Crook & Flail

by Maira Isabel Pita

  She is barely halfway across the lobby before Mark catches her. “Hey, I don’t mind you being jealous, Lucia, but that wasn’t what it looked like, so relax. I guess you haven’t noticed.”

  Inside the lift, she stares miserably at the panel of numbers, wishing she could sweep them all up into her hands like glowing dice and roll them to win what she desires more than anything—Richard alive again. “Noticed what?” she asks listlessly.

  “That this gorgeous blonde you think I was hitting on is really a man.”

  She glances at him, wide-eyed

  “A man in drag,” he clarifies.

  “Are you serious?”

  “When you get close it’s obvious.”

  “And you got close enough to caress her hair!”

  “Only to make sure it was a wig. Doesn’t she look a little familiar to you, Lucia?”

  “I saw her in the Luxor Museum and yesterday in the Valley. You were looking at her there too,” she accuses.

  He asks sharply, “She was in the museum the morning you saw Richard?”

  “Yes.”

  Mark doesn’t drop the bomb until they are in their room.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s your brother-in-law.”

  She deflects her shock with anger. “Then shouldn’t I go down and confront him? If that is Julian then I can end this horrible game!” Yet the concept frightens her. It offers her control but in a much less exciting universe, one in which Richard remains dead and buried forever.

  Mark surprises her by saying, “He knows we’re on to him and that’s enough for now.”

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  His expression silences her.

  “If he keeps trying to haunt you, Lucia, he’s either stupid or he’s dangerous. I need to find out just how determined he is.”

  * * * * *

  The next morning Mark gets up early and Lucia watches him dress, struggling with her emotions, which are as slippery as fish still half caught in a tangling net of dreams. She can’t remember them, which is just as well because it enables her to avoid the issues they forced up out of her subconscious. She concentrates instead on a more tangible concern. “Where are you going, Mark?”

  “Don’t worry about that, just go back to sleep.”

  She rephrases the question. “Will you be gone long?”

  “No,” he bends over her and kisses her cheek, “just long enough to find out what was in that water. Will you stay in bed like a good girl or do I have to tie you to the bedposts?”

  She smiles but then turns away on her side to hide her disappointment that he is only teasing. Like a doctor’s probing fingers, his attitude makes her sexual submissiveness feel like a sickness, like a psychological tumor rather than a dark gem shaped by metaphysical laws, which is what it had felt like with Richard.

  He closes the door so quietly behind him she suffers the unpleasant impression that she is in a hospital and her perverse desires are a dangerous fever he is trying to cure her of.

  An emotionally healthy woman wouldn’t have loved a man like Richard.

  A completely sane woman wouldn’t believe in ghosts more easily than in greedy brother-in-laws.

  With the thick curtains drawn over the glass doors the room is depressingly dark.

  When the phone rings suddenly her heart rate doubles in the mere seconds it takes her to snatch up the receiver. “Hello?!”

  “Did I wake you?” Lori inquires with her usual polite indifference.

  “No,” she replies numbly.

  “Look, Lucia, I’ll get right to the point. Okay? I’ve known Mark for over two years now, he’s like a brother to me and frankly I’m worried that he’s getting in the way of whatever the hell is going on with you.”

  She sighs. “What has he told you, Lori?”

  “Pretty much everything but don’t be mad at him for it. He’s like a brother to me.”

  “I’m not mad at him, Lori.”

  “Good, because he really cares about you. How long has your husband been dead, Lucia?”

  “Seventeen months.”

  “Mark has described your visions to me but maybe you should tell me about them yourself. Mark doesn’t believe in life after death but, personally, I feel it would be wrong to disregard the supernatural angle completely. If Richard needs you, you have to help him, Lucia.”

  “Yes!” she whispers, scarcely able to believe that someone is finally seeing things her way.

  “If he is appearing to you it means he’s trapped between worlds and he either wants you to help him move on or he’s trying to take you with him.”

