Chapter 4: The Morning After the Mark
The morning came gray through the cracks in the tin. Danu woke with a stiff neck and Maya's cigarette smell in his hair. She was already up, dressed, sitting on the desk chair with one boot on and the other dangling from her fingers.
"Up," she said. "We're going out."
"Out?"
"Outside. The city. You've seen nothing but the inside of this room and the back of my bike, little bird. Today you're coming with me proper."
She tossed him a shirt. This one was darker, smaller, still too big across the shoulders. He pulled it on while she laced her boot with two sharp tugs.
"But my uncle," he said. "Jalan Melati. I was going to..."
"You were going to. Then you didn't. Then you came back here and let me fuck you to sleep." She stood. She crossed the room in two strides and took his chin in her hand, tilting his face up toward hers. Her thumb dragged across his lower lip. "You're not going anywhere today except where I take you. Understood?"
"Yes."
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, Maya."
"Good boy."
Outside the warung the alley smelled of drain water and frying garlic. A hawker had set up a cart at the mouth of the gang, selling fried bananas to the early traffic. Maya locked the door behind them and pocketed the key.
"Bike," she said, and he climbed on the back without being told. His arms found her waist on their own now. That frightened him a little, how fast his body had learned her.
She drove slower today. He noticed it. She took the turns easy, kept out of the bus lanes, let him look. The city unrolled in front of him, wide and loud and bright. A market spilling vegetables across the pavement. A mosque with its green dome. Boys selling newspapers off a cart, shouting prices.
"Look at you," she said over her shoulder. "Eyes like a fucking owl."
"Everything's so big."
"Wait till you see the harbor."
She stopped at the harbor. Danu had never seen so much water. It went on past the ships and the cranes until it broke against the sky, brown and glittering and moving all the time. He stood at the low sea wall with his mouth open while Maya bought two cups of coffee from a man with a thermos strung around his neck.
"Here." She put the cup in his hands. It was scalding and sweet. "You've never seen the sea?"
"Once. From the bus. Through a window."
"Christ." She sat down on the wall beside him, knees apart, elbows on her thighs. She looked out at the water and said nothing for a while. Danu kept glancing at her sideways. In the flat harbor light she looked less like a wall and more like a person. It unsettled him more than the mark on his arm did.
"What?" she said, without turning her head.
"Nothing."
"Liar."
"Your coffee," he blurted. "You didn't put anything in it. The tea, the first night. You put something in it."
She took a slow sip. The man with the thermos had drifted off down the quay. Gulls screamed over the roofs of the fish warehouses.
"Of course I did," she said. "I wanted you drunk. I wanted you soft. I wanted you in my bed before you had time to think about running." She turned and looked at him full, and there was nothing soft in her face at all. "Would you have come back if I'd asked nicely?"
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
"That's what I thought." She flicked ash off the wall. "So stop making that face. It worked. You're here. You drank my tea, you slept in my bed, and this morning you climbed on my bike before I said a word. Whatever you want to call that, I didn't put it in the cup."
He looked at the sea. His coffee had gone cold in his hands. The truth of it sat in his stomach like a swallowed stone, and underneath the shame of it there was something worse, something warm and twisting that he refused to look at directly.
Maya stood up. She took the cold cup out of his fingers and set both cups on the wall.
"Come here."
He came here.
She hooked her fingers in the front of his shirt and drew him in between her knees. Her hands slid around to the small of his back and pulled him against her. Anyone walking past would see a big woman hugging a skinny boy at the harbor, nothing more. But her mouth was at his ear, and her voice was a low growl under the gull noise.
"Feel that? That's me holding you. In front of the whole city. You like that?"
"Yes."
"You're hard already. I can feel it against my stomach. Filthy little bird, getting stiff in broad daylight."
"I'm sorry."
"Stop being sorry." Her hand slid down and cupped him through his trousers, right there, in the open, her broad palm pressing the length of him against her. His knees nearly buckled. "See? Nobody's looking. The sea's the only witness and the sea doesn't care. You want me to do something about this?"
