I Was Waiting For You (18 page)

“
Oh, how you fill me,” you would say.

“
Oh, how I want you,”
I would say.

Oh, how my heart would break into a thousand shards every time I took you from behind and the incomparable sight of my dark cock stretching your pink lips and burying itself deep inside you while the eyelet of your a
rse would almost wink at me, as if inviting further depredations. And the obscene thought that one day other men would see you thus, would contemplate the tragic pornography of your indecency, was enough to make me cry.

But I did not have the right to ask you to be mine and mine alone. I was scared to do so. Not because it would have been wrong; it would have been. But because I was in fear of your answer. Knowing your awful pride and will for independence. Later I realised that there were actually days and nights when you would have wanted me to do so and offer a more permanent form of commitment. Becoming genuine girlfriend and boyfriend, whatever that meant or entailed. Move to the city where you lived so we could see more of each other or you might be able to call me at any time of day to meet up, however innocently, for a coffee and a chat.

Why is it that love grows at different speeds between people who care for each other, need each other badly? Not fair, is it?

Many hotel rooms later, you finally left me. You wanted to live your life. You wanted other adventures. From the very first night, you had told me you were a gypsy and that you would not allow any man to ever catch you, imprison you. Let alone me.

An urban gypsy flitting through the lives of men, destroying hearts and souls with cheery insouciance, a falling star amongst us mortals. Oh, how you burned me.

Where are you now, embarked on what beautiful adventures with witty and sexy strangers, witnessing
horizons I know nothing of? The last time we spoke, you would no longer even tell me of your plans because you guessed right: whatever news you provided me with would be betrayed by me one day, used in a story somewhere as some exotic fictional character which only you and I would recognise. You did not want to be a character in a book, Giulia. Forgive me. But then all I wanted you to be was a lasting character in my life. Fiction is only second best, you know, a consolation for the unworthy.

I still want you badly.

The warmth of your mouth around my pulsing cock.

Your fingers weighing my swollen balls, learning how a man is constructed at his most intimate.

The generosity of your eyes.

The foolishness of your wonderful youth.

The ghostly pallor of your body in a hotel room where we have just made love. The flowers in your hair when you accompany me to an official function and are proud to say “This is my man”.

So, here I sit in room 411 of the Palace Hotel. I am naked. I am pitiful. I am lonely. Hotel rooms remind me of sex, of you.

Oh, just to hear the sound of your voice.

You belong here.

I send you this forlorn kiss.

Jack

Jack pressed “Send” and the e-mail made its way to wherever she would pick it up, if she ever did. He expected no answer, of course. That would be asking for too much. Things were clear cut by now and he would never see her again. Maybe occasionally hear about her through third parties (although not Eleonora he guessed), but then even that was unlikely. Different countries, languages, ambitions.

He exhaled.

Washed his face with cold water and slipped on the white terry cloth bathrobe and returned to the computer.

The emptiness weighed on him. Once again, he clicked his way into a chat room.

A sharp sense of unworthiness settled on his mind.

As if Jack finally realised that he had done Giulia wrong.

Guilt was a dangerous thing.

It called for punishment.

Oh yes.

There was a discreet knock on the door. Jack walked across, still wearing the white bathrobe. Outside the hotel room windows, night was falling and the sound of distant sirens – police? – ambulance? – firemen? – echoed through the town as it pursued its descent into darkness. He opened the door.

The stranger looked even larger than the photo he had posted online and forwarded to him during the course of their conversation and ensuing brief negotiation.

A swarthy guy, gym-sharpened and feral.

“You ‘slave of G'?” the man asked brusquely.

“Yes,” Jack lowered his eyes submissively. It was the unimaginative handle he had earlier used online.

“Good,” the man said, taking a decisive two steps into the room. He looked Jack up and down, maybe checking that the few details he had been willing to reveal during their halting chat room conversation and then over the telephone were correct. He appeared satisfied and slammed the door shut behind him.

A point of no return had been crossed.

“So, this what you want? You're sure? No going back now?” the visitor asked.

“Yes,” Jack meekly answered. Fear was now turning to resignation.

