THE DEVIANTS

They met in a bookshop. It was Quills of Parnell Street on Dublin’s northside, a multi-storied affair that boasted a huge second-hand section as well as an award-winning coffee shop. Max was in there waiting for his wife to finish having lunch with her sister in the hotel across the street.

For once, he wasn’t in the mood to appreciate the sheer volume of gorgeous books stocked by the shop and breathe in their smell as he normally was. He was bored and restless, dissatisfied with things. Dissatisfied with himself, and with his shit-heap of a life.

He mooched about the aisles with his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face, looking down at his feet. If his wife Lena had been there to see him, she would have laughingly told him that he looked like a disgruntled Dennis the Menace-style schoolboy and that all he needed to complete the picture was a tie knotted around his head and a rusty old can to kick along the ground ahead of him.

Lena had a talent for painting word- and other- pictures like that, she’d always had it. Odd, that, Max often reflected, especially as he was the one who was supposed to be the writer in the family, not her.

Juliet was in Quills because it was a Saturday afternoon and she liked to wander around in there on Saturday afternoons if she could. She liked to browse the hundreds of shelves and maybe have a cappuccino and a blueberry or cinnamon muffin in the coffee shop on the third floor. Today, she was comfort-shopping.

Her week hadn’t been particularly gruesome but neither had it been anything to write home about and she’d come in today with the express intention of treating herself. Already she’d chosen three books, all from the section marked ROMANTIC FICTION. The books all had glossy covers featuring happy couples. Juliet thought that they might depress her if she looked at them for too long.

When she was done in Romantic Fiction, she wandered over to ‘Thrillers’ in search of something meatier. The new Chris Patton book was on sale today. It had a stand all to itself. It caught her eye and she picked it up. She hadn’t read any of his books yet but she’d heard he was good. At any rate, she doubted he wrote much about happy couples.

She picked up the book and turned it over to read the back. As she read the blurb she felt, rather than saw, a presence behind her, just over her left shoulder. She’d always hated anyone reading over her shoulder. Even when she’d been a child in school she’d hated it. It was just so intrusive, so invasive of another’s space. Irritably, she turned around to see a man smiling at her.

“Good choice,” the man said, indicating the Chris Patton book. “Have you read any others of his? He’s got quite a back catalogue.”

Juliet shook her head, looking at him curiously.

“You should,” he said. “You’ll never look at mermaids the same way again.”

“I’ve never really looked at them before,” Juliet confessed and they both laughed.

“I like your hair,” he said then, unexpectedly.

Juliet blushed and put her hand to her head.

“I only had it done this morning,” she said. “It used to be a sort of mid-brown and down to my waist. I was tired of always dragging it around and never feeling the air on my neck and so I told the hairdresser to cut it all off and bleach what was left blonde with the little streak of pink at the front. I’m... I’m actually not sure what I think about it, to be honest, now that I’ve had it done. I... I needed a bit of a... a change but now I’m not so sure.” The man whistled between his teeth. There was a gap between the two front ones which Juliet found cute.

“Wow,” he said, sounding impressed. “That was really brave of you.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Juliet, feeling shy and self-conscious suddenly. “It’s going to take some getting used to, though. I’m probably going to wake up tomorrow morning and regret it.”

“It really suits you,” the man said.

For a moment Juliet thought that he was actually going to reach out and touch her hair and she could feel her nipples stiffen and her stomach tighten in anticipation.

“It makes you look like a pixie,” he said softly.

The way he said it, he made the word pixie sound like something sexual, something desirable.

“Some pixie,” Juliet said with a nervous laugh, indicating the torn jeans and Dr. Martens boots she wore with her vest top and denim jacket.

“I think you look very pretty,” he said.

This time, the way he said it made Juliet want to hear him say other things, more intimate things.

“Thanks,” she said.

Her voice came out in a croak and she blushed again, embarrassed.

“Do you have time for a coffee upstairs?” he asked her then. “I have to pick up my wife from Morton’s across the street in...”

