Degrees of Intimacy Ch. 07

New York

Marianne wasn't the slimmest woman Gareth had ever made love with. In fact, as she unclasped her bra to let her heavy bosom fall loose, Gareth studied her full stomach with some hesitation. She wasn't fat exactly, not even plump, but by no measurement could she be described as slim.

It wasn't as if Gareth could complain. Despite those few hours a week he found to attend the gym, he had definitely lost the slim figure he still sometimes imagined was just a temporary loss. He pulled down his boxers. His penis, not yet fully erect, never would be unless he lost his self-consciousness about the stomach that had forced him to accept a fifty inch waist-size on his discarded suit trousers.

Outside the window, Gareth could hear the roar of the Manhattan traffic some twenty or so stories below. He fancied he could hear more sirens than usual, but this caused him no concern. New York was a busy city. There was always something happening somewhere or other. It was best never to worry too much about it.

After the last month or so since touching down at JFK, he had only gradually got back into stride. The long meetings, the overflowing mailbox, the documents he had to prepare only now seemed the natural routine of his working life. Besides the projects whose looming deadlines justified his handsome salary, and generous annual bonus, there was at least one project that he had at last brought to closure. And this was, of course, his pursuit of Marianne.

Finally, those evenings in the bar after work, sitting with her and other colleagues, and those sometimes not especially subtle hints, had come to this. Something he was sure justified making up the excuse of having to take one of his estranged wife's daughters to the clinic and thereby take the Tuesday morning off. But, of course, instead of driving across the Brooklyn Bridge, he steered his BMW over to the Upper East Side to fulfil his rendezvous with Marianne.

Marianne lay down on her back on the huge bed she normally shared with her husband. She supported her back on her shoulders. Her breasts flopped down onto her belly. Her dyed-blonde hair was immaculate as always. Her round face was the only part of her in any sense dressed with light purple lipstick, subtly applied highlighter, and the equally subtle application of mascara around her wide blue eyes.

Those eyes were so fucking sexy Gareth reflected, his penis stirring in joyful anticipation, especially now that Marianne was so obviously looking forward to unrestrained sex.

Gareth had a routine he followed with any new conquest. He would start at the feet and work his way, inch by inch, kiss by kiss, up the length of the leg. Although this progress was slow and steady, he knew that by the time he reached Marianne's vagina, it would be moist and welcoming.

As his puckering mouth ascended the calves, gently sucked and licked the round knees, and then slobbered along the expanse of thigh, he could hear that familiar chorus of gasps as Marianne became increasingly aroused. He gazed up at her face, his nose now only inches away from the full, untrimmed mass of her light brown pubic hair. She arched her head back, her hair falling back onto the pillow, while from the corner of his eye he could see a picture of Marianne and her husband smiling contentedly from a photograph by the bedside table lamp.

This was the first time Gareth had ever seen an image of Simon. There really wasn't the time to study it properly. Far more urgent business was on hand. Just as Gareth normally would, Simon was at this moment almost certainly wearing an expensive suit in keeping with the luxury of his apartment and his status in the Lower Manhattan brokerage where he worked. In the photograph he was wearing a polo shirt and slacks, his confident assured smile matching that of his wife around whose waist he wrapped a bare arm.

One thing Gareth was certain of, although he was spared the embarrassment of actually seeing it in the photograph, was that unlike him, Simon would have a circumcised penis. That much was obvious from the surname he shared with his wife.

Marianne's vagina had a rich, welcoming smell when Gareth buried his nose into it, his hands supporting his weight on her outstretched thighs. The taste was equally arousing as his tongue guided itself around the folds and creases of her vulva. His tongue discovered her clitoris before his eyes did, a hard knob of arousal buried under the most complicated of all her complex contours. His forefinger pushed into the vagina, easily engulfed by its moistness. One by one, two, three and then four fingers, thrust backwards and forwards, and orchestrated a series of gasps from Marianne above.

