Smut & Filth. Chapter five.

"French Dressing".

She stepped from the little shower cubicle and wiped condensation from the mirror, revealing her own face and the face of her new lover still standing beneath the cascading water, his eyes on her back as he leant against the cold tiles, his passion having once again been sated.

She wrapped a thick, soft towel around herself and left wet footprints on the timber floor as she padded through the apartment toward the bed, brushing her teeth as she went. Now fresh and clean the room in which she’d spent the majority of her visit smelled musty and of sex. She smiled, unhooked the little catch on the shutters that covered the tall window and pushed them outwards.

The cooler air of the spring morning rushed in, bringing with it a shiver and goose bumps that spread rapidly across her exposed flesh.

His apartment was on the first floor of a small, unremarkable building on a narrow, unremarkable street. The buildings that faced the window in which her frame was framed were tired, grey looking constructs with peeling paint on the shutters and render missing from portions of the stonework. Power and telephone cables crisscrossed the street here and there. None of the roofs were the same height and each was clad in a different style of tile. Pigeons roosted on window ledges and gutters. To her left there was a pharmacie, a huge, illuminated green cross indicating its position and, next to that, a boulangerie. Very unremarkable indeed.

And very beautiful.

She felt his arms wrap around her from behind and she wriggled against him as he held her tightly and kissed the gentle curve of her neck. Across the street, in a similarly unremarkable first floor window, an elderly lady smiled and wagged a finger at them in faux admonishment. At that moment, the loose knot in the towel decided to become unraveled, exposing her breast. She shrieked as the old lady stopped smiling and pulled her own shutters shut, loudly uttering words in French that, although not understood by the wet girl in the window, plainly weren’t complimentary.

He dressed quickly and left her in the apartment. In his absence she explored as she dressed and dried her hair. She looked at the books on his shelves, the food in his cupboards, the contents of his drawers and the toiletries in his bathroom. She unscrewed the lid of his aftershave and inhaled its now familiar scent.

Her investigations turned up nothing she hadn’t already been aware of and she smiled when she noticed the greetings card, now set in a frame and standing by the log burner in the corner of the room. She’d forgotten she’d sent him that. Sent it him before she'd even met him. Already, that seemed an awfully long time ago.

The front door opened as she straightened her skirt and looked herself up and down in the tall, freestanding mirror that stood by the even taller windows. The ancient hinges groaned as they bore the weight of the door. Over the shoulder of her own image in the mirror his familiar smile beamed at her and, in doing so, reinvigorated her own.

“You look fantastic.” He said as he headed for the kitchen holding aloft a little box of breakfast tea, “Got ‘em, your favourite brand as well. The supermarket sells English stuff, for us migrants. Robbing swines though, four bloody euros!”

“Tight bastard.” She laughed as she joined him behind the counter.

He threw a tea bag in a cup and put the kettle under the tap. The water that was intended to fill the vessel immediately began pouring out of the holes in the newly burnt bottom. He turned the tap off, dropped the kettle into the deep, porcelain sink, shook his head and took her hand.

“Fuck my life. The bar’s open, they do tea.” He said.

“Great, but..." She smiled, "...it’s nearly lunch time. Do they sell gin?”

Continue to chapter six.