Wanderlust

It was the word that started it, or more specifically, that third syllable. ‘Wanderlust.’ What the hell did it mean?
It wasn’t anything that Jim had previously experienced. Lusting to wander somewhere geographical made no sense at all. In fact, wandering anywhere – even to the local shop – was usually a bloody nuisance; having to change routines, uproot from all the familiar stuff that made his life so cosy, needing to spend money he didn’t have. Jim was more of a no-nonsense, call-a-spade-a-spade guy.
But that four-letter combination L U S T was something he’d come to appreciate in his magazines and the CDs and videos he rented. Or rather, which he used to rent before he met Julia, because, as his gaze drifted from the newspaper supplement on his lap with its headline ‘Wanderlust Satisfied’ over a magnificent shot of Tyrolean mountains, his thoughts juggled with the dual notions of Lust and Satisfaction in the context of Julia’s as yet unexplored (by him at least) body. And he became excited as the first intimations of how he might overcome his timidity and do daring things with her which were so blatant in and on his magazines and discs.
The fact that the headline was illustrated by those wonderful Austrian peaks gave him an obvious starting point as he began to apply his imagined lusts to her body. The text of the article identified Königspitze as the highest mountain in the illustrated range but his desire wasn’t to exaggerate Julia’s physical attributes, so he began what was intended to be a sort of route map of his soon-to-be-realised exploration of her various contours by naming her own two relatively modest mounds König and Spitze, thus giving each a hint of elevated magnificence but avoiding the creation of any exaggeration that created bra sizes which might seem comparable to large hammocks. Mind you, at the same time, the two inventions’ verbal associations – with royalty and saliva – did little to convey the extent of his love (or, indeed, the size of the relevant organs).
Unfortunately, his experience of the female form was so restricted that this was the extent of the information available to him. At the age of ten, fumblings with non-understanding 8-year-olds in primary school had failed to find any tell-tale contours or even stop the relevant owners of the sought-after breasts ignoring his searching as they pulled their chewing gum out in long strings before stuffing it back in their mouths to start chewing all over again.
For her part, Julia’s experience of such early sexual investigations was extremely limited. Not that she hadn’t been to primary school, but her father’s elevated position in an offshore banking fund had enabled him to send her to an upmarket private version renowned for its ability to prepare pupils for even more expensive secondary equivalents and probable subsequent graduation to the few private but costly universities. She therefore had the accent of a duchess and a second class degree in upholstery design, both of which meant she was way above Jim’s social position.
None of this, of course, featured in Jim’s thinking. As far as he was concerned, the fact that someone with breasts and an accent that placed her several social layers above him or any of his family or friends meant that he was the success that none of those who knew him would acknowledge. As his task of finding, identifying and naming (to himself) the various bits of Julia’s anatomy continued, the journey around her component parts became less exciting and more of a chore.
And so the day at the end of February when her mother, bringing them the tea and biscuits she usually supplied when Jim came visiting, found them in states of relative undress in Julia’s bedroom, the consequent prohibition of further visits was less of a hardship than it might have been. By then, Jim had more or less exhausted (without any successful conclusions) his investigations of the female anatomy and Julia was more interested in her Pilates classes and learning Japanese, so their hitherto weekly rendezvous were abandoned.
While Julia went on to marry a secretary in her father’s company, Jim was happy to persevere with his investigations of the various forms that could be taken by practising his version of Wanderlust. As a result, he never married but had a succession of cats and other pets, most of whom succumbed to the various processes to which he subjected them as he investigated their gender or the frequency with which they could provide litters of offspring.

Trade-in

For a change, Dominic was anxious. 27 years old, single and a dotcom multi-millionaire, life so far had treated him tolerably well. The fact that his parents, who lived in a 6 bedroomed apartment on the Boulevard des Moulins in Monaco, had chosen to send him to Eton had helped him to get started but it was his own intelligence, imagination and, it has to be admitted, ruthlessness which made his rise in the world so rapid. He himself knew little of computer programming but by cultivating friends who did and creating a company image which married laconic sophistication with hard-wired technological dynamism, his initial investment of £500,000 had, at the moment we meet him, grown ten fold, and a soon-to-be-confirmed merger with a Californian company specialising in IT consultancy promised to accelerate that growth even further.

