Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 2

THE PHOENIX TATTOOS Richard Lord, Singapore

It was probably because he was at Spinelli’s that day. He was really a Coffee Bean person. His drink was cappuccino, and neither Spinelli’s nor Starbucks has the right cup for cappuccino. Their cups are all tall and thin, so you get all the milk and foam at once and only reach the coffee when you near the end of your drink.

For that reason alone, he rarely went to Spinelli’s. And, deeply addicted to habit, he hated altering his routine. Strange, unwelcome things often happened to him when he broke routine. Which may be why on that day, having gone to Spinelli’s for his cappuccino, he had that “episode.” While manoeuvering the cup so that he could draw a good swallow of coffee along with the thick clouds of foam, he happened to look over and noticed her. She was pretty, of course, but so were many of the other girls sitting there, or walking by, some much prettier. But his eyes locked on this one. Wait a minute, wasn’t she…? No, that wasn’t her, but… suddenly, it came back to him, at least a part of it. That one time. The two of them together, and fantastic sex.

He couldn’t remember her name, or where he had met her, even where they had gone to make love… well, have sex. It couldn’t really have been love. It was more like… Like?

No, none of that came back to him; but the lovemaking was indelibly printed on his brain. As he gazed at her across the room, he recalled that so pale body, every lovely contour: the smallish but well-shaped breasts, the low sweep of her back proceeding up in a gentle slope to her buttocks, the dark wedge of hair between her thighs.

Just as he started considering that it might have been simply a dream that this girl had turned up in—maybe he had once seen her on the street or in a mall and his flash craving for her returned in a dream—she looked up. The expression on her face, stun and bitterness together, told him it was not just a dream; she had been there, wherever it was. His eyes and brow scrunched up, as if to ask her where they knew each other from. But she instantly turned away, looked around for another table and, not finding one in the crowded cafe, simply pivoted her chair so her back was to him.

He kept staring, however, and on seeing her back, that other key detail suddenly flashed. Yes, how could he have ever forgotten that? The phoenix tattoo, double-headed, there on the small of her back, on the left side. Hypnotic. In such vibrant colours it seemed to be dancing slowly in its flames, even as she lay absolutely still. And it had an identical twin on the crown of her right breast.

Yes, the two tattoos. The thing was, they weren’t just adornments: they played such an important role in their lovemaking. By just pressing them, he could make her instantly aroused, or intensify the pleasure. On that day—or evening, or whenever—when they had been together, he would lean forward during the coupling and kiss the tattoo on her breast while gently pressing the other on her back. She’d start to climax, and he would press harder on the one tattoo while kissing the breast tattoo more intensely. She would come, screaming, digging the blunt side of her fingers into his neck, then drag them down his back, pull at his hair with her teeth, maybe bite his neck or ear as he lifted his head from her breast.

All of this he could remember so acutely. Yet nothing else.

She was waiting for someone, a friend apparently, and that second girl arrived within minutes. She must have told this friend about the episode, because after a short, heads-lowered exchange, the friend looked up and floated him a dirty look. Hell, he must have done something terrible at the time—but he hadn’t the slightest inkling of what it was.

He couldn’t keep from staring over at them, so he edged his chair sideways, in the other direction, and tried to busy himself. But this whole thing was beginning to gnaw further inside him, upsetting the carefully arranged furniture of habit and planning. Nothing like this had ever happened to him, that some details of such an incident remained so vivid—he could see, hear, even taste them right there—and that he completely forgot other details at least as important.

He pulled out a notebook, found a clean page and started sketching the tattoo. As he drew, he recalled how just kissing the tattoo on her lower back had brought her to fierce arousal, how her legs would thrash and her butt gyrate as he kissed her there again and again, his lips and tongue pressing into her pliant flesh.

He pulled out a red pen to add more colour, more “activity” to his drawing. He only had the black and the red, while the tattoos themselves flaunted other rich colours: ochre, green, gold, purple… one he couldn’t even name. But he was able to come up with a good facsimile, considering his meagre materials. He smiled: yeah, not at all bad. Maybe he should have listened to less practical people and gone into graphic art instead of law. He would certainly not have made as much money as he did now, but he might actually be happier.

When he finished, he turned back and looked over to their table. They were still talking, this time ignoring him. He added a few last strokes to the drawing; yes, that’s pretty close to the way it looked. He glanced over at them again. Even from this angle, he could see how alluring the girl was. The way her shift pulled against her body as she sat in the chair made him think of that same body naked, writhing there in the bed against the moist, pink sheets.

Wherever it had taken place.

He closed the notebook, finished his cappuccino in one long gulp and thought of just leaving, taking a wide turn away from them as he exited.

