“I—er—may I use your bathroom?”
She smiled, relaxed. “Of course. It’s at the top of the stairs. I’m afraid the downstairs one is temporarily out of action.”
I climbed the stairs awkwardly. At the top, I glanced to the left and saw inside Vaughn’s bedroom—something I would prefer not to have seen, to be honest—pale-gray walls, the far one decorated with dramatic monochrome wallpaper. A “feature wall” they call it, don’t they? It would give me a headache if I had to sleep in there.
And the bathroom. I had no desire to use it, of course. I was waiting for her.
I half closed the door and stood inside, looking at the neat beige tiles and wondering how long it had been since Vaughn had grouted them—not long at all, judging by the faint smell of putty—and at the shiny chrome taps that had no doubt cost a small fortune. Audrey, Audrey, I thought, as though I could summon her up the stairs by thinking her name like a spell.
I looked at the toiletries lined up neatly on the windowsill. They were, without exception, male: shampoo, shower gel, a razor, and some kind of hideous supermarket-brand gel shaving foam with oxidation around the base. No expensive hairstylist-only shampoo, no perfume, no cosmetics.
I opened the door again and crossed the hallway into Vaughn’s bedroom. Again, it was a resolutely masculine room. There was even a home gym in the corner, which made me laugh out loud. I had a mental image of Vaughn working out here, sweating as he rowed his way to a muscular stomach. Not likely. I doubted it had ever been used.
So, the delectable Audrey had yet to move in. She didn’t stay, often, either, or she would have started moving in some items of her own. There was nothing here of hers. I wondered if there were panties in Vaughn’s drawer, maybe a spare pair, maybe a special pair—something she would only wear for him, would only wear if she were planning to fuck him.
“Everything all right?”
Audrey was behind me. I hadn’t heard her coming up the stairs. I turned and gave her a smile. “Fine,” I said.
“What are you doing?” Her question was direct.
“I was looking to see if you’ve moved in,” I said, preferring the truth. If it had been Vaughn who had come upstairs I would have made some comment about the feature wallpaper. But it was Audrey, and there was no point in messing around. She had come up here because I had summoned her. I had told her what it was I wanted her to do. And here she was, standing next to me, standing close to me in fact, closer than she needed to.
“You could have just asked. Anyway, I haven’t,” she said, her voice low. Her chest was heaving with her breathlessness.
“Why’s that?” I asked, taking a small step toward her.
She stepped back. Ah, too soon, then? Too much, too soon? I would have to be careful. I would need to take it gently, so as not to startle her. She was worth the effort. She was worth the chase.
Her expression was odd. “I have my own place,” she said.
That was no answer. What did she join a dating site for, if she didn’t want a serious relationship? Surely that’s what all women want, really: a partner with a house they can move into, marriage, children? Unless she wanted something else. Unless she just wanted sex.
I had her eyes again. I maintained contact, direct eye contact.
She didn’t move.
Ah, resistance! I liked that. I liked that she was a challenge. I smiled at her, a little smile of encouragement.
“Audrey? Where do you want this coffee?”
“Coming!” she shouted, without taking her eyes away from mine. Her voice was automatic, toneless. Her expression was difficult to read. Was she attracted to me? Did she want me to kiss her? What would she do if I did?
“You’re . . .”
“What?” I whispered, moistening my lips with the tip of my tongue. “What am I?”
“You’re fucking strange, Colin,” she said. And turned around and went back downstairs, without looking back at me.
Ah, Vaughn. At that moment I could cheerfully have killed him. I could have put my hands about his neck and squeezed the air out of his lungs. If it hadn’t been for that interruption, she would have done it. I knew. She wanted me.
I followed her down the stairs, tasting her scent on the air. She’d been so close. I wish she could have relented. But next time, maybe, she will give in. I wonder if I can get her on her own, find some excuse to visit her.
