Читать книгу The Exchange - Carrie Williams - Страница 9

I was crouched on the bathroom sink when the intercom beeped and I nearly fell off backwards. Only the thought of my expensive camera lying in pieces on the bathroom floor kept me from plummeting to the floor.

I climbed up here when I realised that the bathroom window of Rochelle’s apartment has one of those classic Rear Window vistas into a courtyard surrounded by people’s windows. Since then, I’ve been mesmerised by the glimpses of life in this Parisian apartment block that I can get from this vantage point. In the last half-hour alone, I’ve witnessed – and photographed – a gay guy shaving in a wash of sunlight while his much younger lover talks earnestly at his reflection in the mirror, and in another window an elderly lady feeding her dog expensive-looking chocolates as she talked on the phone in an agitated, distracted manner.

I didn’t photograph – but I did watch – as a pretty young girl with shiny golden hair came into her apartment with a boy of around the same age. They were in their late teens, I’d say; probably, from their attire, students. At first their body language was stilted, self-conscious – it was clear that the boy hadn’t been to the girl’s apartment before and that they were finding it hard to relax in each other’s company. It was clear, even from a distance, that they had the massive hots for each other. Normally I might have taken a few snaps, but for once I was too caught up in their ‘dance of love’ to think to do so.

It was like watching some pre-ordained ritual, some choreographed display. The couple knew all the moves but couldn’t skip any – they were in thrall to convention and to the idea of what they expected of each other. It would have been so much easier to just grab each other, as they so obviously wanted to do, but that would have taken some of the fun out of it. For a while, it was all about the anticipation, about the deferral.

They shared a pot of tea, the sunlight filtering in and over her patchwork bedspread. She was in an armchair beside the bed, he was on the bed itself – but on the very edge. He seemed to be trying to lighten the atmosphere with jokes; through the open windows I could hear the tinkle of her slightly over-eager laughter. Her honeyed tresses, pulled up at the nape to reveal a slender brown neck and delicately freckled shoulder, glinted in the sunshine. Her teeth flashed when she laughed, mouth open.

The boy watched her closely, awaiting his moment, anxious not to blow it. I found myself becoming wet, and where I was kneeling, one leg either side of the sink on the wooden surround, I slipped my hand into my knickers and rubbed at myself, softly to begin with and then more vigorously as my excitement mounted. I put my camera on the windowsill and clutched the wall for safety, not wanting to get down and lose myself in my pleasure, causing me to miss theirs. For their pleasure and mine was inextricably bound together. I hadn’t felt this horny in ages.

As if my act had unleashed something in them – as if it had changed something in the very air itself – the girl, suddenly decisive, brave, wanton, stood up and stepped towards the boy. For a moment he looked almost frightened. And then, as the girl placed one hand on his cheek, he smiled and relaxed into her seduction.

Pulling her skirt up around her hips and pushing the boy back onto the bed, she placed herself astride him. Astride the sink, I let my eyelids flutter closed for a moment, imagining it was me atop this handsome boy with his closely cropped blond hair. I didn’t miss Kyle, and I hadn’t thought I was missing sex. But it had been two months, and in all that time I hadn’t even wanked. This was long overdue.

Opening my eyes again, I stared as the girl circled her hips over his. The boy’s head was thrown back – he was enraptured, bewitched. Women’s power over men, I thought, is unbounded. Get them to this point and they will do anything – anything. It was almost frightening to have this power. I thought again of Rochelle, like a spider catching men in the web I imagined her to weave nightly out of her sex magic.

The girl started to fiddle with the flies of the boy’s jeans. Finally getting him unzipped, she released his cock like a caged animal and grasping it in her fist began to move her hand up and down it, slowly at first but gradually building up a more dynamic rhythm.

I started to lose control. Wishing I knew where Rochelle kept her vibrators – she must have one, I reasoned – I massaged the hot nub of my clit while looking around me for something to go inside. My fingers wouldn’t do. I wanted a cock, a big, hard cock. On the window I spotted a plastic shampoo bottle that looked as if it would do the trick. I grabbed it, ran it under the hot tap for a few moments, and then eased it inside myself. A moan of pleasure escaped me. I gritted my teeth at the almost unbearable ecstasy that began to flood my veins. Climax wasn’t far away, but I wanted to ride it with this couple, not before them. I wanted to be part of their union, even if from afar.