"Here? Maya, people..."
"People are looking at the water. Not at you." She squeezed, slow, deliberate, and he made a sound he tried to swallow and couldn't. "Answer me."
"Yes," he whispered. "Please."
She laughed, short and low, right into his ear. Then she took his hand instead of her own and pressed it flat against the front of her trousers, against the heat and the thick give of her through the fabric.
"Not here," she said. "Here you just stand there and stay hard and think about it all the way home. That's your punishment for asking about the tea."
"That's not fair."
"Nothing's fair, little bird. Hold my hand and walk."
She didn't let go of him for the whole walk back to the bike. She held his hand through the market, through the crowd at the bus stop, past the boys with the newspapers, her thumb rubbing slow circles into his palm, and every circle went straight down between his legs. Twice he stumbled. Twice she steadied him with her arm around his ribs and her mouth against his hair.
"You're going to pay for this," he said, when they reached the bike.
"Am I?"
"You're being cruel."
"I'm being patient." She swung onto the bike and looked back at him over her shoulder, and her smile was the sharpest thing on the whole street. "There's a difference. Get on."
He got on. His arms locked around her waist. The engine caught, and as they pulled out into traffic she reached back with one hand and pressed his wrist flat against the front of her trousers, holding it there between her thighs for three whole seconds before the road took both her hands again.
"Feel that?" she called back over the engine. "That's what patience feels like. Hang on tight. It's a long ride home."
The city blurred past. Danu pressed his burning face between her shoulder blades and held on, hard and aching and utterly hers, all the way down the long straight road toward the warung.
Halfway down the long straight road, Maya turned off it. She cut down a side street of rusted workshops and pulled into a lot behind a shuttered warehouse, gravel crunching under the tires. She killed the engine and put both feet down.
"Why are we stopping?"
"Because you've been grinding against my ass for ten minutes and I'm sick of feeling it and not doing anything about it."
"I wasn't grinding."
"Stand up and look at yourself, little bird. You've made a wet patch on the inside of your shorts." She kicked the stand down and turned on the seat to face him, still astride the bike, and he was trapped between her body and the fuel tank with nowhere to go. "Get off."
He swung his leg over, wobbled on the gravel. She stayed seated. She unbuttoned her trousers, lifted her hips, and worked them down over her thighs along with her underwear, until she sat half-naked on the bike with the engine ticking cool behind her, the rough skin of her thighs bare against the leather.
"Now get back on."
"On the bike? Maya, there's a road right there. A workshop. Somebody could..."
"Nobody's back here on a Sunday. And if somebody comes, they'll see a woman riding her man. They'll keep walking." She grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him close enough that her breath landed on his mouth. "Get on. On top of me. Like I taught you."
His hands were shaking as he climbed back onto the bike, facing her, knees on either side of her heavy thighs. The bike dipped under the doubled weight and settled. He had to put his feet down on the gravel to balance, spread wide, and she grinned up at him from under him like he'd never seen her grin, sharp and hungry all the way through.
"Pull your shorts down. Just enough."
He hooked his fingers into the waistband and dragged the fabric down his thighs, and the air hit him, and his cock stood out hard and wet at the tip with nothing left to hide it. Maya looked down at it and let out a long breath through her teeth.
"Look at that. All that just from riding behind me." She spat into her palm, reached down between their bodies, and wrapped her hand around him, pumping twice, slow, spreading the spit over the head while his hips jerked helplessly into her fist. "God, you fit in my hand like you were made for it."
"Maya, please."
"Please what? Say it properly. We're outside. Nobody hears you but me."
"Please put it in."
"Good boy."
She gripped his hip with one hand and guided him with the other, tipped her own hips up off the seat, and pulled him down and into her in one smooth, heavy motion. The bike rocked. The suspension groaned. Danu's mouth fell open against her shoulder and a sound came out of him that he would have died of embarrassment over if he'd had any breath left to be embarrassed with.
"There it is." Her hand clamped onto the back of his neck. "Now ride. That's your job today. I ride you around town, you ride me right here. Fair trade."
