Miss Right and the Wrong Guy

"Danny?"
Alec barely heard the woman's voice above the noise - it was Saturday
night and Cool Catz was throbbing - and until she touched his elbow he
naturally assumed she was speaking to someone else. He looked around
and saw a young woman smiling expectantly. She was tall and slim and
possessed the kind of long, silky golden hair that made Alec think
longingly of Harmony Hairspray commercials and the towering,
unobtainable girlfriends of school football captains.
"It's Danny isn't it?"
There was nothing hesitent in that smile, no beginings of doubt.
Whoever she was she was utterly convinced that Alec was someone
else.
"Remember me?" she asked. She stepped back and opened her arms, as if
presenting herself to an audience. "Samantha - from the first aid
course!"
Alec laughed, a touch regretfully. He was about to explain that she
had made a mistake when she suddenly threw her arms around his neck and
hugged him fiercly. Her smell was sweet and dark and intoxicating, the
closeness of her a moment of abrupt and urgent excitement.
"It's great to see you again," she whispered, her moist lips brushing
against his earlobes. She drew her head back and smiled into his eyes,
her fingers dovetailed around the back of his neck. "Bet you thought
you'd seen the last of me, eh?"
"Well&;#8230;"
"Are you still with that girl, that Julie girl?"
"No," Alec said. This was true. Alec did not have a girlfriend called
Julie.
Samantha's manner became coy and kittenish. A subtle change in her
eyes, her smile, her posture, and suddenly two old mates from a first
aid course were thinking about more than the recovery position. Alec
qucikly reminded himself that he wasn't the man she thought he was, and
neither did he have the nerve or the experience to carry off an
elaborate deception. He knew blokes that could and would and often did,
but suicidal honesty had always been his downfall when it came to
women. He was twenty eight years old, and in the fifteen years since
puberty he had slept with just three wome. All three encounters had
been marked with anxiety, nerve-racking anticipation, and a brief
flurry of furious activity at the end, much like his O levels and his
only fight. Samantha was the kind of woman he wouldn't even dare to
approach in a wet dream.
"You don't remember me do you?" Samantha said. It was a gentle
accusation. Her eyes were glistening with some secret womanly
amusement. "I'm not surprised really. I only spoke to you twice. I
think I muttered hello and something else you ignored."
"Did I?" Alec was surprised at Danny's arrogance. Maybe he was gay.
"It seems like such a long time ago now." He held his breath for a
moment, certain she would looked shocked and say that it was only a
fortnight ago. He was alert to the fact that he had to keep any
references to their shared past as vague as possible. Realising that,
he was also aware that any opportunity to confess that he wasn't this
Danny character had passed for tonight.
"I was a bit of an ugly duckling in those days," Samantha pouted
deliberately and gazed deep into Alec's eyes. "What do you think of me
now?"
"I think you're a very fine swan indeed," Alec said, and Samantha
giggled in a way that made Alec think of the bubbles in a bottle of
lemomade.
"That's funny," she said, breaking away from him. Alec's heart dipped
with dissapointment. He didn't want her to leave. He was getting all
kinds of mad notions about fate and syncronisity and forces beyond the
control of mortal beings. "Can I give you my number?" She found a pen
in her purse and wrote her number on the back of a damp bar receipt.
"You will call me won't you?"
Alec was strangely moved by the brief show of insecurity. He took the
recepit with her number on it and tucked it safely into his shirt
pocket. "You bet."
Samantha kissed him warmly and softly on the lips. "Don't leave it six
more years, Danny. I can't wait that long."
Alec went to find his friend, Salmon, who's real name was Michael
Fish, like the weatherman. The dancefloor was like a martial arts ring
featuring a display of alarmingly realistic simulated combat. In the
centre of it all, Salmon was lurching around in a tight circle like an
insect with a few crippled legs. It was only a matter of seconds before
he was violently sick or violently attacked, or both, and so Alec
dragged him outside.
Alec was in such a bouyant mood that he decided to treat his friend to
a kebab. "I've just met the girl of my dreams," he said, just as Salmon
was tentatively testing the strength of his chilli sauce with the tip
of his tongue. "I think I believe in love at first sight."
Salmon gazed at him with the friendly, uncomprehending smile of a
particularly simple sheep. "It's all 'ead meat, this," he said.
Alec slept soundly that night and woke just after nine the next
morning with dragon's breath and a head the size of a prize pumpkin.
After a few cups of coffee and a long, cool shower to wake his senses,
he took the bar reciept with Samantha's telephone number on it and sat
on the bed next to the telephone.
