Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

After they left, outside on the landing Picasso promised, 'I will have the wife.' His voice was airy, amused, and he spoke out of the corners of his mouth as if Madame Miazga were a cigar.

The new flat in Camden was dark and in disorder. Street lights outlined the crags and valleys of jumble. Michael was given no time for regrets. Picasso herded him to their unmade bed, driven by a lust that Michael knew that he himself had not inspired. Picasso wanted Marta.

Picasso dozed and then woke up with a snort. He flung off the single summer sheet, and padded into the sitting room, leaving Michael in the bed. Lights blazed around the edges of the bedroom door, and there was a sound of assembling, plugging in, mild swearing. Michael finally admitted that he was awake and would not sleep. He stumped downstairs into the sitting room and saw Picasso at 2.00 am, sitting in front of the computer playing Myst . His bare buttocks hung over the edge of the chair as round as peaches.

'Hmm,' said Picasso. 'This is not three-dimensional… you just move closer to the drawing.' On his right, there was a pad and scrawled sketches of the Myst world populated with drunken people and smiling goats. Their smiles were drawn as a series of single unbroken spirals describing cheeks. Michael glanced down over Picasso's body. Picasso worked erect.

'Coming back to bed?' murmured Michael.

'I don't know,' grunted Picasso.

In the morning, the bed was cold and when Michael went downstairs Picasso still sat in front of the computer with a cup of cold coffee and strewn stale bread. Had he been up all night?

'You eat too much,' Picasso announced, in a bad mood. 'You will get fat. You will become a drunken boor.' He sighed, as if it were inevitable. 'Do not expect me to cook you breakfast,' he said. He slip-slopped his way out to the roof garden, carrying his coffee, escaping Michael. It was summer, warm, with beautiful light over the ferns. Michael joined him and Picasso said, 'You missed work yesterday and the day before. If you were more dedicated, you would do a better job.'

Picasso wanted him out of the flat. Michael showered, and deliberately took his time over coffee and yoghurt and bananas, and pointedly washed up – not a Picasso habit – and left at his usual time feeling bloated around the eyes and saddle-sore.

No one at work mentioned that Michael had missed two days. He began to explain that he had had to move flats suddenly. No one asked him any questions about it. Ebru and Emilio were quiet, brisk and business-like, as if Michael were a customer they would attend to in a moment. He filed slides and looked at data, and by the end of the day realized that he had spent it alone.

When he got back home, he found Picasso at the computer, now wearing Michael's best Japanese bathrobe. The game was noisier and the images moved. A tiny alien leapt and jumped and avoided being fried by robots.

Picasso kept playing. 'She is softened and ripe and if you are a man at all you will have her,' he said. Then he looked up. His eyes were angry and hungry. 'Do it because I tell you. I will like fucking you better if I think you are a real man.'

Upstairs, Mrs Miazga was in Michael's bed. She was huge, pink and dishevelled, her hair in Pre-Raphaelite waves. The room smelled of her hair, and of her body, opened and reopened during the course of the day.

'Visit me,' she said in a warm and friendly voice, and held out her arms. She looked dazed and dazzled, her blue eyes warmed like a southern sea. She smiled in complicity. I know you are lovers, we will be his lovers together, love me too.

Well, thought Michael. He could just surf it. Let himself be carried by the wave of adventure.

He went into their new bedroom, stuffed with boxes, some of them full of shoes and vinyl records, and found his sponge bag. He crunched his Viagra into a bitter, tongue-curling paste, to make it work faster. Then he cleaned his teeth to rinse away the bitterness.

The taste of Mrs Miazga's mouth was edged with hormones and a scent he did not quite like. But her huge soft, smooth body was a wonderful maternal harbour. Michael weighed into her, waves rippling around him. There was an excitement about being where Picasso had been, in the folds of flesh still moist from him. Perhaps it was the Viagra kicking in early. Whatever it was, it joined forces with Michael's reluctance to have sex with a woman. Conjoined, they had an unexpected effect. Michael rode Mrs Miazga for forty-five minutes. He did not come, but she did, three times. 'My God, you are super lover,' she said in fractured English. Her fingers strutted pleased up the side of his arm. 'I can tell, you have had many women through your hands.'

Picasso was standing in the doorway. He chuckled approvingly. Much of the time his eyes were kind, as now. 'My big friend loves life,' he said proudly. He mimicked the gesture of Madame's fingers, and strode forward. 'Now I show you,' he said. With no manners, Picasso pulled Michael away from her. He grinned down at the woman. 'I am back,' Picasso said, his teeth bared, and she looked up at him adoringly conquered.

Michael was relieved to be relieved. He went downstairs, clothes draped over his arms, showered and sat in the sitting room. He poured himself a whisky and ate crisps. For the next two hours, the man he loved was in the next room fucking someone else. Michael turned on the television, low. He was just as alone as when he had been living with Phil. OK, you learn. Having a lover, husband, whatever, does not stop you being alone.

Michael had power. He could get rid of Picasso whenever he liked. He could walk in there now and banish him, leaving Marta stranded and shocked.

Except that that had not been the deal. Picasso had given him what he asked for in exchange for life. And why did Picasso want life so very much?

On the sofa, on a sketchpad, there was a drawing of Michael. It was one continuous line of charcoal, a single gulp of information, stylish and twitching as a cat's tail. It was a drawing of a man who was windswept as if at sea, eyes narrowed in the face of some invisible force. The tiny Chinese eyes each consisted of a single charcoal line, but you could tell they were about to weep from wind blown directly onto the cornea. The mouth was downturned, enduring and elated, somehow just about to smile, as one smiles in a storm, from exhilaration. It was a drawing of a man caught up in a miracle. It was a new Picasso.

And it would disappear the moment Michael sent Picasso away.

Madame Miazga darted into the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her. The water suddenly hissed and she began to sing as she showered.

Picasso emerged in Michael's boxer shorts, strutting like a welterweight champion. He slapped his belly and announced, 'We go drinking!'

Madame threw on her light and translucent dress. She smiled warmly at both of them, and giggled with delight. Only a certain hardness in the contrast between her blue eyes and the mascara around them gave a clue that this was a woman who had mastered academic politics. She put a longer finger that was exactly at 90 degrees to the floor against her freshly glossed lips. Sssh, it meant, this is our secret. Her eyes went soft, forgiving, pleading, in memory of her husband. She loved Mr Miazga, but perhaps found him too fastidious.

They separated in the street, waving good night. In a local Camden pub, Picasso played cards and smoked and joined in a game of darts with fat bearded men in black t-shirts and earrings of whom Michael was very slightly afraid. Picasso's cigarette balanced on his lips all night, and he nodded brusquely when his turn came. When others played he sipped beer, looking serious and constructively occupied.

They left at eleven o'clock and for some reason Picasso was angry with Michael.