by Carr, Suzie
Eva, my muse, would nourish me with rich energy, refreshing all tired pulses, nerves, and cells. Her flirty powers would lift me up and open my mind to serve as a symbiotic partner to the world that existed outside my condo and sheltered, boring life.
I opened my eyes at this point, poured myself another generous helping of wine and took to my couch. My head spun delightfully and my fingers and toes buzzed. I leaned back against my couch and sipped my wine, imagining Eva curled up beside me, our legs entwined, her hair falling like feathers over her bare shoulder, a sultry smile resting like a twinkle on her face. I closed my eyes, breathed in the wine, imagined Eva’s soft lips brushing up against mine. In this reverie, she swept in like a graceful ballerina, bathing me in her sweet breath. Her lips—soft, moist, and warm—guided me to a romantic spot where together we twirled on point, to a flamenco beat that rose and fell in alternating quick and slow successions. Our tongues swayed suggestively, hypnotizing us into a space flowing with elegance, passion, and perfection. My heart soared to great heights, and leapt in sync with hers as she carried me along her fluidity in her strong and defined arms. Ever light with her touch, my lips melted under the beauty of hers. I craved her and wanted to caress her soft body against my own.
When I opened my eyes, I floated like a feather back down to Earth, breathing heavily, chest bellowing in and out rather quickly, the most delicious twitch taking up flight in between my legs. I cradled my arms around myself and enjoyed the pulse that radiated through me.
When I could stand without risk of falling and cracking my head open on my coffee table, I walked over to my kitchen counter. Move over Jane. CarefreeJanie controlled the driver’s seat now.
I began writing. I wrote over five thousand words without ever even setting the kitchen timer for my allotted ten minutes. I just wrote, ignoring the red marks under misspelled words and the comma splices, and the incorrect verb tenses. I couldn’t backtrack. I had too much in me that threatened to drown me if I didn’t get the words out onto that screen. I poured myself into this story about a passionate kiss between two women set on a seaside bench, sharing an unquenchable desire, a forbidden moment, a truth too powerful to deny. I ended on a sultry note and dropped my head to my knees to catch my breath.
How would I live a happy, fulfilled life without ever indulging in the touch of her soft lips on mine?
# #
Larry and I sorted clothes that night in silence, each caught up in our own reveries. He was probably thinking about his date with Tim later that night after we finished up our laundry session.
Larry had first met Tim at the mall. He walked into Outdoor World and headed over to the rock climbing mountain in the center of the store. People were clapping and whistling and so he picked up his pace to catch a piece of the buzz. He stood behind a dozen or so other people and watched a man, with the best calves he’d ever seen – his words, not mine – mount the side of the fake mountain like a monkey. He swung his arms and catapulted himself up with the ease of a child playing on a jungle gym. When he reached the summit, he waved at all of the people below, and, as Larry recalled, looked right into his eyes and winked. Well, Larry being the big ‘in-person’ flirt that he was latched onto that wink and invited the guy to get some Mexican food at Chevy’s. Larry said he knew from the moment the guy asked for a Cosmo over a beer that he adored him.
Larry dumped his pile of clothes in the washer. “The best thing about this guy is that he runs his own mortgage company. He’s got twenty loan officers working for him.” He cocked his head waiting for me to agree that yes, indeed, any man would be lucky to have him, the great catch.
I turned to my washing machine instead and spoke while pouring my detergent in the hole. “When do I get to meet him?”
“You’re going to meet him soon. I promise. He’s different than the rest I usually date, though.”
I fed coins into the machine. “How so?”
He wet his lips and pulled his lower one into his mouth the way he did when something stressed him. “Well, he’s in a complicated situation.”
“How complicated?” I slid into our usual seats by the window, careful not to touch the arms of the chair because I’d seen too many people stuff their face with food and then run their grimy hands all over the arms. Larry just stared ahead out of the window.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Nothing we can’t handle,” he said in his high-pitched, I’m-just-fine voice.
