Sydney to Alice Springs. One Holden pick-up truck. One city boy, freshly scrubbed; one London wife, not. The city stop-start vanishes into a six-lane freeway and a biblical sky. The car’s the cabin confessional that will be the two strangers’ close quarters for the next 4,000 kilometres.
He’s called Nick. He’s 24. He’s two years past a girlfriend situation that never really connected. She’s called Sarah. 33. She’s never loved her husband, or maybe she did, once; she doesn’t know.
“You’d know, Sarah, you’d know.”
“Hmmm.”
She smiles and stretches. Three days to go.
Sarah’s on holiday in Australia, visiting a sister who’s not as sick as her husband thinks. She wants to learn to drive manually – she’s never mastered it. She’s hired a car, roped in her sister’s neighbour to teach her – she’s never done anything like this. He’s a painter with some free time; he wants to find the light in the desert that hurts. And to teach the woman from England whose skin is so luminously pale that the whites of her eyes appear pale blue. She has a beautiful neck.
Sarah examines the puppy-like energy of her instructor’s hands as they roam the new buttons of her car, triggering wipers and windows. She laughs. Nick does too. She muses over the kink of his wrist as it rests on the steering wheel. There’s a looseness in him; it’s the ease of someone who’s been loved very much. He’s like a rock that’s been hit by the sun for too long and has collected its warmth and shines with it. He has a beautiful wrist.
Sarah smiles like a child who’s been caught with the last of her grandmother’s chocolates. She examines the dirt on her palm, like river lines on a map, and the dust that’s claiming her feet. She’s revelling in the strange, inexplicable glee coming over her; the unravelling. She yanks down the window and holds her hand high, butting the breeze.
Dubbo, a dot on the map, is swept through in near-darkness. They push on to the next town and suddenly a thick tiredness drags through them both.
They’ll stop at the next dot.
“Nevertire,” says the map.
“Who’d call a town Nevertire?” Nick asks.
Sarah doesn’t answer. She’s good at that.
“Hey? Who’d call a town that?”
The pub owner is Ron. Tattoos cram his arms; the ink is so dense that from a distance it looks like he’s been horrifically burnt. Nick asks for a room. The bar is poised. “What sort?” Ron asks, and there’s the loaded reply into the silence, “Twin beds,” “Uh-huh,” and the room slides back to chat.
The door of the room doesn’t lock and a lone chair’s tilted under the doorhandle like in some lousy Western. Nick and Sarah lie demure in pyjamas in their saggy school camp beds. Read a little; turn.
A sudden suck of a snore.
Sarah cocks her head and stares at Nick, asleep on his back, limbs flung out with the abandon of a child. She envies the swiftness of his sleeping, his obedience and trust. He’s wearing a T-shirt; cleanly white, crisply ironed. His belly is exposed, and his hips.
Her hand slips between her legs.
A warm, flooding wet.
She pads over to him. Hovers her hand above his plump boy-lips. Lowers her head and breathes in his sleeping; wants to take off her clothes and lie on top of him, to kiss him in the clearing behind his ears. Wants to stifle his waking with her lips to his, slip her hands onto the eroticism of his hips, Jesus-kinked; wants to place him inside her, to still his talk with her fingers to his lips.
A swell of laughter from the bar.
She goes back to bed. Thinks of her husband, Matt. In Chiswick.
They’ve not made love in over a year; one of them is always too tired; the timing’s never quite right. She’d be happy to never have sex with Matt again – it’s not why she married him. One day there’ll be kids. He’ll make a good father.
When they do make love you could describe them as tidy.
“I’ve forgotten how to do this, it’s been so long,” Matt said the last time they had sex; during the ad break of Friends, on the couch.
*
Pingpingpingping.
The digital watch on Nick’s wrist wakes Sarah early and she likes it – it’s her energy, work energy. The crumpled clean shirt he takes from his suitcase smells of her childhood. They wolf down bacon and eggs at a faded cafe.
“Where you off to?” asks the young waitress, cigarette-lean in her bra-less singlet.
“Alice,” Nick answers, handing over their money at the till.
Sarah imagines the three of them.
