Eleven
Blake cuts a dashing if remote figure at the bar. He is wearing an oyster gray lounge suit and a black shirt, and is even more disturbingly attractive than I remember. He stands when he sees me and I stop, frozen by his eyes. Neither of us moves. It is as if we are again in a world of our own. Just his smoldering eyes and my strong desire for more from him—what exactly I do not quite know. Then he breaks the spell by moving towards me.
‘You look edible,’ he purrs, his eyes lingering on the curve of my hips.
I blush and touch my bangs.
‘I like the hair, too,’ he murmurs.
‘Thanks.’ My voice sounds nervous and shaky.
He reaches a hand out to touch me and instinctively I pull away. I had not meant to, but my body has its own reactions to him.
He drops his hand and eyes me coldly. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘We can make it a totally sex thing or we can dress it up a little and it will look pretty in the corner. It’s up to you. It’s all the same to me.’
Pretty in the corner. Strange turn of phrase. I study him from beneath my eyelashes. ‘Dress it up a little,’ I say.
‘Good. Can I get you something to drink? A glass of champagne? You’re partial to it, if I remember correctly,’ he says, and leads me to the bar.
I look around the bar. It is decorated in dark wood and deep red curtains. It actually looks like an old-fashioned French brothel. ‘I’ve already had two glasses.’
His eyebrows rise. ‘You found the alcohol.’
‘It found me. I opened the fridge and there it was begging me to drink it.’
His eyes twinkle. ‘Yes, alcohol has a habit of doing that.’
‘I’m hungry, though.’
‘Let’s get some food into you then.’
We are shown into a private booth. The sommelier arrives and I listen to Blake order a bottle of wine that I have never heard of, and realize that the poor and the middle classes have been conned into believing that Chablis, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Pouilly Fume, and Sancerre are superior wines for the discerning, but the truly rich are imbibing a totally different class of drink.
He picks up the menu and my eyes are drawn to his wrists. They are so utterly masculine they make my stomach tighten.
‘How was your day?’ he asks.
‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I really am very grateful, but why did you buy me so much stuff?’
He leans back in his chair. ‘Did you have a doll when you were young?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you make little clothes for her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did it give you pleasure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. It was my doll and I wanted it to look good.’
‘That is how I feel about you. You are my doll. I like the idea of dressing you the way I see fit. I want you to look good. Besides, I like that every stitch on your body has been paid for by me.’
I feel a frisson of electricity run up my spine. ‘I’m not a doll.’
‘To me you are. A living, breathing doll.’
‘What happens in three months’ time?’
‘Did you eventually get bored with your doll and stop playing with her?’
‘Yes.’ My voice is soft. I know where this conversation is going.
‘So will I and when I do I will put you aside as you did your doll.’
‘Well, that’s clear enough.’
‘Good.’ His face is expressionless. ‘What would you like to eat?’
I look at the menu. There is fish and chicken. I hope he will order one of those. But there is also foie gras, which I’d rather die than eat. The waiter appears at Blake’s side. ‘Are you ready to order, monsieur?’
Blake looks at me enquiringly.
‘I’m just going to have whatever you’re having,’ I say breezily.
‘Mussels in white wine to start followed by the herb crusted lamb cutlets.’
‘Pommes sables or pommes soufflé?’ the waiter enquires.
I look blankly at Blake.
‘Try the potato soufflé,’ he says. ‘You might like it.’
‘OK, potato soufflé,’ I agree. When the waiter is gone, I take a sip of wine. It must have been good, but I am so nervous I register it only as a cold liquid. ‘So,’ I begin, ‘You are a banker.’
‘And you have been on Google.’
‘Wikipedia actually. I was curious. All my life I imagined bankers were thieves utilizing fractional reserve banking to create money out of nothing, and then they take your house and car and business when you can’t keep up the repayments.’
‘Ah, this is like all bankers are thieves, all lawyers are liars, and all women are whores.’
‘I’d rather be a whore than a banker.’
‘That’s handy then. I’d rather be a banker who buys a whore.’
‘Why do you need to buy a woman, anyway? With that flashy car of yours, they must be leaving their phone number by the droves on your windscreen wipers.’
‘You were an impulse buy.’ His eyes crinkle at the corners. I amuse him.
I look at his perfectly cut suit, his beautifully manicured hands, and the Swiss precision watch glinting on his wrist. ‘There is nothing impulsive about you.’ My eyes take in that delectable lock of hair that falls over his forehead. ‘Other than your hair.’