“Yes, sir,boy,” the man ordered sharply.

“Yes, sir,” Jack said in a low voice.

“That's better.”

The taller man approached Jack and forced him to take a few steps back into the room, until he was standing by the bed. The visitor lowered his hands and took the bathrobe belt and undid it, then quickly pulled the garment off Jack.

Jack stood naked.

Again, the visitor looked him up and down. And smirked.

Jack had already obeyed the initial instructions he had been provided with once the assignment had been arranged. He was fully bare, having shaven all the hair around his cock and balls while the stranger was en route to the hotel. Jack shivered briefly.

“Nice cunt, looks clean enough,” the man remarked, examining him.

“Thank you, sir,” Jack answered obediently. The act of shaving down there made him feel even more naked, available, ripe for all sorts of humiliation.

“On your knees, slave,”

Jack duly obeyed.

The man untied his trousers and exposed himself, presenting a thick, half-hard already cock to the kneeling, naked host.

“Open your face hole wide,” the visitor said.

Jack took the semi-tumescent cock inside his mouth, where it hardened like rock within a few seconds, thrusting hard against the back of his throat, as he tried not to choke. The man took a violent hold of his hair and conducted his movements with brutal, steady regularity.

The man's penis had an acrid taste and its texture was surprisingly spongy, which Jack had not expected. As he mechanically continued sucking the stranger's member, the room surrounding him seemed to murmur to him “See, now you know what it felt for her, and all those other women, to take your cock into their mouths … now you know what it must feel like to be a woman, to be on the receiving end …”

There was another gentle knock on the door.

The visitor pulled his cock out of his drying mouth.

“Who is it?” he asked.

Catching his breath, Jack said “Another guy I spoke to in the chat room. I wasn't sure whether either of you would actually show up. You know how it is with chat room meets. I reckoned if I made two appointments, there was a better chance one of you at least would show up. We don't have to open the door, if you don't want to.”

The other man smiled, cock still at full mast.

“Why not? The more the merrier. Let him in.”

He rose from the floor and went over to the door and opened.

The new visitor was a wiry Oriental guy. His gaze greedily focused on Jack's exposed, bare cock. The earlier stranger walked over and explained the situation, offering the Asian man the opportunity to withdraw, should he wish to do so.

The new visitor seemed to enjoy the possibilities afforded by the new situation and elected to stay.

“A greedy slave, indeed,” one of the men remarked.

They both undressed.

The Oriental man lay on the edge of the bed offering his uncut but already unsheathed erect cock and the larger of his two visitors took hold of their new found slave by the scruff of his neck and forced Jack down to his knees again.

“Suck him, worship his dick,” he ordered.

The new cock was thinner, veiny and tasted differently. Jack diligently set to work, already mentally comparing the experiences.

As he did so, the first visitor to the room sharply took hold of his soft cock and balls and pulling both backwards and slightly upright by his genitals, forced Jack into the position he required. He spat across his raised, exposed rump and with two fingers lathered the abundant saliva into his anal opening, testing his elasticity and resistance.

“Nice and tight,” he remarked. “That's how I enjoy my slaves.” He suddenly slapped Jack's arse cheeks and then violently thrust himself inside him, breaching the moist ring of flesh in one single movement.

Jack couldn't help himself from screaming. It burned like hell as the foreign penis buried itself deep inside his innards. But he still managed to keep on sucking the cock now fucking his mouth.

“Good boy, good boy,” the Asian man said.

Later, the two men changed places and used him thoroughly in all his available holes.

Jack's mouth was dry and the muscles in his cheeks hurt, come dripped from his well-stretched opening and inside it felt like the fires of hell still and as the men dressed in silence and he lay on the bed, exhausted, willingly degraded as he had wished, he briefly imagined the strangers keeping him in slavery together, abducting him from this luxury hotel room, putting a black, studded leather collar around his neck and transporting him still naked under a coat to another seedy hotel room which would smell of piss and shit and stale tobacco, where he would be offered to all-comers, fucked, whipped, beaten, peed on and hosed like an animal until death would prove a welcome release.

But they just walked out, closing the door to room 411 behind them in continued silence.

