Eat Me Read Free Page B

spectacularly muscled and shiny gym queens would then take her from behind. ‘I want you now, and then you, and then you and you and you ,’ she’d say, crooking a slender, perfectly manicured forefinger at each in turn.
    â€˜You’ve got a milk moustache,’ Helen informed Julia, who quickly wiped it off with the back of her hand.
    â€˜Why do they always put so much froth on lattes?’ Julia wondered.
    â€˜I’m glad you all think it works, anyway,’ inserted Philippa, steering the conversation back to her story.
    Chantal tapped another cigarette out of her pack.
    â€˜What are you calling it?’ asked Helen.
    â€˜â€œForbidden Fruit and Veg”, I think. What do you reckon?’
    â€˜Bit obvious,’ pronounced Julia, after a pause. ‘You know, Adam, Ava—you might as well call it “The Market Garden of Eden”.’
    Philippa blushed. ‘You’ve got a point,’ she conceded.
    Putting her cigarette to lips the colour of Courage (from the Poppy collection, of course), Chantal glanced around briefly to see if there was anyone worth bumming a light from. There wasn’t. She fished her lighter out of her purse and lit up. She blew a few smoke rings into the air. ‘How about—thinking of Jule’s, uh, reaction—“Creme Fraiche”?’ she proposed.
    â€˜I’d just call it “Eat Me”,’ suggested Helen.
    A rather stunning waiter emerged from the cafe to deliver another round of coffees—latte for Julia, cappuccino for Helen, short blacks for Chantal and Philippa. As he strode handsomely back inside, Philippa remarked, ‘Have you ever noticed how all the waiters in Darlinghurst cafes look like supermodels?’
    â€˜Yeah, and the ones in Double Bay, Double Pay look like bankers and gazumpers,’ Helen replied. ‘No kidding. I went bookshopping the other day at Nicholas Pounder’s and then stopped in a cafe around the corner. It was seriously weird. They even wear striped ties. You expect their mobiles to start ringing while they’re taking your order.’
    â€˜The waiters carry mobiles?’ gasped Julia.
    â€˜Julia, for a photographer, you’re very literal. I meant, they look like the types who would carry mobiles.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜Have you shown the story to anyone else?’ asked Helen.
    â€˜Just Richard.’ Richard was the charismatic man who ran the writers’ workshop Philippa had been attending, as faithfully as any churchgoer, every Sunday for years now. None of the others had ever met him, but they felt they knew him. He was Philippa’s guru, her mentor, her confidante, her Number One Object of Lust, though, she insisted, she’d never actually Done The Thang with him and probably never would. She wasn’t sure how old he was—he could be anything from twenty-eight to thirty-eight. According to Philippa, he adopted different looks according to the characters he was creating in his work. One summer he was a bleached blonde surfie with a tan. By winter he was a pale punk. He was widely published in a variety of obscure literary journals under different pen-names, one for each persona. He had, she’d discovered one day when all the members of the workshop went for a walk on the sands of Bondi together, exquisite feet.
    Helen had appreciated the detail about the feet. She quite prided herself on her own feet, which were wellarched, plump and smooth. Her boyfriends had always complimented her on her feet. One, who had a bit of a fetish, had enjoyed worshipping them, though, if the truth be told, Helen had never found it easy to relax with a man licking out what she always imagined were the rather feculent spaces between her toes. When one lover commented about her feet that they looked brand new, like they’d never been used, she wasn’t sure how to take it.
    â€˜What’d Richard say?’
    â€˜He was really nice about