Congratulations, Nathan—fucked it up again. Poor old you.
I realise that I am currently slightly drunk.
This is fine, though, no need for alarm. In fact, quite the reverse. Just take this easy and things could be relatively fine. I am in control.
Because I am not remotely inebriated. I am only nicely, definitely, deeply and unthreateningly relaxed. Even here, in a house full of Maura, in her home, I am relaxed. Even now, when Maura is with me, her feet up on the sofa— shoes off, almost lying, shoes off, that small, domestic nakedness—I am still relaxed. Even when we talk about nothing and manage both our first and our second unforced laugh and are together in something so piercingly like the old, old way, I am relaxed.
I’m not really feeling any more, that’s the point to point out, pointedly. None of this hurts any more, none of this does anything any more.
I can’t feel me. I’ve gone. All gone. It’s always so wonderful when I’ve left me. So safe.
We’ve already been in the kitchen for a while—about half a bottle—but now we’re in the living room with only the light from one lamp and a cosy amount of central heating.
A bit too warm, really, but that’s probably only me and my share of the rest of the bottle, glowing away.
She fibbed about the mess. Maura clearly keeps the place neat—none of that middle-class London leave-it-to-the-cleaner sort of squalor. And I always did like her taste, the way she could build up a room into somewhere agreeable.
Of course, I’m not being foolish, not looking about too closely, in case I catch sight of a this or a that I might recognise. I am equally anxious not to see any traces of somebody else. Although I couldn’t help but notice that none are terribly apparent. I’m glad, if surprised, that she seems to have no bookshelves, in fact, no books—no chances for me to go searching out my titles.
She won’t have them.
You don’t know that.
Yes, I do.
No, what you do is you like her taste.
The slick voice from the dark edge of the head.
She knows yours and you like hers.You like her taste.
“Nathan, can I tell you something—something stupid?” She’s half grinning, biting softly at her lip. “This being the time of the evening when I might.”
“Please do.” Might what? “Surely.Tell away.”
“You always got it wrong and I never ... wanted to say.”
“But now?”
“Now it seems more appropriate.” She fusses at her fringe and I could almost swear that she is nervous—that, or something even nicer. “You see,” and now she rushes this, but nevertheless does say, “every time we talked about it—not that we did a lot—you’d always say that you were fond of The Story of O—‘especially the bit about the egg,’ but there isn’t a bit about an egg in The Story of O—that’s in Story of the Eye.” She breathes out audibly and slaps more wine down into her glass, not unshaky. “Just thought I’d say.”
Jesus, where the fuck did that come from and if I say . . . do I follow that with ... what does she want me to ... Jesus.
I try, “The bit with the . . .” raw egg broken between the naked buttocks, the licking of yolk close to the cunt, Jesuschristalmighty. “Well, fancy getting that wrong.” Lust wallowing in the stomach. “Not as sophisticated as I’d thought, eh. Darn it.”
Darn it? Darn it? Are you sui-fucking-cidal?
Move it along, dear God, just think of a dirty—no, of an erotic something, something subtle, something—
Maura lights a cigarette, hands confident again, assured. “Anyway.” It’s too late, she’s already retreated. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?” And maybe she never did really advance. “I don’t know why I mentioned it.”
Fuck your eyes, Nathan Staples, fuck your fucking eyes, you had it on a plate.
I try to watch her smoking. I don’t like smoking, but I have discovered that I can’t mind it when it’s hers.
I can’t mind anything that’s hers. Surely that means that I’m safe here, that I could even come back, now and then, and visit her with no ill effects.
And with no sign of current competition.
Ssh.
It would not be impossible for me to form a friendship with my separated wife. I can believe it would not be beyond us to grow accustomed to the tentative equation we already seem to make.
And I won’t try for anything more. I won’t.
Maura’s watching me, quizzical. “You’re staring, Nathan.” She smiles—also relaxed—taking time with her words.“But what can it be that you are staring at?” Everything she says sounds both wine-softened and meticulous. “Mm?”