  “Oh God, Lori, do you really think…?” She can’t pursue the thought. Like a rough massage, the other woman’s confident grasp of the supernatural makes her feel uncomfortable even as it relieves some of her profound tension. “What can I do?”

  “Talk to me,” Lori urges, “I’m listening.”

  * * * * *

  By the time Mark returns Lucia has put on black jeans beneath a form-fitting black shirt and applied her expensive makeup in a way that looks perfectly natural.

  He sets a large brown paper bag down on the dresser. “Bagels and coffee and don’t worry, I remembered you take cream and sugar. But first let’s pack.” He walks over to the corner where his small suitcase, laptop and camera bag are lying, the former spilling the light and dark guts of socks and underwear across the carpet. He shoves everything back into it and zips the pliant black leather closed as he glances up at her. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Didn’t you want to spend a night on the West Bank?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then pack.”

  She turns her back on him and opens the closet to hide her relief. She had thought they were leaving for Cairo.

  “Don’t kill yourself deciding what to bring. We’ll only be gone a night or two.”

  “What was in the water, Mark?”

  “A kickass combination of downers, so you couldn’t run when you saw a ghost. I’ll bet you felt pretty damn good, relaxed and open to just about anything or anyone.”

  She tosses a dark gray shirt onto the bed, not trusting herself to speak.

  “Add alcohol to the brew and it’s no fucking wonder you kept passing out.” He returns to the dresser and begins conjuring plastic cups, bagels, small round containers of cream cheese, plastic knives and napkins from the bag.

  “Mark?”

  He doesn’t look at her. “Yes?”

  She goes and stands beside him. “I don’t want anything to happen to you because you’re trying to help me.”

  “Don’t worry about me.” He tries to hide it but she discerns from his tone that he hadn’t expected her concern and that it pleases him.

  “Julian sees you as being in his way now, Mark,” she snaps the lids off the coffees while he spreads a lavish amount of cream cheese onto one of the bagels, “and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Nothing is going to happen to me.” He impatiently smears a modest amount of cheese onto the second bagel. He tosses the plastic knife away. “Listen to me, Lucia. You were unconscious when I found you last night. What did he do to you?”

  “I don’t remember, Mark, honestly. All I remember is him holding me.”

  He picks up his cup and waits, staring into her eyes.

  She looks down into his coffee’s steaming black space. “One second I was in the arms of a man pretending to be Richard,” she says carefully. “Then this strange warmth flowed through my whole body and the next thing I knew you were bending over me.”

  “Well, you weren’t drugged at the time,” he hands her the other cup, “so I don’t think you fainted. Do you know if Julian ever studied martial arts?”

  “He’s a black belt,” she says, surprised, and then hesitates before adding casually, “so was Richard. But how did you know?”

  “How did I know? Because he knocked you out cold without leaving a mark o
n you, which means he’s acquainted with the body’s pressure points. All it takes is a thumb in just the right place,” he illustrates by placing the ball of his left thumb in the tender hollow where her throat merges with her chest, “to make you see stars.”

  She jerks away from him and a stream of coffee arcs out of the plastic cup like a muddy rainbow.

  “What’s the matter, baby, didn’t you like that?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Well, don’t worry, our black belt blonde checked out this morning.” He bites into the bagel but the look in his eyes evokes a predator devouring its bloody kill.

  “She did? I mean, he did? How do you know?”

  “I told you, with enough baksheesh you can obtain the secrets of the universe. A carriage driver remembers taking a woman fitting her description to the airport this morning and a friendly bellhop informed me that she was staying in room 1016.”

  “That would be the one almost right above mine.”

  “A perfect vantage point from which to project a ghost onto your balcony.”

  She experiences an echo of the numbness that cushioned her emotions after she received the news of Richard’s death. She hadn’t really believed he was gone, not forever, and she still can’t. “Then it’s over.” Her voice is hollow with disappointment.

