determined to create magical encounters?
Yet somehow the allure of the Velvet Stretch had faded. Gorging on pleasure and emotional intimacies began to tire, rather than excite, her. While pursuing her fantasies, she’d mysteriously transformed into a woman more interested in the workings of her own brain than the mysteries of a stranger’s heart.
Laki found a lone star bar with a dim yellow glow. She lodged her pod right next to it, squinting before turning away from its glow. The way that it seductively illuminated her skin told Laki that it was the perfect location for the evening’s festivities. She checked the time module, then cursed softly. She realized too late that she hadn’t specified a time in the invitations—it could be hours before the first guest arrived.
She felt the silence of the Stretch invade her pod. If you weren’t hopped up on adrenaline, or some other intoxicant, and distracted by your frantic search for a rendezvous, you would immediately notice the Velvet Stretch’s profound lack of sound. The depth of its silence was stunning, yet it had taken Laki years to notice it. She had been too focused on the pods of strangers, and the anatomy of the people ensconced within them, to take note of the majestic expanse of deep space. Now, she was older and irritatingly aware that she was just a noisy little fleck in an infinite field of silence. The loudest thing in the vicinity was her thoughts, thoughts she had come to the Stretch to escape.
She sat on the floor and flicked the sound module on. Instead of hearing the song she had just mixed, she heard a deep voice say, “Let’s do this by starlight.” Her back stiffened. A heat sparked in her chest and shot straight down into her pelvis. She looked around, but no one was there. The voice repeated:
“Let’s do this by starlight.”
“Fogo,” she whispered, remembering the owner of that voice—the last rendezvous she had had in the Stretch and, quite possibly, the last rendezvous she would ever have.
She touched her waist, running her fingers over the concealed marriage belt, then leapt up to examine the sound module. She didn’t remember making a recording that night, and she couldn’t understand why his voice was filling her pod now. She vibrated her fingers in front of the sound module, commanding it to spin Fogo’s voice into a faster loop. She rubbed one hand over her body, guiding it downward to grasp between her legs as Fogo invited her to do it by starlight over and over again. With the other hand, she added the sound of dripping water to the background and mixed in her favorite song—a love-laced anthem by Mahini.
A soft smile spread across Laki’s face. She no longer felt engulfed by the Stretch, not while lust was tingling through her and enfolding her in its embrace. She lay back on the floor and stretched out her limbs. She watched the twinkling lights around her as she ran her hands over her skin, stopping to apply extra pressure here or added caresses there. Singing along with Mahini, she shrouded herself in arousal and buried time with repeated, focused strokes.
Time had long since abdicated to pleasure when Laki felt her pod rock. Disoriented, she sat up and looked around. Her surprise melted into delight when she saw that her friend Zaha had arrived. Laki scrambled to her feet without remembering that her cloth was hiked up over her hips and hanging open. With a rueful grin, Laki fixed her cloth.
As her pod fused with Laki’s, Zaha shook her head. “You’re so predictable,” she said into the hole that was opening between their pods.
Laki pushed her hands into a pocket in the wall of her pod. She felt the cool wetness of the disinfectant splatter against her hands, then she felt heat as her hands were dried. When the hole between their pods was large enough, Laki ran over to Zaha and embraced her.
“You’re predictable too, you know. I knew you’d be the first to come.”
“So that little show was for me?”
“Yes, consider me your maturation welcome committee.” Laki bowed with a mischievous grin.
Zaha laughed. “Last day! And you’re up here making jokes and playing with yourself. I thought you were going to be a mess.”
“I am a mess; why do you think I was half-naked on the floor? It’s the only cure for panic that I’ve ever known.”
“Well I hope they’re open-minded in your mother-unit, you can’t…”
Laki held up her fingers to silence Zaha.
“At this party, we will not speak those words. We’ll pretend that I have no date with the veil tomorrow and that you won’t have to give everything up in…” Laki paused and looked at Zaha. “I forget. How many days do you have left?”
“Well…” Zaha said, and theatrically pointed to the top of her pod. Laki looked up and saw a thin silver marriage belt hanging there.
“You’re saved!” Laki yelled. They both squealed. Laki hugged Zaha, but she froze when she looked at the belt again. Her arms dropped away from Zaha, and she fell silent.
“What’s wrong?”
“No, nothing. I’m sorry.” Laki stumbled over her words as she stepped closer to examine the belt. “That looks like my friend Pemfi’s belt.”
“Pemfi’s? It is. You know him?”
Laki nodded, but offered no explanation. She was, she knew, an idiot in so many people’s minds. Her friends, her lovers, and especially her sister Se-se thought she was sacrificing herself for no good reason. She didn’t know what Zaha would think if she knew how many marriage belts Laki had turned down, if she knew that the last time Laki had seen Pemfi’s marriage belt, he was holding it out to her with trembling hands and she was shaking her head, telling him, “I can’t.”
Laki put her hand to her mouth as she remembered his stung response.
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“What’s the difference?” she had asked.
“The difference is if you can’t, it’s beyond your control. If you won’t you’re just being a stubborn rub.”
Coming from Pemfi, the curse had sounded like a foreign language, but in his anger he had wielded it masterfully. Zaha looked at Laki, an expectant expression on her face, but Laki didn’t speak; she just let out a long slow breath. She couldn’t throw off the memory of Pemfi, how she had wrapped her arms around him and spoken softly. “You want to make this hurt? You want to make
“You’ve been hurting me for years,” Pemfi had whispered in her ear. “But do you know what’s really going to hurt? Getting locked in a mother-unit. It’s going to kill you. They’re going to take away your pod and your props, and your life is going to change forever.”
She had pushed him away and assured him that she could handle it. He hadn’t believed a word of it. Not Pemfi, not after she’d spent so many nights telling him of her nightmares. He’d offered her a marriage of friendship, begged her to let him save her, but she had wanted to save herself.
Laki smiled at Zaha, hoping her face looked warm and reassuring rather than shaky and uncertain.
“He’s a good man, Zaha. You’ll have a good life.”
Then she pressed Zaha into a tight embrace.
“But what is this?” Zaha asked pulling away from Laki. She put her hands on Laki’s waist and felt the marriage belt through Laki’s dress.
“It’s…” Laki felt the pods jostle before she could answer. She turned and saw that Benko had arrived.
“Ben-ben!” she yelled.
As the walls were thinning where Benko’s pod met Laki’s, she said to Zaha, “It’s a long story…not what you think.”
“So you’re not getting married?”
“Who’s not getting married?” Benko asked stepping through the opening into Laki’s pod.
“I’m not getting married,” Laki said.
“But there’s something under her clothes, look,” said Zaha.
Benko held Laki by the hips and examined the bulge. He pushed at Laki’s waist, feeling the belt through the cloth of her dress. “It’s thick.”
“It’s just a loan,” said Laki. “Pretend it’s like any other belt. Did you bring the screen?”
“What kind of freak gets a thick marriage belt and doesn’t get married?” Benko asked.
Laki smacked him on the back. Turning smoothly, he smiled at Zaha and held out his hand.
“I’m Benko, and you are…”
