The Imaginary Bikini

'Come and see the studio,' said Alexandra. 'It's down in the garden, it's lovely.'

Mandika put down her glass with a final sip and strolled after her friend through the garden, all rampant delphiniums and straggling Iceland poppies amid the weeds, over a broken path of concrete flags that disappeared under the dandelions here and there, to a large shed down by a back fence. There was a cluster of oaks around it, a huge beech shading it from the next field, and a wide green lawn in front, with a few children's tractors and action dolls.

'This is kept nice.'

'We spend time here.'

Mandika undid another button to let cooling air in. 'And let the rest of the place run down?'

'Only really here in the summer, or when Luke's doing his experiments. He doesn't care what the grounds are like.'

'It's a long way out. Why couldn't you work in the house?'

'I called it the studio, but legally it's a laboratory. Hazardous chemicals. Course the whole point of what Luke's doing is making safe paint, but as it isn't marketed yet it's still a HAZCHEM,' Alexandra explained. She creaked open the door and flung open blinds on two big windows at each side. Mandika was dazzled by the sudden access of high summer light shot back from metal drums. The intense smells of various paints, linseed, and turpentine assailed her. Alexandra, twitching her nose at it, muttered something about a leak, and began poking round, but found nothing.

'Luke must have arrived yesterday. I thought I was the first here.'

'Is his room used?'

'I didn't check, I thought I was alone. The fridge hasn't been touched.'

Mandika crossed past the drums of house paint to the back end, under one window, where an easel stood with half a dozen canvases against the wainscoting. The top one was a church with its yew and graves. Mandika nodded in professional appraisal. 'Like it.'

'It's still chocolate box no matter what I do,' Alexandra lamented. 'Look at these,' she went on, flipping the canvases down one by one: an empty barn covered in wisteria, sheep crowding around a shepherd at a stile, a rusted harvester on the lip of a pool. 'Amateur.'

'They're not, Ali, don't be harsh.'

'I should scrape them off but I'm experimenting with Luke's paint. This stuff,' she nodded, indicating what looked like a jar of cold cream. 'Pretty amazing stuff, actually. We know it's safe, but the long-term tests don’t finish till next year. Then his patent's a nice little earner.'

'The multi-purpose one?'

'Yup. Titanium aluminium something polymer, binds with different chemicals. House paint with one, perfect Chinese white for me, even a face paint,' she said, opening another pot marked FP. There was a rich golden yellow in it. 'Just mix and match,' she said with a smile, dipping her finger in and giving herself a golden streak down her handsome nose.

'Sunblock!' Mandika cried, clapping her hands.

Alexandra bowed gracefully. 'That's what I'll do today, just sunbathe. Better than working on this shit.'

Mandika looked at her: she had seldom seen her in anything but black polo-neck and black jeans, well kept, but tight up to the top and down to the wrists. Even today in this heat when Mandika was wearing the lightest of her summer garments and chafing at the unwonted tightness of her underwear, cool-as-a-cucumber Alexandra was in her usual enclosure, her black hair flopping over her shoulders and getting in her eyes. Mandika always had to secure her own firmly behind her when she painted, but she knew Alexandra never did. Her only concession to the heat was being barefoot.

A mobile rang, and Alexandra had a short conversation. 'That was Luke, he should be here by nine,' she said when it was over. 'So I could sunbathe if I had a bikini.'

'Sounds good. Why don't you bring one? You said you're usually here in the summer.'

'Usually the Pritchards aren't here,' she explained, beckoning Mandika out and over to the fence. On one side of them there was another house in the next property, not too close but with an upper window overlooking the toy-strewn lawn. 'See? They're the only people who can see this bit. They go off to the Canaries for four weeks and whoever's here can sunbathe nude, that's why I said we keep it nice. But their car's in the drive.'

'Pity. Who are they?'

'Elderly couple. Nice. Why?'

'I mean… would it matter if they saw you?'

'Oh, Mimi, how could I face them? And even in my underwear I'd feel ridiculous. No, much as I'd love to, and even though Luke's not around…'

'Do you, um… Do you sunbathe with Luke?'

'Course not!' Alexandra said in surprise, then converted it to a giggle. 'I know you think I'm kinky but I do have some shame.'

'Oh well. Just thought. Some people do.'

'I'm game for most things. Your impression of me is based on that night at the Harvest Home. I was feeling sick, that's all.'

'You're contradictory,' Mandika mused. 'Conflicting signals. Black neck to toe, telling drunks to leave you alone like that. No boyfriend anyone knows about. But you're so sexy and beautiful and you can be outrageous.'

'Oho, I see. The rumour factory. No I'm not a lesbian, if that's what the current rumour is, and if we get to know each other better I might tell you a little of my very complicated love life. Which is not even in a very quiet patch at the moment.'

'Sorry, didn't mean to imply… Pity those people aren't gone.'

'Arr, dammit, I want to take all my clothes off and soak it up. I don't often get this chance. It's not fair. Bikini next time, must remember.'

'And you've got the sunblock for it.'

'Oh, I'd better get this off if I don't want to look too silly. It feels nice when you put it on, cool and tingly. Want to try?' she asked, rubbing it smoothly from her nose with a nearby rag she had touched to a bottle of spirit.

'Pity you can't paint a bikini on.'

'Luke's probably working on… What?'

'I said pity you can't…,' Mandika began, fading out as she saw Alexandra's calculating look. 'Surely not?'

