49

August 2018

Greg, Maxim, Alex, Vickey, Leon

At ten to ten the Trust Bank armored security truck, with an armed driver and guards, entered the territory of the British Higher School of Design on Taylor Street. Everything went as it usually did. The truck drove past the guard post and entered the educational establishment’s territory. Driving on for about another three hundred yards, the Trust Bank truck went down into an underground carpark and stopped in front of some iron gates.
Not far from the bank truck, a young blond-haired guy sat in a parked, inconspicuous, white Hyundai Solaris. He was looking down at the mobile phone he was holding in his hand. Without raising his head, the guy looked up in the direction of the truck now and again. After a while, the gates were raised, and the bank truck drove into the buffer zone to unload, the gates coming back down behind it.
Alex, Vickey and Leon were sitting on a bench opposite the bank. Each of them had a paper coffee cup in their hand. All three of them were nervous.
Leon looked distraught. His arms and legs were shaking. Leon’s breathing was intense and spasmodic. He had a canvas rucksack on the ground between his feet, the kind that students usually use. But Leon didn’t have textbooks in his. Leon kept looking at the rucksack nervously, as if he was afraid of letting it out of his sight.
Alex tried to keep calm, but he was trembling on the inside too. He tried to control his breathing, but every time he brought his cup to his lips he thought he’d poor hot coffee over himself.
Vickey was the calmest of the three of them.
If you hadn’t known, you would have thought they were three normal students. Three friends waiting for their lectures to begin. They were again in disguises, their hands covered in thick layers of liquid plaster. They were showing each other stuff on their mobiles and chatting quietly. Next to Vickey lay a file of questionnaires, her props for the role she was to play whilst keeping visitors out of the bank.
A hundred yards from the bench where the guys were sitting, there was a square. Max and Greg, in their disguises, stood right by the entrance. They were also dressed up as youngsters – ripped jeans, hooded tops, dark sunglasses.
Everything was going according to plan.
At five minutes past ten the mobile phone in Greg’s pocket pinged, indicating that he’d received a message. Greg opened it. “Training, as usual, is at 1, don’t forget the balls.” This was an agreed signal from Greg’s guy, who was in his Solaris in the underground parking – the bank’s security truck had left.
“We’re up,” Greg said quietly to Max.
“Just once, Lord. Let us win once!” said Max.
“In, out,” muttered Greg. He was clearly nervous. Drops of sweat had appeared on his forehead. “Luck’s on our side, bro,” he said, as if to himself.
Greg headed towards the bank.
Alex, Vickey and Leon stopped talking among themselves and watched Greg as he approached the bank’s entrance. Alex suddenly felt a rush of inspiration. Not fear, but some kind of sense of faith, that the game had begun, that he was in the game and that he had every chance of winning this game.
Greg threw the door open and entered the bank, the door slowly closing behind him.
Vickey felt nothing. She simply observed what was happening. As if it all had nothing to do with her. Just before they’d left home, Alex had told her what to do if the robbery went off the tracks and they got caught red-handed. He would say that he’d tricked her because they needed a girl on the door, he’d say he had promised to pay her if she carried out a sociology poll for some advertising campaign he’d dreamt up. It all seemed pretty stupid, but Alex hadn’t been able to come up with anything better. If it all went wrong, then, according to Alex’s plan, Vickey would cut a deal with the police and at worst she’d get off with a suspended sentence.
Greg, entering the bank, walked up to a desk with blank forms. He took one and started to slowly fill it in.
Max was already approaching the entrance to the bank.
Leon, forgetting all cautionary measures, was openly staring at his cousin. Leon could hardly breathe. He was totally overcome by fear. “What will Mom think if I end up in prison? What will happen to her?” he thought. The idea circled round and round in his head, entirely depriving him of a will or ability to do anything. It was accompanied by Greg’s words from the day before: “It’s too late to look back, son. You’ve been involved in several armed robberies. You could go to the police and inform on us, of course. But then that same guy who’s going to be driving our money away in a stolen car will go to your mother’s apartment. And you know what he’ll do? He’ll torture your old lady. And then he’ll kill her. And before she dies, she’ll find out that she’s only being killed because her beloved fatty son got scared. He turned chicken right before the most important job which could have made him and his dear old mother rich.” This wasn’t the Greg that had a heart-to-heart discussion with him as they wandered around town, this was the real Greg, a hungry, hounded animal with no time for empty talk. Leon hadn’t told Max about all this. He was scared that Max already knew about this conversation.