She was back in the kitchen with Vaughn. I could hear them talking in hushed whispers. I strained to listen, thinking she might say something useful, something about how compelled she felt to act out of character, how something came over her—but nothing. Just the sort of urgent, hushed tones of two people trying not to have an argument within earshot of other people.
I eased myself back onto the leather sofa and drank some more of the wine. Another ten minutes and I found an excuse to call a taxi and leave. The evening turned out to be less entertaining than I’d hoped, and now I have another dilemma: I’ve gone from wanting a woman, to realizing I don’t need a woman at all, to wanting one again. But not just any woman, this time. Only her. Only Audrey.
An hour later, alone at home now, relieving myself at last of that delicious tension that had grown unbearable, I have started to think about how I can win her over. Whether I can do it: whether I can turn her gaze from Vaughn’s face to mine. And what it would take to make her want me.
At night I wake up. I’ve been dreaming of Audrey, of course. She was here, in my room, and Vaughn was present, apparently for the purpose of undressing her for me. I was supine on my bed, the covers around my ankles. Vaughn brought her in, like a prize, like a virgin being offered to the Temple, and, having received a nod of permission, he set about removing her clothes piece by piece, while she stood still, the expression on her face unreadable. Boredom was the most likely name I would apply to it. She stared straight ahead, in my direction but not seeing me. She was here because she had to be, not because she wanted this, not because she was willing. The coercion did not in itself appeal to me, but there was something about her presence that was undeniably arousing.
“Audrey,” I said, in the dream. Even then she didn’t cast a glance in my direction. She looked sulky now as well as bored, a petulant child who had been forced away from an enjoyable activity into a chore.
Vaughn pulled down her tights—tights, not stockings, of course not stockings, why should I imagine something so appealing to encase those lovely, slender legs?—and lifted each of her legs in turn like a farrier shoeing a horse, sliding the nylon off the foot and laying the tights to one side like a shed skin.
And she stood there in her bra and panties, functional, unmatching—the bra graying and with a hole in the lace, the panties large and black cotton. Clothed, in Vaughn’s kitchen, she had been, not beautiful exactly, but undeniably sexy. She was certainly attractive, in any case—attractive enough to raise my ardor. But now, in my dream, everything was dulled. Her hair was not that lustrous shade of chestnut, falling in shiny waves around her shoulders. It was brownish, hanging in lanky threads. Her face ashen, her eyes a dirty gray-blue. Nothing about her was conventionally attractive.
Vaughn was unable to stop, even though I wanted him to. Go no further, Vaughn, I wanted to say. Stop now. I don’t want to see the rest. But he continued automatically, as though he was following a program that could not be brought to an early conclusion.
And half-awake now, my hand under the sheets moving fast, I find myself pumping and grunting away watching Vaughn stripping the last fragments of gray nylon and black cotton from the skin of his indifferent, apathetic, complicit girlfriend. Naked, she’s worse. Frumpy, sagging, gray hairs sprouting in patches from between her legs, even her knees are lumpy and spotted with moles. Despite this, despite the fact that she would clearly rather be anywhere on the planet than standing naked in my bedroom, I achieve an orgasm of gasping, heart-stopping, free-falling depths. Like staring into the abyss, and watching it stare right back at me.
&n
bsp; I woke up late after my evening with Audrey and Vaughn. I lay there with the sunlight coming in through the gap in the curtains, thinking of my late nights with the bottle of whiskey rapidly depleting and wondering if it was too early for me to consider counseling for my problem. And as for the masturbation—well, thanks to the dream, or was it a nightmare, of wanking over Audrey’s prolonged and disappointing strip—I feel quite positively that I will be able to pursue a path of abstinence for at least a week. There is something deeply off-putting about having to change your sheets and take a shower in the middle of the night because you’ve soiled yourself in a nightly emission like a hormonal teenager. Even my subconscious thinks it is a disgusting way to behave.
I got up eventually and made breakfast, then washed and dressed. It’s a bright morning so I’ve gone for a walk while I think about how to fill what remains of the weekend.
