He turns to her and grins. “You,” he says, “just you. Be the cherry on top of my sundae. Hey, Melu, don’t move, not a millimeter, not a hair, you look incredible there. The light is catching you just right.”
He makes more adjustments, takes a few shots and then stops. “Do you have any red lipstick?” he asks. “And hair gel?”
She roots through her purse. “I have lipstick, yes,” she says, “but I’ve never used hair gel in my life.”
“Put a lot of lipstick on,” Gunther says, “so your lips look really dark.”
He looks at her critically after she’s done. “Wait,” he says, “I want images of you applying the lipstick.”
She does it again.
He cannot help but think that her somewhat old-fashioned dress fits the look of the place and he seats her at a table and has her mime the lipstick action again, with her looking into a small compact mirror and crossing her legs to one side; fifties poster girl look. The sunlight is a diagonal beam behind her, throwing her features into stark relief. He moves her to face into the direct sunlight and she squints at him.
“It’s very hard to keep my eyes open like this,” she says. But she is enjoying his attention.
“Do you trust me?” he asks and she looks at him with suspicion.
“To a degree, I suppose,” she says and he grins.
“Fair enough. I just want to do something with your hair, with homemade hair gel, the spit-in-hand variety. Will you indulge me?”
She agrees. He spits into his hands, rubs them together and tousles her hair. She leans into his hands slightly as he rubs and he works the curls into spikes. It is the first time he has touched her and she is very still, hoping this might lead to something more but he is all work, adjusting her hair and tucking a small strand behind her ear and her skin tingles, she feels electric.
He studies her. “Yes, that works, take a look.”
She gets up and goes over to look at herself in the mirror behind the counter. The mirror is dust-speckled and rust-stained and she catches more of a shadow of herself than her real reflection.
“That’s incredible,” he says, “do not move.” He shoots her reflection until he’s satisfied he got the shot.
“Uh,” he says, “you want to have some more fun? Take it one step further?”
“Oh goodness Gunther, don’t tell me you want me naked? That’s such a cliché.”
“I was thinking of you in your underwear,” he grins, “but naked would be fantastic, you’ll get no objections from me. Unless of course you’re wearing granny panties up to your waist and an industrial bra that my great-aunties would favour and you’re too embarrassed to show me?”
She gives him a filthy look and eases her dress over her head. “My underwear,” she says, her voice muffled by cloth, “is always topnotch Victoria’s Secret, my one indulgence in life, if you must know. Just promise me,” she says and her head pops back up through her dress, “that no one will ever see these except us.”
“You have my word.”
But then she quickly smooths her dress back down and blushes.
“What?” he asks, “you changed your mind?”
“Uh, well, I just thought of something. About the nakedness…”
“You’ve got your period?”
She flushes. She is not used to discussing things like that, not even with Hans; they’ve never mentioned bodily functions except in the vaguest of terms.
“I do not. But I don’t believe in shaving, the way women do these days. I won’t bikini wax or Brazilian wax. I’m proud of my hair. But I know it’s really not the fashion, in terms of your expectations.”
“Melu, I expect nothing except to be constantly, pleasantly surprised by you. Armpits unshaven too?”
She nods.
He is incredibly aroused at the thought but does not want to let her know. He hides his erection behind his tripod and motions for her to take her dress off.
She has always been very proud of her body and she watches Gunther’s reaction, not disappointed by his obvious appreciation. Her long legs, narrow hips, tiny waist and full large breasts. Her skin tone is flawless and he tells her so.
“And my underwear meets your approval?”
“It’s very sexy, Melusine. Let’s take some pictures like this and then get you naked.”
He sets her up in various poses and she is an instinctive model, holding a pose, folding into the shot, and merging with his ideas.
“Okay, I’m ready for naked if you are,” he says and she looks shy.
He positions her in the sunlight. “Now,” he says, “wait until I tell you and then slowly, very slowly, start to undo your bra and then take off your panties. When you slip your panties off, look at me, not down at the floor.”
She nods.
“Ready,” he says and she begins to unclasp her bra, looking down and then at him. She slips off her panties and stands naked before him.
“Melusine, you are utterly spectacular. You take my breath away.”
She is delighted. The entire scene is like nothing she ever imagined, but it all feels perfectly natural.
“I want to shoot you from above. Come and lie here, if you’re okay with lying on the floor? It’s just dust really…”
“It’s fine.”
This photoshoot feels like a dream. She is the centre of his attention and she would not be anywhere else, doing anything else.
He stands on a bench above her and from her vantage point she can see up his untucked shirt. He has a generous belly and she thinks about the ripped and toned Apollo Boys. Gunther is not quite what she’d thought she was after. If, in fact, she’s after him at all. She tells herself that she may not even be interested in him, in that way.
The poses get more and more graphic and Melusine doesn’t question him. She offers suggestions, experiments with angles.
“You’re so feminine and so strong,” he says. “You’re like a goddess.”
They finally run out of ideas and Melusine is tired. She feels as if she has run a thousand miles and her body is aching. She had thought too, that he would have made a move on her by now, and seduced her, and the fact that he has not, makes her irritable. She stands up, puts her hands on her lower back and stretches. “That was hard work,” she says.