Max, having walked up to the door into the bank, took a quick look round at the guys. Leon knew that tough look his cousin could give, a look which brooked no objections and didn’t bode well. Leon shivered, as if he’d been hit by an electric shock that, at least to some extent, brought him back to his senses.
The door closed behind Max. He took a ticket for the line from a machine at the entrance, went over to the seats for those waiting next to the bank manager’s office, and took the one closest to the manager’s door.
As soon as Max entered the bank, Alex got up from the bench. “Let’s go,” he said firmly. “Let’s go,” repeated Vickey. They headed towards the bank. Hesitating for a while, Leon eventually got up and held onto Alex’s arm. Alex turned round and looked at Leon. Leon looked totally pathetic.
“Leon, everything’s going to be fine,” Alex said firmly. “There’s no way back.”
“It’ll definitely be ok?” asked Leon. He was almost in tears.
“Definitely.” Alex carefully picked up the rucksack and helped Leon to put it on. Then he gave Leon a careful pat on the shoulder and pushed him in the direction of the bank. “Let’s go!”
They quickly walked over to the bank’s entrance. At around the same time, a middle-aged, sporty looking black guy also got to the door. He was in old jeans, a grey t-shirt and a light brown jacket. The man looked at Alex, Leon and Vickey and stopped, letting them go in first. Alex, lingering for a second, entered. Leon scampered in after him.
“Please,” the man said to Vickey, holding the door open for her.
“No, no, thank you,” Vickey quickly answered. “I’ll stay here, outside.”
“You’re the boss,” the man said, smiling to her.
Vickey found herself thinking that her disguise, the makeup she’d put on, the fake eyelashes, the heavy eyeliner, the thick wig that covered half her face, this whole masquerade merely made her stand out like the meat of a chicken stands out from the bone when it’s being baked in an oven. She thought this man could see the real her, that he could almost see her standing there naked.
“Thank you,” she quickly repeated.
The man answered her with a smile and went in.
Having gone in, Leon headed in Greg’s direction. Just a few yards before reaching him, he stopped and pretended he was looking for something on his smartphone. He was sweating heavily from the tension. He suddenly had a thought – if it wasn’t for the training robberies, as Greg called them, he would have run away as fast as his chubby little legs could carry him.
Alex stopped not far from the entrance, with his back to the door into the bank and the guard right in front of him. Alex took a few brochures off a stand right next to the entrance and pretended he was reading them. He looked at the brochures, but because of his nerves the text just floated in front of his eyes. The guard paced back and forth off to the side of Alex.
The seconds rang out deafeningly in his ears. Alex tensed up. He could distinctly feel the piece of pipe, wrapped in newspaper, rubbing against his side, clamped down by his belt. In the corner of his eye he noticed the black man in the light brown coat who’d smiled to Vickey when he entered the bank. Alex caught himself thinking that the roguish smile in Vickey’s direction from a guy like that was extremely unpleasant. Was he really jealous? For a fraction of a second that thought distracted him from the job in hand, but it disappeared just as quickly, leaving him alone with his fear and his tension.
In the meantime, Vickey, who’d waited when the guy in the coat went into the bank, and had now made sure that there was no one around in the street, took out her file of questionnaires and her “Closed” sign. She quickly stuck it on the glass of the door. Then she turned her back to it and stood on guard. All as planned.
Inside the bank, none of the team looked at each other directly, but they kept tabs on what their comrades were doing. Leon was supposed to distract the guard and then Alex was supposed to go into action.
There was a moment when it seemed to Alex that the guard was turning his back on him. Alex even reached his right hand under his armpit, feeling out the end of the pipe. He wanted to pull it out, just as he’d done a hundred times practicing at home, and just as he’d done when he’d been in action at the bowling club. But at just that moment the guard unexpectedly turned round in his direction and Alex pretended that he was merely reaching to scratch himself. It looked fairly natural and the guard didn’t notice anything, but Alex suddenly broke out in a sweat.
