The Pleasure Quartet (3 page)

Noah pondered at length where to invite her for a first date and how long to wait until he actually called her and suggested they meet. He had the intuition she wouldn’t be impressed merely being a ‘plus one’ on a guest list, however prestigious the gig was, and actually suggested they visit the Metropolitan, where a new exhibition transferred from London’s Royal Academy was enjoying rave reviews and tickets were at a premium, but available to him against musical favours. He chose right.

They were lovers within a week.

Noah knew his feelings on the subject were profoundly irrational, but soon after April moved in with him, she took the decision to grow her hair longer, and even though all their individual and common friends loved her new look, he felt cheated; as if acquiring a new partner he had been given a wrong bill of goods.

Thus were seeds sown.

Outwardly, things were just fine. They seldom argued, the sex was good if at times predictable, they looked good together and enjoyed each other’s company, and New York was vibrant. What could go wrong?

April was untidy, relished in the chaos of mess, her clothes scattered across their bedroom or further afield if Noah indulged her, while he was meticulous and precise, overorganised apart from the piles of cassettes and CDs that spilled over from his desk into even the kitchen, which he always blamed on the nature of his work and which she never reproached him for or used as an excuse for her own state of domestic wildness. She even approved of the way he dressed, conservative and unimaginative and somewhat repetitive in combinations of black, blue and grey, whereas she generously mined every colour of the rainbow and, miraculously, wore them equally well, avoiding clashes, gaudiness or fantasies of outmoded psychedelia.

‘Are all Canadian women like you?’

‘Like what?’

‘So easy to live with?’

‘Am I?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Would you want me to be more complicated?’

‘Like a messed-up maiden with a tenebrous past in a Victorian novel?’

‘Or any period you can think of . . .’

He wanted to answer in the affirmative, hint that there was too much brightness, normalcy even, about her, but Noah knew she wouldn’t understand. He pecked her on the cheek. They lay together in bed. She was reading a magazine; she seldom read books – another mild if occasional bone of contention – and he was halfway through a compelling thriller while listening to a series of remixes one of the bands he was overseeing had sent along that day following a week of arduous recordings with a local producer Noah had suggested. There was no improvement in their sound. The material, the songs were great, but the textures were still wrong. Although not a musician himself – he couldn’t read music, let alone play either piano or guitar or any instrument whatsoever – his intuition had always served him well even if on occasions like this he couldn’t properly express the way forward with just the excuse of emotional intelligence. It sometimes proved frustrating. His mind half on the book he was holding in his left hand catching the light from the bedside table, and half on the music and wandering through its melodic meanders in an attempt to blindly create new aural paths that would lift it to another level, Noah didn’t realise that his right hand had disappeared under the covers and that he was distractedly stroking himself. They both always slept naked.

Her voice reached him, like a dream emerging from a cloud just as Noah simultaneously felt her fingers pinch his left forearm hard. He pulled the earphones off.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she complained.

He had no clue what she was on about.

His eyes must have betrayed his incomprehension.

‘What?’

‘Your hands are all over your cock . . .’

He looked down. She was right. He was playing with himself, his fingers moving between his cock and his balls. He was only half hard, the contact between hand and genitals barely there, no more than a pleasant feather’s touch.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He withdrew his fingers.

A veil of annoyance passed across April’s eyes.

‘How could you?’

‘It just happened. I didn’t realise. Doesn’t mean anything.’

Didn’t she ever unconsciously touch herself? Surely everyone did.

‘I feel . . . offended . . .’ She was visibly struggling for the right word. ‘Insulted . . .’ she continued.

‘You shouldn’t.’ Noah tried to reassure her. ‘It means nothing. Really.’

‘Don’t I please you enough?’ Her lips downturned, her face child-like in sulk.

‘You do, truly.’ He set the book down and his hand brushed her cheek.

April shrugged him off with a look of disgust.

‘You’ve just been playing with your cock with that hand . . .’

‘It was the other hand,’ he retorted.