Here he looked at his watch.

“...in just under an hour,” he went on. “That gives us plenty of time. I’ll treat you to one of their finest muffins. I hear they’re positively the last word in confectionery deliciousness.”

Here he winked and Juliet smiled.

“How can I refuse an offer like that?” she said. “I’ll just pay for these first,” she added, dropping the new Chris Patton book into her wire basket along with the three romantic novels.

“Here, let me take that, “ he said, holding out his hand for the basket.

“It’s not heavy,” she said but she handed it over meekly.

She couldn’t remember the last time that anyone had offered to carry anything for her, if they ever had. It made her feel feminine and delicate, sort of cared-for, somehow.

“Will you do me a favour?” he said when they reached the checkout.

“If I can,” she said hesitantly, wondering what was coming.

“Would you let me pay for the Chris Patton novel? I’d like to give it to you, as a gift.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly...” began Juliet.

“Please, let me,” he said.

It’s the first book I ever saw you hold. He didn’t say it but Juliet felt like he had.

“I’d consider it an honour,” he added.

There was something so intense about his voice that Juliet capitulated.

“That’s kind of you,” she said.

“It’s nothing,” he said, taking out his wallet. “There, that’s that done,” he went on when all of Juliet’s books had been bagged and paid for. “Now, I believe that we have a date with some muffins.”

Juliet laughed. His use of the word ‘date’ sent thrills through her body. She liked the idea of being on a date with him, even if they were only going upstairs to have coffee. She liked being with him, full-stop, she decided. There was something about him that set her nerve-ends tingling.

She liked the endearing gap between his front teeth and the crinkles around his eyes. His eyes were blue, the sort of faded blue that reminded Juliet of denim that had been washed too frequently. His hair was dark-blonde and shoulder-length, lightly streaked with grey and tied back in a ponytail.

She imagined the two of them, happy and a little drunk, coming home to her flat after a night out. He’d push her up against the wall and kiss her and cup her breasts in his hands before fucking her hard, right there where they stood.

His cock would fill her pussy as if they’d been designed to fit together. She would throw back her head, eyes closed, and give herself up to the cruel, animalistic beauty of the act, letting herself fuck and be fucked in turn.

At the bottom of the stairs that led to the huge coffee-shop, he suddenly stopped and bit his lower lip. He looked to Juliet as if he were trying to decide something. He took a deep breath then and said:

“I want to show you something. May I please show you something?”

Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed her hand and pulled her with him down to the back of the bookshop to the second-hand section. He negotiated his way through the shelves as if he had a specific destination in mind. Juliet saw that they were in the section marked TRAVEL.

Still holding her hand tightly- not that she was protesting, she wasn’t. His hand felt strong and warm around hers- he scanned the shelves for a moment before taking down a dog-eared paperback book and handing it to Juliet. Juliet took the book and looked at it curiously.

On the front cover, a man sat astride a motorbike with a woman peeping out from behind him, laughing. The man’s arms were folded in the heavy leather motorcycle jacket he wore and the woman’s arms were wrapped round his waist. Huge mirrored sunglasses covered his eyes and only some of the shaggy dark blonde hair was visible under his motorcycle helmet but Juliet recognised him instantly.

The laughing mouth was the same, the same big white even teeth with the small gap between the two front ones. Some fifteen or twenty years later, the hair was flecked with grey and the face and waistline had thickened and softened but it was definitely him.

“This is you?” said Juliet, reading the title.

‘TO INDIA OR BUST FOR CARRICK STREET CHILDRENS’ HOME: BY MAX AND LENA MARSDEN,′ the book was called. Masses and masses of thick, lush-looking vegetation was visible behind the couple on the motorbike. The man nodded, grinning.

“Then your name must be Max Marsden?” continued Juliet, reading the authors’ names from the book’s cover.

Feeling stupid then, she blushed and said:

“Well, of course it must be. It says so on the cover.”

