Midnight and the Meaning of Love (65 page)

He stood staring at me, a powerful stare without blinking. “Which university do you attend?” he asked me.

“I’m a high school student,” I said.

He stood silently for a few seconds and then hummed. “A married high school student?”

“Yes,” I responded.
“Alhamdulillah,”
I added.

“Where are you coming from?” He asked.

“Africa,” I said, purposely vague.

“A huge place,” he commented, letting me know he was too smart for this kind of broad response.

“I have an American passport, my wife has a Japanese passport,” I added, still dodging my origin.

“Oh, so there is the trouble,” he said knowingly. “Her father and family have forbidden your union?” He asked.

“Her father gave written permission for our union before our marriage and tried to withdraw it after our
agid
was completed and our marriage was performed and consummated,” I said. I had a feeling that this information, which I would normally have concealed, would move Ali into my corner.

“La kadar Allah,”
Ali said quietly, meaning “God forbid.” “Now you are running away?”

“I am taking my wife to visit with her grandmother,” I said, and then added swiftly, “The ticket office will close today in one hour. It will reopen at nine a.m. tomorrow morning.” I pressed.

As he paused for more than sixty seconds of thought, his wife gently pushed the curtain to the side, looking for him. She looked into his eyes and he into hers. She was holding a small plate with two dates and a few slices of fruit. He put his hand up, to signal her to remain where she was. When she released the curtain, he asked me to wait. Now I stood alone, as only three other men remained still talking among themselves.

After five minutes I walked into the restaurant area not knowing if he had secretly diverted. He was there seated with his wife, who wore a
hijab
and long shirt properly concealing her neck and arms and breasts and hips—over her loose-fitting jeans. She looked my way with judging eyes. Soon they both stood up. Ali walked over.

“My wife said that you are good. Somehow she feels certain. But she is a woman. So I must have some confirmation. How do I know that you are not a criminal? Maybe you have killed someone.”

“If we all did our jobs as Muslims, everything would go as it should,” I assured him.

“Meaning?” he questioned.

“I am a Muslim man following my
deen.
I am married and securing my wife. You are a Muslim man, a husband, a student, right? Allah is the best knower of all things and Allah will hand out the punishment and the rewards, not you or me, right?” I told him. “So Allah will do his work and the police will do theirs, and you and I …”

He turned away from me, and he and his wife shifted from the Arabic language that we had been speaking into Persian, which I did not speak. Silently I waited.

“Show me your passport, and where is your wife?” he asked, turning back to me. As I pulled out my passport and Akemi’s, I said, “You will have to present these passports to purchase our tickets.” He looked at them quickly. “I also have our marriage documents on me,” I offered. His wife smiled approvingly.

* * *

Five minutes before the ticket window closed, Ali purchased a ticket for me. His wife, Samira, purchased a ticket for Akemi. They were Shia Muslims, originally from Iran. Both of them were graduate students at Osaka University. Ali was in engineering and Samira was studying medicine.

Samira was captivated by my “love story.” She was also curious about “the Japanese girl,” as she seemed to have formed an opinion about them as a group.

“Is she Muslim?” she asked.

“Soon,
inshallah,
” I answered, “but not yet. She is reading and learning from our Holy Quran.”

“She is willing?”

“Akemi thinks Islam is beautiful,” I added truthfully.

“Alhamdulillah!”
Samira said, excited. “Will you both continue your studies?”

“I see that your love hasn’t stopped the two of you from your studies.” I smiled. Then they both smiled. Just when I thought I had satisfied her curiosity, she asked me more questions.

“Does your wife speak Arabic? Why Korea?” She asked questions one after the other, softly and politely as Muslim women tend to do. Ali did not seem to mind her questioning me, or my responding. So I fed her a few harmless general facts about myself. I kept rephrasing the same information in different ways but thought it was important to keep her smiling and calm. It was clear that Ali trusted her, not me.

