Free Dirty Tricks by Michael Dibdin

idea that Karen ‘wasn’t my type’ seemed a quaint irrelevance. I felt like a kid again, skewered by desire, every passing girl a kick in the balls, humiliated and tormented by lust. Women never understand the way it hurts . They’ve never felt the pain that lies behind all the hatred we can feel for women, our need to hurt them in return.
    It soon became clear that I was not the only moth cruising Karen’s flame. The Carter boy, Jonathan, known for some reason as Floss, took to spending long hours by the pool in a barely concealed state of voyeuristic arousal. He and his girlfriend Tibbs were supposedly en route to a camping holiday in Italy, but the lure of Karen’s nudity proved too powerful and this project was indefinitely postponed. The shameless bitch openly encouraged her young admirer’s attentions, summoning him to fetch her a drink, move the parasol, even to rub sun cream on her topless back. All quite harmless fun, no doubt – even Karen wasn’t going to seduce her husband’s partner’s teenage son – but I was not best pleased, especially since Tibbs showed no reciprocal interest in me. An energetic girl, she spent the day swimming, jogging, cycling and hiking before retiring to their tent, blissfully ignorant that the thrust of Floss’s nightly attentions was directed not at her but the succuba who also haunted my dreams.
    The fact that I had an admirer in Thomas’s wife just made matters worse. Not only can’t you always get what you want, half the time you get what you don’t need either. I certainly neither wanted nor needed Lynn Carter, a woman of uninspiring appearance and a dreadful bore to boot. Since Karen Parsons was denied me, I resorted to polishing up my French with Thérèse Racquin , but the moment I settled down to read Lynn would flop down near me and solicit my views on waste recycling or food additives. The only interesting thing about our colloquia was that they excited Karen’s jealousy.
    ‘You two spend a lot of time talking,’ she remarked one day, materializing beside my chair as Lynn shambled off into the house in search of tea to counter the Dionysiac influence of the southern sun.
    ‘Lynn does a lot of talking. I do a lot of listening.’
    ‘You talk too! I saw you.’
    Karen had been in the pool. Her breasts were covered now, but I could see the shape of the aureoles through the wet fabric. Water dripped from her crotch and streamed down her legs. I dared not touch her. Lynn might reappear at any moment, Thomas was rambling in the woods somewhere near by, Floss and Tibbs were playing badminton just round the corner. Ironically enough, only Dennis, sleeping off a heavy lunch, posed no threat to my desires.
    ‘What you talk about then?’ my tormentor demanded.
    My eyes caressed her body languidly.
    ‘Mrs Carter’s taste runs to topics of fashionable concern. Her position is essentially uncontroversial, eschewing any extreme ideas which might conceivably add a flicker of interest to her otherwise predictable views. I sit there going “Mmm” and “Mmm?” at appropriate moments and greedily noting your every twitch and shudder down by the pool. In my mind’s eye, your body is liberally smeared with a mixture of walnut oil and Nutella spread. I am slowly removing it with my tongue.’
    Karen looked sullenly down at the crazy paving, where a small ant was wending its way homeward with part of a dead butterfly on its back.
    ‘You never talk to me.’
    ‘I understood that it was forbidden unless Dennis was within earshot.’
    ‘You never talk like that to me!’ she repeated shrilly.
    I have never liked shrillness, particularly when allied to Liverpudlian vowels and a cock-teaser’s soul.
    ‘Karen,’ I replied coldly, ‘you and I have absolutely nothing to talk about.’
    But I mustn’t let you run away with the impression that I spent all my time lounging around the pool. In fact such moments of leisure were relatively rare. Although the subject was never