Hidden Gems

"I didn't know you were still into weed," the other woman said.

Leah's thumb lingered over the lighter, then quickly lifted and withdrew. She looked embarrassed and slipped the joint carefully back into a side pocket of her cargo pants.

"Jeez, Gabi. You make me sound like such a junkie. The truth is I haven't touched it since college. Besides, the local stuff is pretty weak; it barely packs a punch."

"Call it what it is. It's substance abuse." The other woman kept her eyes on the road. "And you do know it's illegal in this country, right?"

"Right. Illegal and sold in open markets, like everything else here. Why are you always so tense? Back home you made it sound like we'd get mugged the moment we stepped off the plane. The danger here is greatly exaggerated, don't you agree?"

The other woman looked at Leah. "Please don't smoke in my car," she said. She propped her elbow against the door and steered with one hand. Her other hand moved back and forth between the gearshift and her stomach.

For a while neither spoke, though the nature of their silence was less hostile than comical, as the rented hatchback creaked and twanged in all imaginable places, and from time to time the grassy smell of dried cow dung drifted into the poorly insulated car. On both sides of the dusty road, the unvaried red earth stretched on, seemingly endless, until it vanished into an inscrutable layer of smog on the horizon. Beyond and above that smog rose a distant range of mountains, faintly capped with snow and interrupted by many valleys.

Barren as the landscape was, many small clusters of villages existed on the red plain, half-ruined and emptying out. Sometimes the road passed through one, and the other woman gripped the wheel with both hands, constantly checking the rearview mirror. Then the settlements thinned out, and they were back in the semi-wild, kicking up clouds of dust on the empty road, with no other car in sight.

"Hard to believe that our trip is almost over," Leah said, breaking the silence as she closed a guidebook whose pages were marked with pencil and falling out. "Didn't we just pick up this car yesterday? Remember what you did as soon as we exited the airport? You almost drove straight into a bus! Because you forgot which side you were on!"

She began to laugh. In strong sunlight her eyebrows tended to disappear.

"Pfft. This IS the wrong side of the road," said the other woman.

Leah, still smiling, let go of her seat belt and dropped her seat back. The woman beside her rolled her eyes; she watched Leah lodge her feet on the dashboard and said nothing. Leah looked out the window.

"There will never be another trip like this," she said suddenly. "It's all downhill from here."

"What do you mean?" said the other woman, with sweat appearing on her forehead. "Is this about Andy?"

"You're going to marry him, aren't you? Everyone's saying it, but I don't know what you see in that little man. He's one of those nice guys who wants to be on good terms with everyone. That's so unlike you."

Gabi simply grunted.

"I've seen it too many times. Once you get married, it's all about your own little corner of the world. He will steal all your attention and turn us against each other. They always do that to women, don't they? And as soon as you're married, he'll knock you up; year after year, he'll knock you up. You'll be fat and tired, and you won't be traveling anywhere interesting again. The trail of babies will drive you mad--"

"Oh well. It'll all work out, you'll see. We'll take you along and make it a threesome."

"Gross!" Leah shouted. Then she grimaced, waving a hand before her face. "Ugh, what's that stench?"

Presently a squat, grimy building appeared by the road. It was small and windowless, its ugliness almost remarkable. The words "MAN" and "WOMAN" had been brushed in reddish ochre on opposite ends of its whitewashed walls.

Without warning, Gabi slammed on the brakes and pulled the car over.

"What are you doing? This thing definitely isn't on my 'hidden gems' list!" whined Leah, who was hurled off her seat by the sudden braking. Now her legs were sticking out from the footwell in a helpless way.

"Must've been the night market," Gabi said as she rummaged frantically for tissues. Sweat had soaked through her mustard-colored tank top under her breasts.

"Uh-huh. I wonder who warned you about all the flies going in and out of that jar of sauce the guy kept spooning into those crispy little balls? Only you ate them all. They were insanely spicy, too."

Gabi grunted. "Just help me get some paper now."

