Conversations 04

I think she was a bit taken aback when I burst out laughing.

"So you saw how pale his scalp was from not having been in the sun, probably since birth. It must have been corpse white."

She chewed her lip as she thought, then closed her eyes. "Shit," she said, very softly.

I worked my phone for all of thirty seconds. "Is this dear departed Anthony?"

She looked at the photograph, showing a bald Anthony enjoying a drink at one of the outside bars, probably on someone else's tab. That was Anthony for you.

"Oh fuck," she said.

"Oh fuck indeed. So, is it really bullying if I question how you survived to be as old as you are without perhaps... I don't know, maybe forgetting to breathe in at times?"

"Oh fuck!" she said.

"What did you do, Jade?"

"I promise you, I just gave that fucking lying, toad-fucking, pig-faced weasel-fucker a hand job. I gave him a hand job. I can't believe I did that. I did that for a dying man. He fucking lied to me!"

"You're a super-model. Guys lie to you every day to try and get into your pants. You've managed to beat them off until now. Or have you?"

"They do lie to me. I know they do. I expect it. And I have never let another man touch me, or touched another man, or woman for that matter until that day on the slopes. How did I not see that one coming?"

"I think you probably did..."

"Please don't," she said very quietly. "No mean jokes. You have no idea how bad I feel."

"Yeah, actually I do. I have a wife who cheated on me. So I know exactly how shit you feel. Probably more actually. I mean, I didn't do anything. I'm the one who happily told you to leave me in hospital and go off and enjoy the day skiing, because I trusted you. And I'm being punished for that."

She was crying silently now, great fat tears rolling down her face as she stared at me with little hope on her face.

"What happened Jade?"

"I told you," she hiccoughed, her words coming out jumbled. "We struck up a conversation while waiting for help that might supposedly never arrive. He lied and lied and lied some more to me, working on my sympathy until when he asked, I gave him a hand job. That's all."

"I need to know what happened. Exactly what happened."

"I don't understand what you want. I jacked him off. He came on my hand, and a little bit on my face and in my hair. As I was cleaning up, the gondola started up again. Neither of us said another word until we got out at the station. Then he thanked me and walked away. What else do you need to know? How long his dick was? How fat? Whether I liked jacking him off more than I do with you? What? What do you want?"

"He came on you?"

"I told you, a few drops here and there. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did it. I'm sorry I didn't see him for the scumbag liar who would tell a stranger he was dying just to get a hand job. I'm sorry I was there. I'm sorry I didn't stay at the hospital with you. I'm sorry I wasn't in hospital instead of you. I'm sorry for everything, okay?"

"I'm even sorrier" I said. "I think when he came on you he changed your scent."

"What? Are you being metaphorical or metaphysical or something?"

"No I'm being literal. Your scent is ... different."

She stood up and came closer to me. "I've showered at least three times since it happened. I can shower again now if you want."

"Okay," I said weakly. The smell was coming off her in waves. It smelled like... I don't know... a dog dead a week, drowned in a cess pool. There was nothing metaphorical about it at all. It was literally eye-watering.

Ten minutes later, she came out of the shower wrapped in just a towel. My eyes told me how beautiful she was. My nose told me she was wrapped in the stench of a charnel pit.

She came closer, and I couldn't keep my face from showing it. She sniffed at herself. "I can't smell anything, but your nose is better than mine. I'll try again with a scrubbing brush."

The next time she appeared, she glowed pink from scrubbing at herself. "Don't touch me please," she said. "I think I overdid it a bit. I even scrubbed inside me with a toothbrush. Even though he was never anywhere near there. That really smarts."

Her distress was obvious. Nobody likes to think they smell so bad.

"Is it any better, honey?" she asked and put her hand on my arm. I couldn't help it. I threw up, the stench was so bad.

Six months later, we were divorced. I don't know what he did to Jade, but that cunt Anthony not only made her smell like the worst pits of hell, she passed it on and infected me as well. All I could smell was that disgusting miasma. I had to load menthol grease into my nose just to make it through the day.

Obviously my career was in the toilet. I was a nose that could only smell shit. The perfume companies don't really want their flagship scents to smell like a fishing boat with a full load that's been baking in the sun for a week.

I must admit, when Jade understood that whatever she had done had ruined my career permanently, she adjusted the divorce settlement so that I got half her earnings in perpetuity. I thanked her by phone. I couldn't stand anyone visiting the apartment. Even when I got my regular supply of groceries delivered, I had to ask them just to leave it in the passage for me to take in later.

Everything smelled of death gone bad. I couldn't sleep for it and the constant reek was giving me really bad headaches. When I managed a home visit by a doctor to get a prescription to handle sleeping and the pain in my head, I was overjoyed and slept 36 hours straight. I even pissed the bed I was so rock solid asleep.

Jade would phone now and again to see how I was doing. One night she phoned and very hesitantly told me she was going on a date. I started to laugh because I could hear someone copying my words of congratulations after they had taken a big pull of helium. That's always funny. I laughed until I fell over.

It turns out that although that lying, cheating cunt Anthony never had cancer, I did. A small tumour in my brain pressing on the wrong part -- phantosmia it's called. Phantom smells. That stupid bitch and her psychopath pup had jolted it into action. Maybe that's not a bad thing. If it hadn't been discovered when it was, it might have grown into something lethal -- something that couldn't have been cut out. Although then I might still have had a wife.

When I came around, to my surprise, Jade was seated next to my bed. It turned out that my reaction to her date announcement had been very surprising, what with speaking like a cartoon character and all. My subsequent silence as she listened to me grunt and groan in pain had apparently been worrying enough for her to cancel her date and come over to check on me. When she got there I was out like a light but still moaning in pain.

That night they removed the tumour as well as my super power. I could never be a nose again.

Jade made a few noises about getting back together, but I knew I could never trust the cheating bitch ever again. Instead I came up with a plan to get a little revenge. I would use her for my pleasure and then cast her aside.

And that's what I did -- right after dear Anthony had a sad accident and accidentally skied right off the edge of a mountain in a snow storm one day. Nothing to do with me, I was nowhere near and can get alibis from at least four of the old gang I used to run with to prove I was having a quiet drink and a game of cards on -- when did it happen again? And if his body was found with my size footprint on his fat arse, that would be pure coincidence.

Back to my plan -- the one where I use her for pleasure and then cast her out into the wilderness. Jade and I would get together three or four times a week and have wild monkey sex. Then I would send her out into the night, almost every time. Except if we'd had a really long, tiring session and then it was only polite to let her rest the following day at my place. That only happened three or four times a week.

I even managed to talk her into investing in my secret scheme to use her face and fame to make me some money and leave her out in the cold. I put together a perfume using my memory of her scent and matched them to the necessary ingredients, again using memory rather than my nose. Then I, or rather we, as she was an investor, launched it with all the necessary fanfare.

The bloody plan backfired and we made a mint off of it. Now she's round at my place almost every day as we run the company we set up from the office there. At least the monkey sex has gone up to almost every night, although in return she insists I have to squire her to various functions to make sure she doesn't get taken for a complete fool again.

The ultimate damn insult though is that she never changed her name back to her maiden name after we divorced, so she is still Mrs Jade Hodges aka Jade Tyger, so everyone thinks we're married.

But I'm playing the long game here. I will take advantage of her all the way, having sex with her and working together with her and even going out or visiting friends or going on holiday with her.

One day, however, maybe in a decade or two, or maybe five, I will kick the cheating bitch to the kerb and laugh as I walk away.

That will teach her.