Body Media

Lord, but she's fine. Coffee-colored skin... coffee with cream, that is. Almond shaped eyes. A smile as sweet as honey. She's making me hungry and I have no place to go, standing in line, just waiting to place my order.

The schlumpy old man in front of me tells her what he wants ("Sumatran Vanilla Tall and Skinny Extra Hot With a Pump of Mocha") and she deftly, swiftly keys it in. The pimply boy working the spouts and steam nozzle barely glances up as the order hits his screen, and he drawls his acknowledgement in a reedy hick voice.

Then her glance settles on me and I almost forget what I want. Self consciously, I glance around and see that no one is standing behind me. I take the time to gather myself and offer her a smile -- not shy, but confident, arrogant even, because girls like that.

This one seems unimpressed. Her polite expression never changes but she says "Good morning, welcome to Koffee Karma, how may I delight you today?" with the same precise cadence I've heard her use on the four people ahead of me. I guess I don't stand out as much as I wanted to.

"I'll have a Medium Mediterranean Dark With Cream," I tell her. My standard order, but this is my new haunt since the office moved to new digs. Today is the first day of the next part of my life. She and I, we are gonna be fine friends... if I can get her to see through the customer she's expecting to deal with and notice me as something more than a string of key codes for coffee drinks.

"Medi Medi Dark with Cream," she murmurs. Her smile is faultless, as is her tabulation of the order. Gangly Pimples down the way yelps his compliance and a few moments later I have my hemp fiber cup in hand. There's a free table nearby, with a view of the beauty behind the counter. I have a few minutes. Why not rest my tired carcase and drink in her beauty along with my caffeine fix?

After a few minutes, even her rare beauty can't keep me there any longer. Public spaces irritate me. Koffee Karma, like any place else, is full of light and noise. Everyone's a walking billboard, for themselves or for their clients or for their employers. One punked-up chick, wearing next to nothing, has her body media going so strong -- all neon pinks, intense golds, flaring white, and buzz-saw blaster music -- that she seems clothed in a series of erratic starbursts. I can't even figure out what she's selling, until the name of her blog (MuffSnack221.eros) scrolls across her midriff in sky-blue that fades into ocean green and back again.

As if that wasn't bad enough, three guys from GothTwatPizza are clustered at another table, their crude banter and laughter less noisome than the spidery black legends that flicker across their bared chests, necks, and faces.

I've had my share of Body Media in the past, of course, like anyone else, but I've turned all that shit off and purged the dynamic liquid crystal pigment from my skin. It itches as it's making its way to the surface, where it'll flake off in tiny, nearly invisible flecks and specks. I've kept only one tiny, oval black spot, just above my left elbow. It's something for me -- not the company, not the recruiters, not some foundation or agency. I'm sure my permanent file is already full of notations about this small act of rebellion on my part, but what's an artiste to do, if not pursue beauty even if it raises doubts and suspicions?

***

The next day, my beauty isn't at the counter. But two days later, a Thursday, there she is.

"Hi," I attempt.

She smiles, her composure as perfect as everything else about her. I notice that she, like me, seems to lack all Body Media -- except for a red spot between her eyes, where I imagine a third eye might, in theory, be located. But I can't tell: It is standard subdermal liquid crystal? Or is it something more exotic? The red spot sort of looks painted on, as though she's applied it to the top layer of her skin instead of installing it underneath. There's no luminosity to the pigment. No wonder I didn't notice it the other day... if she even had it then.

"Good morning, welcome to Koffee Karma, how may I delight you today?" Her perfect rendition startles me out of my thoughts. I place my order in a similarly eidetic manner, using the same words and inflections as I did before. Her fingers, slender and swift, peck at her workstation display.

Gawky Pimples echoes the order. I think to check him out quickly, and even Gawky has some Body Media going on -- a spiral of red dancing with a sinuous twist of green, threads of yellow winding through the m�lange. It looks musical, but he's not sounding off. Probably has the acoustics set to bone induction so he can feel it. I'm guessing from the color scheme it's reggae he's jolting along to. Is it company policy not to sound off? Why bother? In this place, with everybody's Body Media annunciating, blaring, and thumping, who can tell?