The tension was now reaching unimaginable levels. Alex looked at Greg, who was looking somewhere off to the side. Alex quickly looked over to Max. Max looked him right in the eye, and Alex could sense support in his gaze. He felt a little better. His childhood friend, the only guy who’d protected him from the hoods in the yard. The only person who could get Alex out of this insane situation. Alex suddenly realized that he hadn’t been breathing for a few seconds. He gasped in the air hungrily. It wasn’t enough, though, and the oxygen got caught somewhere in his chest. He could sense his stomach quivering. Not his body, not his hands. But his stomach. That recognition made him want to cry. To burst into tears right there, in that damned bank. Which he’d come to of his own free will.
Alex looked at Max. At the only thing that could save him in the world at that moment.
Max looked at Alex. Just for a moment. Then he looked at Leon and gave a barely perceptible nod. Barely imperceptible, but enough for Leon to be sure what he meant: “Now, do it!”
Leon turned to the guard, who was standing by the door a yard or two from Alex, and called out to him loudly.
“Excuse me, are you the guard? Where do you pay for … for … the electricity bill?” he asked, stuttering, but comprehensible all the same.
The guard immediately responded, turning in Leon’s direction, leaving Alex directly behind his back. At the distance of an outstretched arm.

50

February 2018

Vickey, Diana, Alex

After the news about Africa, Vickey decided to quit her job. She rushed around the city for days on end doing paperwork in order to wrap up all her and Diana’s affairs in London while the young surgeon carried on saving human hearts without being distracted.
With each passing day, Vickey convinced herself that the trip was the right decision. She even began to dream of training as a nurse so that she could work with Diana in the hospital and be of use to humanity. She continued to think of Alex, those thoughts providing a sorry backdrop, but she learned to drown them out with dreams of a new life with Diana on their travels, telling herself that it would be the first, key adventure together.
That evening Vickey was on her own at home. Diana had had to stay on at the hospital and Vickey wasn’t expecting her before midnight. She didn’t feel very well because of the vaccination she’d done the day before, so she got into bed early and had even managed to fall into a deep sleep when her mobile began ringing.
She answered without opening her eyes.
“Hello?”
Alex’s painfully familiar voice came back to her from the other end of the line: “Hi! It’s me.”
Vickey’s heart broke free from her and fired off into the stratosphere. She got a lump in her throat. She didn’t know how to answer and simply remained silent.
“Vickey, forgive me, forgive me for everything that I’ve done to you and that I’ll do to you, Vickey,” Alex said drunkenly on the other end of the line. “But I need you. I need you. It’s a matter of life and death!”
Vickey remained silent, unable to get a word out, tears hailing down from her grey eyes. He’d never asked her for forgiveness, ever.
“Vickey!” Alex said. “I got really mixed up, I don’t trust anyone else anymore. Nobody, apart from you. Are you listening?”
Vickey nodded in silence.
“Vickey?” the voice on the other end of the line implored. “Vickey, are you there?”
Vickey, fighting back the tears, spoke quietly.
“I’m here.”
“Come over. Right now. I’m begging you! Only you can help me,” said the voice of her beloved that’d she long to hear for so long. Vickey distinctly heard the pain, the yearning, the desperation and the fear filtering out of him. She’d never heard Alex speak this way.
Her heart was breaking from the desire to rush over and hug him, to understand what had happened, to help. But the thought of Diana, her Diana, rattled round her mind like a bird caught in a cage.
“I can’t,” Vickey finally answered with difficulty.
“Come to me! Please!” Alex begged. “Vickey, I want to live with you. I’ve got a plan: I want to sell my apartment and get the hell out of this damned London, I want to move to a village out in the sticks! There, we’ll build a house in the Lake District, on the shore, and I’ll write plays, and you’ll bring up our children. Vickey! Remember when we were in the car and I told you that I love you? You remember that, right?
There was a loud popping on the other end of the line, following by some scurrying around. A minute later, Alex’s voice was heard again.
“I’m drunk, Vickey. Really drunk. But tomorrow I’ll sober up and I’ll be waiting for you, just come!” There was more crashing around in the background and then the line went dead. Alex didn’t phone back.
Vickey sat on her bed. Her sleepiness had gone, and her peace of mind and will power had gone with it. Her thoughts fluttered about like birds and she couldn’t catch any of them.
