Ritual (12 page)

Charlie
approached her, gradually loosening his necktie. He held her, and kissed her
forehead. It was cool, slightly damp with perspiration, and tasted of perfume. ‘I
hope you don’t think I make a habit of picking up women in hotel lounges,’ he
said, his voice hoarse.

‘I wouldn’t
mind if you did,’ Velma replied. ‘Practise makes perfect.’

She reached
behind her one-handed and unfastened her bra, drawing it off her breasts and
letting it fall. Her breasts were big and soft and heavy, with nipples that
crinkled tight, she unbuttoned his shirt, tugging it out of his pants, and then
she grasped her breasts in both hands and pressed her nipples against his bare
chest, kissing him with mounting hunger. Her teeth sought out his lips and his
tongue, and bit at them so sharply that he could taste the metallic flavour of
blood in his mouth. ‘I’m going to eat you,’ she whispered.

They climbed on
to the bed, struggling out of the last of their clothes. Charlie could hear
himself panting. He took hold of Velma and rolled her over. Her breasts moved
with slow-motion fluidity. Her white thighs parted. He saw dark hair and
glistening pink. Then he had pushed himself into her, and the bedsprings began
to jounce, and all he could see was Velma’s hair and part of the pillow and a
torn off piece of wallpaper that looked like the head of a dog.

Details, blurs, gasps, and then a snuffling, snorting release.

He rolled off
her, trying to catch his breath. Immediately, however, she was on top of him
and straddled his stomach, so that he could feel her wetness pressed against
him. ‘I want more of you,’ she demanded, and when Charlie squinted up at her,
with one hand raised to keep the light out of his eyes, he could see that she
wasn’t smiling.

‘No good huh?’
he said. ‘I told you I don’t make a habit of it. Next time, I’ll try to take my
time.’

‘I want you
now,’ she said, and her eyes glittered. ‘Come on now,’ Charlie protested. ‘I’m
only human.’ But Velma slid down him, and crouched like a cunning animal
between his legs, and held his slippery softened penis in her hand. She stuck
out her tongue, and it was very long and pointed, and she teased him by licking
at the small sensitive opening. All the time she kept her hair drawn back from
her forehead with her other
hand,
and her eyes fixed
on him. Taunting him, provoking him, seeing how much she could shock him. She
was irritating him with her caresses rather than arousing him. ‘Can you guess
how much I want you?’ she said. Charlie was almost frightened to answer. ‘How
much do you think I want you?’

Charlie said
nothing as she sucked his softened member completely into her mouth. She sucked
too hard, and he said, ‘AM’ and put his hand on her shoulder to push her away.
But she opened her mouth even wider and tried to cram his testicles in as well.
Her whole mouth was
cram
full and still she looked up
at him with those taunting, glittering eyes. ‘Velma-’
She
bit him gently, then a little harder.

‘Velma, I have
to tell you that
hurts
.’

She didn’t
release him. Instead, she bent her head a little lower, and used her fingers to
put his second testicle completely into her mouth. Her cheeks were swollen as
if she had been gorging herself with too much food.

‘Velma, come
on, careful now, that really hurts when you –’

She bit him
again, sharper and harder this time, and this time she drew blood. A thin
dribble of it ran out of the side of her mouth. Charlie felt a peculiar empty
feeling in his stomach and suddenly realized that it was panic. Here he was,
lying in bed with a woman he had never met before, and she was holding
everything that made him a man between her teeth. With one hard bite, she could
turn him into
an
eunuch. She could even kill him.

‘Velma, you have
to listen to me now... let me go, will you, please?’

Velma snarled
and dribbled and shook her head from side to side, worrying his sexual organs
as if she were a young lioness who was refusing to surrender her prey. In spite
of his fear, however

–
or
perhaps because of it – Charlie began to feel his penis
hardening again. It uncurled itself against the arch of Velma’s palate and
gradually forced her to let his testicles plop out from between her lips, one
by one, two wet plums, although she managed to keep almost his entire erection
inside her mouth.

