Salty by Mark Haskell Smith Page B

knocking her to the studio floor and attempting to remove her eyelashes with a sharp pair of tweezers.
    Sheila had been left with a deviated septum and a destroyed reputation.
    Still, the photographs were strikingly beautiful. They became the central image of the ad campaign. Sheila’s face and body were plastered on billboards, in magazines, and on the products themselves.
    No one had paid that much attention to her body since then, not even her husband, and although she was a little confused and frightened by Captain Somporn, there was no mistaking the intensity of his gaze.
    Sheila poured some shampoo into the palm of her hand and began to wash her hair. She turned her back to the shower, letting the water rinse the soap out of her hair, giving the Captain a full frontal view of her body.
    She looked over at him, hoping to see a sign, some clue of what he was thinking. A lick of the lips, a twitch of the eye, a boner maybe. But the Captain was stoic, unreadable. He would calmly take a drag on his cigarette and watch.
    When she was finished washing and drying herself off, he asked a question.
    â€œWhat do they eat in Sweden?”
    Sheila had never been to Sweden but she had been to IKEA, the Swedish furniture megastore.
    â€œMeatballs, mostly. Salmon. And lingonberries.”
    Somporn finished his beer and reached for another one in the cooler near the wall.
    â€œLingonberries?”
    â€œThey love ’em in Sweden.”
    Somporn opened a Singha for her and held it up. Sheila didn’t bother to cover her breasts with the towel as she bent over and gratefully took the beer. She noticed that Somporn inhaled sharply as her breasts dangled close to his face, but he made no move to touch them.
    â€œWhat do they look like?”
    â€œLingonberries?”
    Somporn nodded. Sheila tried to remember the lumpy red smear of sauce that came with the meatballs in the IKEA cafeteria.
    â€œLittle. Round. Red. They make a sauce with them.”
    Sheila sat down on the edge of Somporn’s small bed. She let the towel drop and picked up the jar of coconut oil. She slowly began to cover her body with the sweet-smelling emollient.
    â€œHave you tasted them?”
    Sheila nodded.
    â€œThey’re sweet and sour. Kind of like the fruit here.”
    â€œLike a mangosteen?”
    Sheila didn’t respond; she was watching as her body began to glisten from the oil. It felt good on her skin. Better than any mud bath or herbal wrap she’d ever experienced.
    It suddenly occurred to her that she and Somporn were lounging around like lovers, relaxed and warm in the afterglow of sex. This was normally the time Sheila enjoyed the most, the sex being either fun or not so fun; it was during the aftermath that she actually felt close to someone.
    Somporn lit another cigarette.
    â€œThose things aren’t good for you.”
    The Captain nodded and waved his hand in agreement.
    â€œThe smoke keeps the mosquitoes away. I would hate for them to bite you and ruin your beautiful skin.”
    Sheila calmly rubbed the coconut oil onto her breasts, neck, and shoulders. Then she looked at Somporn, their eyes meeting.
    â€œWould you do my back?”
    He nodded and took the jar. Sheila turned around and waited. Captain Somporn sat on the cot and began, very slowly and gently—she could feel his hands trembling—to rub the coconut oil into her skin. She tried to relax but, alarmingly, she found herself getting aroused.
    With her back to him, facing a dark corner of the hut, she couldn’t see anything, just their shadows projected on the wall by the lantern, like a Balinese puppet show. But Sheila felt the touch of Somporn’s hand, the sweet oil nourishing her skin; smelled the earthy odor of the tobacco mixing with the strong scent of coconut and the malty tang of beer; heard the hiss of the lantern, and the wet sounds of the oil he was lathering onto her body.
    Sheila realized, with diamondlike clarity,