No Consequences Pt. 02

There were eight couples at the party including us and the openly married host and hostess, Bill and Peggy Schmidt. Everyone reacted to Kon as if they were all old friends... and to me like I was an odd curiosity, which made me feel they weren't accustomed to seeing Kon, or Rada as they called her, with a guy... I don't know if that was true, it just felt that way. And it felt like they were used to seeing Rada in yoga pants: they all glanced, who wouldn't, but I never saw any surprise in the eyes or a hushed comment, just what seemed like the odd knowing glance.

"You buy her underwear on the first date? The best I ever got was on my fourth and even then it was only after all kinds of hints."

I hate to say this but Peggy, the hostess, who seemed like a lively, pleasant woman, struck me on first sight as, and again, I hate to say it... trailer trash. She had that thin gaunt look with stringy blond hair and an over-the-top cheerfulness that suggested to me she was hiding something... like a lifetime of regrets. Ya, I'm a bit of a snob, I always have been and being with Rada wasn't doing my ego any favours — I consoled myself that I would probably never see any of these people again but, even so, it was awkward. And I tend to blush at the very moments I least want to. "It was an impulsive extravagance I thought she would appreciate."

"An impulsive extravagance or just replacing what you destroyed? And the shaving?"

I hesitated not believing I was having to live through this — she had saddled up to me grinning as if she was in on an in-joke. "She did that, I didn't."

"Because you made her," she challenged immediately.

I was going to argue the point until I remember who my interlocutor was. "Anything else?" I said, not hiding my irritation.

"Oh, don't be churlish, I'm just having a little fun. Do you really think of her as a stalker?"

I will not let myself be bullied. "Let's put it this way, I don't think I'd want her as an ex-girlfriend."

She laughed gustily at this, knowing what I meant. "Does that mean you're in it for the long haul?"

"It means we've just met and we're just getting to know each other — pre-pre-girlfriend."

The knowing grin was back, she could easily tell she had me way out of my comfort zone. "You don't strike me as a guy who would go to a party with a girl in yoga pants, am I right?"

"It proves my point. If she was my girlfriend she wouldn't."

She laughed. "But she can rock them so why shouldn't she — maybe only 1% of the population can — remember when the CEO of Lulu Lemon had to step away because he said, when there were complaints that his pants were stretching so tight they were translucent, that not every woman can wear them?"

She waited for my answer as if it was a serious question. "No."

She giggled. "Well he did and he couldn't have been more right."

Just to put her off a bit I pretended to look around her to glance at her ass. "Looks like you could wear them, too, why aren't you?"

"Are you kidding? Do I really want to advertise that I have no hips and no ass? No, I'd rather you had to guess."

"Well I wasn't speculating, I was trying to figure out what it is about me that encourages you to talk to me this way."

"Oh, don't be stuffy... she says you can be; she says you're way too old for 28 — she can't figure out if you're an old soul or just unsocialized — you spend too much time alone in front of your computer, or so she says." She hesitated, searching my eyes. "So, which do you think it is? Unsocialized or old soul?"

"I think that around you two it doesn't help to be mature."

She laughed so hard at this that everyone looked over at us. Then she gave me a dramatic shove, more of an 'Oh, you're such a kidder' than anything else, then she moved away and I was joined by an odd looking woman you might call elegant if it was in a different environment. Her opening line was, "Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh Mr Turnbull? Do you know what I'm referring to?"

"No," I said, as off-balance now as I had been moments before.

She laughed. "It's what an acquaintance said when he came across Edward Gibbon. Edward Gibbon! The greatest writer of all time, a great historian, too — The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire if you don't know. But it's his writing that I always return to; I just adore it — I read Gibbon like some people read the bible... it's always open on my bedside table, a half hour here, a half hour there... I've read him so much I write like him, that was always the plan — huge paragraphs, chock a block with disparate thoughts all supporting the one bold assertion. Love it, just love it — no one can understand me, of course, but that's OK, writing for me is a release, I'm not trying to entertain, not like you. And you do. Rada gave me your book — she's so proud of you. I started it out of duty but finished it out of pleasure. You're a wonderful talent, Jason and I'm not all that easy to please."