She knows she had told herself earlier that she was not interested in him sexually, but that had been when she was assuming he was interested in her. She admits now that she had thought he was doing all this in order to seduce her and since he has not, she is becoming increasingly bad-tempered. She looks over at him.
He is standing with his hands on his hips, looking this way and that to see if he has missed any opportunities for another shot. His cock is causing his trousers to stick out at a right angle like a gigantic tent pole but he does not seem aware of it.
“Is that erection because of me or because you’re turned on by the art we just created?” Her tone is accusatory.
“I don’t rationalize my erections,” he replies calmly, turning to her. “If I did, they might go away and I’d like them to stay.”
She scowls at him, feeling betrayed, and stupid for it. She walks over to where her underwear has been left on the floor and she pulls it on roughly.
He watches her in silence.
Then she pulls on her dress, furious.
Taking his cue from her, he dismantles his tripod and sets about putting his equipment away.
She hates herself because she’s ruined the moment between them and she feels close to tears.
“Melusine,” he says gently and she looks at him, her eyes shining too brightly, “you fascinate me.”
She tries to laugh, tries to take this consolation prize. It is clear he has no real interest in her. Her hair is still spiky with his spit and she hasn’t wiped off the lipstick. She sits on the bench, waiting for him to tell her when they will leave. She looks around and her truculence leaves her as she watches the sunlight sliding in through the nailed-up boards an
d suddenly she feels magical again in this lost place.
He walks up to her and holds out his hand. She takes it and he pulls her to her feet. He yanks her close and puts her hand on his cock. He is rock hard through his trousers and he whispers to her, “no pictures now, are there?”
She does not move her hand and she leans in to him but he pulls back.
“I don’t think you know what you want, Melusine,” he says.
“How can I know?” she asks. “This is unchartered territory.”
He shrugs. “And, in mapping it so meticulously, you’ll lose all joy in the scenery.” He turns and walks across the room and climbs out the window.
But she stays for a moment.
I’m a cartographer, not a hedonist. I can’t change who I am.
She climbs out the window and joins him.
“What’s the time?” she asks and he looks at his watch and laughs.
“After two p.m.”
“My goodness. Do we still have time to go the State Park?”
He sighs. “Probably not. I guess I ruined this day for us.”
She grabs his arm. “No. You didn’t. I did. I’m sorry.”
He puts his arm around her. “How about we both stop blaming ourselves, okay? And maybe we should know this, that nothing either one of us does with each other is either right or wrong. It just is.”
With that she turns to him and wraps her arms around his neck. She kisses him, thinking that he won’t kiss her back, and when he does, she is startled and joyful.
He pulls away for a moment. “You want to try this again?” he says and she nods.
They climb back in the window and he leads her over to the sunlit area and pulls the dress over her head, pulls off her underwear while she undresses him, unzipping and unbuttoning him.
“So extraordinary,” he says, and he sucks on each of her breasts in turn, sucks hard.
She grasps his cock. “Can you make love to me first and then seduce me later?” she asks and he laughs, murmuring that he can do just that.
He fucks her while she leans across the bench, while she lies on the floor, dirt digging into her back; he fucks her while she sits on the bench with her legs spread wide. She opens herself to him and she pulls him toward her and she tastes every sensation she thought she would never have. Her lipstick is smeared and then gone, maybe it’s on his cock, his mouth, his neck, his ear lobes, his face.
He finally rolls over and lies on the floor, his chest heaving, his cock flaccid, reduced and wet.
“Melusine,” he says. “I’m done. For now, anyway.”
She’s lying next to him and she laughs. “Don’t worry. Me too.”
They’re silent for a while and then Melusine suddenly sits up. “I,” she says, “am starving. I’ve never been this hungry in all my life.”
He gets up and pulls on his shirt. Ravenous though she is, watching him dress makes her sad and he sees the shadow cross her face.
“More later,” he says, and he grins at her. “Don’t you doubt that. Time to leave the Love Shack, baby. Come on.”
He holds out his hand. “Let’s go and try to find some food, okay?” They climb into the sedan and drive off.
Melusine has no thoughts. The hot sunshine, the man next to her, the hunger in her belly, and the stickiness on her thighs all render her timeless, painless. She never knew it was possible to be so void and yet so full.
Gunther is driving at high speed down the road they had come, pursuing his path, not returning to the highway.
She sees something in the distance. “Oh my god, it’s a shop!” Buffalo Bill’s, in the middle of nowhere.
“We look a bit ragged,” she says, pulling down her visor and examining herself in the mirror.
“Who cares?” Gunther asks, and he pulls up the car in a cloud of dust.
They buy two bags of food: sandwiches, chips, chocolate, pop. A feast.
They sit outside in the dusty picnic area and eat without manners. “This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten,” Melusine says of her pre-packed egg salad sandwich. “And this Coke is superb.”
Gunther grunts in agreement, his mouth full. Melusine wishes she had a camera so she could capture him. She closes her eyes. Let me never forget this moment, ever.