She didn't wait for him to figure it out. Her hips rolled up off the seat and his whole body answered, and then they found it together, the rhythm, the push and lift of it, the bike swaying under them with every stroke, the kickstand grinding into the gravel. The handlebars shook. The mirror rattled. The whole machine creaked like a bed.
"Feel that?" Her voice came out rough, close to his ear. "The whole bike moving. It knows what we're doing. Everything in this city knows."
"I can't... Maya, I can't hold..."
"Hold on to me. Not the bike. Me."
His arms went around her neck. Her arms went around his waist, thick and strong, and she pulled him down flat against her chest so that every thrust ground him against her, her breasts crushed between them, her thighs flexing under his. She fucked up into him from below with a strength that made his eyes roll back, using the seat as leverage, her boots planted wide on the gravel.
"That's it. That's my good little bird. Take it. Take all of it."
"It's so deep, it's, oh god, Maya."
"You're close. I can feel you twitching inside me already. Not yet. Squeeze me. Bite my shoulder if you have to. Just don't you dare come before I do."
He bit down into the muscle of her shoulder and she groaned, loud, unashamed, out in the open where anyone could hear, and the sound of it went through him like a current. Her hips sped up. The bike rocked harder, the front wheel jerking with each stroke, the whole frame complaining under them. Somewhere down the street a dog started barking at the noise.
"She's barking at us," he gasped.
"Let her bark." Maya's hand slid down and pressed his hips down into her, forcing him deeper, holding him there while she pulsed around him. "She's just jealous."
Her rhythm broke. Her thighs clamped around his hips and her whole body seized, head thrown back, a long growl tearing out of her throat at the gray sky, and she rode it out with him buried to the hilt inside her, pulsing around him again and again.
"Now," she said, when she could speak. "Now you can come. Ride me through it."
He lasted four strokes. On the fifth he buried his face in her neck and spilled into her with a broken cry, his whole body shaking, the bike trembling with both of them, and she held him through every spasm with her arms locked around his ribs and her mouth pressed to his hair.
They stayed like that while the engine block ticked and cooled and the dog gave up barking. His softening cock slipped out of her and he made a small sound at the loss. She laughed under him, low and satisfied.
"Get off. Fix your shorts."
He slid back, legs barely holding him, and pulled his clothes straight with clumsy fingers. She stood, dragged her trousers up, and settled back onto the seat like nothing had happened at all. Then she looked at him over her shoulder and patted the space behind her.
"Home. You've still got a wet patch. Keep your legs shut at the gate."
He climbed on and wrapped his arms around her waist. There was a bite mark on her shoulder above her collar, and she left it there, didn't cover it, and started the engine.
The ride home took them past the fish market again, and this time Maya stopped there. She always bought her fish from the same woman, a squat widow named Bu Iyah with hands like cracked leather, and Danu carried the box while Maya haggled.
Bu Iyah stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes had gone to Maya's shoulder, to the dark oval of the bite mark sitting above her collar, plainly visible where the shirt gaped.
"Good lord, Maya. What happened to your neck?"
"Nothing happened."
"That's teeth. That's human teeth." Bu Iyah leaned over her scale to squint at it. "Somebody bit you."
Danu stood frozen with the fish box in his arms, ears burning, staring at a crate of mackerel like it contained the secrets of the universe. Maya paid without hurrying. She counted out the bills one at a time.
"Maybe somebody did."
"Who? That pork seller from Jalan Satu? He's got a wife."
"Not him."
Bu Iyah's eyes slid sideways, slowly, until they landed on Danu. On his thin arms. On his face, which had gone the color of boiled shrimp. Then back up to the mark. Then back to Danu. Her mouth opened and closed twice.
"No," she said. "Him? That skinny little thing?"
"You've got something to say about it, Iyah?"
"No. No, ma'am." Bu Iyah weighed the fish again for no reason, eyes down. "Just that I'd never have guessed. He looks like he'd apologize to a mosquito."
