Working It Out

‘I just wish you’d relax. You look terrified.’

‘I am terrified.’

‘Why? Look, if you prefer, we can just play Scrabble.’

‘I haven’t got Scrabble.’

‘Monopoly?’

‘No.’

‘Oh well, looks like sex it is, then.’

There was another long pause.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Kibby, moving over the back seat and linking her arm through his. ‘If all else fails you must at least have a pack of cards.’

A few minutes later the taxi pulled up outside Johnathan’s flat. It was very late. Johnathan’s hands were trembling as he fumbled with the fare. The driver watched him with amusement. ‘Can’t wait to get going, can you mate?’ he asked jovially. ‘First time, is it?’ Johnathan regarded him with loathing, and halved the tip.

Kibby was waiting patiently on the pavement. As the taxi pulled away, Johnathan smiled at her nervously. ‘Right. Here we are.’

Kibby beamed at him. ‘Can’t wait. Have you got any coffee?’

To his surprise, Johnathan laughed. ‘Tons of it. Come on.’

He unlocked the front door and led Kibby into the hall. He took her coat. Kibby looked around, shivering slightly. Johnathan saw that the answer-phone was winking at him. He ignored it. It was probably Chloe again. ‘What’s that?’ asked Kibby, pointing at Schroedinger, who had just stumbled out of the kitchen, looking around blearily.

‘That,’ said Johnathan, ‘is Schroedinger.’

Kibby laughed her laugh. Schroedinger’s ears went back as his hair stood on end. ‘Hello Schroedinger.’ She bent down and picked him up. Schroedinger was too surprised to do anything. He had never been picked up before. Kibby wrinkled her nose up at him. ‘How are you? Have you missed Johnathan this evening? Do you mind that he’s come home with a strange woman?’ Schroedinger wagged his stump non-committally.

‘How about that coffee?’ said Johnathan.

‘Lovely.’ Kibby put Schroedinger down and walked into the sitting room.

‘Be with you in a minute.’ In the kitchen Johnathan set up the coffee machine in a daze. His brain was a whirr. What was Kibby doing here? Did she really want to have sex with him? If so, what was wrong with the normal channels, the usual procedure? There was a sort of etiquette, after all. You didn’t just ask. He clumsily arranged the cups and saucers on the work surface.

‘Sugar?’ he asked a few moments later as he walked into the sitting room with two full cups.

‘No thanks. I like it black and strong. Like my men.’ Kibby took her cup. There was a pause. ‘Johnathan, I’m joking.’

‘Sorry, yes, of course you are,’ said Johnathan, sitting down beside her on the sofa. Schroedinger sat by the door, eyeing them both suspiciously.

Kibby turned towards Johnathan. ‘OK?’ she asked.

‘I think so.’ He paused. ‘There is one thing.’

Kibby looked at him appraisingly. ‘You don’t have any condoms.’

Johnathan felt sheepish. ‘No.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Kibby breezily. ‘I’ve got stacks. Never travel without them. Be prepared is my motto.’ Kibby saluted and sipped her coffee. ‘Now, there’s an easy way and a hard way of doing this,’ she continued in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Either I wait for you to make a pass at me, in which case we’ll probably be here until well into Sunday afternoon, or you let me make a bit of the running. Does that sound all right to you?’

Johnathan shrugged helplessly. ‘Er, yes, fine.’

‘Right.’ Kibby placed her cup carefully down on the table in front of her. She moved Johnathan’s cup to the far side of the table. ‘Don’t want to knock the coffee over in the excitement, do we?’ she said.

‘Suppose not,’ said Johnathan, who had begun to sweat slightly.

‘Right,’ said Kibby again. She moved purposefully towards Johnathan, and took his hand in hers. She looked into his eyes for several seconds. ‘You look like a startled rabbit caught in someone’s headlights,’ she declared.

‘Oh, thanks very much.’

Kibby moved gently towards Johnathan. She smelled of lavender. She kissed him lightly on the mouth. Their lips scarcely brushed.

Kibby drew back for a moment and looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to meet a man who knows how to kiss properly.’ Johnathan looked down modestly. ‘Of course, he needs to know how to kiss improperly, too,’ she added, before moving towards Johnathan again, this time with more propulsion. Her arms went around the back of his neck.