She forced her
head forward the very last half-inch. His swollen glans must have actually been
inside her throat. Still she kept her eyes fixed on him, challenging,
warning
. Any other woman would have gagged or choked. Velma
kept him there, on the brink between extreme erotic excitement and total
terror, and it seemed to Charlie that whole minutes went past.

At last she
lifted her head, allowing the shaft to slide out from between her lips inch by
inch.

‘Did I frighten
you?’ she asked him. Now she was smiling.

Charlie rolled
over and got up off the bed. ‘I frightened you,’ she said.

‘I’m just going
to the bathroom, that’s all,’ Charlie felt as if the floor were tilting, and
wished to God he hadn’t accepted that cognac. He very rarely got drunk. He
didn’t like losing control of himself. Apart from that, the brandy fumes seemed
to be rising up from his stomach like gasoline vapour, and he knew that it
would take only one more drink to make him very sick indeed.

Velma stood in
the doorway watching him as he urinated. ‘Do you know something? I could have
bitten it right off.’ She stepped forward as he was finishing and held him in
one hand. ‘You knew that, didn’t you? And you were frightened.’

‘I do my best
not to live too dangerously,’ Charlie told her.

‘You still
don’t understand, do you?’ Her face so close to his that he could see the
orange flecks in her eyes. ‘I wanted to bite it off. I wanted to chew it and
eat it and swallow it.’

Charlie stared
at her. She had an expression on her face that he could only describe to
himself as triumph, with a little mockery thrown in for seasoning. She released
him, and he flushed the toilet and walked back through to the bedroom. ‘I think
I’d better get back to Martin,’ he said, and reached for his shirt.

Velma came up
behind him and touched the nape of his neck with her long fingernails. It gave
him a shiver that was partly arousal and partly apprehension. Maybe this is
what Fve always been missing, he thought. Maybe my life has always lacked a
little danger.

‘Stay,’ said
Velma. ‘I promise I won’t frighten you again.’

‘I don’t know,’
Charlie demurred.

‘Your son will
be okay. He’s a big boy now, isn’t he?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Well, then,’ purred
Velma, turning him around and kissing his nose. ‘He’s almost big enough for
me.’

Charlie opened
his fingers and his shirt dropped on to the floor.

H
e woke up and there was bright fall sunshine criss-crossing the
ceiling like the reflection on a fishing pond. He rubbed a crust of sleep from
his eye and then turned over. Velma was lying with her back to him, still
breathing deeply. The room reeked of sex and Obsession. Charlie reached over
and gently untangled Velma’s hair.

Beside the bed,
the electric clock read 7:07. Martin had been very tired last night; he was
probably still asleep. If Charlie dressed and went back to their room, Martin
may not even realize that he had been away all night.

Charlie wasn’t
guilty about having gone to bed with Velma. He was
divorced,
he could go to bed with anybody he wanted. But he did feel that it might upset
Martin, seeing how close Martin was to his mother. He pulled at a curl in
Velma’s hair and Velma opened her eyes and looked at him sideways and smiled.

‘It’s morning,’
he told her. ‘I have to go.’

‘No breakfast
special?’

‘I think I’m
just about plumb
wore
out,’ Charlie said in an Uncle
Tom accent.

‘That’s hard to
believe,’ said Velma, and turned around to admire him with eyes that were still
glassy from dreams.

For the first
time, Charlie noticed a deep sickle-shaped scar, just where her right breast
met her chest. The scar was pale pink, and it had obviously healed well, but it
looked as if something had actually taken a good sized piece out of her muscle.
He didn’t like to be over-inquisitive. When you met people on the road, you had
to accept that they tell you as much or as little about themselves as they
wanted; truth or lies; and that you had to take them for what they were. But he
touched Velma’s scar very lightly with his fingertips, and he asked her the
question with his eyes.

‘Self-inflicted,’
smiled Velma.

‘What does that
mean?’ Charlie asked.

‘What do you
think?’

Charlie
shrugged. His guess was that Velma had stayed with a violent boyfriend just one
night too many, and that he had cut her or burned her or whatever it was that
violent boyfriends did these days.

‘I think it’s
none of my
Goddamned
business,’ he said.

