A Country Called Boupha

 
On New Year’s Eve they met on a notorious street corner that was familiar to her. They might have been together previously, perhaps at a bar, since they were both stumbling drunk. As cars swished by on the damp street the pale foreigner with a British accent, yelled, “black rabbits, black rabbits, black rabbits” as he lifted Boupha’s skirt and sodomized her. With everyone around a stranger, what did he care?
Boupha was not a stranger there. With her long, black hair flung forward and her spindly legs with their scruffy knees showing, her white skirt billowing around her head like a flower--which is the meaning of her name--she might have been any girl, but this was Boupha.
Alcohol had dimmed for each the implacable lament of barking dogs, diminished too the man’s sense of shame. He saw himself on a screen, above it all. Despite vague recollections of conflicts with authorities, Boupha told herself the moment would pass, no one would remember. Periodically, a snapshot of her mother and infant daughter intercepted her mind. It was only she herself, Boupha, who did not matter.
The night felt full and empty, elusive and unattainable, even as he desperately tried to hook it and she to accede. Cars honked. Spoiler, someone yelled. He waved defiantly. Thank you for being here!
The cameras flashing at them buoyed the man’s sense of bravura while Boupha kept her head down, dutifully invisible, as image after image of her, of them, spun into electronic space. Once she looked up to see what the pulsing warmth was on her crown only to find the night itself completely illumined.
People from all over the globe commented later upon seeing the frozen stills of them online, reading about their public display, assigning to each the role of sinner, evil fornicator, disrupter of civility, although it was only he, the blond man on top, the man with the money, laughing.