More Than a Kiss

by Layce Gardner

  Over time, they had each staked out their own personal space in the large house. Isabel was in charge of the kitchen and dining room, Jeremy was in charge of entertainment and the living room and Amy was in charge of… Well, she was in charge of staying out of their way.

  Amy put the paper bag down on the counter and Isabel's eyes brightened. "Is that what I think it is?"

  "Pinto Gris. Two bottles."

  "Two? And I think you mean Pinot Gris."

  "They had a two for one sale," Amy said.

  "Start pouring, girlfriend, start pouring."

  Amy pulled two wine glasses out of the cupboard.

  Isabel did a double-take on the second glass. "Since when do you drink wine?"

  "I'm going to change," Amy said.

  "I hope so," Isabel said. "It's hard to eat dinner when a doctor is sitting across the table from you in blood-splattered clothes."

  "No." Amy laughed as she poured. "I'm not changing clothes. I mean, I am. But I'm going to change myself. I’ve decided that I’m boring and consistent and I need to put a stop to it before it’s too late."

  "Oh yeah?" Isabel raised an eyebrow.

  "Yeah."

  Amy handed over a glass of wine. They toasted nothing and sipped.

  Isabel went back to stirring the pot with a long-handled wooden spoon. Amy downed her entire glass, poured another and giggled.

  "What?" Isabel asked.

  "You look like one of those witches. You know in that Shakespeare play. Bubble, bubble toil and trouble."

  "That was Shakespeare?" Isabel asked. "I thought it was from a cartoon."

  Amy laughed and poured more herself more wine. Isabel put the lid back on the pot and turned to her. "Okay," she said, "what's all this about wanting to change? Are you having an early mid-life crisis?"

  Any hoisted herself up onto the bar and swung her legs. "I'm too plain. I'm plain and planned and… pained." She was thinking of her heart. Her heart hurt. It wanted someone to love. It wanted to have a companion - not like an extra heart in her chest, but a heart lying next to her, one she could hear beating and know that it beat for her. She didn’t think these thoughts in words, of course, but in feelings.

  "So, you want to spice it up?"

  "Exactly," Amy said. She drank down half her glass of wine.

  "What're you thinking about changing into?"

  "I don't know yet," Amy said. "Anything, I guess. It's got to be more exciting than what I am now."

  "Well, you came to the right place. I’m the queen of changing your life. Look at all the different people I’ve been.”

  That was true. Just since Amy had known her, Isabel had been a stockbroker, a pizza delivery girl, a locksmith apprentice, a member of the Geek Squad (even though she didn’t know squat about computers) and had even gone to clown school. She had botched the balloon animals class and dropped out.

  Isabel stirred, thinking hard. “You could be a gypsy.”

  "Gypsy? Where'd that come from?"

  Isabel shrugged. "I just think you'd look good in flowing scarves and bangles."

  "I'm not talking about dressing up for Halloween. I'm talking about my life." She drank the rest of her wine and poured another.

  "You better go easy on that," Isabel said. "I don't think making important life decisions while you're drunk is a good idea."

  "Au contraire, ma frère," Amy said with a giggle. "It might give me the boost I need to take action."

  Isabel took the lid off the boiling pot, dipped up a spoon of the brownish pulp and held it out to Amy to taste. "Tell me what you think."

  Amy blew on the spoon and tasted. It took everything she had not to spit it back out.

  Isabel asked, "So? More salt? More cumin?"

  "You know what it needs?"

  "What?"

  Amy dumped her glass of wine in the pot. "More wine."

  "You ruined it!" Isabel said, madly stirring the pot like that was going to somehow help. "I can't believe you did that! My God, it's all ruined." She whined and whimpered and cursed and stirred.

  "Isabel?" Amy whispered.

  Isabel looked at her.

  "It was really kind of bad."

  "It was?"

  Amy nodded.

  "Real bad?" Isabel asked.

  Amy nodded again. "Foul, in fact."

  Isabel looked back at the pot. She turned off the burner and said mournfully, "I wanted to come up with a new recipe, something with zing and pep that would make a good gravy for those tiny Italian noodles."

