Island of the Sequined Love Nun

himself before he ruined her ebullient mood, but he pressed on despite himself. "Don't you think that no coffee or sugar for a month was a little harsh?"
    "You really don't get it, do you? I'll give it all back after a week, 'Bastian, and they'll love me for it. Generosity of the gods: The Sky Priestess taketh away and the Sky Priestess giveth back. It's how these things work. You put a few people on a boat, then you drown every living creature on the planet-the people on the boat are pretty goddamn grateful." She flipped the end of her red scarf over her shoulder.
    "I wish you wouldn't talk like that."
    "You make the rules and you play the game, 'Bastian. What's wrong with that?"
    He turned from her and pretended to go through some notes. "I guess you're right," he said, but he felt acid rising from his stomach. She was calling it a game.
    She came up behind him, pushed her breasts into his back, and reached around inside his lab coat. "Poor baby. You still feel like you did the right thing by burning your Beatles records."
    "Beth, please."
    She unzipped his khakis and snaked her hand in his fly. "Deep down, you feel like John Lennon got what he deserved, don't you, sweetheart? Saying he was more popular than Jesus. That loony-toon Chapman was the instrument of God, wasn't he?"
    He whirled on her and grabbed her shoulders. "Yes, dammit." His face had gone hot. He could feel the veins pulse in his forehead, in his crotch. "That's enough, Beth."
    "No, it's not." She ripped open the front of his trousers and fell back on the lab table, pulling him on top of her. "Come on, show me the wrath of the Sorcerer."

27 – Girl Talk
    Sepie washed the pilot's hair in a bowl with pounded coconut and brackish water. She had been taking care of the unconscious white man for two days and it was starting to get tedious. She was mispel of the bachelors' house, and washing and ministering to a sick and stinky white man was not in her job description. This was women's work.
    There are legends in the islands, and some of the old men swear they are true, that the women who service the bachelors' houses, the mispels, were taken to the secret island of Maluuk, known only to the high navigators, where they were trained in the art of pleasuring a man.
    After months of training, a mispel was required to pass a test before she was allowed to return to her home island to take over the duty of tending to the sexual needs of the men of the bachelors' house. The test? She was sent into the ocean with a ripe brown coconut clutched between her thighs, and there she floated, in heavy surf, for the entire circuit of the tides. Should the coconut pop loose or the mispel touch it with her hands, she failed the test (although there was some leeway in the event of shark attack). It is said that the inner thighs of the mispels of old were as strong as net cable. The second part of the test required the girl to find a delicate dragonfly orchid with a straight stem, and while her teachers looked on, she would lower herself over the flower until it disappeared inside of her, then rise again after a few minutes, leaving the stem unbent and the petals unbruised. The mispel held a position of honor, respected and revered among the islanders. She was not required to do housekeeping, cooking, or weaving, and while the other women toiled in taro fields from the time they could walk, a mispel was allowed to nap in the shade, conserving her energy for her nocturnal duties. A mispel often ended her tour of duty by marrying a man of high status. No stigma followed her into married life, and she would be sought out to the end of her days by the other women for advice on handling men.
    Sepie, however, had not been chosen because of any special skill, nor had she passed through any vigorous concubinal boot camp. Sepie had been marked for mispel from the moment of her menses, when she emerged from the women's house with her lavalava tied a bit too high and showing a bit too much cappuccino thigh, her skin rubbed with copra until she glistened all over, and her breasts shining like polished wooden tea cups. She had painted her lips with the juice of crushed berries and peppered her long black hair with scores of sweet jasmine blossoms. She giggled coquettishly in the presence of all the men, danced dangerously close to the taboo of speaking to them in public, risked beatings by refusing to fall to her knees when her male cousins passed, and went about her chores with a