Midnight

  When I reached down to soothe her by stroking her coat, I plucked a rose petal from her fur. I flicked it off and thought it was a strange find, a flower blossom in a cement cave.

  At my locker, I shined my key light to get my combination right. I unlocked the lock, put my glasses back on the top shelf, and checked for my nine. I took off my T-shirt, put my gloves on the top shelf, and reached for a clean tee when I thought I heard something. I stood silently to listen. Maybe the people next door were moving something on their side.

  When I got silent, the noise I had heard turned to silence also. I put my nine in my pants and took a short walk around. I ran up on a camper’s knapsack, the kind the student tourists used to wear back in the Sudan. Theirs were packed and stacked and looked like they were carrying their whole life in the compartments of the sack held up by two metal bars. They even had rolled-up blankets and thin bedding on those things.

  I got serious thinking how I always thought this underground place was a great hideout. If someone were on the run from the police, they would never think to check in the Chinatown underground.

  In the winter it would be torture. But now that April was coming to its end, the floors were heated, the air was warm and thick, and the water underground ran hot, producing a steam room effect. There was a toilet. If someone had a grill or a burner, they could really escape from the clutches of the law living down here. The only thing missing was windows that led to the sky, moon, and the stars, and of course the light of the sun.

  I decided to walk back upstairs and ask Cho if he knew about the camper’s knapsack down here.

  When my foot hit the third step on the fifteen-step staircase, I heard the shower water turn on. And that sound was definitely coming from Cho’s section.

  “What was I bothering Cho for?” I asked myself. I’m the one with the gun and the lethal feet and hands.

  I walked down the three steps and moved carefully. I was trying to think like the trespasser. Maybe he turned on the shower to make me think he was still in one area, but had really moved somewhere else. Maybe he wanted me to walk up casually so he could catch me off guard and bang me over my head.

  I was up against the wall like a detective. Cho’s cat was looking at me like I was an asshole. I figured if the cat would run down the corridor, the trespasser would expose himself out of fear that someone was approaching. But Pussy saw the steam coming from the stall around the corner, which we both could not see into because of the way the stall was positioned.

  As I inched down the corridor, making it up to the wall of the shower stall, I checked on the right side of the darkness before turning left into the thick of the steam.

  A silhouette was seated in the corner clouded by a full blast of continuous steam. It was too pretty to be an invader. It was Akemi.

  She laughed softly, covering her mouth to lessen her voice with her hand. The sound down here multiplied and bounced around the walls. I put my nine away, reached around and turned off the shower water to lessen the steam. I wanted to see her clearly. The water splashed all over my bare chest before it shut off.

  As the smoke cleared, she was really there, wearing a paper-thin light beige dress, wet and pressed against her exquisite body. She had no shoes on her feet, her diamond toe ring glistened, her legs were twisted into a simple yoga pose for my pleasure.

  She was seated on a fluffy blanket. On top of the blanket was a white linen cloth and a load of rose petals. She had made a bed for us in a hot cave, below the streets of New York, surrounded by steam. I loved it.

  “Mayonaka,” she said, and placed her hand gently on the linen cloth beside herself, asking me to come over without words.

  She didn’t even have to ask. I approached her, bent down, and laid my gun pointed away from her in the corner.

  I could feel her fingers tracing my bare shoulders in the dark. My eyes were adjusted now. She ran her hands slowly over my neck, and both her hands were now exploring my face, like a sculptor. She went down my arms like she wanted to be familiar with each and every muscle and groove in my body. She began caressing my chest, then let her hand be still on my abdomen.

  I stood up and removed my pants, my shorts, and my socks.

  I lifted her off of the bed and carried her into the shower stall, where I switched on a dim yellow light. I wanted to see her. I wanted to see everything. And I wanted her to see me too, see everything.

  In the soft yellow light she leaned against the wall in her paper thin dress, which was held together by only three white strings tied like shoelaces on the side of her body. Pull the string and the dress unravels, incredible.

