(MF rom, slow) - Part 1 - The Black Widow

PART 1 - The Black Widow:

She was beautiful and she was not. Less than medium height. 
Thin. Black hair cropped short, often flopping untidily 
in strands like that of a 18-year-old boy. A face which 
rarely showed emotion but which expressed an intangible 
sadness. Dark eyes set wide apart. A thin vulnerable nose. 
But a mouth to treasure, with top lip dominant. She wore 
black dresses mostly, and black stockings with black 
high-heeled shoes on which she walked sharply, quick-clack. 
When she wore jeans she could look like a skinny adolescent 
of imprecise gender. Jane was not pretty. But she was 
severely beautiful and men and women of all ages watched 
when she passed. I fell in love forever the moment I saw 
her. Tragically, of course. Naturally.

She was married successfully before the world and its eyes. 
The trappings of it were readily evident. She had a four-
year-old son of luminous beauty, a husband famous 
throughout the land and beyond, a big house in the country 
and an elegant apartment in the city. She herself was 
nearly famous and certainly recognisable, superficially 
as a photogenic appendage to her husband and secondarily as 
an intelligent and quirky critic, patron and observer of 
the arts. She was much in public demand.

She was just 30 when I saw her first. It was a good age for 
her, adding maturity to her mouth and her eyes. I was 23, 
her husband's cousin, brought in to assist the family by 
dint of my excellent degree, my gentle upbringing and my 
discretion and sensitivity, to manage its time and its 
affairs. The job was never described but I was to all 
intents and purposes her personal secretary. I lived in 
the two houses. I organised her life, wrote her letters and 
many of her articles, researched her interests and 
separated the wheat from the chaff. I saw her every day. I 
supervised her public face and I scrutinised it privately. 
I adored her.

The matter came up one day, after I'd been with her nine 
months or so. I was in my office and she was there, 
flipping through invitations and reading the notes I had 
attached. She chuckled at something I'd written. "You know, 
you are my best luxury," she said. "I don't really need you 
but, really, I do." She looked up at me directly. "Blue, 
tell me," she said. "Do you love me?"

"Yes," I said, simply and honestly. I was not one to 
dissemble, at least with her.

"That's nice," she said. She sighed. "But it's untested and 
it means so little."

She went back to her invitations and I offered no comment. 
She spoke truth, not spite.  She had called me Blue from an 
early time in our relationship and I had never asked why. I 
accepted it like a puppy inherits a name from its owner.

Without my cleverness I was an ordinary package. Pale blue 
eyes but weak, requiring strong spectacles. Pale hair, pale 
skin, pale everything. I looked, I thought, like an 
underground burrowing animal blinking in accustomed 
sunlight. But I was clever enough to dress well and to take 
care with it, disguising my mediocrity in the apparel of 
conservative good taste. The hand-tailored woollen dark 
grey suit had been made with such a man of manners as 
myself in mind, and I wore one in a succession of minutely 
different versions every day of the week including Sunday, 
when she religiously visited church and took me with her.

My love remained untested and, to be truthful, my work 
barely so. I had a flair for it. It suited me comfortably 
and it required lesser skills than those with which I was 
equipped and largely a sure-handed efficiency which came 
naturally. It came to pass that some of the things she did 
were better done by me, and she knew it and let me lead the 
way with grace. She took all the credit, of course, which 
was appropriate and proper. In any case, she could deliver 
my better lines better than ever I could. We became cosy 
conspirators.

Within 18 months I had become her formal extension. I spoke 
in her affairs with her voice and her mouth and I expressed 
her opinion and delivered her judgement, and she trusted me 
to do so as far as I trusted myself, and if I didn't trust 
myself I brought the matter before her and she generally 
trusted my advice. I basked in her confidence and 
dependence. But there were domains in which I had little or 
no business. I saw the son, Dominic, frequently but I had 
no part in him; and the husband, my cousin Richard, but I 
had no advice he wanted or needed to hear. I dined often 
with them all, or some of them and others; indeed more 
often than not; with status higher than staff, lower than 
family and far less than any of the many brilliant or 
attractive regular guests. I was just Blue. Everybody 
called me Blue.

Newspaper columnists called me Blue. Charity dowagers 
called me Blue. The Prime Minister called me Blue. "Ah 
yes," he said, shaking my hand firmly. "You must be Blue." 
It may have been a politician's trick but he appeared to 
have heard of me. I had made Jane better than she might 
have been and she had made me Blue. I was her creature. It 
was all sublimely satisfactory. I wanted for nothing and I 
was perfectly suited to a life of noble and gentle 
unrequited love. I had been born and bred for it.

The bane of a well-mannered highly-organised and smugly-
comfortable long-term existence is a single split-second 
stroke of chaos. This was not anticipated. It could not be 
processed, planned for or pre-packaged and thus, when it 
happened, it brought anarchy. Richard and Dominic were 
returning in an aircraft which fell out of the sky. There 
were no survivors. Of all the 226 victims, Richard was the 
most famous. The crusading Minister for National Economic 
Reform was given the honour of a televised State funeral. 
This, more than anything, made it so wretched for Jane to 
bear.

