by Donna George Storey
(02/02/05)

I've been waiting for this since Bukhara. Mike and I are -- finally -- alone.

Alone, that is, except for our guide, Nasim, who keeps glancing back from the driver's seat and smiling at us beneath his graying Genghis Khan mustache. This isn't quite the way I'd dreamed it. There is another small complication. Mike and I haven't said a word to each other since an embarrassed "Good morning" over breakfast. Now all he does is stare out the window, and, sure the scenery is fascinating if you like miles of empty highway, desert and the occasional camel. Of course it might just be the heat -- 100 degrees and the car has no air-conditioning -- enough to discourage any conversation. And it probably doesn't help matters that my underwear is damp with his best friend's calling card and the aforementioned heat makes the backseat smell like a seaport brothel: ocean breeze and sailors' spunk.

Mike knows what it is. He was right there with us when it happened.

I was in bed naked when Mike and I spoke for the first time. Connor lay beside me, cell phone to his ear, trying to sweet talk his friend into letting me come along on their grand adventure to Uzbekistan. Months before I came into the picture, they'd been planning to visit Ming Bao, an old college friend who was doing medical research near the Aral Sea. She and Mike used to be an item, and Connor was sure they'd hook up again out in the desert where there was nothing else to do, leaving him the odd man out.

Then I took a temp job at Connor's office and changed the course of history. Connor had done his best to sell me on the idea of a Central Asian adventure, with dinners at Persian restaurants (as close as we could get to Uzbek cuisine) and gifts of glossy guidebooks with cities of azure and gold on the covers. He would read them to me, usually after sex, when every bone in my body was as soft as taffy, and it was easy to imagine the two of us gliding across the map from Samarkand to Khiva on a road of fluttering silk. Truth is, he didn't have to work that hard to convince me. I wanted to go. It wouldn't be like England with my parents when I was fourteen -- wax museums and bowls of Spotted Dick with custard. It would be like stepping off the edge of the world.

"Tara's great," Connor was telling Mike. "You're going to love her. In fact, she's right here." He thrust the phone at me.

I felt a prickle of anger -- I wasn't expecting this -- but I took the phone anyway. "Hello?"

"Hi, Tara." Mike's voice was deep, and if I had to guess, I'd say he was smiling.

"I hope you don't mind if I come along." It was the only thing I could think of to say.

"No, of course not." Which, under the circumstances, was the only thing he could say, too.

While Mike and I chatted about visa applications and Ming Bao's work in the desolate outpost of Nukus, Connor took advantage of the break to tease the sheet from my breasts, across my belly and on down to my knees, gawking like a comic book lecher. At my request, he was still in his rumpled 100% Egyptian cotton button-down shirt. Stockbroker lingerie. Connor was the first guy I ever dated who wore suits to work and I loved to peel off his stiff wool rind to uncover the sweet flesh beneath, loved to kneel and feast on the glossy, purple-headed cock poking up between his shirttails. Sometimes I made him keep the tie on, too. Probably deep down I wanted to do it with my dad or something, but no doubt about it, Connor got me hot.

Now my bad-boy businessman was nudging my legs open and grinning up at me. I almost laughed when he did the old muff dive, his nose poking out over my fur, but soon his tongue began to work its spell. First he circled my clit as if he were licking up some sweet foreign syrup from my flesh, then he followed up with rapid-fire flicks until my thighs began to jerk and quiver.

Doing my best to keep my voice steady, I asked Mike if he wanted to talk to Connor again.

Mike paused. "No need. We've got it all figured out, don't we?"

I swear I could hear his smile widen, as if he knew what was happening, watching us even then.

Three months later, halfway around the world, Connor and I watched as Mike paced the grand square in Bukhara, stopping now and then to study the earth at his feet.

He was trying to guess the burial site of two British officers who'd come to the city 160 years ago in the hope of forming an alliance against Russia with Bukhara's emir. Their wooing had gone badly. They were beheaded instead.

"It's just dust and bones," Connor mumbled. He'd developed a new expression since we got here, a slight curl of the lip, as if he were smelling sour milk. Without the suits and the crisp white shirts, his shoulders looked narrower, diminished.

Mike paused at the center of the square, head bowed. Then he nodded, took out his camera and began snapping a few more pictures of the Ark Fortress with its grim lattice eyes to show to his class in the fall. He taught fourth grade at a progressive school in Berkeley. Connor joked the kids were forced to wear tie-die uniforms, except for the occasional Naked Day.