Maybe it was a form of penance, Jack imagined.

Or more likely just more self-pity.

“Oh Giulia,” he wrote inside his head, “this is what I now am without you, a lost soul, a creature of sex of loneliness. A man who travels a lot and gets up to abominable things within the sacred secrecy of hotel rooms. Without you.”

Just another letter he would never send.

And decided to go to Rome.

C
ORNELIA WAS SITTING ON
a high stall in an open all-hours bar called Phillies with her back to the nocturnal street. Across from her to the left, a man and a woman silently stared straight ahead at the white-capped, blonde barista busy cleaning dishes. The fedora-wearing man negligently nursed a cigarette while the woman, red-haired, in her late thirties she guessed, peered down at her well-manicured nails. There was no juke box or ambient muzak, no noise except for the occasional gurgle of the twin coffee percolators on the nearby counter; it was a perfect three in the morning form of silence, made for nighthawks and lonely hearts. The woman was thin, even gaunt, the silky fabric of her red dress draped across her shoulders, opening up across a V of indifferent, pale flesh. She sported cerise lipstick, just like one imagined vamps did in black-and-white forties noir movies. The couple hadn't spoken to each other since Cornelia had walked into the joint. But their body movement clearly betrayed the fact they were a couple. Only deep familiarity expressed itself, communicated with such a display of common silence.

Outside, it had been ages since even a car had driven by. They were enveloped in a sea of dead time, listening to the mute voice of the downtown Los Angeles night. Figueroa Boulevard was just a few city blocks away, even more of a desert at this forsaken time. There was no game tonight at the new Staples Center Stadium by the nearby convention buildings, so no stragglers ambling by or zigzagging their way past the flaming radiance of this old-fashioned street corner bar in search of a car parked forgetfully around the block some hours earlier.

Cornelia was sipping her second glass of mineral water. The ice had long melted and a lone wilted slice of lemon floated over the bottom of the thick square-shaped glass. She kept on watching the couple, idly imagining their back story, mentally embroidering a whole scenario to justify their presence here, explaining the way they had once met and the unknowable reasons that seemingly kept them together when they visibly had so little to say to each other any longer. Surely, they had somewhere to go back to? Cornelia hadn't. In a few more hours she would call a cab and get him to drive her back to LAX for the first morning flight of the day to La Guardia and her apartment on Washington Square Place full of books and CDs, where she would while the days away until the next telephone call, improbably in view of recent circumstances, summoned her for a job. No rush, she didn't need the cash. But practice made perfect, they said and she had never said no in the past when offered a hit. She had a reputation. She would always find new customers, somehow.

She quietly wondered whether the other insomniacs keeping her company in Phillies also speculated about her own presence there? She didn't think so. She was anonymous. No one remembered her face. She was wearing a dark, dull bobbed wig and librarian glasses and her two-piece standard issue female junior executive suit was a boring anthracite blue, her hair shielded by a shawl and her shape somewhat indistinguishable behind the suit's dull material. She wore flat shoes, to distract attention from her height. She guessed she looked like any other anonymous office worker. Good; it was a suitable appearance. Forgettable, indifferent. Safe. She should know by now. By hook or by crook she had learned the rules of the game, the occult conventions, the precautions, the limiting of risks since she had undertaken her first job. When had it been? Nearly five years back already. Once you'd swum with the sharks, it all became second nature, even if this particular job was not being done for monetary reasons. Just a final necessary evil to get these people off her back and close the chapter. It was a pity about Ivan. But there would surely be other handlers. She was too useful a commodity. She now knew what to do and what not to do. And Cornelia had never much been encumbered by rules and regulations, or least of all morality.

So, now she was just a woman in a bar whose true face others would never see or remember, watching the world go by. Your average, anonymous contract killer. Working on her own account for a rare occasion.

Killing off what is left of the night.

The woman at the bar in the red dress briefly glanced her way, but she visibly didn't note Cornelia's presence, her gaze passing straight through her and likely alighting on some passer-by walking outside, turning the corner on a slow journey towards Chinatown just a mile or so away to the east. The other woman's eyes were rimmed with too much kohl; didn't suit her, made her look older than she was, Cornelia reckoned. She looked away, her indifference returning. The woman's partner lit another cigarette while the attendant refilled his cup of coffee.

