Nine Ten Begin Again: A Grasshopper Lawns affair

by EJ Lamprey

  ‘She knows me as Mac through the theatre, and a bunch of us went on a leather night once for fun. She’s been going to a few leather bars since looking for Mac in this jacket and this hat, but she’d never be so uncool as to admit it.’ He shrugged indifferently, opened her door and went round to his side. She was still trying to wrap the lavish folds of the cape around herself so she wouldn’t pull it off her shoulders, and he glanced across the roof of the car with a crooked smile. ‘You, Cleopatra, have the slightly doubtful honour of being the first person to learn my secret identity.’

  ‘Cleopatra, is that my name for tonight?’ She gave a slightly breathless giggle as she got inside and closed the door. ‘Thank heavens, I thought I was stuck with Beulah. What’s yours, if not Mac?’

  He didn’t answer, concentrating on driving on the wet and busy roads. She’d forgotten her question by the time he nosed the car into a parking spot off the main road.

  ‘Eugene. Wait there a moment.’ He got out to remove the garish buckled and studded jacket he had worn to Angie’s to reveal a shirt of softest leather that fitted like a glove. He put the discarded jacket and biker cap in the boot of the BMW, and took out a plain duffel coat which he tossed onto her lap as he sat inside the car again. She watched his silhouette, fascinated, as he pulled a thin leather cowl down over his hair and eyes. Like a Batman cowl but without the pricked ears and plastic features; unlike most of the actors put into the Batman mask, he had the lean cheeks and jawline to get away with it. Just.

  ‘Eugene? Oh, your name. Really?’

  ‘It’s my real name. You didn’t think I was christened Donald MacDonald, did you? Can you walk about twenty yards to the corner so we can get a taxi?’

