FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘She can’t make it on a Thursday night, otherwise she’s free,’ he said, then added, ‘She strikes me as being very bright. I only wish some of my sociology students were as intelligent. Fortunately, she is familiar with every demographic of Singaporean society. Nobody in my faculty or among my students can boast such a connection to the common people. She’s a real find, Simon,’ he concluded.

  Naturally, I was delighted and felt myself entirely vindicated. It had been a professional decision and Mercy B. Lord had been under no pressure to accept. In fact, she had been given every opportunity to refuse.

  The six months that followed were both agony and ecstasy. While our discussions would occasionally take place in a cheap restaurant (cooking at home in Singapore being a needless exercise), we worked mostly from the flat. Mercy B. Lord would take a rickshaw or a taxi and pick up our dinner on the way. Having her so close, often late at night, nearly drove me crackers. On only two occasions, when it was well past midnight, had I suggested she stay the night. However, she’d repeated the same dreaded words: ‘Not yet’ – two words that were slowly driving me crazy. It wasn’t only the refusal, it was the promise in those words. Perhaps I was being ingenuous, but it was the way she said it, her eyes full of what seemed to be genuine longing and the glint of tears. Either Mercy B. Lord was the world’s best actress, or whatever it was that prevented her was sufficiently fraught with consequences to overcome any desire she may have had for me. Or perhaps, as Chairman Meow would say when we reached a wrong conclusion as kids, ‘Simon, you’re confusing dust motes with fairies.’

  Mercy B. Lord was not only beautiful, she was also dead sexy, so prior to our nightly meetings I’d taken to wearing a jockstrap, otherwise known as an athletic support. In this way I hoped my erections, firmly constrained by an elasticised cotton cup and belt, wouldn’t show. I suffered constantly from agonising post-erection pains in the scrotum, commonly referred to as ‘lover’s balls’, sometimes so severe that I felt as if I was bandy-legged. I’d then have to take myself off to the shower, though not the proverbial ‘cold shower’, to masturbate to relieve the pain.

  But even this wasn’t always sufficient to calm the badly battered ball-bearings, and it was to Veronica that I went to seek relief after I put Mercy B. Lord into a taxi. I make no bones about the fact that I’m a man and therefore probably an insensitive creature, but I was invariably greeted warmly, which somehow helped. I was always stone-cold sober, and it was usually past midnight when I arrived and paid for the obligatory round of drinks, the accepted entry fee. Veronica would then escort me to a back room, referred to as a jig-a-jig room, for obvious reasons. I don’t know how or where she was trained, maybe in Thailand, but she would fit me with a condom, then allow me to have my urgent way with her and afterwards apply various oils to the offending area and gently massage it. Lastly she would serve me a cup of steaming green tea before calling a taxi to take me home. It may sound crass, but in this way sweet little Veronica made the constant longing for Mercy B. Lord almost bearable, and miraculously I would wake up in the morning without pain. Can you sublimate your desire for one woman by taking another? I’m not sure, but then men are pretty basic creatures.

  But, of course, all good things, as well as all bad things, come to an end. One late night in October, a year and one month after I’d arrived in Singapore, we put the finishing touches to our grand ethnocentric research model. I should have bought a bottle of champagne but I’d organised a celebration dinner on the Saturday night at the Goodwood Park Hotel, one of the best eateries in town. It was late and we were happy, but also a little let down, as one often is at the prospect of something ending that has absorbed your attention for a long time and resulted in great camaraderie.

  I turned to my cousin. ‘Dr Kwan, we owe you big-time, mate.’

  He laughed. ‘And me you, Simon. If I don’t get a full professorship out of the paper I present to my university peers, then my guanxi isn’t working. I’m off. It’s almost midnight and I need some sleep. I’ve got student exam papers to mark all weekend, but I’ll see you Saturday night at the celebration.’

  I waited until he’d left then turned to Mercy B. Lord. ‘You too, kid. Your knowledge of the streets and the kampongs was invaluable. You’ve made an enormous contribution. Thank you. If this works, as I know it will, I feel sure something big will come of it. Saturday night we’re drinking French champagne again. Do you think you could wear your black cheongsam?’

