‘See you in an hour.’
I placed the phone on the table and watched the pedestrians go by while I worked my way down the whiskey bottle. This was me unwinding after an awful day at the office. The whole time I kept my mind obstinately blank. I never allowed myself to think of her.
When the telephone rang I was already half a bottle deep and starting to feel a little sloshed so I ignored it. The answer machine clicked on. A woman left a message. She wanted to make an appointment to see the resident hypnotist. ‘That’ll be me, darlin’,’ I slurred to the empty office. She left her number and her name.
Twenty minutes before my appointment with Jenny I slipped into my coat, and moving through the shadows of my office walked down the stairs and out into the corridor I shared with the other practitioners in the building. It was as silent as a morgue. Everyone—the dentist on the first floor, the jiu jitsu master masseur and the chiropractor, along with their staff—had gone home. I locked my office and walked the short distance to the thick, black main door. I stepped outside and a cold blast of wind hit me in the face. I smiled. Just what I needed.
I left my car in the underground car park and took the Tube to Paddington.
Jenny opened the door wearing a tight, V-necked, deep pink blouse and a pair of white shorts with frayed hems. ‘Hello, stranger,’ she drawled, leaning seductively by the doorframe.
I offered up a smile.
‘Come in,’ she invited, opening the door wider.
I walked in and took my shoes off in the hallway. It was an Asian thing. Everybody had to take their shoes off before they could enter her apartment.
‘You haven’t been to see me for a long time. Have you been away?’
‘No. Just been busy, you know?’
‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.
Ah, Jenny. Poor you. I walked in my socks through her scrupulously clean home to the room where she conducted her business. It had a bed, a dresser, a well-used armchair and a basin and paper towel dispenser attached to the wall.
‘Is it still the same price?’ I asked.
‘You don’t have to pay,’ she replied.
‘Jenny,’ I said tiredly.
‘It’s still the same,’ she said quickly.
I took out my wallet, counted out fifty pounds, and put the notes on her dresser. Then I took off my coat, my jacket, my pants, my socks, and my boxers, and went to sit on the armchair. I laid my head against the backrest and closed my eyes. I felt a tight sensation in my body and my brain was wired. I needed to blow off steam.
‘How have you been, Marlow?’
‘Good,’ I said briefly. ‘And you?’
‘I’ve been well.’
There was a pause. Her apartment was warm and the armchair was comfortable. I wanted to relax.
‘Something about you is different today,’ she observed.
My eyes fluttered open. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yes,’ she said sadly and went out of the room. She came back in with a basin of water with a few drops of perfume. Flower petals were floating on the surface. She put it on the floor and I slipped my feet into the warm, slippery water. The sensation was heaven. After she had washed my feet she massaged them with warm oil. She did not try to make conversation again.
Then she pushed the basin away and her clever mouth closed around the head of my cock. Expertly she rubbed her lips up and down my shaft.
I didn’t want to.
I really didn’t want to think of Olivia, but she slipped into my head, forbidden and intensely alive and naked, but for a pair of shiny black stiletto boots. It was her wedged between my legs, her plump, red mouth stretched wide to receive the thickness of my cock.
She looked up at me with her mercury eyes, not innocent and troubled as she had been in my office, but full of raw sexual knowledge.
In my fantasy I called to her as surely as if I had tugged her nipple clamps. Her face slid up and down my shaft. I ejaculated so quickly Jenny made a small sound of surprise.