  She nodded, got out and waited while he locked the car. A beautiful boy, which he would have been, who had toured with shows like the Rocky Horror Show and Grease, and was called Eugene. And Clarissa still insisted he wasn’t gay . . . he had sounded defensive. No need. She wouldn’t have made a teasing comment for the world, because she was being trusted with more of his life tonight than she had expected. Not, perhaps, so odd that he kept a name he had otherwise discarded for the most secret part of his life.

  ~~~

  Donald cast a slightly worried look around the foyer as he handed in his coat and they went through into the room beyond, but Edge didn’t notice. All her attention was directed at her surroundings and she was utterly thrilled. There was a subtle suggestion of decadence about the décor, with stressed gilt and crackle paint in abundance, thick crimson carpet underfoot and a dance-floor ahead, surrounded with cocktail standing tables and, beyond them, glimpses of shadowed plush booths. At the far end of the dance-floor a manorial stairway rose magnificently into darkness, behind a large video screen.

  Donald put a light hand on her elbow to steer her towards the heavily gilded bar, which was tended by a burly bald man wearing, well, not very much. She turned on her built-up heels to look around the room again, watching a slowly-revolving spotlight as it picked up tables and padded booths and gleams off leather-clad men and women who were sitting together but, like her, studying the room rather than each other. Three Doric columns were set around the perimeter of the dance-floor, each with a single seat at shoulder-height, padded to match the dusky red décor. The music was good, thudding stuff that quickened the heart to match; loud enough to be effective, not so loud as to drown conversation.

  ‘Oh God, do you want to dance?’ He saw her rapt face, her head nodding slightly with the music, but she laughed and shook her head. In these clumsy boots, to dance with her own local equivalent of John Travolta? No, thank you.

  Once she started studying individuals she was reassured to realize that they weren’t beautiful people. Huge hips gleamed in leather tighter than hers and bellies strained behind enormous buckled belts. Some people looked rumpled in loose-fitting clothing. One woman in a tiny skirt and boots as high as her own looked on the verge of toppling forward under the weight of gargantuan breasts, while others strutted despite knock knees and skinny chests. She had been told fairly recently that confidence was more important than appearance and it was certainly being borne out here. There were some excellent figures, but she’d learned from Angie tonight how that had been achieved and smiled to herself as she relaxed.

  She accepted her drink and leaned one elbow on the bar to carry on scanning the room. A woman near her, looking around with a combination of arrogance and world-weariness, stared at her boosted cleavage. Edge looked away indifferently, thrilling suddenly to her feeling of anonymity. She wasn’t Edge Cameron, respectable widow, expected to behave as she had always behaved, polite and conventional. She was Cleopatra, ageless and enigmatic, and the hard bold glances she was already attracting were strangely thrilling. On her own, she’d have been completely unnerved. With Donald at her elbow, her daggers on her arms and her identity a secret, she felt invincible. She hooked a heel on the bar rail and, with a creak of leather, managed to perch on the bar stool to get a better view.

  ‘Are those chairs, the ones on the columns, for umpires?’

  Donald, unfamiliar in his half-hood, followed the direction of her gaze and his mouth quirked at the high seats.

  ‘I’d heard about those. The idea is that if you want a really macho partner, you climb up on one of those chairs and wait for someone to lift you down. Gets embarrassing if no-one tries, eh?’

  ‘And then? When she gets lifted down?’ She was fascinated and his eyes closed briefly behind the mask.

  ‘What do you think happens next, Edge?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I asked,’ she pointed out reasonably and his mouth twisted ruefully.

  ‘Oh, Miss Prim. I thought you understood. This is a place where people come for sex. Either they leave together or they go up the stairs to one of the rooms.’ He gestured at the video screen. ‘If they’re exhibitionists, they go to the video room, and switch on the screen.’

  Edge gasped and took a hurried gulp of her drink, then realized something.

  ‘Oh heavens, am I cramping your style tonight? But Donald, don’t you dare leave me!’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said absently, then tapped her arm and nodded across the room. ‘I think she’s going to try it. Doing a Rapunzel, they call it.’

  Edge watched, fascinated, as a hard-faced blonde in skin-tight white leather deftly swung herself up into the high seat, then challenged the room with a haughty stare and a flick of her long blonde hair. A smallish Roman gladiator wearing a leather kilt, cloak, and full hood went over and turned his head up to the blonde, one hand on her ankle.

  ‘Is he kidding? He’s smaller than she is! He’ll never be able to lift her!’ Edge could feel her eyes rounding with astonishment as she watched.

  ‘That’s Sputnik, he’s a regular at my usual.’ Donald was amused and faintly contemptuous. ‘He’s a lunatic. He also challenges for women, and wins more often than you’d think. He does get a surprising amount of action. Persistence pays off.’

  Not this time. The blonde flicked Sputnik’s hand off her ankle disdainfully and looked speculatively at Donald, who half-shook his head. Her gaze moved to a tall and very well-muscled man leaning against the wall, his ankles crossed. He shrugged and lifted his glass to drink, keeping eye-contact, and Edge drew a deep and slightly shaky breath.