"He does apologize a lot," Maya said. "I'm working on it."
She took the fish box out of Danu's arms and put it in the basket herself, and he understood that was a mercy, because his hands were not fit to carry anything. He climbed on the bike and hid his face between her shoulder blades for the whole ride home.
At the warung, the crowd was thicker than he'd seen it. It was late afternoon, the hour when the tables filled with men off shift, and the whole alley smelled of fryer oil and clove smoke. Maya parked around back but walked him in through the front, her hand flat between his shoulder blades.
The noise died a little when they came in. Not all of it, not all at once. But it dipped, the way a radio dips when someone walks past the antenna.
Ponco was there, the old man with the gold tooth who had drunk beer two tables away on Danu's first night. His eyes went straight to Maya's collar. He said nothing at first. He just grinned around his cigarette, and the gold tooth caught the bulb light.
"Nice scar," he said.
"It's not a scar."
"Shame. It suits you. Very..." He waved the cigarette in a slow circle. "Fierce."
"Mind your own glass, Ponco."
"I'm minding it. I'm minding it very well." He drank, still grinning, and his eyes drifted from Maya to Danu and back with a slowness that made Danu want to walk into the sea they'd visited that morning. "The little bird's got teeth, huh? Who would have thought. He holds his glass like a woman holds a kitten."
"And you hold yours like an ass, so we're all learning about each other today."
Two of the younger men at the back table didn't say anything. They didn't need to. One elbowed the other, and the other choked on his beer, and both of them became very interested in the ceiling. Maya stared them down across the room until the chuckling died, and it died fast, because whatever they saw in her face ended the matter completely.
Danu stood by the counter wanting to disappear into the wall. But under the humiliation there was the other thing again, the warm twisting thing. Every stare meant they knew. Every grin meant the whole alley could see that he belonged to her, and some treacherous part of him thrilled at it like a bell being struck.
"Stop looking at the floor," Maya said quietly, passing behind him toward the cooler. "You didn't do anything to be ashamed of."
"Didn't I?"
"No. I did it to you. They can stare at me if they want to stare at somebody." She came back with two bottles, set one in front of him, and flicked the cap off with her thumb. "Drink that. Then come help me stack crates."
He drank. The beer was cold and bitter and better than the tea had ever been.
The stacking took them to the storeroom at the back, past the beaded curtain, where the crates of bottles stood in rows. Maya bent to lift a case of beer and the mark rode up above her collar again, fully exposed in the bulb light, and Danu looked at his own work and felt heat crawl up his neck.
"You're staring at it," she said, without turning around.
"Sorry."
"You keep saying sorry. I'm going to charge you for it, one rupiah an apology, and then you'll owe me the warung." She set the crate down and straightened and turned, and she was close, closer than the room required. "You want them to see it? Is that it? You want the whole city to know who did that to me?"
"No. Yes. I don't know."
"You know." She took his chin. Same grip as the morning, firm, not painful. "You sat at that fish market ready to die, and you liked it. Say it."
"It's true."
"Say the rest."
"I liked it. Them seeing it." His voice dropped to almost nothing. "Seeing what you do to me. That I'm..."
"Say it."
"That I'm yours."
"There." Her thumb crossed his lip. "Was that so hard?"
She kissed him then, standing there between the crates with the noise of the warung humming through the wall, and it was nothing like her usual kisses, nothing quick or claiming. It was slow. Her mouth was soft where everything else about her was hard, and one of her hands cradled the back of his skull like something breakable, and Danu forgot the fish woman and Ponco and the whole staring world.
When she pulled back, she kept her hand on his neck a moment longer.
"The mark stays," she said. "I'm not covering it. Let them look all they want. But understand one thing, little bird."
"What?"
"They saw it and they laughed at the size of you." Her mouth curled. "They didn't see what I see. They don't get to. That part's mine, and it doesn't go on display. Come here after close tonight and I'll show you the difference."
She turned back to the crates and lifted another one, and Danu stood there with the taste of her still on his mouth, and started stacking bottles with hands that would not hold steady.