I can’t bring myself to look at Paco: the situation is really so absurd, I’m afraid I’m going to burst out laughing and then won’t be able to stop until it becomes a kind of very painful hysteria.
‘Evening, lovely ladies,’ I hear him say. ‘What a nice surprise to see you, Alicia,’ he says, and I wonder how he can be so blasé. Perhaps, like us, he’s had more than his fair share of booze tonight.
‘Come sit and tell us all about your evening,’ says Carlotta, patting the space between us on the sofa. ‘You go somewhere wonderful?’
‘Nobu,’ says Paco, stifling a yawn. Before he’s reached us, I’m up from the sofa and looking around for my bag, trying hard to hide how drunk I am. I can barely look at either of them as I plead exhaustion and say goodnight, especially as they’re already entwined on the sofa, hands all over each other. Within seconds of me leaving, I’d stake a year’s pay on it, they’ll be screwing each other’s brains out on the sofa on which I lay naked just a few minutes ago, juicing up as Carlotta’s hand lingered at my hip.
I walk home: it’s not so far, and I’m hoping the cool night air will sober me up, put things in perspective. I’ve never had a lesbian experience, and wouldn’t know one if it hit me in the face. Carlotta was just trying to ease me into the right position, and in my vodka haze I mistook it for something else. Having said that, I remind myself, there was that comment by the Tanning sculpture, about only a woman being able to know a woman’s body. Was that Carlotta’s way of telling me that she’s dabbled, that she dabbles?
But what about me? I’ve never wanted a woman in my life, not even my lovely Jess, and there I was frothing up when she happened to rest her hand on my hip. Was that the alcohol speaking too?
I reach my apartment building, trudge up the three flights of stairs, wanting nothing more than to curl up in a ball but certain that sleep will elude me. Besides, I note from looking at my watch, it’s not even nine o’clock yet. I unlock my door, go in, and while the kettle’s boiling, log on and read through my emails. There’s a number of work-related ones that need attending to immediately, and I make myself a cafetière of coffee and before long have managed to put the whole Paco and Carlotta thing out of mind, for a while at least.
At eleven, just as I’m thinking of turning in, my mobile beeps and I see there’s a message – Jess, I say to myself, finally touching base after her night of passion with the barhunk. But it’s not from Jess, it’s from Paco.
MEET ME TOMORROW PM, it says simply.
I text right back. CARLOTTA?
GET RID OF HER, comes the reply.
I swear under my breath. What the hell am I going to tell her? We have plans – the National Gallery, then the Zandra Rhodes Fashion Museum in Bermondsey. What does he expect me to tell her?
I think of Jess, of what she would say. Tell him where to stick it, or words to that effect. He might be paying you, but he doesn’t own you. Another version, in a way, of what I told Carlotta earlier today.
And I promised her too, Jess, that I’d put a stop to it all, that I wouldn’t sleep with Paco again. That, however, was before the taxi ride with Carlotta, when I realised, as she boasted to me of his prowess, that I wouldn’t be happy without one last mindblowing fuck with him.
Think, think, I’m saying to myself under my breath, and then I have it and I’m reaching for the phone and calling Carlotta’s hotel, where I ask to be put through to the spa and book her a two-hour aromatherapy massage for two o’clock tomorrow.
Pleased with my brainwave, I run myself a lavender-infused bath and climb in, wondering how tomorrow afternoon is going to pan out. In my mind’s eye I sort through my underwear drawer, trying to decide what I should wear. What was it Carlotta said Paco likes best: stuff you can see right through? There’s my black Calvin Kleins, but I was wearing those last time. How about the tan ones? They’re pretty sexy. And on top my floaty black Ghost dress with the low ruched cleavage – feminine but classy. There’s no point in trying to make myself into Carlotta: she’s one in a million.
I’m just soaping my tits when I hear the phone ring, but I know the answering machine’s still on so I let it click through. I’m barely even listening when something about the voice catches my attention and I’m leaping out of the bath and skidding all over the polished floorboards with my wet feet in a desperate bid to pick up before the caller hangs up. But I’m too late: I pick the handset up just in time to hear the line go dead.
