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Are you somewhere feeling lonely? Or is lonely feeling you?
Still looking at Polly, certain that she can see me, I turn my mouth into his stroking hand, flip out my tongue and hook the guy’s finger into my mouth. Even though he’s still wearing those stupid glasses I can tell from the excited biting down of his teeth that I’ve suitably surprised him. I nibble further down the finger and start to suck.
His tongue flicks across his slightly open mouth. It’s such a quick flick that I can tell what he’s thinking. He reckons he’s reading my signals loud and clear.
And Polly has noticed, just as I wanted her to. She can see me up close to one of her cute friends. She nudges Pierre to show him, too, but he’s talking to someone else and he doesn’t turn to look. She puts her thumb up to me, shakes her dress down to cover her legs again, then Pierre’s arm comes round her waist and they merge into the crowd.
The music has faded to one plaintive violin, the lowest possible notes probing the emotions. The dancing has slowed.
The American sees that no-one is watching. He’s strong, and he pulls me over onto him, to sit right down on his lap. My lace dress floats up round my hips. The hardness grows and jumps under the toga and pokes at my inner thigh, jabbing on the bone, at the tendons up high, trying to impress me, weaken me so that it can get in.
‘I need help with this,’ he groans, lying back, complacent in the assumption that he’s got me where he wants me. ‘I’m sorry, honey, but you caused this boner.’
I look down at him. ‘No I didn’t. My cousin getting it on with Pierre did that to you.’
‘Well, you’ve kept it going. I’m in trouble if I don’t have a woman at least once a day. Polly promised that this would be the place and she’s right. Look at you. Sex on a stick, like all the horny English girls. You gotta help me out here. Just with your hand. Your mouth?’
I sit there for another moment, straddling his bare thighs, feeling the hardness pulsing against me under the stupid toga. What a drag that must be for a guy, being attached to that hardness all your life, no control over it, what or who is going to trigger it, or when. Pretty girl wandering round a party on her own in flimsy dress. Get hard. Picture in a magazine. Get hard. Sit on a beach. Listen to sexy music, that disco thump that matches your heart beat. Matches the bump and grind of lovemaking.
But what about me? I may as well be made of stone. My body isn’t reacting to him at all. I’m straddling a handsome guy with a thumping erection who will do anything to relieve himself and nothing’s happening in here. I’m closed up. Dry as dust.
I come to my senses. ‘No. No. I’m sorry. I’m not like that. I’ve got to go.’
I lift my leg and climb off him, tug my dress down, hear the rip of vintage lace, feel the dress slipping.
Frigid. You frigid cow.
‘Look, fair enough if you don’t want to go with someone you’ve just met. Choosy’s fine. But what about me? Help me out here. Girls like you shouldn’t be allowed out looking so goddamn hot!’
He sits up, slams a cushion down on his disobedient groin. I wince.
‘I don’t blame you for being pissed with me. But I’m not putting out. No.’
He sighs. ‘I can tell your head is somewhere else. Who’s the lucky guy?’
I fiddle with a loose thread on my dress. ‘Don’t be nice to me. I just acted like a tease.’
‘And I acted like a schmuck. But I still say you owe some responsibility for this situation.’ His smile spreads wider. Those amazing straight American teeth. He’s obviously relieved that we can talk. And talking like civilised people might just make his hardness subside. ‘Cousin Polly’s never mentioned you’d be here. She’s a great stylist, isn’t she? You know some of the studios are looking at her fashion work? She’s made you look like something Dracula would happily snack on. I’m not sure you realise.’
‘Well, I’m flattered, Elvis. Really.’ Emboldened by distance I point playfully at his crotch. ‘And flattered that I still have that effect on people. But I’m not the girl for you. Find one who’ll want to make use of all that.’
He lifts the pillow off it. The toga is flat, no life under there now. ‘Begone, wench. See if I care.’
I lean over him and kiss him on the mouth. There’s a shy stirring in me as our lips meet. A shy tugging in the places where he touched me. But it’s not him.
Look at me, Gustav.
I put my hands on the boy’s shoulders. Make nice with him. Love the one you’re with. His tongue flips out hopefully. I hesitate, and pull away. Relief that I’m not frigid, that I can react to a cute guy? Or relief that I’ve said no?
‘So long, toga boy.’
He lifts the wine bottle in weary farewell. I still haven’t seen his eyes, and now I never will. The clouds of the night sky drift across the twin mirrors of his glasses.
