The Arrangement
“Mmmm.” Nick lay on his rumpled bed recovering from lovemaking. His eyes slowly scanned his white bedroom, newly decorated and expensively furnished but littered with sports equipment: skis, rackets, a rowing machine. They came to rest on the woman beside him, naked except for a heavy gold ankle chain.
“Me too.” She had a self-satisfied upturn to her lips, magnified by a smudged purple lipstick that exaggerated her pale skin. This, in turn, made her eyebrows and straight black hair seem even darker.
“Can I get you anything … a sandwich or something?”
“You can tell me where the bathroom is. I’m desperate for a pee.”
“Second on the left.”
She daintily ran to the door, merging ghost-like into the dim light of the room. Nick rewarded his muscles with a luxurious stretch, before leaning over to fill two flutes with Champagne.
The toilet flushed, then she ran back to the bed and hugged herself warm. She looked down at her smooth arms and dreamily flexed the slender biceps. When Nick touched the cold glass against her side she came to. “Oooh, yummy, I’m so thirsty,” before drinking. “Thanks.”
She saw Nick’s forehead lined in a question. “You know … for the wine and everything … for this - ”
“So who was it you knew there? Natasha or her latest partner?”
“I’ve known Natasha since Roedean.”
“Good friends?”
“Soulmates.”
Nick sat up. “So are all the stories you hear about those places true?”
“Absolutely.”
“So you two had a schoolgirl passion?”
“Hey, I’m not one of your patients - ”
“Clients - ”
“One of your clients, to be studied, put under the microscope like some … amoeba.”
“We’re lovers.” He cupped her breast with his hand. “Isn’t this the time when one stays up all night telling one another everything?”
“What do you want to know?”
“About you and Natasha.”
“Simple. What started off as an occasional pleasure changed into a habit then an addiction.”
“Mmmm?”
“I became a sex slave. In case you didn’t notice.”
“Well I did notice the … and the …” Nick grinned. “Just before I crashed and burned.” He leaned over her for a lingering kiss.
When they finally parted, she said, “I wish it could always be this fantastic.”
“Yeah. First time sex is perfect. But then it gets even better.”
“Yah, but then it gets worse. People get used to one another ... Like me and Tash … started taking one another for granted.” She pulled the duvet over them both.
“And I noticed the - ”
“Romeo and Juliet are famous because they died horribly young before their romance could stagnate. Before they needed a new, more powerful fix. Hey, wouldn’t it be fabulous if somehow we could go down in history as a couple?”
“Like Dante and Beatrice? Sonny and Cher?”
She laughed. “But it would mean we would have to keep changing. To remain fresh and interesting.”
“Most people can’t or won’t change – they find their rut and proceed to furnish it. That’s what keeps me in business – everyone’s reluctance to change.”
“But I really, really want to. I’m fed up with my slave persona. When we broke up, Tash said it was because I’d become totally predictable – and boring.”
“What really keeps things interesting is the unknown. That’s why people prefer serial relationships. Hit and runs. They want new mysteries.”
“But some people change. If they have to. It’s amazing how far some have gone to - ”
“Don’t you see?” Nick pressed on. “Mysteries last for ever. Who killed Kennedy? What happened to Lord Lucan?”
“And once the mystery is solved, the whole thing is forgotten.”
He kissed her as a reward for being such a good student. “There’s one mystery I’d like to examine again…” He started burrowing under the duvet towards the centre of her body. But her mind seemed to be on higher things.
“No. Seriously …” She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back up the bed. “Listen, Nick. Why don’t we…?”
A light came on outside the Georgian terraced house, and the woman stepped out into the rain, her long black dress and cape giving her a gothic look. Nick stood in the doorway in a black suit and lavender shirt. She turned to blow him a kiss. “Thanks. I will … Goodbye.”
She strode confidently on her sharp stiletto-heeled boots towards her car, searching for her keys.
Nick gently closed the front door, beside which was a glittering brass plate:
Nicholas Smith BA MSc PhD MNCP
Pyschotherapist
Nick left the house, not noticing the tarnish on the brass plate. He wandered down the road and into The Kings Arms. He wore the same suit with a fuchsia shirt.
