Cathexis (34 page)

M8, awestruck, her nose wrinkled in mirth.

“M8” she gasped, “you are The Lady”.

The kitchen table spread with a red cloth, candles stationed in corners. Airline eye-mask in place, I lay naked, sacrificial, a brocade cushion beneath my head, coccyx complaining. 'N.O.R.W.I.C.H. x', the text had read and after wracking my brains to recall the stupid playground acronym – I'd come up with this. Prudence's inquisitive whiffle at my ear, a tentative paw on my breastbone. Climbing on, she settled herself, folding her paws beneath her, a comforting weight. Lifting my head, her furry form against my nose.

“Prudence, get off” I blew at her. Standing, she wobbled gingerly down my body, finding each pressure point and sore muscle on the way, before dismounting at my ankles. Her address capsule tinked against her food bowl.

The hum of the Hilux, brake squeak and ratchet. Dale in my mind's eye, corresponding to the sounds. Door slam, 'prip prip' central locking. A jingle of keys fidgeting the lock, the protracted creak and the swish of local paper across the mat, slam and letterbox rattle.

“Minky?” A pause and sifting mail
.
“Mink?” The kitchen a muted glow, she noticed and the floorboards grumbled towards me. Keys collapsed on the dresser and a thickening of the air, a circumnavigation of the black mass tableau. Plinth screw and the bell of her ring on whisky bottle, clink of glass and ripple pour. Fridge puff and icebox squeak. A throat clearance. The splinter of ice from the tray and its sister tinkle. And then, soft on my lips, the reek of Christmas
.
I understand and accept the whisky cuckoo, its spill left to travel my jowl like mouth tears.

A pinch of white cold burns my nipple, the frozen bud revived by hot, wet velvet. She toys with this a while, shocking and consoling each one in turn. And then, in a draught, she is gone, pounding the stairs. A vulgar torrent above, the mechanism of a flush. In the bedroom, a drawer shunt search. The rumble of Zulus, armed and intent, and me pale and outnumbered, inviting the massacre.

Prudence said 'hi', but the kitchen door snubs her. The be-blink and fake shutter click of a digital camera alarms me, but a reassuring hand papers my cheek and throat and familiar fingers tug my nipples, which I realise are connected to my heart. The hands, so big they cover my ribs, firmly so as not to tickle; I hate tickling. The calluses whisking against my skin, raising goosebumps into a standing ovation.

A dull brute is placed across my pubic bone, be-blink, click. It is taken up and passes rubber resistance over my belly and thighs. It waggles between my knees playfully, but implies a command. It rolls up my thigh and down the other, be-blink, click. A tiny sound, like a dying mouse. Then a glacial fluid drips viscous between my legs, in which the dildo is battered like a saveloy, turning itself until its nose is between me, be-blink, click. It flutters teasingly and is parked undriven, while her hands lift my knees, like a pervert doctor. The tip is steered again and I dip onto it. She tuts a warning and I lay still to tempt the timid creature back. It returns, wiggling and for every inch it enters, it withdraws a centimetre, until it is up to its shoulders, be-blink, click.

“In flagrante delicto” she whispers husky and proceeds with long, slow strokes, a basic slick splutter. Her mohair arm brushes my thigh and the very thought of her focus and prowess sends my hips rocking in a figure of eight. Her thumb works me obliquely; I don't like pressure, she knows that. But my mind is wrong I can't get past the interloper and now the thing is bumping my belly and possibly my skin is stretching, like that pre-alien burst. Can she see it?

“Oh oh oh, sorry baby”. She presses my tummy and withdraws the savage. “Förlat mig, Minky, misstag”. She knows I like her Swedish. “I'll make it better”. A sentient, more dextrous inquisitor feels me. “Look at that”, she says to herself, “like a beautiful dessert”. I rise to her touch, be-blink, clink. Moaning as she controls my tits as well, steering and pedals. The cushion is tugged from my head and she taps my bottom to place it underneath. Running her hands up the back of my thighs, she pushes my knees to my chin. “I'm going to eat you like a sundae”. Her mouth upon me, her mastery of the language supreme. “Mmm” she says, “läcker”. It's always unfeasible, her tongue inside me, so devout, so deviant, so clever, so good. She augments it with a finger and I can hear her feast.

“Är det till rackligt bra? Mmm? Min sanna kärlek, säg till” she breathes.

“Oh good, yes, so good”, her nose rubbing me. “Oh baby, fuck me”. Her fingers chop into me, now pinning my knees to my forehead, reaching inside, playing me
.
I am all cunt and she is all. Bringing me “det stämmer, Minky”. She spits on me, she knows that implodes, her thigh under my back, nursing my rhythm. I know I'm coming and so does she. “That's my girl, that's my Minky, come on baby, show me ...show me”. She wants ejaculation, she loves that.

“Push it” I say and she knows what I mean and ups the tempo, going deeper until I am quivering. She grips my waist and sees to it so proficiently that I show her. She waits ten seconds and does it more and brings it out of me again. She repeats this four times until I'm crying because I could stay in this orgasmatron indefinitely, but I'm already half insane.

“Please baby stop, you're killing me”. She opens the kitchen door, makes a kissing noise at Prudence and comes back. Her arms under my back and legs, she carries me up the stairs
.
I hang around her neck, so strong.

“Sshh” she says, “sshh”. Pulling the covers over me, she kisses my life.

“Ow!”

“Washa mutter Munk?” through toothpaste froth.

