“Je moet niet met me klooien,” Hans snapped back, reaching for his belt, but he wasn’t in the ring and there was no pistol, no pipe.
“Who said we were fucking with you? It’s just time to go.” I spoke slowly and evenly, but could tell we had the upper hand. Hans was shaking; his anger and disbelief making him jelly. He had been pacing around us with edgy eyes ever since he had broken my arm and still wasn’t prepared for this.
“You are fools.” Hans pointed at Koenraad and sneered, “You are no tiger trainer. You worry too much about how you look to notice how the tigers look at you. One will break your neck from behind.” He spun toward me, continuing his prophesy, “And you are too frightened and soft. You know how to handle the tigers and do not. One day you will back down when you should act like a man and a tiger will open your guts with one quick claw. You’ll choke on the stink of your own bowels and wish you had stayed with me.”
“Kanker op!” Koenraad yelled, yanking the bottle of beer from my hand and hurling it toward Hans. It left a fan of beer in its wake and bounced off his collar bone with a painful crack. Hans dropped to the ground wailing.
“I think we should leave, Koen,” I said. And a week later we were in Cape Town.
~
“Black tigers are different.” Koenraad said. He was shaking out a line on the glass coffee table, splitting up the rations with a razor blade.
“Ah man, rot toch op. A tiger is a tiger. People just like looking at the black ones better.” I stroked the black cub in my lap, coaxing him to purr.
“Nah. The black tigers have given us all this. They are magic.” He waved his hand encouraging us to take in a panoramic view and then bent over to lick Giselle’s nipple through her sheer top. She giggled and uncrossed her legs, re-crossing them slowly, confirming my theory that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. “All of this from tiger magic.” He smiled at Sabrina who sat on the other side of him. “I can have any flavor I want.”
“Excuse me?” Sabrina arched an eyebrow at him.
“It’s okay. American kut is nice too. I’m not prejudiced.” Koen winked at her and she smiled back, but not nicely. She stood up, removing herself to sit next to me.
“Is he always that offensive?” She asked as she reached to scratch the tiger’s head.
“Yes,” I answered. Koen and Giselle were busy with their lines of cocaine and weren’t listening. “People often find the Dutch offensive though. We say what we think.”
“I see.” She rubbed the cub under the chin and sighed. “I love tigers. I want to work with them so bad.” She sighed again. “You should name this one Rajah.”
“That’s not very original,” I said.
“Do you have one named Rajah?” She asked and I shrugged. “Well there you go then.” She curled into my shoulder and continued to stroke the tiger. Her skin was pale and smooth, her graceful fingers contrasting against the black fur.
Koenraad got up leading Giselle by the hand, giving me a thumbs up with the other. Watching them depart I was instantly uncomfortable. Sabrina looked up into my face as if sensing it.
“Is this okay?” she asked. Her green eyes looked worried. I noticed how perfect her face was, so angular and honest.
“It’s fine.” I let my arm fall on her shoulders and made myself smile. She continued to pet the cat, occasionally missing the fur and rubbing my crotch, eventually she was ignoring the kitten all together. I closed my eyes and let myself get hard. She unbuttoned my pants so gently and quickly that I didn’t notice until I felt her hand wrap around my cock and ease it free. I concentrated harder on the sensation, ignoring her moan as she slipped me in her mouth. I was feeling not thinking, but she must have thought she wasn’t turning me on enough because she stopped. She climbed on top of me, licking her fingers and getting herself wet. And when she pressed me inside of her I gasped, went limp and there was no recovering my erection.
“It’s okay, sugar. Sometimes the drugs…,” she trailed off.
“I don’t do that shit,” I said.
“Right, well, look. I like you. A lot. I mean, Koen is an asshole, but you’re…well I want to be with you.”
Tears were seeping from the corners of my eyes and I couldn’t wipe them away fast enough. I was mortified that a cheap hoer was watching me make my best effort not to cry.
“Shit. Darlin’ I’m just not your type,” she said smiling. Then she gently slipped me back inside my pants, buttoned me up and kissed me on the cheek. “Is there coffee? I can make us some if I won’t get in trouble with the chef or some such thing.”
