"When Gravity Fails" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

Chapter 5

I learned an interesting fact.

It didn’t make up for the particularly foul day I’d had, but it was a fact I could file in my highly regarded cerebrum: police lieutenants are rarely enthusiastic about homicides reported less than half an hour before they’re supposed to go off duty. “Your second cadaver in less than a week,” Okking observed, when he showed up at the Thirteenth Street apartment. “We’re not going to start paying you commissions on these, if that’s what you’re after. On the whole, we try to discourage this sort of thing, if we can.”

I looked at Okking’s tired, florid face and guessed that in the middle of the night, this passed for wry cop humor. I don’t know where Okking was from — one or another dilapidated, bankrupt European country I guess, or one of the North American federations — but he had a genuine gift for getting along with the innumerable squabbling factions residing under his jurisdiction. His Arabic was the worst I’d ever heard — he and I usually held our acerbic conversations in French — yet he was able to handle the several Muslim sects, the devoutly religious and the nonpracticing, Arab and non-Arab, the rich and poor, honest and slightly bent, all with the same elegant touch of humanity and impartiality. Believe me, I hate cops. A lot of people in the Budayeen fear cops or distrust cops or just plain don’t like them. I hate cops. My mother had been forced into prostitution when I was very young, to keep us both fed and sheltered. I remember with painful clarity the games the cops had played with her then. That had been in Algeria a long time ago, but cops were cops to me. Except for Lieutenant Okking.

The medical examiner’s usually stoic expression showed a little distaste when he saw Tamiko. She had been dead about four hours, he said. He could get a general description of the murderer from the handprints on her neck and other clues. The killer had plump, stubby fingers, and mine are long and tapered. I had an alibi, too: I had the receipt from the hospital stamped with the time of my treatment, and the written prescription.

“Okay, friend,” said Okking, still jovial in his sour way, “I guess it’s safe to let you back out on the streets.”

“What do you think?” I asked, indicating Tami’s body.

Okking shrugged. “It looks like we’ve got some kind of maniac. You know these whores end up like this every so often. It’s part of their overhead, like face paint and tetracycline. The other whores write it off and try not to think about it. They’d better think about it, though, because whoever did this is likely to do it again; that’s been my experience. We might end up with two or three or five or ten dead people before we catch up with him. You go tell your friends what you saw. You tell it to them so they listen. Get the word around. Spread it among the six or eight sexes we’ve got in these walls not to accept dates with men about five and a half feet tall, heavyset, with short, fat fingers and a yen for the ultimate sadism while he’s getting laid.”

Oh, yeah: the M.E. found that the killer had taken a trip around the world while he’d been beating Tami, branding her naked skin, and strangling her. Traces of semen had been found in all three orifices.

I did my best to get the word out. Everyone agreed with my own secret opinion: whoever had killed Tami had better watch his own ass. Anybody who jammed with the Black Widow Sisters usually got himself jammed up, and trashed. Devi and Selima would be picking up every guy they could find who fit the general description, just in the hope he was the right one. I had the feeling they wouldn’t slip the toxin to him at the first chance, either. I’d learned how much they enjoyed what they thought of as foreplay.

The next day was Yasmin’s day off, and about two in the afternoon I gave her a call. She hadn’t been home all night; it was none of my business where she’d been. I was amused and startled to find out that I was, however, just the least bit jealous. We made a date for dinner at five at our favorite café. You can sit at a table on the terrace and watch the traffic on the Street. Only two blocks from the gate, the Street isn’t so tawdry. The restaurant was a good place to relax. I didn’t tell Yasmin about any of the previous day’s trouble over the phone. She would have kept me talking all afternoon, and she needed the three hours to make the dinner date on time.

As it was, I had two drinks while I waited for her at the table. She arrived about quarter to six. Three quarters of an hour late is about average for Yasmin; in fact, I hadn’t really expected her until after six o’clock. I wanted to get a couple of drinks ahead. I’d had only about four hours of sleep, and I struggled with terrible nightmares the whole time. I wanted to get some liquor into me, and a good meal, and have Yasmin hold my hand while I told her of my ordeal.

