Three Wrong Turns in the Desert

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “We are very happy to have you here at the Sidi Driss,” Abbas said, smiling again. “I am very happy you are here.”

  Aidan slipped his arm around Liam’s waist, and Abbas grinned again. He had a gold front tooth that glinted in the light. Liam slipped him a few dinars and he and Aidan entered the room. “No lock,” he said. He didn’t look happy about that. He looked at Aidan. “I didn’t figure you for the public display of affection type,” he said. “You have to be careful with stuff like that in this country.”

  “Abbas is gay,” Aidan said.

  “That’s just the way Tunisian men are.”

  Aidan shook his head. “Nope. Gay.”

  Liam raised his eyebrows, but Aidan didn’t think the topic needed any further discussion. While Liam thought about their next step Aidan set out across a few courtyards to find the restroom. The facilities were very Third World, rudimentary and not very sanitary. It probably wouldn’t have bothered Liam, but Aidan was discovering that he was very much a First World kind of guy. He’d enjoyed the air-conditioned train and the comfy tour bus, and if at some point his tender butt was going to end up on a bumpy camel for a long ride he didn’t think he’d like it.

  When Aidan returned to the room, Liam was ready to go out into the village and look for someone who could read the Tifinagh message. They hiked up and down the hills that made up the village, past a few cafes and souvenir stalls. By then, most of the buses had left, and there were few people around. Most of the shops had already closed, and the street reminded Aidan of a movie back lot after the filming was over.

  Many of the local men, young and old alike, were wearing the long, hooded cloak that Obi Wan Kenobi had worn. For a while Aidan thought they were part of the general Star Wars theme, but he realized that they were the traditional Berber cloaks he had read about in the guidebook, and that George Lucas’s costume designer had simply ripped them off for the movie.

  Liam approached anyone they saw, speaking in Arabic, but either no one understood him or no one wanted to help. They stopped at a kiosk selling handfuls of roasted sunflower seeds to local children. The vendor offered them tea and some seeds, which were still piping hot, freshly scooped from the roasting pan. But he simply stared at the Tifinagh writing as if he’d never seen such a thing before.

  A few minutes before six o’clock, the sun dropped quickly beneath the horizon, leaving the streets coated in sheets of black silk. As they returned to the hotel, Aidan was feeling discouraged, until they walked back into the lobby and saw the desk clerk.

  “I have an idea,” Aidan said to Liam, pulling him off to the side of the claustrophobic room. “You still don’t believe that Abbas is gay, right?”

  “So?”

  “So I’m going to see if I can charm him into helping us.” He hesitated. “It may take more than charm,” he continued. “I’ll take care of him if that’s what he wants—but he might prefer you instead. If that’s the case are you willing to do it?”

  Liam looked at him in the flickering light of the cave. “I thought you were a picket fence kind of guy,” he said. “The kind who just wants romance and monogamy and a house somewhere.” Aidan could see the laughter in his eyes. “You’d have sex with a stranger to get information?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Hasn’t come up yet,” he said. “But I guess so.”

  “You slept with me to get me to go to the souk with you,” Aidan said dryly.

  “Nope. I slept with you because I wanted to. Because you charmed me. Because you keep on surprising me, and I like that.” He gave Aidan a gentle swat on his butt and said, “Go on. Work your magic. Let me know if you need me to pitch in.”

  Aidan walked across the room to Abbas, who smiled again. For a moment Aidan did think about kissing him, wondering how that gold tooth would taste against the tongue. A barista at his favorite coffee shop in Philadelphia had a tongue stud, and Aidan had fantasized about kissing him. “You are liking our hotel?” Abbas asked.

  Man, Aidan thought, it had been a long time since he’d flirted, not counting Liam—where it had seemed almost effortless. Maybe he really was a picket fence kind of guy, he thought, and faltered. But they needed to get that message deciphered, and all their other efforts in Matmata had been a washout. So Aidan said, “Yes, very much. Tunisian people are so friendly.” He smiled. “And the men so handsome.”

  Abbas blushed, his dark skin deepening a bit more. “I have a problem,” Aidan said. “A guy in the last town we visited gave me this piece of paper with these funny symbols on it, and I’m dying to know what he wrote.”