Johnathan was expecting another gentle almost-kiss, and was startled when Kibby unceremoniously stuck her tongue down his throat. He took a moment to recover and then retaliated by sticking his own tongue down hers. There wasn’t enough passing space, and their tongues began to shuttle feverishly from one mouth to the other. Kibby’s tongue gradually began to overpower Johnathan’s and soon established a clear territorial advantage. She started to work towards his tonsils. Johnathan, breathing rapidly through his nose, began to knead Kibby’s shoulders while surreptitiously checking out her bra strap.

With a small moan Kibby pulled away from him. Her face broke into a wide grin.

‘Isn’t this fun?’ she said, turning to the table to retrieve her coffee.

Johnathan nodded, his arm flapping helplessly towards his own cup, out of reach. Kibby turned back towards him, straddling him. She placed her hands on his chest.

‘Sure you wouldn’t rather have a game of whist?’

‘Quite sure,’ gasped Johnathan.

‘Good.’ Kibby put her arms around the back of Johnathan’s neck and lowered herself on to his groin. She felt the bulge of his erection through four layers of material, and wriggled a bit. ‘Mmm, feels nice,’ she murmured softly, her mouth inches away from his, before running her tongue around Johnathan’s lips. As she did so, she gyrated her hips, causing Johnathan to wonder briefly whether the sensation he was feeling in his nether regions was intense pleasure or intense pain.

Kibby resolved the problem by sitting back. It was pain. Johnathan stifled a yelp. What happens when an irresistible force meets an almost immovable object? The almost immovable object gets squashed. And then it deflates.

Kibby had now begun to lick her own lips. She began to unbutton her shirt, staring all the time into Johnathan’s eyes. Johnathan stared back, hypnotized, too frightened to think about the damage she had just inflicted on his rapidly shrinking genitals. When she had undone the last button, Kibby pulled the front of her shirt open and shrugged it off her shoulders and on to the floor. Johnathan apologetically broke off from looking at her face to have a closer look at her chest.

Kibby was wearing a black satin bra, which had small lace details along the top of each cup. She thrust her chest towards him eagerly.

‘I rather think that needs to come off, don’t you?’ she panted.

Johnathan gulped, and nodded mutely. Bras incorporate a particular release mechanism which can only be operated by the owners of at least two X chromosomes. Men just cannot do it. But they are always made to try.

Staring at the small nubs of her erect nipples through the black fabric, Johnathan took a deep breath and reached behind Kibby and ran his hands over the bare skin of her back. His hands descended on the bra hook. He felt tentatively along the line of the strap. It was particularly unfair that he wasn’t even allowed to see what he was supposed to be doing. He wrestled with the clasp, which refused to yield to his clumsy touch. After a few moments of silent struggle, his tongue sticking half out of his mouth in concentration, he looked up at Kibby. She smiled down at him and pushed her breasts towards his face in encouragement. The sight of so much flesh spurred Johnathan on. He began fiddling like a man possessed. Kibby yawned. Eventually she said, ‘Would you like me to do it?’

Johnathan nodded. Three seconds later the bra was on the floor. Kibby had effortlessly unhooked it with one deft swoop of a single hand. Johnathan didn’t mind. Kibby had beautiful breasts, and they were now swaying gently in front of him, about six inches from his face. His erection was staging something of a recovery.

Johnathan reached up, gently cupped one of Kibby’s breasts in each hand, and squeezed. Kibby let out a small sigh. She ran her hands through Johnathan’s hair, and when they were clasped firmly around his head she pulled him fiercely towards her right nipple, urging it into his mouth.

Startled, Johnathan began to flick the end of his tongue over Kibby’s nipple, but as she continued to pull his head closer he took it wholly into his mouth and began to suck it, stopping occasionally to take quick gasps of air. Kibby sighed again, more deeply this time.

Eventually she pulled back. Her face was flushed.

‘Time for bed,’ she said.

Some time later, Kibby said, ‘Well.’

‘Sorry,’ said Johnathan.

‘Don’t be,’ said Kibby. ‘It was nice. Have you got an ashtray?’

‘Somewhere. Hang on.’ Johnathan rolled off the bed. He pulled on his dressing gown which was lying by the door and went to the kitchen. There he took a plate from the drying rack and brought it back to the bedroom. He presented it to Kibby.

‘Thanks,’ said Kibby, who had retrieved her cigarettes from her handbag and was now puffing away contentedly. ‘I always enjoy my post-shag fag more than any other,’ she said. ‘It’s an integral part of the whole process. Of bonking.’

