— t dawn, Coyote is sweating mightily. He feels lousy. “I’ve got dengue fever,” he tells Monkey, who lays his hand on Coyote’s forehead. “Naw,” Monkey regirls before puberty and old women with withered dugs are occasionally seen uncovered, not counting the foreign girls on Kuta beach. This girl refuses to admit she is pubescent, though her breasts are ripe pears. Monkey views her coolly; Coyote becomes feverishly agitated. She is for an instant a naked brown sprite as her red- orange sarong floats free and she slips into the water. Coyote clears his throat loudly and sidles resolutely toward her. The girl casts apprehensive looks, but Coyote refuses to notice. He tries to start a conversation with his 12 words of Indonesian. Monkey whispers a warning, but Coyote is beyond reason. He floats closer, until the child covers herself and flees. Monkey snarls. Coyote growls. They sit a long time, sweating in hot water. “Well,” Coyote defends himself, “she needed to learn that she has to watch out for men like me.” Renting a room Monkey is dismayed to discover that the wad of Indonesian money he’s bought is mostly cut-up newspaper. This doesn’t improve their dispositions a bit. They go up to the school in the center of the village. Craning their necks around a partly open door, they watch girls practice the dance. Later, eating dinner, Coyote chats with Binturong, the foxfaced matron who runstheir/osman. Binturong’s daughter Martin flits past, a shapely bird, exquisitely-proportioned. All these beautiful girls are driving Coyote wild. Monkey goes off to bed. In the morning he will climb the taller ofthe cinder cones that jut above the town. Coyote declines this useless exertion under the tropical sun. He has been hanging around with Monkey too much. Two men together can be a bore. assures him, “nothing to speak of. Probably just Binturong’s cooking.” Monkey will return after his climb, and they will “get out of this hole.” By evening Coyote is flat on his back. Dengue is a fire in the marrow of his bones and boiling lead in his joints. Sweat runs from every pore and there is no comfortable way to lie. Breakbone is steady, unrelenting pain. Monkey has carried off the aspirin. Nor does Monkey return at nightfall. Coyote writhes and sleeps, groans and dozes. Staggering to the toilet next morning, Coyote finds himself in a grey emptiness under a burning cobalt sky. Coyote memorizes the cracks in the ceiling. He is alone on the floor of a volcano and the hours pass slowly. He reflects on his errors. He dreams of naked little girls with tiny breasts that swell, then sag into the witch Ragonda’s pendulous boobs. He hears Monkey’s raucous laughter, and sees pillars of smoke and strange deities in forms of fantasy and horror. When will Monkey return? He dreams monsters. The earth swallows him, blood red lava flows. The vast pit is carmine. Mt. Baturis the vulva ofthe world and Coyote is trapped inside. He realizes that Monkey will never return, and he will never get out. This is Earth’s punishment for his lifelong lasciviousness; for lubricity, lust and or- ality. For peeking through knotholes, for treating women as objects, for masturbation, fornication, seduction, and salacious fascination. The world's womb has swallowed him, and will cook his meat forever. The third day thunderheads tower high above. In lucid moments Coyote chuckles that Monkey hasn’t returned. Who would have guessed that the very person he nursed would abandon him? He hopes the bastard fell into the crater. All Coyote has had is trouble since he met that blond-haired devil. Coyote wonders if this is really dengue, or some other, deadlier fever. There is no respite from pain. ' J_ his is Earth's punishment for his lifelong lasciviousness; for lubricity, lust and orality; for masturbation, fornication, seduction, and salacious fascination. The world's womb has swallowed him, and will cook his meat forever. In dreams the cinder cones are Earth’s clitoris, and Monkey rubs himself against it. Steam and smoke pour from the active crater, Monkey dives in. Barely nubile Balinese dancers surround Coyote. They bare their tiny slim bodies, stroke their own breasts and smile enticingly. Monkey comes up through the floor laughing and capering, he handles and caresses the girls, waves his cock, waves Coyote’s cock. Coyote sits up to make him stop but finds his own hand there, and himself alone in a dusty-white room, clothes and gear slung all across the floor and beds. He staggers to the stinking squat toilet, but nothing comes. Low dark clouds obscure the sky. Thunder roars above the mountains. He laughs at Monkey’s treachery. It is a good lesson which he will never forget. If he lives. The volcano erupts. This must be the end. The great blown-out, burning cunt of the world is giving birth. Her water breaks! He hears it roar on the roof. Water gurgles and splashes everywhere. He rises and staggering weakly to the door, he looks out. Water pours down the slope into the lake, rain pounds the roof, huge drops dapple the ground, water is everywhere. The monsoon has reached Bali at last. Coyote realizes he no longer hurts. • ■ a M he fever departs as swiftly as it came. When he goes to pay the bill he finds that without what Monkey borrowed he hasn’t enough. He trades Binturong the gear Monkey left plus his own black folding umbrella. A day later, safe in decadent Kuta, a room is vacant at Lusa Losman. He can rest at last. English Sparrow is staying at Lusa Losman with Sandpiper, a tall, lisping chap. She says they are “just like sisters.” Sparrow has cut and spiked her hair now and and wears three earrings in each lobe. She proposes that she, Sandpiper and Coyote become a trio; Coyote in the middle. She seems genuinely surprised when he refuses. Something burned away in the fiery pit. English Sparrow seems dangerously flighty to entrust with so fragile a part of his body. Coyote sees Monkey one more time. At the post office Coyote is surprised to hear that familiar maniacal laugh, and turns to see Monkey approaching, his mouth full of teeth. Monkey greets him cordially, as a long lost friend. "I had dengue,” Coyote reproaches him. “Why the hell didn’t you come back?” “Oh, it was too hot in there. I couldn’t stand it any longer. You say you had dengue, but it was probably just the heat of all those girls around you, Coyote. Did you bring my gear out?” “Damn your gear,” Coyote shouts. “You lost my money and abandoned me when I was sick, you bastard.” “Ha, ha, Coyote, you’re getting old and crotchety,” Monkey says.”l didn’t take your money, I got gypped out of money myself. I was curing you all right, but the disease was chasing little birds. Ha, ha, ha.” “You damn primate!” Coyote rages, but Monkey dances off, past Balinese in business suits and travelers in drawstring trousers, airline captains, Iowa dentists, brown boys in tailored shirts and old women in black. Monkey turns and laughs, all teeth and testicles, then vaults by his invisible skyrope up toward the ceiling, his tail flapping out behind. He disappears entirely, in the general direction of Asia. Rick Rubin lives in Portland and writes for numerous national, regional and neighborhood publications. His last story for CSQ was on Portland Mayor Bud Clark. Artist Tim Braun lives in Portland. He regularly illustrates and designs for CSQ.
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