Eat Me (8 page)

‘Sounds like a relationship to me,' Helen marvelled.

‘Oh, I wouldn't go that far,' countered Julia. ‘Or rather, I'd go that far, but I'm not so sure he would. He's young and doesn't like the idea of being tied down. Once, I brought up the subject of commitment. He yawned and said, “Isn't that a movie about an Irish rock band?” I didn't feel like pursuing it after that. He doesn't even like to make plans more than three days ahead of time. Never mind. He's a major babe. And it's the nineties after all. I feel lucky to have found a man who actually wants to have sex. You know, sperm counts are falling all around the globe. It's a real worry.'

‘It's often said that another reason people aren't having sex is for fear of catching AIDS,' Helen said. ‘Personally I think it's also for fear of catching a relationship. I think a lot of people, men in particular, look on relationships as potentially fatal conditions as well. But back to your spunkrat. He sounds great. And he's not bothered by the age difference?'

‘Doesn't seem to be,' Julia answered. She had neglected to mention the
Sunset Boulevarde
episode. After all, when she read him the riot act over his ongoing Norma Desmond jokes, he'd finally dropped the subject.

‘Super,' Helen approved. Julia asked if there was any romance on her horizon, and how things were going with Sam.

‘Oh, things aren't really “going” at all. I don't know.'

‘I reckon you should make a move, Hellie. Jump his bones.'

‘I don't think so, Jules. Not Sam. If it works out at all, it's going to be one of those relationships like risotto, that needs a long cooking time and just a trickle of emotional stock poured in at a time.'

‘I suppose I've always been a fast-food girl myself,' chuckled Julia. ‘But you must give me your risotto recipe someday.'

A young executive type with an Armani suit and a gold earring entered the restaurant. He stood just inside the door surveying the scene. When he was satisfied that he had been noticed by everyone, he sat down at the table next to Julia and Helen. He pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. Removing it from its fake tiger-skin case, he dialled a number and loudly instructed whoever was on the other end to ‘e-mail me the proposal'. He put the phone on the table, stretched his pinstriped legs arrogantly in the direction of the girls and ran his fingers through his ponytail-length, slicked-back hair.

‘Wanker,' Julia whispered to Helen.

Helen rolled her eyes in agreement.

The man then snapped his fingers at the waiter.

‘That's rude,' Helen observed, sotto voce. The handsome waiter clearly thought so as well. He approached the man's table. The waiter tilted his head back so that he was looking, literally, down his nose at the man. ‘Takes more than two fingers to make me come,' he hissed. With that, he turned on his heels and strode back to the kitchen.

Julia and Helen snorted with laughter. The man, who had gone red as a chilli pepper, pushed up his jacket sleeve to look at his watch, shook his head as though he'd been waiting for ages for someone who had failed to show, got up and walked out.

Helen decided against mentioning her Goulburn adventure for now. It was already quite late. She had a class to teach first thing in the morning and needed to prepare for it. Besides, now that she'd written that letter, she was beginning to have second thoughts. The analytical bit of her brain, the part that had its hair pinned up in a stern bun and wore suits and black-framed glasses, was back from its holiday and wasn't at all pleased about the mess on her desk. Ms Analytical interrogated Helen mercilessly: What was she doing having that sort of blatantly submissive sex, and with a total stranger at that? What on earth had she been thinking of? He'd handled her so roughly. And she'd liked and encouraged it. But there was another voice in Helen's head. The chick with the short short skirt, long long legs and big attitude sitting on that desk, the one who'd piled up the cigarette butts in the ashtray and was swilling lemon Stolis. She pointed out to Ms Analytical that in fact Helen had taken the lead, and that they had just been playing at rough sex. It had been exciting and consensual and no one had got hurt. And it was safe—they'd used a condom. So what was her problem? Longlegs blew smoke in Analytical's face. The upshot was: Helen didn't think she was ready to talk about it quite yet. She wouldn't mail that letter after all. She'd write another one to Fiona, concentrating on the conference this time, tomorrow at the latest.

‘Do you want coffee or shall we get the bill?' Julia glanced at her Swatch.

‘No coffee for me,' Helen replied. ‘I've got a big day tomorrow. I'd better get going soon.'

‘Me too.'

After classes the following afternoon, Helen stepped off the train, and hurried through the sad sleaze of King's Cross to her tidy flat on Bayswater Road. Throwing her bag and the mail she'd picked up from her mailbox down on her kitchen counter, she set the kettle to boil. She fetched the container of freshly ground coffee out of the freezer and savoured its aroma before scooping out a few spoonfuls into her plunger.