"Don't tell me you're actually going in there," cried Leah, who had climbed back into her seat. The mishap seemed to have pulled her out of her prior gloom. She turned to the filthy roadside building, her eyes flashing. "Just imagine! There's probably no running water, and nobody has cleaned it for ages. You'll get sick just from breathing the air inside." She pointed at the ditch by the road. "Why don't you just go do your business there?"

"Are you out of your mind?" Gabi flew at her. "Everyone's gonna see me!"

"There's literally no one here. Anyway, don't flatter yourself; no one is lining up to check you out."

"Screw you! Where's the freaking paper?"

"But where's the magic word? You dropped the magic word somewhere, friend."

"Come on, I don't have time for this!"

"Well, my dear Gabriella, just say it."

Gabi glared at her and murmured something. Leah cupped a hand to her ear. "Excuse me, what did you just say? Didn't quite catch it."

"Oh, for God's sake--please, PLEASE give it to me!"

"Voilà." Leah grinned. With the air of a magician, she produced a stack of tissues from the glove compartment. Gabi snatched it, her pale, sweaty face unpleasant to behold.

"You just wait, girl; this isn't finished." She kept looking over her shoulder as she got out of the car. Then she reached back inside with a serious look. "Listen, we're not supposed to stop in a place like this. This is a RED zone. Stay in the car and keep the doors locked. I'll only be a second."

"All right. Bon appétit."

"Very funny!!"

Leah watched her friend hurry across the road, her butt clenched as tightly as humanly possible, and disappear behind the wall marked "WOMAN." She pressed both hands to her cheeks and burst out laughing. Leah had those eyes that sat rather far apart on either side of her broad nose bridge. Yet there was something infectious about her laughter; it could not easily be parodied.

"Yeah, I'm totally locking myself in and keeping watch for absolutely no one," Leah muttered to herself as she climbed out of the car, which was coated in a uniform layer of red dust. "Gabi is so paranoid, dividing the whole country into those green, orange, and red zones. It doesn't make any sense. She always thinks everyone's out to get her."

She yawned and stretched, confidently relaxed like a cat. Despite the foul air, she seemed glad to be free of the car seat; her legs could use a walkabout. She began wandering in a series of widening circles around the car, kicking occasionally at the red gravel. Then her hand slipped into the side pocket of her cargo pants and came out with the joint and lighter. With great familiarity, she lit it up. From the look of surprise on her face, the cheap local weed packed more of a punch than she had thought. It settled her into a mood; she was like a different person, and the stench no longer bothered her.

Had the road not dropped steeply into a ditch, she might have walked out onto the endless red plain, endlessly barren under the open sky. She shielded her eyes and gazed at a distant village that squatted so close to the earth, its roofs made of tough old straw, its walls the same savage red as the earth beneath them. With some disquiet, she imagined living in such a place, the deprivation she would endure day after day, her body yoked to life's unforgiving weight like livestock, yet bound so closely to it, so dear and indebted to it...

Not out of sympathy, she imagined her body submitting to that silent red earth, so complete and breathless. The thought was miserable and impulsive. She stopped it by kicking hard at the road. A piece of gravel scraped against the car door and flew down the ditch.

"How much longer is Gabi going to take in there? Has she passed out?" she thought. Then, more morbidly: Is she dead?

Leah walked up to the low, windowless building that passed itself off as a toilet. The stench intensified. "Gabi?" she called toward the door behind the wall marked "WOMAN."

The other woman answered with a series of heavy groans, an occasional sharp gasp of surprise, and the sigh of relief that ensued, accompanied by all the other nebulous sounds that were harder to stomach. At least they reassured Leah that her best friend was still alive, and knowing Gabriella was suffering put a mischievous smile on her face.

Then Leah caught another sort of noise--suppressed laughter and the soft clapping of hands--and it seemed to come from behind the toilet.

"Something isn't right," she thought. For a moment she stood still, uncertain whether she had really heard anything. Still clutching the joint, she moved along the wall to the back of the building. There she saw four young men, local peasants with deeply tanned, gleaming skin. They were taking turns peering through a hole at the bottom of the wall. They wore T-shirts printed with random English letters; their toenails were uncut and dirty above their colorful flip-flops. The unbearable stench that hung behind the toilet seemed to have no effect on them.