I sat still and took in his stress. “If you don’t tell me, I can’t promise you’re going to sleep well in the next few nights.” I looked over his crossed legs to the magazines sitting idle on the table next to him. “Can you pass me the Mademoiselle?”
He exhaled through his nose and his nostrils grew large and flared like a bull. “I can’t stand when you do that.” He stood up.
I remained calm with my hands folded neatly in my lap. “When I do what?” I loved toying with him like this and seeing him come all unglued.
“Bully me with vague threats.”
“Bully? I’m not a bully.” I stood up and faced him. “How dare you call me a bully?”
“But you are.” He stared down at me.
Everyone stopped their folding, their pouring, and their reading and stared at us. A man reading a newspaper folded the tip of the paper down to get a good look. A mother with her baby stopped staring into her child’s eyes and instead took in our sights. The attendant eased into a lazy stance against the counter and watched us instead of her soap opera on the television above her folding station.
He broke the stare and his chin buckled. “You can be a little mean.” He looked back at me. “It hurts sometimes.” His chin revved into overdrive on the quivering.
I grabbed for his arm. “What’s really going on here?”
He exhaled, not taking his serious eyes from me. “I really like this one, and I want you to be happy for me.”
“I was just messing with you.” I tousled his hair and he backed away.
“Easy. I kind of liked the way it fell into place tonight.” Finally, he broke into a small smile. Not quite big enough to ease my concern that my best friend almost started to cry right in the middle of ABC Wash Center for reasons still foreign to me.
We sat back down and an awkward echo of unspoken words sat between us like a mountain. I thumbed through a magazine. He joined me, and the two of us sat there in silence. I read a short story about a girl who traveled to two different continents in search of herself. She searched for two months in mosques, in poor towns, in overcrowded city streets for a sense of wonderment that would entitle her to the fresh sprig of life and the power of being valued. Plagued by the guilt of bad mistakes, she craved to find the truth and forgiveness that would set her free to indulge one day in love and blessings. When she landed back on her own country’s soil, she finally discovered that she didn’t have to look as far to find her answer. Her answer stood at the baggage carousel with a dozen red roses and a big sign that said “Will You Marry Me?” I tossed the magazine down with an extra hard lashing. “How do these people get this crappy stuff published?”
Larry continued reading his gardening magazine and simply murmured in agreement.
“Let me ask you something,” I said to him. I tore the magazine away from his face. “Do you think the fantasy of being with someone is better than actually being with someone?”
“Depends who we’re talking about. If you mean that guy Jeff I dated, fantasy won on that one.” Jeff kissed like a sloppy mess according to Larry. “Most times, I’m pretty satisfied with reality.”
“Do you think it’s possible for someone to imagine the taste of say a cherry pie if she never in fact ever ate a piece of cherry pie?”
He stopped reading and pondered this with a tilt of his head and a massage to his now stilled chin. “You’d have to have one heck of an imagination. But sure. I suppose if you concentrated on what a cherry pie might taste like, you could imagine the tartness mixed with the sweetnes
s.”
We stared straight ahead contemplating this. Finally, I released my concern on a deep breath. “I wrote a short story I want to get your opinion on before I let anyone else read it.”
A grin stretched across his face revealing deep grooves where his happiness always sat. “It’s about time.” He dropped his head and perused his magazine again. “You know I’m going to love it.” He flipped to a new page. “I love everything you write, darling.”
“This one is very different. I need you to read it objectively.” I didn’t take my eyes from the washing machine in front of us. “This one has some kick to it.”
“All of your stuff has kick to it.” He said this like a father complimenting his young child’s wild, red head full of unruly, untamable cowlicks.
“I want you to read it before you go out tonight.”
He flipped to another page and winced. “I’m picking him up at eight.”
I reached into my satchel and pulled it out. “Read it now.”
His eyes lingered on the stack of papers that my fingers cradled. “Right now. With you sitting right here?”
I needed his reaction. “Right now.”
