“Why don’t you stay there?”
He smiled and looked wistfully into his empty beer glass. I waved for the waiter. I signalled for two more beers.
“Because I want to share it with someone and have yet to find her,” he said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.
“Do you think you ever will?”
He looked up, meeting my eyes.
“I don’t know, Julianna, do you think it could be possible for a rogue like me to find a girl who could love him?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure. I mean, you’re not that ugly, and after a shower you don’t smell desperately awful. I suppose it depends how good you are to her.”
“I’m good in bed,” he said, with a naughty smile.
“Okay, that’s five minutes taken care of, what about the rest of the time?”
Looking me right in the eye, he said, “I haven’t a bloody clue, but I’d do my damndest to make her the happiest girl in the world.”
I had to look away, for I knew that my life was so bloody complicated that I could never live a life like that.
He took my hand, so I had to look back. He saw the tears in my eyes.
“Why do you cry?” he asked.
“Because she’ll be one lucky girl, whoever she is.”
“Stop fucking about, Julianna; you must know how I feel about you?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you, every sodding minute of every sodding day. And to make things worse, I even dream about you when I’m asleep. You got me right here, and I don’t sodding like it,” he said, banging himself on the chest.
“Look, I’m no angel, I told you that, so I’ve done things that I’m not exactly proud of, but there were good reasons at the time. I want to wipe things clean and start afresh, and I’d like to do it with you.”
“It’s not easy to do that in your line of work,” I said.
“Just mine?”
“Okay, our line of work,” I said, conceding a point.
He gave my hand a squeeze. I returned it, feeling unsure and very vulnerable.
“I need to know what you feel about me?” he said.
I laughed. It wasn’t very kind, but it was a genuine reaction.
“So do I, damn it,” I said.
He frowned at me, so I squeezed his hand to reassure him.
“Look, Carl, you know I told you that I come with more than my fair share of baggage, so believe me when I tell you that I don’t know what I think or feel about anything anymore. To ask me how I feel about you may just sound a simple question, but for me, it isn’t at all. I know just a few things; I know that I like it when you touch me; I know that when I hear your voice I get a warm feeling inside.; I know that when I know you’re in the town as me, I feel safe and want to be with you. I know when you’re in the same building; then I want you to come to me and to hold me.
“We joked about my virginity, but it’s no joke, no man has been there, I promise. But there’s not a night that goes by, when I’m in bed and thinking, usually about you, when I don’t want you to do things to me that no man has ever done. As for whether I love you or want to spend the rest of my life with you, I really haven’t a clue.
“I’ll be content to travel with you down life’s road, for as far as you can put up with me and vice versa. If it’s a few weeks, fine, or if it’s until one of us pops off, then that’s fine too. I just don’t want you to put me on some pedestal and then wait for me to fall off. I want us to be open and honest about everything in our lives, not the past, just with the here and now, as I’m happy to leave the past behind us.”
It was one of the longest speeches I’d ever made about my feelings. I just hoped that I made sense.
He smiled at me, looking less unsure.
“I’ll settle for that. Can we come to an understanding?”
“About what?” I asked, cautiously.
“Whatever is in the past stays there, for both of us. I don’t want either of our futures being scuppered by things that are dead and buried, okay?”
“Dead and buried?”
“Absolutely.”
“How apt,” I said, standing up and pulling him up to his feet. I stretched up and kissed him. It felt absolutely right, while things were happening inside me that I had never experienced before. It went on for quite a long time. Eventually I broke off.
“Why don’t we go up to one of our rooms and you can go somewhere that no man has gone before?” I suggested.
Epilogue.
“Honey, have you seen my black dress?” I asked.
“Which one, you must have about six?”
“The slinky one you bought me in Milan last Christmas.”
“Ah, no, the last time you wore that, didn’t the Brazilian Ambassador try to get you out of it?”
“Right, and then you spilled something green down the front. I sent it to the cleaners, so thanks, now I know where it is,” I muttered as I finished packing.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I think so, have you got your international adaptor for the laptop?”
“Yes, and I’ve clean underwear and passport. We’ve been through the list, Jules, so shall we go?”
I had a last look around the house and then followed him out to the taxi.
“Calm down, we’re only going for two weeks, so if we’ve forgotten anything, I’m sure it can wait. Besides, you know Maryanne, if you need something she’s bound to know where you can get one,” he said.
I sat quietly on route to Auckland airport, but my mind was in a whirl. So much had happened in the last two years that I could hardly keep pace.
President G’ymbai had quietly honoured me and the team by awarding us some medal for services rendered and made us all Freemen (and one woman) of the nation of Mgombi. Later, in a private meeting with Maryanne present, he’d given me a small velvet bag with five amazing diamonds inside.
“I can’t think of anyone who deserves these more, after you’ve been through so much trouble,” he said.
I glanced at Maryanne, so she had told him, or had he guessed?
In any case, he never mentioned it, so it remained our secret. The next day I was present when he laid the corner stone of the Robert Carlisle University College in Juminka.
I cried.
Harvey took some time off, spending a week in Ghana and then taking a certain tall lady back to the States to meet his mother.
My relationship with Carl became general knowledge, apparently quite quickly, as he accused me of being a screamer. All I know is the doctor told me I was unlikely to achieve an orgasm for some time.
He was wrong!
Sex became very important to us, because I suddenly made up for lost time, and Carl wasn’t sure how to deal with it. It wasn’t as if I thought about it a lot, or even that we did it a lot, it was just when we went to bed at night, we just sort of merged, and occasionally, if I turned over in the middle of the night and touched him, one thing inevitably led to another.
After three months, we calmed down a little, but I still adored being on the receiving end of something I had been quite ambivalent to in my past. To feel him inside me was something so thrilling, the psychological impact was more erotic than the limited feeling I had inside my constructed parts. I had everything I needed, including a clitoris, and after a while, I knew that all the nerve endings had come together just fine.
My favourite position was on top, astride him. That way I could keep a degree of control, and I just adored making it last as long as I could. Often he’d shout his impatience and lose his control, but with practice we became really very good lovers.
In many little ways we were completely incompatible, like music tastes and similar, but in the major things, we were so alike as to be spooky. Politically and socially, we thought the same things, and we both were spiritually in tune, although neither of us had much time for the churchy religion that so many people craved.