“Marhaba!” she called gaily as she wove her way between the iron tables and chairs.

I signaled to Ahmad, our waiter, and he took Yasmin’s drink order and left menus. I looked at her as she studied her menu. She was wearing a light cotton European-style summer dress, yellow with white butterflies. Her black hair was brushed down sleek and lustrous. She wore a silver crescent on a silver chain around her darkly tanned neck. She looked lovely. I hated to bother her now with my news. I decided to put it off as long as I could.

“So,” she said, looking up at me and grinning, “how was your day?”

“Tamiko’s dead,” I said. I felt like a fool. There must have been a way to begin the story with less of an awful thud.

She sort of goggled at me. She murmured an Arabic superstitious phrase to ward off evil.

I took a deep breath and let it out. Then I started with dawn, yesterday morning, and my enthusiastic wake-up call from the Sisters. I went through the whole day, ending with my dismissal by Okking and my weary and lonely walk home.

I saw a tear slide slowly down one of her carefully blushed cheeks. She wasn’t able to speak for several seconds. I didn’t know she’d be so upset; I berated myself for my clumsiness.

“I wish I’d been with you last night,” she said at last. She didn’t realize how hard she was squeezing my hand. “I had a date, Marîd, some guy from the club. He’s been coming in to see me for weeks, and finally last night he offered me two hundred kiam to go out with him. He’s a nice guy, I suppose, but—”

I raised a hand. I didn’t need to hear this. I didn’t care how she paid her rent. I would have liked to have had her with me last night, too. I would have liked to have held her between the nightmares. “It’s all over now, I guess,” I said. “Let me blow the rest of my fifty kiam on this dinner, and then let’s go for a long wait.”

“Do you really think it’s all over?”

I chewed my lip. “Except for Nikki. I wish I knew what that phone call meant. I just can’t understand her running out on me like that, sticking me for Abdoulaye’s three thousand. I mean, in the Budayeen, you can never be sure how loyal your friends are; but I’d gotten Nikki out of one or two scrapes before. I thought that might have counted for something with her.”

Yasmin’s eyes opened wider, then she laughed. I couldn’t see what she thought was so humorous. My face still looked swollen and bruised, and by ribs still hurt like the devil. The day before had been anything but clownish. “I saw Nikki yesterday morning,” said Yasmin.

“You did?” Then I remembered that Chiriga had seen Nikki about ten o’clock, and that Nikki had left Chiri’s to find Yasmin. I hadn’t connected that visit to Chiri with Nikki’s later skip-out.

“Nikki looked very nervous,” said Yasmin, “and she told me she’d quit her job and had to move out of Tami’s apartment. She wouldn’t tell me why. She said she’d tried to call you again and again, but there wasn’t any answer.” Of course not; when Nikki was trying to call me, I was lying unconscious on my floor. “She gave me this envelope and told me to be sure you got it.”

“Why didn’t she just leave it with Chiri?” That would have saved a lot of mental and physical anguish.

“Don’t you remember? Nikki worked in Chiri’s club, oh, a year ago, maybe longer. Chiri caught Nikki shortchanging customers and stealing from the other girls’ tip jars.”

I nodded; now I recalled that Nikki and Chiri left each other pretty much alone. “So Nikki went to Chiri just to get your address?”

“I asked her a lot of questions, but she wouldn’t answer a thing. She just kept saying, ‘Make sure Marîd gets this,’ over and over.”

I hoped it was a letter, an apology maybe, with an address where I could reach her. I wanted my money back. I took the envelope from Yasmin and tore it open. Inside was my three thousand kiam, and a note written in French. Nikki wrote:

When I finished reading the letter, I sighed and handed it to Yasmin. I’d forgotten that she couldn’t read a word of French, and so I translated it for her.