  ‘Oh, Simon, of course!’ She clapped her hands, laughing. ‘I’ve seen a pair of even higher heels at Robinsons. They’re lipstick-red for good luck. Now I have an excuse to buy them!’

  ‘May I be permitted to buy them for you?’ I asked, adding quickly, ‘you know, as a thankyou for the effort you’ve put into the research project?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But I’d really like to. You’ll please me by wearing the black cheongsam, so let me please you in return.’

  ‘Simon, it’s not professional! Dr Kwan said we were equal partners, that my name would appear on his paper for the university.’

  ‘It’s not meant to be professional,’ I protested. ‘It’s a simple thankyou. For God’s sake, you’ve given up months of your free time without any compensation. You refused to be paid for your time. Mercy B. Lord, we, Henry and I, owe you a great deal more than a lousy pair of red shoes!’

  ‘Simon, you owe me nothing. I’ve been working with Beatrice Fong since I was sixteen – it’s all I’ve ever known.’ She looked at me. ‘When you’ve done the same thing for five years, meet, greet and be sweet —’

  ‘You do a whole heap more than that, Mercy B. Lord,’ I interjected.

  ‘Hold on, let me finish, Simon … you begin to think that’s all you can do. That first research project, I mean, the part that was …’ She paused, searching for a word.

  ‘Legit?’

  ‘Yes, legitimate … made me realise that perhaps I could do something else. Being nice for a living has its limits. But then I thought, well, it’s only an extension of what I know, meeting people and making them feel at ease, but instead of answering their questions I asked them my own. So it wasn’t really much of a test, much of a change.’

  ‘There was a lot more to it than that. You did brilliantly. We based the entire report on what you gave us.’

  Mercy B. Lord ignored this obvious compliment. ‘But working with you and Dr Kwan over the past six months has made me realise that maybe I have the capacity to do something more intellectually challenging one day.’ She looked down, hesitating. ‘Something that didn’t depend on me being just … you know … attractive and personable.’ She looked up. ‘That’s what you’ve given me and it’s more than enough thanks.’

  I will never know how I resisted sweeping her into my arms and kissing her and telling her over and over how I loved and admired her. But all I said was, ‘Dr Kwan says you’re very bright, that you’d beat the pants off his best students.’

  ‘Simon!’ Mercy B. Lord exclaimed in mock shock. ‘I have no intention of removing his best students’ pants!’ Then she giggled.

  I grinned. ‘Although I’m sure every one of his male students would be delighted if you did.’

  She gave me a mischievous smile. ‘Simon, if I was going to remove any male’s pants, they’d be yours.’

  ‘Yeah, but “not yet”,’ I replied softly, the easy, rather silly bantering suddenly over. ‘Come, sweetheart, it’s late. We’d better call your taxi.’

  ‘Oh no, Simon.’ She lifted her handbag from the chair where it rested and, reaching in, produced a toothbrush. ‘There’s a new pair of panties in there as well. I got both when I went out to pick up dinner.’

  I was too dumbstruck to react. ‘But you just said—?’

  ‘Well, make up your mind. Our project is over. Don’t you want me to stay tonight ?’

  Like a bloody idiot, I said, ‘Mercy B. Lord, are you sure?’

  She lowered her eyes and in a voice not much above
a whisper declared, ‘No, Simon, I’m not sure. I’ve tried so very hard not to.’ She looked up at me, her eyes brimming. ‘But I’ve made the terrible mistake of falling in love with you.’

  Everything is perfect in the imagination – two lovers slipping into each other’s arms, the touch of perfumed skin, the slow quickening of the breath, the gasp, the cry then the sigh of a first wet, smooth entry, the daring agony of withdrawal to delay the coming of the ultimate moment. Then the tenderness of mouths meeting and tongues touching, exploring breasts and nipples taut with desire, the questing tongue finding, enjoying, cultivating a slow and wonderful excitement before coming together once more. Then the urgent thrusting, and the sheer bliss of a woman’s urgent cries as she abandons herself to a carnal, primitive, all-consuming and glorious excitement that is the perfection of a simultaneous climax. So much for imagination.

