Friday #2
“To say, ‘I’m horny let’s bone’?” asked Jennifer in a tone that suggested she’d rather never hear or speak that particular combination of words ever again.
“Exactly.”
Jennifer shrugged. “You could have done that, though.”
“Sorry. What?” This was veering further and further off-script as they went. Audrey had come in expecting to be told to leave, repeatedly. Not to be told that she could come back any time for a casual hookup.
“I mean, I never said this had to be one way. There is absolutely nothing stopping you showing up at my office and saying, Hi, I’m at a bit of a loose end, do you fancy bending me over and fucking me so hard I piss myself’?”
“I’m not sure I’d put it quite like that.”
“Well”—Jennifer gave a you-do-you gesture—“you can always take your pants off again.”
“That was once. And there was context. And, for the record, I’m not super into the hard fucking thing?”
“Oh? Good to know.”
“I mean,” Audrey babbled, “a finger’s fine. But…I don’t really like. Anything more. Or hard. In there. It just feels weird.”
“Then say, ‘I’m at a bit of a loose end, do you fancy bending over and I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll piss yourself’?”
Okay, off-script no longer covered it. “Must there be piss involved?”
“No, Audrey.” It was Jennifer’s most sardonic voice and most sardonic face, both of which were extremely sardonic. “The piss is optional.”
“Okay, good.” And then the traitorous part of Audrey that hated her and didn’t want her to have nice things seized control of her vocal chords and added, “But you don’t actually mean it, though?”
“You’re really hung up on this piss thing aren’t you?”
“Not the piss,” Audrey kind of yelled. Realising a fraction too late that Jennifer was taking the—well, taking the mickey. “You wouldn’t really be okay if I showed up at your workplace and was like, ‘Do you want to have sex now?’”
“Try me,” suggested Jennifer.
“Now?”
“Well isn’t that what all this is about?”
“But what if you’re busy or…or not in the mood or…”
“Then I’ll say, ‘I’m busy,’ or, ‘Not in the mood.’ This isn’t complicated. Don’t make it complicated.”
Jennifer was right. There was no need to make this complicated. And while Audrey wasn’t keen on being used for sex, having a mutual using-for-sex agreement felt a lot more equitable.
Also hot.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m at a loose end.”
* * *
After what wound up being slightly more than ten minutes of disarranging Jennifer’s sheets (although this time they had at least removed the quilt to a safer distance), Audrey got up, smoothed out her dress, and made polite I-should-be-going noises.
“Will you be around for the weekend?” asked Jennifer with way more casualness than she’d earned.
“Isn’t that your call?”
Jennifer gave her a look of infuriating nonchalance. “The Lodge is booked for the whole run. You can have your room if you want it.”
Chances were, this was as close to an invitation as Audrey was going to get. “Yeah,” she said, “okay.”
“Besides, I assume you’ll want to catch up with the granny.”
Okay, maybe that was as close to an invitation as she was going to get. “I thought you told me to stop doing that.”
Jennifer was still radiating a studied apathy. “Where you’re concerned, Lane, I’ve learned that telling you not to do things doesn’t get me very far.”
Studied apathy was not in Audrey’s repertoire. She stared at Jennifer so hard it was practically a gawp. “Seriously? You’re letting me do this?”
“I’m admitting I can’t be fucked to stop you.”
“Jennifer,” Audrey exclaimed, a little embarrassed at how gleeful she sounded. “I would hug you but—”
“But I’d bite your fucking nose off.”
Audrey touched her nose protectively. “I mean, I wasn’t going to say that specifically. But basically yes.”
“I do get it.” Postcoital-Jennifer was definitely the most reasonable Jennifer. “I know there’s a story here and I know you want to follow it. I can’t let you publish it, though.”
This was more than Audrey had ever expected and was beginning to sound almost disturbingly out of character. “Who are you and what have you done with Jennifer Hallet?”
“What can I say, you wore me down. Blame the sex.”
All things considered, Audrey would rather not have blamed the sex. That—as she and Gavin had discussed at length—went to some bad places integrity-wise. “Can I blame something else instead?” she asked. “Like my infuriating but secretly charming persistence?”
Jennifer Hallet hauled herself out of bed, made rather less effort to tidy herself up than Audrey had made, and went back to her desk. “If you like. Just keep me in the loop.”
Deciding that it was best to quit while she actually was ahead for once, Audrey left Jennifer to whatever important producer work she had to do and returned to her room for a shower.
If she was going to talk to Doris, and since it was actually still pretty early in the evening, there wasn’t really much reason not to talk to Doris, it would be polite to do so while not smelling intensely of fuck.
“Is everything all right?” asked Doris when Audrey knocked on her door.
“Yes,” said Audrey, and then feeling at least some need to explain she added, “it’s Audrey.”
The door creaked open an inch. “Still around then?”
“Yeah. I think Jennifer sees me as some kind of lucky charm.”
“I think it’s simpler than that dear,” replied Doris. “I think she just likes you. Now, what do you want?”
That was probably more of an essay question than it had been intended to be. “Lots of things, but mostly I…I guess I just want to hear more about your life. If there’s any more to tell.”
“I’m nearly a hundred,” Doris pointed out. “There’s always more to tell.”
Which made Audrey feel awful, because as fully-rounded a person as she knew Doris was, there was a very specific more she was interested in. “I was actually wondering…”
“If there was more to tell about Her?” asked Doris, with audible capitalisation.
And Audrey just nodded, a little abashed.
The door closed. And for a moment Audrey worried that she’d blown it. Or perhaps not even blown it, just unnecessarily upset a nice old lady who’d done nothing to really deserve upsetting. Not that anybody deserved upsetting, really.
After a moment, though, it opened again and Doris stood there looking—not quite grave, but serious. “You’d better come in.”
So Audrey came in. Much like in Jennifer’s trailer there was nowhere to sit but the bed, so that’s where Audrey sat, with Doris next to her looking straight ahead. And for a while they remained quiet, Audrey not wanting to speak and Doris looking for words.
“I know how you feel,” said Doris. “Because it gets you like that. She gets you like that. I’ve not thought about her—no, that’s a lie—I’ve not talked about her in years, but now I have, she’s everywhere all over again.”
“I’m sorry,” replied Audrey. And she was. Although not so sorry that she didn’t also want to hear whatever it was Doris was going to tell her next.
“Don’t be. It’s been good in a way, remembering. And as it happens I did see her again, after I left Patchley. Just a couple of times.”
And Audrey sat quietly and listened.