Kay ran.
Down the hill from the villa, winding through roads marked on the sides with red-and-white crash barriers. Through half-cleared trails, he emerged into the capitalist nightmare of the Copacabana beach area. Tiers of hotel decks washed down the hill like oil-fuelled rice paddies. Fat Americans lounged, drinking cocktails. Down on to the coast, the morning light struck the softly-stirring sea. Looking out over the strait towards the Croatian mainland, he was temporarily winded by the beauty, along with his own body's machinations as it continued to digest the previous evening.
He'd shuffled off, post-orgasm. Guilt: a little. Being inappropriate, probably. They had encouraged him to stay, but Carmela's gravity of expectation of his return was too powerful, so he lit a joint and smoked it on her balcony. Waiting for her, for her admonishment at his indiscipline. He'd tell her, of course he would. Half past eleven. Midnight. He'd kept on waiting, falling asleep at some point in the very early morning. When he woke, there was evidence of her: underwear, beauty products, aura. She had come back and gone again. No finishing off with her, he realised. To come with their charges, it'd been the right call, probably.
Three eggs, water, coffee, and now five miles down the hill and he was starting to rationalise. Two Japanese tourists in impossibly-cool tourist-wear giggled at him in his RATM vest and baggy, sweaty shorts.
The run back became a walk back. Uphill, the temperature rose around him and in him. Fuck it. He slipped through the side entrance at the bottom of the enormous property, up through the decorative gardens that Eduardo had built for his grandmother to walk through before she died. The centrepiece was an exquisite grotto of obsidian flagstones, expensively designed to make them appear haphazard. The view over the bay was better than at the beach, and the heat was warded away by climbers of Jasmine and Japanese Lily Flower. The four sun loungers were never occupied apart from today. A very-oversized white Real Madrid shirt concealed Carmela, one he'd never seen before. He allowed himself to imagine it being a gift from a Middle-Eastern overweight beau who pined for her not-given affections. Her face hidden behind a pair of exaggeratedly large sunglasses, her legs the only part of her exposed to the sunlight, broken as it was by the scattering effects of the well-tended shrubbery. Teal bikini bottoms were just visible under the duvet-effect football shirt.
"Look what's been dragged in." She lifted her sunglasses. "Finally made it up, I see. Need to pound out those existential worries on the hot tarmac? As if you fucking have any?"
Kay took a seat on the edge of the lounger, deliberately sweating into the plush fabric. They caught up. She'd been longer than she'd expected, as Kay had expected. The meet-up became a hook-up with some Serbian-sourced Vicodin, and they - they being the entourage - had hit the nicer fetish clubs in the tourist district. Carmela had changed into red leather hipsters for fear of not looking fetish enough. She needn't have bothered. She yawned as she recounted the tale, like it was a dull supermarket anecdote, occasionally sipping on a two-litre Dunkin Donuts iced coffee which must have been delivered.
Kay didn't miss any details in his account of the night previous, and Carmela's eyes brightened as he hit the highlights: on-face cunnilingus, mutual masturbation, threesome porn.
"I fucking knew it." She cackled, sitting up slightly, then back down again as the nausea hit. "Fucking gen zee bullshit. Like, we're so non-sexual... don't care who it is as long as they're genuine." She did a mocking accent. "As soon as some brainless piece of meat comes along with his big dick swinging along, they're jumping on top of it like a couple of horny schoolgirls."
"Thanks."
"I'm joking. Obviously. Your dick isn't that big."
Kay smiled. Carmela's vitriolic articulation was like sweet marujuana smoke in his ears.
"Anyway." She lifted the sunglasses again. "You all got off then. Me now?"
"Huh?"
Carmela answered him by rolling her teal bottoms off and flinging them near the pool.
"Come on. I need endorphins and I'm definitely not fucking running."
Kay edged up the lounger, positioning himself between her legs. Her vulva was comparable with Flicks - large, well defined, with broad outer lips - but it looked more commensurate with her body shape. He licked his thumb and manipulated her sticky-out, coffee-brown clit with it.
"I should probably have told you I've got this Noom thing booked for this evening."
"Noom?" Kay slid the thumb in to see how wet she was. It emerged with a sheen of her arousal.
"It's a pyramid scheme." Carmela looked up slightly at him, again. "Fundamentally a ripoff. It's Jessica Anistanfuch's thing."
Kay knew the name. An actor. A famous one?
"Bottomed out of Hollywood," Carmela's hand reached her buttcheek. "Has a line in selling candles and sex toys to rich bitches like me at parties organised by her devotees. It'll be fun."
"Am I coming?"
"Bet your ass." Carmela giggled. "Another chance to shoot your load on some fucking gen zee non-titties maybe."
This seemed to turn her on more.
"Can you go down on me?"
"In a minute." Kay squeezed her thigh as he strummed her clit in a circular motion. "What do we do at this thing?"
"I dunno. I did it as a favour to this girl Petra who posted about me on Instagram. She's the one doing it. I think we sit in a circle and try out different lotions and stuff. Aubrey and her friend are coming."
