by Ann McMan
“Help. Help me,” I cried. “Felice—you have to help me.”
She was at my side in a flash. Without a second thought, she yanked the power cord from the wall and the unit rolled to a stop. My arm was only centimeters from being crushed.
“My god. My god.” She was practically crying. “What happened?”
“It jammed,” I explained. “I got caught trying to fix it.”
She was staring down at the sleeve of my tunic. “We have to get you out of this.”
“I know. Should we cut it?”
“No.” Her voice was full of trepidation. “We can’t ruin your habit. Sister Agnes would be furious about the waste.” She met my eyes. “You have to take it off.”
My heart began to race. “Take it off? How?” I waved my free arm. “I can’t.”
“I’ll help you.”
I didn’t reply because I couldn’t trust myself to speak. So I nodded.
When she unpinned my veil, I noticed that her hands were shaking. Then she moved behind me to reach the buttons on the back of my tunic.
“Lean forward.” Her voice was low and husky. I felt warm, moist air move over my back as she separated the folds of the rough serge fabric. Her hands slid beneath the tunic and pushed it away from my shoulders.
“I need you to turn toward me so I can free your arm.”
I was sweating. I could feel water dripping down my forehead from beneath my short hair. Moisture was running along my arms and pooling between my breasts. And those weren’t the only places I was getting wet. All of my guilty fantasies about her were roaring to life. I closed my eyes tight to shut out the memories of all the things I’d imagined doing to her. With her. I was afraid she could sense it. I was terrified she would know what I was thinking and would recoil from me. That she would rebuke me and leave me there, half undressed, unmasked in my shame for Sister Agnes to find.
But she didn’t.
When I turned to face her, she pulled my tunic away. I was wearing only my thin, white chemise and I should have been embarrassed to be so revealed before her, but I wasn’t. I allowed myself to meet her gaze.
“You called me Felice,” she said.
I nodded.
She took a step closer. I could see moisture gleaming on her nose and along her upper lip. “How did you know my name?”
“Because I know you.”
“How can you know me? I don’t even know me.”
I wanted to move closer to her but I couldn’t. I was still a prisoner of the machine. I was a one-armed creature, trapped in a web of my own making.
I raised my free hand and laid it against her chest. I could feel her heart beating beneath my palm.
“I know you.” I said again. This time, the words were liquid, like the soft, sloshing sounds of water against the granite sides of the ancient washtub. “I know you.”
She closed her eyes. Then she took hold of my hand and moved it down to cover her breast.
“Free me.” I implored her. “Free us both.”
I’d never been with a woman. I’d never been with anyone. But when she touched me, I knew that this was the absolution I’d always sought. She released me from the tangled confines of my habit, and allowed me to do the same for her. I unwrapped her slowly, like the great, mysterious gift she was. We didn’t speak. Not with words. We didn’t have to. Within the starched, white confines of our fabric prison, we discovered an explosive new world filled with sensation and color.
Somewhere along a twisted path of my subconscious, I understood that this loss of innocence came with a price. That my life as part of this enclosed community would never continue as it had been. But as we lay together atop our bed of broken vows, I didn’t care.
When finally we disentangled ourselves, I dislodged my habit from the machine. We dressed in silence. I could sense the change in Felice. She was somber. Her eyes were dark. Lifeless. She wouldn’t meet my gaze. When I reached out to help her with her veil, she shrank from my touch. I tried to conceal my hurt. My panic.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“No,” she replied. “It isn’t. It won’t ever be.”
She strode to the door to leave. I stood in stunned silence and watched her go, surrounded by all the toppled columns of wash that had borne silent witness to our loving misdeeds. But when Felice turned the knob, the door wouldn’t budge. She shook the knob and pulled at it. Her attempts grew more frantic with each failed attempt.
“It won’t open!”
I hurried over to try and help her. Surely the door was just stuck? It, like everything else at the abbey, was ancient. Slow. Uncooperative.
I tried to turn the knob several times. It was hopeless.
“It’s locked.” I met her eyes. “From the outside.”
Felice backed away and wilted to the floor. “It’s her. She knows. She saw us.”
She meant Sister Agnes.
“You don’t know that.” I tried to reassure her, but it was pointless. In my heart, I knew she was right. Sister Agnes was the sacristan of our order. She, alone, held all the keys.
Have many friends, they said.
Many. Not one.
We heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door swung open.
Sister Agnes filled up the opening like the agent of an angry god. She would not look at either of us. She turned sideways and pointed a long, thin finger up the rocky hill toward the main house.
“The Abbess is waiting for you both. Go. Now.”
I followed Felice on that last, fateful climb. She never looked back at me. I watched her small, straight back disappear behind the large, paneled door that led to the Abbess’s office. I was instructed to wait outside. I never saw Felice emerge. I never saw Felice again. Ever.
