Heller (14 page)

“Lily!” I
chased after her. “You’re going the wrong way. The art gallery is
in the other direction.”

She shouted
over her shoulder, “I need to make a detour first, if you don’t
mind.”

I shrugged.
You’re the boss
, I thought, scrambling to keep up with her.
Damn heels. She kept walking for a while, randomly crossing
streets, until she suddenly stopped in front of one of the city’s
many business hotels, well-appointed but busy and impersonal.

“I want you to
go in to that hotel and book a small suite for me. From now until I
leave. In your name though. Pay for it with your credit card and
you can add the cost to your final bill.”

I stared at
her.

“Go on,” she
urged impatiently and gave me a little push. So I went in and did
what she requested. She sat quietly in the foyer while I booked the
suite. When I had been given the access swipe card, she stood up
and led me to the lifts. We travelled up in silence and it wasn’t
until we were inside the suite that she spoke.

“Thank you,
Tilly,” she said, smiling broadly. She reached up, ripped off her
headscarf and unplaited her hair. It fell in a soft cloud down to
the middle of her back. She fluffed it out and took off her
long-sleeved smock to reveal a tight, low-cut red designer blouse
that half-exposed her small breasts. I watched on in surprise. She
removed her long pants and rummaged in her gigantic handbag
retrieving a black leather miniskirt, quickly pulling it over her
narrow hips and lacy panties. Her sensible flat shoes went flying
across the room as she kicked them off, in their place slipping on
bejewelled stilettos that would have cost more than my entire
outfit.

She took a
makeup case from her handbag and spent ten minutes liberally
applying it to her face. The final touch was to exchange the modest
sleepers piercing her lobes for a set of enormous gold hoops. She
was transformed. I wouldn’t have recognised her as the modest
married woman I had met that morning. She stood in front of the
mirror, ogling herself.

“Ta-da!” she
exclaimed to me, twirling around.

“Spectacular,”
I said, clapping in approval. Privately I thought she looked like a
hooker, but I wasn’t being paid to sit in judgement on her fashion
taste.

“You still
want to go to the art gallery?” I asked doubtfully. She wasn’t
really dressed for it anymore.

“Screw the art
gallery! I couldn’t give a shit about art.” She had a strong
English accent that seemed incongruous with her looks. I commented
on it.

“I
am
English. From North London. Arranged marriage,” she confided. “I’ve
been married to that boring shithead for a year now. He and his
bitch of a mother keep a close watch on me all the time. I haven’t
had any fun for ages!”

I suddenly
felt sorry for her. She was only young and should have been out
with her girlfriends meeting lots of boys, not stuck in an arranged
marriage with a much older man.

“He is very
rich though, which is nice. I can buy whatever I want. Almost makes
up for all the cocksucking I have to do,” she told me. I was lost
for words as to how to respond to that. She looked at me
questioningly. “I chose you because you looked bold. I thought you
seemed the kind of person who would let me have some fun and not go
telling my husband. I hope I was right?”

“I’m here to
help you have as much fun as you like, Lily. I’ll give your husband
very detailed and dull reports on the shopping we did and the art
we viewed, if you like.” She smiled and nodded her head
mischievously.

“And I’ll bore
him to death every night telling him the same. He won’t even ask
after the first time.” We smiled conspiratorially.
This will be
fun
, I told myself.
I can’t believe I get paid to do
this.

She made some
adjustments to her makeup, asking casually, “Are you packing?”

I was studying
my nails and said distractedly, “Why? Are we going somewhere?”

“No, dummy!
Are you
packing
? You know – carrying a gun?”

“Not today,” I
said truthfully, then was slightly less truthful. “Usually, but not
today. It’s a bit awkward to explain when you’re going to art
galleries and shopping,” I embellished. “I only take it with me
when there might be some danger.”

She was
disappointed. “We could have gone somewhere and fired off a few
rounds. Scared a few tourists. That would have been fun.”

Thank God I
don’t have a gun
, I thought gratefully.

“What’s the
deal with that guy Heller? He is hot! I’d do him in an instant.
Have you done him?”