The progress of Gareth's mouth from the vagina, over the navel, around the crenulations of her nipples and finally to her mouth and its expertly capped teeth was just as leisurely and steady as his earlier progress from the ankle. All the while, he kept a finger or two inside the warm cavern of her vagina, twitching her clitoris and pushing his fingers back and forth. Marianne gasped and panted with growing passion, her polished fingernails digging into Gareth's broad back. And just as Marianne was clearly ready for action, so too was Gareth, his penis throbbing and pulsing and ready for the plunge.

At last, he was inside, and the two of them thrust their crotches up against each other in a steadily growing curve of passion, one that after many partners and many similar encounters, Gareth knew he could delay from the final moment of release for many minutes more.

And then the phone rang.

"Shit!" Marianne cried. "Who the fuck can that be?"

"Ignore it!" hissed Gareth.

Whatever it was, there was more urgent business to attend to.

The phone rang all six times and then Gareth heard Marianne's voice crackle from the answer-phone explaining that she and Simon were not able to take the call at the moment, but if the caller left a number...

And then her voice stopped abruptly as the respondent hung up.

Despite the interruption, Gareth was too expert to let this deflate his prowess and within a minute, he and Marianne were fucking again, more energetically than ever. Gareth now learnt something about Marianne he would never have suspected and that was the extent of her vocal passion. Her gasps became shrieks that ascended in volume and pitch with each of Gareth's thrusts.

She was a screamer.

It was a good thing, after all, that they had arranged to meet in Marianne's apartment rather than retreat back to the office after a glass or two of wine, as Gareth once contemplated.

Then Gareth heard another sound, quite piercing but definitely melodic. It wasn't from outside, though he was conscious of the echoes of sirens and automobile horns rising from the streets below. Rather noisier than below his own apartment, that was for sure. And it was too high-pitched to be the sound of a stereo blasting from an adjoining apartment.

"Fuck!" Marianne gasped, stretching her arm over to the bedside table, Gareth's penis still deep inside her. "Now it's the cell phone. I should've just turned it off!"

"Just ignore it!" Gareth snarled.

He was just about losing patience with these interruptions.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Marianne cried agitatedly. "Get your dick out of me! It's fucking Simon!"

Gareth hated doing that. It was almost physically painful to snatch his penis out from where it was so fully embedded, his erection as stiff as it could ever be. Clearly, it wasn't that pleasant for Marianne either, who gasped with a painful grimace, snatched the cell phone from the table, and pressed it to her ear.

Gareth sat back on the mattress, cross-legged, his penis twitching in attendance, while Marianne sat on the side of the bed nodding her head and occasionally shaking it, making occasional monosyllabic utterances.

"So, you'll be back early then!" she confirmed, just before turning off the cell phone and replacing it on the table.

"Your husband's coming home, is he?" Gareth asked, wondering whether he should now just leave. He had, after all, achieved almost everything he'd intended to do. Not absolutely everything, of course, but almost.

"He doesn't know," said Marianne, looking startled. "He doesn't really know what's happening. There's been a kind of explosion in the other tower. Not the one he works in, but the North Tower. No one knows what's happened. Apparently there's smoke coming out of it. He's been told to stay at his desk. They think it's the best place to stay. Apparently, it's safer than outside if there's something like that explosion they had a few years ago in the underground car park."

"So, he'll be staying at work then?" wondered Gareth hopefully.

"Who knows," Marianne remarked. "No one knows what to do. Simon's been phoning emergency services for advice, but they're always engaged. The management advise staying at their desks. After all, what's happened in the other tower can't be happening in both of them, can it?"

"I guess not!"

Marianne put the cell phone down and bit her lip. She looked up at Gareth and noticed his erect penis protruding almost incongruously between his crossed knees.

She giggled.

"Well, he won't be back for an hour or so, even if they do evacuate the building," she remarked. "What can we do while we're waiting?"

"I know exactly what I want to do!" said Gareth determinedly, with a wicked smile on his face.

Re-entry was not as smooth as had been the original entry. Marianne was obviously quite tense, though there was enough residual moistness for the feat to be achieved with no pain to either of them. He thrust back and forth, only gradually building up the rhythm, mindful of what it was sometimes like when the fucking was interrupted in mid-stroke and remembering too well the times it had killed all the passion.

Then Marianne said, whilst not responding at all with her body as Gareth had hoped, "It'll be on the box, won't it?"

