by O. L. Casper
The experience of Hindu Kush is strangely similar to that of opium and takes me back to that time. I realize Anna and I have been introspective for some time now and I try to start a conversation with whatever absent-minded thought pops into my head as my tongue begins to roll, somehow distant and separate from my perceiving soul.
“I remember the first time I did it.”
It comes out in the same pitch as my normal voice, but somehow very slow. And the words have the synesthetic effect of producing colors in the air in front of my face.
Anna turns on a stereo system by remote control.
“Did what?”
A smooth jazz tune comes over the Cambridge Soundworks speakers.
“Smoked grass—”
The string of the conversation is lost in the music, instantly one of the best jazz tracks I’ve heard. Then I feel the urge to talk again.
“This feels good,” is all I can think of.
“It’s very nice. It doesn’t make you want to talk, but you want to listen instead, you want to experience and feel.”
“The first time I smoked I was visiting a friend on one of the islands off Georgia. She had another friend and the three of us wandered off into the forest, stopping when we reached the ocean. I was sixteen at the time. My two other friends had been smoking for some years. At first they resisted the idea of me smoking with them. They thought I was an intellectual type, that I wasn’t suited to try it. They were being protective. I began talking about Bob Marley songs and the philosophy of using ganja to enhance spirituality and perception. I think I bored them enough because they finally gave in. That first time I tried it I felt nothing. Maybe a little more prone to laughter but that was it. When I saw my parents the next day and couldn’t tell them what I’d done, I had my first experience of feeling a deep sense of separation from the world. I’d believed I would find a deeper connection and it brought just the opposite sense.”
“That’s a sad story.”
“I think it was my first step toward a kind of social enlightenment.”
“—now it’s getting better.”
“I realized no one can ever truly know anyone else; therefore, no one can really understand another person.”
“That’s sad.”
“It depends on your point of view. For me, it’s liberating. And if you can fully understand that and feel joy about it, it’s indeed transcendent.”
“You’re always looking to transcend, Sophia. What about the here and now? What about living day to day? The dull routine of existence…how deal with that?”
I can see from her remarks she is somewhat depressed and lonely, and, for the sake of peace and a happy time together, I change tack. I scoot closer to her on the bed. “Every moment can be transcendent. It’s all in the mind. A matter of how you choose to look at things.”
I move in for the kiss. Her lips are soft and warm. I touch my tongue lightly on the outer edge in a small rapid motion. Then our tongues embrace. She is one of the best kissers I know. Anna unbuttons the top buttons on her silk nighty. I help her unbutton, looking down, and open the top of her pajamas, exposing everything down to her belly button. She is not wearing anything underneath the pajamas. Her large supple breasts seem to float before me, pert and perfectly round, like two tawny globes attached to a perfect body. The nipples are dark and I can see goosebumps forming on them.
“Are you cold?”
“No,” she says, “just stimulated.”
I lick the tips of her nipples, one after the other, till each is erect.
“Do you want to go under the covers?” she asks with a shyness I haven’t seen in her before.
“Yes.”
As I say this, the HTC vibrates in my pocket.
“Let me turn my phone off.”
“It doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s for work. You should answer it.”
“It’s just a text.”
“Answer it. Maybe they are calling you in for the baby.”
I think of Savannah and take the phone out of my pocket. She leans back on the bed, pulling her pajama top together, covering her breasts.
MARK: I’m free now.
I try to think of what to say without being rude.
SOPHIA: I’m sort of in the middle of something. Can it wait a bit?
MARK: If you don’t come soon I’ll probably fall asleep. It’s up to you.
SOPHIA: I’ll come now.
I wrote this last without even thinking about it. I felt immediately sorry I did so, looking at Anna slunk back, looking at me.
“It’s okay if you have to go.”
I didn’t speak at first, trying to find the words in the haze and clouds that filled my mind.
“It’s okay,” she repeated.
“It’s about work—I think.”
“Some kind of work,” she said smiling. “I saw the expression on your face change when you saw who it was from. I won’t say anything.”
“Thank you.”
This response came automatically. I didn’t even process what she said any more than to know it was a declaration of protection. Did I trust Anna? I wanted to, but really I didn’t. I didn’t trust anyone. But I hadn’t revealed anything that made me terribly vulnerable. Moreover, I didn’t care. I was going for broke. If I got fired I wouldn’t care. I was living life all the way up and that’s all that mattered. Or at least I thought so, in that foggy brain of mine.
“We can pick up another time. Or not. As you like it.”
“Definitely.”
“Don’t get carried away in the whirlwind. He doesn’t love anyone. Not even himself. Not all the way. Only a little and only sometimes.”
I leaned in for a goodbye kiss and buried my tongue in her mouth. She pulled my head in toward her with both arms. It was hard to pull myself away.