  "You will. It just won't be that recipe," Amy soothed.

  "I'm a horrible cook," Isabel lamented. A giant tear slid down her cheek.

  Amy pulled Isabel into her arms and squeezed her tight. "You are not a bad cook. You are creative and inspired. What's that adage about Babe Ruth?"

  "Who's Babe Ruth? Is she on the cooking channel?"

  Amy laughed. "Babe Ruth was a great baseball player. Famous for hitting home runs. But what most people don't know is that he struck out more than he hit."

  "I thought he was a candy bar."

  Amy held Isabel at arm's length. "Just promise me you'll keep swinging. That you'll keep trying out recipes."

  Isabel nodded unconvincingly.

  "You'll hit those home runs, I promise."

  "Maybe," Isabel said under her breath.

  "Listen to me," Amy said, giving her a little shake. "Do you know how much I admire you?"

  "Me? Why?"

  "Because you have a dream. You're living it. You know what you want. And you keep going for it. I wish I had your enthusiasm."

  "Thanks," Isabel said. "Thanks for being my friend."

  "Now drink your wine. I'll make dinner." Amy threw open the fridge door, rummaged inside and brought out a block of cheddar cheese. She went to the cabinets and took down a box of saltine crackers. She grabbed the bottles of wine and announced with full arms, "Madame, dinner is served."

  Isabel grabbed her wine glass and asked, "You're sure it couldn’t be saved?"

  Amy put on the sympathetic face she'd practiced in the mirror for the day she might have to inform a family member that the patient had expired, and said in a somber tone, "I’m sorry. We did all we could, but we could not resuscitate the patient."

  Isabel grabbed her glass swallowed a healthy drink of wine. "Okay," she said. "Let's go out back and watch the sunset."

  An hour later the sunset was gone and so was most of the wine. Amy and Isabel were lounging on the far side of the yard in metal lawn chairs. Amy nibbled on a big block of cheese like a mouse and Isabel munched on saltines like a squirrel.

  "You know what really pisses me off?" Isabel asked.

  "Is this one of those rhetorical questions?"

  "Yes.”

  "You didn't have to answer that," Amy said, "It was rhetorical."

  "Oh."

  They snacked in silence for a full minute. Finally, Amy asked, "What pisses you off?"

  "Oh, yeah," Isabel said, remembering what she was going to say. "Hot dogs."

  "Hot dogs like in wieners?"

  "Yep. They're sold in packages of ten. And buns are sold in packages of eight. That's not right. It’s this giant food conspiracy and we just lay back take it. We let them do it to us."

  "I wish you hadn't pointed that out," Amy said. "Now I'm pissed off."

  "What's going on out here?" a male voice asked. Both women jerked their heads toward the house and saw Chad looking out the back door.

  "Hey!" Isabel said cheerily because she was at the stage of drunkenness where everybody is your friend and everything is potential fun.

  "Ugh," Amy said disgustedly because she was at the tipping-point of drunkenness where all it would take is one little thing to tip her from happy to belligerent. And that one little thing was striding across the lawn toward her.

  Chad approached carefully because he had spotted the wine bottles nestled in the crotches of the women. "Have we decided to forgo dinner in lieu of drinking?"

>   "Forgo. Lieu," Amy mocked. "Listen to how smart I am. I can say forgo and lieu in the same sentence."

  Isabel laughed. Cracker crumbs sprayed out her mouth and into her lap.

  Chad squinted at Amy. "You need to eat something."

  "I am eating," Amy said, showing him the one pound block of cheddar cheese that had nibble marks around the entire circumference.

  "Yeah, we are eating," Isabel said through another mouthful of crackers.

  Then, in an unspoken display of drunken simpatico, Amy tossed the block of cheese and Isabel tossed the box of saltines, each to the other. They caught the other’s toss and began to munch happily.

  "You are drunk," Chad said.

  "You are sober," Amy retorted. She held the box of crackers up to him. "Cracker?"

  He waved away the box. "Where's Jeremy?" he asked.

