New Dawning International Bookfair
Presents
A Sapphic Erotic Story
By
Giselle Renarde
Copyright © 2011 Giselle Renarde
Narcissist Seeks Narcissist
Chapter 1
“What’s that you’re scribbling, darling? It’s about me, isn’t it?” Szuszu reached across the table, nearly knocking over her backup scotch and soda. “Hand it over, Babs. Let’s have a look.”
Babette pressed the cocktail napkin flush to her chest, setting down her slim gold pen. “It’s nothing, Szusz. Just my shopping list.” She shook her head, eyes wide, guilty as sin. “Just my groceries.”
“Shopping!” Szuszu cackled, knocked back the scotch in her hand, then slammed the glass down on the table. “Darling, you haven’t done the shopping since you shacked up with that dairy cow you call a wife. You don’t need to shop -- just bend the old hausfrau over a bucket and you’ve got your milk for free.”
“Leave Matilda out of this.” Babette shoved the cocktail napkin in her jacket pocket.
“Ah!” Gazing across the table through the amplifying lens of an empty scotch glass, Szuszu pointed to Babette’s chest. “There! I see what you’ve written. It’s all smeared across your tits, darling.” Squinting, she tried to make out the loopy handwriting smudged on Babette’s skin. “noitaroda… lautum… rof… What is that, darling, Latin? Or have you had a stroke?”
Babette glanced down at the writing on her chest, wetting another serviette with Szuszu’s next scotch and rubbing it over the pen marks. “It’s backwards, darling. It’s an imprint, you know.” After setting the wet serviette down on the table, she pulled the dry one from her pocket. “Fine, then. Fine, if you’re so curious. Here it is. That’s what I wrote.”
Squinting at the flimsy square of paper, Szuszu held it up close and then away from herself, but the words still wouldn’t come into focus.
“I think you need to get yourself a good pair of specs, Szusz.”
Szuszu’s eyes twitched at the blasphemy. “Nobody wears glasses, darling, except librarians and Elton John. I was a model, you know.”
“Yes, I know, Szusz. Everybody knows.” Babette rolled her eyes like a teenager. “You do realize you’ve gone up to every person in this bloody lounge to tell them I was a model?”
“Well, I was on the cover of all the magazines in my day.”
“In your day, right, you were. Headlines read: War is over. Szuszu greets sailors at port.”
An overwhelming desire came over Szuszu to kick her dearest friend in the shins, but when she let loose, her snakeskin boot met the cylinder of metal holding up the table. “Oh, for Christ sake,” she moaned, rubbing her toe. “If I wasn’t legless, I bet that would smart.” Defeated, she handed the napkin back across the table. “Here, read this for me, Babs. I can’t see straight.”
“Can’t even think straight,” Babette mumbled. “All right then, you want to know what I wrote while you were babbling on about your glory days? I wrote up a personal ad, darling: Narcissist seeks narcissist for mutual adoration. Turn-ons include mirrors, soup spoons, darkened windows, and other reflective surfaces. Must enjoy photo albums, the sound of her own voice, and endlessly reliving days of cover girl glory. Doppelgangers will receive preferential treatment—see attached photo. Looks trump substance. Models preferred. Serious enquiries only.”
When Babette had finished reading from the serviette, Szuszu offered weak applause. “So you’re going to dump the dairy cow after all these years. Good show, darling. It’s about time.”
Babette’s ears turned bright red and she shook her head. “I am not dumping anybody. This ad isn’t for me--it’s for you. You’re the narcissist, darling. You’re the one unlucky in love.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it, Babs.” Szuszu polished off the last of her scotch and held up her glass for more. “I’m not like you, darling. I don’t buy into your little cult of Noah’s Ark, everyone in neat little pairings.”
“It’s hardly Noah’s Ark if it’s full of lesbians,” Babette muttered. “Only, I think you’d be happier if you had someone to share your life with.”