"Let's go get something to drink," Connor called. "I'm dying for a Starbucks Frappuccino."

Mike turned and shot me a quick smile, his thin lips curving in a flash of perfect, white teeth. It made me glad, like a touch of home. Most of the smiles I saw here were marred by gold or decay. Behind Connor's back, I rolled my eyes. Starbucks? Did I know this guy?

We started off, Mike in the lead. He was the only one of us who'd bothered to learn key phrases in Uzbek and Russian, the only one seemed to know where he was going in a country where maps were hard to come by.

"Excuse me, but do we have to go back into the old city?" Connor said. "I don't want to get lost in that rat maze again."

Mike stopped and patted the guidebook in his back pocket. I couldn't help notice his ass looked great in jeans, muscular, squeezable. "I thought we'd try the most famous tea shop in the city before we leave," he said. "It's been around since the 16th century. Apparently the guy has his own website."

"Great. Then maybe we can go back to the hotel and order it online." Proud of his joke, Connor turned to me.

I nudged my lips into a smile.

"Look, I mean it. I'd rather go back to hotel for a swim. Tara?" The arched eyebrow was clearly an offer. We hadn't had sex since we landed in Tashkent. Dinner didn't agree with him, he was too hot or tired, there were too many damn flies. I'd given up asking.

I shook my head. I didn't come all the way to the other side of the world for a swim. And certainly not a sweaty fuck with old Connor.

Connor glanced at Mike, then back at me. "Okay, maybe I'll get lucky and they'll have Starbucks, too."

We started off again, Connor bobbing beside me, as if attached by an invisible rubber band. Soon enough, the narrow, twisting alleyways gave me the excuse to step closer to Mike. It wasn't the first time I'd hoped the people here thought I was with him.

The next stop of the trip was Nukus, near the border of Turkmenistan, where Mike's old lover, Ming Bao, was studying health problems in the local children. The city was dusty and charmless, but not our lovely host. Ming Bao greeted us at the gates of the medical compound, a moon goddess with a whisper of a voice. Mike had to bend down to hug her because she was so tiny. But when he lifted her and swung her around, her laugh bubbled out, rich and deep. At dinner -- a vegetarian spread of yogurt soup, cucumber salad and thick, yeasty rounds of bread -- they sat close and murmured things we couldn't hear, the way they probably did back in college, on Mike's narrow dorm bed.

All through the meal, I couldn't keep my eyes off of Mike's hands. The fingers were thicker than Connor's, darker. I pictured one tanned, sturdy hand cupping Ming Bao's small breast, her coffee-drop nipple caught between his thumb and forefinger, while his other hand dipped between her legs to part the slick petals of her most secret flesh.

I ate more than usual that night. Practically shoveled it in, Connor said.

But to my surprise, Ming Bao made Mike sleep in her guest room with me and Connor, the three of us camped out on the floor on an odd collection of mattresses and futons. Connor insisted I take the middle -- not that he didn't love his buddy Mike, he just didn't want him to get the wrong idea.

"No more off-the-beaten track travel for me," Connor was saying. He lounged back on one elbow rather languidly, but I could tell he wanted a fight. "There's a reason nobody comes here. It's the armpit of the world. And I'll bet this poisonous dust takes a couple of years off of my life."

Mike was settled back on his lumpy futon, hands clasped behind his head. "Ming Bao said it's not carcinogenic."

"She has to believe that, you idiot. She lives here," Connor snorted.

Mike sat up. His eyes held a strange light. "All right, dude. So next time go to Club Med. But don't look too hard at the waiter who tries to sell you his sister with your piña colada, or the skinny kid begging you for quarters, because if you do bother to look, it's all ugly."

"Excuse me teacher, will this be on our 'Social Justice' exam?" Connor smirked at me.

A few weeks before I would have laughed. Now I pulled the blanket up over my head.

"Now you've made the girl disappear." It was Mike's voice. "How are we going to have any fun tonight?"

Connor hooked an arm around me and pulled me toward him. "She's mine, remember? Yours is down the hall in the locked bedroom."

I peeped out from the covers, but Mike didn't look mad. He lay back and smiled, as if he knew the joke was on him, but didn't mind. Even in the dim light, I could see the dark stubble on his cheek, hinting at a secret, but tireless masculine vigor. If we kissed, that beard would chafe my lips, my chin.

He must have seen me looking, because I thought I saw him wink at me. Or maybe I just imagined it?

