The Client

I pull open the front door and she’s there, exactly as I remember, larger than life and in my face.

Fuck. She has the worst fucking timing.

“Lisa,” I say, trying to keep my voice even, my temperament in check. “What’s up.”

“I was in the area,” she says, and moves to push past me, but I hold up my hand.

“Nope,” is all I say to stop her. “We’re not doing this. You moved out. You don’t live here anymore. Remember?”

She backs up, the same look of exasperation on her face that used to drive me insane, because she always used it for small, unimportant stuff. This isn’t that, at least not to me, but still, I don’t want to see that expression again.

It’s then I notice she’s actually wearing makeup. Which isn’t like her.

“Look,” she says, addressing me through slightly downturned lashes - fakes, I think. “I just wanted to get a couple of things from my storage boxes. Okay? That’s it. I’ll be in and out in no time. Close your eyes, it’ll be like I was never even here.”

“What things? It’s all clothes and beauty stuff. Nothing important.”

“Never you mind,” she says, shifting her weight a little to give me the full petulant mode. “It’s my stuff. I should be able to get to it, even if it’s in your place. Right?”

We had agreed on that, the month before when she’d finally left. She couldn’t afford to rent a new flat yet, so in a moment of weakness I’d said she could store things here. Everything had gone into boxes in the spare room, and I’d barely looked in there since.

“You know where it is?”

“Yes.”

She looked down at her nails, which were glossy and pink. Again, not her thing, at least, not usually. Perhaps she’d been out to treat herself.

I look at my watch quickly. I had a visitor due in less than fifteen minutes, and I didn’t want Lisa here when they arrived. That would be awkward, to say the least.

“Fine. Just in and out, though.”

“I need to use the loo, too.”

“Jesus - fine, use the loo, Christ.”

I stepped to one side and let her in, smelling her perfume as she strutted past me.

Strutted? I turned to see her round the corner of the hallway and for a split second, I notice thin, spiked heels on her feet.

Then I realize.

“You’re going to see Gary, aren’t you,” I say loudly enough that she’ll hear.

“What?”

“I said you’re going out – to see Gary. Right?”

“Might be,” she half-yells back. I hear boxes being shifted. “It’s Saturday night. I’m allowed to go out. So are you, as a matter of fact.”

I glance down at my t-shirt, ripped jeans and lack of socks. “Might be later,” I lie.

I hear her laugh at that, and feel my face flush. Bitch.

“Yeah sure you are. You might want to take a bath. You stink.”

She’s not wrong. Sitting inside all day in the middle of summer playing Xbox will do that to you. I’d actually planned to jump into the shower before my visitor arrived, but lo and behold, here’s my ex-girlfriend to spoil that plan.

“Was just about to get in the shower. If you hurry up and get whatever it is you’re looking for, I can get on with it.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” she says, over the sounds of more boxes being moved. “I can see myself out.”

Right, and nick a few things at the same time. I’m still figuring out how she took an entire set of plates and cutlery without me knowing.

“I thought you said you knew where it was,” I point out, advancing down the hall towards the spare room.

“I thought I did,” she calls back. “It’s got to be in one of these boxes at least.”

“Brilliant.”

I step into the spare room and stop cold.

She’s bent over, delving into one of the larger cardboard boxes, her bum straight up in the air. She always did have a peach of an arse, and I am only now noticing that she’s covered it in a very tight dress for Gary. The dress is covering some dark, gauzy looking tights, and those heels I saw her click away from me in are higher and sexier than anything she ever wore with me. Suddenly I want to punch Gary in the face.

Hearing me, she straightens up, looks over her shoulder. “What? Don’t just stand there, help me look. Sooner I find it, sooner I’m out of your hair.”

“It’d help if I knew what you were looking for.” I really don’t want to do this, but I can’t have her here for much longer. It’d be a disaster. And I do need that shower.

“It’s a little box,” she says, unhelpfully. “Black cardboard. Got some silver writing on it. Pretty.”

