The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6

by Jakubowski Maxim

  Water. The word came to him in a rush as he sucked it from the bag, as it streamed into his mouth. Salvation. Memories began to flood back to him: Planes overhead, dropping bombs; artillery shells and shouts of “Incoming!” Laughter coming from the lead driver. How beautiful his sister looked in her wedding dress, dancing with their father on the balcony of their home overlooking the Tennessee River. The driver standing beside him, trying to grab the bag away. The touch of a woman’s lips in the back seat of a Packard, smelling cigarettes and her perfume as he unbuttoned her blouse. Two veiled women, no, three, opening their robes, placing his hands on their breasts, kissing him, the wives of a man he loved like a brother, and they were as sisters. Kicking the driver in the face. An Arab man in his arms, the Arab’s head a jigsaw puzzle of brain and bone as the German soldier desperately sought to reload and he, the man, raised his revolver, screaming.

  Then the convulsions began, the man’s body jerking so violently he slipped from the harness and fell, one foot still in the stirrup. As he fell, the bag of water came out of his grasp and he reached for it, desperately, unable to hold on; then his eyes went snapping shut as a new round of spasms racked his twisting body in mid-air. He heard himself screaming, felt his stomach contracting, felt the rush of the ground and the pain of impact as water streamed from his lips and he began coughing uncontrollably.

  He vomited all the water until the parched sand had drunk it all. He watched it disappear into air and Earth, his eyes wide in disbelief as the horrible thirst returned to him. He began to cry suddenly, tears flooding from his eyes as his nose began to run and he felt his bladder voiding, causing a stabbing pain in his loins. His ears, too, felt liquid, the world swirling around him as he lost his balance. He found himself on hands and knees, his stomach heaving though there was no more water for it to give up. His tears poured to the ground.

  The driver stood over the man, still cursing. The driver took out his revolver.

  Dr Thornhill was napping upstairs when the merchants brought the American into the lobby, so it was Mrs Thornhill who first recognized the signs of water fever. The man was far too weak to walk; the innkeeper told the merchants to lay him on the wicker couch. He looked like he was at death’s door.

  Elise’s Arabic was weak, but she overheard and understood the symptoms: the American was unable to take water into his body even as he purged it, and he had experienced gradual but total loss of memory as the water left his body. Now he did not even know his own name.

  She felt a stab of panic; while water fever was one of the least contagious of this country’s many maladies, there was still the slim chance of transmission through direct transfer of what little fluid his body retained. She heard the Arabic word for “bath” and felt she had to speak, even though she knew she was unlikely to be taken seriously, especially without her husband there.

  “Do you speak French? Alingli’zia, Hal Tatakalm Alingli’zia?” The men ignored her and continued their discussion of how they would bathe the man. “I’m a nurse, I was trained as a nurse,” she said, “Infirmière, Krankenschwester,” seeking desperately for the Arabic word and not finding it. “Doctor,” she finally said, “I’m a doctor.”

  The innkeeper continued to ignore her, as he’d done since they first stopped in this outpost, but one of the merchants stopped and looked at her. He was an Arab with very dark skin and a thick moustache in that style some colonial Englishmen favored.

  “You say you’re a doctor?” he asked, and she was surprised to hear him speaking in English.

  “A nurse, actually. I was trained as a nurse. I haven’t worked since . . . since the war. But I’ve read about water fever. You must not bathe him.”

  The innkeeper waved his hand dismissively at her and started speaking in a different dialect, one she didn’t understand at all. But the dark-skinned man was listening. “Why not?” he asked her.

  “If you bathe him, his body will absorb the water through his flesh. He’ll die immediately. If you give him any water, you could kill him.”

  “But he hasn’t taken water in four days. He couldn’t drink anything, or even eat any food. Each time he tried he purged it. We’ve been in the desert. He’ll die soon anyway.”

  She nodded. There was a great sadness in the dark man’s eyes.

