Eat Me (11 page)

He took a puff and held it out to her. ‘Come here, little girl,' he said, patting the bed next to him.

‘Natasha,' she said, her voice coming out in a whisper. She felt humiliated. He hadn't even asked her name. ‘My name's Natasha. And I'm not that little.'

She looked down at her feet. Her face felt flushed.

‘Come here, Natasha.'

Still she didn't budge. He shrugged and took another puff.

In her fantasies he'd tried a bit harder to win her. In her fantasies, he had pretended to be interested in her own poetry. In her fantasies, he had at least asked her name before he asked her home.

As Philippa studied her friend, an awful thought occurred to her. ‘You weren't,' she said, breaking into Chantal's thoughts, ‘you know, a virgin or anything, were you?'

‘Sorry?' Chantal looked momentarily lost. ‘Oh, God no. No, no. I'd had several boys by then. Boys our age.'

‘Oh, of course. I remember now. There was one who used to trail you around like a pageboy to a princess. As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, they were all a bit like that. Besotted.'

‘I think,' said Chantal, drawing on her fag, ‘I liked Bram because he was different. He seemed, I don't know, stronger, less malleable and more defined.'

Philippa sucked a few globules of caviar off the top of a cracker and waited for Chantal to continue. ‘So, did he seduce you or what?'

Chantal considered the question. ‘I suppose you could say that I seduced him.'

Bernard rolled onto his back. Philippa blew on his tummy. His head hung off her lap and almost touched Chantal's silver satin-covered thigh. His eyes closed, and a thin train of saliva dribbled down onto the shiny fabric. Absorbed in her memories once more, Chantal didn't even notice. All she ever needed to do, she was thinking, was turn around and walk out. Bram was still beckoning to her. She shook her head. She nearly did walk out then.

The reason she didn't was because she decided that she would neither give in nor give up. No. She would have him, but on her terms, not his. She drew herself up to her full height. (She'd been stooping slightly so he wouldn't seem shorter than her, which he was.) She looked him straight in the eye. A smile played across his features, but she greeted it with a cold sneer.

‘Take your shirt off,' she ordered.

He looked surprised.

‘Or should I just go home?'

She could see from his eyes that this new game excited him. He put the joint out in the ashtray, pulled his shirt over his head and leaned back on his elbows. ‘What next, Natasha-girl?' he asked.

‘Trousers. Boots. Socks.'

He did as he was told.

‘Good boy,' she said.

Chantal had noticed candles stuck to saucers or jutting out of candlesticks around the room. She put down her beer, fished her lighter from her purse and walked around the room touching the flame to the wicks and watching them sizzle to life. He watched her, trying to appear cool but it's hard to look cool when you're just wearing little red briefs. She could see he was getting a hard-on.

He'd switched on a lamp that rested on a shelf above the bed when he'd come in. She knelt on the bed to turn it off. When she did that, he wrapped his bony fingers around her leg just above the knee. She stared down at his hand. ‘Off,' she said. He relaxed his grip and looked at her with a curious expression on his face.

Men. Treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen. How true it is. Chantal sat down in the chair and crossed her legs. ‘Take off your jocks.'

He took off his jocks.

‘Good boy,' she repeated. She liked the patronising sound of it.

He was horny as a toad. Chantal laughed. This seemed to make him even harder.

‘Play with yourself,' she told him. Her heart was pounding. She was on unmapped territory here. She'd never actually seen a man spank the monkey before. She found herself hypnotised by the rhythm of his hand and the incense of the scented candles. She uncrossed her legs.

Still pulling away, his eyes bulging, he watched riveted as Chantal slowly pulled off her own shirt, and then wriggled out of her long skirt, which she let fall to the floor. She then unlaced and toed off her Docs and pulled off her socks. Black socks, of course. She still had on her favourite slip, a black satin number she'd got in an op shop. It had a rip at the hem. Leaving the slip on, she reached up for her panties and snaked out of them as well.

She sat and watched him for a while like that.

Spreading her legs a bit more, she inched her slip up until she was just exposed to him. She was very wet. She inserted her fingers into herself and then pulled them out and sucked them.

‘Natasha, please...' he moaned.

