“My husband is a good man. My husband is a gentle man. Even though the passing of the years has hardened him and he is no longer the young man with whom I shared my early student poverty, he is still the man I sleep with. I smell his stale breath when he awakes in the morning and it does not offend me. I see the faint stains in his underwear before I load up the washing machine and it doesn’t shock or disgust me. My marriage is the most important thing in my life. I treasure it. I protect it from the storms. I shield myself behind it. I’ve messed up so many other things, but my marriage will survive against the odds and divorce statistics. It will work. It must work.
“My husband and I argue a lot. He cries when we go to sentimental films, while my eyes remain dry. I have a cold heart, you see. I’m not romantic. I don’t know why. The way I was brought up, I suppose. We’ve lived together seven years, married for five of them. Two flats. One house. No children. My husband wants us to have babies, and he is becoming more insistent. Soon I shall turn thirty; I mustn’t leave it too late, he says. I don’t want kids right now, I tell him but what I mean is that I don’t want kids at all. I don’t like the way adults go all soft and mushy in the presence of babies; children get on my nerves, they cry, they show off, they are loud. I would be a bad mother.
“Once I could have justified my actions by invoking my career, my brilliant career. Now I can no longer do so. People think I have a prestigious job, but it’s not what I thought it would be. There are too many frustrations. So, I am left with much emptiness.
“The lovemaking is not what it used to be. We’re growing older together. Too familiar with each other. All too often, at night, he is tired and falls asleep without even finishing reading the financial papers. He is ambitious, has lofty aspirations for his own career. Works hard. Some times, in the morning he feels randy and arranges his body against mine, presses himself against my back, rubs his cock against my arse, lazily fingers my breasts. I wet my fingers and lubricate my opening and manually insert him. On most occasions he’s only half-erect. He screws me in utter silence. I like being taken from behind. It makes me feel more sensitive. Our morning fucks barely scratch the itch in my guts. Oh, there’s nothing bad about it. I’m sure most other couples are no more animated or passionate than we are. Once or twice a year, he whizzes me off to a small country hotel for a long week-end. The lovemaking is better. I even orgasm sometimes. But in the mornings, it’s always over too fast. He comes inside me and my thighs are all damp as he pulls out and rushes to the bathroom. He only has a half hour left to shave, wash, dress, eat before he leaves for the studio or the outside broadcast he’s been assigned to. But, all in all, he is a good, kind man, my husband. He forgives my trespasses. Tolerates my wild, irrational tempers. The tall man I married for better or for worse.”
She put her pen down. Enough for today.
She takes a coach and visits the Hoover Dam, one hour’s drive out of Vegas.
The view is majestic. The vast expanse of water in the lake is utterly surreal in this desert environment. She journeys down with visiting crowds to the bottom of the dam, to the heart of the concrete monster and feels quite dwarfed by the sheer power of the construction. At the end of the tour, she goes to the cafeteria with its huge bay windows at water level and sits herself down with a coffee and a sticky cake. A man accosts her. Identifying his accent is easy. He’s Welsh. Works in local government or education, it doesn’t quite register with her. But it’s nice not to have to communicate with yet another Yank. He’s here with a group of friends. Fellow professionals, he insists. Enjoying a spot of gambling. They’re having a small party and card game in their room at the Mirage tonight. Yes, the Casino with the live volcano outside. Would she like to join them? She must be homesick, surely. It would be nice to hear more normal accents. Two of the boys are from Bristol, he tells her.
Once in the room, she first notices the other woman. Auburn hair, round face, dark glasses, black halter top and tight white jeans. The other men, the Brits, seem unappealing. More like lager louts on a sun, booze and sex holiday to Ibiza. Her host, his name is Maurice, effects the introductions. She quickly forgets the men’s names. Two of them are junior doctors and the third one a sales executive, a rep for a pharmaceutical company who’s probably picking up the bill. The woman’s name is Vicky.
It is not my real name, she tells Katherine when she joins her in the bathroom where they powder their nose and cheeks. “It was Liliana, but it was wrong. I just don’t feel like a Lily or a Liliana, really. So I changed it.”
