Cydonia - Two

Two
We sleep past morning, venturing forth in the early hours of the afternoon. As ever it’s hot. We sit around the pool, taking in our surroundings in the light. It’s much the same; a pool, a few tables, a vending machine. People mainly gather in their own little cliques and gangs, a group of Israelis babble noisily, comparing maps and tans, in the corner a little Japanese crowd whisper politely to each other, smoking cigarettes and drinking from a shared flask. I don’t want to be in their gangs, not that they’d let me if I did. My brother goes to phone the garage, Pete goes to the vending machine, leaving me alone to smoke a cigarette and pretend like I don’t care.

I watch the sunbathing girl at the other end of the pool, lying on her yellow towel in her blue bikini. I can’t see her face but her body screams at me from across the water. Her skin boils carelessly under the sun, but it’s making her the colour of heaven and I don’t care. Her mathematically perfect tits, that gentle rise between her legs under blue. She turns round to burn her other side, fixing the fabric around her arse as she does so. Jesus Christ Almighty.

An Adonis appears, a perfect specimen. He stands at the edge of the pool and rips off his sackcloth shirt to reveal a body so toned, tanned and perfect it makes me want to kill myself. His shoulder length mess of golden hair ripples thorough the air as he dives into the cool water like a seal, barely rippling its surface. The Japanese politely glance, the Jews pause unintentionally, I blow smoke into the day, feeling bad that I’m tainting the air that he breathes.

He cuts through the water like a bullet, leaving a little trail of bubbles to pop and jostle behind him. He swims a length underwater and surfaces with barely the need for breath. He hauls himself out as the sun’s rays rush and fight to warm his skin. Dripping wet he sits down beside the girl in blue. He says something but she reaches up her hand. He takes it in his. Two perfect hands. She turns round and sits up to look at him. Her hair is brown and her face is beautiful. They sit there like clay, warming in the sun like statues. I wonder if they are Brazilian. I pick at a fingernail and look down at my hairy legs, tanned but not golden.

Pete comes back with three cans of Coke, my brother comes back with news from the garage. It’s more serious than they initially thought, they told him, swing past the garage and we’ll fill you in. I wonder what’s more serious than dead?

Katherine in the light is much more welcoming, a busy little town full of busy little people. The black faces are mostly gone now, inside, smart enough to have hangovers in the mid-day sun. Still a few wander around, here and there, nothing much to do, lost in their own country. White replaces black and we fit right in. We pass everything you’d expect, shoe shops, butchers, newsagents, a proud little supermarket with a bright green logo. We pass by, heading to the graveyard garage on the outskirts of town.

The garage is a friendly place, nice mechanics and curious dogs that let us tickle their bellies. But the news isn’t good. Steve, the boss, tells us we need a new big end. We have no idea what that us but apparently it’s expensive and will take weeks to arrive from the city.

Weeks.

We walk back towards Palm Court, stopping off in the little supermarket for provisions. We buy pasta and generic sauce, bland foods to cater to our budget. On the way back with our shopping bags our pace slows, we walk the same walk as the night before and it’s still too hot. We’ll have to find work, my brother says. We all knew it but the thought of working in this place, in this heat, is a punch to the guts. We didn’t come here to work, not in this unforgiving bowl of dust, but it’s the only way out of it. It’s work or die. It’s like reality. I never came here for reality.

We sit around the pool some more, playing cards and figuring out ways to earn money. There doesn’t seem to be much opportunity in this place, we could be here a long time. The Brazilian super couple are still in the vicinity, still sunning, still burning. The heat and the talk and the view gets too much so I escape to the room.

I lie there on the cool sheets, staring at the ceiling. I feel like sleeping but my eyes don’t want to shut, instead popping open as if looking for something in the delicate cracks above. I think about the Brazilian girl and her blue bikini. I want to lick her like the sun, from head to toe, like a lizard, like a demon, like a god. I think about her fucking her perfect boyfriend and it turns me on more than the thought of fucking her myself. I stare at that ceiling and unbutton my shorts, I slip my hand down my fat little belly into the furnace below. I’m sweating. This country is too fucking hot.

It doesn’t take long. I close my eyes and now they stay shut.

My brother wakes me and tells me we have to move to our new room, to the bigger dorm. I’d forgotten about that. We hadn’t exactly unpacked so it doesn’t take long to gather our bags and move out.

The new dorm is much bigger, ten flimsy metal bunks, mostly occupied. The room smells of many people. Of breath and farts and skin and hair. It’s not disgusting, but it’s not pleasant either. It’s like the smell from the white van with the volume turned up. We drop our bags beside a bunk in the corner, my brother takes top, I test out the bottom, it squeaks and cries as if disturbed. Pete takes a top bunk in the other corner of the room; he climbs up the little metal ladder with difficulty, the sharp, thin rungs cutting into his bare feet. He clatters down on the springs, rocking the bunk like a lifeboat; I pity the person below him tonight.