“That’s me,” said Max, the grin widening.

He held out his hand to Juliet and, when she took it, he raised it to his lips and kissed it. Juliet’s eyes widened.

“I don’t expect you to have heard of me,” he went on, still holding her hand. “It was written a good while ago. It wasn’t exactly a best-seller, though we sold enough copies to make a fair few

quid for charity. That’s why we did the trip in the first place, you see, to raise money for a childrens’ charity my wife was involved with. Still is involved with, as it happens. The corporate sponsorship we managed to rustle up for the trip along with the book sales raised enough cash to put a fully-stocked library in a local childrens’ home.”

“That’s fantastic,” Juliet said. “And you wrote the book together, you and your wife?”

“Not exactly,” Max said. “A ghost-writer did most of it. We were sending back what you might call little dispatches about the trip when we could to a local newspaper that was following the story. A small publishing-house picked up on the whole thing then and that’s how the idea for the book came about. I couldn’t believe it when I came across this old copy, here, after all this time. It was just a few minutes before I met you. It was a bit of a blast from the past, I can tell you. I was going to buy it but then I thought I’d leave it for someone else to enjoy. I still have boxes filled with unsold copies up in my attic somewhere. I don’t really need any more. I’ll buy it for you, though, if you’d like to have it,” he finished.

“I’d love to have it,” Juliet said. “So this is your wife?” she asked him enviously then.

The sight of the woman’s long dark wavy hair tumbling down over the shoulders of the sleeveless sun-dress she wore made Juliet wish suddenly that she hadn’t cut off all her own beautiful long hair only hours before. Max nodded. He took the book from Juliet’s hands.

“That’s Lena,” he said. “She’s probably aged better than me since that picture was taken, if you want to know the truth.”

He patted his rounded stomach with a self-deprecating smile.

“I think you look very nice,” Juliet said shyly, echoing his words to her earlier.

She was surprised by how jealous she felt of this woman she’d never met, this Lena, who’d apparently aged so much better than her husband. Lena looked like the kind of woman Juliet had always envied, the kind who never struggled with things like bitten nails or tights with ladders in them or broken relationships. She looked happy and fulfilled and in control, as if she’d worked out all of life’s secrets a long time ago.

“Why, thank you, kind lady,” Max said, bowing from the waist and waggling his hands in a ridiculous parody of a knightly flourish.

“You’re silly,” giggled Juliet.

“Wouldst thou care to go upstairs with this gallant knight and partake of a light repast, my kind lady?” Max went on, still in his ridiculous knight-speak, offering his arm to Juliet. “After we’ve paid for this, of course,” he added with a wink, indicating the travel book in his hand.

“Why not?” laughed Juliet, taking his arm and allowing him to lead her back the way they’d come, first to the register to pay for the book and have it bagged up and then to the stairs that led up to the coffee shop.

Upstairs in The Muffin-Top, they found a secluded little table down the back of the room where they could sit with their cappuccinos and cakes and have their chat in private.

“I’ll get these,” Max had said when they’d stood at the register with their loaded trays.

“No, please, let me,” Juliet had protested, fishing about in her bag for her purse. “You’ve already bought me the books, the Chris Patton one and the travel one. Let me pay. It’s the least I can do.”

He’d actually taken her purse from her, gently but firmly, and pushed it back down into her bag.

“It’s only a few muffins,” he’d said, taking out his wallet and thrusting a twenty-euro note at the bored-looking woman behind the till.

Juliet, with a kind of fluttery feeling in her stomach, had made no further protest. Following him meekly to their table, she wondered what she’d have done if anyone else, anyone but this man with his faded blue eyes and easy grin, had tried to pull that stunt on her at the till.

His hands had felt strong and hard as they’d closed over hers at the checkout. She imagined him pinning her to her bed with them, his naked body damp with sweat as he lay stretched out on top of her and drove his cock into her until he came, emptying his ejaculate into her open, hungry body.