A jukebox blasted out heavy metal. A tarty-looking woman, red ribbons in her blonde curls, danced alone, oblivious to the audience of young male barflys. Even the dedicated pool players had interrupted their game. The low-cut red satin minidress drew attention to her flesh rather than concealing it. Nick nodded to a few of the customers and the barmaid poured him a lager. He sat at the bar, captivated by the floorshow.
The music came to an end, the blonde stopped dancing and a general gasp of disappointment was felt rather than heard. She went to the bar and glugged from her pint. A man fed more money into the jukebox. His enormous biceps flexed grossly during this delicate operation. His forearms seemed puny as did the hips below the bulging shoulders and heavily muscled back. The blonde watched his slightest move. Dylan’s Just Like a Woman came on and she started dancing again. She makes love just like a woman. Eroticism radiated into her surroundings as her arms periodically squeezed her breasts together.
The panhandler sitting next to Nick broke the spell. “Great, isn’t she?”
Nick tried to dismiss him with a slight nod but failed.
“She likes a good time. She’s a nymph. You could have her.”
“What?” Nick was startled at the pimpish proposition.
“A nymph.”
“What do you mean? She’s some sort of wood-sprite? A mythological maiden of the fields and mountains?”
“What?” Oblivious to irony. “What’d you say mate?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
The barfly was reduced to mumbling to himself. “A nymph, nympho, nymphomaniac. You can tell.”
The blonde looked in disgust at the muscled man when a Leonard Cohen number came on, and returned to her pint at the bar, giving Nick a cool look in passing. When he continued looking at her she raised and waggled her empty glass. He went across and, after a few quiet words, ordered her a Tia Maria and Coke. Close to, she was even more attractive than when she was dancing. Her even tan was set off by sixties pale lipstick – very Julie Christie. Overloaded with chunky jewellery, she looked streetwise and a little hard, and therefore older than her twenty five years.
They talked. The pool game had restarted. Customers came and went from the pub. Nick and the blonde laughed a lot and occasionally touched one another unnecessarily.
They came out of the pub and walked up the road. She had an arm around his waist then slipped it down and into his back pocket. When they reached his car outside his flat, he opened the passenger door for her and she flashed a lot of thigh as she got in. She laughed when she caught him looking.
She gave him directions as they drove through Bath.
Once in her flat, he lunged at her and kissed her hard at the same time as pulling at her clothes.
“Slow down, lover,” she said in her estuary English accent. “There’s plenty of time.”
He kissed her gently. Then she took him by the hand and led him into a very feminine bedroom. Everything was a shade of red. In the dim light, they slowly undressed one another, still kissing and fondling. Her breasts were smaller than the padded bra had suggested. When she gently pushed him away in order to put an old 45 on the stereo, he glimpsed a set of weights under the bed. He looked surprised at the incongruity. She pushed him onto the bed to continue the lovemaking. When the music started it made Nick burst into laughter: the song was Je T’aime, another sixties touch. As they returned to their lovemaking, her all-over tan started to rub off onto the sheets.
She was tied to the prison-bar-like rails that formed the foot and head of the bed. Her helpless body shone with sweat and her face was set in a grimace illuminated by a transient flame, as though she was being tortured.
Nick continued flicking the cigarette lighter on and off. Her bonds were only velvet ribbons and her apparent rictus of agony relaxed into a postcoital smile of satisfaction. “Thanks, that was great.”
Nick looked at the clock on the bedside table. Three books stood there: Vol 1 and 11 of Metamorphosis by Ovid and Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories.
“I’m sorry, darling, but your time is up.”
“You’re going to say we’ve had our joyride and you need to go home for your beauty sleep.” She tugged at her restraints. “Typical man.”
Nick freed her right hand. She untied the remaining knots with a smile and her long scarlet nails.
After manufacturing and lighting a six-skin joint, she hissed grey smoke into the red room as she watched him dress. He cadged a toke.
