Rudy and Zsa Zsa

A bougainvillea breeze and gusts of Mexican street food rattle the bedroom shutters, while in the paseo outside, hustlers and buskers, their faces made-up in the style of Catrín, work the tourists, mostly American, who sift through cheap souvenirs, drawling and whining like bored children. Sweat beads on Master's upper lip as he draws a horse crop over my skin. The soft suede tickles my armpit hairs, brushes my nipples, meanders over my bellybutton, and teases my crotch. Sprawling . . . sweating . . . pulsating . . . I'm a swollen starfish floating just under the surface of a warm tidal pool . . .

Torpedo !

A riot of barking dogs, drool spilling from their foaming jowls, pound and clamour, their hides bleeding in places where they've scraped against the walls of their chain-link pen. The mahogany front doors smash open, and their forged iron hinges grind and scrape as they slam back shut. A storm of Nike runners thunders down the hallway tile. Men, their faces painted like circus performers, crowd into my bedroom. A sad harlequin fumbles with a revolver to my forehead.

Go ahead Buddy ! Risk it ! Put that bullet in my brain !

The rancid pong of sticky football afternoons, too many post-hang-over cigarettes, and a masking spray of cheap cologne fills the bedroom. A clown stops at the foot of the bed. Under his baggy nylon shorts, a hard-on forms.

Call the scene: "Still-life on a Sunday Afternoon." Naked, I'm stretched like an X across sex-soiled bedsheets, an eight-foot bullwhip winding under and beside me. Disgusted, a rooster recoils towards the exit, his thick black curls slapping the reds, golds, and burnished browns of his grease-painted feathers as he blinks away, only to see the scene reflected back to him again from the dressing table glass, and then again from the wall mirror.

Inching himself against the wall towards the knife drawer, Master jumps my harlequin. Whether it's the ten-inch Bowie to the jugular or the shock of a naked man hanging from his back, the clumsy kid drops his Glock-19.

Caretaker Herman arrives. Master catches his eye, and with a nod beckons him to snatch up the gun. He relaxes his hold on Harlequin, who exhales in relief.

"¡Dispersa !" he says.

Housekeeper Editha gives the intruders a head start before releasing the dogs after them.

"Master, Sir," I say, "Would you untie me please?"

The rustling leaves of a mature tree cast a mottled shadow over Editha on a patio bench. She's watching old man Herman scratch compost into the roots of a rose bush. Trudy, her favourite Doberman, lies at her feet. From the Yucatan, they whisper and chortle in their mother tongue. When Herman's done, they'll have their coffee, and then they'll retire to their apartment upstairs, and they'll sleep in a shared bed, like they do every night.

Herman asks if he should report the home invasion. "Please don't involve the police. It's private," is all I can think of to say.

"In position for inspection !"

I know the drill. I strip, slap the wall, and spread my legs. Master shoves his middle finger into my pussy, his thumb into my ass, and pulls my butt towards him.

"Face down onto the bed ! Spreadeagle !"

The air shivers as he lifts the cane to the ceiling. Anticipation . . . not knowing when or where the blow will land. . . that's what excites me. My face twitches, and then swat. . . . my legs jerk and kick.

I want a mouthful of him.

Swat . . . my ass cheeks smart and burn. "Ram your cock into me !"

"What?"

"Please !"

His dick nudges between my legs as he presses his body against my back, nuzzling into my neck, and reaching down to massage my raw bum. He pulls me around to face him. I explore his muscles stretched taut over his wiry ribs, the fine tufts of hair under his arms and around his dick, and then clawing into his back, I cleave to him. Grinding into high gear, his dick thrusts into my cunt, and his loins switch on the jackhammer. Flushed with desire, sweating with heat and energy, my body pulls, absorbs, and clenches as I'm consumed in ecstasy. He releases into me . . . and then softens.

Nestled in downy pillows, gentle fan-breezes caress our bodies. His chest rises and falls as he sucks in quiet breaths, his eyelids stirring as he dreams. Occasionally, perhaps, roused by some barely perceptible snore, I might spoon into him, shuffle him to one side, and we'll sleep some more. Meanwhile, as the dawn-streaked hallway becomes blanketed in afternoon light, Editha and Herman patter through the house, invisible and silent, wiping the floors clean, polishing the furniture, and scrubbing the kitchen surfaces sterile.