"What?" Gareth answered, barely able to disguise his annoyance.

"Something like that, an explosion in the World Trade Center, it'll be on television, won't it?"

"Yeah, I guess so!"

"Then let's turn on the TV," Marianne said.

Gareth pretended not to hear her. His rhythm was beginning to take precedence over anything else.

"Look! Fucking get off me, will you!" said Marianne with annoyance. "We're putting on the fucking box whatever you fucking think!"

"Oh! Okay," said Gareth reluctantly, his penis popping out with a slight eructation, just about audible over the distant traffic noise.

The two of them then sat naked on the side of the bed. Marianne located the remote control and aimed it at the television.

For a moment, they looked with disbelief at the picture on the screen which was of a huge tower with smoke billowing out just two-thirds the way from the bottom.

"It's not a science fiction movie, is it?" asked Marianne in an urgent whisper. "It's the real fucking deal, isn't it?"

Gareth nodded. This couldn't be happening! And not now! This was America in the fucking twenty-first century. This was the real world. Whatever was happening and being televised couldn't be real, could it?

But, of course, it was.

"Shit! This is serious!" said Gareth, as the unsteady lens of the television cameras were intercut with images of newsreaders and a stream of data tickertaped under the screen. Flight 11. 8:48 a.m. Details still awaiting. The North Tower.

"This isn't real!" Marianne exclaimed. "Those poor people. And what's that? Whatis that?"

Gareth felt a sudden very sick feeling grip his stomach as the image replayed itself in his mind. It was someone falling out of the window. Or if not a person, exactly what a person would look like if it plummeted from the window of a 110-storey building.

"I need a piss," Gareth announced.

He stood up and strode across the pinewood floor towards the en-suite bathroom, his head turning back with horror, half-hoping and half-fearing that he might see more of that horrific scene. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, not really sure if he wanted to pee at all, but certain that he needed some space to himself. Did he feel like puking? There was a very real sickness in his gut, but it wasn't translating into anything more material.

He gazed at his reflection. He was a good-looking guy. He knew that. His success rate was evidence enough of that. The girls he'd picked up and fucked. Even that dyke chick in the South London pub. Not the first dyke he'd notched up, but one worth the effort. But what should he do now? What he wanted to do was find a decent excuse and split. He'd done what he'd come to do, after all. Now, he could jump back into the BMW and drive back across town. He felt sorry for Marianne, of course, but her husband would be back soon. And Gareth almost envied him the story he had to tell his wife.

And then he heard a shriek from the adjacent room. A shriek that chilled him in a way he'd never imagined one could. Something that all those horror movies he'd watched had never really prepared him for. It burst out suddenly and violently, rose high and then choked on itself before returning with gulps. In Gareth's imagination, it was as if Marianne had just been attacked by a figure in an almost comical mask, but he knew it was something quite different and something almost certainly associated with whatever it was that was happening downtown.

He dashed out of the bathroom, his pretence of needing a piss totally forgotten, to see Marianne choking on her tears as she watched the television, its volume raised to an entirely unnatural volume.

"The cunts! The fucking cunts! The motherfuckers!" Marianne gasped.

"What? What?"

"The South... The South Tower... Another..."

Gareth had never known an experience like this before. At the back of his mind, he'd assumed that a plane hitting a sky-scraper in Manhattan could only be an unfortunate accident. Horrible. Unfortunate. But understandable. Things like that could happen. It had happened to the Empire State Building, after all. But two planes! Whatever it was, it couldn't be an accident!

There was no pretence at concern that drove Gareth to put his arm around the naked, sobbing, huddled Marianne as he watched the screen with horror that was so great he wondered if it was humanly possible for Marianne to feel any worse. The newsreaders and tickertape told the same story. Another plane. This time filmed. Again and again, he saw the image replayed by the television studio of a huge Boeing 747, Flight 175 as he later discovered, fly straight into the North Tower, the very one where the cuckolded Simon was working, but fortunately not on the 90^th floor.

"I've got to phone Simon!" said Marianne, suddenly sobering up. "Check that he's all right!"

