IN THE MORNING, as a finger or two of sunlight picked its way through the few gaps between the adula leaves, Lintoa was first to awaken, which was only to be expected as he wasn’t the one who had almost OD’d on kassa the night before. It took him a moment or two to remember where he was and during that time he came to realize he was not alone under the adulas. Something nearby in the gloom was snorting. At first he thought he’d got lucky and found himself a black bantam pig without looking and was just wondering what he could use as a weapon – could you finish one off with a high heel? how much damage would a nail file inflict? – when he noticed the outline of a body next to him. Now Sandy Beach was little, and not unendowed with porcine qualities, but even he was not so small as a dwarf pig and it wasn’t long before Lintoa realized his companion was human. It took his eyes a moment or two to get accustomed to the dim light but once they did he soon ascertained that his bedfellow was the little flame-haired American who had arrived on the island a couple of days earlier.
He stood up, intending to sneak off but before he had managed to part the adula leaves, Beach’s eyes flipped open. As soon as they found Lintoa, Beach’s jaw dropped open too. He pulled himself into a sitting position. ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a place this island is, to have someone like you on it!’
Lintoa didn’t know how to respond. His main worry was that Beach would ask what he was doing there or might gossip about him having passed the night outside the village, which could lead to awkward questions and perhaps even the discovery of his liaison with Perlua which was taboo for at least three reasons he could think of: that she was white, that they were both girls and that he cross-dressed as a boy when he met up with her.
‘Moning,’ said Lintoa, for want of anything better to say. ‘Is be plenty damn better from last night.’ This was true. The wind had dropped and the roar of the ocean had now diminished to the lonesome sighing of the surf.
Beach didn’t say anything. He wasn’t about to discuss something as mundane as the weather with the vision he beheld. He hardly had the breath to talk, let alone to waste on platitudes. When he recovered the power of speech at last, all he could manage was a slow and passionate, ‘Hot banana . . .’
‘I is must go,’ said Lintoa. ‘I is be late for shitting.’ The she-boys always shat together on a section of beach between those set aside for male and female defecation. As the only other she-boy of his age now was Sussua, if Lintoa was late it would mean she’d have to shit alone with no-one to talk to. Not only that but he would be conspicuous by his absence, leading to questions about where he’d been. So he thrust aside the adula leaves and, carrying his high heels, which were useless anyway on sand, strode off.
Beach was overwhelmed. God, this woman! She was big. No, she was really BIG. She was an amazon, the kind of woman who could fuck you to within an inch of your life. But it wasn’t just that. Beach was taken aback at the emotion that swelled up inside of him. It wasn’t centred on the fork of his legs, as his feelings for the opposite sex invariably were; it felt to start in his stomach and move in waves into his back where it seemed to take hold of and squeeze his kidneys. He could scarcely breathe. ‘No, wait!’ he shouted after Lintoa. ‘Don’t leave me now!’
He got to his feet and tried to make his way out of the adula bower, but when he pushed at the leaves they only sprang back and attacked his face. He whirled his arms around frantically, desperate to get out but this only seemed to make the leaves mad so that they came back at him even more strongly. His head hurt like hell from the kassa and his brain was dehydrated and working on half its cylinders. The result was, after a couple of minutes he was exhausted and fell to his knees. It was now that he noticed that the hem of the adula canopy was a few inches above the ground. He dropped to his stomach and slithered under.
By now even Lintoa’s massive figure was tiny in the distance. Beach ran after her, but he kept stumbling in the soft sand. In the end he had to give up and could do no more than watch as the loveliest woman he had ever seen walked further and further away from him.
He determined to catch her in the village but as he approached it, having to stop and rest every couple of minutes because of his kassa hangover, he was overtaken by William and Dr Gold who were on their way to the shitting beach.
‘Hey, what’s the rush?’ asked Dr Gold as Beach again tried to run on the soft sand and fell flat on his face. ‘Are you that desperate to shit? Maybe this drug you ingested last night had an effect on your digestion.’
Beach ignored this remark. ‘Didn’t you see her? The girl in the red dress? She’s gorgeous. So – so – so—’
‘Big?’ said William.
‘Yes, big,’ said Beach. ‘But not just that. There’s something special about her I can’t quite put my finger on.’
Try putting it between her legs, thought William. But he said nothing about Lintoa to enlighten Beach. He figured Lintoa could look after himself.