Liquid & Light

Evening, passion, hunger.

Night, silence, warmth, stillness, love.

Morning and day, love and time, pleasure and memory. We go to our jobs having shared evening and night and croissants, alternated in the bathroom and fretted over our watches, sworn at public transport, remembered each other's eyes and breath, day-dreamed of the night.

Evening, light, hunger. On the top deck of a bus I notice a curious thing on the curved surface of a dark blue car: a broad geometric splash of lime-green light and a necklace of crimson burning above it, immobile as stars. Looking into this perspectiveless pool denies all sense of distance; at times the strange abstract picture is just quenched; it takes on the evening-blackness of the air. Then a car goes by. Feeling your warm leg pressed into mine and your hand resting with knowing force against my midriff, through clothing, where we dare not touch more, innocent among the watchers, I gaze down at the car in the street and finally work out that I am seeing the reflection of lights from the theatre on the other side: bright yellowish panels with the names of coming attractions, and over it a semicircle of scarlet neon. Yet compressed into the curving dark blue panel across the way they are darkened and stripped of context, becoming a liquid of light, shadowed not as other vehicles pass but a second before, because of the angle I'm watching, rendering the eclipse timeless and uprooted. I want you to see my floating light.

We got off at the restaurant, in Upper Street just past the Screen on the Green, a restaurant both of us had been in once before, with other, separate loves. Now together. Us. We are Sally and Imogen, they are, they are Imogen and Sally. Look at them! Look, turn your heads, as they tried to hide their secret, seem unconcerned, make it seem the night before and the coming night were nothing but your dream. See, we hold ourselves apart. They sit at opposite sides of the table, look around. Perhaps they'll meet someone they know? It's only a friendly chat, girls do it all the time, a bite to eat, a few friendly smiles, and inside a voracious thirst for honeydew and orgasm and stillness.

"Apparently the chicken's really good here," Sally said as she examined her menu. "Terry had some and said it was the best. But that was six mon-, nine months ago, and it's changed hands since. Do you like chicken?"

"White meat, and breasts."

"I want something to drink. Something sweet and refreshing and warm, some juice or nectar from -- Oh, no, sorry, I don't think we are yet. Couple more minutes? Thanks."

"Nice murals they've got. Behind you. Remind me a bit of Chagall. You were saying."

"Mm. I like Chagall. Those delicious blues up in the -- I want your pussy so badly, I can still taste you, I want to see how far up my tongue can reach, god you tasted delicious, how do you do it? Thinking about it makes me dizzy. Do you think anyone would notice if I slipped under the table and pulled your clothes off with my teeth?"

"Waiter would. Shtumm. Um, I think I'd like the Dover sole, please. Oh, what do you -- Oh, right, just chips would be fine," said Imogen.

"Chicken and jacket potato please. And could we have a bottle of the Chilean white? Thank you. Mm, Chagall. Would you like to go the Gallery on the weekend? I haven't been for months. We could go there or we could go home and fuck like bunnies all day. Find a nice continental delicatessen and get a selection of salamis to ram up each other."

"Oh god, oh god. Sally. Please don't. Please don't. Not here. Can we talk about something else? I'm wet and I need to change or have your face do... oh why, Sally, why us?"

"Lucky."

"Just lucky. Serendipity, chance, right place. Those cats. Did we work out what they were?"

"No. We agreed they were too hairy for Burmese, and too Burmese-coloured to be Persian. So beautiful, so beautiful. Two pussies sitting patiently on the windowsill waiting for someone to notice them and let them in. How long had they sat there? So patient, so soft, so gentle."

"You said that. 'Two pussies together,' you said."

"It wasn't even meant to be..."

"But as soon as you said it we both laughed. Didn't we?"

"Oh Imogen, we weren't even going to the same pub. We could have just passed."

"But as soon as you said that, I knew. As soon as you blushed and looked... conscious... of what you'd said, I knew. That you could. And already I was looking at you... differently."

"I felt your gaze. I felt it like a thing, a stroke. Exploring. My face, my clothes and shoulders. You were afraid to stroke my breasts. Do you remember?"

"I couldn't look there, I had to keep to your face, your hair, your bag, away from the body. I was stirring as soon I looked out you. I thought, I bet her hair's fabulous in the light."

"It's rubbish hair. It's --"

"It's what I thought, soft and fair, different shades, some of it's as brown as your pussy, that faint brown, some of it glows like corn. Not like gold, it's not metallic, not dyed, it's an oaty lustre."