‘Fuck,’ I almost scream, hitting the replay bottom. And there it is, that West Coast drawl I’ve heard so often in my dreams over the last five months, that lazy, laidback, unspeakably sexy, honeyed drawl. I listen to it once, and then I sit down on the sofa and I listen again, feeling all shivery and heated up at the same time.
‘Alicia,’ he begins. I know it off by heart by now. ‘It’s Dan, Dan Lubowski. You probably don’t even remember me.’
Oh yes I do, Daniel. Oh yes I do.
‘You did me a tour, a while back, in April, I think it was. A movie tour. And I’m passing through town tomorrow and I wondered if we could meet up? If you could do me another? Here’s a number you can reach me on.’
I finally come to my senses, after listening to the message five times, and scribble the number down on a piece of paper. Then I go into the kitchen and pour myself a large glass of red wine.
Back in the living room, I switch off the light and sit in the semi-darkness, my heart galloping away inside me. I’d come to think I’d never hear his voice again, never mind him calling me to arrange another meeting. I feel like a schoolgirl on the verge of her first date – prey to a kind of delicious terror. I should be angry, but somehow the mere sound of his voice has magicked away all the pain and confusion and all I want is to see him again as soon as possible.
I take a hefty swig of wine, put the glass down on the floor and start punching in the number, screwing up my eyes in the dim light cast by the streetlamp beyond my window. It’s a long one, I think, but the code’s not American. A female voice answers almost immediately, heavily accented, and when I ask for Mr Lubowski she says she will put me through. The phone rings a few times. He’s gone out, I think. I left it too long.
Then he answers, and I’m struggling to speak, my throat constricted. ‘It’s – it’s Alicia,’ I finally manage to say. ‘I just got your message.’
‘Alicia,’ he says softly, and I feel a warm glow spread right through me. ‘How are you?
‘Fine. Fine.’ I’m struggling to find something to say.
‘That’s great. I’ve often – often wondered.’
Then why haven’t you bloody well called? I want to shout, but I don’t. We had a fuck, a couple of fucks, he owed me nothing, owes me nothing. We talked vaguely of other tours but nothing was fixed. He paid me handsomely. Why would he have called?
‘How’s business?’ he says. ‘What’s been going on with you?’
He sounds genuinely interested, and before I know it I’m chatting away to him, the ice broken, the anger dissipated, telling him about my summer and about some of the nutty American clients I had, the teens full of attitude and the camera-toting clichés. He’s laughing, and asking more questions, and I remember why I fell for him for quickly, so hard. Then I ask him how he has been, and he starts telling me about a film that he’s been involved with that required several months of shooting in the wilds of Alaska, and that was beset by numerous post-production problems that ate up most of his summer. I decide, not knowing whether I really believe it or not, that’s nevertheless reason enough to forgive him.
I take a sip of wine, put my glass back down. I’m listening to him, trying to picture his face again, and all of a sudden I get that image of him with his head thrown back on the old boardroom table, gasping as I shoot one buttery finger up his arsehole and he sheds his load.
Wedging the handset between my ear and my shoulder, I pull open my towel and start fingering my pussy. I do it slowly at first, but just the sound of his voice is sending me out
of control, and soon I’m lying back on the sofa rubbing frantically at my clit. It’s not long, inevitably, before I’m biting down on my knuckles to suppress my moans as I come, savagely, almost painfully, thinking of nothing but his beautiful cock inside me, of his mouth on mine.
There’s a silence on the other end. ‘Alicia, you OK?’ says Daniel after a minute.
‘Uh huh. I was just – just reaching for a cigarette and nearly dropped the phone.’
‘Well, listen, I’d best let you get to bed,’ he says. ‘It’s late, and you’re a working girl. The reason I rang so late,’ he adds, ‘is that I’m in Paris now but I’m in London for lunch tomorrow and I wondered if you could could maybe squeeze me in for a tour in the afternoon, before I fly out?’
I grit my teeth. Why does it have to be tomorrow, I think, when already I’m running between Paco and Carlotta like a fucking lunatic?
