique, in Camille’s terms, has caused an anger to rise within him. He feels his grip on Monique tightening. He says:

  ‘So I don’t rightly care a great deal about him.’

  Monique pulls him closer. She says:

  ‘Adam, Camille’s mummy and daddy are not going to split up. I love you very much.’

  ‘And I love you very much.’

  They move on in silence, but his head still spins. The heat feels oppressive. Dodging oncoming cyclists, boneshakers overloaded with carrier bags and passengers, they cross a bustling side-street that’s like a small rushing river of travelling humanity, banked with what look like dwarf London plane trees where more garments hang, drying safely out of reach. As they land on the comparative haven of the opposite pavement’s shoreline they halt to examine a display of flip-flops and plastic jewellery laid out upon a blanket; there’s nothing of interest to them, but the distraction provides a temporary respite from the unfinished discomfort of reconciliation. They move on; in his mind’s eye, Adam sees shadowy images, flashbacks of events, moments, some real, some imagined, times with Monique, and others, she with the Russian masseur, the AMIE Board, Jasmin-Sharon, Lucien, emails, texts, phone calls… he strives to frame a question that will make sense of these elusive shapes, make something of the jigsaw; after a minute or so he says:

  ‘How did this happen, Monique? How come I made a fuss before… about things you said were nothing… yet I was probably right even if you were, too. How come here I am having to say it all again, and this time you’re so much closer to falling off the edge? It’s like a terrible kind of déjà vu – where the thing keeps repeating but getting worse each time. What have you done?’

  ‘My darling – nothing is getting worse. I have done nothing.’

  He wants to stamp, to shout, to shake her, to insist, to tell her to stop saying the word nothing! It doesn’t make sense, there can’t be nothing. But he maintains his composure; he wants to believe her. He says, patiently:

  ‘At least then you’ve acquiesced… reciprocated – I don’t know what conversations you’ve had, what emails you’ve sent.’

  ‘If you mean to Lucien… look – we have hardly talked. He does not speak very good English and, at the meetings, I am a little embarrassed to speak French because I sound silly.’

  ‘It didn’t seem that way to me in Mykonos. Anyway – you’ve obviously given out your email address and phone number.’

  ‘But of course – all of the members of the Board need to be in touch. There are communications and circulars going around all of the time – there is a central database with everyone’s contact details – I could not avoid it.’

  Adam slowly shakes his head. ‘ I don’t like it that you’re out there and people think you’re approachable, available…’

  ‘But I am not available… I am just nice to people who are nice to me.’

  His thoughts are strained, confused; he wants to attack, to criticise, but he knows she is right – and she can’t help it – her great strength just happens to be an agonising weakness for him in their relationship. He wants her to be attractive – he wants to fancy her – so he knows he shouldn’t be surprised if others do too. He says:

  ‘But you’ve let this guy think you’re available.’

  ‘I have certainly not.’

  ‘Look – I’m not saying I don’t believe you – it almost doesn’t matter – it’s what it feels like – that you’ve got yourself into a situation – you’re so close, can’t you see it? – you’re one email or text message away from having an affair – you reply with a date… and you’re having an affair.’

  ‘I shall not reply with a date, my darling.’

  ‘But what will you reply with…?’

  It irks him increasingly that she hasn’t already replied, negated the offer, terminated the connection, presented him with the gift of the news, the blood money. Monique says:

  ‘I shall find the right words – my, darling, Lucien is sensitive to the situation – he said he would not go to the last meeting if you were going to accompany me.’

  ‘You mean because I rang his number?’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘So you discussed that?’ His heart sinks anew.

  ‘Only to say… I thought I should explain what happened – that you had thought it might be… important – a message coming to my phone late at night.’

  ‘It was important all right.’ He’s pained that they – Monique and Lucien – have since had some dialogue about the matter: ‘Does he suspect?’ ‘Don’t worry, I can handle it.’ Why would Lucien say he should avoid him? Only out of some outmoded and extreme sense of honour would such an offer make sense; clearly no such protocol applies to Lucien – it could only be to minimise embarrassment, detection. ‘Monique,’ he wheezes as if the air is thin, faintness assailing him, ‘I’ve learned I couldn’t recover from you having an affair… you make me feel like you’ve had one.’

  ‘But I promise you – I have not had an affair.’

  ‘It’s not just humiliating… it goes so much deeper than that… I can’t even begin to explain what it’s like… that guy…’

  ‘My darling… Lucien… he has not done anything that should offend you… he does not read into things the way you do.’

  ‘Don’t make excuses for him. You’ve told me already he’d have an affair.’

