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.
The client went to collect my coat. I gave the girl a kiss and nodded at the bottle of massage oil in her tiny hand. “Keep it-you’ll make better use of it than I will.” He came back and put a possessive arm around her, and my mind switched over again. Escort? Girlfriend? I couldn’t be sure. The tip he slipped me was equal to the fee. samedi, le 20 decembre
I am heading home to see friends and family, as is my custom. The Boy has gone on to spend a few weeks with his parents, as is his custom. I think some things should be sacrosanct from the intrusion of couplehood, and watching your family get drunk and pass out in the toilet is one of them.
Train travel is a most exciting wonder of the modern age. Having invented no shortage of faster, cheaper, and more comfortable ways to travel, we insist on perpetuating an outdated, and dare I say it, wildly inconvenient method of transport. What other modes of carriage could possibly expect you to make your own way to the start and terminating stations, wait until the company’s convenience to commence your journey, sit so long without even a free warm soda, and set up seats and tables so that you are inadvertently rubbing thighs with every pervert between King’s Cross and Yorkshire? I love it, you know I do.
Having made this trip so often, I know-seconds before the conductor’s voice breaks over the loudspeaker-when we are one minute from my stop. I know which carriage will put me closest to the exit and could conduct a tour of the station blindfolded. Even when no one is waiting for me, and I know there will be a twenty-minute queue for a taxi when I get there, the effect of stepping onto the platform at home is vivid delight. And the glow of being on my own ground lasts indefinitely, or until I pull into my parents’ drive. Whichever comes first. dimanche, le 21 decembre
Daddy and I went for a walk just after sunset. He claimed his legs were cramping from so much sitting around, but I suspect it was to get away from my mother, who has gone into celebratory overdrive. She’s an equal-opportunity party animal, juggling five or six seasonal holidays at a go. The last we checked she was trying to whip up familial enthusiasm for an Eid firework party. Having only a vague notion of what Eid is, who celebrates it, or what shoes would be appropriate to standing in a back garden and craning my neck at multicolored gunpowder, I decided in favor of the walking option.