The Pleasure Quartet (14 page)

We ate in a conservatory on the far side of the villa, a night full of stars reigning above us, and the lights of the city and its procession of tall edifices facing the long arc of the beaches below us twinkling away madly.

The meal was delightful, served by a cadre of silent servants. The meat was succulent and spiced to subtle perfection, the greens crisp and metal-sharp, and the choice of sorbets we feasted on to cleanse our palates singularly refreshing.

Joao summoned a helper, who brought Astrid’s violin along, and he requested she play. I wondered how many servants a household of two could possibly need, and tried to push the thought away. Such attention was not the way that I liked to live, but it wasn’t my place to judge Joao’s lifestyle.

‘Let’s see how much influence Summer has had on you,’ Joao suggested.

Astrid was a little bit self-conscious as she played, and her version of Kreisler’s Liebesleid was at times halting and clumsy. We applauded nonetheless. Coffee arrived.

‘Summer,’ Joao looked over to me. ‘We’d love to hear from you. Will you?’

‘Maybe another time?’ I said. ‘It’s getting a bit late. I think the wine might have been a bad idea. I wouldn’t be at my best . . .’

‘Is that a promise? You’ll come back and play for us another day? And we’ll be less generous with the wine, maybe . . .’ He grinned.

Astrid took that as a cue to excuse herself, similarly pretexting tiredness and the effect of the heavy red wine we had generously been drinking.

I made to rise as she moved away into the villa, but Joao waved his hand.

‘You can stay tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ve had the room prepared. You’re absolutely welcome. But I can have the driver take you back, if you prefer.’

I was hesitant.

Staying in and the comforts of the villa had an undeniable attraction, and tipsy as I was, I couldn’t face the drive home and then venturing alone into my apartment. I sat down again.

‘Good,’ Joao said. ‘A nightcap? A vintage brandy?’

He had a kind smile.

A good-looking older man. With violet eyes. Cultured, self-confident, unpushy.

I missed the hands of men. The soft and hard touch of their lips. The way they could play me.

I did not sleep in my room that night.

We’d talked for hours. Or rather he’d done most of the talking, and I’d barely listened, neglectfully watching the curl of his lips, the sensuous droop of his eyelids, the elegant lines of age forming around his mouth, his long fingers and the solid bulk of his body housed with quiet ease under the flimsy white curtain of his shirt.

There was a lull in the conversation. A silence. That found me daydreaming.

He took my hand in his.

‘Come with me.’

I felt distant, not quite there.

Looked back at him.

Saw him plead.

‘Sleep with me tonight.’

‘Yes.’

He led me to his bedroom.

You couldn’t say he was a bad lover. He returned me to the way things were before I met Dominik and that indelible fire inside was awakened and had kept on burning ever since. Making love by numbers so to speak, the job done properly and attentively, with enough tenderness and application to soothe the hunger inside but no more. I supposed this was what real life was all about.

Steady.

Loving.

Studious in his attempts to share the pleasure equally with me, even clumsy at times for a man of his age and, I presumed, his experience. Skimming the surface of my lust with practised touches, fingers, mouth, tongue, teeth and inevitably drawing some form of automatic response.

But it felt uneventful.

Not enough.

He even offered me a post-coital cigarette, which I turned down.

The next morning his driver returned me to my small, rudimentary beach flat and I had agreed to become his daughter’s violin teacher. Astrid must have guessed he had taken me to his bed, and the expression on her face was one of both jealousy and wariness, but she soon warmed to me again. I just hoped she wouldn’t see me as a substitute mother.

The waiter refilled my champagne flute.

‘Would you like a strawberry in that, Miss?’ he asked, his voice a low, rough drawl that I imagined would enunciate dirty words perfectly, but maybe it was just the wine talking. He had jet-black hair, dark eyes and a close-cropped, designer beard that bordered a pair of full, sensual lips, curled in a sardonic expression. He knew that I was drunk, and found him attractive, I was sure of it.

Joao touched my arm and I turned my attention back to the group, studiously avoiding following the waiter’s arse with my eyes as he walked away.

‘. . . but what else can we do, Matheus?’ Joao was saying to the man next to him. ‘All the wealth in the world cannot control the weather . . .’