On the main road a badger lies on its side, its head flattened by the wheel of a car. It’s relatively fresh, just starting to enter the bloat stage, its four legs raised and straightened by the gases of putrefaction that are distending its abdomen, the blood around its head still red. I stand and observe it for a little while. There are no sidewalks here, just a wide grass shoulder with a hedge and fields beyond.
I think about going home and getting a bag of some sort and taking it away somewhere so that I can watch the process unfold, but of course there is no point in intervening. It defeats the whole object. The decay must be allowed to take place here, where the animal died; otherwise it is not a genuine process. I leave it, reluctantly, thinking about coming back tomorrow evening after work, if there is time, and assuming that the city hasn’t found it by then and shoveled it onto the back of their roadkill van.
After lunch I do some studying, looking into tag questions, embedded commands, and double binds, thinking about the badger, thinking about Leah. Each of them is so different; each has such different needs.
She told me what had happened to her, eventually. It didn’t take much to get her talking, and as she did so I responded appropriately, teasing out the story like pulling on an unraveling thread, and then watching her come apart. She had been working at a superstore as a management trainee, and the boss there had been flirting with her for weeks and weeks. He was older than she was, and gradually she began to fall for his charms and admit to herself that she found him attractive. Eventually one night after work she agreed to meet him for a drink, and from there they went back to the store. I wanted details, of course—this was the interesting part, after all—but to press her on that would be to distract from the main purpose of our conversation, which was to help her find the right path. Reminding her of the details of the sexual affair that followed was not going to do that. So—they had an affair that seemed to consist mainly of sex in the store after hours, or in his car parked in isolated rural locations. And then his wife discovered what was going on, and a humiliating encounter at work followed, with Leah shamed in front of all of the staff and a good few customers, too. I wouldn’t have believed it possible when first meeting her—such a shy, quiet girl—but she genuinely didn’t realize he was married. And after that, of course, he avoided her at all costs, shunned her and excluded her from all the management training she was supposed to have. She applied for a transfer, which was blocked by the head office. And despite it all, despite this man’s appalling behavior, the trigger that brought Leah to me was that she still loved him, even though it was hopeless.
There was the word: “hopeless.” The word I need to hear, to start things off.
“It’s easy to make things better,” I said. “The end of the road is easy to find, and it’s a very simple road to take.”
“I’m afraid of pain,” she replied.
“Could there be any pain worse than this?”
“No. But I might—do it wrong. I might get things wrong, and that would be worse . . .”
“There are no wrong decisions. You can decide this, and feel better about everything. It’s a decision you can make. The decision is completely in your hands. You have the power to do this, and the strength to do it.”
“I suppose so,” she said.
“There is always peace,” I said softly. “Peace, and quiet, and an end to all the pain. You can choose for it to be painless, and quiet, and completely on your terms. It’s for you to choose.”
From a purely technical aspect, it really is that simple. The techniques I’ve learned—language patterns, inducing a trance state and a heightened relaxation state in people purely through conversation—were the easy part all along. It’s just a case of listening closely to what they are telling you, not just with their words but far more importantly with their bodies, with their eyes, with their movements and shifts and subtle changes in tone. It isn’t rocket science (an inexcusable cliché), but nor is it pseudoscience. It’s reassuringly easy when you know how.
You want to know how I do it, don’t you? I can imagine it, your fervent interest, your curiosity that others might describe as morbid: I can see it in the sparkle in your eyes. Well, ask me, then. Go on. I know you’re dying to.
In any case, I can’t and shall not reveal the details. Do you think I stumbled upon this overnight? Do you think this level of awareness is something everyone can master? It’s a long, slow process, not just the learning of the techniques required but the effort involved in tailoring that same process to the individual concerned. It starts with a simple conversation, but this is just the first of many such meetings, many such conversations. The hard part is knowing if they are ready, and spotting the ones who are close enough to make it work.
