SearchBirds sing in absurdly tall palm trees as the only mildly polluted water of the South China Sea sizzles into white foam on scalding magnolia sand. There are two women beside me, both naked, both brown skinned and both with the kind of beauty that puts them in another realm of humanity. Faces brimming with sublime knowledge of the way the world works and the way to manipulate it when necessary. One leans over me, her soft breast touching my arm, and smiles an open-hearted smile. Her lips are sharp and red. Her teeth are white and perfectly even. “Babes,” she says in a surprising harsh South London accent, “you want a cup of tea?”
My eyes open to another world; Sharp winter morning London sun and the grim less than bewitching reality of the woman I took home last night. She’s around forty-nine, her eyes are small and her skin carries the grey complexion of an eighty a day smoker. “’cause I don’t know where your kettle is.” She’s wearing one of my shirts. It doesn’t look good on her.
It takes me a couple of seconds to adjust to this new version of reality; Sainsbury’s basics. “Sorry. You’ll have to boil a pan. My kettle blew up.” It’s not true… My kettle’s still in Bangkok.
She kisses me on the lips before slipping off to the kitchen. I instinctively wipe the trace of her spit from my lips. I don’t know why this bothers me. I had my lips all over a much more intimate part of her anatomy the night before. Maybe my dream of perfect women on white sand beaches has thrust a bit of snobbery on me. She’s a perfectly nice woman. And if you screwed your eyes up a little you could almost see how she might be beautiful. So why does it feel so wrong?
I’ve let this room develop a tipped bottle bank look. A nice selection of semi finished clarets, a Sainsbury’s dry Amontillado (not as shabby as it sounds), some Maekong and Sang Som and even a few overpriced bottles of Singha to counter the effects of homesickness.
“Where do you keep your tea bags?” She yells from the kitchen.
“Under the sink.”
“Is this milk all right?”
“How does it smell?”
“Not brilliant.”
“It’s fine.”
I close my eyes and I can almost feel the lapping of the sea.
She comes in with the cups. She has that look of a woman who wants to be part of the furniture… In Bangkok I’m always happy if a woman makes herself at home like this. Why can’t I stop thinking about when she’s going to leave?
She places the cups on a small white table from IKEA. She’s lucky. I only put it together yesterday. She lies beside me tracing my chest with her aged looking fingertips.
“You don’t look very brown for someone living in the tropics,” she says. “I’d be out in the sun every day if it was me living out there. I’d have a yacht or something.”
I smile.
She bites my nipple and holds it between her grey teeth licking with her hot tongue.
I guess I’m easy. Immediately I find myself ready for action. Her skin feels rough, used, and her eyes look ancient but somehow, in the moment, it doesn’t matter. The great thing about the state of arousal is that all those little “buts” evaporate and you just enjoy whoever you’re with. She holds me too tight; her thighs gripping me and pulling me deeply into her sad beautiful world.
When it’s all over we drink the tea. It’s lukewarm and I can taste that the milk is off. I need to get a fridge.
© Turk Fist. All rights reserved by the author.
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December 3, 2007, 21:40
Ah Mr. Fist in a Chandleresque mood. Excellent. Now all we need is a little plot....nothing too fancy...and it's off to the races.