“I could put your hair pins in it …” ventured the assistant.
“Someone once gave my father a tin of agarwood and he kept it hidden away, never once using the incense. I stole the biggest piece, which nature had sculpted into the shape of a man. It was the first thing I hid in my purse. When I wasn’t looking, the man used to leave me messages written with hair pins on my skin; he’d climb out of the bag when my eyes were closed. He said my hair couldn’t stand being restrained by hair pins, so he took to braiding my untamable hair and winding it around my head like a crown. In the world I lived in, it was always men who held the keys to the world. That little agarwood man was my secret key … I always blushed when he’d dip his finger into his mouth before smoothing down my thick eyebrows …” Her voice was scarcely audible any more, a little girl murmuring in her sleep.
Super Emperor
RAFI JUMPED OUT OF HIS CHAIR TO GREET THE SHEIKH WHEN HE APPEARED, unannounced, in the hallway, but he headed straight for Nora’s suite and entered without knocking. Rafi couldn’t help but feel embarrassed, like he’d been caught red-handed. He’d gotten used to the sheikh’s sporadic appearances and disappearances over the ten years he’d spent working as part of the man’s security detail whenever he came to Madrid on business or pleasure.
The women he’d gotten used to seeing on the sheikh’s arm never lasted more than a few days, though. There was always a new face, attracted to the forty-something sheikh’s good looks and the financial empire he’d managed to build at a relatively young age. This time around, it was different though. Somehow Nora had succeeded in luring him back every time he went away. Through some unspoken arrangement, he’d made her understand what her role was in that equation of theirs: when he was around, she hardly ever left the suite, but as soon as he left, she’d be out of there in an instant as if fleeing his shadow. Whenever her mood darkened and the ties binding them began to break — because she was the one breaking them — he’d rush back to trap her.
RAFI LINGERED IN THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE, TRYING TO LISTEN IN ON WHAT WAS HAPPENING on the other side of the door. The sheikh’s aftershave hung tenaciously in the air.
Inside the suite, Nora lay on her chaise longue and watched him come in. Something in her eyes drew him toward her like a magnet, like a shark sensing a drop of blood at the bottom of the ocean. He leaned over her, careful not to touch any part of her except for her lips, grazing them cruelly with his own. His kiss penetrated her skull, burrowing down to her spine. She clenched the chaise to stop herself from wrapping her arms around his neck. When he pulled back, he could taste her blood on his lips. He licked them as he stared at her. “What do you do when I’m not around? Do you find a way to entertain yourself?”
The question groped at a deeper question: her intentions. It was absolutely vital for him that she remain exactly where he wanted her, when he wanted her, how he wanted her. Fulfilling his every condition. The taste of her saliva, her silence, they awoke the hunter inside of him. She knew that tone of his, it preceded a storm. “Your bills betray a lack of enthusiasm. What do you do to amuse yourself in my absence?”
“Nothing.”
He’d failed to draw her into conversation, but it only provoked him further.
“Nothing? Don’t you miss me?” Their arguments usually started with something stupid like that.
“Do you want me to lie? No, I don’t.”
“Maybe you miss hi—”
“Hold it right there.”
“Who are you to tell me where I should hold it?”
“They’re your rules. You came up with them and now you want to break them. If you get to break the rules, then I’ll break them, too.”
“Really? I’d love to see that.”
“Fine. You will,” she said with implicit defiance. He grabbed her by the throat.
“Are you threatening me, you bitch?” He squeezed her neck; he seemed to enjoy watching her face turn carnelian red. “You want to make a laughing-stock out of me? Is that your plan? You stup—”. She hit him with her arms and fists, catching him unawares, and broke free.
“Say one more word, and I swear you’ll never see me again.”
She got up from the chaise longue and ran toward the bedroom. He caught her by the bedroom door and threw her against the cold, clean wall, grabbing convulsively at her body.
“Oh really?! I’ve obviously spoiled you then…” That was the last thing he said. His thirst for destruction was beyond words. Rafi tried to ignore the fight raging on the other side of the door even though he could hear bodies crashing together.
She ascended from pain to pain, from climax to further climax, staring into eyes that delighted in her suffering. No matter how much she gave in, he would never trust her. Her eyes cut into him like a tightening noose, penetrating through him and around him. He left no room in her for a rival. Time passed them by. She dived down, drawing him in, toward the hunger that always followed. She was always two steps ahead and he was always panting to catch up. If he’d managed to beat her to it, he’d have left her there without a backward glance. She bit, it hurt, he groaned. He was searching for hatred in her, she was searching for destruction in him. When he was plunged inside her like this, her body betrayed her with desires that weren’t her own: it mimicked him so that he could take her over. She was finding it harder to overcome this thing that brought them together, that enslaved them, that always lured him back. No matter where else he went or who else he lusted after, he was as stuck as she was in the trap he’d laid for her.
Caviar
THAT NIGHT, THE SHEIKH HOVERED AROUND NORA, TRACKING HER EVERY MOVE like a vulture, ready to swoop the moment she flagged. He forced her to eat caviar on bread topped with slices of lemon, but he himself didn’t touch the stuff. He liked to order things his ulcer prevented him from eating and watch her eat them instead, as though she were a dog or a cat, relishing the sight of each bite as it went down. He liked forcing every bite down her throat, which always tightened up after he plundered her body. He put her on and took her off as if she were a glove, but when her body rejected him, he would break through her defenses by force-feeding her.
When he was done, she’d curl up on the end of the sofa and he’d ignore her and carry on drinking alone, looking weary and grim. The further he drifted from consciousness, the closer the two of them grew. She remembered the texture of the caviar, reddish, jelly spheres exploding against her tongue and the roof of her mouth, washing away the taste of him in sea-saltiness. At one point, she laid his head down in her lap so that he could stretch out on the sofa. She was calm in those moments of truce when everything was laid bare. In sleep, he was just an innocent boy from a working-class neighborhood. His forehead was sweaty at the hairline and the volcano inside him lay dormant. Maternal instinct filled her and for a moment she was woman pure, with no need for ornament, or danger. When his breathing got heavy, it was easy enough to lay his head on a pillow. Then she stood up.
She shut the door to her bedroom, and then several others: one that led to the sitting room, another that led to cramped maid’s quarters, as well as the door leading to the Jacuzzi and the door to the bathroom. She felt like she had to shut every door within a hundred-meter radius.
Through the windows in the corner of her bedroom she stared out onto the two tree-shaped sculptures in the park below, which peeked back up at her. She didn’t want to sleep. She didn’t want to sit down. She wasn’t afraid, but her mind was aglow, split open like a gorge. Fiery explosions surged upward, blazing wildly in the corners of her mind before melting away. Nothing could be translated into a coherent image. She made a decision: leaving her fur coat behind, she wrapped a gray scarf around her head and slipped through the service room into her assistant’s bedroom where she put on the woman’s coat. She slipped out through a door that opened out onto the end of the hallway and took a quick look back at Rafi’s room; he left the door ajar even when he was sleeping. She was relieved not to have him hovering around her either. She wanted to be alone for a night. Alone. Face to face with the world.