The Blake Soul

by I C Camilleri

  “Yes, I suppose I did. He was always honest about it. Forget it. I’m just feeling resentful today.” She smiled up at him, “Thank you Freddie, I’m all right now. You really should join your date. You should try to treat women better, you know, and then you might find someone who is worth being faithful to.”

  “Unfortunately that someone is already married to my cousin and has three of his children and another on the way. Josh really does keep you very busy. I hope that he realises just how lucky he is. But as for me, I have to make myself happy with as many girls as I can take. I bet you that I can at least kiss ten girls this evening. Not just any kiss, but one that will drive them mentally insane.”

  “You’re on. I’ll be watching and counting.” She laughed as she flicked her curls away from her flushed face. He loosened his tie and flung his jacket on a nearby seat and went back to the dance floor. His presence again caused a stir. It seemed that everyone wanted him as a dance partner. He went really wild and started kissing and groping girl after girl, but none of them stopped his indecent assault. He looked at Maria and smiled as he fingered out numbers behind his victims’ backs. He managed to disentangle himself and move from one to another with such agility that it was all highly erotic to watch. After his eighth he sauntered over to her, laughing, “You have to help me choose number nine; I’m running out of decent girls with skirts.”

  “Freddie, are you drunk?”

  “I’ve had a drink or two.”

  “You should calm down. How about kissing your miserable date?” Maria pointed out.

  “I’ll have her this evening. Go on, choose for me.”

  “OK, I really don’t want this dirty performance to stop just yet. Let’s see...erm...Do you see that brunette with the red dress. She’s Polly. Try her.”

  Freddie beamed at her. He had managed to drag her into his little game. “Would you like a better view from the front row seat?” he whispered softly in her ear.

  She nodded cheekily and he took her hand and pulled her towards the dance floor. He nimbly edged his way next to Polly. Maria giggled as he grabbed the innocent girl and started kissing her. When his victim was totally paralysed and oblivious to the fate of her underwear, he abruptly let her go. He turned to Maria and danced with her to the far end of the dance floor. Maria was laughing her head off.

  “And now for my tenth, the best for the last,” Freddie said as he cornered her against the wall and kissed her hungrily. Maria had no time to react and she was as paralysed as Polly had been a few minutes earlier, he was a charmer and a good kisser. But she already knew that because she had had a taste of him a long time ago when she was pregnant with the twins.

  The passionate kiss turned into something more when his hands started to smoothly slide up her dress. This time she did not stop him when her underwear slithered down to her ankles. This was just harmless pleasure, she thought. She would stop in a minute. She leaned her back against the wall and felt her dress ride high as she hooked her leg around his. Pam, her husband’s first whore was watching this, everyone was watching this. But she was the leading star of this movie now. She could feel the ivory satin sheets and hear the roll of the cameras as the directors watched. The spotlight was on her and it was Josh not Freddie who was all over her.

  She gasped and shook. She was swamped with those primitive cravings. She had to finish this. Josh was pulling her hand, leading her inside the ladies’ room. She heard the door key turning, locking them safely inside. She closed her eyes and held on to the wash basin. She could feel him standing behind her, sliding her dress up to her waist. She heard the metallic sound of his zipper followed by the clink as the buckle hit the ceramic floor.

  “I’m home baby,” he whispered in her ear. There was something derogatory in his tone that shook her awake. She opened her eyes and looked up at his reflection in the mirror.

  Oh no, what had she done? She wanted to punish Josh, but not this way.

  She tried to wriggle away but his grip was too strong. She could not expect him to stop now. There was a point of no return for men and she knew the rules of the game. She stood still, enduring his grunts of lust. She kept watching him through the mirror, her heart breaking with remorse. He finally tilted his head back as he prepared for his exquisite finale.

  This was her chance, he wasn’t looking at her. She grabbed the crystal dish full of potpourri. She twisted round and swiftly smashed it in his jaw. He reeled backwards, clutching his face. She pulled her dress down, slid past him and unlocked the door before he had even blinked.

