Susie and King Reg

"What's with the cameras, Susie? Who are you—Chuck Berry?"

"No no no no no," she tutted as if I was the offender. Maybe I was. "They're all Huban's. Huban's—nothing to do with me. I just have to put up with them."

"Can't I at least switch that one off while you make me look an arsehole? Where's the stop button?"

"That one's part of the closed-circuit," Susie said. "The tape machine's in the lounge, do you want me to go and stop it?"

I laughed. "No, don't bother."

"You look like Lily Savage," Alison said when they'd finished.

I examined myself long and hard in the mirror before making my decision. "I actually look less attractive than Lily Savage. Can we take it off now?"

"You must be joking! Come on, we're taking you back to the party now you look beautiful!"

So I had no choice in the matter. The only person I looked no more or less attractive to than usual was Solomon. So I tried to slip into the dark with him. But Susie immediately found King Reg curled up on the floor beside us, and paying an extraordinary amount of attention to his nuts. She bent down and said he liked having his balls tickled and she demonstrated as much and even offered me a go.

"I think he likes Solomon better than me," I said. "Let him have a go."

But she was gone, waltzing through clouds of her mates asking them where she ought to put her gorgeous new painting of her big darling dog.

"Take down some of your skinny nudes, Susie," one bloke said. "And put it there."

"What's the matter with my nudes, Merv? I've seen you drooling over them."

"No way. I'm not into skinny women, you just don't get the tits on them."

"You don't get the tits on them?"

"That's right."

"Merv, I know the type you fancy. You like them big, you'd like a few big-arsed Fragonard ladies around the place wouldn't you?"

"Are you kidding? The bigger the better, ask any bloke. Vanessa Feltz, now that's sexy."

"Oh, God," Susie despaired and looked away. Then she came back: "You know that's always seemed rather suspect to me. I mean what's your earliest image of a woman larger, heavier and stronger then yourself? Your mother! Maybe artists who paint such strong women do it because they're in love with their mothers, and maybe you like them because you're in love with yours. I don't know why you don't just be honest about it."

The confessions weren't immediately forthcoming, though. Susie looked from one bloke's face to another and got nothing but laughter where she wanted sense.

"But you're all men," she said. "You wouldn't back me up anyhow. Come on, Everiss! Solomon, what do you say?"

"I gotta admit," Solomon piped up from behind her, "Weren't only Sigmund Freud, it was Plato too taught us every man wants to horse his Momma, and if he don't then there's somethin' not right 'bout him." Then he added, logically: "Or somethin' not right 'bout his Momma."

Solomon. A genius of conversation and rhetoric. He could traffic good sense from his one remaining lung by way of his mouth when he wanted to. But sometimes, and this was one of them, what he needed was a good editor. Course, after that Susie followed King Reg's initiative and decided to like Solomon too.

And I put up with my faceful of Max Factor for as long as I could stand it and took my mind off it with the liquor I'd promised not to touch. Then I looked round for Susie but she wasn't where I looked first, so I went for a piss. When I came out of the little bog there she was, walking past, so I collared her.

"Susie, I've had enough of this," I said, pointing at my face. The joke had worn off but not the make-up. "Can you spare me two minutes to help me get rid of it?"

She just giggled at me. "Oh, Everiss, don't! You look gorgeous."

By the time she saw I wasn't kidding and took my hand to lead me into the big bathroom again for my scrubdown, we were beaten to the door by a girl.

"Oh, Emma, wait!" Susie said. "Let me just get something from there." She came out smiling, with a handful of bottles—"In you go," she said to Emma, and pushed me back into the little bog I'd just come out of.

I picked up the soap from the basin.

"No, don't use soap. Here take this... cleanser... and cotton-wool. Let me show you."

"You don't mind?" I mumbled. "Using up your stuff on me?"

"Keep your mouth still. Now close your eyes."

So I got cleaned up. And I was still dressed smart, I remembered. I was getting attention from a wonderful-looking woman still so, maybe, I was even a little desirable. Susie was by the mirror looking at me and I took a step back; that was all the steps back I could take before my backside hit the doorhandle. I looked in the mirror; a little puffed and red from booze and make-up but not really so bad. Not bad at all.

"Christ, I look like shit," I said.

"No you don't," Susie said in a way that made you believe her.

