The Blue Guide

by Carrie Williams

  I sit down at my dressing table and plug in my hair drier. Sometimes, I think, I don’t deserve a friend like Jess. She’s always been there for me, and I hate to think of what would happen if she wasn’t. Not that I’m an emotional disaster zone, though the last few months might suggest otherwise. Far from it, in fact. I’m pretty low-maintenance as friends go. But everyone gets themselves into a little pickle now and again. Everyone needs someone to hold their hand through the bumpy bits.

  Good old Jess – she didn’t even tell me, when I was obsessing about Daniel, to get a grip on myself. She never once said: look, Ally, you had the shag of your life and you really like the guy, but it was basically a one-night stand and nothing more and you have to get over it. He’s out of your league.

  No, she totally understands that however brief our encounter, I’d found, in Daniel, someone I just knew I could make a life with. Someone who made me laugh, who turned me on, who treated me – at least it seemed that way at the time – with respect. Someone who stayed remarkably down-to-earth when all the glamour could have turned him into the world’s biggest arsehole.

  Jess just held my hand, and called me up, and sat drinking vodka with me when I didn’t feel like going out, watching reruns of NYPD Blue. She’d even turned up on my doorstep one night with a pair of Eurostar tickets, and we’d spent a weekend in Paris looking at art, and wandering along the Seine, and drinking cheap red wine and talking about everything and nothing. Our hopes for the future. Our careers. Which rock stars we’d like to fuck. The best positions for orgasms (she prefers it doggy-style, with manual stimulation of the clitoris – whether by herself or her partner, doesn’t matter).

  I’ve never had lesbian inclinations, but sometimes, when I hang out with Jess, I think she’s so damn perfect that I don’t know why I don’t just tustle her into bed and fuck the living daylights out of her. Ever since our first term at uni together, when we were neighbours in our hall of residence, we’ve been the best of buddies. And she is gorgeous to boot. But we both like dicks, and that’s that.

  One night on that visit to Paris, when we got back to our room in the early hours, drunk on booze and talk, I’d seriously considered – for one mad, lonely moment – just going for it anyway, to see what it was like, to see if it could work. But I knew she didn’t want me, as I didn’t really want her, and that we risked losing our friendship through one pissed experiment. And so after she’d gone to sleep I settled for a woozy wank, lying in front of the silently flickering TV, thinking about Daniel Lubowski in the dome room.

  Afterwards, my hands still sticky with my juices, I’d sneaked out of the room and – in direct defiance of all Jess’s advice to just stop thinking about him and get on with my life – dialled his number from my mobile. This time I actually went through with it, rather than just thinking about it, rather than calling up his number on my screen and then bottling out. My heart was in my throat, and I don’t know what I would have said if he’d picked up, but the call clicked through to his answerphone anyway, and I hung up. I never told Jess I did that, but nor did I try calling Daniel again after that weekend, though I still thought about him when I wanked.

  Jess is already sitting at a table when I arrive, sipping a glass of Chardonnay and making puppy eyes at the new barman, who’s pretending not to notice, although you can tell from his body language that he’s secretly rather enjoying the attention.

  She nods over at him as I sit down opposite her. ‘Might take him home tonight,’ she mutters. ‘Could do with a damn good shag.’

  Jess split up with her banker-wanker boyfriend a year ago and has been happily single ever since, although she’s not averse to a bit of rough and tumble when the mood takes her.

  ‘Could do worse,’ I say, looking over appraisingly at the object of her desire. He’s polishing glasses now, affecting to look out of the window as his honed pecs flex and then slacken with the movement of his arms.

  ‘So anyway, how are you?’ says Jess, leaning towards me over the table. ‘You’ve been a pain in the arse to get hold of. Mr Primadonna Ballerina been keeping you on your toes?’

  She stops when she sees my face, my averted eyes.

  ‘You haven’t? Ally, tell me you haven’t.’

  I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t. I can hardly believe it all myself. I feel like I’m in some weird dream. I’m fucking Paco Manchega, I say to myself, and it sounds completely unreal. Maybe I just imagined the whole thing.