She is American, from Phoenix, Arizona, has been in Vegas six months now, some waitressing, some hosting, a personal escort agency had found her tonight’s gig. “Very respectable, classy, you know, they actually advertise in the local papers. So you’re English too? Who do you work for?” she asks.
“I don’t,” Katherine answers. “Freelance,” she explains. Why complicate matters? She knows all too well why she has been invited here tonight. Fresh meat. Orifices.
There are dark shadows under Vicky’s eyes. Her face is heavily freckled and the freckles continue all the way down her front and disappear inside her cleavage. Her neck is intensely pale. She wears her hair up in a delicately sculpted bun. She is quite small and delicate and once must have been ever so pretty, baby-faced until time finally caught up with her. Her eyes, once the sunglasses come off, are revealed to be dark green. Hypnotic. Under the halter top, she has medium-sized breasts, Katherine sees, as Vicky lifts the material to powder her tits. A reflection catches her eye in the mirror. Katherine can’t stop herself staring at the other woman’s breasts. They are so round. Almost perfect. Pierced. She’s even a touch envious of both these impeccably rounded orbs and the striking adornments. She’d never have the guts. She used to faint at the dentist’s.
“You’re very pretty,” she tells the other woman.
“Thanks, dear.” She readjusts her top, wriggles her bum inside the tight jeans. “Shall we? Your English buddies are waiting for their entertainment.”
The men ply the girls with drinks. The ensuing conversation is rowdy, suggestive but innocent enough to begin with. Maurice, who seems in charge of orchestrating the proceedings, is particularly boisterous, and his jokes are actually on occasion witty. They order snacks from room service, and the obligatory champagne. Katherine relaxes. Gazes at the men. Tries to imagine what they would all look like in their birthday suits. That one must have a hairy chest, what about the beer belly on the other one, another must surely have a big cock, don’t like the last one though, looks a bit evil.
“Well, boys, this is Vegas. Time to gamble. What’s your poison?” Maurice asks.
“Poker.”
“Strip poker.”
They all giggle and look toward the two women sipping their drinks on the mustard couch.
The pharmaceutical rep devises an infinitely complex set of rules for the game, to ensure they all shed clothing fast enough, including Katherine and Vicky, who are assigned to respective card players.
They play.
Vicky is the first to end up unclothed. Katherine still has her underwear on. And garter belt and stockings. She knows from experience how much men like her when she wears them. The carousing Brits are soon all shirtless, one is down to his jockey shorts.
The American woman has a small, compact body, her legs are not that great, and sports two thick gold rings on her nipples. Adorned a la modern primitive. The rings glisten inside the pierced puckered, dark red skin of the nipples. Katherine can’t disguise her intense fascination. Neither can the guys; their tongues almost sticking out when they catch sight of Vicky’s extraordinary boobs and their unnatural metal extensions. One of the medics deliberately loses his next hand to carry Vicky to the next stage where forfeits begin.
“She has to play with her tits,” one of them orders.
Vicky does.
She twists the darker skin between her nimble fingers, pulls the tips of her round breasts through the hoops of the rings, distends the flesh to impossible proportions. Asks the man nearest to her to lick her fingers and then smears the moist secretion over her abnormally erect nipples. They are all entranced. Katherine included.
Vicky tires of manipulating herself. “Next round,” she says.
Inevitably, all the clothing is shed. The men sit there around the table, self-conscious, exchanging nervous glances at each other, a couple of them are semi-erect, another handles himself but fails to harden his stem; too much drink.
“Isn’t this great?” Maurice exclaims to break the silence. “More champagne, ladies and gentlemen.” He stands up to get the last bottle from the room service trolley. He has a fat, floppy arse.
He brushes past Katherine as he pours the drink for her and, with his free hand, roughly fondles her left breast. She finds it, and him, deeply unpleasant and shivers. He ignores her reaction.
The women are now excluded from the card game and the men play between themselves for forfeits.
