by Jan Vivian
He pressed the number listed against Alicia’s name.
‘Si?’
‘It’s Monty…again.’
‘And?’ she wasn’t going to make it easy for him this time.
‘I’ll see you…later tonight, after nine-thirty…or any evening, seven onwards, any day next week. We can plan ahead if that helps you?’
As he waited for her to reply he drummed his fingers impatiently on the bench he was seated upon, a towel used to mop the sweat from his body. Somehow, he would live for the moment, do as Alicia had always suggested so directly.
‘I’d like it for tonight and again on Friday next week…si?’
‘Moment by moment, Alicia,’ he laughed out. ‘I’m not keeping a diary on when it’s to be…’
‘We’ll see,’ she said in a friendlier tone. ‘I need some times with you to get your moods right…you get so angry. Is what I ask so difficult to understand, Monty, mi Inglés?’
‘I’m thinking of others,’ he said in faultless Spanish, ‘those I still care for, but don’t see, in another life of mine.’
‘Then I think, lover, we are beginning to understand the details of our reunions. Tonight and again Friday may settle it. I will text you my address…the bed is comfortable…the welcome honest.’
♥
Monty took a cab from the secure parking place where the hourly charge was bearable. He would be there for her at the agreed time.
He knew that it was an unremarkable avenida where Alicia had told him her apartment block was situated; there the residents felt a pride in their neighbourhood and made sure it was kept clean. The rubbish containers that were strategically placed by the roadside were closed not piled high and with their contents spilling out for scavenging dogs, rats and cats to feast on. Trees, their foliage dusted lightly, offered scant shade in the heat of the day.
A light wind cheater was worn over a white t-shirt that accompanied a favourite pair of Levi’s. A shower had pepped him up and a light body spray made it all seem as if he was out on a date. Perhaps that was the way to look on this assignation, this walk on a wilder way of things where the only game was how soon he’d be screwing the lady who had asked for him.
It really was crazy. He was behaving like a poor student or those he read about in the newspaper columns of the city’s main papers – escort services, sex slaves, pleasure seekers and givers, along with a phone number.
He wasn’t to be counted among them; no way!
He was on a date and he’d hold fast that idea. This assignation was a true first and Alicia’s brilliant smile as she opened the door to him confirmed that it was so.
‘Hola!’ he smiled brightly and held out a small posy of flowers.
Alicia stared wide-eyed at this impossible gesture.
‘Charmer…my handsome Inglés…you charmer!’
She flung her arms about his neck still holding the posy and kissed him, felt Monty offer touches to the skin of her back. The cropped t-shirt she had chosen to wear made this so much easier.
‘I try,’ he smiled engagingly. It seemed to work on the woman who had changed so much since their last encounter.
‘I am so glad…you agreed…to be with me!’
‘I am…I am,’ he kissed back in response to her lead. Alicia made him shrug off his jacket and she now pulled at his t-shirt until caresses could be offered to his skin.
‘This feels so good…so good. I’ve thought of nothing else today…’
Alicia’s urgency unsettled him.
She maintained her claims, sought to lead him to the bedroom, her embrace disconcertingly purposeful. There would be no extended preambles, no coaxing foreplay if she continued to take control of things.
‘Steady, Alicia…tranquilo.’ He chose the only words that conveyed what he wanted from these early moments. ‘Slow is best…’
‘Do you think so?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead she unfastened her skirt and stepped out of it pulling the crop-topped t-shirt over her head in a single almost balletic movement inviting his kisses and sucking ministrations to her breasts. ‘Touch them…do what you did before…see how it is for me already just thinking of you.’
Their reunion was proceeding too quickly for him.
‘I’m rather new to this way of it,’ he whispered, ‘let me show you how loving starts for me?’
‘Make it soon…soon, very soon!’ she exclaimed and embraced him with one arm as she groped his crotch, felt the swell and fumbled for his belt. ‘Undo it…go on!’