  Jess is right in my face now, hers all flushed and excited. Then she leans back, tries to look stern. ‘Hang on,’ she says. ‘Why are you looking so damn miserable if you’re copping off with one of the world’s great love gods? And why, more to the point, didn’t you ring me the minute this happened?’

  I slump down in my seat, wishing I wasn’t here, that I’d just stayed at home and drunk myself into a stupor. Jess is going to go ballistic when she hears what I have to say, and I don’t know if I can handle it.

  ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ she says, relenting, tuned in now to my despondency and figuring it needs the softly-softly approach.

  ‘So hit me with it,’ she says with a coaxing smile when she sits down again, placing a large glass of Cabernet Sauvignon on the table in front of me. ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘He’s married,’ I say bluntly, and I watch as her face falls.

  ‘Bloody hell, Ally, when did that happen?’

  ‘A month ago. Her name’s Carlotta. She’s trying to be an actress.’ I look out of the window. ‘She’s nice, actually,’ I add. ‘In fact she’s making a lot of effort to be my friend. It’s her that I’m showing round while Paco struts his stuff, actually.’

  Jess leans forward to extract a cigarette from her pack, offering me one at the same time. I take it, and for a few moments we smoke in silence.

  ‘So what happened?’ she asks at last, and I recount the whole tale for her, from my wank in the bath via our illicit doings in the stretch limo to his parting words at the oyster bar. As I’m talking, she alternates between anger and laughter, but when I’ve done she’s deeply serious.

  ‘You have got to stop, Ally,’ she says, wagging a finger at me. ‘I don’t know what this guy thinks he’s playing at, but you’re on a crash course with disaster, no doubt about it. You don’t need me to tell you . . .’

  ‘I don’t,’ I interrupt. ‘I knew exactly what you were going to say, and I would say exactly the same thing if it were you in my place: get the hell out.’ I feel in my pocket for some notes to go buy another round. ‘But admit it – you’d have done the same thing if the chance presented itself.’

  Jess looks at me through narrowed eyes. ‘That is not the point,’ she says, mock-sternly this time, and we laugh together. A weight lifts off my shoulders: this is what I came here for, I tell myself – to be reminded that problems are sometimes only as serious as we want to make them. I’ve been silly, but I have time to get out before anyone is hurt.

  Of course, now we’ve got the moral reprobation out of the way, Jess is desperate to know all the nitty gritty of my night and day with Paco – everything from the colour and make of his briefs to the size of his dick and how many times I came. She can’t help herself, asking more and more questions, and as I answer them I notice her head turning more and more frequently to look at the guy behind the bar. I sneak him a glance, and I realise with a secret thrill that he’s listening in on our conversation now. He’s got a odd little smirk on his lips, and he keeps looking up and catching Jess’s eye. Both of them, it’s clear, are getting all in a froth at my descriptions of what Paco and I got up to, and after a few minutes I decide to leave them to it.

  Jess and I have a giant hug as I wait for my taxi. ‘Just remember what I said,’ she admonishes. ‘Leave well enough alone, girl. This one’s too hot to handle.’

  ‘Message received loud and clear,’ I say. I shoot a look at the barman, who’s already undressing Jess with his eyes while she’s preoccupied with me. Jess lives only five minute
s away, but I seriously doubt they’re going to make it back to her place before getting down and dirty.

  ‘Have a lovely night,’ I say to her, and then a thought occurs to me. ‘Listen,’ I whisper. ‘I don’t know exactly what lover boy over there heard, but I don’t want it getting around about Paco, for obvious reasons. Will you try to sound out what he did and didn’t hear? And if he thinks he knows who we were talking about, make sure you get it straight that it wasn’t Manchega, OK?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Jess, ushering me out of the door. ‘You can count on me. Now just get the hell out of here. Some of us haven’t had a decent fuck in months, you know.’

  On my way home in the taxi, I turn my mobile back on and there’s a message from Carlotta. There’s langour in her voice, as if she’s drunk, or has just made love. She tells me she’s been thinking and has decided she’d like to go see some art tomorrow. She says she doesn’t mind where, but then Paco’s voice can be heard in the background:

  ‘The Tate Modern. Tell her to take you there, angel.’

