Searchterm Entry #14: The Subtle Profession
Last but not least, this is the final entry to our Search Term Challenge, a tale of love and hidden intentions.
For details of the challenge, and to see other entries, click here. Voting for stories will begin tomorrow!
The author of this story is Tama Wise, who blogs and publishes fiction at Letters from Silent Hill.
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The Subtle Profession
Lupe knew that if he ever told his mother that he still worked within the district’s most notorious dirty house she would probably disown him. But here he was, three years later, still doing what he knew how to do best. The young man knew it would be the end of him should she ever discover the truth.
It was all a matter of how to describe what he did, and what words to use.
Lupe felt the a rare, cool breeze blowing in through the open window as he paused over the letter. In the smothering temperatures at the Heart of the World it was a treasured gift to be party to a calm wind. Added to the fact his profession saw him naked more often than not. The bedsheet was still knotted about his hips, but cast about him in disarray like a riotous bride’s dress.
“You’re the only person I know who still writes longhand,” Joaquin remarked, from where he still lay on the bed. Lupe woke from his thoughts, realizing he had been staring at the buxom bedhouse owner on the street below. “I suspect that you don’t do things that much different from Calay…”
“We share most of your customs.”
“Even the ancient art of letters, but there are still those who resort to the older forms?” asked Joaquin. “With the advances these days, have you not adopted one of the short, dresser codes?”
Joaquin swept himself up from the wide bed, all long, deep, athletic limbs. Lupe had thought him related by the way they shared the same smooth build, although Joaquin’s skin was a shade like the new cawfee they drunk on the high streets. And where Lupe’s hair was cropped close to the skull, Joaquin’s was a shock of thick, luxurious black curls. They differed in modesty too, Lupe noted, as Joaquin stood proud.
“When one writes to their mother,” remarked Lupe, as he felt the firm press of Joaquin’s weight and embrace from behind. “It pays not to adopt shorthand code.” He could sense the young man’s eyes scanning what little he had already written.
“I think I will come to like this place more than I had suspected. Maybe you are not the barbarians that I was told to expect.”
Lupe thought him serious, but there was an easy grin greeting him as he looked up. He felt Joaquin’s arms close about him tighter, and his lips press again to his. The warmth there was pleasurable, but altogether stifling as the embrace banished what brief breeze he got against his skin.
Lupe let things linger longer than he would usually have allowed. For the moment, there was only the sound of the streets, drifting up to the wide windows along the top floor of the brothel. The generous room, richly appointed with bed and drapes, statuettes more lewd than Joaquin’s bared form to inspire acts far more bawdy. In the end, it was neither of them that broke the kiss by will, but the sound of thumping, then muffled shouting from the next room. Lupe noticed Joaquin’s surprised glance.
“It sounds like a herd of olyphant…”
Lupe almost broke a smile as he heard the crescendo of cries. “Lukas and Elimore. Bellowing bastard brothers, the both of them.” He watched Joaquin regard the wall with curious imagination. He thought he could almost see the images that were going through his head.
“Regulars,” Lupe clarified. “They occupy three or four girls at a time. The last thing they need is more sex.”
“But here they are,” finished Joaquin, with a smile. He looked to be savoring every new occurrence, every new sight and sound like it was new. “Maybe one of the few things our cultures do not share. Such a place as this would not be so obvious in its appearance…”
Lupe shrugged, toying with his pen. The words would have to wait, he realized, although he needed to cap the ink again, before it dried up again. That would make the second bottle this month. He quickly recorked it, as he watched Joaquin pick his way through the trail of clothes strewn on the floor. Joaquin picked carefully over a bowl of fruit before selecting an apple from the range.
“Could you give one to me?” Lupe asked, setting aside his writing tools. He focused on not neglecting his real task, the true reason why he was here. Joaquin tossed him a bright red apple, the color of blood, which Lupe snatched from the air. “Have you left much family behind? Do you have brothers?”
Joaquin frowned slightly, but it took a keen and practiced eye to notice it, one that Lupe had. He bit into the apple, and in his nakedness as he stood there, he resembled one of statuettes. Not one of the small ones though, he made all the others look like miniatures of the full sized masterpiece.
“None,” he remarked. It was too blunt though, there was a pain there. “I almost had a brother on two occasions, but they were stillborn.”
“And you’re traveling here alone?”
The brothers next door fell thankfully silent, where they had the sound of mules. Lupe wondered for how long this time, when there wasn’t the sound of their own lovemaking to drown them out. He heard the crisp bite of the apple, but neglected his own now, just holding it. Joaquin’s answer came more considered, telling in itself.
“Yes. Alone enough.”
“Things are not so different between here and Calay that a man of your sort can travel alone unharassed?” Lupe realized too late that it came out wrong. Joaquin passed him to stare out the window, eating casually, watching the puppet shows below. A good crowd had gathered, despite the languid heat.
“I was harassed by you, was I not?”
Lupe smiled. “Fair harassment, and paid for in coin.”
“I almost detect a wonder as if you are asking if you might see me again,” Joaquin said. His grin showed a white shine of teeth, the hint of apple.
“Would that be so bad?”
“No. A man traveling alone needs company from time to time.”
Lupe nodded. “That he does. But a man without goal and family attending with him… perhaps that is as strange here as an obvious dirty house is in Calay…” He tested Joaquin with a slight glance, and the hints were there again, to those trained well enough to see.
“You work in fantasy, do you not?” Joaquin bit down the rest of the apple, the stout line of his jaw working as he chewed. When he finished, “Then let us build a fantasy … that maybe I’m a Calay Crown Prince, traveling with retinue, slumming in vices not so easily purchased in his home land. Avoiding guard and viceroy and making out with all manner of low men.”
Lupe smiled, leaning back in his chair, watching the man create in a mere theatrical way. “And suppose then I am an assassin, working with all manner of shady powers, smitten instead by the very person I work to destroy…”
There was a brief and boiling silence, before Joaquin laughed, crisp and calm.
“You play the game well,” replied Joaquin. The young man’s touch was at once both easy and pleasurable as it ran along Lupe’s strong shoulder. “And I’m sure there will be time that we will both play again.”
“I have no doubt,” Lupe said. Joaquin’s hand lingered, and then left, as he moved to gather his britches. Lupe added with a restrained smirk, “My Prince…”
“And bawdy man…”
The kiss that they parted on was rich and generous, threatening to start things all over again. Then the foreign man was gone, leaving the shine of silver near the door. Lupe settled back in his chair to hear Lukas crying out again, and he took up his pen again. Without distraction the words came easy, the longhand code flowing as easy as the wine had the hour before.
One day, Lupe knew he would have to write his mother for real. Each letter was a reminder. But how to describe the profession he found himself in still.
Below, Lupe watched the Crown Prince join the crowds near the sideshow fables. He would linger there a moment, before disappearing again into the city.
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