Ricardo smiles again, and that smile in that instant, strikes me as far more important than the poor bird’s life. I wonder what has come over me. He nods towards the doorway. “Shall we go,” he asks, “to the bedroom?”
I laugh and lead the way. “The living room,” I correct him.
“Ah,” he says, cheekily. “But is also the bedroom.”
I cross to the French windows and stare out at the lights on the jetty.
“Cool, huh?” he says, sounding, for an instant, pure American.
I nod. “I used to live here – well, a bit further down that way.” I point to the right. “It’s a great view. Noisy in summer though.”
“Yes,” he says, moving to my side. “The … livraison …”
“The concrete deliveries,” I say. “All that grey powder. Awful!”
“Yes,” he agrees. “And so early in the morning.”
We stand in silence for a minute and I become aware, first of the sound of his breathing next to me, and then of the heat of his body reaching across the gap between us and warming my arm through my shirt-sleeve. It feels peculiarly romantic, almost like a date – almost like that moment when you wonder when the first kiss will come.
“So what happen with Tom?” he asks, thankfully breaking the silence.
I shrug. “I don’t know. He’s having a wobble I think.”
“A wobble?” he repeats.
I nod and sip the whisky. “He’s being strange.”
Ricardo nods. “All human beings are mad. It’s just whether you can find one whose madness you can live with,” he says.
I laugh. “Yeah … sounds about right. But I do worry. He had a sort of breakdown about a year ago. He was on anti-depressants – Prozac. Still, I suppose lots of people are.”
“Oh yes,” Ricardo says. “Lots. In France, many, many.”
“We had this really weird conversation,” I say. “He phoned and said he didn’t feel like he was in a couple, that he was missing doing the things he did when he was single.”
“Sexual things?”
I shrug.
“Not so good,” Ricardo says, swilling the whisky around the glass.
“No,” I agree.
“He should not make you worry like this. He should just do quietly his needs.”
I turn to him, a confused expression forming. “Well, it’s not really how loud he is about them,” I say. “It’s the needs themselves that worry me.”
Ricardo shrugs. “People do what people must do,” he says. “If it’s the end then it’s good to tell, if it’s important. But otherwise, it’s better to be quiet. Better not to worry everyone. Life is too short.”
I combine a small laugh and a little outrage into a short gasp. “So you think he should just lie to me?”
Ricardo nods seriously. “The end is the same,” he says. “Only you are worried. You don’t agree?”
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I think he should be faithful. I don’t need to shag around, I don’t see why Tom would … should, whatever.”
Ricardo wobbles his head from side to side and then looks back out over the port. “You are special maybe. I think it is better. I think faithful is better, but most men – they have needs. But if they are, comment dire …”
“Speak French if you want,” I say.
Ricardo shakes his head. “It’s good for me to use English. No, if they are little needs – I don’t see why to hurt your partner by telling everything.”
I sigh. “I see your point,” I say. “But …” I shrug and sigh again.
“You never?” Ricardo says.
“What, cheat?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “With other people.”
I shake my head.
“Never!” he says again.
I shake my head and laugh. “No, never,” I say.
Ricardo nods. “You very serious boy.”
I shrug. “You seem very surprised.”
Ricardo tilts his head wistfully. “Even normal men …” he says.
I wince. “Hetero is better,” I say. “Or straight.”
Ricardo frowns in incomprehension.
“I’m normal too,” I say. “Or I like to think so.”
He nods. “Yes,” he says. “Sorry, of course. So most, hetero men, even Catholic, they do things they shouldn’t. Sometimes – often maybe – I think it saves a marriage. Lets people do what they must without ending everything. I suppose I think that gay men will be more – flexible.”
I laugh. The whisky and my tiredness are hitting home and the lights on the jetty are blurring. I blink hard, then, normal vision restored, I say, laughing, “Most of them are. More flexible, that is.”
“But not you,” Ricardo says. He sounds impressed. “Not Mark.”
I feel a bit prudish, so I answer, “Not yet,” and then wonder if that sounded flirtatious and rephrase, “never up until now,” and wonder if that didn’t sound even worse.