  ‘This is definitely the “something out of the way” that I was looking for. I don’t even care that I’m spoiling your evening, this is fun.’

  Donald didn’t answer, although his mouth twisted slightly in a smile. He had looked away to watch two men who had just strutted into the room, and Edge, following his gaze, felt a slight stab of disappointment. Was that the sort of man he found attractive? She didn’t like the look of them at all. Unlike the other patrons who were fully clad, albeit with the occasional cut-out or swooping neckline to expose bosom or hairy chest, the newcomers looked more like the ones on the websites, close to naked with cross-straps, bicep and calf bands, and overlarge G-string
s protecting what they would no doubt scorn to call their modesty.

  Donald swivelled to stand in front of her, his blue eyes glinting through his half-mask.

  ‘Give me the collar, Edge.’ He took it from her as she obediently produced it, and clipped it into place, lifting her heavy false hair free. Then he leaned up against her knees, his face inches from hers.

  ‘Put an arm round my neck, don’t look around, don’t make eye-contact. Look besotted, if you can.’

  She laced her fingers loosely behind his head and smiled nervously into his eyes.

  ’Is it those guys? Do we need to get out of here?’

  ‘Play it by ear. You’re doing fine. I think they’re mainly bluster, but I could wish Angie hadn’t made you look quite so tempting.’

  ‘This is a hell of a time to finally come up with a compliment,’ she complained through stiffly-smiling lips and felt him shake with laughter against her knees.

  ‘Believe me, if you looked a little more like the resident in a retirement village, I’d be a lot happier right now. Did I not tell you how good you looked?’

  ‘No, you didn’t. I don’t count expensive hooker as a compliment.’

  She tried to watch the newcomers from the corner of her eye, as four more men entered, one of them leading a half-naked woman on a collar and chain. As she watched, the woman touched the man’s arm and he jerked round to glare at her. She flinched back and Edge’s eyes widened. She’d seen exactly that flinch recently; she knew that woman.

  ‘That awful Bateman woman is with them! Oh dear, Donald, I don’t like the look of them at all.’

  Donald turned his head fractionally to look, then went still as Sputnik came up on the other side of them and touched his arm. Even under the half-mask, Donald’s face radiated cold disapproval, but the other was undeterred.

  ‘We need to get your lass out now,’ he said in an urgent undertone. ‘I’ve run into these guys before, and they are very, very bad news.’

  Donald already had the leash in one hand, and twitched the sides of Edge’s voluminous cape together.

  ‘Hold it shut at chest level,’ he told her briefly, his voice subtly different, and looked at the smaller man. To Edge’s complete astonishment, he deferred to him. ‘What do we do?’

  The other jerked his head toward the door. ‘You behind me, the lass on our far side. Two of us, we should be okay, but these guys are bampots. If they challenge, are those daggers real?’

  Donald nodded and qualified it. ‘Blunted.’

  Sputnik nodded. ‘It’ll likely be okay, but if they challenge, lass, spring the one on your right arm for me. I’ll turn and take them, you keep moving. If anyone gets past me, Eugene will have to take him. Keep the dagger on your left arm for yourself at worst, but if you have to draw it, use it, don’t mess about. Go for soft spots, not for leather. Then run like buggery.’

  He turned, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and Donald lifted her lightly down from her barstool and followed close on his heels, his hand firm on her arm, pushing down. She obediently crouched slightly, cursing the boots that boosted her height and made it almost impossible to hurry.

  The incoming group was still swaggeringly spreading out, and although one of them looked across, he jerked his head at his closest companion, said ‘Sputnik’ and laughed. Sputnik raised his middle finger in wry salute and kept moving. Edge was terrified she would stumble, turn her ankle in the ridiculous boots, fall sprawling to the floor. She tried to distract herself by focusing completely on their little guide. His voice was naggingly familiar, and so was the bouncy way he walked—and why had Donald suddenly turned their safety over to a man he’d dismissed contemptuously only moments earlier?

  It seemed to take forever, but finally they cleared the gilt door and were in the empty foyer, through it and out to the cold wet street, taking deep breaths of the misty night air.

  ‘Sputnik, thanks,’ Donald said in the same disguised voice and the gladiator put his hand up under his mask, as though—Edge’s eyes widened—as though he were brushing up a moustache.

  Major Horace Chubb blew a gusty sigh of relief and, for the second time in their acquaintance, offered her his jerky little military half-bow.

  Edge opened her mouth but Donald’s hand, still on her upper arm, clamped shut so abruptly she yelped instead as he spoke again to the Major.

  ‘We owe you, pal. Big time.’

  ‘When you’re tired of Eugene,’ the Major looked at Edge, ‘look me up. Cor! But you can leave the daggers behind, haw haw!’

  She smiled, bent forward and gratefully kissed his masked cheek, not even caring that he was goggling down her bodice. He gave a breathy little whistle of appreciation, then flapped his hands at them both.

  ‘Go. Now. There’ll be more of them any minute, they hunt in packs. I’m phoning the polis before they start hurting anyone.’