  If I have described it clumsily without the foreplay, the words of tenderness, the promise of fulfilment to come that most women love to hear, it is because in my imagination I see pictures that stimulate, arouse and heat the blood. Perhaps this is why, as an artist who thinks in images, I find it difficult to translate them into words, even though words are so much a part of making love. Sometimes tender, sometimes raunchy, they include the passionate promise of things to come, the small ecstasies that are going to be performed if her lover is as good as his urgent, salacious promises. To describe these murmured words as ‘dirty’ is an altogether puritan and offensive notion that denies the erotic vocabulary and part of the variety and pleasure of lovemaking.

  I still have great difficulty describing that night, finally making love to someone I’d imagined making love to countless times. I recalled that first week in Singapore when I had lusted after her, consumed by blatant carnal desire. But by the second week my feelings had changed, and for the first time in my life I felt something different. When she lightly brushed my cheek with her lips, although the kiss was not intended to be provocative, nonetheless it sent a frisson down my spine and set off a small explosion in my gut and then directly below it. But even so, I had begun to imagine what it might be like to have Mercy B. Lord as a permanent part of my life. My feelings had grown from that point until I now wanted all of her: her sidelong glances; her giggles; her frowning concentration; those spontaneous touches; her complex female mind; her surprising clarity of thought when, for example, she put herself in the shoes of the women in the kampongs; her confidence in her own beauty and desirability; and her humility and compassion when she talked to the amahs, the Chinese washerwomen in their white blouses and black pyjama trousers. I loved the way she walked and stretched; her clean, pink mouth when she yawned after a long night’s work, touching her lips after the yawn had passed.

  Perhaps that’s why I foolishly and insensitively asked if she was sure about her resolve to stay with me. I had long since realised that Mercy B. Lord was not reluctant to make love or to give up her virginity. Her fear sprang from something else, even, perhaps, someone else. Whether Mercy B. Lord came to me as a virgin or with the past of a promiscuous woman wasn’t of the least concern to me. She wasn’t a trophy or a challenge and never had been. Now I had triggered the fear that for so long had been expressed in those two words, ‘not yet’. She still held the new toothbrush in its cellophane wrapper, but now her head was bowed and a single tear moved slowly down her left cheek. I stepped closer and kissed her lightly on the forehead, then cupping the back of her head in both my hands I raised her head and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips parted and she gave a small gasp at the touch of my tongue but then she joined in like a hungry child. She had made no attempt to hold me, but suddenly she pulled her mouth from my own. ‘Undress me, Simon, everything. I want to be naked.’ She said this softly yet boldly, as if it were an instruction, albeit a loving one. ‘I want to kiss you when I’m naked.’

  She was wearing a light yellow and red floral summer dress with short puffy sleeves and a wide skirt to just above her knees, and on her feet were a pair of simple open leather sandals from which protruded bright-red varnished toenails. She wore little make-up apart from mascara to frame her dark eyes and light green eye shadow on her lids. I undid the half-dozen mother-of-pearl buttons below her neckline. ‘Close your eyes and I’ll tell you when to open them,’ I said. I slipped her dress over her head and smoothed her hair back into place. She stood in her bra and panties, a prettiness of skimpy white lace, and I realised that the idea of staying with me wasn’t a spontaneous decision brought on by the euphoria of having completed the project with the possibility of regrets in the morning. ‘Keep them shut now, no cheating!’ I laughed. I then turned her around slowly so that her back faced me and undid her bra strap and removed her bra, turning her back to face me. ‘No peeping, darling.’ It was the first time I had used the endearment and it sounded gloriously possessive. Her breasts were small – about the size of an upturned teacup – firm and pointing slightly upwards. I kissed them, taking each nipple momentarily between my lips so that she gave a small gasp. ‘More, much more later,’ I murmured, then slid to my knees and undid her sandal straps and removed them. Then slowly, gently, I pulled down her panties until they reached her ankles and she could step out of them.

  ‘Can I open them now?’ Mercy B. Lord asked.