“I hope she’ll be happy,” she said when I folded the letter up.

“Being kept by some old German bratwurst? Nikki? You know Nikki. She needs the action as much as I do, as much as you do. She’ll be back. Right now, I guess, it’s sugar-daddy time on the Princess Nikki Show.”

Yasmin smiled. “She’ll be back, I agree; but in her own time. And she’ll make that old bratwurst pay for every minute of it.” We both laughed, and then the waiter brought Yasmin’s drink, and we ordered dinner.

As we finished the meal, we lingered over a last glass of champagne. “What a day yesterday was,” I said bemusedly, “and now everything is back to normal. I have my money, except I’ll be out a thousand kiam in interest. When we leave here, I want to find Abdoulaye and pay him.”

“Sure,” said Yasmin, “but even then, everything won’t be back to normal. Tami’s still dead.”

I frowned. “That’s Okking’s problem. If he wants my expert advice, he knows where to find me.”

“Are you really going to talk to Devi and Selima about why they beat you?”

“You bet your pretty plastic tits. And the Sisters better have a damn good reason.”

“It must have something to do with Nikki.”

I agreed, although I couldn’t imagine what. “Oh,” I said, “and let’s stop by Chiriga’s. I owe her for the stuff she let me have last night.”

Yasmin gazed at me over the rim of her champagne glass. “It sounds like we might not get home until late,” she said softly.

“And when we do get home, we’ll be lucky to find the bed.”

Yasmin made a sweeping, mildly drunken gesture. “Fuck the bed,” she said.

“No,” I said, “I have more worthy goals.”

Yasmin giggled a little shyly, as if our relationship were beginning all over again from the very first night together. “Which moddy do you want me to use tonight?” she asked.

I let out my breath, taken by her loveliness and her quiet, unaffected charm. It was as if I were seeing her again for the first time. “I don’t want you to use any moddy,” I said quietly. “I want to make love with you.”

“Oh, Marîd,” she said. She squeezed my hand, and we stayed like that, staring into each other’s eyes, inhaling the perfume of the sweet olive, hearing the songs of thrushes and nightingales. The moment lasted almost forever … and then … I remembered that Abdoulaye was waiting. I had better not forget Abdoulaye; there is an Arabic saying that a clever man’s mistake is equal to the mistakes of a thousand fools.

Before we left the café, however, Yasmin wanted to consult the book. I told her that the Qur’ân didn’t contain much solace for me. “Not the Book,” she said, “the wise mention of God. The book.” She took out a little device about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It was her electronic I Ching. “Here,” she said, giving it to me, “switch it on and press H.”

I didn’t have a lot of faith in the I Ching, either; but Yasmin had this fascination with fate and the unseen world and the Moment and all of that. I did as she told me, and when I pressed the square white spot marked H, the little computer played a reedy, tinkling tune, and a woman’s tinny voice spoke up. “Hexagram Eighteen. Ku. Work on that which has been spoiled. Changes in the fifth and sixth lines.”

“Now hit J, for Judgment,” said Yasmin.

I did, and the calculator peeped out its goddamn little song again and said, “Judgment: Putting effort into what has been ruined brings great success. It profits one to cross the great water. Heed three days before beginning. Heed three days before completing.

“What has been ruined can be made good again through effort. Do not fear danger — crossing the great water. Success depends on forethought; be cautious before beginning. A return of ruin must be avoided; be cautious before completing.

“The superior man arouses the people and renews their spirit.”

I looked at Yasmin. “I hope you’re getting something out of all of this,” I said, “because it doesn’t mean a camel’s glass eye to me.”

“Oh, sure,” said Yasmin in a hushed voice. “Now, go on. Press L for the Lines.”

I did as I was told. The spooky machine continued: “A six in the fifth place means: Repairing what the father has ruined. One’s actions are praiseworthy.

“A nine at the top means: He does not serve kings and princes, sets himself higher goals.”

