*****
On a bright evening in late May I stood at my easel, bare brown feet cool on white marble. Sunlight still streamed in through studio windows that opened out onto the cobalt sea, Johnny Buckle was nothing more than an unpleasant memory, and all was well with my world.
I painted to music. Gounod’s Faust tumbled and soared into the air around me as I added the final details to my latest work, but just as Mephistopheles arrived to announce Faust’s damnation my apartment buzzer sounded, and I reluctantly turned the volume down. I padded across to the doorway and stretched to reach my intercom. ‘Whoever you are, you’d better have a bloody good excuse for disturbing me.’
‘I’ve brought alcohol and food to appease the gatekeeper – will that do?’ a laid-back voice, tinged with a soft West Country burr, crackled over the intercom.
I grinned and pressed the button that unlocked the front door. Nat Carlin was a fellow expatriate, a feckless, easy-going surfer who ostensibly worked in an internet café in Santa Marita’s tiny centre. He was also a pharmaceutical genius who amused himself by creating his own extensive range of hallucinogenics and stimulants for personal use, and cultivating a splendid year-round crop of skunk that he sold to the local slacker population.
‘Hey, stranger.’ I wrapped my arms around my visitor’s waist and he bent down to kiss me on the lips.
‘Beware of geeks bearing gifts.’ Nat held up a supermarket carrier bag. ‘Reckoned you’d be too caught up in your creation to bother about such a trivial detail as food.’
‘Thanks.’ I broke away and unpacked bread, cheese and a sun-warmed bottle of Rioja. ‘I’m almost finished. Another day and I’ll be free again – nothing to do but divide my time between beach and bar.’
‘How dreadful.’ Nat was already opening the bottle. ‘And that’ll last for how long? I give it three days before your horrific work ethic kicks in and the unstoppable Lilith Bresson feels the need to start on her next masterpiece...’ He stopped his goading as he saw my canvas. ‘Fuck, that’s good, Lili.’
‘Lilith. And yes, I know.’
‘Sorry. Lilith.’ He peered a little closer at the two beautiful, onyx-haired young women who lay entwined and oblivious to his gaze. ‘Hey, isn’t that Rosario?’
‘Yup.’
‘But she’s your cleaner.’
‘Yup. She gave me hell for not giving her anything to do, and I had a commission, so I decided to ask her to do a sitting. With her girlfriend.’
‘Jesus.’ Nat stared at the painting for at least half a minute, and his thoughts were virtually audible. ‘Oh Jesus. You get paid to paint lesbians. Actually doing it, right in front of you. You’re making your goddamn living from painting hot women getting it on.’
‘Yup. And you don’t even want to know what I’m charging my client to watch me work on the webcam.’
Nat shook his head in disbelief. ‘I hate you. I really, really hate you.’
‘Thank you.’ I rubbed at my left shoulder, driving my knuckles deep into the joint. ‘Hell, I ache. It’ll take me a week just to stand straight. I’ve spent so long hunched over the bloody thing I feel like Quasimodo.’
‘D’you want me to work on it, lovely?’ Nat’s voice carried a note of hope that always made me smile. ‘I have special rates for lucky bastards who paint filthy women.’
‘Okay.’ I sat down at a kitchen chair and pulled my vest top over my head. ‘Just try and keep your eyes on the job, sex pest,’ I warned as he began to knead at the tight knots between my shoulders, his practised hands avoiding the hard nub of jagged bone on my left scapula.
After ten minutes’ dutiful massage, Nat’s hands began to wander, as I knew they would, and he let his fingers drift softly over my left breast. I glanced at the canvas, then at my watch. It was past seven o’clock, so technically I was finished for the day, and there were perhaps two hours’ work still to do at most on a piece that would be completed a week ahead of schedule. Nothing one last early morning wouldn’t fix, and the closest I ever got to slacking.
Nat began to make lazy circles around my nipple and as I leaned back I could feel his erection pressing into my back. I shook my head in mock disgust. ‘You’re just a walking hard-on, aren’t you, Mr Carlin?’
‘So? It saves you the hassle of dating and other pointless social interaction.’