2.

She was like no woman he’d known: sensuous as glossed silk, acrobatic and unashamed, bringing him to three more acts than he thought himself capable of in a single night and after she melded into him as though created for this sole purpose, concaving into his contours with a gentle sturdiness that somehow bespoke a lifelong intention to have been there always, as though not only all his life had been preparation for this day, but hers also; which was not so far from the truth as he thought, since she knew boxida to be capable of anything from blood-drinking to whisking you away to a great gleaming city, filled with hairy pale-bodies, so far beyond the forests and rice paddies nobody in living memory had seen one, where machines did the work of men, animals were slaughtered in great killing-machines, all were rich and happy though there were no trees, disease and evil spirits were banished (the village shaman saying this was why the spirits had grown cruel – so many sought revenge for being expelled), and to be alone with a boxida was to have a chance at an untold reality beyond all previous possibility; unbuckling his belt she readied herself for anything, but she found the usual equipment, though unhealthily sallow, and the fucking was nearly the same, the boxida capable of less go-arounds than her usual all-nighter, which was delightful; what was truly different came after, when she lay back with a delicious sinking sensation on a bed too soft to be believed, crinkly white sheets cleaner than the rain, and in the bathroom, rather than scooping a few handfuls of fetid water between her legs (normally all the cleanup she was allowed while an impatient client smoked outside), she stood under placid streams of water warm as the sun, together with him, kind boxida, towering wider than two of her, who rubbed soap (so sweet-smelling she almost gagged) on her belly and breasts and between her shoulderblades, hands supple as trod-over mud, which kept on touching and touching and touching, even where she made her trade, without wanting to fuck, only to touch, and she liked it, the first hands she could remember that caressed her with affection, and in the bathroom’s bright light, she got a clear look in his eyes, great, deep, green, her reflection clear in them; by the time he handed her a velvety towel, maybe the kindest material she’d ever touched, she was so dizzingly overawed she barely knew she was in love with this boxida, more godlike and more human than anyone she’d known in her eighteen years; after the shower he stroked her head – so light! – and she was already asleep, body warm to the touch as she exhaled warm pools of air on his chest, and all his previous life seemed a dream, one that melts before the reality of a new room it takes you a moment to recognize waking up, and though he’d come seeking only a sight of the Mekong, he felt sure he’d found what all men seek. 

In the morning, they awoke somewhat staggered to each other’s presence, athletically made love and had another shower, then walked to the market, fingers touching shyly, him oblivious and she forcedly indifferent to the gawks of the stallowners and shoppers, bringing back egg-battered rice cakes, greasy friedbread, and coffee, eating at the table in front of the bungalow as morning birds wheeled and cackled over the gray-flowing Mekong; he decided he could not part from her if it meant leaving her undefended in that ratty shack, and she, as yet prosaic, was keeping her hopes to a large tip, to put with the stash she’d managed to hide away, half a hundred dollars worth of Thai and Lao currency in a small cloth wallet tied around her waist.  She shivered in the morning breeze and he ran back to the market, buying her two oversized sweatshirts with superstore brand names from worlds ago; she put one on and with the other covered her legs, which seemed ridiculously exposed in her miniskirt to morning air and staring eyes, watching carefully as the boxida, her boxida, ate in much the same manner as he drank beer the night before, which is to say, as people did, though it would not have surprised her if secret mandibles unfolded from his head to deposit food into a gullet in his back, but he remained human, even as his deep green eyes were godlike. 

Finished, the day stretched out before them, and she knew that, boxida or no boxida, she’d best get back, before the mamasan took exception to a too-long absence, since her normal stock in trade, not liking to mix the businesses of day and night, always had her back by dawn, where she cleaned the shack and then made lunch with the youngest sisters for the others, and during the long idle afternoons, though homesickness was a deep daily gutache, she sometimes thought her lot was not so bad – back in the village the labor was ceaseless, hanging over your head even when you were working, the incessant cycles that kept food in stomachs and clothes on backs and rice in the paddies and the next generation coming along, whereas here, when the mamasan didn’t beat her (a thing her own mother had not spared her, at that) and as long as she stayed in the good graces of the older sisters and kept her mind off the coming night, life was good enough, and she sent back vaster sums to the village than her family could possibly know what to do with, though she knew it would all be gone when she returned – and now here was a miraculous karmic contortion, a boxida who’d liberated her from her reality for a night, and in the stout circle of his arms she was positive even the most malevolent of spirits could not harm her.  But how could he have any use for her now, beyond the one he’d already satisfied?  

“Where you want to go?” he asked, his accent making his voice sound like an underwater breeze.

“Back,” she said, her voice a warbling singsong to him, but taking in the meaning, his expression dropped so precipitously, like a child seeing its father beat up on a public thoroughfare, that she ran a finger across his clenched knuckles and said, “Just to see mamasan.  Must see her.”

“And then?” he asked.  “You go with me?”

Her heart swelled at the thought, but what would the mamasan say, but, “Yes,” she said.  “I go with you.”

At the checkpoint were different cops, looking less authoritative in morning’s inclined yellow light; having already heard a foreigner quick with the cash had passed by last night, they affably received documentation in currency; a left, a right, then he was weaving around the buffalo standing in front of the karaoke shack, brakes squeaking with road dust, killing the engine and waiting in the driver’s seat as instructed.  She went inside, past the bouncer dozing on one of the tables, back to the cooking area where the mamasan was squatting by the fire with the two older sisters, eating rice porridge and examining a pailful of palm-sized waterbugs still wet from forest ponds.

She said to the mamasan, “He wants me to go with him.”

“Cost him a pretty penny,” said the mamasan, not looking up from the waterbugs she was prodding with a forefinger.  “For how long?”

“Today,” she said.  “Tonight.”

“Did he hurt you?  Did he go after your blood?” asked the first sister.

“Oh no.  He was, oh, so nice,” she said, reeling with memory and lacking words, nothing in her experience having prepared her to describe such an experience, though it seemed natural as wet-season floods.

“A blood-sucker with cash,” said the second sister.  “How much you get out of him?”

“Enough,” she said.