‘It probably takes longer, too, if that performance is anything to go by,’ said Johnathan gloomily.

Kibby eyed him critically. ‘Are you one of these men who worry about their sexual performance so much that unless he can keep it up for an hour and a half and the woman has nineteen multiple orgasms he considers himself a failure?’

‘Yes,’ said Johnathan.

‘Oh God,’ said Kibby.

‘Sorry,’ said Johnathan again.

Kibby rolled over to face him. ‘Look, there is nothing to apologize about, really. It was fine. It was nice. It was cuddly. Please don’t start torturing yourself about it. I enjoyed it.’

‘Cuddly’? thought Johnathan, appalled. Since when was sex supposed to be cuddly? Weren’t words like ‘magnificent’ in the more traditional lexicon of sexual epithets? Or at least ‘passionate’? But ‘cuddly’. Johnathan felt as if he had been compared in bedroom prowess and technique to Humpty Dumpty.

It had been nice. It had also been very quick, and rather humiliating. They had repaired to Johnathan’s bedroom, and undressed as quickly as they could. Kibby had straddled Johnathan and lowered herself on to him. She bent forwards to kiss him softly on his mouth and then whispered in his ear in her best Clint Eastwood voice, ‘Go on, spunk, make my day.’

Johnathan had duly obliged, there and then.

As he came, the pleasure was somewhat eclipsed by his horror of an ejaculation so premature as to be in the wrong time zone. Kibby saw the look of mortified despair which passed over his face. She stopped moving.

‘What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?’ she asked.

‘Not exactly.’

‘What then?’

‘Ah.’ Johnathan had rolled his eyes nervously, silently praying that she wasn’t going to make him say it. She wasn’t. Instead she said:

‘Oh.’

‘Sorry.’

Kibby exhaled languorously, studying the glowing end of her cigarette. ‘You really mustn’t worry,’ she said. She stubbed out her cigarette and carefully put the plate by the side of the bed. She rolled over on to her front and looked at Johnathan. ‘So. Are you going to ask me to stay the night or are you proposing to banish me outside at this ungodly hour?’

‘Well, you can stay, of course. I was hoping you would.’

‘Good,’ said Kibby. ‘In that case do you think I might have something to wear? An old T-shirt or something?’

‘Let me go and see,’ said Johnathan, wearily whipping back the duvet a second time. He was starting to feel very tired. He rummaged around in the corner of his bedroom and found a T-shirt, which he passed to Kibby.

‘Thanks,’ said Kibby, slipping it over her head. She reached out and held Johnathan’s hand. ‘I don’t have to go anywhere tomorrow morning, so I think we should have another go then. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Got any breakfast?’

‘Cornflakes, but no milk.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Don’t worry, there’s a shop nearby. It sells most things. You can have whatever you want for breakfast.’

‘Goody. I’ll start off with some more of your delicious sausage.’ Kibby laughed again, more softly this time. She kissed Johnathan tenderly on the cheek, and then moved to the other side of the bed and settled down with her back to him. ‘Night.’

Johnathan stared up at the ceiling. He thought of how Chloe would have reacted to his performance. She would doubtless have begun explaining compassionately how he should not be embarrassed by this sort of thing, but should confront it–indeed, here was just the book to help him–90s Man in the Bedroom: Placid and Flaccid.

‘Night,’ he said absent-mindedly. Who was this woman who cared so little for social etiquette, the politics of sexual encounters? Who was this woman with the finely-honed bullshit detector? Who was this woman who didn’t mind sexual failure on a truly epic scale? And, above all, what on earth was she doing in his bed?

Ever since his university days, Sunday mornings in Johnathan Burlip’s life had been reserved for doing precisely nothing, except possibly for taking some pills to temper the Saturday night hangover, and then lying very still until it went away.

When Johnathan woke on this particular Sunday morning he was alone in the bed. From the kitchen came the clanking sound of pots and pans. Johnathan swung his feet on to the floor and went into the kitchen. Kibby was standing by the fridge, fully dressed, surrounded by green plastic bags. Schroedinger was sitting on his bean bag, watching her with benign interest.

‘Hello,’ said Johnathan.

Kibby smiled at him. ‘I’ve been to the shop.’

‘So I see.’

‘Do you want some coffee? I’m going to do scrambled eggs with mushrooms, bacon and sausages. Sound OK?’

