‘I am addicted to risk,’ I admit, seating myself carefully, ‘I took too many risks with strangers. I ended up losing everything I had: my job, the roof over my head, my friends, my family.’
I smooth the crease out of my miniscule skirt, crossing my bare legs above the knee, swaying my foot rhythmically about until my stiletto is dangling precariously off the end of my big toe.
‘Well, almost everything. I guess I still have myself.’
Phenomenal: to him, my beauty must be phenomenal. I’m wearing my hair off my face, exposing the silver clasps clinging to my ears, the thin gold necklace strung around my slim neck. A thick lock of stray hair falls off my forehead, covering my eyes. I brush it off me as if it’s a flea’s itch, a nettle sting, a feather’s tickle, flickering my eyelashes at him. I groom myself fancifully, shaking my hair out so that it uncurls, unravels, and slightly changes colour.
‘I take risks, too,’ he tells me, once he has found my undivided attention, ‘Only I do it for a living.’
I raise my brows a mite and purse my lips in concentration. So, this male isn’t a bricklayer, after all. The rank smell coming from under his hairy armpits must be down to stress, lifting weights or some kind of triggered sexual response to my overt body language.
‘You take risks for a living?’
‘I trade commodities: oil, gas, power. Guess you could say I’m successful. I’ve a large town house in the suburbs, a hybrid 4-wheel, a sauna cabin and plunge pool, a mini gym. I take exotic holidays in the sun.’
‘Guess you could,’ I interject, telling him my plight, my rough luck, ‘I live on the streets myself.’
I think of all the hordes of homeless huddles of blankets sleeping underneath the arches, in store doorways, under bridges. Of the dirty-faced girls and boys with scrawled placards pleading Help Me that I meet at the roundabout every time I drive out of town. Of the young immigrant woman selling Big Issue outside her local supermarket. Of the beggar girl on the metro without a septum, her weepy eyes. Of the real poor. Immaculately dressed for him, I must bear little resemblance to the destitute and impoverished.
‘I don’t believe you,’ he opines, polishing off his glass of lukewarm wine, ‘You look far too…’
‘Too clean to live on the streets? Is that what you were going to say?’
He licks his upper lip salaciously with the tip of his tongue, as if trying to taste his nostrils, ‘Yeah.’
‘I didn’t say I slept on the streets.’
I can tell, he’s absorbed in me: he’s never met a woman quite as unsettling or disquieting as me.
‘Tell me what happened to you.’
‘I left state school at sixteen without any qualifications, found myself a dead-end job as a customer services assistant pacifying complaining online shoppers in a call centre. Some of the customers were coarse, rude about me. Can you imagine how degrading that felt for me as a woman? It was like that every day. The same sickening routine day in day out. Me, trying to appease angry old men.’
His ears prick up at their prospects, ‘Angry old men? What were you selling for heaven’s sake?’
I smile, my twisted deviant smile, ‘Would you believe stimulants to enhance the male sex drive?’
‘And did they work, these stimulants?’
‘What do you think?’
I pause, staring at the wafer thin wedge of lime curling itself into a spiral helix in my empty glass.
‘The pay was awful, barely enough for me to live on, let alone enjoy myself. I grew sick of their sexist insults, the innuendos. I needed out. So, I waited until the next bad man came on the line and got personal with me then, I’m afraid, I swore at him and told him what he could do with his order. It didn’t stop there. Every time clients were rude to me, I swore at them and refused to take their orders, and I made damn sure that everybody in the office heard me. One of the other telesales girls put in an official complaint about my noises to the shift manager. I was suspended from work then summoned to a disciplinary hearing without a witness, accused of unacceptable behaviour towards our esteemed clientele, of bringing their dreadful company, Sex Roots International, into disrepute.’
Drew cuts in stifling a fizzy-nosed urge to laugh, ‘Sex Roots? Is that what they called themselves?’
‘Cute isn’t it? I was summarily dismissed without severance pay. It was the kiss of death as far as finding a job was concerned. I ran out of cash, grew desperate. I even sold my mother’s antique jewellery to a rogue street dealer. It was her special gift to me for my twenty-first. I lost it all.’
I lower my head, exhausted, spent, almost finished, ‘In the end, I sold myself.’
My face turns a sickly blanche. He must be able to feel my inner turmoil, the conflicting emotions: my obsession mixed with guilt, the shame loitering in my heart, the butterflies in my stomach, as I bare my sacred inner soul to him.
‘The urge to take risks grew inside me,’ I reveal, ‘I had a fair few clients at first: five, twenty, thirty, then I went downhill, grew impatient, couldn’t wait for the next one, needed an instant thrill.’
The speech gushes from my mouth: hurried, rapid, clipped. I can’t leak the words out fast enough.
‘My mind was riddled with sex. I couldn’t help myself. I needed risk, excitement, illicit journeys.’
I’m getting animated, excitable. Even with all I have lost, I still crave risk. As I open my heart to him, I sense his intrigue with me growing, a tumour of need swelling inside his love-starved belly.
Drew grips my hand.
‘Think I can help you,’ he says, in a vain attempt to assure me, ‘If you let me.’
It’s you who’s going to need the help, you sad creep. I’m the one in control here. The one who’ll decide when, where and how we breed, not you, and I’ll determine what happens to you afterward.