He did as Alicia commanded but slowed the progress of her hands on him as she brazenly coaxed a response. With lazy sweeps to his back and waist she helped Monty strip, coaxed erect straining flesh from his briefs before leading him in halting steps to her bedroom. Scented candles flickered everywhere and their shadows were cast upon the walls.
Hand jobs weren’t for him, not now, but her ways of it might change all of that and far too soon.
‘Stop that,’ he gasped, surprised to find that an aching need for her vied with the certainty that she wished him to prolong her passionate claims upon him. ‘Just stop that, Alicia, please!’
His grip upon her wrists tightened until she did as he commanded.
‘Be with me my special Inglés…find me!’ she breathed hotly against his face and sucked on his probing tongue as deep open-mouthed kisses were exchanged.
‘Alicia…Alicia!’ he called out.
With practised ease she had drawn him to her as they settled on the bed, clamped her fingers to the tightened skin of his buttocks before she raised her legs about his waist to control a clamorous rhythm of her own choosing. An end had to be found to the lingering sex that she knew him to be so capable of.
‘’We’ll soon feel how it really goes, won’t we…won’t we?’
♥
‘Are you awake, Monty?’ Alicia offered gentle touches to his face, rose to kiss him softly before she moved to lie with her head on his belly. Now she could cup his flaccid flesh and squeezed it gently. ‘You did something for me, again, that I didn’t expect…’
‘And you almost broke me in half,’ he murmured drowsily.
‘Loving like that with you is no game…and you don’t want me to make it up to you in any other way than this. Why is that?’
‘You know why,’ he said.
Alicia had helped him to live out a fantasy and he now felt that he was on the edge of sleep, yet he understood that the whole night would not be spent with her. The way their tryst had gone, that he had found the means to reach his own sublime fulfilment on two occasions, meant that if he did so he would be fit for nothing the following day.
She moved once more, offered the lazy sweep of her breasts to his skin and lay on him to seek a renewal of languorous embraces.
‘If you’re sure I shouldn’t pay you something?’
‘I am,’ he said gruffly and clasped her hair for an instant.
‘Don’t! Not that!’
She bit the skin of his chest and before he could react moved, placed deepening kisses to his mouth, sought to suck his tongue in her own ways of exerting once again some gasping, breathless control over what he said and did to her. She wanted to rouse him for one last energetic coupling.
Monty raised his knees, obliged Alicia to move until he lay between her legs.
‘I can live with myself by doing this with you…just for the fun and pleasure of it…the exercise,’ he said without a thought for how that might sound, an un-gallant expression of his wishes. He met Alicia’s stare then saw her nod. ‘You told me not to get too close. Remember? So, we live for the moment and make of it what we can…what it is, our special arrangement.’
They laughed together on that being said.
‘And it will be again,’ she implored, ‘special.’
Alicia rose and began to kiss his belly, felt the muscles tighten in anticipation as with each slip of her lips and tongue to his skin she found him.
‘Being with you is not what the oth
ers might think it is…your friend, Beatrix, for one,’ he said squirming to meet each lick and suck. ‘Hm! You do that….so well.’
‘She doesn’t know,’ Alicia murmured as she rose to kiss him but Monty brushed his fingers across her mouth before conceding to her once more. ‘You’ve tasted me…’
‘That was different…’
‘And what we now do may again be different.’
Reaching for the pack of condoms Alicia felt Monty’s lips kiss and lick the nipples of her aching breasts. She allowed him that moment’s easy devotion. Then, she slipped the coloured latex over straining flesh before settling upon him and renewed her exhorting rhythmic claims upon it.
14
Knowing Me – Knowing You
He left Alicia’s apartment later than had ever been intended.
What had begun as calling upon her in accordance with her plan had slowly and pleasurably evolved into other ways to satisfy their needs. She had even agreed to shower with him but that became an inventive little excursion into the use of a brush. The massage of her skin by that and a favourite gel had led to extended foreplay once more.