The girl’s breasts, her cunt; her tongue reaching up to it; Nick’s tongue between her own legs. She squeezes her thighs under her white linen skirt.
“See ya,” says the girl, eyeing Nick’s belt buckle and boots.
Sarah recognises the hungry city stare and smiles back at her, tenderly; she was that once.
“You should’ve asked her along,” she says to Nick.
“She’s not my type.”
“Uh-huh. And who is?”
He grins.
Sarah takes the keys from his fingers and there’s the shiver of a something as the two of them touch. She strides away from it. Today she’ll master the clutch; she gets into the driver’s seat and pushes the car strongly into the frontier space. Nick is concentrating and keen at her ear and his hand is firm over hers on the gear stick.
“Change, move up, clutch, listen to it, clutch... that’s it, you’ve got it!”
The ground flattens, the sky expands before them, the air is crisp and thin and it makes Sarah want to slice her way through it very fast; the waitress still wet in her head.
“The landing sky,” Nick muses and Sarah smiles and floors the accelerator and drives fast at the stretch of sky falling to the land. There’s a lizard, still on the bitumen with its head to the sun – thud, head’s gone.
“Damn.”
Laughter fills the pick-up’s cabin. Nick chatters about his studio and his building job as Sarah plies him with questions and imagines breathing in his smell in the clearing behind his ear, and the softness of his earlobe in the cave of her mouth. Somewhere in the late afternoon they stop at a pub where the locals sit silent around a big square counter plumping out the room. There’s a deep hush like a long cool drink, as if everything worth talking about has been exhausted long ago. Sarah and Nick catch each other’s eyes and grin. They sit outside, under the shinbone beauty of a lone gum tree. Nick tells her he wants to be a cool dad. That his grandmother still has her spark. That his school asked him to be a priest – “but I loved girls too much”.
They laugh. Nick looks at Sarah. She feels a pulling coming over her, a churning inside. She stands, clotted by awkwardness. Hopes he doesn’t speak because whatever she says back will be jagged and wrong, and hopes he doesn’t look because she’ll blush. She can feel it, the fierce pull like a hand inside her stomach, the wet.
Nick bins his ball of a sandwich bag.
Sarah strides from him. Back in the truck she roars the engine to a start with the tips of her toes, the seat slammed forward as far as it will go. Nick climbs in beside her and pokes her playfully in the ribs. She flinches.
*
Busy silence.
*
He says suddenly he wishes he could take her out for a drink, see her in the real world; know her.
“Maybe you wouldn’t notice me in the real world.”
“Oh, I dunno about that.”
“I’m just a housewife.”
“I dunno about that.”
Sarah arches back in the seat. She’s married – she doesn’t sleep around. It’s the only certainty now in her life. The best sex is the sex you’ve never had, she knows that. You can only seduce someone who’s not content, she knows that.
Who’s not content.
She’s much better at sex by herself, in her head, where it’s always more accomplished, theatrical, dirty. Whenever she makes love it’s her own thoughts that stir her more than the touch of a man.
Her partners have never been her focus while they’re on her, they’re merely kick-starting the film in her head. As they push inside she’ll slip into concentrating on a scenario that’ll trigger her pleasure and it has little to do with the person making love to her. Nick doesn’t need to know any of that.
Or maybe he does.
Because he’s younger... and she’ll never see him again after this trip.
Sarah has never come close in reality to the sex of her imagination.
She’s never allowed herself to; she’s never before said exactly what she wants.
*
Now they’re in salt-pan country. They stop the car and walk into the silvery, moon-plain vastness and whoop across the bleached bowl. Sarah turns. Wants to kiss Nick. He stares for a second or two too long; they break the gaze quick, walk separately to the car. Nick gets in the driver’s seat, drives on quietly.
A storm ahead. A steel-grey curtain is drawn almost the length of the sky and they slow with the flint smell strong upon them and a plummeting chill. Nick stops the car. He looks at Sarah; she’s wet, can’t read him, and they drive on and at the first angry spots of rain she yanks down her window and puts out her head like a dog, she holds out her face to the sting and the hurt.