“Who’s it talking about, Yasmin?” I asked.

“You, darling, who else?”

“Now what do I do?”

“You find out what the changing lines turn the hexagram into. Another hexagram. Push CH for Change.”

“Hexagram Forty-seven. K’un. Oppression.” I pressed J. “Judgment: Oppression. Success. Perseverance. The great man causes good fortune. There is no blame. When one has something to say, it is not believed.

“A great man remains confident through adversity, and this confidence leads to later success. It is a strength greater than fate. It must be accepted that for a time he is not granted power, and his counsel is ignored. In times of adversity, it is important to maintain confidence and speak but little.

“If one is weak in adversity, he remains beneath a bare tree and falls more deeply into sorrow. This is an inner delusion that must be overcome at all costs.”

That was it: the oracle had spoken. “Can we go now?” I asked plaintively.

Yasmin was looking dreamily into some other Chinese dimension. “You’re destined for great things, Marîd,” she murmured.

“Right,” I said, “but the important thing is, can that talking box guess my weight? What good is it?” I didn’t even have the motherless good sense to know when I’d been told off by a book.

“You’ve got to find something to believe in,” she said seriously.

“Look, Yasmin, I keep trying. Really, I do. Was that some kind of prediction? Was it reading my future?”

Her brow furrowed. “It’s not really a prediction, Marîd. It’s kind of an echo of the Moment we’re all part of. Because of who you are and what you think and feel, and what you’ve done and plan to do, you could have drawn no other hexagram than Number Eighteen, with the changes in just those two lines. If you did it again, right this very second, you’d get a different reading, a different hexagram, because the first one changed the Moment and the pattern is different. See?”

“Synchronicity, right?” I said.

She looked puzzled. “Something like that.”

I sent Ahmad off with the check and a stack of kiam notes. It was a warm, lush, dry evening, and it would be a beautiful night. I stood up and stretched. “Let’s go find Abdoulaye,” I said. “Business is business, damn it.”

“And afterward?” She smiled.

“Action is action.” I took her hand, and we started up the Street toward Hassan’s shop.

The good-looking American boy was still sitting on his stool, still gazing off toward nowhere. I wondered if he was actually having thoughts, or if he was some kind of electronically animated figure that only came to life when someone approached or he caught the crackle of a few kiam. He looked at us and smiled, and asked some question in English again. Maybe a lot of the customers who came into Hassan’s place spoke English, but I doubted it. It wasn’t a place for tourists; it wasn’t that kind of souvenir shop. The boy must have been all but helpless, unable to speak Arabic and without a language daddy. He must have been helpless; that is, dependent. On Hassan. For so many things.

I know a little simple English; if it’s spoken slowly enough, I can understand a few words. I can say, “Where is the toilet?” and “Big Mac and fries” and “Fuck you,” but that’s about the extent of my vocabulary. I stared at the boy; he stared back. He smiled slowly. I think he liked me.

“Where is the Abdoulaye?” I asked in English. The kid blinked and rattled off some indecipherable reply. I shook my head, letting him know that I hadn’t understood a word. His shoulders slumped. He tried another language; Spanish, I think. I shook my head again.

“Where is the Sahib Hassan?” I asked.

The boy grinned and rattled off another string of harsh-sounding words, but he pointed at the curtain. Great: we were communicating.

“Shukran.” I said, leading Yasmin to the back of the shop.

“You’re welcome,” said the boy. That stumped me. He knew that I’d said “thanks” in Arabic, but he didn’t how how to say “you’re welcome.” Dumb kid. Lieutenant Okking would find him in an alleyway some night. Or I would, with my kind of luck.

Hassan was in the storeroom, checking some crates against an invoice. The crates were addressed to him in Arabic script, but other words were stenciled in some European language. The crates could have contained anything from static pistols to shrunken heads. Hassan didn’t care what he bought and sold, as long as he turned a profit. He was the Platonic ideal of the crafty merchant.