“I, ahm, was just staring.”
“Which means you were thinking. About what?”
“About this all being ...” Oh, fuck it, why not?—I’m relaxed, she’s relaxed ... “About how nice this was: seeing . . . well, seeing you.”
“That’s . . .” She stops, looks briefly at a point somewhere between my feet.
And then I feel it: that sweetest, sweetest, airless moment when it happens, the slip into clear water, the change.
God, God, please.
The pulse in you ripping up from a standing start and you looking at her and her looking at you and then you can’t help swallowing—that cartoon, nervous-tension type of gulp that might be funny at another time, but currently feels simply hideous and uncool—before the stillness between you takes that one hot step and fixes you by the bone, lays you bare and makes you want it, makes you need her to see you, really see you—muscle parted, veins unzipped, right into the sad little shiver of your cells where, Jesus God, she already is, she already is, she already is.
Oh, shit, I’m too drunk, I can’t stop, I won’t be able to stop. This is . . . I’ve got no ... there’s no defence.
She stands, a brief unsteadiness making her grab at the table top and shudder the lamp’s light between us, while the room and my ribcage swing.
“It’s good,” she closes to lean a hand on each arm of my chair and has me wonderfully trapped, “it’s been good to see you,” and I catch her legs between my knees and I lift my face, as I know I should do, and watch her while she bends and then kisses me. Then I close my eyes while she kisses me and then open my lips while she kisses me and I am so hard and so living and so sick for more.
But Maura keeps her own kisses closed, dabs one at my forehead and then stops, leaves my thoughts staggering, my hands twitchy on her hips. She considers me, grazes my heart with a blink. “But this is really very—”
“I know, I know.” I fold my arms and close my legs as she slips from in between them with the best part of my soul in tow. “And I didn’t expect—”
“Of course you didn’t.” She kneels, dizzyingly, next to my chair and I turn, because she allows this, and hold her head to, once again, kiss. And now we do open, push, taste: the hard glide of her in my mouth and turning, trembling, drawing me forward to the edge of pain. This is the hungriness I remember, our hungriness.
She’s wet by now. Ready. For me.
Which would be fucking crazy, Nathan. Absolutely.
And wonderful.
I let her ease back, kiss the end of her nose to make her smile. “Thanks.”
Slowly, be slow, take it easy, be OK.
She frowns the way she sometimes does when she is actually happy, but thinking on towards something else.
Please make everything be OK.
She must be actually happy: her finger tips tracing, doing something light in the hair just beside my ear, making a shiver come in my throat.
Fuck, I could just . . . I would so much like ...
I notice I’ve caught hold of one of her hands, I kiss that, too. “That was lovely.” My hard-on isn’t dying, not at all, and I am glad, for the very first time, to be over forty. If I was one second younger I would have died, by now, of metastasised self-control. “Really.”
“Nathan.” I’ve made her out of breath. Myself, too.�
�Nathan, this is . . .” She frowns again, then softens. “Yes, it was. Lovely.”
I stroke her cheek and, while she looks away, grin like a bastard, a lucky bastard.
But don’t push it, not yet, be sensible.Think of the future, invest.
Fuck, I want to come. In my whole fucking life, I have never wanted so fucking much to just come.
“Do you, I mean . . .” my words have a shake in them, but I continue in any case,“it’s really late ... quite late.” And it drags at all of my vertebrae to say so, but I do,“I should really go, because we’re both a bit—with the wine and ... I would do the same thing stone-cold sober in the middle of the day, but . . . I should go. Do you think I should go?”
She doesn’t answer. I lean far over, rather uncomfortably, and kiss at the top of her head. I have always liked kissing, it is such a good thing. I could spend many days, perhaps weeks, doing nothing but.
“Should I go? Are there cabs?”
Yes, naturally there are cabs, you fuckwit. There are Manson-eyed, religious-maniac, all-night-healing-on-the-radio and asking-after-your-sins cabs, or seatbeltless-MOT-in-your-dreams cabs, or late-night, drunken, dope-fiend, axe-murderer, couldn’t-find-the-Houses-of-Parliament-with-a-fucking-map cabs. And I am really going to ask her to get me one?