He combed his hair at the dressing table mirror and adjusted his tie before returning to the bed and leaning over to kiss her forehead and eyes. “Goodbye, and thanks again.”
“Thank you lover. You were great. A Formula One Ferrari.”
Nick took out his wallet, pulled out a £50 note and placed it on the bedside table.
The blonde gave an exaggerated look of surprise. “What’s that?”
“It’s a fifty for you.” Nick grinned.
She sniggered, stopped, then exploded into laughter. Nick joined in then took out another fifty and placed it next to the other. “Only slaves work without pay.”
Nick twiddled his fingers in farewell and left the room with: “Feel free to call me anytime.”
Nick was playfully struggling with a young redhead on a brown leather couch in his consulting room. Her childish pouting and pushing made her seem more like a protean teenager than a woman in her mid-twenties. The dark panelled room was sparsely furnished with an oak desk and a matching armchair next to the couch and a solitary yucca. Certificates hung on the wall. The redhead finally succeeded in pushing Nick away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She bit her clear-varnished fingernails, “It just doesn’t feel right.”
“What?” he replied in all innocence.
“It seems … um … immoral … unethical. People come here to have their minds probed, I thought? Not their bodies.”
“It’s okay. I’m not a doctor. I’m not under any Hippocratic oath or anything. Trust me.”
She paused to consider, then passively submitted to his desires. He stripped off his suit and black underwear, then her clothes. At the epiphany, her pubic hair flamed with the exact shade of red as that of her head and plucked eyebrows.
Although her white body remained passive, her vivid green eyes danced to the rhythms of their lovemaking.
They rested. She thoughtfully traced the contours of his shoulder muscles with her forefinger as he licked the pearls at her throat.
When she made a small movement to escape from under him, Nick asked, “Are you okay?”
“Mmmm.” Then a disinterested, “the first time was a near miss, the second completely wrecked me. A complete writeoff.”
She got up and turned to him as she moved to the door. “I’m thirsty. Can I get you something?”
“Please.”
In the kitchen, she put her face close to the mirror and stuck her finger in her eye to adjust her contact lens. Then she took a bottle of wine and Evian from the fridge, a wine glass and a tumbler from a cupboard and a corkscrew from a drawer.
Back in the consulting room, they drank and chatted. He slid to her end of the couch.
“Isn’t this just perfect?” he said.
“I must go. Heavy day tomorrow.”
She slowly finished her water, while observing the movement of her arm muscles. Then she sat up to dress.
“When will I see you again?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know.”
A trickle of sweat ran down the neck of the animated, boyish figure standing before a mirrored wall doing biceps curls with heavy weights. Sharp intakes of breath hissed into the silent and almost empty blue room. The veins of her arms almost burst from the shiny tanned skin.
The second hand of a wall clock swept on inexorably. Angled reflections gave an air of unreality to the room where a life-sized monochrome photograph of Michaelangelo’s David had the appearance of a shrine with it’s surrounding joss sticks, cushions, flowers and fruit.
She ignored the ringing telephone.
Nick sat at his desk in his consulting room, the phone to his ear. He broke the connection, re-dialed and listened again, impatiently.
A figure, burnt to the colour of mahogany, was exercising in front of the mirrored wall. Each engorged muscle was sharply defined now every trace of body fat had burned away. The drawn face was covered in sweat – and tears. She wore no jewellery, but the small of her back was tattooed – with a phoenix.
After glugging from a large bottle of Evian, she moved to one of the exercise machines that crowded the room. She started rapid bench presses.
The other walls were covered with exercise-anatomy charts and photographs of women bodybuilders. In one corner of the room was a brass-railed bed devoid of its dangling velvet bonds. On the bedside table were the books of Ovid and Kafka.
The phone rang. Her answering machine cut in immediately. Nick’s voice was begging, desperate. “What’s wrong? Why don’t you return my calls? Or answer your emails, your doorbell? Am I ever going to see you again?”
She spoke to her reflection in the mirror. “No, Na … Thanks, Ta … Sha?”
Page(s) 9-14
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