‘It was just on the off chance,’ he says in response to my hesitation. ‘I guessed you’d probably be booked up.’
‘No, hang on a sec!’ My mind is racing, trying to work out how I’m going to do this. I have to see him, yet at the same time I know I mustn’t seem desperate. In any case, the imperious Paco is not going to let me off lightly; my only option there would be to pretend that I’m ill and cancel my morning outing with Carlotta too. But I’m just too professional to pull a stunt like that. It’s just not me.
‘OK,’ I say calmly, as if I’m flicking through my diary. ‘I have morning and afternoon tours, but I’d love to meet you in-between.’
‘No can do,’ says Daniel. ‘I’ve got a lunch, remember.’
‘Oh yes. OK, how about two o’clock? Will you be out by then? We can meet for a quick drink before I start my afternoon tour.’
We agree to meet at Mash on Great Portland Street, which gives me just enough time to drop Carlotta off for her massage and run a couple of blocks to him. I’ll tell Paco I can’t make it until three – in fact, I’ll deliver him an outright lie and tell him that Carlotta is having just an hour’s massage from three. That gives me an hour with Daniel. It’s not enough, but it’s the best I can do. Whatever is going to happen in that hour is in the hands of fate.
11
OF COURSE I hardly sleep, and the face that greets me in the mirror is not the one I want Daniel to be gazing at this afternoon. But there’s not much I can do about that now, beyond smear some MAC Studiofix concealer under my eyes, be a little more inventive with my makeup than usual, and pick up a raw apple, carrot and beetroot juice on my way to a late breakfast with Carlotta in the club lounge of her hotel. There, some strong coffee and fresh berries perk me up a bit more.
Carlotta herself is looking all pink-cheeked and radiant, and I wonder if she’s just had a bath or been in the steam room, or whether it’s a post-coital flush. The thought, for the first time, doesn’t bother me. I’m impatient for this morning to be through. What Carlotta’s husband has been doing to her is the last thing on my mind.
I tell her, to get it out of the way, that I’ve got an urgent, unexpected meeting with my accountant that afternoon and have booked her in at the spa. She’s fine about it, says that one can never have too many massages, although she also takes the opportunity to point out that she’s never met anyone who can do it like Paco. I don’t feel much like talking about Paco, but in any case she changes the subject, and instead begins complimenting me on what a great model I was last night.
‘So natural,’ she says, folding her lips around a raspberry. ‘I can’t believe you never do it before.’
I suddenly realise I didn’t see the result, in the pandemonium that followed Paco’s impromptu return, and ask her if I can have a look at it sometime.
She looks at me, all big-eyed and apologetic. ‘I not want to, Alicia,’ she says, ‘but I have to destroy it. I worried Paco might find it.’
I study her face, wondering what she’s afraid of – Paco knowing that she was drawing me naked, or him knowing that she was drawing at all? Did he stifle more than her career as a model? Did he stifle her artistic dreams too? Or is it that Carlotta has, as I am starting to suspect, certain inclinations that she doesn’t want Paco to know about? Suddenly I realise how much there is that I don’t know about this couple who have drawn me into their orbit, entangled me in their lives.
After breakfast we head for the National Gallery. This time we make our way round fairly randomly, although Carlotta gravitates towards nudes again. Her favourite, by far, is Renoir’s A Nymph by a Stream, which, she tells me, reminds her a little of Victorine Meurent, and, by extension, of me. The theme, she tells me knowledgably – the association of the female body with the primal forces of nature, here represented by the water and the mossy bank and grasses on which the wide-eyed model lies – is a traditional one in French art.
The one I find most fascinating, on the other hand – or perhaps the most compellingly uncomfortable – is Bronzino’s An Allegory with Venus and Cupid. The erotic but erudite subject matter, we read on the plaque, endeared it to François I of France, who once owned it. Its foreground is dominated by Cupid kissing Venus, a hand on one of her breasts, but the painting is haunted by other faces half-hidden in the shadows around the main figures, contorted faces representing other facets of love – Fraud, Jealousy, Despair, Folly and Oblivion.
