attention. She has the slightly knock-kneed gait of many Japanese women, as if modestly keeping her legs together. He will see about that.
He has made the most of these free evenings, and this is his fourth date of the week. God bless date-or- not.com, he thinks.
‘So, you’re an airline pilot,’ she says. ‘That must be very interesting.’
It’s a good sign. Impressed by his job. He checks her out subtly while sipping his beer. She will certainly do.
He is already thinking about the mirrors on his ceiling, how she will look, how he will look doing it to her when he sees them reflected. He has lost weight recently, buffed up a bit. He spent a full twenty-five minutes before heading out examining his reflection in the full-length wall mirror in his bedroom.
‘You have lovely ears,’ he says. He means it. She really does. Each woman has her own special part of the body, he thinks. Like Juvita, the air hostess who kept blowing him in the aircraft toilets. Perfect neck. Tragic what happened to her.
‘Thank you,’ Keiko says, modestly. She insists on pouring his beer for him.
‘Would you like to see a great view of the city?’ he says.
‘Of course,’ she says.
She is under him, her eyes wide. He shifts position so that she is on top. He grasps her slim hips with both hands, then lets the back of one graze across the gentle curve of her breasts, feeling the hard small nipples against his skin. Her mouth is open in a silent exclamation, her eyes tight shut, pelvis rocking. He glances upwards, taking in the sight of her moving on him, and his own body, taught under her. She opens her eyes, looks upwards, then squeezes them tightly shut again and digs her nails into his chest. For a moment, he looks up into his own eyes as if into those of an adversary, one who acknowledges him silently in the dimly lit room.
6. Juvita
She meets Andrew at her tennis club. They have sex that afternoon, in the showers of the ladies’ changing rooms, with the water running. They have sex at dusk, behind a bush in the Botanical Gardens, and in his car, and in the disabled toilets at the Esplanade in the interval of a classical concert, and on the beach on Bintan, and in every room of his apartment, and she sucks him off in the cable car between Harbour Front and Sentosa and wanks him off in the back of a multiplex on Orchard Road during a car chase. He is her thirty-second lover since it happened.
‘I love you,’ he says one day. She stops returning his calls.
7. Andrew
May is cooking rice and some kind of Japanese soup with seaweed in it. He stands in the kitchen with her, opens the wine and pours it into two blue-tinged, thick-stemmed glasses.
‘How was your friend’s birthday?’ he says.
‘Not bad,’ she says, tasting the soup. ‘Although we had a few too many, I’m afraid.’ He chuckles complicitly. ‘We had to send the birthday girl home early in a taxi. And then I got talking to a very nice couple, and, um, did that for a while. And then Saturday was shopping. How about you?’ She stirs more rapidly.
‘Pretty boring, I’m afraid,’ he says. ‘I just watched the news. Seems the Philippine thing has spread.’
‘Really?’ she says, absently. The rice cooker light flicks from red to amber.
‘I hope I’m getting some sex tonight,’ she says as he takes the last spoonful of soup. He swallows heavily and looks at her, startled. ‘It doesn’t have to be right now,’ she adds quickly. ‘We can let our food settle first. Drink?’
Several very large gin-and-tonics later, he gets up, sits down, gets up again and they stagger together to her room. He fiddles with the portable CD
player while she removes her clothes and lies back, ready. Barry White starts playing. They laugh together at the cheesiness of his choice. He falls back next to her and begins kissing her. Her tongue probes his mouth. He clutches her breasts, then licks them. She makes noises of approval.
He pushes his hand down inside her panties and fingers her. She is already wet. He finds her clitoris and makes small circles with his finger.
He pulls off her, and then his own, underwear. She lies back, legs open, eyes closed.
After a little while, his member is still, at most, half-mast. The room is turning gin-flavoured circles around his head, which he lowers to the bed to rest a little. It is a little worrying, but he optimistically reasons that if he just carries on, eventually things will sort themselves out.
He is about to suggest that she offer him a hand when she speaks. ‘Can I say something direct?’ she says. His middle digit keeps making small circles, the room large ones. ‘If all I wanted was a finger,’ she says, ‘I wouldn’t have bothered to cook for someone. I could have done that on my own.’
‘Sorry,’ he says.
‘Perhaps,’ she says,’ you would like to just talk some more. We could exchange knitting patterns. Would you like to do that instead?’
He withdraws his hands from her and lies staring at the curtains. She sighs and looks him in the eyes.
‘Let me introduce you to my best friend,’ she says. She reaches under the bed and pulls out a smooth black dildo, a foot and a half long. His eyes widen. She grasps it two-handed, rolls sideways and impales herself on it, groaning convulsively as she comes, and then lies still, smiling. It is like watching someone commit Japanese ritual suicide.
Andrew gets up and pulls on his boxer shorts. ‘I have to go,’ he says.
‘Really?’ she says, looking surprised. ‘Why?’
8. May
‘That just gave me a great idea for a story.’
‘You want me to stop?’
‘No… just. Ah. No… Listen. I’m thinking…’
‘Seriously, Alex, at least finish fucking me before you start work.’
‘Okay…’
‘Okay… Ah. Yes.’
‘…’
‘Is that good, baby?’
‘It’s… um. Yes.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes… in the conflict. It’s set on one of the rebel-held islands…’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. I’m not going to stop, you know.’
‘No… keep going, it’s good.’
‘I know. I’m damn good. They all say that.’
‘…’