Naturally Blue stood up to be counted. It wasn't anarchic 
to me. It was work. I was drenched with the detail of it 
for three feverish days and nights. The widow stayed in her 
room and took no calls; took nothing except subsistence 
food and drink and twice daily briefing notes from me which 
she noted and initialled. I didn't see her until late on 
the morning of the afternoon of the great funeral service.

She wandered into my office looking like an unmade bed but, 
in all other respects, as cool and straight as always. "I 
don't want to go," she said flatly.

"You must," I replied immediately. "It is not a matter of 
choice."

"I can't face people. I can't look at their faces. I can't 
talk."

"You don't have to do anything but be there."

She looked at me gravely. "Then you have to be with me. 
You'll have to do the looking and the talking and the 
kissing and the shaking of hands. I can't do any of it."

"Of course," I said gently. "You know I will look after 
you."

Her face was blank; emotionless. "Poor Blue," she said. 
"What will you do now?"

I was taken aback but tried to disguise it. I knew she was 
talking about the future. "That's hardly important," I 
said. "The question is, what will you do?"

"Yes, I've been thinking about that." The corner of her 
mouth lifted slightly. "I'll tell you later."

"Get dressed," I said. "You know what to wear. Something 
undemonstrative."

Again she smiled a small and wintry smile. "Black and 
understated. That's more than half my wardrobe."

"Don't worry. I'll protect you."

"Yes," she said. She stood and headed for the door. "But it 
can't go on."

She was courageous under fire and I expected nothing less 
of her. She declined the heavy sunglasses and stood clean 
and upright through the two hours of black-bordered 
ceremony, her face still and her eyes dry. Only once did 
she nearly falter; when her son's small coffin was lifted 
and borne away. She clutched at my hand and I gripped her 
tightly. Nobody would have noticed. I had prepared the way 
and I ushered her past the crowd of well-wishers smoothly, 
murmuring polite expressions of appreciation and regret.

"You did well," I said to her in the car.

She turned her head and looked at me indistinctly. "Is it 
over?"

"Yes."

We rode home in silence. She went back into her room and I 
didn't hear from her until the next day. Late in the 
afternoon she appeared in my office. "We have to talk," she 
said.

I put aside the letter I was reading. "Certainly, if you're 
ready."

"Blue, I can't go on like this."

"Yes, that's what you said."

"My life is a sham."

I said nothing.

"I'm a fake."

Nothing.

"I have been playing a role I never designed for myself. It 
just happened."

Nothing. It was not time for me to speak.

"It's over. I am neither wife nor mother. I am just me."

I nodded slowly. "I understand."

"Do you, Blue? Do you understand I intend to leave all 
this?" She gestured about her. "It's not me. I'm going away 
to be me."

"A holiday. Good idea."

The corner of her mouth lifted into the suggestion of an 
apologetic smile. "No," she said. "Forever."

I blinked at her nervously. "You can't."

"I can and I will."

"What about your work, your friends?"

"I have no work and I have no friends."

I passed on that one. "What about the estate?"

"Sell it."

A long silence ensued. She watched me carefully. "But," I 
said, and trailed away.

"Go on," she challenged.

"Who will look after you?"

"I will," she said softly. "I will look after myself." She 
walked to the window and watched the traffic down in the 
street. "I'm waiting for you to ask the real question."

"I guess you mean," I said, "what about me?"

"That's it."

I shrugged. "It's not important."

"It's the issue that's troubled me more than any other." 
She turned to face me. "Blue, I can't take you with me. I 
can't do that and find another life. What's now would just 
go on and on and I would be nothing. You're me better than 
I am. Worse, you're my only true friend and I have to give 
that up as well."

"I'll survive," I said, more stiffly than I wanted.

She looked at me sadly. "I'm too tired to think about it," 
she said. "Come and see me tonight, after I have a rest."

"Say, eight?"

"Make it nine."

At nine she opened the door to her personal suite. She was 
made up and dressed smartly, down to black stockings and 
high heels. "Going out?" I asked, surprised.

She seemed business-like. "No, staying in." She indicated 
me to an armchair. "I have much to talk about and I know 
you're a good listener. Tonight I want you to be a really 
good listener. Understand?"

"Absolutely. You talk, I listen."

She was nervously energetic and busy with her hands, almost 
agitated. "Blue, you don't know me. You think you do but 
you don't. I'm not the person you think I am. I have to stop 
pretending."

"I heard you this afternoon," I said.

