The Big Sugarbush

by Ana Good

  “Looking for a tampon,” she lied.

  “Do not say that,” said Hasi, his face stern. “We do not talk about these things.”

  “What? Menstruation? You’re telling me you don’t talk about menstruation?”

  “That is enough!” warned Hasi, his face reddening.

  “Because I’m having my period,” remarked Storm casually as she pulled a super tampon from her pocket and waved it in the air. “And I need a new one of these inserted as soon as possible.”

  Hasi and his men stepped back from the tampon-waving correspondent, clearing a path to the door.

  Storm had what she wanted now: Hasi and his men unbalanced. Tampon! Tampon! Tampon! she felt like screaming as she walked toward the door unencumbered. She’d forgotten what wussies men were about women’s periods. At last, she had the upper hand.

  “Let her go,” croaked Hasi to his men, who could not have retreated any farther into a corner if they had tried. “There is nowhere for her to go. Whether we kill her or the desert kills her, makes no difference. Yes?”

  “Thanks,” said Storm, who was out the door before Hasi and his men could change their minds.

  80. Her Healing Touch

  Mary Lou was reading a tattered copy of O, The Oprah Magazine when Thumper awakened. Casting the magazine aside, she climbed into the elevated hospital bed with her girlfriend. “You’ve been asleep for, like, hours,” murmured Mary Lou. “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Miss me?” moaned the snowboarder.

  “Like the dickens!” proclaimed Mary Lou. “Dirk called when you were asleep. She saw your tumble on CNN. She called to congratulate you, and to ask if you were okay.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “That you were fine and dandy.”

  “Good. Thanks. She like California?”

  “Loves it. Candice has her back on testosterone and she’s taken up surfing. Says it’s just like snowboarding, except you can do it naked.”

  “Cool!” said Thumper, who at the moment envied her sister her physical freedom. “Any news from the doctor?”

  Mary Lou snuggled against Thumper’s side as best she could, given all the apparatus and wires they had tangled around her girlfriend. “No news,” she sighed.

  The two were quiet for a while. It was dark in the room, except for a single bedside lamp where Mary Lou had been sitting reading. The machines around Thumper hummed and bleeped.

  “Think we can make out?” asked Thumper.

  “I think we should try,” insisted Mary Lou.

  “Can’t really move much,” complained Thumper.

  “How about I get up and straddle you?”

  “Cool! If you do that, I can move my hands, give you something to ride.”

  Mary Lou, who was wearing a skirt, slipped out of her panties and kicked them across the room before straddling Thumper.

  Hiking her skirt, she was soon at home on top.

  “Can we, like, do this in here?” whispered Thumper.

  “They’re charging us, like, five hundred dollars a day for this bed. Honey, at those prices I say we can do anything we damn well please.”

  Mary Lou slid apart Thumper’s gown and began to slide her tongue over her washboard abdomen. “Feel that?” she purred.

  “Ah, yeah! Definitely!” giggled Thumper.

  “Good,” Mary Lou murmured as Thumper’s hand slid between her legs and she mounted two fingers, then three. “Mmmm! I feel that, baby!”

  Mary Lou was soon biting her bottom lip, trying to keep her panting to a dull roar. The harder she rode Thumper’s hand, the harder Thumper pushed back. When she came she had to bite into Thumper’s shoulder to muffle her scream. She rolled off Thumper onto the side of the bed, perspiration glistening on her rosy cheeks.

  “Mary Lou?” whispered Thumper in the darkness.

  “Yes, honey.”

  “I felt that.”

  “Course you did,” snickered Mary Lou.

  “No,” said Thumper. “I mean I really felt that. Down there. In my, er, clit.”

  “Oh my God!” cried Mary Lou. She peeled pack the sheets and stared at Thumper’s bulging muscular thighs. She ran a hand along one thigh. “You feel that?”

  “Oh yeah!” cried Thumper.

  Mary Lou leaned down and kissed her girlfriend’s mound through the thin cloth of her tighty-whiteys. “How about that?”

  “Dunno. Try it again. A little harder?”

  Mary Lou was only too happy to oblige. Less than a minute later, it was Thumper who had to bite the air to keep from screaming.