Nonetheless, as he sat in his penthouse in Knightsbridge, there was no concealing the fact that he wasn’t exhibiting the sardonic sang-froid that he usually affected. He had taken ages deciding which suit to wear, wandered about in the William Fioravanti for a while before throwing it off and choosing instead the less ostentatious dark blue cashmere handmade by Henry Poole of Savile Row. Then, as he was pouring his third martini, he caught sight of himself in the full length Venetian mirror beside the Maurice Adams cocktail cabinet and felt an indefinable uneasiness. It was too correct, too formal. No, it would have to be the Alexander Amosu vicuna/pashmina blend. As he slipped the jacket on over his two-tone Givenchy silk shirt, he remembered hearing an interview in which its maker spoke of its ‘uncompromising quality’ and revealed that it had taken more than 80 hours work to achieve the perfection it represented.
He checked himself again in the mirror and, with the pattern of gold threads in his Satya Paul Design Studio silk tie glowing discreetly and the Schneider of Clifford Street shoes completing the line of the trousers, he had to admit that he looked pretty good.

Surely she’d be impressed. She was a woman who saw through appearances, especially when there was anything cheap about them. When they’d met at the Breeders’ Cup in Santa Anita, it was the colour of the silks on his entry in the Classic that had attracted her. They had, she said, ‘the exquisite discretion of the post-impressionist palette’. He had no idea what she meant by that but he was impressed.

She’d actually approached him at the champagne reception on the evening of the race to ask about the younger horses in his string and whether he had any potential Derby entries. Her knowledge of British flat racing was comprehensive and, as they talked, the extent of her connections in the top stables became clear.

But it was in his hotel suite later that her real talents became evident. Dominic had had lots of women and was confident that he knew what they wanted, but her caresses, her inventions, the sensations she provoked, the long, slow, aching climbs to release were beyond anything he’d ever experienced. She’d left after breakfast to fly to Hong Kong, but he’d persuaded her to stop off in London on her way back to the USA.

He checked his Patek Philippe Aquanaut. 2 o’clock. Her flight was due in at 4.30 and his Learjet 70 was standing by to take them straight on to Geneva.

He was packing his Kenneth Cole Reaction overnight case when his Goldstriker iPhone 4G Diamond rang. He snatched it up quickly, nervous now because he didn’t want anything to get in the way of the afternoon’s plans. The caller’s ID didn’t show. When he answered, his voice was abrupt, dismissive.
‘Yes.’
Adrenaline surged when he heard the caller’s voice. It was her.
‘Listen, Dominic,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get the flight. Something came up here.’
‘Oh shit, what?’ he said, momentarily forgetting that cool ought to be his default status.
‘That guy from Dubai. You remember? The one we were talking about?’
‘What about him?’
‘He was asking about Tattersall’s this year. Looking to make a big investment.’
‘So?’
‘Well he wants some help. “Inside thinking” is how he put it.’
‘Right, and you’re his thinker, are you?’
‘Seems that way.’
There was a smile in her voice as she replied. It annoyed him.
‘So how long are you staying?’ he asked.
‘As long as it takes.’
He found the lightness of her tone insulting. It seemed in the end that she was like all the rest – shallow, selfish, careless of whether her choices hurt others.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Enjoy.’
He clicked the phone off and sent it skimming across the leather of the Italian sofa. This was an unfamiliar experience. No-one decided his agendas. He was the one who changed his routines, his choices, not some bloody hanger-on at racetracks.

He flopped onto the sofa, reached across to open his MacBook Pro and was soon scrolling through the pictures of his favourite escort agency. Some of the faces he recognised but he wanted something new now, something to help him unload the anger she’d created in him. As well as the Europeans, there were Filipinos, Vietnamese and other East Asian women, all beautiful, all capable of combining elegance with erotic extremes. In the end, having chosen a Japanese, it occurred to him that extremism might be on the agenda so he added a black woman. Each would cost him £10,000 for the night, but they would do what he wanted, what he needed. In fact, as he disconnected after his call to the agency he knew exactly how they could serve him, how he could use them to redress the balance. He smiled. He was back in charge.

Life wasn’t so bad, after all.

TWINS?

