She was sure that the sounds they made would sometimes alarm the neighbours, some of whom were terribly nosy, but she didn’t care. Couldn’t a couple resuscitate Javanese rituals from the early 19th century in the comfort of their own kitchen—or, as was the case, in every other part of their apartment?
Things can’t get any better than this, she thought. But she was wrong.
She got back one evening and started undressing immediately. She somehow knew he was in the bedroom. (Since they’d started the sex thing with the tempoyak, they had achieved an almost ESP level of communication.
They could not only finish each other’s sentences but anticipate the other’s thoughts. This was probably because the ritual took them into more intimate territory than either had thought possible.)
By the time she got to the bedroom, she was already naked. And he was waiting for her, standing, also wearing only a smile. He didn’t have any of the props with him, but even looking at him without the ritualistic paraphernalia—he was just the naked Zeb that she had seen hundreds of times in the past nine and a half months—was enough to get her excited.
She was so happy letting her eyes wander over every inch of him (some inches more than others) that she didn’t notice he had his right hand behind his back. Then he brought it out: the book, again.
‘I’ve just finished the next page,’ he said. ‘The page after the description of the sex thing with the tempoyak. Would you be interested to try the next level?’
‘There is a next level?’
‘Yes. The book goes through several stages, each subsequent one meant to bring a couple even closer together in the journey of life.’
She nodded, not daring herself to say anything, not even ‘Sure!’, even though her mind was filled with exclamation marks.
‘Tonight we can go back to basics: just you and me, if that’s okay with you. But when you come home tomorrow,’ he said, walking towards her, reaching her, doing a few things to her until he brought his lips to her ear and whispered, ‘bring a whole durian.’
A few days later, Zeb was walking along the road that housed the Toko Junk bookshop. The aged proprietor, sitting outside for a respite from the stuffy interior, waved to him and he stopped.
‘How are you doing, Mrs Heng?’
‘Fine, thank you. Looking for any more books?’
‘Not for the moment,’ he said cheerfully. ‘There are so many I haven’t finished yet!’
She watched his retreating back with a smile. If only all customers were like him! He’d sometimes buy things that no one else would buy. Like his most recent purchase: a 19th-century Land Code, a hardcover exquisitely bound in burgundy but written entirely in Hindi. ‘Do you read Hindi?’ she’d asked.
‘No.’ She could have sworn he then winked at her. ‘But I’ll improvise.’
NIGHT RIDE
Nigel Hogge, Philippines
The gears of the old diesel engine clashed and the bus lumbered off up the highway, bumping over potholes and creaking from side to side. Lisa fought her way to the rear to see if she could get a last fond look at her mother and sisters, but when she got there, the gathering dusk made it impossible to see anything through the grimy rear window.
For some reason she began to cry. Perhaps it was a memory of her father averting his eyes as he accepted the little gift from her that started the tears.
She searched for tissue paper in her purse, all that she carried besides an overnight bag and some ears of corn bound with twine, pressed upon her by her mother at the bus stop.
A hand loomed in front of her face, holding a handkerchief. Instinctively, she took it and wiped her eyes. Pulling herself together, she removed the cloth from her face and was disturbed to see it wasn’t very clean.
She turned to the person who had so kindly offered it to her and was surprised to see a young foreigner, a tall, skinny white guy dressed in a faded denim jacket, scruffy white T-shirt and khaki shorts. He was grinning at her.
In the darkness, she could make out faint pockmarks on his face. He had a big, thick-lipped mouth that reminded her of an English rock-and-roll star she’d seen cavorting on a video.
She quickly returned the grubby cloth, nodded curtly, and turned back to the window. She was in no mood for banter. She felt depressed and stared through the glass at the occasional passing light.
The bus droned on through the evening. Night fell. Her feet ached. She hung onto the ceiling strap for support, and out of nowhere her depression lifted, and wicked, erotic thoughts came to her, the kind of thoughts that often plagued her because she was, she knew, a wicked and erotic girl.
Wild fantasies entered her mind, not helped by the fact that she was standing on a filthy floor which trembled and vibrated and sent tremors running up her legs, finishing up at the same damp spot between her luscious, plump, quivering thighs.
Naughty visions of men, boys, hairy chests, flat bellies, hard biceps, lean buttocks, swelling calf muscles, corded necks, thick wrists, sensitive fingers, firm jaws, the feel of a man’s… caramba!!
She froze, her cheek pressed to the unclean glass… caramba! The son of a bitch! The low-down animal! Was she imagining this, or was this part of a dream? Had she fallen asleep standing, and what she felt pressed against her bottom just imagination?
She unwrapped the green leaves from a sheath of ripe yellow corn and wondered if she shouldn’t offer some to the foreigner standing behind her.
He had been silent so far, thank the Lord, and she couldn’t be sure whether he was very kind or a disgusting pervert. She decided to keep the rest of the corn to give to her girlfriends at the club, and sank her pearly white teeth into the soft, delicious flesh of… caramba!
Placed against her butt, which she knew from experience was one of her most sought-after features, was a warm iron pipe. Yes, right in the groove between her bottom cheeks! She chewed on the corn furiously.
She couldn’t scream for help with her mouth full. She twisted her head around to glare at the white guy, but he was standing with his eyes closed, a peaceful, innocent expression painted on his face, which was definitely not handsome. The warm iron pipe had withdrawn. It no longer pushed against her soft rump. She stared up at the man for a while. It was too dark to see if he was pretending to be dozing. A car passed the bus and the cabin was momentarily lit, the yellow glare of the passing headlights sweeping across the mass of long-suffering humanity squeezed like cattle inside the bus as it rattled through the hot night towards the capital.
She blinked and was startled to see his eyes, which were a deep brown with flecks of gold, now open and looking at her.
They didn’t turn away. The man watched her, no longer grinning like an idiot. He wasn’t quite as unattractive as she had first thought. She frowned at him and turned back to her solitary vigil at the greasy window. She knew what would happen next… and it did.
Actually, two things happened at the same time. She had just realized that her pussy was very wet because of the nasty thoughts she’d been unable to banish from her mind minutes earlier, when the bus hit a particularly large pothole on the highway and the foreigner was thrown against her back. A growl of irritation rose from the passengers, and some of the peasants near the front of the bus told the driver their opinions of his ancestry and his mother’s true occupation, but what Lisa knew with total clarity was that the iron pipe against her rump was real, very real, and had not been a dream.