  “Funny symbols?” Abbas asked.

  Aidan nodded. “Somebody told me it was Tifinagh?” He deliberately mispronounced the word—though he probably would have said it wrong even if he hadn’t tried.

  Abbas smiled again. “Ah, you are in great luck,” he said. “My mother’s family are the Kel Tagilmus, the people of the veil. You would call them the Tuareg.”

  Aidan nodded, his hand resting on the counter between them. “Tifinagh is our alphabet,” Abbas said. “If you show me, perhaps I can help you read.”

  “That would be great,” Aidan said. He pulled the paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to the desk clerk.

  Abbas scanned it, then looked up at Aidan, curiosity in his eyes. Aidan looked back at him, in what he hoped was a combination of helplessness and flirtation. But he might have just looked confused.

  Abbas said, “It is both a man’s name and location, and a warning.”

  “A warning?”

  “It says that you must be very careful, that there is danger all around you.”

  Aidan remembered the men who had attacked him and Liam in the souk, and who had chased them through the streets of El Jem, and shivered. He hoped that the pharmacist had been able to get away from those men himself.

  “I know,” he said.

  Abbas looked at him once more, then at Liam in the background, and nodded. “You are to meet a man named Ifoudan, who – how do I say this—he takes camels across the desert?”

  “Yes, I expected something like that,” Aidan said. “Does it say where I find this man?”

  “In the camel market at Remada,” Abbas said. “A town south of Tataouine. We call it the Green Heart of the Desert. It is surrounded by a forest, the trees from the north. Not like an oasis.” He studied Aidan’s face for a moment. “You are to be there the day after tomorrow.”

  Aidan thanked Abbas very much for the help, and when he crossed the courtyard to Liam, the bodyguard suggested dinner in the hotel’s bar area.

  After the waitress, a pretty young Tunisian woman, took their order, Liam said, “What did the desk clerk say? Are you meeting him later for a roll in the sand?”

  Aidan was surprised to hear a note of jealousy in Liam’s voice. He filed that away for further consideration. “Nope. He just translated the note for me.”

  The waiter poured wine for them. “Really? What does it say?” Liam asked.

  “We’re going south.” Aidan repeated what Abbas had said. As he was finishing, the waitress delivered a platter of briq as an appetizer, a folded, crispy crepe with a lightly cooked egg inside that had to be slurped quickly. Liam and Aidan laughed at each other’s attempts to eat the deliciously sloppy mess.

  Liam ate in silence for a few minutes, then said, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe it would be best for you to stay with the tour rather than come with me. You’ll get back to Tunis safely that way.”

  “But I thought you needed me to pretend to be Charles Carlucci with the Tuareg.”

  Liam shrugged. “I’m bringing them the account information. That should be all they care about.”

  Aidan’s first reaction was that Liam was dumping him. He didn’t know why that bothered him so much. After all, Liam had known Aidan was going back to the States as soon as they returned to Tunis. This relationship, if that’s what it was, was only for the short term.

  The waitress cleared away th
eir dirty dishes, and returned a moment later with a platter of lamb couscous with copious amounts of fiery harissa sauce and French bread.

  As she served them, Aidan realized that if he left Liam behind in Tunis after everything was finished, he’d be the one doing the dumping. But if Liam sent him back there before the adventure was over, it would be like getting dumped again. Blake had kicked Aidan out of his life, and Aidan wasn’t about to let another guy do that to him so soon afterwards.

  “I signed on for the whole trip,” he said when the waitress left, cutting in to the rare, pink lamb. Blood dripped off the edge of his knife. “I’m not quitting now.”

  “Are you forgetting the Libyan intelligence agent who grabbed us at the medina and then chased us from the pharmacy?” he asked. “This isn’t a pleasure trip, Aidan. You’re in over your head, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  “You may be taller than I am, Liam, but I’m not in over my head, not yet. You seem to think I’m a nitwit who needs babysitting. But I’ve been holding my own here so far.”

