for me. Soon several short, pretty dresses joined the knickers in the drawer.
I knew there was another woman. He’d told me before we ever slept together. I probably fooled myself into believing it was almost over, for she lived hours away, and from what I knew had always treated him badly. But one week he went to see friends in the city where she lived. While I tried for a few days to ignore the itching weight of his key in my pocket, in the end I could not resist. I tore his house apart looking for evidence of her: e-mail, pictures. There was one in particular that broke my heart: her gorgeous face cracked in a smile and pink satin pajamas open to the waist. I found her name, her number, and rang her. There was no answer. I left a message on the answerphone: this is a friend of A2’s, I just wanted to talk to you-don’t worry, it’s not an emergency.
She rang back. “Hello,” she said, sounding tired.
It was hard to keep from screaming. The pulse in my neck was throbbing. “Do you know who I am?” I asked.
“I’ve heard your name,” she said. I told her about me and A2. She was very quiet. “Thank you,” she said at the end. The day after he came back, I used his key to go in but he wasn’t in the shower.
He was waiting for me. I’d upset her, he said. What right did I have to do that?
There was no answer. I was shaking with anger. What right does anyone have to feel jealousy?
One of the teachers at school gave a talk to the girls in our year about his marriage. Love is a decision, he declared to a room of hormonally charged teenagers. We scoffed. Love isn’t a decision; the films and songs tell us otherwise. It’s a force, it’s a virtue, we were at the charmed age when you can suck off your brother’s best friend in your bedroom and still believe in a one true love.
Then I fell for someone who hurt me. Gradually I came around to the teacher’s point of view. You have to open the door before someone can come in. That was no guarantee of control once they got there, of course, but it was something that was comprehensible, if not entirely logical.
In control, that’s what I thought. But first-time jealousy tore me to pieces the same way first love had. We argued and fucked, and fucked and argued, then we argued more and fucked less.
And when we did have sex, it had changed. Once he used to put knickers on and bend over the edge of his sofa. Laughing, I would apply a riding crop to his behind. After a few minutes we’d run to his bathroom where he’d excitedly pull down the panties and look in the mirror. If I hadn’t yet imprinted the pattern of the fabric on his skin, we’d go back and try again.
After, I just whipped him and whipped him until his skin was raw and spotted with blood. Until he told me to stop.
The times we shared a bed, A2 slept with his arms tangled around me. I kick and struggle against sheets and blankets in the night; he held me in. I rub my legs together like a cricket; he warmed my cold feet between his. Whenever his hand rested on my belly, I would wake, wondering not only at his stillness-he was only slightly less animated asleep than awake-but also at his lack of self-consciousness. The body is so unarmored: our species’ success is dependent on what is inside our skin, not a thousand spikes mounted on it. I might have hurt him any time he was asleep. If he turned over, exposed his spine, I might have attacked him right then.
And once: I woke before the alarm to find my curtains open on a perfectly gray morning. Hearing a sigh, thinking him awake, I turned toward A2. He still lingered in the twilight of sleep and his long arms were at strange angles under the displaced pillow.
“Why are you tucking your hands in like that?” I asked, for his elbows jutted out but his palms were jammed beneath the bedding.
“So you don’t snap them off,” he murmured, and went into deeper sleep. The first starling of the morning started in a tree outside.
He broke things off with his other lover but I never quite believed it and we drifted apart, sleeping together less and less frequently until one day he was seeing someone else and so was I. We were each happy for the other.
Now, A1 squeezed my knee and affected a dirty-old-man cackle. A2 winked over his menu. A3 glowered in the corner-as is his custom-and A4 grinned brightly into middle distance.
“So what are you lads up to today?” I asked.
“Nothing very much,” said A1. His measured words were like those of a schoolteacher.
“Nothing much at all,” said A2.
A4 smiled toward me. “Wasting as much of your time as possible.”
“Don’t you fellows have jobs to go to?” They don’t all live in London, but business brings them through on a semiregular basis.
“Theoretically, yes,” grumbled A3. He’s the ginger one. Dour northerner. And I mean that admiringly.
“Rubbish,” said A2, turning toward me. “And your good self? Things to do, people to see?”
“Not until later,” I said. The waitress came by to take our orders. A2 ordered the special for everyone. None of us knew what it was. Didn’t matter. A3 seemed reluctant to give up his menu. A2 asked after the Boy.
“I’ve asked him to come up here and move in with me,” I said.
“Mistake,” said A1.
“Big mistake,” A2 said. A3 mumbled unintelligibly. A4 continued smiling for no good reason. That’s why I like him best. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was the manager of the agency. She asked if I could be in Marylebone for four.
“Four the time or four the number?” She meant the time. I checked my watch. Very doable. The As pretended not to eavesdrop.
Most people raise an eyebrow when they find that my closest friends are mostly men, and for the most part, men I’ve slept with. Strange, I think. Whom else are you going to sleep with besides the people you know? Strangers?
Don’t answer that. jeudi, le 18 decembre
N and I had a minor falling-out at the gym. Nothing serious, such as whose glutes are benefiting more from adding lunges to the workout, but a parting of ways on the subject of restricting access to public services and benefits. He: in favor, at which point I believe the words “paranoid refugee hater” may have traversed my mind, if not escaped my lips.
We managed to keep from strangling each other and repaired to mine for risotto. Conversation stayed on safer subjects, namely shoes, rugby, and who in the Footballers’ Wives cast sports the best cleavage. I’m sure we’ll work out this schism in the end-both the cleavage debate and the ID card thing. That said, disagreements never resolve themselves as quickly once you can’t fuck each other anymore. vendredi, le 19 decembre
The manager is a doll, but easily confused. Case in point: I was sitting in the back of a cab while the driver tried to find the Royal Kensington Hotel-which, incidentally, doesn’t exist.
I was a quarter of an hour late. We finally decided she must have meant the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington. The driver waited outside while I checked the name and room number at reception. It was indeed correct. I gave the cabbie the thumbs-up and he drove off.
The client was freshly showered and wearing a white toweling robe. We walked through to the suite’s front room, where another woman sat drinking wine, already topless. She was a small blonde cutie from Israel.
I took off her skirt and shoes and undid the ribbon ties on her black silk knickers with my teeth. I had been told she was his girlfriend, but something about it didn’t quite jibe. He seemed to know her no better than I did. If she was a working girl, she definitely wasn’t from my agency. Instincts can be wrong, though, and in threesomes with someone’s girlfriend the best course of action is to lavish attention on the woman. It was no hardship-she smelled of baby powder and tasted of warm honey.
We moved on to the bedroom. He went at me from behind while she kneeled down to work at me with her tongue, fingers, and a mini-vibe. I found his exceptionally smooth body fascinating-someone’s been spending plenty of time down the waxing salon, I thought-an effect compromised by his rough, untrimmed beard. The whiskers tickled and scratched as he lapped at my girl-parts.
“I don’t know what you had in mind,” I said as my time started drawing to a close, “but I think it would be great if you came all over both our faces.”
The Israeli girl licked her lips and winked at me. A pro. Had to be, had to be.
Afterward I produced a small bottle of apricot oil and she gave both me and the client the most luscious massages. If I hadn’t enjoyed it so much, I would have been jealous of her skill. I gathered my clothes from the rooms while she pummeled and kneaded his back.
