Implicit

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Eliza

Happy birthday, Alex.

My fingers curl around the double whiskey until the glass is trembling in my grasp and the smooth liquid surface rolls like a choppy sea. I lift it from the bar, my reflection a dark blemish on the polished surface. Smudged and indistinct.

I sit, straight-backed, my shirt plastered to my body with sweat, courtesy of the heatwave that got lost in London, and my heavy eyelids begin to droop, my head bowing under the weight.

"Posture, Elizabeth!" my mother’s voice snipes from the dark corner of my mind.

My shoulders jerk back and my chin snaps up in sharp response as my breath judders through my shaking lungs.

Relief is on its way.

I sip, savouring the burn of fiery alcohol, breathing in the peaty scent. The stream of air-conditioning cools my clammy skin, and its low hum dulls the noise of the crowd jostling around me to a murmur as the tight fist clenching my intestines begins to loosen its grip.

When I push the empty glass away, I turn my suede barstool around to face the revellers and scan the crowd for part two of tonight’s entertainment, but as ever, I get distracted. The groups of girl friends, shrieking with laughter at some inside joke I will never be privy to. The happy couples, sharing kisses and touches I can never experience. My chest tightens with every breath I steal as the lonely void inside yawns wider.

The barman slides a refill forward, reminding me of my mission, and my attention skips over the hideous Hawaiian shirts and socked-sandaled feet, past the stag parties, and sticks on a dark-haired man removing his leather jacket.

He doesn’t seem like he’s too drunk. Still standing upright and able to hold a conversation with the group of men he’s with. He raises his glass and swallows more of the amber liquid as his playful gaze hits mine and the corner of his mouth kicks up.

I watch his throat move as he swallows once more and he leans in towards his friend. He slaps the other man’s shoulder before he makes his way over to me, dodging around the bodies blocking his path.

I tilt my head, sit straighter on my barstool, and watch the man walking towards me.

I’m drawing conclusions and making assumptions based on nothing more than his gait. The length of his stride. The way his eyes twinkle when he looks at me.

He doesn’t look like a virgin or a serial killer. Check.

He does look clean and well dressed. Check.

My gaze travels downward, past his waistband... and...

You like anything you see? he asks. Every syllable laced with lust as he approaches. And his accent isn’t local. Probably a tourist. Check.

Hello, Mr Thursday Night.

I finish my second whiskey and push the empty glass across the bar. I’ll tell you in the morning. I grab my clutch bag and stand, almost chest to chest with Thursday, and catch a whiff of his aftershave. Something cooling.

His smile is easy. Simple. Mine is nothing but a necessity as he drapes an arm over my shoulders and steers me out through the crowd and into the sultry summer night.

This way. I tug him through the swarm of Londoners towards our destination a short distance along The Embankment. My usual hotel.

––––––––

Thursday follows me through the hushed foyer. The rapid click-click-click of my heels on the marble floor alerts me to my frantic steps, and I glance back at him, almost jogging to keep pace with me, as he looks up at the chandeliers twinkling above us.

We slip into the mirrored lift and he shuffles close. Too close. I can feel him.

My fingers curl into tight fists as I force myself to remain still, to not take that step back and create the space my brain is screaming for, as I count the seconds until the doors open again to release me from this tin-can prison cell.

Tell me something. Why does a woman who looks like you not have a boyfriend?

I don’t want one.

He catches a strand of my loose ebony waves between his fingers, frowns briefly, and then slowly lowers his face towards mine. I slide backwards. Farther away.

A deeper frown settles across his forehead as the lift chimes and the doors glide apart in one swift, smooth motion. I lead the way just as fast across the plainly decorated corridor to my suite and insert the key card.

"So, what do you want?" he asks as he follows me inside, his gaze sweeping through the plush, permanently reserved suite.

Now there’s a question. What do I want? I throw my tiny bag on the sofa and turn to face Thursday. I lower my voice and move in closer. I want you. Just for tonight. And I want to stay wide awake.

My fingers tangle with his and I pull him through the living area to the bedroom.

I turn to face him. My fingertips glide over his chest and lower, along his abs and down to the bulge in his jeans. "I want to forget. I want you to make me forget."

Forget what? he asks, his eyes half-closed as my hands wander and explore his growing length.

Everything. Including my own name. Especially that.

Maybe you should tell me what it is before you forget it?

Maybe you’re better off not knowing. I tug, ripping open the straining buttons on his jeans to put an end to his pointless questions. I’ll never tell him. Or anyone else. Who or what I am.

You want a fuck buddy?

No. I shake my head for emphasis. This is a onetime-only deal.

Just sex?

Exactly.