Gareth nodded. This clearly took precedence over anything else. He felt suddenly conscious of his nakedness and that of Marianne, but he was unable to do anything quite as trivial as put clothes back on. He sat on the bed, his knuckles pushed against his teeth, while the billowing clouds of black smoke emerged from the recently hit building, mingling with those of the North Tower.

"Shit! Shit! Shit" he murmured again and again. Was there nothing more profound you could say when things like this happened?

"It's engaged!" shrieked Marianne, throwing her cell phone violently onto the mattress. "It's fucking engaged! Fuck! Fuck!"

And then she once again shrieked out loud, a piercing cry that added to Gareth's misery and also to his embarrassment. His clothes? Should he?

And then the cell phone rang again. Marianne snatched it up and held it to her ear. Gareth had enough presence of mind, and this somehow steadied his own shattered nerves, to lower the volume of the television, while Marianne nodded her head and gasped "Yes! Yes! Of course!" at regular intervals.

"I love you!" she said suddenly.

What?

"I do! I love you, Simon! Please please please... just get home..."

And then Marianne sat there, reluctant to put the cell phone down, although Gareth sensed the call had finished. She lowered it slowly towards her lap and gazed at it as if hypnotised, her face a crumpled mess of misery, her mascara just a smudge of tears.

"He's on the 105^th floor. They don't know what to do. There's smoke everywhere. They're heading to the roof. It's the only place to go."

"Surely a helicopter will pick them up."

"It must do! It must!"

What do you do in times like this? Gareth knew how to play women when it came to seduction, but comforting them? What do you do? He put a reassuring arm around Marianne's bare shoulders. Instinctively she nuzzled close to him, her eyes focused on the television and its images of firefighters and billowing black smoke.

And then she abruptly pushed him off with enough violence that it bruised his chest.

"Just keep your fucking hands off me, you bastard!" she shrieked before exploding into another torrent of tears.

Oh shit! Now what?

Marianne punched furiously at the cell phone buttons.

"What's happening? Are you all right?" she yelled hysterically into the mouthpiece.

Marianne returned to a conversation that Gareth desperately pretended not to hear while his attention was split between the relative comfort of newsreaders and the gasps of disjointed interjections from Marianne. She put the cell phone down.

"It's not easy getting up the stairs. It's real crowded. Simon's had to get off the phone to help someone from a lower floor who's burnt. He says it's horrible. Her skin's boiling or something. It's a fucking nightmare. Oh! Ohh! Iso want to talk to Simon!"

It was no use. Gareth had to return to the bathroom. He staggered across the room, hesitated by the pile of clothes and slipped on his boxers, before taking them off again in the bathroom where he stood in front of the latrine. From the bedroom he could hear Marianne's agonised cries while he stood, wobbling, above the sight of a latrine into which his penis was stubbornly refusing to relieve itself.

And then he remembered that image of the falling body. In his mind's eye he imagined it tumbling, rolling and flailing as it bounced against the unforgiving vertical hardness of the tower to eventually land on the ground below.

He choked and a small stream of spew ejected itself from his chest and drooled down his chin.

He choked a bit more, kneeling on the ground in front of the toilet bowl, coughing up, with no result, as the vivid image in his mind recurred of a splattered human body, perhaps like a fly on his car windscreen, hitting the ground surrounded by fire engines.

At last he staggered back, carefully tugging his boxers back on. The task of dressing himself when he returned distracted his eyes from looking at Marianne. When clothed he finally did so, to see her sitting in her dressing gown, the cell phone against her ear, and the clear evidence on the white towelling that she too had relieved herself of the contents of her stomach.

"I love you! I love you!" she repeated over and over again while her eyes focused on the billowing smoke on the television screen.

And then, suddenly, it happened.

Marianne and Gareth looked at the television with the same horror as, in what seemed like slow motion, the North Tower crumbled and collapsed, like a man punched in the chest. It was more like those controlled explosions that provided so much entertainment when a city block needed clearing, but this time not controlled at all. This time, the explosion took with it the lives of so many innocent men and women and so many brave firefighters whose dedication and courage had beamed out reassurance in these last few minutes.

Marianne lowered the cell phone. It had gone dead.