  81. Lull in the Storm

  Storm was not far from the shack where they’d held her captive when she dropped her fatigues and began to urinate. She had not lied about that. She wasn’t on her period, though. That had been a bald-faced lie: a very effective one, it seemed.

  Storm sighed as she relieved herself. At least she was outside. Free for a few of the last moments of her life. She stared up at the stars as she wiggled back into her fatigues. The sky twinkled with a different pattern of constellations than the ones she’d viewed only a week ago. The last time she’d really looked at the stars had been with Poppy in Vermont. That seemed a long time ago. A lifetime ago. Storm kicked at the wet sand, ashamed of how she’d last treated Poppy.

  Poppy was special: Storm had never allowed anyone as far into her heart as that little tart had managed to climb. She wondered where Poppy was now. Had she completed rehab? Storm was certain she had; she wished she could see Poppy one more time. Say good-bye. Make amends. She hated the idea that she was going to her grave without letting Poppy know how much she really cared for her.

  The door to the shack creaked open and Hasi Ahmad stepped out into the hazy starlight of the desert. “Come back now!” he pleaded. “We must finish the interview.”

  Storm kicked more sand as she walked toward the shack. It was no use, really. She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her fatigues, only to jam her right hand into the vial of pain pills Hunter had forced on her.

  The pills. I can swallow them all. Take my own life instead of giving it to them.

  Storm realized in an instant this was the only way she might die with dignity. She slowed her pace as she shuffled toward the hut, popping first one pill, then another. She had difficulty swallowing the pills. Her throat was dry. She tried to work up some spit, but the pills kept sticking to the roof of her mouth. They dissolved against her tongue as she walked, bitter and hard. Storm kept swallowing pills right up to the door, where Hasi ushered her roughly inside using the butt of his rifle.

  By the time she was back inside, she felt sleepy. She lay down on the cot. The muscles in her legs felt like jelly. Even her tongue felt numb. When she tried to talk, her tongue wiggled like hot rubber against the roof of her mouth. Her lips felt swollen and heavy. She felt she might choke on her own tongue. On the bright side: She felt too dreamy to care one way or another. A haze hung over the room. Hasi and his men appeared to be wearing halos.

  She lay back on the cot and shut her eyes, confident hers would be a pleasant death, after all.

  82. A Different Kind of Fox Hunt

  Poppy chewed her cheeks as the military supply convoy stopped at the third and last checkpoint on its way into the war zone in the southern provinces. It seemed to Poppy like the Hummer and its escort tanks were lurching as slow as giant scorpions across the sand.

  The rock star wondered again why the Americans were at war in this godforsaken place. Normally she paid little attention to politics. A month ago she could not have dreamed she, too, would be at war. She’d never loved anyone enough to risk her pride, let alone her life.

  Wee Gee squeezed Poppy’s arm, bringing her out of her trance as the Hummer lurched forward, toward an arc of lighted missile fire that spread like a halo over the eastern sky ahead of them. “The general said that’s where we’re headed. Over to the right of that light,” said Wee Gee.

  Poppy frowned. “That looks far
away.”

  General Wilson turned around in her seat to address Poppy. “It ain’t far, honey. About five miles. We’ll be there in about the same amount of minutes. I have to tell you gals we could hit some fire. Or roadside bombs. If we take fire, I want you two to get down on the floorboard, as flat as you can. French kiss that goddamn floorboard. This thing is bulletproof. The bottom is steel plated. Just get down and stay down. Understand?”

  Wee Gee, who was already on her knees halfway down into the recess, replied, “Yes, ma’am!”

  But Poppy remained seated. “May I have a gun?” she asked General Wilson, her voice as steady as if she were asking for a cup of tea.

  “Can you shoot?” asked the general.

  “Of course.”

  Wee Gee snorted. She looked up from her cubby on the floor of the Hummer. “You know how to shoot a gun?”

  “Of course. I’m English. I’ve been on duck hunts and fox hunts.”

  “Fox hunts?”

  “Yes.”

  “You ever kill any foxes?”

  “Not the furry red ones, no. Though I have to say I have knocked out a few of the lesbian kind in my time.”

  Wee Gee chuckled.

