The Mastermind

by David Unger

  But even then, after the storm has passed, she will not let him stop.

  “I need this,” she keeps repeating, and she won’t let him rest. He’s unsure if it is the drink or her passion that makes him stay hard.

  She is directing him, telling him what to do and where to go; it’s as if she has been crossing a desert for years, and finally finds an oasis that might run out of water if she stops drinking from it. Whenever his strength seems to flag, she urges him forward, or goes back down on him and slurps his penis in her mouth, trying to get him ready for the next penetration.

  At one point he climbs off her, exhausted, and wraps himself up in the sheets. She lays next to him, faceup and covered in sweat. He can smell her body odor, which is strong now, no longer mango, a bit fetid like a rotting guava. He likes the smell.

  It is four thirty in the afternoon. Through the green curtains of the Stofella he can see a strip of sky and a range of thick clouds, like a rumpled gray sash, signaling the coming of more rain and darkness. Where has the afternoon gone?

  “Maryam?” he asks, tightening the sheet around him like a papoose, afraid that she might want to begin again.

  “Yes, Guillermo?”

  “Shouldn’t we be going?”

  “Where to, my love?” The words my love echo in his head. They say too much about their commitment and it makes him extremely nervous.

  “Home. Your house. Your father’s.” He can’t bring himself to say her husband’s name.

  “They can all wait. You don’t know how much I needed this. It’s been years. I’ve felt things I didn’t know existed. You have such a manly body.” Maryam grabs his hips and gives them a tug. “Thank you,” she says, staring at him without blinking her eyes.

  He offers a fake smile and closes his eyes. Making love to Maryam is something special, not anything like what he expected. But still, he has a difficult time enjoying the moment. He is worried about what’s going on in the office while he has been philandering. This is the way his mind always works. And then he starts speculating if Maryam uses birth control, or if she has any communicable disease like herpes or chlamydia.

  She seems to be in no rush to leave, covering herself with one of the big pillows.

  “What about your husband? Surely he must be worried,” he says stupidly.

  Maryam lets out a sprawling laugh. “Samir? Well, he is like an old, smelly goat. The kind that climbs up a dry mountain—all skin and bones, no muscles—looking for bits of grass to eat.” She rolls over and grabs Guillermo’s behind. Her eyes are almost on fire. “I like this,” she says, squeezing his cheeks. “Fleshy and hard.” A second of silence flits by and then she laughs heartily for a second time.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  Guillermo braces. “Yes?” he asks, shifting in the bed. He is sure she’s going to tell him that she’s in love with him. Then he will have to tell her he’s not interested in breaking up his marriage—or hers, for that matter; that time has to pass before he can get together with her again.

  “From the start, Samir refused to eat me. He thought it was unmanly.” She is moving her hand around under the sheets and he is certain that she’s touching herself.

  “Many men feel that way. Especially in the Middle East, I would imagine,” he says, just to say something. He isn’t prepared to discuss these issues with a woman he barely knows. And he doesn’t want the image of Maryam’s husband going down on her to be central in his mind.

  “I would imagine, Guillermo, that you don’t know what you are talking about,” she says smiling, almost laughing at him. “I assume you know nothing about the Middle East. Have you ever been there? I mean to Lebanon?”

  “You are right, I haven’t been,” he replies, relieved. His eyes are closed and he would like nothing better now than to fall asleep. He hears Maryam shifting.

  “Beirut is an international city, like Paris or London, but by the sea.” He opens his eyes to see her straddling a pillow. “Would you like me to tell you what’s wrong with Samir’s lovemaking?”

  Guillermo doesn’t want to know anything. He wishes she would just be quiet, but without thinking, he says to her: “This is between the two of you.”

  He sees her green eyes sparkling. She touches her chin and says, “I thought it might have something to do with the thickness of my pubic hair, which is normally dense as a hedge. I shaved it just for you.”

  She pauses, waiting for Guillermo to say something. All he can think is that five hours ago he had no idea they would be sleeping together.

  “So once I gave it a really good trim and I showed him my vagina. He looked at it as if it were the ugliest thing he had ever seen. He insisted that I cover myself up, that I lacked modesty. He swore that he was too old to try something new and that he had never seen anything so repulsive. He made me swear never to shave it again. But there, I’ve done it.”

  “I guess you disobeyed him,” he says awkwardly.

  She shakes her head, laughs, and says, “I knew you would like it. You have the face of a man who will do anything to satisfy a woman. You’ve been raised on Playboy magazine and Esquire.”

  He laughs a fake complicit laugh and then says nervously, “And I thought you read the Economist.”

  “I do! But I also like Playgirl. I have a stash of them in my closet!”

  Guillermo is not amused. “Well, I should be going,” he says. He remembers that he had earlier called Sofia to meet him at this very same hotel, in this very same room, at six. He needs to find a way to call her.

  Maryam sticks her hand under the sheets, grabs his dormant pecker, and begins to softly squeeze his testicles. “Can’t you stay a bit longer?”

  “My kids will be waiting for me,” he says, moving away from her, very much aware that his penis, sore as it is, is growing hard again in her hand.