But then, just like her mouth could do nothing but smile, maybe the tone of her words knew only how to persuade. I wanted a pen so I could scribble obscene messages to her on the wall like the ones I read in Paddington Gents. I wanted to leave her a little something and maybe when I checked again she'd have written back a reply. But I couldn't wait for that, I wanted the answer now. So I chanced my arm; I chanced my arm right then and there without hesitation by moving close and kissing this tall, slim, beautiful, little black-dressed, Thirty-Three-Year-Old-Today, long-legged adult woman. And her smiling mouth was at first like an uncertain friend. Then it closed over mine, warm and wet, and it decided on a hungry and desperate recognition.

Ooh, yeah, I like this. I'll have another mouthful of that, she thought. And she turned the key and locked us in with just a basin and a toilet pot cramming in upon us from all sides, and our arms coiled and crushed with all our strength and her hug made me believe (and other things she said about me) that, although we'd have to release our grip before the night was out, we'd have at least by then pressed into each of our hearts something of the other that we'd never let go.

It was ridiculous. She had the run of this whole house and here we were in this tiny room like naughty cousins kissing in the cupboard under the stairs. So we broke for a gasp of air and I got chance to remember something that it might be a lot of people's opinion I should've remembered earlier. But there it is. I remembered the husband and it cleared my head faster than a faceful of cold tap at six am. Susie was being naughty and I suddenly wanted to know how she felt about it.

"So, where's your husband tonight? What's-his-name?"

"Huban? He's in the lounge."

What! I couldn't believe it. He's where? Not: he's in Aberdeen, but, he's in the frigging lounge. The hairs jumped up on my neck like they'd heard the fire-bell.

"He's here! In the house?"

"Of course," she laughed. "Why shouldn't he be, it's his house."

"He's just out there? And you're doing this!"

"It certainly looks like it, doesn't it?" She hugged me round the neck and kissed me again.

"So which one is he?" I said. "Did I talk to him?"

"Did you talk to anyone named Huban?"

"Er... no."

"Didn't you? Huban Cour de Comte?"

"What?" I was in shock. "No way. Him? You're joking! Christ, that guy! So, what, does he know where you are?" I was still understaffed in the grasping-the-situation department.

"Everiss, I don't know."

"Are you pissed?"

She giggled again. "Do girls usually have to be pissed to get off with you, Everiss. That's a shame."

Yeah, she might laugh it off but what the hell was going on, anyway? Didn't she mind getting off with someone while her husband was in the next room? Didn't she think he'd mind? Oh, God, here come those babyfat kissy lips again. It really wasn't the thing to think about right then and there. So I didn't; I just put it under my chair for later.

I'll tell you what was the thing to think about right then and there, though. That little bog might have been the only private place in the house, but outside was a whole world we could hide and snog in. So we opened the door a crack and made a break for it, agreeing to rendezvous in front of the house in five. There were some manic performances going on in the big room; some of them were pretending to give the dog blow-jobs. And Huban Cour de Comte was still wrapped up on the sofa in his little victim. He had his iron in another fire.

I wanted to slip out with no fuss, but that Emma bird was at the top of the stairs with a tall, smart-looking bloke, and she nabbed me.

"Deserting your post?" she said.

"Eh?"

"Aren't you supposed to be on duty?"

"Just getting a bit of air, you know."

"You'd be surprised the people who're popping out for some air at the moment," she grinned as if she knew so much about me she could write an encyclopaedia article on it. "Or maybe you wouldn't. Go on, you'd better go, she won't wait for ever." And she held out something and put it in my hand. It was a Durex Elite.

What were these people doing? Renting out their mate, their married mate, to all-comers? I got an image of the ladies of the harem washing and perfuming the new, beautiful wife ready for her big night. But Christ, if there was any new wife here it was me.

The moon, I could see once I got out in the fresh air, was also new, or soon after at any rate. It was thin and crescent and near it, at the ten o'clock position, was Venus: a burst out of the blackness like a poke in a closed eye. I hadn't see that before—was it an illusion or was it really shining like a torch on the moon's bald dusty darkness?

Susie was out there, no-one else. Another Venus under the moon. So we headed out, walking round the corner to the Grove. My Grove, and smoking all the way from Susie's pack. Right up over Notting Hill we went, and as far as the tube station and Susie dragged me into a kebab shop 'cause she was thirsty for mineral water, she said. But Diet Pepsi was all they had so that's what we got.