He laughs out loud. I look at him. The man has lovely teeth.
‘This might turn out to be a lot more interesting than I thought,’ he says.
The mussels arrive in tiny, covered black pots. When Blake opens his I follow suit. The smell is maddeningly good, but I wait until Blake reaches for his utensils before I copy him.
‘Bon appétit,’ he says.
‘Bon appétit,’ I repeat.
The mussels are meltingly soft in my mouth.
‘Good?’ asks Blake.
‘Very.’
But the portion is so small it is quickly gone. ‘I don’t understand something,’ I say, daintily dabbing the corners of my mouth. ‘How come the paparazzi never follow you around like they do other celebrities and eligible bachelors to expose all your escapades and wrongdoings?’
‘For the same reason my family and the other great families are not on the Forbes richest list. We don’t like publicity. Unless it is sanctified by us you won’t see it in the papers.’
‘Are you trying to tell me your family has that much power?’
‘I’m not trying to, I’m telling you. It’s easy when you control the media.’
‘Your family controls the media?’
‘The great, old families do. It is in our interest to work as a group.’ His eyes glitter in the soft light. Suddenly his lips twitch. He leans back and flashes a smile. ‘But enough about me. Tell me about yourself.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Other than the fact that you live on a council estate and don’t earn enough, I know nothing at all about you.’
‘That’s not strictly true. You know I am AIDS free, don’t have any sexually transmitted diseases, own a clean bill of health, am on contraceptives as of today, and have had a full body wax.’
His smile becomes a wolfish grin. ‘How was the waxing session? Not too painful, I hope.’
‘Not at all. You should try it sometime.’
He laughs outright. ‘The day you pay me to have sex with you, I will.’
I don’t smile back.
The lamb arrives. I look at my plate. Blood has eddied under the meat. I cannot eat that. I sigh inwardly. It will be vegetables and potato again.
‘Where do you get your unusual coloring from?’
‘My grandmother on my mother’s side was Iranian. The hair is from her and the blue eyes are from my father’s side of the family.’
He lets his eyes wander around my face, lingering on my mouth. ‘Have you been to Iran before?’
‘I went once as a child, but it is my dream to take my mother back there.’
‘It’s dangerous there now.’
‘For you maybe, but not for me or Mum it isn’t.’
‘Still, don’t you think you should wait until all this talk of war is over?’
‘There will be war. It is better to go now, before Iran becomes another Iraq or Libya.’
‘What was it like when you were there?’
‘When I went it was a wonderful place. We stayed in the desert. It was very beautiful. At night there was pure silence. And the sand dunes sing.’
‘You can go to Saudi Arabia for sand dunes.’
‘You don’t understand. Isfahan is in our blood. I remember when my mother was leaving she climbed to the top of the steps of the plane, then she turned around and did this.’ I open my arms out as if to gather something in the air and bring my arms back towards my face and kiss the tips of my fingers. ‘I asked her what she was doing and she said she was kissing the air of her motherland goodbye. I remember thinking even then that I must bring her back to that beloved land of hers.’
‘I’ve never been to Iran.’
‘Of course you haven’t. Iran doesn’t have a central bank. My mother says it is why the world wants to wage war with it.’
‘Does she also believe Elvis is still alive?’
My eyes flash and I glare at him. ‘We can dress this arrangement up and play it any way you want to, but don’t you dare criticize my mother. Even the dirt at the bottom of her shoes is better than you,’ I cry passionately.
He gazes at my flushed cheeks and glittering eyes without anger, almost speculatively. ‘You brought her up,’ he says softly.
My anger subsides as suddenly as it came. ‘Yes, I did,’ I agree flatly, and must have looked as lost and as naïve as I felt for he reaches out to cover my hand with his. I pull mine away.
He takes his hand back to his end of the table and looks at me coldly. ‘OK, have it your way,’ he says, and looks for the waiter.
A waiter appears almost immediately.
The waiter looks at my plate. ‘Was everything all right, mademoiselle?’
‘It was fine. Just not hungry.’
‘Perhaps you have left some space for dessert?’ he suggests with a tilted head.
I shake my head and the waiter looks at Blake. ‘Monsieur?’
‘Just the check.’
‘Of course,’ the waiter says with a nod, and raises his eyebrow to another waiter hovering by a pillar. The man comes and begins clearing away the plates. The bill is presented discreetly in a black wallet and Blake drops his card into it. When his card comes back, Blake says, ‘Shall we?’
He stands and, with his hand on the small of my back, leads me out.