  ‘No, keep them shut just a few more moments.’ I buried my face in her dark loveliness and kissed her Venus mound then slid my tongue down and deeper, searching for her core. Another gasp, this one louder, as my tongue found the place where her vulva parted, then a small whimper. The softness of her warm pubic V was enormously exciting and I felt the straining hardness within my trousers. Then, rising, I faced her and gently grasped her shoulders. ‘You may open your eyes now. I have seen you and tasted you, Mercy B. Lord, and you are perfect: very beautiful and absolutely delicious.’

  She opened her eyes and smiled. ‘Thank you, Simon.’ She raised her arms and cupped her breasts. Ridiculously, she still held the toothbrush, which had somehow broken through the top of its cellophane wrapper and was pressed against her breast. ‘But my breasts are too small.’

  Later I would ask myself why every woman is unhappy with some part of her anatomy. Now I said, ‘They’re lovely, perfect, but scrubbing them with a toothbrush won’t make them any bigger.’

  ‘Oh, I should clean my teeth!’ she cried. ‘They always – I mean, in Barbara Cartland books – they clean their teeth before … going to bed.’

  ‘You’ve been reading the wrong books,’ I laughed, removing the toothbrush and placing it on the coffee table. Then, taking her by the hand, I led her to the bedroom.

  I switched on the bedside lamp and pulled back the covers. ‘Hop in, darling.’ She climbed into bed and pulled the sheet up to her neck. ‘I am now going to reveal what is laughingly known as my body. I don’t expect you’ll be impressed,’ I joked in an effort to put her at ease.

  Mercy B. Lord giggled. ‘I can barely wait, darling.’ It was the first time she had used the endearment, so commonplace but in this context so wonderful. Then there was a sudden look of consternation. ‘Simon, I’m not on the pill.’

  ‘Lucky my dad gave me a lecture on the birds and the bees,’ I said with a grin, telling her the story as I peeled off my clothes. I’d been fourteen, around the age that puberty strikes a young bloke like a sledgehammer. I suppose my mum had instructed my sisters, but it was Dad who called me into his study. I don’t remember very much of what he told me, something about the various things you could catch if you weren’t careful. But then he handed me a packet containing a condom. ‘Always carry one of these in your wallet, son. Replace it every month if it hasn’t been used.’

  Shocked, I blurted, ‘Dad, I’m only fourteen!’

  ‘A man never knows when he’s going to get lucky, son,’ he’d replied. Now I looked down at Mercy B. Lord and was relieved to see she was grinning. ‘And tonight I got lucky, exceedingly, wonderfully, terrifically lucky. And I always took my dad’s advice.’ I reached into my
back pocket and withdrew my wallet, opened it and removed a condom. ‘Mercy B. Lord, would you do me the enormous honour?’

  ‘Oh, Simon,’ she said, shocked and surprised, ‘I don’t know how.’ Then she started to giggle.

  ‘On the scale of difficulty it probably rates as a one, just up from zero,’ I joked.

  Mercy B. Lord took the small packet between forefinger and thumb. ‘Oh, look, it’s in something squishy!’

  ‘Lubrication. You pay extra for that. I’ll have you know I’m no cheapskate,’ I laughed. Then I said, ‘I too have a confession.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m wearing a jockstrap.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘An athletic support.’

  ‘Oh, Simon, there is something wrong? You are hurt?’ she cried, concerned.

  Somewhat sheepishly, but eventually much to her delight, I explained how she was responsible. ‘Then I shall remove it and —’ she held up the small condom packet, ‘hopefully put this on.’ I removed my shoes and socks, dropped my trousers and quickly stepped out of my underpants. My shirt covered the jockstrap, which was already struggling to restrain my urgent need to break free.

  Mercy B. Lord leapt from the bed – God, she was beautiful – dropped to her knees and, to my surprise, held the condom packet between her lips as she lifted my shirt. ‘Hold,’ she said, handing me the ends of my shirt. Then she removed the jockstrap with the predictable result. All that constrained longing became a hugely distinct possibility. ‘Oh, Simon!’ she said with a gasp. ‘Is that all for me?’ Then, suddenly serious and biting her bottom lip in concentration, she opened the small packet and carefully slipped the condom in place. ‘Isn’t your daddy a clever man?’ she said, rising to her feet. Suddenly she let out a mischievous giggle and pointed at my left breast pocket. ‘Oh, Simon, your shirt! I hadn’t noticed before.’