The Things That Make Me Give In (15 page)

‘They did not need words. They were not afraid. Fear was for the time before this, when they had not touched each other. Now they had and there was nothing more for him to do but scoop her up into his arms and carry her through to the room she spent all of her life in.

‘Once there, they could not speak. They found that they could hardly touch. The door closed, his clothes were quickly gone, and then they shook. They quaked before the thing they were about to do, all the months of subtext suddenly becoming text, all their passions opened up like the pages of a book . . .

‘It was too much.

‘They were reduced to speaking in code again. They didn’t have the proper words, and so when he asked her to pass him some fruit, she lay down before him on her sheets. And when she said, “Lift my train, servant,” he fell upon her.

‘He expected her to flinch, and yet she was firmer in resolve than he. And when her mouth found his mouth and her hands guided his over her oil-smooth flesh, he realised that it was not just her resolve. She knew what he did not. She had been trained in arts he could barely imagine, and though she trembled as he did her touch was sure and knowing.

‘She stroked the stem of his cock with one finger, slow and deliberate. At the very moment that the touch became too fine, she pinched, while her mouth found the sensitive places behind his ears, in the hollow of his throat, the insides of his arms.

‘She licked the line that cut down the centre of his chest, smiling when she discovered how much and how little he liked to have his nipples touched. Her fingers sought out the creases between his thighs and his groin, too tender to bear anything but the scratch of her fingernails.

‘He knew he was clumsy by comparison. He clasped her breasts and bit her throat, rubbed himself against her curves. Found his way between her legs and rubbed there, too, at first with the flat of his thigh and then suddenly his cock, pressed tight to the slippery groove she opened willingly for him.

‘When she cried out, he could not say he knew for what. It seemed he had hardly done a thing. She could not have. His own flesh was so taut and full of sensation that he could not imagine she would find her pleasure before him, but she clasped him to her and whispered in his ear: “You give easily what other men never strive for.”

‘The words turned his ache over, and then over again. He could not bear to find the deeper heat that lay beyond her soft spread lips, but her hips tilted up to his and her breath was hot against his cheek. He knew what those non-words meant.

‘And when he finally slid into her, and felt her so tight and close around him, he knew what that meant, too: he could not be apart from her again. His heart would not let him.

‘His body would not let him be slow and gentle, either.

‘Pleasure coiled tight in his groin and forced him to rut against her, the roll of her hips and her panted exultations doing nothing to alleviate his need. He tried to calm her, and found that his hands trembled. They could not hold her down.

‘And the sounds she made – like an animal too long held and finally let loose. They sang through his body and pushed him further, until the bed lurched with his thrusts and her eyes closed with senseless pleasure that mirrored his own.

‘He tried to tell her that he could no longer hold back, but no words came. He made instead that same animal sound, as the coiled pleasure finally gave out and he reached his end inside her.’

I think I’m waiting for him to say more. I want more. That can’t be all. I lean forward to tell him that. More, I say, but he just tells me how they made love many more times that night – what a cheat.

Though I’m not sure that it’s really a cheat when you’re as aroused as this. I spend the rest of the day thinking in more graphic detail than his story: his cock kissing her clit, how his shaky whispers made her slippery and ready, how thick he felt inside her, working and working. Her nipples will have grazed his chest as he fucked into her, holding her hips so that each thrust fell solid and true.

I wonder if he thinks about how good it would feel, too. To fill someone in the same way I long to be filled – I want his hands on my hips and our bodies smooth and oiled. I want his mouth on my pussy, easing that ache he’s ensured will never now go away.

It isn’t enough to be told stories of flowery things that could be.

But when I go back the next day, he is subdued. He tells me he doesn’t want to tell me the rest – that the story is finished anyway. But I don’t believe him.

And sure enough I’m right. There is an ending.

‘It was into the morning,’ he says, ‘when the Sultan came upon them, intertwined. In a fury he wrenched the lovers from one another, and before the handmaiden could do a thing he had thrown her servant into the dungeon.’

Of course, I knew this was coming. I tell him not to end it like this, but he doesn’t listen.