  “Then how do we save him?” he asked. His voice faltered, cracked. He grabbed her shoulders. “Tell me how to save him!”

  She stood, mute, unable to say it, destroyed by the sadness in the dark man’s eyes. It terrified her to see men cry, and Arab men sometimes scared her even after months in this country.

  It had been many years since she’d seen men die. “It’s almost always fatal.”

  He looked like he was going to hit her. “There must be something we can do!”

  She shook her head. “My husband’s a doctor. He’ll tell you the same.”

  The dark man released her and started speaking very quickly to the innkeeper in what sounded like two or three different dialects. Elise watched as they took away the shroud that covered the man’s face.

  Her hand came to her mouth. She made a strangled noise.

  The three men looked at her.

  “It’s Perry,” she said, her voice cracking.

  The dark man stared blankly. “You know my friend?”

  She stared at him, her eyes following every crevasse that had been etched in Perry’s face since she’d seen him ten years before. Perry’s lips began moving wordlessly, faint gasping sounds coming from them as he tried to speak. “I knew him in the war,” she said. “He was at El Alamein. I was a nurse.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “No,” she lied. “He was just a patient. He had a head wound. Shrapnel from an artillery shell. He had lost his memories for a time. He got them back.”

  The dark man nodded, a dour expression on his face.

  “Well, it appears he has lost them again.”

  The burning had increased; it coursed through his body. He could feel his loins inflamed; he had not urinated successfully since that time he’d tried to drink water. Sometimes the inflammation caused him to become hard; in those moments, all he was aware of was his sexual need, as if that was all that had ever been or ever would be. He welcomed those moments because it took his mind off the pain in the rest of his body. His lips were blistered and cracked; his tongue so filled his mouth that when he saw the woman’s face and tried to speak, all that came out were strained hissing noises.

  He felt sure that he knew her, but he did not know from where. Since he didn’t know anything else about himself, about her, or about the men who carried him down the hall, this did not seem out of the ordinary. He felt them cutting away his robes, which were crusted to his body with filth.

  “No water,” he heard the woman’s voice. “You can wipe, but only with alcohol. No, that alcohol’s not pure enough. My husband has the pure kind in his bag.”

  “Don’t try to speak,” he heard someone say, distantly, a male voice, familiar, with an accent like one mixed from two places he had called home at two very different times. He realized that his lips had been moving, that he had been trying to ask the woman how he knew her.

  “Dying?” he heard himself ask, unaware of what it might mean.

  “You will be fine, my friend. The English woman has gone to fetch her husband. He is a doctor. The English have the best doctors, that’s what everyone says. She’s a friend of yours, eh?”

  Perry heard men arguing in Arabic. There were bootsteps as two of them stormed off. The dark man sat next to him, holding his hand.

  “There is a cure, my friend. We will find you a cure. If the French doctor does not have one for you, we will take you to the baths at Al Adra. There, anything can be cured. And you mustn’t worry about the price.”

  Al Adra. The words had meaning, he was sure, but he could not find it in his mind. He felt the touch of lips, the taste of liquor and kif, the scratch of beard and the moist, slick feel of a tongue against hi
s. His tongue twitched at the intrusion and he remembered that the man’s name was Majid. Then a new wave of convulsions went through his body and he began to black out. He heard himself screaming. Majid held him down to keep him from rolling off of the bed.

  “Even a kiss will kill you, my friend,” he heard a voice dimly, distantly. “My tongue’s a serpent to you, now. Not so different from the usual state of affairs, I suppose. Love has always been poisonous in the desert. Your English girlfriend seems to remember that.”

  “Your wife said it couldn’t be cured.”

  Thornhill paused, his stethoscope pressed against Perry’s bare chest.

  “Water fever is 90 percent fatal, yes.”

  “Then my friend will die.”

  “I’m afraid that’s one possibility.”