Johnathan nodded. He surreptitiously pinched himself.

‘I think I’ve worked out how to use your coffee machine,’ continued Kibby as she began to unpack the bags. ‘Why don’t you go next door and let me deal with all this, and I’ll bring you a coffee and some mango and guava juice. Sounds disgusting, but it was all they had.’

‘Right,’ said Johnathan, feeling a little overwhelmed. He went into the sitting room and switched on the television. A very old children’s show which had been popular fifteen years earlier was on. He watched distractedly. A few minutes later Kibby came in with a glass of juice and a steaming cup of coffee. She put them on the table and came and sat down next to him.

‘Hello,’ she said, and kissed him on the lips.

‘Hello,’ said Johnathan, immediately worried about the danger of his incipient hard-on manifesting itself through the lightweight towelling of his dressing gown.

‘Are you hungry?’

Johnathan looked at her as innocently as he could. ‘Not particularly.’

‘Good,’ said Kibby. ‘Come on then.’ She took his hand and led him back to the bedroom.

Johnathan eyed the over-laden plate with ill-disguised glee. Mushroom, sausage, egg, bacon and fried bread were heaped on top of each other, jostling for space. He looked carefully for a spot to put his tomato ketchup.

‘Wow,’ he said.

Kibby grinned. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve worked up quite an appetite.’ She paused. ‘You’d better enjoy it though. Don’t think I make it a habit to cook men breakfast. Strictly first-time shags only, birthdays excepted. From now on it’ll be back to cornflakes.’

A carefully constructed forkful went into Johnathan’s mouth. He chewed contentedly.

Kibby watched him eat. ‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘Do you really not mind people like Gavin having a go at you? Doesn’t it rankle?’

‘Not really,’ said Johnathan cheerfully. He thought. ‘Well, sometimes it does. Sometimes it pisses me off hugely.’

‘Because they’re right or because they’re wrong?’

‘God, I don’t know. It just pisses me off.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘All right then, both. They may be right. But what really infuriates me about people who criticize lawyers is that they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Lawyers are pretty easy targets, after all. People just make assumptions about how awful and greedy we are. That’s what really irritates me.’

‘Not the fact that most of you actually are awful and greedy?’

‘No. That I can live with.’

Kibby looked around his sitting room. ‘You don’t seem to be doing too badly for yourself.’

Johnathan put down his knife and fork. ‘Look, I’m not saying I’m particularly proud of what I do. I’m not. I don’t even enjoy it, really. I never wanted to be a lawyer. I never used to dream about a life of fighting injustice when I was younger. I just sort of fell into it. I work all the hours God sends and it’s usually pretty bloody boring. I won’t deny that the money isn’t bad, but there should be more to it than that.’

‘Such as?’

‘Recognition. Respect. More personable colleagues. Prospects. Better coffee.’

‘If it’s so awful, why don’t you leave?’ said Kibby.

There was a heavy silence. Then Johnathan said, ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t.’

‘You’re scared,’ observed Kibby.

Johnathan looked at her. ‘Correct,’ he said.

‘Can’t you get another job? One that’s more fulfilling?’

Johnathan rolled his eyes. ‘They don’t exist.’

‘Have you tried?’

‘Well. No. No, I haven’t actually tried. But I know people who have.’

‘Perhaps you should try yourself.’

‘Perhaps I should.’ Johnathan began to eat again.

‘Bet you won’t,’ said Kibby.

‘I bet I won’t, too,’ agreed Johnathan with his mouth full.

‘Shame, though.’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’

There was a pause while Johnathan busied himself in skewering the last mushroom with the end of his fork, jabbing at it half-heartedly as it skidded around the plate. Kibby watched him closely as she sipped her mango and guava juice.

‘You only get one chance at this,’ she said eventually.

‘At what?’

‘Life. It’s not a dress rehearsal. You can’t come back and have another go. It’s now or never. Aren’t you worried that you’re going to wake up one day when you’re sixty and ask yourself what you’ve ever achieved in your life and arrive at the rather awkward conclusion that the answer is probably nothing? And by then it will all be too late. You’re right when you say that there are more important things in life than money. There are.’

‘Breakfast,’ suggested Johnathan.

Kibby ignored him. ‘It’s pointless spending your life running after money if you’re empty inside. At least if you enjoyed your work that would be a reason for doing it, but you don’t. You’re a nice bloke, Johnathan. You deserve better, you really do. You should at least think about it.’