‘Days and nights passed, with the handmaiden confined to her room. She kept a stoic outward appearance throughout this trial, for fear that her pain would make the Sultan more likely to punish her love.

‘But she need not have been so concerned, for he punished her love regardless.

‘On the seventh day he was returned to her. No restrictions placed upon them, no banishments. They were permitted to see one another as freely as they liked.

‘She was quick to realise it was not a freedom she could ever relish. For when she took her lover in her arms and thanked the heavens for his return, she found him cold and distant. And when she kissed his lips, they were unresponsive. And when she clasped him to her his body did not quicken – he stood before her as insensible as a block.

‘It was then that the handmaiden wept bitter tears, for she knew what the Sultan had done. Still, it stung no less when he told her that the Sultan had taken his heart from his chest, and hidden it away where none would ever find it.’

He sags back on to the pillow once he’s done. He doesn’t look at all satisfied, but then I wouldn’t be either, if my story ended like that. Still I find my lips pinching together, and my hands clenching into fists.

‘Don’t end it like that,’ I say, and it comes out tighter than I had expected.

‘How should it end, then?’ he asks, but he isn’t asking at all. He knows how it should end.

‘He searches for and finds his heart again.’

‘How can he? He has no heart. He cares about nothing.’

‘Then she’ll go and find it. She won’t ever stop looking.’

‘She probably knows that the Sultan has really burnt it to ash.’

‘No. No. She’ll find it.’

‘If it is hidden, it’s hidden away for ever in the Mountains of Time. She would have to travel a thousand miles on bare feet through freezing winds and snow, and brave the chasm of dread and the pits of despair, and the acid falls of the mountain passes and the rocks made of glass as sheer as a skyscraper.’

There’s this horrible pressure pressing on the back of my eyes. I can feel it. I don’t want to feel it. My hands are clenched into fists but I don’t let him see it.

‘She can make it. She will make it.’

‘You don’t know that.’

I should stop talking because it’s obvious that he’s upsetting himself. He looks disturbed, deeply so, but then his hands aren’t clenched so tight into fists that he could make diamonds from coal inside them. I want to grit my teeth, but then no words would be able to escape.

‘Even if she can’t make it, she’ll just love him anyway,’ I squeeze out, past all of the pressure inside me.

‘No one can love someone who can’t ever love them,’ he moans, but he’s wrong. He’s wrong.

‘People do it all the time,’ I say, and hate the desperation in my own voice. I clench my fists until it goes away. Until he flops back against the pillow and sighs, though it isn’t a sigh of resignation. I haven’t won.

The fight is just over. The story is over.

He smiles his faint smile. The one I like the best. The one I think he’d do whether he was sick or not. It’s the kind of smile he’s made up of – such small slight pleasures. He’s the kind of man, I think, who would allow himself one sweet per day, from a swimming pool full of them.

I don’t know why that thought – and perhaps other thoughts, too – makes me get up and leave the room, in case he sees me crying tears I try too hard to hold on to.

He doesn’t get a chance to change the ending, though I don’t think he would have even if he could. The next day I go to work and people are bustling, busy. Marisa grabs my arm and shakes me. ‘Aren’t you excited?’ she asks, and dread fills me in all the places excitement should be. I know what her demands for excitement mean.

They’ve found a heart for him. I guess the Sultan didn’t burn it to ash, after all.

Of course I am called for. He wants to see me before they take him to surgery. But I’m not like his heroine, stoic
when trapped in her little waiting room. I’ll probably faint. I’m the story in reverse – melodramatic in the times it was not, cool and calm when I probably should have been melodramatic.

I want to ask him a million things when I see him about to be wheeled down to his probable death. They only occur to me now and chief amongst them is this:
why? Why did you spend so much of the little time you had telling me all those stories? Why? Oh, it’s too late now, Joe. Why?

He squeezes my hand, expression frankly, bleakly terrified. He’s shaking when he tugs me down to him, so close that I can feel that similarly shaking breath against my cheek.

I’m lucky, I suppose. He answers my question without me having to ask.

‘They were all about you, Edie,’ he says. ‘They were all for you.’