At a town with too many “o’s” they don’t know how to pronounce they stop for petrol and Sarah goes into the toilets and rushes off her pants and flits her finger over her clit; she circles it and savages it and slips two fingers inside until she sweetly, deliciously comes, her face crammed hard against the chill of the cubicle door.
She wants Nick’s tongue on her nipple like a droplet of cold mercury. Wants her eyelids kissed. Wants him shaving her, clean, pushing her legs wide and forcing it upon her. Wants a trembling inside her, a holiness, a fluttering between them both. Wants him pulling back her hair as he’s kissing deep. Fucking hard. Wants his finger in her ass; then his cock, yes, yes, that. Wants two vibrators in her ass and her cunt. Wants Nick licking her until she can no longer bear it, wants his tongue circling and circling her clit. Wants the sharp hot spurts of her cum, again and again, the exquisite release of all that. And doesn’t want to have to give anything back.
She walks to the car. Doesn’t look into Nick’s stare. Gets into the driver’s seat. Revs too heavily, roars off. A carcass of a calf is melted like icecream on the roadside dirt. A kamikaze bird thuds into the windscreen.
*
Churning silence.
*
The outside heat is pressing in and somewhere as Sarah’s driving Nick is pouring water from a bottle into his hands and trickling it in silence over her forehead and it’s slipping down her chin, snail cold between her breasts and rolling to her belly; and he pours it into her outstretched hand as she keeps her eyes on the road and slowly rubs her neck; and in silence puts out her hand for more.
A night ahead to be camped in. At a roadhouse supply stop they get directions to a dry riverbed ahead. Sarah’s unsure about the delicacies of driving on sand but Nick assures her it’s easy, he’s done it before. They swap seats. The pick-up turns from the highway onto dirt, and sand, drives further and further and... sinks.
Rev. Stop. Rev again.
“Shit,” Nick says, hunched at the wheel.
Sarah laughs. Nick looks at her; laughs too.
They climb out. There’s no shovel. Sarah holds up her hands and grins.
They dig. Nick’s long-fingered and soft hands and Sarah’s sun-grooved and squat ones work side-by-side; there’s sweat and stones and laughter and scratches and blood. And then she revs and he pushes on the tailgate, and again, one-two, and again, one-two, and they stop and flop, their energy scuttled.
The light slides. They haul themselves onto the empty highway and challenge the yelling silence and kick stones and roam the expanse as the dark crowds upon them.
They return to the creek bed. They’ll tackle it all in the morning.
Between mouthfuls of burnt-sausage sandwich they grin in the firelight and settle into silence, their swags side-by-side. Like two kids on their bellies in front of a lounge-room TV they watch lightning inside clouds in the wings of the sky. The flashes are like a silent orchestra – here, now there, now together – but there’s no thunder, God knows why; and somewhere from tension, wire-taut, Nick brushes Sarah’s hand. Brotherly? What? She doesn’t know, doesn’t respond; and he rubs at her shoulder and again she doesn’t respond and silently he draws across the flap of his swag and she cannot read his “Goodnight”, and she imagines a lifetime ahead dissecting the missed moment – the itch of what could have been – and tells herself you reap what you sow, it has to be done, and as she says “Goodnight” she strokes his wrist gently, once, and he rubs strongly back, his fingers learning her wrist and her arm and then he leans across, his lips and his tongue to hers. Done.
“I’ve forgotten how to do this, it’s been so long,” Nick laughs softly, from the close dark, as Sarah looks up to the lightning still trapped in the clouds.
BELLE AND SYLVIE
Louise Welsh
Louise Welsh is the author of seven novels, including The Cutting Room, The Girl on the Stairs, A Lovely Way to Burn and Death is a Welcome Guest (volumes one and two of the Plague Times Trilogy). She has written many short stories and articles and is a regular radio broadcaster. Louise wrote the librettos for the operas Ghost Patrol and The Devil Inside (music by Stuart MacRae). She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.
When I first got it on with Belle it was her dirty talk that amazed me. The “Ooh fuck me”s and crazy sexual fantasies she whispered in my ear. I guess I was shocked. I mean, these days it’s no great surprise to hear a doll curse, but when you eventually manage to coax some sweet young thing between the sheets you don’t expect her to have a mouth would make a stevedore blush. But I was hot for her and after a while I got hot for those breathless obscenities.