My guess is that most people make both plus and minus assumptions about being a twin. Yes, it’s fun seeing an exact replica of yourself and the occasional mistaken identity thing can reveal some pretty juicy secrets about the sibling you’re being mistaken for. But the theft of your physical uniqueness, the fact that you’re a twin before being allowed to be an individual must be pretty disorientating.
Eric and Joe Campbell were fairly typical, seemed to enjoy themselves a lot and do things which actually encouraged other people to mix them up. It was only when they left school that they set aside the fun aspect of it all, mainly because, strangely, they developed very different skills. Eric turned out to be a gifted scientist, mainly in the field of endocrinology, while Joe’s talent was, first, for writing poems – mainly to impress girl friends – but later, using his linguistic facility to sit at a computer making up stories, slogans and jingles for industrial concerns, video companies, and even the occasional national broadcaster.
Their physical resemblance was, of course, still striking. They were both slim, handsome men, with plenty of hair, but Eric had none of Joe’s flamboyance or confidence with friends and strangers alike. He preferred his own company and the fascination of his researches. In fact, as his expertise had grown, these finds had produced some very effective remedies for certain hormonal conditions, which had encouraged him to think about branching out and benefitting from them commercially.
It was an idea he first tested on Joe in one of their rare get-togethers, when each caught up with the other’s latest schemes and activities. Joe’s were always quickly conveyed because very few of them lasted a significant amount of time and were basically either tales of editors’ ignorance or brief accounts of disastrous flirtations. Eric’s, on the other hand, were infrequent and, usually, deep, serious ponderings over various chemical experiments, the reactions of antibodies in unlikely contexts and other esoteric happenings incomprehensible to Joe.
But this time it was different. It was the word ‘hormone’ that caught Joe’s attention, mainly because, despite the fact that he knew that most of his brother’s work was hormone-related, his knee-jerk reaction was always to assume (or, at least, hope) that the talk might be of sex. On this occasion, it was more promising because it was followed by the expression ‘mammographic density’ and from Joe’s familiarity with women’s magazines, he knew what the ’mammo’ bit of such expressions was. But Eric had swiftly progressed to talk of ‘libid-derived hormones, amino acids, peptides and proteins’ so his interest wavered.
Until, that is, Eric uncharacteristically mentioned money.
Joe shook off the dream-state into which he was sliding and said, ‘What?’
‘I said there’s money to be made there if I could be bothered.’
‘Where?’ asked Joe.
‘Retrograde Densities,’ said Eric. ‘That’s what I was telling you. I’ve synthesised this…’
‘Never mind that,’ said Joe. ‘How will you be making this money?’
‘Well, I know the chemical messenger works, delivers it to the right tissues, but…’
‘Yes, but where does the money come in?’
‘I told you. Several of the big boys are getting into the market with products that…’
‘What sort of products?’
‘Like I said, the ones with actively retrograde densities. The ones I’ve been working on.’
‘So you’re telling me you’ve made this product thing that sells?’
‘Well, it could if I tried to…’
‘What’s it called?’ asked Joe.
‘Called? It’s not called anything. It’s just a bi-lateral incidence I’ve observed when you…’
‘Never mind that,’ said Joe. ‘You reckon you could sell it?’
‘No, I don’t care about selling things, but I’d like patients to have access to it.’
‘And you say they’d buy it.’
‘Oh yes, I’m pretty sure they would.’
Joe rubbed his hands together.
‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘Brother dear, I know just the company you need.’
Eric just frowned.
Joe pulled a small notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket.
‘Now what did you say it was, this thing?’ he asked.
The frown still on his face, Eric watched as Joe copied down his answer.
‘It’s not a “thing”. It’s a bi-lateral incidence of actively retrograde densities.’
Joe looked hard at the words, nodding slightly as he did so.
‘Perfect,’ he said at last. ‘OK, give me a couple of days and I’ll be in touch.’ And, with Eric just nodding, he stood up and left.
Just two weeks later, he texted Eric to fix a follow-up meeting.
When it happened, Eric was only vaguely curious but Joe was buzzing with energy. As he sat down across the table from Eric, he reached again for his inside pocket and pulled out a single rolled up sheet of paper.
On the blank outside, Eric could see the name of a major pharmaceutical company.
‘Told you,’ said Joe. ‘All you needed was a name and a campaign.’
Eric shook his head. Joe unrolled the paper to reveal a blinding white snowscape with lightning flashes on a dark background. Across the top of all this drama was a single word: BLIZZARD.
‘What the hell’s this?’ asked Eric.
‘Like it?,’ asked Joe. ‘I came up with the name, they bought it, and they want you to get in touch with their labs as soon as you can.’
‘But… Blizzard?’
‘Dynamic, eh?’ said Joe. ‘the complete, devastating cure. They love it.’
‘But what the hell’s it got to do with my experiments?’
‘Everything,’ said Joe. ‘You told me it was
“Bi-Lateral Incidence of Actively Retrograde Densities.” That’s B L I A R D. It just needed a middle bit, so I added the year you invented it, 22, squeezed the letters down a bit and… voila!’
The world of endocrinology knows this all happened many years ago. Eric still lives in his flat in Glasgow but Joe has a Georgian house in Richmond and properties in Scotland and the Dordogne.