'It's perfect,' Alexandra whispered. 'It's made for it.'

Mandika laughed once, collected herself as she realized the enormity of what was proposed, then began laughing uncontrollably at the thought of the good elderly Pritchards looking down on a bikini-clad woman. At the distance of their windows they could never tell the reality.

'Hey, I'm not trying to get rid of you, but when did you have to leave?'

'About… about now to catch the three fifteen,' Mandika said with a glance at her watch. 'So half an hour till the next. It doesn't matter which I take, there's nothing I need to do in London.'

'Well I'm going to try this. So either I wait half an hour till you go, or…'

'Or what? I'm game.'

'Um… help me? It could be messy. And I can't reach everywhere.'

'Yeah, sure,' said Mandika with a rush of guilty pleasure. This was going to be very naughty, laughably exciting, and almost entirely safe. 'What if they see you and come down to talk? Across the fence?'

Alexandra bit her lip in delight. 'I think I could get away with it. They've both got dodgy eyesight,' she said in glee at her audacity. She roughly pulled her top off, revealing a red bra.

'Ah, sexy indeed.'

'Black is for the outside world,' Alexandra commented. She looked down at her breasts in their covering, then unhooked it and let it fall. She seemed to be admiring the roundness of her breasts but Mandika saw she was appraising them as an artist, as a surface to be covered. 'I've got some red like that, red face paint.'

'It's thicker than face paint.'

'Yes, more opaque, much better,' she agreed, with the tub in one hand now trying to work out how to apply it. A smearing on her hand reddened her right breast but when she tried to smooth an upper edge, she found it frustrating to judge.

'A brush. I'll do that,' said Mandika. 'If I paint the outline we can fill it in easier.'

Alexandra stood as still as she could while her friend laid a strap-line along her back in cool sweeps. This was feeling indeterminately sexual, and the agitation within her legs hardly permitted her to be as stock-still as she wanted. Mandika lifted up each breast in turn and gave it a sharp red boundary, then rounded over the top. She found a broader brush and begin covering the breasts with red paint, since this was clearly going to be less messy than daubing it on by hand. Alexandra stood there as it was finished and watch the luminance soak into her skin, into a more matt glow. Her own breasts often turned her on a little, but never before in this way, this beautiful alienness clinging to her.

'How long does it take to dry?'

'A minute or less in this sun,' said Alexandra. She went outside and exposed herself. There were only the birdsongs and tree rustles of a summer day. A jet went by, a mower coughed into action in the distance. She touched her bosom casually, then got Mandika to stand blocking the window while she lifted them up and checked below. 'Close enough,' she said. 'I think that's just sweat I can feel.'

Indoors again, she undid her jeans and made to release them. She looked up with an earnest expression on her fine dark eyebrows. Mandika found herself holding her breath. Alexandra looked down again and dropped her jeans, briefly showing red lacy pants underneath, before these too fell to the earth at her feet. She stepped backwards out of them and presented the other woman with a view of her trimmed dark hair.

'It could be awkward,' Mandika said quietly.

'I keep a trimmer here,' said Alexandra and went to fetch it. There were some toiletries on a shelf above a sink. Filling a little dish with water she sat on a low bench and, spreading her legs and tensing herself, scraped away most of the rest, then stood. 'Doesn't have to be smooth. Now come on, block me in.'

Hesitantly Mandika knelt at crotch level and carefully painted a red band on the taut skin, supremely smooth apart from the faint fuzz her hands detected as she worked. Saliva pooled in her throat and she could not help lingering over the vaginal aroma. With some reluctance she got her to take a few steps around, and eyed the route for the hips and back. When she knew how they would meet she made a fast line around, making Alexandra release her breath at the cool sting. Now she had a top line. The line underneath was harder to be sure of, and she had to stroke and support and weigh her friend's buttocks for a while before deciding how to proceed. Because of her dress habits Alexandra had no paler skin already there to help her. It was early summer, no time yet for browning, and she was creamy and silky everywhere. Mandika's nose brushed over her hip, accidentally.

She painted it in broad strokes, filled up all that clear space left and right, then got Alexandra to bend over, supported on her hands against the bench. With trembling hand Mandika dabbed red paint down her crack, hesitated on her anus, then as Alexandra showed no sign of moving from the submissive posture, gave one last brush right over that. It made the painted woman gasp.

Now they examined the effect. The shape of the front part was to be determined by how the back hung. Mandika filled in the other two sides of a triangle, coloured it in from above, and left the most sensitive till last.

'Do we need to?'

'It'd look silly if not. Even they could see something. Fill me in, gently.'

'Let the rest dry then spread your legs on that bench,' said Mandika, and a minute later she was kneeling in front of a musky, juice-flowing vulva, touching her wet brush carefully to the outer labia, making them flushed with red. Alexandra whimpered in overtly sexual delight with each touch, one hand stroking her friend's hair.

It was over at last and they walked about a bit indoors till they were convinced it looked partly like a skin-tight bikini.

'If they talk over the fence, make sure they walk away first,' Mandika giggled. They went outdoors and strolled around. It felt intensely good to be bare under the sun, Alexandra assured her, and after a few minutes more of building her confidence she asked again whether she had to go soon. Mandika shook her head slightly.

'What colour would you like to be?' Alexandra asked her with an unaccustomed throaty husk brought on by the roilings in her painted body.