“How ‘little’ is ‘little’?”

She holds her hands about six inches apart. “No, wait.” Moves them to ten inches. Then she looks at me with a cheeky smile. “Remind you of anything?”

“Piss off,” I say, but I can’t help but smile too. I pick up one of the nearest boxes and open it up, while she turns back to her own search with a chuckle. “Gary then,” I say as I rummage through the box’s contents.

“Mmm,” she murmurs in reply.

“I said ‘Gary’. Lucky fella.”

She lets out a short, sharp ‘ha’ - the same laugh that used to make me cringe a bit in the cinema, when she’d laugh just a little later than anyone else at some not-that-funny joke.

“Yeah, s’pose he is,” she says. “Still, you were lucky too, for a long time.”

Five bloody years. “Yeah, a long time,” I say.

It was luck that brought us together - almost literally, considering we met down the bookies. I was watching half my week’s wages limp towards the finish line, and she was bouncing up and down while she cheered on the winner. Couldn’t help but notice those perfect tits of hers as they went up and down, no bra in sight. When she’d calmed down and noticed me staring, she told me I could buy her a pint, even though she was the one who walked out with all the winnings. Later in the pub when she put her hand on my leg and slurred “You’re fucking gorgeous,” I figured that was my luck changing. I was right.

Luck wasn’t what kept us together, though. The sex did, for the most part. She was still the best fuck I’d ever had. I never even cheated on her, it was that good. Everything I ever wanted to do, she’d be up for. We broke beds. Burst condoms. Shagged like fucking rabbits.

Eventually though, I started to realize that was all we had. All the little things started to add up. All the annoyances, all the irritations, all the little stupid things became one, big giant ball of stupid things - and it was all I could see when I was with her. Then it was all I could see whenever I wasn’t with her. So I decided one day I didn’t want to see it anymore.

That was a month ago, and being honest, I didn’t miss her. I didn’t miss that giant ball of annoying stuff.

But fucking hell, if I didn’t miss the sex. A lot.

Especially because there was one thing we never got to do. One thing we never ticked off the sexual bucket list. And it’s weird because really, it wasn’t that odd. Wasn’t that kinky. We just never did it, because in her words, it wasn’t “right”.

I’d never managed to fuck Lisa right in her big, delicious arse. And believe me, I’d tried.

The closest I ever got, believe it or not, was the first time we were together. I dunno why, maybe she was drunk, maybe she was just feeling randy or maybe she wanted to show how much she was ‘up for it’. But that first night, she told me that if I wanted to, I could “stick it in my bum”.

And I said nah, like a bloody idiot.

Never came up again. Not when I was slurping whipped cream off her tits, getting her to suck my dick while I was dressed as a pirate, when I finger fucked her on that rollercoaster or even when I gave her a quickie at my dad’s funeral (she did look awfully good in black).

Not one time. And now she was gone, and my chance had gone with it.

Well, I’m not the kind of bloke to take that sort of thing lying down. Which is why I was very anxious to get Lisa out of my flat before my visitor arrived, who was going to oblige me with exactly what I wanted.

“Is this it?”

I held up a little box, but it was grey not black. Silver writing though. She took a look and shook her head. “No. Sorry.”

“Fuck me, we’ve been through half the boxes in here. Have you got any clue at all where it might be? I do have plans tonight.”

“I’ve got plans too, babe,” she moaned. I didn’t pay any attention to the ‘babe’ - she called everyone that. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here.”

“Fine. Let’s just finish up. But I swear if it’s not here, you’ve got to go, alright?”

“Alright,” she said, and opened up another box.

I sighed, picking up another box - heavier than the last one. I checked my watch again. My visitor was supposed to show up in ten minutes. There was no way I was getting that shower. They’d have to just deal with my stink.

Which probably wouldn’t matter, considering what I had planned.

I was finally going to do Lisa right in her big, delicious arse.

Not this Lisa, obviously. This Lisa - my ex, Lisa - was going to leave me to it after she found whatever bloody knick-knack she had left here. But after she was gone, ah, then things were going to get really interesting.

