The Seven Steps to Closure (8 page)

‘What sort of problem?’ asked Elaine suspiciously, while staring at her blouse.

‘Oh you know the normal type. Big emergency,’ she muttered evasively, trying to tame her hair. Finishing her unsuccessful grooming attempts, she picked up her menu, staring at it intently.

‘What type of emergency?’ asked Dinah.

‘Oh big client, I had to get his divorce documents in order. Speaking of which,’ she said to me, ‘yours have been submitted. You look great by the way.’

‘Thanks, for the compliments and the divorce papers.’ I patted my hair. ‘I’m finally getting the hang of doing it. You should have seen me the first time I washed it. Total disaster: I looked like a mushroom. Tristan got me a hair straightener and some anti-fizzing agent and it’s all under control.’

Elaine was staring at Natalie. ‘Who is it?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Who’s who?’ Nat stared even more intently at her menu.

‘The big important client,’ Elaine persisted.

‘No one you would know.’

‘I know a lot of people.’

‘Look can we just drop it, it’s not important.’

‘Not important? You’re late for dinner tonight, Thursday you didn’t even show up for the movies.’

‘Oh shit!’ Nat looked stunned. ‘I totally forgot.’

Now it was my turn to look suspicious. ‘If you forgot,’ I asked, ‘why did you send me a text the next day?’

Nat squirmed in her seat.

‘Oh my God,’ Elaine said.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, looking at her in concern.

‘Oh My God.’

She seemed to be fine so I glanced around for a fire or some other cause for her apparent alarm.

‘OH MY GOD.’

I intensified my search, now hunting for an axe murderer or a suicide bomber. And then I noticed Nat. She sunk guiltily into her seat as Elaine pointed a finger at her and hissed, ‘You’ve been having sex!’

‘Shhhhhhh,’ Nat urged, flapping her hands at Elaine. ‘Shut up.’

‘I will not shut up. I want to know with whom, and where and for how long and well, just tell me everything.’ Elaine pulled her seat in closer to the table and leaned towards Nat, eagerly awaiting the details.

‘You’ve been having sex?’ I asked Natalie.

She looked at me sheepishly, and then smiled.

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Anyone we know?’

She shook her head.

‘Any good?’

She grinned.

Elaine called a waiter over and ordered a bottle of bubbly. ‘To celebrate,’ she explained. ‘Now – tell us everything.’

‘I can’t,’ whispered Natalie in a horrified voice, ‘I’m such a slut.’

‘Is it more than one man?’ asked Elaine with glee.

‘Euwwww no. Ahhh, I’ve been having sex with……… No I can’t say it, it’s just too bad.’

‘Come on. It’s all right we are here to support you, not ridicule you,’ I encouraged.

‘Okay. I’m going to say it really fast because otherwise I won’t get it out.’ She took a few deep breaths and then launched into her sentence. ‘Itsthekleeneratork’.

She looked at us expecting some sort of response. I glanced at the others. They all shook their heads.

‘Nah, sorry love we missed it. You’re going to have to say it slowly.’

She put her hands over her face and said through clenched teeth, ‘It’s the cleaner at work.’

Collective gasps followed this outburst. Natalie having sex with a cleaner? Stylish composed Natalie, whose life was perfectly ordered? Natalie whose only interest was getting a partnership? Natalie who hadn’t even looked sideways at a man for…… well forever?

I giggled nervously. ‘Seriously? The cleaner?’

‘You’ve been doing the wild thing….. with the cleaner?’ asked Dinah bewildered.

Elaine, frozen in shock, suddenly burst into gut-wrenching, convulsive laughter. Everyone in the restaurant turned to look at her while she doubled over and slapped the table. ‘Ahh God, this is too good.’ She wiped the tears out of her eyes. ‘So has he been hoovering your rug?’

She collapsed again and Dinah and I started to laugh.

‘I hope he gets into all the cracks and hard to reach places,’ Dinah said, tears coursing down her face.

‘Yeah,’ I said giggling. ‘Is he good with his feather duster?’

‘Right,’ said Nat, ‘all of you shut up or I won’t tell you anything.’ She waited till we stopped laughing – like a teacher with some wayward students. Every time we had it under control one of us would catch the others eyes and start giggling again. Finally she began her tale.

‘Well he’s been cleaning there for about three months. He’s very thorough,’ she said enthusiastically, stopping with an annoyed look on her face when we all burst out laughing again.

