The Bonk Squad (29 page)

Meg rose from the seat she’d so
recently reclaimed, and accepted her gift. “Thank you Ian. Thank
you everyone. I love having you here. Apart from anything else,
you’re a good excuse to do the dusting now and again.”

There was general laughter at this.
Meg was well known for her relaxed attitude to
housekeeping.

“
But hasn’t it been a good
year?” she added, finding it easier to face a crowd of people after
a few drinks. “Another book out soon for Romy...Mandy and Eloise
have both been asked for full manuscripts...Vi’s sold at least half
a dozen short stories...and Ian and I are going to get our partials
posted before the January meeting.
Aren’t
we,” she said, staggering
slightly. “Liz and Bobbie mus’ be close to that, too?” she queried,
trying to stop them from fading in and out of focus.

Bobbie hung her head. “Um, maybe,” she
muttered.

“
Dream on,” Liz snorted.
“All these lovers are keeping me too busy.” She gave Ian a nudge in
the ribs and just about slid off her chair in a fit of
giggles.

Vi, who had no knowledge of the
‘men-for-Liz’ scheme, pushed herself up from the armchair, took a
firm grip on her big silver serving spoon and announced in
disapproving tones, “I’ll be Mother.”

She started to dole out portions of
trifle, and the sozzled, far from hungry crowd formed a haphazard
queue.

“
Go easy, Vi!” Eloise
begged. “Think of the calories.”

“
It’s only once a year,” Vi
said, delighted to have diverted everyone’s attention away from Liz
and her unseemly exhibition.

“
It’ll be delicious, I’m
sure,” Meg said, gazing at the pool of golden liquid seeping out of
the sponge-cake layer. “You haven’t skimped on the sherry, I
see?”

“
Secret of a good trifle,”
Vi agreed.

Meg turned to Ian and peered up at his
newly defined cheekbones. “So how’s your partial now? Satisfied
with it yet? Your new s’nopsis was spot-on I thought?”

Ian smiled down—getting an enjoyable
eyeful of her gorgeous breasts from his vantage point. “You’re
right, Meg,” he agreed. “It’s time I sent it away. Curtis and
Anouska can take their chance in the big bad world. And yours is
nearly ready as well?”

“
Close enough.” She lurched
against the table edge. “Thank God I’m not driving anywhere,” she
added. “Vi’s trifle’s going to finish me off, I think. We’d better
make the coffee good and strong.”

“
Everythings’s great,” Ian
said. “Mandy’s a bit tiddly. She really got into the fizz. Liz
seems to be losing her inhibitions too—if she ever had any. Even
Bobbie’s come out of her shell.”

Meg gazed around at the whirling
colors of her friends’ party clothing. Eloise wore red as bright as
her bowl of berries. Bobbie’s turquoise top and floral skirt were
ocean-fresh. Nurse Mandy had squeezed into peach, with frills; Romy
looked misty in soft gray-violet trousers and a paler mauve
camisole; Liz had forsaken her ever present jeans for a tiny denim
skirt and multi-colored knit top—and Vi was resplendent in an
elderly but grand dress of primrose silk. Meg thought her own blue
chambray skirt and cream blouse looked ordinary by
comparison.

Ben seemed to have sneaked the music
up much louder. The Beatles were now belting out ‘Sergeant Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts’ Club Band’. Feet tapped and spoons waved as the
dessert disappeared.

How old does he think we
are? He’d better not play Herb Alpert...

Part way through the meeting,
somewhere between the post-lunch coffee and before the official
afternoon tea break, nature started taking its course. Every now
and again, one of the writers visited the powder room to trickle
away their several glasses of wine, and their tea or
coffee.

The procession of toilet-goers
continued in a leisurely fashion until Ian decided it was his
turn.

And, used to living on his own, he
pushed the door almost closed behind him, but didn’t quite latch it
shut.