Alex. Her beloved Alex. He’d phoned. He was alive. He’d called out to her. He’d asked her to go back to him and be with him, just like she’d dreamed of doing. But why, instead of joy, was she overcome by a feeling of impending disaster.
She sat in silence on the bed until Diana came back.
“What are you sitting in the dark for?” asked Diana, turning on the light in the hall. “Did something happen?”
Vickey didn’t want to tell Diana about Alex’s call, not now, not today.
“I need time to think,” she said to herself.
On seeing Diana, as usual, her heart fluttered, but now it ached with a new feeling – a feeling of guilt.
Vickey jumped up from the bed. “I don’t feel very well today. Let’s have a drink of wine and get in the bath? Today I…” She thought for a second. “… I don’t want to think about anything.”
“An excellent plan!” Diana answered quickly. “I’ve been on my feet all day in the operating room and they’re about to give out. I’ll go and have a wash and run the bath.”
She went off to the bathroom.
Vickey took out a bottle of red wine, poured it into a decanter and left it “to breathe.” She found some big candles and took them into the bathroom – when the two of them were home together they never locked it.
Entering, she saw that the bath was already filling. The air was full of the aromas of Diana’s favorite bath salts from L’Occitane – a tart scent of lavender fields and the vineyards of Tuscany where they’d dreamed that they would one day buy a house. And Diana, her adored Diana, svelte, strong, gracious Diana was in her top and panties, her leg up on the toilet as she shaved it whilst talking to someone on the telephone.
Vickey smiled and went back into the living room so that she wouldn’t interrupt Diana as she got back into a homely mood.
Vickey aimlessly wandered around the room. Her heart was aching. She got the feeling that she could no longer distinguish between the different objects surrounding her.
She was sleep walking for a while until, right up close over her head, she heard Diana’s voice. The beloved voice of her beloved Diana.
“The bath’s already ready.”
Diana laughed happily and passed her a large glass of wine on a long, thin stem.
Diana. An island of calm and love. I don’t want to think about anything. I only want her. To listen to her. To be with her.
“I want to drink to you, my love!” Diana said with feeling. And Vickey sensed that tears were coming to her eyes. “To how lucky I am to be with you.”
Diana led Vickey by the hand into the bathroom.
The candles were already burning and the room was wrapped in romantic, dusky shadows. They helped each other to undress and climbed into the hot water, placing their glasses on a small table next to the bath.
Diana sat down first and Vickey nestled between her legs, her back up against Diana’s breasts. Diana’s long, slender legs embraced Vickey on all sides, her knees sweetly poking out from the water and through the thick, soapy foam.
“We’ll ask for an apartment with a piano so that you can play!” Diana said happily. “We’ll put it in the rental contract, next to the point stipulating that we need an air conditioner and a bath.
The hot water and Diana’s embraces relaxed Vickey’s body. It was as if Diana’s arms were protecting Vickey from Alex, blocking him off. Diana tenderly massaged her beloved’s shoulders. She kissed her behind the ear.
Vickey sipped her wine. For a few moments she felt happy – she was with Diana, they loved one another, they were together. Alex hadn’t phoned, it had just been a dream. She would have loved that long-awaited phone call to have merely been a dream.
Diana passed the back side of her palm down Vickey’s neck, skimming off the foam as if she was washing away her heavy thoughts, and kissed her. It was as if Diana was transporting Vickey to a different space where there was only the two of them. Diana gently pinched Vickey’s skin between her teeth, caressed her with her tongue.
Despite the hot bath, goosebumps passed up and down Vickey’s body.
Diana’s hands caressed Vickey’s breasts. Vickey began to moan, turning her head to meet Diana’s lips, tender, soft, luscious. She vanished into them.
They kissed one another for a long, long time. They were in no hurry, before them was a night of bliss and love.
Diana’s hands slipped lower to Vickey’s belly, freezing at her appendix scar. She passed her index finger over it several times.
“This scar on your body – it’s my favorite scar ever in my life,” she laughed. “I’m telling you that as a surgeon.”
Her palm moved between Vickey’s legs. She began to move it, her powerful fingers skillfully massaging Vickey’s clit. Another mouthful of wine. Yes, please, more.
Vickey took down the shower head that was hanging on the wall. She turned it to its broadest setting and aimed the stream of water between Vickey’s legs. Vickey groaned. Then harder. Another minute, more. And an explosion. Vickey came.
