Pongo #31

Martaro

I show her inside in soft focus, the black lines around the furniture trembling before me. Five years of just internet chatting and she pops up now, all coffeecup eyes and treacle hair, the same as ever. I knock a pile of post onto the floor as we pass.

"So where is she then? With a scrunched nose she brushes a finger along the frame of a signed picture of Pucha Picha on the wall, a gift from the girl herself before she retired. A lot of Picha's fans don't actually realize that she doesn't make movies anymore, let alone that the private persona of the "Triple Torpedo franchise star, Lorta Banshellam, is nigh-on reclusive, and spends most of her time locked away in a mansion carved from her earnings. She always was damned shy, from introductory masturbation cameo in "Munch Mistresses VII to the full-on antics of her later works. On camera, a squirting Fury, off, blushed like a work experience tea girl. We got on well.

"What are you doing here Saral?
"I've come to see my twin brother after all this time, she smiles deviously. "You know, chat rooms aren't the same as talking in person. When you give someone a hug online, it's just a dancing icon ' a smiley face moving backwards and forwards with its arms out. Whereas when you hug a real person, all warm and pulsing¦ She moves towards me and I stiffen like a scared dog as her elf-skinny arms wrap
around me like ivy.

"Saral -
"¦well then, it's a whole different story.

She nuzzles into my chest. We have never even been close to identical. I had grown to six feet by the end of school, while she remained scoopable at five feet five from fifteen onwards. As her hair tickles my chin, I feel my stomach begin a slow-motion somersault, a perfect ten, and nausea bubble within me. I break out of the armlock.

"Why now?
"Man, you sound pissy today, she pouts, big-eyed, before picking up a cup from the sideboard and holding it out like a scheming Oliver Twist. "Tea?
Obediently, I go into the kitchen. A good enough excuse to cool off in private. The kettle boils and I choose two Assam bags, inhaling as the water makes them scream their spices.
There is a muffled question from next door.
"Hmm?
"I asked you where she was.
"Who?
"This girlfriend of yours. The porno star. That her on the wall?
"No, that's someone else. I decide not to update her fully on the platonic nature of my relationship with Miffy. Knowledge being power and all that.
"How bout her?
"Whoever you're pointing at, and if you remember, I can't see because I'm making you the tea you requested, it won't be her. I don't have her picture up here.
Silence. I walk through, trying to level the cups. A drop still splashes on me.
"Sorr-ree. It's hard to believe she's not still the stroppy mid-teen stop-out that drove our mother insane. Only the absence of uniform and spots give it away.

"Miss me? she suddenly beams, taking a cup from my hand. "I've been lots of places. Singapore, Bali, Prague. Ask me anything.
"Does Mum know you're here?
"Don't be silly. I haven't spoken to her in years and I don't intend to start now.

As she sips, despite the whine of her voice and the plain awfulness of her conversation, I catch myself looking at her all over again. The swell of her cheeks as she giggles, sputtering tea across my carpet, the whip of her eyebrows switching her expression in an instant from Mary to minx. She'd be such a good actor, I think.

"Well I missed you, even if you didn't miss me, you swine, she grins, smoothing her skinny jeans and fitfitfitted shirt. Pats my knee.

I grunt. She may as well have pissed a circle around me.

"Singapore, she says, "was beautiful. They all look the same of course, the Singaporeans. I know a lot of people say that as a racist thing, but it's true, and those same Singaporers that look the same as each other, they look the same as the Japanese, and the Indonesian, and the Chinese and the Vietnamese. They all do. I dunno how they get married or anything. How would you choose a wife from them all looking the same?
My eyelids feel heavy. I want her to shut up, but she continues spewing forth like a mudslide.
"You should have been there in Düsseldorf, Marty. The German boys just went wild for a British girl abroad. Kinky devils.
"I don't see anything particularly kinky about British girls.
"You're just numbed out from filming porno all day every day.
"I don't want to know what you got up to in and out of Europe -
"In and out IN Europe, you '
"SARAL! Her tea goes flying as my fists hit the tabletop.

