Pirates of the Caribbean — A Marketplace Tale, Part 6
Pirates of the Caribbean is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. Laura recently released “No Safewords,” a fan anthology of tales by different writers set in the Marketplace world.
In Part 5, Bette gets her hands into something interesting 
. In this part, Bette will go on an exploration that turns surprisingly personal.
The next day dawns clear and mild, which is apparently a regular thing around here. I hear a light knock at the door, and a uniformed waiter enters, pushing a room service tray with flowers, juice, a covered dish, and oh, thank you gay Jesus, a carafe of coffee. I sit up in bed, suddenly ravenous. I guess I burned off last night’s sumptuous repast with Clarita, because I felt like I could eat ALL THE THINGS.
To my surprise, Rita sweeps into the room behind the waiter. I scramble to pull the sheets up higher around me — I sleep naked! But Rita reacts as if absolutely nothing at all is out of order and seats herself, in a way that can only be described as regal, in the thronelike armchair next to my bed, crosses her legs, and asks: “So. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes — I don’t think I moved a muscle the whole night long.”
“That’s not what I hear,” Rita says, with the tiniest hint of a smirk.
Oy! What is it with this woman? She’s always got me off guard! Older, wiser, and three steps ahead of me. It’s a good thing she likes me; if I were up against her she’d see me coming from 500 yards, I think.
“You are quite a surprise. I send up Clarita to give you a massage, and you end up giving her the full treatment.”
“Well, that’s me…I’m a giver,” I say lamely.
“That is quite some unusual massage technique that Clarita reported to me. In great detail, I might add. You give new meaning to deep tissue massage.”
I laughed. “You could call it that.”
“I shall have to be careful, or Clarita will try to stow away in your suitcase when you leave. She has quite a crush on you, my friend. I had to send her on an errand to the next town to prevent her from serving you breakfast.”
“Not that I would mind,” I say.
“No, but a two hour breakfast simply won’t fit into today’s busy schedule, I’m afraid. I have a few things planned for you.”
In half an hour, I’m showered, dressed, breakfasted, and out front looking snappy. The military did wonders for speeding up my morning routine, I can tell you that much.
There’s a sand-colored Land Rover in the drive, and a big, lanky blonde guy leans out the drivers’ side window and waves me over. I hate to admit it, but my immediate thought was: “Oh. The one with the really big cock.” I mean, I don’t even own dildos that big, and that’s saying something.
I see Rita in the passenger seat and open the door to the back seat.
“Benny,” Rita says, “Let Bette drive, and you get in back. We’ll probably use you to drive home. And lift heavy items.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Benny says. None of that macho bullshit about I’m the man I gotta drive, I note. Benny gets out with a big smile and unfolds himself across the back seat. I hand my backpack to him and he puts it on the floor behind the drivers’ seat with a grin.
“I have a feeling this trip will be more fun for you if you get to drive,” Rita says.
“How do you know me so well?” I ask with a grin.
“You’re not so hard to read as you think you are, maybe,” she says, laughing and pulling down her massive Jackie O sunglasses down over her twinkling eyes.
Rita says it will take a half an hour to get there, but in reality, it takes us a half an hour to get out of town, even though El Batalle doesn’t even have a single streetlight. Rita, I realize, is the unofficial mayor, Mama, and tribal chief around here. I might have been unnerved by the way people on foot would walk right up to the car like it was made out of Marshmallow Fluff instead of the two-ton hunk of sheet metal and rubber that it really was, but I’d done a lot of ambulance driving in countries where goats were considered road markers during my tours in the Army. Rita spent most of her time leaning out the window, chatting, shaking hands, in not one but two cases, kissing babies like a candidate for office.
Once we got out of town, I ask Rita, “You ever think about running for governor?”
“Ayyy, no, chica, not me. Give up my private life? Not for all the money in the world! Besides, the governor of Puerto Rico has very little real power, and it’s not like someone like me is going to choose less power over more. Isn’t that right, Benny?”
There was no response from the back seat. “It’s amazing,” Rita says. “That boy can sleep anywhere, anytime, on top of anything.”
“Do you think there are any Marketplace people holding high office?” I ask.
“Ah, no. I don’t think so, really. Too much exposure,” Rita says. “Take that one,” she says, pointing to a fork onto a dirt road. “Although I heard that governor — you know the one in South Carolina who got caught with a mistress from Argentina? I heard he went to an auction once, but never got anywhere.”
“I guess if he had, he wouldn’t have tried to claim that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail,” I say. Rita laughs. “In all seriousness, it might solve a lot of problems for politicians who can’t keep it in their pants.”