  The general’s head disappeared from the seat ahead of Wee Gee and Poppy. When the general reappeared, she was hoisting a machine gun over the seat of the Hummer.

  Poppy took the gun, along with a belt of ammunition. She strapped the ammunition around her chest and sat back in the seat, lowering her eyelids.

  Outside the Hummer the noise had picked up. As long as Poppy kept her eyes closed, it sounded like a celebration, like fireworks across the Thames on a hot summer night. Pop! Pop! Then a low rumble.

  “We there yet?” asked Poppy, as the Hummer slowed to a crawl.

  In the front seat, General Wilson had been tracking the GPS signals in Storm’s camera. A green dot pulsated on the screen. “Almost there, ladies,” said the general. “That shack up there just off the road seems to be the place.”

  Poppy squinted in an effort to better decipher the tin-roofed edifice in the shadowy distance. Light leaked in thin rays out the cracks around the front door. Two windows glowed with yellow light, one on each side of the door. In the far distance, by moonlight, she spied a group of armed men scrambling like scorpoions over the ridge of a sand dune. Poppy gripped the barrel on her gun as the Hummer slid to a stop not twenty feet from the shack.

  General Wilson turned in her seat to instruct Poppy to wait, let her soldiers secure the shack, make sure it was safe. But by the time the general had her neck craned around, Poppy had opened the door to the Hummer and tumbled into the night. She ran as fast as she could toward the shack. The weapon bounced against her chest, an event that would have been painful if Poppy had been in her right mind.

  But Poppy was not in her right mind.

  “Goddamn it!” yelled the general after the rock star. “After her, ladies!” she called to a platoon of soldiers who spilled out of the Hummer next to them.

  83. Operation Desert Storm: Code Blue

  Poppy burst into the shack, relieved to find Storm alone, face down on a cot. She rushed to the cot. Kneeling, she grasped Storm’s head, gently rotating it until the correspondent’s cold face fell into the cup of her hands. When Poppy saw Storm’s face, her relief turned to panic. The war correspondent’s normally creamy complexion was tinged blue.

  “Storm!” she cried. “Can you hear me? You all right, love?” Poppy squeezed Storm’s right hand, which hung cold and lifeless off the side of the cot.

  A pair of medics struggled to drag Poppy aside. “Let us have a look at her, ma’am,” said the first medic, a tall, gangly black woman. “Please, let us see her.”

  Wee Gee, who was now in the shack alongside General Wilson, grabbed the grieving Poppy around her waist. Struggling, she pulled Poppy backward, off Storm’s body. “Get back, baby girl! Let these ladies have a look.”

  Poppy kicked and screamed. One well-placed kick of her combat boot and she was free of Wee Gee’s grip, back on top of Storm’s seemingly lifeless body.

  While Wee Gee regrouped, trying to catch the breath Poppy had kicked from her, the general sauntered up behind Poppy. She made a small jabbing motion with one hand to one of the medics. Understanding the motion, the medic pulled out a syringe, which was already loaded with a clear liquid. She thrust the needle into Poppy’s posterior.

  The rock star’s knees buckled. General Wilson caught her and swung her to the ground softly while both medics busied themselves over Storm.

  The general studied Poppy’s limp form. “Sorry about that,” she said to Wee Gee. “But she’s not helping her friend. The medics need to make an assessment, and they can’t do that if they can’t get to the body.”

  Wee Gee licked her lips. She did not like the term body, which the general had used to describe Storm. She held her tongue, though, and cradled Poppy in her arms as the medics performed a series of maneuvers involving tubes and bags over Storm’s limp body.

  One of the medics turned to face Wee Gee. She held up a plastic vial. A pair of large, blue tablets clinked softly together in the vial. “You recognize these?” she asked Wee Gee.

  Wee Gee shook her head a virulent no.

  “Your friend have any prescriptions she took regularly that you know of?”

  “She was an addict.”

  “An addict? What did she use?”

  “Pain killers. She loved the things. Anything with opiates.”