One of them was simply barefoot, his feet coated in red dirt as he lay on the ground, now pressing his face to the hole, now turning to speak and gesture at his pals, who squatted close around him, grinning and clapping their hands softly. When they saw Leah, they did not scatter or even seem embarrassed, but merely tilted their oily mustaches up at her with a mild, almost bored annoyance. It was her mistake to get in the way of their entertainment, their eyes seemed to say; this place belonged to them, and it was their right to watch.

"Get lost, you pigs!" Leah shouted.

She shouted louder than she needed to, partly to frighten them off, partly in the hope that Gabi would hear. Her face looked shocked and almost sick; the weed had also put a reckless heat into her. The men did not expect a confrontation. They rose slowly, and Leah saw that they were rather short men, lean in their oversized T-shirts, at first glance almost harmless. But there were four of them, and Leah knew she could not really fight them all.

"Just hold them here until Gabi gets out," she thought as they surrounded her. At first it seemed less like an assault than a game. They tried to corner her, all the while laughing among themselves. "Don't touch me!" she screamed. But the hands reached out one after another, slapping her ass, tugging at her hair, or grabbing her breasts; as soon as she fended off one attack, the next came from an unexpected direction and had its way with her body. A deep flush filled her face; she was angry and helpless.

Then either her foot slipped or one of them shoved her. She lost her balance and fell headlong into the nearby ditch. Like a loose log, she rolled and tumbled down the slope, kicking up red dust that made her cough uncontrollably. At the bottom of the ditch, she tried to push herself up on her elbows, but her head felt so heavy that she immediately slumped back onto the ground.

The barefoot man had come down too and caught up with her. The thick, oily mustache shone above his lips, and his eyebrows almost met in the middle. He stepped over her body and stared down at her with a peculiar look. It was hard to tell whether he was disgusted or fascinated by what he saw.

Without warning, he spat in her face. Leah cried and winced. Then he sat on her chest, almost crushing her ribcage under his weight, and started slapping her with savage blows.

"No! No!" she shouted. She tried to roll away but was pinned down by his weight. He pulled away the hands she had raised to shield her face and slapped her hard across one cheek, then the other. He used both hands, twisting his waist to draw force, and grabbed her hair to make her expose her cheeks. The cracks of his palms against her burning skin sounded as loud as thunder, and they filled Leah with a hot, bewildering shame.

"God! Stop hitting me!"

Big, fat beads of tears chased one another down her nose. The other men had come down into the ditch as well. They squatted a little way off, their elbows resting on their knees, their eyes fixed upon Leah's face as it was sent from one side to the other in the red dirt. The men watched with the absorbed interest of spectators at a cockfight.

One of them had found the joint she had dropped somewhere above. He put it between his lips, smiled with great satisfaction, and passed the joint to the man beside him.

Soon Leah gave up defending herself. The sudden violence and humiliation of the slapping, which hit harder than blows from fists, sent a wave of despair through her that paralyzed her body. His hands seemed to have no interest in marring the rest of her features; it was principally her cheeks that he wanted to punish and shame. He grabbed her hair to make her look into his eyes before he struck her. More than the physical pain, he was beating fear into her. Behind him, her closed legs jerked on their own each time a slap landed.

Finally the barefoot man stopped. By then both her ears were ringing, the unpleasant sensation inflated by the weed. She shut her eyes just before he spat at her again, all over her face. Then he stood up slowly, stepped aside, and observed her. She was not a pretty sight: dirt and dust clung to her messy blonde hair, and between the sweat, tears, and spit, it was hard to tell what was on her face anymore.

Leah began to sob. Above her, the sun blazed so brightly that it nearly blinded her pale blue eyes. She felt the sun directly on her groin and looked down. They were rolling her dark green cargo pants down to her knees, along with her underwear.

"Don't," she pleaded in an unsteady voice, but they caught her arms and yanked her legs open.

They kept turning Leah, now placing her on her stomach, now throwing her on her back, until the dry red dirt had replaced her own complexion. The men fucked her savagely, with no regard for comfort or hygiene. The moment one pulled out, another entered; there was not a moment of respite. They lay upon her, and she was just two hot, stretchy holes to be rammed from different angles.