She wondered what he would say if he knew what she was thinking. Would he be shocked? If she were to tell him, would he get up and storm out of the coffee shop in disgust? She had the oddest feeling that he wouldn’t, that he would be pleased about it. She didn’t know why she felt that. She just did, somehow.

When they were seated in their cosy little booth with their purchases, Max held out his hand to her. Juliet stared at him, surprised.

“I know we shook hands downstairs, or at least I kissed yours,” he said with a grin, “but we haven’t really been properly introduced yet. I’m Max Marsden and I couldn’t be happier to make your acquaintance.”

Juliet took his outstretched hand. She already knew from downstairs what it felt like, knew that it was warm but not clammy, larger than hers and firm.

“I’m Juliet,” she said as they shook hands. “Juliet Carpenter.”

“Juliet,” repeated Max. “Juliet.”

He sounded to Juliet as if he were tasting her name, rolling it around in his mouth like he were savouring a particularly fine wine. She liked the idea that he was treating her name like that, as if it were something special or precious.

“I knew you wouldn’t have an ordinary name,” he said. “I knew it would be something beautiful, like its owner.”

He shifted in his seat beside her until his thigh rested alongside hers. Juliet was happy to leave it there. It felt right to be so close to him. She had the strangest urge to take his hand and place it high up on her thigh, close to her pussy.

They talked then, not like they were strangers but like they’d always known each other. Max Marsden told her that he was forty-seven years old to her twenty-eight. He told her that his wife, the woman with the sun-dress and the long, wavy undisciplined hair, the woman called Lena, was an artist who painted pictures and currently had her own exhibition at a small but fashionable art gallery in Dublin’s Liberties area.

She’d been making a name for herself for the last few years and was now considered a success in both commercial and critical terms. They had two children, teenage girls called Georgia and Olivia, who were both in secondary school and who displayed behaviour as alternately loving and bad-tempered as anyone could reasonably expect from teenage girls.

Max and Lena, but especially Max, had always wanted to travel and see a bit of the world. Years ago, after their sponsored trip round India on the back of a motorbike, they had been seriously considering doing a second trip, perhaps visiting the places that they’d missed the first time round- “To raise the cash to send the kiddies in the childrens’ home on a few holidays,” Max told Juliet ruefully- when they’d discovered that Lena was pregnant with Georgia, their eldest daughter.

Max had been all for continuing his travels alone while Lena remained behind in Dublin and had their baby but Lena had put the kibosh on that idea straightaway and so consequently, there had only ever been one book published on the subject of Max and Lena’s travels round India for charity,

the one that nestled now in Juliet’s bag along with the Chris Patton thriller and the romance novels.

“Lena said at the time that I was a complete and utter shit to even contemplate going back to India without her while she was pregnant,” he told Juliet, “and in a way, I suppose I was, but she had her parents and her older sister Bea and a whole fucking entourage of close friends who’d all known each other since university. I knew she’d have been fine without me. Better off, even.

“So, of course, I jacked in all notions of going back to India by myself- I hadn’t much choice in the matter, as you can see- and I stayed here in Dublin with her for the whole of the pregnancy like the good little husband that I was expected to be.

“Anyway, as it turned out, I ended up being exactly as much of a spare prick as I’d predicted, what with all of Lena’s friends and family milling around, fussing like mother hens and telling me in no uncertain terms what I was doing wrong which, from what I remember, was pretty much everything.”

He grinned and took a swig of his coffee.

“It was all worth it, though, when I held Georgia in my arms for the first time,” he added, his eyes softening. Juliet, who’d never had a child, had a sudden vision of herself, exhausted, naked and drenched in sweat but elated, as elated as it was possible to be, as she presented Max with their newborn child, hers and his.

The thought made her stomach contract and her pussy tighten with an unexpected longing. She imagined Max bending his head to drink her milk from one of her swollen breasts, and then lifting it again to flash her a lazy, satisfied grin, a milk moustache adorning his upper lip. The thought brought a hot blush to her cheeks. To cover her confusion, she said:

“So you had to give up the globe-trotting and the writing, then, when your daughter was born?”