  Maria pushed past the crowd. She had tears in her eyes as she blindly headed for the door. She deserved this, she had been encouraging him all evening.

  Freddie ran after her and grabbed her hand, “I’m sorry, Maria, I don’t know what came over me. Forgive me, please. Don’t go.” There was genuine fear in his deep blue eyes, fear that he had lost a good friend. Maria had never seen the confident, loud and happy Freddie looking so lost and unsure of himself.

  “I’m not one of your whores Freddie, the ones you use and dump daily. Don’t ever lure me into something like that ever again. I love Josh and nothing like this would have happened had I not been really angry with him and so bent on revenge.” She was crying now, she felt dirty and used, but she had no right to lay all the blame on him. He had lured and she had followed. “Please Freddie, don’t tell Josh about this. You are drunk and crazy and you were just carried away. Josh will skin you alive and he won’t let me work with you again. If you still value my contributions to your research department then we must pretend that this did not happen. We can discuss this further tomorrow at work when you are sober.”

  She ran to her car and she wept bitterly. She remembered her underwear on the dance floor; she was not going back in to get it. What would her colleagues say about her behaviour? Would someone tell Josh? She thought about it. Josh never socialized with the people working with her because they were also Freddie’s friends. In any case, most of them had been pleasantly drunk too and were busy doing the same thing while their partners were babysitting at home. Harmless pleasure, that was what they often called it, just a dirty kiss and some groping around. No one would dare point a finger at anybody. And she had hardly spent more than a couple of minutes locked in that restroom. She started the car and drove off.

  Revenge was the only thing that had sparked this off. She was positive about her feelings, her heart belonged exclusively to Josh. And what about Freddie’s feelings? He did not love her. He had kissed and groped everyone on the dance floor that night. That proved that he did not single her out. He was just drunk and he will sleep it off and be different the next morning.

  That’s it. She did not need to tell her husband about this; after all he used to do far worse things than her. He had slept with millions and she just had him on her list until that day, now she had added Freddie. But it wasn’t full-blown sex either, she had stopped it prematurely, she persuaded herself just to ease her heavy conscience. She was allowed one tiny slip. She would not compromise her marriage or her medical career for those few moments of madness. Josh need never know.

  She drove on, deep in thought.

  She opened the door to their house. It was massively late but Josh was still up, waiting for her in the lounge. She ran onto his lap and kissed him.

  “Weren’t you angry with me?” he asked wearily.

  “I was. And I was even angrier when I met Freddie’s date Pam. I believe you still remember Retributions and the ivory satin sheets.”

  He sighed, “So Freddie told you, or did he get her to tell you? Can’t you see what he is trying to do?”

  Her brown eyes flared with anger again. “I half thought that he was lying, or at least I hoped that he was. So it was true. Was it?”

  He leaned his head against the back of the sofa. Her forgiveness had lasted less than a few seconds. He felt exhausted. “Yes, it really happened, but it was a bet and I was a crazy, dirty-minded, immature boy. Maria please, h
ow many times do I have to apologize for the things I did when I didn’t even know you existed? I can lock myself here if that makes you happy. Please tell your brother that if he wants me to star in any of his novels again he must do an all-male cast.”

  She saw the helpless dejection in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Josh. I should stop this.”

  He looked at her in surprise. She didn’t usually let him off the hook that easily. “So, besides discussing my lurid past behaviour, what else did you do this evening?” he asked, carefully searching her face.

  She rested her head against his chest, avoiding all eye contact. “I just had a wild night dancing with Freddie and others.”

  “You don’t seem to mind Freddie’s friendship despite his vulgar past, which I can confirm is far worse than mine,” he grumbled.

  “Don’t start that again. I don’t love Freddie and he is not my husband, so I don’t care what he did or is still doing. You have to stop being so jealous of him...and I have to stop being jealous too. Freddie is just a friend, a wild friend, we just danced, a bit too wildly, that’s all.”