  ‘The Tate Modern,’ reiterates Carlotta. She’s strangely pliant with Paco, I think, for a woman who seems to know her own mind so well the rest of the time. ‘I expect you midday again. Thanks Alicia.’

  I climb out of the taxi outside my flat, suddenly incredibly weary from all the emotions and complications of the last few days. But it’s all over now – I’ve promised Jess and I’ve promised myself. I’ll get a good night’s sleep and tomorrow will be fresh and bright as a blank canvas.

  10

  IT’S PAST NOON, and the meter on my taxi is ticking over as I wait for Carlotta outside the hotel. I called up quarter of an hour ago to let her know I was waiting, but there’s no sign of her. Still, at the rates Paco’s paying me, I could sit here all day, letting the fare go through the roof. I sit back and watch the world go by. It’s a balmy summer’s day and there’s a lot of flesh on display by the office workers and students strolling out of Fitzrovia and down towards Oxford Street – lots of midriff T-shirts and short skirts and little denim shorts.

  Suddenly Carlotta’s there, sliding into the back beside me. She’s somewhat toned down today, in a short-sleeved baby-pink cashmere top and flared black linen skirt that comes down almost as far as her knees. She’s still in heels, of course, and her hair is loose as yesterday.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, clearly not really meaning it, and not offering any explanation. A sickly caramel smell floats in with her.

  ‘What’s that perfume?’ I say.

  ‘Angel,’ she says. ‘Thierry Mugler. You like?’

  I don’t have any choice but to say yes, though I’m not into perfume or aftershave at all – I much prefer the human body au naturel, within reason.

  ‘Paco take me to Liberty’s on the way home last night,’ she explains. ‘The beauty hall is amazing. He buy incredible massage oil with sandalwood and – what it called? – patchouli and geranium in it. I dripping in it when he finish with me.’

  I don’t respond, don’t even look at her. I don’t want to know, I think sulkily.

  But she’s obviously in the mood for sharing, and there’s nothing I can do to stop her without being rude. Or without changing the subject. Nothing comes to mind, however, and afterwards I wonder whether this is probably because, deep down, I did want to hear all about it.

  She’s reclining against the seat of the taxi, legs crossed, tapping her foot against the floor as she talks. I suspect she notices that the taxi driver, overhearing a few words, gradually turns down his radio and is now listening in. Afterwards, I think, he’ll probably have to try to find a quiet sidestreet where he can wrist himself off.

  ‘Paco always wonderful lover,’ says Carlotta. ‘But last night he on fire. I so tired, so tired.’

  She senses me look at her and raises her eyebrows meaningfully. ‘We get home,’ she says, ‘and he pull off my clothes and take me right there, on the floor in the hallway. He like a man possessed. We leave our clothes there and he carry me into bedroom and lay me down and massage me for hours. And then just as I falling asleep, he turn me over edge of the bed and start fucking me so hard from behind, I not sure if I can take it.’

  She closes her eyes, swoons back. Her hand is between her legs now, and I look at her with dread, afraid she’s going to start openly masturbating right here in the cab.

  ‘I keep coming and coming and coming,’ she says. ‘And still he not stop.’ She opens her eyes, grabs my hand besides hers. ‘Until you have a man like Paco,’ she says, looking at me, ‘you don’t know what sex is.’ She blinks, affords me a pitying little smile. ‘I know I very lucky woman,’ she says.

  I want to tell her to shut up now, but I’m fascinated, too, by what I am seeing through this unexpected window onto her and Paco’s sex life. And, most peculiarly, there’s a damp bloom in my knickers where I’m getting more than a little turned on. I can’t stop thinking about how it felt when Paco mounted me on the chair, drove himself into me like – as Carlotta describes it – a thing possessed. I have to have him again. Just one more time. And then I’ll keep my promise to Jess.

  ‘So I hardly get any sleep all night long,’ says Carlotta.

  Now I come to think of it, she does look a little peaky, a little less fresh than yesterday.

  ‘He just not leave me alone,’ she goes on. ‘It is exhausting . . . and beautiful. He is extraordinary lover. I hope you experience man like him one day, Alicia.’

