Free Night by Edna O’Brien

proper the blush was reinforced by a pink of hers that was permanently there, so that her cheeks were crimson. All these different patches of colour on her seemed to be moving, changing shape, changing definition. She was pretty, delectable. She was younger than I. He undid her bodice. Even her chest had a flush to it. The colours were seeping through like port wine through a litmus. I held her, fast.
    “I knew you would,” he said, taking one of my hands and attaching itself to his that was already adhered to hers, and I squeezed and I squeezed upon it. I was curbing my jealousy. Her legs were tight, thighs sealed, her very modesty a summonising more welcome than a welcome. We were in the stately room, what Tig calls the Casbah, and all was very breathless, her gasping, continually blushing, his snapping teeth andhis capable tongue, the vapours from all of us so gentle, so pervasive like steam. One of my tasks was to undress her for him. She kept her chin down but had her eyes raised in order to look at us both, a beseeching spaniel’s look. Her hair was ash blonde but down below, her topnotch was brown, a mouse brown. She gave little halting breaths, looking at him much more than at me. Then he got in the buff. He was scarred all over and that should have been a warning to me that he was from the underworld. Like a pythoness she was, with her nails and her teeth, a little pythoness pranking things up. The hank that he had on himself, it must have been from his military training. I got the feeling that he’d be just as happy having a game of snooker. All through the event, even when she started combing his hair and brushing it with her wire brush, he was asking me if I knew any rich people. Then we had a very heated discussion as to what constituted rich. He thought millions, I thought less. All the time she was saying to him, “Come on Milos, come on.” I got the feeling that he was not above bezzling. Asking me if I knew any dowagers who lived alone, was willing to be a stud. I expect he was with a gang, she too, loyal to him as I know now, loyal, an accomplice. He was quite cursory with her. The other thing he was interested in was horses, said did I visit anywhere where there were stables and could I get him invited for week-ends. Now and then he would jog her like she was a mare, called her Shaggy and frigged her. She had shaved her eyebrows completely and there was something very drastic about that, gave her a gorgon’s look, a feeling shewas formerly a snake. Quite rough he was. She went blue-black easily. I felt I had to do something, so I picked up a few nubs of coal in my hand and put them on the fire. The funny thing is they never spoke, there was no Daphne, no Sweetheart, no My little poppet. Everything about him was fawn and epicurean but he was lacking in passion. Biding himself. He stuck the brass-topped poker into her and though she was refusing, she was at the same time whittling away to her pussy’s delight. All of a sudden he hit her, made her sit up and eat a cardamom seed. They had a supply in a plastic bag. Then she cried, got the sniffles so that I had to bring them together. She said he had put her to sleep once for three days and that she never wanted to re-live that. There were little miaows coming out of her, soft and sussural and it was very harmless the whole occasion, with me there like some sort of statue, my stockings rolled down but otherwise clad. I thought I’d better do something so I made a sort of platform with the mirrored cushions and drew them there, as to a hammock, making their foreheads adhere, ordaining them to kiss by means of the nostrils like Eskimos. I lay next to them and said things to them to egg them on. I had to rack my brain, remember my halcyon nights. I had only to gurgle, to approve, to disapprove, to ask for a big finger or a big toe for him to reach out and acknowledge me. I thought I was making a hit with him. I had only to pinch her for him to applaud and