The question now was how to proceed from here? He was going to call
her, no doubt about that, but what would he say? More importantly, who
would he be? Samantha thought he was some guy called Danny, and to
allow her to continue believing that seemed in Alec's mind to be
nothing short of devious. Then again, if he told her the truth she
would probably be angry and not wish to see him again. No date, no
opportunity to explain face-to-face that his actions were completely
out of character, and deffinately no hope of oral sex. Not that his
motives for seeing Samantha again were purely laddish. In fact he was
being sweetly na?ve in his desire to see her again, oddly compelled by
a mysterious and powerful call to romance this girl.
After half an hour of internal wrangling, his heart galloping and
butterflies swooping in his stomach, Alec picked up the phone and
dialled Samantha's number. He almost hung up the moment the call was
answered.
"Hello, Fox and Saddle?"
"What?"
"What?"
Start again. Alec took a deep breath. "Is Samantha there
please?"
"No Samantha here," the man said. "This is the Fox and Saddle. Have
you got the right number?"
Alec read the number and the man hummed curiously.
"My number alright, but I don't know any&;#8230;hold on! Is she a
guest here?"
"I don't know," Alec said. "She might be. She's about twenty-five or
so, tall, long blond hair and eyes that could jump start a flat
battery."
"Ah, the biker chick," the man said archly. "Samantha."
"Yes. Is she there?"
"Nope. But I could go knock on her room door. Who shall I say is
calling?"
"Tell her it's Ale - Danny!"
"Alidanny?"
"Danny, just Danny," Alec jabbered. "Just tell her it's Danny from the
first aid course. She'll know who you mean."
The phone went clunk. Alec collapsed onto his back. Never had a
conversation so exhausted and rattled him.
"Hello?"
It was her. Alec experienced a moment of joy so pure and intense it
ached. "Samantha, is that you?"
"Danny!" she cried, obviously delighted to hear his voice. "I didn't
think you'd call so soon."
Alec needn't have worried about what he was going to say because
Samantha was a natural chatterbox. He was happy just to sit and listen
to her voice, occasionally plugging the gaps with all the right noises.
When she suggested that he take a taxi to the Fox and Saddle and meet
her for lunch, Alec naturally agreed, but at the back of his mind he
couldn't quite convince himself that for once his luck was in. He
wasn't a pessimist by nature but when it came to the mating game he had
long ago accepted that rugs were only placed under his feet for the
sole purpose of being pulled away again by some diety with a clownish
sense of humour. If they made a film of Alec's life the starring role
would be split jointly between Woody Allen and Norman Wisdom, and his
miserable few ex-girlfriends would be played by plain, bored-looking
girls with no lines to speak. Alec just wasn't the leading man type,
and he certianly wasn't the type who attracted beautiful, vivacious
blonds.
No, but the erstwhile Danny obviously was that type. Evidently Danny
had a lot going for him. Stuff worth borrowing.
A couple of hours later Alec was at the Fox and Saddle, which was
packed with Sunday Dales trippers, a couple of pub football teams in
various stages of undress, and a knot of grumpy, beleagured old men who
had to be locals. He couldn't see Samantha in the bar, so he bought a
glass of orange and took it out to the beer garden, where he found her
waiting for him at one of the tables.
She didn't see him at first. Alec watched her for a while, a
hypnotised voyer, until she sensed she was being observed and looked
his way. Smiling with bashful guilt, Alec went and sat beside her. She
smelled of flowers and Radion.
"How long were you watching me?"
Alec just shrugged, unable to shift the shy, affected smile from his
face.
Samantha took a sip of her drink, eyeing him coyly over the rim of her
glass. "What did you see, Danny?"
"I thought you looked liked a swan," he said, and she laughed
kindly.
"Do you fancy going for a ride?"
"No car," Alec reminded her. "I came by taxi."
Samantha seemed to find this amusing. "Don't worry, Danny boy. Meet me
out front in ten minutes and I'll give you the ride of your
life."
Intrugued, Alec left the beer garden and waited on the pavement
outside the pub's front doors. A short time later Samantha rode up on
the bike from hell, a muscular, brutish machine that was all attitude
and hot, growling temper. Polished chrome caught the sunlight and threw
it back like daggers froma knife-thrower's hand. She could not have
done anything more to arouse him. She had roared straight out of his
secret library of poems and perversions, the bitch on the bike, the
dragon's mistress, beauty and the beast. He wanted to do it to her on
the open road, ton-up, spear her from behind as second by second their
tenuous grip on life was slipping.
As if reading his thoughts, Samantha turned her head towards him. Alec
saw only his own face reflected in her helmet's black visor. There was
something disturbingly insect-like about her now, something chilling
and predatory; yet the fear he felt, a distant, enigmatic terror,
merely intensified his desire for her.
Worldlessly she passed him the spare helmet, which he put on. It made
him feel strangely mean and invulnerable, as if he had a gun in his
hand. Then he swung his leg over the seat and mounted the bike.
