The Camp is Vast Asleep
Nate Jarvis

Steve and I are in Celebrity, a two-level bar run by two bosses. Natasha runs the thinly veiled it's-karaoke-not-prostitution second floor (first if you're British) whilst Jackey runs the horribly unsuccessful drinks-and-music first (ground if you're British) floor.

Jackey named himself after Jack Daniel's. He spells it "Jackey" instead of "Jackie" because Jack Daniel's spells it "whiskey" instead of "whisky." His real name's Wang something.

I walk in and order a whiskey off Jackey. Steve gets brandy or Tsingtao, or both, mixed one-to-one. One of us says "Ben Harper" to Jackey and Jackey knows what we mean.

Then the Italians walk in.

I'm legally Italian by blood right (mother's father's mother died a citizen), but don't speak a word. World Cup or no, I'm always mesmerized by Italians from Italy. I don't know why; I know it's stupid; I'm still despite. They come in, just back from Wuxi, old friends of Natasha's, get their drinks and we—they and Steve and me is we—start some talking.

Marco is from Lazio. I, a Romanista (79th minute: Nakata Nakata NAKATA!), decide against derby talk.

Cullo, they say...

Cullo, you gotta hear this, they say...

Cullo, they say, in Wuxi-dialect Chinese, means "CHEERS!" When we toast, every time we toast—and we toast a lot—we stare, very visibly, eyelines drawn and underlined in Sharpie, at the ass of a girl on the first floor waiting for a guy to come into the bar and take her away, up the second floor.

"Cullo" is Italian for "ass." "Ass" like the asses we're looking at as we toast, not "ass" like the asses we're making of ourselves for doing so.

We're drunk.

And we're asses even when we aren't.

Many a beer and a brandy and a "whiskey" later, the Italians are catching up with Natasha.

Steve and I are catching up with each other, which we do every day. He's holding a brandy on the rocks, staring into space, smiling. Glass with the drink unmoved. I'm holding a bottle of Tsingtao, staring at Steve, at the space he stares into. Our drinks are getting warm. Condensation is running down the bottle of my beer, pooling on my thumb and between my fingers, making my hand wet, and cold.

Time doesn't pass. Sometime later we kill our drinks and stumble. Catch a cab and make our way home. We get there and sit on the sofa, Alpha on the stereo, drink some more and think about people we miss.

The girl is wearing boyshort panties. I pull them down with my teeth, off with my hands, my forehead pressed against the globe of her ass as I switch from the first to the second.

Her skin smells like soap. She showered after we got here, then put her panties back on, then wrapped a towel around her body to hide her tiny tits. Nothing androgynous about her, though; girl's got hips, girl's got legs that go and go and keep on going.

Sheets wind up wrapped round her like a towel, like a toga, like my tongue.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's due.

Her belly is flat—I mean supermodel-in-an-aerobics-ad flat—her tits small enough I have to pinch and pull to make them
move, or bite and breathe to make her chest heave. My left thumb is in the back of her knee, my right hand holds both her ankles to the right side of my head. "It hurt," she says. "Do you want me to stop?" I say. She nods, seems to concentrate; I set her right ankle on my left and sliiide down, my lips on her labia, one finger than two up inside her pussy, touching the soft spots on the inside, lingering, switching, hitting, stroking, my thumb and my tongue on her clit, now and again trying to catch the streams she squirts in my mouth like a dog with a hose, my hand pressed against her solar plexus to keep her short of breath, to keep my hand on her belly, to keep my skin on her skin.

To keep me touching her.

Time doesn't pass but later I stop, kneel on the floor on the side of the bed, gripping her glistening upper thigh with one hand. She's lying flat on her back in the bed. She puts the back of a hand, the backs of both hands, against her forehead. We both, we catch, catch our breath. And I smile really big. She smiles really big. She laughs a little. I laugh a little. And she's beautiful. No longer nervous, at ease, naked and happy in the way that only sex can make you happy, in the way that only sex can make you tired and awake at the same time. I look her over, over and over, again and again. Her thighs and her ankles, her eyes and her ears, her belly, her cunt. She's beautiful.

Dewdrops in her pubic hair.

I eat her out again.

Sometime later I flip her over onto her chest, her ass in the air somewhat. Her thumb brushes my balls as she guides me into her cunt, then I force my weight down into her weight into the bed, my lower belly firm, against her bum, and pump, slowly because she says it still hurts.