We were standing on the wide balcony outside one of the penthouse suites at the Belmond Copacabana Palace hotel, visiting a cohort of Joao’s business acquaintances and their mistresses. The men had been speaking in Portuguese and Joao had switched to English, for my benefit I knew, but I was only partially grateful since I had nothing in particular to contribute to a conversation about crops or drought conditions. Matheus had a face like a bread roll – pale, round and shining – with a thin sheen of sweat that layered his features. When he spoke, his thin lips curled back and exposed a row of crooked teeth. Saliva hovered at the edges of his gums and a spray of spittle burst forth with each word he uttered.

I forced my mouth to lift into a smile that I hoped conveyed polite interest. The sound of the sea lapping against the sand below was a welcome antidote, and I concentrated on that instead, and let the talk of crops, machinery and the price of holiday homes wash over me. I turned my head and looked out at the wide expanse of ocean stretched out like a dark ribbon beyond the shore and the people below us crawling like ants across the sand. City lights glimmered in the distance.

‘Joao, we are being very rude I think, and boring your lovely guest.’

I swung back again. It was Matheus, with a dreadful smirk spread across his face, delighted to make a point of my infraction. I barely knew the man and I hated him already.

‘Oh no,’ I insisted. ‘Forgive me. I could not help admiring your beautiful city. I never grow tired of looking out at the sea.’

That much at least, was true.

‘And what better place to see it from, eh?’ Matheus gestured towards the room. His Piaget watch artfully caught the glare from a lamp overhead and caused flashes of light to bounce off the wide glass doors that separated us from the rest of the suite. His wrist was fat and hairy and totally at odds with the effulgent watchstrap that shone when he moved, advertising both his wealth and his terrible taste in jewellery.

Joao had told me as we strode through the chandelier-lined lobby towards the lift that he had offered to host tonight’s gathering, but Matheus had suggested that each of the couples in attendance book one of the Belmond’s penthouse suites instead. The wide living area alone was larger than my whole apartment, wooden floors polished to mirror shine and dotted with soft, thick rugs. Abstract art pieces were hung on the walls at regular intervals, each of them subtly elevated by the gallery-style lighting that made the colours and textures seem so alive. The long, pale mint-coloured sofa and matching armchairs sat as if someone had arranged them using a ruler and a feng shui guide to achieve the perfect combination of elegance and casual comfort. They probably had. Glass-topped coffee tables with geometric-style chrome legs were decorated with fresh-cut lilies floating in bowls of water. The scent that emanated from them was so heady it made me dizzy.

‘It’s lovely,’ I replied weakly. I would have far preferred to watch the waves roll in from one of the cheap but excellent cafés by the sea side, with a hearty plate of paella in front of me and a glass of cold beer, or barefoot on the beach sipping a caipirinha prepared by one of the beachfront drink stalls, but I couldn’t admit that to Joao.

‘Perhaps we could make our excuses to Matheus, let them have their fun at the Belmond and catch up with them for lunch tomorrow? We could see a show instead, the three of us?’ I had suggested when I saw Astrid’s face fall as she had caught sight of me earlier that afternoon trying on the gown that her father had bought me to wear for the occasion.

Joao was immovable. ‘Matheus and his friends have travelled all the way from São Paulo to enjoy Rio. It would be impolite of me to refuse his invitation to join them tonight. Besides, why waste such beauty as yours on sitting in an audience with us two? I want to show you off.’

Astrid was sitting alone on the couch in the living room, playing computer games on the widescreen TV, nearly swallowed up by the plush cream leather cushions that were piled on either side of her. She looked even younger than usual, and small, as though she might slip down between the cracks in the sofa like a lost coin and be forgotten about.

On the screen in front of her, an animated mushroom was driving a blue Ferrari. The car twisted and spun, navigating hairpin turns and avoiding shooting flames and banana skins as Astrid pressed the buttons on the controller with alarming dexterity. She looked up when her father spoke, and the blue Ferrari ploughed straight off the side of the road and dropped into a jagged crevice. ‘Game Over’ flashed up on the screen, layered over the face of a laughing dragon. Astrid thumped the controller down, picked up the copy of
Todateen
that lay on the low wooden table in front of her and began idly thumbing through the magazine without stopping on any page long enough to read it.