Polly is waiting for me just inside. She’s been watching me.
‘You turned Toga Tomas down? Unbelievable. He’s got the hots for you. What’s up, hon?’
I shrug. ‘I’m bushed, that’s all.’
‘We’ve got lots of other cute guys around if Tomas doesn’t do it for you.’
She winds one arm round my neck and holds me for a long moment. The crowd has dissipated. Pierre is nowhere to be seen. The music has stopped. Empty bottles and glasses and trays have been virtually kicked into a pile in the corner. One or two overhead lights have been switched on in place of the old lamps. Scraps of lace and feather and ribbon are shed on the parquet floor, shining dully like fish scales. Masks have been ripped off and draped jokingly on the mannequins in the shop.
In short, the spell has been broken.
‘We’re all going up into the piazza for a meal. You coming, hon?’
I shake my head. ‘Can we catch up tomorrow?’
‘We’re leaving first thing. Might not even get any sleep. Might get on the plane dressed like this! Oh, please come with us, Rena? You look a sensation like that. Even more dishevelled than you were before, if that’s possible, like Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Like someone’s just ravished you, although I know damn well they haven’t, you saucy minx!’
‘I told you, Polly, and tonight’s just proved it. I’m genuinely off men.’
‘OK, forget men. Forget sex. I just want to show you off to my friends! Who knows, someone might offer you a photographic commission. Tomas is big in the film industry.’
I hold her tight. Kiss her cheek. I smell Eternity, by Calvin Klein. Just like mine. ‘Baby steps, Pol. I’m not a player like you. Not yet, anyway. I want to see if I can make it here in London, first. Come back and check me out in a year’s time. Who knows? I might be ready to fly by then!’
‘I’ll be back sooner than that. OK. Piss off into the night like a little bat, then! Take Pierre’s car. It’s the incredibly expensive and luxurious red Bentley parked outside. His driver will make sure you get back to the flat safely. And keep the dress. My gift to you. You look magical this evening.’
‘That’s down to you, Pol. Tomas just mentioned what a great stylist you are.’
‘Tonight London, tomorrow the world!’ She gives me a little shake, then another huge hug. ‘But you know, you’re looking so good tonight. Kind of ragged, and feverish. If you really are off men, then celibacy suits you!’
I have left the blinds open in Polly’s flat and through the huge plate-glass window the River Thames glints like steel under the night as it slides under Tower Bridge. Fireworks are spattering somewhere over to the east where the Docklands railway will be trundling lethargically around the glittering skyscrapers.
I ease the dress off my shoulders, managing to get enough buttons undone until it sheds like a second skin. My reflection is overlaid by the river, but I can see my body unpeeled in the moonlight, the body hidden in its laddish layers from Gustav Levi. The body that Polly dressed up like her dolly, that Tomas tried half-heartedly to ravish. But neither of them got down to the skin, did they? They didn’t see the whole of me.
My breasts, released from the dress and the bra, are high and full. I cup them gently, so heavy and warm, hold them forwards, watch as soon as they make contact with the cold glass how the nipples pinch into dark red points, an answering tightness behind my navel, the bounce of my breasts as my heart expresses its interest.
Jake didn’t like my breasts. It was as if he was scared of them. He’d ogle other people’s tits, as he called them, or comment on pictures in magazines, but he never touched mine except to give them a brief squeeze and a token rub before we scrabbled out of our clothes and lay down on that narrow bed. I’d push them into his hands. I’d try to kneel up over him and push them at his mouth, but he’d give them a cursory fondle before pushing me onto my back and getting down to what he really wanted.
These buried untried responses are like roses that will shrivel if they are not pruned. A vine that will wither if it’s not plucked. Any poetic image you choose. I’m alone tonight, I can set it to music if I want.
When the nipples go hard like this they burn and prick, little beacons, bright cheerleaders waving their pom poms, no, that’s a daft simile, they are just a pair of super sensitive buds that set off the train of wanting, the heavy ache pulling down to my centre, travelling towards a really deep, dark desire which I know has never been truly awoken.
What are they all doing now? Polly and her friends, dancing in a hoola round Covent Garden or crossing the Strand and demanding breakfast in the River Room of the Savoy where she is staying with her rich boyfriend. Jake, strumming discordantly on his guitar, cigarette dangling out of his mouth like James Dean, glowering at the sea beneath his caravan.