Cornelia attempted to recall the eyes of the other woman earlier this evening. The younger one. What colour were they? She just couldn't. Much of what had taken place did so in semi-darkness, an oppressive penumbra in which she had played the leading, murderous role. There had been a haunting quality in those eyes when she had pleaded for her life. She had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet another one. Damn!

“My name is Sarah,” she had said, looking towards Cornelia with a sadness full of resignation, as if she already knew she could not be swayed. There were rules in this unholy game which must not be ignored. And even though Sarah was not a player, she had instinctively been aware of the fact.

Cornelia had not responded immediately.

“I will do anything you wish me to,” the young girl had continued. “Or rather you can do anything to me you want. Anything.”

Maybe it was the cold heart she saw in Cornelia's eyes that made her plead with such desperation. She had once been told by someone she trusted that they were sometimesgrey, steely and unfeeling. When she cleansed herself every morning with cold water and no soap and examined her features in the mirror, she saw no such thing. Eyes are just eyes. They convey nothing. Colours changed somehow.

The body of the man she had tracked down to this hotel room was sprawled just a few feet away on the carpeted floor, stone cold dead. One bullet had sufficed. It seldom took more; don't believe what you see in the movies. Killing a man with a gun was simplicity itself if you knew where to aim and had a steady hand and, of course, the advantage of surprise. Ivan had supplied her with his address on the West Coast when she had forced him to spill the beans and Cornelia had quietly observed him for several days to identify the patterns he followed, trailing him from his office as a realtor in Beverly Hills (no doubt a cover, but that wasn't her concern) to the Figueroa, a rococo hotel downtown with a fascinating over-the-top decor that blended equal doses of terracotta Mexican colours with Indian artefacts and monstrously sized potted plants throughout its dark lobby area. The guy had parked his Chevvy in a lot at the back of the hotel, which had given her time enough to move ahead and innocently share the elevator with him up to his floor. He hadn't even given her much of a look. She'd jumped him just as he was opening the door to his room. As the lock clicked Cornelia had put the gun to his head and sharply shoved against his shoulders and forced him into the room.

It had taken her barely a second or so to take it all in. The young woman sitting on the bed adjusting her stockings, looking up at her and the man barging through the door. The way the girl's mouth formed a puckered O of surprise. The man was just about to say something in protest when Cornelia had pressed the trigger, and the muffled sound of the weapon's silencer had interrupted the
nature morte
of the scene unfolding in overdrive. He slumped to his knees, and then almost in slow motion to the hotel room floor, his limbs spreading incongruously across the floor, his face three-quarters burying itself into the lush softness of the carpet.

The young girl's mouth returned to its normal thin-lipped shape and she froze on the spot, no doubt a million emotions, questions and fear spreading through her body.

The hit was clean. There wasn't even that much blood, yet.

Cornelia looked at her again.

Their eyes locked.

A torrent of communication surging through the darkened, pastel room in the utter stillness of the late afternoon. All things unsaid but sadly clear in both their minds.

Witnesses have no rights.

This was when she told Cornelia her name. In a forlorn bid to humanise herself. To make Cornelia reshape her resolve.

But there was no way she could commit the same mistake again. Giulia, Paris. Was this a circle of hell through which she was wading, every event cursed to repeat itself in infinitesimal variations?

Cornelia didn't respond, just stood there, her legs now straddling the inert body of her appointed victim.

“I can't offer you money. I haven't any,” the girl continued. “But I promise I won't say anything. Please. To anyone …”

She certainly didn't look like a whore he had picked up somewhere. Not a cheap one at any rate. Maybe a girlfriend, or another man's wife he was enjoying on the side? Or another woman he intended to groom? That's what hotel rooms were for, weren't they? Perfect havens of anonymity where anything could happen. Sarah's white blouse and pleated linen skirt had a conservative cut, only spoiled by the fact that the skirt had been hoisted up to mid thigh as she had been straightening the line of her stockings as Cornelia and the man had forcibly entered the room. The upper, uncovered half of her thigh was creamy, white, almost virginal, above the darker, flesh coloured fabric of the hold up stocking. No garter belt, Cornelia couldn't help noticing.