Her father hadn’t noticed. He was choosing between two sets of earrings that he had bought for me to wear, one a pair of long, draping silver tassels that reached all the way to my shoulders, and the other, subtler gold hoops with a single diamond inset into the base.

I stood stock still as he threaded one of each through my lobes to compare them, decorating me as if I were a Christmas tree.

It wasn’t the first such evening, or the first gown. The previous weekend Joao had taken me to the opening of a new sushi restaurant in Leblon, where the sashimi was the best I had ever tasted and the prices on the menu had made my eyes water. Before that, there had been an exclusive charity ball in yet another waterfront hotel, where the cost of the buffet alone could probably have filled the charity’s coffers for a whole year.

By default, too flattered or dazed to ever say ‘no’, I was becoming a kept woman.

Tonight he had wanted me all in black.

‘You’re so pale,’ he said. ‘So unlike other women here. I love it.’

Fortunately, I had been sunbathing topless often enough that I could wear the dress that he had bought me without revealing any tan marks. The neck and back were cut in a wide, long V, revealing my throat all the way to my belly button, and my shoulders down to the curve of my rump. I couldn’t wear a bra with it. A fact that I was sure Matheus was fully aware of. Joao’s corpulent business partner had been staring at my breasts all night. I was vaguely irritated that Joao had exhibited no discomfort at all over Matheus eyeing me up so lustily that he might as well have reached over and planted a territorial flag between my tits. I did not expect him to engage the man in an old-fashioned round of fisticuffs, but he might have at least been a little bit jealous.

What was I to Joao? A selling point of some sort? Had he brought me here because he knew that he would do better in his business relationships if he had me hanging from his arm?

Matheus placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it. Smoke curled from the cigarette’s end and around his fingers, which jutted like sausages from the doughy ball of his hand. He stared at me and took a long drag, then licked his lips. I took another sip of my champagne in a bid to suppress a coughing fit. Matheus’s mannerisms were so overtly sexual that I could not help but imagine him in the act, nude and on all fours, the paunch of his hairy belly hanging down and obscuring his short, stumpy cock and shrivelled ball sack bouncing between his legs.

Would he be the sort who liked hurting women, or did he secretly harbour a desire to be dominated? By women, or by other men? The possibilities multiplied in my mind along with a cinemascope-worthy screen of disturbing, pornographic visuals. Did others have these thoughts about strangers, or was it just me? I often found myself imagining what men’s cocks looked like, whether or not I found the men in question attractive. Sometimes I imagined what they would taste like too, or how they would feel inside me. Just the sort of thing that my mind threw up, often at the most inconvenient moments.

‘Excuse me, please,’ I said, and whispered to Joao that I needed the bathroom. I held my shoulders back and concentrated on keeping my balance in my high heels as I walked past the huddle of women who were draped over the soft furniture in the lounge area, chatting to one another in Portuguese. None of them looked to be older than twenty-five, probably half the age of their respective significant others camped out on the balcony. They were ensconced on the corner sofa, five pairs of long, lean legs stretched out and sharing the same large ottoman in front of them. Each of them wore a variation on the same outfit. Skin-tight, brightly coloured mini-dresses in vivid shades of red and purple that highlighted their brown skin and voluptuous bodies, curved and firm without an ounce of superfluous fat.

I knew that Joao, with his good looks and money, could have been dating another woman like them. Younger, better looking than me. Certainly slimmer and with fewer wrinkles. Perhaps I ought to have been flattered, then, by his and his business partner’s obvious attraction to me, but I wasn’t. I was familiar with the minds of men like that. They wanted something different, and here in Rio, with my pale skin and red hair, it just happened to be me. I was a fetish to them and not a person. Another type that they could notch on some metaphorical bedpost.

I darted into the bathroom. It was twice the size of my bedroom. The Jacuzzi-style bath and heated tiles were marble, surrounded by sleek black fittings. A long wide mirror lined one wall, over the vanity unit. I took a clean glass from the tray on the side and filled it with water from the tap and swiftly drank it to wash away some of the champagne that I had imbibed, then sat down on the bath’s edge and pulled off my shoes. My toes were red and pinched and the balls of my feet ached.