by Simon Brooke
'Yes. I mean, no, she doesn't look ... like that.' I feel indignant on Marion's behalf (guilt again) but I suppose that is how she must appear to the rest of the world.
'Christ, I'm thirsty tonight,' she says, sticking her head into the fridge. 'You and her together, then?'
'Yes, we are,' I say in a very English sort of way.
'Kinky. She's old enough to be your mother.'
'I like mature women,' I say even more stiffly. Louise comes over to me, opening a diet Coke. She looks me in the face.
'Course you do, mate. Why not? I like older men - especially if they've got a bit of cash.' She takes a swig of Coke and waits a moment for my reaction. 'She should see you all right. That house must be worth a couple of mill. Hey, you might get a flat like this, play your cards right. You're a good-looking boy, not bad where it counts.' She makes a playful grab for my crotch and I immediately pull away. She laughs.
'Why did you bring me back here?' I ask slowly.
She looks surprised by the question. 'Because I just fancied someone my own age, I suppose.' She fiddles with the tab on her Coke can. 'And because you were the best-looking straight guy at that party. I thought if I didn't get you someone else would.' She looks up at me leeringly. 'Bit of a trophy fuck, I suppose. You should be flattered.'
I sort of am. But then I'm also just a commodity, a piece of meat. It's becoming quite a familiar sensation.
Louise walks away.
'G'night, mate. Make sure the door's closed behind you.' As I walk out into the warm night air fatigue catches up with me. My feelings of shame about Marion are mingled with a sense of unease. Presumably Louise produces that little performance on a regular basis for whoever pays for her flat.
And perhaps that's it. For all Jonathan's grinning, charming bullshit about his escorts offering nothing more than companionship and anything beyond that not really being part of the service, perhaps if you really want: a nice flat rent free, clothes bought for you and enough pocket money to do your own thing you've got to fuck for it.
Chapter Eleven
I put my key into the lock and creep in. The house is half in darkness and still smells of the party. I take off my jacket and undo my trousers. The zip is totally buggered and the material around it creased and pulled out of shape. Marion must never see this, I tell my shadowy face in the mirror. Then it occurs to me that even if she does ever buy me a suit it'll only be to replace this one and I'll end up just breaking even. The shirt isn't as bad as I first thought - I've lost three buttons but I can easily ask Anna Maria if she'll sew them on again and not tell Madam. My tie is so tightly knotted I don't think I'll ever get it undone but with a bit of luck Marion will be so embarrassed she'll buy me another one as Mark suggested. God, at this stage even a new tie would be nice.
I take my shoes off and creep upstairs. Needless to say, Marion is still awake when I tiptoe into the bedroom. 'Where the hell have you been?' she asks quietly, without moving.
'Er, just seeing Louise home,' I say lightly.
'Oh, yeah?'
'Yeah, she, er, she was a bit nervous about going home on her own at night.'
'She was nervous? I would have thought that most of the men in West London had more reason to be nervous,' whispers Marion venomously. I begin to take my underpants off and discover that my dick is stuck to the material. I pull it off as gently as I can but can't help gasping in pain. 'Now what?' says the voice from the bed.
'Nothing. Just going to brush my teeth.'
'There's some mouthwash in there too.'
The next day, Saturday, Marion has gone out by the time I wake up. Her side of the bed is just a vast, empty expanse of rumpled retribution. Oh, Christ, I've done it now.
An hour later while I'm eating the Rice Krispies, which I've finally persuaded Anna Maria to buy by writing it out for her, my mobile rings and I answer it. I hear a muffled voice at the other end saying she wants a change from white lilies, they're such a cliché.
'Hello?' I say, realizing that it is Marion. She's rung me and then got carried away bollocking someone. Probably, just practising for me. 'Hello-o-o-o?' I say again.
Anna Maria, pouring more coffee for me, looks enquiringly.
'Madam,' I say. She rolls her eyes and walks off. This makes me laugh.
'Some of those cute pink and purple ones,' says the muffled voice irritably. 'The ones you said came from somewhere.'
I try again. 'Hello, Marion?'
'Andrew?' says Marion.
