With or Without You (7 page)

‘No.’

‘Were you ever?’ she asked, curious.

I shook my head. Should we have been? If I’d become Marilyn or Madonna or
Brad
would he have stayed with me? Were any of those people the type to please Byron? I didn’t think so.

‘So don’t let him off the hook for it, kiddo. Just tell me what was good about your departure.’

‘I broke this antique,’ I began, closing my eyes as I recreated the scene in my head. ‘This ancient Greek urn that my great-aunt willed to me. I have no idea how much the thing must have been worth.’

‘Rose died?’ Nora asked, looking shocked.

‘Well, she didn’t die so much as disappear. But her immediate family has waited the prerequisite amount of time. The will has gone into play.’

Nora held out her glass reverently. ‘To Rose,’ she said. She’d never met my great-aunt, but she’d heard the stories. She knew that Rose was worth millions of dollars, and that she loved me.

‘You can see that the urn was priceless –’ I paused ‘– and I broke it.’ I sighed, still in semi-shock at what I’d done.

‘You didn’t mean to,’ Nora said matter-of-factly, as if that made things better.

‘Course not. But that doesn’t change the fact that I destroyed the thing. Still, when it broke, I went on my knees to pick up the pieces. Even
one
of those shards of pottery would have been worth money to a museum, and I had some fleeting thought of crazy-gluing it together. Crazy all right. There’s no way.’ I sighed. ‘And even with Byron standing there, screaming down at me, I was thinking of the museum. That’s when I saw it.’

‘It?’

‘This … This sheath of papers. This manuscript in the
rubble. I don’t even know if Byron saw the thing at first, he was so out of his head at the thought that Gwen might not really be in love with him.’

Nora made a gagging noise, like a cat fighting with a hairball.

I lowered my head in my hands, wanting to clear the memory, wanting to think about the positive rather than Byron. After a moment, I looked back at Nora, ready to continue. ‘I scraped the bits of the urn into my suitcase, and picked up the papers – they were practically crumbling at my touch – and I wrapped them in some of the brown paper the box had come in, stuffed them in the bag and left.’

‘Where are the papers now?’

I motioned to my sleek red computer carrier. I hadn’t wanted to leave the bag in my car, hadn’t wanted to leave it at Nora’s. I wouldn’t feel truly secure about the manuscript until it found a home at ARTSI.

‘What are they?’

‘I don’t know. I saw the writing as I put the pages in the case. They’re in Greek. Or some form of Greek. Scrawling writing. I can’t read Greek – Latin, but not Greek – but I can recognise it, after having seen so much of it in the museum. Think of the concept, Nora. These papers must be thousands of years old. The only reason they survived this long is because that urn was airtight, sealed completely, and then broken by me in a heated fight with an imbecile.’

‘What will you do with them?’ Nora was obviously entranced at the thought. This was fanciful, the stuff of fairy tales. Exactly the sort of story she could appreciate. Her large green eyes looked lit from within.

‘Bring them to the museum, I guess. Show them to Marcia –’ I paused again ‘– or Anthony.’

Nora grinned. ‘Anthony,’ she murmured. She took another sip of her drink and then gave me a wink. Her mascara-drenched eyelashes fluttered becomingly. They were tipped in glittering eggplant that went well with
her green eyes. ‘I remember Anthony,’ she continued dreamily. Nora has a good memory for men, and Anthony isn’t a man
anyone
would quickly forget.

‘Come on, don’t tease me. I can’t even think about this whole thing clearly.’

‘Nobody could think clearly once Anthony enters the picture.’

I looked down at my green apple martini. ‘And even less clearly after one of these.’

Nora ignored me, and began to list Anthony’s attributes, counting each one off on her fingers. ‘He’s the James Bond of ancient literature, Eleanor. Profiled in the
LA Times
. Written up in
GQ
. The man has it all: brains, brawn and a killer accent.’

‘I broke up with my boyfriend
today
,’ I emphatically reminded her, not wanting to admit that she was right. ‘Just hours ago.’

My best friend gave me a look that said, ‘Come clean.’ Her looks are like mental polygraph tests. She can always tell when someone’s lying to her. Besides, she had just personally escorted me back into the sea of sexual pleasure. Why was I trying to hide from her?

I took a deep breath. At this moment, a famous, and handsome movie actor slid by our booth, blowing an air-kiss to Nora. She winked back at him, and I found myself as awestruck as ever. Had she been with this man? I hadn’t heard about it if she had.

