Word
EmbarrassmentPerfect for the Job
view galleries "You'll do."
I smiled at her then made to step round them but the old man stepped across in front of me.
"She said you will do."
"OK, sure. What will I do for?"
"The job, of course. Now follow us."
I stood perplexed as the elderly couple turned and walked away from me up a passage between two houses. They looked nearly identical with their long grey hair and the long grey raincoats covering their nondescript bodies. Old people bodies. It was surreal. It could be a bizarre ritual or a strange cult but it was more likely just old people behaving like old people. The woman walked through a tall wooden door in the fence, a green freshly painted door in an old brick fence. The new and the old. The man turned to me as I stood on the pavement. He smiled at me, a broad kind smile.
"Come on then."
No, it wasn't a weird post-ironic mugging. It was just an old couple needing some help getting their cat out a tree, or something. I walked swiftly along the passage and followed the man through the tall green door. The garden was amazing. Everything was perfectly in order, neatly trimmed, and remarkably green for the late autumn. It had green trellises, white pebbles, trimmed grass, shrubs in white square tubs. I recognised the plants though I couldn't tell you their names. It was a nice garden. The man was standing by the greenhouse door, inside was all moist and sweaty.
"Close the door will you, you don't know what types you can find about here these days."
I closed the tall green door behind me and slowly stepped along the white pebble path. I looked but I could not see a single weed poking through their perfect garden. Somehow it didn't quite fit the couple. Sure they could have been from Scandinavia but they looked more like ageing hippies than minimalist Swedes.
I stepped into the greenhouse and before my eyes adjusted to the gloom the man had closed the door behind me and flicked a switch. Suddenly I was confronted by a massive screen of porn. Multiple squares on the screen playing different porn films: naked wrestling, naked beach ball, a couple in a pool, a threesome in a bed.
Between me and the screen was a bed on which lay the woman. Her grey raincoat in a little heap on the floor, her body spread naked across the bed. Her legs spread showing a clean shaven vulva, which looked as attractive as the pornstar pussies on the screen. However, that is where the comparison stopped. She had wrinkly thighs, drooping stomach, sagging, pendulous tits. But her face was sweet, she was smiling at me, smiling with her eyes as well as her mouth. The man spoke from behind me but I didn't turn to him, I kept looking at the naked woman's enchanting smile.
"Young man, I am sorry to say that I am no longer able to fulfil my obligations. Erectile dysfunction. As you will notice we have invested in this secret garden with these aids which suffices for most of the time but once a year we like to reenact our meeting and treat my wife to the seeing to she received on the day we met."
He rested his hand on my shoulder in encouragement.
"You, young man, will play me. You will not say a word, you will simply give my wife a seeing to then leave without so much as a kiss goodbye. I took the liberty of preparing her for you before we invited you in. Here is your condom."
I took the condom he held up for me, it was on top of an envelope which I guessed held some bank notes. I didn't make any move, I didn't take my clothes off nor did I try to leave, I still kept looking at the smiling eyes of the old woman
"Young man, you are perfect for the job."
I have been hypnotised before for my fear of flying. I can't remember all the things the therapist said to me, a mixture imagining things and doing basic tasks like tapping my knee. I felt brilliant after, and I mean really brilliant, the type of feeling that makes you run down the street just because it is downhill. Now, afterwards I said that there wasn't any point in the hypnosis where I felt I had to do what the therapist asked, but I always did what I was asked because I wanted to. It was like that with the old woman's smiling eyes. I'd like to say the eyes enchanted me, hypnotised me, but it was simpler than that. I didn't want to disappoint those eyes so I did what they asked.
And afterwards I felt he was right, I had been perfect for the job.
