Reyna snapped his head up and back as if she’d slapped him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Faan set her mouth in a stubborn line. “I wasn’t out whoring like you, if that’s what you think.”
Reyna drew his arm back; his hand closed into a fist, but he stopped himself before he touched her. He closed his eyes and stood shuddering. Faan could smell the anger on him and whipped up her own to match it. He drew in a long unsteady breath. “I don’t know what to do with you. I just don’t know.”
He swung around, went out.
Faan stared at the door a moment, then wrapped the quilts around her and tried to sleep, sliding in and out of nightmare for the rest of the night.
The drums beat like tinny hearts, ta ta ta tii-yi ta ta turn, the heavy throb at the end of each phrase dying into a wobbling ta a a. Ta ta, ta ti-i-yi, ta ta tum-mta as a.
The’daround hummed and buzzed, zou, zoul, za za za zing za.
A Kalele singer stood on a wooden drum behind the musicians, a slender coal-black man who looked much younger than he was, with a narrow naked torso and voluminous black wool trousers heavy with gold studs.
Ou sing zuul, n’ gid a meeeyn, ba bi mun, the singer keened in an asexual minor moan, ou zing zuul, gidda mii-yan, a modulated monotone. Nonsense words meaning nothing, it was safer to mean nothing, a wrong. word was like plague, sickening then killing, but-blending with the hot smoky air, the smell of bodies in heat, the uncertain flick-flick of candle flames in sooty chimneys-the sounds created a fog of desire overlaid by melancholy.
Dawa danced with his long arms curled above his thrown-back head, sway-stamp-wheel, his sandals pat-
tering on a sanded section of floor within a circle of limelights in tin reflectors that threw their glow up from beneath, waking oiled blue glimmers on his skin, watery shimmers in the blue satin lining of his robe. He danced his ambiguity, his sexuality-and with his height, his physical beauty, with all his shadows running the wrong way-he was strange and intimidating though he did not mean to be.
› › ‹ ‹
The Cheoshim Armsman slowdanced body to body with Reyna Hayaka, then took him to one of the dim booths lining the sidewalls; he pulled the curtains shut and began kissing the Salagaum with rough impatience, his hands busy on breasts and buttocks.
Reyna placed his palm over the Armsman’s mouth, leaned back against the man’s knotted arm. “I am Salagaum,” he murmured, “not habatrize.”
The man rolled his head with an abrupt, almost violent gesture, wrenching Reyna’s hand away. “I know,” he growled when his mouth was free. “You been paid, haven’t you?”
– yes.
“Well, what’s the problem?”
“As long as you know what I am, none.” Reyna drew his fingertips down the Armsman’s face. “Come upstairs,” he whispered, ignoring the man’s roughness, keeping his voice soft and beguiling. “There’s no need for such hurry. I’ll please you better if you give me time.”
“No! Think I wanna be seen with somethin’ like you?” His fingers tightened on Reyna’s flesh; his grip was bruising, painful. “You do it here. Now.” He shifted his hold, slammed Reyna onto the leather covered bench at the back of the cubicle. “I want it hard, shikko,” he whispered as he tore at the thongs of his trousers, “hurt me.”
Ta ta ta, taaa ti tum ta, the drum beat out, ta ta taa, ti mta a turn mta.
Za zi za zrum azrum um, the daround muttered in its lowest tones-a head-dipping, belly grinding music. Ta ta ti turn mta, the drum growled.
Zrum zrumm um zum, the daround hoomed.
The new singer improvised against the beat-Oh oh AH oh, pas si CO toe, pan ni PUS si, coo no PAN niher voice high and swinging, cos si to palm ni. Gold coins glittered on the translucent white silk of the veils that fluttered about her ripe body. Oh ah oh pas si co, she crooned.
› › ‹ ‹
An hour before moonset there was a small confusion at the heavy velvet drapes concealing the door as half a dozen newcomers pushed through, five of them Cheoshim youths, their black spiky hair cut short, predatory eagerness in their faces. The sixth was a few years older, a sleekly muscled Mal.
Descending the stairs for the fifth time, Reyna stopped to watch the Mal, thinking he was very like Dawa, had the same kind of bones and blaze to him, although he had a finer polish than Dawa ever acquired. His hair was disciplined into a heavy braid that hung in a club down his back; he wore Cheoshim warrior leathers with careless ease and moved with the quiet, liquid grace Panote the Doorkeeper showed on one of his better days.
He let the others scatter without him and stood by the drapes, looking around, his face expressionless.
Reyna came down the last steps and drifted to one of the seats pushed up against the front wall. He was tired and feeling battered but he couldn’t leave yet; the Bee-house Salagaum were hired till the EndDrum went, none of them would get their fee if any of them left early.
Pay was becoming a problem these days. The Salagaum of Bairroa Pill had to deal with increasing interference from the secular City Shindas, bribes going up and their fees going down. And there was nowhere they could troll for new clients. The Joyhouses that had been exclusively Salagaum had been harassed, then shut down by these officials-the Maulapam sent word it had to be done and it was done. At the Manassoa Order’s urging, the Shinda Board had passed clothing laws that banned Salagaum robes on the street and solicitation laws that were supposed to drive from the city prostitutes of all ages and sexes, but were applied only to adult Salagaum; the children-for-rent and the female habatrizes were mostly ignored.
The young Mal dropped onto the bench beside Reyna Hayaka and sat with impassive face watching the guests labor to have fun: couples swaying in body to body hugs meant to be dancing, feet scraping over the floor, hands rubbing flesh and cloth; bhaggan smokers sitting and holding hands in reeling, babbling rings about a bubbling waterpipe; pepepo drinkers hopping alone to music they alone seemed to hear, habatrizes and the other Salagaum going up and down stairs with and without companions, parts of them, a section of face, a hand, an arm, a breast, a thigh, passing through spots of light, the rest lost in the shifting swaying clots of shadow. There were whispers all around, voices drifting in and out of the desultory tump-zing from the drums and daroud.
“It’s all very dreary,” the Mal said suddenly.
Reyna blinked. He didn’t feel like talking, but he was being paid to respond. “I suppose so,” he said. “It’s late.”
“Why do people do this?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t seem to be enjoying it.”
Alarmed, Reyna willed a smile to his face, touched the man’s forearm with his fingertips. The muscle was tight under the skin and there was a film of sweat that his fingers slid on. The man… no, he was more like a young boy on his first date… he was nervous; that pretended disdain was his attempt at controlling a situation where he didn’t know the rules or have the kind of edge he usually enjoyed. Reyna had seen it before, a hundred times and a hundred more, but never in an adult as old as this; even those boys the Mal brought with him had more ease about them.
He shook off his weariness and got back to work. “Oh diyo,” he said, “but you know how it goes. An evening has its ebbs and flows and sometimes there’s a need for quiet and sometimes there’s a need to shout. You know.” He stilled his fingers, let them build small pools of warmth on the young man’s arm.
“That is true.” The Mal smiled.