  “I don’t think you’re a nitwit at all,” Liam said. “On the contrary, I think you’re a smart, brave, resourceful guy. But...”

  Aidan didn’t let him finish. “If I’m so smart and brave and resourceful, then you need my help. End of story. This lamb is delicious, isn’t it?”

  Liam laughed. “Did you boss your boyfriend around like this?”

  Aidan shook his head. “Nope. But maybe if I had, I’d still be in Philadelphia. This is the new Aidan Greene. Get used to it.” He kicked off his right shoe, and stretched his leg out so that his foot grazed Liam’s leg.

  Liam responded by grasping Aidan’s foot, and bringing it higher up his thigh. Aidan slid back in his chair as Liam guided his foot, up, up, until a beatific smile graced his face.

  19 – Hidden Dangers

  Dinner at the Sidi Driss was a lot better than the run-down accommodations. They sat under the stars, and it was magical—just the kind of romantic date Aidan loved. He only had to ignore the Libyan intelligence agent pursuing them and the realization that one man had already died because of the account information they were carrying.

  Belghasem stopped into the bar to make a few announcements. “Tomorrow, we go early morning to a ksour, very lovely, interesting trip. We spend night in Tataouine.”

  Liam called him over and asked about the itinerary. After Tataouine, which Belghasem said was interesting, very lovely, the tour would cross the desert toward Douz and the Chott el Jarid. After a few more stops, they would return to Tunis.

  “I guess we’ll stick with the tour as far as Tataouine,” Liam said when Belghasem left. “From there, though, we’ll have to find a way to get to Remada.”

  Two of the men from the group had bought light sabers in the market, and staged a mock battle near the restaurant entrance. “I want to do that,” Aidan said.

  “I’m afraid not,” Liam said. “We don’t want to call too much attention to ourselves.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “You didn’t say that last night,” Liam said, with sly grin.

  After the waitress had tempted them with dessert, Aidan said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place with so little ground light. I want to go out and look at the stars. I’ll bet we can see the Milky Way.”

  “Since I had to deny you a light saber battle, I guess we’re going,” Liam said. They walked out of the hotel’s front door, and after a couple of moments they had left behind the town. Liam wrapped his arms around Liam and whispered, “I can make you see stars.”

  They kissed, and maybe it was the darkness, or the lack of any other stimulus like street sounds, but everything about the kiss seemed magnified. Liam’s lips were already familiar, but tonight they tasted like the spicy harissa, the rare lamb, the sweetened coffee they had finished the meal with. Aidan turned his head to the right, and Liam nibbled at his lower lip, then moved to his chin. Every kiss, every bite, sent shivers through Aidan’s body, direct to his dick.

  The sky overhead was a magnificent canopy, more stars and constellations than Aidan had ever seen before. Liam pulled back, and pointed out those that he knew, the ones he had learned to navigate by. To Aidan, they looked almost like 3D, and he kept wanting to reach out and touch them. A shooting star blazed across the sky, and he knew he should make a wish—but at that moment it seemed like he had everything he wanted.

  Walking back toward the hotel, Liam gently pushed Aidan up against a rough stucco wall and kissed him again. The bodyguard’s chin was rough, a five o’clock shadow blossoming there and on his cheeks, but Aidan welcomed the sensation. The sandpaper feel of Liam’s beard was an amazing counterpoint to the soft moistness of his lips.

  Aidan’s dick pressed against his pants, and as Liam pressed their bodies together, he could feel that Liam was hard, too. “I could get used to this,” Liam said in a whisper, right into Aidan’s ear. In response, Aidan lifted his leg and wrapped it around Liam’s butt, pulling him even closer.

  “I think we’d better take this back to the room,” Liam said. He backed away, and Aidan felt a moment of physical longing as their contact was released. He didn’t want to wait to walk back to the hotel; he wanted to pull his clothes off, offer his naked body to Liam right there in this darkened alley, lit only by the stars above.