  When the thin cloth fell to the floor, her dark hair lay on both sides of her pretty shoulders. She was the definition of art. As my eyes moved down her body, some delicate and intricate body design was revealed. At first I thought it was an expertly drawn tattoo. Within seconds, though, I realized it was Sudanese henna. She had drawn a henna belly chain, each link life-sized and perfectly situated from her navel leading around her side to her back. The design was so perfect it clung and hung and rode her curves like a real piece of jewelry. I spun her around and the design wrapped around her tiny waistline. Like a real chain, it had a clasp, which was drawn above the split of her ass.

  She put her arms up on the wall she was facing, stretching the length of her body so that I could get a rear view. She pulled her hair, which had now spilled down on her back, to the front so that I could see the detail of her second design. It swirled up and around her spine, a vine with tiny leaves. The design ended with a drawing of two small leaves resting at the nape of her neck. A Japanese spin on a Sudanese tradition, unlike anything I’d ever seen. No henna hands or feet. Henna, for even sexier secret places.

  When I looked up amazed from admiring the curve of her back and the wicked canvas her skin made for her artistry, she turned only her face towards me. I leaned in and kissed her. Her body slowly turned to face front, her nipples fully extended and brushing against my chest. She had her eyes locked into mine. “Please,” she whispered and smiled. I decided she was the sneakiest feline roaming around down here. And I knew she felt she had waited too long for me to give her what she wanted.

  With the palms of my hands pressed against the shower walls, and her tucked in between them leaning, I kissed her mouth gently. Every time I kissed, she sucked. I felt and heard her breath escaping. Suddenly I felt her soft hand feeling the length of my dick, exploring the head with such a light touch and moving down the length of it, not resting until it was beneath my balls. I grew longer and harder on her.

  She started that sucking. She sucked my tongue, licked my lips, even licked my face. Her tongue was so nice, not too wet or dry, breath fresh like she was sucking rum candy before sucking me. Now, I was glad I had washed up already. I wanted it to be good for her in every way.

  I sucked her neck, feeling like it was mine now. I had one hand softly on her throat. She whined a soft sound. I moved my hand down and felt her shoulders, in awe of Allah’s design of women. I felt the soft skin of her arms. Both of my hands held her waist. I worked them back up. I explored her breasts. Touching them lightly first without looking, it felt like they belonged in my hands.

  I pushed her back against the wall so I could see them. In the yellow light, the skin of her titties was beige. The areolas were brown. Her nipples were tan. I licked and sucked them.

  She put her small hand over my big hand and pushed my hand down in between her legs. Her leg muscles relaxed and her thighs opened up to welcome me. With my fingers I felt her pussy muscles throbbing on the inside, and I found her clitoris. It was not a little button, it was long and more like a two-and-a-half-inch sliver of flesh shaped like a piece of yarn. I caressed it with my finger and her whole body dropped down to the floor as if she could no longer hold herself up because of the pleasure. She was squatting down with her legs opened and inhaling and exhaling, breathing hard.

  I lifted her up and switched places with her. I sat
down on the shower stall floor. She stood before me. Her pussy was directly in front of my mouth. I smoothed out the silky bush and used two fingers to open her lips. I put my tongue on her clitoris as I had yearned to do. I sucked it gently. She put her own hand in her mouth and bit down on it to lessen her whine of pleasure. Still I could hear her. I had both of my hands gripping her buttocks so that her clitoris would stay pressed against my mouth. I tickled her with my tongue and she exploded. I released her cheeks and she fell back against the stall wall and collapsed down to the floor where I was. Her head was hanging between her own legs. Her hair was almost dragging on the ground.

  I lifted her face and brushed her hair out of my way. I licked her earlobes and stroked the hair on her head. We started kissing once again.

  I needed to go into her now. It was urgent. She felt it too, I knew. Without standing up completely, she straddled me. We were both facing one another now, in the sitting position. Then I raised her up, using both of my hands wrapped around her waist, and eased and lowered her body onto mine.

