“Keep singing,” I whisper, “keep singing.” I move behind her. My hands creep around her and begin to undo her high-collared blouse, button by button. Her breasts spill forward, pushed up by the bra, femininity under wraps. My long fingers reach for her nipples. Her breath falls short, but she keeps on singing.
I kneel before her, her breasts open to the air, the rest of her body covered by her long velvet dress. I cup her breasts and squeeze them together. I am a maestro. There is nothing hesitant as I take a nipple into my mouth, sucking hard, biting the blood to the surface.
We topple to the ground. She keeps her face averted, her eyes staring upward as she thrills along with the bass line. My mouth caresses her entire body. She will not look at me. She seems far away, her focus carried away by her magnificent voice. To me it feels as if the range and resonance of her voice is fusing with the extraordinary breasts that tumble to either side of her belly. I can feel her voice vibrating through her skin. The scale of her is operatic, her taste salty and Wagnerian, her smell, her sweat, the texture of her skin, an immeasurable wealth of orchestration.
“Quin, take me, take me…”
I lift my hand from between her thighs, her profile barely visible through her thick black bush.
“Keep singing.”
I feel her welling up under my tongue, as she thrusts, out of control, like a bird flapping madly in a cage. I keep her pinned by my mouth, playing her like an instrument. She crouches, her skin shiny, lit by the valves, her lips pulled back like some majestic creature, a sphinx, an olive-skinned Madonna. She is singing the scales of an octave. She is close to screaming, but her breath comes in perfect pitch—middle C, D, E, F sharp. The carpet grates under her knees as, oblivious, she arches in a final climactic spasm. She traverses two full octaves in one glorious shriek.
The sound of her coming rips through the back of my head in streams of pure color as I ejaculate all over the rug. It is like John Cage in a thunderstorm, like wind through a forest. I’ve never heard an orgasm like it. All my fears, all my doubts evaporate for three glorious minutes. And I, Quin, know then why I had been put on earth.
That night I made love to her four times. By the third time, I knew I had to get those notes down before they evaporated forever. I keep a tape recorder behind the couch, ready to record the odd inspired moment.
I’ll always remember it. Felicity was on her front, lips pressed against the carpet, pouting, pushed forward. She was breathing in short gasps. There was a pillow under her belly so her ass jutted up, the two pale orbs spread, her pussy glistening under the hair. Both of us were animal now. We existed beyond skin. No album notes, nothing to drag us into identity, just the heat and the smell and the sex.
I looked back over my shoulder and pressed the record button with my left toe. She never noticed a thing.
MACK
I still can’t believe it. Like this chick, this housewife, spends one night with the Wolf, and that’s it, bang! Her whole universe, microscopic though it may be, is upended. She goes home, packs two suitcases and a trunk full of stuffed toys, hires a taxi and leaves a note scrawled in crayon for her husband of ten years. She was on a mission, I tell you. I know these women. A man’s persona is ultimately his most private territory. So what does this witch go and do? She treads all over Quin, invading his very soul.
First it was the shoes. For ten years Quin had been wearing the same pair of tennis shoes. Footwear, he believed, should remain utilitarian, not decorative. An admirable sentiment, if not a bit dated, but I respected it anyway.
Two months after moving in, that bitch had him wearing brogues, for Christ’s sake. I caught him tiptoeing down the corridor, shoes in hand, blisters all over his feet. I figured she must be some chick, I mean this guy had had the best of them, you know, models, dancers, the usual band molls. For Quin to take up shoes she had to have something special.
“Quin, what’s this chick got on you?”
He nods slowly in that reptilian way of his and says, “Music.”
That’s all, like a guru or some enlightened mystic. He had us all fooled. Speaking as an old fool, I know.
Next thing he’s coming to work in a suit, as if this is the eighties or something. Listen, I’ve got nothing against the corporate, especially corporate money—it keeps the drugs rolling in. But I like to keep suits in the conference room, not the studios. A tie at two a.m. makes the bands nervous.
Besides, it made Quin look like an exotic spider of the toxic variety—not a great look. So I ask him to leave the suit at home. He agrees but tells me that he’s got no control, the needle runs haywire when she opens her mouth. Pure sound, he tells me—like he doesn’t even hear the words, just the tone of her voice.
Great, I think. He’s finally cracked and we have an album to record by December. I’m telling you, at this point in history my ponytail is going gray.
Like I thought, she worked her alchemy on him. She moved in, washed the curtains, sorted out the wardrobe and even weeded the concrete courtyard, for Christ’s sake. Gone were the seventies relics, the stashes of joint butts, torn beanbags, used guitar picks.
She threw out four hundred copies of Stereosound, Audiophile and LA Ears.
She dismantled his workbench and insisted that it be reassembled in the back shed.
She even scrubbed the walls. The place lost that comfortable nicotine-yellow hue. It made me edgy just walking in. It was so white you felt like donning shades. Not the domain of a nocturnal creature like Quin. Like luxury is not an issue here, unless you count the luxury of sinking into a worn leather couch, comfortably caved in from many a stoned drummer sinking his fat ass down into the upholstery.
Even the ceiling didn’t escape the brutality of her scrubbing brush. Edwardian, Quin tells me, staring up at the exposed plaster swirls, as if he ever fucking cared before. Edwardian! I’m telling you, I felt like hanging garlic around my neck in case it was catching. Funny thing is, I never actually met her at the house. Quin used to take me around
only when she was out. Not that I’m suggesting he was scared of her or anything. Just getting the various harmonics of his life in tune. Cautious bastard, I thought, you know how women can just throw your life into disarray. Especially if you’re one of the great unwashed, unmarried brethren. You know, secretly I think I did want it to work. Like there might be hope for us all.
Then she did something that even I found hard to forgive. He’d given her access to the lounge room. The sacred listening site. Fatal mistake. I mean the shrine of sound was in there, stacked up on four milk crates, valves gleaming, turntable balancing on oxygen-free wires. Quin’s very sanctum. His inner ear. See, women think that anything that’s not to do with them, or that’s not income-generating, is just a hobby. They don’t understand or appreciate the nuances of obsession, especially when it comes to inanimate objects. Like record players. Quin told me he caught her standing over the machine, eyes gleaming like an insane lighthouse, duster at the ready. He nearly freaked, but then she turns around and says, “But how was I to know?”, her voice alone sending him into a crippling paradox of lust and forgiveness.
Man, did he have it bad.
QUIN