No

Minna Somayan returned four days later, knocking on the door soon after his shower and a beer at the end of work. Who would knock at her own front door? The answer was Minna, filling the room and his heart with joy on a sweet touching of lips. “Hi, you.”

He melted. Four hands floated like butterflies in a garden, in which buttons are flowers. They cross-pollinated, opening, discarding, breathing steadily as a healthy young woman and a dive instructor can do in a daunting situation. Naked, he laid her on the bed, at the gates of kingdom come.

Moving slower than an old boyfriend ever could, he feasted his eyes and senses. She watched with equal fervor. He resisted his own volition, savoring the moment. He twitched, prolonging the sweet agony till tides could wait no more. In a moment, the world would be his. Why would a man so wealthy need to rush?

So he gazed, not meaning to ask where she’d been. He meant to bemoan his days and nights without her, the distraction of it and, oh, his tarnished image on board because of errors—but it came out wrong. “Where were you?” It sounded like jealousy.

“Oh, God! You’re not jealous?”

“No. I don’t get jealous.”

“What? You don’t get jealous?”

“I told you: I don’t get jealous.” He shrugged to prove it. The delay in physical contact got strained but felt necessary. He stared up. “I’ve never been jealous. That’s a good thing, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. It’s the greatest…” She sat up to slump on the edge of the bed. In a monotone she said she’d been home. That was it. She’d been at her parents’ place, explaining things. They wished the newlyweds well and hoped for a long and prosperous life.

The End.

Except that a man so seasoned at depth doesn’t need to see a thing to feel its presence in the periphery. He sat up too. She said she also used the time to recover from an episode of… well, female things, if he must know, things of a personal nature.

If he must know? Oh, how little he knew. Why would she leave for her period, if that’s what it was? He stood up. He looked out the window and back at her snatch, as if for clues. He looked down at the old ramrod, so rudely left alone for so many days.

And, he might as well know, she made good use of her time by getting rid of the asshole responsible for… a major part of her problems. Or tried to get rid of him at any rate, though the incredible jerk had this sick notion that she was his property till he was good and goddamn ready to let her go, and anybody who tried to take what was his would be in for a bumpy ride on a very rough road.

Getting rid of the asshole?

She laughed, “What a jerk. You would not believe this guy. He can’t even talk. He says, ‘You like die?’ Like I’d hang with that lowlife forever. Like it doesn’t even matter that I’m married now. Hell-oh-oh…” She smiled in the cute, pixie persona of happier times but failed on a quiver.

Frankly embarrassed that the woman of his dreams touched his thumper in the same sentence of disclosing a former thumper, Ravi shivered in a sudden chill. Goose bumps rose like samurai from the underbrush, as she cried out, “Look at you, with the chicken skin!” She laughed again, a small, forced laugh to salvage the difficult moment, playfully prodding the other little samurai.

“He’s… what? Your boyfriend?”

“Was. Fourteen years. But it’s over. It was a mistake. Hey. I’m twenty-six years old. Okay? This guy, he takes advantage when I’m only twelve. Yeah, I went along. I was mature for my age. But fourteen years? Enough already. One time, I fuck him. One. It wasn’t so good. The other times were terrible. It doesn’t work with him. He thinks he owns me. He too rough is why. I get out because I want something else. That’s why. I want you.”

“You mean he didn’t know about me, so you had to go home to tell him we’re married?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean. I tell him every time. I mean, not married every time. You the only one so far, married and all. Still every time he get all huff and puff, want to blow away whodaguy.”

“Whodaguy?”

“Yeah. This time, you da guy. Hey. No worries. He been saying that for years.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.”

“I don’t. I told you. I used to. You never have one girlfriend?”

“Why are you talking differently?”

“Pshh. Because. I been around that guy. That’s why—hey. You been taking steroids?” She addressed the thick-necked, muscle-bound bully in her hand, which she coddled and coaxed toward testimony one more time in the face of rigorous cross-examination.

“So what? He wants to… make trouble?”

