Wounded (9 page)

She glances at me, then pulls the blanket off me. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was blushing. It's a ridiculous idea, though, given what she does for a living. She doesn't look at me as she gently peels at the tape around the bandage on my leg.
 

"Do it fast," I tell her. She looks at me quizzically. "Fast."
 

I show her, ripping the bandage off quickly. It hurts like a bitch, and I have to stifle a groan. She picks at the bandage on one of my shoulders, going slowly again.
 

"No, do it fast." I mime ripping quickly. She looks at me incredulously and says something. I shrug. "It's better to just get it over with."

She peels slowly. I curse, put my hand on hers, and rip it away, hissing through my teeth. She jerks her hand away and scrambles backward, chattering angrily, jabbing her finger at me.
 

She doesn't like to be touched, I guess. I lift my hands up. "I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

I put my hands on my lap, covering myself, fingers threaded. She moves toward me again and pulls the last bandage off, quickly this time. I nod and she shakes her head in disbelief.
 

Stupid ass
, I imagine her saying again.

She takes a roll of gauze and rips a long, ragged piece off. I frown, wanting to show her how to do it right. I glance at the foot of my blankets and see my clothes, some of my gear. My combat knife. I tap her shoulder, point at the knife. She shakes her head, but I point again. She gives it to me and scrambles away, leaving the gauze near me. I pick it up, eyes locked on hers, and cut a neat square, show it to her, then a second and third. I sheathe the knife and toss it out of reach.
 

She creeps back toward me like a skittish kitten, takes the gauze squares from me and gingerly places them on one of the wounds. There's an aged bottle of peroxide on the counter and I point at it. The wounds need to stay clean. She frowns at me, but gets the bottle and hands it to me. I dump a small amount on my wound, and my teeth almost crack from the strain of containing my scream of pain.
 

Fuck, it hurts.
 

She takes it from me and does the same to the rest of my wounds, and by the end I pass out from the pain. I come to, and she's clumsily taping the gauze on, loose and off-center.

"No, no. Not like that," I say.

She starts and drops the tape. I rip off the bandage she did and re-tape it, centered and tight. She watches carefully, and then does the same. Her fingers on my skin are gentle, careful, feather brushes. She looks to me and I nod.

"Good job. Much better. Thanks.
Chokran
."

She responds, and I shrug. She points at me, says “
Chokran
,” and then points at herself and repeats what she'd said, which I understand to mean "You're welcome." I repeat it, and she corrects my pronunciation.
 

She touches my chest, and this time I lay back down, slowly moving to the floor, each inch agony. I lay panting, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. I open my eyes to see her watching me, her expression inscrutable.

I examine her in the light of day. She's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. About my age, twenty-three or twenty-four, a narrow face with high cheekbones, small, delicate ears, full red lips framing a wide mouth. Her eyes are like chocolate, dark and liquid, watching me watch her. Her body is svelte. I remember that word from high school English class. Her waist is narrow, turning her slim hips into tantalizing curves, making her full breasts even more pronounced. I remember her mimed comment about hunger being the impetus for becoming a prostitute, and realize her thin figure is the result of true hunger rather than any desire to be thin for the sake of appearance.
 

She shrinks back under my gaze, realizing I'm looking at her appreciatively, like a man looks at a woman. Her eyes harden and her lip curls. Her fists clench.
 

I drop my gaze, but I feel her eyes on me a moment longer. She goes to the doorway, peers out, and ducks back in. Her face is shuttered closed, hard, ice-cold. She reapplies lipstick, retouches her blush, too much.
 

She has a trick, I realize. She's totally different, now. Her body is loose, her hips swaying as she moves to the door; before, each motion was tightly controlled, precise. Now, she's like liquid, exuding sultry confidence that I realize is totally faked. She glances at me once as she moves out of sight, and I see a flash of some inscrutable emotion, there and gone.
 

