The Blue Guide (17 page)

My hunger overwhelms me, and I turn abruptly, ripping off the blindfold. Carlotta, taken unawares, loses her balance and hurtles backwards onto the carpet between the coffee table and the sofa, narrowly missing bashing her head on the sharp corner. She blinks up at me as I loom over her, wondering what to do first, whether to go down on her or to take my own pleasure first. Taunted ragged, I go for the selfish option, lowering myself onto her face. She welcomes me by grasping my hips and pulling me down further, so that I'm worried I might be suffocating her, not to mention
drowning her in my nectar. Not that that would be a bad way to go, in the scale of things.

Still clasping my hips, she starts pushing me backwards and forwards, letting me know, I decide, that I can be active in all this, that I don't just have to sit on her face and enjoy myself while she does all the running. I respond by swinging my mound of Venus slowly back and forth, so that her tongue has the opportunity to linger on the pip of my clit for a moment before sweeping across my lips to my hole, dipping in and out before recommencing its journey. A cadence builds up, layer by layer, until pure joy is jagging through me like electricity, and I know it can't be long until I am rocked by the seismic shocks of my orgasm.

Sensing I am near, Carlotta stops her movement to focus on my clitoris with her mouth. My cunt is filled by most of one of her hands, bunched up into a fist, and as my enraptured womb begins to open and close around her, her other hand shoots down between her legs and starts grinding at her own mons. She rears up just as I'm finished, eyes squeezed closed, mouth set in a grimace that testifies to an almost unbearable pleasure. As her contractions die away, she goes floppy beneath me and lets out a long low sob.

We hold each other for an hour or more, then Carlotta gets up and leaves the room, and after a minute I hear a bath running. I climb to my feet, look out of the window in wonder, barely able to conceive that beyond it, in the heart of London, people are going about their everyday lives – shopping, sitting in meetings, lunching with friends – as if the world is the same as it's ever been. Whereas for me, in here, in this fairytale suite with this raunchy Spaniard, everything has changed. Life will never be the same again.

In the bath I sit between Carlotta's legs and allow myself to float away as she reaches around me and soaps the tender crevices of my cunt, as she takes two good handfuls of breast and gently washes them. With my sleek wet hair back against her chest, I listen to her heart beating, feel it reverberate through the bones of my skull as if it's an echo of my own pulse. Sooner or later, I think, we would fall into synch. And if we lived together, our menstrual cycles would too.

When we've climbed out and towelled each other off, I go to retrieve my clothes from the drawing room. Carlotta dresses in her bedroom, then comes to tell me that I ought to leave, since Paco could be back at any moment. I remind her that he is paying for my time, all day every day for the next two weeks. It's still reasonably early, and if we caught a cab we would have a good run at those galleries she wanted to see.

She confesses that she's exhausted, that the morning's romps have worn her out and that she'd prefer to stay in the hotel and have a little siesta, followed by a swim if Paco isn't back by then.

‘You take afternoon for you,' she smiles. ‘We do cultural things tomorrow, yes? Here –' She reaches for her snakeskin bag, rustles in it and passes me over a note. It's a fifty. I blush.

‘Carlotta, I ca –'

‘Take it,' she says, pinning me with her fathomless blue stare.

‘But –'

‘Buy something special, from me. Why you not go back to Selfridges and buy some lingerie to model for me tomorrow? Something that really get me going.'

We look at each other and giggle. ‘OK,' I concur. ‘I'll see what I can find.'

Dressed at last and having run Carlotta's hairbrush
through my lust-tangled locks, I head out into the sunlight.

By the time I've reached the street I've done the dirty on Carlotta by pocketing the fifty pounds, mentally adding it to my holiday fund. I'll wear something choice from my undies drawer tomorrow, pretend it's new. What she doesn't know won't hurt her.

I walk home slowly, stopping to do some grocery shopping on Marylebone High Street en route. As I'm filling my basket, I surprise myself by hesitating by the magazine racks, sneaking sly glances up at the top-shelf offerings as I pretend to flick through a copy of
Cosmo
. A line of busty blondes, brunettes and redheads, of Essex girls, Asian babes and black beauties, leer down at me, or smile coyly. Boobs are thrust out awkwardly; their poses look unnatural and highly uncomfortable. I feel a bit dizzy. This is the first time I've felt any interest in this kind of thing. I reach up and grab a mag more or less at random, shove it in among the salad leaves and pasta parcels and eco-friendly dishwasher tablets. On my way to the tills I slip in a few extra and rather unnecessary items in a pathetic attempt to hide it, knowing full well that what goes in must come out.

