Even though I’m not. I’m absolutely not. I’m just thrilled and startled by the sight of him, so fleshy and solid and real. When he’s wearing his jacket and his shirt and his tie, you could almost believe that there’s nothing but steel underneath. He’s not made out of flesh and bone. He’s made out of moveable mechanical parts.
Only he’s not, he’s not at all.
He’s covered in rough hair, and much broader across the chest than his suit ever implies. Of course, he’s always looked big in it. I’ve known right from the start that he isn’t a small man. But to see it now up close and so naked … to see the jut of his collarbone like something found in a dinosaur’s graveyard … to see his thick but firm pectoral muscles and shoulders like an enormous yoke …
It’s unnerving. I feel like I’m sanding away the topsoil to get at the bones of some mythical creature beneath. Every new revelation makes me wonder what I’m going to find next, as though he doesn’t actually have ordinary legs below the waist. He has great furred things that bend the wrong way and possibly end in heavy hooves.
Like that story I read as a child, about a woman who takes some charming guy home with her for some casual sex, then realises too late who he really is: the Devil, Satan, Beelzebub. He’s just lurking there inside his man-skin, and when she least expects it he springs the trap and eats her heart whole while she’s still breathing.
Or at least I think that’s the way the story ends. I could be misremembering. It could be her who eats his heart while he still sleeps, and takes his power for her own.
In fact, I’m pretty sure that was the real finale.
So why am I thinking of another one? Why can I see her behind my eyes, with some great gaping wound in her chest? It’s a ridiculous image, really, when you think about it, and a stupid story that has no bearing on anything here.
Which doesn’t explain why I drop the sheets.
I mean, it’s not as if I’m actually going to find anything. He’s just a man, if ‘just’ is the kind of word you can apply to someone like Janos. And he’s definitely not going to leave me with a sucking wound in my chest, either literally … or otherwise.
I’m safe, I think.
It’s just that I don’t feel it. I’m all restless and agitated, and completely unable to lie back down. I have to get up just to keep this buzzing, brittle sensation at bay, but when I do it doesn’t get any better. I pad out of his plush bedroom and into a hallway that stretches on forever, and I’m immediately unsettled by the silence and the darkness and the sense that I’ll never find my way out.
I have to grope along the walls for a light switch that probably isn’t there – it’s voice-activated, I bet, or maybe connected to him telepathically – until finally I discover a door.
Sadly, however, it doesn’t lead to the relative sanctuary of a bathroom. It takes me to that enormous airy living space that spans the entire length of his apartment. I glimpsed it on the way in, but let it drift below the sex haze I was operating under.
And now it’s back in all of its opulent insanity, both better and worse than I ever imagined it. There isn’t much furniture, so I can’t get too nervous about some platinum-plated this, or some antique that. In fact, there’s so little in here you’d be justified in thinking the place was uninhabited. It looks rather like a showroom, with that smart and sharp-edged couch and the unobtrusive prints on the walls. Of course, they’re probably originals. Hell, for all I know they’re original Picassos.
But that’s not the problem.
No, the problem is the wall of glass that dominates the place – no curtains, no blinds, no fancy coverings that I’m too plebeian to have heard of. Just a great glossy expanse, with a view so glorious it’s almost intimidating. The entire city is beyond that wall, spread out in a mosaic of tiny lights and dancing shadows, near blue-tinged in the darkness.
And it’s beautiful. I never knew the city could be so beautiful, not even after watching a thousand movies that start off with this very thing – the aerial view of some vast metropolis, steely and cold and just waiting for something terrible to happen. But then in the movies there’s always a patina of lifelessness, as though London is just an unfeeling backdrop.
Whereas here it seethes with life.
It makes me want to cry, though I’m not entirely sure why. Because I’ve never really seen anything like this before?
Or is it because I’ve never been allowed to? I’ve gone through the motions for so long, I never realised my way was barred. I didn’t know I was so small in a world that has things like this in it – this view, this life, this everything – and it’s all so vibrant that emotion simply wells up inside me.
Yet I don’t even think he notices. What stuns and scares me is, to Janos, this is just a backdrop, always expected but never admired. He doesn’t have to admire it. He paid for it with money that means nothing to him, despite how much it could mean to so many people. It means something to me and I don’t even need it. I’m not hungry, or cold, or poor.
But I’m still five hundred levels below whatever this is – and I always will be. I’ll always worry that I’m sitting wrong on seats too expensive for my terrible clothes. And there’ll for ever be that moment when I wonder if I’ve made a gaffe, or stood in awe of something when I should have been blasé.
I can’t be blasé about this stuff. It makes me do funny things, like stand here in the middle of the night half-mesmerised by a view of the city. I even put my hand up to the glass, as though I might be able to reach through and touch it.
And then I hear his voice from the bedroom, and I react in an even stranger manner. I jerk around too fast, the way people do when they’ve been caught doing something bad. I had my hand in the cookie jar and he’s just seen me, and now I have to explain. But how to explain this? How to explain this feeling going through me?