Diana turned the water off for a while, giving Vickey a chance to get her breath back.
She kissed Vickey on the neck, nibbling at her earlobe. She whispered.
“I love watching how you come, I love your moans, your shouts and your groans.” Diana smiled happily.
Vickey looked at her as if in disbelief.
“Seriously,” Diana laughed. “I think I love your orgasms more than my own. I want more.”
And Diana turned the water on again. A powerful jet, further strengthened by Diana blocking a third of the nozzle with her finger, again began to arouse Vickey’s clit.
Vickey touched her breasts with her hands, they slipped over skin wet with foam, she pinched at her nipples. Vickey sensed that she was building up into a ball, into a single point. The second orgasm came slower, but with the same inevitability.
They slowly swapped positions. Now Diana lay on her back in the water and Vickey sat in the middle of the bath under the tap, Diana’s thighs pressed between her body and her legs raised up onto the side wall of the bath.
Vickey looked at Diana, naked, floating before her eyes. And her heart ached with love and tenderness. She spoke to Diana.
“I love you! You know that I love you?”
Diana looked at her with laughing, loving eyes and answered with confidence.
“Of course I know.”
Vickey took her glass of wine and took a big sip, but instead of gulping it down she lowered herself over Diana’s face, kissed her on the mouth and let the liquid out in small portions. Diana drank. She laughed happily. Beautiful, beloved Diana.
They continued kissing. Vickey moved the glass away. And placed her hand on Diana’s thigh. Vickey could feel Diana’s soft butt, rocking slightly in the water, slipping along her stomach.
She placed her hand on Diana’s breasts, and the other in her crotch. Her fingers confidently felt out the right spots on this body that she knew so well.
Diana quietly groaned, writhing slightly, the foam beautifully sliding over her body. Her small breasts, with their nipples almost painfully hardened and sticking up beautifully, inspired a burning desire in Vickey to tease them with her mouth.
Vickey lent forward slightly and touched one with the end of her tongue. Diana shrieked, but then immediately fell silent and waited for it to continue. Vickey passed her abrasive, moist tongue over the second nipple.
Diana lay still in the water, but her heart was pounding so hard that Vickey could clearly hear its beating as she locked her lips over Diana’s left nipple. She began to suck and nibble at it, taking the right nipple in her hand and pinching it to the threshold of pain. Diana groaned loudly.
Vickey placed her palm between Diana’s legs, her four fingers confidently burrowing into the depths of her pussy until the thumb lay on the clit, powerfully circling it.
Vickey’s fingers felt out the prized depression and began sharp movements pressing in on it. Again and again and again.
Diana cried out, writhed and then, all of a sudden, broke out in tears. She came. She came for a long time, loudly. Her thighs clamped hard around Vickey’s hand.
Through her fingers, Vickey could feel the orgasm exploding within Diana. Forcing her heart to leap out of her chest and hammer its beat in ecstasy.
May it never end. Beloved, beloved Diana. I never want to get out of the bath. I want to hide in it. It was as if Vickey had woken up. At the realization that she would have to come out into the light from this life-saving refuge.
Diana said that they would get out of the water when they’d finished the wine. Settling in opposite one another, they raised their glasses into the air.
“Yes, first a toast,” Vickey said with a theatrical grumpiness, pulling back the glass that she’d raised to her lips too early. “You can’t live without them.”
“Yes, I love toasts,” Vickey smiled, somewhat sorrowfully.
“Often they’re the quintessence of my thoughts," Diana said.
“So, my dear girl!” Diana continued after a theatrical pause. “I think it’s important that a person should have a dream. It’s vitally important that they follow it. Maybe it will lead to disappointment and failures, maybe it will lead to victory – nobody knows in advance. But it’ll be a great pity if you don’t give it a try.”
She swayed her glass back and forth in her hand, as if thinking about the words to follow.
“This work in Africa has always been my dream,” Diana continued, smiling, “and I’m very grateful to you for agreeing to help me pursue my dream. I’ll say it again, though: I really, really love you, but you’re in no way obliged to say goodbye to your family and move to another continent with me. We can always find a middle way.”
Diana saw tears appearing in Vickey’s eyes at these words. She stopped, lent forward to her beloved and tenderly caressed her cheek with the palm of her hand, pushing back a lock of hair.