  I placed the tip of my dick at the entrance of her pussy. She was so petite.

  I didn’t have to teach her nothing, instinctively she just began to bounce slightly and softly in a circular sort of motion as her very moist but very tight pussy hole opened up little by little and clung to my dick like a too-tight glove. We rocked back and forth gently like playing on a seesaw. I felt her skin rip open and my dick pushed most of the way inside of her.

  With my hands gripping her waist, I pushed her from her hips downward, so I could get the last six inches inside of her where it was meant to be. When I was all the way in and hit her bottom inside, she gasped. I grinded her while she eased up and down, up and down, breathing harder and harder like she was on the ride of her life, the pole controlling all of the motion. Her mouth dropped open and her head was tossed back now. Our hips were doing all of the work.

  Me, I felt something that I never had before. It was a sensation so sweet and so strong, like the thrill of being yanked up in the air at an extreme speed and tossed around in the sky with the stars and allowed to fall down to the Earth with no parachute or protection. Her womb was the perfect place, and it gave me the perfect feeling. There were no problems inside of there. It was a hundred percent pleasure, a hundred percent peace. It was impossible to imagine that there was any place better. It was warm and soft and moist. It was tight yet long enough to take it all. And with the friction of each of her inner muscle movements, I felt a higher and higher sensation. I grinded harder, she bounced a little more swiftly. It was skin to skin, flesh to flesh, no condoms or creams or sponges or injections, or pills or plastics or patches or contraptions. When the energy built up so strong that I could not hold it back any longer, I spilled a million warm seeds into her and the rocket ride dropped down as if it was out of fuel. Yet even the drop was a surge of pleasure. I could feel her fluid and mine oozing out as my dick slowly began to relax. She threw her whole body over my shoulders and just lay there trembling on my back.

  When she climbed down, she sat beside me in the shower stall. She threw one leg over my leg comfortably. She took one of my hands and put it down there. It seemed like she was ready to go again. But what she wanted to show me, when she pulled my hand back, was the blood on both our fingertips coming from her. Not “a river of blood.” Not thick goops of blood. Not stinky or fishy blood. Just slight thin blotches of watery blood. The kind I needed to see, the blood that was not there when I first sucked her clit.

  She picked up her white linen cloth and dabbed the blood from herself onto it. She waved it like the Japanese flag, white with a large red dot. She held up her hands like a runner throws their hands up at first place at the finish line. I thought to myself, what a strange girl. But I loved everything weird about her. She was my wife.

  She lifted her right leg and used her toes to turn on the shower. We were both standing now, the steam building and rising. The heat was intense. She began to wash my body with her hands and my bar of soap. Seeing her naked, soaked, and wet was erotic to me, so we did it again. I held her up and pressed her back against the shower wall.

  I stood and rocked up into her. She bit her lips and climbed the walls. She moaned so much I thought I saw Pussy the cat running up and checking on us. The water poured down heavy onto my face and body. The steam hid us from the no one who was down there.

  Making use of the bed she made for us, I lay down like I was in the private room of a fine hotel. My first ever full-out sexual encounter caused me to feel so relaxed and so free and so damn good I wasn’t worried or thinking about anything or anyone else.

  As she climbed back on top of my naked body, with her naked, soft, and shapely body, I felt my joint stiffen again. I could feel her heart beating in her chest, or maybe it was mine. I could feel her hair brushing against both of my shoulders. I flipped her over and with me back on top, I just grinded her slowly, pushing it all the way in using even the muscles in my toes. Her pussy muscles were throbbing wildly like a second heartbeat, her body lost somewhere below me.

  She could not get enough. I thought my weight might be too much for her but she wrapped her legs around me like a frog and just flowed. She bit my shoulders and scratched up my back. But even the abuse felt good. I put my passion prints all over her too, even between her thighs. I was catching on to how to know when she reached her orgasm. She would shake all over, as though it was beyond her control. Her entire body would be trembling. A whining sound came from her belly and rose through her chest, throat, and out of her mouth. If I didn’t know it was pleasure, I could’ve mistaken it for the sound of crying.