She turned away from him.

In silence, she switched off her own reading light and pulled her side of the quilt over her shoulders, ignoring him. Noah did likewise, settling with his back to her, their arses cheek to cheek. He knew that by morning the cloud would have passed and the subject be unlikely to be mentioned again.

But he couldn’t sleep, his thoughts now focused on her earlier question. It bounced around in his mind: ‘Don’t I please you enough?’ Round and round it went.

And every time the answer came back positive.

Making him angry with himself in the process.

Maybe he wasn’t cut out for a simple, unassuming state of happiness, of domesticity. He was aware of the fact that in crowds, at parties, functions or elsewhere, he was always looking over his shoulder for others, for new conversation, for distractions. Ever trying to escape boring company, hoping for something better on the other side of the room, in another room, elsewhere. It was the same with women. The thrill was in the chase, the initial exploration, the early days of passion and sexual intemperance and excess.

He wanted more.

But didn’t know what that might consist of. Could he have recognised it even if it presented itself?

He thought of April, by his side, her body warm and soft, almost perfect, the velvet heat when he moved inside her, the faint night smell of her breath, the musky fragrance of her cunt, the way she breathed when they fucked, haltingly, gasping for air as if she was hanging on to a cliff and was playing a game and unsure whether she wished to let go or not.

But she never let go, did she?

Sometimes he dreamed of more.

Of waking in the small hours of morning, his mind still shrouded with fog, to feel her silken lips wrapped around his cock, sucking him slowly, engineering his rise, conducting the blood arousal like an orchestra conductor. Swallowing him whole and literally. Not a thing she would ever willingly do, he knew.

He evoked the pale orb of her arse cheeks when he moved inside her as she kneeled on all fours and allowed him to thrust away and he couldn’t help but wonder how tight her other hole would be. On a couple of occasions, he had been tempted to move just that vital inch or so and try to penetrate her anally but she had always made it clear it was not on the menu. Not that he had a particular fetish for anal sex, although he had enjoyed the few times women had allowed him to practise or suggest the supposedly twisted art, but there was a dirtiness, a taboo about the act that drew him strongly towards the idea of it.

April was normal.

And nigh perfect.

And transparent.

And boring.

She fucked because that’s what girlfriends did with boyfriends. Women did with men. He didn’t even know if she enjoyed it. She came so easily, he often wondered if she faked her orgasms. She expected him to take her, to enter her, to possess her, seemed to believe that her sex was a gift he (or other men) would be grateful for, an offering, but she seldom initiated the act. Had it not been a healthy exercise, a sanitary flexing of their body hydraulics, he reckoned she would have been totally indifferent to the act. Seen it as just another function, like eating, running or conversation.

More.

He wanted more.

He dreamed of a dark sexual power that would move him like music did, like magic.

Shortly after, for her job, April had to fly off for a few days to the magazine printer’s plant in Illinois to overlook a new production process. Her trip had been planned for some time, and had nothing to do with that awkward evening. Noah found himself alone in Manhattan for a series of nights and, although he would never have admitted so to her, he felt a sense of relief and a quiet sense of excitement. Opportunities? The chance to reconsider their relationship? His thoughts were still vague on the subject.

He’d detoured past Electric Ladyland studios to pick up the masters for some new material by a West Coast middle-of-the-road balladeer who had been signed to the label long before he had become involved, and walking out into the midday sun had decided he had no wish to continue to his office on Perry Street. His company hours were flexible and, anyway, he could always be contacted on his mobile. He was in no rush to listen to the recordings. He knew they would be bland but efficient, tailored for the radio market, every beat in place, superficial but perfect for the dance floor.

In truth, the frosty exchange with April that other evening had left a seed of doubt in his mind.

