“True, true,” Feroza said. She took a last gulp of her coffee and Hemrajie drained her glass of tea. The sun eased down to the horizon, but the man did not return.
“Like we friend making some extra distance today,” Hemrajie said.
“Look so,” said Feroza.
“You want to make a small walk? Work out some of this sugar?”
“All right.”
It took them five minutes to reach the bend. The road stretched out to the far factory, but they did not see anyone running. A car sped by, the wind of its passing making their clothes flutter.
“That strange,” Hemrajie said. “I don’t think he woulda go so far.”
“Maybe he take a run through the cane field.”
“Maybe.”
“We could walk up a li’l bit again.”
They continued for another five minutes, by which time the sky was getting dim. It was only on their way back that Feroza saw something out of the corner of her eye. “What is that?” she said.
They stopped, peering through the canes. Then they saw him. He was lying in the middle of the field, several feet off the road. His head was twisted back, his arms and legs cast out limply.
“Oh God,” said Hemrajie.
“Come,” Feroza said.
They eased their way through the canes. Feroza knelt beside the man and put two fingers to his neck. Then she put her ear in front of his nose.
“He...?” Hemrajie began, but did not complete the sentence.
“He not dead,” said Feroza. “He unconscious.”
“What happen to him?”
“Car hit him,” said Feroza. “Or more likely the taska and the driver didn’t notice.” She peered in the dimming light at his nostrils and ears, then ran her hands over the man’s head, down his arms, then his torso, then his legs. “Nothing broken,” she said, as though talking to herself. She rose to her feet.
“What’s that?” Hemrajie said.
Feroza looked down at the man’s body. “What?”
“Uh, that,” said Hemrajie. “In front. By his, uh...” Feroza bent down to look more closely, then pulled at the man’s clothes. “Is his intestines?” Hemrajie asked. Feroza was blocking her.
“No,” Feroza said. “Look at this.” She moved aside. She had pulled down the man’s shorts and Hemrajie saw that his penis was full and pointing bluntly to the sky.
“What—?”
Feroza ran her fingers along the man’s hair again. “Uh-huh. A depression right here. He get hit on the head.”
“But how — I mean—?”
Feroza sat on the ground. “We had a patient like this three years back. Young fella, about twenty-five. Get a blow to the head, right around the same spot. Was in a coma and had a permanent cockstand.” She looked up at Hemrajie. “He was in the ward for three months. You could bet a few of the nurses take advantage of that.”
“Advantage?”
“Yes. It was good.”
Hemrajie stared at her friend in the dimming light of the cane field. “You mean — you?”
“Yes. Was more than ten years since I get something.”
Hemrajie continued to stare.
“Oh, don’t watch me so,” Feroza said. “Was no harm.”
“What happen to the patient?”
Feroza shrugged. “He never come out of the coma.” She looked down at the man’s penis, then reached out and put her hand around the swollen shaft. “I tell you he was dougla.”
Hemrajie laughed, then her hand flew to her mouth. “You shouldn’t be doing that!”
Feroza looked up at Hemrajie. “Why you don’t take something?” she said. Her tongue slid delicately over her front teeth. “You never had a man. Now is your chance.” She glanced down at the jogger. “He will never know.”
“I couldn’t,” said Hemrajie. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?” Feroza’s voice was low, cajoling.
“We have to get him help.”
“We will. But his vital signs stable. No harm.”
“I can’t,” said Hemrajie.
Feroza got off the ground, but did not let go of the jogger’s penis. “Well, I going to,” she said in the same low voice.
“What?” said Hemrajie. “Suppose he have AIDS!”
Feroza shook her head. “He does take care of himself.”
“Feroza!”
“It dark. No one will see.” She grinned. “But you could watch and learn how to do it.” With her other hand, Feroza slipped down her pants and her panties, then squatted on top of the man. She eased down with a deep sigh. Her hips began to move and, underneath the hem of her jersey in the dim light, Hemrajie could see the shaking of Feroza’s pale shanks. In a few minutes she stiffened, grunted, and her hands turned to claws on the man’s unmoving shoulders. She stood, pulling up her underwear and track pants in one movement. “I’ll go by you and phone for the ambulance. You wait here with him. Give me your house keys.” Hemrajie reached into her pants pockets and handed over the keys. Feroza took them and turned to push her way out of the cane. She glanced back at Hemrajie. “It go take me twenty minutes to go and come back. And the ambulance probably won’t be here in less than an hour. I mightn’t even reach back before half-hour.”
“All right,” Hemrajie said. “I will wait.”
Feroza left, and Hemrajie stood in the middle of the canes under the starry sky. After a while, she stooped down and she saw that Feroza had not pulled up the man’s shorts. She reached out, then hesitated. Slowly, she put her face closer. Except for a picture from a magazine when she was twenty-three, she had never seen a man’s penis. The light from the moon was enough for her to see details — the pulled balls, the thick vein on the underside, the swoop of the helmeted head, even the intimate slit at the top. Hemrajie thought how ugly the penis was, and how beautiful. She reached out timidly and put her fingers around it. It did not feel anything like her dildo. It was firm yet had give. It had a throb and a warmth. It was alive.
She looked around. The canes were a wall of black lances and the moonlit road beyond was empty and silent. Hemrajie pulled down her pants to her knees. She didn’t wear panties when she walked because they rode up. She would just rub him against herself, she thought, just to see what it felt like. She moved on top of the man, feeling his hard flesh poking at her soft and secret place. She held his penis and moved it against herself. She did not intend to put it in. But he was so hard and she was so wet and it slipped so easily into her. She rested her weight on him and began moving her hips as Feroza had done. This was what she had never known, and she closed her eyes and imagined that she was in her bed on her honeymoon, and she quickened her hips and came within moments.
Hemrajie’s head drooped in release. She took a deep breath. He was still inside her, still hard, as she started to ease off his body. And she saw his face in the moonlight, and the strength ran out of her legs, and she sank, helpless, back onto his erect shaft. In the clear light of the moon, the man’s eyes were open and aware and staring mutely at her.
The funeral party
by Shani Mootoo
San Fernando
Matilda Jasodhra Mansing would not wear black. Her concession to funereal tradition on the occasion of her husband’s burial was blue. She had commissioned the dress from April Lang, Trinidad’s finest designer, a long time ago. Design me something, she had said, something spectacular for when he dies, should I be blessed with life so long, and do make me something, something less garish but certainly leaning toward the spectacular, for my own day, my own day of reckoning.
Once the word had been given, the paper creation was put into production, a conversation in silk and satin about nature and origins — not so much the flora but the fauna of Trinidad invoked, alongside suggestions of the theater of Carnival — feathers, that is, and wings, sequins, iridescence, all of these commingling with the subtler concupiscence evoked by the Indian sari (teasing translucence, tightly bound and bound and bound, as if to influence deportment, yet an exposé, par excellence, of the wearer’s physical attributes) — a provocative concoction, in short, delivered post haste, for the occasion. The fabrics, the sequins, the feathers, all shimmered in disturbing shades of blue.