“Well, I do, darling. I have you, don’t I?” Szuszu took a sip of her replenished scotch, and the taste made her sputter. “Babs,” she hissed, “this tastes Welsh. Have a swig and tell me what you think.”
“It’s scotch, Szusz. It’s Scottish.”
“Perhaps it was served by a Welshman. Did you see who poured this drink?” Rising on unsteady feet, Szuszu asked the lounge, “Did anybody see a Welshman pouring my drink?”
“There are no Welshmen in this country.” Babette smacked her fist against the table. “Now sit down and shut up. I’m trying to tell you something.”
She fell into her chair, her bony ass smacking the seat so hard she felt it through her spine. In preparation, she took another swig of scotch. It still tasted funny. Maybe her taste buds had jumped ship.
“We’re going away for a time, Matilda and I.” Babs folded her hands over her heart. “Not forever, darling, only on holiday…but rather a long holiday, I’m afraid.”
In the back of her mind, Szuszu knew she ought to react, but her heart felt frozen. “How long is long?”
“Six months, at the very least. It’s a bit of a world tour sort of thing.”
“A world tour…” Szuszu tried to blink, but the folds of her eyelids were stuck together. “Well, I can come along, right?”
Babette reached across the table now, trapping Szuszu’s hand under hers. “I’m afraid not, Szusz. It’s a bit of a second honeymoon sort of thing.”
Szuszu took a swig from one of the other scotch glasses littering the table. “But darling…”
“Yes, Szusz?”
“You can’t leave,” she said. “Who will I drink with when you’re gone?”
Shaking her head, Babette released a deep sigh and handed Szuszu the serviette. “I only wrote this ad to amuse myself, darling, but I’m beginning to think you really need it. You just can’t survive on your own, now can you?”
Szuszu flattened the wrinkled napkin against the table as Babette rose to her feet. “Will you post this for me before you leave?” Szuszu asked. Her eyes were too hazy to make out the words on the paper. “And make sure to attach a picture from when I was modeling. You know I like my girls a little younger.”
“To think,” Babette mused, heaving Szuszu to her feet. “Matilda and I will be hiking in the Rocky Mountains and we’re bound not to see as many cougars as there are in this lounge right now.”
Resting her heavy head on Babette’s shoulder, Szuszu closed her eyes and laughed.
* * *
The lounge manager took Szuszu by the hands and planted two Hollywood kisses on her cheeks. “Beautiful as always, my dear.”
“Kenzo! I need some privacy and a prime location tonight,” Szuszu told him. “Somewhere with a clear line to the entrance. I’ve placed an ad, you see.”
“Szuszu, baby, you know I love you…”
“Yes,” she replied. “Everyone does.”
“But,” he went on, “we talked about this the last time you put out an ad: I simply can’t allow prostitution in my establishment, not even for you.”
She whacked him in the chest with the back of her hand, and nearly tumbled over in doing so. “A personal ad, Kenzo! A personal ad! On a dating site!”
“Oh!” He chuckled politely, tossing his head to one side and leaning back. “I do apologize. An easy mistake.”
“Right,” she grumbled, settling into the curved velvet booth near the darkened window.
Darling Kenzo brought her a couple scotch and sodas, and when she was finished
with them, he brought over a few more. Time was always a hazy concept, but when she felt as though she’d been waiting quite a long time, she told Kenzo, “I specified in my ad that I’m looking for a girl who resembles me, all right?”
Kenzo nodded. “I understand, Szuszu, baby. If I see a decomposing rat skeleton in a blond wig, I’ll be sure to send it directly to you.”
“Yeah, thanks, darling.” She’d stopped listening, but grabbed hold of his hand when the lounge door swung open. This could be her doppelganger. This could be the woman who was so like her, so physically similar and devoted to the same ideals that they’d fall for each other in an instant.
A young woman in leopard tights stepped into the lounge and Szuszu’s heart thumped hard as she cast her gaze around the room. All Szuszu’s dreams, or at least the ones in recent memory, were coming true. “That’s her! My twin, my mirror image—that’s her!”