The phone rang. It was Marc, the student with the lime green pigtails, with a query about the final paper for the course. His voice triggered a replay in her mind of the day in class when he'd made that comment about the ‘beauty myth', and how she'd reacted. If she hadn't been so distracted, she might have realised that his question now sounded suspiciously like an excuse just to speak to her. She balanced the receiver on her shoulder while making her coffee. Only after he said, ‘I think you're a really cool teacher, Helen,' and hung up rather quickly did it occur to her there might have been, as they liked to say in film studies, a subversive subtext.

She pushed the thought to the back of her mind and sat down to open her mail. Nothing wildly exciting: a telephone bill, a catalogue from DJs, a letter from her parents and a postcard from Fiona in Darwin. The last reminded her of her own letter, and she fished it out of her bag. She tore open the envelope. That missive would go no further than a discreet file in her desk drawer. What she saw caused her face to pale and her heart to skip a beat. She dropped it to the floor and put her hands over her mouth, which, behind her stretched fingers, had formed a large ‘O'. She double-checked the envelope. Yes, it was clearly made out to Fiona in Darwin. But the letter inside began:

Dear Bronwyn,

It was nice to see you again in Canberra and catch up with what you are doing. I was very intrigued by your thesis on the valorisation of gender identity in contemporary Aboriginal theatre and dance...

THE FIFTH SCARF

The woman in the red corset smooths on her elbow-length black kid-leather gloves. Her dark hair flows like warm chocolate over the plump vanilla scoops of her shoulders. The corset pushes up her breasts, exposing them nearly to the nipples. Turning with a coquettish flounce of her tutu, she bends at the waist to study herself in the mirror that is propped up on the floor. She reaches for lipstick the colour of raspberries and freshens the bow of her lips. She is aware that she is displaying her firm round buttocks to advantage. Red suspenders stripe the immaculate white flesh, and sheer black stockings encircle the pale fullness of her thighs. Her stilettos further elongate her legs, heightening the dramatic effect. Her sex is barely covered by the black lace g-string. Widening her stance, she lowers her head to look back from between her legs. Her hair hangs down in a lustrous curtain to the floor. Yes. Just as she had expected. Those big green eyes, with their thick fringe of lashes, are welded to her. They say, come to me, love me, tease me, fuck me now.

Beg me, darling. I'd like that.

A white lace curtain flutters in the cool mountain breeze. The silk fringe on the lampshade undulates in the draught. The dusky rouge lampshade is pure Victorian, like everything else in this history-encrusted room. Although it is only mid-afternoon, the room seems to exist in a perpetual gloaming. The densely forested slopes outside the window glow a soft eucalypt blue. Shafts of slanting light play sensuously with the patterns of the lacy bedspread and warm the threadbare colours of the woven rugs scattered over the wooden floor. A fire glows and crackles in the small fireplace, licking even more intricate rivulets of light and shade over the scene.

Wait a minute. If it's cold enough to have a fire going, then it's too cold to open the window. One or the other. Let's take the fire. Forget the breeze.

Drawing herself up again, she inspects the fire. With a poker she gently stirs the logs; under her precise touch, the flames leap up with the alacrity of desire. Concealing her emotion, she shifts her gaze to the naked slave on the bed. She's been there a while now, and has been very good, too. She hasn't even needed to be gagged.

Sashaying over to the bed, she spreadeagles the willing, wide-eyed creature and ties her by her beautiful hands and perfect feet to the bedposts with silk scarves. Placing a gloved hand on her slave's instep, she notes with satisfaction how her whole body jumps as though jolted by an electric current. Then, moving her hand up to encircle the slave's ankle with her fingers, the mistress lowers her lips down onto the big toe, which still smells faintly of ylang-ylang and sandalwood oil from the bath. She flicks the top of the toe with the tip of her tongue and then takes it into her mouth and sucks on it. Planting rows of tiny kisses all the way down the foot, she continues up the leg to the knee, where she rests her head. Her right hand lies casually on her slave's stomach; the left traces baroque patterns on the inside of the opposite thigh. A train rumbles past. She feels the vibrations from the walls and floor through the bed frame, through her slave's warm and silky leg.

She places her mouth on the inside of her slave's thigh and pulls long and hard on the creamy skin. Pinching it between her teeth, she draws the blood to just below the surface where it remains in the form of a love bite. The slave moans. The mistress raises her head and looks at her sharply. ‘Did I say you could make any noise?'

