I stifle another yawn which twists into a smile, not because the thought of fucking in a bed someone died in appeals to any morbid side of me but because I’m surprised. Surprised to be waking up in this room. Surprised about last night.
I hadn’t expected anything but an inconvenience when my elderly father asked me to look after his beloved and equally elderly Labrador while he took a short holiday. Rufus is too old for a stay in kennels, and Dad wouldn’t countenance someone, other than me, staying in the house. “It might be suitable for Marjorie next door and her awful hairless cats, but not for an old soldier like Rufus,” he’d said, and regardless of the fact that I have more work right now than my company can comfortably cope with, I said yes. He’s my dad and the only relative I have left, so I’d wear the fucking dog like a scarf while I work if I needed to. But as it is, he spends twenty-three hours a day sleeping in his basket and is as deaf as a post these days.
So I’d expected inconvenience, not the delightful interlude lying next to me. I push the blond strands from her forehead and stroke my finger down the elegant slope of her nose. After last night, she might sleep for a week. I might’ve myself, but for the fact that I’m still on Japanese time after having just returned from Tokyo a few days ago.
I consider waking her to keep me company—okay, to fuck—but decide not everyone likes to be awake at first light. She might be more amenable to morning sex if it’s definitively morning.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say.
Not that gifts or horses, or whatever is meant to represent women in that analogy are strangers to me. I’m just not very spontaneous, and the female company I keep is usually one of a couple of types and almost always in the business. An artist looking to gain representation; a situation I’m never sure who is using whom, or else one of a number of women who seem to move in the same circles. Socialites and minor celebrities, those wishing to see and be seen. And then the newly divorced seeking investment opportunities for their settlements, sometimes along with a little sexual validation.
I can’t say I’ve ever found a woman stuck in a dog door, mores the pity. If I’d known what treats were in store, I might have looked after Rufus before.
Come to think of it, it’s rather odd that both my eighty-year-old widower father and Eamon’s sixty-something widowed mother are on holiday at the same time.
Good for him, if that’s what it is,I decide.
With a smile, I reach for my phone on the nightstand, a habit I should be broken of at this point in my life. But being out of contact means I lose business, and losing business means a loss of money, and that just doesn’t interest me. But I suppose if I hadn’t been in possession of my phone last night, I wouldn’t have spent an hour talking an Icelandic conceptual artist down from the ledge, and then possibly I wouldn’t have arrived home in need of a distraction. Honestly, this business is a little like herding cats or psychoanalysing high-strung toddlers, at least when it comes to dealing with artists. God save me from artistic temperaments. And may he never save me from women in Batman underwear.
Spending a week dog sitting definitely does have its—
Fuck, the dog!
I look at the time—it’s just gone five.
I’m not sure a dutiful son would abandon his charge in favour of a fuck, but I’m sure Dad would understand, even if Rufus won’t. The decrepit thing sleeps through the night, but like an old man with prostate problems, he’s up at the arse crack of dawn. He’ll need feeding and his morning medication, so I slide out from under sleeping Bat Girl and grab my pants from where I’d abandoned them on the floor. When she turns onto her back, her arms raised over her head, she looks like the blonde version of Modigliani’sSleeping Nude.
With less pubic hair.
Ten minutes, I decide. A quick sniff around the garden,his meds and his breakfast, and I’ll be back into bed before she’s even realised I’ve gone.
Because a view like that needs appreciating. I’m not an artist. I can’t paint or sculpt her likeness. But I can sure as hell show this beauty some devotion.
6
Miranda
‘I haven’t moved in,Heather. It’s just a job, and a part-time one at that, on top of my regular full-time one.’ And somewhere to stay where I feel like I’m not in the middle of theWar of the Roses, take II.
I look down at my desk, my keyboard clear of both dust and crumbs, papers in neat stacks, books with their spines facing out. Pens and pencils neatly deposited to myFor Fox Sakecup, and a pump dispenser of strawberry hand sanitiser standing next to it. Work is my little oasis of calm and control. The one place I can define outside the chaos of my everyday existence.
‘Cat-sitting is hardly working, Mir.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ I reply, examining my pale painted nails before I lean my elbow against my desk, my chin on my fist. ‘But, as it turns out, cat-sitting pampered hellcats, hell-bent on escape is, well, a job and a half.’
‘Some of them have such ridiculous names. Kizzy Stardust was one of them, right?’
‘David Meowie and Pawdry Hepburn, but that was weeks ago.’
I’m now looking after five cantankerous entitled Persians who all require individual diets and exactly fifteen minutes of “me” time in the evening. At least, that’s what the folder decrees, the instruction manual each owner leaves with directives for their beloved pet or pets care. I’m pretty diligent as a rule, and I try my best to stick to it, but there’s no way I’m spending my evenings getting covered in cat hair. They get a quick brush and ought to be thankful I’m not giving them the once-over with the vacuum hose.
But caring for those two hairless cats seems now like a distant memory. Though in reality, it was only last month that their hot neighbour rearranged my internal organs more than once that evening before proving himself to be no gentleman and all dude. It was a night of revelations, an experience I’ll never get to repeat again. After my fifth orgasm, I’d fallen back on the mattress exhausted and sated in ways I didn’t understand I could ever be, tucking the most secret of smiles into my pillow even overwhelmed as I was with the sense of something bittersweet. It was almost like the last night of a holiday when you’re reluctant to let go and travel home. But that’s not to say I’d anticipated waking to a pink bottom on the pillow next to me.
Newsflash: it wasn’t his.
So a dude. And we all knowthe dudeis about the hit and split. I mean, that’s fine, I get it. But it might’ve been nice if he’d made his intentions clear before I went to sleep. It might’ve been nicer still if he’d closed the bedroom door behind him. Waking to a cat’s bum in your face isn’t the nicest experience.
It was probably for the best that the agency had called early to tell me the house owner was returning unexpectedly that day. Sure, it left me hurrying around the house to tidy away the evidence of previous night in a panic, as well as packing my suitcase and getting ready for work, but at least I hadn’t had time to dwell. By the time the cleaning lady arrived at seven thirty, the only proof he’d been in the house at all was the bottle of single malt he’d left behind.