I had already made my decision. I knew my life in the church was over. Many were called. I would not be among the chosen. I had made certain of that.
I had no idea what Felice would decide. Or what the Abbess would decide for her.
The next morning, I packed my small, cardboard suitcase and walked the three and a half miles into town. I couldn’t go home. I had no home to go to. I had only a heart full of pain, and the soft, sweet, tender memory of a timorous and ill-fated first love that would never fade.
8
Big Girls Don’t Cry
Quinn got up early so she could get the boat over to Plattsburgh as soon as the Dock Street Marina opened. She wanted to be first in line to get her registration for the tournament handed in. She wasn’t sure if the officials would bother looking her boat over, but she was prepared if they did. She had read over all of the watercraft requirements more than a dozen times, and her pontoon, while unorthodox, complied with every single rule. Junior made sure of that. Every time he threw up an obstacle, Quinn found a way to work around it. And, thanks to her friends at Astroglide, she had the cash for the entrance fee. Until last night, the only thing she’d been missing was a man’s name on the form.
But that wasn’t a problem any more. Not since Marvin showed up and offered to help her out.
Marvin. Boy, she never could’ve predicted that. Nobody else would, either. And he wasn’t exactly happy to be offering to help out. He made that much clear.
“Why do you want to do this if it makes you so mad?” She asked him that question last night, while they stood on the pier beside the boat. He looked big and imposing in his baggy pants and oversized, yellow windbreaker. He was taller than Quinn, too. She’d never noticed that about him before.
“Let’s get something straight,” he said. “I don’t want to do this.”
Quinn felt like he was spitting the words at her. It didn’t make any sense.
“I still don’t get it.”
“You don’t need to get it. And if you don’t want my help, that’s fine with me.”
Quinn reached out a hand to stop him. It looked like he was going to walk away. “No. Wait. I want your help.”
“Fine. Show me where I sign the damn paper
and let’s get this over with.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you have to do more than sign the application. You have to go out with me. Every time.”
He blew out a breath and looked back up toward the inn. She could see the muscles in his jaw working.
“It’s only three days,” she added.
“Three days?” He looked at her like he was trying to figure out if he could pick her up and toss her into the lake. “On that piece of shit?”
Quinn looked at her boat. She’d done a good job tricking it out. Everything was in place for the tournament. Twin engines with a cutoff switch. A live well made from a cooler with an outboard aerator. Junior’s chair. A big fridge for her beer. Even her corporate sponsor logo was in place. It looked spiffy, too. The neon letters danced in the moonlight. The subtle rocking of the boat made them look like they were animated.
“It’s not a piece of shit. It’s perfect.”
Marvin was unconvinced. “The only thing that’s ‘perfect’ is your chance to end up on the bottom of this lake. I’ve watched you pilot this thing. You don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.”
“Montana helps me. And it’s not like I have to parallel park it or anything. I do okay.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m worried about. They’ll never approve this thing for the competition.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me?”
He stared at her but didn’t say anything.
“Well?” Quinn asked again.
He held out a hand. “Gimme the goddamn paper to sign. If you get in, we’ll talk about it.”
Well. She got in, all right.
As it turned out, the tournament administrator did walk out to look at her boat. Quinn thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head when he saw it, tied up between a Bass Tracker and an Allison XB that each looked like they could break world records for speed. Each time he cited an obstacle—and there were a lot of them—Quinn showed him how she had complied with the letter of the requirements. He really had no choice but to let her in. When he handed her the registration card, a set of numbered badges, and the schedule for weigh-in times, his gruffness waned a bit.
“Look, lady,” he said. “Why don’t you save yourself the fifteen hundred bucks and stay off the water? These boys,” he gestured toward the sleek, hopped-up boats that clogged row after row of slips in the marina, “all play for keeps. They’re pros with years of experience and the best tracking equipment money can buy. You won’t have a prayer.”
Quinn took the registration card and the ID badges from him. “Thanks. I’ll take my chances.”
He held up both hands. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Quinn smiled at him and picked her way back through the latticework of wooden docks to climb back aboard her boat. Winning didn’t really matter to her. She understood that now. She wanted to be part of something that nobody ever thought she could do. The more people tried to talk her out of it, the stronger her resolve to compete grew. And now, thanks to Marvin, she was going to get that chance.
She felt bad about Junior, though. Even though he’d started out acting like an old curmudgeon, she could tell that he was starting to loosen up. He’d been talking more. On their last couple of trips out he’d even pointed out some great spots to her—places he said the pros would never look at twice. Places Phoebe was known to frequent.
“You pay attention to her,” he said. “She’ll show you where the big’uns are. You drop your line in any of her favorite spots and you’ll be likely to haul up a winner.”
That seemed to make sense. But Quinn didn’t know how to guess where Phoebe might be found. “How do I know where to look for her?”
He handed her a dog-eared map of the islands that he’d marked up with a red grease pencil.