  Josh nodded, not wanting to know any more details. He was afraid of having his thoughts confirmed. Freddie must have used his wild dancing and kissing bet but he did not know how far Maria had let him go. His last and tenth victim always ended up in the ladies with him. Josh used to laugh at this when he was younger but it was a different matter if the tenth victim happened to be his wife.

  He kissed her forehead. He could smell Freddie’s aftershave in her hair. Her eye makeup was smudged, her eyes were red and swollen, she had cried bitterly. He casually slid his hands over her hips; he could feel no underwear beneath the flimsy dress. Freddie usually slipped it down on the dance floor before seeking refuge in the restroom. The other boys would hoot and laugh, waiting for it to hit the ground. Josh himself had often used similar tactics as they bet against each other. They were boys and sex was the only thing they could think of. But apparently Freddie was still doing the same thing, and tonight he had tried it on Maria after enticing her with an erotic performance with his other nine victims. She had had a pious and sheltered upbringing, she wouldn’t have known of such tactics because she never frequented his uninhibited circle of friends where loose moral conduct was the norm.

  He squeezed his eyes tight in pain. Maria had succumbed, he was sure of it. The flimsy physical attraction she had for him was not enough to keep their marriage afloat. And Freddie offered similar physical advantages.

  All his insecurities came flooding back, swamping him, drowning all his self-esteem. But he could not confront her with anything, he would give her whatever she wanted or else she would leave and he would have nothing. He was that child again, begging for scraps of leftover affection. That insecure pathetic child kept returning again and again. He put on his acting mask and kissed her as he placed his hand on her small pregnant belly and drew her closer to him.

  ****

  Her alarm went off. Maria opened her eyes and groaned. She was seven months pregnant and emotionally drained. Nothing had changed, if anything the jealous tantrums had more than tripled now that Josh had started filming with that gorgeous piece of no-good. He had just spent five days away with her in some exotic location. Maria had not stopped phoning him, every fifteen minutes, and he had patiently answered, even during a take and he had not once complained about it. Her brother, whose book they were filming, phoned back and gave her a good scolding. He assured her that her husband had not put a single foot out of line. But she was now highly emotional, bloated, sluggish and heavily pregnant...the exact opposite to his curvy, smiling and energetically adventurous on-screen wife for whom the word voluptuous had been created...and also the opposite to Freddie’s girlfriends who miraculously had all slept with Josh in the past. Could her husband be right, was Freddie doing this on purpose?

  She had been wary of him after that wild Christmas party, but Freddie had appeared the next morning with a big bruise on his chin and had been all apologetic as he somehow downplayed the gravity of their actions. He had invited her out to lunch with Pam whom he then treated with the greatest affection. She had been relieved. Freddie had no romantic interest in herself as confirmed by his hunger for his many girlfriends’ unearthly beauty.

  She switched the alarm off and then abruptly sat up. Josh had taken a late night flight back home and should have arrived four hours ago. But her bed was empty. She grabbed her phone in anger. “Where are you? I have an important business meeting at work today. You promised to stay with the kids. They are already up and I’ll be late for work now.”

  “The kids are still in bed. You were asleep when I came home and I didn’t want to wake you up,” he said at the other end of the line. He opened the bedroom door and smiled broadly at her.

  She held her head high and sailed past him into the kitchen. The table was beautifully laid out for breakfast. Josh had brought home every fruit created under the sun. He knew about her cravings for the cartloads she consumed daily. She wiped a tear and sat down.

  “Josh,” she said softly as she poured a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, “I just wanted you to know that I’m meeting Rob today.”

  “So, Rob is the important business meeting.”

  “We have to coordinate the trials we are staging across both sides of the Atlantic. He’s here for only one day and Freddie has organised a dinner tonight in his honour....”

  “I thought that it will be just us tonight. I have to go back early tomorrow morning and you knew that. They really frowned upon this one day break. I came home to be with you and the kids...”