  “I don’t know, my love, but it seems to me that you wouldn’t mind it if they waited a bit longer.” She is stroking him gently.

  “We’re supposed to go for pizza at Tre Fratelli and see a movie at the Oakland Mall. They will be awfully disappointed if I’m late.”

  “I don’t know anything about children. Are yours house-trained?” she asks, licking the tip of his penis.

  “Very funny. Ilán is nineteen and Andrea is seventeen. They are both at the Colegio Americano.”

  “Sweet,” she says. He is not sure if she is referring to the taste of his penis or his children’s education.

  He tries to pull away from her, not out of displeasure, but fear. She refuses to let him go. “Maryam, this isn’t the time to tell you about them. I must go. Really.”

  She continues looking up at him and licking as if hasn’t said anything. “I bet you’re afraid of your wife. That must be it.” As she says this, she pushes his penis away and recedes from him.

  Maryam cannot possibly be jealous of his wife. “This is her bridge night, with les girls—her girlfriends—I swear. I am meeting my children.” He leans over and kisses her on her right ear—he notices again that it is flat—before getting out of bed.

  It has begun raining again and the droplets are smacking the window in the room, slipping into the ledge from a crack in the glass. The hotel clerks can’t understand why he always selects the same ugly room without a view. “We do need to go, Maryam.”

  She smiles at him like a vixen. “Well, if we are going, I need to shower, my handsome man. It’ll take me a minute.”

  While Maryam is in the bathroom, Guillermo grabs his BlackBerry. He quickly texts Sofia to tell her that an emergency has come up and he cannot meet her tonight. Don’t come to the hotel. He wants her to text him back to confirm. Then he lies back down.

  What is wrong with him? He realizes he’s still a bit drunk, spent. He feels that he and Maryam actually fit together, sexually and otherwise. There is a sense of compatibility which he never experienced—not with Chichi or Araceli. And it scares him because it reminds him of what
he felt in New York with Meme.

  He hears the water from the shower spraying full force. Maryam is singing loudly in what is probably Arabic. Guillermo feels untethered. His wife is becoming more impatient over his excuses for getting home late, for acting bored with her and disinterested in their kids. Maybe they should make a clean break of it. The only ones who might suffer would be the children, but Guillermo is convinced that since they have their own lives, their own group of friends and activities, they would hardly care. It’s not as if they are still six or eight years old. And he is sure they will do whatever their mother asks of them—

  His phone chimes; Sofia has texted back.

  Fine!!!! You are a prick!!! You’ve ruined my Friday night.

  He will have to deal with her anger some other time, maybe give her an extra five hundred quetzales.

  * * *

  Before they leave the room, Maryam asks: “Guillermo, what are we getting ourselves into?”

  He answers frankly, “I don’t know.”

  She hugs him as if they have just seen each other following a ten-year absence. She does not want to let go. “I needed this, to feel this animal pleasure. I’ve been lonely for so long. But I also know that tonight I’m going to feel ashamed. I fear that what we’ve just done will ruin lives, our lives as well as others.” It comes out like a sudden uncontrollable confession. “But I don’t regret it, no matter what happens next.”

  “Neither do I,” he responds, surprised to hear himself speaking honestly. He realizes he cannot undo what has just happened. It can’t be taken back.

  Maryam pushes away from him and touches his nose. “And look at you. Who would’ve thought you could give me such pleasure?”

  He smiles.

  “Do you love me?”

  “Maryam, we just—”

  “I know that my legs could be longer, my tummy flatter.”

  “You’re delicious,” he says, meaning it, remembering the taste of mango.

  “You make me feel like a beautiful woman, you know, and all of a sudden I don’t really care about my defects. Toes that are too long, the big mole just above the small of my back. Making love with you this afternoon has made me forget any doubts I might have about myself . . .”

  He is feeling grateful, but cornered at the same time. It has been an incredibly intense afternoon. And suddenly he is hungry. “We must go, Maryam,” he says tenderly.

  “Samir never made me feel that I was more than a vessel.”

  Guillermo feels the stirrings of another erection. Almost to shut her up, he begins kissing her again. They kiss for a few minutes before she pulls down her leggings. She is not wearing her underwear, and so pulls down his zipper and puts him inside of her. She is already so wet, there against the wall. She pulls his shoulders into her, and then grabs his butt. She is breathing heavily, panting, and then she moans and begins talking: “You know that my father is very fond of you, but if he knew—oh God—this were happening—no, no, no, no, no—he would be extremely, extremely—there, there, there, just like that, oh God, please put your finger in there—oh my God. No, no, Guillermo, there, there, there!!”

  She throws her head back and Guillermo has to hold her body up, otherwise the two of them will collapse onto the floor.

  Still inside her, he carries her back to the bed.

  “You have to pull out or we’ll never get out of here.”

  They both lay on the bed, on their backs, gasping, trying to relax their breath. Guillermo closes his eyes and feels that he is about to drift off to sleep.

  In almost a whisper, Maryam says: “He’s a very stern and moral man.”

  “Samir?” Guillermo asks in a trance.

  “No, my father, silly!”

