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The crowd chanted something that sounded like "TAAAAY-HA MING-GUK[clap clap]! TAAAAY-HA MING-GUK[clap clap]!"
"They're saying 'South Korea, South Korea,'" Sabina said. Her mother was Korean.
"Wow," Thomas said. "There can't be that many Koreans. They must be very well organized." He looked up and down the street.
They watched until they got too cold.
"Madness out there," Sabina said, closing the window. Beautiful goose bumps.
"I should go," Thomas said.
She didn't look at him.
"Fine."
"I have plans," he said.
"Go." Wordlessly he got dressed, left her standing naked and desultory at the fridge, eating grapes. Downstairs he emerged into an orgiastic tide of human beings, their garbage and warm breath and arbitrary nonsensical enthusiasm. All over the place, American flags: pins, buttons, stickers, miniature flags, big proud banners. Support Our Troops. Uniformed cops massed at barricades, trapping the horde on Seventh. There were cops on horses. People eating pizza with their mittens on. Everyone happy. Everyone screaming. Things flying from windows above. The crowd, overjoyed, shouting, "WOOOOOO!" and "TWO THOUSAND SEVEN!"
Okay, fuck this, Thomas thought.
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"We should come together," she said, "right at midnight, when the ball drops. The countdown will be just for our orgasm."
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He walked back into Sabina's building, rode the elevator back up.
She opened the door in a scuffed blue bathrobe.
"It's really chaotic out there," he said.
"So?"
"Can I stay?"
She sighed. "You know your behavior is frequently outrageous, don't you?" He nodded. She walked back inside, shaking her head. With great relief, he followed.
On the living-room carpet, she lay down on her back. Undid her robe, exposed the long paleness of her body. He knelt. He ran his tongue from the sole of her left foot up her calf to the underside of her knee and then along her inner thigh until it touched her vulva.
Sabina trembled. "I hate you," she said. "Keep going."
He did.
Time became meaningless when he went down on her. That was his favorite thing. How the world disappeared and in its place there was only the experience. Her wetness, her warmth. Her moans, steadily rising, turning staccato. Becoming gasps. Going sharply silent. She came like an attack, hips bucking up off the carpet, grinding against his face.
"Fuck," she whimpered after. "You can't just make me forget everything like that, it's not fair. I still hate you. Yes, kiss my pussy."
Getting tissues from her desk a few minutes later, Thomas noticed her laptop open to a grainy YouTube video. "What were you watching on YouTube?" he asked. "Funny cats? Mexicans brawling?"
"Saddam Hussein getting hanged," Sabina said. "I was about to watch, but I changed my mind."
"It's on YouTube already?" he said, then clicked "play."
Elderly Saddam Hussein being walked to the high gallows in a dim, grimy chamber. Harsh voices chanting Arabic, a name, a prayer. Blurred shapes as the camera phone was jostled. The dictator starting to speak. A brutal clang as the trapdoor fell. An incredulous clamor. The dangling body, the broken neck.
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"Fuck my ass," she said. Only when stoned did she demand anal.
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Thomas got up and went to the window. Sabina slipped free of her robe and joined him there. The crowd screamed.
"I'm tired," he said.
She led him to the sofa. They sat. "Be naked with me," she said. After he undressed, she arranged a goose-down comforter over them; as always, their mutual nudity felt sublimely intimate. He didn't feel this way with other girls.
"They were yelling when he fell," Thomas said, "like it was a touchdown or something."
She put her hand on his leg. They smoked half a joint with the lights off and turned on the TV, which showed pop stars performing in Times Square before the huge crowd. Sabina went to the fridge, and he watched her beautiful slim body float away in flickering darkness, float back. They ate cold grapes from a bowl. He felt numb. On TV, the ebullient crowd counted down to eleven o'clock — practice for midnight. He and Sabina smoked more. They made out a little. Her hand crept to his cock under the comforter and she idly, gently jerked him off for a while, massaging the underside of the shaft and teasing his balls, but he didn't come. Going to the window again, they looked down naked on the terrifying multitudes. They threw grapes at them.
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