In a porcelain tub, worn and softened with age, my big toe stretches to open a polished nickel faucet, and my bathroom cathedral, tiled in exuberant Mexican pattern and colour, sings and echoes as the bath is replenished with a stream of hot water. At a time when local women tented their heavy skirts and squatted in the fields to relieve themselves and their husbands and brothers peed against stone walls, this magnificent basin, hauled from Mexico City by donkey and cart, and fed by a roof

tinaco,

probably represented the ultimate in luxury.

I'm thinking these thoughts when his dick and balls bob past me at eye-level. As he pauses at the toilet bowl, I admire his slightly bowed legs and sweet white bum cheeks, and then I swim around to watch his hand cup and aim his dick. I fix on his rosy pink dome, the pinprick hole at its tip, and wonder:

Does it tingle like my clitoris?

A vigorous stream of golden pee jets out.

He climbs into the bath with me. We're neither of us ready to stop playing.

A vintage black safe which carries the gilt signature: "Mosler, Bowen y Cook, Mexico," sits in the corner of my bedroom. Decorated with flower garlands and a European pastoral landscape, it's so furniture-like that it's barely recognizable as a concrete vault. This afternoon, in a lazy moment of tenderness and nostalgia, Master dials the combination, reaches in and pulls out my jewelry case. While I weave a diamond tennis bracelet through my fingers, he examines a Burmese red emerald hat pin . . . it probably belonged to my mother. He tests its sharp point on his forefinger and then pokes the inside of my thigh without breaking the skin.

Laying out an assortment of earrings on the velvet-lined lid of the jewelry case, he uses a soft cloth to polish the gems and disinfect the tips. "Pick your favourite !" With the shrewd precision of a woman deliberating over a box of Godiva chocolates, her greedy eyes turning from the gold-embossed map to the elegant mosaic of tempting shapes, her senses piqued to each unique flavour and texture; a cream filling versus a praline; a caramel or a truffle; she savours the exquisite pleasure of those blessed moments prior to the sampling. Like her, I take my time to select the perfect labia ornament, a gold hoop ring inlaid with three pink diamonds.

Headlamps faded into black, as a jeep crept into our African housing complex, a circle of huts and outbuildings linked to my father's bungalow by a mass of buzzing electrical wires. The once dark rich humous of the jungle floor, having been stripped, its churned up surface hinting at the deposits of diamond, cobalt and copper in the ground, was now a pink crystalline silt glittering in the purple Zairean dawn. The vehicle paused in the darkness, and then snoozed. Taking care not to wake the occupant, I quietly unlatched the door to the passenger seat. Blinking and recoiling from the outflow of fermenting sweat and garbage, I nudged his cheek with the muzzle of a cocked and loaded rifle. He opened his eyes, and flashing a smile, he raised his open palms. "Rudy," he announced.

I lowered the rifle.

"Zsa Zsa ! Shouldn't you be in university?" he asked.

I couldn't explain. All I knew was I was feeling alone and rootless in London, missing Pater . . . and I'd been nabbed smoking pot.

"Chemistry wasn't my thing."

"Considering your freaky genetics, it should have been a breeze !"

"I didn't say it was too difficult."

He pulled out a torch and rummaged around the jeep. When the light beam strobed over me, I felt the heat on my breasts and noticed my robe had fallen open. From the darkness he conjured up a handle of Crown Royal. I smiled, because we'd run out.

"Your Dad beat me at chess. I want a rematch," he said.

"Of course. That would explain the three AM arrival."

"I was going to crash here until daylight . . . I didn't count on someone being awake."

"You must have been driving for days."

"Janusz Bialik plays an excellent game."

Rudy told me he and Pater met at the Williamson diamond mine in Tanzania, where Pater was a geologist and where Rudy was contracted to provide security. Pater, brilliant, but a wildcard, was fired. Rudy still worked there.

I led him through the screened-in porch where a woman and three children slept in nests of wicker furniture. Pater was passed out in a living room armchair. When I gently laid the rifle across his lap, his fingers curled back around the trigger and forestock. Moïse, his body guard, was snoring from the couch, oblivious to the unexpected arrival of our visitor. Pater's prostitute, at least that's what he called her, was sleeping in his bed. It was her children and sister camped out on the front porch.

Rudy and I spent the rest of the night upright against the wall in my bed, swigging whisky under a shared mosquito net, and over the next week, that's where we slept, in shifts. . . mostly. When it came to chess, Rudy, a specialist in armed combat, was focused and astute; Pater, quick thinking but distractible, chain-smoked and drank way too much. The competition was matched, their record of wins, a tie.

