Look to His Like

Chapter Ten

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.



Definitions of Australian slang in this chapter:
not the full quid - not sane.
Tassie - Tasmania, a State of Australia
carks it - dies

-------------


I walked into the Bistro Mozart at 7 p.m on the dot. According to the profile Jarup had emailed me, Apollo Filiberto was six foot, black haired and hazel eyed - hardly a description that would single him out in a crowd, and my own description had been just as scanty.

Yet, as soon as I made my appearance, a man fitting Filiberto's physical profile rose from his table set for two in the centre of the crowded restaurant and languidly lifted a beckoning hand. I smiled and began to weave my way through the tables towards him. My smile had been cool and merely polite, but I muttered an inaudible "Phwoar!" as I approached. Filiberto may have been descended from Italian royalty, but he was aptly named - he looked like a mythical god, with his short, curly dark hair, classically handsome facial features, and lean, athletic body. Naturally, I assessed his rating on the thigh scale, and he did well - although Drake had set the bar so high there, even a mythical god couldn't measure up.

Strangely, for the season, Filiberto wore with black expertly tailored trousers, a white turtle-necked ribbed sweater, the bulky collar cushioning his square jaw. However, I forgot the oddity of it, on noticing how it offset his great tan and clung to his perfectly sculpted masculine torso. When he pulled out my chair for me, I saw a gold Rolex wrist watch, and a chunky gold ring on his right hand, embedded with a large, glowing ruby.

"You must be Jo," Filiberto murmured as I sat down. "I recognised you from your profile, although you are much more beautiful than your description denotes."

I'm from a race of women that would snort with laughter at such gallantry or at the very least demand its speaker to "cut the crap". However, 'Prince Apollo' was so charming and debonair that I could only blush. I think I even simpered, if you can believe it.

"Would you like wine?" he purred, resuming his own seat. "It's the Wolf Blass Chardonnay, quite an exquisite wine - fruity and heavy with oak aging."

"Thank you," I said. I admit, I sounded breathless. He gave a small, limpid smile. As soft dining music tinkled in the background, we both watched with apparent avid interest as the golden brew streamed into our glasses. When the levels were equal in both, Filiberto returned the bottle to the ice bucket, and lifted his glass to me in salute. "To us," he said, his long lashed eyes glowing warmly at me. We clinked glasses.

I decided all sensible thought would be driven from my mind if I kept gazing at him. Well, I'm as susceptible as the next girl to a nice set of pecs, aren't I? So, after taking a long sip of wine, I pulled the peanut bowl closer to me, and began to sift frantically through it looking for cashews. Quite uncouth, I know, but after the incidences with Staal and Bello, I was wary about lowering my guard again.

"So," I said abruptly, extracting a cashew and popping it into my mouth before resuming my search. "Let's get down to business, shall we?"

"Of course," said Filiberto. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw him lean back in his chair and cross one long, elegant leg over the other. I noticed his hands, clasped loosely in his lap, were long fingered, perfectly manicured, almost feminine. For some reason the sight of them steadied me...they were so different from Drake's sexy ones. My loins lurched at that particular memory. I had no difficulty then in lifting my head to regard my companion.

As I quickly studied his face, I realised with a feeling of relief that he did not, after all, turn me on. I like a man to appear as if the only thing on his mind when he looks at you how much he'd like to bonk you. I also like a man who looks as if he's either just emerged from a marathon mattress session, or would be prepared to engage in one at the click of the fingers. 'Prince Apollo' was too refined and contained, too well groomed. Furthermore, I discerned something distinctly plastic about his exquisite manner.

I was to understand the reason for the latter soon enough. As I watched, a change rippled across his countenance, like a gust of wind over a grassy meadow. He grinned, his eyes lit up with eagerness, and he uncrossed his legs to lean forward and thump his clasped hands on the table. He vibrated as he drummed his feet on the ground beneath the table in apparent glee. I reeled with shock at the transformation.

"Hey, howdja like that?" he said merrily. "Harry said I needed to show you I could do suave and sophisticated!"

I stared. The appearance of the perfect trophy husband had been a performance? I rubbed my head in agitation. I could do without this perplexity right now. "You - you did very well," I said weakly. "What - ? I'm sorry, I don't understand..."

"What doncha understand? C'mon, let's bare our souls and have a deep and meaningful! It'll be fun!"

I studied him. Was he not quite the full quid? Yet, he had played the role of the urbane, mature man with skill and ease, so he was not without intelligence. I concluded he had an air of innocence about him, as one who was not so much socially inept, but socially ignorant. He behaved as if he had led a sheltered, narrow existence ...

"You go first," I suggested, intrigued. "Tell me about yourself."

--------

The profile had stated him as a twenty-six year old company director. I also knew he was heterosexual.

"Yeah, I'm partial to girls," Filiberto admitted, as one would say if admitting to a weakness for chocolate or fast cars. "I can't have sex with 'em, though. I've tried, believe you me, but every time I have, I swear I think Nana is in the same room, ready to wallop me with her handbag. It's quite off-putting."

'Nana', I learnt, was his ancient grandmother who had raised Filiberto from a toddler after his parents were killed in a road accident. "I owe her everything," he insisted. "She's been so good to me, and has made so many personal sacrifices to give me a good life and the best education with my own private tutor. Now that she's real old and can't get around very well, I figure it's the least I can do to have her live with me and meet her every need."

"Wouldn't it be better for you if you were not so close?" I said carefully. "I mean, she is obviously affecting your sex life. If you cut the apron strings, you might be able to have a relationship with a nice girl, get married, have kids. There are great retirement homes ---."

"Oh, no, I couldn't just cut Nana off," Filiberto said, horrified. "She's been so good to me, and has made so many personal sacrifices ---."

