Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
Ash
I got home that night and started my bedtime routine, only to find our group WhatsApp chat had gone wild. I started reading through the messages and almost choked on my toothpaste when I did. I typed back quickly.
Ash: NO ! I am not having sex with this Maximillian Adam.
Yo: But maybe Maximillian Adam is finally the guy to break the curse and give you orgasms.
Charlie: Screaming-so-loudly-they-called-the-cops orgasms!
Sarah: Ten orgasms!
Yo: Lose-consciousness orgasms.
Melusi: Not to mention the squirting ones.
Ash: OMG ! Stop saying orgasm.
Yo: We’re not joking.
Ash: I know you’re not! And, believe me, I’m deeply disturbed.
Melusi: We’ve all taken a vote, and we all agree that you need to have sex with this guy.
Russ: Even I think you should have sex with him.
Ash: Guys! I am not having sex with him.
Melusi: Marcel agrees!
Ash: Of course you’ve told Marcel already!
Melusi: I think it’s a sign from the universe or something like that.
Ash: What is?
Melusi: Think about it. What are the chances of hearing two stories about him while sitting at a restaurant under his office?
Yo: Not to mention he’s from abroad. Like we were saying earlier!
Ash: Nope! I’m turning my phone off now. I have an early morning meeting and I need to sleep off Santa’s Little Helper. Love you all, but NO . I am not having sex with this mysterious man who may or may not own llamas!
Yo: I think it’s hot he owns llamas.
Ash: We don’t even know if he owns llamas.
Charlie: They make excellent watchdogs, like geese.
Sarah: Don’t they spit at you?
Frank: That’s right! They do. They fucking spit.
Melusi: Hahah!
Russ: Lol
Charlie: Beware! The guard dog—it spits.
I laughed, despite myself. But I was glad the conversation had moved on from squirting to spitting. I rubbed Petal’s head and she purred next to me.
Sarah: But seriously, have sex with him.
Ash: Guys, those stories are ridiculous. Rumors! Do you really believe them? It’s not possible to come ten times and no one screams that loudly during sex unless they are in a porno.
Frank: Okay, you do have a point there.
Charlie: And I did read an article about squirting actually just being peeing.
Frank: NOOO .
Yo: I need to read that!
Melusi: Stop. Please.
Sarah: I think the most far-fetched thing about the story is the llamas, personally. Apparently, you can do all sorts of things if you practice tantra.
Ash: I’m going, guys. I need my rest. I have Sebastian first thing in the morning, and you know what he’s like before his micro-dosed mushrooms have kicked in.
Russ: You deserve a medal for working with him. The other day he told me to “make the match cuts match like a motherfucker and not feel like jump cuts.”
Ash: Hey, don’t trash talk my work hubby.
Russ: Hahah! Sorry.
Sarah: You know, if he wasn’t really married, maybe you two could actually be husband and wife.
Ash: Oh God NO ! I would hate to be married to him. He would drive me insane. Working with him is fine, thanks. Got to go. Bye, guys.
I plugged my phone in to charge and walked onto my small balcony, Petal close behind me. The wind wasn’t howling, which was a miracle for Cape Town, especially perched up here on the mountain. I had the best view. In front of me were the bent-over trees that had been disfigured like little old men leaning over walking sticks from the years of gale-force winds. Beyond that, further down the hill, was the sea, its horizon dotted with the lights from cargo ships, and to my right, a perfect view of Lion’s Head mountain.
But tonight, I wasn’t able to appreciate my views like I normally did. Tonight my thoughts were very much elsewhere. Even though I wouldn’t admit it to my friends, I was thinking about Maximillian Adam. More specifically, whether or not all those rumors were true. No one could be that good at sex, could they? But I was intrigued.
I suppose there was something about him that had had me intrigued long before tonight’s very revealing eavesdropping. Plus he also liked cheese, and in my book, that always said a lot about a person. I had to admit it—there was just something about Maximillian Adam, and I had a sudden urge to email him, not that he would respond at this hour. I paused for a while and thought about it, but before my brain had even made the decision, my fingers were already tapping away on the screen.
Dear Maximillian,
Just come back from eating springbok sushi and drinking Santa’s Little Helpers—sound familiar?
I almost jumped when a response came back immediately.
Dear Leigh,
You should have come upstairs and said “hi.” I’m still here.
A bolt of something deliciously warm shot through me. The idea that he’d been right there was weirdly thrilling.
Dear Maximillian,
Late night at the office? I hope it’s not our job that’s keeping you up?
Dear Leigh,
Not at all. I didn’t feel like commuting home in the busy traffic to Noordhoek, so stayed to work a little longer, but then I got very distracted with something that came up.
Came up? My thoughts immediately plunged into the gutter. Very distracted? Another gutter thought. But he had confirmed part of the rumor to be true. Perfect opportunity to pry further.
Noordhoek? That’s a long drive home.
I’d dropped the formal Dear Maximillian now. So had he.
I’ve been thinking of moving my office there actually.
———
Well, it would make sense with the long commute.
———
And also the people in this office park can be a little intrusive, to be honest.
Intrusive? My thoughts plummeted right back to that now well-visited gutter. Intrusive, as in calling the police because you were making a woman scream so loudly during sex that you had people concerned . Perhaps there was some truth to these rumors after all? I continued to test the waters.