  “Spoken like a true Englishman,” said Majid. “We will take him to Al Adra. There he will die, or be cured.” There was a profound sadness in his voice, and when Elise looked at him she felt a catch in her chest, and she heard herself crying, as if it were on a phonograph record. She tried to tell herself she wasn’t crying. “He will bathe in the waters of Al Adra.”

  “I told you, water will kill him. Inside or outside his body.”

  “Al Adra’s waters are different.”

  “You’re not going to tell me some Arab fairy story about a magic oasis filled with naked harem girls, are you? That story was invented for a Tijuana Bible.”

  Majid shrugged and left the room.

  A single tear fell from Elise’s cheek as she leaned over to adjust Perry’s pillow. She watched it splashed across his lips, and his whole body convulsed with agony.

  “Elise,” he said. “Your name’s Elise,” and the rest was lost in a siren song of plaintive wailing as he shook all over, and would have rolled onto the floor if Elise and hadn’t held him down.

  “How the devil did he know your name?”

  She lied in a whisper. “I introduced myself to his friend. He must have overheard.”

  “So now you’re on a first name basis with the Arabs?” said Thornhill.

  Elise turned away.

  He realized that he was naked, that his clothes had been removed somehow. He couldn’t imagine how; perhaps he had always been naked, always. He smelled something and remembered that it was called alcohol. He remembered smelling it long ago while he groped after his memories. That recollection came flooding back to him: His head bandaged, and this same woman’s face looking down at him, telling him it was going to be all right. Only that time, her face had not been streaked with tears.

  He felt the gentle stroke of the compresses all over his body: face, arms, hands, feet, legs, body. He felt cold hands and on his loins, felt the sting in the head of his penis, felt a sudden stabbing pain as he grew.

  Through the pain he felt her touch, and something told him it should be familiar even though it was not. It was a businesslike touch, as if she were doing something disgusting. The pain in his loins grew more intense as she finished wiping him; his sex throbbed in agony that didn’t diminish.

  “Let’s turn him over.”

  He heard himself crying out as his erection pressed against the clean linens. The man ignored it, but the woman reached under and adjusted him, making it slightly less painful. He felt her hands again, softer this time, on his back, his shoulders, his buttocks.

  “It’s true, you know.” It was the woman’s voice.

  “What’s true?”

  “About Al Adra,” she said. “I read a journal article about three cases of paralysis.”

  “So now you’re reading my medical journals? I thought you liked detective novels.”

  “It was just after the war. They couldn’t explain it, but it was well documented. Two Egyptian women who had been injured in accidents. Paraplegic. And one man paralyzed in the war.”

  “What happened?”

  “They bathed in Al Adra. The two women regained use of their legs.”

  “And the man?”

  “He died.”

  “Well there you have it. Pure coincidence, I’m sure. I’d like to see a more thorough study, but this is hardly the time for it.”

  “Roger, the American’s going to die,” said the woman. “You lied to his friend.”

  “It’s not always fatal.”

  “Much more than 90 percent, though.”

  “You think we should take this American to some legendary Shangri-La off in the desert that probably doesn’t even exist?”

  “I talked to the innkeeper. He’s been there.”

  “Oh, was he paraplegic once, too?”

  “No, he didn’t go into the baths, just saw what’s left of the town. He says it’s only a few hours by car.”

  “Elise, be serious! We are not letting them take our car!”

  “We’ll go with them. There’s room. We can lay him out on the back seat.”

  “It’s a fairy story, Elise. Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t let your Irish heritage get the best of you.”

  He heard heavy footsteps stomping away. The door of the hotel room slammed shut. With some difficulty, the woman turned him over again.

  He felt her face against his, heard her soft sobbing. She placed her head on his chest, cheek to flesh, and cried for a long while.