  When I rolled off of her and onto my back, we were both lying down facing the ceiling. She pulled my hand back between her legs and smiled.

  I told her, “No more for you.” Somehow she knew what that meant.

  I gave her a kiss and when our tongues touched, I started touching her up again, naturally.

  I just kept looking into her eyes and kissing her lying there. She just kept licking and kissing me too. It was like a magnetic pull, we couldn’t and didn’t want to get off of one another. I felt like I couldn’t move. Like my limbs weighed a hundred pounds each on their own and my whole body, a ton.

  We took another shower eventually. We watched each other dress in fresh clothing.

  We packed up our stuff.

  We were both leaning on opposite walls staring at one another fully clothed in the dark cave. Our eyes were filled with feelings, and both our lips were wet. We had to calm down the constant throbbing below, hers and mine, before we could raise up to leave.

  I got off work at three. Now it was six o’clock.

  “C’mon,” I told her. She tucked herself under my arm. We walked up the stairs and out through Cho’s.

  He took his eye off his business for one hot second and watched me leave with the huge camper’s knapsack on my back and Akemi’s fingers folded into each of mine. We left the bed she made and the rose petals she spread in the downstairs corner.

  “Later, Cho,” I said casually. I was too relaxed to think or care.

  Outside we walked the other way instead of passing her uncle’s shop. I don’t know what I expected or what she expected. I stopped and pointed in the direction of her family store. She shook her head no and clung to me.

  In the train she was all over me and I liked it. Since we made love it seemed like we could not unglue ourselves. One minute our legs were touching, then our hands, faces, and feet. We were stuck together and could not peel ourselves off.

  When we came through our apartment door, Umma looked at me, a long gaze into my eyes. She looked at Akemi, a long gaze into her eyes. Akemi lowered her eyes.

  Naja ran out and gave Akemi a princess’ welcome.

  “Are you ready?” I asked Umma.

  “We are both ready,” Umma answered in Arabic.

  In my bedroom I put down Akemi’s camper’s knapsack. When I turned around, she was right there behind
me. The energy was so thick between us that I didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay right there locked in my room with her. Even if we didn’t touch, the feeling of the love and the energy that swirled around us would have been enough.

  But I promised Umma, so we prepared and went by taxi.

  53

  AFRICA & ASIA

  I saw the shift in Sudana’s eyes when she saw Akemi walk in. Now Sudana was like a pretty, wide-eyed fawn, looking at a wild cheetah passing by and estimating the danger it might cause. I knew that she liked Akemi, except didn’t like seeing her with me.

  Seeing now the jewels Akemi wore, the jewels I gave her, including the ring, Sudana’s eyes widened even more. She didn’t say or ask anything. Her eyes went from the jewels over to me. She gave me one concentrated stare then cast her eyes down and away from me.

  We were being separated for a time in Mr. Ghazzali’s house, the men from the women.

  Then we were all brought back together once again by the call to prayer. Akemi looked uncomfortable but Umma scooped her up and let her watch from behind. I knew what Umma was doing, because we believe there is no compulsion in Islam.

  At dinner Mr. Ghazzali, his two sons and three daughters and wife Temirah, myself, Akemi, Umma, and Naja were treated to a Sudanese spread, served not on their main dining room table, but on the floor using the traditional low tables, carpets, and pillows.

  Sudana served Akemi with special attention and great hospitality. Her hand was steady holding the steaming kettle of tea and pouring it into Akemi’s small teacup. I was grateful for how she was welcoming Akemi. It made me respect and appreciate Sudana even more.

  The simple new business deal was brokered, a cultural seminar for Sudanese females. It was good business but really a woman thing. It was the only way for the African women raising children in America to transfer knowledge, power, and common sense to one another. Temirah and Umma would host a class for the daughters of Sudanese families.