  Isabel said, "He came home, mumbled something about women and PMS and locked himself in his bedroom with a bucket of left over Kentucky Fried chicken that he scavenged from the back of the fridge."

  "I'd offer you a chair," Amy said, "but I don't want you to stay."

  Amy and Isabel giggled.

  Chad put his hands on his hips and stared down his perfectly shaped nose at her. "I want you to know, Amy," he said, "that you aren't making a good impression on me right now."

  "Oooh, don't say such things, Chad. You're making me sad," Amy said. She didn't so much drip sarcasm as she spewed it. She giggled. “Chad. Sad. I rhymed!”

  "I'm serious. If you're going to be my number one girlfriend you can't go around getting drunk and eating with your bare hands in the back yard like a feral animal."

  "Here's a solution," Amy said. "Demote me to number three girlfriend. Or maybe number ten. Or how about you take me off the list entirely. How do you like them crackers?"

  Chad crossed his arms over his muscular pecs. "Is this about the banana peel?" he asked.

  "Could you possibly get any more assholish?" Amy said. “Of course it’s about the damn banana peel. It’s about the basic philosophy behind the banana peel. First, by throwing the condom on the floor where it would prove a safety hazard you demonstrated what an inconsiderate fucktard you are. Second, by telling everyone the story you proved that you’re a gossip and will do anything for a cheap laugh, and third just because I made the mistake of sleeping with you once, much to my regret, does not mean I want to have anything further to do with you.”

  “Brava, tell it to him straight, sister,” Isabel said.

  Chad stared at Amy. “You don’t mean that. You’re not thinking straight. I’m going to give you a pass on tonight.”

  “Ugh!” Amy said, and pelted him with a cracker. It bounced off the side of his perfectly shaped head.

  He glared at her. "Now you're throwing food at me?"

  "You're lucky I didn't have the block of cheese in my hands," she said.

  Isabel guffawed. "I saw a gorilla do that once. At the zoo. He got tired of this guy making faces at him through the bars and he picked up his feces and threw them at the guy. Splat! Right in the kisser."

  Amy grinned at Chad. "Be careful. I may throw my feces at you next."

  Chad stomped on the cracker and glared at her. "I've had enough. I'm going home to wait for your apology." He stalked back across the yard.

  "You'll be waiting a long time," Amy called out after him.

  He disappeared through the door. Amy and Isabel grinned. Then they tossed the cheese and crackers to each other and went back to nibbling.

  Mirror, Mirror

  "How do I look?" Jordan asked. She stood in the hallway, looking into the full-length mirror leaning against the "wall." "Wall" deserved quote marks because the "wall" wasn't really a wall. The old, crumbly drywall had been taken down and all that remained were two-by-four studs and bared electrical wiring. This was the motif for the entire second story of the house. Whenever Jordan complained to Edison about the "walls," Edison only said, "Sometimes it's necessary to tear something down before you can build it back up." That may be true, but when it was going to be built back up was the problem. So, the mirror was leaning against the "wall" and Jordan was checking her reflection. She asked again, "Tell me the truth, Ed, how do I look?"

  Jordan did a complete 360 to give the full effect of her ensemble. Actually ensemble may have been too expansive of a word. Outfit was more suitable for what she was wearing: khaki shorts, sandals and a white linen shirt.

  "You look casually sexy," Edison replied. "Or sexily casual. Depending on who's doing the looking."

  "Not too casual though, right?"

  "Right."

  "Too sexy?"

  Edison shook her head. "I think you've found the perfect blend of casual sex."

  Jordan stood with her back to the mirror and peered over her right shoulder. "I can't see my butt."

  "It's there, don't worry."

  "Does my butt make my pants look big?"

  Edison laughed. "Your butt is perfect and you know it."

  Jordan grabbed her butt cheeks and lifted them up higher. When she took away her hands they bounced back into place. She sighed and grabbed her cheeks again. This time she squeezed her cheeks together in an effort to make them look smaller.

  "My butt's too big," Jordan moaned.

  Edison's face lit up. She pulled a roll of Duct tape out of her pocket and held it high. "I could tape it. I could tape anything you wanted. I could make your butt smaller and your boobs higher. Or I could make your boobs smaller and your butt higher. Your choice."