She looked Vickey in the eye, pupil to pupil. It was, no doubt, at this moment that she understood everything.
It seemed to Vickey that an hour had passed before she heard Diana’s voice again.
An oppressive silence enveloped her. And then there was an explosion. The world, as if in a slow-motion film, flew apart. Diana was too clever not to understand. She’d understood back then, at her birthday party, but she had driven away the thoughts that only brought her pain.
“Did Alex phone?” Diana asked, almost whispering.
Vickey felt a cold in the palms on her cheeks, she looked into her eyes, they didn’t have the strength to lie. Her head slumped down onto her chest, hopeless.
“You’re going to him?” Diana asked again, her voice somehow detached.
Vickey was silent. She didn’t know the answer. She’d been blown every which way by a storm that had raged from the moment he called. She was silent, it seemed, for just half a minute. But it felt like an eternity, an eternity that now separated them.
“No,” Vickey blurted out, coming back to her senses, “I’m not going. I love you! You’re all I need.”
“Vickey,” Diana said in a sensitive voice, “I love you. I really do love you. But being a surgeon, helping children in Africa – it’s my dream, it’s always been my dream, since I was a kid. It’s not your dream.”
Vickey couldn’t understand. Diana was saying that because that was what she thought. Or did she feel sorry for her? Or had she changed her mind?
Diana’s voice was quivering, but she straightened her back and lay back, pulling away from Vickey, still talking. Only she knew how difficult it was for her to say what she was saying.
“Your dream has always been Alex. And my love for you won’t let me deprive you of your dream.”
Wise, kind, generous, subtle, delicate Diana. Diana. She no doubt wanted to cry now too. She loves me.
Vickey, crying, could hear her own quaking voice begging Diana not to abandon her, not to leave, she swore her devotion and love. Diana gently caressed her knees and thigh. But then she got out of the bath, put on a bathrobe and went to leave the bathroom.
Vickey rushed after her, slipping and almost falling to the floor. Diana helped Vickey back up, hugging her shivering body to her chest. She held her tight in her embrace.
Vickey wanted it to last forever and never end. But she knew her. She knew how she took decisions. In an instant. Irreversibly.
It seemed to Vickey that a ringing silence and the sounds of the entire world had become jumbled in her head. She didn’t understand anything, couldn’t feel anything.
Diana moved away, and Vickey’s gaze followed her as she left. With a parting smile, she spoke.
“Do you remember? Your favorite quote: ‘He smiled calmly and eerily, and told me: “Don’t stand in the wind!”’”
Diana spoke that way, because that was what she thought. Or because she felt sorry for her. Or because she’d changed her mind. Again, that fog in my thoughts. I don’t understand anything. I don’t know what to do.
Diana stepped through the bathroom door. And out of Vickey’s life forever.

51

January 2018

Alex

Alex kept the promise that he’d given to Max and stopped drinking. He even went back to his editing job in order to gradually prepare for someone to replace him.
He saw almost no one and, it seemed, for the first time in his adult life didn’t sleep with anyone.
He carried on keeping his diary, but, for the most part, kept it to quotes from other people that would come to mind from time to time. It was Orwell for the most part:
“Happiness can exist only in acceptance…”
Or:
“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
And then an unexpectedly brutal quote from the rapper Snoop Dogg:
“Sex is like a beautiful meeting of the genitalia. It’s the dance of love between a penis and a vagina.”
But, for the most part, his thoughts were focused on the coming robbery.
In the coming crime he saw a hope that he could be rid of the shackles of everyday rules, that he could be free of his hated former life that had led him up a dead end. He felt sorry for himself. And blamed himself for having lost what had been in his grasp. He also saw this wild act as being a victory over his mother. The robbery, for him, would be like slicing through the Gordian Knot just as Alexander the Great had done.
Alex didn’t recall his drunken conversation with Vickey. Max said that he would find a “suitable chick” right before the job. He said there was a guy, maybe in Bromley, who owed Greg a lot of dough, and that he would agree to talk his chick into doing the job for them.
Alex really missed Vickey. And Diana. The two people closest to him in his life. He genuinely regretted having driven himself to a state where he couldn’t pick up his mobile and dial them in order to hear their familiar voices.
