anger of a naked, freezing, overworked girl

    They emerged from the limousine after another tense two-hour drive, still a bit bleary-eyed despite the coffees they had forced down when they met at the British Consulate at 4 a.m.  There were only five of them this time, Lady Fanshaw and Mr. Zinowsky being unable to make it.

        Coats and gloves were necessary.  Early mornings in the Gobi are cold even in August.  Peggy was glad she wore fur-lined boots over heavy socks.  They poked around the perimeter of the exhibition hall until they found the loading dock, where a crew of four was taking out the trash.

        Three of them were Chinese men in ski caps, heavy gloves, insulated jumpsuits and big black work boots.  Two were bringing bags out to the dock.  A third was backing up a very big truck to a very large dumpster.  Peggy imagined that hundreds went through the hall every day, with drinks and food provided, so that must generate a lot of trash.

        The naked girl had one foot on the deck, the other extended out onto the edge of the dumpster, her rough, widely-spread toes curling over the lip to maintain her balance, as she barehandedly swung the bags from the dock into the far end of the dumpster.  Her skin was flushed, partly from the cold and partly from her exertions.  The bags were heavy but she had no problem hurling them the fifteen feet or so, swinging her hips with a rough kind of grace that brought out the ripples of her abdominal muscles.  Her breasts swung tightly in time with each throw.  It was as if flinging bags of garbage was in the family line.  There were occasional grunts for the heavier bags but for the most part she made it look effortless.

        Now she hopped onto the dock, walked forward, turned around, and planted her other foot on the dumpster as she started grabbing the fifteen or so bags that her co-workers were depositing in front.  She was facing away from them now and they saw the motions of her exquisitely formed glutes, and the strong but somehow still delicate muscles of her bare shoulders, brought out by her over-all tan.

        The man in the truck shouted out something.  Miss Smithers turned to answer him.  The conversation was in Chinese.

        Sir Gregory, Sir David, Mr. Donaldson, Peggy and her supervisor Mr. McConway could only stand at a respectful distance and wait until the job was finished.  Standing in one place on a cold morning, one gets cold.  Peggy was on the verge of shivering, despite being so heavily clothed.

        Finally Tami waved to the men on the dock, who disappeared inside.  Evidently she was the crew foreman.  Now she jumped off the dumpster, her tough soles landing silently on the rough concrete, and walked over to the truck as the hoist lowered.  She climbed up the back of the truck to attach the dumpster.  She was facing away from them and she had to spread her legs wide as she grasped the top strut with her toes to anchor herself.  She was pitched forward and her puckered anus winked at them in the early morning chill, her internal muscles reflecting the vigorous motions of her arms and hands.

        She hopped down, and with a loud whirr the dumpster was lifted and emptied its contents into the truck.  Tami watched, hands on her hips, to make sure no bags spilled over.  Then the dumpster was lowered to the ground and hit the concrete with a resounding bang that echoed through the cold still air.  Tami hopped up and spread her legs again as she disconnected the dumpster.  Finally, standing on the ground, she waved to the man in the truck and it drove off.

        She had seen the delegation, of course, and now faced them, arms at her sides, expecting them to approach her rather than the other way around.  They came up to her, glad to get their blood moving again.  As Peggy drew close she noticed Tami’s hard bare feet on the cold concrete, filthy, freezing and reddish, and wiggled her own toes, thankfully snug and warm in her fur-lined boots.  The naked girl’s stiff nipples pointed at them as if accusingly, angry little brown pebbles.  She gave off an odor of drying sweat and rotten garbage.  From handling all those trash bags, Tami’s thighs had streaks of dirt across them.  Her pubic hair was caked with gray dust.  Her fingers and toes had grease smudges from working on the truck.  Most disgustingly, at some point a slurry of something rancid and red had sprayed across her right breast and nipple, leaving a dried speckled streak.

        “Good morning, Miss Smithers,” Sir Gregory said.

