SICK HEART

by Huss, JA

  But this is our last night. I’m not going to waste it.

  Anya and I come out onto the top platform, but instead of leading her over to the helipad I take her behind the building, past the showers, and ease between the containers towards the back.

  I look up and then stop so suddenly, Anya bumps into me. She follows my gaze upward where Maart is standing on top of the container with the half-full bottle of bright blue Lectra in his hand. “What are you doing?”

  He holds up the bottle. “What’s it look like?” Then he nods his head to Anya. “Thought we might share.”

  I’m not sure if he means Anya or the bottle. Because we’ve obviously done both in the past.

  “The bottle,” he clarifies. “Unless you want some privacy. And if that’s the case, then tell me to get lost.”

  I am not going to tell Maart to get lost and he knows it. I don’t like the tension between us and this is our last night on the Rock. I want to spend it with him. He’s my best friend.

  But I want to spend it with Anya too. I feel like we’ve spent a lot of time together but it hasn’t been nearly enough. I look to Anya. “You OK with this?” She’s staring up at Maart with a weird look on her face. And I can say, after four months of silence with this girl, that I have seen every possible look on her face and I’m pretty good at deciphering them. But this one I’m not sure about.

  Is she mad? Confused? Conflicted? The last one, I think. But conflicted about what?

  She nods her affirmation and urges me forward with a light touch in the small of my bare back.

  I meet Maart’s gaze and shrug. “I guess we’re in.”

  He grins back. And it’s a wide grin. I have known him for decades and if you add up all the time we’ve spent in silence it would equal years. So I can read the meaning behind his expression. And I am not confused about this one.

  He is up to something.

  I reach up, hook my fingertips over the lip of the container, then pull myself up and turn to reach for Anya. Maart is reaching for her too.

  I eye him, then Anya, to see if she will reject his offer of help. But this girl is nearly unshakable. She doesn’t even hesitate. She takes both our hands and Maart actually chuckles as we pull her up in one smooth motion.

  And then there she is. There we are. The three of us. Way too close. But I don’t want to back up and leave the group. It would send the wrong signal.

  What the fuck is Maart up to? I’m not quite sure yet, but he’s staring intently into Anya’s eyes. Then he points a finger at her face and in a low voice he says, “I have one rule tonight. And you do not get to say no.”

  She swats his hand away.

  “No sign language,” he growls. “I earned your words. So I want to hear you talk. Do you understand me?”

  It’s weird watching them because it’s very clear that Anya and Maart have a relationship going.

  Not the same kind of one I have with her.

  Not lovers. There is no chance Maart would fuck this girl during training.

  It’s something else.

  Something even more intimate.

  It’s mutual respect.

  And of course, that’s mandatory when you have a student-teacher relationship and spend hours together training one-on-one each night. But even so, I haven’t been imagining them in a relationship.

  Anya presses her palms together, like she’s praying. She touches her thumbs to her eyebrows and lowers her chin. Her formal wai is the ultimate reverence typically reserved for monks. And ajarn.

  Maart reaches out with the tip of his finger and lifts her chin back up. She drops her hands and waits.

  “Well? Yes or no?” Maart asks.

  “Fine.” Her voice is small and soft. “I agree.”

  Maart smiles as his head slowly turns to me. Then he holds up the bottle. “Then let’s celebrate.”

  I take the bottle and he turns his back to us, walking over to the other side of the container where he has a little plate of those little cornstarch cookies that are so popular in the rural towns of Brazil, some dried pineapple, banana, and guava, and some chocolate pieces in a stainless-steel bowl that’s sitting on a chunk of quickly melting ice.

  This is our thing. Every last day of Rock camp Maart, Rainer, and I come up here to the roof of a container and we get drunk on whiskey under the incredible blanket of stars that can only appear on the darkest of new-moon nights.