I hear a man's voice, hers answering, low and sweet. Fake. The air is still today, and I can hear everything. A jingle of a belt, faintly. Her voice, moaning, fake, too loud. His voice, grunting, porcine.

Vomit roils in my belly, anger pulses in my chest. Hate. Jealousy. Disgust.
 

Where is this coming from?
 

I don't know her. Don't even know her name. So why am I reacting this strongly? There's no answer, but each moment increases the tempo of my rage, beating with my frantic heartbeat. Each sound makes my gut clench. Her voice, so falsely enthusiastic, shreds my nerves.
 

I recognize the emotions now. All together, they form a single feeling: helplessness. I want to stop this, but I can't. Physically, I can't even move. It's her choice, her life, not mine. And I'm completely dependent on her.

Fuck.

After far too long, a span of maybe ten minutes, she reappears, repeating the process of cleaning herself in the tiny doorless bathroom. She fixes her hair and lipstick and blush and clothes. I don't watch this time.
 

She glances at me once she's done fixing herself. I try valiantly to keep my face neutral. I don't know what she sees, but she turns away from me and goes outside, leaning against the outside of her house near the window, just within view. I can see her back, a strip of skin visible between skirt and shirt.
 

I shouldn't want to touch that stripe of skin, but I do.

The desire is overwhelming.
 

I lever myself up off the ground, holding my breath against the pain, and then let myself fall back down. Lightning bolts of excruciating pain shoot through me, blinding white, subsuming me until I pass out.

Darkness floats over me, welcome relief from desires I shouldn't have and don't understand.

FIVE

RANIA

He is asleep. So handsome. I do not understand what is happening to me. From the first moment I saw him, something in him called to my blood and made it sing. Even now, my last client of the day gone as the sun sets, my body thrums merely looking at him.
 

His jaw is square and strong, his hair as black as the darkest hour of the night, making his shockingly blue eyes even more vivid. Of course, he is sleeping right now, so I cannot see his eyes, but they sear into me nonetheless, whether I am awake or asleep, working or at rest. His eyes seem to see me, the real me.
 

His body...pale skin, smooth and hairless except for a thin trail of hair from his navel down beneath the band of his underwear. He is hugely muscled, each limb sleek and thick and powerful. His chest is broad and hard, bulging with muscle even slack in sleep. His belly is like a plowed field, squares of muscle delineated by deep grooves. His arms are like cords of braided rope, each bicep wider than my thigh, his hands large and rough and powerful. His legs are like the twisted trunks of old trees, nearly as wide as my waist
 

No man I have ever seen looks like him. Of course, the men I know, they merely jingle their belts and pull out their manhood and do their quick and dirty business on me. They never disrobe entirely. They are never naked. To do so would be allowing themselves to be vulnerable. To stay clothed demonstrates their power over me. I must be naked while they remain clothed and pay me money so they may violate me.
 

This man, this American. He is not naked. He has his underwear on, and I have not moved them, so I have not seen him naked. But, even so he seems more fully nude than any man I have ever seen. I want to look away from him, but I cannot, and when I look at him, strange things flutter through me, pulse in the secret places of my heart and soul and body. It is like hunger, but not.

I remember Malik, my first client. I remember all too well the way he looked at me, and I remember thinking he looked hungry then. Is that what this is? The thought douses me with coldness and disgust. Is this feeling in my belly and between my thighs the hunger for sex?

No. That is not meant for anything but work. Money. Men are pigs. I am not a woman, I am a thing. An object, a servant for their needs. Sex is a tool.
 

But...nonetheless, I cannot stop looking at him.

He must be in pain. He moans even as he sleeps, trying to roll over in his sleep, but the pain stops him. I remember his hand touching mine as he showed me how to rip the bandage off. My hand burned as if shocked by lightning, a single, innocent touch that set my entire being on fire. I could not help my angry response.
 

The touch of men sets my stomach to heaving, and all the while I am working I must contain my disgust and disguise it with pretended desire, pretended enjoyment. The louder and more fake the sounds I make, the more they like it.
 