  "Do you use it?" Jordan asked.

  "I have. It works great. Hurts like hell taking it off, though."

  "I'll pass."

  "Whatever. It's here if you need it." Edison put the tape back in her pocket.

  Jordan turned around and looked full on at her reflection. "I just don't want to look too planned. Looking planned is the equivalent to looking desperate. And looking desperate turns women off."

  "I don't know about that," Edison said, "I kind of like a quiet air of desperation. It means they're easy targets."

  Jordan whacked Edison in the arm with the back of her bandaged hand. "Ow!" she exclaimed. "Your arm hit my hand."

  "Listen, Jordan, reality check here. You're just going to see the Doc so she can take out the stitches. It isn't a date. She has a boyfriend, remember the guy in the photo."

  "I know that. But I’m not competing with him. I would just be presenting another option so this could be the precursor to a date with a person who is offering another type of relationship. You have to remember most of us didn’t start off gay. We eventually realized it. Maybe Amy hasn’t realized it yet. That’s all I’m saying."

  "So you are going to ask her out."

  "If it comes up organically."

  "How does asking somebody out come up organically?"

  "You know like if her stomach growls and I hear it. I could say, 'You must be hungry,' and she'd say 'I am hungry' and I could say 'let's go get something to eat' and then she'd say –"

  Edison picked up, "And she would say 'I'm hungry for you, baby' and you'd say 'Here I am, come and get it.'"

  They laughed, but stopped abruptly when the door across the hall opened a crack and one eye peeked out.

  Meet Irma Kalandarishvili. Irma had black hair, black eyes, and an entire wardrobe of only black clothes. Or maybe she just had only one black outfit. Jordan wasn't sure. Irma was tall and thin like a ballerina and her hair was slicked back in a severely laquered bun. She never blinked. Nobody had ever seen her blink. She could've been mistaken for a stick of licorice except licorice had more personality.

  Jordan had gone out on a date with her two years ago. The date was horrible but the sex afterwards made up for it. Irma and Jordan fulfilled a hunger in each other that other people couldn't. It wasn't based on banter or intellect or common interests. It was purely animalistic. So, Jordan and Irma became friends with benefits except they weren't really friends. And when Irma showed up one day needing a place t
o stay, Jordan rented her a spare bedroom.

  Irma moved in and paid her rent on time with cash. Nobody knew where Irma was from--Russia? Germany? Or one of those Slavickstan kind of countries. Nobody knew how she made her money or what she did behind the doors of her room.

  Ever since Irma had moved in six months ago, Jordan had avoided her. She didn't want to have a physical relationship with somebody that lived under her own roof. It had been fine to be fuck buddies when your buddy didn’t live with you but now it was different. Jordan reasoned that it was too much like that old adage, "Don't shit on the hand that feeds you." Or something like that. She’d told Irma that but Irma wasn't giving up so easily.

  Irma eyed Jordan up and down and said in her thick accent that sounded like Natasha from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, "You are dressing for big date?"

  Jordan shrugged. "Just a maybe date."

  Irma leered at her. "If maybe date is not what dreams are made, you come to Irma and Irma will un-dress you and show things you never experiment in wild dreams."

  Edison said, "I think you mean experience in your wildest dreams."

  Irma looked at her coldly. "No. Irma mean experiment in wild dreams." She looked back to Jordan and smiled wickedly before she ducked back inside and closed the door.

  "Someday I'm going to scream in her face. Just to see if she blinks," Edison said.

  Jordan laughed. "She won't. I think her hair is so tight in that bun she can't blink."

  Edison laughed. "I don't get what you see in her."

  "We had an arrangement, that's all. It worked in both our favors."

  "What an arrangement," Edison said with a huge eye-roll. "If you two aren't doing somebody else then you do each other."

  "Operative word here is did. We no longer do. But I'm sure you could find the same type of arrangement if you wanted."

  Edison said in an imitation of Irma's accent, "Edison not want. Edison want love true not buddy fuck in experiment love."

  "You don't really believe in true love, do you?"