The minute she’s gone and the door is closed and locked, I turn and throw myself at Paco. You’d think I hadn’t had any in years, the way I’m on him now, undoing his zip and pulling out his cock and climbing onto it as he sits in the chair, pulling my knickers aside with my fingers. You’d never believe I’ve come several times this afternoon, the way I’m burning for him.
One arm on his shoulder to steady me, I’m riding him as if he were a wild horse, my spine arched, shoulders thrown back, all the muscles of my cunt squeezing, locking me onto him. And then he’s standing, and advancing across the room, and I’m amazed at the power of those thighs, for him to be able to hold me up and carry on feeding himself into me, in and out, in and out, faster and faster. Then we come to a halt, and I’m up against the wall and he’s banging into me, crushing me, and we’re both gasping and tearing at each other with our hands.
He binds me against him again with his arms and carries me back to the chair, swizzling it around as we sit down. I lean back again – we haven’t been kissing anyway, no time for that nonsense – and this time I finger myself too, so that with the stimulation of his prick inside me and the action of my own digit, I come hyper-intensely. It’s the cue for him to stop thinking of football or flamenco moves or whatever it is he thinks about to keep a lid on himself.
I take the opportunity to slide back off the chair, onto my knees, and take him in my mouth. He drives his fingers into my shoulders, jerks his hips convulsively, and I look up and find that he’s watching himself in the mirror as he comes, staring into his own eyes. I nearly choke on his come with surprise. That, and the desire to laugh.
Half an hour later we’re washed and dressed and having a very civilized drink in the Blue Bar at the Berkeley. We’ve picked a corner table, but Paco has got his shades on for good measure, not thinking what a wanker he must look. It’s nearly midnight, after all. Still, needs must when you’re an international superstar on the town with your bit on the side.
We’re sipping dry martinis, chatting desultorily. I’m finding it hard to focus, still shocked by how I reacted to him, how much I continue to want him, after all I’d decided, after Carlotta. It seems so wrong, such a terrible muddle, but in the dressing room it felt so right. So necessary. I had to have him.
After an hour or so, Paco looks at his watch, sighs. ‘I want to spend the night with you,’ he says. ‘Here, in this hotel. I wish I didn’t have to go.’
I, in turn, wish that I could tell him not to rush off, that his wife, in all likelihood, is still in the room we shared at The Zetter, going down on some bit of fluff she picked up in the bar, munching on some fresh clit as she threatened to do if I left. But I can’t, and I’m exhausted anyway, and in truth the only thing on my mind now is getting home and slipping into my own bed, alone, and getting a good night’s sleep. Suddenly, an empty flat is just what I need.
13
THE MORNING FINDS me slobbing around in my kimono, waiting for Carlotta to call. I’m certainly not going to chase her after her little fit of pique: if she wants to go out, she can contact me. In the meantime, I have a huge backlog of calls and emails to work my way though.
I sit down at my computer, log on and check my inbox. More than a hundred new messages. I groan, pour myself another cup of coffee, try to bin as many as possible without opening them and assess the rest according to priority. My eyes lock onto one about twenty down in the list: [email protected]. The subject field reads ‘Sorry!!!!!Future date????’
I don’t want to, but I click on it.
‘Alicia, I’m sorry,’ it reads. ‘I was really looking forward to seeing you. Please forgive me and say you’re free on the 20th, for dinner at least, but a tour if you can make it. I’ll pay for your time, whatever. I’m in town for a couple of days. Dan.’
I read it over and over, wondering if there’s anything between the lines, and then I get cross – as much at myself as him, and I fire tetchily back:
‘Booked up. Sorry, A.’
By the time I’ve fetched yet another coffee, a second ‘danlub’ email has plopped into my mailbox. I open it:
‘Will double rate if you cancel the other. D.’
I frown, start chewing at the inside of my cheek. I suppose I should be flattered, if he thinks I’m worth that, but now I’m really getting wound up.
‘Not for sale to highest bidder,’ I type. I pause for a second, then hit send. Immediately I do so, I’m wondering if I’ve done the right thing. He’s apologised for the missed date, and I know, in my heart, he didn’t mean it that way. All this business with Paco and Carlotta must be sending me a bit loony.
