Jon Dalziel found himself doodling on his pad, lost in some distant conjecture on what kind of underwear he wore. It wasn’t the sort of thing he normally did. After all, staff were ‘Staff’, he left them alone. No, this had been caused by Grant coming into his office to ask him for something and he, of course, had been sitting down and Grant standing up, and he’d been carrying a clipboard, and he’d been holding it just so, so that somehow your eyes just snagged there, almost like they were being directed to it, and he’d noticed that Grant was down the leg of his trousers, seriously down it, as in a distinctive penis shape tucked down there nicely, and a good length of it at that, like all your worst porno fantasies. Pure tack really, big knob down the Levi’s, but there it was and what was he to do with it? And the question was……
Why wasn’t he wearing any underwear?
Snippy was trying to explain the odd smell to Jaclyn and failing. “Haven’t you noticed it then?”
Jaclyn pulled a face and shook her head. “Can’t say I have. He smells rather nice to me.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t nice,” she said rather waspishly. She apologised immediately when Jaclyn raised her eyebrows. “Sorry, tiring day.” She loosened the neck of her blouse. There was a huge fan whirring around drunkenly above their heads, but it seemed to simply be stirring the soupy air, not cooling it . The smell of curry was making it thicker, heavier. At least it felt that way. It was almost quarter to seven; they had been last out the building. They were sitting now in the Indian Queen, Snippy’s favourite restaurant, but it wasn’t lifting her spirits any.
“Do you find him attractive?” Jaclyn asked suddenly.
“Good God, no.”
Jaclyn laughed. “That was very emphatic, you didn’t even ask me who I meant.”
Snippy coloured. “I knew who you meant.” She looked at her. “Why, do you?”
Jaclyn licked her lips. “Mmm, I think so, in a distant fantasy sort of way.” She laughed, a little embarrassed, and began fiddling with her napkin, saying, “Last night, with David I had this really hot session…” she stopped.
Snippy looked at her. “You’re never saying…?”
Jaclyn raised her eyes a little, smiling almost evilly. “I’m afraid I did, and he was a real hot mover, I can tell you. And that tongue, the way he stroked up my clit.”
“Jaclyn….”
“Can I help it? He’s always so bloody sultry. I mean, it’s probably just his bad eye and everything, but the way he just stares at you, and those odd vacuous eyes, doesn’t he make you think of a robot or an animal or something? He’s just like an empty-headed robot, as if you could say, lick my quim, and he’d go on doing it like his jaw never got sore or anything. Great, the stuff of fantasies…” She laughed again, “As I rather proved last night.”
“Poor David.”
“Poor David, my ass. He got it all, didn’t he? Think he never fantasises about the hideously pink and polished Tracy that works in his reception? I’ll bet.”
They were silent for a moment or two then Snippy said, “And another thing, there wasn’t any sweat in his right armpit at all.”
And on that curious note they ended their conversation.
Wednesday.
I don’t know who he is.
Jaclyn read the sentence again, surprised by it. She had no memory of writing it, or why, and yet there it was on her lay out pad. Curiouser and curiouser, as the white rabbit said.
She leaned back in her seat and lifted the back of her hair, trying to let the air in. She had all the windows open, but her office was in the eaves so it never really got cool. It just wasn’t feasible. She could hear the London traffic down below, its distant headachy roar. She felt tired just listening to it.
It had been a curiously unsatisfying day. She couldn’t seem to get these designs right at all, and yet she’d really been looking forward to doing them. For the last few weeks she’d thought of nothing else, she’d been full of ideas, and yet here she was as effectively blocked as she could ever remember being. If only she could get the big window right, everything else would follow suit, but she couldn’t. Suddenly all her ideas seemed hackneyed, out of key. It didn’t help that Grant’s window, even tucked round the side of the building as it was, was still selling the silver gauze like nobody’s business. They’d even had a complaint about it, that it wasn’t ‘suitable’ for families shopping in the store. First time ever they’d had a complaint about a window. But it wasn’t going to be acted on, they were selling too much fabric for that.
She sighed. The whole thing made her feel inadequate. Grant rustled up a window out of an old dummy and fifteen yards of silver gauze, along with a few bags of dried orange, and lo and behold they had a sales frenzy on their hands.
She sighed again. God, she wished she could take her clothes off, it was so bloody hot up here. How was she supposed to create in this heat?
A knock sounded at her door.
“Come in!” she called.
Grant stuck his head round the door and smiled his slow smile, “How are you doing?”
What a soft voice he had; you had to strain to hear it. “Crap,” she said. “I can’t get these bloody things right at all.” She shoved them away from her irritably.