Why had he begun to touch himself, rather than reach out to her nude body at his side? He tried to remember if he had been daydreaming, fantasising, drumming up past girlfriends or mental caches of pornography that might have caused him to absentmindedly stroke his cock rather than his girlfriend. He could not recall anything particularly erotic passing through his mind right then. Was he actually seeking arousal, just a Pavlovian reflex buried deep inside his male senses responding to a primeval bell? The thought that he might no longer be attracted to April, despite her beauty, burrowed in the back of his brain like a termite, quiet, insistent, small but definitely there, nibbling away at the mental banks of his relationship.

He sat at the outside table of a café on Sullivan Street, sipping a coffee and watching the passers-by. A petite longhaired dark blonde walked by. She looked foreign, in the way she was dressed, with both elegance and simplicity, and the way she carried her head straight, assured in the knowledge that she was attractive, chin to the fore, snub nose raised, kissable heavy lips free of lipstick, cushioned, inviting.

She caught Noah staring at her and hesitated a brief moment when he thought she might even stop, begin conversing with him, maybe even come and sit with him. A faint smile emerged across her lips and she continued past, supremely self-confident, reassured by the power she knew she had over men. His eyes followed her arse. The skirt was short and tight, her legs straight and sinewy, the thin material of the cotton skirt adhering to her skin like a thin veil. As she reached the corner with Bleecker the sun exploded behind her, exposing the shape of her body through the flimsy material. Somehow Noah was convinced she was wearing nothing underneath. He grew hard in an instant at the thought that this foreign girl, in her mid-twenties but looking dangerously younger, was absolutely the type of woman who would, without hesitation, suck his cock between the sheets in the morning to wake him up and confound him with wonderful obscenities should he fuck her in the arse.

She disappeared around the corner, her ostentatious sexuality carrying her along to her destination where an unknown lover was no doubt already caressing his cock awaiting her arrival.

For a brief moment, Noah felt like jumping out of his chair, dropping a few dollar bills on the table for the coffee and rushing off to follow her. But he didn’t. He was aware he presented well, looking neither like Brad Pitt nor like Frankenstein’s monster, could hold a conversation with a modicum of wit, but he had never mastered impromptu pick-up techniques, he knew. ‘Sorry, Miss, do you happen to be French?’ And if she did, what to say next? And if she wasn’t?

Damn, sometimes, he wished he was more decisive. He was when it came to work and business, so why not in his private life?

The waitress came along to ask if he wanted a refill, which he turned down. She had a pronounced Mid-West accent and wore tight black jeans with a thin red plastic belt, wedge-heel canvas shoes and a white T-shirt advertising the logo of the café. She wore a visibly sheer bra, her nipples hard and sharply delineated behind the stretched material. She looked down at him and he was certain could not avoid seeing how his trousers were deformed by an obvious erection. Her face was pleasant but inexpressive, and Noah felt a wave of shame when he realised that it was not unlike April’s, somehow devoid of emotions, of depth. Adequate for the majority of onlookers but not for the seekers of truths, for whom mere simplicity was not enough. He held her gaze one instant, as if challenging her to object to his ever so inescapable hardness. He paid up and left.

Walking home, he found himself captivated by the spectacle of women. Old and young, walking alone or with others. Thin and voluptuous. The variety of ways they dressed, revealed degrees of flesh, hints of their personality, their likes and dislikes. Their posture, ramrod straight and slouching, waltzing along the streets, tiptoeing as if through water across the busy pavements, eyes peering right ahead or avoiding his incoming stare with false modesty. Each one distinctive. Unique.

And, with every vision, a million scenarios began hatching in his febrile mind. Of undressing them, fucking them, loving them, hurting them, having them beg, making them come, manipulating the underground rise of their lust, bringing their basic truth to the surface.

Would that skinny woman in her late forties with the pastel cashmere coat enjoy having her hair pulled while he rode her? Would that teenager in a Harvard rowing team sweatshirt and jeans torn at the knees enjoy being pinned down with brute force while he lowered himself into her? Would those two Scandinavian-like waifs speaking in a language he couldn’t recognise as they crossed the street in a different direction consent to take turns sucking him off, both on their knees in front of him?

No wonder he couldn’t lose his erection.