Stephen Leather - Once bitten

The Star She was gone when I woke up and I didn't remember her leaving in the night. I felt as if every bone in my body had been broken and then reset, there were bruises on my thighs and bitemarks on my shoulders, not deep enough to draw blood but I could see where her teeth had marked me. She'd been like an animal at times, screaming and biting and scratching, but she'd been gentle too, soft and imaginative, doing things to me that no-one had ever done to me before. Part of me wanted to ask her how she knew how to give so much pleasure, how she knew just what to do and how long to do it, but I knew that I didn't really want to know the answer because the things she did in bed weren't the things you learn from books, they came only from experience. No-one had ever made love to the me the way she'd done, and I doubt that anyone else ever would. I'd asked her if she wanted to use anything but she laughed and said no, there was no way she'd get pregnant and I wondered if the flippant attitude came along with the immortality complex but when I asked her if she was on the Pill she just kissed me and flipped me over onto my back and I didn't ask her again.

She used the phone once during the night, I think, because I sort of remembered waking up to find her sitting on the edge of the bed whispering in a language which I didn't recognise but which sounded Slavic, Polish or Russian maybe, and I reached out for her in half-sleep and she ruffled my hair and put the phone back and then made love to me again. I don't know, maybe I imagined that bit.

There was an indentation in the pillow and I rolled over to her side of the bed and lay there, face down, breathing in the smell of her. I went to shower and saw that she'd used the bathroom, the shower stall was wet, two of the towels were damp and there were a few of her hairs in one of my brushes. I picked one of them and ran it through my fingers, stretching it out to see how long it was. It was perfectly straight, no kinks or bends. I love straight hair. I got so pissed off when Deborah went out and got her's permed, without even asking me whether or not I thought it was a good idea. I hated the way it looked, but even worse I hated the burnt smell that lingered for days afterwards. Terry's hair smelt fresh and clean, but as I ran the individual strand over my skin I could feel that it was strong too. I held it up to where I imagined the top of her head would be if she was standing next to me and I dropped one end and allowed it to swing free. I imagined she was there, looking up at me, teeth parting as she smiled, standing up on tip-toe to kiss me. I caught my reflection in the mirror and realised how dumb I looked so I put the hair back on the shelf above the sink. The were several others in the brush and one of them was pure white. I pulled it out of the bristles and would it around my left index finger. It had the same feel as the black hair but was totally devoid of pigment.

I showered and put on a white towelling robe and went into the kitchen to make myself coffee.

There was no note from her anywhere but the red light was flashing on the answering machine and I thought that she'd left a message for me on it but it was Peter Hardy, asking me to call him again.

I dialled his number, half expecting to end up speaking to his machine, but he picked it up on the third ring.

"We speak at last," I said.

"Hiya Jamie. I tried to call just after midnight. You out with the crazies?"

"Just one," I laughed.

"How was she?"

"I'll tell you about it some time. But not yet, OK?"

"Sure. Hey, that film, Lilac Time. Do you want see it?"

"You've got a copy?"

"I haven't, but I know a man who does and he says he'll lend it to me. Snag is, it's not on video so we're going to have to go a viewing room."

"Is that a problem?"

"In LA? Of course not. It's only the likes of poor working folks like you and me that have to live without pools, Jacuzzis and viewing rooms."

"Er, I've got a pool, Peter. And a Jacuzzi." Deborah had insisted that we have both when we were looking for houses. They weren't something I'd miss.

"Yeah, I know that, mate. You want to see the film or not?"

"Of course. The sooner the better."

"OK, I've been on to a friend of mine, an agent who owes me a favour. He said he'll let us use his house. This afternoon. That suit you?"

"Shouldn't be a problem. I don't usually get really busy until the evening. I'll ask one of my colleagues to hold the fort. What's the address?"

He gave me the details and said he'd meet me there at three o'clock.

I spent the morning lying under my car trying to work out why I was getting a grinding noise from the near side whenever I had the steering on full lock. The springs looked OK and I finally figured it was just a case of the shock absorber starting to go. I wasn't planning to do anything over the weekend so I reckoned I'd probably have a go at doing it myself. That was one of the pleasures of owning an old car that was put together with nuts and bolts rather than a spot-welded built-bynumbers Japanese model. I stripped off my overalls and washed the grease and dirt from my hands.

There were times when I wished that I could repair my own body as easily as I took care of the car.

If it needed new brakes or bulbs or the bodywork got dented then you just ordered the parts and did the work and it was as good as new. Even almost thirty years after it had rolled off the production line it was virtually perfect. And if ever the engine wore out it would be reasonably easy to replace, there were still plenty of specialist suppliers back in the UK who could ship one over. But my body, the organs that were beginning to show signs of wearing out, well, that's a whole different ball game. There was no replacement for the skin that was beginning to lose its elasticity and was becoming speckled with brown moles and wrinkled around my eyes. I could remember being young and playing in the fields around the family farm, playing football for hours and running with the dog and never getting tired. Now walking up a couple of flights of stairs left me out of breath.

I ate reasonably well, health-wise, but at times I could feel my veins and arteries silting up with cholesterol and fat globules and at night the sound of my beating heart seemed less powerful than it used to back when I was a teenager and had most of my life ahead of me. I wished I could go back.

There was a small cut by the thumb on my right hand, not much more than a nick but I smeared antiseptic ointment over it. That's something else I'd noticed as I got older – cuts and abrasions took longer to heal and it took weeks rather than days to shrug off colds and the like. It was as if my body was starting to get tired and I wondered how long it would be before it gave up trying to repair itself and I was left to lie alone on some urine-stained bed, riddled with bed sores and waiting to die. I shook my head and tried to think of something else.

I went to the kitchen and microwaved myself a frozen lasagna and boosted my caffeine intake with two steaming cups of strong coffee. I always felt better after coffee.

The agent's house was in Beverly Hills and the guy was obviously doing well because it was above the smog line. Just. It was a single-storey ranch house affair, lots of cartwheels and exposed beams and cactus murals on the walls and it had all the charm of a takeaway taco restaurant. I parked the Alpine between a white Corvette and Hardy's orange MGB. Hardy, like me, preferred old British cars to any of the American stuff, and we often used to help each out in the hunt for spare parts. At any given time there was a good chance that one of our cars would have something mechanically adrift and it was a rare occurrence for them both to be on the road together. I made a mental note to ask him if he fancied giving me a hand to fit the new shock absorbers.