"Lust..."

"Lips. Because you were talking I could watch your lips. How pretty. I thought how perfectly formed they were, how they moved just right, turned up... humorously. Or; winsomely. An old-fashioned look, somehow. Winsome, is what you are. Sally. My Sally."

"Dark, my Imogen. You are beautiful, sultry --"

Imogen snorted in laughing denial and poured another glass, then taking Sally's hand lightly as she poured her one. She could only stay that way a short time, a few instants of loving contact amid the impersonal space, then withdrawn, then friends. "So I thought my friends weren't expecting me this early anyway so I'd go your way, into the Ploughman. I'd probably see someone I knew there even if I couldn't talk to you. I'd watch you... those bare arms, perfect and plump and glistening in the starlight... examine the shape of your breasts and your tum, from a few tables away."

"How could I not talk to you? God you were so beautiful in the moonlight. A horse chestnut behind, just framing your hair as if the leaves were all tiaras. Your body was straighter than its trunk. I compared them. And when I looked I got wet. My cunt got wet after we'd been talking a minute, half a minute, just seeing you in front of a tree and comparing you. Gnarled wood, against warm, hot yielding flesh. I imagined the bark and the wet leaves on one, after the rain had come down. The fresh smell. And I imagined your pussy. I knew it would have the rich musky, earthy scent... like a truffle or something. Like a chocolate. Like a rum chocolate. That's what your pussy is like."

"Absurd creature!" Imogen laughed, throwing back her head. Two creases were exposed in her neck, where the head had weighed it down, distant kin to the stretch marks in her thighs, and like them surrounded by paler smoothness with the blue tinge of veinlets under the surface, marking a thin and transparent skin made for tongue and teeth and nose to ruffle. "My pussy is nothing like chocolate or rum. And nor is yours, yours is sweet and tart and heady but --"

"It is to me. It feels... it makes me, you make me intoxicated like that. Because you're dark and rich like... I thought your hair would make me faint. Smelling it down there, with all your scent, just burying my no-- my tongue and my nose, and my tongue and..."

"When did we know we would fuck?"

"First five minutes?"

"Easy. Three minutes, two. Less. As soon as we got into the light and could look at each other properly. And the way you had your arm on my shoulder. I said to myself, she's bi. I know she is. We've scored. All I have to do is let her know I am and the talk and the evening can do their--"

"--their magic. I felt so dorky in a tee-shirt when you were wearing that outfit."

"I loved the effect. I wanted to rip it off you and suck your tits. I wan--"

"The magic of Chagall is in the way he groups his figures, I think, not just in the colours. The colours are beautiful but it's the composition that draws you back to him. Don't you think? Oh thank you. Oh that looks good."

"Thanks. Um, can we have another bottle, please, as you're here? We're a couple of old lushes so this one won't take us long. Thank you, you're sweet... Fuck, hom much did he hear?"

"Nothing. I saw him coming. You were ripping my tee-shirt off and biting my tits. It hurt actually. It was wonderful. I've never enjoyed being hurt so much."

"You into... um, S&M, at all? Or... things?"

"Never have been. Want to try it with you. If that's okay?"

Imogen gulped hard. "Love to," she whispered. The fact that they had only just begun registered anew. Not last night the memory, discovery, not tonight the anticipation, but weeks of learning, perhaps months of becoming comfortable, of deep discoveries, of overwhelming bliss, of pain: the beautiful pain of biting that Sally had just offered, and anal explorations and whipping; the crushing pain of arguments and break-up as any long relationship would go through, of finding they were less than perfect, of seeing cruel human faults in her angel, and in guilt at causing them through her own neglect and selfishness. All this flashed upon silent Imogen in the chatter of the restaurant.

"Clitoris," Sally whispered.

"I'm sorry?"

"Attracting your attention. I'm going to love sucking on your clitoris tonight. Ripping off your crimson scarf, beautiful though it is. You'll need it because I'm going to leave love-bites all over your neck, big visible ones. And on your breasts. Your boobs will be a mass of red toothmarks. Would you like that, Imogen, dear, darling? Biting like you bit me? Marks all over you?"

"Oh god yes."

"You couldn't have another lover. Not for weeks."

"I only want you. White meat. And breasts."

"And wine, sweet wine. Plenty of drinking and plenty of eating tonight. Cheers."

"Bottoms up."