I sat still pretending to read more of the horrible magazine. I watched Larry from my peripheral vision. My heart leapt when he smiled, soared when he groaned most likely at a conflicting point for the characters, twirled when he shook his head wildly side-to-side in obvious agreement with my characters.
Twenty minutes later, he sighed and said, “Wow.” He stared at the last page with awe.
I sat up tall, allowing my smile to fully embrace the moment. “Wow, as in…?”
When he turned to look at me, I saw the slightest twinkle stemming from his watery eyes and this caused my eyes to spring much of the same. “Wow as in far different.”
I fished. “Far different in a good way?”
He cocked his head. “Give me a break. Like you even have to ask that.” His forehead creased. “I take it to write this kind of sexiness that things are going well with that girl Eva?”
I blushed for the first time ever in front of Larry. “A girl’s got to keep some things secret.” I couldn’t even look at him.
He shoved at me. “Tell me.”
“I’ve been flirting with her.” I finally looked up at him. “A lot. You’d be proud.”
His smile said it all.
And, I’m sure mine did, too.
# #
When I returned from the laundromat, I went straight to my computer, logged into Twitter, and sent Eva a direct message alerting her to look out for my short story I had promised her. I did this without taking my pocketbook off of my shoulder. Then, without blinking, I emailed her the story.
Not until I sat down with a glass of milk and some chocolate chip cookies, picked up my mail from the past few days, and thumbed through some bills and advertisements did I really stop and contemplate what I had just done. Eva Handel’s eyes would soon scan my literary work, my words. She would absorb and bury them deep into her subconscious mind.
In a matter of half an hour, if she had already started to read, she would intimately connect to that part of my brain that fired off lustful chemicals.
This thrilled me.
I stared at my laptop from the couch wondering if Eva’s eyes were moving to the beat of my sentences, if her heart fluttered along with their rhythm, if her inner thighs were squeezing together to intensify quivers that could quite possibly be stemming from my words.
I rose and paced my floor. The confidence of a few minutes prior waned along with my milk and cookies. I stopped in front of the mirror, took a good long hard look at myself and wondered what Eva would think of my red cheeks, my messy blonde ponytail with darker roots, my squinty eyes, and the half-moon wrinkle on my chin. One of my bullies once told me I reminded her of a Vidalia onion. Since then, I’d never eaten one and I refused to pass them by at the grocery store.
I didn’t look like a Vidalia onion at the present moment. My skin actually glowed and my eyes sparkled. I fixed my ponytail, blew a few loose strands away from my face and smiled. My lips were rosier than usual. I’d dare say even kissable. These lips needed the moisture of Eva’s. I traced my finger along my bottom lip imagining Eva’s finger in its place. I gazed into my eyes and imagined what Eva would see in them. Currently, my pupils were so large; they took over the blue of my irises. Would she see a woman yearning to kiss her? Would she see a woman craving to run her fingers down the heart of her cheeks? Would she see a woman who wanted to lose herself in her long, thick dark hair? Or had I become so adept at hiding this woman, that all she’d see was fear in my eyes, and an insecurity and a lack of confidence so major that I never could’ve ever pulled off such a thing as a flirty vibe strong enough to send her reeling over the edge of self-control?
I exhaled a shaky breath.
I shook my head, walked away from my reflection and sat at the breakfast bar in front of my computer. Before checking my email to see if she’d read it, I reread my story. I cringed when I found two typos. Surely, she’d see these and see amateur, liar, dreamer, illusionist, idealist, or worse, failure.
In essence, I had failed. I was twenty-nine-years-old and never been on a date, never held hands with someone, and never even, up until recently, flirted. How dare I attempt to write about a kiss convincing enough to curl the toes and fingers of Eva Handel? I’d imagined many people accomplished that already. What would she ever see in me, the coward who used computers as her shield against the cruel and bitter world? What would Eva ever see in someone like me if she ever met the real me, not CarefreeJanie?
What if she wanted to meet CarefreeJanie?