‘I will,’ said Johnathan.

‘Bet you don’t give it another thought.’

‘I will. I promise,’ said Johnathan.

‘We’ll see,’ said Kibby. She drained her glass, and looked at her watch. ‘I should really go.’

‘Oh. Right,’ said Johnathan, suddenly realizing that he desperately wanted her to stay. He watched helplessly as she got up and began collecting her things.

‘Thank you for a nice evening,’ she said. ‘And a nice morning.’

‘Thank you,’ said Johnathan.

‘Here’s where I am,’ said Kibby, writing down a number. ‘It would be nice to see you again, so give me a ring.’

Five minutes later Kibby was gone, after a slightly embarrassing goodbye kiss. Johnathan had aimed for Kibby’s mouth and she had gone for his cheek, resulting in an awkward clash. Johnathan had only narrowly avoided poking out Kibby’s left eye with his nose.

Alone in the flat, Johnathan stood in the middle of the sitting room with a broad smile on his face. After a while he became bored, and so instead sat on the sofa with a broad smile on his face.

Kibby Kibby Kibby, he thought. Nice name. Kibby what? He realized that he did not know her second name. Who was she, actually? He had slept with someone without knowing their surname. Johnathan felt appalled and then felt an unstoppable rush of elation. Kibby. Kibby Something. Kibby Something with whom I have recently had sex. Twice. Johnathan nodded with satisfaction. It sounded good.

Johnathan walked into the kitchen where the dishes from breakfast were stacked up neatly by the sink. He would do them later, he thought. Perhaps on Wednesday. Just then he didn’t want to spoil his moment of glory.

He leaned down towards Schroedinger’s bean bag. ‘Oi,’ he said. ‘I scored.’

Schroedinger looked up at Johnathan, unimpressed. ‘Suit yourself,’ said Johnathan. He beamed. Schroedinger emitted the sigh of the long-suffering self-righteous, and closed his eyes.

Johnathan remembered the winking answer-phone. He went into the hall and reluctantly pressed the button. After a brief crackle of static, a familiar voice echoed through the flat.

‘Hello? I know you’re there. I do. I can sense it. Why won’t you pick up the phone? Johnathan, we need to talk. I’m worried about you. After Troilus. I know you’re upset. I just want to talk to you. I want to check you’re all right.’ There was a small pause, followed by an artfully controlled sob. ‘I think you need help. I wish you’d call me. Soon. Please.’

Johnathan let out a low whistle of appreciation. Some performance. Brilliant. He had fallen for this sort of thing before, but no longer. Chloe was history. He made some more coffee and walked through the flat thinking about Kibby and what she had said about his job. It was, he reflected, nothing new. Such thoughts had been lurking at the back of his mind for years. He had learned to ignore such ideas when they fought their way to the front of his consciousness. Dissatisfaction was all part of the job package, along with private health insurance and gym membership.

Money. The root of all evil. Also the root of quite a lot of pleasure, thought Johnathan. A thought began to nag at the back of his mind that if that was true, he should be getting a lot more pleasure from it than he actually was. He began to wonder where his salary went. He stared at the ceiling, trying to remember what he had spent money on in the previous week.

Johnathan went to the hall table where the last few months’ bank statements had amassed, unopened. He found the most recent one and opened it. He was hugely, cripplingly overdrawn. Johnathan scanned the column headed ‘withdrawals’. He sat down and began systematically to account for each figure on the sheet.

Half an hour, later the awful truth had sunk in. The electricity bill, council tax, mortgage, house contents insurance, income protection plan, water rates, telephone, television licence, car insurance, credit card repayments, interest charges on some long-standing loans and membership of a few university clubs whose standing order he had never got around to cancelling left him with a net income per month which just made it into three figures. His life had been hijacked by a never-ending stream of pleasure-less bills which had set him firmly on the road to financial ruin.

Johnathan threw the treacherous bank statement into the wastepaper basket. Perhaps Kibby was right after all. Something was clearly wrong. There seemed little point in carrying on like this. Something had to be done.

He thought about what Kibby had said. Life was not a dress rehearsal. He thought about his money, or lack of it. He thought about his job. He thought about Gavin’s self-righteous preaching of the night before. Maybe, he thought, the time has come to actually do something about all of this.

Ah, sod it, he said to himself. What have I got to lose?

FIVE