I thought I could actually feel her sincerity. "Thank you, that's kind of you to say."

"I've asked Kon to convince you to come to my book club. I'd love to show you off."

"Well, I'd certainly consider..."

"Nonsense, you're cringing at the very thought of it but you're going to come, she'll see to that: you have to get out a lot more, she's told me that and if her words can't motivate you, her yoga pants will, eh, Mr Turnbull?" She laughed, gripped my arm then moving on, leaving me to wonder if I hadn't joined that Star Wars cocktail party.

"So what's happening tonight?" I asked when we got in her car. "Are you staying over or are you going to flee again?"

"They liked you, I didn't think they would — I thought you'd be a little too stuffy for them but you were good — the drinking helped."

"You told Peggy everything that ever happened between us."

"Of course I did, she's my best friend."

"Does she tell you everything that happens between her and her husband?"

"Everything."

"Does he know that?"

"Probably, you've met her, you know what's she like, hardly one to keep things in."

"Ya, well, you seem to be like that, too."

She glanced over. "Ya, well, as I said, we're best friends... and we're lovers."

I had suspected she was the one so I didn't react. "Does he know that?"

"Of course he knows that, why do you think I wear these yoga pants over there — if he wants to fuck around, well, so can she."

"You're forgetting it was her idea..."

"And it's his kids that are stopping her from getting her end of the bargain."

"So you're sleeping with her just to get back at him?"

"That's kind of the way it started but we've moved on."

"To what?"

"To the fun of it — sex can be fun; who knew?"

"Even when you have to tie the guy up to have it?"

"Especially then, if I hadn't tied you up it would have been over in minutes and you'd never know even the little you do about me."

I ignored this truth. "Have you had sex with anyone else there?"

"No!" she exclaimed this as if she was outraged. "Who do you think I am? I've told you who I've had sex with, do you think I've been lying to you? I haven't; I don't lie. And I don't stalk someone when he's been out fucking his agent. I get seriously jealous then, like really, really jealous — it's what happens when you decide to care."

"And that's what you've done, decided to care?"

"You don't stalk if you don't."

"Are you staying over?"

"If you ever take a phone call while we're having sex you'll never see me again, ever — I know I don't own you, you can do as you please but you're going to respect me when I'm with you or you don't deserve to see me... any of me."

It never occurred to me this was the reason she avoided me — it said something about me that I didn't like. "I'm sorry, I really am... I told you that..."

"I know what you told me, it doesn't mean you rub my face in it."

"You're right, I'm sorry." And I was but I made a mental note: feisty, principled, absolutist, which I wrote on a scrap of paper the moment we got to my house. Then I got her a glass of wine and myself a beer. "Pick a subject," I said, stretching out on the sofa, relaxing, glad that she was here and anxious not to get off on the wrong foot.

She was in a chair opposite. She sipped looking at me, then she got up, came over and lightly lay against me with her head on my shoulder. "Everything seems like a competition with you." She left it at that for a long while then said, "I want some sleep, I can either do it here or go home, your choice."

The moment we got in bed she fell asleep while I lay staring into the blackness trying to imagine her turned loose on a page with all my other characters. I wasn't actually sure that with all her idiosyncrasies she was right for the part of Jennifer Carter but as I tried to envision her in a scenario all the other characters blurred out of focus.

She's wonderfully packaged, and fit — I'd call her robust... which made it all the more difficult to believe she could curl under the sheets into the configuration of a child. It was amazing. If it wasn't for the heat she was pumping out she could have been a pillow.

I kneed her in the ass. "It's 8 o'clock — why do you need 9 hours sleep?"

She straightened and turned over towards me, stretching her arms. "You think it's easy being a stalker?"

I could see an outline of the breasts beneath the t-shirt I lent her (reluctantly). "Ya, well this stalked has been waiting here for over an hour ready to be assaulted."

She gave me just a little gum. "That's sweet, we stalkers always like to be appreciated."

"I was thinking we should get that out of the way then go for a hike... if you're up to it."

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and yawned — I noticed all her long white teeth are unfilled. "I thought you only walk with your muse, never with we mortals."

