Tight Women in Hard Places

by Alicia Night Orchid

  “I never thought of it like that,” I told Wendy.

  “It’s all about opening your mind and letting the sun shine in.”

  She was twenty-four, an artisan, a creator of silver and gold ornaments. Buck had completed two tours of duty in “The Nam,” as he called it, but was now dedicated to bringing the war to an end. Jude was Buck’s cousin, a couple of years older than me. He played guitar and wrote music. They were on their way from New York to San Francisco.

  “Wheels,” Jude said to no one in particular. “That’s so far out.”

  Wendy lit incense and candles. She sifted through a stack of records, selected The Doors, and fit the album onto the turntable. She began to dance to those first hard driving chords of “Break on Through.” She spun and tripped through the room. She raised her skirt over her knees, revealing strong thighs. Beneath the thin top, her breasts rolled. There were no steps to this dance, just joy on the move.

  She curled a finger at me. “C’mon, sweetie, shake that thing.”

  Reluctantly, I rose to my feet and began to dance. I wore short, tight cut-offs and a T-shirt. I felt the unexpected heat of Buck and Jude’s eyes on me.

  I knew the men who came to The Checkerboard saw something in me they liked. I’d overheard them admiring my ass and legs. They said I had boobs to die for. Bobby had wanted me, of course, but that was just Bobby—I’d known him since third grade. It came as a surprise that anyone else would want me. I still thought of myself as a skinny brunette with pimples and glasses.

  But here I was, shaking it, teasing these men like a gypsy in the firelight. It made me feel powerful and womanly in a way I’d never felt before.

  When we reached “The End,” Wendy crashed onto Buck’s lap. I continued dancing and it took me a moment to realize they were kissing. Then he had her top off and a hand up her skirt. She touched him through his jeans.

  I felt Jude’s hand on my elbow.

  “C’mon,” he said.

  We walked outside and leaned against the minibus. He lit a Winston and I lit another Virginia Slim.

  “They get a little carried away,” he said.

  “Hey, I’m cool.”

  Not as cool as I pretended to be.

  “Yeah, but they hardly know you.”

  Far above, waves of multi-colored light rolled across the sky. “Look,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “The Northern Lights. We get them every summer.”

  He rummaged inside the minibus, found a blanket, and spread it on the ground. We lay on our backs, taking in the incredible display. He talked about growing up in New Jersey, about swimming at The Shore, about trips into The City. He said he’d played gigs in The Village and even met Bob Dylan and Joan Baez there.

  I half-believed him.

  I talked about growing up in crummy, little Dunlap. I explained about Bobby and me. A train passed on the tracks, not thirty yards away. Over the clanking of metal on metal, I said I’d give anything to get out of this place.

  “Come to San Francisco,” he said. “Wear some flowers in your hair.”

  “San Francisco?” It was too far away to imagine.

  “Sure? Why not? Besides, I gotta go somewhere.”

  He confided that he was on the run after burning his draft card and failing to show up for his physical.

  “If enough of us say no, we’ll bring the military-industrial complex to its knees,” he told me.

  “What if they catch you?”

  “They won’t catch me.”

  He rolled, stretched his body over mine, and worked a knee between my legs. He pushed my hair out of my face. “Come to The Haight. We’ll get high every night, make love every day.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  He kissed me and tugged at my T-shirt. Inside his bell-bottoms, his cock pulsed like the aurora borealis.

  I pushed him away. “I’m not ready for that with you.”

  He rolled off with a sigh. He spooned me and ran gentle fingers through my hair. “I really dig you.”

  “I just broke up with my boyfriend.”

  “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

  “Not tonight.”

  I wasn’t ready to fuck him, but I liked the way his body fit against mine. I liked the way it felt to be held. After a while, I placed one of his hands on my breast. He squeezed it and kissed the nape of my neck.

  From inside the house, we heard Wendy cry out, “Yes, yes, fucking yes.”