"No," she said, with her hand up. "Listen. I asked you to 
listen. For example, my marriage and Richard's mistress. Or 
his latest mistress. You'd know about it, of course. 
Richard and I have barely had sex together in two years. 
I'm not sure now whether I even liked him. I just put off 
thinking about it. But," and she wheeled and looked at 
me directly, "that hasn't stopped me from having sex. Did 
you know that? No, I can tell from your face you didn't. 
Though not like Richard. I didn't have a convenient lover." 
She was pacing again. "I grabbed at opportunities as they 
came up. I liked it like that. Quickies. One night stands. 
More like half-night stands. Sometimes half-hour stands." 
She stopped and looked at me, a taut smile on her face. "Am 
I shocking you? I hope so. Don't worry, I didn't do it all 
that often. Not often enough for my liking, to tell the 
truth. Last time was about three weeks ago. I did it 
standing up against the wall of a back corridor in the 
Astral convention centre with a man from Berlin. It lasted 
less than 10 minutes but it was wild and it was great. I 
must be shocking you now."

Yes, I was shocked. Jane? Jane did this? Could it be true?

"I'm not inventing it," she said, anticipating my doubt. "I 
have no need to do so. Do you know, for example, that I 
rarely wear pants under my dress? It helps stoke the little 
flame of rebellion that I need, and it means I can hike up 
my dress and screw a guy in a corridor. Or a rest room, 
which I've done. Or in a car, which I've also done. A few 
times. I like it. I've never brought a man home. I try to 
be discreet. Never with a family friend. Or even an 
acquaintance. Usually a stranger." She held up a hand 
again. "I know it's dangerous. Many times it's also 
unprotected. But that's what makes it good. What do you 
think now, Blue? Does it sound slutty? Don't say anything. 
Just keep listening. I've never been faithful to 
Richard, not for six months at a stretch. Not even when I 
was pregnant. Nor he to me. I've never been faithful to 
anybody. When I was young I seduced a man older than you. I 
had a body like a stick but it was so easy. For three years 
I did everything sexually possible with him. Before I was 
alittle older I sucked his cock and swallowed his semen. I did 
everything but be faithful to him. I cheated on him with a 
boy my own age. I like sex, Blue. I've always liked it, and 
I take it when it's available. You hear what I'm saying? 
You don't know me. I'm not the person you think I am."  She 
gestured at me. "It's okay. You can talk now."

I was speechless. She went on after barely a pause. "I'm 
not finished. I've scarcely started. For example, there's 
the matter of you. Blue. My own Blue. You've been with me, 
how long? It must be nearly two years. My keeper, my 
saviour, my spokesman, my protector, my loyal lieutenant, 
my extension, my shadow. A perfect treasure who has kept me 
sane and kept me going when I might have stumbled. And who 
loves me and adores me and worships me and puts me on an 
impossible pedestal, and I'm not worthy of any of it. I 
have been gripped by a strong desire to stand in front of 
you and slowly raise my dress and watch your face. You have 
no idea the number of times I have come within a breath of 
doing it. Such a delicious erotic prospect. But you're so 
loyal and faithful I couldn't bring myself do it, even when 
I was determined. You won't look down my dress when I 
afford you the opportunity, even if I haven't much cleavage 
to offer. You look away deliberately. You're so virginal, 
even though I know you're not because I know somebody you 
slept with and she told me. Dear Blue. It was the one thing 
you failed to deliver. When I needed sex you gave me love." 
She ran both her hands through her hair. "The silly thing 
is that everybody assumed your duties included intimate 
attention to me, including Richard. I'm talking a lot. Are 
you still listening?"

I cleared my throat. "Listening, yes."

She stood directly in front, one hand on hip, looking down 
at me. "Still you have doubts. You're thinking I'm 
strangely affected by recent events, probably."  She had a 
little smile turning up her mouth in a curious manner. 
"It's time for a moment of truth." Watching me with her 
dark eyes and her strange smile, she lifted the hem of her 
dress daintily. Slowly it lifted up her legs and her 
thighs, past the tops of her black stockings, the sort 
which were held up on their own, and up to her belly. She 
was indeed wearing no pants. Her pubic hair was dark-near-
black and the puffed tuft of it was nearly perfectly 
triangular, and prominently forward. Her legs, all of her 
legs, were elegantly wonderful, like I knew them to be. She 
stood there, dress held against her stomach, observing me. 
Studying me intently, while I looked at her body. "So 
sexy," she whispered.

"Yes," I agreed in a fluttering voice. My breath was short 
and again I cleared my throat.

"Not me," she said. "You. So sexy to watch you watching me. 
I knew it would be. I knew it would." She lifted the dress 
higher, all the way up her body and over her head. She 
wriggled out of it and dropped it on the floor. Wearing a 
black bra, black stockings and high heels, Jane lifted her 
chin slightly and smiled her thin little smile. "Nothing 
special," she said. "I am just a woman like any other 
woman."

"I cannot accept that," I said.

"I know," she said. "But you will after you fuck me 
tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the next night. Then I can be me."

She reached out her hand to me in invitation. "No," I said, 
not moving. It did not seem feasible. The offer was 
invalid, surely.

Her hand waggled in front of me. "Yes," she said firmly and 
with a trace of impatience. "Blue, you cannot deny me." 

Indeed I could not. I could not deny her anything. I would 
have given her my soul to sell to Lucifer for a bar of 
chocolate and she knew it. "Come on," she said, beckoning. 
"Fuck me and set me free."