When Stewart arrived at the dinner party with a life-sized mannequin tucked under his arm, Stella asked him if he would care to deposit it in the cloakroom where the rest of the guests had left their coats.
Ignoring her, Stewart marched down the hall to the dining room. Stella scurried after him. The conversation stopped as he set the mannequin—dressed in a red satin evening gown, which was split to the thigh—next to the fireplace. All eyes were drawn to one of her legs, which jutted out from the slit. The guests held their breath as Stewart arranged her so that she balanced against the mantelpiece, then gave a collective gasp as the mannequin toppled to the floor. From her prone position, legs sticking up stiffly into the air, it was clear that she wasn't wearing panties.
"How to handle this?" wondered Stella, as Stewart lifted the mannequin back to a standing position. She watched in amazement as her husband, Graham, walked over to Stewart and handed him two martinis.
The mannequin, thought Stella—from her gazelle-like limbs to her parted mouth, that gave the impression that she was permanently poised on the verge of saying something witty—was the epitome of everything that Stella had strived for and failed to achieve during tortuous sessions at the gym. As Stella walked towards her husband, a wave of anxiety rising in her chest, she had the distinct impression that the mannequin's eyes were following her.
She tugged at his shirtsleeve. "What on earth are we going to do?"
"Do?" said Graham, a tall man in the latter stages of baldness. "About what?" He speared an olive and plopped it into a glass.
"About Stewart. Don't you think he's behaving a little oddly?" She looked over to the mannequin's martini glass, which Stewart had lodged between her fingers, where it remained untouched.
Graham chuckled. "Yes, quite amusing isn't it?"
"Well, I don't know," said Stella, feeling a little faint. The mannequin was still looking at her, this time she was certain of it. Her head had twisted to the left, and her gaze was trained directly on Stella.
Stella walked backwards towards the kitchen, tugging her fitted black dress towards her knees, wishing she had worn something looser. She usually considered her legs to be her best—well really, only—feature and had worn the dress to show them off, but since the mannequin had appeared on the scene she was convinced that the tight dress only emphasized the world of difference between her hippo-sized backside and the mannequin's slender haunches.
She shut the door behind her, took a gulp of air and began to stir the Cassoulet, which was bubbling on the stove. What on earth, she thought, licking the spoon absentmindedly and setting it aside, had compelled her to put on a pair of black hold up stockings this morning, as well as a rather provocative thong?
As she began to mix up a chocolate soufflé the question continued to niggle. It was hard for her to admit her motives to herself, but, if she was honest, the donning of the outfit had been a practical response to Graham's recent lack of sexual interest, and she was nothing if not practical, she thought as she whipped up the soufflé a little too vigorously. She could only hope that after the guests had left the sight of her saucy undergarments might bring forth some sort of response from him.
She poured the soufflé mix into individual serving dishes and slid them into the oven, flushing as she thought of the mannequin's eyes and the way they had followed her. She hadn't felt this way since she was fourteen and had had a crush on Miss Charlton, the gym mistress. Her insides felt all gooey as she put the soup tureen onto the hostess trolley and wheeled it into the dining room.
To her dismay, she saw that the only seat left at the dinner table was next to the mannequin, whose chin was now propped in her hand, her head turned expectantly towards the empty chair.
She could hear Stewart say to Graham, who sat beside him, "I've not known Carla long. It's very much early days …" Graham was indulging Stewart, Stella noticed, nodding attentively as he talked.
Stella poured the soup into the bowls and put them in front of her guests. Because her friends had impeccable manners, no one had dared to ask Stewart directly why he was so insistent that this dummy—Carla, as he called her—was his girlfriend. But mannequin or not, both the other men besides Stewart and her husband were transfixed by the perfect cream orbs that spilled out of Carla's low cut gown.
Not wishing to make a scene, she set a bowl in front of Carla. She would humor Stewart, as if he were a child with an imaginary friend.
As she leaned over Carla to put a bowl beside Stewart she felt a hand brush the back of her leg, so that she almost dropped the soup into his lap. She looked at Stewart. Had he just touched her? No, it was impossible. He was still rambling on to Graham, "The thing about Carla is, she actually listens to me. Whereas with Dorothy (his ex-wife), I could hardly get a word in edgeways …"
Stewart turned back to Carla and tied a napkin around her neck. As Stella sat down beside her she could scarcely believe her eyes as Stewart lifted her spoon, filled with cream of mushroom soup, to Carla's lips and tilted it. Some of the soup ran into the hollow between her lips, the rest spilled over her chin.
"Okay darling," he said, as if responding to an imaginary voice. "If you think you can handle it on your own." He let the spoon sink back into the soup and turned back to his conversation with Graham.
As she looked at Carla, at the viscous globules of soup that stuck to her lips, at her bright, vacuous eyes, she was vividly reminded on an image from one of those magazines that Graham kept hidden under his golf clubs in the wardrobe, of a girl who had just had a man ejaculate on her face. She would never let Graham do something like that to her, of course, although she had read somewhere that it was quite good for the complexion … She froze. Amidst the chatter that swirled around her she felt that touch again, and this time she was quite certain whose it was. Carla's hand was cupping her knee, then slipping under the hem of her dress.
She turned to look at Carla, whose blank expression provided no answers. She clamped her thighs together over Carla's hand, which was surprisingly warm, quite lifelike in fact, not stiff and cold as she would have expected. She felt quite flushed, as she gazed at Carla's nipples, clearly visible through the flimsy fabric.
"Go on," said a voice. "You know you want to." Stella's heart began to pound. Had Carla actually spoken to her? She reached down and pulled Carla's hand out of her skirt, trying to decide what to do. She was not one for making a scene in public. No, the best thing to do would be to take Carla into the kitchen and get to the bottom of this, woman to woman.
She leaned across Carla to Stewart. "I'm just taking her to the kitchen to clean her up. She seems to have got a little soup on her dress."
Feeling rather self-conscious, she helped Carla up. She was startled to find that Carla's limbs felt, not only like human flesh, but smoother, baby soft, and hot, as if there were molten liquid fizzing and bubbling beneath the skin. Despite the fact that her head was spinning and she felt unsteady on her feet, she put her arm around Carla's waist and carried her across the room.