  Maart has placed a blanket down on the rusty metal roof of the container, a thick quilt that feels very good on my bare feet when I step onto it. And it suddenly occurs to me that Maart has put a lot more thought into this night than I did. Because this isn’t how it typically goes. We bring the bottle, we bring ourselves, and every once in a while, Rainer will produce cigars.

  “What’s all this?” I ask, panning my hand to the spread before us.

  Maart grins at me, apparently in a very good mood. “It’s our last night on the Rock. And we might come back here again one day, or we might not. I didn’t plan on Anya being here. I thought it would just be us. But fuck it.” He stares at her for a prolonged moment. “She’s not bad to look at, though. Right? So I’m not complaining.”

  Anya walks over to him and raises her middle finger in front of his face.

  He swats her hand away. “I said no sign language. If you want to tell me to fuck off, you will use words, nak muay.”

  Anya scoffs. “That’s nak su to you.”

  Maart laughs. And so do I. Nak muay means fighter. Nak su means warrior.

  Anya has proclaimed herself a warrior. And Maart must agree, or he would correct her. He’s been so stressed this time around, it feels good to see him happy.

  “So,” I say, walking over to stand next to Anya. “You speak Thai too?”

  We haven’t spoken any Thai out here. So she didn’t pick this language up from us.

  She sits down and picks up a piece of dried pineapple, nibbling on it coyly. “I’ve been speaking Thai since I was seven.”

  I look at Maart to see if he knew this, but the expression on his face is some kind of combination between admiration and confusion.

  “I understand seventeen languages,” Anya explains, the tip of her pink tongue poking out to lick a sugar crystal off the pineapple. “I’m Lazar’s spy.”

  Maart laughs and looks to me. “Did you know this?”

  “She told me last month.”

  Maart considers this for a moment, his eyes narrowing down into slits, but he’s not looking at me when this happens. Or Anya. So he’s thinking about something other than us. But that expression disappears when he sits down next to her, reaches over her—letting his bare arm brush against her bare leg—and picks up a piece of dried guava. “Sit down, Cort. Stop overthinking shit.”

  I draw in a deep breath and hold it for a second. He’s definitely up to something. Because it’s not me overthinking anything right now. It’s him.

  Maart’s dark brown eyes pierce mine, dragging this moment out for so long it becomes intimate. “Come on,” he finally says, his voice soft now. And this breaks the awkwardness. “What are you waiting for, Cort? We got shit to celebrate.” He holds up the bright blue bottle of Lectra. “Let’s get fucked up.”

  I hate this. I love this. I hate this. I love this.

  These two things cannot be reconciled. Ever. And tonight just proves it.

  Because Maart isn’t just any man. He is my best friend. Sometimes, he’s more than that. He is my secret weapon and my greatest weakness.

  And Anya isn’t just a girl. She is a pretty girl. She is our girl. But she is more than just a pretty girl who is ours. She is a reward.

  For a job well done. For a fight hard fought. And, whether I really want to admit this or not, she is my prize for walking away. For bowing to Udulf. For accepting his reality as mine. For giving in.

  And that, I realize, is not how I want to win.

  That is not the way of the warrior.

  But it’s far too late to do anyth
ing about it now.

  So I take that bottle from Maart.

  And I get fucked up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - ANYA

  I know Maart fairly well now. We’ve spent the last month training together, one on one, every single night. He’s had his hands all over my body while we grappled on the mat. And even though his touch never felt intimate or made my stomach queasy, now, when he brushes his arm across my leg to grab a piece of dried fruit, it is intimate and my stomach does something weird.

  I don’t remember much about the first night we were all together. I just know it felt good. And I was very drunk. It wasn’t anything I relived in my head. I didn’t play it all back, going from moment to moment.

  Some of that is because I wouldn’t be able to track those moments. I think I skipped most of them while it was happening.

  But right now, time is not skipping. Time is long, and slow, and… I don’t know. Maart’s attention is somehow different. And I haven’t even taken a sip of Lectra yet.

  “Here,” Maart says, putting the bottle of Lectra in my lap. “Ladies first. Drink up.”