‘Did you –’ I started.

‘You really
don’t
read my blog, do you?’

I flushed, and then took a quick sip.

‘Don’t worry,’ she teased me. ‘Let’s get back to your man.’

‘He’s not my man,’ I insisted.

‘He will be. He wants you, Eleanor. You’ve said so yourself. Every time the two of you have worked together, he’s been more than attentive.’

‘Crush on Anthony Ginsburg aside,’ I told her in a serious voice, ‘it was very odd. As soon as I saw the
papers I found myself less angry at Byron. I thought: look at us. We’re totally insignificant. We destroyed – or, rather,
I
destroyed – an ancient artefact. Something that existed buried in the dirt, undisturbed and unharmed, for centuries. Here’s a manuscript that someone wrote thousands of years ago, half a world away. I started to feel very small. When I looked at Byron, his cheeks all red, smoke nearly pouring out of his ears, I thought that he looked awfully small, too.’

‘
Was
he small?’ Nora asked. This was a topic she could sink her teeth into. ‘I mean, he had fairly big hands.’

‘You can’t tell anything from a guy’s hands.’ Even I, with my little experience, knew that.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘but I’m always curious. He looked like a, you know, European cucumber to me, but in those handmade suits, I never could tell. Was he more of an Armenian cuke? They tend to curve at the end. Or was he built like an Oriental cucumber? They’re long and skinny.’ Nora likes things large. And she has absolutely no problem discussing this particular fixation. The fact that she uses cucumbers as size gauges wasn’t new to me. She’s been doing this ever since she dated one of the darling chefs in the city, a man who took her to farmer’s markets, who pointed out the differences in flavours from one cucumber to the next. (
He
was the size of an American pickling cuke, if I remember correctly. Not that long, yet plenty thick.) But I didn’t feel a need to describe my ex’s member, using vegetable terminology or anything else. In fact, I wanted to forget what Byron looked and felt like as quickly as possible. It’s why I had taken the marathon shower, why I kept wanting to spray myself with perfume. Anything I could do to erase him.

Nora eyed me expectantly, but I shrugged off the question, getting back to what I really wanted to talk about. I stared out at the dance floor and then at the movie showing silently on the wall. It looked like an X-rated film, but I knew what it really was. Nora has several private rooms in her club. One features
images from the web that customers can call up at will. Basically, the walls are large screens that show exactly what anyone is surfing for. You might see porn or music videos or even blogs, such as Nora’s own,
ThePinkFedora.blogspot.com
. Another room is called Would I Lie to You? This room features all black walls with a do-it-yourself polygraph machine on a small wooden table. Nora understands how obsessed people are with this sort of gimmick. She thinks it’s amusing to send a couple back there to learn each other’s secrets. There’s a room in the rear called Body Graffiti, outfitted with edible body paints and a shower – for after; there’s another called Friction; and one called Smile, with Polaroids and video cameras.

But the room at the end of the hall is the most popular: Cinéma Vérité. Anyone can go into it, knowing ahead of time that they will be filmed, and that their antics will be projected onto the wall of the dance floor. Although I’ve never been in that room myself, I’ve always liked it best. Every time I go to Nora’s club, I pretend to be watching dancers on the floor, but I stare at the amateur porn stars, getting into the mood in that small mirrored room. There’s a part of me that wants to be as free as the customers who head to that private paradise.

Right now, an enchantingly pretty Asian girl with long blonde dreadlocks was entering the room. I watched, mesmerised, as two attractive men followed her in – one dark, the other light. The dark one had on leather pants and a tight-fitting red T-shirt. The other was dressed down in jeans and a button-up white Oxford shirt. As I watched, the two men began to kiss the girl – kiss her face, her neck, her breasts. It was as if the threesome had been plucked from some other world, where people did this sort of thing on a routine basis.

Nora reached out and touched my hand. When I looked at her, she let me know she was going to order us more drinks. ‘And check on my bartenders,’ she added. ‘It looks as if one of them is getting ready to fuck one of the
patrons.’ From the way she said the words, I couldn’t tell if she was pleased about this or not. Would that be a no-no in Nora’s club, or the sort of thing to get you a bonus? Then, with a nod towards the screen, she indicated that I should keep watching.

