Big Surprises

I hate thieves, they seem the most vile of criminals, cowardly, sneaking, taking, hurting, not caring. They're reptiles. Give me a living, breathing axe murderer any day, at least you know who you're dealing with.

"That's utterly stupid and you know it. Who did I hurt? No one. And I wasn't sneaking, I was doing my job. And cowardly? Bullshit. It took courage to do what I did. It takes courage to fight back against these fucking power mongers ..."

"So what do you do in that head of yours? What do you do when you're not obsessing about a lost breast; when you're not planning your next heist? I mean what do you do? Do you have any pleasant thoughts, some good cheer to pass on to your fellow man? Do you ever think about what to get Aunt Martha for her birthday or what charity to surprise with a munificent gift? Do you have a favourite football team you cheer for, a rock star you worship? Do you read, go to the theatre, go to movies? Do you day dream about things wrapped in wholesome goodness, things that are warm and cuddly? What actually goes on in that head of your's when you aren't either obsessing or scheming?"

"Fuck off."

I laughed. "What's your last name?"

"Bradley. Why?"

"I go to the post office some times. I want to put a name to the face on the wall, the one with the long string of number under the picture."

She harrumphed. "You wish."

"I fear."

"Well, don't. It's been 18 months and there hasn't been a peep. That money was no more than spillage to them ... it was destined to end up in some asshole's year-end bonus packet."

"Yes, it was."

It took her a moment. "Very funny. I don't feel like an asshole, I feel I was fighting back. I don't care what you think."

"Then why did you tell me?"

She hesitated. "Because ... " she never finished.

"Because why?"

She exploded. "Because, because for fuck's sake. I told you because I've told you everything else about my miserable fucking life, I told you because you've probed every part of my fucking body with your goddam fingers ... with your fucking tongue for fuck's sake. That means something to me. It means ..."

Tears. I hadn't planned on the 'fucking' tears. "Ok, OK, Jesus, what did you expect me to say? Well done?" I reached for her hand that only moments before had wiped away a tear and I tried to think of other things.

She is smart, she is more than happy to move on. Her big secret is out, she has weathered the storm. Now train timetables require our urgent attention.

But you don't quickly forget about something like that, particularly when you're side by side on a train with you thighs pressing hard against each other's. I was sipping cool white wine from a thermos she thoughtfully supplied; I was delightfully tired from the day's long walk and happy to have met an interesting collection of people, some of whom I might actually meet up with again. No, I was feeling pretty good about life here on the train ... except for the nagging fact that I was consorting with a criminal whom I had to admit I really didn't know very well. How much more is there to know?

"Not much. I'm a pretty boring person ..." she banged my thigh with hers, "or I was. I know now I don't have to be."

She slept for an hour with her head on my shoulder while I pondered the infinite mystery of her gender. I've never understood women. That's one of the reasons I've never had a true girlfriend. I like order and predictability; I abhor chaos and indecision. And that's what women mean to me: for me, they create chaos out of order and indecision out of predictability and this item, asleep beside me, is the very personification of that ... and yet I was fascinated, too ... nah, it was more than that ... I tried to think through what the last three days meant to me but I couldn't pin it down, couldn't settle on anything ... except that her criminal mind made her more interesting than less, more sexy than sobering, more exciting than ..."

"You have a hard-on," she whispered.

"I know."

"I do too in effect and my nipple is raking this t-shirt when you breath and it's starting to become a problem."

"So move."

"I don't want to move. My world's perfect right now. I feel like I've been entirely reborn; I feel I could float into the clouds. Do you know what's going to happen in a few days?"

"No."

"I do."

"What?"

"It's a secret and you've had enough of those for one day."

The secret is that I may well be falling in love with this woman, I don't want to, I really don't want to but it may well be happening.

"Are you particularly horny for a man? Or are you typical?"

She said this apropos of nothing. It took me a moment. "No, I only get horny for a woman."

She squeezed my erection. "You know what I mean."

I did and I didn't. "How should I know? I'm probably a typically horny man but how do I know?"

"How about me as a woman? What do you think?"