“He won’t do nothing. He’s my cousin, Darryl. My uncle would kill him. My mother too. I always look up to him in school and what not, but I got so sick of him. He’s crazy. I been done with him since high school. Eight years already. Besides, we married already!”

“He wants to shoot me?”

“All talk. Listen. You the one. You different, Ravi. I love you. I want you to be strong. Look at you. Look how strong you are.”

She’d spoken Standard English, with a subject and verb for each sentence. She’d displayed proper grammar, syntax, diction, and enunciation. Yet she receded to pidgin security. Pidgin is jumbled slang with marginal meaning. Pidgin communicated on da kine. Ravi asked, “Can you please stop talking like that?”

She laughed, “Ah dunno.”

He went mum, remembering that marriage is forever. She saw and tried to take them back to lovely times, as if the physical could preclude the regretful. But it could not. What had seemed heaven sent got reduced to wrinkled foreheads. He asked. “You tell him every time?” Skinny complained from the dresser, as if to remind. It’s not like I didn’t tell you. Yet she too sympathized for the fools before her.

Ravi shook his head and lost the loving feeling.

“No you didn’t.” He meant that Skinny had said no such thing, that sweetness and light had fooled them both. The strange woman between them moaned, so the pathos between them could give in to the old pleasures. She peered up, but the kaleidoscope refracted the scene to broken glass and nothing more.

So a mover and a shaker in the charter community pondered his afternoon agenda and how to send this date down the road. She’d stayed longer than most. That’s what a pretty face can do. Maybe he could begin that evening, charting a future. Who was that guy, who’d felt eternal bonding in a world turning perfectly at last?

Married? Fuck.

So the world turned back from light and magic to mundane reality. Shadows stretched over the garden, where nothing took root. No more butterflies and gentle pollination. No more mystery and metaphor, where buttons were flowers. A tiptoe through the tulips was just another jizz fest—a great one at that, though a bit heavy on sentiment. The guys laughed that women were all the same once upside down. Ravi had thought different, especially this one.

Then love ended, like life. The woman looked up with a swollen smile to watch his Pyrrhic victory, to see the difference between sweet agony and agonizing loss, and she moaned again.

That was some pent-up mustard. But what did she expect, and why on God’s blue earth would she tell the ex-boyfriend about a marriage? Would she tell the ex everything, as if the ex didn’t know? So he asked again, “Why did you do that?”

Glancing at the window, she asked, “You can make more, can’t you?” She underscored her familiarity with manly function, not that Ravi Rockulz would begrudge a beautiful woman her frolicking past. But this was different. This woman was his…

Yes, many sexual helpers were married or had boyfriends. This was different, with spirit and intimacy—not like that nutcase Marcia who swore she’d keep sucking him off till they were eighty—or ninety! Because she loved him sooo much. This wasn’t like that! Minna had a reason to tell her Cousin Darryl about her husband. Maybe telling the cousin was revenge. Some women need to hurt the macho men who “own” them.

Or maybe she wanted to egg him on.

Some women need to win the macho game. Whatever; the beautiful wave collapsed on a strange woman he did not know.

“Oh, God!” she said when a rattle-bucket truck roared up and screeched to a halt. Ravi peaked out at the goofy truck four feet off the ground on mongo tires, with two big trannies, sixteen shocks and a fortune in silly hardware chromed or painted red or yellow. Springs, shafts, gizmos, padlocks, exhaust trumpets, U-joints, and the works. Jumping to the ground, a swarthy man with a Fu Manchu, a potbelly, and a handgun, looked around for signs of life.

“You little cunt! I’ll kill every bone in your body!” He fired a round in the air.

She whispered, “Sh. He’s so stupid. He’ll never find us. What’s he going to do, knock on the door?”

Ravi whispered back, “Why are you whispering then?”

She giggled. “Sh. God. You think you’re jealous. He’s insane.”

It was fun, but it wasn’t. “At least I’m not haole.”

“Hey. You know what? I wouldn’t go out to tell him that. Okay? Aw, shit! Look! No wonder he get so mad. His windows all webbed.”

Besides that, the irate ex then bellowed like a sad animal, “Our son needs you!”