Summer festivals are becoming my favourite kind.
Maybe two gigs after the one at the castle, the one with the book and the red-head I can only describe as... hot. That time I met a devil at the crossroads, got possessed, did a paranormal B&E, and was rewarded with a peek into the beyond.
It would be silly to tell you that experience didn't raise a lot of questions on my part, but with only a recollection like a burning Escher painting to go on I couldn't exactly call her up for clarification. I'd been ready to chalk it up to a spiked drink or a weird dream until I noticed a perfect handprint singed into the edge of my sleeping bag. It was hard to think of it as a trick when my close examination revealed the faint pattern of fingerprints melted into the fabric.
A flash of memory, a moan being transmitted to my ears via two glowing red thighs, as if there were strong light shining from beneath her soft skin. I feel the heat on my face and get another deep taste of her as she looks down at me, a pink lip pursed around the point of a sharp canine.
Of course, I told Elle the whole thing next time she called me, before one of her first solo gigs in the states. Our brief flings in person had become a little romance over the phone, when she had the time and felt like a familiar voice. We were both career nomads so long distance things weren't new to either of us, but it felt special. I hoped she wouldn't begrudge me getting laid, if she even believed me.
"We have a friend in common." I tell her.
"Oh yeah? Who's that?" She sounds tired but content, it's a good sound for her.
"Didn't actually tell me her name, now you mention it." Or give me her number, more's the pity.
"She, huh? So tell me, what did 'She' look like?" Elle's teasing me of course, though not about who she thinks.
"In a word?" I grin to myself, wish I could see Elle's face right now. "Hot. Very fucking hot."
I can hear her silently wonder if I'm talking about who she's thinking about.
"Oh yeah?" That anticipatory twang in her voice tells me we're talking about the same woman.
"With the most beautiful green eyes I've ever seen." I tell her.
"Hot with green eyes huh?" Her voice shakes a little, I imagine her shivering at the memory of those burning lips on hers, shiver myself at the mental image of them together.
"You're welcome, by the way." I grin. "I think she enjoyed seeing us."
"Shut the fuck up..." She finally believes me. "When... uh..." She coughs, I can hear her suppress a giggle at the realisation. "When was this?"
I mentally calculate.
"Two months or so? While you were cutting the album."
"Hey... uh..." I sense her ready to tell me something, then she thinks better of it.
"What?"
"Did she ask you for anything? Any kind of favour?"
"Way ahead of you, Chica. We're even."
"..." She fails to say. "I was gonna ask what she did for you but... I know you."
My smile becomes softer, sweeter. I never knew there was enough of me to know.
"I'm a simple creature, I keep saying." She giggles at that.
"Uh-huh, I noticed." She tells me. "So long as you've got beer and pussy you're happy."
"Damn right, though not in that order."
"Naturally."
There's a silence that in person we would fill by undressing each other and then enjoying a hard, loud, wild fuck on the floor. On the phone, we just have to sit there and blush quietly to ourselves.
"So how're the fuck-heads?" It's affectionate, kind of. Her old stage-mates weren't something she looked back on too fondly, the clash of an aspiring musician among aspiring popstars.
"Still fuckin'." I tell her. So long as their cheques keep cashing and their amps stay heavy then I'll have a job. But I've been thinking about something new as well.
"So... what did she want?"
"I'll tell you if you tell me first." I tease her.
"You already know." I can hear her grin, I press for more.
"So she just said, 'I want to perv over you seducing a sweaty roadie' and you said 'okay'? C'mon, tell me."
"She said..." Elle says. "That if I wanted her help then I had to pay with sex or death, symbolic I suppose."
"Huh." I take that bit of cosmically horrifying information in stride. "You could've told me."
"I think putting a man under that kind of pressure could have been counter-productive." She laughs and then I do, she makes a good point.
"So you used me for your... sex magic?" I find it odd that I don't mind. It's hard to feel bad about meeting and then having sex with two beautiful, mysterious women from exotic lands. The memories of being intimate with one American singer and one Hadean demon are probably going to be what I fantasise about for the next century or so.
"Totally." She giggles.
"Did it work?" I'm suddenly just a little bit self-conscious. Elle flirted with me like she just wanted to unwind and enjoy some kinky rebellion on the stage. I gave my all of course, but if I'd known her career depended on it I might've carbed up first.
"Well a few days later I get a call from a record company I'd never even sent a demo to, and now they're producing my album." I blush a deep red, she's so far out of my league.
"I think she likes you then." I tease.
"I think she likes you too." She teases back.
"She only wanted me for my body." Which was true enough.
"C'mon then, tell me."
"Uhh..." I struggle for words. "It was either a heroically dangerous quest to destroy an evil artefact, or criminal damage of an old book. Depends how you look at it."
"A book?"
"It took more effort than it sounds."