'Hi,' I say nervously.
'I'm just buying some flowers.'
'So I heard.'
Marion ignores me and says, 'I need to talk to you. Meet me in Joe's in half an hour.'
'But I'm not dressed, yet. Make it an hour.'
'Not those,' screeches a voice from the other end of the phone. 'Some fresh ones - those look like they've been under an elephant's ass for a month.' Then, 'Andrew, it's nearly eleven. Really! Have you just got up? OK I'll just come home.' She rings off.
I put the phone down. That's it - I'm going to be chucked.
And I deserve it. Bloody Louise. Fucking Louise, more like. I do feel bad about Marion. I was never once unfaithful to Helen from the time we started going out in her first term at university to the time she dumped me when she was coming back from France. Four years and not once.
I had offers. That party, in a flat off campus when Helen had gone home for the weekend to see her parents. The girl in the doorway of the kitchen. Slightly pissed, face flushed, breasts heaving, under the thin fabric of her dress, leaning back against the doorframe. Laughing, saying things like, 'You're so horrible to me, I hate you.' The kind of things girls say when they really fancy you. The smell of her warm body and perfume. I was tempted. I took another swig of warm lager and looked at her lips as sh• ran her tongue over them, waiting for me to make a move.
I did make a move. I muttered, 'Better go. Got an essay to do tomorrow,' and staggered off home.
Marion is walking through the door as I come downstairs, freshly showered and shaved. She is wearing sunglasses. A bad sign. Chris is following her, trying to manipulate the biggest bunch of flowers I've ever seen through the front door. I'm guessing they're not for me.
'Hi,' I say as brightly as I can.
'Hello, darling,' she says.
There is a silence as she puts her bag down and helps herself to a glass of Perrier from the drinks cabinet so I say, 'What are you doing for lunch today?'
She says quietly, 'I have a luncheon engagement with an old friend but Anna Maria will fix you something.' She looks across at the driver. 'Chris, just leave those flowers on the settee and wait a moment, I need to go out again.' He nods and obeys. She takes a sip of water.
Oh, Marion, please get this over with. Just tell me we're finished and let me get my stuff and get back to normality. 'OK,' I say quietly.
'Sit down.' She pats the cushion of the settee next to her. I sit down. She doesn't take off her sunglasses. 'I just wanted to check something,' she says, looking straight ahead at the far wall. 'You didn't sleep with Louise last night, did you?'
I'm suddenly very much aware of Chris, the driver, being in the same room with us. He is staring out of the window, having laid the flowers down on the settee. I don't know what to say but somehow my mouth has started without me.
'Louise? No. I - I just saw her home, like I said.'
'She didn't make a pass you?'
The idea that Louise, drunk and giggly, would drag me back to her flat without trying it on just doesn't sound convincing so I say, 'Well, she did, sort of but I, er, resisted,' I stammer. I resisted? What am I on about? Suddenly I'm the virtuous heroine in a Victorian melodrama. Why is it Marion makes me say such weird things?
'Good.' She squeezes my leg affectionately. 'Good boy. I really can't stand cheaters. You know, after Edward.'
She looks round, touches my cheek and stares into my eyes. I look for hers but all I can see is my shameless, lying face reflected back at me from
the huge black lenses.
Yes, all right, I lied. I had a one-night stand and now I've lied about it. I am a pathetic little piece of shit, I admit it. But I've never been unfaithful before, that's the point. My mates were straying all the time. I provided my friend Ben with an alibi half a dozen times but I was always completely faithful to Helen - and look what I got for it. I'm twenty-four and it's about time I did what most blokes my age having been doing for years: having great, mindless sex whenever they feel like it.
Besides, from what Davina said at the party, Marion's been lying to me for the three weeks since we met, which is kind of hurtful in its own way. Unless Davina really was just bonkers. Anyway, Marion and I really does feel like a fling, not like we're going out properly. How could we go out together in the usual sense? We're hardly likely to get married. And I know from what Davina says of her past that Marion's no angel.
'I want you to wear that Rolex,' she says suddenly. Oh, God. Why now?