At the till, I avoid the cashier's eyes when he greets me and look resolutely away when he rings in my grocery items, pretending to be absorbed by a poster on the wall. As the groceries slide to the bottom of the conveyor belt, I pull two plastic bags from a roll and start packing them in. The wank mag comes down nearly last because I'd pushed it to the bottom of the basket. It's face up. I lurch over the belt in an ungainly fashion, grab it and crush it down the side of one of the bags. I'm still avoiding the cashier's eyes as I hand over my credit card and he asks me to punch in my PIN.

I'm home in ten minutes, lying in my bed with a glass of rosé and a tub of Ben & Jerry's on the windowsill beside me, flicking through the mag. A procession of faces simper out at me: look at what I've got, they say. But I see nothing special among the roll call of tits and pussies and arseholes. Nothing that lights my fire. Perhaps, I think, I don't like women after all. Perhaps I only like Carlotta.

And then I turn the page and the fire between my legs is reignited as I take in a blonde vision not unlike Carlottta – real boobs, cute little pussy, blazing blue eyes in a tanned face below peroxide hair. There's the same mixture of tacky wantonness and a weird kind of innocence, the suggestion of secret depths. As on the other pages, this girl's pose borders on the gynaecological – she's prying herself apart with her fingers, cunt agape for the camera. There's no mystery, no eroticism. But there's something in her eyes, as there is in Carlotta's, that sucks you in, almost against your better judgement. Something that promises pleasures you've scarcely even allowed yourself to dream of. It's as if something is beckoning me into a life that goes far beyond the one I imagined, or even hoped, for myself – a life darker, more uncertain, frightening even, but a life richer and worth every risk, every doubt, every moment of anguish.

I sit up, take a swig of the ice-cold rosé and a spoonful of the ice cream, then lie down and slip my hand down the front of my jeans, staring back at the woman as I slide one finger through my moistness and into my pussy. My hand movements get more frantic the longer I gaze into her blue eyes with their curled black lashes. As I climax, however, I close my eyes and it's Carlotta that I see in my mind, smiling that cheeky, flirty smile that makes me melt every time.

I sleep like a parched man drinks at a desert oasis, hard and long, greedily, and I wake late. Feeling fresher than I have in years, I chop myself some fruit and sit out on my balcony, still naked from bed. There's no one visible in the windows of the pub onto which these apartments back, but even if someone could see, I'm not sure I would be bothered, I'm so shorn of all cares. I bite into a slice of pineapple, chew slowly, savouring its slightly sticky sweetness. Then I close my eyes and let the stark sunlight beat down on my lids, flooding my brain with an apricot glow.

I barely register the door of the adjacent balcony open, or only in retrospect, when I hear the voice.

‘Morning over there,' it says in a broad Scottish accent, and my eyes pop open.

‘Hello Eduardo,' I reply, more than a little wearily, looking over at my neighbour. The idle son of Italian immigrants who made their fortune in ice-cream parlours in Edinburgh, he spends most of his time sunning himself out here, rowing volubly with his girlfriends, or scoping out local talent from a seat on the terrace of the Moroccan bar downstairs.

He's leaning on the railings of his balcony, smiling wolfishly, dressed only in his boxer shorts, hair still mussed from sleep. ‘How're you doing?' he says, eyes straying down to get his fill of whatever he can see of me through my own railings.

‘Good,' I nod. ‘Just having a peaceful breakfast.'

‘Fancy sharing?'

I shake my head, incredulous that he can be so slow in taking a hint. Either that, or he just doesn't give up easily. Whatever, I already know that he's an out and out chancer. The whole time I've lived here, he's not let up trying to get into my knickers – when I'm wearing any, that is. It's not that he's at all bad-looking, though
his bandy legs let him down a bit. Ordinarily I wouldn't turn my nose up. But I guess he doesn't realise quite how much I can hear through the wall that separates our flats, doesn't realise that I know how he talks to his women just minutes after making them wail and claw at his back in their abandon. Just the feel of the hands of such a man on me would give me the creeps.