“Will you let me go?” she asked quietly, as if she no longer even believed it could happen.

“I don't think so,” Cornelia replied. “I just can't. Not this time.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

Sarah lowered her eyes.

Cornelia felt unbearably sad. There was no enjoyment to be found in killing innocents. She was not a sadist. Didn't they call it ‘collateral damage'?

“Now?” the young woman enquired, seemingly resigned to her fate, her voice low.

Cornelia walked up to the bed where Sarah was sitting.

Looked down at her.

“A waste, I know,” as if apologising.

“Yes,” Sarah agreed, her voice a thin sliver escaping from her mouth, touching the very root of Cornelia's heart, or was it her stomach? Sometimes, emotions affected her in curious physical ways.

All of a sudden, she wanted to ask the girl so many questions. Who she was, why she was here, the nature of her relationship with the dead man? She desperately wanted to know her. But she also knew it was impossible. She didn't have the time. Yet another unnecessary risk.

Her name was Sarah. That was all she could allow herself to find out.

“Get up,” she ordered.

Sarah rose from the edge of the hotel bed, and stood, her gloved hands by her side. She was shorter than Cornelia had initially estimated.

The young woman looked towards her, waiting for further instructions, a veil of sadness drifting across her pale face.

“Had he paid you in advance?” Cornelia asked her.

Sarah blushed. Cornelia wasn't sure if this was caused by embarrassment or anger. Or even pride.

It made her look quite beautiful, though. Her cheeks an attenuated shade of pink that served to emphasise the sharp delineation of her cheekbones.

“With him,” Sarah answered, “it had nothing to do with money. Absolutely nothing.”

“Love?” Cornelia continued.

“No. Nor lust either,” she said. “You wouldn't understand.”

No, Cornelia would never understand truly why certain women invariably agreed to surrender themselves to the wrong men.

When Cornelia ceased responding, Sarah brazenly straightened out her whole body, almost growing by an inch or so as her back snapped into position.

“You just wouldn't understand,” Sarah defiantly continued. “Not in a month of Sundays.”

No, Cornelia couldn't.

“Undress,” she asked her.

Sarah obeyed unconditionally, and Cornelia knew it was no longer because of fear. Just submission. Like many women when they shed their clothing, she began by the bottom. She unzipped the invisible fastening on the right side of her skirt and the light fabric of the garment slid to the floor where she elegantly stepped out of it. She wasn't wearing any undergarments, revealing that her plump mound was shaven totally smooth, which Cornelia somehow hadn't expected, although she did the same to her own genital area, but then it was something the punters in the clubs preferred. Standing there motionless now, Sarah allowed Cornelia a minute of oppressive silence to collect her thoughts and drink in the vision of her obscene nudity, upright in her stockinged legs and nothing else.

Her sexual slit was a straight line gash from which no inner or outer labia protruded, like a raw wound, a scar that hypnotised Cornelia. Like an image in a mirror. She felt another twinge in her stomach. She couldn't help but stare at Sarah's cunt.

Then she quickly shed the rest of her clothes, the opaque white silk blouse and a small, and somewhat unnecessary brassiere, which then unveiled slight dark-nippled breasts even the smallest of men could cup in one hand, delicate hills in the porcelain landscape of her body.

Cornelia kept on peering at her.

Forgotten desires of school crushes on other girls flooded back. It had been ages since she had been with a woman.

Having taken in Sarah's prominent sexual characteristics, Cornelia quickly noted that the whole geography of the young woman's body was dotted with small bruises. These blemishes travelled across a whole spectrum of colours from dark, almost blue to brown and pale yellow as the skin had begun repairing itself.

These bruises had been created over a period of time; there was no way they could have happened on the same occasion.

“Turn round.”

Sarah did so, with elfin grace.

The bruises also generously populated her back, prominently spread across her thighs, with even redder lines, like the forgotten remnants of whip lashes or continued caning, criss-crossing her slightly androgynous buttocks.