One afternoon Rudy and I stopped in the bush to watch bonobos fuck. Somewhere in the Congo Basin, where tsetze flies trade venom for blood, hippo bulls battle for herd dominance, and blasting caps unearth open-pit mines, Rudy whispered, "I want to rape you."

I whispered back, "I want that too."

Master squeaks open a bottle of South African Pinot Noir and gurgles the rich red liquid into a crystal glass, then he dunks the cork and holds it to my nose. I breathe in the aromas of a crisp autumn sunrise in the Cape of Good Hope. Precious drops fall onto my tongue and down my throat. He rubs my pussy. Unable to resist a lick, his grey buzz cut scratches between my legs, and then he bites the lip of my vulva . . . hard. Staring up at me, his wily smile and the chameleon-like swallow of his Adam's apple warns me of what's to come. Slipping the cork through the pearly sheen of my labial folds, he positions it firmly. The pin pricks the outside of my vulva; and there's a rush of endorphins as it pierces through the flap of skin and nerve endings into the cork.

In the morning, when he pulls back the sheets, there's a circle of crusting blood around the piercing. With a hint of satisfaction in his smile, he admires how the diamond hoop hugs my vulva, now bristling with a sprinkle of light morning stubble. I promise myself I won't ever let it heal over. When I want to remember, I'll wear it.

Still lounging in bed, I enjoy the view as he walks down the hallway. His shadow bends to inspect a delivery leaning against the wall . . . a package about the size of a large computer screen.

"It's for you," Editha says.

While I pretend to sleep, he takes a box-knife and tears through the outer layers of paper and plastic bubble-wrap. Herman hands him a pencil flashlight, and he scans inside, pulls out a note, and tosses it aside. He pushes the box towards Herman. "Lock it away," he says.

I overhear fragments of an angry phone call.

"Sell it my ass ! . . . Destroy it more like !"

Heaving in silent rage, he storms away, grabs a pull-up bar, and pumps out a series of rapid-fire chin-ups . . . and then he's gone.

Normally, I float through my day luxuriating in the lightness of my silk robe, savouring the way it falls on my skin, drapes over my breasts, hints at my nipples, cinches at my waist, and drops when the tie belt is loosened, its bold saturated colours stroking me as I nap, read, and dream.

But today is different . . . I'm tense.

Evening phone calls announce the start of the business day in Geneva. I put on a suit, make myself up, and position myself at my desk, where for the next few nights I'll track the revenue and expense forecast of the Angolan oil company Sonangol. You can guess who I work for . . . Isabel dos Santos, Africa's wealthiest woman, or someone else. I consult for a multi-national firm. We take all kinds of jobs.

I'm at my desk when Editha arrives with my nightly espresso.

"Not too strong I hope."

"Just the way you like it."

The coffee is a rich Colombian brew. It comes with two of Editha's cinnamon almond biscuits, baked as delicate and fine as the bone china they're served on. Framed in a halo of shiny black curls, Editha's large brown eyes are clouded by cataracts, but she won't leave the house to get the surgery which will save her eyesight, her sealed Mayan lips as determined as her steadfast refusal to leave the house.

She points to a vase of lilies, carnations, and white roses. It arrived with a card: "I need your help. Love Rudy." But Master hasn't been "Rudy," not since I was eighteen-years-old in Zaire. As for love, it's real and experienced, proven and tested, but never said. I sweep the flowers off the mantle. "Get rid of them !" Editha bends to pick up the broken glass. The mess disgusts me and I'm ashamed she has to clean it up for me.

Except for Editha and Herman (who don't talk) and Pater (who's long dead), nobody should know about Rudy and I . . . nobody ! So, who sent the forged note? It all links back to the three-ring-circus that took place in my bedroom.

I flash back to Master's response to the package delivery. Cold, curled into himself, and furtive, his thin lips pursed into a frown when he saw the address. Scanning down the hallway and into my bedroom, afraid I might be watching, he immediately ripped up the note, and hurried to hide the package away.

I'm half aware of Editha lifting the hallway bin.

"Stop. Let me take that," I say.

I shut the door, and stare at the wire dustbin. For almost a lifetime, I've respected Rudy's secrets, as he has mine. This covenant of trust, which purifies our interactions and powers our scenes, has been the foundation of all we mean to each other. But someone, I don't know who, has found out about us and they're exploiting the depth of our feeling for one another. Hating myself, I find I'm pulling out the discarded scraps of the note, and puzzling together the message. It reads: "Sell it or I'll take you down with me."