He half chuckles, shaking his head a little. "You didn’t even ask my name."

I don’t need to know it. Are we done talking?

Now I’m intrigued. I want to know so much more.

Good God, you’re not a virgin, are you? Panic claws at my throat, making my eyes sting. I won’t be able to forget. I’ll fall asleep and plunge straight into another night terror.

No. I’m not a virgin. But I’m not the type of guy who doesn’t call either.

Can you pretend? I’ve become quite the actress.

My fingers move slowly to my topmost button and open it, before dropping to the next and the next. Mr Thursday Night has stopped talking. In fact, I think he’s stopped breathing.

When my shirt is hanging loose, I push the satiny material from my shoulders and kick off my shoes, watching his chest rise and fall harder. Faster.

So what are you waiting for? I unfasten my trousers and push them down my legs. I step out and leave the material pooled on the carpet. Thursday’s eyes are burning as he licks his lips, probably subconsciously, and reaches back to pull his shirt over his head.

Not bad. I suppose. It doesn’t really matter. I only need one piece of him, and his torso isn’t it.

His trousers hit the floor, and I step forward to take his straining length in my hands.

Yes. This will work just fine.

His jaw drops a fraction and his eyes close as he pumps into my welcoming hand, again and again, as my thumb circles the eager head.

I bring my lips close to his ear. Take them off, I whisper, and he complies immediately, pushing his boxers down to his ankles and kicking them aside.

I reclaim his cock, my fingers curling around its width and my palm moving slowly. His eyes peek open and his strong hands move to each side of my face. I jerk away. I don’t make love. And I don’t kiss. I just want to fuck. Can you do that?

He hesitates again, but only for a second before he groans and drops his head. I curl a hand around his waist, the other still working him hot enough that stopping will be impossible, and guide him to the bed.

When the underside of his knees touch the bed frame, I push at his chest and he falls backwards. I reach around and unhook my bra.

There are condoms in the drawer. I tip my head to the small bedside cabinet on his right. He rises up on his elbows and watches my underwear hit the ground.

Fuck me... you’re perfect, he chokes out.

I smirk. I intend to.

His gaze trips over my body, and he scrambles for the protection.

Put it on, I command. He does as I ask and I kneel on the bed, watching him unroll the rubber over his straining cock, before I push him flat and straddle his waist. I position myself over him and he grabs my hips.

Wait. What about you? Don’t you need... His sentence disappears into a garbled string of expletives as I sink down onto him and welcome the burn. The stretch. The fullness. The pain.

This is what I need.

"Wait. What... fuck!" He scrunches his eyes tight as I rise, then drop my weight down hard, and my lips finally smile today when searing pain shoots through my lower abdomen. My shoulders relax and the knots in my stomach unfurl completely.

It’s this or the drugs my GP keeps pushing.

Slow down, Thursday grunts.

But I can’t. I don’t want to. Peace is on the other side and I need to get there, as fast as possible. I rise and fall harder, watching his expression as I build us both up higher and higher. He lets out a frustrated, strangled sound and his hand slips around my hip and lower. I push his arm away.

I’m gonna... ahh!

I smile breathlessly. So am I. I don’t need clitoral stimulation. I need the pain. The punishment. My muscles begin to tighten and I grab on to that feeling as it bubbles in my lower abdomen, catch it by the tail, and concentrate on it fully.

Oh! Yes! I laugh as I step on the launch pad and catapult myself into oblivion.

I glance at the clock several hours later as I lie still and wait for Thursday to begin to drift off, the plain cotton sheets barely at hip height, pinching the (probably permanent) bruise on my inner thigh as I gaze across the pillow and wonder what it’s like to be him.

The postcoital fatigue is trying to pull me under as the high wears off and the nightmares lurking beneath beckon me like a siren’s song, Thursday’s eyes flutter closed and his breathing deepens and settles into a rhythm that is slow and steady. Peaceful. He’s asleep.

Not bad, Thursday. It’s almost a shame this was a onetime-only deal, I mutter as I slide from under the sheets and reach for my clothes.

Ten minutes later, I slip out the front doors into a morning that’s heating up to be a scorcher. That new day smell is still lingering in the air and the soft breeze of dawn whispers sweet little lies about fresh starts and perspectives, as I squint at the rising sun reflecting bright orange off The Thames and look around when the doorman hails me a cab. Mornin’, Ellie.

Good morning, Dez. How was your night?

He reaches for the handle of the rumbling, now-idle black taxi and pulls it wide. Uneventful. How was yours?

I wink as I duck inside and slide along the cool leather seat. A lady never tells.