‘No mistress,' she breathes.

‘Good girl,' she says, stroking the other lightly from the tip of her toes to just below her sex, which, the mistress notes with satisfaction, is already glistening with dew. She lightly tousles her slave's pubic hairs. Standing up straight now, she thoughtfully surveys her domain.

Philippa stares at the words in front of her. She stands up again and walks thoughtfully over to the bed. Holding onto one of the bedposts, she leans on it, pensive. The bed creaks. ‘Sshhh,' she says. ‘I'm trying to think.'

How I long for her touch! I should have known. It never pays to be too eager, too greedy when you're the bottom. Now, I turn my head to look at her. She is shaking her head with disapproval. She reminds me that I am not to look at her without permission. I'm a naughty girl, and I'm going to be punished now. I hear the sharp click of her heels on the floor and my heart beats fast. I resist the temptation to look and see where she is going. I hear the crisp sound of an unlocking clasp. I know what's coming next. I stare hard at the moulded ceiling. My gaze madly strokes the intricate details of the plaster roses and latticework. I try to stay calm. A log explodes in the fireplace and, outside the window, a child calls to his mother. Outside, I know, the Blue Mountains sky is a cold and emotionless blue. The wind is whipping through the gum trees. The child is probably rugged up snugly in a thick woollen jumper and anorak, with the strings of the hood tied in a bow under a chin still padded with baby fat. He has mittens knitted by grandma on his little hands. There are apples on his cheeks, and the neglected half of a Violet Crumble in his pocket that will melt when he gets indoors, and lead, upon discovery by his mother, to a spanking. A very vigorous spanking too, I imagine! A spanking would be nice. I hear her walk to the window. She must have noticed the child too. At last, she's coming back to me. I can't resist looking at her. She is a vision in red and black. Her voluptuousness strains against the crisscrossed laces of her bodice and her beautiful breasts form two mounds as mysterious as any of the sensuous peaks of the mountains sprawling around this town. I want to worship those breasts. Will she let me?

She is frowning again. She spills a handful of tiny instruments onto the bed beside me. They fall onto the lace of the bedspread with a soft metallic whisper. She is reaching behind her now, to the bedside table. She has a scarf in both hands and it's coming down over my eyes. Don't blindfold me! I want to see you, I want to devour you with my eyes. Ohhh. Now I am in darkness. I close my eyes and surrender to it. Every nerve in my body is quivering.

And Chantal couldn't figure out what the fifth scarf was for! Silly girl.

I can hear the whalebone in her corset rasping ever so faintly and the rustle of the tutu as she shifts position. What's she doing?

It can't really be whalebone, can it? People would find that
so
offensive. Unless it's an antique corset, of course, in which case, no new whales were killed. I think they still call it whalebone these days when it's not, really. It's plastic. Maybe she should just say she could hear the bones in her corset rasping—they do call the plastic in corsets ‘bones', I believe. I should double-check that with Chantal. Doesn't have quite the same ring, though. Sounds like she might have some osteological disease. Philippa reaches for a box on the desk. Studying the contents, she extracts a chocolate in the shape of a miniature conch shell. Putting it into her mouth, she sucks on it till it begins to melt, running thickly over her tongue and down the back of her throat. Concentrate. Concentrate.

I can feel her face close to mine now. The ripples of heat off her skin and low, sweet breathing caress me. Her breath has the odour of chocolate and mint; her skin is a more subtle musk. She's pulling away again. My cheeks are cool. I pout. A soft, leather-clad finger traces my lips, top and bottom. I throw kisses up at them. The smell of leather, the scent of her perfume, these are driving me insane. I open my mouth and take the finger between my lips. I suck on the finger, and now it's two, and three fingers. The animal taste of leather fills my senses and makes me tingle all over. Another rustle of the tutu and creak of bone and her other hand is resting lightly—so lightly!—on my sex. My clitoris swells and aches for her touch. She knows me too well. She strokes it once, twice...please, please, keep going...but she won't, not now anyway. I know her too well also. The hand slips away. I hear another jangle of metal, as her lips, warm and oily with lipstick, close around my nipple. She is flicking my nipple with her tongue; it stands up stiffly between her teeth, eager to please. I want her hand back on my pussy. I strain my hips towards her. I hear her straighten up and laugh. ‘And what are you trying to do, you naughty girl?'