I smile falsely, then shift my chair around slightly, so that my back is almost turned to him, precluding any further conversational gambits. There was a time, early on, when he could have had me, before I learnt what he's really like, but he blew it. I had just moved in and was having trouble picking up a decent TV signal. I'd seen Eduardo out on his balcony and called over to see if he'd had similar problems and could offer any advice. He'd come right round, promising to sort things out.

It was a Sunday in late spring, unseasonably hot, and he was wearing just his shorts and some sandals. His southern Italian roots mean he is dark-skinned by nature, but a tan was turning him a deep mahogany brown, and his skin shone with sun oil. As he bent down to fiddle with the tangle of wires and cables behind my television set and I watched the sinews in his back and arms move up and down, my chest rose and fell with yearning. I would fuck him before he was out the door, I told myself.

He turned back to me. ‘Gonna have to climb up on the roof,' he said, rising to his feet. ‘I'll go get some tools.'

I didn't answer, just looked him hard in the face. ‘No hurry,' I said after a moment. ‘How about a drink? I made some fresh lemonade this morning.'

‘Mmmm, thanks. That sounds great.'

‘Sit down,' I said, gesturing towards the squashy blue
sofa I'd just had delivered from Heal's that morning. It had cost me a full two months' wages, but suddenly I couldn't wait to sully it. I was on cloud nine – a place of my own at last, some chic new furniture and, to top it all, a handsome neighbour keen to help me settle in. Surely it didn't get any better than this?

I brought in a tray bearing two tall glasses of the cloudy liquid, clinking with ice cubes, and set it down on the wooden floorboards in front of the sofa, then reached over to the stereo beside it, flipped open the CD tray and inserted my favourite disc of the time – the eponymous album by Lamb, featuring the sublime ‘Gorecki'. Langorous and hypnotic, it was perfect for a lazy summer Sunday spent entertaining a potential new lover.

I turned to Eduardo, held my glass up. ‘Here's to new beginnings,' I said, and we smiled at each other for a beat, perhaps two, more than was strictly necessary. I saw my opening, leant forward, and that's when the noise of the drill flared up outside, rending the quiet that settles over the surrounding streets when the office workers are away.

I'm not a confrontational person, and would have either ignored it or turned up the stereo to try to mask it. But Eduardo was up and across the room like a streak of lightning, striding out onto my balcony and grabbing the tip of a rail between each hand as he swung his head from side to side in an attempt to pinpoint the source of the noise.

‘Hey you,' he bellowed when he caught sight of the culprit on a nearby rooftop. ‘You know what fucking day it is? Do you think you can make a bit more noise, mate? We can't fucking hear you over here.'

In response to some reply from the man, I saw him brandish his fist in his direction. ‘You motherfucking
cunt,' he hollered. ‘You wanna go down to the street and sort this out? I'll have you, motherfucker.'

My libido died a death. There's nothing unsexier than a display of machismo. Sure, it was a Sunday and there were people who wanted to kick back and take it easy, but London is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week city, and if some bloke wants to hop out on his roof and do a spot of DIY, what are you going to do about it? Eduardo, I had quickly learnt, was an uncouth, foul-mouthed bully.

I brought him out his lemonade, told him I didn't think he was going about things the right way, and then tried to close my ears to the further torrent of abuse that he unleashed at the DIYer, as a reaction, it seemed, against my criticism. He was probably disturbing more people than the drill was now. I looked at my watch, pretended a lunch engagement.

‘Shame,' he said, turning back to me, leaning in for the kiss of which he had cheated himself and that, unbeknown to him, would never be offered again. If he hadn't lost his cool, hadn't revealed his true nature, we would probably have been banging away on my lovely new sofa by now, sliding off it onto the freshly polished floorboards, making them creak beneath our interlocked limbs, the slam of our hips as he drove into me. Still, better I knew then, I've always thought, than got involved with him and had to endure the complication of continuing to live next door to him
after
finding out he's a pig. And there were countless nights when I was provided with ample confirmation of this early impression by shouts and screams in the early hours.