Again, as if there was something in the air or as if he heard the whisper of my thoughts, the boy, losing control, grabbed the gusset of the girl’s knickers and pulled them roughly aside to reveal the golden fluff of her public mound. Even from where I knelt, I could see the glisten of it. My knees started to quiver. I couldn’t hold off much longer. I tried to slow down the pumping of the bottle inside me but it was as if a force greater than myself had taken possession of me. Lips parted, I moaned and moaned.

‘Fuck … Fucking hell … Oh FUCK FUCK FUCK!’

Taking hold of his cock, the boy rammed himself inside the girl, who jerked backwards, puppet-like, at the force of his intrusion, eyes wide as if in shock and awe. Then she fell back over him, strands of hair sneaking loose from where it was tied and falling about her shoulders like a golden rain.

Backwards and forwards, gyrating round and round, she rode him. His hands, on her hips, pulled her tight to him. On the sink unit, I rocked backwards and forwards to meet the bottle as I thrust it into me, the fingers of my other hand pressed tightly against my clit. I glanced down every now and then, delighted by – fascinated by – my own pleasure, but then I looked quickly back up, not wanting to miss them coming.

And then suddenly they did, at the same time, or almost. She threw her torso and head back and began wailing like a she-wolf, and that must have unclenched his pleasure, for all at once he started bucking on the bed, hands still clutching her hips as he came with full force.

As he did so, his head also thrown back, chin tilted up towards the ceiling, his eyes opened wide and met mine across the courtyard, through our respective open windows. And by now, I was coming too, mouth wide open, breath fast and frantic. From where he lay, he wouldn’t be able to see what my hands were doing, but it must have been pretty clear that I was getting off on what they were doing to each other.

But it was too late – I was lost to the orgasm flooding me, unable to shrink back from the window much as I wanted to. And so our eyes stayed locked on each other, and I got my wish – to be part of their union – after all.

***

Hopping down from the sink, I sought out a clean flannel and gave myself a quick soapy wash. Then I stood up, straightened my clothes, and risked a peep out the window in the direction of the couple’s flat.

The girl was kneeling on the bed now, in the window, looking out. From across the courtyard I heard snatches of her words:

‘Weird … Could have sworn … Didn’t you hear anything?’

Christ, I thought. Did I really make that much noise? I felt my cheeks burn red. This wasn’t like me at all. I didn’t know what had come over me.

I’ve always had voyeurism in me, and it was obviously a factor in my ‘choice’ of profession, although sometimes I do wonder if I ever had any say whatsoever in my career. Neither of my parents had any photographic skills or interests, but from very early childhood I was obsessed with cameras and making images. Even when I wasn’t taking photographs, I was creating albums or cutting images out of magazines and making collages. In early teenagerhood, I graduated to buying up faded old photographs I found in charity shops, and going to photography exhibitions. It became inevitable that that would be my choice of degree

But I never thought my voyeurism would bring me to this – to watching other people fuck and getting so bloody turned on by it that I have to give myself a good seeing to. I’ve never done anything like this before, but now I wonder if this isn’t the natural outcome of my tendencies. Has my photography always been about spying on people? And hasn’t it always been about my being on the sidelines of life, looking at it but not daring to get involved – a way of keeping my distance?

In an effort to halt my thoughts and the self-doubt they engendered, I climbed back onto the sink and reached for my camera. I was just looking out of the window again, noticing that the boy and girl had disappeared but that the elderly lady and her pampered pooch were back, and thinking they would make a good shot, when the intercom went.

Climbing down, feeling sheepish, I went to the door and pressed the button.

‘Hello?’ I said, and then: ‘Bonjour?’

‘Hi,’ said a deep male voice in English, with a heavy French accent, and for a moment my heart thudded. It was the boy from across the courtyard, come to bawl me out for spying on him and his new girlfriend. But then:

‘We’re friends of Rochelle’s. We thought you might be lonely. We’d like to show you around town.’

I paused for a moment, and then I took a deep breath and spoke into the intercom:

‘Come up,’ I said.