Free Better Than This by Stuart Harrison Page B

know yet,” I admitted. “I haven’t any firm plans.”
    “You’re taking a business degree aren’t you? If you like I might be able to introduce you to some people who could help you. I have some friends in Chicago.”
    “Chicago?”
    She smiled. “I know people there who run very large companies. I’m certain they’re always on the lookout for bright young people.”
    I didn’t know whether to believe my ears. It seemed she was offering me a kind of unsubtle bribe to make sure I moved somewhere a long way away from her daughter. I said something to the effect that I would certainly remember her offer if I ever thought I was interested in moving to Chicago, and I think in that moment we understood each other.
    That night as I lay awake in the dark there was a tap at my door. Before we’d arrived Sally had warned me we would have to sleep in separate rooms, which of course I’d expected, but when she crept down and slipped into bed with me I was glad to see her. I’d been thinking about her mother’s offer, smarting from the insult it implied that I wasn’t good enough for her daughter. When I told Sally she thought I must have misunderstood.
    “Then what the hell was that performance over dinner all about?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Bullshit. I suppose I misunderstood when she kept talking about that Hunt guy you used to see and how he’s been asking after you.”
    “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”
    “This isn’t about jealousy, Sally.”
    She must have realized then how I felt. “I’m sorry,” she whispered in my ear. “She’ll come around.”
    “She’s not going to come around,” I told her.
    “She will once she gets to know you properly. I warned you about her before we arrived.”
    “You said she could be difficult to get along with. You didn’t tell me she was a class A bitch.”
    “She just wants the best for me,” Sally said, a little hurt.
    “The best being somebody else, like Garrison Hunt for instance.”
    “It doesn’t matter what she wants. This is my life remember, and it’s you I’m here with now isn’t it?”
    To make her point she slipped her hand down across my stomach and took hold of my flaccid penis. She pressed her body against me and whispered in my ear.
    “I don’t want us to fight. Make love to me.”
    I said, “Did you ever fuck this guy Hunt?”
    “What?”
    “You heard.”
    Her hand retreated. “Do I ask about who you’ve slept with?”
    I felt bad and wished I hadn’t asked. But some things we have little control over. “Did you?” I insisted.
    She hesitated. “No. Satisfied?”
    “Yes,” I answered, but in fact I knew she was lying. She couldn’t meet my eye, and to change the subject she took hold of me again.
    The blind needs of the flesh, preprogrammed with a one track mind took precedence over quibbling issues of wounded pride. Sally squatted over me and lifted her nightdress over her head. Her body was pale in the darkness, the smooth curve of her hips drawing my eye to the plane of her stomach. She settled over me, drawing me into the folds of her flesh, then leaned forward to support herself, with her hair brushing my cheek.
    “Forget about my mother,” she whispered.
    I reached around and in one swift motion rolled her over. She looked up at me, startled by our sudden exchange of position, then she grinned. We began making love. Sally closed her eyes,
    and a soft breath of air escaped her mouth. I whispered in her ear that she was beautiful, that I loved being with her like this.
    She clung to me and softly moaned and I looked into her face at her closed eyes, the smile that played on her lips and I thought of her mother lying in bed somewhere on the floor above us who didn’t think I was good enough to be with her daughter, and I thought about Garrison Hunt too. A lot of old feelings welled up in me, things I hadn’t felt for a long time since we’d had to move from our old neighbourhood after my dad had died