Gustav – I can’t picture him. Maybe he’s still sitting up on that high stool, turning the stem of his refilled cocktail in his long fingers while the barman polishes the glasses and tries not to glance pointedly at the clock ticking away at his overtime.
I lie down on Polly’s queen-sized bed, just in my knickers, my hands resting on my breasts. In my cousin’s walk-in closet is a wardrobe full of cellophane-wrapped dresses and suits and blouses, all for me to borrow, she said. All swaying as if in a breeze, or as if someone has just brushed their hands along them.
One hand trails down my flat stomach and onwards, into my knickers. The images of the last two days stalk across my mind like the credits of a movie. Now there’s just me, naked and alone on this low white bed, resisting the warm tugging between my legs, teased into being by all that’s happened. Not by Tomas and his tumescent toga. Not by the desire biting in his mouth, the hardness lifting the white cotton.
I’m turned on by the thought of Gustav’s wrist when I pulled off his glove in the square. Gustav’s finger, hooking my hair behind my ear.
So my fingers trail down, and into my knickers, pull them aside and then right off, stroking and parting myself. I’m too lazy to find anything else to use on myself. I push in a little more, the warmth and wetness, withdrawing, pushing in harder, and what makes me flower brightly under my own probing fingers is no amount of music or poetry or lovely photographs.
I’m not frigid.
As dawn blossoms over my drowsy face, what makes the wetness spring and spark is the wondering of how Gustav Levi’s mouth would feel, kissing me right there.
CHAPTER FIVE
I have actually run some of the way to get here. I tell myself it’s only because I’m desperate to get my cameras back.
He’s told me which way to come and now I’m in a street on the other side of the river, practically next door to the Savoy Hotel in fact. But Polly is long gone.
I didn’t wake up until midday. The first thing I did was look for Gustav Levi’s business card. And I couldn’t find it. I tipped my jacket upside down, inside out, shook it. It was plain white, thick, his name in a thick black Modoni font. I tried to envisage the number across the bottom. I couldn’t. I hadn’t even read the card. I must have dropped it in the street. At the party. In Pierre’s red car.
I slammed my hands down on the bed. Then I forced myself to count to ten and walk to the window and back ten times. My camera. My cameras. Think. My life’s work is stored in there.
My mobile phone buzzed on the table beside the bed. I can’t think who that is. Please not Jake. And I’ll kill Polly if she gave Tomas my number. I don’t want to have to find the words to put him off. No. Stay calm. It could be one of those galleries. Number unknown.
‘Yes. Serena Folkes here. Hello?’
There was a pause. Then, ‘Ah. Serena.’
His voice was even deeper than I remembered, pouring treacle. My knees went from under me and I fell onto the bed.
‘Gustav! Mr Levi. Oh my God. You don’t know how happy I am to hear from you!’
He chuckled. I could hear low voices and brisk footsteps in the background. He sounded as if he was an echoing room.
‘Maybe you could come and show me how happy?’
‘How did you find me?’
‘The wonders of technology, Serena. I just made a note of your mobile number when you left your phone with me in the bar last evening. If you go to your contacts you’ll see I’ve added myself in there, too. So now we’re both armed with vital information. I told you I wanted to see you again, and I meant it.’
I just stared stupidly at the phone.
‘You do want your cameras back, don’t you?’
Yes I did. I do. And so it was arranged.
This must be it. There’s a flight of steps and big glass doors up ahead of me, but before I reach them and check the address I stop to look at the publicity poster attached to the approaching railings.
There’s no obvious gallery anywhere nearby, but the poster shows a sepia photograph of a group of comely women reclining on a sofa, with tumbling black hair, plump bodies, and can-can corsets and stockings. They are incredibly dated, girlishly coy, mostly, their backs turned to the camera to show mooning white buttocks and big bovine hips and shoulders, but the eyes gleaming under curled fringes are vacant and old as the hills.
I guess they are from a collection of dirty postcards of fin-de-siècle Parisian prostitutes, or a clever reproduction. They are certainly faded. Patches of the background are missing or cracked where the old processing ink has peeled away from the paper, but the women are intact.
I run my hands over my own rounded hips. I’ve made a real effort today. After we’d arranged to meet I told myself as I showered and dressed in Polly’s glittering white bathroom that today is the day to make some changes.