“Pas encore …” Ricardo translates. “OK.”
“And you?” I ask, trying to move the conversation away from how up-tight I apparently am. “You don’t cheat on Jenny, do you?”
Ricardo stares back out at the sea. “Pas encore,” he says, laughter in his voice.
I nod and grin. “But if you did you wouldn’t tell her anyway. Or me either.”
He sighs and shuffles his feet. “It depends,” he says.
“On?” A first uneasy pang about where this is going hits me. I notice that I’m feeling slightly flushed, and vaguely aroused. I wonder if the two are connected.
Ricardo sighs. “Oh I don’t know,” he says. “If it is a little thing, of no importance, then no.”
I nod. “And where do you draw the line?”
“The line?” he asks.
“How do you decide if something is important?”
Ricardo blows through his lips. “Maybe a kiss. Maybe a kiss is not so important. And maybe feelings. Maybe if I’m drunk and something happen, but it is not important – maybe then I don’t tell.”
I nod. “I guess,” I say, vaguely.
“But if, you know, you see someone many times – well, then, maybe you have to decide who you want to be with.”
I nod. “I can see the logic,” I say. “But it just …”
“And it depends who,” he continues. “Say it’s a friend of Jenny – say I kiss you, or Tom, or a girlfriend of her – she would be hurt. So I would not tell.”
I try to swallow but my mouth is suddenly dry. I swig the last of my whisky. My dick is hardening – I’m hyper aware of his physical presence beside me – and I’m not sure if it’s just the whisky or my tiredness, but the situation seems increasingly unreal. “And is that something you’re likely to do?” I say. “Kiss Tom?”
Ricardo laughs lightly. “Tom? No!” he says. “But with you, it might be good.”
I clear my throat and summon my final reserves – my final reserves of reserve. I place the glass carefully on the wooden sideboard and turn to Ricardo. I touch his arm gently and nod and smile wryly. I wrinkle my nose and nod. “This is where I should leave,” I say calmly, with certainty.
He smiles at me broadly and tilts his head to one side. “I like you,” he says simply, a glint in his eye.
We stare at each other for a few moments. His eyes are deep seductive wells, and it’s a struggle not to let go of the rope, a struggle not to relinquish myself to the freefall into ecstasy or oblivion or whatever is calling to me from those depths. But my mind is a cacophony of screaming alarm bells. In the stupidity stakes of life, sleeping with Jenny’s boyfriend would clearly be hard to beat. “I know,” I say. “And I’m flattered, but …”
Ricardo raises an eyebrow. “Just a kiss then,” he says, leaning towards me.
“I don’t …” I say, but it’s all I can manage.
Ricardo licks his lips and shrugs one shoulder. “Just a quick kiss – for Christmas. Oh, yes! I have this!” He produces a sprig of mistletoe from the sideboard and l
ifts it above his head. “Now you can’t refuse.”
I smile and he leans in a little further, but at the last minute I turn sideways to avoid the impact. His stubble grazes my cheek. I brazen it out and move and kiss him on the other cheek turning the whole sorry episode into a goodbye peck.
He sighs, straightens and looks at me with an amused, circumspect expression. “So here,” he says, theatrically, almost camply, pointing at his cheek, “is OK. And here,” he points at his lips, “is not?”
I nod and laugh. “Something like that,” I say.
He measures the distance between his cheek and his lips with finger and thumb and then shows me the result. “So, what, six centimetres between good and evil? I must read my Bible again.”
I snort, part out of amusement, part out of embarrassment. “You’re right,” I say. “It’s absurd, but …”
He shrugs and looks at me quizzically. “So don’t be,” he says with a mini-shake of the head. “Don’t be absurd.”
I stand before him and freeze as his face comes closer; I can feel his breath on my lips, the heat of his nose beside mine. And like a dam weakened first by a tiny leak and then crumbling into a gush and finally rupturing into a torrent, I sense my defences collapsing. When his lips touch mine, lightly at first, I think, “Oh God, no,” and then simply, “Oh God.”