“Oh yes that’s right, fuck me like that, give it to me hard, nail me to the bed, give me your cock...”
I’d grip her hips gently, give her deep long thrusts steering her towards climax, move my fingers across her small breasts, down towards her little bush, rubbing her clit, trying to keep my rough fingers gentle like she’d taught me.
“Harder... harder!”
Until her whispers grew harsher and her words coarser.
“Slam my cunt baby!”
Rocking her hoarse, until the words fell into gasps and I knew she was there.
I was wiping down the whisky bottles when I first saw her, reflected in the smoky glass mirror that runs the length of the bar. She had her back towards me and was chatting to Fat Al. He leant over her with that look he reserves for the dancers and a stab of dismay hit me like a Saturday-night punch in the guts. After all, things may have been tough, but since when were we so hard up we were putting kids on stage? Not that I’m against nippers – I was one myself once – but nippers as strippers? It’s just wrong, is all. I uncorked the bourbon and poured myself a splash that rang pure gold against the glass. The girl heard the alcohol chime and turned towards me with a smile that could light the whole of New York. My faith in Fat Al was restored. Tiny she might be, but that girl was all woman. I swirled the whisky, suddenly unable to drink though my mouth was dry.
“Hey Frogs, meet our newest artiste, Belle. From now on known as Tinker Belle. Tinks, this is Froggy, my associate and the best barman this side of Manhattan.”
Belle fluttered her lashes and into my mind flashed every storybook seaside trip. Those eyes were the bluest blue I’d ever seen, and I’ve worked with some pretty hot dolls. Then she smiled again – the full one hundred watts – and I knew I was gone.
Maybe it was something to do with me being on the economical side height-wise, but up until then I’d always favoured big dolls. Girls like Sylvie. A long-legged, smoky-eyed showstopper billed as “The Cyd Charisse of Burlesque”, who could hook a leg around my neck and pull me to her still standing. Sylvie had been
retired from the Radio City Rockettes on account of putting on a little weight. Hell, I thought it suited her, more to shiver when she shimmied. Al would give her a big build:
“And now, all the way from gay Paree, for your delectation, the delicious, the distracting, our very own Rockette, Ms Sylvie Cherie!”
The lights would dim, the needle hit shellac, music grind up, and one long leg would slide from between the red velvet curtains to a chorus of wolf whistles and cheers. Sometimes Sylvie would milk it, running a hand down that perfect pin, snapping her suspender, holding the spotlight until the crowd was impatient. But most nights she kicked straight onto the stage, rumba-ing and shaking her tits until you thought she was going to fall right out of her skin-tight, high-slit black velvet gown – which of course was exactly what she did, looking as surprised as a calendar girl whose doggy’s just ripped her shorts off.
Then she’d really start to enjoy herself. Fooling with her evening gloves, flinging her paste diamonds behind the bar. Playing the crowd until they were mad for her. When she unsnapped the front fastening of her brassiere they went wild. She’d tease until they begged, turning her back on the crowd and wiggling her tush, before flinging her bra away, giving them a view of her naked back, then she’d turn round slowly clasping her hands over her bosoms. Now the show really got going. Naked ’cept for her high heels and a pair of sequinned panties that wouldn’t hide a mouse, Sylvie’d dance across the stage, holding her big soft tits in both hands, pressing them together, rolling them round, letting the hard as button nipples peek through her fingers, then pushing them up to her red painted lips, tonguing each one slowly, sending every man in the room stiff. Sylvie was top of the bill and my main squeeze. But then Belle smiled, and suddenly small girls who looked like they’d been formed out of ivory became my new weakness.
Le Chat Rouge was the name of the club. When he first came up with the name, Al wanted the girls to dye their bushes red. A kind of gimmick, if you get my drift. I thought he was onto something, but they told him to go fuck himself. Still, there’s no doubting a Frenchy name says sex in a classy way. Course everyone called it The Pussy Club, but what can you do? Try is all.
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