“Akemi doesn’t speak Arabic! And she doesn’t speak English either! And you don’t speak Japanese!
E wallah
!” she exclaimed. “So the two of you are communicating through your eyes, your thoughts, and your gestures? How beautiful!” Samira said softly. “Praise Allah! He has given both of you something special.”

“And our hearts,” I said. “We are communicating through our hearts.” And those were my last words before they each purchased our tickets.

Afterward, I paid Ali the 30,000 yen. He embraced me. “There is an Islamic center in South Korea. Be sure and visit there in Itaewon. It’s a section of Seoul. There are many halal places and a mosque as well. There are good Muslims there, not many, but enough for a community.”

“Thanks, good looking out,” I told him.

“And you are right. Allah is the best knower of all things,” he said. Then we parted ways.

* * *

A well-suited, elderly Japanese man whose breath filled the entrance to my hotel with the stale of alcohol was being held up by a young Japanese female teen. She wasn’t robbing him. She was simply keeping him from stumbling while drunk. I moved past them before noticing my wife standing in front of the vending machine across the lobby. I walked up behind her and pressed my body against her back. She was wearing a sleeveless dress. She looked up and over her shoulder at me, with her mischievous smile.

“What are you doing now?” I asked her. She placed her finger on the glass, pointing out some kanji letters. Softly she said, “Five thousand yen.” She didn’t reach for her purse, and I liked that she didn’t make the same mistake twice. I fed the machine the money and walked behind her up the stairs, enjoying the way the expensive black silk dress danced on her subtle curves. I was loving her pretty toes, the nails freshly painted black, and her bare legs in her expensive high heels. She could seduce me, but when we reached upstairs, I would have her change her clothes. From here on in, she would not seduce any other man, which I believe women do when they are uncovered outside of home. As my wife, she would conceal her magnetism. And she had so much of it.

The hotel room door meter was just about to eat up the last two minutes of our payment. I pushed in the new key and it reset until the following morning.

The scent of nail polish rushed up my nose when the door closed behind us. We both took our shoes off. Akemi’s clothes were in neat, high stacks piled up in the corner. I had to smile as I glanced around the room. Finally relaxed enough to really notice every detail, the sheer black curtains, revealing the blackened sky, and the clean black sheets pulled taut across the mattress. My wife had beautiful black eyelined eyes and wore an exquisite black silk dress and her petite feet and pretty black toenails were alluring against the tan bamboo floor.
She is art,
I thought to myself as I saw how she blended and decorated herself and everything that surrounded her.

I noticed the one missing bottle of water and the uneaten onigiris.
Right beside them and on the desk lay several crisp brand-new 10,000 yen notes, which were perfectly spaced and arranged like a circular Asian fan. I stepped over.

With my eyes, I counted. There were thirty-five 10,000 yen notes, close to $3,500 US. I didn’t say a word, just turned and looked at my wife, who was leaning up against the wall looking back at me. We stared.

“Come close,” I said to her. She walked over slowly and came up very close. She looked up into my eyes. I hugged her. “Where did you get all that money?” I asked, feeling her soft hair against my face.

As I looked over and past her, I realized that I did not see her trunk or suitcase. The LV Cruiser bag was there though. I dropped my arms, put my hands on each side of her waist. I pushed her back a step gently. “What did you do?” I asked her.

She pulled my study cards out from my pocket and flipped through them quickly. Then she eased my Japanese-English dictionary out of my pocket. She sat down on the floor in one of her yogastyle sitting ways, her minidress unable to cover her pretty bare legs. She arranged a few of my study cards on the floor with the Japanese side flipped up. I couldn’t read that side, so when she finished I squatted down and turned each of them over.

“Akemi suitcase sell,” were the words she’d combined. I looked at her.

She pulled up each card and placed down a new sentence. I flipped ’em. “Japan Akemi country.” I smiled. Picking up the cards, I asked her, “Where sold?” I placed two word cards down so she would understand.

She answered, “go,” which she always said when she meant come. I knew she was offering to take me to whatever location or person she had sold her luggage to.

“Chotte Matte,”
I told her in Japanese, asking her to wait.

