Charlotte Stein - Run To You

‘I’m not sure that’s quite real enough. It sounds like something from a tabloid newspaper, about the swinging the neighbours have been doing.’

‘People meet there to have sex, then.’

‘Sex is better, but I think you can do more.’

I glance across at my boss. He’s no longer looking, but that doesn’t matter. This conversation is definitely giving off a vibe, now, that people should be able to feel across long distances and without glancing at me. I can feel it pulsing at my core like some nuclear reactor, so it must be spreading outwards.

Soon everyone will be irradiated.

At the very least, they’ll know. Alissa is having an oddly sexual conversation with a complete stranger, and doesn’t want to stop. Look at her there, shamelessly not stopping.

‘They meet to touch, and kiss, and lick,’ I say, and though my voice shakes I’m proud of myself. It feels like he shot a tennis ball at me with a cannon, and somehow I miraculously managed to smack it back.

‘And is that all?’

I close my eyes and take a breath, hovering on the brink of not obeying. He’s just toying with me, pushing me, daring me to go too far. I shouldn’t care. I should put the phone down. But I suppose the trouble is:

I want to go too far. I’m tired of living in the land of not far enough.

‘They meet to screw in every kind of position, all over each other and upside down and inside out. And when they’re done with all the things I can imagine, they start on the things I can’t. Threesomes and foursomes and things with toys … things with handcuffs and canes and red silk sliding all over their bodies …’

By the time I’m done my face is flaming, and I’m trembling all over. I barely even remember what I’ve said – it just came out in such a tumble, one word racing after the other, all of them so eager to emerge. I didn’t realise how eager I was to emerge.

But I think he does.

‘What a wonderful way with words you have when you really try.’

‘It’s nothing to do with trying. It’s just you and how goddamn persuasive you are.’

‘If I’m so persuasive then why are we talking about what you want to talk about?’

I frown at nothing and no one, the inside walls of my cubicles suddenly gone. Instead they’re replaced by his indomitable face, and its every infuriating line and curve.

‘No, we’re not.’

‘Of course we are. You wanted to know about The Harrington, and now I have told you – even though it is the most closed of all secrets.’

‘But this is … this is what we started out at. We started talking about it and then you wanted me to talk dirty.’

‘Oh, darling. If I wanted you to talk dirty there are a hundred other ways I would have gone about it. No no no, when we began talking I wanted to know what your face looked like, and you led me down an entirely different path. I must admit I am enjoying the view here, but even so – it’s your view, not mine.’

Oh, God, he’s right. How is he so right all the time? It would be impossibly frustrating, if he wasn’t so calm about it. So inoffensive. He doesn’t force his point of view on you. He just leads you down a certain path inside the labyrinth, and suddenly you’re lost.

‘It wasn’t … I didn’t do it on purpose, though.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Of course not. Why would I?’

‘Because you don’t want to talk about your face.’

This labyrinth is dark, and deep. I don’t know where I am any more.

‘Maybe I’m hideous,’ I say, so faintly I hardly have to worry if anyone can hear. Only he can, down a million miles of phone wires to his lair that lies beyond the goblin city.

‘I think it’s more likely that you think you’re hideous.’

‘No, I really am. I’m sure you think you’re talking to some gorgeous babe whose presence pushes through wood, but in reality I’m monstrous. I’m six foot tall and three hundred and fifty pounds, with no ears and one eye,’ I say, and I know why I do it. It’s so I can be the minotaur instead of the girl. I’m marching around his maze, hungry for his blood.

But he doesn’t care either way.

‘Are you just trying to turn me on now?’

‘A man like you isn’t turned on by no ears and one eye.’

‘Perhaps not – but I am turned on by the sound of your voice, and the way you watched me, and by your resistance. I’ve never known anyone long for something so much and yet be so afraid to take it when it’s offered.’

I’m the girl again, just like that. I’m running around the insides of myself, blind and fumbling – only I think I was wrong about him having a lair at the centre. I think I can see him atop one of the walls with a rope, and he just threw it down to me.

I won’t take it though. I don’t know him well enough to take it. This could be a trap, and once I’m up there he robs me of my self-esteem and makes a run for it.

‘You don’t know what I long for.’

‘How can you imagine so when you make it this clear? You long for something different, and lovely, and exciting,’ he says, as my eyes drift closed. ‘You long to be outside your own skin, for just a little while.’

I’ve never ached before over something someone’s said. I’m not used to the sensation, so sweet and hollow inside myself. It makes me swallow too thickly and keep my eyes closed in case someone sees I’m having feelings, and most of all it forces me to deny, deny, deny.

‘That’s all wrong.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why are you still on the phone?’

‘I’m putting it down.’

‘Of course you are.’

‘We’ll never speak again.’

‘No, never.’

Is it my imagination, or does he sound strangely sad when he says that last lonely ‘never’? It must be the former, and yet I can still hear the word echoing in my head a long time after he’s said it. I let the silence spin out, just so I can feel it for a little while longer.

Before I have to say: ‘I’m really not pretty, you know.’

‘Tell me all the ways in which you think you’re not.’

‘My face is too square.’

‘So you have a strong jaw that I should angle up to the light, before I leave a trail of kisses over its perfect slant.’

‘And my upper lip is hardly there, while my lower one …’

‘Is so full and soft and sulky, as I lean in to steal a kiss.’

‘You wouldn’t want to. My skin is almost see-through and my hair is as thin as paper. I can never do anything with it.’

‘Except lie back and let me wrap my hand around those soft strands. Is it dark?’

‘It’s almost black.’

‘And your eyes?’

‘A muddy brown. A boring, dull, nothing brown,’ I say, though that’s not strictly true. It’s just that I don’t want him to recognise me as the girl from the lobby, not yet. Not while he’s so content to imagine me into someone else.

‘But you would look up at me with them, wouldn’t you?’

I know what he means. He means that I would look up at him as I took his cock in my mouth. He means it because I make him, in my head. I push him back on the bed, and lick along the length of him, wetly, greedily, oh, God .

‘I would.’

‘And what would those eyes of yours say?’

‘More, now, yes, please.’

I don’t know if I mean more of his words, or of the sex he doesn’t know we’re having in my head, or just everything, everything would be fine. He’s nothing like I thought and everything that I want, and if that means I have to take a leap of faith and grab the rope, I will.

‘Oh, so greedy. Are you greedy, little Alissa?’

‘You know I am.’

‘Then tell me what you want,’ he says, and the fantasy suddenly bleeds into reality. I blurt out words before I’m even sure he’s ready for them – words like ‘I want you to fuck my face.’