He kisses me on the lips and I don’t hinder or abet; I just stand there in that thought, “Oh God,” and let him. And then he slides a hand behind my neck, pulls away and says, “I really like you, you know. Since the day in the mountains.” And then he moves in for a second kiss, and this time, as he pulls me towards him, I turn my head so that we make a better fit and it seems that at that instant, because of that simple act of acquiescence, I am as steeped in the sin of the moment as he is. Curiously, I think of something my auntie used to say: “You might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.” I think of Tom, pissing me around and think, “Fuck him!” And perversely, “Huh! Two can play at that game.”
I wonder if there is a scale of infidelity, or is that it; is it simply now, done? And if so, if I am to be hung for my crimes, why not just go the whole hog? It’s at this point that I open my jaw and let Ricardo’s tongue enter my mouth; it’s at this point that I pull my stomach in so that his hand can work it’s way past the waistband towards my dick.
“Eh, oui,” he murmurs, pulling me towards the sofa, then sitting and unbuckling my belt. As he pulls my jeans down, I catch sight of myself in the mirror. For an instant, I see myself exactly as I am: a sad, weak, human being, with no willpower, no principles – someone who would cheat on his partner with his best friend’s boyfriend. And in that instant, I almost summon the willpower to stop it all – my muscles even begin to move in the right direction. But then he lies back on the sofa and wriggles his own jeans off, and I stop looking in the mirror, and look instead at his tight body, at the swirls of fur around his belly button, at his expectant, naive grin, and he’s as tempting as a fireplace on a rainy day, and I simply forget about walking away. I remember instead, the thought I had the first time I saw him: that there are people who are so pretty, so seductive, so charming, that there’s just no point trying to resist.
He pulls me to the sofa beside him and we press our bodies together – delicious. I unbutton my shirt and help him shuck his polo, and then we pull each other tight, desperate to maximise the skin-to-skin contact. He reaches and pushes his stiff dick down so that it sits between my thighs, and then, amazingly, nothing else happens.
We lie there together, kissing occasionally, looking into each other’s eyes, smiling. I stroke his back, he strokes my hair, and each twitch of his dick solicits an identical twitch from my own and that makes us snigger, and the simple fact of that laughter on a rainy Christmas Eve feels like a gift from some open-minded, benign God.
After maybe twenty minutes, I start to doze, and my arousal fades, and I wonder confusedly why this act should count for anything at all; I wonder how our societies became so fucked-up that a cuddle became a crime?
And then the moment is broken and I’m awake and my mobile is vibrating across the coffee table and Ricardo is jumping up and saying, “Merde, la dinde,” and there’s smoke in the room, and I’m blinking at my nudity and pressing a button and listening to Tom sing, “We wish you a merry Christmas. We wish you a merry Christmas …”
When he has finished, I say, as one might to a child, “Thanks Tom, that was lovely.”
“You OK?” he says. “You sound weird.”
“Sorry, yeah, I dozed off.”
“You’re at Rick’s aren’t you?” he says.
I clear my throat guiltily. “Yeah,” I say. “He’s in the kitchen. Burning the turkey. But I’m knackered. I hardly slept.”
“Turkey?” Tom says.
“Don’t ask.”
“Anyway, I know it’s only the twenty-fourth, but I wanted to say happy Christmas, and, well, sorry. For everything.”
“I tried to phone you,” I say, realising as I say it that Tom has actually apologised – a first!
“Yeah, I was out,” he says.
“But I phoned you this morning too,” I say, re-buttoning my jeans, and thinking that I’m not in the best position to be expressing outrage no matter where he was, but that this probably won’t stop me.
“Yeah,” he says vaguely. “Anyway, give Ricky boy a big kiss from me, and you two have a lovely evening, OK?”
“And you, Tom? What are you doing?”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, OK?” he says. “Byeeee.” Click.
“Yeah,” I say, frowning and putting the already silent phone back on the table. “Bye.”
I refasten my belt and button my shirt, and think that Tom is hiding something, and think that there are problems closer to home, and then wonder briefly which problem I need to think about first.