‘I feel so small’ sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, even to me. And ‘the sight of the city moved me’ is even worse. His eyes will go bright with amusement, the way they do, and that smile will hook the corner of his mouth.
While I quietly die inside.
In fact, I think I’m dying already. I lumber back to the bedroom like there are weights in my feet, still thinking of views and gaffes and the way he lives his life. I just can’t shake that image of him walking past that window without so much as a second glance, even if I know that may not be entirely true. Perhaps he looks all the time, and I’m just being unfair. Maybe he takes none of this for granted at all.
Though even if he doesn’t, his effortlessness is still real. I know it is. I’ve seen it first hand, in the way he walks and talks and moves inside his own skin. He belongs in this world of wealth and power, no matter what I tell myself.
And I do not.
I can’t even walk back into the bedroom. I just stand in the doorway, gazing in at him like some urchin with her face against the glass – though, granted, his utter nakedness might have something to do with this paralysis. He hasn’t even got the covers over him any more. He’s just lying there with everything out on show, to the point where it seems deliberate. Apparently he’s grown tired of hiding behind his suits, and wants me to see all of him.
But now I’m the one who isn’t ready. I’ve grown used to him one way and don’t know how to process this other him, with his flagrant nudity and his willingness to let me sleep over and his soft words, spoken just as I’m about to stumble over to him. ‘Come back to bed, love,’ he says, and I’m stopped in my tracks all over again.
‘Love’, he said. And he didn’t do it in Hungarian, either. He said it in English, so I can’t possibly pretend it’s anything else, like with szeretett. I’ve come close to looking that one up a number of times, and always turned away at the last second. If I turn away, I don’t have to find out that it means adored or amazing. I can just imagine it means sweet piece of ass, and keep everything on an even keel.
Instead of it being like this.
This is like being on the
bow of a boat as it tries to negotiate a tidal wave.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asks, but it’s impossible to explain. Most women don’t mind when their incredibly wealthy sex buddy decides that he’d like to be something more. In fact, isn’t that the goal, according to Cosmo? To get him to love you?
I’m sure it is, though I wish they’d at least offer advice on the other stuff. The surrounding stuff, such as he’s massively wealthy and you’re not. Six easy steps to negotiating class- and money-based landmines. Or how about: confronting your feelings of unworthiness … or even being someone’s perfect amazing magical blow-job-giving girlfriend is not the be all and end all of existence.
Yeah, I’d appreciate that last one. Of course it would be a bit of a steep change in direction for them, considering all the money they make from persuading women to feel bad about themselves. But I’m sure they could do it.
They could do it if they were in my shoes right now.
‘Should I ask again, or would you rather stay standing there in a state of what looks like abject terror?’
‘I’m fine, really.’
‘People who say they’re fine, really, usually mean the absolute opposite. And especially when their actions confirm this theory.’
He’s not just talking about the refusal to come to the bed, quite obviously. There’s also the way I’m picking at the door frame, as if there’s actually something there to be picked at. And every now and then I’ll pluck at the hem of this shirt I’m wearing – his shirt, to be exact. It’s seventeen sizes too big and smells so divine I could curl up inside its depths and never come out again, and yet I keep worrying at it anyway.
If there was a loose thread I’d pull on it until everything unravelled.
‘I was just … wondering …’
Oh, I know that’s not a good place to start. It leaves me too many options, and all of them so dangerous. If I go with the wealth thing, he might be offended. Or maybe I’ll be offended. Or worse: we’ll work things out and live happily ever after.
Lord, I just don’t know how to live happily ever after. I can see that now. It should have been clear before but it wasn’t, and so here we are in hell.
‘And what was it you were wondering about?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Give me a second to come up with something, OK?’
‘All right,’ he says, just like that. No amusement, no ruefulness. Just an acceptance of my foibles, and a deep patience with my needs. He doesn’t want to rush me or push me, and is quite content to stay quiet and wait for whatever it is I want to say.
In fact he’s been that way all along.
He just is that way, and I love him for it. I love him so much that I can feel tears sparking behind my eyes. And it’s silly, it is, but I understand why it’s happening. It’s like when I was a kid, and won a prize for the best-written essay out of thousands of entries. And rather than accept it and be happy with it, I wrote a letter to the board to make sure they had it right. I couldn’t believe that it was me.
I was so sure it couldn’t be.
I’m always so sure that it couldn’t be.
‘Come here, love,’ he says again, and this time I go. I stumble to him and curl around his legs – mainly so he can’t see my face, but also because it feels good. It feels so damned good to be with him, no matter what my insecurities tell me. I hate my insecurities for telling me these things. I hate them for multiplying like bacteria, growing dark spots I don’t want to know about and illnesses I’d rather not face.
‘What is it?’ he asks, and as he does so he strokes my hair back over and over, and runs a hand down over my side, and generally makes me want to say more than anything in the world. He’ll understand, I think.
But I still can’t quite do it.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You do know.’
‘You’re right, I do. I just don’t know how to say.’