When a rather mellow Liz approached
the powder room and presumed it to be unoccupied, she entered to
find Ian concentrating on zipping up his none-too-roomy trousers
with his none-too-deft fingers.

He stared at her in horror. She
giggled in return.

“
Ooops, sorry,” she said,
checking out a portion of taut belly that hadn’t been on display
the day they’d bought the pants.

“
It’s okay. I’m decent.” He
hitched his trousers higher.

“
Only just, in those. They
do great things for your butt. And it’s a great butt. You should
see how you’re being looked at out there.”

“
I know how I’m being
looked at.” He stifled a smile, trying not to appear as thrilled as
he felt.

“
Are you enjoying
it?”

“
What do you think?” Liz
was so beautiful he felt she must constantly experience the
tingling rush and gratifying warmth and the
‘I-know-you’re-a-little-bit-jealous smugness’ of human
admiration.

“
I think you’re loving
it.”

“
I think you’re right.” His
dreamy eyes pictured an endless line of willing women somewhere in
his near future.

By now Liz leaned against the large
wall-hung vanity top. Her tiny skirt had hitched up against its
edge, revealing even more of the long legs Ian itched to stroke.
Paradise was only inches away. How much self control could a
testosterone-stoked man be expected to show in the face of such
beauty?

She looks like a willing
woman!
The thought grabbed him by the
throat and shook him to the soles of his Italian-clad feet.
Certainly her eyes were far from forbidding.

Lust swirled like an intoxicating mist
through the air of the small room. He drew a little closer,
trousers zipped but still unbuttoned.

“
I feel amazing,” he added.
“You’ve rescued me. I should give you a thank you kiss.”

“
Should you?” she teased,
leaning back, tilting her head up in invitation. He stepped a
fraction nearer so his thighs settled between hers. Sparkling wine,
dry red, and an extravagant amount of good sherry swirled though
veins and brains. Inhibitions swept away like twigs down a flooded
river.

“
You shouldn’t really,” she
murmured. Her voice said one thing, but her eyes said quite
another.

Ian gazed at the absolute perfection
of her lips. Their seductive invitation. His hands reached toward
her thighs...settled there...caressed.

She gave a tiny gasp—which caused her
lips to part a little more.

Ian groaned, and grabbed. With the
steely strength gained from long years of hefting sacks of
fertilizer and premium-grade trees and boulders for landscaping, he
urged her up so her hips were supported on the edge of the vanity
top, then pressed his pelvis and his mouth into her tempting
softness, and enjoyed.

Liz threw her arms around his
shoulders for balance.

“
Ian!” she tried to
exclaim, but it was unheard and unheeded. They sank deep into a
mutually satisfying embrace.

Which was interrupted a moment or two
later when Vi pushed the still-unlatched door open and hit Ian on
the afore-mentioned butt.

He lurched further forward with
surprise, and he and Liz were thrust harder onto the vanity-top,
which promptly parted company with the wall under their combined
weight.

Liz followed it down to the floor with
a shriek of terror, and landed with her bottom neatly contained in
the wash-basin.

Ian’s long limbs scrabbled in all
directions in a desperate dance to avoid landing on top of
her.

Behind him, Vi gasped in
outrage.

And then the water burst
forth.

It gushed and squirted and poured from
the fractured pipes—in a drenching fountain that had Vi squarely in
its sights.

She stood rooted to the spot, still
absorbing the disgusting sight of Ian and Liz apparently coupling
in the room next door to all the other writers. Her primrose silk
dress turned transparent under the deluge.

“
Turn it off at the mains,”
Ian yelled from his cramped position on the floor.

“
Get the fuck off me,” Liz
howled.

“
Find some towels for the
carpet,” practical Mandy bellowed.

“
Who’s got the camera?”
Eloise wondered aloud.