I reach for the phone, dial Jess’s number. She’ll be in a strop with me, for not returning her calls, but she’ll relent, especially when she hears what I have to say, what has happened. And she’s the only one who can talk any sense into me.
The tone goes on, then her answerphone takes over.
‘Jess, it’s Al,’ I say urgently. ‘I’m sorry. Stuff – stuff has got a bit out of control. Call me. Love you.’
My mobile’s ringing as I hang up the landline. It’s Carlotta, all bright and breezy, suggesting a walk on Hampstead Heath. Fresh air sounds like a good idea to me, after a succession of sweaty encounters in hotel rooms and dressing rooms, and we agree to meet at the top of Parliament Hill at four o’clock. I check my mailbox again, but Daniel has gone silent, unsurprisingly. I swear under my breath. I’ve well and truly blown it with him.
I see her before I get to the top of the hill: she’s the only person on the heath in a pair of red stilettos. The only one wearing a semi-transparent white sundress with no bra either, I would guess. Around her, kites are colliding and getting tangled as their owners struggle to concentrate on them rather than her.
She steps forward, kisses me on one cheek, a cigarette in one hand. With the other she risks a little tweak at my nipple.
‘Hello, lover,’ she breathes into my ear.
‘Hi,’ I say shyly.
‘How is your evening with your friend?’ she asks, a little archly, obviously still smarting.
‘Fine,’ I reply. ‘It was fine.’
‘She is still brokenhearted?’
‘She’ll get over it.’
‘Everybody do,’ she says, exhaling a mouthful of smoke, pointing over to the south. ‘Look,’ she exclaims. ‘You can see St Paul’s. That where we were the other day – at the Tate, no?’
‘It is,’ I say. ‘What did you do?’ I probe. ‘Last night?’
‘Oh, I send out for that sexy movie in the end. It seem such a waste of a lovely hotel room, to go home. Our suite is so huge, you get lost in there on your own. It make you lonely. No, I felt cosy, so I stay and watch a film, and I masturbate a lot, thinking of you. Then I get a taxi home and go to bed. I hear Paco come in, feel his hand on me, but I can’t.’ She laughs. ‘Even I have limits,’ she says.
I find that hard to believe, but I’m glad she didn’t fuck Paco last night. I like to think that I had him to myself, for once.
She’s smiling at me in the sunlight, her hair glittering around her like a candyfloss haze, and I wonder if I should feel bad. After all, how could she be upset at Paco fooling around when she is doing exactly the same behind his back, and even with the same person?
‘What are you thinking?’ she says, watching me curiously, and I shrug.
‘Nuthin’ in my noggin,’ I say, and at her raised eyebrows I knock on my head, provide a translation. ‘It’s all empty in there.’
She laughs, looks around her. ‘Is it true, what I hear,’ she says, ‘that you can swim naked here? Outside, in some ponds?’
I nod. ‘You want to go?’ I say.
‘Why not? Sounds like fun.’
I walk her to the heath ponds, explaining to her that the former brick pits are fed by natural springs, which means they get a bit of algae but are generally quite clean. It turns out to be a quiet time of the day, and we strip off and plunge in and float around for a
bit, before finding a little corner where we can have a bit of a smooch. After a while, Carlotta reaches for me, starts fingering my pussy, and then I do the same to her and before long we’re talking about where we can go for a proper fuck.
Carlotta’s all for doing it right here, actually, but I’m a bit worried we may get into trouble. She teases me for being so circumspect, bobs her head down under the water and jabs at my fanny with her tongue, coming up laughing and blowing bubbles and crossing her eyes. I want her so badly, I’m ready to give in, just haul her out onto the bank and have her right there, without a care for who sees us. But then an old lady walks by us, skin hanging off her in baggy folds, tough-looking as a rhino’s, and we get out and dress hurriedly and go in search of a private spot.