‘That too?’ she had gasped in abject pleasure.
It had been pressed to the base of her spine before he had slowly entered her, the handle’s unresponsive firmness a contrast to his erect and sensual skin that again possessed her. For once, he had been in control of everything.
He walked briskly in the welcoming cool of the early morning air, each step as if in harmony with thoughts of how it had been between them. What may once have been out of bounds, the use of an unlikely aid to seeking pleasure, had been acknowledged as something particular to their union.
‘I didn’t want our time together to end,’ he remembered her saying before she closed the door on him, her hair a delicious tumble of wet curls. He no longer cared that streaky blonde was not to his taste, at all.
Alicia had breathed a deep sigh of contentment. Gone, already, were the times when she had looked upon their tumbles as calculating, as if they were hedonists. She probably didn’t even know the word; what he felt was the inexorable fall into a way of things between them from which it would be difficult to break free.
Perhaps his friend, Tomas the sensible, had got it right. Treat the whole thing as a business game. Meet the terms of the contract, nothing more; keep everything, everyone in such cases, at arms-length…literally. Don’t get close…too close. What did he really know about Alicia, save that she took it all from him and out of him? She had never said a word about the life she had led that had brought her to this, taking a young lover…her Inglés.
His steps on the pavement echoed off the walls of the blocks that he passed. The first road-sweepers were already out, their jets of water and rotary brushes etching smears and swirling patterns on the dusty surfaces of the walkways.
He took a bus.
There was much to prepare for.
An interview was to be granted, one of BIM’s competitors in the city had learnt of his situation. Exploratory talks, nothing more; bring your portfolio of work, tell us ‘what you can bring to the table’, or the Catalan equivalent of that worn-out saying.
Work, if it was to be offered, would again restore a semblance of normality.
Hearing from Anna and knowing how it was would help too, more than he dared to admit. What he sought to find with Anna was courtship and emotional tranquillity.
Was he such a weakling, or was he simply enslaved by the easy ways of it with Alicia?
Once the code had been punched in and the doors to the callé slid open soundlessly, he forsook the lift and ran up the stairs to the apartment taking two treads at a time.
‘Make the most of the day!’ he sang out into echoing void
♥
The meeting was hastily set up.
He would hang out with a group of friends; Rodrigo had persuaded him to do so. Tomas would be there, along with Clara – he would have to bury the ghost of that affair, somehow – and others. He lost track of the names mentioned in the rushed mobile call. They were all in relationships so he’d be an odd one out.
If they only knew!
The balmy evening, the transition from sunset to darkness was always special after a hot day. The street lights on their ornate pedestals gave a softened glow. The tracery on iconic building frontages could still be seen, the influence of Gaudi was everywhere; the tiled inlay to some facades…oh! The city was a great place to be; to live, to meet and greet; above all to love!
He was one in a multitude; he looked unremarkable in chinos, tan loafers and a short sleeved shirt that he had tucked in. The Moroccan leather belt, a natural contrast to the outfit, was fastened a notch tighter. He carried no surplus weight – arduous gym sessions and the romps with Alicia were having their own effects.
His reverie, the riot of thoughts that possessed him as he neared the chosen café and bar were disturbed.
‘Whaaat?’ he breathed out slowly.
His name was being called.
‘Monty…Monty!’ he heard above the laughter and chatter that rose to greet him as he opened the door. Clacking heels made him stop. Other revellers pushed past him and he saw Alicia standing there accompanied by two female companions. Neither of them was Beatrix.
‘It’s so soon…but, how are you?’ she asked as she stepped closer and he breathed in her intoxicating scent. ‘This is a wonderful surprise…’
‘For me it is too.’
The city was a big place for coincidences such as this, he kept from saying.
‘Is everything okay…after, you know?’ she chose to whisper, unable to resist offering a sliding caress to his arm.