We strolled on and I told her these were the streets I walked lonely before she found me and put me up in her flat. She was glad. She crooned The Streets of London in tribute to my vagrancy while we walked, and she cuddled herself close and sang it softly in my ear and gave me a hard-on.

"Oh, shit, I forgot my keys!" I said. "The keys to the studio—we could have gone up there."

"You idiot," she said and she pressed herself against the ache in my trousers that those cold keys could've eased. If I'd brought them. Bollocks!

"What do you do, Susie?"

"What do I do? I go to the Scottish Tourist Board on Cockspur Street every day and try to resurrect ma wee accent to impress the punters."

"Do you? God, I thought you might be Scottish. Whereabouts are you from?"

"Edinburgh."

"Midlothian?"

"Lothian."

"Yeah, but Lothian's split up into parts, isn't it?"

"Oh don't, Everiss, I'm not at work now. I have to explain this sort of thing to dopey Italians day in and day out."

"Well for a change you can explain it to a dopey Londoner, can't you?"

"It's split into counties, but mostly you just call it Lothian, alright?"

"But Edinburgh must be in one of the counties."

She laughed. "Yes, it's in Mid Lothian I suppose. But you'd only differentiate between the Lothians when you're... er, talking about a small village like Dunbar in East Lothian."

"Is that one of the rules at the Scottish Tourist Board? You're not allowed to differentiate between the Lothians..."

"Oh, yes," she giggled at me. "They discourage us from differentiating between the Lothians unless it's absolutely necessary."

"So where would you recommend me to go in Scotland?"

"Brighton. I'd recommend you to go to Brighton, Everiss, not Scotland at all. And if you do, I'll come with you because I love Brighton. I was there for three weeks in the summer at Devil's Dyke, have you heard of it? Staying with my friend. And I took my mountain bike, it was so joyous! Shall we go—when are you free?"

Before I could say "I'll check my diary," she grabbed me around the middle and steered us back homeward so we could check on the guests and the rest of the animals. But when we got as far as the gardens in the middle of Ladbroke Square I tried to carry her over the railings and make love in there but all we got was vandal-proof paint all over us. Lover-proof paint in this case. And we went back indoors to wash it off, but this time into Susie's warm, private, locked en-suite bathroom without having to go upstairs.

I told her, breathing between snoggy clinches, that I was gonna chase her forever until she was mine. She said even as far as Brighton? She said I was beautiful. I said no, you're beautiful, I'm ugly and used the mirror to demonstrate my point. She said I was delicious, sexy, she scratched up my tee-shirt from out of my belt and caressed my chest and stomach. She had such a shape, such a body—slim up and down with the hips wider, but only subtly wider. The whole body made subtlety a religion. It was the subtlety that smashed you in the face like a sledgehammer. It was blatant. And I fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around her arse and put my head to her belly. She laughed and cuffed my ear till I got up.

I don't know for how long we were away from the rest of the party altogether but it seemed, you know, a bit of a suspiciously long time. So I asked Susie if Huban might be asking himself where she was. He's probably guessed, she said, but he's okay about it.

"Okay about what?" I said. "He'd hardly be okay about us being here like this if he knew, would he?"

She was amused by my ingenuousness. "Everiss, we don't have rules like that. Huban is fine about what I do as long as I don't make it too obvious. He just doesn't like to be inconvenienced."

This was the most honest kind of dishonesty. It was so unlike the creeping about and lying sort of infidelity that was my style. Anyway it was a funny old situation but all I had to do was adapt. Just get used to it, it was easier. So that's what I did. If things were this more-or-less-nicely arranged then who was I to throw a wrench in? You know, if I could have my place in their system then why try to screw it up?

I closed my senses off so there were no more signs to see and no more forbidding to hear, and explored the back of her thighs, shifting the dress up by inches to waist-height with my hands all over the moons of her arse. And all of it naked to the touch and I wondered where her knickers were cos my fingers couldn't find them. Well, if mortals will handle gods. I must've conducted something to earth cos I was struck standing there unmoving, unmovable, with rivers of lightning; grasped by the middle and spun dizzily. Then held fast head and foot and punched breathless with desire. My eyes came open and I looked down and saw white knickers—so that's where they were.