  This surprises Guillermo. “Maryam, from the beginning your father has been scheming to bring us to together. He was the one who invited me to your house that first time, remember? And he is the one who always insists that we end our Wednesday meetings with lunch.”

  Maryam touches the thinning black hair on Guillermo’s head. “Love, you can’t confuse his desire to have people like each other with actually setting up a scenario like this. He would be horrified to know I had la petite mort with you.”

  “Is that what you just had?”

  “Yes, my sweet man. I had about half a dozen in a row. This has been something more, like touching the sky with my hands.”

  chapter eleven

  reduced libido

  And that’s how the relationship between Guillermo Rosensweig and Maryam Khalil Mounier begins. From the outside, it looks like a series of carnal encounters behind curtained windows, in hotels where they can’t be seen—never in the public eye. It is a clandestine affair, recognized only by its two participants, mostly negotiated through salacious text messages that are almost immediately erased. They park in different garages near the Stofella and are constantly looking over their shoulders. They are suspicious of everyone. Guillermo doubles his tip to the concierge, a short balding man in his sixties who always hands him the keys of room 314 in a plain white envelope.

  Initially, their texts are extremely short, almost telegraphic. They are meant to reconfirm times and dates. But soon Maryam’s messages to him become quite pornographic. Guillermo is extremely shy in responding at first, though eventually he answers in kind. It’s as if a floodgate has been opened and he begins telling her about his constant erections, his wet dreams, his desire to go to the bathroom at work and masturbate. He realizes they have embarked on an uncharted course, but he is happy, deliriously so.

  Are you hard? I am lying in bed naked.

  Where are you? I want to eat you.

  I just painted my nails green. Next time I see you with my father I will wear sandals so you can see my sexy feet and imagine how wet I am for you.

  I almost came last night just thinking of slipping between your legs.

  I shaved tonight.

  And then their messages become more elaborate, like the one he receives one Saturday morning when he’s taking Andrea to her swimming lessons at the Pomona.

  Guillermo, last night I couldn’t sleep thinking of you. I feel like such a fool. Here I am married to Samir and you are quickly becoming the most important person in my life. My phone has become an extension of my body, awaiting your next text message. And what if I were to become aroused when I am having dinner with Samir or my father? It would be a disaster. Yesterday, remembering some of our get-togethers, I cursed you for how much you mean to me. I don’t know what we’ve started, but it feels not only a bit crazy, but also quite dangerous. And who knows where this romance is going, or how it will end. I want to see you all the time, but am beginning to see the danger that this will put us both in. We must be more careful.

  He realizes he can’t simply give a brief answer to a text of this complexity. So while Andrea is taking her backstroke and butterfly lessons, he drinks a coffee in the café at the Pomona.

  Maryam, your e-mail made me very sad. Everything you say is true. Maybe it has all happened too quickly and it would have been better if we had not taken our feelings for each other to the next level. I know you think you are at a huge disadvantage but it isn’t so, since both of us are married. It seems senseless to even expect that one day the two of us might end up together. And I know I couldn’t ask that of you. Making love to you is like finding heaven on earth and I don’t really believe in those things. I don’t want your father to find out about us because, though I know he is my friend, he would hate me for tampering with your marriage.

  * * *

  When Andrea’s swimming lesson is over, she scours the Pomona looking for her father, who she finds hunched over his phone in the café.

  “You were here all this time,” she says.

  “Something came up at work,” he responds, smiling awkwardly.

  “Dad!”

  He smiles tensely and says, “Yes, my dear?”

  “Don’t you remember telling me you’d watch my lesson?”

/>   He looks at her wet hair and red eyes, barely recognizing who he’s talking to.

  “Forget it!” she snaps, stomping out.

  He gets up slowly. “Wait, young woman! Don’t run out on me like your mother.”

  The café’s glass door has shut, as if to define how Guillermo relates to his children: as if through a filter.

  * * *

  Sometimes their text messages are short, almost salutations.

  Good night, my love.

  Good night, my king.

  Or they erupt, like the Pacaya volcano, into a stream of words.

  I feel better this morning, though I still miss you terribly. Maybe we shouldn’t text each other so much because it just increases my level of anxiety, especially on weekends when I imagine you having lunch or dinner with your wife and family. Sometimes I think I have fallen in love with your words more than with you. I don’t enjoy feeling enslaved to your words, which enslave me to this fantasy, which I can’t even talk about. And then when reality sets in, I realize we’ve embarked on a dangerous path that can only end in pain. But then I start thinking that there is something very unique and strong between us and that it is foolish to cut it off just as we are getting started. What are we going to do? Tell me, you who have more experience in these kinds of things . . .

  Their text messages are full of contradictory feelings, as one would expect between people in the throes of an illicit love—to commit or not to commit; to risk all or to risk nothing and go back to their humdrum lives.

  They meet only at the Stofella in the beginning, which is both exciting and dangerous, and at some points terrifying. At any moment someone in the hotel restaurant or meeting rooms might recognize them walking in or out, or dropping off their cars in the nearby garages. After all, the hotel is in the heart of the Zona Viva, where all strata of Guatemala’s upper society circulate, where they are safe from assault but not from curious eyes. All in all, Guatemala City is a small town.