  Monique bites her lip. After a few seconds she stops and draws him into an embrace beneath her umbrella. ‘My darling – there is nothing to worry about. I shall make you feel better. Just let me think about what to say.’

  As he’s speculated before, would she really let slip such a potentially revealing, intimate detail – that she and Lucien had privately discussed his reaction to the midnight text – if she genuinely had something to hide? Once again her enigmatic innocence creates an ambiguity that leaves him floundering – just how well does he know her? On the long flight at times she’d seemed distracted, preoccupied by some matter, and at other moments lately he’s noticed her drift, perhaps whilst reading, or to dwell in the bathroom in silence, apparently unmoving, or go awol from his side at the airport or around the hotel complex, reappearing with a look of surprise, as if she hadn’t noticed her own absence until she saw him standing alone. Where do you go to, My Lovely? He’s been holding his breath, unconsciously, and now sighs as they resume their meandering progress through the old town, a fast-disappearing slice of the original Shanghai, a disorderly maze of markets and alleyways where mingle smells of sewers and street food, its swarming natives seemingly impervious to the relentless tidal wave of modernity that rears up a block or two away, a twenty-storey tsunami. He spots a colourful print amongst a small collection propped up outside a store – Warhol’s Mao – and stops to take a photo, the irony appealing – in a flash, appropriately, a woman shopkeeper appears from nowhere to reprimand him; he apologises – he’s not sure what for – but gets the shot. They hurry on a little, chastened.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Pardon, my darling?’

  ‘I’ll leave it with you – to make me feel better.’

  ***

  ‘You wan’ sex massage?’

 
Adam lifts his head, and cranes to look round at the girl. He knows precisely what she means – she could hardly be more direct – and straws in the wind have warned him it was coming, but still he plays for time. ‘I’m sorry?’

  She cocks her head on one side, makes a telephone with the little finger and thumb of her left hand, and smiles sweetly. ‘I phone friend. She come do sex massage.’

  Adam lets his head flop back down upon the hollowed-out face-rest, the tiled floor below swimming before his eyes. Sounding exasperated, he says:

  ‘I think I’m hallucinating. You know my wife’s next door? With your colleague?’ He flicks out an arm to gesture at the dividing wall.

  The girl doesn’t answer – perhaps she hasn’t understood. She says:

  ‘You pay for extra hour?’

  ‘I don’t know – have I? Should I?’

  She doesn’t answer, but continues to tickle gently the back of his scrotum, adds more oil and smooths it along his perineum, around his anus. He closes his eyes, heart thumping, enjoys the sensation, safe at the moment. He can’t believe it’s happening, Jurmala in reverse, the fantasy: the pukka massage that crosses the line… except now it’s his turn. Could this be some extreme and misguided apology that Monique has contrived?

  It was Lifen’s boss who had recommended the hotel spa over dinner – one of the best in Shanghai, she’d said. But since when did the girls in five-star spas offer extras? And in the surely still prudish People’s Republic? There was no suggestion that it would be anything other than absolutely above board, none of the nudge-nudge intonation nor the sly smile that he recalls of Vladimir in Jurmala. He’d sat beside Monique and opposite Lifen, and so mainly conversed with her, while Monique chatted with her boss. Earlier, as afternoon had begun to fade into dusk, they’d drifted about Shanghai, wearied by the humidity, taking in the sights with calm indifference: groups of shiny balding old men rolling rattling dice in the streets, squatting round on packing cases, cackling; harnessed kite flyers despatching their dreamlike creatures from the lengthening shadows, soaring up to feed in the setting sun; the darkening Bund – their destination – its sky-high neons and boat-borne giant plasma screens springing twinkling into life; new and old endlessly juxtaposed in the sprawling nation city, unplanned, uncomely, a million Manchesters. The meal was superb, the surroundings sublime, though he’d have been happier with a back-street restaurant and a cheap taste of the real Shanghai; but it was politeness to accept the extravagant hospitality. Lifen had travelled back with them in the taxi, making sure they reached their hotel safely. She’d seemed happy – she’d offered to take a day off to act as tour-guide if they wished – they’d kissed her goodnight and headed straight for their room. Adam had quickly undressed and got into Monique’s bed, but he guesses he’d succumbed to tiredness before she’d finished in the bathroom; it had been a day that had drained his body and soul in equal measure, his whole entity awash with hormones and horrors. He’d surfaced into consciousness this morning with a residue of unease in his veins, lying in wait to ambush his waking with anxieties only temporarily erased by sleep. Monique was up and dressed, loudly clanking over a breakfast that had evidently arrived via room service.