"This would be a hike, a few hours... what do you say?"

"To the one, great, to the other you're going to have to wait a bit — I have to go home to get changed so, if I'm going home anyway, I'd like to have the other in my bed, I've never actually been laid there... it'd be great."

"By a man."

Gums. "By a man."

I tried arguing for a tussle in both beds but she wasn't budging so after a hasty breakfast we were driving downtown, heading for her place.

"Why a bug? Who drives a bug any more? How old is it?"

"We are what we drive, right? This is me, it fits me perfectly: no form, all function — it's 21 years old; I keep it in perfect running shape... like myself."

"You're hardly without form," I commented, wondering why I needed to.

"That's the way you see me... as a lay; it's not the way I think of myself," she glanced over at me with a lot of gum, "although I lay with me a lot, like a lot."

It took me a few seconds to get her double entendre. "Every day?"

"Pretty much if I have the time... and I usually make the time — it's what keeps me balanced. How often do you do it?"

"Few times a week... actually, no, probably not even that much, not when I'm concentrating on a story."

"Wuss."

I pulled out my phone, selected the app then dictated: 'She masturbates everyday, it's a priority, keeps her balanced. Drives a Volkswagen Bug because, quote, 'you are what you drive'; all function, no form — as if. It's spotlessly clean, not a wrapper to be seen.'

When I put the phone away she glanced over at me again, this time enquiringly, no gums. "As I told you I'm having trouble with my heroine and thinking you might make a great stand-in... thought I'd invest a few days figuring you out, see if works."

She didn't react to this: I thought she would. She said nothing and just drove further into the city until finally at a red light she turned to me. "You're a gifted writer, it's just that you have nothing to write about, no life experiences — you don't go anywhere; you don't seem to do anything; there are no people in your life — no friends. You got away with pulling everything from your imagination once but writing this book you hit a wall so it doesn't surprise me you'd use me as a character, I'm one of the few people you know and how well do you know me? Hardly at all."

This, of course, was absolutely true... I've butted up against my lack of depth in every sentence I've ever written but that doesn't mean I wanted to talk about it with her. I didn't, so I said nothing as we drove through the centre of the city then past the invisible line where the faint-of-heart dare not go. "There's a way around this part of town you know."

"We're almost there, another couple of blocks."

This section of town was worse than I'd imagined: derelict, dark, brooding, threatening; there were just a few stores with hand-painted signs between shuttered buildings. I checked to see if my door was locked and pretended I wasn't scared.

She parked the car in a garage beside a reasonably well-maintained house, having first gotten out to open the garage door.

"Aren't you scared living down here?" We were walking along a sidewalk that in places was almost rubble. And ya, she might have had a long jacket on but she was wearing fucking yoga pants.

"I was at first — I took marshall arts lessons: kicking, punching, that kind of thing. I always keep pepper spray in my purse and I always have my purse with me. But no, not any more. I've been living down here ever since I started working so people are pretty used to me and I'm used to them." She nodded and smiled at a man coming towards us.

"But why live here?" Then it occurred to me. "Is this where you're from? Do you live at home?"

She gave me some gum. "No. I choose to live here for a whole lot of reasons but basically because, like my car, this is me; you might like an antiseptic bungalow in the an antiseptic suburb... although I doubt you've given it a moment's thought. Me? I'd like to live in a forest and in this city this is as close to a forest as I can get."

She waved at some Asians through a store window partially darkened by a peeling dark sun screen then unlocked a door and led me up a long, steep, dark staircase at the top of which was another door she unlocked.

The room was big and bright with little colour. There was a bed in the far left corner, an old standalone wardrobe at the foot of the bed, a small dresser beyond that and a small table with a laptop on it by the only window... with outside bars on it. At the other end of the room, past two beanbag chairs, was a small kitchen in the corners only detectable as a kitchen by the sink and what I gathered was a small fridge and hotplate. The bathroom on the other side of the tiny kitchen table wasn't a room at all but just a toilet, sink and shower clustered in the open corner.

"You live here?" The place seemed clean and bright enough but it wasn't fit for the lowliest of students.

Gums. "This is home."

