Monsieur by Emma Becker Page A

touch myself lazily as we speak, spurred on by the frustration of hearing his beautiful voice, his hard-on voice, singing songs of desire. Oh, the writing, the writing . . . These days, Monsieur is insistent that I should be writing. Come to think of it, it’s all a bit of a cliché, a story about a married man with the niece of a colleague. But I shouldn’t offend his literary pride.
    â€˜Why not?’ I know all too well that yet another strike day will just see me faffing around.
    â€˜Give it a try, at least,’ he answers. ‘I’ll call you tonight, or at some point during the day if I can manage it. OK, my love?’
    â€˜OK.’
    â€˜Where are you now?’
    The conversation is changing direction.
    â€˜In bed. I’ve just woken up.’
    â€˜Completely naked?’
    â€˜I’m always naked. Like the day I was born.’
    Between clenched teeth, Monsieur releases a painful sigh. ‘You make me hard!’
    I chuckle contentedly, stifle a protest. ‘But I said nothing to provoke it!’
    â€˜You said enough. My imagination does the rest. How’s it going to look if I get to the clinic with an erection straining at my trousers?’
    â€˜It’ll fade,’ I predict, stretching, even though I know that, given the chance, I’ll make sure it doesn’t. A fact Monsieur is quite aware of.
    â€˜It’ll fade, and you’ll send me obscene text messages and I’ll get hard again. Do you think it feels comfortable when I’m operating?’
    â€˜If you’d rather I didn’t . . .’ I smile.
    â€˜Are you crazy? Send me photos of your arse. I’ll look at them between appointments.’
    â€˜And then you’ll sport a mighty erection in the presence of your lady patients. Not very professional.’
    â€˜To hell with them. It’ll relax me getting hard for you. You’ll send me pics?’
    I rephrase a small anodyne promise, a witticism, the foundation stone of most of our telephone conversations. What makes me wet, my version of hard, is knowing it’s so easy to excite Monsieur. To think of him in his expensive suit, or his surgical scrubs, clearly erect, concealing his embarrassment beneath his mask, and all because of me. My fat arse stirring up such feelings inside him.
    â€˜We’ll speak tonight, darling,’ I warble, still stretching.
    â€˜Your voice arouses me,’ he says, then brusquely ‘Till tonight.’
    After an hour on Facebook, I summon the energy to open a new text folder, and stare at its emptiness like a chicken confronted with a knife. The problem of the white page is how full of emptiness and expectation it is. If you jot down a few words, the white void seems to shout, ‘Feed me!’ How can I plumb its depths? I, who, for the last year, have been sleeping on the laurels of my one and only publication. For more than six months I’ve felt like a dried-up well from which only drops of muddy water have been painfully drawn. So, yes, I write. In notebooks I lose after a few days, across the virgin pages of my diary. Stupid thoughts. All the nothings that are part of my comfortable student life. Am I capable of more today?
    I think of Monsieur’s voice on the telephone as he expressed amazement that I knew so much about his private life over recent years, neglecting to mention that my mother had told me about that weekend in New Jersey long before we first met. So, with no thought of success, I improvise a few lines, like a compliant courtesan, to oblige him. I write:
    He always seemed amazed that he had long been a part of my life, although before our first conversations he had been something of an abstraction. I was building a whole world with the facts I could glean, or plunder, about him. Monsieur enjoyed erotic literature; this was the detail that set me on my quest. For a long time, I had been alone in my appreciation of Calaferte, André Pieyre de