        “Good morning, sir,” Tami said, politeness hiding her exasperation with them.  She was still a bit winded after the strenuous job.  It was so cold her breath came out in little clouds.  She was standing bolt upright, shoulders back, breasts thrust forward above her hollowed-out tummy.

        “I think we have finally succeeded, to your satisfaction,” Sir Gregory said.  He came up to the naked, filthy girl, taller than she was, more than 50 years older, and fully and elegantly groomed and clothed.  His cologne contrasted with her stink.  He handed her four affidavits.

        Tami looked them over carefully, while absently scratching her bare butt, and then a nipple, the one that had escaped the vile spurt.  Her hair was a sweaty mess and she brushed back a few strands.  In the midst of such dishevelment her pretty face and bright green eyes stood out all the more.  She read one affidavit, then another, careful to handle them with the fingers that were still unsmudged.

        Tami handed them back.  “These can be faked.”

        “Miss Smithers, really -- ”

        Tami exploded.  “R - really!  They can be faked!”  The cold was finally starting to get to her now and she began shivering.  “Y - you don’t know, sir, how much I’ve been lied to!  Over and over!  I once saw a -- thing -- signed by a doctor, saying I was a c - crazy girl and shouldn’t be given any clothes.  I had to g - go across my whole country hiding from the p - police!  And it turned out the s - signature was faked!”

        Sir Gregory was trying to hide his indignation.  “But these are notarized -- ”

        “I don’t care about notaries!”  In fact Tami had only a vague idea of what the word meant.  “I want -- physical proof!”  Her arms flung about, she stamped her bare foot onto the concrete, her breasts jiggled this way and that.  This was their first exposure to Tami’s legendary wrath.  She handed the papers back to Sir Gregory.

        “Well -- I don’t know -- what we can do further,” Sir Gregory said, handing the affidavits to Sir David, who slipped them back into his attache case.

        Tami’s eyes got wet.  She clenched her fists and beat them against her hips.  “It is -- COLD -- out here!  I mean -- C - COLD!!  Do you know how b - badly I want to put on clothes??”  The clouds of her breath shot out with each word.  She prayed up to the sky.  “Please, God, give me clothes!” she said in a little voice, as if for the thousandth time.  She hugged herself, trying to stop the shivering.  She covered one grimy bare foot with the other.  Peggy so longed to give her coat to the poor naked girl, and even her fur-lined boots, but she knew it was strictly forbidden.

        “Well -- yes of course we are -- ”

        “And this -- ” The girl uncovered herself and motioned to the building -- “place full of -- creepy old guys watching me.  This is more than I agreed to, WAY more!”  The poor naked girl shivered again, all over.  She closed her eyes.

        Then she held each of the five in her steady eye, one after the other.  “Next week -- Thursday -- at one o’clock they tie my elbows together behind my back and put me on this huge -- fake penis -- it’s gigantic -- and tie my feet to the floor, and then they twist it up so far into me I have to stand on my tip toes.  That’s the -- icky -- stuff they do to me.”  No longer was she a Sphinx.  She was expressing her real hurt, revulsion, anger, shame.

        There was a brief silence.  Then she said, as slowly and evenly as a cold naked girl could say it, “After that they will t - tie me up and stretch me out, like you saw me that one time.  My head’s way up there.  If I say anything, they can all hear it.  The ac - coustics are really good.  They can all hear me -- shout when I -- c - c - come.”  These last words were especially hard to say.

        “Next Thursday, when I’m up there, I will shout out:  I AM AN AMERICAN CITIZEN!  I AM B - B - BEING HELD HERE AGAINST MY WILL!  I WILL T - TESTIFY AGAINST ALL OF YOU!  I DEMAND TO SEE MY AMBASSADOR!  Then I will shout it out again, in Ch - chinese!”

        Sir Gregory’s eyes widened in shock.

        Without another word the shivering naked girl turned and sprinted back to the building, arms pumping, breasts bouncing, bare feet now numb with the cold thudding against the gravelly concrete.  She was headed for a welcome hot shower, though it would be up on a platform with no curtains and men in suits all around watching as her breasts jiggled with her vigorous scrubbing.