We trudged up from the water to find a meal had been set on the patio for us. There was a big platter of fruit, and covered baskets of other things, set neatly on a glass table. There was an ice bucket with a bottle of white wine, and another bucket filled with ice and beer next to a little platter of sliced limes.
"Oh, man," I said feeling greedy and thirsty. "It's like they read my mind." I grabbed a beer and wedged a lime into it, stuck my thumb into the hole and tipped it over so the lime floated to the bottom of the bottle. "When in Rome," I said and sucked happily on the beer.
I took the metal cover off of a plate to find a huge cheeseburger and fries beneath. I sat down, naked and soaking wet, and stuffed a bite of the cheeseburger into my face. Root smiled as she slipped back into her sarong, twisted it in front, then tied it behind her neck. She poured herself a glass of the wine and took a sip. She sat down and plucked a piece of green melon out of the fruit plate. She nibbled on it, but her eyes never left me. I stopped chewing.
"What?" I asked around my mouthful of meat and cheese. I looked behind me and wiped at my face.
"How's your burger?" She asked.
"Perfect," I said and took another bite. "Medium rare, no vegetables, cheddar cheese instead of American. It's almost like someone knew exactly how. . ." I trailed off and looked at her. She was smiling at me, looking at me with a silky expression that I didn't know of what to make.
It was the meal I always enjoyed after a good fuck.
I thought of the day she brought my juice to the Stadium, how she had gotten that perfect. Just the way I liked it. Maybe this chick wasn't so bad afterall, even if she was an incredibly creepy stalker who knew where all the guns in Mexico were hidden. Fuck. That had been impressive. Like, better than Christmas impressive. Root wasn't as picture perfect as Martine, and she certainly wasn't going to be as much of a freak in the sack as Martine had been (at least as far as I could tell), but I had to admit, there was something about her. Beneath her fuzzy exterior, I sensed danger and darkness, like there was a creature locked up in a dungeon inside her.
I wanted to find that cage and invite the creature out to play. Or battle. Preferably both.
"You're going to get a sunburn, Sweetie," she said. She cocked her head slightly and said, "Tell the front desk to bring a sarong for Sameen. Something in black," she said and rolled her eyes a little bit when she said 'black.' "Or at least a very dark violet."
"What. The. Fuck." I said looking around. "Do you need to take your meds or something?"
"I'm just fine," she said and popped a grape into her mouth. A man in the hotel uniform approached our table, as though out of nowhere, and handed me a deep, plum-colored piece of fabric. "Thank you, Juan," Root said, reading his name tag pointedly.
"Can I get you ladies anything else?" He gazed at a fixed point on the horizon, avoiding my nakedness. It made me snicker.
"I think we are set for now. That will be all." She waved him off and ate another piece of fruit as I sat there with the sarong in my lap, naked and confused. "Do you know how to put on the sarong? There are different ways of wearing one, of course."
I wrapped the sarong around me like a towel. She smiled and shrugged. "So," I said. "Do you plan on telling me how you do that?"
"How I do what, Sweetie?"
"Don't play with me, Root. You know what I mean. That thing where you pull a rabbit out of thin air. And by rabbit, of course I mean finding the best guns in Mexico in a crazy church basement and making it rain sarongs."
"Well, it didn't actually rain sarongs. I actually just procured one sarong." She had the most intense eye contact of anyone I'd ever met. Normally, I avoided intense eye contact. Normally, eye contact made me uncomfortable. But there was something captivating about Root, something that made me curios rather than aloof- and it was that curiosity as opposed to the eye contact that made me uncomfortable. I broke her gaze and looked away for a moment. Much to my surprise, I shivered as I remembered her fingers and lips in the water, the taste of her nipple in the salt of the sea.
"Fuck," I whispered and shook my head to clear my thoughts. I stuffed a few fries into my mouth and chewed. "Are these drugged?" I asked, grabbing another bottle of beer from a bucket on the table and repeating the lime ritual. She shook her head, still watching my every move with those amber eyes.
"No more drugs," she said quietly. "Unless of course you want to. I had been thinking that Molly might be fun for us, although after that delightful performance in the water, I don't imagine we will need any chemical enhancement in or lovemaking. No. I'm hoping we can come to a bit of an understanding. Kind of a 'you show me yours and I'll show you mine' arrangement." She reached over to my plate and took a fry off of it. She brought it to her lips and ate it in little bites with her front teeth. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her if she touched my grub again I would cut her, but I was transfixed just watching her, listening to her voice lazily fill the space in between the ocean waves.