  ~~~

  Edge rubbed her arm and Donald grimaced apologetically as they hurried round the corner.

  ‘I had to shut you up before you said anything and he realized who we were. I told you once before, he’s a good man in a crisis. We got lucky.’ He stopped walking as they turned into another street and slid his mobile phone out of his back pocket. ‘I don’t think we’d have got out unchallenged without him; they’ve obviously clashed before. He really would have taken on those goons with a blunted dagger and welcomed the chance. Totally over the top. I’m bloody glad he didn’t recognize us—nudge-nudge wink-wink around the Lawns wouldn’t have suited you or me at all.’

  He glanced up at the street name bolted to the wall above them and phoned for a taxi.

  ‘I’ve just realized, I’ve seen photos of him in action before.’ Edge’s eyes brimmed with mischief. ‘Do you remember, a year ago, I told you about the blackmail stuff Hamish and I had seen? There were photos of a man in leather getting all hot and sweaty with another man? I thought the worst at the time. No wonder he was paying up, they were pretty damning.’

  ‘Which is exactly why I wanted you unrecognizable. Poor old Sputnik! Are those bloody boots killing you? They said four to five minutes. Not too long to wait. We can go on to my usual, but it might be better to head on back.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to get them off,’ she admitted. ‘I can’t tell you how afraid I was that I’d fall over. They’re okay for walking, just clumpy, but horrible when I try to hurry.’

  Donald tweaked the folds of the cape around her again and peeled off his half hood, driving impatient fingers through his sweat-darkened hair.

  ‘I’m so sorry. That could have been really bad. I’m a bloody fool. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She smiled up at him. ‘It was actually exciting. In retrospect, anyway. And until the goons arrived I was enjoying myself, I can see why you go. It’s incredibly liberating, like a fancy dress party where you can behave exactly as you want because no-one knows who you are. Do you want to go on to your club? You went to a lot of trouble getting me dressed up, when I could just have worn a hood. Thank you for that.’

  He half-laughed. ‘The whole time Angie was transforming you I kept thinking you’d panic and call a halt. I don’t think we should push our luck. You were getting far too much attention, I’m not sure I could have kept you to myself much longer, Miss Prim. Everyone will be wanting to know who you were. A leather Cinderella.’

  ‘Leathery Cinderella, more like. Maybe I ought to get one of Angie’s little cement-mixers for everyday use. And,’ she pulled at a lock of the heavy black wig, ‘cut my hair like this and dye it.’

  He reached for the leash hanging down her front, and tugged on it gently.

  ‘Stop fishing for compliments, woman.’

  She swayed forward, smiling, but instead of smiling back he went still. His vivid eyes stared down into hers before he kissed her lightly, almost tentatively, on the lips.

  The pressure on the leash slackened immediately so that she could move back. Instead, and to her own astonishment, she swayed further forward. A
fter an almost infinitesimal pause his mouth came down on hers again. Not at all lightly.

  Chapter 4 – Wednesday November 13th

  It’s in his kiss

  She stood passive and unresisting as his arms closed round her, still astonished, not only that Donald—Donald!—was kissing her, but that she had invited the kiss. She should—she should be—but she couldn’t think what she should be doing to stop him, to put things back to the way they should be between them, because every nerve ending in her body was suddenly flaring to life in passionate response. She shuddered from head to foot, surrendering completely to the totally unfamiliar sensations storming her senses as she melted against him, and nearly fell when he pulled back, blue eyes blazing, and held her away.

  ‘Edge, no.’

  The world abruptly reappeared, street lights, passers-by laughing and talking, car tyres hissing on the wet road. She drew a ragged breath, her heart hammering, furious with herself and with him. The taxi arrived and she climbed inside on rubbery legs, heat flooding her cheeks, and wrapped the cloak around herself as she huddled in the furthest corner. He sat as far from her as he could after giving the driver the address of the Lawns, staring out of the window, his profile alternately shadowed and washed with the streetlights as the taxi accelerated down the road.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he told the window, as they started onto the M9, but she couldn’t respond, still alternately hot and cold with humiliation. Dressed like a hooker, kissing in the street, kissing Donald like a hooker in the street. . . she shuddered, and shuddered again, and wrapped the cloak tighter so it would look as though she was shivering with cold.

  He finally turned to look at her. ‘I should never have done that.’

  ‘Heat of the moment.’ Her voice was infuriatingly husky and she cleared her throat, adding lightly, in as close to an excuse as she could make for responding as she had, ‘You’re an unexpectedly good kisser.’