We all lie down on our new beds, taking long breaths and blinking slowly, letting our minds wander. I’m taken back home, to my bedroom, to familiar smells, familiar walls. The dorm door opens and in walks one of our new roommates. He mutters to himself, not seeing us lying there in the dull light. He’s not like the usual. He’s not a handsome European or an enthusiastic American. He’s older than us, late thirties, no, probably past forty. He isn’t trendy or hip. He wears shorts and sandals and a t-shirt, his hair is short and irrelevant, his face just a face. His eyes hide behind thick unfashionable spectacles. He mutters and he sounds Australian. My brother sniffs and he turns to us. How ya goin’? We grunt back our greetings. Right oh, he says with a nod.

And then he’s gone, back into the sun.

We cook our pasta in the communal kitchen then eat it by the pool side. It doesn’t taste too bad. I wash up with Pete as my brother talks to Dale about finding work. Others cook and wash up around us, the kitchen a babbling ramble of accents and languages. A German girl screams as a cockroach scuttles across the tiled floor like a man running for his life. One of the Japanese stamps on it with his purple flip-flop.

We spend the evening playing cards, just the three of us. Dale mentioned a friend with a cleaning company that were always on the look out for short term workers. They cleaned schools and governments buildings. It didn’t sound so bad. My brother had a number to call. The guy from earlier came past, the mutterer, carrying a tall can of beer. He gave us another how ya goin as he passed and again we smiled and grunted. As we played cards I watched him watching the small television beside the kitchen. He took short sips on his beer and long drags on his cigarette. He was watching an American sitcom I’d never heard of with great concentration. He wasn’t laughing. I tried to concentrate on the card game.

We got bored of cards and the poolside and went to bed; we were the first ones there. I’m lying looking at the pattern of cold metal springs beneath my brother’s mattress above me, sleep takes my hand and I drift.

But someone enters the room and drags me back. Two little men shuffle quietly to their bunk, the height of children, whispering quietly in Spanish. My brother snores gently.

And I drift.

And I wake. A girl and a boy. German? Probably. The girl fishes in the darkness and catches a tartan toilet bag. They enter the bathroom together, momentarily filling the room with stark light. Water runs, a muffled sneeze, a smothered laugh, silence, sleep.

Awake again. My brother now snoring like a desperate bull. Someone in the corner of the room tuts and sighs dramatically before cursing in a language I don’t recognize. I’m embarrassed and I understand. I lift my legs and bash his mattress. A last snort from the bull before silence. I rest easy. I am a matador.

Sleep and awake. Jesus, what’s wrong with this room? It’s the guy with the spectacles and the how ya goin. He closes the door quietly behind him and stands there a while, just staring into the room. His smell reaches me, cigarettes and beer and something else. He walks to his bunk and sits down on the springs. He breathes slowly, his shoulders rising and falling like pistons. He stays like that. Sitting and staring. At nothing. I want to keep watching him, but sleep finally takes me away.

Even though we were first to bed we’re last to wake. Predictable sunshine streams into the room as we stir and look around the almost empty space. Eager beavers, our roommates, off to see the sites, to explore and make new friends. Not me, not us. I get up, wash quickly under the selfish trickle of the shower and head outside.

I exit Palm Court and walk to the super market, my eyes taking far too long to adjust to the waking light of day. The artificial light in the shop is kinder, I walk the aisles sleepily, picking up a few things, iced coffee, a sandwich, the usual. I stand at the magazine rack and leaf through a film magazine imported from home. It’s almost double the price it should be. The perfect Brazilian couple breeze past with a whiff of coconut sun cream and a basketful of nutritionally obnoxious bullshit. I pretend to look at the magazine as I turn to look at them. Her legs and arse ghost through from behind her sarong, moving stealthily down the vegetable aisle like a lioness. I buy the film magazine from home, even though I shouldn’t.

Back at the Court I drink coffee and smoke a cigarette whilst flicking my magazine. My brother appears, he berates me for wasting money on the magazine then tells me that the man from the cleaning company is coming by later to meet us, so don’t do anything daft. His concern confuses me.

We kill the day by playing cards and sitting around, mostly in the shade. My brother and Pete swim for a while, or at least splash around in the water like little girls. I’m too tubby for that, to be splashing around almost naked in the hot sun with beautiful Brazilians near by. My chest is so white it’s translucent; my little boobs would put the Japanese off their lunch. No, I’ll sit in the shade with my expensive magazine.

Roger arrives at sundown, the guy from the cleaning company, a tall, stocky man with wide shoulders and a hard working face burnt old by the sun. He looks us over carefully. If you can work on your own and work hard then the job’s yours. We nod enthusiastically. I’m dreaming about doing something daft, just to satisfy my brother’s fears. Pull out my cock. Spit on Roger’s face. Call his wife a cunt. Shit myself. But instead I smile and nod.

He sets us up with a training day. We, with a bunch of other hopefuls, were to clean a high school from top to bottom, an extended job interview if you will. Unpaid. Sounds like a joke. But of course we agreed. There’s nothing worse than stiff competition for a shitty job.
Roger tells us that a van will collect us the following morning at six. Six? An early night then, same as the last really.

We eat pasta, play cards, go to bed, sleep, wake, sleep, wake, sleep…wake. Six.