  I’m biting my tongue as we pull up behind the Tate Modern, where I hand the driver his fare and a large tip. On our way inside, I try to take my mind off the subject by telling Carlotta about how the building was converted from an old power station and explaining that the artworks are arranged thematically rather than, as in most galleries, chronologically. She says that sounds interesting and that she’s looking forward to the visit.

  It’s at this point that I realise I have absolutely no idea where to begin, and I ask her what kind of art she likes and what she would like to see.

  She looks a little sheepish for a minute, and then she replies: ‘You think I have just one thing in my head,’ she says, ‘but I like to see some nudes.’

  I nod a little too earnestly. ‘We can do that,’ I say, pointing towards the escalator. On the fifth floor, I remember, are the Nude/Action/Body galleries. There should be plenty there to tickle her fancy.

  We come out in front of Rodin’s The Kiss, on the threshold of the galleries, and stand to admire it. Carlotta studies it from several angles, says she doesn’t know a great deal about Rodin or sculpture in general but loves the way the bodies appear to be melting into each other, that that’s what she feels when she’s kissing Paco – that they are becoming one.

  She wonders aloud if I have ever felt like that and I think for a minute and I say, ‘Yes, just once.’ I don’t tell her any more than that, but not because it’s Paco I’m thinking about – his lovemaking was far too vigorous and carnal for that, for me at least. No, I’m thinking about Daniel and the morning after our second night together, when I lay awake in the dawn light, just looking at his face as he slept, and then he stirred and turned to me and, as he held my face between my hands and kissed me, his cock slipped into me without any need for lubrication, and I came with the sheer joy of it, and felt, yes, like I was melting into him.

  And then half an hour later he was gone from my life for good.

  I look up at the sculpture and I feel like crying, but Carlotta is moving away into the first room, pointing excitedly at a work that she’s obviously familiar with and is happy to have discovered here. I follow her across the room and look at the plaque: Reclining Nude.

  ‘Picasso paint this just weeks before he ninety,’ she tells me, and I realise that she’s no art amateur after all.

  She steps closer to it. ‘Imagine, such old man.’ She laughs. ‘Even when ninety he can’t – how you say? – keep it in pants.’ She leans into me a little – more, I think, to make me feel like her confidante
than because she really doesn’t want anyone else to hear. I’ve already learnt from the taxi ride that she doesn’t mind who knows about her bedroom antics.

  ‘When I artists’ model,’ she says, ‘I sometimes fantasise I am posing for Picasso. Not that I don’t pose for talented men. But they not him, you know. And I love to have posed for Picasso, to have been his mistress, to fuck him, even if he treat his muses like shit.’ She gestures back at the canvas in front of us. ‘Even as old, old man, I think that would be amazing. He a genius, but more than that, he had big thirst for the world, for painting, for women, right to the end. To be immortalised in painting by him – that really something.’

  We stroll through the galleries, stopping to look at pieces that catch our eye, and I listen to Carlotta talk passionately about art and realise that there’s much more to her than I’d given her credit for. It’s no bimbo, after all, who can knowledgeably discuss nude photography, from Man Ray to Helmut Newton, who can debate whether Surrealism was a sexist movement or not. I’m hanging onto her every word, spellbound both by what she’s saying and the ardour on her face as she talks about a subject that is obviously very close to her heart. I’m not surprised when, at one point in the conversation, she lets slip that she has aspirations to be an artist herself, even if her acting career pans out.

  One of the last works we see before we head off for afternoon tea is an amazing ‘soft sculpture’ by Dorothea Tanning, Nue couchée. Carlotta is overjoyed to finally see it in the flesh, as it were: she says she’s been a fan of the artist for a long time.

  ‘She still working now,’ she says. ‘She start to work with Surrealists in 1930s and become famous with topless self-portrait in 1942. She still live creative life.’ She lets out a barely audible sigh.

  Nue couchée is a remarkable work – a 3D female nude made up of cotton, cardboard, wool and table tennis balls, covered in pink crêpe. As an artwork, it’s incredibly tactile – especially where the rounded protusions of the balls suggest a string of vertebrae and at the swell of the almost outrageously voluptuous hips – and Carlotta can’t resist reaching down for a squeeze when she’s made sure the guard isn’t looking our way.