I’m not sure if Leah is quite at that point, and I am thinking about leaving her for a few weeks, maybe trying to reconnect with her after a time. She will go one way, or the other. If she chooses the right path, then I will be ready for her.
Sometimes I meet people who aren’t ready, and I leave them to continue on their own. If they need me later on, then I shall find them again.
It’s not as if I don’t have others to look out for, in any case.
Annabel
On Monday morning I got to work feeling empty. The sky was dark gray, threatening rain, like the inside of my heart.
Kate was off today, which meant it was just Trigger and me. I wasn’t in the mood for him today, Trigger and his ever-changing moods, cheerful one minute and grumpy the next. But the office was deserted. As usual, the milk carton I’d bought on Friday and used only once was empty in the fridge. I needed a cup of tea, and the theft of the milk, such a petty thing, made me want to cry. It was the early shift, probably, who started work long before the stores opened, and needed a drink to keep them going through the dark hours before dawn. But that was no excuse for being too lazy or thoughtless to bring in their own milk. The fridge in the kitchen that served the management hall actually had a padlock, and that was the reason.
I made a cup of green tea instead and logged in to the system. I opened my e-mail. Twenty-four new messages since I’d logged off last night. Where did they all come from?
I scrolled down, looking for ones that were interesting, and my eyes were drawn to one name: Sam Everett. I ignored it, working my way through all the intelligence reports and requests to log out of systems I didn’t use anyway because they were going to reboot the servers. There was an e-mail from the force’s Recreation Association asking me to join the monthly lottery, an e-mail about a sergeant from Tactical Operations who was planning to run a marathon in Tibet and wanted sponsorship, and a request for additional copies of the bimonthly Violence Profile from two people who had just joined the Strategic Planning Department.
That was it. I couldn’t put it off any longer. Sam Everett—news desk, Briarstone Chronicle. The title of the e-mail: “Recent deaths.”
Dear Annabel,
I hope you don’t mind me contacting you directly. I had a meeting with DI Andrew Frost recently and he told me that you might be able to provide me with some additional data with
regard to the recent increase in—still not sure what to call them—undiscovered bodies? Decomposed deceased? You know what I mean, though, don’t you? I realize I am supposed to be putting inquiries through the force’s Media Services department but so far I’ve met with a big blank every time I’ve called or e-mailed. Please get in touch and maybe we can meet to discuss.
With kind regards,
Sam Everett
Senior Reporter, News Desk
Briarstone Chronicle
Below that were a landline number and a cell phone number. I closed the e-mail and went back to the others, working my way through them methodically, before putting even that aside and starting work on the next sex offender profile.
Colin
In the kitchen at work someone has left a copy of today’s Briarstone Chronicle on the table. It’s covered in crumbs, has a smear of butter on the front page, and in normal circumstances I would lift it between finger and thumb and deposit it in the wastebasket before wiping the surface down with disinfectant and washing my hands.
But today the side bar on the front page catches my eye. I stand over the table, reading. It’s about their pathetic “Love Thy Neighbor” campaign they launched on Friday—and it seems to be an exhortation for everyone to knock on their next-door neighbor’s door and check that they are still breathing.
If I weren’t within earshot of the two people sitting at desks just outside the kitchen door, I would probably have laughed out loud. What good do they think it’s going to do? At the very best, all it will achieve is to find the ones who have still not been found. I don’t know how many that is. I don’t always see the paper, and many of them wouldn’t even make the news.
And suddenly I have a bright idea. A wonderful, glistening, delicious, and dangerous idea. I could call them up, the people at the newspaper, and tell them where to look. Save them the trouble of their campaign. After all, the good people of Briarstone have better things to do with their days than to bother with checking up on their neighbors. Surely it would be a kind thing for me to do, to let them know (without troubling the police, who, let’s face it, are already under tremendous pressure to solve burglaries and assaults and all manner of other horrible crimes) where the others could be found?