Almost immediately, however, he realised this was impossible. How could he walk away from this woman with whom he had apparently shared something incredible, yet lost so much of. He had to find out what this was all about, or at least make more of an attempt than that feeble questioning look he had thrown her.

He pulled out the notebook again, carefully tore out the page with the drawing, rose and moved quickly over to their table. The friend looked up first; the girl herself gave him just a cursory glance, turned, looked down and started twisting the edges of a serviette into tiny cones. “Could you please get out of here? We’re having a conversation, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Actually, I did notice,” he replied. “But I wanted to give you something.” He placed the drawing down on the table, right in front of the girl. Her friend looked puzzled. The girl turned to her friend and said something in a soft voice; he tried, but was unable to make out more than a few words. The friend nodded, stood up, started moving away. About a metre from the table, she spun around and pointed to her watch.

“Fifteen minutes,” the girl said, shaking her head, then turned back to him. “Okay, you can sit down if you like.” He nodded, pulled out the nearest chair to hers and started to slide it a little closer. “Not there,” she snapped.

“Take that one,” pointing to the chair on the opposite side of the table. He shrugged and settled himself into that seat.

She picked up the drawing and stared at it. Her face indicated that she was impressed. “That’s your tattoo, isn’t it?” She nodded. “You have it here,” he pointed to the spot on his own back; she nodded again. “And the other one… higher up, on the other side.”

She looked at him fully for the first time since she had first spotted him.

“Yes, so what?”

He shifted uneasily, but allowed himself to place his hands on the table.

“Do you know who I am?” He tried to control his voice, to sound calm, but a slight note of desperation slipped in.

“Of course. What do you think, that I’d forget something like that? Shit, you have an even lower opinion of me than I thought.”

“No, no, it’s not that, it’s just… Alright, now how can I explain this?” He searched for the next path to follow. “Do you know my name?” She snorted out a derisive laugh. “No, I don’t. You didn’t want to tell me, remember? You said, ‘Just call me David Beckham.’”

“No, I don’t remember, that’s the problem. I just don’t… I mean, there are so many details there from that… time together. So vivid up here.” He pointed to his head. “But then so much I just can’t recall.”

“Like?”

“Like… just your name. Did you tell me your name?”

“Of course, I did. I guess I was just too naive back then. I trusted guys.” He felt a surge of free-floating guilt. Yes, he probably had treated her terribly. That may be why he was experiencing this bout of selective amnesia.

He’d read somewhere how the brain often filters out things that are especially unpleasant, or that we’re horribly ashamed of. A defence mechanism that helps us to move on. But what horrible thing could he have done? She didn’t seem to bear any traces of physical damage. What could he have done to her inside?

“Any-thing else?” She snapped his contemplation with the harshness of this question.

“Yeah: a lot else. Where did it happen? Here in Singapore? At your place, at the uni hostel, a friend’s? Or were we somewhere on holiday?” She stung him with a look that said such an insulting question deserved only dire contempt. She turned, the bitter look still on her face, to check a message on her handphone. “I have to go,” she said icily without bothering to turn back to him.

But he couldn’t let it end there. “I’m sorry, but this has never happened to me before. Hey, I’m only twenty-seven. I usually get praised for my good memory. But I really can’t remember too much about that time we were…

together. Just the… well, the mechanics really and… your tattoos. Those tattoos were like some hypnotic medallions.”

“I see, so all you remember is the sex? Getting inside me, pumping like crazy, the stormy kisses, all that. Pushing all the right buttons, pulling all the right cords. Isn’t that what you guys call it?”

“Well, I also remember the colour of the sheets; they were pink, right?

And that ugly bedside lamp… then there was this thin rug which was a horrendous shade of green, and…” He looked up; it had suddenly come back to him. “And you said you would take me the next day to where you got your tattoos.” She said nothing, didn’t nod, but her narrowed eyes told him he was right. “You said you wanted me to get two just like them. You said it was…

necessary, that it was part of our being together.”

“So you don’t forget everything. You have a good memory for what you want to remember.”

“I want to remember it all. I want to remember your name, where we were, why we were there, how we got that far…” He stopped, suddenly realising that he had swept past what could be the key to the whole episode.

“And… why didn’t I go and get the tattoos?”

Her eyes narrowed further, as if they were turning into small creatures—mythical beings, half-reptile, half-whatever—going into attack mode. He actually started to get scared, thinking she might be able to physically attack him, take revenge for some wrong that he couldn’t remember but deeply deserved to be punished for.

“The pact,” she whispered, and then smiled. The smile looked like it tasted of strychnine. But it seemed as if this was a taste she enjoyed.

