She kissed me on the mouth!

I felt like I would faint with pleasure!

Her tongue pried my lips apart and sought the inmost reaches of my mouth.

She sucked my willing tongue out and her lips drew upon it and her teeth lightly held it.

I was going into a daze of pleasure.

Her hands were stroking me, touching spots in my body I had never suspected had any pleasure in them. I began to breathe heavily.

She stroked my breast. "Darling, darling," she was whispering. And then, "The mouth is everything."

She kissed down my throat. She kissed down my chest. She kissed down my stomach. She kissed down my thighs.

Suddenly all the blackness around me was a vortex, pulling me in as though I were being swirled right down, helpless with sensuous pleasure.

I floated suspended in joy amongst the stars.

White lightning seemed to flash across the whole universe.

I lay in an utter daze. I had never felt such a thing before. Lights were spinning in the utter blackness of the room.

My heart was pounding so hard I felt my chest was going to explode.

We lay quietly in the velvet dark.

I could feel the spent relaxedness of her.

Time passed.

Then her hands upon my cheeks. She stroked them. "That was very good," she whispered.

Weakly, with one hand, I sought to pluck at her breast. Gently she steered my hand away. "This is all for you," she said. "The mouth is everything." She kissed me. "Everything," she said. She kissed me more passionately. "The mouth is everything" she moaned. "Oh, darling, lie still. This is all for you. Just spread out your arms and legs and enjoy it."

Her tongue was stroking my lips. Then her whole mouth was cupping and stroking my lips. Then her mouth and tongue and hands were once more finding secret places in my body.

My passion began to stir anew.

Her hands suddenly caught my hair on either side of my head. She was gripping my head passionately. I could feel her eyes like black coals in the dark as she looked at me.

"Oh, darling," she said with choked passion. "The mouth is EVERYTHING!" She kissed me. She drew back. "It is many hours until dawn."

And her mouth once more began its journey down my body to culmination in sublime ecstasy. It seemed to me that never before in my life had I ever had sex. And not like this! But it was beyond anything I had ever dreamed for or of. Nothing, absolutely nothing in Heavens or on Earth had felt that good before!

When I awoke it was well into the afternoon.

I showered, something new for me. I put on clean clothes. Something new for me. I smiled at Melahat Hanim. Something new for me. She was helping the waiter serve me breakfast.

The whole world smelled good, looked bright. Something very new for me.

"Where is my darling Utanc?" I said.

Melahat said, "When the car was delivered, she and Karagoz went off to get her driver's license."

Of course, that was easy. I had given her the proper identification and birth certificate of an actual baby girl that, had it not unreportedly died, would have been about Utanc's age by now. But Karagoz would have to teach her quite a bit before she could pass any driving test.

I went out to the cool patio and sat in a chair. One of the small boys came tearing out of Utanc's room without any clothes on, spun about and vanished. He returned with pants on and tried to sneak by me. It was too narrow a gap. I tousled his head and smiled at him. He gaped back.

I reached in my pocket and got a coin. I gave it to him. He stared at it suspiciously.

I reached into my pocket and gave him a ten-lira note. He took it and looked at it in amazement.

I reached in my pocket and gave him a hundred-lira note, almost a U.S. dollar. "Just tell Utanc, when next you see her," I said, "that the moon and sun together are dim compared to her."

He didn't know what to make of it. He went off muttering the phrase so he could remember it. Suddenly he was back. "Sultan Bey," he said, "can we eat all the grapes we want?"

I smiled indulgently. "Of course."

A little while later, there was a roar of an approaching car. I got up and looked out toward the gate.

A vehicle shot in, braked with a squeal of tires and slid exactly into the parking place.

It was a white BMW road-rally car. A sedan with a low profile and a big trunk. Plastic no-see-through glass covers had been put over the inside of the windscreen and windows. You couldn't see who was in it.

Utanc got out on the driver's side. She was garbed in a white cloak with a peaked hood, and veiled, and all that was visible of her were her sloe-black eyes and even these were shadowed by the hood.

Daintily and modestly, she crept across the yard and when I would have stopped her, turned her body and slid past me, eyes downcast, and was into her room.

I was in a state of alarm at once! Had I done something to offend her?

Karagoz was getting out. He had some bundles. A small boy grabbed them and sped to Utanc's room. The door slammed behind him.

I went over to Karagoz in alarm. "Is the car all right?"

Karagoz said, "It's fine. They had one all ready to deliver to a rich official and, for a premium, they sent it right over this morning as soon as I relayed your note. Drives great. Awful (bleeped) fast, though."

"Did she like it?"

"Oh, yes! Drooled over it."

"And when does she get her driver's test and all?"

"Oh, we got the license. I only had to show her a few things the salesman showed me. Then I showed her how to steer and so on. In about ten minutes she had it. The test man said she was the best driver he'd seen for some time. Mysterious."

"Well, of course anyone expert at driving camels would have no trouble learning to drive a road-rally, stick-shift car," I said.

"That's true," said Karagoz.

"Then what's she upset about!" I demanded.

He thought and thought. Then he said, "In the store where they sell cassettes, she wanted some Tchaikovsky—he's some composer or other—and some piece called 'The Overture of 1812'—she said she wanted the one with real cannons in it—and they didn't have either one and said they'd have to send to Istanbul for it. But she really wasn't upset. She just told them she'd take the Beatles that they did have and they could order the rest." He thought a while longer. "Oh, yes. She said the high-frequency band was missing on the audio cassette deck they tried to sell her and that they better get some decent hi-fi equipment in if they wanted her for a customer.

"But actually, she was very sweet about it. She's very shy and not forward at all. You can tell from her accent she's been raised amongst the wild nomads of Russia. Really, she's the most mannerly and demure person I ever met. Except, of course, when she gets behind the wheel of that car!"

So I had no slightest clue of how I had upset her.

The day dimmed for me.

I could hear some laughter coming from her private garden, her own throaty amusement and the high-pitched little squeals from the two small boys. So she wasn't mad at them. She had drooled over the car. She had not been mad at the merchants. She had gotten her driver's license. She was not upset with Karagoz. There was only one conclusion I could reach.

She was mad at me.

I stared for hours unseeingly into a discarded pile of shriveled grass.

I knew I could not live without Utanc.

Now and then in a lifetime, somebody catches a glimpse of Heavens and then promptly plunges into Hells. And that was what was about to happen to me.

That night, there was no messenger from Utanc. I fretted away the hours fruitlessly.

In the morning, red-eyed and bushy-haired from lack of sleep and worry, I thought that if I could just speak to her and ask her what was wrong, it would all come out all right. At least I would know.