Her friend. Kay sensed Carmela's semi-hostility. Seventy-five percent of her wanted to push him, to make him uncomfortable. Not that it worked. But a little bit, maybe a tenth, was jealous of him with others. Kay rolled onto his front and nestled his head on her pubic bone. Short pubic hairs mingled with his beard. His tongue found the same spot his thumb had a few seconds before. Kay knew her frequency: how to keep her hanging on, how to finish her off. He gripped both of her thighs now, pushing her legs up. There was a tightness in her groin as she approached orgasm. She was laughing.
"You okay?"
"Just trying to stay in the moment." She looked at him, down her belly. "But keep going. I'm about to cum."
She did. Her pelvic floor pounding as the ripples diffused through her body. Kay dipped his tongue in her, like he had with Aubrey. There was salt, sugar, a hint of tequila maybe.
"Do I taste of booze?" She'd read him. Kay nodded.
------------------------
Carmela had things to do. Vlogs. Posts. Referrals. There was no one else in the house. Kay had the sudden sense: you're on holiday, so he decided to do something about it. He walked to the same beach he had earlier. There was a jetty with little boats on it, sticking out into the aquamarine water, a little triangle of well-curated concrete. He found a trattoria on the unbusy frontage, ordered some deep fried prawns and a Heineken, took out his le Carre and attempted to read it. Reread. It was a full forty minutes before he checked the football scores on his phone.
"Found you."
Flick in full, her-on-holiday mode. Stonewashed short-shorts just visible beneath an oversized beige vintage Depeche Mode t-shirt. She sat down next to him without invitation and took off her purple sunglasses.
"West vs East?" She nodded at his novel. He put it face down on the table, saving the page. "Spies and dead drops? Simpler times, yeah?"
"I find I read pages three or four times and still don't understand what's happening. Good thing, right? Where's Aubrey?"
"Gone out elsewhere. Some sponsorship thing her mom is making her attend. She's back later."
The waiter came past and took Kay's empty. He ordered two more without invitation.
"I know there was the threat... y'know, MAD. Mutually assured destruction." Flick seemed pleased to have remembered the meaning of the acronym. "Back in those days. But it's simpler, the narrative. Good vs bad. Left vs right."
"You think?"
"Well, yeah." The waiter was a wiry twentysomething with a moustache. He put the beers on the table. Flick picked hers straight up. "Right and left are too conflated with other stuff now. I think."
"Uh-huh."
"So, if you're right wing... I'd say, my family would be put there. Money-wise. You just want to be the individual. You make money, you keep it. But the contemporary right joins that to stuff like, vaccine denial. Climate change denial. Just 'cos you're not a socialist doesn't mean you should go along with all that stupid shit."
Kay shrugged.
"So Carmela invited us to her thing this evening." Flick was halfway through the beer. It wasn't a question but Kay answered it.
"Noom. Seems like bullshit."
"I can see that." Flick laughed. "I don't, well. I dunno. I thought you were all about, like, bollocks yoga tantric stuff. Energy lines and body spirit. No?"
"Well, no," Kay shrugged again, changing his mind under the smallest scrutiny as usual. "I dunno, maybe it'll be interesting. Female body positivity. I guess it's gotta be okay."
"I think it's more than just female body positivity. I expect you will need to get involved too."
"Right." Kay mulled.
They talked for a couple more hours at the bar and on the walk back, the Sun sinking towards the mountains behind the old city. Politics, people, places they'd been, that they wanted to go to. There was absolutely no cliche in her, no expected answer. He realised that she had his number: was more informed, more thoughtful. But there was a hint in her, something she was seeking. She dismissed the previous evening when she brought it up. Sexual fluidity. Literally.
---------
Noom.
It was printed a thousand times in bold typeface on the surprisingly-high quality linen robe he was wearing. They were all supposed to be wearing them, instructed by Petra to strip to their undies and arrive at Shanice's top-floor covered terrace. Everyone had ignored the instruction, barring Petra and him. To general amusement.
The room had the best Fung Shui, apparently. Maybe something to do with plants. There were a lot of them. Carmela had scrounged up the most comfortable pillows from the rest of the house and the five sat facing one another in a wide circle, with Petra at the point nearest the half-height narrow glass wall, through which was a view of the sea. Kay would have described her as voluptuous if he was being insulting, which he wasn't, so a better word might be womanly. Red hair which was long and tied back in a ponytail, pale skin which she seemed happy to advertise: the Noom robe was tied as loosely as possible around her waist, and he'd caught himself admiring the outline of her large breasts - again, a better word might be bosom - when she moved around. She was confident, assured; she had an air of certainty that was in contrast to him and some of the others in the room. She'd taken to Kay since they'd met a couple of hours previous, a 'what's your angle on working these rich bitches' answered by a gin fizz and a half an hour of sunshine on the terrace. She was talking about 'points of energy' on the body.