Oh, yes, I really am.
The first time she speaks, I don’t hear her, I only catch the press of the one word like a punch under my belt.
And then she clears her throat, says it again. “Stay.” She doesn’t look at me. “If you’d like to.”
“I—” A new flush of aching sweat.
“I have a spare room.”
And then the bang of disappointed blood and the babble to cover my tracks, fill in the time I need to think. “Oh, yes, of course.Thanks.Very ... very good of you. I appreciate . . .Thanks.”
“I’ll make up the bed.”
Bed.
Fuck. Bed.
And why bother making it up, when I can just hang from your mantelpiece— it’ll make me feel less tense.
Bed.
“Nate?” I glance up, brain still grinding, and Maura is standing in front of me.“I’ll go and do that now, then.” She doesn’t move. “Will I?”
“Ah, if you . . . yes. That would be best. It is about time to turn in. Thanks.”
“The bathroom’s at the top of the stairs on the left, if you want to ... And your room would be next door.”
“OK.Thanks.”
“There isn’t much time, Nathan. I’m sorry.”
It puzzles me when she says this and she doesn’t explain, but I do understand when she holds out her arms quite gently and lets me stand up into them: holds me, while I hold her, my hips tucked back to keep her from pressing against my prick and knowing about its condition—not that she couldn’t guess. I mouth at her ear and breathe, “Thanks.”
“Stop saying thanks—you don’t need to.” And she fastens her arms at the small of my back, fits to me, all of me.
I will not scream, not out loud.
One hug in, no more, and then she’s walking and out through the door and I don’t see her face, can’t tell how she read me, or what she thought.
At least I didn’t come.
I allow her a decent interval to climb the stairs and set about things before I follow. On the landing, although I try not to, I can hear the lovely, dry disturbance of a blanket being smartly unfurled.There is also, of course, the working give and take of her breath. I can hear that, too.
I could go in and help her : the old mutual stretch and fold and tuck.
Which is why I shouldn’t go in and do anything.
“Nathan?”
“Yes.” Unless she calls me in, wants me in.
“Your towel’s the grey one—it’s over the side of the bath.”
“Fine, great.” Shit. “Mm hm.” Shit. “Mm hm.” Shit. I mumble off into the bathroom, sporting a plastic smile.
Find the light switch, flick it, bolt the door.
So.
OK.
And, perhaps, one more step forward.
And get the fucker out. God, Jesusgod, Jesus, oh, that’s it, that’s the boy.
We can at least, I can at least—even if she is next door. Especially if she is next door.
Oh, Christ.
Oh, Maura.
Darling.
Very much.Yes, very much. Indeed.
Not that she’ll know—although she might suppose it.
Ah, yes. She might. Nice.
But not that she’ll hear me, I’ll be quiet. I always am.
Out of the corner of my eye—this madman is standing side-on to the mirror, need cording in his neck.
Oh.
Ohfu, ohfu, ohfu, ohf.
The one blank moment.
The first wince in of breath.
And then again.
Ssth hhaa oh. Oh.
And the last of her, the last of me, spent in my palm, a cower of exhausted meat and a thick kiss spilt between my knuckles, something salt I’d had in mind for someone else.
Well, I’ll sleep after that, though. Maybe.
Maybe, in your fucking dreams.
Washing my hands in her sink with her soap. I should splash my face also: not looking my best at the moment: bad eyes and a drinker’s flush, red-wine tongue.
In my fucking dreams. I have a great deal of them.
She’s downstairs somewhere now.
Must have passed by the door while I ... must have.
I can hear her, locking up. I think, locking up. One of those homely, night noises, comforting.
Head’s rushing. My blood pressure’s screwed. Should sit.
All night with her here. Same house. Same floor.
You never know.
And she’s drunker than I am.
Dousing the face again.
And I’m drunk enough for anything.