Because then Lisa was going to arrive, and I was going to stick my cock right up her. I’d paid for the privilege. I was going to enjoy it. As long as this Lisa fucked off.

“Wait a minute,” Lisa said. She was looking over at me. “Under there.”

I pushed back some old skirts and saw a black cardboard box. Something I’m pretty sure I’d never seen before. There was silver writing on it, as she’d mentioned. I pulled the box out from the other box and handed it to her, but she didn’t take it.

Instead she looked at me with a glint in her eyes.

“Don’t you want to know what’s in it?”

“What? No, I don’t really.” I pushed it towards her. “What I want is for you to take it and go, like you said you were going to.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure, yeah, I could do that. But then you wouldn’t know what’s in there.”

I hefted the box a bit, testing the weight. It felt like there was something inside, something that was moving around, sliding.

“Why do I care?” I said, even as part of me was starting to care. I had no idea why she was being so bloody coy. And yeah, that was one of the stupid things that drove me bonkers. She had a way of making even the smallest thing seem like a Sherlock Holmes mystery.

“You’ll care,” she said. “Trust me. Just open it.”

I looked at the box and read the writing. It said CLIENT EYES ONLY.

And suddenly my stomach felt like the inside of a washing machine.

Slowly I brought my hand up to the box and lifted the lid. It came off easily. I was barely aware that Lisa was looking intently at me, edging closer.

It looked like a box of old pictures, at first. That’s what anyone else might assume if they opened this by accident. But no-one else was going to open this. No-one else was going to see it. I was supposed to see it.

This wasn’t some random box that Lisa needed to find here.

There were several stacks of pictures, all neat, all wrapped in plastic. It was pretty clear from the top picture on each one what the subjects were.

The first pile had a picture on top of Lisa, walking hand in hand with a man that wasn’t me. It looked like it was taken recently; her hair was the same. It also looked like it had been taken without her knowledge, and from a distance.

I took hold of that first pile, stripped the plastic off and started leafing through the images. Lisa at the supermarket. Lisa waiting for a bus. Lisa in a club. Lisa in a pub. Lisa at home, with some sort of fisheye effect on the image. Lisa taking a shower. Lisa in bed. Asleep.

It was a record of Lisa’s life. For weeks. There had to be hundreds of photos.

The second pile was smaller. The first photo almost seemed to continue from the other pile: it was a picture of Lisa, asleep.

Except she wasn’t in her bed: she was in some sort of lab, with people in white coats standing nearby. She was naked underneath a white sheet. And to the left of her head was another head, a mannequin kind of - and it looked just like Lisa.

The third pile was even smaller, but this was the most damning, the most serious.

It was pictures of Lisa - this Lisa, the Lisa I was standing next to. She was in a blank, dull looking room, like a photographer’s studio. She was standing with her hands by her sides, in the same outfit she was wearing right then. Staring into the camera. Then in the next pic, turned ninety degrees to the left. Staring off into the distance. No smile. No life.

“Fuck me,” I murmured.

“Pretty sure you’d like to fuck me instead,” Lisa said casually.

I looked up into the eyes of this Lisa.

“You’re here early,” I said, as dumb as it sounded.

“Yeah,” she said. That same twinkle was in her eye. “Surprise.”

“I thought you were - I mean, I was convinced - ”

“That’s the general idea, isn’t it?”

I put the box down and looked at her, really looked at her. At the hairstyle that matched the photos. At the makeup that I now realized wasn’t for Gary, but was for me. At the tight dress that clung to the curves I remembered. At her eyes. Even her eyes. They’d gotten that right.

She was Lisa’s exact double.

“You’re perfect,” I whispered.

“No,” she said quietly, as she leaned in close to me. “I’m better than her in one very important way.”

And suddenly her hand was in mine, and she was leading me to the bedroom, to finally check that one last item off the bucket list.

Credit: Photo by Christopher Bill on Unsplash