Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [15]
Now that they had left the noisy traffic behind, the sound of the radio came to the fore: “We’ve reached the end of tonight’s program, dear listeners. We leave you until tomorrow—same time, same place—with Lena Horne and ‘Mad about the Boy’ …”
Cavidan Hanım felt a tingling in her loins. Don’t tell me to give you a break; I’m a human being, and I know human beings have a tendency to lose it every now and then. Actually, it was pretty understandable. She’d never really had much of a sex life, other than a few rather tasteless flings with colleagues, and that was so far in the past now, her conspirators had faded into pale ghosts of her imagination. And throughout those long years, whenever she attempted to satisfy the urges of her body by herself, leaning against the cold walls of her shower stall, it wasn’t those inadequate lovers but her male students that she fantasized about. She loved the way they smelled so fresh, how their voices still cracked, their unruly attitudes, and their black-haired arms peeking out from rolled-up sleeves; she loved it all, at least as much as she loved this city. She threw her head back, draining the can of beer in her hand. She’d grown silent, perhaps out of shame for her thoughts.
Tolga slowed down next to the cemetery, turned on his right-turn signal, and then parked by the water. The headlights illuminated the sea one last time before going out; the seagulls, caught in the circles of light, flitted about the sky like giant snowflakes.
“I can have a beer now, too, can’t I?”
Without breaking her silence, Cavidan Hanım reached down into the black plastic bag next to her foot. She took out a can, opened it, and handed it to the young man. She had avoided his eyes. The jazz program ended, and Tolga switched the radio off. For a while, they just sat there, listening to the wind howling wildly.
I keep referring to the wind, I know, and perhaps you find it annoying, but there’s no way around it, because for me it’s the main character of the story. It was bolting through the sky in fits of madness, lunging down and surging back up, sending shivers through the evening lights, absorbing the familiar sounds of the city into its own roar. It dried lips, hurled anything and everything that failed to match its strength, weighed down upon souls, made skin crawl. Tolga sipped on his beer, contemplating Cavidan Hanım’s profile, while she contemplated the seagulls lowering themselves toward the sea. One wonders what was on their minds just then. But then, it’s not hard to guess. Perhaps a jumble of thoughts coursed through Tolga’s mind—how he could possibly explain this delay to his girlfriend; his eleventh grade English teacher; the fact that he had to buy a present for his mother; how awful it would be to be out at sea in this weather; whether or not Cavidan Hanım’s medallion was in fact a locket, and if there was a picture in it; his girlfriend again; his mother again; even the project he’d turned in that day, and the likelihood of its success. Though these may not have been his exact thoughts, they were certainly something along those lines. He didn’t try to focus on anything in particular, and that was comforting to him somehow.
He leaned back in his seat, took a big gulp from his beer, and got lost in thought again. He was back to pondering the matter of the presents; in fact, he was on the verge of actually making a decision. And he would have, for sure, if only he hadn’t felt Cavidan Hanım’s hand settle onto his crotch just then. At least he had finally eliminated the perfume, narrowing his options down to two: either the laptop bag or the cashmere sweater.
“Do you mind if I touch you?” she asked nonchalantly, as though asking if she could roll down the window. Moreover, she went ahead and began unzipping the young man’s pants, without even waiting for an answer. And unzip them she did.
Tolga looked in amazement at the fingers pulling at his boxer shorts. Would it be rude to ask her to take her hands off of me? he wondered. His manhood, though, growing beneath the woman’s touch,