In London, my taxi takes me through streets of white row houses, where CCTV cameras catch traffic violators and petty criminals, while money launderers, mafia men, and war criminals burrow deeper, adding swimming pools and spas. I stroke my diamond tennis bracelet, portable wealth, purchased in case we ever had to flee one of the hot spots where work took Pater. My instinct is to abandon my Mexican house, have Herman and Editha shroud the furniture in sheets, bolt the shutters and doors, and remove the memories. They could take a portion of the selling price and take the dogs back with them to the Yucatan.

I'd move back to the London flat which I own with Anthony Styles Wakefield. I met him at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, where I was standing in front of Mapplethorpe's iconic portrait of a leather-clad couple. One guy, chained at the collar, wrists and ankles, is seated; the other stands beside him holding the shackle rings. A horse crop points to where a generous length of chain, both ornamental and menacing, falls from the seated man's crotch. I took a step back and bumped into Ant.

The flat was just the start of a collaboration. When Pater died, we managed his estate. Eventually I moved to New York and he to Dubai, but nothing, not my moves, nor Ant's AIDS diagnosis, his revolving door hospital stays, courses of experimental treatments, and finally the antiretroviral therapy, which keeps him healthy and thriving, have stopped us from texting our mundane daily moments, and nurturing our investments like husband and wife, planning for the long-term.

In expressionless conference rooms, I present my material in a pointed Oxford accent, only slightly tainted with a Polish lilt. Ruxandra, our project lead, has jet black hair, blood red lips, and long lacquered nails shaped into points. While others make small talk around cold stale coffee and bready sandwiches, I study the energy and movement in her Garden of Eden tattoo, tracing the snake which crawls along her forearm and disappears under her sleeve. With my single braid of silver hair, my complexion which has been described as porcelain, and my blue-grey eyes which read as innocence in one minute, and ice-queen in the next, I wonder what I portray. Ruxandra's opinionated, yes, and maybe a risk taker, but has she experienced, really felt, what it means to have to take a stand, and then to be forever haunted by the consequences of a decision made?

My i-phone flashes an anonymous notification, "Give the servants the weekend off."

When I push open the front door, the tiles glisten before me towards the patio, a lush green oasis of ferns and palms. Like the cold-blooded reptile he is, my Master flattens completely onto the ground, his rough talons extending to bask in the coolness of the stone. He click, click, clicks like a reticulating lizard as his spine curves up and eyes turn to the sky in a cobra pose. Every muscle and sinew tightens, until his body shakes with the strain.

To be alive is to suffer . . . or is it the other way around?

In one graceful movement, he slithers into the swimming pool, his skin softening as his muscles loosen in the water.

The light comes into the kitchen wavy and distorted through a wall of windowed doors, the glass speckled and bubbled with age. On warm afternoons we open out to the patio. Whereas my chair is a barrel-shaped mess of loose fitting pillows, Master sits bolt upright in his high-back chair, his forearms positioned emperor-like on the tightly upholstered armrests. He watches as I flare a gas flame under a kettle. I rub dry Lapsang Souchong in my palms; sprinkle the crumbled leaves into a ceramic teapot; drench it in piping hot water; let it sit for the requisite three minutes; strain; and pour it out. Then, I serve him, all flavour, steam and freshness, my two hands trembling with desire for him.

He pulls a knife from its sheath and follows me to the sink. By the way he balances it, I can tell the blade is heavy. Using the dull side of the knife he brushes the robe off my shoulders. He plops a sharpening brick into a glass tray of ice-water. Shards of cold water sting my skin. Bubbles climb up the sides of the red-grey stone and explode at the water's surface.

Slowly and precisely, his fingers press the knife blade onto the stone. His gaze locks to mine as he applies pressure and scrapes the steel edge back-and-forth. When the rasping rings dry, setting my teeth on edge, he smooths more water onto the stone, and continues the sharpening. With a brush to his forefinger, he tests the bevel. The silver blade dances in the air along the curves of my face and my neck; it circles my breasts, and teases the vertebrae of my spine. The breeze of the metal so close to my skin is electrifying. I moan, grunt, and cry, but I don't move, a shudder would be lethal.

Balancing the flat side of the knife against my ribs as though it were a shelf, he tests the weight of my breast, lifting and dropping. Holding the knife level with one hand, the finger of his other hand flattens my nipple onto the knife blade just shy of the lethal cutting edge. I look down. He's hard. I am too.