Jafar lay fully clothed that night on his bed. The cloth was ruby coloured and matched the eyes in his cobra staff. He liked the colour red.
Iago was perched on a high table near his head, drinking from a silver bowl Jafar had filled with a strong liqueur native to Agrabah. The parrot drank, of course, like a bird, and was pretty inebriated already. Jafar toyed with his immaculate beard, coaxing it into tighter curls, and watched him.
"Iago," he said finally.
"Jay?" Iago looked up and hiccuped.
"How long do birds live?" asked Jafar, in an unusually quiet voice. Iago gave him a funny look.
"You're not thinking of doin' me out of a lifetime, are ya?" he inquired suspiciously, and when Jafar shook his head slowly, he said, "I dunno. How many parrots do you know who can outthink the idiots who feed them crackers?" He laughed and dipped his head fully into the bowl.
Jafar twisted his beard into such a tight spiral several hairs broke loose. He yelped, unaccustomed to suffering physical pain, and let go hurriedly. "Jasmine plans to have me executed, I think," he said softly. "I will make preparations for you to flee with Suzuki... but I should have liked to take you with me into the afterlife." He turned and fixed Iago with such a baleful glare that the parrot sobered up instantaneously.
"Yeah, and if I had lips I'd kiss you," he said nervously. "Look, enough with this death talk, okay? You're Jafar, you don't die. Moulder maybe. Lurch. But not actual dying." When this exacted no response, Iago plunged for an escape route. "Did you hear what Suzuki picked up from the Council of Elders? They're seriously discussing the Cave of Wonders and the Djinn of the Lamp. Apparently a few freelance sorcerers have been getting funny visions..." He trailed off. "I don't mind working tonight, checking out back alley gossip, that sort of thing. Might be onto something, eh? That lamp would solve all your problems." He attempted a snicker, but it died, dry and worried, in his throat.
Jafar, thankfully, had been distracted from his morbid thoughts and was stroking his swollen nose thoughtfully. "Yes, Iago, what an idea. Why not? Why not indeed." Iago, grateful for the escape route, told him not to wait up and dived for the nearest open window. It had been left ajar in the vain hope that some cooler night air would loosen the thick coils of heat around the bedroom, but the air all over Agrabah was burnt.
Once he was sure his feathered friend had completely vacated the premises, Jafar got up and walked to a red and gold tapestry, presented to him by the Chinese Grand Vizier, his mentor and teacher. Fa Ho Sun would have been very pleased if he ever discovered the use his protégé had for this tapestry, which sadly he never would due to an extremely messy death at the hands of a mob of royalist Imperial Swordsmen.
Jafar rolled up the tapestry and looked into the world's first two-way mirror (which he had invented, after much injurious experimentation, himself). He was peered through a window into the distinctly Japanese-influenced bedroom of Suzuki. She was serenely undressing, a long and complicated process as her obi was undoubtedly the most intricate piece of engineering in the entire palace. Jafar watched with impatience.
Naked, Suzuki presented a wholly confusing sight to Jafar's crumpled, neglected libido. She was fantastically white, rather frighteningly so, and so slender and curveless was her physique that only the delicate simplicity of the darkness between her legs and the dip of her waist marked her out as a woman. Her face was no less ugly, and in fact in contrast to the ethereal perfection of her belly and thighs it was hideous. Yet night after night, when Jafar was sure Iago was out on 'night operations' and he was unlikely to be disturbed by the palace guards, he would roll up the tapestry and watch Suzuki take from her lacquered cupboard a smooth, thick instrument of about eight inches and place it in the unfathomable depths of her second mouth.
Unknown to Jafar, Suzuki was fully aware of the true nature of the large mirror on her wall. For some reason, it presented a wholly confusing conundrum to Suzuki's lesbian, feminist sensibilities. Not only was it blatant exploitation of her position as a servant and a woman, but it was also rather gross. She had a fairly shrewd idea of what Jafar did whilst he watched her, and if this mental image was not disgusting enough she had to add the extra, impossible element: it was Jafar doing it. Yet night after night, she took her little toy out of her cupboard and spent fifteen minutes theatrically writhing, thrusting and groaning. Her training as a geisha had left her with enviable predictive powers, for indeed after fifteen minutes Jafar had quite finished, and panting with damp exhaustion he would exit the bedroom for his private bath, and wallow in the water and his overwhelming sensations of satiation and self-hatred. Suzuki would then cease the dramatics and take herself and her toy down to the harem, where her lovemaking was actually quiet and restrained.
Tonight, however, Jafar was nervous and worried for his future. The prospect of death at the hands of 'the shrew', as he liked to think of the Princess, distracted and woed him far more than he would care to admit even to Iago. It was these strange feelings of dread that led him to act, for the second time in his life, on impulse.
What surprised him was how unsurprised Suzuki was to see him there. She sat up, closed her legs, put her toy on her inlaid table and said, "Well?"
Jafar stared at her, at loss. He stood where he was, banging one fist against his thigh, looking rumpled, flustered and uncomfortable. The door slowly swung shut behind him. "Er," he said, eloquently. Then, without further preliminaries, he started to undress.
Suzuki watched him with considerable interest. It would only be the third time she had been called upon to gaze on a naked male countenance, since during her geisha days her sexuality, her features and her respectability had prevented her from becoming an expert. Besides, she had always wondered what Jafar looked like underneath all those robes. She was interested, but not altogether shocked, to find he was more or less a skeleton, swarthy and sallow, with lank muscle stretched tight under ill skin. His torso was covered with numerous discolorations and his bones protruded dismally. He was bald, but that appeared to be the shaving of his head.
He looked on her with rather more desire than she looked on him. For the first time in her life she felt beautiful.