I catch his chuckle and a flash of his gold tooth as he clunks my door shut and reels off my well-practiced address in Connaught Village to the driver.

The porch light is on but unnecessary as I hop up the white steps to my front door whilst the sun climbs higher into the summer sky. My clothes are already sticking to my skin.

I hit the call button for the lift and wait for my rocket to the penthouse. When the doors fly apart, I step inside the mirrored cuboid and am instantly engulfed by the scent of the cleaning staff’s favourite air freshener. It certainly doesn’t smell like any lavender I’ve ever encountered.

I wrap my fingers tight around the brass handrail and brace myself. Four seconds. Then the doors will open. I can do that.

My eyes flick to the woman in the mirror. My long dark hair is all over the place, so I rake the fingers of my free hand through the tangled strands. My mascara is smudged under one grey eye, the only survivor of yesterday’s meticulously applied makeup.

I step forward, closer to my reflection, and carefully scrape under my bottom lashes with my fingernail. My attention moves over my black-clad body, and I straighten my shirt and pull down my jacket. The slim-fitting trousers look fine.

Seconds later, I’m catapulted several storeys into the sky and deposited at my own front door. Oh, thank God. I gasp as I step out on to solid ground and wide-open space, my hands held at my sides like a penguin in an attempt to stay upright.

I reach for the heel of my Jimmy Choo, balancing on a Chanelle-clad leg, and wrench it from one foot and then the other. A sigh of relief flows from my nose and my feet throb in response.

Grasping both shoes in one hand, I extract my keys and security card from my bag and open the heavy oak door. I breathe in the same air freshener in here and throw my heels down, and they clatter along the dark flooring of the hallway and come to rest in a pool of bright sunshine spilling in from the skylight.

I welcome the coolness of the wood that has been freshly mopped in my absence against my sore toes, as my bare feet pad along towards the coffee, and stop when I breach the cold marble of the kitchen floor to stretch out my toes.

Oh, that’s better.

The coffee machine is possibly my most prized possession. For a woman who doesn’t sleep more than two hours, works a full-time job, and fucks a different man to oblivion every night, it was as inevitable as death.

I grab my one personal memento, the black cup with the oriental flowers I got on a tour of Asia, and position it. Then I fill the machine’s water tank, refresh the beans, and wait for the elixir to flow as I watch this morning’s procession of masochists, otherwise known as joggers, make their way around Hyde Park from the window.

You’re a fine one to talk.

The hot liquid trickles slowly into its vessel and my fingertips reach for the handle. Come on! There’s nothing express about this bloody espresso.

At last. The longest twenty seconds of the day are over, and I raise the cup to my lips, breathing in the scent that makes my head spin whilst sipping the liquid life. I’m fairly certain when I die, it will be discovered that I was in fact ninety-eight percent coffee.

Only two percent monster? There’s a miscalculation here somewhere.

I take my cup and move through the hallway, into my home office, and sit at the antique walnut desk that reminds me of the one in my father’s study. Sometimes it reminds me of too much and I wish I’d left it in France, but as I fire up my laptop, I run my fingertips over the smooth curves and edges, bracing myself to face the latest drivel sent to me by my boss, Leon.

Leon knows me as ‘Eliza Alexander.’ I work as his assistant. And although I don’t have cause to thank the universe for much, I am forever grateful for my job. Not my shitty salary. That would barely cover the cost of whiskey in London. But for the inside track on the investment opportunities. An assistant doesn’t have money to invest. I know that. But in secret and under my legal name, I get to be me for a few minutes a day. I get the life I should have had but don’t deserve.

Hidden in plain sight and more informed than any investor could ever expect to be, I see everything firsthand. Including his temper when his deals sour. The unofficial deals. The ruthless streak so cleverly concealed beneath that oozing layer of charm and sprinkled between all those raging hangovers.

As I’m scanning the latest spreadsheet, noting how well the software company I invested in last year is doing, my calendar pings with a reminder (as though I’d forgotten) that I have to be at work in two hours.

After refilling my coffee cup, I finally feel ready to face Leon’s latest series of brandy-fuelled instructions. I open my work email and am immediately greeted with boxes popping up and filling my screen, urging me to various meetings and carry out my obligations. I note each one and close them down before clicking on Leon’s late-night epiphany.

––––––––

To: Eliza.Alexander@imperium.com

From: Leon.Burke@imperium.com

Eliza,

I have meetings all day today. In the future, don’t schedule so many in one day. You need to order my wife an anniversary gift and book somewhere for dinner. I forget the exact date but it’s this month sometime.

I see that I have two new client meetings first thing. You need to be in both for notes and research. Reschedule anything else.