"Why?" I was beyond shock. "You're an accountant for fuck's sake, you make good money."

More gums. "But I won't always have to be an accountant. Anyway, I've got everything in here that you've got, except the mortgage."

"I don't have a mortgage and that's like saying... well, never mind what that's like saying. I don't get it."

"You don't have to get it." She went over and dropped down on the bed. The springs creaked like you would expect them to. "If you're not too turned off," she grinned, full gums.

I didn't budge. "Where did you work?"

She told me and when I asked she told me why she quit.

I was impressed but it still didn't add up. "All your clothes are in there?" I pointed to the small, thin wardrobe, a small, cheap chest of drawers was beside it.

"Yep," she nodded, knowing it didn't seem possible.

There was so little available space I had to ask. "So what did you wear to work?"

"Pretty much the same thing every day — I got teased about it at first but they got used to it."

I looked around. "Where do you do your laundry?"

She grinned. "There was a laundromat not far from work. I stripped into a dressing gown and did everything," she laughed, "they got used to that there, too."

This was a hard puzzle to put together; the pieces just didn't fit. But I knew that was because every one of my middle class sensibilities wouldn't allow me to understand. "What do you do down here? I mean, you can't really go outside can you?"

"There's sort of a coffeeshop-community centre down the street. I go there a lot, meet the people, hang out and help out when I'm needed — the coffee is foul though. In here I usually hang out there." She pointed to her desk.

"Doing what? Office stuff?"

"Never bring it home. No, I write."

This didn't really surprise me, everybody writes. "Write what?"

She lay down. "I'll tell you about it... after."

Stretched out on the bed like that with the sunlight streaming on her gave me a perfect view of her wonderfully formed mound pressing tight against the ultra-light fabric. I went over and sat down on the bed beside her, still a little shaken by it all. "I'm having a tough time with all of this."

She grinned full gums. "It shows."

I pulled out my phone again and dictated a version of what she had told me, what I had seen and my impressions, waiting all the time for her to interject something. She never did.

When I put my phone away she reached up and pulled me down. "Don't let me freak you out; I just look at things a little differently than you do... it's all good." She kissed me then wrestled me onto my back climbing on me her lips still against mine. Then she sat back. "This time let me feel like you care a little, OK?"

She smiled and began humping my thigh with a kind of dreamy look. I watched her for a bit then said, "So what? I'm the edge of the bed?"

She gave me full glistening gums. "I love this feeling... are you in a hurry?"

I had to remind myself that I was in this primarily for research. "I just can't see you up here alone... doesn't fit. Why?"

"It never feels like I'm alone." She continued to slowly grind herself into my thigh, her countenance still glowing with the pleasure obviously radiating through her body. Now she stopped and grinned. "I'll show you why later."

When I pulled her down and held her so tight the grinding had to stop something happened to me, a faint sense that my world of self-inspired piety was welcoming in her unique brand of asceticism, it was flowing into me like water seeping into sand, naturally, inevitably as if neither of us had any control; as if it was just a natural consequence of us being together.

It was thrilling and scary at the same time. And she was feeling it, too. When I hooked my thumb into the waistband of her pants and underwear she looked at me as if she was trying to understand a greater meaning. For some reason Konrada Remp and I were connecting, a two-way connection. When I peeled down her skin-tight pants she helped, solemnly, there was none of her usual cheerfulness, this seemed like a rite of passage of sorts, it was hard to figure out; since entering the room I had gone through a gamut of emotions: confusion, disgust, intrigue, admiration, now it was the wonder that I was letting myself go; I was letting myself become open to her.

When we had our clothes off and I was kneeling between her legs, fully conscious now that it was a person I would be entering, not just a body and when I slipped in and her arms came around squeezing me, the tightening connection shocked me: for the first time in my life the feeling that I would be giving was overriding my instinct to take. And for the first time I made love; I locked in an embraced and felt my body fuse with her's, yearn with her's; I felt her hot gasping breath on my cheek; her nails dig into my back and I heard my sounds drown out her's. When it arrived and I emptied my ecstasy in her she seemed almost to be nourished by it, to gain a second wind — she made me feel like she had just received a gift from me that she had always wanted.