It took Sebastian a second to realize that she was serious. “I’m not sure that would be a good idea. The Shark People are suspicious of the nin—, the guards. I wish Akiro would have listened to me and found some non-Japanese. This business with Malink’s dream is a sign that our credibility is slipping.”
“That’s what I’m saying. If we show that they’re under the control of the Sky Priestess—”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Beth.”
She dismissed the thought with a wave. “Fine. We can talk about it later.”
Sebastian wanted to stop himself before he ruined her ebullient mood, but he pressed on despite himself. “Don’t you think that no coffee or sugar for a month was a little harsh?”
“You really don’t get it, do you? I’ll give it all back after a week, ’Bastian, and they’ll love me for it. Generosity of the gods: The Sky Priestess taketh away and the Sky Priestess giveth back. It’s how these things work. You put a few people on a boat, then you drown every living creature on the planet—the people on the boat are pretty goddamn grateful.” She flipped the end of her red scarf over her shoulder.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”
“You make the rules and you play the game, ’Bastian. What’s wrong with that?”
He turned from her and pretended to go through some notes. “I guess you’re right,” he said, but he felt acid rising from his stomach. She was calling it a game.
She came up behind him, pushed her breasts into his back, and reached around inside his lab coat. “Poor baby. You still feel like you did the right thing by burning your Beatles records.”
“Beth, please.”
She unzipped his khakis and snaked her hand in his fly. “Deep down, you feel like John Lennon got what he deserved, don’t you, sweetheart? Saying he was more popular than Jesus. That loony-toon Chapman was the instrument of God, wasn’t he?”
He whirled on her and grabbed her shoulders. “Yes, dammit.” His face had gone hot. He could feel the veins pulse in his forehead, in his crotch. “That’s enough, Beth.”
“No, it’s not.” She ripped open the front of his trousers and fell back on the lab table, pulling him on top of her. “Come on, show me the wrath of the Sorcerer.”
27
Girl Talk
Sepie washed the pilot’s hair in a bowl with pounded coconut and brackish water. She had been taking care of the unconscious white man for two days and it was starting to get tedious. She was mispel of the bachelors’ house, and washing and ministering to a sick and stinky white man was not in her job description. This was women’s work.
There are legends in the islands, and some of the old men swear they are true, that the women who service the bachelors’ houses, the mispels, were taken to the secret island of Maluuk, known only to the high navigators, where they were trained in the art of pleasuring a man.
After months of training, a mispel was required to pass a test before she was allowed to return to her home island to take over the duty of tending to the sexual needs of the men of the bachelors’ house. The test? She was sent into the ocean with a ripe brown coconut clutched between her thighs, and there she floated, in heavy surf, for the entire circuit of the tides. Should the coconut pop loose or the mispel touch it with her hands, she failed the test (although there was some leeway in the event of shark attack). It is said that the inner thighs of the mispels of old were as strong as net cable. The second part of the test required the girl to find a delicate dragonfly orchid with a straight stem, and while her teachers looked on, she would lower herself over the flower until it disappeared inside of her, then rise again after a few minutes, leaving the stem unbent and the petals unbruised. The mispel held a position of honor, respected and revered among the is-landers. She was not required to do housekeeping, cooking, or weaving, and while the other women
toiled in taro fields from the time they could walk, a mispel was allowed to nap in the shade, conserving her energy for her nocturnal duties. A mispel often ended her tour of duty by marrying a man of high status. No stigma followed her into married life, and she would be sought out to the end of her days by the other women for advice on handling men.
Sepie, however, had not been chosen because of any special skill, nor had she passed through any vigorous concubinal boot camp. Sepie had been marked for mispel from the moment of her menses, when she emerged from the women’s house with her lavalava tied a bit too high and showing a bit too much cappuccino thigh, her skin rubbed with copra until she glistened all over, and her breasts shining like polished wooden tea cups. She had painted her lips with the juice of crushed berries and peppered her long black hair with scores of sweet jasmine blossoms. She giggled coquettishly in the presence of all the men, danced dangerously close to the taboo of speaking to them in public, risked beatings by refusing to fall to her knees when her male cousins passed, and went about her chores with a wiggly energy that had caused more than one of the distracted village boys to fall out of a breadfruit tree during harvest. (She broke ankles as well as hearts.) Sepie was all titter and tease, a lazy girl who excelled at leisure, a natural at invoking and denying desire, a wet dream deferred. At fifteen she took up residence in the bachelors’ house and had lived there for four years.
When Malink and the men brought the flyer and the man in the dress to her, she knew she was in for some trouble.
“Take care of them,” Malink said. “Feed them. Help to make them strong.”
Sepie kept her head bowed while Malink spoke, but when he finished she took his hand and led him into the bachelors’ house, gesturing to the other men to lay the flyer and his friend on the ground outside. The men smiled among themselves, thinking that old Malink was going inside to receive a special favor from the mispel. What, in fact, he was receiving was an ass chewing.
“Why don’t you take them to your house, Malink? I don’t want them here.”
“It’s a secret. If my wife and daughters find out they are here, then everyone will know.”
“I’m the only one who can keep a secret in the bachelors’ house. Take them to old Sarapul’s house. No one goes there.”
“He wants to eat them.” Malink couldn’t remember ever having to argue with a woman and he wasn’t at all prepared for it.
“You’re chief. Tell him not to. I will not cook for them. If I feed them, they will shit. I’m not going to clean it up.”
“Sepie, what will you do when you marry and have children? You will have to do these things then. I am asking you as your chief to do these things.”
“No,” Sepie said.
Malink sighed. “I am asking you to do these things because these men have been sent to us by Vincent.”
Sepie didn’t know what to say. She had heard the Sky Priestess chastise Malink in front of the people, but she had been more concerned with losing coffee and sugar for a month than with the actual offense. “You will tell the men to cook for them?”
“Yes.”
“And they will carry them to the beach and wash them if they shit?”
“I will tell them. Please, Sepie.”
No man had ever said “please” to her before, let alone the chief. It was not a courtesy that women deserved. For the first time she realized how desperate Malink really was. “And you will tell Abo to wash his dick when it is his turn.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“He is stinky.”
“I will tell him.”
“And you will tell Favo to quit making me put beads in his ass.”