He slid them round with his fingertips until he could see them. She looked at his hands. “That’s an odd ring,” she said, sitting forward and frowning at it.
He lifted his hand and looked at it. “A gift to myself, long time ago. It’s very old.”
“May I see it?” She rolled her chair up against the desk and reached for it.
He turned it on his finger, shaking his head slightly. “It doesn’t come off, I’m afraid.”
Curiously she didn’t ask him to see it on his hand, although he was paused there, expectant, almost as if he was waiting for her. She looked at the drawings, feeling ashamed of herself. It was just that his hands were so freaky, the one with the ring long and white and fragile, like a woman’s almost. And the other, his left hand, heavy and strong with that dark skin. Like cockskin, she caught herself thinking.
“What do you think of them?” she said brusquely, practically shoving the drawings at him.
“They look good,” he said softly and something about it irritated her. It was like he’d known she was changing the subject.
“They’re crap. I was turning out better than that at art school.”
His smile widened a little, but she noticed he hadn’t changed his expression, one of detached amusement. He never really did. She also noticed that he never showed any teeth when he smiled. She had seen him laugh and realised she hadn’t seen his teeth then either. Maybe he didn’t have any.
“Have you thought of using that shaved silk velvet, the Thai one?” he asked.
“Well, of course I’m going to use it, it’s one of the new season’s lines.”
“No, I mean featuring it, solely, for the main window.”
“You mean the big window?”
He nodded, looking amused again.
“But what about all the other lines?”
“They could be spread in the other windows surely?”
“We don’t normally do that.”
He said nothing.
“I’d have to take it to the board. It’s a major policy change. They’d shit a brick.”
He still said nothing.
“I suppose I could,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”
He picked up a pencil, pulled over the pad and showed her.
Jon Dalziel was drinking coffee from a delicate Clarice Cliffe cup. A replica of course, from Past Times. His boyfriend, fifteen years junior to Jon’s stated age, and twenty to his actual, had his head on his lap, gazing up at the ceiling. He was a passably beautiful boy, in a Baywatch sort of way, blonde and tanned, but what had been endearing and boyish five years ago was now beginning to look just a little preserved and careful. They were dressed almost identically in checked shirts – Jon’s red, Billy’s blue – and denims with neat little turn ups and white socks. They did look just a little cloned, it had to be said, but what did Jon care? When had conventionality ever done him any harm?
He sighed.
“What’s up?” Billy asked immediately.
He sighed again. “Oh, nothing in particular, just fed up, I think.”
“Want to go out?”
“No, I wasn’t meaning that.”
Billy looked up at him. “What then?”
“Work. I think I’m in a rut.” He laughed abruptly. “Pretty rich that, coming from me. But it’s this lad we’ve got there, Grant, Elmer Grant…”
“Gantry?” Billy interrupted.
“What?”
“Did you just say Elmer Gantry?”
“What? No. Grant. Is this really relevant, Billy?”
“No, I just thought you said… never mind, go on, what about him?”
“Well he’s such a…. he’s so …well, into himself, I suppose, like he knows exactly who he is and what he wants. He just makes me question what I’m doing with myself.”
Billy swung up and put his feet on the ground. “D’you fancy him?”
Dalziel looked at him. “Now, why d’you ask me a thing like that?”
“I don’t know, way you talked about him or something.”
“Christ, I’ve only just mentioned him.”
“Doesn’t matter, sounded like you fancy him, do you?”
“He’s crippled down one side, blind in one eye, walks with a limp and mutters into his socks.”
Billy smiled. “That’s okay then.”
Jon looked at him, feeling an all too familiar annoyance. “I’ll tell you what though, he’s hung.”
That made Billy sit up. “What? How d’you know?”
“I saw it. He doesn’t wear any underwear, or it was down the leg of his boxers or something, but I could see it down the leg of his jeans nice as you like. Real head on it too.”
“Oh God, that’s disgusting.”
Jon looked at him curiously. “Why?”
“A cripple with a big dick, that’s so deformed. Yuk. And you, you’re a perv, going for it. It turns you on, doesn’t it? Yuk,” he said again.
“I don’t see why. You like big guys well enough in the magazines, what’s so different?”
“You’re joking. They’re studs, sexy. I mean, they’re meant to look like that, but he’s a freak.”
Jon laughed, frowning. “I don’t get this, how d’you know they’re not the freaks?”
“They’re not crippled, he is. It’s probably all wrong when you see it, like lumpy or something, or hair in the hole or something. Yuk,” he said again shaking himself. He leaned over abruptly and kissed him hard, saying, “Come on, lets go to bed.”
Jon got up and went.
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