  “Wow.” I’d never experienced anything like that in the back of Bobby’s Mustang.

  “Sounds like she got hers,” Jude said through a snicker.

  His hardness pressed between my ass cheeks. He rolled my nipple in his fingers. I turned and sat up. He started to do the same, but I pinned him down with a hand on his chest. With my other hand, I unbuttoned his fly and reached inside.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You know what I’m doing.”

  “You don’t have to, if . . .”

  But I wanted to. “Just relax.”

  I wet my hand with saliva and began to stroke. His eyes rolled back in his head. His hips rose and fell to my rhythm.

  “Fuck, yeah,” he said.

  I stroked harder, faster. “You like it?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Don’t stop.”

  Just before he shot, I pushed up my T-shirt and rubbed his flesh against mine.

  “Jesus, yes, Jesus,” he groaned as he gushed onto my breasts.

  A low moan escaped my lips.

  Then I was suddenly cold and wet in the night air. I kissed him, stood, and started across the yard.

  “Hey,” he called after me.

  I wiped his stickiness on my cut-offs and kept walking. When I passed the porch of my new neighbors’ house, Buck leaned against the railing. He was naked except for undershorts, and I tried not to look at his lean, hairy body. He waited until I was even with him before he spoke.

  “Those nights in ‘Nam,” he said.

  “What did you say?”

  A faraway look haunted his face. “Those nights in ‘Nam.”

  “What about them?”

  “They were savage. The nights were fucking savage.”

  He looked like he was about to cry. Wendy strode through the door, wearing an Army shirt and nothing else. She took her man by the arm.

  “C’mon, Buck. I’m here now.”

  He didn’t resist when she steered him inside. She spoke to me over her shoulder. “He’s still a little freaked about the war.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

  I didn’t have to think about it. “Definitely.”

  I sleepwalked through my days, serving burgers and fries. As soon as my shift ended, I was by Wendy’s side. The men found work at one of the RV factories, so we had a little time to ourselves before they showed up hungry and horny.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Wendy explained, “working for The Establishment.”

  She was making brownies. But these weren’t just any brownies. You’d walk on the moon after eating these brownies.

  We’d met only nine days ago, but I felt like I’d known her forever. She was smarter than my mom, my teachers. She knew way more than my friends.

  “So, how else would you get money?” I asked her.

  “We don’t need money. We can live off the land. Everyone contributes and we share. You do your thing. I do mine.”

  “I don’t know how to do anything.”

  “Then you apprentice with someone like me who knows how to garden, who knows how to sew, who knows how to cook.”

  “I guess it could work.”

  “It has to. Otherwise, we’ll blow ourselves up with The Bomb.”

  It wasn’t a very pleasant alternative. “How long have you known Buck?”

  “In this life, about a year.”

  “This life?”

  “We knew each other in a previou
s life. It’s why we’re soul mates.”

  “He seems to make you happy.”

  She poured the brownie batter into a baking dish. We took turns licking the mixing bowl with a wooden spoon.

  “He won a Silver Star in the war. He fucks like he fights.”

  “Wow,” I managed. Nancy and Rhonda wouldn’t even admit to having sex, much less talk about it like this.

  “Are you fucking Jude, yet?” she asked.

  I turned away. Jude and I were still stuck on hand jobs, but I didn’t tell Wendy. “Not exactly.”

  She popped the brownies into the oven. “Have you ever had an orgasm?”

  “A what? I don’t know. I guess. Sure. Why not?”

  She pulled herself onto the kitchen counter. “If you’d had one, you’d know. Have you ever rubbed yourself?”

  “You mean . . .”

  She hiked up her skirt, revealing a tangled thicket. She opened her legs, then used her fingers to spread her lips.

  “Here’s the spot,” she said, touching the little bump at the top of her slit. “Rub yourself until you can’t stand it. You’ll know when to stop.”

  A red burn scorched my face. “I know that.”