Kenzo writhed in her grip, but she wouldn’t release his hand. All he said was, “That’s her?”
Chapter 2
“Holy crap, that’s her!” Naomi tapped her chewed up fingernail against the lounge’s darkened window. “That’s Szuszu! That’s her!”
Erin shielded her eyes against the glare from the streetlights and looked through the glass. When she turned her gaze back to Naomi, she looked like her eyes were about to pop out of her head. “That’s her?”
Digging through her big-ass purse, Naomi found the magazine she’d had in her possession for nearly as long as she could remember. She flipped through the weathered pages until she arrived at the spread that had put her to bed -- if not to sleep -- as she discovered her sexual self.
There was nobody nearby except the doorman, so Naomi held up the magazine for Erin to get a better look. Szuszu was nearly naked in most of the pictures, and fully naked in all the rest, but the face was definitely the same. The woman in the lounge was the woman in the magazine.
“I can’t believe a huge model would resort to taking out a personal ad.” Naomi felt absolutely giddy.
“I can’t believe any intelligent woman would resort to answering one,” Erin shot back.
Naomi raised an eyebrow. Comments like that made her feel like a bit of a moron, but nothing could douse her enthusiasm. “Well, we can’t all marry our bosses, now can we?”
Before Naomi could apologize for being catty, her best friend said, “Besides, this chick’s, like, twenty in those pictures, and she’s how old now? Like, a hundred?”
Naomi watched through the window as the woman whose photo spread she’d spread herself for all those years knocked back a drink. Szuszu imbibed like a cowboy in a western saloon, and that image made Naomi tingle. “So she’s a little bit older. So what? Your husband’s older than you.”
“That’s different.” Erin cleared her throat, but didn’t explain how or why her case was so unique.
“No it isn’t. Besides, she obviously has a great sense of humor, if her personal ad is any indication. I love that she doesn’t take herself too seriously, you know?”
Erin read Szuszu’s ad again. “I don’t know, kid. What if she’s serious? What if she really is a huge narcissist and she’s expecting some anorexic supermodel to walk through that door?” Erin glanced quickly up at Naomi, and then shifted her eyes back to the personal ad just as fast. “I mean…you know I love you, but you don’t exactly fit the bill.”
Naomi stepped back from the window until the glare allowed her to see her own reflection in the glass. She wasn’t very tall, but she wasn’t particularly short, either. Everybody told her she had a pretty face, and she believed them, but always with a grain of salt. That’s what people told fat girls to raise their self-esteem, wasn’t it? Such a pretty face! Like her grandmother, pinching her chubby cheeks as a child. Such a pretty face! She did like her hair, though. The cut and color Erin had suggested looked great: dark with bright red strands sweeping across the front and kind of spiky at the back. It suited her.
“You just don’t get the comedy in the ad because Szuszu’s British and they have a different sense of humor than we do.” Naomi was trying to convince herself as much as Erin. “And see? Look, she’s wearing a zebra striped jacket. Nobody wears animal prints anymore, except to poke fun at themselves.”
Erin looked Naomi up and down, knitting her brow. “You’re wearing leopard spot leggings.”
“Exactly.” Naomi shrugged. “Because I don’t take myself too seriously.” She turned her gaze back to Szuszu, watching the former model chatting with a handsome man all in black. “You know, it was Szuszu who basically forced me out of the closet. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know when I would have come out.”
“Seriously?” Erin peered through the window again. “Why? Is she some kind of lesbian advocacy guru or whatever?”
Naomi chuckled at the thought. “I don’t think so. I didn’t even know she was into women until I saw her personal ad under ‘female seeking female.’”
“So then how did she make you come out?”
Sensing a flush in her cheeks, Naomi admitted, “My dad caught me stashing his magazine in my backpack. I think he was even more embarrassed than I was, but I’m glad it went down that way. I didn’t have to hide that I was attracted to other girls. He knew, so I could talk to him.”
“And he didn’t spend all your high school years asking, ‘Don’t you have a boyfriend yet?’”