I gazed back at the screen, focusing once again on the vision above the dance floor and the music playing in the background. I knew the song, because I’d heard it so many times at Nora’s: ‘Stuff Me Up’. Peaches and someone named Taylor Savvy. It was a perfect soundtrack for this sexual scenario, Nora’s favourite by the singer aside from ‘Fuck the Pain Away’. I think she likes that one simply because she enjoys saying the words, like the way her patrons adore ordering sexually charged drinks at the clubs: ‘Give me an Orgasm,’ ‘I want Sex on the Beach,’ ‘I’d like to order a Blow Job.’

Had the trio in the not-so-private room been ordering drinks like this? Something had definitely gotten them in the mood. It was as if Nora’s DJ were paying attention to the needs of the people in the Cinéma Vérité room. And most likely, she was. When I gazed over at the DJ – the always stunning Miss Take – I saw that she was following the antics of the trio as willingly as were the rest of the club’s patrons.

The music in the club suddenly reached a crescendo, and the threesome reacted with even more outrageous behaviour. I stopped thinking about the soundtrack and started paying attention fully to the lovers. There was something about the way that they moved, kissing one another so passionately, hands overlapping, bodies pressed together, that fully captivated my attention.

God, they were pretty.

The girl was especially luscious, her mouth painted the dangerous dark black-red of a ripe cherry. Her golden skin gleamed with some sparkling silver fairy dust. She had those long blonde dreads that made absolutely no sense with her features, but somehow added powerfully to her allure.

The two men were focused entirely on the pleasure of their female partner. They took turns kissing her mouth, first one, then the other, until all three were wearing the remnants of her dark lipstick. The boys looked so sexy with the red stains on their lips, and the girl looked positively in heaven, her eyelids fluttering as she kissed first one, then the other.

I stared, unmoving, until my cellphone rang. I felt the phone rather than heard it. The smooth vibrations worked through my computer bag against my thigh, and I reached into my bag and lifted out the small device. It was Byron. Big fucking surprise. Undoubtedly, he wanted to continue our argument. The one thing that Byron hates most in the world is losing a fight. I slid the phone back into my bag without answering the call, and then looked up at the screen once more.

I watched as she continued kissing one man and then the other, and I shifted my hips against the vinyl of the booth, unable to help myself. The vision was more of a turn-on than I would have known. I always see the unexpected at Nora’s clubs. Sometimes you’ll read in the gossip magazines about starlets who dance on bar tops, or slip off their bras and pin them to the ceiling of a local watering hole. There isn’t much left for people to do to shock the A-listers. But Nora always manages to draw in an interesting crowd: drag kings and drag queens, customers whose clothes are literally painted onto their skin, people who come to the club solely to have sex where others can see them.

That’s apparently what this trio had in mind.

The girl kissed her blond partner in a way that let me see that they both had pierced tongues. The tiny silver barbells gleamed in the light as the lovely minx just barely touched the tip of her tongue to his. I wondered what it would feel like to kiss someone with metal in their mouth. I could ask Nora. I’m sure she knows. I watched as the girl then backed away from her partners and nodded, giving a silent instruction.

Instantly, the two men started making out with each other. I caught my breath. It was fantastical, watching the way they embraced, as if under the command of the female member of their party. Even though she was small, she was clearly in charge. There was no doubt about that. She could have been dressed in head-to-toe leather, holding a whip in one hand, and she would have looked divine. But she didn’t need faux dom attire. Her power emanated from within her very person – tiny though she was. I recognised that ability from seeing Nora in action.

Watching men kiss wasn’t something brand new to me. Art students are by definition liberal. You can’t view naked bodies on a day-to-day basis without being at least somewhat open minded. Still, this sultry threesome was eye-catching, if only for the sheer beauty of the players. I wondered: Was this something they’d agreed upon before heading to the club, or were they strangers, having come together only moments before on the club dance floor?

Which concept did I find more erotic? The possibility that this was an organic experience – as well as an orgasmic one. Just as Nora, Dean and I had come together unexpectedly, I liked the idea that these players had simply hooked up while dancing, not even knowing one another’s name. But the more I watched, the more certain I felt that this was a fantasy come true for this team of three. That they’d talked it over, planning every move ahead of time, taking the time to discuss their every desire. This concept was sexy, too. Maybe they’d gone out to dinner at one of the better restaurants: Ivy on Robertson, Shecago on Main. Over lobster or sushi or something expensive, they might have talked about what each person hoped to win from the evening.