Her hair smells like hair, and a little like hotel shampoo. My mouth at her ear, talking, whispering, nibbling. The first time I stick my tongue in her ear it's a wet willy; she laughs and pulls her shoulders up, sucks in a lot of air, forcing her ribs in, forcing her ass up into my pelvis, my ass up into the air, so then I smash down hard and it's no longer slow, but deep now, and rhythmic. Our groins move together from the sheets on the bed up, up two feet, three feet, into the air and then back down, till I'm (the taller) on tiptoes and I slip out and swear and she guides me back in, a thumb on my sac, then again, and again, the meat of her ass jiggling, dancing bounding, bouncing. I slip out again and she guides me back in; I'm taking God's name and she's taking mine, she's flat against the bed and I'm flat against her, her hands in my hands and I shift down toward the backs of her knees then up towards the sharp points of her shoulders, and again, and hard, and again, the headboard hits the wall.

And time does not pass.

Later we're talking. "I want to leave," she says. "My father want me go back Dalian."

"When do you leave?" I say.
"Tomorrow. Still have no buy train."
"Oh. ... Oh."
"No worry, us. Not so serious."
"Oh. ... Oh."
"I go back Dalian, work. Work here is no good. Money good, more good than Dalian good. But my father say go back Dalian. I no want back."
"If you don't want to go, don't. Money's better here. Stay here and work."
"But my father is live in Dalian, so I must back Dalian."
"—."
"Jiangyin I have no family, no friends. So I back Dalian."
"You have me. If you want to stay, stay."
"—."
"—."
"I back Dalian."

We're dressed and ready to go. She's got her boyshort panties on her, her jeans over her panties so tight I can see the curves I spent the night with. The TV's on, an old historical film from the 80s about the San-fan Rebellion.

On our way out the door, out onto the street, she says: "Blood."

And I say: "?"

And she says: "On the sheets. There was blood, on the sheets."

But I already knew that.

Before we leave I point to the TV and say, "Is that Wu Sangui?"

And she says, "Yes, that's Wu Sangui."

But I already knew that.

Eight hours later I'm rubbing my eyes with the thumb and first two fingers of my right hand, left hand holding my place in Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace, 30 kuai pot of crap coffee going cold on the table, though the first cup's still steaming. I can smell her pussy over the smell of coffee.

When I take my hand away and look at it, I see dried blood between the hangnails, emphasizing the lines of my cuticles, stuck down below the quick. Steve died during the night.

Two hours in an airplane and ten in a taxi, I make it to the hospital just in time to be too late.

I expected to have a eulogy, but I didn't. Rachel did, something about their students who (despite packing the room) seemed somewhat peripheral. I stood in the back, all in black—sweater and cargo pants and socks and shoes—and I watched. Everyone, and I mean everyone, came up to me and shook my hand and said "Nate. Nate. Thank God you made it. You were his best friend." Rob says it and Troy says it and Peter says it and Scott says it and Satoko says it then Wolfgang says it then the other Wolfgang says it. I keep track, I keep track of who said it, because when I see Steve tonight, tonight after his funeral, over dinner, over Tsingtao, I'm going to tell him every little thing that happened between the last time I saw him and now, between his funeral and the beers we're drinking, and we're gonna raise a glass and say "Cullo!" We're gonna stare into space and catch up, without even saying that single proverbial word.

The funeral's over. Now it's just me and the school and government officials who have to be here still, for legal reasons or out of giri-type obligation, and Steve's ashes in a lacquered box. They take me out for lunch, a banquet with the lazy-susan in the middle of the table, the eggplant and the chili pepper chicken and the ants (yes, they're literally ants, like the insect) spin around it like a planet orbiting the barycenter it shares with the sun. We get beer and baijiu; I toast with ganbei and with cheers and with cullo, which I have to explain, the explanation drawing a laugh. I still haven't accepted the fact of Steve's death, despite seeing him powdered and grey and inside a box the size of a Nintendo; the whole time I'm here drinking and eating and laughing I'm also trying to remember everything that happens involving everyone the both of us know, knowing it'll all come out in one mad rush as soon as that first bottle cap flies through the air and falls to the floor, that I'll say everything I need to know and everything I need to share, all without saying that single proverbial word, the instant I see him.

I was still keeping track, so I could tell him, the whole time they talked, and ate, and drank, and laughed.

I still am.

***

Nate Jarvis is a contributing editor for Ignavia.