“The globe-trotting, yes, but not the writing,” Max said, halving what was left of his muffin and holding it out to Juliet.

She took it, and was happy when their fingers touched, happy too to be eating food that he’d been eating himself. She tried to eat it delicately and not too eagerly, knowing that he was watching her.

“You still write travel books?” she asked him in surprise.

She occasionally watched travel programmes on television and read the odd travel book, mainly when she felt the need for a bit of escapism, but she’d never heard his name before today.

“That’d be hard to do, given that I’m not exactly free to do any travelling,” he said wryly. “No, not travel,” he went on. “Thrillers. I write thrillers now, all featuring my own exclusive creation, Detective Ryan Shelby.”

“But that’s so exciting!” enthused Juliet. “Thrillers? I adore thrillers. Well, you already know that, because you bought me the new Chris Patton book. Would there be any of your books downstairs? We could have a look before we leave.”

“I can save you the trouble,” Max said with a hint of bitterness. “Unfortunately, the publishing world, in its infinite wisdom, has thus far declined to clasp Detective Ryan Shelby to its collective bosom and so, consequently, I have a whole forest’s worth of manuscript paper, all curling at the edges and turning a fetching shade of yellow, lining the shelves at home.”

Juliet did her best to look sympathetic while Max drank the last of his cooling coffee and grimaced at the taste. Looking at his watch, he said:

“I have time for one more quick coffee if you do?”

He looked across at her hopefully.

“Only if you let me pay,” Juliet insisted, getting to her feet.

When they were settled once more with their fresh hot coffees, Juliet said:

“It’s such a shame about your books. It’s probably just that the thriller market is so saturated at the moment with stories featuring Detective This and Officer That. I used to buy everything under the sun written by about half-a-dozen of my favourite thriller writers but then they started churning out so many books that I couldn’t keep up with them and so now I only buy the odd one here and there.

“Every second person writes thrillers nowadays, and it seems like every book is part of a series. If you miss one, you miss out on a big chunk of the back-story. Nobody writes stand-alone books any more. It’s all about a series of books now. Oh, I don’t mean to criticise detective novels that come in a series,” she added hurriedly, worried that she might have offended him. “I just meant that there seem to be so many of them around.”

“I think that that’s the problem in a nutshell,” Max said. “Anyone who fancies themselves as a writer can just shit out a piece of crap and you can bet your ass that it’ll be topping the best-seller list within a year or two and meanwhile, poor old Detective Ryan Shelby sits mouldering in a drawer, waiting for his time in the sun.”

He sighed and stared off into space for a minute, seeming to forget that he wasn’t alone. Juliet watched him discreetly, wishing that she could reach out and touch the stubble that darkened his jaw. Their eyes met and he grinned. She took a sip of her coffee to cover her embarrassment at being caught openly staring at him and then spluttered when she burned her tongue.

“So, what do you do for a living?” she asked him when she’d recovered. “While you’re waiting for Detective Ryan Shelby to get the recognition he deserves, I mean?”

Max laughed.

“You’re too kind,” he said. “I live in hope, I suppose, as we all do. And, in the meantime, I paint houses.”

There was a silence, then Juliet said:

“That must be interesting, painting houses.”

“It’s not, believe me,” said Max dryly. “But it’s a living, and so it’ll have to do. For now, at any rate. Until my ship comes in, whenever that happens. If it ever does.”

“Isn’t it funny,” Juliet said suddenly without thinking, “how you and your wife are both painters, but in different ways? You paint houses and she paints pictures. Isn’t that funny?”

“Yes,” said Max, but he didn’t laugh and neither did Juliet.

“What do you do, fair Juliet?” he asked her then.

“I work in a bakery near here,” Juliet said. “It’s a sort of coffee shop and cake shop in one. I decorate cupcakes and birthday cakes, among other things.”