  She gave me a sisterly smile and lowered her skirt. Her scent filled the room, making me blush even more. “We’re all children of The Universe, sweetie. Go with it.”

  “Children of the universe?”

  “Dust in the wind.”

  The next evening, Jude and I were on our blanket when we heard Wendy’s cries.

  We exchanged a knowing glance. “Let’s go,” I said.

  I pulled him after me. We hunkered outside a bedroom window, peeking through the screen. We saw them in the candlelight, Wendy on all fours with Buck behind. Her pendulous breasts swung free as he plowed into her.

  Jude’s breath was hot in my ear. “Damn,” he said.

  I reached behind and lifted my skirt. Jude pushed my panties aside. He sought an entry I could no longer deny. His fingers in my pussy sang a squishy tune.

  Buck smacked Wendy’s ass hard enough to make her yelp.

  I fumbled with Jude’s belt. His cock sprang free.

  “I want you,” he whispered.

  I wasn’t thinking about Bobby anymore. I really wasn’t thinking about Jude either, but I wanted his cock.

  “Do it,” I said. “Go ahead, do it.”

  He pushed and I pushed back. He fucked me standing up, slow and sweet. On the other side of the screen, Buck’s tight butt worked—slap, slap, slap. Wendy ground against him. Suddenly, her belly clenched. She writhed and grunted like a construction worker.

  I wanted some of that.

  I slid a hand inside my panties. While Jude pumped, I rubbed.

  Wendy flipped onto her back and Buck knelt beside her. She took him in her mouth. He pumped in and out, then threw back his head and squirted white and hot across her lips. She gathered his cream in her hands and licked her fingers clean.

  Behind me, Jude shuddered and gasped. I felt that quickening between my thighs, but this time, I didn’t let go. I rubbed and rubbed, overcome with longing. It began like the rumble of distant artillery fire. Red and green tracers zipped past and shells burst in a dazzle. The night exploded into a thousand heartless shards. My knees buckled and Jude held on to keep me from falling.

  Yes, yes, fucking yes.

  They’d intended to stay the summer and earn a little money before moving on, but The Man was on to Jude. Blue suits showed up in town asking about hippies.

  “We’re outta here tonight,” Wendy told me.

  The guys had already taken the minibus to the lot by the creek for a paint-job makeover.

  “I’ve got some things to do,” I told her. “Don’t you dare leave before I get back.”

  I called in sick and rode my bike to town. I hated that job anyway. My first stop was the bank. I’d saved most of my wages and tips—$500. I kept $450 for myself and used the balance to replace Bobby’s class ring. Sort of. The man at the pawnshop didn’t have this year’s ring, but he had plenty from a few years earlier.

  It would have to do.

  Then I went home and packed.

  Then I wrote Bobby a letter.

  I wrote that if we’d really been meant for each other, he’d have found a way to stay home instead of going off to war, he’d have spent his last three weeks before Basic with me instead of Mike, and he’d have given the Mustang to me instead of selling it to the first guy who answered his ad. If we’d really been meant for each other, we’d probably have met in a previous life.

  Finally, I wrote that he should be careful in The Nam.

  I’d heard the nights were savage there, fucking savage.

  I left my mom a note too. I was going to San Francisco, but she didn’t have to worry, because there were gentle people there, people who wanted only peace and love. We were all children of the universe.

  I left Dunlap that evening in the minibus, repainted a dull black to hide the psychedelic hippie shit underneath.

  Wendy lit a reefer and passed it around. Buck pointed the minibus into the sunset. Jude held my hand, looking more stoned than usual.

  Dunlap disappeared behind us.

  And the rest is history.

  A LOVER IN THE HOUSE OF SPIES

  My mother was a spy. Or maybe just a bored professional with an overactive imagination.

  All my sister and I could say for sure was that she traveled often, claimed she was with the State Department, and kept a journal. She and our father led separate lives until he died a few years before she passed. He had his golf, his business associates, and his other women. She had her work, her books, and her daughters.