He heard us come through the curtain, and greeted me like a long-lost son. He embraced me and asked, “You are feeling better today?”

“Praise be to Allah,” I replied.

His eyes flicked from me to Yasmin and back. I think he may have recognized her from the Street, but I don’t think he knew her personally. I saw no need to introduce her. It was a breach of etiquette, but tolerated in certain situations. I made the determination that this was one of those times.

Hassan extended a hand. “Come, join me in some coffee!”

“May your table last forever, Hassan, but we’ve just dined; and I am in a hurry to find Abdoulaye. I owe him a debt, you recall.”

“Yes, yes, quite so.” Hassan’s brow creased. “Marîd, my darling, clever one, I haven’t seen Abdoulaye for hours. I think he’s entertaining himself elsewhere.” Hassan’s tone implied Abdoulaye’s entertainment was any of several possible vices.

“Yet I have the money now, and I wish to end my obligation.”

Hassan pretended to mull this problem over for a moment. “You know, of course, that a portion of that money is indirectly to be paid to me.”

“Yes, O Wise One.”

“Then leave the whole sum with me, and I will give Abdoulaye his portion when next I see him.”

“An excellent suggestion, my uncle, but I would like to have Abdoulaye’s written receipt. Your integrity is beyond reproach, but Abdoulaye and I do not share the same bond of love as you and I.”

That didn’t sit well with Hassan, but he could make no objection. “I think you will find Abdoulaye behind the iron door.” Then he rudely turned his back on us and continued his labor. Without turning to face us, he spoke again. “Your companion must remain here.”

I looked at Yasmin, and she shrugged. I went through the storeroom quickly, across the alley, and knocked on the iron door. I waited a few seconds while someone identified me from somewhere. Then the door opened. There was a tall, cadaverous, bearded old man named Karim. “What do you wish here?” he asked me gruffly.

“Peace, O Shaykh, I have come to pay my debt to Abdoulaye Abu-Zayd.”

The door closed. A moment later, Abdoulaye opened it. “Let me have it. I need it now.” Over his shoulder, I could see several men engaged in some high-spirited gambling.

“I have the whole sum, Abdoulaye,” I said, “but you’re going to write me out a receipt. I don’t want you claiming that I never paid you.”

He looked angry. “You dare imagine I’d do such a thing?”

I glared back at him. “The receipt. Then you get your money.”

He called me a couple of foul names, then ducked back into the room. He scrawled out the receipt and showed it to me. “Give me the fifteen hundred kiam,” he said, growling.

“Give me the receipt first.”

“Give me the accursed money, you pimp!”

For a second I thought about hitting him hard with the edge of my hand across the flat of his nose, breaking his face for him. It was a delicious image. “Christ, Abdoulaye! Get Karim back here. Karim!” I called. When the gray-bearded old man returned, I said to him, “I’m going to give you some money, Karim, and Abdoulaye is going to give you that piece of paper in his hand. You give him the money, and give me the paper.”

Karim hesitated, as if the transaction were too complicated for him to follow. Then he nodded. The trade was made in silence. I turned and went back across the alley. “Son of a whore!” cried Abdoulaye. I smiled. That is one hell of an insult in the Muslim world; but, as it happened to be true, it’s never offended me very much. Still, because of Yasmin and our plans for the evening, I had let Abdoulaye abuse me beyond my usual limit. I promised myself that soon there would be a settling of that account, as well. In the Budayeen, it is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and intimidation.

As I passed through the storeroom and went to Yasmin, I said, “You can collect your cut from Abdoulaye, Hassan. You’d better do it fast: I think he’s losing big.” Hassan nodded but said nothing.

“I’m glad that’s taken care of,” said Yasmin.

“Not any more than I am.” I folded the receipt and pushed it down into a hip pocket.

We went to Chiri’s, and I waited until she’d finished serving three young men in Calabrian naval uniforms. “Chiri,” I said, “we can’t stay long, but I wanted to give you this.” I counted out seventy-five kiam and put the money on the bar. Chiri didn’t make a move toward it.