I head through to the kitchen where Ricardo, still bare-chested, is using his polo shirt to fan a smoking, turkey-shaped lump of charcoal on the windowsill.
“I burn the bird,” he says despondently.
I bite my lip and smirk despite myself.
“What?” he asks. “It’s not so funny.”
I crack into a broad grin. “Actually, it is,” I say. “Vegetarians don’t eat turkey.”
Ricardo shakes his head. “No?” he says. “And you? You don’t?”
I shake my head slowly.
Ricardo feigns outrage. “So you do this on purpose,” he says. “You seduce me and drug me to sleep and burn my dinner?”
I mimic his outrage. “I seduced you?”
Ricardo opens his arms and walks towards me. “OK,” he says. “We seduce each other.”
I take a step back and shake my head. “I think I should go,” I say. “I mean, this really isn’t such a good …”
“No,” Ricardo says. “You burn my dinner and then leave me? I don’t think so.”
I laugh. “Well, is any of it even … I mean, are even the potatoes OK?” I say.
Ricardo shrugs pathetically. “Sorry,” he says, opening a cupboard and peering inside. “Pot Noodle?” he says. “I have lots of Pot Noodle. And we have Champagne.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Crazy guy,” I say.
“It’s OK?”
I laugh. “OK, Ricardo. Pot Noodle. But no funny business.”
He nods. “OK,” he says. “No funny business if you don’t want. Just Pot Noodle and then Champagne, and then we sleep. Chicken and Mushroom or … Chinese Chow Mein, or … Tikka Masala …”
He pulls a face. “I think they all have meat or bird in them.”
I shake my head. “No, it’s fine,” I say. “They don’t have anything real in them at all. I’ll go for the Tikka Masala.”
“OK,” Ricardo says, reaching for the kettle. “You open the Champagne.”
Deserving Better
I sigh and stretch and lick my lips. My mouth is dry, I have a vague headache, and a slight backache too. And there seems to be too much light i
n the bedroom. I wonder if I forgot to close the shutters. Tom’s heavy arm around me exacerbates my backache, so I reach above the covers and move it to my hip. Something about it, the weight, the girth, the velvety hair, makes me open one eye, and I see that this is not my bedroom, this is not my bed, this is not Tom’s arm, and I deduce, then remember, that the hot body pressed to my back, the erect dick squashed against my buttocks, is not Tom’s either.
I groan and start to roll away, but the arm moves back around me and pulls me in tightly. “Later,” Ricardo murmurs. “There’s time for all that later. Sleep.”
I remain frozen for a few seconds and then as if hypnotised by his command, sleep washes over me anew, and I relax into the warmth of his grasp.
The next time I awaken, I find myself alone on the sofa bed. The sky beyond the windows is bright blue and sunlight is streaming into the room catching particles of dust in its beams. Something about the hard edges of the shadows this seaside-light produces reminds me of my brother’s place in Brighton. I can hear Ricardo’s voice from the kitchen and I listen for a while to be sure that he’s on the phone – that there are no other voices. I quietly pull on my jeans.
He is standing naked, facing the other way, staring at the horizon, one hand holding the phone, the other, absent-mindedly stroking a buttock. The coffee machine is spluttering beside him, and there’s a smell of toast.
I watch him in silence. I stare at his buttocks, appreciating the proportions of his legs, the shape of his back, the neck, the bicep showing on the arm that holds the phone. And then the toaster pops up and he spins and sees me.
“Jenny,” he mouths, pointing at the phone with his free hand. I point to myself and wiggle a finger at him, but he either doesn’t understand or chooses to ignore me. “Yes, he’s here,” he says. “I give you.”
I roll my eyes, stifle a groan, and accept the handset. “Hello?” I say.
“Merry Christmas,” Jenny says. “Merry Christmas!” Sarah repeats, shrieking in the distance.
“Merry Christmas to you too,” I say.
“Shit, you sound rough,” Jenny says, brightly. Her voice hurts my head.
“Yeah,” I say. “Too much to drink.”
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