Susie sat down on the toilet lid and I knelt in front of her while she hugged me into her tits. Her bare knees were apart around me and I took her arse and slid her so she pressed into me and there was only one way we could be closer. I wanted it. Bad. And God, I wanted her; I just wanted all of her. I wanted to wear her proudly like a busted eye. Except a busted eye is a symbol of pain already suffered, isn't it? And I wanted to wear this woman like a symbol of the pain I knew she'd make me suffer someday. I knew it. I knew she would.

Three-thirty in the morning. Let me go check something, she said and she came back saying there was hardly anyone left in the house. I should go, I said. She didn't argue. And back in the bedroom Susie wiped a finger of dust off the top of the tripod-mounted camera.

"Look at that," she said. "Is that good for them? He never looks after things."

"There isn't one in...?" I said, pointing behind me into the en-suite.

She came close to me and whispered, "Don't worry, we didn't leave any evidence." Then she stepped back and laughed. "No, there's no camera in there. Or in the other loo; anyway all the tapes have stopped now, I checked."

So, comforted, I got changed out of my glad rags and into my scruffy civvies while she watched.

I said, "I want to take you to dinner. Can I? Next week?"

She cuddled and kissed me. "Make it early. Early next week. Call me, I didn't give you my number did I? Hang on while I write it down. There you go." And she left me.

But I don't know where she went. I found Solomon in the big room upstairs with a pair of shades sitting on his nose, surrounded by empty cans and bottles. There were pools of beer and liquor on his table and scraps of food on plates. It was quiet in there and none of the few remaining bodies were standing. The only noise was Huban still there muttering in the dark, but now chatting-up Clare the caterer.

When I asked him about the glasses Solomon told me Susie had put him in my place on the bar and, "Here," she'd ordered, putting a pair of tortoise-shell Wayfarers on him, "wear these, we don't want you staring at everyone with those eyes."

"Cheeky bitch," I said.

Solomon shook his head. "Didn't bother me none. So can we go now?"

I said okay, and downstairs I had another quick look for Susie. But in the end we just left, and outside I said to Solomon I wished I'd had the chance to say goodbye to her.

"What for?" he said. "Didn't you have time to tell her goodbye all the time you were with her tonight?"

"How do you know?"

"Man, do you think I stood there servin' drinks all night and not knowin' what I was doin' it for?"

In fact he'd done a remarkably good job, he said, and he hadn't spilt many drinks on his customers. "Least, they didn't holler out any if I did."

Cold and sober on the streets, I realised I was back in my old clothes again; in rags after the Cinderella togs. I felt like Mr Benn, back in his normal suit after being an astronaut or a cowboy or a knight-in-armor and walking back down Festive Road, or wherever he lived, all deflated and ordinary. But Mr Benn always had his memento of his adventure. And I had mine. My scrap of notepaper—scribbled with a phone number and 'Susie X', a lipstick bow kissed onto the back and a spray of Jean-Paul Gaultier, which I held to my face and breathed.

"You sure screwed up big time tonight," Solomon said.

"Eh? Why?"

"Boy, you're stickin' your neck out so far I might cut it off myself."

"What do you mean?"

"I thought you said this woman wasn't a project."

"Yeah, I know. I did."

"Big mistake."

"I know," I said with a grin. "So, er, don't you think I should've gotten off with her then?"

"I think you're an asshole, you know that? After all the work you did this year, this summer, and every test you get, you bomb out like that."

"I haven't bombed out!"

"I give you money and you blow it on liquor. You meet a woman and you're all over her like a rash. That ain't bombing out? You know what bombing out is, Frank: you're gonna be screwing her if you ain't already!"

That was bombing out? He shakes his head and says I'll be screwing her as if it's a bad thing! Thing is, Solomon doesn't think people have any more control over themselves than cockroaches when it comes to love. When a roach feels randy he keeps backing into things until he backs into a female and then they go at it. That was me in Solomon's eyes. Course, he had me pegged as the last hope for the species, too, so Christ if I fell on my arse that was it for humankind.

"You oughta take a lesson from that goddamn key club in there," Solomon said, thumbing over his shoulder at the house. "Them swingers got their ego under better control than you do, you know that?"

"Eh? How do you make that out?"

"Them bed-hoppers ain't got no jealousy. You can't have jealousy if you know some other guy's ballin' your wife in the next room. If you got no jealousy, you got no ego—don't matter if they've worked for it or it comes natural. Either way it gives 'em more in common with the Buddha than you, Frank, and that's the truth."