Graham Masterton - Plague

'Okay,' she said slowly. 'I'll come and look at it. But that's all.'

The cab dropped them on the corner of a faded but still-elegant street. It was one of those tired enclaves of wealthy old widows who were too set in their ways to move away from encroaching slumdom, and there was a mingled smell of decay and expensive perfume in every lobby.

'This is a strange place to live,' she said, looking around the street.

'I like it,' said Charles Thurston. 'It reminds me every day that style is never permanent, and that today's lounge lizards are tomorrow's drawing-room dinosaurs.'

They ascended five floors in a dingy wrought-iron elevator that shuddered and groaned at every floor. 'You speak in riddles,' she told him. He smiled. Charles Thurston's apartment was expensively decorated in a clean and rigid Scandinavian style that surprised her. There was plenty of natural stone, plain wood, and glass. Everything was in whites and browns and grays, and the fabrics were all woven wool or leather.

'This doesn't look like you,' she said, sitting down on a soft tan cowhide settee. 'Drink?' he asked her. 'Vodka martini on the rocks, please.' He mixed the cocktails and brought hers over. She sipped it, and it was as cold and uncompromising as everything else in Charles Thurston's apartment. 'Why don't you think it's me?' he asked her. 'You're warm, and this place is chilly. I imagined you living with good Indian carpets and a few well-chosen antiques.'

He walked across to the window. 'I like my backgrounds neutral. The most important things that happen in a room are the people who live and love in it. I don't like to interfere with human beauty by cluttering my living-space with inanimate objects that keep crying out for attention.

'I think you just made that up. I don't believe a word of it.'

He turned back from the window and smiled at her. 'Would you like to see the lunch that you're not going to eat?'

'I'd be delighted.'

He took her hand, and led her into the dining-room.

He had been telling the truth. The table was set for two with stainless-steel cutlery and hand-made Swedish glass and pottery.

'Well,' she said. 'I have to confess I'm convinced.'

Charles Thurston ran his hand through his dark curly hair. 'Won't you just sit and watch me eating mine?' he asked, with a mock-plaintiveness that, for all its obvious artificiality, still appealed to her.

She couldn't help giggling. 'All right,' she said. 'And since I don't like to be rude, you might as well give me just a teentsy piece of fish, and maybe a tiny bowl of soup.'

'And just a thimbleful of champagne?'

She smiled. 'That will do, yes.'

Charles Thurston rang a small bell on the table. Esmeralda hadn't expected that, but then she supposed that a young man of his means would naturally have a servant.

Charles Thurston pulled her chair out for her, and she sat down. He himself sat at the opposite end of the table, shook out his napkin, and grinned at her.

The servant was no ordinary servant. When she walked in with the soup, Esmeralda took one look at her, and then shot a quick quizzical look at Charles to see if his face showed any signs of mockery or amusement. But there was nothing.

She was black, with close-cropped hair and a thin silver headband. She was exquisitely beautiful. Her eyes were deep and vivid, and her mouth ran in sultry curves. She was also extremely tall — at least six feet — despite the fact that her feet were bare. She wore a flowing kaftan that clung, as she walked into the dining-room, around huge firm breasts.

'This is Kalimba,' smiled Charles Thurston, offhandedly. 'Kalimba is what you would call a treasure.'

Esmeralda watched the black girl with widened eyes as she padded out of the room, her bare rounded bottom plainly visible through the diaphanous kaftan. In a small voice, she said, 'I suppose you would, yes.'

They sipped consomme in silence for a moment. Then Esmeralda laid down her spoon.

'Are you trying to tell me,' she said, 'that Kalimba is really your servant? And nothing else?'

Charles Thurston paused with a spoonful of soup half-lifted from his plate. 'I'm not trying to tell you anything.'

'Well, she intrigues me. I mean, she's very beautiful, and very sexy. Are you friends?'

'One has to be friends with one's servants.'

'Don't mock me, Charles.'

'I'm not. Kalimba is everything you say she is. She's beautiful and she's very sexy. She's also a very good cook, she makes beds, she cleans and dusts. Okay?'

Esmeralda frowned. 'I don't know. You baffle me.'

'Why do I do that?'

'Because you're after something and I don't know what it is. Up until I saw Kalimba, I thought it was my body.'

He finished his soup and laid his spoon down. 'You're reacting just like every girl does when she first sees Kalimba. She thinks: Why the hell have I been playing hard-to-get when he's got a woman like that around the place? It throws them off their usual game.'

Esmeralda raised an eyebrow. 'Is that why she's here? As an aid to seduction?'

Charles stood up and poured her a glass of Moet & Chandon 1966. It was well-chilled, and ferociously dry.

'Kalimba is here to serve lunch,' he said simply, with a faint suggestion of a smile.

A few minutes later, Kalimba came back for the plates. There was something about the black girl, silently serving and collecting up food, that was disturbingly erotic. She looked like a fantasy slave girl, with her sullenly pouting mouth and her lowered eyes. Esmeralda couldn't help noticing the way her charcoal-black nipples stood stiff under the flimsy fabric of the kaftan, and somehow it made her feel both aroused and inadequate. She often liked to play the slave girl bit herself with her step-father, but in the presence of the dark and musky and mysterious she felt pale and plain.

The lunch continued. By three, two bottles of champagne were empty, and they were well into their third. Kalimba softly came and went, with coffee and sweets. Esmeralda felt light-headed and unreal, and somehow everything about Charles Thurston and Kalimba was no longer puzzling or threatening, but funny. She laughed at almost every story he told, and when he suggested they go into the living-room, and he put his arm around her, she didn't object in the least.

They drank more champagne, and Charles put on some soft drumming record that mesmerized her with its endless complicated rhythms. They sat on big embroidered cushions on the thick rug, and shared a cigarette, and laughed even more.

'You still confuse me,' she said, taking another sip of her drink. 'I mean — you're a very confusing person.'

'I think I'm very straightforward,' said Charles.

'That's what's confusing about you. You're straightforward, but you're not deep. You're like a rubber tunnel.'

He laughed. 'I'm like a — what? I was never called that before.'

Esmeralda was giggling so much she could hardly explain what she meant. 'Well,' she said, 'just imagine you're driving along and you see a tunnel ahead of you. Very straightforward. But supposing you drive into it, well, you just bounce back out again, because it's rubber. That's what you're like. I think I'm getting someplace with you, but I just bounce back out again. You're a rubber tunnel.'

They laughed and laughed until Esmeralda thought she was going to cry. Then, when they had quietened down, Charles reached over and took her arm and said, 'Esmeralda — do you mind if I lay something on you?'

She was bright-eyed. 'What?'

'Do you dig massage?'

'M-massage?' The idea of it seemed hilarious.

'Listen, I'm serious. Massage can do fantastic things for your inner being. It — calms you down, it brings you closer to yourself. I don't mean your massage parlor stuff. I mean real meditative massage.'