  The medic rattled the vial again. “But you don’t recognize these?” The medic spilled the pills into her palm and fingered them, searching for the coded numbers that would tell her, perhaps, what kind of drug Storm had taken. The tablets had no code. They appeared to be a private manufacture of some sort. Desperate for some identifying data, the medic bit into the bitter end of one pill.

  The other medic popped her head up. “What is that stuff?” she asked. “She had to have taken it. Look at her shirt.”

  The front of Storm’s fatigues were stained a milky blue. Clearly she had taken the drugs, or been fed them, then vomited.

  Wee Gee leaned forward. “That’s vomit? That’s good? Right? If she vomited she didn’t get the full effect? Right?”

  Ignoring her, the medics resumed work on Storm. One of them filled another syringe and injected the medicine directly into Storm’s chest, close to her heart as near as Wee Gee could tell.

  “What was that?” Wee Gee asked. “We don’t know what she’s taken. Do we?”

  The medic shrugged. “Assume it’s an opiate. See if we can get a heartbeat. Anything at this point.”

  Wee Gee watched in horror as the women cracked open the dented red metal case on a portable machine. Ripping open Storm’s shirt, one medic slapped the small red paddles to her blue chest. Storm’s booted feet jumped as the medic applied the charge of the machine.

  Then again.

  Wee Gee held the unconscious Poppy tight to her own chest, smoothing her hair, as one of the medics leaned back and adjusted the dials on the machine.

  “Got a beat!” one medic cried. “She’s back!”

  Wee Gee didn’t have to ask what that meant. Storm began to moan. The medics rolled her to her side on the cot as a steady stream of what looked like blue milk leaked from her chapped lips.

  84. Coming Home

  The doctor shook her head as she slipped the black cuff around Storm’s arm and took her blood pressure. “You’re damn lucky. That’s all I’ve got to say.” She rounded the bed and checked Storm’s pupils with a silver penlight. “Damn lucky those field medics knew their stuff.”

  Storm was sitting up in a hospital bed, in Herndon, Virginia. Though a civilian, she’d been brought into Baghdad central military ER, then promptly airlifted stateside. Purple crescents floated under her ice-blue eyes. Her lips were so badly chapped and cracked, the hospital doctors had applied a white salve to stem off infection.

  Wee Gee crossed her arms as Storm adjusted the tubes that
snaked around her chest. “Girl, you look like something the dog’s been keeping under the porch all summer.”

  “Really?” said Storm. “Well, don’t hold back on my account, dear. Tell me what you really think.”

  Poppy sat silent in the far corner, curled in an orange plastic chair, reading a fashion magazine. Since arriving stateside with Storm, she’d been unusually subdued.

  Storm crooked a finger toward Poppy. “You!” she croaked. She pointed to a spot on the edge of her sterile white bed. “Here. Next to me.”

  Poppy laid aside her magazine and trounced over to Storm’s bed. “Do I look bad?” Storm rasped weakly as Poppy perched on the edge of her bed.

  “Bloody awful,” said Poppy.

  “I guess you won’t kiss me, then?”

  Poppy wrinkled her nose. “Bloody right about that!”

  Storm curled a hand around Poppy’s own hand, which rested at the edge of the bed. “Thank you for coming after me.”

  “You don’t need to thank me.”

  “Yes, I really do. No one ever did that kind of thing for me before.” The emotion was apparent in Storm’s voice. The rasp in her throat wasn’t caused by cigarettes now but by the deep feelings Poppy had evoked in her.

  The two women were silent for a moment. Storm spoke first. “I’m not good with this talking about feelings thing, but I want you to know that when I was in that desert, certain I was going to die, all I could think of was you. I didn’t want to leave this life without telling you how sorry I am.”

  “Sorry?” Poppy furrowed her brow. “About what?”

  “Hunter,” rasped Storm. “That thing I did to you in Stowe. You finding me like that with Hunter.” Storm averted her eyes in shame. “I hurt you. I could see it in your eyes. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “That was a shock. I thought you fancied me.”

  “I do fancy you,” whined Storm, her voice rising. “I did then, and I still do. I, like, really love you. I want to be with you. Don’t you get that?”

  “It would have helped if you’d told me that, like, in words,” mumbled Poppy, a little embarrassed that Wee Gee was listening to every word, her ears perked and her pen poised.