“Yasmin, you look beautiful, honey. Marîd, what’s this for? The stuff last night?” I nodded. “I know you make a thing about keeping your word and paying your debts and all that honorable choo. I wouldn’t charge you Street prices, though. Take some of this back.”

I grinned at her. “Chiri, you risk causing offense to a Muslim.”

She laughed. “Muslim, my black ass. Then you two have a drink on me. There’s a lot of action tonight, a lot of loose money. The girls are in a good mood, and so am I.”

“We’re celebrating, Chiri,” said Yasmin. They exchanged some kind of secret signal — maybe that kind of occult, gender-specific transfer of knowledge goes along with the sex-change operation. Anyway, Chiri understood. We took the free drinks she’d offered, and got up to go.

“You two have a good night,” she said. The seventy-five kiam had long since disappeared. I don’t remember seeing it happen, though.

“Kwa hen.” I said as we left.

“Kwa heriniya kuonana.” she said. Then, “All right, which one of you lazy, fat-assed whores is supposed to be up on stage dancing? Kandy? Well, get your fuckin’ clothes off and get to work!” Chiri sounded happy. All was well with the world.

“We could pass by Jo-Mama’s,” said Yasmin. “I haven’t seen her in weeks.”

Jo-Mama was a huge woman, nearly six feet tall, somewhere between three and four hundred pounds, with hair that changed according to some esoteric cycle: blonde, redhead, brunette, midnight black; then a dull brown would start to grow out, and when it was long enough, it was transformed by some sorcery into blonde hair again. She was a tough, strong woman, and no one caused trouble in her bar, which catered to Greek merchant seamen. Jo-Mama had no scruples against pulling her needle gun or her Solingen perforator and creating general peace in gory heaps all around her. I’m sure Jo-Mama could easily have handled two Chirigas at the same time, and simultaneously still have the unruffled calm to mix a Bloody Mary from scratch for a customer. Jo-Mama either liked you a lot or she hated your guts. You really wanted her to like you.

We stopped in; she greeted both of us in her usual loud, fast-talking, distracted way. “Marîd! Yasmin!” She said something to us in Greek, forgetting that neither of us understood that language; I can say even less in Greek than I can in English. All that I know I’ve picked up from hanging out in Jo-Mama’s: I can order ouzo and retsina; I can say kalimera (hello); and I can call somebody maláka. which seems to be their favorite insult (as far as I can make out, it means “jerk-off”).

I gave Jo-Mama the best hug I could manage. She’s so plentiful that Yasmin and I together probably couldn’t circumscribe her. She included us in a story she was telling to another customer. “ … so Fuad comes running back to me and says, ‘That black bitch clipped me!’ Now, you and I both know that nothing gives Fuad a thrill like being clipped by some black whore.”

Jo-Mama looked questioningly at me, so I nodded. Fuad was this incredibly skinny guy who had this fascination with black hookers, the sleazier and the more dangerous, the better. Nobody liked Fuad, but they used him to run and fetch; and he was so desperate to be liked that he’d run and fetch all night, unless he ran into the girl he happened to be in love with that week.

“So I asked him how he managed to get clipped this time, because I was figuring he knew all the angles by now, I mean, God, even Fuad isn’t as stupid as Fuad, if you know what I mean. He says, ‘She’s a waitress over by Big Al’s Old Chicago. I bought a drink, and when she brought my change back, she’d wet the tray with a sponge and held the tray up above where I could see it, see? I had to reach up and slide my change off the tray, and the bottom bill stuck on the wet part.’ So I grabbed him by the ears and shook his head back and forth. ‘Fuad, Fuad,’ I said, ‘that’s the oldest scam in the book. You must have seen that one worked a million times. I remember when Zainab pulled that one on you last year.’ And the stupid skeleton nods his head, and his big lump of an Adam’s apple is going up and down and up and down, and he says to me, he says, ‘Yeah, but all those other times they was one-kiam bills. Nobody ever done it with a ten before.’ As if that made it all different!”