She ignored him. Taking her time, she stroked herself to orgasm. She felt powerful and attractive and sluttish, a truly wonderful combination. She threw her head back as she came and closed her eyes. She didn't hear him get up but she felt warm lips on her neck and another hand stroking her cunt. Bram was kneeling in front of her, caressing her and kissing her face and eyes and hair.

They stumbled over to the bed and fell on each other with such an intense passion that they were both amazed. He bit her nipples hard and then she went for his, and punished them with her teeth and her nails. She rolled him onto his back. She liked the way she could make him gasp by teasing the head of his dick with the lips of her cunt and then, in one long smooth motion, swallowing it whole, squeezing it tight. After a while, she eased herself down onto his chest and they rolled onto their sides, still locked together and humping away, now penetrating each other with their tongues as well. By now they were sliding on mingled sweat, and she couldn't tell the beating of his heart from her own. He moved her body like his poems moved her head. Suddenly, he grabbed her buttocks hard and, with a stuttering moan, came inside her. The sensation of his hot jetting sperm caused her to crest again. As they lay there panting, wrapped in each other's arms, Chantal knew she had just had the best sex of her life. Being a woman of insufficient experience, she naturally confused it with love.

When they reluctantly untangled their limbs for a smoke, he stroked her hair with his hands and kissed her forehead. ‘Well, well, little Natasha,' he chuckled.

They saw each other often after that. The sex was hotter than Parramatta in January. Bram initiated her into vampiric rituals where they'd suck each other's blood and even talked her into shooting up with him a few times, the arsehole. God. Chantal remembered when AIDS awareness took hold. She had a sickening vision of herself as one of those human tenpins on the telly. She became the first one of their little group to have an HIV test. Miraculously it was negative. He called her Little Natasha and declared her his muse. He never did ask to see her poetry.

Because Chantal was in love, she never protested at the fact that he never wanted to stay at her place. Nor did she complain (much) that he had no interest in meeting her friends. Or, for that matter, introducing her to his—except when they ran into them by chance, and then only if one of them asked her name. He didn't ever care if she had an exam or a paper due; they met and mated according to his needs and schedule. But the sex was phenomenal, and she worshipped his genius. She could never admit to anyone how humiliating it was at times.

The worst, of course, was that night she thought they'd had an appointment and went over to his place only to find some blonde girl in his bed. He hadn't even tried to conceal what was going on, or apologise. Worse, he'd laughed. Not a good look from where she stood. Nor did he run after her when she turned and fled. Later, he told her he needed his space and his freedom and if she ‘couldn't deal with that' then she should just ‘find a nice bourgie boy and move to the 'burbs to drop bubs'. Later, one of his mates told her that Bram had said to him that he was in danger of really falling for her and had to end it before it became too serious. His mate thought this was a perfectly logical position. Then again, he was male too.

‘Hello hello? Earth to Gorgeous. Earth to Gorgeous.' Alexi had returned to find Chantal sitting perfectly still with her head thrown her back and her eyes closed behind her sunnies. Next to her perched Philippa, Bernard sound asleep in her lap. Philippa, having given up on the conversation, had finished the whole plate of hors d'oeuvres. Mellow with food and champagne, she was absentmindedly stroking Bernard and watching the other guests flit about the garden.

At the sound of Alexi's voice, Chantal's eyes flew open. She blinked. ‘Oh, dear,' she said. ‘Have I been off with the fairies?'

‘No, darling, I have. And I've got a date with a particularly delicious one who's waiting by the front door. I've just come to say too-roo, sweetie.'

‘Have a good one, darling,' Chantal smiled.

‘Exactly what I'm planning to do.' Alexi puckered and air-kissed both girls goodbye. They watched his lithe form weave through the garden.

‘He's a scream,' Philippa observed, smiling. ‘And so are you, Chantie. I don't think I've ever seen you flake out so badly before.'

‘Oh, darling,' Chantal said. ‘I really am not myself today. Have I been gone long?'

‘Nearly filed a missing person's report,' Philippa replied. ‘But no worries. I've been having a good time people-watching. You know me. I get a bit shy at these things if I actually have to mingle.' She suddenly looked down at the furball in her lap. ‘Oh, yuk!' she exclaimed.