Yada, yada, yada, I thought. "Quite," I said, cutting off something that had obviously been drummed into him, most likely with the assistance of a walloping handbag.

"Anyway, it's no hardship, not being able to root a girl," Apollo said airily. "My parish priest thinks the image of Nana linked with sex must be a symbol for chastity, and that therefore I have been called to that life. At first, he recommended a course of theological study which would enable me to sub - sublim - ."

"Sublimate?"

"Yeah - my sexual desires, so I could live a pure life with ease." He sighed, "But that didn't work. I'd wake up every morning with a hard cock and blue balls, and just want to run out and root the first girl I saw, only I knew I couldn't do that, 'cause I couldn't get Nana and her handbag out of my head." He blanched at the memory.

"So, what did you do?" I asked, as our meals were served - lobster mornay for me, the Great Aussie Burger (with Golden Tassie Fries) for Filiberto.

Filiberto shot a covert, fearful glance over his shoulder - looking for the formidable Nana? He leaned forward, and crooked his finger at me. I bent my head towards him.

"We had our house painted one year, and one of the men left behind a magazine!" he whispered. "It changed my life."

So, 'Prince Apollo' masturbated over centrefolds to get his rocks off. I didn't know whether to feel relieved or sorry for him. "Oh, I see," I murmured. Filiberto nodded meaningfully, and beamed at me.

It wasn't until the next day that I learnt I had not "seen" at all.

-----------------------------------------

Meanwhile, "I was happy for a long time after discovering magazines," Filiberto confided over dessert. "I had an easy, well-paying job sitting on the board of the company which used to belong to my dad, I had heaps of money, and no sex hassles. Then," he said dramatically, "the shit hit the fan."

It seemed six months ago, Nana was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour, and doctors predicted she had at most three years to live. I could tell the situation devastated Filiberto. He was without doubt a devoted grandson, and emotionally dependent on this awful dinosaur who I was beginning to dislike intensely. His sadness and fear were exacerbated when Nana told him she would go to her grave happy, if only Filiberto should marry some nice girl.

"To please Nana, I decided to get married," he said. "But, I tried to find a girl who would put up with a no-sex marriage, and it was impossible," he said, the memory causing his shapely mouth to curve downwards in melancholy. "They all just wanted to root me, or at least were confident they could persuade me into it. Gee, I never thought girls were so horny! Are they all like that?"

I laughed. Despite his peculiarity, I quite liked 'Prince Apollo'. "I can't speak for all girls, Apollo," I demurred with typical lawyer caginess, "but I personally quite like sex."

He looked scared for a second, and cast another wary glance over his shoulder. I grinned.

"Don't worry, though, I'm not going to make demands on you," I said. "Apart from other very good reasons, now that you've mentioned it, I also wouldn't be able to get the image out of my head of your Nana watching us!"

"It's not so much Nana - although I grant you, that's bad enough," said Filiberto in a confiding undertone. "It's her handbag ...the handbag." He shuddered violently while I looked at him curiously. For a second, his face looked pale and taut, then he shook away what was obviously a distasteful recollection.

"Where was I? Oh yes," he said. "So I couldn't find the right girl. Then last month, I found in one of my magazines an advertisement for Harry Jarup's business in the personals. I placed a call - and the rest is history! You're my first meeting," he added hopefully. "It was tricky for Harry because I didn't want to meet a lesbian, and he seems to have mainly lesbians and gays on his books - not that there's anything wrong with being a lesbian," he said hurriedly, "but I know Nana would have been able to tell from the start, and then she'd know I wanted a marriage for reasons other than sex ...then she'd start to suspect I was not entirely normal, and start walloping me with that handbag ..." Poor Filiberto looked anguished. "No, it just had to be a normal girl!"

"I understand," I said, hurriedly, not liking at all the thought of that handbag. "Well, you know I'm after a marriage of a respectable duration - it wouldn't look good if I threw in the towel after only a short period."

"Sure!" said Filiberto eagerly. "Once Nana dies, you can divorce me, or hang on for however long you want. It's no bother to me, just as long as I can go on living my life the way I want to, while making Nana happy until she carks it. I'm really very comfortable with my life of chastity, you know," he said earnestly, probably afraid that I might want to seduce him at some point, "so please, when we're married, don't feel sorry for me or think I am missing out on something."

"I won't think that," I assured him. Then I realised it - I had agreed implicitly to marry Apollo Filiberto.

-----------------------------


He drove me home in a current model silver Mercedes ("I make sure I upgrade every year"), with a promise that he would pick me up the next afternoon, when we would drive to his home in St Ives. There, I would meet the inimitable Nana ("I'm sure she'll like you, have no fear!"). The prospect unnerved me.

I dragged myself inside, plopped down on my couch and zapped on my TV and DVD. Seinfeld whirred into life. Wolf leapt onto my lap and began to cat-kiss my hand in that frenzied way that told me he was hungry. Heeding the message, I dragged myself up and plodded into the kitchen where I opened a tin of tuna and forked it into Wolf's plate. I watched as he fell upon it with great snuffling bites.

"Looks like I'm going to be married, Wolf," I told him wearily. "You and me are going to leave here and go and live with 'Prince Apollo' and Nana."

Wolf only twitched his tail. I sighed, ate a vegemite sandwich, and returned to the couch. I knew if I lay down, I would sink into sleep straight away; so I remained upright. I suspected if I slept, I would be subjected to my subconscious screaming "What the frig are you doing!?" messages at me. I couldn't have that. I had to keep going on this path I had laid for myself ...

I watched Seinfeld long into the night, not moving, not laughing. Perhaps I dozed a few times out of sheer fatigue...perhaps I didn't. I only rose from the couch as Wolf scratched at the door, his signal to be let out for his dawn romp beneath the rose bushes. Then I got ready for another crazy day.