He looks at her. “Wait,” he says. “Time for a picture of us together like this.”
She nods.
He sets up the camera and puts it on the self-timer. They sit close together, grinning without reserve, the remnants of their food around them. The camera clicks.
The sun sinks lower and the shadows become longer and the Joshua trees darken. The mountains to the one side turn black, while the others, in the spotlight of the western setting sun, glow a fiery red.
“What a place,” Gunther marvels. He looks at her. “I have an admission to make,” he says and her stomach grows hard and cold and the food she has eaten roils greasily.
“I don’t have any work scheduled in Vegas,” he says. “I cancelled it after the baby died but I never told my wife and then when things got worse between us, all I wanted was some time to myself, all I wanted to do was come and get drunk for a week and so I told her I was still booked.”
She takes his hand. “That’s understandable, don’t you think?”
“I just couldn’t stand it, Melu. I couldn’t do anything. It was my sperm that her body was rejecting and I saw that in her eyes every time she looked at me. I had failed her. Five times. I was the one to cause five unspeakable tragedies from which we’ll never recover. It’s my fault. And I wanted oblivion and I thought this was the one place to come where I could get that, where I could just disappear for five days and not have to feel the weight of all that pain.
“And I was so drunk,” he says, “that night you thought your door was mine. It was my second night. And being drunk wasn’t really working. I was drunk but I couldn’t forget. And then the next morning, after you were at my door, I saw you while I was eating my breakfast, you were waiting for your husband to book your tours and I followed you to the Skywalk.”
He looks at her. “That’s my admission. Are you angry with me?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “I couldn’t be, not even if I tried.” A thought occurs to her. “You leave the day after tomorrow?”
He nods. “In the morning, yes.”
For a while they say nothing.
He takes her hand and they sit there in the dirt outside Buffalo Bill’s convenience store.
“What would you like to do later?” he asks.
“I never want to wash again,” she says seriously and he laughs. “I don’t,” she says. “I want to keep the glorious stickiness of our day on me forever.”
“Okay, so showering isn’t on the agenda,” he says. “How about we go and hang out for a bit in the Fremont area in old Vegas? Watch the neon signs come alive. They have a light show that’s apparently spectacular. Then we can take the car back and maybe have dinner somewhere?”
She doesn’t care. She could sit on this piece of concrete forever with her feet in the sand.
“Sure,” she says, shading her eyes from the sun. “Sounds great. Look, not a cloud in the sky. Amazing.”
He pulls her to her feet. “Let’s head out on the highway,” he says, “looking for adventure and whatever comes our way…”
He starts singing Born to Be Wild and she hums along. They get back in the sedan and turn back the way they came.
At one point, Gunther pulls over on the lonely stretch of road.
“Are we running out of gas?” she asks.
“You’re very anxious about our gas situation,” he says. “We’re fine. I just thought it might be nice to make love to you again, unless you have any objections.”
“None whatsoever,” she says, laughing, and he slides his fingers under her dress and pulls down her panties, while she turns to him and kisses him deeply, unbuttoning his shirt.
It is amazing, she thinks, how they manage to do this so perfec
tly, as if they have choreographed it, their movements perfectly aligned.
He pushes her seat all the way back and she tears off her dress and bra and pulls him on top of her. Her left foot is anchored on the steering wheel and she raises her hips to him, holding onto his back. The sunshine is hot on her hands and their bodies are slick with sweat and they come together and he lies on top of her, not moving.
“Too heavy?” he asks.
“No, you’re perfect.”
“We’re going to get stuck like this you know,” he says, “when all our bodily juices dry.”
“Superglue,” she says, sleepily.
He rolls off her gently and pulls on his shirt. She grabs her dress and pulls it over her head, stuffing her bra into her purse. She retrieves her panties from the floor of the car and tugs them on.
They turn to grin at each other.
“I’m thirsty,” she says and he finds a leftover bottle of Sprite that is hot but tastes just fine.
They head back to Las Vegas and she watches the sun dropping low behind the mountains. The Joshua trees are now black silhouettes, backlit by a hellfire glow.
“Where are the stars?” she asks anxiously, craning to look.
“They’re still there,” he reassures her. “Just not visible yet. They’ll arrive, give them time.”
Just before they near Las Vegas, a blood red moon appears in the sky, as large as a grapefruit and Melusine sees one star, just one, before the city lights obscure all else. She makes a wish.
They park near the Fremont and she smooths down her dress with her hands and laughs.
“I can’t imagine how I look,” she says.
“You look more beautiful than I can describe,” Gunther tells her. “Wait. I must lock my camera in the trunk, this area doesn’t look all that safe.”
She waits for him and they walk down through the Fremont, ambling, window shopping, chatting.
They stop at the far end, down near The Plaza hotel.
“That’s where Frank Sinatra used to perform,” he tells her.
“Does it still work?” she asks, dreamily.
“Do you mean does it still operate as a hotel? Yes, I believe it does,” he says.
She is leaning back against him, and they are listening to some techno music while the strippers on a bar counter dance out of time, swinging their hips from side to side like a school chorus without meaning.
A Glittering Chaos Page 9