Chapter 15
Once Carlos and Mai returned to their hotel room, the starlit sky outside was a deep black, converging around a shining white moon. Even the fiery autumn leaves were painted in the same suppressive shade. At a distant horizon, barely perceptible, a blue glow hinted at the coming morrow. The young couple cleaned up in silence. Then, they got in bed together. Carlos avoided giving off any hint that he was interested, and Mai seemed more relaxed, or rather sedated. Propped up against a tall pile of pillow, her eyes were half-open. Her lips opened and closed ever so slightly. He told her that he would wait, until whenever she was ready, really ready. He told her that she was under no pressure. He told her loving things. Mai turned to look at and past her boyfriend, stiffened her lips into a semblance of a smile, and nodded. The boy kissed her lightly on her cheek, feeling its slight fuzz. He slunk back into the warm blanket and basked in the soapy freshness of his and her bodies. Sleep arrived unannounced.
Carlos dreamt that he was Mai, and Mai was him. The united entity chased a tiny sparrow upstream, through fields of wheat and hills of green, through the thunder and rain. This body was an incredible device made rippling with muscles, teeming with sparkling sweat beads, genderless but at the same time the embodiment of all things hypermasculine and hyperfeminine. They arrived at a crashing waterfall. Droplets saturated the air. There he-she found an empty nest, rested above a slick black boulder. Perched at the straw construction of its home, the sparrow wordlessly asked, “Can you carry me forever?””
Awakened, Carlos suddenly felt a fire in his belly, hips, and thighs that he was sure tear his being open from inside out. His head spinned, or the world did. He knew not the time nor the place. Moonlight imprinted the geometries of the window frame upon otherwise pitch black bedroom walls. The boy heard wet kisses and quiet sobs; his full-body delirium intensified with each of these sounds. The girl was sinking her face into his groins and bobbing up and down arrhythmically, almost lost in thought. Half out of shock and half out of concern, Carlos reached down and pulled her face up. She made a loud pop.
“Mai? What are you doing?” He slurred drowsily. Mai ignored him and went back to occupying herself. Carlos flailed and pushed her forehead away, “Stop, stop, stop.”
“Please just shut the fuck up and go back to sleep,” glared his girlfriend in a nasal growl. “I’m here with you now, so just enjoy it.” The faint light made it clear that she had been crying, face shiny, drenched in tears and slavering. Her cat eyes now glowed with murderous intent. Hate and predatory, but to whom he wasn’t sure. Carlos laid back down and relaxed his muscles, so Mai continued. He laid there among quilted beddings, watching the autumn moonlight dance with skeletal branches, intoxicated from a cocktail of shock, fear, drowsiness, with a double shot of pleasure. He even gripped her short black curls tight into himself as the orgasm washed over. Carlos thought of love.
Mai was the small spoon. Every now and then, her body would shake in a teary hiccup. Carlos could hear her labored, stuffy breath clearer than ever. He caressed her hip and thigh and hip again. Only a few minutes before, she had tried to mount her boyfriend unprotected right after sucking him off, but he shoved her away. Crawling off to fetch a condom, Carlos was dragged back by an impossible strength coming from this small Asian girl; she was insistent on getting pregnant. He was shouting in annoyance and confusion. A few angry accusations of “crazy” later, they were wrestling, and the girl was clawing his forearms open, screaming in tears. In that moment, all he thought about was how much time she used to spend with her mother, having their nails meticulously manicured. He tried restraining her with a hug, thus his back bled for it. It was calmer now. She laid on top of his arm, holding it tightly, crying into it. Carlos couldn’t stop feeling the salt searing into his throbbing rended flesh. It was the first time that he saw her cry, ever. With time, Mai’s chest began rising and falling with more regularity.
The bedding would be brown with dried blood, come morning. Carlos was trying to keep his heart rate down; residue adrenaline still coursed. Watching Mai snore tenderly in his embrace, he wondered if he should be mad at her the next day. He didn’t know if he could ever see her the same regular, happy way again. He didn’t know if he cared to. He was nowhere near as resilient as she was, and this whole thing had been flipping her upside down. He asked himself, what if they had traded places, would he ever recover? He thought back to the time when he was single, then being in a relationship. He thought about Mai and about Elizabeth Mulway. He thought about death. He thought and thought and thought until it wore him out.
By the time some conclusions were reached, Carlos felt faint. While he slipped into another dream, drab and heavy clouds swirled in and extended a night already long. In that nonexistent threshold between the night before and tomorrow’s light, raindrops started tapping on the window pane.
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