I have rehearsed my breeding plan for days, careful to choose the right venue and time. For me, the timing is everything. The choice of venue, a dealer’s wine bar late on a Friday evening, ensures a scarcity of unattached single women out on the town in search of love, a partner, future husband, a potential breeding mate, or a one night stand. I switch my mind to a critical assessment of my male, having no doubt: he’s a cold-hearted, blunt, calculating, ruthless bastard. His sole ambition being achievement, hitting target: the target tonight being me. No manners, no please or thank you, just a loner, someone too obsessed with working all hours to sustain a successful relationship.
I wonder how many other women have enjoyed his dull personality, the type of women, their age. Young, very young I suspect, working class, unsophisticated, uneducated, vulnerable: easy prey for a closet beaux, a paramour, a reluctant suitor, like him. On the other hand, he does sound as if he might be stinking rich, I do desperately need to find a nest to hatch my brood, and he did offer to buy me a double gin without me prompting him.
‘We only just met,’ I reply, ‘How can I be sure you won’t…?’ I let my query drift off as a tease.
‘Take advantage of you?’
I’ve drunk a lot of gin tonight. I purse my moist lips, trying harder to concentrate, failing dismally.
‘I won’t do anything you don’t want me to,’ he reassures me lying through his stained black teeth.
What do I have to lose?
I stand unsteadily, take off my suede, reach for the off white zip-up leather jacket hanging off the back of my chair, throw it on, and zip it up halfway, as far as my breasts.
He loves me dressed in white. It gives his tainted lady an unintentional air of purity, some serenity.
‘You change colours more often than a chameleon,’ he tells me, joking at my expense.
I test him, blinking my eyes, turning my icy steel grey irises to a warmer shade of almond.
He freezes, caught in a state of stunned amazement, ‘Strewth! How did you do that?’
Strewth?
‘My little secret. Why, did I bother you?’
‘Surprise, yes. Shock even. Bother, no. It’s just that I’ve never seen a girl behave like you before.’
I smile: my warmest, endearing, affectionate, might-just-love-you smile, ‘Well you have now.’
I bend down, searching around under the table, lift my black quilted diamond ladies tote bag and weighty battered pale blue suitcase up off the floor, then slam the case on the table, shifting the glasses, creating a scene, drawing attention to my bare rear from the other male admirers. I unzip the case and stuff my suede jacket inside, zip the bulging case, then I look at Drew and ask him his permission, just to make sure I still have his bed for the night.
‘Can I bring my worldly possessions with me, please?’
He draws out a state-of-the art i-phone, ready to book our taxi home? ‘Sure, let’s get out of here.’
While he is busy messaging Uber, I tell him my name is Flyn.
‘Flyn? Unusual name,’ he says, sending the payment with a flourish, as if sealing his latest deal.
‘It’s Irish. It means descendent of the red-haired one.’
‘You don’t sound all that Irish.’
‘I moved here when I was a little girl.’
‘And is your mother red-haired?’
‘No, she was oaken.’
‘Was.’
‘She died of cancer last year.’
‘I’m really sorry. Were you very close?’
‘Thank you. We were best friends. I think of her every day.’
With nothing left to say, we wend our way through crowded tables to turnings of inquisitive heads, lewd comments about my microscopic skirt, coarse jibes about us copulating. I shun them all. His feelings towards me are softening. I’ve found the way into his heart. Suddenly, he’s feeling sorry for me. Maybe, he wants to take me in his bulging arms and give me a huge hug? Meanwhile, I’m struggling with my suitcase.
‘Here let me take that for you,’ he says in a kinder than expected voice.
I unburden myself on him, warming to him. He has feelings for me after all. I thank him for being so incredibly kind to me, forcing him to apologize for the unruly choice of venue for our romantic soiree.
‘Sorry about the animals. That’s all they are: animals who’ve had too much to drink. Sad really.’
‘It’s alright, I’m used to them,’ I admit, lowering my voice, not wishing to upset the uncouth yobs.
‘That doesn’t make them right, does it?’
I shrug my shoulders: the turds really don’t matter all that much to me, ‘They’ll grow up one day.’
We leave the cellar bar in silence. It is pelting with rain outside, hard, steady, in our faces. I grin. I love mild rainy nights. Rain makes me come to life. I smile radiantly at him, feeling much safer with him, happier to grasp his wrist which feels strong, warm, secure, if hairy to my tender touch.
‘I think we’re going to get drenched,’ I say, hoping, like some expectant birthday girl, we will.
‘Do you mind?’
My grip on his wrist tightens. I feel his pulse racing for me. I decide to make my opening move.
‘Walking in the rain at night with you? Not at all. I find it really romantic. Kiss me, won’t you?’
My inviting request takes him pleasantly by surprise, ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’
‘Very sure. Kiss me.’
He kisses me tentatively at first, on the lips.
‘That felt lovely,’ I murmur, appreciating his salty taste, ‘Kiss me again.’
This time, I open my mouth up fully for him. Once we have kissed, he spirits me down the narrow cobblestone alley into a deserted back street sparsely furnished with old fashioned street lamps. We linger beneath the moonlight on the street corner, kissing hungrily until our taxi, a spacious silver people carrier driven by a cheerful young-to-middle-aged Indian woman, arrives.
Just as we’re starting to get acquainted, and very wet. The teeming rain sticks my hair to my scalp, turning the straggly ends a deep teak.
My skin bristles, sensitized by the rain. I feel ready for him. Ready to take the greatest risk of all.
