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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 navigat-
ors, 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 is-
landers. She was not required to do housekeeping, cooking, or weaving,
and while the other women
112 / Christopher Moore
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 wiggly energy that had caused more than one of the distracted village
boys to fall out of a breadfruit tree during harvest. (She broke ankles as
well as hearts.) Sepie was all titter and tease, a lazy girl who excelled at
leisure, a natural at invoking and denying desire, a wet dream deferred.
At fifteen she took up residence in the bachelors house and had lived there
for four years.
When Malink and the men brought the flyer and the man in the dress
to her, she knew she was in for some trouble.
Take care of them, Malink said. Feed them. Help to make them
strong.
Sepie kept her head bowed while Malink spoke, but when he finished
she took his hand and led him into the bachelors house, gesturing to the
other men to lay the flyer and his friend on the ground outside. The men
smiled among themselves, thinking that old Malink was going inside to
receive a special favor from the mispel. What, in fact, he was receiving was
an ass chewing.
Why don t you take them to your house, Malink? I don t want them
here.
It s a secret. If my wife and daughters find out they are here, then
everyone will know.
I m the only one who can keep a secret in the bachelors house. Take
them to old Sarapul s house. No one goes there.
He wants to eat them. Malink couldn t remember ever having
Island of the Sequined Love Nun / 113
to argue with a woman and he wasn t at all prepared for it.
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