I’m aware that Carlotta is watching me as I examine it, and I sense that I have awakened her curiosity. ‘It not so happy view of love,’ she says at last. ‘You think love like that?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say, not at all offended by her probing, and marvelling at how perceptive she can be. ‘Deep down,’ I tell her, ‘I’m as romantic as they come.’ I think of Daniel, of my hopes for this afternoon. ‘I’d like to believe in happily-ever-after,’ I say.
Carlotta smiles. ‘I sure you get it,’ she says. She gives my arm a little squeeze. ‘You deserve it. You so lovely.’
Over coffee afterwards I listen to her talking animatedly about two male nudes we’ve seen on our journey through the galleries. The first was an académie, which, as Carlotta explains, means an anonymous life study made as part of the curriculum of a classical art training in early-nineteenth-century France. It was a naked man seen from behind, and as she looked at it Carlotta had compared it aloud to Paco’s lithe, athletic dancer’s body. I’d had the same thought but not been able to voice it, for obvious reasons.
We agree on another thing, and that is that Gustave Caillebotte’s Man at his Bath is, in some ways, even sexier. The guy in it is pale and a good deal stockier, lacking Paco’s grace, but the sense of domestic intimacy, of a glimpse into a private moment, makes it a turn on.
‘It like Dégas’ bathers,’ says Carlotta, tonguing the froth on her cappuccino. ‘It make us all into voyeurs; that the point. But a domestic male nude like that is rare, even shocking, at time.’
We discuss the shock value of art for a while, how we’ve become deadened to it, for better or worse, but I find myself more and more distracted now, and am constantly shooting glances under the table at my watch, counting down the minutes until I see Daniel. Finally, at twenty to two, anxious not to be a second late for my big date, I bundle us into a taxi and head back to Langham Place, where I deposit Carlotta at the spa and set out on foot for Mash.
I’m a little early, which is fine, because it gives me the opportunity to refresh my makeup in the loos and have a quick brandy to dampen my nerves. Then I pop a mint in my mouth, order a mineral water and place myself on one of the retro-futuristic chairs in a pose that, I hope, looks both alluring and effortlessly casual.
Half an hour later I’m still sitting there, only now I’m on my third brandy and I’m deflating rapidly, slumped in my seat. Every few minutes I look idiotically at the display screen of my mobile, though I would hear it if it rang or beeped a message. Thirty minutes is not so late in London, where everyone’s always getting stuck in traffic or in a tube tunnel, but time is ticking away – I have to be with Paco in another half-hour, and
there’s no way I can fake illness now Carlotta’s seen me and knows I’m fine.
At ten to three I give up on my dreams of Daniel Lubowski. He wasn’t interested enough to call me after those two nights together, and he’s not interested enough to keep our date. Something better came up, no doubt. I pay for my drinks, push open the heavy glass doors and head back to Langham Place, the bitter taste of the brandy still on my lips.
12
THERE’S MORE BOOZE at the hotel, in the Infinity Suite, where Paco awaits me. He’s actually on the phone when I tap on his door, but he waves me towards two flutes of champagne set on a little silver tray on the coffee table, and I take one gratefully. I stand in the window, look back at him on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, his ankle swinging jauntily. Seemingly unthinkingly, he starts fiddling with the remote control as he rattles away in Spanish, and the flatscreen TV flickers into life to show him, Paco, strutting his stuff.
I watch, mesmerised. For all I know about him from the gossip rags, I’ve never actually seen Paco dance, and it’s true what I’ve read of him: he’s fiery, expressive, thrilling. He positively burns, in this most passionate of dance forms, with sensuality.
Paco finishes his call, and for a moment we remain in silence, watching the rest of the performance.
Like I said, I’m no dance expert, but the combination of fleet footwork, graceful arm and hand movements, and – most of all – the surprising vibrancy of his naked upper body, which has an almost sculptural quality to it, are dazzling. The long flowing locks he had back then add to the full-bodied drama of the spectacle.
‘What do you think about?’ I say at last, flicking my eyes from the image on the screen to Paco in person and back again, unsure which is the most compelling, unable to believe that I’m here with him. That I was summoned by him. ‘What do you think about when you’re dancing?’
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