  “I don’t love him like I loved you, Alec,” she said softly, and it seemed like the first time he had ever heard that word. Did it mean something? He felt sure that it did, but he couldn’t imagine what. “He’s an arrogant prig. I hate the English. He makes love to me like it’s a distasteful act, when he bothers to do it at all. He touches as little of me as possible.” She cried for a long while, her face still on his chest. “I thought I loved him for a while after you left me. I would have loved any man who was there to help me forget you. How I envy you, Alec. You’ve really lost everything, haven’t you?”

  He became aware that he was still naked. The dry air felt good on his flesh. He was no longer in pain; in fact, he felt nothing but the warmth of her face on his chest.

  “Have you had many women since me? Pretty harem girls, dressed up in veils and finger cymbals for you?” She sobbed softly for a time. “I guess you don’t even know, do you. Probably best that way. Don’t think I hate you, Alec. I know why you left. I knew many soldiers. I heard about the things you saw. I would have left, too. It would take an incredible man to be able to love after seeing those things. And you’re incredible, but maybe you’re not that incredible.”

  He felt her hand on his cock; he felt a sudden surge of feeling, a brief flash of pain, the warmth of her breath brushing his lips as her hand moved up and down, stroking him. He heard her breathing quicken, felt her grip tighten on his cock.

  “You were my first,” she whispered. “I never told you that.”

  He arched his back, cried out softly. Her lips touched his, her tongue grazing his own, and everything flooded back to him in a wave of pleasure. Memories of her lips, that hand, her body against his. His name was Perry. His name was Alec Perry and he was from Knoxville, Tennessee. Her name was Elise and she was twenty-three when they’d known each other, and he had remembered nothing. The doctors told him he had a wife in Tennessee, but he couldn’t even recall the woman’s name until after the news had come from home that she had died having a son. Her name was Emily. The child died as well.

  Elise kissed him harder, her spit dampening his thirsty tongue, and a pain began to course through him as his memories of Emily mingled with those of Elise. The curve of Emily’s body where Elise’s was flat. The weight of Emily’s hip where Elise’s was spare. Elise’s kiss left his lips, descended his body like a spiral staircase, the trail of a tongue moistening his flesh.

  Then her warm mouth was on his cock, her tongue swirling still, around the head, her lips around his base, again, again while her hand rested lower, stroking between his legs, a brief respite and the words from her lips: “Make me forget, Alec, make me forget you,” her breath desert-hot on his sex as she hovered for an instant, bef
ore he felt her mouth on him again, her fingers curving around his shaft.

  He remembered her doing this to him on a barren clifftop overlooking a rocky plain beneath an endless, endless sky. And, stranger still, he remembered saying those same words to her: “Make me forget, Elise, make me forget you,” knowing his flight left the next day. He could feel his flesh leaching the spit from her mouth as his back arched, as he reached his climax with her mouth locked around his cock and felt a moment of ecstatic release as the vision came upon him: Elise illuminated in the slanted African light of an Algiers hotel room, a breathtaking moment becoming a Kandinsky as it came apart violently in his mind, the flesh of his cock beginning to sizzle as he purged explosively into her mouth, his own mouth popping wide open and his eyes suddenly spurting tears in the very instant he heard her say, ten years before and yesterday in the echoes of El Alamein: “You’ve already forgotten me, Alec.”

  He began to scream. She sat bolt upright, her mouth dripping, and clamped her hand over his mouth. Her hands shook as she drew cool starched linens over his body. His eyes poured water like faucets and his cock still spouted semen, soaking the sheets. He felt more sheets as his eyes came open, blurry with the tears, and he wondered what he was doing here, who this woman was and why she looked so familiar. He heard the heavy footsteps, heard a cry of alarm.

  “He wet himself,” he heard the woman saying hoarsely, sounding as if her mouth had been burned.

  “You’ve been crying,” he heard the Englishman’s voice.

  “Crying? Don’t be ridiculous. The alcohol stung my eyes. He’s having an attack. He wet himself.”

  Perry felt the Englishman’s hands on his wrists, pressing hard. He saw the Englishman’s face through a sea of tears. Elise bent over him and dabbed the tears from his cheeks.