  “Or that’s what he wants us to think. But whether or not it’s true, he’ll still have to find out where we’ve gone, figure out where we’re staying, then get a room, and it won’t be as easy for him to hide on the West Bank. He also knows I’ll kick his skinny ass if he comes near you again.” He eyes her bagel. “Don’t you want that?”

  “No, you have it, please.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, where will we be staying on the West Bank?” She tries to sound interested.

  “We’re camping out beneath the stars tonight, princess.”

  “Oh!” A spark of excitement kindles again at the core of her being.

  “It was Doug’s idea. He and Lori have all the gear so they’ll be coming with us. Doug wants to get you into more tombs and I want to get you away from greedy brother-in-laws.”

  Chapter Twelve

  They are the first off the tourist barge, on which there is no sign of anyone resembling Julian, male or female, when it docks on the West Bank. Mark directs their cab to the Temple of Hatshepsut, the queen who crowned herself pharaoh and is therefore considered the world’s first feminist, and they leave their bags with the driver.

  A long central causeway leads to the temple’s upper court, where three levels of narrow rectangular columns, strikingly modern in appearance, are set into the face of a cliff. Inside the temple’s second level there is another row of inner columns and beyond them a shadowy open space leads to yet two more rows of double columns, one to the left and one to the right of a ramp ascending to a third level.

  Lucia has to peer over tourists’ shoulders at the delicately etched reliefs on the western wall. Most of the paint has worn off and they are barely visible. Nevertheless, she is still able to make out the theme, which is Hatshepsut’s expedition to the land of Punt, a kingdom rich in spices and other desirable luxuries imported by the Egyptians.

  She tugs on Mark’s sleeve and he follows her to the eastern chapel, where there are not quite as many bodies in their way.

  “The divine birth,” she informs him quietly. “The ram-headed god over there is Khnum shaping the queen’s Ka on his wheel.”

  “The queen’s what?”

  “Her Ka. Everyone has a higher and a lower Ka known as the Ba. The Ba is your physical body, your Ka is the energy animating it, or manifesting within it. The Ba was usually represented by a bird with a human head. Your Akh is your spirit, independent of all form and personality.”

  “And who’s the midget under the queen’s bed?”

  She smiles. “The dwarf-god Bes. For some reason he was associated with childbirth. He was supposed to be able to chase away infection, which might be related to his aspect as a god of music and dance.”

  “Just another way of saying exercise is good for you?”

  She laughs.

  “Come on, princess, I’ll show you something more interesting than the divine birth.”

  Intrigued, Lucia follows him out of the temple’s cool shadows into penetrating sunlight where the temperature nevertheless remains ideal.

  “Feel like a jog?” Mark asks when they reach the bottom of the causeway.

  “A jog? Where?”

  “We don’t have much time. Doug and Lori are meeting us at the rest stop at one o’clock. They’re bringing us an empty backpack. We’ll have lunch with them then drop our stuff off at the hotel and meet them back in the Valley before dark. What I’d like to show you is over there in that cliff. If we run we’ll have time to see it. Can you keep up?”

  “No problem.”

  They pick up a tail of laughing Egyptian boys as they run toward the cliff face but their curiosity doesn’t last the distance. By the time they reach the rocky slope they are completely alone.

  Mark barely pauses to let her catch her breath before he starts up a steep trail ahead of her.

  The sandy path ends abruptly at the mouth of a cave.

  “This is where the queen’s construction crew had lunch,” he tells her. “Come on.”

  The small cave is dark and surprisingly chilly but enough sunlight filters in through the opening to reveal smooth walls covered with ancient graffiti.

  Mark homes in on a particular spot near the back. “Here it is. The not-so-divine conception.”

  He is referring to two figures briefly sketched in black. One is a woman bent at the waist, who braces herself on something as the man behind her grips her hips and prepares to enter her.