So I’ve shed Rena the scruff in her jeans and biker boots, and I’m wearing a dress. Well, he told me that this was business and that I was to come to his office, so businesslike is how I want to be. It won’t go amiss for my other appointments, either. So it’s not only a dress, but a black jersey dress, flaring on the hips, wrapped tight across the bust, severe yet softened by these shiny black boots. Flat, not heeled. I can’t masquerade to that extent, let alone pound the streets of London in heels. And a cropped black Cossack jacket with velvet collar and cuffs and military silver buttons.
At the last minute I pull on the beret for comfort, but this time I wear it low over my forehead Garbo-style.
I continue on up the polished white steps and read the name above the door. It says The Levi Building. It’s not as phallic as some City buildings. None of the structures along the Embankment reach any higher than Big Ben. But it’s no less hulking and impressive for that. The words swim into focus. The Levi Building. So he owns the whole shebang?
The lobby is vast and echoing. There is a chrome shelf, not even a desk, in the middle of the place, and a lady sitting bolt upright behind a switchboard of buttons. She looks like a spooky Mary Poppins. Black hair pulled back into a bun so tight that her face is dragged back with it. A black broderie anglaise blouse pinned with a cameo brooch. She glances up and without speaking pokes out a long plum-painted fingernail to press a button marked Levi.
‘Is everything around here named after him?’ I ask. My voice hisses across the black marble interior as if I’m in church.
‘Penthouse office. Top floor.’ Her voice is high, as if holding a top note.
The lift spits me out at the top, and I am dazzled by the blaze of light. It’s hard to know where the light comes from, whether I’m facing north or south, even.
‘Ah, Serena. How lovely to see you again.’
A pin man appears in the distance, etiolated and thin like an alien just about to step out of the blinding interior of the mother ship. I rub my eyes and step towards him. He seems to be wearing a suit and a white shirt today, but before I can focus properly he takes my hand and shakes it formally. He holds it for an extra moment.
‘I’m so glad you took my phone number,’ I gibber, as we start to move back towards the light, one of my hands still in his. ‘I would be absolutely lost without my cameras!’
‘Your head is like a sieve, so it’s lucky I’m a magpie. Gloves, cameras—’
How familiar his deep, calm voice is. I only met him yesterday.
There is a cool, tomb-like atmosphere in this place. I still can’t see clearly, but I think we are in a corridor. He turns right and leads me into another big space but this is insulated. Not warm, but not cold, either.
He drops my hand and leaves me standing in this vast, warehouse-like space. He walks towards another window but the light in here is less glaring, and finally I can focus. I turn in a full circle. There are more of the French photographs, blown up, on one wall, and others, sepia, black and white, none coloured, but I’m assailed, as any visitor would be, by rolling flesh, and plump women, and vivid nakedness.
‘You’ve brought me to a gallery? This is awesome. A real inspiration. Exactly the kind of venue I’ve dreamt about.’
‘Not just any gallery, Serena.’ There’s a click. On goes an oversized chrome Anglepoise lamp by his desk and there he is, springing back into my life. Someone who looks just like him, anyway, but this guy is scrubbed and brushed today, those eyes blacker, deeper, more glittering in contrast to the cleanly shaved cheeks. The formal tailoring makes him seem taller and broader, but the fine fabric also restrains him, restrains all that restless energy.
He stands and moves differently, slowly, considerately, the jacket creasing slightly as he bends his arms, the trousers revealing nothing of the long legs I saw in their jeans last night. The body that pressed against me. No hint of the manhood, what lies beneath. He moves almost in slow motion, but not his hands. They are restless as ever. They pluck the middle buttons, doing and undoing. The man I know as Gustav Levi is someone who stalks misty London squares at night, wrapped up warm but unshaven, wild eyes watching.
Apart from a giant vase of lilies in the corner tall enough to bathe in, there is nothing else visible in this space.
As the light snaps on the lively photographs leap away into the shadows cast by the winter afternoon light.
‘This is my gallery.’
I walk towards the window. Behind him the river flows dark and fast past the London Eye and the South Bank opposite, multi-coloured lights winking off the various bridges spanning the Thames.
‘What can I say, Mr Levi? You said you were an entrepreneur, but this? You own this place? This whole building?’
‘That’s my name on the door. And more besides, Serena. You could say I’m multi-national. London. Paris. New York is currently being conquered.’ He takes a pen out of his breast pocket and taps it against his chin. His mouth is hard today. Both lips equally unforgiving. ‘I’m a walking, talking, living corporation. Mostly I own and lease galleries. I prefer to try to keep art in my life, but I do own other kinds of industrial space, too.’