“I have to let her go, I have to let them go. Let them go and wish them happiness. I have to, but it’s so unbearably hard.”
Alex had already been writhing around in bed, unable to get to sleep, for half an hour. He’d tried everything he could think of. Television, melatonin, two glasses of Chianti Classico. Nothing.
Sport, news, science, news again, news that everyone would forget about tomorrow, someone had argued with someone else, someone had started sleeping with someone, a soccer team had lost again, changed its coach again, fashion. Fashion channel. Skinny girls on the catwalk, some of them almost bare-breasted. Some with veils over their breasts, which made them even sexier, just outlining the shapes of their beautiful female bodies.
Alex made himself comfortable and started to watch what was happening on the catwalk. A few minutes later he decided to try and find some quiet European film, but his gaze was caught by a beautiful model.
Thin, like all her colleagues, she was distinguished by the fact that her chest was almost entirely flat.
The model strutted back and forth on the catwalk, and something hit Alex inside. She reminded him – and yes, damn it, Alex had learned to always be honest with himself – she reminded him of Johnny.
Alex vividly recalled the day when Johnny, the young student writer, had been in his apartment. He saw Johnny’s thin, shiny lips, it was as if he could feel his tender skin under his fingers. To this day he clearly remembered him from that innocent midday.
His erection appeared almost instantly. Alex closed his eyes and began tenderly massaging his cock. He passed his other hand over his entire body, his stomach, his thighs. His arousal was growing.
Alex wetted his right palm and began to move his moist hand up and down the head of his cock. He closed his eyes and lay back on the pillow. Two people appeared in his imagination – Johnny and the model from the catwalk. The model was dressed as he’d seen on the television screen, while Johnny was only wearing jeans.
Alex imagined that he was caressing them both, the model kissing his chest, Johnny standing close by, barely touching his shoulder.
Alex’s hand started to dry out. He wetted it down again. He screwed his eyes shut tight. As if receding into himself. He continued to imagine.
The model began kissing Alex on the chest. Her tender, soft tongue slowly touched Alex’s nipples, forcing Alex to groan. Johnny carried on standing in his jeans, tenderly holding Alex by the shoulder, his touch sending Alex’s head spinning.
The model didn’t touch Alex’s cock. She passed her small, beautiful palm along the inner surface of Alex’s thighs. Johnny carried on standing nearby. He looked at Alex with his innocent eyes.
Alex wasn’t sure what he wanted or who he wanted. Or how. He didn’t understand and he didn’t want to understand. That was no longer important to him.
Eyes shut, squeezed shut to the point of pain, continuing to separate him off from reality, carrying him off into his own, internal world.
Everything was resolved almost instantly. Johnny took Alex’s hand and placed its palm on the base of his cock. Then, with his mouth, lips and tongue, Alex sensed Johnny’s beautiful, taut nipple, just as he had sensed the taste of the girl’s breast, and he yelped in joy. He fastened on to it, taking Johnny’s second nipple with his left hand.
Alex greedily licked Johnny’s breast, his hand gliding back and forth, and his arousal reached a peak. Johnny placed his hand on Alex’s head, just put his hand on his head, which aroused Alex to the limit. The feeling was like none other and Alex groaned loudly.
The model lowered herself down and quickly took Alex’s cock in her mouth. Her fine, tender, warm lips enveloped his swollen member.
Alex imagined this picture, groaned, his hand, his already dry hand moving up and down.
Johnny raised Alex’s head sharply and locked their lips together. The model squeezed on Alex’s cock ever tighter with her hand, moving it back and forth ever faster, taking its head into her mouth. Again, again, again, his head spinning, the music from the catwalk blurring with the music in his head.
The wave reached its uppermost point, yes! Yes, yes, yes, and then quieter. Quieter. Quieter.
Alex lay on his back and slowly, very slowly, moved his hand up and down his cock. Up and down his cock, wet with sperm, calming it, lulling himself to sleep, and slowly, soundlessly shutting the door on the room of sins which only he could enter, alone with his secret desires, fears and feelings that only he could recognize. He closed the door behind him. Alex tightened on the lid of his own Pandora’s box that only he could see.
Alex fell asleep. He drifted off into a world of dreams, accompanied by the monotonous electronic rhythm of an alien catwalk.