Naomi chuckled. “Exactly.”
They stood in silence as Naomi crammed the magazine back inside her purse. She took a deep breath, but she was still nervous as hell.
“Aren’t you going in?” Erin asked.
She gave herself another glance in the darkened window. Erin was right -- if Szuszu really was expecting a girl who looked just like a supermodel, tonight would not end well.
“Want me to come in with you?” Erin placed an arm gently around Naomi’s shoulder and offered a gentle squeeze.
“No,” Naomi replied, buttoning up her black velvet jacket. “I’ll be fine, thanks.” Plastering on a smile, she walked toward the lounge entrance. “Wish me luck!”
Chapter 3
“I know how you despise contradiction, Szuszu, baby, but that girl looks nothing at all like you!”
Szuszu glared at the man, urging her eyes to shoot laser beams at him and singe his pride-and-joy hair. “Kenzo, darling, you know I only frequent establishments where the customer is always right. Particularly if that customer happens to be me.”
The gorgeous girl raised a hand above her head and waved in Szuszu’s direction. Granted, her outlines were a little fuzzy, but everything was a blur when Szuszu had been drinking… and it was a rare event when Szuszu had not been drinking.
Rushing to the table, the girl called out, “Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s really you! It is you, right? Szuszu? The model?”
Szuszu started, then touched her own hair, both cheeks and her nose. “Well, mostly it’s me, yes.”
“After drastic refurbishment,” Kenzo muttered. “You’ve got about fifteen percent original parts, I’d say.”
Szuszu glowered, but the girl threw her head back and let out a hearty laugh. After a moment looking back and forth between her and Kenzo, Szuszu joined in too. “Yes, yes, Kenzo. Very amusing. Now won’t you be on your way and fetch two scotch and sodas?”
“Oh, not for me,” the girl said. She was still standing rather far away. “I’d like a…hmm…something fruity? Not too much alcohol.”
This time it was Szuszu who laughed, with both the manager and her date looking at her like she had three heads. “What?” she asked. “You can never have too much alcohol, darling.”
Kenzo nodded before taking a step back. “I’ll bring you a mango Bellini, and two scotch and sodas for my Szuszu baby.”
This corner of the lounge seemed rather darker than the rest of the place. Szuszu squinted, but could only really make out the huge smile on her date’s face. “You are so like me, darling -- all teeth. Back in the day, photographers commented
on my teeth, you know. We had our own back then, the teeth God gave us. Everything’s different today. It’s all false you know, darling.”
“Wow,” the girl said, still standing what seemed to be halfway across the room. “It’s so great to meet you. You have no idea how exciting this is for me. I’ve worshipped you since I was, like, twelve years old.”
“Yes,” Szuszu went on, watching for Kenzo to appear with her drinks. “They were always asking for more T ‘n A during my photo shoots. You know what T ‘n A stands for, of course, darling -- teeth in action. I would smile until my gums bled from exposure. It was agony, darling, simply agony!”
The girl clapped her hands together, laughing hysterically. When she doubled over in hysterics, Szuszu caught a glimpse of her cleavage jiggling beyond the fold of her jacket. She had to applaud their size: “Nice tits. Bigger than mine, I’d say. When you’ve lugged me home after closing time, we’ll have to take all our clothes off and compare.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have been nervous about meeting you,” the girl replied, still in fits of giggles and struggling for breath. “Oh my God, you are so fricken funny!”
It wasn’t until the girl shuffled onto the bench next to Szuszu that she realized she’d neglected to offer the little darling a seat. When she felt the warmth of a foreign body against her leg, this silly experimentation with the dating world seemed all too real. Babs had set it all up so she wouldn’t feel lonely while her dearest friend and the dairy cow were off on holiday, but sitting so near to a perfect stranger only reminded Szuszu that Babette was gone, at least for now.
“Where is that bloody man with our drinks?” she asked. “Does a woman have to be dying of thirst before she’s served in this establishment?”
Narcissist Seeks Narcissist Page 1