She reaches round to the table next to the settee, opens a drawer and takes it out. She opens the box elegantly and there it is, gleaming in the sunlight - Swiss-made, accurate to a few seconds a year, waterproof, twenty-two carat guilt, I mean, gold.
Now I do feel like shit. She hands it to me and I put it on while she watches.
It does look good, though.
'Thank you,' I say, kissing her on the lips.
'I know it's difficult for you dating an older woman. It's difficult for me with a younger man. I've never done it before, either,' she says, taking my hand. 'And I know that the world of luxury you've been thrown into takes some getting used to but if a relationship is worth having, it's worth working at.'
'Yes, I know,' I say, overwhelmed by this sudden outburst of emotion. What is she saying? I thought she thought we were just having fun.
'I want you to wear the Rolex tonight.'
'Sure,' I say quietly. 'Where are we going?'
'Well, I'm going to a dinner party,' she says, closing the box and putting it back in her handbag. 'But you're having dinner with Channing.'
'What?'
'I said to Channing you'd have dinner with him.'
'Without you?'
'Like I said, I'm going to another dinner party.'
'What? Go out with him? Oh, Marion.' I knew this was too good to be true.
'Just have dinner with him.'
'What? With that old poof?'
Does Chris snigger from across the room?
'What's a "poof "?'
'Poof. Fag.'
'Don't call him that,' says Marion, closing her handbag with a resounding snap. 'Channing is one of my best and dearest friends. I am sure if you get to know him, he'll become one of yours too.'
I get up and begin to pace the room. 'Unlikely.'
'Andrew. It's an invitation to dinner. You should be flattered,' she says, getting up.
'Flattered? He just wants to-to-'
'To get to know you?'
'To get my trousers off.'
Chris is definitely stifling a giggle now but I don't care.
'Andrew, don't be ridiculous. He knows you are my lover.' She pauses. 'He knows you would never be unfaithful to me.'
Ooops. I try another tack. 'Oh, Marion, come on-'
'And I'm sure you won't object to some free dinner.' A bit below the belt, that. I sigh deeply. 'Oh, OK, then. If it'll make you happy.'
'Good. I've said you'll be there at eight.'
Strangely enough, when I get home to get changed, Vinny is lying on the settee watching TV. He has the phone carefully wedged between his face and a cushion.
'So? What was she like?' he says, raising his eyebrows in welcome at me. 'Yeah? Yeah? Ah, rampant nymphomania - I've always admired that in a woman.'
Oh! God. Normality. How I miss it.
I walk along the tiny Chelsea street where Channing lives, counting down the numbers on the toy houses until I come to his. I'm wearing my blue blazer and a pair of very ordinary grey trousers that I haven't worn for ages. Catching my reflection in the window of the tube train I decide it's probably some desire to want to appear as wholesome and clean-cut as possible. Except that the stripy tie makes me look like a schoolboy.
Since I started in this business, getting dressed has become something of minefield. The idea was that I'd acquire a wardrobe full of gear and enjoy choosing what to put on every day. Instead I've got the same stuff plus quite a few other bits I've had to buy myself. My credit card bill is probably affecting the balance-of-payments deficit. Deciding what I should wear each evening occupies my mind from lunchtime onwards. It's just lucky that I haven't got anything more important to think about.
Lying in the bath, earlier in the evening, I tried to look on the bright side. I might find out something more about Marion. Perhaps she really has been just lying to me and I've believed it all, like a fool. Perhaps she is not as rich as she says, or perhaps she just invented her entire past because she thought it would impress me.
Or perhaps Marion wants to get something more on me.
Find out whether I did do it with Louise. Discover my true intentions, check that I'm not just a paid escort on the make - which I'm not, of course.
Or perhaps Channing hopes I am, that I'll go out with anyone who pays, that I'll do anything for money. Is that why he is so keen to have dinner with me? Oh no, I hope not. I feel slightly sick at the thought of it. Anyway, it's not going to happen. Funnily enough, it's not even the physical act, it's the seediness of it. Look on the bright side though, I might meet some new people - female ones, that is - who might help me out financially if, when, Marion dumps me.
At least, as Marion so kindly pointed out, I'll get a free dinner.