"Did you actually just say 'lovemaking'?" I asked.
"Mmmmh. I did." She smiled at me and brought her feet up to her chair so she could hug her knees.
"Uh. Okay. Look. I'm not sure if I gave you some kind of mixed message, but I do not 'make love'. I fuck. We fucked. That was fucking."
"Fair enough," she sighed. "It's all just semantics. Whatever you want to call it, it was lovely."
"Lovely?" I snorted. I took a long pull on my beer. Her smile faded, but she continued looking at me with eyes that seemed amused, but intense as ever.
"It was hot," she whispered soft as the waves and wind. "Fucking you was fucking hot, Sameen. I plan on fucking you again. And again. I plan on fucking you hard. I plan on fucking you so hard you squirt all over both of us. I plan on fucking you with my tongue and with my fingers and with toys. I will fuck you until we are both sore for days, and then I will leave you begging for more, begging me to fuck you and fuck you and fuck you. How does that sound? Better?"
She finished her little speech and I swallowed hard, realizing that while she'd been speaking, a mouthful of beer had turned into a warm puddle on my tongue. Something about the way she enunciated each and every 'fuck' that came out of her mouth had made a hot coil of nerves tingle in my gut. "Well, aren't you just full of surprises," I said, smiling in spite of myself.
"Churro?" She took the top off of a napkin-lined basket and offered me a fried pastry, covered in cinnamon and sugar. I snatched one and bit into it. "Do you want ice cream to go with that?"
"No. I don't want any ice cream. I want to know how you do what you do." I tried to steer us away from fucking and back to the conversation at hand. I tried to stay focused and dignified while licking sugar off of my fingers and readjusting the sarong which was sliding down my torso.
"God talks to me," she said.
"So, you're not going to tell me then. All right. I'm going to go in and shower." I tossed the churro on the table and started to stand, but she spoke again.
"Sit down, Sameen. I'm telling you the truth. Well, my truth anyway. I call Her God. You called it Research. Harold calls it the Machine. It's all the same thing, but She chose me to be Her analogue interface. She speaks to me. She speaks through me."
"How? How exactly does she speak to you?" I asked. I could tell from her expression she was being serious, but I was still incredulous. The jury was still out on whether or not she was nuts, and I was guessing when it came back it would have an affirmative verdict.
"In here." She tapped her right ear. "I had a cochlear implant so I wouldn't have to depend on phones or computers. It was too risky for me to be apart from Her. So, I had Her implanted, so to speak. And now she is forever cozy in me, right next to my brain. I made Harold do it after he checked me out of the institution. Well, Harold didn't actually do the surgery. I found the best surgeon and Harold drove me to him. It took some convincing. I mean, he really didn't want to do it, and I think part of him was jealous She had chosen me, but eventually he did it. I can be very persuasive, you see."
"Yeah, I think I've had a taste of your powers of persuasion," I said, trying to understand everything she was telling me. "Why you? Why did it chose you?"
"I don't know why She chose me. But She did."
"So, that's how you knew where to find the guns?"
"Yup."
"And that's how you found me at the Stadium that day, and knew about my juice?"
"Yes. I can also tell you what, when and where you enjoy breakfast. And as you just tasted, I also know how you like your burgers. But those things are fairly trivial compared to what She and I usually communicate about."
"This thing, it makes you pretty powerful, doesn't it?"
"It does. Yes. In many ways it does. And She is a power I chose to use for good. Well, most of the time anyway. But better that you stay on my good side, Sweetie, just in case I decide to take a walk on Her wild side." She plucked another grape from the fruit plate and rolled it between her front teeth before biting down on it and smiling at me. "We could rule the world, Sameen. Or indulge in some approximation of ruling that involves saving people and lots of celebratory fucking of one another."
I rubbed my face and squinted at her in the sun which was setting behind her. I needed some sunglasses. And maybe it was the heat or the beer or the blood raging in my groin in a nearly explosive manner, but her offer sounded pretty tempting. "I'll have to think about it," was all I said.
"I'd expect nothing less, Sweetie," she said. She stood up and came over to stand before me. She bent down and used her hand to angle my face toward hers so she could kiss me on my lips. I allowed it for a couple seconds before breaking away. She smiled, content as a cat, walked up the patio into her room, and slid the glass door silently closed behind her.