Meantime, jostling up behind me, there's a middle-aged woman, overweight and coruscating shades of cinnamon, rust, and burnt sienna. It's disastrous. She should get a new designer. She literally looks like shit.

I glance back at my beauty behind the counter, and her level gaze has not wavered. I'm pausing, hesitating: She's waiting to see if I need something more.

"I -- " Words fail me. "Thank you," I offer, and a quick light flashes in her eyes, brighter and more beautiful than anything flickering or twinkling on anybody's skin.

***

Friday morning, I achieve a breakthrough. After our familiar ritual -- her greeting, my order -- I see her luminous gaze dart momentarily to my arm.

"Is your tattoo growing?" she asks.

Something surges through me at that moment, something like a lightning bolt. "Yes," I almost stammer, my heart suddenly pounding. "I... it's... it's designed to develop over time. Slowly."

"Why slowly?" she asks, and now there's a smile, a real smile, bringing a new level of allure to her lips.

I glance around. I'm the last in line for the moment. She's talking the chance to chat me up. I could tear up with hope and happiness, but that's the sort of thing people still expect from girls, and I'm determined not to live down to anyone's stereotypes.

"Because the world is too fast, and too loud," I tell her, walking myself through the words as I speak them, afraid I'll forget English and start to babble unless I stay focused.

Her smile grows brighter, and her perfect white teeth glint, her tongue moving warm and shadowed behind them. Such a mystery, such a temptation. I am not getting any sleep tonight unless I avail myself of one or two of my favorite toys, thinking of her and imagining those fingers, that tongue...

"I think so too," she says. "What will your tattoo turn into?"

I could indulge in words, but I smile back instead. "Wait," I tell her. "That's the whole point. You have to wait and see."

***

And for the next month, the tattoo, as she calls it, grows. And so does the erotic tension between us. Am I imagining things? Does she even like girls? Impossible to tell, because she interacts with all the other customers, male and female alike, with the same perfect professionalism. No one seems to notice or want anything more than that. Maybe she only seems to like me because I made such a point of letting her know I liked her.

It's been four Mondays and three Fridays and tomorrow is the fourth Friday since I started coming to this branch of Koffee Karma. The installation on my arm has blossomed in the night. I've been bursting to show it off to her. I wait until I can be last in line... I've perfected the timing by now... and I sidle up to the counter. She smiles with crazy brightness, crazy beauty, and doesn't even ask me what I want. She keys it in from reflex at this point. Gawky Pimples responds like an automaton.

Her eyes drift to my arm and widen. Her smile becomes softer, tinged with wonder and surprise. "Is that a flower?"

"That's a flower," I affirm.

"And is that some sort of... little fruit?"

"The little fruits will grow a little bigger and brighter before they are done."

"What are they?"

"Oranges," I tell her.

"Real oranges?"

I laugh. Obviously, not real. Just pictures made of luminous liquid crystal.

"I mean, do they depict what real oranges looked like?" she corrects herself.

"Yes, as far as anybody knows," I tell her, trying not to sound too clever and boastful.

Her look is rapt and delicious. She turns that deliciousness upon me as our eyes meet. Could she want to bite into me, tug on my skin, suck my juices the way she wants to devour those tiny little oranges?

"Why oranges?" she asks me.

"They say oranges were the forbidden fruit," I answer. I'm a little unclear about this, actually, and I suspect I have gotten the story wrong. I never paid attention in school when we learned about mythology -- all that stuff about a perfect garden, a lizard, god the mother and god the father and god the son, three leaves and one blossom, all of that seemed incredibly useless and remote. Now I wish I'd had a keener ear for those dusty old stories.

"Why forbidden?" she asks me.

Because it contains the flesh of god, the seeds of life. We eat in memory of... well, something important. I don't say this, because I'm certain I have gotten more details mixed up. But that's a truth I'm feeling on the inside of my tingling skin.

"Want to find out?" I ask her. I can't believe I've been so bold. But we've spent a month dancing slowly, slowly closer to this moment. This seems as good a time as any. The best time so far, in fact.

She tilts her head, and a whole new expression comes over her, more arresting than anything Body Media could conjure up. "Yes," she finally answers. "I would like that very much."

Lost for anything more to say just then, I extend my hand. "My name is Dina."

"Nangai." She takes my hand and oh, my Lord, her skin leaves mine singing.

For Brody.