  He’d never felt so much sexual abandon, not even in his younger days, traveling Europe and moving from job to job and guy to guy. He’d had plenty of sex, from a quick roll with a Polish laborer on the floor of a London squat to sucking an elderly Frenchman in the grand bedroom of a fabulous high-ceilinged apartment just off the Champs-Élysées in Paris. He’d kissed men in the lavender fields of Provence, in the men’s room of the Monte-Carlo Casino. He’d been fucked by Yugoslavs, Italians and Czechs; fucked the asses of Chinese political refugees and Nigerian street vendors.

  It had all been fun, in retrospect, even the incidents that hadn’t worked out so well, like the time in Brussels when a businessman’s wife had surprised them in bed and chased Aidan, bare-assed but clutching his pants, down a long spiral staircase. He’d spent a night in a small country jail in a remote Swiss canton, been surprised by the jailer in the middle of the night as he sucked his cell mate, and been kicked back on to the street in outrage.

  But none of it compared to the feeling he had with Liam. A single glance, the lightest touch, was enough to get him hard. It seemed like there was a continual wet spot in his boxers where his dick leaked against the fabric. When he had Liam in his arms he never wanted to let go.

  He scrambled to keep up with Liam’s long strides through the darkened town, then as they navigated the hotel corridors back to their room. Once there, the moment had passed. Liam turned on the single bulb, and while Aidan relaxed on the bed the big bodyguard sat next to him, poring over a map of Tunisia. Aidan spent some time with his guidebook, discovering that the ksour were fortified adobe structures built by the Berbers to store their grain. Around eleven, Liam yawned. “Guess we should get some rest.”

  “Really?” Aidan looked up at that sexy body as Liam stood next to the bed and peeled off his shirt and shorts. “That’s what you want? Rest?”

  Liam laughed. “You have something else in mind?”

  “I could think of something.”

  Liam dropped his boxers and stood naked before Aidan. Aidan remembered seeing Liam showering behind the Bar Mamounia, and how he’d believed there was no way he could even touch a body so perfect—the beefy biceps and triceps, the six-pack abs, the narrow, tapered waist, the tree-trunk thighs. Liam’s dick stiffened as Aidan watched, and Aidan scooted across the bed to take Liam in his mouth where he stood.

  The bodyguard’s dick tasted so good, filled his mouth and banged against the back of his throat. He longed to grasp Liam’s ass and pull him even closer, but his gag reflex was acting up, and he had to twine his fingers together in a trick he’d learned years before, to calm it. Liam seemed to be enjoying Aidan’s actions, then sud
denly he put his hands on Aidan’s shoulders and said, “Don’t move.”

  There was something strange in his tone, so menacing and unexpected in the middle of sex. Aidan stopped, Liam’s dick in his mouth, and then Liam backed away, very carefully.

  “What...” Aidan began, as soon as his mouth was free.

  “Ssh,” Liam said, holding his finger to his lips. Slowly he turned and moved around the bed, behind Aidan. Disobeying his order not to move, Aidan twisted around on the bed to watch him, and then he saw it.

  A scorpion clung to the cave wall, just about even with Aidan’s head. He backed away as Liam picked up the guidebook and then, in a quick motion, slammed the book against the scorpion and the wall.

  The loud thwack! startled Aidan, even though he’d been expecting it, and he nearly fell off the side of the bed. Liam pulled back the guidebook, and the scorpion fell to the ground dead. Using his t-shirt, Liam picked it up and walked to the door of the room. Aidan got a great view of his tight butt, lightly dusted with light brown hair, as he looked out into the hallway.

  Aidan saw him bend to the ground, and felt a tremor of anticipation rush through his body. Liam was so damned gorgeous. They might only have one more night together, but Aidan was sure as hell going to make the most of it, scorpions or no. Regardless of what happened in Tataouine, or Remada, or even back in Tunis, Liam McCullough was his for the time being. He worried that perhaps he’d lost Blake by not being more aggressive, by not grabbing for what he wanted from life with both hands. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

  Liam dropped the dead scorpion outside the door, as if it was a used room service tray, and then shook out his t-shirt. He turned back to Aidan, closing the door behind him.

  Liam’s erection was gone, but Aidan knew he could make it come back. He stood and slowly lifted his T-shirt off above his head, exposing his flat abs, dusted with fine dark hair. He heard Liam catch his breath.