Chapter 50 Her Voice

Some women you have sex with. Some women you sleep with. And then there are the women you have sex with and then sleep with. A whole night. And during that night, you cannot escape the warmth of their skin close against you on every blurry single occasion you half awaken, you sense their body in the darkness of the room, soft and pale so close to you it could be an extension of your own skin, and you have to repress the urge to pull her against your bulk and squeeze her to death as the tenderness races through your soul like a sweet poison invading your bloodstream, a runaway train with its ineffable cargo of lust and affection Those are the women who also break your heart. Those are the women who move your heart in quiet, ardent, hypnotic, mysterious ways. And she was one of those. No ifs and buts; no doubts about it. At the wrong time. In the wrong places. We’d met in the mountains. Snow fell on a picture postcard ski resort like a curtain of cotton buds floating, swirling down from a grey sky, minute patterns against the background of peaks and valleys. Here, France. There, Italy. It was a neutral zone, an ideal place for people to meet who shouldn’t meet, away from the gaze of security cameras or familiar faces. I was staying at a luxury hotel with parquet flooring and uniformed staff. She had been assigned a room a mile away into the steep hills, some rustic inn with wooden beams criss-crossing the ceilings. Arrangements had been made to organize the exchange in the opulent ground floor salon of my hotel. It was late evening; a lounge singer was crooning a song by Coldplay, badly, his fingers flying like errant quicksilver over the electric piano keys. I was wearing black, as planned, so that she might recognize me. It was unlikely anyone in the noisy apres-ski crowd scattered across the deep sofas would be wearing the same colours, and for security, I had a copy of an obscure Italian crime magazine on the table in front of me, next to my glass of tomato juice. The red and the black. That’s what had been agreed. I didn’t know who to expect. Her jet-black curls fell to her shoulders as she made a beeline towards me, her long, lanky legs devouring the floor. She sat across from me, nodded politely and ordered a coffee from the white-jacketed waiter. We sat in silence, quietly observing each other while the music played and the crowd’s chatter rose and fell around us. She allowed the spoonful of sugar to float briefly on the coffee’s surface before it sank. I noted a few isolated strands of white hairs amongst her darkness. Soft brown eyes. Pale uncovered shoulders. The gentle curve of her neck and slight breasts under the thin material of her white blouse. She sank her coffee in one gulp and rose to her feet. She walked away slowly, leaving the manila envelope she had been holding in her right hand on the table. I took hold of it and walked swiftly after her. For a moment, there was a look of confusion on her face; maybe she thought she had left the envelope for the wrong person? “Come to my room,” I asked. The shadow of a smile crossed her red lips, and she followed me to the lift. Room 411. That first night she let me undress her, but would not allow me to kiss her on the mouth. Her hair fell across her naked shoulders like a lion’s mane, thick, curling to infinity, heavy, dark as night. Her breasts were small enough that I could cup one in each hand and marvel at their softness, pink pale nipples blending quietly into the whiter landscape of her skin. There was a small brown mole growing inside the crevice of her belly button, another texture for my tongue to wander across before exploring further south through the unclipped, luxuriant jungle of her pubes. Unlike so many other women, she had no distinct smell down there, but the initial sensation was of an all-consuming fire that took me by surprise. Time and again, she rode me like a stallion, delaying penetration and rubbing her cunt against my cock, pressing down on my pelvic bones until I hurt, and could bear it no longer and cramped with a muted cry. Then we slept, skin touching skin, words redundant, in the peace of the Alpine night, leaving everything unsaid, after our communion of lust. In the morning, she left around five – she had earlier set the alarm on her mobile phone just before we had dozed off, arms tangled between crumpled sheets in the room’s penumbra. I didn’t want her to go, but she insisted she had to return to her own hotel, and be seen at breakfast by others. I watched, with pain in my heart, as she slipped on her black tights and then her dress. I blew her a kiss as she moved towards the door. “Don’t get up,” she said, as I slipped out from under the quilt, my cock still damp with her juices, and opened the door. I imagined her path, attempting to listen to her steps down the corridor through the wooden partition, shadowing her movements as if practising my spy craft. I did not hear the lift. I stood naked with my back against the hotel room door, with a heavy heart. There was a gentle rapping at the door and I opened it halfway; it was her. She smiled at me and quickly kissed me on the lips. “My name is Giulia,” she said. I had to stay on at the resort longer, awaiting further instructions from London. She joined me every night. On the second night, we hurriedly undressed right by the door and she suggested we share a bath, while Pink Floyd and other tunes she’d collected MP3 files of played on her laptop which she’d precariously positioned across the sink. Inside the water, she leaned against me and took my cock in her mouth; my throat tightened at her unbidden generosity and purity of desire. The landscape of her body grew familiar, her longs legs, the scattered birthmarks across her flesh, even the small pimples on her rear, the colour of her smile, the look of tenderness in her eyes when she came, the sounds she would make in the throes of pleasure, the way she would turn onto her stomach and invite me to take her from behind and the incandescent vision of my cock digging deep inside her, separating her scarlet sex lips while the puckered hole of her arse almost winked at me in complicity, the way she would say my name, or at any rate the name she thought was mine. “It can’t last.” “No.” “You’re beautiful.” “Let’s not talk.” We were together for now. And we fucked as if we’d never fucked before with anyone else. But she was too young, she had another life I knew nothing of and we both were all too aware of how impossible our situation was. When the time came to make our separate ways, we exchanged telephone numbers. “It’s wrong.” “I know.” “I have to go to New York. Join me there.” “I don’t know.” “I’ll book your ticket.” “I’m not sure.” “Please.” Our first row, as she and I already counted the number of hours before she had to leave and return home and the pain became too much. Her sitting in a corner of the room, all bunched up. Making up. Making love. “You hurt me,” as I thrust inside her with too much anger and despair. “I’m sorry.” “Don’t do that again.” A kiss at Ground Zero, the reflection of her naked body in the room’s closet mirror as she walked naked out of the bathroom and we embraced, her pale nudity shadowed against my all-black outfit, the shape of her arse, the curve of her back, the fragile geometry of her neck. Memories that would have to last forever, I already knew. Her voice on the phone. “Pronto?” The next time we met was months later. She’d made arrangements and rented a room in a stone house in a walled city half an hour’s drive from Rome. It was, again, out of season, and the heating was on the blink and we had to stay in bed most of the time just to keep warm, running clumsily down the steps to the lower level of the small house to fetch water, or snacks to eat. I would watch her in awe as she moved between bed and winding stairs. She suffered from stomach cramps and every time I entered her, she flinched. We had only two nights and time flew like lightning. She would drink water and then straddle me and allow the tepid liquid to dribble back into my open mouth. My heart was melting and my soul was in turmoil. She drove me back to Fiumicino in her own car, and we almost ran out of petrol. I barely made my plane and there was no time for goodbyes. Which was better after all, I supposed. She’d also mentioned how much she disliked long, clumsy farewell scenes. In Barcelona in the Spring, she told me that while she waited for me to arrive, she couldn’t help herself and had masturbated herself on the hotel room bed we were about to share. Halfway through the first night, her period began. We fucked in blood with all the energy of despair, and damn the sheets. Her powerful body waltzing above me, impaled on me, and the flood of red bathing my loins as I grew softer and withdrew from her. My fingers checked my midriff in the room’s darkness and then spread the blood and come and sweat across her delicate breasts, like a painter celebrating the colours of the seasons on his unsteady easel.