"I don't know you well enough, don't know any other woman well enough to compare, so I have no idea."

"How many women have you slept with?"

"Four."

"How do I stack up ... in horniness?"

"Come on, Beda, how would I know anything about your horniness? My own horniness right now is off the fucking charts ... and it can be painful."

"Ah, poor you; you know what I'm asking. How do I perform?"

"Can we not talk about this right now? Jeez, it's a long enough trip without it."

"Tell me and I'll drop it."

"You're fabulous."

"Really?"

"You turn me into an animal. It's disquieting."

She chuckled. "A lap dog." She chuckled again. "A bum sniffing lap dog with ..."

"A fellato-ing fellon."

Long silence. "That really bothers you, doesn't it? And that really bothers me. Why can't you look on it like, hey, she's rich, she's a big catch, one breast and all? Why not think, 'shit, if I play my cards right, this could be mine?'"

"Because it's illegal to make a living off the avails of a felon."

"That's the avail of a prostitute you dipshit and if there's one thing I can't be accused of it's that — although I can't make that guarantee going forward. Sex is just so much fun." She waited a moment before adding, with genuine curiosity, "Who knew?"

"About 7 billion and counting."

She banged my thigh again. "You calling me slow?"

"I'm calling you ridiculous. Poor me, I've only got one breast — the other one may be fabulous but I can't let anybody see it so I'll put on my double-thick pyjamas and hide at home all night. Brilliant."

"Hide at home at night to get degrees in Russian literature, medieval history and accounting."

"You've got a degree in Russian literature?"

"Yep."

"I'm impressed. Must come in really handy."

"Not in conversations like this." She chuckled then looked up at me. "Do you masturbate?"

This was the second of her non sequiturs in two minutes. It caught me off guard, I've never been asked that before, but my response was honest enough. "Sure, of course." Then I added. "But you probably don't. Right?"

Darkness flashed in her eyes. "Why would you say that?"

"Low self-esteem, poor body image ..."

"Doesn't mean I don't have a sex drive. I do, it's just that I don't turn myself on, I let other's do it."

"Porn?"

"You got a problem with porn?" She said this in a funny, crime thug, pugnacious kind of way

"None whatsoever, it's just that I wouldn't figure you ... for a consumer."

"About a third of pornsters are women."

She had me interested; this was kind of kinky. "So what kind of stuff turns you on?" She brought it up, she must want to talk about it.

"The honest stuff. I like to watch women and try to get into their heads, try to figure out why they're having sex in front of a camera, where they get that confidence, or is it recklessness? It fascinates me."

"So not the actual sex part, but more the motivation?"

"I've convinced myself that if I wasn't ... maimed, I'd go on Abby Winters. Have you ever been to that site?"

"I've seen a couple of the pics and videos, never gone on the site per se. But that's lesbians, isn't it?"

"It's women enjoying sex and they sure as hell look like they're enjoying it. That's what's so fascinating. They look like absolutely normal women yet they've put themselves out there ... I don't know why. For the money, I guess, but it couldn't just be for that, they must really want to be there. They make it look so natural ... like so much fun, that's what fascinates me. I didn't have any experience ... then," she elbowed me in the ribs, "so I couldn't imagine what they must have been thinking but right from the first time I saw one of those videos I knew I wanted to have the courage and the genuineness to be in the room with those women — it looks so honest, so natural and it looked like so much fun — and not just the sex part, the laughter after it's over when they're worn out; they're always in such fabulous moods — there on the bed or on the floor with their legs open and their pubic hair all tangled up. Jeez, it's just so fucking ..."

"Fabulous."

"Ya, fabulous, it really is."

"But you aren't gay."

"No, and they aren't either, most of them, I'd bet, that's another reason it's so fascinating: that doesn't seem to matter to them — they really get into it with each other, I don't know why, for the fun of it I guess, or for the sexual expression ..."

"For the money."

"Ya, but I'd bet the money isn't the motivating factor, it's an inducement for sure, but I think it's more than that, why else would women strip down and masturbate in front of a camera?"

"Masturbate?"

"Ya, the two major categories are girl-girl and solo."