I’ll pretend I don’t know he’s leaving today. I’ve pretended a hundred million times that he’s left before now. I’m glad he’s OK – of course I am. It’s what I hoped for more than anything, even when it meant I couldn’t do my job properly. But I do do my job properly. And then I go home, and sleep on my lonely narrow bed, and get up and have a breakfast for one, a dinner for one, a supper for one.

Things are not like they are in stories. I could never be any of those things. I’m not beautiful enough to set someone alight at first kiss, not interesting enough to hold their attention, not clever enough to think of beautiful stories that I’d like to hear until the end of time.

I’ll pretend I don’t want to hear them ever again.

And then I see him quite by accident. I thought he’d already gone, but Marisa said he waited for me to come down when I was called for. He’s called for me many times, but I always thought:
what if I get there, and something goes wrong with him in between and then he’s not OK any more?
Maybe this is
Grey’s Anatomy.
It’s only fiction when you least want it to be.

Or what if I get there and he’s different now? I imagined the whole thing. It was all just nonsense, brought on by loneliness and no one coming to visit and unprofessionalism and death. And a heart hidden away for ever in the Mountains of Time.

He doesn’t need me any more. There are lots of girls who’d love to hear him tell them stories.

But then I see him. He’s waiting outside, leant against the railings around the hospital. He looks odd in normal clothes, hair brushed. Shaved and neat and tidy. Sad-looking, even though he should be happy.

Joe, I think. Joe. Are you just waiting for me to take that chance?

How can you ever know if someone is? Just waiting, I mean.

I guess the only way you can know is if you do what I’m going to do next. It’ll cost me, I know. It’s costing me even before I start on the journey. I want to lie down and give in right now but what sort of self-respecting heroine would do that?

I can’t do that. Not when his heart is still hidden in the Mountains of Time.

And so instead I travel a thousand miles on bare feet through freezing winds and snow, and brave the chasm of dread and the pits of despair, and the acid falls of the mountain passes and the rocks made of glass as sheer as a skyscraper.

And risk it all, just for you.

WHEN WE WERE
young, he arrested us. Or not arrested, exactly. Warned us. That’s what he did. Though I still remember the metal clinking around my wrists.

I think about that metal a lot. I think about it now as I stare at the new sheriff, as coldly as I can. Who is this new sheriff really? Nobody, in fact. He doesn’t wear those mirrored aviator sunglasses that Wade used to do, the ones that made him as impassive as a monolith. He doesn’t have Wade’s granite jaw and gun-metal voice.

His voice has a reedy quality underneath it. He whines at me. He tells me to put that ‘cigarette’ out, but there’s just not enough authority behind his wavering tone and his doe eyes.

I doubt he’s going to get the handcuffs out. What am I going to masturbate over tonight, with my face pressed into the mattress and my hands linked behind my back? It’s tough going when I can’t use my fingers, but I manage. You’ve got to work with whatever gets thrown at you.

‘You’re in big trouble, Starla,’ he says, and for a moment I do wonder if he’s going to do something. Frisk me, force me up against this graffiti-ed wall behind the bus shelter. Kick my legs apart.

But no, it’s a boring no. He just lectures me, and then tells me he’s going to give me an official warning. Next time he catches me smoking pot it will be jail, he threatens. Seriously, I’m quaking.

It’s a shame, really, that he’s so handsome. What a goddamned waste.

I think it’s the waste I’m considering when he catches me next. Same place, same offence, only he’s now purple with rage. I’ve kicked it up a notch with my blatant disregard for his authority. I’m pushing him to do me wrong.

And by do me wrong I don’t mean take me in. That’s the right thing to do, correct? He should take me in, and lock me up, and never let me see the light of day again. I’m a bad girl, a nasty piece of work, and I deserve whatever is coming to me.

I wonder if I can make something come to me.

‘Didn’t I tell you just yesterday, Starla?’ he begins. He sounds ma-ad. If I was younger and my mom was still alive, he’d definitely be calling her: ‘Starla’s going off the rails, Mrs Kent. You should really see to her, and set her straight.’