“Now, that does sound interesting,” said Max. “What do you put on them?”

“Oh, hearts and flowers and teddies, the usual things,” said Juliet. “People’s names. ‘Happy Sixth Birthday, Amy,’ that kind of thing.”

“What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve ever been asked to put on a cake?” Max challenged.

“That’s an easy one,” said Juliet. “We had this man in once who wanted us to put a picture of... well, his... his penis and testicles on a birthday cake for his girlfriend.”

“His penis and testicles...?” echoed Max with a snort of laughter. “Did you do it?”

“No, of course not,” giggled Juliet. “We’re a nice respectable family bakery, not some kind of... of emporium for pornographic confectionery, as Mrs. Morrissey- she’s my boss- told the customer. And anyway, can you imagine putting that kind of thing on display in the shop-window where children and elderly people could see it? We’d be done for breaching the obscenity laws at the very least, wouldn’t we...?”

She giggled again.

“I suppose so,” admitted Max.

Juliet was glad to see that she’d made him smile. She’d wanted to make him smile with her little story. She suddenly wished that she could make him smile every day for the rest of both of their lives. He finished his second coffee and looked at his watch. Juliet felt herself turn cold inside. Was he leaving? An hour couldn’t have passed already, could it?

Of course he was leaving, she thought dejectedly then. He’d said he only had an hour and now the hour was up and he was going to leave her to go and pick up his beautiful wife and he’d say, well, goodbye, it was lovely to meet you, maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime, and then he’d be gone and she’d never see him again. Juliet didn’t think that she could stand it if that happened, if he did that. She sat miserably, waiting for the blow to fall.

“I’ll have to be making a move,” he said then, looking at his watch again. It was a good watch, an obviously expensive one. Had Lena given it to him, as a token of her love for him, maybe? This is it, thought Juliet. The polite brush-off. She steeled herself against the rejection that she knew was coming.

“Can I see you again?” he said instead, urgently.

Juliet stared at him, wondering if she’d misheard.

“Please,” he added. “I need to. Please.”

He reached across the table and squeezed one of her hands, tightly enough to hurt. It was a good kind of pain. She wanted to feel more of it. His eyes had a kind of hunger in them that both frightened and thrilled her. When she looked in them, she was conscious of feeling a heat between her legs and a tingling in her nipples. He was looking at her now as if he knew what he was doing to her, what he was making her feel. He looked, too, as if he were pleased about it. He released her hand and waited for her answer.

Juliet opened her bag and pulled out her receipt for the books she’d bought herself, the three romantic novels. Grabbing her pen, she wrote down her address and mobile number on the back of the receipt and handed it to him with trembling fingers.

“My flat is just a few minutes’ walk from here,” she said. “Can you come? Say, Thursday night?”

He nodded, pocketing the receipt after reading what she’d written on it.

“If you don’t hear from me,” he said, “I’ll be there at eight. And thank you,” he added. “Till this Thursday, then, my fair Juliet.”

He took her hand and kissed it again.

“Till Thursday,” Juliet agreed, her heart pounding.

She was in shock. She couldn’t believe that, on Thursday night, they would be alone together in her flat. He left then to go and pick up his wife Lena and bring her home while Juliet lingered over the remains of her muffin and cold coffee, thinking about her new friend Max Marsden and the

faded brilliance of his eyes and smile and his dark blonde hair that had strands of grey in it. It was scraped back into a messy ponytail and tied up with an elastic band. During their time together, she’d wanted to reach over and free it from its confines. She felt sure that it would be soft and clean and that it would smell like coconut shampoo or maybe apple.

She thought too about the way his hand had felt when it closed around hers, and the way that his touch had made her want to put her own hand between her legs and stroke herself till she climaxed. She thought about him as she walked the short distance home to her flat in nearby Basin Street and every minute of every day after that until he was due to arrive on Thursday night. She couldn’t wait to see him again.