A soft smile spread across Laki’s face. She no longer felt engulfed by the Stretch, not while lust was tingling through her and enfolding her in its embrace. She lay back on the floor and stretched out her limbs. She watched the twinkling lights around her as she ran her hands over her skin, stopping to apply extra pressure here or added caresses there. Singing along with Mahini, she shrouded herself in arousal and buried time with repeated, focused strokes.
Time had long since abdicated to pleasure when Laki felt her pod rock. Disoriented, she sat up and looked around. Her surprise melted into delight when she saw that her friend Zaha had arrived. Laki scrambled to her feet without remembering that her cloth was hiked up over her hips and hanging open. With a rueful grin, Laki fixed her cloth.
As her pod fused with Laki’s, Zaha shook her head. “You’re so predictable,” she said into the hole that was opening between their pods.
Laki pushed her hands into a pocket in the wall of her pod. She felt the cool wetness of the disinfectant splatter against her hands, then she felt heat as her hands were dried. When the hole between their pods was large enough, Laki ran over to Zaha and embraced her.
“You’re predictable too, you know. I knew you’d be the first to come.”
“So that little show was for me?”
“Yes, consider me your maturation welcome committee.” Laki bowed with a mischievous grin.
Zaha laughed. “Last day! And you’re up here making jokes and playing with yourself. I thought you were going to be a mess.”
“I am a mess; why do you think I was half-naked on the floor? It’s the only cure for panic that I’ve ever known.”
“Well I hope they’re open-minded in your mother-unit, you can’t…”
Laki held up her fingers to silence Zaha.
“At this party, we will not speak those words. We’ll pretend that I have no date with the veil tomorrow and that you won’t have to give everything up in…” Laki paused and looked at Zaha. “I forget. How many days do you have left?”
“Well…” Zaha said, and theatrically pointed to the top of her pod. Laki looked up and saw a thin silver marriage belt hanging there.
“You’re saved!” Laki yelled. They both squealed. Laki hugged Zaha, but she froze when she looked at the belt again. Her arms dropped away from Zaha, and she fell silent.
“What’s wrong?”
“No, nothing. I’m sorry.” Laki stumbled over her words as she stepped closer to examine the belt. “That looks like my friend Pemfi’s belt.”
“Pemfi’s? It is. You know him?”
Laki nodded, but offered no explanation. She was, she knew, an idiot in so many people’s minds. Her friends, her lovers, and especially her sister Se-se thought she was sacrificing herself for no good reason. She didn’t know what Zaha would think if she knew how many marriage belts Laki had turned down, if she knew that the last time Laki had seen Pemfi’s marriage belt, he was holding it out to her with trembling hands and she was shaking her head, telling him, “I can’t.”
Laki put her hand to her mouth as she remembered his stung response.
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“What’s the difference?” she had asked.
“The difference is if you can’t, it’s beyond your control. If you won’t you’re just being a stubborn rub.”
Coming from Pemfi, the curse had sounded like a foreign language, but in his anger he had wielded it masterfully. Zaha looked at Laki, an expectant expression on her face, but Laki didn’t speak; she just let out a long slow breath. She couldn’t throw off the memory of Pemfi, how she had wrapped her arms around him and spoken softly. “You want to make this hurt? You want to make me hurt?”
“You’ve been hurting me for years,” Pemfi had whispered in her ear. “But do you know what’s really going to hurt? Getting locked in a mother-unit. It’s going to kill you. They’re going to take away your pod and your props, and your life is going to change forever.”
She had pushed him away and assured him that she could handle it. He hadn’t believed a word of it. Not Pemfi, not after she’d spent so many nights telling him of her nightmares. He’d offered her a marriage of friendship, begged her to let him save her, but she had wanted to save herself.
Laki smiled at Zaha, hoping her face looked warm and reassuring rather than shaky and uncertain.
“He’s a good man, Zaha. You’ll have a good life.”
Then she pressed Zaha into a tight embrace.
“But what is this?” Zaha asked pulling away from Laki. She put her hands on Laki’s waist and felt the marriage belt through Laki’s dress.
“It’s…” Laki felt the pods jostle before she could answer. She turned and saw that Benko had arrived.
“Ben-ben!” she yelled.
As the walls were thinning where Benko’s pod met Laki’s, she said to Zaha, “It’s a long story…not what you think.”
“So you’re not getting married?”
“Who’s not getting married?” Benko asked stepping through the opening into Laki’s pod.
“I’m not getting married,” Laki said.
“But there’s something under her clothes, look,” said Zaha.
Benko held Laki by the hips and examined the bulge. He pushed at Laki’s waist, feeling the belt through the cloth of her dress. “It’s thick.”
“It’s just a loan,” said Laki. “Pretend it’s like any other belt. Did you bring the screen?”
“What kind of freak gets a thick marriage belt and doesn’t get married?” Benko asked.
Laki smacked him on the back. Turning smoothly, he smiled at Zaha and held out his hand.
“I’m Benko, and you are…”
“She has a marriage belt hanging in her pod, and she is getting married. Did you bring the screen?!”
“Wait!” Benko held up his hand. He stood in the middle of the three pods and cocked his head to one side.
“What are you looking for?” Laki asked.
“Not looking. Listening. This mix is depressing.”
He walked to the sound module in his pod. He sped up the rhythm of Mahini’s song, then mixed in a hard, fast beat. Zaha went to her sound module and added the sound of an animal yelping, then punctuated it with intermittent high-pitched tinkling sounds. They looked at each other and grinned.
Laki did a little shimmy. “Nice.” She kissed each of them on the cheek.
The pods shook suddenly. Laki, Benko, and Zaha stumbled a bit. They looked up to see two pods joining them at once. Laki waved at her arriving friends then shot Benko a look.
“Okay, okay, I’ll go set up the screen,” he said and walked toward his pod.
Laki linked arms with Zaha, and they walked over to where Laki’s friends’ pods were fusing with the party. When the pods merged, the space Laki and Zaha were standing in expanded.
Zaha saw Benko float away in his pod.
“Where’s he going?” she whispered in Laki’s ear.
“Setting up the screen,” Laki said.
“What’s the screen for?” Zaha asked.
“Oh, you’ve never been to any of Laki’s parties?” one of the newcomers asked.
Zaha shook her head no. She and Laki glanced at each other before Laki leaned in to hug each of the newcomers and kiss them both on the cheek.
“I see,” said the other newcomer. “You met in the Stretch.”
Zaha laughed loudly. “No, we met at a mother-unit training.”
There was an awkward pause.