  “Tough! I can’t wriggle out of this and I want you to come with me tonight. Freddie’s getting Tanya, his latest craze, so we will be on equal grounds, both our exes on the same table.”

  “You do realise what Freddie’s doing here. It’s no secret that our marriage is on very treacherous rocks. Freddie decided to bring in reinforcements to totally sever what we are desperately trying to keep together. Your old flame and first love is bound to succeed where he himself failed.”

  She stood up, her face burning with anger, “I have no time to listen to your farfetched paranoid theories, you obsessive freak.” She flung her orange juice at his face.

  “Leave daddy alone, I hate you mummy,” Emma screamed. She had chosen that moment to enter the room.

  “Go back to bed, Emma. Please go,” Josh said as he wiped his face on a napkin. Maria had burst out crying and he wound his arms around her.

  “My daughter hates me,” she sobbed in his shirt.

  “She doesn’t. It’s that Freudian Oedipus complex, if the boys were here they would have supported you. Stop crying.” He wiped her tears. “Come on, go and change, you’ll be late for Rob’s meeting. I’ll ask Julie to mind the kids this evening. We’ll go to this dinner together.”

  “I’m sorry, Josh.”

  Some hours later she was walking slowly towards her office. She was late and the receptionist told her that Rob was already waiting for her inside. She hesitated outside her door. She hadn’t seen Rob in three years, though they communicated regularly, discussing business. She would have preferred not to meet him looking like this. She didn’t want him to gloat at her general miserable appearance. She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  “Hello Maria, you look as beautiful as ever,” Rob complimented her as he warmly hugged her.

  “You are too kind, Rob.”

  “I mean it. Wow, you’ll soon be having your fourth child. I did read about your close call on that Oscar night. It was all over the papers. Was that only a year ago? Gosh, and you’re heavily pregnant again...Josh certainly does rob you of a decent breather.”

  Maria scowled, why did they all keep nagging about this? Even those bloody journalists. She just wanted to scream and tell them that she too wanted the child; Josh hadn’t forced her into anything. She quickly changed the subject and they were soon immersed in their work. They spent hours brainstorming. Time just
flew and there were no uncomfortable pauses as she had expected there would be. Instead they were soon laughing and remembering their happier younger days.

  “Maria, it’s good to see you smile again.”

  She nodded, yes it was good to forget her troubles and be able to laugh at the world with Rob. She had missed him, she realised with a start. She looked up into his eyes and remembered the first day she had met him. It had been love at first sight and they shared loads of golden moments. Their eyes locked. He too seemed to have gone down that same memory lane.

  “Maria, there isn’t a single day that passes that I don’t bitterly regret what I did. We used to be so good together but I blew it all up.”

  “That was ages ago, things change and people move on,” she said as she tried to shake off her nostalgia.

  “I never moved on. You always thought I would, but I never got married. And now I sense that there is trouble in your paradise. Maria, you looked unhappy and drawn a while ago and the gossip magazines are picking that up too.”

  “Since when did you start reading such trash?”

  “Ever since you became their hot topic.” Rob reached across her desk and took her hand. Maria looked at their fingers entwined together. She swallowed hard as she tried to push back her tears. He came round to her side of the desk and kissed her. She closed her eyes. She was young again and she could feel that same flutter of her heart.

  Her baby kicked. She stopped.

  What had come over her? She had been vulgarly intimate with Freddie three months ago and was now tenderly kissing Rob. She must be the problem here. Freddie and Rob were just being men, grabbing what was generously offered to them. Her possessive jealousy for Josh was eating away at her thoughts, dissecting her heart and breaking their marriage apart.

  She looked at Rob, “I’m sorry. Let’s not make this uncomfortable for us especially as we have to go through dinner with my husband and his carefree crazy cousin this evening. Josh and I are just passing through a difficult time, that’s all, but I still love him and he loves me. We have three beautiful children together and another on the way and I’m sure that we can sort everything out eventually.”