Closing the door, I looked back to see Anna in her bed, smiling at me seductively. She was my lover on the side, and I was his lover on the side—the man with whom, increasingly, the sun rose and set. I began to muse on what sort of a man I was actually dealing with. First off, he was beguilingly charming. Initially I thought he was this and nothing else. But I eventually began to realize his shallowness was merely a pretense.
I crept down a vast corridor. Thunder rumbled and I saw a white flash out of a window at the end of the hall. I reached the last door on the right, on the seventh floor, and knocked softly as he had instructed. There was no response. I decided to see if it was open.
It was unlocked. I peeked in. My gaze fell on a large, loft-like room. All the lights were out and the room was lit by skylights and bay windows. The rain collided with the windows, completely obscuring the view.
“Mark,” I called out, my voice echoing in the distance. There were large boxes of flora and fauna extending across the room, marble pillars, and various fountains and waterfalls. Still, the room had an unkempt feel to it. It was obviously not lived in, seldom used, and not very well taken care of. I called out to Stafford again, to no avail.
The room extended off to the right, away from the sea, around a corner I couldn’t see past. I walked toward the corner. Scenery aglow in silver light, I felt my heart pounding. Around the corner I saw the end of the room in that direction. This was the biggest room in the house I had been in. In the middle of the far wall was a corridor with light coming from the other end. I walked to the point where I could see the end of the corridor and stopped. There was what appeared to be a hooded black cloak standing facing me. I could see no face inside the hood and the cloak extended down to the floor. I was horror-struck. Normally I am not afraid of anything, but in my intoxicated state I had become very impressionable and easily scared. I stared at the faceless black inside the hood.
Laughter creeps in behind me. I turn. Stafford is standing out on the veranda watching me. He holds a small glass.
I smirk, unamused.
Stafford sets his glass down on the edge of a the veranda and enters the room. In the distance small fingers of lightning exte
nd silently down over the sea, like a scene from a horror film. The grinning Dr. Jekyll returns to his wife one last time before his ghastly transformation.
“What did you think of the cloak?” he asks with the smile of Hyde.
“Hideous. Reminds me of the film Eyes Wide Shut—seen it?”
“Naturally. Where’s the cult?” he shrugs confidently. He begins to walk around me, like a shark encircling its prey. His polo blends with the shadows while his slacks are a blur in the darkness.
“Probably waiting in the next room…waiting for you to present your newest sacrifice on the Altar of the Illuminati.”
“You’ve got a vivid imagination, Sophia.”
“You’re not part of a cult?”
“Not in the least. What cult would take me?”
“Any of them. They thrive on rich members.”
“Rich members…rich members,” he rolls it around on his tongue, as though he’s giving it serious thought.
“No, they wouldn’t have me. Or I wouldn’t have them.”
“—That’s more likely.”
“They’re bloodsuckers. All of them. That’s the only reason they have any kind of members at all, rich or poor. You can get rich sucking the blood of a few wealthy individuals, but you can get far richer sucking the blood of the poor masses.”
“I think you’ve hit on something.” I raise my eyebrows in sarcasm.
“What exactly?”
He says this as he passes in front of the cloak and stops.
“Cults are after control.”
“And money is a means to that control.”
“Is it a means to yours?”
“Of course. A silly question. Or are you implying something more?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“I am interested in control. Obviously. But only as much as it can bring me a measure of independence. That’s what wealth does. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“But then it becomes sort of an addiction. Once one already has far more than one could ever need but goes on collecting—amassing.”
“You don’t hold back, Sophia.”
I’m getting annoyed by the frequent mentioning of my name. It annoys me in general if people say my name in a conversation when we’re the only two people in the room.
“Perhaps that’s part of what I find so appealing. You say exactly what’s on your mind.”
“I hold back.”
“Yeah?”
“Tremendously. Nine tenths of what I think, at least.”
“To have the key to that mind…” he grumbles aloud, in a way I imagine a much older man would.
“You wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
I wink and smile. I think of how absurd my reactions are—our whole conversation’s stupid at this point, I suppose we’re both tired—but I’m playing a part. The part of Hyde’s lover.
“You know what the most attractive thing about a woman is, Sophia?”
“I know who you’re talking to, you don’t have to say my name.”
“I’m reminding you who you are.”
“I know who I am.”
“Perhaps then, I’m reminding me of who you are.”
“Do you forget?”
“How could I? Regarding what I know of you, that is. I know the way this body looks. Though sometimes, when I picture it when you’re not here, I can’t quite remember all the details. Specific contours, certain lines. It blurs. And then I want to see you.”
“Am I only a body…in your eyes?”