My interest in life is firming again. Not like me to be so vigorous.
God, thank you.
Maura’s turned on the radio somewhere. She used to like to hear it while she did the washing-up: never music, always talk. I should go down and help her.
Like I used to.
When I wasn’t too busy, or off somewhere touring, or pissed.
I wasn’t so bad. Was I so bad? So awful?
I glower at my reflection, punchy, and then notice the shelf beside it, the contents of the shelf—the male shaving gear, the aftershave, the toothbrushes paired in the glass.The wall skips and hits me on the cheek.
She’s with,
with
she’s.
She’s.
No.
No, she’s obviously not.
She’s not with anyone—he’s not here. I’m here. It’s me who’s fucking here. It’s me she fucking asked to stay and me she kissed.
I slip down the mirror for comfort, settle to squat on the floor. As I sink, I pass through a layer of her perfume, it hurts me in my teeth.
He isn’t here, has maybe gone, really totally gone, but she hasn’t got around to throwing out his things.
And, fuck it, I don’t care.
Even if he hasn’t gone for good, but is simply absent—I am here and he is not. And my being here is that much more serious. It must have been a big decision to ask me back—a line crossed.That’s good.
That’s fucking wonderful.
If he’s not here, he doesn’t get her. I do. Because she’s mine.
My wife.
Never did divorce me.
Still mine.
So now I step into the breach. Right in.
And I spruce whatever can be spruced, brush at the jeans and tuck the shirt in better, feel glad of the modestly stylish clean underpants—I’m equally well prepared for road accidents or sex. Dry the hands again on my towel: and the face, and the back of the neck: don’t want to seem clammy for her. My cheek’s slightly red where I hit it, but I think I’ll be fine.
I know I’ll be fine.
My brain
throbbing gently against my balls.
I will have a backbone, a genuine spine, and I will walk downstairs and love her, because she is my darling, darling. She is my love.
I rummage carefully round for his comb, steady down my hair with it.
And fuck you, mate.
I leave the bathroom as I found it and lean over the banister, intending to call down something friendly, soft, perhaps only her name.That would be a start, our introduction to the rest of the night.
The radio is grumbling away still, louder—actually, surprisingly pin sharp.
“Sometimes I don’t understand you.You asked him back?”
“Well, why not?”
“Well, I would have thought it was obvious why not.”
“It wasn’t obvious.”
“He’s gone now, though, right? Hm? Oh, no you di—”
“It was too late and he’d drunk too mu—”
“He was too pissed to leave?”
“No. But I said he should stay. So he’s in the bathroom and keep your voice down.”
“Keep my—”
“He’s harmless, a bit boring. Good at what he does. Come on.That’s all.”
I hear her laugh.The tiny impact of a kiss.
And I think
That’s it, the sound of my death: a small laugh and a stranger’s kiss. How ridiculous.
And they stroll out into the hallway beneath me and Maura glances—of course, quite naturally, why not?—up and she sees me and I see her and I know from her look that she is sorry and that I am nothing, nothing at all.
Nothing that stamps its way to the foot of her stairs and nods and grins, more ludicrous than ever, and can tell—even so—that her other man has been out at his own brand of party, lager on his breath and smoking when Maura says that she wants to give up and I never did tell her about the cancer, there didn’t seem to be an opportunity—it would have felt like special pleading—and perhaps I might mention it now to pass the time and keep as utterly civil as I must, for fear of, for fear of ...
I want to kill him, to kill him the way he’s killed me.
Except that I’m nothing and, besides, I have already told them—or, really told her, I can’t quite look at him—already told her that I’ll just head on up and get some rest, although this is impossible and will not happen and instead I will lie in the dark of a room I will never remember, curled in my clothes on the bed she has made me and I will listen to the shifting of dirt behind my eyes and will never have felt so unclean, so utterly unclean, and I will listen to the house and the shake of me on the mattress and I will listen and, in the end, because they must, I will hear them come up and settle themselves for the night, I will hear them go to bed.
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