“No, I haven’t
done
him.” Well, only in my dreams. “He’s my boss, Lily. And
it’s not a good idea to do your boss.”

She spun from
examining herself in the mirror to look at me in surprise. “Isn’t
it? I wouldn’t know ‘cause I’ve never had a job, but why not? I bet
loads of women do their bosses every day.” She turned back to her
reflection and added another layer of mascara. “When my disgusting
husband was fucking me this morning after you left, I pretended it
was Heller instead,” she confided. I didn’t know what to say to
that either. I didn’t know if Heller would have been flattered.
Maybe? She finished her makeup. “Let’s go to the casino. I’m
feeling lucky today. Especially lucky now that I’ve got you to have
some fun with.” She hooked her arm through mine and we headed off
to the casino.

She was an
enthusiastic but reckless gambler, betting thousands of dollars at
a time, winning and losing equally. I could hardly bear to watch
all that money being risked so casually. My phone rang. It was
Heller. I walked away from the table.

“How’s
everything going?” he asked, seemingly much calmer since I last saw
him.

“Okay, so
far,” I said, straining to hear him over the general noise.

“What are you
doing at the casino? I thought you were going shopping.”

“How do you
know where I am?”

“Your handbag
has an implanted tracking device. Primitive, but it’s doing the job
for now. We’ll fix up something better later.”

I didn’t know
whether to feel pissed off or pleased.

“Is Mrs Hayek
enjoying herself?” he asked. I glanced over at the roulette table.
She was drinking champagne and laughing up at a good-looking, but
unctuous, young man standing on her left, who was cheering her on
to higher and higher bets. She had her hand on his arm.

“I think so.
It was her idea to come to the casino. She’s not as demure as she
first appears.”

He gave a very
sexy low chuckle that made my stomach feel funny. “Women seldom
are, Matilda.”

The shifty
young man leaned down and kissed Lily lingeringly on the mouth. She
wasn’t pushing him away. In fact, she had her hand on his butt.

“Oops, looks
as though she having a bit too much fun now. Gotta run. She needs
rescuing from a lounge lizard.” I hung up and sauntered back slowly
to the table, not wanting to cramp her style but not wanting
anything untoward to happen either. She whispered something in
Lizard’s ear and he nodded, laughing. She gulped the last of her
champagne and grabbed his hand, pulling him away from the
table.

I followed at
a discreet distance as they wove their way through the crowd. They
stopped in front of a ladies bathroom and Lily went in. She came
out immediately and said something to Lizard, smiling, pulling him
through the door. I gave them a diplomatic minute before silently
opening the door. All the cubicles were vacant, doors open, except
the cubicle at the far end. I stealthily crept up. It was obvious
from the repeated grunting and occasional moan what was going on
inside. I didn’t want to hear any more, so quietly left, keeping
watch out the front.

I deterred one
very drunk woman from entering by telling her that someone had
thrown up all over the floor, it was currently being cleaned up and
directed her to the conveniences at the other side of the room. She
didn’t even blink, but staggered off obediently.
I have
authority!
I thought exultantly, an emotion that died a quick
death when I heard Lily’s very extravagant and noisy orgasm from
where I was standing outside the bathroom. I glanced around
nervously, hoping nobody else,
especially
the mountain-sized
casino security men, could hear her ecstatic screaming over the
constant clamour of the nearby pokie machines.

Eventually,
Lily poked her head out and ushered Lizard from the bathroom. She
looked mussed, her lipstick smeared and her hair wild, but with a
cat-with-the-cream satisfied expression on her face that frankly
made me jealous, given my own current frustrated status. She
favoured Lizard with a prolonged kiss and a final squeeze of his
arse. He asked her something and she rummaged around in her handbag
for a pen, writing on his hand. Another kiss, another squeeze, and
they separated. She slinked over to me.

“God, I needed
a good fuck, and he was exceptional! A million times better than my
limp dick husband.” She gave a whole-body shudder of pleasure that
turned my shade of envy from pale green to emerald. “I’m
so
famished. Let’s go eat.”

