They lay across his fake satin sheets, Amanda’s long torso arranged perfectly as if she was conscious of the way her body fell. Gavin was convinced that she was: everything Amanda did seemed calculated. The twenty-three-year-old was almost as tall as he, an ex-gymnast and an aspiring model. Amanda taught four Pilates classes a day, except on Sundays when she practiced Ashtanga yoga in the morning and rode a horse in the afternoon. In other words she had absolute control over the lithe small-breasted body that lay like a reclining python beside Gavin’s own naked body. Feeling a little vulnerable about his thickening perimeter, the property developer pulled up the sheet.
“Why cover up? You’re beautiful,” Amanda purred in that irritating little-girl voice she adopted whenever they’d had sex—only in this case they hadn’t.
“Don’t patronize me,” Gavin replied, then immediately regretted his harsh tone. It wasn’t her fault he was distracted. In truth he’d never fully engaged with his women, even his wife. He could never relate to descriptions he’d read in books about the emotional surrender men felt at falling into the body of the woman they loved. He was always a little removed, as if his consciousness was floating above his body, a small helium balloon jerked along by his galloping penis.
Gavin looked at Amanda’s rippling abdominal muscles that undulated toward her naked pubis…perhaps his eye was too cold, too critical.
“Did you notice?” Amanda purred. Gavin glanced at her again, wondering if he’d missed a body piercing or a new haircut.
“The total Brazilian, silly!” she giggled, pointing to her crotch. “I did it for you—not a hair left.”
“It’s okay,” he grunted, wondering if he should raise the question that hung over them, thickening the air like humidity.
Amanda rolled onto her stomach and faced Gavin’s back. The three scratches had already begun to form thin white scars. Could they be war wounds from a secret lover?
“Gav, how did you get those?” She ran her cool fingers across the bumpy ridges.
Panicking slightly Gavin searched wildly for an explanation.
“New suit I had altered—silly bugger of a tailor left a pin in. Why?”
“There isn’t anyone else? I mean, if there was you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
He kissed her shoulder. “Baby, of course there isn’t. I promise. Listen, I’m sorry about…” He couldn’t bring himself to actually say the words. Under the sheet his flaccid penis lolled against his thigh like an accusation.
“It’s okay, I know it happens a lot to men your age,” Amanda murmured, curling up under his arm. Spoken like a true twenty-three-year-old, Gavin thought, fighting the urge to run from the room.
“Yeah well, it’s never happened to this man before.”
“It’s the divorce, it must be really stressful,” Amanda continued, unaware that she was moving in a very dangerous trajectory. She’d tried everything—fellatio, blowing on his balls, a full body massage, even tickling—but he’d failed to grow hard, and frankly she was feeling a little demoralized herself. Maybe he’d stopped finding her attractive. She sneaked a look at herself in the full-length mirror opposite—was that possible, she wondered.
“You don’t love me anymore,” she whined, her guard slipping. An uncharacteristic tiny pool of sweat began to gather in the hollow of her hip.
“I do, baby, I do,” he answered automatically, already calculating ways of getting rid of her before nightfall. She was so perfect with her immaculately plucked and waxed eyebrows, her manicured fingernails clipped to just the right length and varnished mauve. Originally he’d been attracted to her because of the boyish figure that seemed to defy its own femininity with breasts that were hardly there, hips more reminiscent of a young boy’s than a woman’s, a body that still dominated over nature and the onslaught of gravity. She was always impeccably clean, never seemed to perspire, and her scent was a very faint lemony fragrance that didn’t even hint at the fruity earthiness that even his pristine wife exuded at certain times of the month. In short, Amanda seemed unnatural and this was precisely what Gavin had loved about her. But now? Now he couldn’t even get an erection.
“Mandy baby, look, I’m dealing with some very big issues right now—you know, men’s stuff I can’t really share. But listen, remember that holiday I promised you—New Orleans? We’ll go there in the summer. In the meanwhile, let’s take a break from each other for a couple of weeks while I get sorted out, eh?”
“You’re not leaving me, are you?” She sat up suddenly and her blow-dried raven hair shiny with product—Gavin had always loved the slightly chemical smell of it—slid around her shoulders, just like in a television commercial.
“No, I promise. I just need to get some distance to really be able to give myself to you.”
He wondered how she’d believe such bullshit, but Amanda, looking at him with wide black eyes, seemed to hang on his every word.
“I understand. Men are like that,” she said. “I read about it in that American book. They need to retreat into their cave and then they spring back at you like a ball at the end of a piece of elastic. Well, Gav, I’m here for you when you’re ready to bounce back,” she announced with a very serious air.
Just to bounce up would be good at this point, Gavin thought darkly, and reached over to hand her back her clothes.
Saturday Honeywell’s house was one of those large Queenslanders encircled by a wide wooden verandah. Balanced precariously on stilts it looked as if it hadn’t undergone any renovations since it was built, which, Gavin judged, must have been a good hundred years ago. He pulled up the parking brake and rested his head on the edge of the car window. The block was substantial: it could hold two residential apartment buildings with parking if you knocked the house down and extended as far as the fence boundary, he noted, already calculating the profit margin.
He got out and steeled himself. It looked far worse than he’d imagined. He had been hoping that Ms.—God, he hated it when women called themselves that—Ms. Honeywell might be one of those neat scientists who pride themselves on their organizational skills. He had tried to console himself with the thought that he might finally have located someone he could feel safe confiding in, but this—this fecund jungle, this obscene waste of good building land—was almost too much to bear. He hitched his trousers up and walked heavily toward the front gate. There were the remnants of a large vegetable patch with a few struggling ears of corn and several bean plants. The rest had gone to seed and been left to sprawl across the garden path, some hardy offshoots even climbing up between the wooden slats of the verandah, which, he noted, was in a state of irredeemable disrepair.
The front door had a brass knocker in the shape of a turnip root. Obscenely twisted, it looked suspiciously turdlike. Gavin, thoroughly revolted, had to shut his eyes as he lifted it to knock. The heavy banging resounded through the wooden house.
Immediately several dogs began to bark. Gavin heard the patter of tiny paws, then the unmistakable clunk of human feet. Three minutes later the door was flung open.
“Nah, the place is not for sale.”
A mass of red hair, small suspicious piercing blue eyes, and some kind of green and gold bandanna flashed before him, then the door was slammed in his face. Determined, he knocked again, then shouted through the copper letter slot that looked disconcertingly vaginal.