I made an emphatic mental note to visit the site. "Are there men, too?"

"Not many."

"So, could you do it? Could you masturbate in front of a camera, make out with a woman?"

She seemed to always think long and hard before answering a question she found tough. "I've spent a long time thinking about those women, a long time. They're so liberated, so genuine, so sensible that I absolutely love them all, love their attitude. If I saw one of them on the street I'd go up to her and tell her how much I admire her, no doubt about it. So if I was whole would I do it?" She paused for a moment as if she was just going to leave it there. "I showed off my body a few times before the accident, I didn't care that I was going to get a reputation in school, didn't care a bit, even wanted it to happen. So, ya, for sure; I think I would. But now? No, I'm just way too sensitive about it."

"Ya, but I'd bet a lot of those women think their ass is too big or their tits are too small or they're too fat or whatever, but still they do it."

"Ya, you're right, that's part of the fascination, no doubt about it. Some of those women ... if they were me would say screw it and strip off their shirt — I know, and I love them for that. But it's not me."

"But you want it to be?"

"I'd like to get over my ... hang-up, ya, big time and with you I've taken a small step ..."

"Big step."

"Ya, well, maybe, but ya, I'd like to face my fear and get over this and maybe now, thanks to you, maybe I can, but I'm a long way from stepping in front of a camera."

We were both quietly pensive in the last half hour of the train ride. I thought she might be thinking about the 'what ifs' of her life, while I was grappling with 'the accident' and how it must have affected her. She had the looks, the body and, at least for a while, the inclination to be a highly sexual woman and then in a moment she got shut down. What did that leave behind? Were her psychic scars as indelible and permanent as her physical scars? No, certainly not, I knew her well enough to know that. But could she ever be truly liberated from the mental anguish of her disfigurement? I doubted it but I didn't know and I didn't think she did, either.

Still, it was fun to imagine her trying for that liberation ... with another woman ... on a bed, together, with an overhead camera.

By the time the train pulled in and we caught the underground it was past 9 and we were both really hungry so we stopped at an upscale curry house just a block from her flat.

Something strange happened soon after we sat down. When a young waiter came up to us and Beda said a simple 'Hi, how are you tonight?' he seemed to almost shrink back like a lowly subject in the presence of royalty, not a common sight to a colonial. It was weird.

She knew her way around an Indian menu far better than I so she ordered but when the guy left, seeming to bow deferentially, I asked her what that was all about. Her wide eyes showed real sadness. She had been coming to this restaurant regularly for over four years, always alone, always reading or working with her head down, never saying more than 'please may I have ... and thank you.' "The man was shocked to finally be acknowledged. How depressing is that?"

Very, but I could imagine it: that's the way she was on the first three days of the walk, too: remote, aloof and silent.

This little drama put a pall over the table. I was charged up for sex one moment (actually arguing against stopping for food in the first place) and now it seemed the furthest thing from my mind. Who am I really dealing with here? Is this a woman I could even like?

We tried to make conversation but it certainly wasn't flowing naturally. I made a couple of stabs at levity which didn't take, she filled in a few blanks in my near total ignorance of Indian food. So I was glad when it came and so was she because it changed the mood of the moment enough for her to furrow her brow and announce that she had something else she had to tell me; it looked serious: I didn't know if it was going to be about another missing body part or the admission of another crime.

Turns out Big Secret #3 was a crime in the making.

Yesterday, a couple of days after I, in effect, first met her, when she explained The Breast, it was to me at least, Big Secret #1. Earlier today she sprang on me Big Secret #2, the heist that embezzling 867,000 pounds from her employer. Now was the time for Big Secret #3 and she didn't ease into it, she just came right out with it like she did #2.

She had been having a hard time at her job, starting well over a year ago. She loved the work and was good at it but the culture had changed radically since she first started with the company and she had gradually started to feel unclean about the work, like she was shilling for a mafia-like organization that was shaking down its clients. She couldn't escape that feeling. Externally, everything in the company was about making the most for their clients; internally, everything was a lust for the year-end bonus ... while the complicit soldiers like her just followed orders — she felt like she was a lowly lieutenant taking orders to commit war crimes from battle-loving generals. She had made up her mind over a year ago to quit but, trouble was, she liked the work and the office had become her life. What else could she do?