His touch, this American...it did not set my belly to revolting, and that was the catalyst of my anger. I should hate him. He has killed my people. He may have killed my brother. But I do not hate him. I do not know why I did not leave him where he lay bleeding to death. I did not, though, and that is the fact. I brought him to my home. My
home
. He sleeps a few feet from my own bed.

He knows what it is I do. He does not like it, although I cannot say why. Perhaps I disgust him, although I doubt I disgust him enough to prevent him from prevailing on my services when he is capable.

I have seen him looking at me. He tries not to, which is strange. I am a whore. Why should he worry about my privacy? But he does. He looks away when I clean myself for the next client, when I change and reapply my makeup.
 

What does he think when he looks at me with those blue eyes? Does he hunger for me like all the other men? They hunger for me with the desire of the flesh. They see me as good for one thing. They barely know my name. And even that is not my name.

Maybe he sees me as a woman, a person.
 

No. Surely not. Why would he?
 

I blink, and he is awake, watching me watch him. I force myself to meet his eyes without looking away or flinching. I want to hide from him. I cannot shake the sense that he sees into me. That perhaps he can see my thoughts, my secret desires, despite the language barrier between us.

He speaks to me, says something soft in his low, rough voice like distant thunder. I watch his Adam's apple bob in his throat, watch his lips move. I wish I knew what he was saying. He asks me a question and waits for an answer as if I understood him.

He touches his chest with a palm, and says one word: "Hunter." Then he points at me and shrugs his shoulders. He wants to know my name.

I stare at him, considering. I have not told anyone my real name in a very long time. Not since Malik.
 

I touch my chest between my breasts. "Rania."
 

Why did I tell him my real name? It is not as if he would know the difference.
 

"Rania." He says my name slowly, as if tasting it on his tongue.
 

I know the answer when he speaks my true name: I do not want him to know Sabah, the prostitute. I want him to know Rania, the woman.
 

Why, though?
 

I do not know. But that is what I want.

I try his name: "Hunter."
 

He smiles when I say his name. I wish I could pretend to myself that his smile, even a small one like this, just a slight tipping up of his lips, did not make something flinch and flitter in my belly, clench in my secret heart. His smile is genuine. As if he does not want anything from me but to see me smile back.

I know better. I know what he wants.

So why am I smiling back? The corners of my mouth are lifting in a real smile, not a fake one like I give the clients. It is a smile that delves into my heart and pushes away at the heavy darkness. My smile is drawn from his, inspired by his, and it feels good on my face, in my soul.
 

Reality reasserts itself, and I get to my feet and move to the window. Why am I smiling at him? Why is he here? Why did I save him?
 

Another pair of blue eyes stare at me, these long dead, long since banished into the world of memory. Another American, dying by my hand. In the realm of remembering, my hands jerk, my shoulder twinges with the kick of pain, and there is a deafening roar. An American, young, handsome, blue-eyed and innocent-looking, dies. I watch him die. Watch him gasp for breath.
 

I had nightmares for a very long time about those sky-blue eyes staring through me, veiled by death. I would wake up alone in my blankets, Aunt Maida's scraping breath nearby, Hassan's louder snoring to the other side, and I would still see sky-blue eyes boring into me, seeing my soul with the blank stare of a ghost.
 

I still wake up some nights, seeing those dying eyes.

That long-dead blue-eyed man is why this American, Hunter, is in my home. Perhaps if I save him, I will not dream of dying blue eyes any longer. Perhaps I will see the living eyes, Hunter's eyes. Not merely sky blue, but the hot, sharp shade of lightning, of the ocean, which I saw once in a trip as a little girl with Mama and Papa to see someone in Beirut. The ocean was rippling and moving and endless and so, so blue, like a field of many sapphires. I see this same shade in Hunter's eyes, and it frightens me. It hurts when he looks at me. His eyes spike through my hard walls and see into the secret softness hiding deep within my soul.