BUSINESS
Summary: The wife of the curator of the British Museum meets Med-Jai warrior Ardeth Bay. Ardeth, OC.
Category: Angst, drama, romance.
Rating: M
Author's note: Any feedback will be treasured for the rest of my life, and keep me going.
Chapter Ten
He was gone. He was gone completely. The hairs on the back of her neck no longer trembled when she gazed out into the night, and she found herself sitting in the lobby for hours, staring blindly into newspapers and starting at every dark shape that fluttered into the edges of her vision. But they would always be porters, or ambassadors, or the occasional nomadic craftsman who managed to creep past the guards at the front gates.
Not him. Never him.
She took to knitting, and purchased rolls of crudely dyed indigo wool yarn from a Tuareg woman, and began to work on a scarf for Charlie: an inky, uneven, hideous thing that ribboned around the bedroom like a serpent. She took to drinking bourbon during supper. He became a shadow that muddled her mind – a shadow that was faceless and nameless – but she could not erase him no matter how hard she tried.
She took to crying while her husband slept beside her.
One evening Alfred bounded into the bedroom like a child and said: "Those bloody rag-heads are finally relenting, darling. We're going home. Those artifacts are staying where they belong."
And through the ache that suddenly clawed at her chest she began to convince herself that she was happy at the news.
"Good old England, Margie. Rain and fog and civilized people. We should go out to the marketplace to celebrate with Charlie. Our last hurrah in this wretched city, my darling."
And so the next morning she packed a picnic hamper with ham and cheese sandwiches and bottles of lemonade, and they made for the nearest souk.
They lost themselves in the heat and the sour stink of animals and people. Alfred purchased a small, silver dagger for himself – "A little gift for defeating those Med-Jai," he proclaimed – and bought Charlie a miniature instrument that had strings like a guitar. She bought nothing for herself, but did not object when Alfred hooked two heavy silver earrings into the holes of her earlobes. They resembled chandeliers, and at the end of the numerous tassels hung tiny bells that jingled when she moved.
"Are you all right?" Alfred said when they had walked for nearly an hour. "You look preoccupied."
"What?"
"Preoccupied, darling. I said you look preoccupied."
"Hardly. A little tired. But Charlie doesn't seem ready to sit down just yet."
"You're always tired," he remarked, easily. "You've been tired for the past three weeks. I wonder if it's a woman thing."
"Excuse me?"
He wasn't looking at her. "I wonder if you're hiding something."
"Honestly, Alfred. Is this the time and place?"
He faced her, a spark in his eyes. "Why don't you look like you're ever here, Marjorie? Why do you still look like you're a million miles away? Are the earrings not enough? Is the victory of our museum not enough? What more can I do?"
"Honestly…"
Suddenly, she saw him. He was standing several feet behind her husband, next to a wrinkled vendor hawking beaded leather slippers. The crowd pulsed in waves in front of his tattooed face. Men in turbans, women in veils, camels.
Ardeth Bay was staring straight into her eyes.
"Marjorie, you're still not listening to me. Why? Why are you ruining this day?"
"I just…"
He seemed like he had sprung from her imagination, and she couldn't tear herself away from the Med-Jai's gaze. "Alfred—"
"Wake up!" And he slapped her for the second time since their arrival in Cairo.
Oh God, he saw. That was the first and only thing on Marjorie's mind as the hotness flared across her left cheek. He saw.
"Alfred," she said, turning to her husband, a sudden desire to leave overtaking her. Leave the pressure of those burning eyes. "That's enough. I don't want to stay here anymore."
"Mum, Mum." Charlie was pulling at the hem of her dress. "Dad said there's a chicken fight starting down the street. I want to see."
"It's out of the question."
"But Mum…"
"Charlie, that's hardly appropriate," she began. Then she looked down into his upturned face. "You know, all right, darling. I'll go with you."
"Don't be ridiculous, Margie. It's a man's sport. Women aren't allowed to watch a chicken fight in this bloody country."
"All right. You take him."
"Oh, but will it be appropriate when I take him, my pumpkin? Will it be moral and righteous and—"
"I think it's best if you leave me alone for a period of time, Alfred," she said. "It's a woman thing. I'm tired."
Charlie was yanking at her dress again. "I don't want to go if you don't."
"I love you," she said to him with an unexpected surge of emotion. She cupped his warm face between her hands, and felt her heart squeeze at the pure beauty of this child: the boy, her son. "But I can't go with you. Not this time."
"If you get lost, go back to the hotel," Alfred said. "Come on, soldier. Let's go see the chickens."