We soon find a little wooded area off a minor path and, making sure no one can see us, creep in, divest ourselves of our clothes again, and fall on top of each other, giggling and kissing and sucking and grabbing at each other. We roll around like playful kittens for a while, then things turn dirty and this time it’s her reaching into her bag for the strap-on, slipping it on and ramming it into my arse until I don’t know whether I’m crying because I want her to stop or because I want more. When she takes it out, she keeps it on, using it on my clit this time, until I’m actually sobbing, from the intensity, from the frustration of being on the cusp of orgasm and then having her ease off, teasing me, again. And perhaps also from love, I think as finally I do climax, clasping Carlotta’s head to my chest and holding her fast against me.
Afterwards, Carlotta whips out a little digital camera from her bag.
‘Look what I buy this morning,’ she says, and she brings it up to her face and takes a snap. She turns the camera to show me my own image on the back screen. I’m all heavy-lidded and somnolent, the cat that got the cream.
‘Souvenirs,’ she says, and she takes some more, getting bossier as she goes on.
‘Left, right, no left a bit more . . . arch your back so your titties sticking out . . . open your legs more so I see your pussy. Spread yourself for me. No, spread yourself, I say.’
It’s a turn-on, I must admit, and I take some similar ones of her. We even take a few of us together, turning the lens on ourselves, sticking our tongues out, planting big kisses on each other’s cheeks, hamming it up.
‘Aren’t you worried about Paco finding out?’ I say as I watch her tuck the camera back into her bag.
‘You no worry, I save them to CD and delete from camera,’ she says. ‘That’s safer than prints. Then I just look at them on computer when Paco’s out.’ She laughs. ‘Oh, I gonna masturbate so hard over you when I back in Spain,’ she says. ‘And I’ll do a copy for you, to remember me by.’
I want to ask her what will happen then, when she goes back to Spain. What will become of us. But I so desperately don’t want to marr this glorious afternoon. So I don’t say anything. And I don’t say anything about maybe having fallen in love with her. That’s for another time.
Over coffee and cakes on Hampstead High Street, Carlotta asks me if I can take her to a lesbian bar, since Paco is performing again that night. I tell her I’m surprised she doesn’t attend his shows, and she sneers, waves her hand dismissively.
‘All those ugly women getting turned on by him,’ she says. ‘And the gays too. Grazie, no. No thanks. I prefer to have him all myself when he come back.’
‘So you want to go to a girls’ bar?’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ she says a little dreamily. ‘To see the scene.’
‘Do you go to lesbian bars in Madrid?’
She sips at her coffee, looks at me a little combatively. It looks for all the world like she’s about to rebuff me with a curt ‘None of your business’. But then she relaxes back into her chair, lights a cigarette and looks at me intently.
‘Sometime,’ she says.
The door is open for me, and I know it’s now or never.
‘I know you have done this before . . .’ I begin.
She exhales a little puff of smoke. ‘Of course,’ she says.
‘Often?’
‘I never count,’ she says with a certain aloofness. ‘I just say, I take it where I find it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It mean if I see a pretty woman and she like me and I like her, I not gonna say no. You think I crazy?’
‘Have you ever –’ I can’t say it. The word ‘love’ gets stuck in my throat.
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’ I cast around for a way to skirt the subject. ‘When – who was the first one?’
‘Oh, Alicia, Alicia – we going back years now.’
‘OK, then when was the last time, before me?’
She crosses her legs, runs her fingers through her hair. ‘It was New York,’ she says. ‘At a gallery in the East Village. Paco was rehearsing – he always rehearsing – and I was alone. This girl come in – a Venezuelan, I find out later. I just have to have her.’
I stare at her, my mind racing. I happen to know that Paco and she came to London directly from New York. Given how little time they have been married, it must have been during that very trip. This must have happened only a week or two before she slept with me.
‘What did you do?’ I say, almost beside myself, both appalled and fascinated, knowing that what she tells me will make me suffer but obeying an ache in my groin to know more.
She breathes in and out deeply, and her breasts heave and fall. She’s clearly getting excited too, at the thought of her conquest.
‘I keep looking at her,’ she says, ‘but she don’t react, don’t return my stares. I know she know, though. That she playing with me. When she go, I follow her, and after a few blocks she turn round and she say to me, “What do you want?”’
‘What did you say?’
‘I come right out with it. “I want you,” I say.’
‘Jesus.’
