The Old Man and Alexis

'She got arrested for affray in Ibiza. And last time, in Crete, she passed out drunk on the beach and got sunstroke. She's so fair-skinned, you see.'

Her bottom lip drooped down and to the left which meant that she had said something she shouldn't have.

'Greek hospitals,' she went on. 'Like Baghdad.'

I noticed the abrupt change of subect as well. Time to cast off a line...

'She didn't get her complexion from you,' I said. 'First time I saw you...'

'...You thought I was foreign. You told me already.'

'Alright. Jesus.'

'You always repeat everything,' she said. 'You're like a fucking demented.'

'I'm an old man,' I said.

She looked at me with impatience over the rim of her Bloody Mary before dissolving into laughter. It was obvious where Alexis had picked up that particular defence mechanism.

It was a sunny afternoon, the first in a long time. After we had eaten, neither of us wanted to go home so we took a drive. We parked above a reservoir with our windows down, listening to the sound of jet-skis criss-crossing the water below. Steph glossed her lips using the back of her Ipod as a mirror, her blouse rendered see-through in the haze of light that surrounded her while I looked on, searching her features in vain for a trace of Alexis.

'Remember the last night we came here?' She put her hand on mine.

'I swear, there were doggers around,' I said. 'In those bushes there. They kept moving.'

'Well, they certainly got their money's worth, didn't they?' She leaned across to kiss me, her hand sliding up to my crotch. 'What's the matter?'

'Nothing,' I said. 'That roast beef. It's not sitting right.'

'Why didn't you say?' She looked at me with equal parts concern and confusion.

'Let me,' I said. I popped the button of her jeans and let my hand rest on her stomach.

'No babe, we should go if you're poorly.'

'I'm not that poorly.'

Her painted lips opened as my hand moved down to the lace covering her vulva. She lifted her shades and rested them on her fringe, her eyes narrowing and eventually closing as my fingers traced the outline of her slit through her thong. She was soft and damp underneath, though less so than her daughter when I touched her in the same way. It was only by summoning up the image of Alexis, by pretending that it was her pussy I was touching, that I could muster any enthusiasm for the task. The hand that jerked me off through my slacks was Alexis' as were the clit and vulva I thumbed and teased. It had become the norm in my sex life with Steph.

Steph came suddenly with a hissed '...Fuck...', her hips arching up from the sticky leather of the seat. I withdrew my hand and licked my fingers clean.

'Taste good?' Steph was unzipping my fly. 'Feeling better?'

'Oh Lex...lick me.'

Fuck it...

But Steph didn't notice either my near fatal slip of the tongue or my pathetic attempt at covering it up. I shut my eyes and surrendered to the vision of Alexis' mouth between my legs, even though Steph was far superior in terms of blow-job technique. She manipulated my balls, her other hand busy along the shaft while her tongue described insane, exquisite patterns over my leaking glans. Alexis was none so subtle yet it was her artless enthusiasm I evoked as the tendon at the base of Steph's tongue, applied parallel to that of the underside of my glans, pushed me over edge. She clamped her lips shut, squeezing my thigh at each convulsion of my body. Now it was safe to open my eyes. Steph was looking up at me with one slim eyebrow cocked in dissolute archness. The ghost of Alexis' name faded from my lips. Steph gulped and extracted my cock from her mouth.

'You better be a hundred percent when we're in Albufeira,' she said. 'I got plans for you.'

'Oh yeah?'

'Oh yeah.'

I smiled along with her even though it sounded more like a threat than a promise.

*

'Where's mum?' said Alexis, her voice long-distance warped. 'What's the weather like?'

'It was forty degrees at three o'clock. Twenty at midnight.'

'You lucky sods.'

'Steph's in her bed. Pim's and squid. A bad combination.'

There was a pause before Alexis said, 'Well, I should probably go.'

'Don't. Not yet.'

She laughed and I pictured her raising a hand to cover her mouth.