‘Yes…I’m learning all the time.’
She laughed happily and pouted a coquettish smile of her blush pink lips. He couldn’t help but think she was someone new, calmly stylish in her under-stated clothes, slacks and a billowy blouse with neat gold buttons and cuff fasteners. They gave her slender frame a natural elegance that he had failed to really notice before, or that he was seeing again but through new eyes.
They were away from their usual rendezvous; that explained it.
‘Are you out on the town,’ she asked.
‘Are you?’ he said with a teasing smile and nodded at her companions who still kept a discreet distance from them.
They had the bemused look of those who had seen a friend with a young guy they had been told nothing of. What could Alicia now say about them being together? That she was having an affair…that she had met a guy for the sex and he’d refused her money…it was now a special arrangement? Oh, so special!
‘I was…meant to be…out on the town,’ she almost crooned in frustration and indecision. ‘Oh, what am I to do?’ Alicia turned to her friends. ‘Give me a moment?’
‘Take all the time you need!’ one laughed knowingly. ‘We’ll meet in you in there.’
Monty and Alicia walked away, into the square, not so far, but near to the street- vendor’s mats, those selling a variety of easily bundled up items if the Guardia Civil showed up and moved them on. These immigrants, vagrants to someone’s ways of seeing it, had look outs. Their wares would soon be whisked away as they legged it.
As she reached out to him to offer a moment’s touch to his skin her bag slipped from her shoulder.
‘Aiee!’ she screamed.
Alicia stumbled away from him, the force of the pull upon the useless straps making her tumble to the ground. A snatch thief, unseen until a split second’s decision had been reached, had ripped it from her.
Monty gave chase, his legs and arms pumping furiously to gain speed.
He was thankful now for the gym sessions, their purpose so very different now as he read and met each bobbing weave of the assailant. A tap-tackle, so useful in Uni rugby games, brought the guy crashing to the ground.
Alicia’s bag spilled from his hands.
With gasping breaths Monty turned in a split second’s assessment of Alicia’s plight and to see whe
re she was. Alicia ran towards him, her heels clacking in discordant accompaniment to her cries of instruction to him.
‘Déja lo…déja lo! Leave it…leave it!’
He didn’t know why she was screaming it out to him until he caught a split-second’s glimpse, peripherally, of another man. Instinct made him swing his arms to ward off blows but…they weren’t enough.
He yelled out in pain…he expelled a gush of warm breath as a knife sliced through the skin of an outstretched arm and plunged with brutal force against a rib below his right shoulder and…snapped.
The bag had already fallen from his hand. His assailant snatched it up and fled without a backward glance before disappearing into the traffic. Car horns blared.
‘Cariño…cariño,’ Alicia wailed as she knelt down beside him. ‘My gallant…oh, my gallant! Why…oh, why do that?’
Monty was overcome by pain and vague thoughts.
He had never been called a ‘gallant’ before...she had never used the word ‘darling’ on him before.
Monty made out her tears; he felt Alicia’s kisses…he saw blood...his blood, stain her blouse. It clung to her skin like a diaphanous shroud as she knelt beside him.
A crowd had gathered to witness the scene; the wail of a siren could be heard…the slamming of doors and then authoritative voices.
Someone, a witness, had called the police.
Before life-saving hands could drag her away, Alicia kissed Monty’s blood-flecked lips and whispered breathlessly in a shocked voice, her lips pressed to his ear. She clamped one of his hands in hers…willing him on and to let him know she was there.
‘You matter to me, now! Hold on…hold on…hold on to everything! You’re not alone…I’m with you…I’m with you, for as long as you want me!’
♥ ♥ ♥
The paramedics had gathered Monty’s possessions, taken them from his pockets and given them to Alicia.
She sat in the ambulance and stared at him, at the deathly pale face, at the oxygen mask and the drip that swung erratically above him as the vehicle made its way through the traffic.