“That would be nice. I’ll show you where it is,” I offered and got up to show her, my eyes dry and smiling.
“You know I wanted to go to college, not be a showgirl?” She told me. “And then I thought I’d be in Vegas, not Africa. I had to try to figure out a way to make money easy and fast we were so poor. I was the sixth baby and my mama was so tired I think most of the time she couldn’t remember she had me. In fact my sisters named me ‘cause she forgot to.”
I laughed.
“True story. I’m just telling you ‘cause I got the feelin’ you and Koenraad grew up just like me. Koen reminds me of one of my brothers and I had to kick his ass regularly. I only want to talk is that okay?” I told her that was fine.
~
“Sabrina, can you lock up the cats and feed them? I have to talk to Koenraad about something,” I asked. I could tell she was wondering about what, but she shrugged and took the cats away.
“She’s turned out to be a good assistant. Loves the tigers,” Koen said.
“I got something in the mail today. It’s about your mother,” I said carefully.
“Is she coming?” he asked. The way his eyes lit up I could imagine us eating oranges in the Netherlands chill. I hated this.
I handed him the obituary that had arrived without a return address. His eyes moved across the paper slowly, his face blank as he read.
“Godverdomme. It doesn’t even list me as her son,” he said.
He crumpled into himself and landed sitting on a crate. His face in his hands, he sobbed and rocked. “I thought she would come,” he said.
“I’m sure she meant to,” I said and kneeled next to him so that I could talk softly.
“She never meant to do anything except forget me.” His words choked out between his sobs and all I wanted was to do something about his pain.
“That’s not true,” I told him as I pulled him against me and rocked him a little. “Your mother loved you, she was just sick.” I stroked his hair and laid my cheek on the top of his head. Then I felt him tense.
“Get off me you reetridder!” He pushed me hard enough to knock me over. “How long have you been waiting for this moment?”
“You’re my brother, Koenraad.”
“Brothers don’t fuck each other. You think I don’t know about you and Hans?” He threw up his hands.
“You haven’t even fucked Sabrina, have you? Two years and you haven’t even fucked her. That’s okay, Pieter, because I have. I like kut. I love it!” He kicked the crate, cracking a hole in the side. Then he thrust a finger at me.
“Stay away from me,” he said. “If we didn’t have a contract…” He stopped, glaring at me through a silence that said more than his angry words. As he stormed away I noticed Sabrina in the corner, wiping her eyes.
~
We haven’t spoken for two weeks except onstage and now there is so much to say and I think I might not ever have a chance to say it all.
“Ik hou van jou.” The words gurgle and hurt to pronounce and I’m sure he can’t understand me. I say it again. “Ik hou van jou.” And when he looks confused I say it carefully, but the vibrato of my desperation continues to garble the words. “Ik hou van jou.”
“What is he saying?” Sabrina asks and as she leans closer to my face I can smell the stink of tiger just below the heavy sweetness of her perfume. She meets my eyes as Koenraad turns hi
s away. I can’t say it again even though her expression is pleading. I know he understood and he has turned away. Sabrina asks him again what I’ve said.
“He said don’t kill the tiger.”
Koenraad’s body twists to look stage right as if help were coming or he needs to go find it. He is going to leave me, let me die without returning my words. I close my eyes and stop fighting the weakness that is replacing my blood. I had no business loving tigers or men who worship them.
Then a clammy hand brushes my forehead, cooling the pain in the blood empty beat of my temples.
“There is no reason to kill the tiger, Pieter. You’re not going to die. Do you understand me?”
I open my eyes to see Koenraad’s cross-scarred chin quivering and I think I understand him perfectly.
~~~
Author’s Bio
Rebecca K. O’Connor is the author of the award-winning memoir Lift published by Red Hen Press in 2009. She has published essays and short stories in South Dakota Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Los Angeles Times Magazine, West, divide, The Coachella Review, Phantom Seed and Prime Number Magazine. Her novel, Falcon’s Return was a Holt Medallion Finalist for best first novel and she has published numerous reference books on the natural world.
Find Rebecca at:
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www.rebeccakoconnor.com
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Tiger, Tiger: A Short Story Page 2