He let these words sink in, then he added, “Maybe you just want Ordinary or Special — but not so good. I tell you mister, you not want your autumn years to be filled with sadness. Extra-special is best of best.”
Walt knew his own true nature. He knew his own weaknesses. In the past he had bought toys for more than four hundred. That mountain bicycle for a start. That had cost him five-fifty and he hardly ever used it. The chance of an experience like this did not come twice in a lifetime. He really had no choice.
“I’ll take the Extra-special.”
The man was effusive.
“You make good choice. This wonderful adventure. Very fantasy. Very erotic.” The man did a little shimmy with his hips and smiled one of those enigmatic smiles that only Orientals can seem to produce. “I guarantee you never have nothing like this before in your life. You not forget this night for a thousand years.”
“I should live so long,” replied Walt, dryly.
Walt had never been with an oriental woman. In truth he had not had sex for quite a time, not since his marriage to Jody had broken up a year ago. This would be quite a new experience for him. He believed he liked diminutive females. They appeared to be more submissive. That might not have been true, but it seemed so. Jody had not just been a muscular five-feet-eight. She had also been a work-out freak. When her arms gripped him around the back of his neck, and legs locked behind him, her heels driving him into her, he had felt as if he were in some kind of medieval vice, a fucking-machine built to pummel men’s genitals to pulp. He had felt manacled. No need for handcuffs or leather straps: Jody had been a human bondage device all by herself!
He was led through narrow winding passageways, the walls lined with red and gold flock wallpaper, to a wooden door. The man turned and smiled as he produced a large iron key. The door was opened and Walt pressed gently inside.
“Woman come in a moment. She pretty. You like her.”
“I’d better,” said Walt, staring around him.
There was a musky perfume coming from somewhere. He discovered holes in the sides of the bed and guessed they were vents. The aroma was powerful and intoxicating, with some kind of an aphrodisiac quality. He felt himself being aroused. Walt had heard of certain foods and drinks doing that, but not a fragrance.
The room was weird by his standards.
He inspected the bed, which was large with black satin sheets.
Each side had a huge round red pillow with a hole for its center.
The headboard was carved with a painted rainforest scene. There was a red monkey motif following the oval shape of the bedhead: mischievous-looking creatures with round quizzical mouths, linking tails. Snakes slid in and out of stylized undergrowth. There were tigers in there somewhere, half in and half out of shadow. Magnolia trees stood leafless and bare, with dark-red cupola-shaped buds on the tips of their branches. Succulent pitcher plants, with deep mysterious recesses, grew from mossy banks. Vines entangled and wound their way throughout the whole scene, binding all the individual beasts and plants together. Incongruously, right in the center of the headboard there was a long railway train entering a deep tunnel.
When he studied the picture closer he could see death in there too.
There were the symbolic skulls, obvious to any culture. He noticed that these were arranged in casual piles with exactly four skulls to each heap. There were shapes of pale light which might have been severed hands scattered throughout the undergrowth of the jungle, secreted in pockets of dead leaves. White flowers and white feathers decorated the floor of the rainforest. Rib bones curling out of rotten logs, were hung with hair-moss, dripping with a substance that might once have been human skin.
Necrophilia?
“We’re having none of that sort of thing,” he murmured to himself, half-jokingly. “She’d better be alive when she comes in here.”
It was then he turned his attention again to the walls, floor, and ceiling.
It was all mirrors, mirrors everywhere: on floor, ceiling, and all four walls.
Reflections of the bed went into infinity in all directions. When he stepped further into the room, a thousand-thousand Walts went with him, like a curved line of soldiers. When he stood still, he was the hub of helicopter rotary blades made of Walts, which whirled gracefully away into light years beyond. It was while he was thus experimenting with the simulacra that he was aware of another presence. She suddenly appeared by his side in the mirrors, startling him.
“Did you just come in?” he said, looking at the closed door. “I didn’t hear you enter.”
“I am very quiet,” she said, smiling.
She was an enchanting, delicate young woman whose very form and beauty took his breath away. He was not just astonished but shocked by her loveliness. He felt inferior to such a woman. She could not possibly want to stay in this room with a clumsy oaf like him. If she did, there must be something wrong with her, something hidden and perhaps vile.
“Are you — well?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you,” she breathed, misunderstanding him. “I am perfectly well, thank you very much.”
Her breath smelled of oranges and mint, as the words came out of her mouth like invisible bubbles. Suddenly, he did not care. She could be riddled with horrors for all he worried at that moment. He knew this was his one chance to have such a woman, for he would surely never get another. There were drums in his loins. Heavy metal music coursed through his thighs and belly. This was happening to him. Two hours ago he had been just another seedy passenger on a plane. Now he was a king with the most exquisite concubine in the land. He watched as she removed her scant clothes to reveal small breasts with brown tips, a smooth flat stomach with a neat dark triangle below it. Walt swallowed hard and began trembling.
“Shall I — shall I undress now?”
Once Walt had stripped himself, she took his clothes and put them in a box under the bed, as if they were tainted things. Then she lay beside him on the bed, where he was studying himself in the ceiling mirror, his erection somehow larger and more formidable in this looking glass. Thousands of curved penises went sweeping away in a crescent, like a palisade of sharpened stakes on a medieval battlefield, ready to pierce the chargers of rash knights. Then her rosebud mouth was on his breast and he could feel the dry silkiness of her breast beneath his armpit. A lump came to his throat. He began to cry soft tears. He did not know why. They just came from somewhere deep inside and flowed down his cheeks. She licked the tears from his eyelashes, saving they were deliciously salty.
Then, when she reached for him down below, he felt her fingernails graze his abdomen.
“Ouch,” he said, looking down.
“Sorry,” she replied, smiling.
But he was astonished. He had not noticed before now, but her fingernails were about an inch long, and very sharp. Her hands were like those of a goddess from some dark jungle religion. If she wished she could pierce his skin with those claws. It was not a thought that rested lightly on his mind.
“Good God,” he said. “Don’t you ever cut those?”
“My people believe it is beautiful to have long nails,” she explained in a disappointed voice. “You not like them?”
“I — well — they just look a little dangerous, that’s all.”
But then, looking down on her, he forgot about the nails.
They made love not just once, but three times in the next two hours. This was remarkable enough, since Walt was normally a once and then roll over and go to sleep man. But even after the third session he was still ready to go again. He guessed it had something to do with that smell of musk.