Kibali
"His business permit has been stuck for six months. The thick government clerk who controls his fate wants more than bribes. She wants him—in her office, on her desk, whenever she calls. The permit can wait."
The permit has been "processing" for six months.
My import business is dying. Every week I go to the Mombasa County offices, take a number, wait for hours. Every week, the same answer: "Still processing. Come back next week."
The clerk who controls my file is named Bi Rehema.
She's been controlling more than my file lately.
Bi Rehema is fifty-three years old.
A government clerk for thirty years, she knows every loophole, every shortcut, every way to make paperwork move or stop. She's thick—enormously so—with a body that fills her government-issue chair and a face that shows no mercy.
The first month, I tried bribes.
She took the money. The permit didn't move.
The second month, I tried connections.
My cousin in the governor's office made a call. Still nothing.
The third month, she called me into her private office.
"Close the door," she said. "We need to discuss your... application."
"You want your permit," she says.
It's not a question.
"I need it. My business—"
"Your business will survive." She leans back, her massive breasts shifting beneath her government blouse. "Or it won't. That depends on me."
"What do you want? More money? I've already paid—"
"I don't want money." She stands, moves around her desk. "I want something else."
"What?"
She stops in front of me. Close enough that I can smell her—jasmine perfume and government office. Close enough to see the hunger in her eyes.
"I want you."
"I've been watching you for three months," she explains.
She's unbuttoning her blouse, slowly, deliberately. The government seal on her pocket rises and falls with each breath.
"Every week, you come in. Polite. Patient. Handsome. And I think—this one. This one is different."
"Different how?"
"The others beg. Plead. Offer money, connections, everything." Her blouse falls open. "You just wait. Week after week. Like you trust the system."
"I don't trust the system."
"Good. You shouldn't." Her bra is industrial, barely containing her. "The system is me. And I want something the system can't provide."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then your permit continues processing. Forever." She unhooks her bra. "Or until you find another way."
Her breasts fall free—massive, dark, government-issue in no way.
"There is no other way, is there?"
"No." She smiles. "There's just me."
I take the clerk on her government desk.
Push her back onto the papers—applications, permits, lives she controls—and bury my face between her thick thighs. She gasps, grips my head.
"Not what I expected—"
"What did you expect?"
"Reluctance. Duty." She moans as my tongue finds her. "Not hunger."
"You've been playing with my life for three months." I lick harder. "I have plenty of hunger."
She screams into her hand.
She comes on government time.
On the desk where she stamps permits, where she controls fates. I eat her until she's shaking, until she's begging, until she forgets she's a clerk and remembers she's a woman.
"Inside me—please—now—"
I stand. Unzip. She looks at me with wide eyes.
"You're—"
"Worth the wait?"
"Worth every permit in this office."
I enter her.
I fuck the government clerk on her desk full of applications.
Her thick body bounces with every thrust, papers scattering, stamps rolling onto the floor. She's loud—too loud for a government office—but she doesn't care.
"Harder—make me feel something—thirty years in this office—"
I give her thirty years of compensation.
Pound into her while she screams, while the desk shakes, while somewhere in the building other clerks pretend not to hear.
"Fill me—please—make it worth it—"
I fill her.
Explode inside the woman who's been toying with my business, my livelihood, my future. She comes screaming, her thick body clenching around me.
Afterward, she hands me my permit.
Stamped. Approved. Six months of waiting, over in one afternoon.
"This doesn't mean we're done," she says.
"It doesn't?"
"This means you've made the first payment." She buttons her blouse, returns to her professional self. "Monthly payments. Same time. Same office."
"And if I miss a payment?"
"Then your permit expires." She smiles. "And we start the application process all over again. From the beginning."
I make my payments.
Every month, I report to Bi Rehema's office. Close the door. Give her what she requires.
Sometimes on the desk. Sometimes against the filing cabinets. Once in the storage room, surrounded by decades of paperwork—her thick body pressed against boxes of forgotten applications while I took her from behind.
"You're my favorite applicant—" she gasps.
"How many others are there?"
"That's government business." She clenches around me. "Focus on your own file."
The arrangement continues for two years.
My business thrives—every permit, every license, every government approval moving smoothly through the system. Bi Rehema makes sure of it.
In return, I make sure she's satisfied.
"I'm retiring next year," she tells me one afternoon, her thick body sprawled across the desk we've desecrated a hundred times.
"Does this mean we're done?"
"This means I'm losing my leverage." She traces a finger down my chest. "So I need a new arrangement."
"What kind?"
"The kind where you visit me at home." She kisses me softly. "Not for permits. Not for business. Just because I want you."
"And if I don't?"
"Then you don't." She shrugs. "But you've been coming to my office for two years. Don't tell me you didn't start enjoying it."
I don't tell her that.
Because she's right.
Bi Rehema retired six months ago.
Her replacement is young, efficient, by-the-book. My permits process normally now—no delays, no games, no after-hours appointments.
But every Sunday, I drive to a house in Nyali.
A thick former clerk opens the door, wearing nothing but a smile.
"Come in," she says. "I have some paperwork that needs your attention."
There's no paperwork.
There's just her, and me, and the arrangement we've built on a foundation of corruption and desire.
Some permits, it turns out, never expire.