HE
WANTED to fuck the righteousness out of her.
He
knew moments before she had left the room with his drinks trolley that she
would be preparing supper for him. A fare not to be found in his fridge, she
would rustle up something poignantly plain like always. Marmalade sandwiches no
less and a mug of warm milk. Her deed remained unspoken. No taxi had pulled up
outside his gates; no escort awaited him at the airport. The French Riviera
complete with sun would have to do without him. To pique his despair, the night
had brought rain. Smatters plagued his windows underlying what she’d taken from
him. Vince’s palette grasped for anything to savour within her offering but
orange peel and milk left a sour aftertaste.
Her
hands had taken everything out of him, but he would never beg her to stop. In
the wake of her treatment, his legs had felt battered yet cleansed. Countless
nurses had treated him since the crash. Only Nora seemed to mean it. She
laughed at him, raged at him and despaired at him without actually changing her
expression. She had the gall to enter his study with the choice of Monopoly or
a thousand-piece jigsaw to console his missed flight. He made his choice and
she instructed him to do the edges first. Sky, grass and buildings can then be
distinguished. The remaining pieces can be found to fit somewhere. Pieces of
similar colours and/or patterns can be used to fit en-masse to the remainder of
the puzzle.
Vince
questioned her sanity. Somehow she had tricked her way into his home. She had
sent his visitors packing and confiscated both the convenient and the essential.
He sorely missed his phone, not to mention his wheelchair. Vince wanted to
believe and could easily believe she was indeed crazy. He had met plenty of crazy
people in his life and her actions, on face value, would indicate the same. But
shrewdness and self-possession oozed from her being. She didn’t want anything his
contacts wanted. She had cheated the gates simply by not taking anything. But she
still wanted something from him.
Once
he had completed Big Ben’s face and part of the sky, Nora administered his
antibiotics. His hedonistic past latched onto her role as a bossy nurse. He’d
partaken in sexual role-play in the past based on master and servant themes spiced
with bondage. A real life situation differed from role-play in insomuch as
describing a taste and actually tasting it. Her hands personified her attitude:
square, clipped and impeccably clean. Vince had a thing about hands. He
couldn’t abide by a woman with gnarled, stubby or pudgy hands, even if she had
the face of Venus.
Nora
didn’t help him to bed as nurses should. Nora-like, she waited at the top of
the stairs. Vince braced-up the pork chops that passed for knees and sweated
his way past the stairlift. His left knee begged him and begged him. His right knee
dragged behind like a plank of wood. Quadriceps rattled within his skin. Bees
swarmed about the ligament-cluster of both knee joints. A million prickles
converged upon the apex of his shinbones and jack-hammered their way down to
his ankles. Sweat trickled down his spine. His teeth clenched, the dressing at
his throat bobbed with each snort. Clearly, he could see her square, impeccably
clean hand around his cock. His left knee juddered. Another brace. Her thumb,
gentle yet firm, drew a circle around his foreskin. The upper landing opened
out. Vince’s eyes sought out her hands. And there they were, clasped at her
front, neat, clean and without encouragement, without praise. She infuriated
him.
He
shuffled across the landing to encounter her mockery of a sleeping space upon
the floor. With his bare foot, he gave the blanket a little kick. His eyes met
hers. She seemed pleased without changing her expression.
He
continued to lurch and snort his way to his bed. Nora folded his bedcover outwards.
On lowering himself, Vince tore open the Velcro of his knee-braces and cast
them aside. He brought his body parallel to the bed-frame, his knees singing.
Vince wouldn’t be needing painkillers tonight. The back of his head fell
endlessly, not on a pillow but onto her hand. If he tried to counter the force,
her fingers would clamp shut, entrapped his hair. He did not want to fight it; in
fact he found the sensation erotic. His eyelids weighing like wrecking-balls
permitted one last appraisal of her as she gazed down upon him. No, he wasn’t going
to die tonight.
‘Did
you ever see that film, Misery?’ he asked.