The silence goes on for a solid minute. Both of us know. Both of us know everything. They say that twins have telepathy. Well I'd say they don't, at least no more than close friends or sparring partners know what each other is thinking. It's something you acquire after knowing someone a while, that's all, and I can see the perfectly oiled cogs of Saral's brain whizzing round, trying to generate some solution to this black hole of sound and warmth. You half expect her eyes to roll like fruit machine wheels, cherries to bananas to dollar signs to cherries. That or her mouth to drop open and a slip of paper to be sat on her tongue with instructions as to what to do next written on it.

"You know, Marty, I hate it. The reason I go on about my travelling so much is because it's the only brief respite I have from facing reality. Every day in a different country, it's like a fresh start.

What's this? Some new intricate tactic to win me over, no doubt, but the technique is lost on me.

"I'm sorry. I turn up here unannounced and just expect you to invite me in for tea, or to put me up. It's not fair, and I know it. All of this yanking your chain, this smiling to get my own way, it's too addictive. I'm¦I'm very worried I can't stop.
"Can't stop what? I catch myself asking.
"Marty, I'm sorry. She turns away as she says it, leaving me to decide on the sincerity of her expression. "I did a lot of things out there, but they didn't bring me any pleasure, not really.
"No?
"No, I just felt like I was fucking five again, playing other people for the suckers they were, with a guileless expression and a heelclick. I told some very important people in those countries some very big lies, just to get into their parties, or to get the front of the queue. I was stood, holding a martini at some ambassador's reception, and I realised it wasn't making me happy. More to the point, I realised that other people were unhappy as a result of me. Not just the real Duchess of Consigny shivering outside the velvet rope, protesting her name, but the girl in sixth form who should have gone out with Kendry Birill instead of me: the girl who was really a lesbian and not just one to get the girl everybody wanted. I hated every second of fucking Kendry, but I wanted to be able to tell them all I'd done it, especially the boys, and so I did it. Then there was the time I ' oh, Marty, you don't want to hear all this crap. I didn't come round to dump a confession on you.
"You didn't? I ask coolly.
"No. I came to say goodbye.
"Why? Off to Brazil? Ecuador? Tibet? Off on another fuckfest jaunt? I can hear my voice crack.
"This isn't good anymore, Marty. We used to be friends.
"Where are you going Saral?
"Nowhere in particular, but I can't see you again. It's ' it's inappropriate.
"What do you mean? Of course I know what she means.
"You know, Marty, you know!

We have both stood up during this last exchange, as if some hand has levitated us without our consent. She is standing, all five foot five of her, with fists curled at her sides and breasts high and shaking.

"No, it's funny, but actually, I DON'T know, Saral. How did we go from you doing your flirty schoolgirl act and acting like you actually want to see me to you pulling a stunt like pretending to leave forever? I don't know what your mind is like to live in, Saral, but I think I'll stay ignorant on that. I imagine it's a junkheap, or a library in disarray, or a rat's nest. I don't know, and I don't care. Why did you come back?

"I love you! she cries, and a teardrop skis down her perfect cheek.

There it is. There's the trick. I should have known. I did know she'd try that, but I should have been prepared. Instead, fuck it, the tear works its alchemy on my cock, and I know she has seen.

She's heading towards the door now, her final shot to camera planned as a beautiful close-up of her pinkened (not red) eyes. She's going to leave me like this, her crying will stop a second outside the door, and then she's going to have a good laugh about me helplessly jacking off in awful loneliness. The bitch knows I'm not with anyone. She knows that it's only her and never her. And because I cannot bear it any longer, I take my revenge. I grab her by the hair and kiss her hard.

"Mmph! she protests, horrified. I will have this before she goes. I will have this much. My tongue, like a determined barracuda, forces her own down into the floor of her mouth (funny, we hear so much about the roof, while the floor is more or less ignored), and I drink in every time she has turned on the waterworks to wind me up, every time she has walked past me naked, complaining that her breasts ache, every time she has told me intimate details of nights in Dutch leather clubs. With every related in and out, my tongue fences in, then out. I ravish her mouth, leech out her breath and finally exit, leaving her mouth as wide as a jam jar neck, her breathing desperate and her eyes flushing out the crocodile tears with real. She stares. She stares.

"Now fuck off, I tell her. And God bless her, after more than twenty years of torturing me, she does.