Ben skidded out to turn off the water,
and Meg dived for the linen cupboard. In true Kiwi rugby style, she
began tossing a rainbow of towels at Bobbie, who threw them around
the hall corner to Romy, who laid them like sandbags at the
entrance to the powder room. The carpet was wet, but not as wet as
Vi, who still stood frozen to the spot in a shower of
spray.

Her dress clung like an invisible
skin, her formidable underwear was now totally on show, her new
perm had flattened. Her eyes goggled with shock.

Happily Ben knew where the outside
water connection was. His swift reaction brought results a few
seconds later, and the fountain slowed to a trickle and then to a
series of disappointed drips.

Meg arranged a flannelette sheet
around poor Vi. It was the most absorbent item left in the linen
cupboard, and the best she could do at such short
notice.

“
They were
at it
!” Vi shrieked,
whirling around to face her roomful of friends. “At each other like
cats! Right in front of my eyes!”

“
Bullshit,” came Liz’s
muffled yell from inside the powder room.

“
Absolutely not, Vi,” Ian
protested as he staggered to the doorway, T-shirt rucked-up and
waistband unbuttoned.

Vi flapped a hand out from under her
sheet and pointed to the evidence. “Like cats,” she insisted again,
remembering next door’s Tom demonstrating what to do with a willing
Tabby in the garden right outside her sitting-room window the
previous week. The noise had even disturbed old Arnold from his
habitual doze. They’d stared out the window together in horrid
fascination, Arnold yowling with jealousy. Only the fact that no
actual plants were being damaged had prevented Vi from taking a
broomstick to the furry fornicators.

“
I expected much better of
you than this, Ian,” she added. “I suppose that hussy led you
on?”

“
Are you all right, Liz?”
Ian enquired over his shoulder to the hussy.

There was a stony silence. “What the
hell do you think?” she muttered a few seconds later. “You weigh
heaps, Ian. And this basin just about broke my back.”

Nurse Mandy appointed herself to the
afternoon shift, muscled Ian aside and disappeared into the powder
room to check on Liz’s injuries.

Ian did his trousers up and smoothed
his T-shirt down while several smirking women made their own
assumptions.

“
We might have to adjourn
until January, I think,” Meg said, surveying her shattered
home.

Fifteen minutes later, the dishwasher
had still not completed its first load because there was no water.
Meg had persuaded Vi to have a lie-down. Mandy and Romy had taken
Liz by taxi for an unnecessary x-ray, and the rest of the writers
had departed with their half-empty bowls and platters.

Meg handed Ian a cup of strong tea. As
ever, he stirred and stirred until his three sugars had
dissolved.

“
Shit,” he said, finally
looking at her. “What a mess. We weren’t, of course. Just a bit of
a drunken cuddle.”

“
Not my business, Ian,” she
said, remembering his unsecured trousers.

“
Totally your business,
Meg. We wouldn’t—er—do that here. Not in your home.”

She shrugged.

“
We wouldn’t do it
anywhere,” he protested. “Liz and me? Dream on!”

“
Poor old Vi,” she said,
changing the subject.

“
I’ll fix up your bathroom.
That goes without saying.”

“
Will it be safe to turn
the water on later?”

“
Yes. I’ll see to it when
I’ve sobered up a bit.”

“
I’d better get a
plumber.”

“
I
am
a plumber. I was apprenticed after
I left college. Only worked at it for six or seven years though
before Dad got sick and needed help with the Garden Center.” He
drew a deep breath. (Of regret or relief, Meg wondered?) “It’s been
handy for the water features. I can install them without having to
employ outside help. We specialize. Some of the big country
properties commission all sorts of ponds and fountains and
waterfalls.”

“
But you never went back to
it fulltime?”

“
It’s a filthy job
sometimes. Good money, but I enjoy the plants, and the
people.”

“
Well, well,” she said,
sipping her coffee, picturing Ian in a different role. Muddy
shorts, work-boots, sweaty T-shirt, tool-belt. Quite attractive
really.

“
Your vanity’s smashed,” he
said. “I’ll buy you a new one.”