"I'll be right here, Charlie," she repeated, and her husband took her son upon his shoulders, and the two of them faded into the throng of shifting bodies.
She willed herself not to cry.
She didn't cry when he walked to her. She didn't cry when he motioned to her with only a nod; simply followed him, dream-like, past the vendors and the stalls, the earrings pulling at her earlobes and jingling with every footfall.
He led her under the tattered awnings of a sunbaked alleyway, and turned the corners of the mud-bricked homes. The sounds and the smells of the souk were fading. A few ancient men and women stared at them from doorways as they passed, their eyes startlingly white against brown, leathery skin.
The alleyways grew narrower and what few people there were disappeared from view, and when they finally reached the dead end, he pressed her to the wall with the entirety of his body.
She studied the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the fullness of his lips. His beard was thick and closely cropped, and she noticed some faint sprinklings of gray along his chin; perhaps they were new, or perhaps she had simply never seen him at such close proximity.
She ran the fingertips of both hands over the tattoos on his cheeks.
Blue-black. Subtle variations of saturation in the ink, and blurring faintly at the edges. She was surprised that the tattooed portions of his skin didn't feel any different from the rest of his face: warm and tough, and slightly moist with perspiration and oil.
He ran a hand up her stocking-clad thigh, the calluses of his fingertips audibly snagging the nylon in little pinprick pulls. He reached the end of the stockings, and she felt him run his touch over the bands and the clasps of the garter. Through the thin cotton of her underwear, she felt the heat of his palm hovering at her womanhood.
She slid her hands from his face and grappled futilely with the unfamiliar design of his belt, his sash, the countless black layers of his clothing. He was already firm, and she took him through the loose linen of his trousers, but he pried her fingers away and unfastened his belt and released himself.
He was larger than Alfred, and dark. The veins that ran the length of him were almost purple.
She bunched her skirt to her waist, and parted her legs, and he hooked aside her soaked underwear and pushed himself into her.
He was tall, and she felt herself being lifted from the ground with the force of him. She managed to wrap one leg, then the other, around his thighs; he held her buttocks within the span of his hands, and kept her pressed to the wall with his body.
His thrusts were forceful and deep and controlled, unlike her own natural rhythm, which would fall impatiently apart into erratic jerks whenever the pleasure built within her. He was a warrior, she remembered. A chief. Perhaps this was how he fought.
The climax was rising quickly, hot and almost painful; Marjorie gripped his shoulders and bit into his neck to keep from crying out. Her earrings were swinging against her jaw, the tiny bells clanging together.
Through the small alley in the distance, she saw an old woman emerging with a wicker basket spilling over with laundry. She was eighty, maybe ninety, and she craned her head to them immediately, and Marjorie looked at her as she looked back, her weathered face dispassionate and unchanging.
The English woman being pinioned, standing, by a Med-Jai.
A thin sigh escaped her; she was nearly there.
And then the old woman turned away, and retreated from where she came, and Marjorie hurriedly grabbed Ardeth Bay's face so that she could stare into his eyes when he pushed her over the edge.
Sweat had beaded on his forehead and trickled into his lashes.
"Oh," she said, and her entire body shook as she climaxed, her muscles convulsing and falling apart as the heat from her core suffused her in a flood.
He pushed against her several times, slowly, then suddenly gave several swift thrusts, and let out a soft murmur from the back of his throat, and was still for a long time, panting heavily into the crook of her neck, and then the earrings slowly fell silent, and all she heard now was the distant humming of the souk and the inhale and exhale of their breaths.
She caressed his shoulder blades. She took in the musky scent of his dampened hair. When he withdrew from her, she caught the fluids of the aftermath in her underwear.
She smoothed her clothes in place, and they walked back through the alley, past the eyes of the old men and women in the doorways.
He nodded to her once more when they reached the slipper vendor in the souk.
Perhaps she should say something now, Marjorie realized. Something. Anything. She finally decided that she should kiss him, but when she leaned forward he only touched her left cheek with the heel of his palm. Then he stepped backwards into the crowd and was gone.
She bought a pair of beaded slippers from the vendor without bothering to talk down the exorbitant price, and stood there until Alfred and Charlie returned.
"Well? How were the chickens, Charlie? Did you have a good time?"
"Oh, for God's sake, Margie. I shouldn't have done that earlier and you know I'm sorry. Don't make a scene now. Not in front of our son."
She stared at her husband. "What do you mean?"
"Wipe up your tears, darling," he replied. "You know Charles hates it when you cry."
TO BE CONTINUED…