Blake’s lips twist. ‘Father, meet Lana. Lana, my father,’ he introduces.
His father looks at Lana. His eyes are pale blue stones. He pushes his glasses up his nose. He looks mild and harmless. If she had seen him in the street, she would have smiled at him.
‘Run along to the ladies and powder your nose or something. I need to speak to my son,’ he says.
His rudeness makes Lana gasp. She picks up her purse automatically and makes to rise, but Blake’s voice is like a whiplash. ‘Stay,’ he commands.
Lana looks at him. He is staring at her. She puts her purse down, and he shifts his eyes from her to his father. ‘When I have finished dinner I will come to you,’ he says softly, and stands.
The old man says nothing. It is obvious that he is livid, but he turns around and leaves the restaurant.
Blake sits. ‘Sorry about that,’ he apologizes. But he has changed. Become remote and preoccupied. ‘My father can be brusque sometimes.’
He looks at her uneaten dessert. ‘Do you want coffee?’
She shakes her head and he calls for the bill. He puts her into a cab and watches it drive away. Then he hails another cab and tells the driver to head to Claridges. He checks his phone, his brother has called. He calls him back.
‘What’s up, Marcus?’
‘Have you seen Dad?’
‘On my way to him now.’
‘Any idea why he suddenly decided he must see you?’
‘Nope,’ he lies. They chat a bit more and then he hangs up.
He doesn’t immediately to go to his father’s rooms. He goes to the bar and orders himself a large whiskey. A girl comes up to him.
‘Hi,’ she says. She is very expensively dressed and very seductive. She is a call girl. He can tell a mile off. ‘Buy me a drink?’
He sighs and raises his hand. Instantly, the bartender comes to his side. He moves his thumb in the girl’s direction. ‘Get her a drink too,’ he says. The girl smiles at him. Ah, the clothes were bait, the hook is her smile. She is very beautiful. She has long, shining blonde hair that he can see is natural and pearly teeth. He wants to be distracted.
‘You must be very rich and powerful,’ she says.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘The way the bartender left what he was doing to serve you first. It’s always a good sign of big money.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Russia.’ He nods and almost smiles. Cliché of clichés. Of course, she is Russian.
‘And you? You are American.’
‘Yeah.’ He has never paid for sex. And then it hits him suddenly. He is paying for sex! It makes him laugh out loud.
‘What is so funny?’ the Russian asks.
‘Why did you become a hooker?’
Her eyebrows arch. She is pure sophistication. ‘Because I like nice things.’ Then she deepens her voice until it is like hot caramel. She is very good at this. ‘And I love a hot fuck with good-looking strangers.’ She eyes his crotch greedily. She does it well and if he didn’t know better he would think she was desperate for his body and not the contents of his wallet.
Lana’s white face when his father ordered her to leave the table flashes into his mind. He signals to the barman. ‘Charge everything to my father’s room,’ he says, and leaves a fifty-pound tip. His father is tight and actually goes through his hotel bills. ‘Enjoy your drink,’ he says to the Russian beauty, downs his, and makes his way to the lift.
Upstairs, his father is waiting for him. As he expected the meeting does not go well.
‘Do you think you are the first Barrington to be tempted?’ his father asks him coldly
‘Tempted?’
‘Tempted to throw it all away for a bit of flesh.’
‘I don’t want to throw it all away.’
‘Really?’
‘It hasn’t crossed my mind.’
‘Do you think I am a fool? Do you think I cannot see what she is to you? Each one of us has a personal siren summoned from some demonic place, who enters our lives in the most mundane way, leads us to the very edge and sings as we fall to our destruction. I had mine. Many years ago.’
Blake stares at his father. A memory struggles to surface. A voice in his head, ‘Don’t go there, boy.’ He does not. Instead, he turns almost gratefully to his father’s story. Even the thought of his father being in love is foreign, impossible.
His father smiles frostily, his voice is calm and unemotional, but the memories must have been bitter for his mouth is a tightly controlled slash in his face. ‘She was a redhead, a fledgling star. Every time I saw her, I could have ruined everything, but I fought it with every ounce of my being.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Dead.’
‘What happened?’
‘It got so bad your grandfather paid a man to run off with her. She became a drug addict and died in a motel room. I saw the pictures and even then I felt an indescribable loss. But now, when I think back, I realize that my father was right. She was the enemy carefully chosen for me by fate. A beautiful butterfly. After she had destroyed me, after I’d lost everything, she would have carelessly moved on to the next flower.’ He looks intently at Blake. ‘What would happen if I paid your girl to leave you?’
Despite himself, Blake flushes with anger. He turns away from his father. ‘I’ll thank you to stay out of my business. I don’t want to leave everything for her. It is only a fling. Temporary.’
He walks away from his father and stands close to the door. He is so angry at his father’s suggestion to pay Lana off that he barely listens while his father accuses him of letting ‘a woman’ get under his skin. Eventually, he leaves and walks the streets of London for almost an hour. He feels confused and lost. The only thing he knows for sure is that he aches for her. With every fiber of his being, he aches for her.
He tells himself it is just lust. But he knows, he knows it isn’t. It isn’t lust when you want to reach out and wipe away her tears and press her body against your own. He doesn’t just want to fuck her, he wants to hold her after that. She fills the void inside him that has never been filled by the best schools, the most beautiful women, the fastest cars, the most expensive champagnes, the most glamorous parties.
He takes a cab back to St John’s Wood and lets himself in quietly. For a moment he stands at the mouth of the corridor. The living room is dim. Then he walks towards it—his feet soundless on the thick carpet—and stops at the threshold. Only the lampshade by the sofa is lit. She has fallen asleep on the couch. Her fingers are slack and trailing down. There is an empty glass that has rolled away from her. He goes to her. She is unbearably, impossibly beautiful. He puts his hand under her neck and the other under her knees and lifts her. She moans softly, but she does not awaken. He smells the alcohol on her breath.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she mumbles.
He freezes. For a time he is still, but she does not awaken so he carries her to their bed and puts her down. He bends down and kisses her lips. She is half-asleep, but she opens her mouth and he deepens the kiss. Her hands come up to his hair, her fingers entwine in the silky strands. She moans and arches her body towards him. He supports her body with his forearms and lifts her towards him and begins to suck at her exposed throat.
‘Please, Blake…’ she gasps and molds her body towards his.
He lets his mouth trail lower. At the soft swelling where her breast begins he stops and sucks again. This time longer. He will leave his mark on her. She moans with pleasure. He takes his mouth away and looks at the red mark possessively. He feels like an adolescent again. She is his to mark. He put his mouth on another part of her creamy skin and sucks diligently.
Her hands are moving towards his belt. They are urgent but useless against the metal buckle. She is more than half drunk. He puts his hand into her pajama trousers, slips it under her panties, and touches her between her legs. Her sex is wet and tingling for him. She has never begged him to enter her before. He wants her to. He rips open her pajama top. A button hits the mirror in the room and makes a sound. She does not hear it.