At first I'm not sure where I am. The room is opulent, with chandeliers and dark paneling and thick ruby carpets. Mike is there, too, standing beside me in a shiny green tux with sequined lapels, something a Vegas magician might wear. I want to whisper a warning: They'll all know we're American now. But Mike doesn't notice. He's busy fishing around down the front of my dress. I glance down and see I've grown a Vegas-style cleavage, fat melons bursting out of a sequined gown in the same gaudy green. The skin glistens as if coated with oil. Mike slowly pulls his hand out and with it comes a string of pearls. Each tiny white globe makes a liquid smack as it emerges from the crevice of flesh. My new breasts are heavy and a little sore but what he's doing feels very nice.

I see his other hand reach down between my thighs, and just then I notice the bottom half of my dress is missing and I'm standing with my legs wide open, my pussy rudely exposed. Mike's fingers disappear inside me and he pulls out another string of pearls -- or is it the same one? -- each jewel stretching my ruddy inner lips into an "o" of pleasure. The pearls grow larger and fuller and Mike has to coax the last one out, tug-tug-tug, and he starts panting and....

I woke up wet, with my nightshirt hiked up to my neck and a boner pressed against my ass.

"Hey," I whispered.

"I thought you'd never wake up." It was Connor's purr. Damn.

At least Mike was sleeping with his back to us.

I gave Connor a nasty look, but he just grinned.

"Come on, Tara. You're already wet."

I mouthed "no."

He frowned and pressed my head downward with his hand, how-about-a-blowjob-baby in any language. I saw, as if through Mike's eyes, the backlit image of me nodding over Connor's crotch like an oil derrick.

"Make love to me," I whispered.

"You do want it, eh, princess?"

Thanks to the dream, I did, but I wanted something else, too. Since the beginning of the trip, I'd felt it, a pulling and stretching of some tight little knot of an internal organ I didn't know I had, but I wasn't sure which way to go to make it stop. Maybe sex would do the trick. I let Connor roll on top of me and searched the darkness behind my eyelids for some help to keep it short and sweet.

Princess? Yes, a captive princess. A yurt hung with silk carpets. The Mongol chieftain was trying me out for his harem. He was a busy man. Had lots of cities to conquer, villages to burn. If I didn't climax quickly, I'd be handed over to his men for their unspeakable pleasures.

I hooked my heels behind Connor's knees and bucked up against him so that his tight belly rubbed my clit just right and his balls tickled my back door with each delicious thrust. It was working. Another minute of this and I'd be chief concubine.

Then I saw them. Rows of obsidian eyes, watching us through the tent flap. I turned my head away, but worked my hips faster. Because, in truth, I wanted them to see, to ache for what they'd never have, and now their hands were pulling open loincloths, drawing out flushed, rigid wands, yank-yank-yanking until ribbons of semen twirled through the air, and then, oh yes, it was coming, my victory, galloping hot and hard from my belly to my chest and skull and...

I managed to stifle my cries in Connor's shoulder, but his groans would've wakened the dead.

At breakfast Connor announced that he wouldn't be going with us on the overnight trip to Moynaq, a resort left high and dry by the dying Aral Sea. "I'm sure I'll catch something from that toxic sand blowing around," he said. "But you two go ahead and enjoy."

I knew then he'd planned the whole thing. Mark your woman well before you send her off. A Mongol chieftain indeed.

And now Mike and I are finally alone.

Nasim stops the car at the Soviet war memorial, a triangle of concrete projecting from the sand like a giant sundial. He points to the vast desert laid out before us. "Sea," he smiles, making swimming motions with his hands.

Mike meets my eyes, then looks away.

I'd read about what happened here, but nothing could prepare me for the real thing. Back in the '60s, the Soviets diverted more and more water from the rivers to grow cotton to clothe the army. For twenty years, this central planner's fantasy-come-true made the desert bloom, but the Aral Sea was shrinking and now this once-thriving seaport is a desert village of sand and salt that sparkles like snow.

"Was the sea here when you were a child?" Mike asks Nasim.

"Yes, oh, yes." The big man chuckles as if at the funniest joke imaginable.

Next Nasim drives us to the ship's graveyard, a must-see for crazy foreign tourists. We shuffle across the sand and crunch through patches of baked salt and mud to the huge carcasses of the abandoned vessels. Some are half-buried, some stand upright as if still floating in water, their flanks blistered like burnt skin. One looks more cheerful than the others. It is painted gray and white, but only on one side. Nasim explains a film crew from Europe painted the ship to make it look sharper for a documentary.

