The Long Highway Pt. 10 A

Three conversations

I ran into an attractive Asian woman who lives in our building. She and her husband are refugees, I think. They live in a very Asian way, with a character rather than roman numeral marking the number of their apartment, out in the hall on the front of the door. That seems overdoing it, ha ha. We know they're Asian, after all.

Sometimes I hear a baby in their place, the mother cooing to it in their language. They live very naturally, with nice colors. I've seen the inside of their front room, at least, in view clothes hung on a line to dry, a sarong or something, maroon color with white. Batik? Is that what it is?

We were chatting in the hall and her husband came back, stood against the opposite wall, facing us, in the white shirt he wears to his job. Skinny guy with a keen manner, grins a lot, self-effacingly. I'd like to fuck his wife, but that's off the subject, ha ha.

But it's true I'd like to. She's hot. If this makes me sound stupid, all the better. Sex is stupid. I'd like to have stupid sex with her. Not that she looks stupid, mind you. Far from it. Just that her ass looks prime in the sarong- yellow one- and the band, brown and blue, wound on the diagonal around her torso like shrink-wrap makes her look sinuous as a snake. Maybe it was some kind of special day for them, her dressed like that. Or does she wear a native costume for every occasion? She has a nice, serious face. I don't mean to make fun of her. She's a beauty in the classic sense, from her part of the world, from anywhere at all. I said she's hot. I mean her face smokes. Funny as that sounds, that's how I see it. Damn. And a nice person.

"How was work?" she asked her husband who had just interrupted our conversation (about nothing whatsoever really, but enjoyable all the same).

She had a soft voice, soft as smoke.

"Not so good," the man said, his tone gruff in comparison.

"What happened?"

"I took another Covid test." On the job, presumably.

"Okay."

"And I may have Covid."

"You tested positive?" I said.

"Yes."

"I may have it too," his wife said, nodding.

"Okay, goodbye," I said and skedaddled out of there, maybe a little snakelike myself. I'd been standing between them, none of us wearing masks, of course.

At a party I talked to another beautiful Asian woman I knew, an actress. She approached and stood close, her distinctive sculpted face, broad cheeks, arched eyebrows near me, leaning forward almost as if on a spring- her features charged into the light, so that I saw, as if touching, the texture and forms, smooth, bright, radiant, like Akemi's, her features well-defined, really as if carved, hard bones, soft flesh drawn across. She seemed to like me, wanting to get that close, cut down the space separating us. Her eyes flashed as she looked at, seemed to look into me.

"Where were you?" she asked. "I was trying to find you." Nodding serious, but with humor, earnest humor, I should say. Her black eyes really searching, compelling my attention. I wanted to give back the same she put out. Feeling, I mean. There to be grabbed and run with.

"Sorry, I got busy, you know."

"I was hoping to talk but it was like we were standing on opposite sides of a door pushing, though we were both trying to go the same way." To each other, she meant.

She and I had a rapport from before but it isn't one I've ever acted on.

Nice.

A guy at the party was talking to his wife as they got drinks, reminding her and guests nearby of his childhood, alcoholic mother- not as a warning to his wife, I think. She seemed fine, not to have a drinking problem. I guess the glasses they were both holding had reminded him.

"I don't want my children to grow up like I did, with a mother who was a drunk."

"I understand," his wife said, smiling, I guess wondering why he was bringing this up. Was he himself drunk?

He turned to his brother for confirmation.

"Don't you agree?"

"Yes," said the guest at the party I recognized only then was related to the other. He directed his response to his brother's wife, in her red dress, bright color set off by at least one silvery accessory sparkling like ice in the glasses filled near the midway point with whiskey. "I don't want his two children to become adults and when asked 'How was your mother when you were a kid?' have to answer, 'Actually, she was pretty bad.'"

The cash bar served mixed drinks. The whiskey on the rocks I helped myself to was my second. You need that at these college evenings. I couldn't blame Akemi for begging off this time.

The younger brother whose presence had surprised me apparently didn't have children of his own.

I'm not sure why I mention these conversations except that they made an impression, each in its own way. Taken together, they had a sort of symmetry. When you write, observe things to write about, you get a sense for this kind of stuff. Hard to explain. It should come through in the prose.

I liked when I went home the way Akemi pushed my arm out of the way so she could get her hand to my penis.

Speaking of nice.

Or was she saying, in effect, "Let's get on with it..?" My former girlfriend Pam sometimes projected that attitude. "Stand clear so I can do this and have the rest of my night free"- or afternoon or whatever.

Akemi was busy, but she's not Pam. Pam's in my past. Feelings linger, some good ones. Hell, we were together a few years.

She was about to call her parents when I arrived. It was morning in Japan. But we went to bed- the living room futon/sofa, that is.

"Just for a short time," Akemi said. Her family couldn't be kept waiting.

I turned her around and caressed her from behind.

"Sometimes there's nothing better than having your back scratched," I said. I looked for the Japanese word. "Kaku?" Or did that mean "itch"? Japanese has a lot of words that sound the same, homophones. She didn't tell me. Sometimes I think she prefers I not know her language. Or maybe she smelled the whiskey on my breath and thought, "You want what you want so what are you talking for?"

I have to remember she's not Pam, not difficult like her, but also that she's a person in her own right, more than "not Pam" lol.

Akemi can be difficult too, more power to her.

My fingers trailed around to the tops of her breasts, the curves, then the nipples, flexible plugs or like pencil erasers, between hard and soft like them and about the same size. I was hot.

"The pain here's gone?" I asked.

"Hm?"

"From the vaccination. Side effect." I was caressing her shoulder.

"It took a long time. Three days," Akemi said. "Three days." Her voice gets high when something surprises or appalls her, also when excited. There was a squeak to it, in-breaths, in response, I like to think, to my touch, which I did everything to make as tantalizing to her as it was to me, my fingers tracing the smooth tubes of her upper arm, coming back around her shoulder, the point of her shoulder blade that looks almost wafer-thin from a certain angle, jutting out catching the light, looking like pure light itself. Akemi's skin.

I could include this as a fourth in the conversations I'm writing about, but not many words were exchanged.

Her touch made me stop talking, just moan, then breathe through my nose, snorting. I thought she'd give me head, she was that expressive and I was geared for it, the rooftop scene still on my mind, terrible scene, I'd make a good one instead.

I ended up going for her pleasure rather than mine. I guess the thought of that rape was affecting me- writing about it had- I wanted to treat Akemi better than the gang had that other woman. And I wanted to go down on her. You know how it is. Somethings bringing her pleasure, winning her response is the best prize of all. She's responding to me from her depths, exploding all over me. That's a bond between you, its strength showing in her cunt grinding at my lips and teeth, later in her hairs found between them.

"You should go around the other way," Akemi said. We were on the living room futon and she thought I'd be more comfortable turning but I said I was alright coming straight from the front. I could get my legs under the coffee table. And it worked. Where there's a will..