So Noordhoek—are you a horse rider?
It was a perfectly good question: everyone in Noordhoek owned horses. It was the kind of place that instead of normal traffic signs it had horse signs in the road to remind you that you may just bump into one in the traffic.
Never been a horse rider! But I do keep chickens, which I suppose makes me a total Noordhoek cliché.
This was it, my in.
Hahah! Total cliché. And I never took you as someone who conformed. You’re going to have to break out of it. I suggest owning something more unexpected, like, I don’t know, an ostrich, kangaroo, or even a llama.
Or I could get a Balkan donkey and invite you over to make cheese?
I nearly fell off my chair as my heart—be still, beating heart, be still—jumped into my throat. Was he flirting with me? This felt like flirting. Yes! This absolutely, one hundred per cent felt like hardcore flirting!
I leaned forward in my chair and stared at my phone. Petal seemed to have sensed something was up, as she looked at me with big, wide, expectant eyes.
“Should I flirt back?” I asked her and she immediately turned her back on me and started walking away.
I nodded to myself. “I know. You’re right.” I put the phone down on the coffee table next to me. The answer was no, I should not be flirting back. Flirting never ended well. Besides, detox !
But this wasn’t just any guy. This was Maximillian Adam. A man who may or may not be an utter sex god. A guy who may or may not own llamas. Who talked cheese to me like no one had ever talked cheese to me before. Funny, intelligent, successful, so nice to talk to . . .
“Oh, fuck it,” I said out loud, and grabbed my phone off the coffee table, typing:
I’m not sure I’d enjoy donkey milking. How about you make the cheese and I’ll eat it?
———
I’m sure that can be arranged.
There was a moment of silence between us. I sensed a mutual holding back. We were poised at a moment where certain things could be said. Certain things that once said could not be unsaid and would cross a line. I held back. He held back. He finally broke the holding pattern.
I should drive home at some stage tonight, so I better get off my email. Really nice chatting to you, though. I always enjoy it. Have a great night, Leigh, and hopefully we’ll speak soon.
His sudden sweetness made my heart actually feel as if it was fluttering.
Yes, I always enjoy our chats too. Drive safely, Max.
———
Night, Leigh.
———
Night, Max.
I put my phone down and couldn’t help but notice how warm and tingly my body felt. God, maybe this Maximillian could be the one to break the curse after all, even if that’s not what the psychic had said . . .
Five years ago, we’d thrown an engagement party for Sarah and Russ, and because they’d said no strippers, we’d thought up some other creative entertainment for the night. This had resulted in us hiring an Elvis impersonator, an “illusionist”—whose only illusion was calling himself an illusionist—and the worst-rated tarot-card reader in Cape Town.
The evening was a total hoot, the illusionist had tried to make the Elvis impersonator disappear, which had not worked, and the Elvis impersonator had been so fun that he managed to turn the party into a massive sing-a-long.
Then there was the Tarot reader who’d told Sarah she would probably only get married much later on in life, if ever. Who’d told Melusi that the right woman would come along for him, and told Russ that the right man would come along for him. And then she’d come to me . . .
She’d shuffled the cards intently, eyes closed, humming to herself. I’ll give her this: the whole thing looked very authentic, right down to the Bohemian-style scarf she’d tied round her head, and the long necklaces with crystals and what looked like sharks’ teeth.
“I’m going to do the Celtic spread with you. It tells us so much more, and you are a more complicated case,” she’d said in this strange, mystical-sounding accent.
“Oh, am I?” I’d winked at my friends, waiting for her to tell me what this “complication” was.
She started putting the cards down dramatically and we all stifled giggles.
“I can see that you have been living under a great curse, and you have not been able to break it,” she’d said.
I’d felt hot and cold all at once.
“What do you mean?” I asked for clarification.
“Mmmm, yes, a very, very strong curse that can’t easily be broken,” she’d said.
“It can’t?” I’d repeated slowly. By this stage, I was hanging on her words, and so were my friends.
“Mmmmmm, I see now,” she’d said, waving her hands around the cards as if they had now transformed into a crystal ball.
“What do you see? What do you see?” I jumped in. My friends had moved closer too. It was clear we were all thinking the exact same thing.
“Mmmm, this curse has cost you great pain over the years.”
“Tell us more,” Melusi half shouted, waving at the cards.
“But you are trying to lift the curse in the wrong way.”
“What should I do?” I sounded quite frantic now. I was fully invested in this woman’s words, despite her numerous one-star ratings.
“You have to go back to the beginning, to where the curse was cast. You can only undo the curse at the source.”
“At the . . . What does that mean?” Yo asked. She looked as if she was the most taken in by all of this.
“Whoever, or whatever circumstance caused the curse, you must go back and redo what wrong was done in order to undo it.”
I widened my eyes and looked at my friends. Their eyes were as wide as mine.
“That means . . .” Russ started.
“Logan M. McAdam Junior,” Sarah concluded.
That had been the second time only that I’d actually searched for him. I wasn’t sure I believed in going back to the source to break the curse, but of course, after receiving information like that, one couldn’t help one’s curiosity.
I hadn’t found him. I’d searched on social media, even called some old school friends. But nothing. It was as if he’d dropped off the face of the planet. There would be no going back to the source, even if I’d wanted to. Ever.