I watch him for a moment through the front window, phone clamped under his chin, spinning around the room, adjusting the invitations on the mantelpiece, shoving a new CD in the machine, throwing glossy magazines into a pile in the corner. I am just considering how likely it would sound that I had forgotten the address and the phone number and so I had not been able to meet up after all, when Channing turns and sees me. Still on the phone, he raises his eyebrows and shouts over his shoulder at someone.
As I walk up the few steps to the front door it is opened by the maid, a dour, wrinkled little South American woman, probably aged well beyond her years. How did I know he'd have a South American maid? Inside the house dance music is belting out of the CD player.
'G'd evening,' I say.
She looks at me mournfully and I realise that she has obviously never had a good evening in her life. Her days are probably pretty grim as well. She lets me in and walks back down the hallway.
Suddenly a tiny dog appears, yapping around my feet. I wait until the maid has turned her back and is disappearing downstairs again and then try and kick it away. Obviously thinking this is a game, the little bastard comes back for more. I turn to it and start mouthing 'Stay' and holding up my hand. It leaps up at my finger, snapping and snarling, its diamond collar glinting in the light of the chandeliers. I yank my finger out of the way and hold my whole hand up. Now it thinks I am doing some kind of dance and so it gets even more excited. Still backing off, I walk straight into Channing who has obviously been wondering how it could take anyone so long to travel the three yards from the front door to the living room. Still on the phone he rolls his eyes and shrieks, 'Coco! Bad dog!' Coco runs off happily.
Channing finishes his call and puts the phone back. He looks me up and down, smiles coquettishly and asks what I would like to drink. For some reason I say beer, which he does not have, so I settle on Scotch with ice but without water. He has a vodka martini. Then he gestures me to take a seat. Like Marion's house, there is nowhere to sit comfortably, you can either perch on a tiny, hard doll's-house chair or collapse into a cotton-wool settee. I go for the perch option and immediately feel ridiculous. He, of course, knows which is the only sensible seat in the room and takes it.
We sit facing each other for a moment like one of us is going t
o draw and shoot and then, still smiling, he says, 'Well, I'm so glad you could make it.'
'So am I,' I lie.
'Nice of Marion to let you out of her sight for an evening,' he smirks.
'Oh, she does from time to time,' I say blandly.
'Marion usually keeps her boys on a short leash.'
'Perhaps I'm not one of her boys, then,' I say coolly. He laughs loudly and sweeps off to refill his glass. Grimacing with discomfort, I take the opportunity to swap seats onto the soft settee and sit bolt upright, my hands on my knees. He sits down again and smiles broadly. God, I wish he wouldn't do that. I'm beginning to recognize expensive dentistry when I see it.
'So, you from London originally?' he asks. Oh, Christ, we're not going to go through all this, are we? On the other hand, at least it is quite a safe topic so we do the whole thing and then move on to him.
He is originally from Georgia but had moved to New York City when he was about eighteen to escape his small-town parents and their small-town ideas. He worked in a clothes shop or 'couturier', as he calls it, on Fifth Avenue and ended up living with the owner. He then did the same thing with an interior designer, a night club manager and finally, an antiques dealer, where he learnt his trace. But he had got bored with New York and then went to Rio where he had some wild years and met Marion. Now he is giving London a shot.
Lucky London.
And it's OK. A bit quiet, you just cannot eat anywhere decent after midnight except Joe Allen's but it will do him for a while. I agree and say that it is a bugger that the Tube finishes at midnight. He laughs and I realise that he has probably never been on the Tube in his life.
Then he announces that we had better go or we will miss our reservation and he dashes off to get ready. I suddenly feel a lot more relaxed - partly at the thought of a short break from him and partly at the thought of some nice food somewhere.
I leap out of the horrible settee and have a good stretch, discovering that I can nearly touch the ceiling. I help myself to another drink and wander around the room, tripping up on a huge leopard skin rug. There is a lot of leopard skin now I that I come to notice it. His friend Irena, he tells me later, gave him the idea - she has a whole room decorated in leopard skin. 'Most of it real,' he says enthusiastically.