But it nagged at her. Like the rest of her life, work had become depressing and, like the rest of her life, she didn't know what to do about it. Until a few months ago when she struck on Big Secret #3.

It would take time to slowly put together, but it was simple enough: she would quit the company and take the same golden parachute all the dons were getting, or a version of it.

I sat gobsmacked (as they say here) as she outlined what she proposed to do. It was just so fucking audacious.

Part of her job was to redirect funds to what was called the Compensation Packet, a fund from which all the bonuses were paid. It's was only a small part of her job but it was the inspiration for her plan which was to simply take 3 million pounds from the fund and send it to a foreign bank then march into the Vice-President's office, outline all the ways she thought the company was a criminal organization (while all the time hinting at evidence she had stored away), and abruptly quit right there and then. Simple. Here is the audacious part: they would discover the next week what she had done ... and, she was betting, they would do nothing about it! They would let her just walk away. She was sure of it, positive: "I've been a valuable employee there for 8 years, rising through the ranks to take a top job where I was trusted to deal with a lot of the more sensitive stuff. They wouldn't dare prosecute me, I know too much. Sure, none of what they did was absolutely illegal, but a lot of it was borderline when it wasn't downright smarmy. It's stuff that was never designed to see daylight. If they put me on trial my accusations wouldn't look good at a time when their reputation has already been thoroughly trashed by LIBOUR, credit default swap and all the rest. 3 million is chump change to these guys and prosecuting me would not be worth 3 million pounds of bad publicity. I'm betting they just move on."

My throat was dry, I felt like I hadn't even breathed in the 15 minutes it took her to tell her outrageous story. I reached for the second bottle of beer the waiter had brought and swallowed half of it. "What happens if you're wrong?"

"I'm not wrong. I know these guys."

"You'd go to jail. You'd do serious time in jail and they'd comb your bank accounts and find the money you've already stolen. How much money do you need, anyway? Jesus, are you nuts?"

Here is her point, she repeated it four times before I went to sleep that night, or tried to:

"It's not about the money, not even a little bit — I have all the money I need. It's about the principle. These guys do such a bang-up job they deserve these huge bonuses every year. Ya, well, I've been working there for 8 years and I deserve one, too, at least as much as some of those asshole. They get them, why not me? And if they aren't going to give it to me I'll take it. If I'm a criminal, so are they. It's the fucking principle of the thing. I've studied this every which way and I can't back down. I can't work there any more and I want to send them a message that I think they're all a bunch of crooks and there is no honour amount thieves. Prosecute me if you want but I won't go quietly." She smiled grimly. "And you know what? They won't. In fact, they'll respect me for it, that's the way they think."

"So you'd bet all your money and five years in jail on that?"

She took a drink and stared me down defiantly. "I would ... but it's not going to get to that. Trust me."

I guess that was my take-away: I didn't trust her, I realized that as I lay awake all night beside her, not wanting to touch her, not wanting anything to do with her, because I didn't trust her, in fact, I was a little bit afraid of her. Principle? Bullshit. I think she was an adrenaline junky who got her rocks off tapping through targets online just like a cat burglar gets off doing his thing on the second story. The girl is a thief. An attractive one with a great body and a libido that is just warming up, but there is no getting around it, the woman is a criminal.

I must have drifted off at some stage during the night because I was awakened in the morning suddenly, and unceremoniously. She was yelling something as the overhead lights flooded the room, something like, "Ok, Ok, your little temper tantrum's over," she was waving something at me. "It's time for Big Secret #4."

She put a small tray with two coffee mugs on the bedside table and sat down on the bed so close to me her hip pinched my hip.

I was barely awake but even so I couldn't miss her excitement.

"Are you conscious?" She poked me in the ribs; she had been sullen last night, pissed that I was pissed — but she was over it now. "Big Secret #4 is one you have to know about because it involves you, not the you of this moment, not the you of last night, the you of yesterday — the you who was really into me — the you of tomorrow."