He gestures at Mike's digital camera. "I take picture of you and your wife."

I hesitate, but Mike laughs and throws his arm around me. Perhaps he feels our little problem has faded to nothing in the face of such devastation.

In the picture we both grin like we really are newlyweds -- or fools.

Neither of us say anything when Nasim puts our bags in the same room at the deserted guesthouse and closes the door discreetly. The place has all the charms of the Soviet era -- a lumpy double bed, a metal dresser, two straight-back chairs.

Mike collapses on the bed, leaving, I notice, plenty of room for me.

"'Depressing' doesn't begin to describe it," I say, brushing sand from my hair. "But I'm glad I came."

"Me, too," he says quietly. "This is one of the earth's greatest ecological disasters. It's important to bear witness, even if you can't do much else."

"You've done a lot of witnessing today, haven't you?"

Mike shrugs.

"I'm breaking up with Connor when we get home," I say. The knot in my belly lurches, but I think I mean it.

At this his eyes flicker. "I probably shouldn't say this, but he doesn't treat you right."

He isn't going to get an argument from me. I stretch out on the bed.

"You've probably seen a lot of his women come and go."

Mike thinks for a moment. "A few."

I'm about to ask for details, but stop myself. That's all in the past now. Instead I say, "Why do you think Nasim laughed when he talked about the sea?"

"Maybe it's the only thing he can do."

"Laughing in a graveyard," I murmur.

Mike studies my face. "You know what I do when I'm in a hotel? I try to imagine the people who slept in this bed before, hoping of course, that the sheets have been changed in the interim."

I have to smile. "It was probably all Communist bigwigs in a place like this when the sea was right outside."

His smile looks even sweeter against the day's sunburn. "I'm sensing honeymooners. The kids of the bigwigs on their first night alone."

"Oh, I'm sure they'd been fucking like bunnies since they met." If he's trying to cheer me up, it's working.

"No way. Her father was KGB. The guy knew if he touched her, he'd have a one-way ticket to the Gulag." Mike turns on his side to face me, but a chaste few inches of bed still divide us.

"So they had to wait?" I ask, giving him a sidelong glance.

"Yes, and it wasn't easy. For him at least. He'd look at her across the table in a café and try to decide which part of her was the most beautiful -- her blue eyes, the curve of her lips, the four cute freckles on her hand." Mike must be a magician because when he taps my hand gently -- four times -- I feel it in other places, too.

"It wasn't easy for her either. She had dreams about him, naughty dreams and when she woke up she was wet...down there...." Here my voice turns husky and falters. I close my eyes.

"He dreamed about her, too, even when he was awake. He wanted to be the one to kiss her and touch her and make her breath come fast."

He pauses. The bed creaks. I feel the warmth of his body.

Suddenly I freeze. Is this really what I want? This isn't a land where dreams come true. There's no silk here, no conquering chieftains, no sea. Only things that are dead or dying.

And yet, even as I lie here, I feel myself stepping forward, falling.

I was right about his whiskers, but the roughness soon fades to heat. I've been waiting for this, too, the taste of him, the merging, but at first I only sense my own skin, the way my tongue floats in my mouth as it dances around his. His hand finds my breast and he rolls my nipple between his fingers, the soft cloth of my dress adding a luscious friction of its own. And then, as if I've willed it, the other hand dips beneath my skirt, one finger slipping under the elastic of my panties, damp with new arousal. Slowly he begins to strum. Nipple and clit are now joined by a strand of pleasure stretching hot and full through my torso. My breath is indeed coming faster and then, more slowly, my body lifts off the bed as the tightness under my ribs begins to unravel, soft as silken thread, cresting then dipping like waves.

There's a loud knock on the door.

Mike sits up guiltily. I smooth my dress back over my knees.

"Mister and Missus," Nasim calls. "Dinner is ready. I make you my plov. Best feast in Karakalpakistan."

"Rahmat," Mike calls back.

We smile at each other. We have a night of feasting ahead.

On the way to the dining room, Mike pauses on the terrace.

"Look," he says waving his hand out over the desert. "The sea."

I'm about to laugh and tell him yes, his hands are magic, but even he can't bring the sea back. Yet as I gaze into the soft pink light of dusk, the sweep of sand really does begin to look like the sea. I don't ask him how he's done it. You don't ask the sorcerer his secret. You marvel at it, and believe.

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