‘Sorry, sorry, please go on. I promise we’ll behave.’ Elaine was the first to regain her composure.

‘It was a couple of months ago that I met him…not that met is really the right word.’

I noticed the ladies at the table next to us had gone quiet and were leaning towards us like a pack of dogs towards a tasty bone.

‘I was working late trying to get some work for the Velucci family up to date. It must have been about 10 o’clock, and all I could hear was the vacuum cleaner working its way closer and closer to my office. The more I tried to ignore it the more uptight and angry I got.’ She paused and we all nodded encouragingly at her while she took a deep breath. ‘So when it got to the corridor outside my office I decided to ask them to move to a different area until I had gone. The place is enormous, it’s not like they had to clean right there right then. I got as far as the doorway when I saw him.’ She paused and shivered.

‘What does he look like?’ the woman at the table next to us asked.

‘About six foot tall with dark hair, but really thick hair – sort of crumpled looking.’

‘Like he’d just gotten out of bed?’

‘That’s it, like he’s just gotten out of bed.’ She sighed.

‘I love that look,’ a lady at another table whispered to her friend.

‘And he has the most beautiful, buttery brown eyes. When he looked at me it was like….,’ she paused to consider.

‘Like he was looking into you, into your soul?’ the waiter asked helpfully.

‘Just like he was looking into my soul,’ confirmed Natalie, totally unaware of the crowd she was drawing.

‘It was like he possessed me as soon as his eyes met mine. I got such a shock that I stumbled and had to hold onto the door frame for support. And then he was there, his arms around me, supporting me. I had goose bumps all over my body, and I mean ALL over my body.’ She paused.

‘Go on,’ said the chef, leaning over the kitchen bench to hear.

‘Well then he said “Are you all right?”’ she mimicked a low husky South American accent. ‘At the sound of it my knees went totally out from underneath me and he picked me up and carried me to my desk. “Have you eaten lately?” he asked me, “Maybe your blood sugars are down.” Which I thought was pretty funny coming from a cleaner. But I couldn’t laugh because the only thing wrong with me was the effect he was having on me. And then…’ She paused again, caught up in her memory.

‘And then?’ we all asked in unison.

‘And then I looked up straight into his eyes. His face was only a few inches from mine. I could see his pupils dilate. I tried to say something but my mouth was so dry that I licked my lips.’

We all gasped.

‘And then I licked them again, more slowly. It was like I could already taste him.’

‘What did he do?’ whispered Dinah.

‘Well, as we stared into each other’s eyes he tightened his grip on my waist, and I put my hands on his belt, pulling him closer. Then he licked his lips and all of a sudden I wanted him more than I have ever wanted anything or anybody.’

I saw a lady at the table next to us put her hand to her heart as if she was in pain.

‘What did you do?’ I was mesmerised by her tale.

‘Well I pulled him closer again but my skirt was in the way. So he reached down and slowly, with the palms of his hands, pushed my skirt up to the top of my thighs, and then he moved in between my legs. His hands were entwined in my hair and I needed to get even closer to him, so I arched up bringing my face closer to his.’

She stopped overwhelmed by the memory. We all waited while she composed herself. Finally she took a deep breath and continued. ‘And then he was kissing me. Ravishing my mouth, my face, my neck – he was driving me crazy. I ripped his tank top off over his head, and the beauty of his body stunned me.’ She stopped shaking her head, ‘I still can’t get over how perfect his body is. And then his hands were on the buttons of my blouse pulling it back off my shoulders. He paused and took a deep breath as he stared at my bra and I reached back and undid it and then threw it on the floor. He took my breasts in his hands and massaged them gently as he kissed me. It drove me wild and I started ripping at his pants, undoing his belt and zipper. And then I placed both my hands on his …’ She paused and looked embarrassed.

‘Penis,’ supplied Elaine helpfully.

‘Yes, his penis.’ She blushed as she said it. ‘He went crazy, pushing me back on the table so he could get my skirt and underwear off. We did it right then and there: me lying on the table with my legs wrapped around his waist and him leaning over me, talking to me in Spanish. It was the wildest, most frightening, best sex of my life.’

She paused, and everybody held their breath, silently urging her to go on.

‘Things got pretty awkward when we had finished. We got dressed and sorted out my desk, neither of us speaking, and then I left.’

She stopped, exhausted from the telling. I pushed a glass of bubbly into her hand and she took a big swig. By now the entire restaurant staff and patrons were clustered around the table.