'You sound so desperate,' she said.

'I am desperate. I miss you so much.'

'It's only another week.'

'It's another week without you.'

In the toilet bowl beneath me, whose water was still faintly contaminated with the by-products of Steph's gastroenterisis, floated a baby wipe glistening with the load of come her voice had coaxed from me a few minutes before. Steph's crook stomach that evening had been a gift. It had given Alexis and I the opportunity to talk properly for the first time since her mum and I had gone away.

'She'll more than likely call you tomorrow,' I said. 'Be prepared for graphic details. I love you.'

'You pick your moments, don't you?'

'Lexi, please...' The whining something I could hear in my voice was detestable.

'I love you too.'

'What are we going to do?'

'Maybe the squid will do us both a favour. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that...Say it again.'

'Say what again?'

'You know...'

There was a clatter upstairs.

'I think she's up,' I said. 'I love you. I have to go...'

I hung up and held my breath. The noise came again and I recognized it as the sound of a loose shutter. I stopped myself from ringing back and scratched myself raw instead.

In the bedroom, Steph was snoring, foetal beneath a single sheet. Using my mobile as a torch, I crept around to my side of the bed. Unhelpfully, I was painfully hard again. I lifted the sheet, releasing a warm haze of Steph's flesh. Sun oil, red wine, toxins...

'Arrogance,' she seemed to mumble as I lay down next to her. I curled about her, my erection pressing against the small of her back. In the dark, she could be whoever I wanted her to be.

'Are you awake? You feel any better?'

Her reply was unintelligible. I felt for her cunt and found her dry.

'Don't,' she said from the depths of unconsciousness. 'Go sleep.'

I wrapped an arm about her hot stomach, squirming into her back like a dog. Her lower vertebrae gnawed at my exposed glans. I mouthed her name to the back of her mother's head: Lexi...Her mother tutted and tried to move away.

'Shh,' I said. 'Babe, oh babe...'

'...Not yours.' She was still asleep but the words were clear.

'What isn't?' In a fever, I guided my cock into the cleft of her joined upper thighs. 'Steph?'

'...Mustn't tell her...'

A dart of nausea ran through me, serving as counterpoint to the onrush of orgasm. I tried to pull free at the last second but the muscles of her thighs clasped my spastic cock in a death grip...

'You sexually assault a sick woman.' Steph was livid and semi-delirious when I brought her tea and Immodium the following morning.

'I swear to God, I...I must have been asleep...' I tried to strike the right note of amusement and shame.

'It's disgusting. What's got into you?' She recoiled as I sat down next to her and put my hands upon her shoulders.

'You see how crazy you make me? From beyond consciousness, even. How do you feel?'

'Violated.'

'Oh come off it, babe...you were babbling in your sleep last night.'

'I thought you were asleep.'

'When I was getting into bed...'

'What was I saying...?'

'That someone mustn't know something. All this.'

She went pale under her tan. I watched in mystification as her anger degenerated into childish helplessness.

'I have to tell you something,' she said. 'But you have to promise me that you'll never tell Lexi.'

My flesh crawled.

'What?' I managed to croak.

'I meant to tell you before. Darling, I don't want you to think that I've been keeping things from you.' She grabbed my hands. 'There was a problem. With Jon's sperm.'

A thousand wisecracks suggested themselves but I rejected them all. What the fuck was she talking about?

'I wanted a baby so badly. And then this...opportunity came along.' She was crying. 'I loved her the minute I set eyes on her. She was my little girl. And I promised myself that minute that she'd never know any different.'

It wasn't really that big a deal what she was saying. I couldn't understand why she hadn't told me before. But when I looked around the room before turning my gaze back upon her, I had the sense that everything familiar, including Steph, had somehow become weird and pregnant with threat. My hands were freezing within hers.

'Who was...I mean, where did you...'

'An Irish girl. A nurse. "In trouble," she called it. I don't know...I'm so sorry. Please don't tell her.'