  But never other men, so far as we knew.

  We found the journal in a trunk along with her wedding dress, personal correspondence to grandmothers and aunts, and old photos. Jen, two years older than me, the proper banker with glasses and perfect nails, refused to read it.

  “She was a private woman, Kate. She would never have wanted this.”

  But if our mother hadn’t wanted us to read her journal, why hadn’t she destroyed it? Why had she left the key to the trunk in a lockbox with instructions to her lawyer to turn the key over to us?

  “Besides,” Jen pointed out, “she was demented in her final years. Demented, Kate.”

  But the dates on the journal weren’t from our mother’s declining years. She’d been a healthy, vibrant forty-something between 1970 and 1972.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself, Kate. Let’s put it back.”

  “Sure, whatever you say.”

  But I scooped up the journal when she wasn’t looking. I took it home to my apartment near the university. I read it by a dim light, in bed, with the covers pulled tight.

  June 20, 1970

  Flight over the Atlantic, Lisbon to DC

  Our Chief of Station here is a lecherous buggerer who prefers underage boys to women. The KGB is at the other end of the spectrum. Their man, Boris Poderezky, touched my ass on the way to dinner. Throughout a meal of vodka, squid, and sausages, he stared at my breasts as if they were the first he’d ever seen. By the end of the evening, we struck a deal. I’m to run a “honey trap” on Kamenev, the Soviet scientist suspected of selling nuclear secrets to the Libyans. Once he confesses and exposes his connections, Boris will close the trap. I have a girl in mind, a Yalie who recently joined the Clandestine Service. Kamenev will never be able to resist her.

  Streeter worked at the Student Union as a janitor. He was years younger than me with unruly black hair, wild eyes, and a hard, tattooed body. I picked him up over Christmas break, when not many students were around. I flashed him my panties while grading papers in the lounge. He asked if he could buy me coffee. Then he asked if I had a lover. When I said no, he placed a hand on my knee under the table.

  A rough, calloused hand.

  We kept our trysts secret, using empty rooms in the hotel wing to which he had keys. What would the dean say if he knew
a full professor was sleeping with a janitor no older than her students? Besides, Streeter had a girlfriend.

  June 27, 1970

  Palácio Belmonte—Lisbon, Portugal

  The Director himself intervened and said no “honey traps” using untested Yalies. We’re still running the honey trap, but now I’m the honey. It’s not like I haven’t done this before. Good thing Kamenev is older, fifty if he’s a day, because I turn forty next month. I’m not that sweet, young Yalie, but I still have a good figure. I just left Kamenev at the bar downstairs. Boris tracked him here where he’s speaking at a conference. The Mossad (Israeli Intelligence) has also reported attendance by a Libyan named Muhammed al Mujaahid. We believe al Mujaahid may be Kamenev’s contact. What kind of man sells nuclear secrets to terrorists? An intelligent man, a handsome man, a quiet-spoken man. A man who knows how to treat a lady. (If this wasn’t just a job, I could probably get to like this Kamenev). Anyway, the hook is set. He asked me to join him for dinner tomorrow night. He thinks I’m a rich American widow on holiday.

  Streeter and I lay naked in bed. I’d just ridden him hard, bouncing on his long, slick cock until we both came. He was smoking in a non-smoking room. He told me I was the best pussy he’d ever had. When I asked why, he said it was because I needed it so much, because I’d do anything he said. Also, because of my glasses. He didn’t expect a smart girl to like it so much.

  He mashed out his cigarette and pushed a finger that smelled like tobacco between my lips. He moved it in and out while staring into my eyes behind my glasses. I flicked his finger with my tongue, sucked it like a cock. He watched, fascinated, his jaw slack. He sat up in bed, hard again, and knelt beside me.

  “Do yourself while I fuck your mouth,” he said.

  I opened my legs, dipped inside my slit, and smeared pussy nectar on my clit. I gave my mouth to him. With my free hand, I held his balls.