Ray and Simmone were a married couple who I knew from my local pub in south east London a good few years ago and, like me they were both in their middle thirties. Ray was a big, big guy, not overweight but definitely a heavyweight; very tall, broad, altogether imposing but not altogether bright. Could have been a doorstop for an aircraft hangar. Simmone was a sex goddess! Not what I would call a classical beauty but she was a mesmerising work of art and her ability to spin heads was unlimited. She positively oozed sex appeal. I mean she reeked of it! Simmone could walk into the pub and kill all conversation stone dead the second she showed up. Her entrances were the stuff of Hollywood. They'd be like some of those old Westerns when everything stops as some gunslinger strides into the saloon looking for trouble.
Except Simmone was for real. She was all woman. And she had no need of a six-shooter to get everyone's stunned attention. She never dressed provocatively neither because she didn't need to. She could've been shrouded head to toe in an old tarp' and she'd still have you drooling. It was her aura; the atmosphere she brought with her, and there was simply no way of covering that up. Simmone's aura couldn't be contained in a bank vault! Her presence was probably more powerful than the magnetic north and I reckon she could spin compass needles as well as heads. I bet she could even stop time too without much effort.
Okay, slight exaggeration but I hope you get where I'm coming from because although I'm telling a story here, I'm not making it up. What follows actually happened. And I should know because it was me that it happened to.
Simmone was your archetypal femme fatale, the quintessential temptress to put all others in the shade and my association with her began in our local pub one Saturday afternoon in the late 1990's; and it's probably fair to say that it may never have began at all had I not indulged in just that one beer too many. I had known her and husband Ray for some time but only enough to offer a polite nod in greeting and say "Hello'. We did after all use the same pub as our 'local' but up until this point I don't think I'd ever had a conversation with either of them. But like every other man who had clapped eyes on Simmone, and I dare say some women too, I would fantasise about finding myself on more than just her christmas card list. However, any sane Joe entertaining fancy ideas about Simmone only needed to take one look at Ray to know he'd have to be insane to try. (In all honesty I think that may be the reason Simmone married him - to guarantee herself freedom from unwanted attention because he was way below her in the intelligence stakes.)
So when this particular Saturday afternoon came around I was to be found propping up the rear bar in our 'local' and I guess I'd been there for about a couple of hours when Simmone suddenly showed up. I didn't actually see her arrival but I knew it had taken place by the obligatory silence which followed after all conversation had been sucked out of the pub. The silence in Simmone's wake was so pure that if a sewing needle had dropped on the floor it would've sounded like an iron bridge had just collapsed. Anyway, she and Ray and a friend of theirs who I can't remember took a table just behind me and once they were seated all conversation was resumed. I could hear the three of them conferring on what to drink and then guess who should slink up to the bar beside me to place the order? Correct! I said 'Hi' like you do and Simmone said 'Hello' in return, placed her order and... that was it. I took one of their drinks over to their table because Simmone had her hands full and she gave me a smile and said "Thanks". I then went back to my lonely spot at the bar and rewound the tape in my head and replayed the whole scene from the time Simmone slunk up beside me till I landed back at my lonely spot and hit 'rewind.' I think I may have replayed it two or three times. Sad or what?
Another twenty minutes went by and I thought I should be making tracks. It's not that I was feeling the effects of drink it was just that there was nothing to keep me there any longer. Except Simmone of course, but she was totally off limits. So I thought maybe I should just go home. Even if I did stick around and somehow manage to inveigle myself onto her christmas card list her husband would be at my front door with a very different kind of greeting long before Simmone got to draw the little xxxx's at the bottom of the card. Yeah, I thought, I'll finish this beer and then make tracks for home. But I did nothing of the kind. I ordered another pint of the old amber nectar instead. If I hadn't ordered that 'one more for the road ' I would've gone home for sure, cooked a meal, watched TV, probably had a wank over my brief contact with Simmone at the bar, and my life for the next few months would've been totally different. What follows would never have happened and I'd be writing fiction here instead of telling it how it was. So...
... There was Simmone, her big lug of a husband Ray and someone else who I can't remember sitting at a table behind me on this one Saturday afternoon. Couples shooting pool off to one side, guys playing 5 card stud for pennies, 90's music on the jukebox, a mixed crowd - you get the picture. I'd been standing alone at the bar like a billy-no-mates and then, incredibly, Simmone gestures me over to join them when our eyes connect during my return from a visit to the Gents. Maybe she just felt sorry for me, I don't know, but I dutifully went over like it was no big deal and nonchalantly pulled up a chair next to her. I said 'Hi' again to Ray who, after he got the nod from Simmone, seemed fine with the new seating arrangement and went back to talking to whoever-it-was-that-I-can't-remember, leaving me and the quintessential temptress to put all others in the shade to strike up a conversation right away.
As it was summertime Simmone was wearing a dress; a thin cotton piece that covered everything but hid nothing. Bosom to die for. Honest to God! You just wanted to dive straight in. Anyway, she tells me she's a keep-fit fanatic (aerobics three times a week and yoga every day - hence her statuesque physique,) but I already knew this little tidbit of information as did every other guy in the pub, and I dare say some women too. She went on to explain that she was a school teacher and took English and Drama classes at a nearby college for girls and although I knew she was a teacher I was unaware of the disciplines she taught. One of the things she told me which I had no idea about, and I have to admit I felt a little disheartened to hear, was that her and Ray would be saying goodbye to London early the next year and relocating elsewhere in the country. But my spirits were lifted a little with the overall impression she gave me of not being entirely content with her marriage - now that did sound like music to my ears. It could also have been just wishful thinking on my part, dastardly man that I am. Whatever. Anyway we talked and talked and the drink started to flow. God knows what we found to talk about, I really haven't a clue. I was just happy to be sitting next to her and being the object of her attention. She could've been waxing lyrical in ancient Sanskrit for all I cared, just as long as she was directing it at me and not all the other guys in the pub whose eyes, green with envy no doubt, I could feel burning into me.