Samantha greeted his groin with her backside. She was wearing black
leather trousers, boots with polished buckles, and a loose leather
jacket over a white tee shirt. Alec slipped his hands around her waist,
under her jacket, and let them rest firmly against her stomach. He
could feel her breathing, urgent, racy, impatient.
She revved the engine. The bike prowled to a nearby set of traffic
lights, hungry, restless. The light went green and Alec felt himself
being catapulted forward; at the same time part of him was left
suspended in the air. Before that sensation had fully registered it was
replaced by others, first that of streaking between two lines of cars
like an arrow down a hosepipe, and then a burst of screaming,
electrifying panic as she opened up the throttle to beat the next set
of lights.
Samantha took a sharp right turn across the path of an oncoming van,
then charged recklessly up and over a frighteningly pointy hill. Alec's
stomach leapt to the top of his helmet and then took the kind of plunge
normally associated with elevator accidents. He could have sworn he
heard a bell ring.
A narrow country lane unfurled before them. The bike responded with
the mechanical equivilent of a drool, accelarating cheetah-like. Alec
clung on for his life as stone walls zipped by without deffinaition,
only to rear with menacing clarity as Samantha dragged the bike around
the tight bends. It was a ride of alternating terror and relief, a
roller coaster train powered by its own devilish spirit.
Samantha stopped the bike by a track that led into some woods. She
twisted her head around but didn't lift the visor of her helmet. "You
wanna play in the woods, Danny?"
Alec lifted the visor on his own helmet. Sunlight burned his eyes.
"Depends what you want to play. Cowboys and indians?"
Samantha laughed huskily. Hi-ho, Silver, and away they went.
The track to the woods was bumpy enough to launch the bike into a
series of spectacular wheelie-jumps. They finally stopped by a stone
post which bore an inscription too faded and moss-covered to be read.
They left the bike and helmets and strolled hand in hand along the
woodland path, silently enjoying the cool contentment of nature. Alec
found it impossible not to daydream. In his mind it was three months
down the line. He and Samantha were inseperable, Yorkshire's answer to
John and Yoko. By now she knew he wasn't Danny and the whole thing was
a big joke to them, especially when any of their friends asked for a
sticking plaster.
"Danny? Are you listening?"
"Of course," Alec said, wiping the vacant smile from his face. "Just
remind me what it was you said though."
Samantha gave him a withered look and tugged his hand insistently.
"Down here, come on."
She led him off the main path and down a crooked little trail that
wound its way sinsiterly into the heart of the woods. There was a
gloomy sense of the ancient down here.
"What happens how?" Alec asked when they had stopped.
"This," she said, and kissed him forcefully on the lips. She pushed
him back against a tree trunk and pressed her weight against him. When
he tried to put his arms around her waist she reached behind her and
gripped his wrists hard. "You have to beg before I let you touch," she
whispered. She sounded like the bike, hungry, lascivious.
They were playing a game, one where she was the biker bitch from hell
and he was her slave. The reality of it made Alec tingle all
over.
She forced his arms behind him and around the tree trunk, securing
them by holding his wrists so tightly it began to hurt. Her knee was
planted firmly in his groin. Alec felt a kind of unutterably orgamsic
sense of helplessness that physically weakened him. He supposed, in
theory, that he could easily overpower her if he wanted to. But he
didn't want to. He didn't even want to think about it because it
invaded the game like a draught in a warm room. Instead he gave in,
yeilded, bowed to her strength and superiority.
Something closed around his wrists with a pinching, shocking snap.
Samantha instantly stepped away from him. She seemed as remote and
passionless as those about to take aim and fire at a condemnded
man.
"I don't want this," Alec said, testing the strength of the handcuffs.
They were locked solid. These were real, not play-things. He was no
longer turned on, just frightened and acutely aware of his
vulnerabilty.
Samantha continued to gaze at him with cold, pityless indifference, as
one might gaze upon a fly trapped in a spider's web or a pig's head
hanging in a butcher's shop.
"Samantha!" Alec bellowed, thrusting his body as far forward as the
cuffs would allow him to go. "This is not funny! Not funny
anymore!"
"Not funny," she agreed tonelessly. "But then I have no sense of
humour. This is just business, Danny, that's all. Nothing personal."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small pistol. It was so
small it could only have been a toy. Or so small it could only have
been real. Alec felt dread set in his stomach like instant
cement.
"I've got a message from Donna Hammond. Do you remember her, Danny?
She's that girl you raped at a party in Wakefield. She just wanted you
to know what it feels like to be pinned down and fucked."
"Wer-wait!" Alec screamed. "You've got the wrong-"
A shot rang out. The woods fell silent again.