Here, he closed his own eyes, tightly. For one thing, he didn’t want to see her face at this moment. But more importantly, he needed to dig deep within himself to recover what kind of pact they could have made. If it was still there, he would find it. Nothing. He opened his eyes again, slowly, half-believing she’d be gone when he looked. But she was still there, of course.

However, the smile was gone; this time, there were tears trickling down her cheeks. As they reached her mouth, she opened it slightly and eased her tongue out. It seemed like she wanted to swallow them, to wash the acrid taste from her mouth.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t… what pact was this?” She closed her mouth tightly, her stare fixed on him, and the tears seemed to stop instantly. “Look, I’m really sorry if I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean that at all. I just wanted to… to get the whole story on what happened there.”

“There’s no story,” she answered. “There’s just ways in and ways out.” She glanced again at her handphone, more as an excuse than to read any messages there. “I have to go.”

She stood, started pulling her shopping bags together, then turned slightly to grab something off the next chair. Only at that moment did the impulse seize him; he acted on it without hesitation. As she was turned slightly to the right, he lunged over and touched the spot where he thought he remembered the tattoo being. He was, as it were, spot on. At the initial touch, she stiffened.

As he pressed harder against her flesh, she gasped. Her face knotted in a look of unwanted arousal. But almost immediately, she recovered: she swung around, looking like she had just been bitten by a snake. The expression on her face now clearly warned she was quite ready to attack.

What the hell was he doing? He could be charged with outrage of modesty. He was a lawyer, he knew that. If convicted, he could be suspended from practicing law—`for years maybe.

But being a lawyer, he also knew that he had a ready defence. He was just reaching out to flick something off her shift, there on the back. How did this constitute a sexual assault? To prove his guilt, she’d have to prove some offence was actually committed. Boy, would he love to see this in court: for her to stand up, expose the tattoo, have a deputy prosecutor touch the spot and watch her soar into instant ecstasy. The judge might even ask if he could touch it himself, just to be certain. He knew a few who would probably insist.

He laughed at this notion.

Of course, she had no idea he was laughing at some imagined judge, not her. So when she slapped him hard and jolted the laugh from his face, he was not, as he could have been, riled. But he realised it was useless trying to explain the matter to her. He would just accept the slap as a down payment on what he probably deserved from her.

“A joke, is it? Everything’s a joke for you.” She clutched her bags again and looked ready to pivot and leave.

“No, it’s not a joke, not at all. Look, stay just five more minutes.

I’m ready to fulfill my side of the pact. But I don’t remember what it is.

Honestly.” She looked at him hard, in a way he couldn’t read. Was she trying to judge whether to believe him or not? Or was she waiting for the perfect moment to do something awful to him, to gain what she must see as her justified revenge? “Honestly,” he repeated. “Honestly.” He shook his head in frustration, aware of how deeply dishonest the word “honestly” can sound.

Her features softened significantly. Had he reached her? Was she willing to listen to him, to give him back those parts of the story he was missing? Or was this just a trick to lull him before she struck again? She said nothing for about a minute, just stared at him; he felt like a cord was twisting inside him, slowly pulling his throat down further into his chest.

“No, I really have to go. I do.” She reached down, picked up a sheet of paper from the table, slightly torn at the top, coffee stains at one edge. She held it out to him. “This is yours.”

“No, you can keep it. It’s… it’s a present.”

She smiled at him for the first time, a smile without the strychnine anyway. She then reached into her soft black bag, extracted a pen, and inscribed something on the sheet. She extended it to him once more. “Now it’s my present to you.” After a slight hesitation, he took the drawing back.

“I have to go.”

“Can you give me a number or something where I can contact you?”

“No. You can’t contact me.”

“Okay then, how about… at least tell me where was it? Where did we?

No, better, why are those tattoos so… so powerful?” She smiled again, more warmly this time, whispered, “It’s there,” turned and moved off quickly. He rose, but then just stood there, watching her go. Until she disappeared, he had almost forgotten that he was holding the drawing. He quickly looked to see what she had written. He read, “What you can touch is just the beginning of what you can feel.” He frowned, then folded the sheet in half and slipped it into his wallet, next to the credit cards. “The beginning of what you can feel?” Well, he should be able to work this one out. He was a lawyer after all, someone who used logic to herd and corral the irrational.

And what was that last thing she said? “It’s there?” What’s there? The secret of the tattoos, the place where they met, the reason she couldn’t tell him?

Hmm… it was like his cappuccino, probably: at the bottom of all the foam, all the clouds, you eventually found what you were looking for. As she said, it’s there. And, somehow, he knew that it was.