Jo-Mama started to laugh, the way a volcano starts to rumble before it goes blam, and when she really got into the laugh, the bar shook, and the glasses and bottles on it rattled, and we could feel the vibrations clear across the bar on our stools. Jo-Mama laughing could cause more damage than a smaller person throwing chairs around. “So what you want, Marîd? Ouzo, and retsina for the young lady? Or just a beer? Make up your mind, I don’t have all night, I got a crowd of Greeks just in from Skorpios, their ship’s carrying boxes full of high explosives for the revolution in Holland and they got a long way to sail with it and they’re all nervous as a goldfish at a cat convention and they’re drinking me dry. What the hell do you want to drink, goddamn it! Getting an answer out of you is like prying a tip out of a Chink.”

She paused just long enough for me to cram a few words in. I got myself my gin and bingara with Rose’s, and Yasmin had a Jack Daniels with a Coke back. Then Jo-Mama started in on another story, and I watched her like a hawk, because sometimes she starts the stories so you’ll get all caught up in them and forget you’ve got change coming. I never forget. “Let me have the change all in singles, Mama,” I said, interrupting her story and reminding her, in case my change had slipped her mind. She gave me an amused look and made the change, and I kicked her a whole kiam for a tip. She stuffed it into her bra. There was plenty of room in there for all the money I’d ever see in my lifetime. We finished our drinks after two or three more stories, kissed her good-bye, and wandered further up the Street. We stopped in Frenchy’s and a few other places, and we were satisfactorily loaded by the time we got home.

We didn’t say a word to each other; we didn’t even pause to turn on a light or go to the bathroom. We had our clothes off and were lying close together on the mattress. I ran my fingernails up the back of Yasmin’s thighs; she loves that. She was scratching my back and chest; that’s what I like. I used the tips of my thumb and fingers to touch her skin very lightly, just barely tickling her, from her armpit up her arm to her hand, and then I tickled her palm and her fingers. I ran my fingertips back down her arm, down her side, and across her sexy little ass. Then I began touching the sensitive creases of her groin the same way. I heard her start to make soft sounds, and she didn’t realize her own hands had fallen beside her; then she began touching her breasts. I reached over and grabbed her wrists, pinning her arms to the bed. She opened her eyes in surprise. I grunted softly and kicked her right leg aside, a little roughly, then I spread her left leg with mine. She gave a little shudder and moan. She tried to reach down to touch me, but I wouldn’t let go of her wrists. I held her immobile, and I felt a strong, almost cruel sense of control, yet it was expressed in the most caring and tender way. It sounds like a contradiction; if you don’t feel the same thing sometimes, I can’t explain it to you. Yasmin was giving herself to me wordlessly, completely; at the same time I was taking her, and she wanted me to take her. She liked me to get a little wild now and then; the moderate force I permitted myself to use only aroused her more. Then I entered her, and we let out our breath together in a sigh of pleasure. We began to move slowly, and her legs lifted; she put her heels on my hips, digging in and holding on, as close to me as she could get, while I was driving into her as close to her as possible. We jammed like that, slowly, drawing out every gentle touch, every surprise shock of roughness, for a long while.

Yasmin and I still clung to each other, our hearts thumping and our breath ragged and quick. We clung until our bodies quieted, and still we held each other, both satisfied, both exhilarated by this restatement of our mutual need and our mutual trust and, above all else, our mutual love. I suppose at some time we separated, and I suppose at some time we fell asleep; but in the late morning when I awoke, our legs were still entwined, and Yasmin’s head was on my shoulder. Everything had been fixed, everything had indeed returned to normal. I had Yasmin to love, I had money in my pocket to last a few months, and whenever I wanted it, there was action. I smiled softly and slowly drifted back into untroubled dreams.