“As I was about to say before you interrupted me: the most attractive thing about a woman is her mind. It’s the brain that’s beautiful. It’s what makes a woman a woman and nothing else. It’s the level we all connect on, though so many seem to forget…” He trails off.
To say I feel building tension in the course of our conversation would be gross understatement. But I don’t show it. I’m as cool as an Eskimo.
He continues, “That’s why I enjoy these conversations more than anything—well almost anything. Sex is in the mind mostly.”
“You’re more outspoken about the way you think of sex than any man I’ve ever met.”
“I’m open about most things.”
“Are you?”
He tilts his head.
“Who did you have a meeting with before I came up here?”
I lift my chin ever so slightly.
Hyde goes white. He quickly masks his anger with a smile. I have visions of being found dead on the anse. The dried blood mingles with the sand. Rigor mortis has settled into my gaunt corpse. Anna has seen it all and Stafford has been arrested and is imprisoned on Nassau. I spiral deeper into an abyss of senseless fear.
“A business associate.”
“And…”
“Why do you want more information? It would turn an interesting conversation into a dull one fast.”
I don’t say anything. Just look at him penetratingly.
“Is it because you’re interested in business? How silly of me; of course it is.”
Of course it isn’t.
“I’ll advise you on some stocks. Maybe even do you a favor in business. Front you something to get started. Is that what you want?”
“I wouldn’t turn it down. But it’s not exactly what we’re talking about here, is it?”
I can see the wheels turning. He’s going to kill me. He suspects me of something already. Maybe he thinks I’m a secret agent from the IRS, or a special agent of the FBI. He’s got a maddening look in his eyes. A look that makes the eyes of the ancestors in the House of Usher look like those of the seven dwarves.
Stafford smiles again and steps back, looking to the floor. He’s trying to play humble, disarming, shy even. Why the act? He’s a wolf playing a sheep. I don’t buy it. Not for a second. This pimp of stolen goods. Drug trafficker. Whatever sort of criminal he is—I detest him for it with every fiber of my being. And yet at the same time, for all this mépris, I feel an incredible animal attraction. Why am I drawn with more intensity than I have ever known to someone I find almost unbearable at the same time? Why do two people fall in love who, at the same time, can’t live with each other? This defines exactly how I feel about him. He is a contemptible monster, a beast. But I find with him, an incomparable lightness of being.
“With time, you will come to know more about my affairs. Perhaps all about them. But for now you’ll have to be content with seeing bits and pieces, wondering and fitting them together. That’s all I can offer you in that arena right now. Accept?”
“Accepted.”
“Glad that’s sorted.”
At this he starts to circle again. I feel an almost irrepressible urge to rip his clothes off, to tear them asunder, and push him to the floor. Once more, I marvel at the violent, sexual feelings I’m having. This isn’t me. I’m becoming someone else, I tell myself. And it’s partly true. The only part that’s not true is the part that allows me to be aware of the two selves, one emerging from the other like a cicada shedding her exoskeleton and leaving it on a tree branch. Something for the other animals to wonder at.
“Would you like a drink?” he asks as he wanders off to a bar near a waterfall and pool.
“What do you have?”
“Scotch, brandy, wine…you name it, I’ve probably got it.”
“I’ll take some red wine. Whatever you’ve got.”
“I don’t have any wine glasses up here. Do you care?”
“Never use ’em.”
“Good, me neither.”
I take a seat on a ledge along one of the pools.
He walks over with the drinks, sits next to me and sets mine down between us. I look at him, picking mine up.
“Beaujolais nouveau. Imported from Toulouse.” His French accent is quite good.
“I love this wine. One of my favorites.”
“I love it too. One of the few wines I really like. The only one that actually tastes like strawberries and doesn’t just say it on the b
ottle.”
“I once drank one that said on the bottle it tasted like bacon with a hint of burnt tire.”
Stafford lets out a deep, bellowing laughter.
“Who writes that shit?” he asked, curling forward with laughter.
“What are you having?”
“Brandy to follow up the vodka I had before.”
“You need to get proper smashed before hooking up with me, huh?”
“Naturally—” then, “Of course not.”
He displays that false modesty, the almost childlike humility that I find so disarming in him.
I lean in for the kiss. Fireworks explode across our lips, lightning passes in our heads. I’m so high now, I feel dizzyingly sick. An overload of feelings. I take off his polo. Then I help him take off my shirt. I run my hands up his torso, feeling his muscles that glisten even in the near dark of the room. He lifts my long skirt, rolling it up. I pour the last of the wine down the hatch before I help him get the skirt up. He reaches up my inner thighs, sending pleasure rippling up through the core of my being. I’m not wearing underwear. He fingers my front-bottom, tickling the five o’clock shadow I did not find time to trim earlier. My bottom grass. With two fingers he spreads the lips, all the while looking on me with a holy reverence.