They're like a pack of dogs, she thought, goading each other on in a race to mark the lone bitch down as their own. She stopped resisting openly and pretended to submit while she waited for one possible opening.

She was both terrified and irritated by the way they fucked her. When a man took her, he would press his entire body on her, leaving not an inch of her skin free from his oppression. As he thrust his hips and dug his toes into the same red dirt that had coated her body, he would speak to her or turn to speak about her to the others. Several words were repeated over and over again, and she assumed they must be the most obscene slurs in their language.

As they called her by those unintelligible slurs, they grew more excited, and Leah grew smaller under their pressing bodies. She panted and grunted, her cheeks painful and swollen, her heart pounding uncomfortably fast. The relentless grinding and slamming had forced a reaction in her groin. When they tried to kiss her, she no longer pressed her lips so tightly together. She began pissing herself a lot. When the ground beneath her grew soggy with piss, they dragged her by her ankles to a dry spot. She was appalled and ashamed at how readily her body yielded to the assault.

For a few moments she found her mind drifting away. She could no longer follow all the things they were doing to her body. The next thing she knew, her legs had locked around a man's waist, or her hips had shifted to a better angle for him to penetrate her. It was as if her mind had said "No!" to a nasty thought, and her body had immediately jumped to "But that's a great idea!" and proceeded to act. Next it was her tongue that reached into another man's mouth.

"I'm buying time for Gabi to get help," she thought, and a tear escaped her eye.

From time to time there came a pause in her torment. The men would squat a stone's throw away and pass the joint between them, unashamed of each other's nakedness, their balls sagging down to touch the earth, while their trembling dark cocks seemed to shrink back inside their foreskins a little. They looked pleasantly relaxed beside the blonde woman lying on her stomach. Their eyes gazed beyond her used flesh with total indifference, the same way people stuffed after a heavy meal look at leftovers on the table. But they were simply recovering; their cocks would grow rigid again, and they would get down on her, more impatient than ever.

"The worst is almost over," Leah encouraged herself. Her body was coated in a thick mixture of red dust, sweat, and piss, theirs and her own, and she lay there, quiet and submissive, hardly distinguishable from the land beneath her. One of her legs curled up as if she were trying to crawl away, but there was no strength left in her limbs.

She lifted her face from the dirt to look at the ditch, and its edges seemed to become so tall and steep that it was impossible for her to climb out. She had fallen into this ditch, and now she would never walk out of it. This did not upset her too much. The warm dirt seemed to be healing her swollen cheeks; she wanted to press her face back into it again.

In spite of what was happening, her mind had remained surprisingly lucid. She wondered what she was going to tell Gabi when this was over. It would be impossible to hide the evidence. She had saved her friend from a similar fate. Gabi had contacted the police, and help was on its way. She owed her one now. Had she listened to her advice and stayed in the car, it would probably have been Gabriella who ended up lying in the ditch.

Then she was turned onto her back. The sun made her squint; she saw that it was the man without shoes again, and without thinking, her hands flew up to cover her face. The man handled her roughly, like a piece of luggage, but he only pressed his bare foot onto her belly. He pressed down quite heavily. When the pressure made her let out a fart, the man grinned. His foot scraped the dirt away until it came into contact with her tender, fair skin.

He looked down at her with curiosity, judging her as if he were seeing her for the first time. Leah's eyes were very pale in the sun, while his were dark brown. Between them, that seemed to be the only difference: pale eyes looking up, dark eyes looking down toward the earth. His eyes shifted, turning clear one moment and murky the next. She saw him thinking, planning a future for her right there on the barren red plain with him. The calculation in his eyes reminded her of one Sunday at IKEA with Gabi, when they had looked at a couch and planned where it would go in their apartment, whether their friends would like it, whether it would fit all of them on movie night.

"This is the end of my trip," she heard herself say, as she parted her legs for her new master. "This is the place I'll spend the rest of my life in. What I thought was a short stop on a road trip turns out to be the longest journey of my existence."