  “Doggie style, princess, or should I say jackal style.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she replies soberly.

  “I knew you’d like it. Hatshepsut’s lover Senenmut was the architect who designed her temple and Doug says that’s supposed to be them, but I think it’s just two average Egyptians having fun.”

  “They’re only stick figures yet they have such presence. It’s been thousands of years but you can still feel that moment, can’t you?”

  “The moment right after would have felt even better, yet instead the artist chose to sketch desire just before its fulfillment.”

  She glances up at his profile. “You still haven’t shown me any of your work, Mark.”

  “I will, don’t worry.”

  She glances behind them. Only a rough circle of sky is visible from within this little womb in the earth. “Not many people seem to know about this place,” she observes.

  “No, most of the guides don’t even know about it.” Abruptly, he grabs the waistband of her jeans and unzips them. “Turn around,” he commands and even as she obeys he yanks them all the way down to her ankles, along with her panties. “Now bend over.”

  His undertone affects her circulation like a low-grade frequency and centuries fall away as she resurrects the woman on the wall. Surrounded by sand and rock, she feels even more exposed and vulnerable. She braces herself on the rough wall and glances up at the ancient couple. She knows exactly what the woman was feeling—a delicious anticipation and relief that for a while she will feel like a goddess, totally desirable and fulfilled and free from worries. With a rigid penis inside her, past, present and future all come together in its fleshly timeline and in her wet pussy, responding to its divine energy with civilizations of sensations… Mark grips her hips and his first thrust seems to find her body’s magical core it feels so good.

  “Oh God!” she cries.

  “You mean gods!” He spanks her as if to punish her for this sacrilege.

  His cock is so incredibly hard it seems imbued with the spirit of the stone surrounding them.

  “Mm, you’re so tight, princess… You have such an unbelievable,” he rams the compliment into her, “little pussy!”

  She suffers the excruciati
ng impression that he is impatiently shoving her vital organs aside to make room for his much more important erection. It stuns her how hard and fast he drives into her, so that she can hardly catch her breath.

  “Mark, you’re hurting me!”

  “Am I? Would you like me to stop?”

  “No!” she sobs.

  “Maybe what you want is for me to fuck your ass instead—is that it? Do you want me to fuck your ass, princess?”

  “Oh yes! Please!”

  “Not until you tell me how much you want it. Come on, tell me how much you want me to fuck your ass.”

  She gasps the words, “I want you…I’m dying for you…to fuck my ass!” as he beats the totally humiliating confession out of her.

  He removes his cock from her body with the cold suddenness of pulling out a knife and all he has to do is give her a gentle push for her to fall onto her hands and knees. Her jeans and panties, bunched up around her ankles, make it impossible for her to keep her balance after his violent strokes, which have left her feeling deliciously weak.

  The sand is soft and cool, a refreshing change for her palms and a more than adequate cushion as she senses him fall to his knees behind her. She keeps her eyes on the entrance, even though if anyone were approaching she would hear them coming up the rocky path…and once he flicks his head between her pussy’s wet lips to transfer some of its juices to her dry asshole she forgets everything else. They could have an audience of native guides and tourists and she would scarcely notice because the experience of a big hard cock forcing itself into her from behind completely fills both her mind and her body.

  Her hair falls forward, hiding her face as she makes soft, helpless sounds of resistance mingled with acceptance. He penetrates her slowly but relentlessly, pushing the envelope of her flesh until she is sure she can’t stand to take any more of him. Yet she does and this time her dirty little hole responds by clinging to his erection with a mysterious feeling of triumph and inviting it in even deeper.

  “Oh yes,” he whispers, “give it to me, baby, let me fuck your ass like I really want to!” And he does. He bangs her from behind like a condemned man having his final fuck who has nothing to lose if he kills her with the intensity of his pleasure. Or like the ancient construction worker on the wall come to life with a hard-on he’s waited two thousand years to get off.