‘What is it?’ I ask him.
‘I was remembering that first night I found you in my bedroom.’
I grin. ‘When you spanked me?’
‘When you became wet?’
‘You never told me. Were you hard?’
‘Like a fucking rock.’
I laugh. ‘Why did you come up to your room?’
‘I followed you. I saw you go up with Ria. When you didn’t come down, I knew that you must have found my bedroom.’
‘What did you think when you saw me?’
‘When I saw you stealing my tiepin?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘I could not believe my eyes. Layla Eden in my bedroom. And taking what didn’t belong to her. All my Christmases rolled up into one.’
I shrug nonchalantly. ‘I wasn’t really stealing. It was mine. It had my name on it. Just like you have it across your dick.’
He laughs. ‘It’s fucking branded on.’
I pick up a handful of sand and let it flow through my fingers.
‘Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Ria had not asked me to use the upstairs bathroom. Would we never have got together?’
He takes my hand in his. His touch is soothing. ‘I always dreamed of what it would be like to be with you. We didn’t hook up by accident. I was always looking for a way to make you notice me. You had me from the day you lifted your skirt and showed me your polka dot panties.’
‘I didn’t lift it and show it to you,’ I protest indignantly. ‘I fell down.’
‘That’s what they all say.’
‘Oh you are big-headed.’
‘That’s what they all say.’
‘Oh!’ I slap him around the head and he pushes me on the sand. The sex is gentle. The sea. The sand. The orange sky. They were all witnesses. They would keep the memory of my love for this man if by chance I am not able. Inside my belly, Tommy kicks lustily.
Take care of Daddy, if I am not around.
FORTY-ONE
BJ
I buy her flowers and watch her stroke them as if they are hurt children she is soothing. Since that night in the caves with Jake, I don’t tell her anymore how much everyday hurts. She is dying right before my eyes and there is not one damn thing I can do about it. I want to bellow. I want to howl. But it would frighten her. She looks at the calendar with joy. She is another day closer to her goal. I look at it with terror. I am another day to closer to finding out how much of her the cancer has eaten.
How much is left.
She hides things from me. I know she has written letters for Tommy. Eighteen. To be given to him on his birthdays. She gave them to her mother. I accidentally overheard her conversation. The intolerable pain of that discovery is impossible to describe. I wanted to go and fight ten men. I wanted to hurt someone the way I was hurting. I went into the bathroom and made a hole in the wall. It hurt like a mother. But it dulled the other pain.
Sometimes, when I have to share her with her family, I feel resentful. I feel as if they are stealing my time. What little is left.
I don’t know how much more I can take of any of these feelings.
Everyday she makes me touch her belly. But I don’t know how I feel about Tommy. He’s my flesh and blood. He’s mine and there is a connection, but there is no love in my heart. There is no place for him. For me there is only Layla.
I cannot love anyone else.
Not now.
Not yet.
Maybe because my heart has been ripped open and I’m bleeding. Maybe that’s it.
After that night at Heat Exchange, I’ve never gone to a club or a strip joint. We entered the VIP room. She got out of her little dress, opened her legs wide, showed me her pussy, and asked if I wanted to touch it outside of work, and I felt nothing. Just disgust at myself. My dick was limp. I paid her and left. I knew when I walked out of that door that I had gone to the wrong place. What I was looking for could not be found in a bar or a strip club. Instead I retreated to a place where I’d found solace in the past. Somewhere I could not be found. In the darkness of the old smugglers’ caves.
Bob Marley is singing, No Woman No Cry. The calendar reads Ten Days More. And oh yeah, its got a drawing of a happy face next to it.
FORTY-TWO
Layla
Tomorrow is the big day. Because I opted out of a biopsy that could cause me to miscarry, it will be like opening Pandora’s box. They will do a biopsy on everything in my uterus to assess how bad the situation is. Immediately after, they will operate to remove the baby and perform the hysterectomy.
They don’t know how long I will be out. The cesarean will only take 45 to 60 minutes. It’s what needs doing after that’s the unknown factor. I think I am too numb to feel afraid.
My bag is packed. It is an optimistic bag. There is chewing gum to help speed the process of bowel function returning to normal after a cesarean birth, compression stockings, sanitary towels, and a pair of champagne glasses.
How strange, then, that it feels as if I am packing never to return.
We have a quiet dinner early, as I am not allowed to eat after 8pm. I eat lightly and BJ doesn’t eat at all. We talk a little. We stare at each other a lot. As if we are never going to see each other again. We end up in the bedroom. That afternoon I had taken the time to scent the place with aromatherapy oils, scented candles, and made the bed with silk sheets that I ordered from the Internet. By the bed there was tray of fruit and a big beautiful box of chocolates.
‘Do you know?’ he whispers to me. ‘The sexual texts from The Ming dynasty regarded a woman’s sexual organs as a crucible or a stove from which a man could cultivate vitality.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ I say biting my lower lip.
‘Yeah. Want to try something Ming?’ For a moment the old BJ glitters in the candlelight. Tonight he is strong and powerful and I am putty in his hands.
‘OK.’
‘Get totally naked, then shake your whole body; your legs, your head, and your sweet ass. Afterwards, sit down cross-legged on the bed and invite me into your body.’
So I shake my entire body, sit down, and ask him to come into me. He takes off his clothes, muscles rippling across every part of his body, and his cock standing to attention like a good soldier. He comes to sit in front of me.
‘When I exhale, you inhale and vice versa. Pretend that you are able to take that breath you inhaled from me down to your sex organs.’
As he breathes out, I find myself breathing his breath into my body and down to my sex. Up so close he nearly takes my breath away. He is such a magnificent specimen.
Slowly, I become conscious that I am sharing all of me with him and he is doing the same. The realization makes my skin super sensitive, as if an electric current is running through my body.
He stares into my eyes. ‘Now kiss me and share your breath with me.’
So we kiss and kiss and kiss and the strangest thing happens. I don’t believe woo-woo stuff but suddenly, amongst the scent of the candles and aromatherapy oils and the silk sheet under us, we become one person. And I’m not even talking about BJ and I. I’m talking about BJ, Tommy, and I. Suddenly we are joined in a kind of magic circle. All of us linked forever. No matter what happens after tonight, we will always be together.
And then I am back in my physical body, on my hands and knees, reveling in the muscular caress of his shaft. He is like he was in the old days, before the cancer. Raw and unbelievably passionate. I feel his large hands on my body. Touching, claiming, branding. It is as it was on our very first night.
The orgasm when it comes is so shattering, so incredible, so crazy I can’t even scream.
‘Wow! That was so … mind blowing,’ I pant breathlessly.
He turns his raven eyes to me. ‘You’re mind blowing.’
‘So are you going to honey talk me now?’ I tease with a smile
‘Why not? You are everything I could have dreamed of. You’re a cool, cool girl, Layla.’
I look into hi
s beautiful eyes. How I love this man. I take his warm, rough hands in my own. ‘No matter what happens tomorrow, you know, I’ll always love you.’
Something sad and dark crosses his face, but he hides it as quickly as it showed itself.
‘Are you ready for your goodnight kiss?’ he asks lightly.
As he has done from the day we got married, he opens my legs and lingeringly kisses me right in the middle of my sex.
‘Good night, my darling,’ he whispers softly into my core.
“Jump into the angry abyss with a smile on your face.
This how magic has always been created.”
—Shamans