Free Universal Carnal Nowledge

XVIII

"l-a-d-i-e-s"

The next day, of course, Alicia was due to move in, so it was the last night Wendy would have me to herself and we made sure it was a good one. In the morning we shared an unhurried breakfast and she got ready to go and help Alicia with the move as promised, while I prepared to go to Uncle Albert's.

Just after Wendy had left, the phone rang. It was Fran. I could tell right away that she had recovered her poise after her astonishment the previous night. In fact, she thanked me for the demonstration: "It was very impressive." She also brought me up to date on last night's developments after I left. At about eleven o'clock, Manlio had rung to find out what had happened to Gabriella.

"I tried to stall him," she explained, "because Gabriella was still a bit, well, you know -- "

"Dazed?" I suggested.

"Yes, but Manlio started to get all Latin and hot-tempered with me and I was getting flustered because he was talking so fast, then Gabriella suddenly appeared and grabbed the phone and gave him a piece of her mind. In the end she told him to eff off in four languages at least and hung up on him. James," she added pensively, "this thing of yours, what Connie calls your 'fluence', it's hell on relationships, isn't it? Except yours, of course, James darling."

"H'm," I said. I supposed I ought to feel guilty that another love affair had bitten the dust on my account but somehow I could not muster the energy.

"Anyway," Fran went on, "Gabriella stayed in her room last night and Connie's miffed because she was going to have it. She didn't appreciate sleeping on the sofa, and she wanted to move her stuff in from Tommy's today. They've been arguing about it all morning." And now she mentioned it, I could hear raised female voices in the background.

I felt this was an easy call. After all, it was Gabriella that had changed her mind about moving out. (True, she had had some prompting from me but I failed to see that that had anything to do with it.) "Connie ought to have the room," I pronounced.

Fran did not reply, at least not to me. "O Gabby," I heard her call in her sweetest butter-wouldn't-melt voice. "Could you come to the phone a moment please?"

This was followed by the sound of approaching footsteps and Fran's voice announcing my name.

"James, lover," Gabriella purred.

"Good morning," I replied cheerfully. "Gabby, Connie gets the room." That was it: no explanation, no discussion. Yet the fiery Latin tigress took it like a lamb.

"Of course, James lover."

"Also, give her a hand moving if she needs it. Go and tell her now, and put Fran back on."

"Yes, James. Anything you say, lover." And as her footsteps receded I heard her say, "Connie, Connie darling ..."

Fran thanked me for sorting out a dispute that had been driving her mad all morning, and I admitted to her that I was beginning to relish this power that Albert's invention had given me. As she rang off I decided to use it again. It was now a couple of hours since I had fucked Wendy, so I called Kylie next door and she came running. Applying a fresh coat of spunk to her insides was just the boost my morning needed.

I had to admit that having this kind of facility on tap made life's burdens easier to bear, and I caught the bus to Albert's feeling pretty good about things. My smugness would have increased still further had I been able to witness events a few miles away at Alicia's old lodgings, where Wendy was giving a faultless impersonation of a respectable widow, left comfortably off financially but lonely. She never lied to Alicia's former hosts, she assured me; she simply played the part so well that there was no need to. In fact, she charmed them to such effect that it was only with difficulty that she was able to turn down their invitation to stay for lunch.

Another consideration that put me in a good mood was the thought that today, at long last, I should be able to find out for sure what Albert had done to me. I entered his house and switched on his computer. I completely ignored the piles of dirty books and assorted rubbish waiting to be cleared; after all, I reflected with the cynicism that I had noticed was becoming characteristic of me, I now had a corps of willing volunteers that would be only too happy to take this unpleasant task off my hands.

Albert's computer gave me the same screen as when I had tried to access it before, blank except for a dialogue box demanding a password in which I had entered every crude sexual vulgarity I could think of, all in vain. This time I confidently typed l a d i e s.

Instantly the screen came to life, offering me a bewildering array of files and documents. I checked through a few at random. Many were in mathematical or statistical formats and were stuffed with information of which I as a layman could make nothing. But others were in ordinary word processing formats and as I opened these I found to my relief that Albert had written up his work.

I resisted the temptation to read them there and then. Instead I found a box of discs and copied file after file so I could study them on my own machine at home. It took quite some time; when I got home it was to find that Kylie had gone but Wendy and Alicia were unpacking. Naturally, I had to welcome Alicia to her new home in the only possible way (the poor child would have been so disappointed otherwise). That done, I left her on cloud nine and made for the boxroom I used as a study. At long last, I was about to learn the truth.