“Did you give
him your phone number, Lily? Do you think that’s wise?”

She flung me a
pitying look. “I gave him a fake number, dumb arse! I don’t want to
see him again. I just wanted to borrow his dick for ten
minutes.

Well, okay
then
, I thought, my Sphinx-face firmly in place.
Glad we
sorted that out
.

We dined at
the casino’s five-star restaurant and it was a very enjoyable and
rare treat for me. We shared a bottle of wine and she told me about
her life in Jordan, how she missed her family and friends in
England and her fear of ending up with ten kids by the time she was
thirty. I couldn’t blame her, maternity not being high on my list
of priorities either. Her phone beeped. She looked at the
message.

“Shit,” she
said sullenly. “Fuckwit’s back from his meeting and wants me to
socialise with his boring business partners and their ugly old
wives tonight. We have to go.” She threw a bundle of money at the
waiter and we briskly walked back to her secret hotel room, where
she showered, brushed her teeth and gargled, transforming herself
back into modest and reserved Mrs Hayek.

I walked her
back to her husband where she gave a brilliant performance as a shy
young woman who had been intellectually stimulated by an afternoon
surrounded by the Masters, and not physically stimulated in a
bathroom by a young stranger in tight pants with a nice arse. Her
husband’s eyes glazed over with boredom as she enthused at length
about stroke work and lighting. He wasn’t going to question her any
further about her day’s activities. She was so good I almost stood
up and applauded.

I agreed to
return at ten the following morning and made my farewell. I gave
Rumbles a quick call in the lift and waited in the foyer for about
fifteen minutes while he drove over to pick me up. He delivered me
home safely and I trudged up the stairs, absolutely knackered. I
had just walked in my front door when Heller walked in behind
me.

“Debrief me,”
he ordered.

Oh yes,
thank you God!
I offered up gratefully, until I realised that
he wasn’t asking me to take off his clothes. Disappointed, I
wearily pulled off my shoes, loosened my hair from its chignon and
gave him a heavily censored summary of my day. He rubbed his mouth
pensively as he listened.

“She’s going
to be a handful, but I can keep her under control,” I insisted,
sounding more confident than I felt.

“You must let
me know immediately if you have any trouble. Just try to keep her
happy. The fee for this job is astronomical. I want a satisfied
client.”

That struck me
as an extremely funny thing for him to say and I started to laugh
uncontrollably. “Don’t worry about that,” I managed to choke out,
tears coursing down my cheeks. “She was
very
satisfied this
afternoon.”

He stared at
me as if I’d gone crazy, shook his head in bewilderment and left me
lying on my lounge, helpless with laughter.

“Let’s do some
shopping first today,” Lily decided, peering at herself in the
mirror, carefully applying her lipstick. We were in the secret
suite again, and she was wearing blue jeans so tight they looked as
though they were spray-painted on and a long-sleeved, low-cut,
body-hugging deep purple top. She staggered around on
ten-centimetre heels and had on more makeup than a drag queen. Her
diamond earrings dangled, touching her shoulders every time she
turned her head. She was pimped to the max. Next to her I looked
stodgy and conservative in my business suit.

“I want to
spend a serious pile of money today. That cocksucker husband of
mine owes me big time. The things he makes me do. It’s demeaning!
He’s so horny lately too.” She turned from contemplating herself in
the mirror to look at me. “I think it’s you.”

I was
startled. “Me? What do you mean? I haven’t done anything.”

“I think
you’re turning him on, and he’s taking it out on me.”

“You must be
joking! I’ve barely even spoken to him. I’m not even dressed
provocatively.”

“Yeah, but he
gets off on that librarian look.
Duh!
You’ve obviously got a
hot body and keeping it covered in those suits, with your hair up
and your makeup so discreet, you’re giving him a boner every
day.”

“Gross!” I
pulled a face.

She rolled her
eyes. “Tell me about it! I’m the one who has to hump him every
night. Thank Christ he can only last for about five minutes before
he’s done. Saves me a lot of boredom and staring at the ceiling.”
She snatched up her handbag. “Let’s go.”