I couldn’t let it happen. I would never be as skillful without my keyboard and computer screen as companions.
CarefreeJanie offered me a chance to taste the sweetness of delivering a compliment, to tickle a girl’s heart without freaking her out with my social awkwardness, to leap like a sexy cat over her and spin her head in wide, wonderful circles at my agility. At least in my mind’s eye, Eva would experience all of this.
What if she read my story and didn’t like it? Would she scan it, looking just for keywords she could later cite when we tweeted again?
If she hated my story, then she would hate my story. Nothing I could do at that moment would be able to affect the way she responded to it. I sat victim to the second hand click on my kitchen wall clock, shaking my legs and staring at my two glaring typos. If she hated it, better to know upfront and create my getaway plan before I got sucked in too deep into her enticing world. Of course, knowing what I knew about her already, if she hated it, she’d never tell me. I guessed by her sweetness that she never critiqued anything more than Old Bay and her own silly mistakes like mismatched shoes. If she read it and hated it, she’d probably send me a direct message saying something like my third grade teacher would’ve said to me, ‘Oh great job, sweetie.’
Living life always in the midst of the shadows of doubt, I could read through the lines. When my mother would write me an email and use an exclamation point, I knew what she really meant was ‘nice attempt’ instead of ‘way to go’. When Doreen would fill her emails with three or more smiley faces, what she really meant was ‘I feel sorry for you so here you go my friend, some smiles to get you through your sad life.’
If Eva responded with anything less than five adjectives, I’d know instantly that she didn’t like it.
My throat dried up and a sense of dread scratched its way up my spine the longer I sat waiting.
An hour later, I decided that if she hated it, I wouldn’t care. I would simply move forward in my life the way I always had, one foot, albeit a clumsy foot, in front of the other in a direction that suited me. If I couldn’t be a writer, maybe I’d go back to school for something completely opposite – accounting or chemistry or something that used the other part of my brain. Maybe I’d spent too much time trying to activate the wrong side of my brain? What if Barbara called it right all t
hose years ago when she told me that I should never put pen to paper because all I ever wrote was icky and gross? Was I that idiot who thought she could sing, tried out for American Idol and got placed on the finale for the world to laugh at my naivety in thinking all along that I was the next Mariah Carey?
How would I ever know? How did anyone really know unless she braved all and tossed her work out into the world for strangers to critique? Pen names appealed to me suddenly. They offered writers a way to avoid ridicule and reinvent ourselves, should our first set of books suck. If bad reviews poured in, we could change to a new name and toss another book out into the world and hope it was strong enough to stand on its own and be worthy of literary praise that won awards, gained the attention of high profile publishers, and created a wide gap from where the writer stood financially one month to the next.
I refused to waste any more time worrying about what Eva thought. The longer I worried the more annoyed I became. I braced to launch a full scale defensive attack against her and she was probably dining over a friend’s house getting drunk on cheap merlot and hadn’t even known I sent her a story to read.
I played a game with myself. If I opened my email and she had not responded, I would never tweet with her again because my heart couldn’t take this kind of pressure. I would chalk it up to destiny. If the universe wanted me to continue flirting with a girl I never planned to meet, then she would email me within the next hour. If the universe planned to protect me from being sucked into this intoxicating vortex, then I would know by my empty inbox. I’d let fate decide.
I set my timer for one hour and then drew a bath.
I lounged back against my bath pillow and soaked up the steam. My head swirled, so I closed my eyes and inhaled deep, rejuvenating breaths. I placed my hand to my chest and relaxed with its beat. I pictured Eva sitting behind me, holding me in her arms. Her hands grazed around my waist, her chin cradled in the crook of my neck. She’d tickle my neck with her lips, dragging her tongue against my skin. She’d tickle my belly button with her fingers and caress me tighter when I giggled. She’d forfeit the tickle for my serious escape into her hands where we’d fondle each other’s palms as we stared into each other’s eyes. She’d say to me in a breathy whisper, “You are so beautiful, my princess. So beautiful.”