‘What?'

‘It just farted,' Philippa said, curling her lip and forcefully evicting Bernard from her lap. He landed on his feet, shook himself and meandered off to see if he could score some of the smoked salmon off the buffet table. He'd had enough of her anyway.

‘Where were we?' Chantal frowned and lit a cigarette.

‘You said you saw Bram last night,' Philippa said.

‘Oh, God. I ran into him at a party over at my new neighbours' flat. It was a jungle party. You know the sort of thing. African music, ambient jungle mist from a dry ice machine, drinks in coconuts. Everyone in leopard-skin prints and cat masks.'

‘What were you wearing?'

‘My new zebra-stripe minidress. Leopard skin is just so five-minutes-ago. Unless it's white leopard, of course.'

‘Of course.'

‘Anyway, Bram just sort of materialised in front of me. Wearing a pith helmet and a safari suit.'

‘Oh dear.' Philippa's hand flew to her mouth. ‘Not a safari suit. How totally naff.'

‘Totally. There are few sights more tragic than that of a poet in a pith helmet. But, you know, I didn't recognise him at first. He's aged pretty badly.'

‘He must be what, forty-three? Forty-four?'

‘Forty-four. His eyes were red and puffy and his lean frame had filled out in all the wrong places. Wrinkles fretted his skin. He even had that awful line that slices from the middle of the eyes straight down the cheek that long-term smack users all seem to get. Not that I know that many of them. But you see it on ageing rock stars a lot. And his skin was even more sallow than I'd remembered it. A steady diet of drugs and alcohol doesn't exactly do wonders for the complexion.' Chantal gestured ironically with her champagne glass and cigarette. ‘Not that I'm exactly drug-free. But at least I use mud-packs and have a facial whenever I can afford it. And getting enough sleep is very important too, of course.'

Philippa didn't want to hear a beauty lecture. ‘And then?' she prompted.

‘Anyway,' Chantal paused to blow a smoke ring, ‘before I twigged to the fact it was him, I'd said something like “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” and he responded by singing that silly Moody Blues song. He was quite drunk and the words came out all slurred: “Shtepping outta n jungle gloo.” Suddenly, there was this shocking moment of mutual recognition. He stopped singing, and gasped, “Li'l Nas, Natasha!”

‘You know, darling, for years I'd held imaginary conversations with Bram in my head in which, with haughty wit and perfect composure, I'd assassinated his character so thoroughly and so devastatingly that he'd died and come back a new man. But now that he was there in front of me, I felt only pity.'

‘As you would,' Philippa nodded.

‘I mean,
I've
progressed. The last torn slip I wore was made that way by Comme des Garçons. And I gave up poetry when I met Alexi, which was soon afterwards, and he made some comment about it being on the “whiffy” end of literature.'

‘That's a bit unfair,' Philippa protested.

Chantal shrugged. ‘Darling, life is unfair. Anyway, we talked about the old times. He made some mumbling apology about what a shit he'd been. Then he talked me into showing him my flat, which, after all, was just next door. By then I'd had quite a few of those violent coconut cocktails and was feeling a little unsteady on my Patrick Coxes. If I felt any foreboding, it was coming from some distant, anaesthetised place. I led him inside. “One for the road, eh, Little Natasha?” he belched. While I was trying to figure out whether he was referring to alcohol or sex—and I was quite horrified by the thought of either at that point— he just stumbled past me and made a beeline for my bedroom.'

‘How is it,' Philippa wondered, ‘that some men have an unerring instinct for finding the bedroom unaided?'

‘By the time I'd followed him in, he'd fallen crosswise over the bed, feet dangling off one side, head off the other. He was mumbling something. I moved closer, a bit apprehensively, to hear what it was. “A bucket, Nats, gettush a bucket.”' Chantal lay a slender hand against her forehead.

‘He didn't,' Philippa gasped.

‘He did,' Chantal affirmed, rolling her eyes. ‘I got him a bucket, and I can tell you it was not a moment too soon.' Chantal didn't have the heart to regurgitate, so to speak, what had transpired after that, although she certainly remembered it in excruciating detail.