‘Start with the words. They’re these things you use to express yourself.’
‘Couldn’t I just make a series of complicated hand gestures?’
‘I think you’ve already done that. I couldn’t quite get a read.’
‘You – supreme overlord of my every thought – couldn’t get a read?’
‘It’s easier to guess when it’s something as simple as sex,’ he says, then pauses just long enough for me to notice. ‘It’s harder when emotions are involved.’
Now it’s my turn to pause, but probably for different reasons. He just wanted a moment to catch his breath or organise his thoughts, most likely, whereas I need the extra seconds to gather my courage.
‘And are they involved, with us?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think I’m much more nervous about being involved than I thought I would be.’
‘That’s not such a strange thing.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘Of course not. How could it be? You began all of this with the expectation that it would just be sex, and nothing more.’
‘Well … maybe,’ I say, but I really mean yes. Yes, that’s exactly what I thought would happen. I even went so far as to imagine him having some kind of emotional meltdown, before backing off just as things got too heated.
Only somehow that seems to be me.
I’m the one having the emotional meltdown.
I’m the one who’s backing off.
‘And you believed that I would only ever require that from you, and this belief kept you safe,’ he continues, so casual and yet so sharp at the same time. The sentiment practically stings as it sinks in.
‘I suppose that could be true.’
‘And now suddenly things are different, and you’re no longer sure how to behave.’
‘You don’t know that. How can you know that?’ I ask, half-laughing – though even as I’m making this little non-sound I understand what’s going to happen. I can feel it in the falsity of my own amusement, and in his slight hesitation.
With Janos, the silences say as much as the words.
However, the words make a particularly good show, on this occasion.
‘Because I feel many of those same things myself,’ he says, and this strange prickling sensation runs up the back of my neck. We’re not different at all, my mind whispers, and in this sudden quiet I could almost believe it. It steals over me like a comforting blanket, soft and warm – and all the while he’s stroking and stroking my hair.
It would be so easy not to tell him anything else.
Too easy, in fact.
‘So do you feel like you’re not good enough, too?’
‘Good enough for what?
‘For swanky soirées and magnificent views and fancy restaurants,’ I say, and brace myself for his amusement. I’m facing away from him, but I know I’ll still hear it in his voice. It curdles the tone, like a throat full of clotted cream – unmistakeable and unavoidable.
And also completely absent.
‘Ah, so that’s what has you so worried, my lovely one,’ he tells me, and there’s nothing sardonic about it, no wry amusement. He doesn’t even say that last part in a sarcastic manner, which means something rather disturbing:
I have to accept it at face value.
He really means that I’m lovely and his, and that I have a number above any of the others. I’m not four or seven or twenty thousand and nine.
I’m number one.
‘Perhaps a little.’
‘And by “little” you mean so much that it’s making you dig your nails into your palms – not to mention the night-time wandering.’
‘Maybe the latter was just about needing the bathroom.’
‘So that’s why you got up.’
‘It could be.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it could,’ he says, in this faux-solemn way that’s becoming very familiar. He’s about to spring a trap, I think, and sure enough here it is: ‘Care to tell me where the bathroom is?’
‘Sure,’ I tell him, brightly, but in
my head I’m frantically counting doors and identifying likely culprits. It wasn’t the one on the left, which means it absolutely must be –
‘The first room on the right.’
‘So you pissed in my study.’
I don’t know what’s more jarring: that he nails me so effectively, or that he used the word ‘pissed’. It sounds absolutely profane in his glassy, accented voice, like seeing a nun spit or watching the Queen run naked around a playing field.
‘What? No, I –’
‘Such a strange choice when the nearest bathroom is right there,’ he says, and points a finger in the direction of the door at the end of the room – while I inwardly face-palm. Of course, I should have known. All places like this have en suites, after all.
But the fact that I had no idea only serves to illustrate my point. I’m still living in a world where people have to fumble around in hallways when they need the toilet in the middle of the night. In fact, I’m not so far removed from a time when most people like me had to go outside for things like that.
I’m not ready for this.
I’m not right for it.
‘I don’t belong here.’
‘Because you don’t know where the bathroom is? That seems like something of a leap.’
‘You know that’s not why.’
‘I do, but I’m still waiting for you to say.’
‘I don’t fit in, Jan. I don’t wear the right clothes or do the right things. You know what drink I wanted to have with my meal? Diet Coke. I desperately wanted a Diet Coke, because I hate the taste of water and despise the taste of wine. And you know what? Next time I’ll just ask. I’ll just ask, and you’ll have to sit there with a woman who drinks fizzy soft drinks, in a room full of people who probably don’t even know what a fizzy soft drink is.’
I pause then, but only because I have to. I’ve run out of breath to say words with, and my cheeks are all hot with embarrassment. What a thing to admit, my mind barks at me, only once I’ve recovered there’s some more.
Oh, there’s so much more.
‘Is that really who you can imagine yourself with? A girl who drinks pop, and probably burps after she’s done it?’
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