  If I want to curtail what’s about to happen, now would be the time to put a stop to it.

  But I don’t. So I drink. I take a long sip and Cort laughs, pulling the bottle away from my lips before I’m even done. “Slow down, killer.” I love his laugh. He’s been stressed this entire time. From the moment we got here he’s been caught in some web of worry. But now he’s different. He’s calm and happy.

  So even though I know that tomorrow is my last day with this man, I don’t let that worry touch me. I don’t let reality chase away our one night of dreams.

  He drinks too, then wipes the sticky blue liquid from his lips and passes the bottle to Maart. They catch each other’s gaze for a moment. Hold it.

  And I want to know all the silent words passing between them in this moment.

  Is it I love you? Probably. But it’s also Thank you. And We did it. And, when both of them suddenly look at me, it’s She’s pretty.

  I blush.

  “Stop reading minds”—Maart laughs—“and drink.”

  I do. I drink. We all drink. We nibble on the sugared-up dried fruit, and then, suddenly, Cort is feeding me chocolate and I’m sucking on his fingers as I stare into those steel-gray eyes of his. Get lost in them. I know this is the drink catching up with me, but I don’t care.

  Maart is laughing, telling some story about their childhood. Some memory of a long time ago when it was just the two of them against the world and a girl called Anya maybe didn’t even exist yet.

  We lie back on the blanket—me in the middle, them on either side—and look up at the deep dark above our heads and marvel at the vast emptiness dotted with pin-pricks of light.

  Our hands are wandering. Not doing anything sexual, not really. We’re just touching each other the way you are compelled to do when you’re on the Lectra. A fingertip across my upper thigh. A thumb caressing lazy circles on my cheek. My hand on Cort’s scratchy face as he hovers over me. Kisses me.

  Then Maart is there. Kissing Cort.

  I get lost in that. The way their lips press together. The way their eyes close when they open their mouths. The way their tongues twist and then the way they both kiss me. Maart’s mouth on my neck, trailing down to my breast.

  We don’t have clothes on and I don’t even know how that happened. It just did.

  Cort’s mouth on my lips. His tongue twists with mine as Maart takes his kisses down my stomach. His fingertips parting the folds of skin between my legs. Pressing inside me. Making me gasp.

  I see Rainer’s face then. Laughing. Smiling. Joyful. Saying something about starting the party without him. The bottle. He drinks, his eyes lighting up as he watches Maart lick between my legs. And I sigh when Rainer’s tongue passes over his lips, like he wants a taste of me.

  And then he is tasting me. He and Maart are between my legs, holding them open as they kiss each other, then me.

  My back bucks up from the pleasure and Cort’s mouth is there, hard and demanding as he pulls my hair while he kisses my lips, whispering things into my ear as he bites my neck.

  I understand seventeen languages, but I can’t make sense of his words. They cannot make sense because I think he says, I will rescue you, and that’s not right.

  No one ever rescues me.

  “Shhh,” he’s telling me. “Stop thinking so loud. Just enjoy it.”

  So I do.

  Cort pulls me on top of him, positioning me over his hips, my long, wild, blonde hair dragging over his marked-up chest. And I get lost in those skulls—the big one on his right pec, the heart with the keyhole over his left pec, the little skeletons, and skull faces with gray eyes.

  And the stars. I trace the stars as we fuck, his cock buried deep inside me. Maart behind me, pulling my hair as he wraps his palm around my neck. Not pressing hard. Not pressing at all, like he doesn’t want to scare me, just turn me on. And it does turn me on.

  He enters me too, momentarily fighting with Cort for dominance. But Cort’s laugh echoes into the night and gets lost in the blanket of stars.

  I turn my head and find Rainer sitting back on the blanket, jerking off as he watches us. He winks at me, says something in yet another language I don’t understand, then comes in his hand.

  Cort’s thumb is swirling small circles against my clit and he and Maart fuck me and that’s it for me too. I gush all over them. And then they gush inside me.

