John Abbott - Scimitar

She was lying naked on the wide lower berth where all last night they’d made love, a faint, pleased smile on her face, her long blond hair fanned out over the pillow, her head turned toward the closed bathroom door. The train was still heading eastward, it would not begin its true southern descent until they left Albany. The compartment’s picture window was facing north, it splashed a cold clear light into the room, broken occasionally by the dappling of infrequent trees along the track. The bathroom door opened.

He came out into the sharpness of sunlight streaming through the window, materialized like some dusty pagan god wearing only a white towel around his waist, his brown hair wet and plastered to his head, his grey-green eyes reflecting the light, his face breaking into a grin when he realized she was observing him solemnly and silently and — well, reverentially, she supposed, and felt suddenly embarrassed.

There was another glint of green, echoing the green of his eyes, darker in hue, curling like a misplaced eyebrow on his left pectoral, just below the nipple. She realized all at once that it was a tattoo, and further realized that it was a sword... well, some sort of sword... one of those swords you saw in the waistbands of guys wearing turbans and baggy pants... that kind of sword.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

“Is what what you think it is?” he said, drying himself now, the towel in his hands and no longer around his waist, his cock — he had taught her to call it a cock, and not a dick or a prick — his cock faintly tumescent even in repose. Her first boyfriend... well, the first boyfriend she’d known intimately — had called it a dick. That was when she was sixteen. The other two had called it a prick. That was when she was respectively seventeen and just nineteen. Last night, when she stopped being a teenager altogether, Sonny had informed her that a prick was what you called a son of a bitch. A cock was what he was about to put in her mouth.

“It is a tattoo, isn’t it?”

“Oh,” he said. “This.”

And looked down at his chest as if discovering it for the first time.

“A samovar, right?” she said.

He burst out laughing.

“No,” he said. “Not a samovar.”

“Well, what do you call that kind of sword?”

“A scimitar,” he said.

“Yes, that’s what I meant,” she said, and felt suddenly childish, suddenly the teenage girl again and not the woman she’d become, the woman he’d miraculously caused her to become. Still drying himself. The towel behind his back, an end in either hand, working the towel. His cock hanging there. Moving slightly with the movement of the towel. Like a pendulum. Hanging there. Moving. Waiting to be touched. By the woman, not the girl, not the child. She had a sudden desire to take him in her mouth again.

“Where’d you get it? The tattoo, I mean.”

Her eyes on his cock.

“In San Francisco,” he said.

“When?”

“I was still very young. Just out of medical school.”

“Why a sword? A scimitar.”

“Why not? The other new residents were getting mermaids and hearts and such. I figured a scimitar would be more original.”

“Why green? To match your eyes?”

“No, it was St. Patrick’s Day. We’d gone up there for the weekend. I thought green would be appropriate.”

“Bring it closer,” she said.

He walked to the bed. She reached out to touch the tattoo.

“Cute,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“This, too,” she said.

Geoffrey placed the call to Nepal at 1:00 P.M. sharp, New York time. He had eaten a hamburger and french fries at his desk, washing his lunch down with a Diet Coke, waiting for the appropriate time to call. By his calculation, it was now 10:40 P.M. in Kathmandu. Alison should be in her apartment and in bed at this hour, with nowhere to rush off to and plenty of time to talk. The phone rang once, twice, three times...

“Hello?”

A man’s voice. A brusque tone even in that single word. Had they put him through to the wrong number? Halfway across the bloody world?

“Yes, hello,” he said, “excuse me, I’m trying to reach...”

“Who’s calling, please?”

Same brusque tone, more impatient now.

And then, somewhere in the background, “Who is it, Spence?”

Alison’s voice. But who...?

“Is Miss Haywood there, please?” he said.

“Who is this?”

The voice thoroughly impatient now, virtually rude.

“Geoffrey Turner. May I please speak to Miss Haywood?”

“Moment.”

And off the line.

Muted voices in the background.

Spence who?

“Hello?”

Alison again. On the phone this time.

“Who was that?” he asked at once.

“Spence,” she said.

“Who’s Spence?”

“You know very well who Spence is.”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. Who in bloody...?”

“Sherwood Spencer Hughes,” she said.

Sounding every bit as impatient as Spence himself had a moment earlier. Sherwood Spencer Hughes, Her Majesty’s Consul-General, familiarly known as Snuffy, except apparently to a certain female Grade-9 who called him Spence and in whose rooms he happened to be at — what the hell time was it?

“What’s Snuffy...?”

“People do call him Spence, you know.”

“I’m sure,” Geoffrey said. “But what’s he doing at your place at this hour of the night?”

“Late meeting,” she said.

A shrug in her voice.

“Alison?” he said.

“Yes, Geoffrey?”

Cool. Precise.

“Alison... what’s going on, would you mind telling me?”

“I assure you nothing’s going on.”

“Then what... I call your place at whatever the hell time it is there, and Snuffy answers the...”

“Geoffrey, I’m truly sorry, but this is an inconvenient time for me. As I told you...”

“Inconvenient? I’m calling all the way from...”

“Yes, but we’re in the midst of a meeting here.”

“Well, I’m awfully damn sorry about your meeting, but...”

“I’ll have to ring off now,” she said.

“Not before we...”

The phone went dead.

“Hello?” he said. “Alison?”

And looked at the receiver in his hand.

Snuffy? he thought.

He’s sixty-two years old !

One moment he was there, and the next he was not. He was carrying only a single suitcase, whereas she was carrying trunks and trunks full of clothes, which she probably should have shipped by UPS as her mother had suggested. But until these past several nights of ecstatic instruction, she’d been merely a rebellious teenager who’d objected automatically to any suggestion her mother made, and so the tons of trunks — well, actually one camp trunk and two oversized suitcases.

Plus a duffle full of dirty clothes.

And a traveling case with her cosmetics and perfumes in it.

And her tote, which contained — in addition to her wallet and Kleenex tissues and chewing gum and hairbrush and whatnot — a pair of jogging shoes which she would have put on if she’d been alone and not with Sonny. Sonny preferred heels. So she stood now with her luggage, wearing moderately high heels and a trim blue suit, no hose because of the suffocating heat, long blond hair pulled back in a cool, elegant and she hoped womanly bun, the tote slung over her shoulder, waiting for him to come back with a porter.

Penn Station looked worse each time she saw it.

When she’d been home for the spring break, she thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, there was just no way on earth it could look more like New Delhi, she had to ask Sonny if he’d ever been to New Delhi and did Penn Station look worse? Although he’d already told her he’d been born in London and had spent most of his childhood and young manhood here in the United States, which didn’t come as much of a surprise since he didn’t sound British at all, despite his mother.