Brian wasn’t much of a man for computers. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see their usefulness. In times of loneliness or overdue assignments they could be quite helpful. But in the list of priorities he kept pinned to the insides of his eyelids spend time with computers did not figure. Women did, and drinking, and maintaining popularity amongst my peers, and although he rarely admitted it (except when under the influence of one of the other three) he was rather partial to cooking too.
Computers had a place in his life, but not a big place. He e-mailed regularly, understood that www. delicious.com was a European cooking site, and www.deliciouxxx.com was not, and on occasion used the machine in his little brother’s room to release his inner geek, but that was as far as it went. Never, not even once, had Brian entertained the thought that a computer might change his life. And then it did.
Local was the word that first caught his eye as he scrolled down his Hotmail inbox, sorting the substance from the spam. Then Sex. Then Free. There were any number of other messages that might have called him; promises of increased size, greater staying power, thicker hair or easier access to credit, but they were too slick, too automatic, too carefully translated from the original Eastern European dialect to lodge in his brain. Measured against them, the simple modesty of this message screamed out to him. No desperate capitals, no exclamation marks, no promises—just the everyday language his mother might have used, though mercifully the phone number offered was not hers.
Hi, I’m Eileen, and I’m offering free, local sex. Click me, please.
Brian clicked.
I’m interested in making you happy. Call this number for a free trial, and if we get along, well who knows?
Local was important. Local was no awkward Ghanaian call code on the next phone bill. Local was no accent, no barrier to imagination. Local was a girl-next-door fantasy just waiting to be indulged.
Brian dialled.
‘Hello.’ The voice was young and innocent, or that of a fifty-three-year-old with an acting background, saving to take her recently laid off husband for a surprise trip to the Gold Coast. The tingle of the illicit teased his deeper instincts as he leaned back against the bed head and wriggled the phone to a more comfortable position.
‘Yeah, hi, I’m Kieren. I saw your ad on the internet.’
‘Hello, Kieren. What can I do for you?’
‘Well, ah, what are ya wearing?’ It seemed as good a place as any to start. There was a certain ice to be broken first, that was only natural. ‘This isn’t costing me is it?’
‘Only for the call.’
‘Right.’
‘You sound strong to me,’ the sweet voice of commerce continued. ‘I like strong men. Do you have strong hands?’
‘Well yeah, you know. Do some weights and that.’
‘Strong gentle hands I bet.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
Although to be honest it wasn’t a place Brian was all that comfortable going. This wasn’t about him. This was the sort of experience best enjoyed with the mind and body disconnected. A professional should have known that.
‘Just tell me what you’re wearing.’
‘What would you like me to be wearing, Kieren?’ The voice lowered a touch, as if the pimp at the controls had hit ‘seductive’ on the voice synthesiser.
‘Just tell me.’
‘Well I’m sitting on my bed, and I’m wearing a tank top, without a bra, um it’s white, and it matches my panties. Is this good Kieren?’
Yes was the answer to that question, and No was too, for without warning Brian found himself caught in the grip of the strangest feeling. As much as he tried to access that portion of his mind where the impossible could be believed and the morally untenable happily embraced, somehow it eluded him. And that was strange enough in itself, for it took up a not inconsiderable fraction of his brain, and the neurological pathways leading there were well established.
But there was more. Something in that voice, its closeness, its familiarity, drew his eye down his pathway, past his stained wood letterbox to the suburbs beyond, where surely she now sat, mobile to her ear, financial desperation set down beside her. It wasn’t guilt Brian felt when he thought of her, or even sympathy.
‘Is this good Kieren?’
Leave me out of this, he wanted to say. You do your job, I’ll do mine. If I wanted to chat I’d have rung Youthline.
‘Yes, yes it’s good.’ Brian was having real doubts now. He had broken the first rule of fantasy. She was real to him, and how could that possibly work? How could he be excited by someone who was real?
‘You sound excited Kieren,’ the terrible, somehow familiar voice continued; and that was so obviously untrue Brian could barely keep the mobile to his ear. A weaker man might have admitted defeat, but Brian came from stronger stock than that.
Never start a job you’re not prepared to finish, as his good dad said (when it suited him) and dammit, Dad was right. What’s more, hanging up meant letting go of the voice on the other end, and the sorry truth was, it had a hold on him.
So Brian closed his eyes and tried hard to concentrate. What was that she was saying now? Was that a television he could hear in the background?
‘I’m taking my top off now, Kieren. Can you hear that?’
He could, and he could imagine it too, but it didn’t make him feel excited at all, not the way he would have liked. It made him feel distant, and, in the strangest way imaginable, dirty.
‘Um, yes, wait, just wait a sec,’ Brian pleaded, knowing how pathetic he must sound but seeing no other option.
‘Is there something wrong?’
‘I’m just, I’m just not ready. Say something else.’
‘What?’
‘Something that hasn’t got anything to do with sex. Just tell me something about yourself. Tell me what you like. Tell me about your hobbies.’
‘I don’t think I should do that,’ the voice replied, after the shortest of hesitations.
‘Why not?’
‘That’s not really how it works. That would be dangerous.’
‘You can trust me.’
‘No I can’t. I bet you haven’t even told me your real name.’
‘I will, if you agree to meet me.’ He didn’t know why he had said that. Something was driving him on, something he didn’t understand.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that. Come on, let’s just forget about it and go back to talking dirty.’
‘I’ll pay,’ Brian tried.
‘Look, I think it’s best I hang up now,’ the voice told him.
‘No, don’t—’ but Brian’s plea was interrupted by a second voice on the other end of the phone, somewhere in the background.
‘Juliet? What are you doing?’
‘I’m on the phone.’
‘Yes, but you said you’d—’
‘Sorry.’
The phone went dead, and a very startled Brian tried to make sense of the swirling confusion inside his head. That voice, that other voice, he recognised it, but where from? He frantically searched his brain. The answer came to him with a thud, the sort of shock that could send nascent love and uncertain excitement hurrying back down the same black hole where earlier arousal had retreated.
But as he lay there, the phone still in his hand, his heartbeat easing back to a canter, a new and dreadful truth dawned upon him. Juliet. He had a name now, and more. Juliet-friend-of-Malcolm. Malcolm, that little prick from the party, with his smartarse questions and perverted research. How hard could it be to track her down? The excitement of that thought now took hold of Brian’s brain, in the remarkable absence of the obvious question. Why? Why would he want to?
And the reason the question wasn’t asked was the reason so many queries go unproposed. Brian, although he was in no position to recognise the condition, was in the grip of the first stage of that thing we call love. A whole new form of attraction. Deep, unseen, disturbing. At that very moment the reverberations began, harmonising from cell to cell, sending their message of love unseen through the blood, stiffening the sinews and clouding the brain. And Brian was defenceless against the invasion. All he could do was be aware of the strange new thoughts floating through his head. Maybe this had been a lucky break.