  We collapse into each other, a heap of bodies drunk on Lectra. And that’s when the buzzing of the tattoo machine starts.

  Rainer is grinning wildly as he marks Cort up with yet another bit of ink. But it’s not a skull this time. He turns the keyhole over Cort’s heart into a lock.

  Then he takes my hand and draws a key. A skeleton key, of course.

  And he makes it fit the lock over Cort’s sick heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - CORT

  The world is mine.

  This is what the Lectra tells me.

  It’s all mine for the taking.

  Finally.

  We are a heap of sweaty fighters under the stars.

  Warriors, all of us.

  Champions in the dark.

  My body is still humming from the sex, my mind is still blown from the ecstasy, and this is when the Lectra takes over. Pulls me into that other place. That other reality where I am small, and screaming, and running through a bathhouse.

  I’ve been here before, I tell the Lectra. You’re gonna have to do better than this.

  And the Lectra says, Challenge accepted.

  Everything in the dream changes and I’m suddenly in a shipyard, one small boy among dozens of small boys running between containers. But we scream. Oh, do we scream.

  And our feet are bare. And they are bloody.

  This is how they find us. We leave a trail of crimson scarlet in our wake. And all they have to do is follow it.

  But I don’t know this yet. How could I know that? I am only four.

  I look up and the girl who is Anya or Ainsey, but is neither Anya nor Ainsey, is shaking me by the shoulders. She is older than me, years older. Maybe seven. She flashes her fingers at me quickly, efficiently, desperately.

  Listen, her fingers say. Hide! Run and hide and don’t ever come out! No matter what happens, do not come out! She shakes me again. Do you hear me?

  No. I don’t. Because she can’t talk. She has no tongue.

  But I do, of course, understand her. And that’s all she really means.

  So I nod. And I run again, weaving my way through the maze of shipping containers, never wanting to be inside one of those things again. Because I still smell like piss, and shit, and death from the trip across the ocean.

  I run, and run, and Maart is there around every corner telling me, “Keep going. I’ve got your back.”

  And I do keep going.

  I go. I climb.

  I’m on the roof of a rusty green container, my w
hole body pressed flat so that the hunter men cannot see me from the ground.

  The men are strong, and fast, and they catch her first. The girl with no tongue. The girl who talks with her hands. The girl who draws stars on the inside of the container in her own blood as we pray, with palms pressed together, thumbs against our eyebrows, that one day the men will open the door so we can run.

  They catch her. And then…

  I wake up screaming.

  But only on the inside.

  Because I know better.

  And I know why I know better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - ANYA

  “Wake up.”

  I turn over, my mouth a dry, sticky, gross mess, and see Maart’s face pressed towards mine. “What?” I croak.

  “Time to get up, princess.”

  I shield my eyes from the sun and look around. “Where’s Cort?”

  “Here.” He hands me a cup of water. “Drink this. Cort’s already downstairs with the kids. We’re just finishing packing up and the boat is already here.”

  I let out a long breath, my head throbbing.

  “Anya.”

  “I hear you.”

  “You’re not moving.”

  “Give me a sec.” I push my hair away from my face and sit up, then feel a little sick.

  “If you’re gonna puke, do it before you get on that boat.”

  “Oh.” I groan. “Why did I get drunk last night?”

  “Because it’s fun.”

  I look down at myself and realize I’m still naked. “Oh.”

  “Here.” Maart laughs and tosses my clothes to me. “You can take a shower. All the kids got a shower this morning.”

  I nod and yawn—“OK”—then look around again, this time actually seeing things. “Where’s Cort?”

  “I just told you. Jesus Christ. Get up.” He doesn’t wait for me to decide that, he just grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet. When I look up at him, he’s smiling.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just… It was fun last night, right?”

  “I barely remember it.”

  “Fuck you. You remember. Just say it was fun, Anya, and I’ll stop bothering you.”