‘And you know what she do? She just smile and then she lead me right up to her apartment on that street and we stay in bed for the rest of the afternoon. I think I come – what? – ten, fifteen time. She do something with her tongue that –’
She stops, fishes in her suede Balenciaga bag for her purse and flattens some notes on the table. ‘Let’s go,’ she says, and in the space of a heartbeat we are out of the door and flagging down a taxi.
‘Langham Place,’ she says to the driver, ‘but we in no hurry. Take your time.’
As the car pulls away from the kerb, she yanks down one of the folding seats with their back to the driver and hitches up her skirt. On her knickers I can see a blot of moisture. She pulls them to one side to reveal her tidy little cunt, all shiny and glistening in the sunlight.
‘Go down on me,’ she commands. ‘Let me feel your mouth on me, your tongue.’
I kneel at her feet, on the taxi floor, and bring my mouth to her foaming pussy, wondering if I can satisfy her in the way the Venezuelan did, or the way Paco does. Not that she complained last time, in The Zetter, but I’m feeling a little inadequate, a little lacklustre, after her description of the girl in the gallery.
She doesn’t complain though, and as she starts writhing, gripping each side of the seat to secure herself as we go round corners, I stop worrying about the other girl and about how my prowess matches up to hers and just hope that the driver doesn’t slam on the brakes and ask us what the hell we’re doing.
He doesn’t, but after we’ve dropped Carlotta off at her hotel and are crossing Marylebone to reach my flat, I bury my head in a magazine, determined not to catch his eye in the mirror or to give him any chance to ask me if his ears had been playing tricks on him.
I make a few calls to find out where I can take Carlotta that’s trendy but discreet, then get changed, wondering what one wears to a lesbian bar. At twenty-eight, I’m really not very worldly-wise where many things are concerned. I finally settle on some wedge heels and a black satin pencil skirt with a scooped-neck beige Joseph top. No doubt Carlotta will be wearing somethin
g rather more outré.
With five minutes to kill, I check my emails and find there’s one from Daniel, apologising: the last thing he wanted, he said, was to offend me. I send one back, apologising for being oversensitive. I add that I am free on the date he asked about after all, then at the last minute before sending delete that sentence. I really don’t want him to think I lied, even though I did.
And then I’m in another taxi speeding back to Carlotta’s hotel, starting to feel like a bit of a human pingpong ball.
When I knock on the door to Carlotta’s suite, it’s the maid who answers.
‘Madame is showering,’ she informs me. ‘She says to order yourself a drink.’ She leaves, closing the door behind her.
I step into the drawing room, stand listening to the sound of the rushing water from the bathroom for a minute, wondering whether to go and hop in with Carlotta. I’m pretty sure she’s expecting me to, and I’m certain she wouldn’t say no to a quick one, but left on my own for a minute I suddenly find I have an overwhelming desire to take advantage, to have a bit of a snoop.
I tiptoe into the bedroom, ears keenly attuned to what’s going on in the bathroom, the door to which is half closed. Carlotta’s singing something in Spanish. I imagine her hands skimming her breasts almost unconsciously, running down her belly and soaping the neat little folds of her pussy, the delicate little eye of her sphincter. I cast the image from my mind, try to concentrate on what’s in front of me: the silver chest of drawers. Now where did she put the picture, the one she says she’s thrown away? Was it the middle drawer? I open it. It’s empty. So, I find, are all the others.
I turn around, scan the room. There are two circular bedside tables, and as soon as I see them I’m consumed by curiosity. Who couldn’t resist a peek, even if it’s only to find a tube of KY Jelly nestling next to the Gideon’s Bible?
I walk over, open Paco’s – or at least the one that is most likely to be his, given that it’s on the side nearest the men’s dressing area. When I do so I let out a little gasp of surprise that I’m quick to stifle. But it’s not the little gold handcuffs that take me unawares, nor Carlotta’s strap-on, which she used on me only a few hours ago – though that does force me to confront the fact that she may have it primarily to use on Paco more than on other women. No, what stuns me most is the sight of the very picture I believed destroyed, the sketch that Carlotta did of me in the Olympia pose.
The Blue Guide Page 15