Leon

CEO of Imperium Investments

––––––––

Arsehole, I grumble, and tap out a considerably more polite response to his abrasive email, letting him know I’ll be in both meetings and have already ordered flowers and booked his wife’s favourite restaurant. For next month. On their actual anniversary. And her birthday, which is in two days’ time.

I hit send and snap the laptop shut, shoving it into my bag before I head for a shower.

Seth

I push open the window of my stuffy budget hotel as far as it will go, a few inches, and inhale the polluted air. The hit of diesel skids down my throat before I cough it back up.

I keep my eyes on The Shard, looming over London like a sentinel in the distance. The promise of a beautiful day hangs heavy in the air, and hope pushes through the tangle of nerves to bloom in my stomach.

Surely such gorgeous weather counts as a good omen? It’s not like it happens that often.

I back away from the window, my attention stuck to the towering structure that has invaded my thoughts for the last eighteen months. I toe off my worn running shoes, before yanking off my sweat-drenched t-shirt and tossing it on the bed that’s already littered with tatty neuroscience journals, and I eye the product my dreams hinge on lying on the desk.

It looks so ordinary, you’d never know. Just a flat cap. Until you put it on.

I reach for the soft leather and check the connectors, then turn it over and over on my hands as my stomach mirrors the action, rolling in queasy waves as I picture the world that’s waiting for me with this cap on my head.

I need to stop. This isn’t helping. God knows what my mum would say if she knew.

Fuck it. One last time.

I situate the sensory cap and lower myself onto the chair as I attach the VR headset, plunging myself into darkness before the virtual world I created floods my senses and transports me back to a time when I wasn’t a screwup and Billy was still alive.

I land in my mother’s kitchen and am reminded, again, that I need to find a way to integrate scents in to my multisensory experience. Until I can figure out a way to stimulate the olfactory bulb that works consistently, I have to imagine she has something good in the oven.

Sunlight streams through the open windows and weaves its way through the vase of daffodils on the island, strewn with medical journals, highlighting the yellow heads and kissing the orange trumpets proclaiming springtime.

A breeze flits around the kitchen, cooling my skin and ruffling my hair, as it carries the sounds of the guys messing around outside—a football game in full swing with more fouls than the Aussies could handle. My attention catches on the height chart gouged out in the wooden doorframe as his running footsteps approach.

Billy.

Hey, man. It’s been a while.

Hey. I clear the prickly knot of grief and guilt from my throat as Billy pulls me in for a familiar, sweaty hug. His arms are still strong and capable in this world. His hands and reflexes lightning quick. His smile is the same stubbly slant of lips and teeth it always was.

You up for some sparring? Blow off some steam? He goes to the sink and fills up a tall glass with water that he chugs in three swallows.

Nah. Not today. I’ve gotta get ready for the pitch at The Shard.

That’s today? What the hell are you doing here! Go! Go get ready. Be prepared. Knock ʼem dead.

I will. I just wanted to let you know it’s today. It’s finally happening.

It’s been a longtime coming, eh?

Too long. I keep checking my phone to see if they’ve tried to call and cancel yet. My laugh gets stuck somewhere before the exit, snagging on the truth in the statement. I wish you could be there.

His eyes probe mine and a frown draws his brows down as he says, You’ve got this, mate. Watch. And he jabs me, hard, in the arm.

Ow! I laugh.

See? He laughs back at me in that easy, carefree way he had and I know it’s time to leave. Concentrate on something positive. Tangible. Real.

I miss you, man. This is all for you.

I’m right here, Seth.

Yeah. I know.

He gives me that boyish grin that haunts me and starts to walk away, back towards the game. I’ll see ya later. I’d say good luck, but you don’t need it.

See ya.

Oh. Seth?

Yeah?

Deposit that cheque, would ya? It’s givin’ me hives just thinkin’ about it.

The che—? Shit.

Yeah. It’s yours. And you’re the only rich bloke with morals in the whole world.

This programme is getting too bloody intelligent for its own good.

When Billy disappears through the back door, I take a shaky breath and switch the software programme to The Shard.

Deposit the cheque.

No. Never.

A replica of a meeting room I found online fills my vision, and I check through the Java code as the ache in my chest dulls to bearable. The command strings and programmed responses. I check the 360-degree video for errors before I close my eyes and listen to the ambisonics.

Does that sound like I’m in The Shard?

Next, I review the character design files, since the virtual version of me needs to do some of the talking today. I check the input points, the degrees of freedom—in this case 6DoF—and that the frame rate is at a constant ninety frames per second. Haptics are solid. Latency is low to nonexistent. Immersion should be almost absolute.

Yup. The tech is