Rocking on the toilet, my poor coco on fire; cystitis, the nemesis of nymphos.

“I think that dildo trashed my junk”.

She laughed at my charming turn of phrase, then frowned. “Shit!” she said. Spitting bitterly into the sink, absorbing the implications.

Chapter 16

“Madame Bracewell”. Simon gathered my hands plus the Volvic bottle of cranberry juice that Dale had decanted. Simon, front of house, introduced my co-selectors. Imogen Wagstaff, a chinless, smock of a woman, two oversized front teeth and a surprised smile like a budgie that had turned into a rabbit. Stephen Burgess, a novice suit from Dempsey Makepeace whatever. Zoe Gluck, American, a mono-browed sixty-something old schooler. Her demeanour like her hair, short and steely, scathing, crabby. I liked her instantly.

“OK, here's the thing people”. Rosamund drew her fingers into anxious steeples.

Apparently, the uptake had been three times what we’d expected and the five of us would whittle six hundred and two entries down to a shortlist of one hundred by tomorrow evening, with a final selection of forty by the end of the following day.

“Understood” said Simon.

“Oh brother” said Zoe.

“The plan is” Rosamund continued, “our lovely volunteers from Tiber Academy will bring the pieces before you. You will decide yes, no or maybe. Obviously majority rules; three maybes will constitute a second viewing, as will two yeses and a maybe and one yes and two maybes and so forth”.

“Bring it on” said the suit.

“Let's snuff some hope” I said. 'And give some' Dale whispered in my head.

The artwork floated by, held aloft by bashful teens.

“Relax, kid” said Zoe. “We're not looking at you”.

I said maybe a lot, Zoe and Simon no, and Imogen and the suit said yes to pretty much everything.

Sometimes the pieces were conceptual, represented by photos or sketches and accompanying notes. Simon devoured the explanations but I didn't bother unless I was taken by the image. It was as if we were on a train, stopping at impossibly short intervals, not least because I had to keep leaving to pass splinters. By midday, when Rosamund dropped in to say the canteen was open, we'd only got through a hundred and twenty. Grabbing a stack of sandwiches, I went to see Dale.

The grizzly bear groan of a high powered tool wound down and the red door swung open freely. She attached herself to my sandwich mouth. “How's coco?”

“Agony to wee”, passing my hand over her crotch.

“How long have you got?”

“Half an hour” I said, unzipping her.

By 6.30 that evening, we had winnowed fifty eight from three hundred.

Dale drove home, the car wallowed in third, her hand devoted to my thigh.

“Clutch” I said, shifting the stick to second. She chuckled at our cohesion.

“I vote this goes”. Simon before a canvas the size of my balcony, depicting a forest in secret blues and greys.

“But it's fantastic” I protested.

“Agreed, but it will dominate and deprive at least four others of a chance”. Rankled by his authority and the spiteful crystals down below, I wrestled to keep reasonable. “Now this I like” he said, an image pixelated like a colour blind test, but when your eye fell in, an empty pair of boots swam out at you.

“It doesn't do much for me” I said.

“I can't see how it fits the brief” growled Zoe.

“It has atmosphere” said Imogen, removing her glasses and squinting so close I thought she intended to gnaw it.

“Stephen?”

“Pants”. He'd given up the will to live some time yesterday. Imogen flipped it over. “Such mature work for a sixteen year old” she said thoughtfully.

I scanned the image again and the sensation; the tempered shock of looking out to sea through binoculars, unable to relocate the tiny pair of waving arms you thought you'd spotted from the shore.

“You OK?” Zoe staunched my flow.

“Yeah, thanks, I think I'm a bit punch drunk”. I massaged a temple and something bounced like a needy icon at the edge of a computer screen.

“I think we could all use a drink” she said and marched off like matron.

We made further inroads into the pieces and the Shiraz wine-box Zoe had commandeered. By three, we had our forty and the last drop had been wrung from the silver bladder in the box. My head crowded and loud, shutting my eyes I saw pigeons in flight reflected in the windscreen of a car, the Saab. A compulsion to count them, the opportunity slipping through my fingers like the fine chain of a locket. Perhaps I had a fever.

The silver star is turning, hanging in the air over my face because she is above me. We are meant to be getting ready, the night of the exhibition. But her armpits smell like spruce trees and she has offered her breasts. Her rare blue alpine Pasque flowers search my common-or-garden periwinkles. “I love you”.

She's tried the skirt and my leather jacket, which she covets. “I'm too old for that image now” she says, even though she look
s thirty four, tops. She smoothes my Calvin Klein trousers across her rump, pleased. She fills them better than me. Tugging at the cuffs of the jacket. “What should I wear underneath?” “Nothing”. “What just my bra?” “Yes ...and the star”. I pretend to die on the bed because she is drop-dead gorgeous. Her sensual lips against mine, unresponsive. Quite convincing, but then she whispers “Jag ä snyggare naken”. And though I don't know what it means, it brings a hint of a smile ...and a tear, because it's as if I'm in the future and this is the past.

Simon's eyes greedily flitted over the fact of Dale, dipping to her cleavage and then, more furtively, to her boots.

“It's wonderful to meet you at last” he said. “And may I say that you are a very lucky woman”. His arm curled around my shoulders; gracious tonight, but still with a
soupçon of sleaze.

“I know” Dale said, more to me.

“You have remarkable eyes my dear. One can only imagine the delights they have witnessed”.

I sighed. “Don't spoil it Simon”.