‘It could be,’
said Velma. ‘You know all about the Celestines, don’t you?’

Charlie stared
at her.
‘The Celestines?
You’re the second person
who’s mentioned the Celestines to me in a couple of days. I never heard of them
before. Didn’t they come from New Orleans or something?’

‘Originally
they came from New Orleans, yes; but now they’re all over.’

‘I still don’t
have any idea of what they are, or who they are,’ Charlie admitted.

Velma said
nothing for a moment. Then she climbed out of bed, and approached the dressing
table, inspecting her naked body in the mirror. She laid one hand over the scar
on her chest, and closed her eyes. ‘You feel hostile towards them.’

‘I don’t know
anything about them. How can I possibly feel hostile towards them?’

Velma opened
her eyes and looked at him in the mirror. ‘Do you always feel hostile towards
things that you don’t understand?’

Charlie swung
back the covers. ‘I’d better get back to my son. If I get back now, he’ll still
be asleep.’

‘You mean he
won’t realize that his father has been away all night?’

‘Something
like
that.’ Charlie reached for his crumpled pants.

‘Does it make
you feel guilty, spending the night with a woman you picked up in a bar?’

‘Not at all.’

Velma came over
to him, still naked, and buttoned up his pants for him. Then she kissed him on
the lips, and laughed.

‘I know that some
Celestines run a restaurant at Alien’s Corners,’ said Charlie.

‘That’s right,’
said Velma. ‘So you do know something.’

‘I don’t get
this,’ Charlie told her irritably. ‘It’s like some kind of guessing game. Do
you know what the Celestines are?’

‘Of course.
They’re like a society, a club. Every now and
then they get together and they eat a special dinner.’

‘
Le Reposoir
, they meet there,’ said
Charlie, and Velma nodded.

Charlie said,
‘The way we got together last night, was that accidental, or was it arranged? I
mean, was it arranged by somebody else? Were we supposed to get together?’

‘You could say
that,’ she said. He knew now that she was mocking him.

‘Do you mind
telling me who arranged it, and why?’

‘Are you
feeling used?’ she teased him. She turned her back on him and for a split
second he saw a mental Polaroid of last night’s lovemaking, Velma biting his
shoulder, Velma sitting on his face, grinding herself into his mouth.
Vicious, harsh, dangerous sex; sex with teeth and blood and
fingernails.

He buttoned up
his shirt, buttoned the cuffs. ‘I don’t know what this is all about,’ he said,
trying to keep his voice steady. ‘I don’t think I want to know what this is all
about. I’m going back to my room and then I’m leaving. If you want some money –
here -’ He reached into his back pants pocket and took out fifty dollars in ten
dollar bills.

Velma shook her
head. ‘I don’t want your money. I’ve already been paid.’

Charlie seized
hold of her wrist and twisted her around. Instantly, she slapped his face,
hard, and he let her go. They stood glaring at each other, and panting. A
crimson handprint gradually appeared on Charlie’s cheek.

‘Somebody paid
you to pick me up and screw me?’ he asked her incredulously.

‘I was trying
to help you,
that’s
all,’ said Velma. I was trying to
make you understand.’

‘Understand
what? I mean, what’s the connection?
You, me,
Le Reposoir
, these Celestine people.

What the hell
is it all about?’

Velma was calm.
‘You approached them, didn’t you?
The Musettes?’

‘You know about
that?’

‘I know the
Musettes. They called me. They were under the impression that you knew
something about the Celestines and that you were anxious to join them.’

Charlie stared
at Velma, narrow-eyed. ‘Now, wait a minute. I went to
Le Reposoir
because I wanted to eat there, that was all.’

Velma dressed
and Charlie watched her, feeling completely perplexed. If the Musettes had
believed that he knew what the Celestines were, and that he wanted to become
one of them, why hadn’t they invited him to join when he had visited
Le Reposoir
yesterday? And why on earth
should they have gone to the trouble of finding out where he was staying after
he had left Alien’s Corners, and paying for Velma to take him to bed?

Velma lifted
her breasts into her bra, and fastened it. ‘You’d better go down to see your
son.