“In America, sure. Other parts of the world are more sensible — people have affairs and while it’s not necessarily a good thing, it’s not the end of the world, either.”
“That would be a nice change,” I say.
“Well, it’s your kind that are leading the way,” Rita replies.
“My kind? You mean gay people?”
“Yes, absolutely. You people are the future. You’re teaching us all to get real about love and sex and family.”
“It has been a pretty big deal lately. I love that it’s happening. When I was a kid I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime.”
“We still have a long way to go, though, here, and in places in the Global South,” Rita says, patting my knee. “Gay people are a gift from God and should be treated as such everywhere on Earth. How do people think we’re going to make anything beautiful without gays, or get anything to work right without lesbians? It’s not like we can get along without you.”
I laugh.
“If I ever had children, I would wish to have a gay child. I want a nice splashy gay wedding.”
“If it’s not rude of me to ask, Rita, why didn’t you have children?”
“Well,” Rita says, taking off her sunglasses and tapping one of the temples contemplatively against her teeth, “It’s funny. Your kind has spent the last forty years on a quest to get married. These days it seems like all the gays want to get married, settle down, have a baby — just like you. Now wait, stop here,” Rita says. “You see that little gap in the trees? You want to turn in there, but be careful, it’s narrow and there’s a drop on the left side.”
I turn into the gap and the trees are all around us, pushing at us like the brushes in a car wash. I pull hard right, not wanting to tumble into a ditch on the left. Ten yards in, we come out into a grassy clearing. In front of me, I can see a beautiful stream, tumbling out of some rocks. There are kids playing on the rocks and in the stream, and families on the far bank having a Sunday picnic.
“This is so beautiful,” I say.
“Leave the car here and come with me,” Rita says. “Benny has been here before, he’ll follow if he wants to.”
As we pick our way toward the stream, Rita continues. “For me, it was a forty year quest NOT to get married, not to have children, not to be under any man’s thumb,” she says. “And it was like an obstacle course, especially early in my life — dodging this, swerving away from that, putting up with a few decades of family pressure and disappointment. But I knew that was not the life that I wanted, or the life that I was meant for.” Rita waved me to follow her on a natural bridge across the stream, skipping across toffee-colored rocks to the far side.
Once we reached the other side, we stood on a massive boulder. “Look,” Rita says, pointing behind me.
I turn around and there’s a massive, sheer wall of light brown rock jutting out of the tropical foliage.
And it’s covered in petroglyphs: ancient carvings of beings with bows and arrows, hunting deerlike creatures. Curling labyrinths swirl across the wall, and carvings of hands, and mythical creatures I don’t recognize. I’m an atheist, and a pragmatist, but I feel a spiraling sense of awe I don’t think I’ve ever felt before.
“I wanted to take you to see your history,” Rita says. “Since it was on the way.”
“What do you mean?” I say, almost drowsily, enchanted by the sheer scope of the carvings and the depth of time they represent, unable to tear my eyes away from them for reasons I don’t understand.
Rita nudges me with her elbow. “Look around, handsome,” she says, indicating all the families and kids enjoying the water and the beauty. I start focusing on each group. This one. That one. The kids. The grownups.
They all look exactly like…me. That one could be my sister. That one could be my child. It was uncanny. After spending a lifetime never seeing a single person in whom I saw my own reflection, here were a hundred of me.
Of us.
Us.
I have an us.
“This is no accident, chiquita mia. Aqui esta tu familia.”
“I have to bring Kelly here,” I blurt out. I don’t feel like I have a whole lot of control of what’s coming out of my mouth at the moment.
“Claro que si,” Rita says. “She is your family; you want to introduce her to your family. Of course you want to show her yourself.” We pick our way over to the shore, where families sit on worn canvas tarps and blankets eating a midday meal. “And you have to bring el bebe, of course — the next generation.”
“Well,” I say quietly, mindful of the young kids around me, “My child won’t exactly be related to me in the same way…genetically, I mean.”
“I don’t want to trivialize that,” Rita says. “But no matter what, your baby will be connected to you.” I spot Benny, working his lanky limbs across the rocks with no small difficulty, carrying a picnic basket.
“And you,” Rita says, shading her eyes to watch Benny’s precarious progress across the stream, “are connected to this.”
The Taino petroglyphs mentioned in this post are real, and you can visit them. Here’s more about La Piedra Escrita, a massive boulder in the Rio Blanco that is covered with petroglyphs (and is a popular spot to swim and picnic).
Lily Lloyd is the author of Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your Kinky Relationship, a book about making kinky relationships work.