‘What the hell?’ she said, acknowledging her audience for the first time. ‘Everyone, back to your tables. You,’ she said, pointing at the chef, ‘where the hell is my dinner?’

‘Uhh,’ he said nervously, looking at the waiter for support, ‘you haven’t ordered it yet.’

‘Ohh, well I’ll have the garden salad and the gnocchi. Girls?’

We all ordered our meals and everyone else returned to their tables.

‘So what happened after that?’ I asked.

‘Well I made sure I was out of the building well before the cleaners arrived for the next month, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him. During the day I would think about the feel of his hands on my breasts, the weight of his body on top of me. At night I would dream that I was doing it all over again. One day I got to work and found a red rose on my desk. When I smelt it I found a little piece of paper between the petals.’

‘What did it say?’ I asked.

‘It just said ‘Sorry’. I felt bad for avoiding him so decided to stay late that night just to let him know that everything was okay but that it wouldn’t be happening again.’

‘And?’ Dinah asked, her brown eyes wide.

Nat held up three fingers.

‘Christ, three times?’ Even Elaine seemed impressed.

‘Yep. Once on the floor, once on my desk, and then on my couch. I didn’t get home till about 1 in the morning. And ever since then, every cleaning night, I wait for him. I wasn’t going to tonight because I had to come here, but I couldn’t resist.’

‘Well if tonight is cleaning night, where were you Thursday night?’

Natalie looked a little sheepish. ‘At home.’

‘But I rang you at home and you didn’t pick up.’

‘Hmmm, well I wasn’t really in a position to pick up the phone.’

‘You mean he was there with you?’ Elaine asked.

She nodded. ‘The thing is, when you used to talk about sex I never really got it. I mean I’ve never really had sex till now.’

‘You’ve had sex,’ I said.

‘Not like this. Remember when I was dating Bobby?’

We all nodded.

‘Sex with him was so mind numbingly boring that I used to go through work in my head. Now it’s all I can do not to pass out from the feel of him naked next to me.’

I thought about it. It was true. Nat had never really joined in our sex talk.

‘They can’t have all been bad,’ said Elaine. ‘What about Simon?’

‘Didn’t know the meaning of foreplay.’

‘Adam?’

‘Premature ejaculator.’

‘Warren?’

‘Used to have to watch the footy while we did it.’

‘Ok. What about Richard?’ I said. ‘Surely he was okay?’

‘Richard was the worst. He used to pull out to finish himself off.’

‘Ughhhh,’ we all groaned.

‘Why did you never tell us?’

‘Until I met Ricardo I had always assumed there was something wrong with me.’

‘Well it sounds like you are making up for lost time,’ Elaine said approvingly.

And then our meals arrived, cutting off all conversation for a while.

* * *

I woke a little bleary from the night out with the girls, which had turned into a bit of a champagne fest after Natalie’s little confession. It had seemed like a good idea at the time to start toasting things.

Elaine had started it. ‘Here’s to hot sex.’ She raised her glass in the air.

‘Here’s to multiple orgasms,’ Nat said, giggling ferociously.

‘Here’s to new shoes,’ I said, which sadly was the closest thing I’d had to an orgasm for a while.

‘Here’s to make up sex,’ said Dinah.

‘Ohh yeah,’ said Elaine, ‘my favourite. To make up sex.’

We had gone on like that for the rest of the night, chatting about nothing and then charging our glasses to toast things. After five bottles of champagne our toasts had lost much of the significance.

‘Here’s to waiters.’ We toasted the waiter, who was looking distinctly nervous.

‘Here’s to lamp posts,’ I said, walking into one as we staggered down the street.

That made Dinah laugh so hard she bent double at the waist before finally collapsing in a heap. ‘Here’s to pavements,’ she shrieked, rolling around on it.

I stopped mid-step, staring across the road. My champagne soaked brain slowly interpreting the new billboard that had been erected there. ‘Ahh fuck.’ I raised an imaginary champagne glass to the larger-than-life image of Jake. ‘Here’s to cheating ex-husbands,’ I slurred. ‘May they rot in hell.’

I sat up in bed and paused for a second, waiting to see how my body would respond to being upright. A little hungry – a good sign. I stood up carefully waiting for any dizziness. Nope, all appeared to be in working order. I popped a couple of Advil just in case a belated hangover decided to hit, and got dressed to go to Lily’s for brunch.