'Of course not.'

'Oh fuck...' I managed to hand her the basin by the foot of the bed just in time. She heaved dramatically, my hand tracing insincere circles upon her back. Nothing came. She had nothing left inside her to vomit up.

*

It took me months of half-arsed detective work but I finally tracked her down, to a hospital in Kent. We met, a few weeks before Christmas (and my first wedding anniversary), at the beginning of her shift in the hospital's public canteen. She was wary, as she had good reason to be. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing there or even if I had the right person. She didn't look anything like I remembered. Her Ulster accent had been Estuaried into indeterminacy. Moreover, she didn't remember me at all.

'It was a long time ago.' She looked at me as she might have at a database of sex offenders in the aftermath of an assault. 'There were a lot of parties. Sorry, tell me again who you are?'

I repeated the unconvincing story I had told her over the phone about a fictional near-death experience and the conciliatory memoir it had inspired me to write.

'Am I going to be in a book? Do I get royalties?'

'I got married again recently.' I held up my ring. 'Second time lucky. What happened to me taught me that life is short. And the little time we have ought to be celebrated.'

'I should bring you up to the CCU,' she said, dipping her hand into a bag of Bombay mix. 'You'd go down a storm. I still don't know...I mean, what are you trying to say to me?'

'Nothing. I just wanted to talk to you.'

'About old times.'

She looked away, towards the reception area, visible through the perspex of the canteen window.

'Some crack back then, alright. Plenty to celebrate. Maybe I'll write a book.'

'It was wild,' I said. 'Actually, that party at the hospital is a bit of a blur.'

'They say you remember. Later on, after the blackout, maybe years later, the details come back to you. You don't. You remember nothing. It's like a chunk of your life that's been stolen from you. And afterwards, nothing is the same... Look, mister...I'm happy for you, okay? And good luck with the book. But I'm sorry. I really don't feel like revisiting those days. And this is too weird.'

She took her ringing phone from her pocket.

'The ear medicine was on the countertop, a blind person would see it,' she said. 'Oh for Christ's sake...can't you pick her up?'

'Everything okay?' I asked her as she hung up.

'My daughter's sick at school. I have to call my sister to have her collect her.'

'I have a daughter. Well, step-daughter. She was twenty this year.'

'That's how old she would have been.'

'Who?'

'Nobody. I got pregnant back then. I gave her away.' She flicked her hand. There wasn't a trace of emotion on her face. 'One of those things.'

We walked together to the reception.

'What's her name?'

'Who's name?' I said.

'Your step-daughter.'

'Lexus. Alexis, I mean. Thank you for your time.' I shook her hand. 'I'll send you a copy of the book. Do you...never mind.'

'What?'

'Your daughter. The one who was adopted. Do you know where she is?'

'She told me she'd take care of her. I never saw either of them again. But it's better that way. It's okay. She was a kind woman. Big hearted. Anyone could see that.'

*

'Say it. For the laugh. Call me Dad...'

I arrived in Shoreditch an hour or so later. Traffic was slow around the approach to the tunnel. I rang Steph but her phone was turned off. I left a voicemail. Another clever lie as to my whereabouts and my ensuing late arrival time. My Alexis phone was in my briefcase so I couldn't call her. Anyway, I wasn't sure that I wanted to speak to her. Not yet.

The night before, Steph had talked about the consolations of being a grandparent.

'You get to put it right the second time around. And then you get to give them back.'

She'd had a drink. Grandkids sounded wrong. I was still a young man, wasn't I?

Wasn't that the problem?

Without make-up, Steph looked drawn. I could see the face of her death lurking beneath the surface of the living skin. The fact of her mortality, occurring to me for the first time, left me cold...

Alexis was at the apartment before me, as she usually was. I saw from her eyes that she had been crying.

'We're going to Hell,' she had said once. Maybe we were there already.

'I'm pregnant,' she said.