“Hai,”
she said softly, watching me stand up. I held out my hand to her. She placed her hand in mine and I pulled her up to her feet.

“This dress,” I said. “It’s for Mayonaka.” I touched the cloth of her dress and gently pulled it some. When I released the material, it lay back down over her now raised-up nipples. I took everything out of my pockets and laid it out on the desk.

“This face”—I touched her skin—“is for Mayonaka.” I squeezed
her lips until they puckered. “These lips are for Mayonaka.” Gently, I kissed her. She exhaled. Her lips parted and our warm tongues welcomed each other, our kissing and licking and sucking expressing our deepest emotions.

Soon I ran my hands down the length of her body until I was squatted with my hands wrapped around each of her ankles. I loosened my grip and stroked her feet with my fingers, then moved my touch over her ankles, then calves, and brushed her knees and pulled up into the inside of her thighs. “These legs are
only
for Mayonaka.” My fingertips could now feel the moisture spreading and soaking the lace of her petite panties. Her eyes turned into pools of boiling oil and her breathing picked up and our hearts raced.

When I removed the soft silk dress with the costume jewelry that flooded her neckline and ran down her back, I could see that her breasts were swollen. When I touched them lightly with my tongue, she bit her lip and stepped up and walked backward onto the mattress. She walked backward until she hit the wall. Then she eased her body down to a sitting position. She held her legs with her hands and laid her chin on top of her knees, watching intensely and waiting. I came out of my clothes and she studied my erection. I took two steps and picked up the oil elixir. I sat on the bed facing her. I began massaging the oil onto her body, beginning with her pretty toes. She eased one hand down and began stroking my erection with a light touch, creating an urge that was multiplying rapidly. The scent of Sudanese oils perfumed the air. Akemi released her hands, and her legs cocked open revealing her pretty pussy. I liked her pussy hairs, didn’t want her to shave them away. I pulled her closer, then lifted her. I positioned her there and she wiggled until her opening gave way and grabbed me like a tight surgeon’s glove. With only the tip at the entrance, pushing against her clitoris, she threw her head back and let out a sound that could only be released this way. I helped her bounce softly until I eased all in.

We rocked slowly at first, in a rhythm that was as natural as the soaring movement of the wings of the white-tailed eagle I saw in the fields of Hokkaido. Her pussy felt fatter and more juicy. As her walls massaged me, and my muscle moved in it, my mind left and only feelings and sensations remained. When her walls began to flutter and she turned into a waterfall, she fell against me, holding me as tight as
she could. I eased my back against the sheets. Her body was pressed against me, sealed by her syrup.

I began licking her outer ear. I was not finished. She began wiggling again. I gripped her hips and we were back to grinding. Only the sound of our breathing and the mixing of moisture could be heard. It felt good to her, I knew. She was digging her nails into my flesh. When I flipped her so that she now lay on the bottom, and I eased one of her legs over her head and began thrusting inside her from a side angle, she began purring and moaning all over again. With my eyes closed and my feelings stirring and escalating, and my heart pounding, I saw scenes of myself climbing the Hidaka to find her and suddenly my emotions shifted from longing and desire and pure pleasure to insult and anger that we had ever been separated. Soon I realized that I was fucking her hard. I began sucking her neck and passion-marking her body, same as an animal marks his territory. I could hear her heavy breathing and light voice in my ear. As she cried out repeatedly, “Uuhh, uuhh, uuhn …,” I remembered that she was my wife, the mother to my twins, and I spilled all my seeds and swinging emotions inside her until my body weight crushed her.

I rolled to my side, both of us breathing like we had climbed one thousand stairs. Her face was flushed and her eyes filled with tears. Then a smile eased across her lips and she said,
“Aishiteru.”

I grabbed her up and we remained in an embrace. My feelings were still furious. “I fucking love you, girl. I fucking love you like crazy. You belong to me and I belong to you.” I knew she didn’t know what I said. But I knew she understood.

* * *

At 9:15 p.m. a new hunger aroused me. I showered and put on fresh wears. As I looked through Akemi’s clothes, I called out her name.