You'll remember how I told you about the time I took the Countess for a ride in the country, and how that ended up. At any rate, I'd've sure found it hard to forget - other than pinching myself and wondering if it really happened, after all - and I guess any other guy would too. 'Course, I'd always figured that this was a lady who had to be about the best lay in all the world. She's not just a looker, but she kinda oozes sex and sensuality when you look at her, the way a leopard oozes grace and power and general bad-assedness. Granted, it'd take a man with bigger stones than me to stare at the Countess, still less undress her with your eyes, however much you might want to. I figure if she wanted to break a man, she could do it with no more fuss and bother than that same leopard might pull down a pronghorn.
But you don't need to stare at the Countess. It doesn't take a lot more than a glance for you to tell that this is about the most beautiful, sexiest and smartest woman you're ever going to meet in the flesh, and the only hard part is where you have to admit you've got about a snowball's chance on a hot stove of ever getting within arm's reach. And that was what left me pinching myself. I'll own up to the whack-off fantasising - I'd've had to be queer not to - but it was so unbelievable that anything would ever have come of it, even if I'd been shown a video of the two of us in that hayfield, I'd've sworn it was a forgery.
Well, there was no sense in following the Countess around like a dog with blue balls. I had the memories, when I could convince myself they were real, and they were some way-out memories at that. I mean, the Countess, who's the kind of woman the Queen of England would say "Madame" to, going down on me, and swallowing, too? Hoo, boy. No, I just had to say to myself, "Jake, my man, just be glad you're in a nice well-paid job with all found, you scrub up not bad-looking, you've got some good manners on you, and take it one way and another, you can generally find some pussy if you want it badly enough." And I won't say I didn't knock one out to the thought of the Countess now and then, or pretend it was her I was balling instead of whoever it really was, but on the whole, I just got on with things and didn't fret none, and when I saw her turning on those wiles on some businessman who was going to help make her even richer, I'd smile inside, 'cos I'd been there, and I was ready to bet the house he wasn't going to.
But one day I'm on my way down to the gym to spend an hour or so staying in shape, and as I'm going in, the Countess is just coming out. She's in fencing gear and toting a sword of some kind - an epee if I'm not mistaken - and this guy who teaches her is a couple of paces behind her, looking red-faced and out of breath and generally giving all kinds of clues as to who it is who's just really been taught a lesson. She sees me and stops, and says, "Jake. Just the man I wanted to see."
So I stop and draw myself up a little straighter, try not to stammer, and say "Madame. What can I do for you?"
"I have a function to go to ce soir, and my escort has let me down," she says, and I figure I'd sooner have been the guy at the record company who told the Beatles that guitar bands were on their way out. "If you're not otherwise engaged...?"
Yeah, like I'm going to blow the Countess out by telling her I've already got a better offer. I pretend to think for a moment, while the Countess pretends not to know I'm pretending, and then I say, "Sure, I'd be delighted, madame." And that's the pure truth, too.
She hands me a business card and says "Then take the afternoon off and go and get yourself outfitted, Jake. I have an account."
I just bet she does. Matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't have the folks there eating out of her hand for fear she bought them out and slung them onto the street.
So I scrub round the gym session and go get a cab and pretty soon I pitch up at the kind of gentleman's outfitters where they don't let you through the door unless all four of your great-granddaddies were the right sort, or else you've got a pass from the Countess. Inside it's all walnut with a shine an inch deep, discreet murmurs and assistants who take a second longer than you're really comfortable with when it comes to measuring your inside leg, but I gotta say they know their stuff. I'm none too easy to fit off the peg, but in less time than it would've taken me to buy a pair of pants, I'm decked out top to toe in the kind of duds you'd wear to the opening of Parliament or an audience with royalty. The weirdest thing is, I actually feel comfortable in it, though normally I'd sooner be skinned alive than put on a tux.
They pack it all up for me and tell off some guy to bring it round to the Hotel, and so we fast-forward to when the Countess and I are turning up at this "function" of hers in a limo that's slightly shorter than a Greyhound bus. She's been chatting politely to me all the way there, and although we ain't been talking about, say, Harleys and hayfields, it's not been all stilted and make-believe-polite, and I'm already thinking that, even if the Countess wasn't drop-dead-and-call-the-undertaker gorgeous and loaded to boot, she would make about as good a date as a flesh and blood man had the right to hope for.
We get out of the car and the Countess is surrounded by photographers faster than you can snap a shutter, but she holds up a dainty hand that asks 'em to all mind their own business and I'll be dipped if they don't back off, which I never heard the like of.
Being the Countess's arm candy for the next few hours isn't what you'd call hard work. A lot of the conversation goes right over my head, but then wherever the two of us go it ain't me that they're interested in talking to. I figure that this might be hard for a lot of men to take, and I get a sort of idea as to why the Countess never has a man permanently in tow, but as for me, I'm cool with it, and I just enjoy myself drinking in the billion-dollar atmosphere, not to mention the thousand-pound champagne, and the time goes by quicker than I'd've guessed.
We quit the party at about two in the morning and it turns out we've got a suite booked on the top floor, and I'm a couple of doors down from the Countess. She smiles at me as we go up in the lift, and she says, "You do fill out a suit very well, Jake."
"Thanks," I say, and maybe I've taken just enough of the free drinks to add, "but I'm hardly a beginner next to you, Madame." It's no more than the truth, if it comes to that, and it has to be something she knows very well and has heard before.
She smiles, accepting the compliment, and says, "And you've been the perfect escort, and I hope you have enjoyed yourself."
I laugh. "It's the high life, all right, and not for me every day of the week, but it's been something to see how the other half live, or maybe the other point oh oh one percent. Seriously though, who'd pass up a chance like this? I've had a gourmet dinner, rubbed shoulders with half the A-list and got to strut my stuff in the classiest surroundings I'll ever set foot in." Then the champagne gives my tongue another kick and I say, "But I'll tell you one, thing, madame. There were maybe twenty of the best lookers in the world there tonight, and not one of them fit to hold a candle to you."
Another smile, and not even a hint to me to stop my blethering; and she says, "Well, as you have seen me to my room, Jake, perhaps you would care for a nightcap?"
"Sure," I say, trying not to make it sound like "pretty please with a cherry on top", and also trying not to fantasise about getting the Countess out of those designer originals of hers, 'cos I'm ready to bet she can read my mind. So we go into her room, which is about the size of the ground floor of your average country house and has a huge picture window looking out over the lights of London. There's a crystal decanter on the sideboard, and she takes a couple of brandy snifters and sloshes a generous slug of I don't dare guess how old Cognac into each of them, and hands one to me.
"A votre sante," she says, to which I say "Prost," and we both take a sip. The rot-gut I usually drink stomps over your tongue in hobnailed boots and you mostly feel relief once it's gone down, where as this just sashays on down like a harem dancer in silk slippers, honey-smooth and fragrant; but I can feel it's got a wallop on it, and besides, you don't guzzle antique brandy, still less in front of the Countess.
While I'm admiring the brandy and the view both, the Countess turns on some music, and she faces me and says, "We were too busy to dance earlier, Jake. Care to make up for it?"
She's got one hand out, which I take, and I say "Glad to, but I'm not much of a ballroom dancer."