“These are all the places I seen her over the years,” he explained. “Ever time I fished in any of these spots, I bagged a keeper.”
Quinn stayed up late that night poring over every detail of the map. She memorized the locations of all the places where Junior had made his fat, little tick marks. She took her own pencil and drew straight lines connecting all the spots, trying to plot routes that made sense. One thing she knew was that tournament fishing was all about speed. You had to get from one hole to the next fast—that’s why the boats belonging to the pros were doped out like water rockets.
When Quinn showed her route map to Montana, Montana just stared at it with an odd expression on her face.
“What’s wrong with it?” Quinn was afraid she’d done something stupid again.
“Don’t you see it?”
Quinn looked down at the series of red marks and intersecting lines. It didn’t look like anything to her but a small fortune in marine gas.
“No.”
“Pisces.”
“What?”
Montana pointed down at the map. “The pattern you’ve drawn here. It’s Pisces. The fish. You know—the constellation?”
Quinn looked at the map again. Holy shit. How had she not seen that? Not only did it look like the outline of a giant fish, it looked exactly like Phoebe. At least, it was how Quinn remembered Phoebe looking in that weird-ass dream.
When she got back, she’d show the map to Marvin. He said he’d help her out if the boat got approved. He was on the hook now.
Quinn laughed at her own joke.
Yeah. They were all on the hook now.
Montana was waiting when Quinn cut her engines and drifted in toward the dock at the inn.
“Toss me a cleat line.”
Quinn left the bridge and threw a rope to Montana. Montana caught it and pulled the bow of the boat in.
“You really need to remember to turn this thing around when you come in.”
“I know.” Quinn apologized. “I keep forgetting.”
Montana tied up both ends of the pontoon. “How did it go?”
Quinn gave her a toothy grin. “We’re in.”
“What?” Montana’s eyes were like saucers. “No shit?”
“No shit. Look.” Quinn held up the badges.
“But I don’t understand. How did you get them to waive the whole man requirement?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then how can we be in?”
“Because we got another man.” Quinn hopped off the boat to join her on the dock.
“Who?”
“Marvin Pants.”
Montana blinked. “Who the hell is Marvin Pants?”
“Smile when you say that name, little girl.”
The voice from behind her made Montana jump about a foot into the air. Quinn caught hold of her arm to keep her from going off the edge of the dock into the water.
“Jesus, Mavis!” Montana groused. “Don’t sneak up on people like that.” Montana turned around to face her. “You scared the crap outta me.” Montana did a double take when she saw the large man standing behind her. “Why are you dressed like—that?”
“Montana?” Quinn explained. “Meet Marvin.”
Montana looked back and forth between Quinn and Mavis. “Marvin?”
“It’s a long story, missy. And it’s one I ain’t telling. So just do us all a favor and don’t ask.”
Montana looked back at Quinn. “Mavis is a man?”
“No.” Quinn corrected. “Marvin is a man. Mavis is Mavis.” She looked at Mavis. “Right, Marvin?”
“Right. Now the two of you get out of my way. I want to check this piece of junk out to be sure it’s seaworthy before I park my ass on it for three days.”
Marvin pushed past Montana and climbed aboard the pontoon. Montana watched him with a dazed expression.
“I don’t get it. She’s a man?”
“I guess she is for about half the time.”
“Which half?”
Quinn shrugged. “Right now, I guess it’s just the for the half we need. So that’s all I care about.”
Montana watched Marvin moving around on the boat, checking the engines and everything else Quinn had rigged. She looked down at her feet.
“I sure never saw that one coming.”
“Is this seat taken?”
Towanda smiled up at Cricket. “It is now.”
“Thanks.” Cricket pulled out the vacant chair and sat down. Hero’s Welcome was hopping this morning and all of the tables were already taken. Cricket had been wandering around inside the store for fifteen minutes waiting for one to open up. She was relieved when she recognized Towanda. She set her cup of coffee and her blackberry scone down on top of the table. She had a folded copy of The Island Times tucked beneath her arm.
“I’ve seen those papers around.” Towanda pointed at the tabloid. “Anything good in them?”
“There are some great deals if you’re in the market for a used pickup that’s been wrecked. But I prefer to read the personal ads.”
“It has personal ads?”
“Hell, yes.” Cricket picked it up and flipped it open to a page with a folded corner. “SWM seeks BBW-Dom. Must like B&D and water sports.”
“Water sports? What the hell does that mean?”
Cricket lowered the paper. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No.”
“Don’t you write this stuff for a living?”
Towanda shrugged.
“Water sports equals golden showers. You’ve heard of those, right?”
“Of course I have.”
“Let’s see what else we have here.” Cricket scanned the columns of type. “Ah. Here’s a winner. MWM iso SF for ANR. NSA.”
“Do I even want to know what all of that means?”
“Probably not, but I’ll tell you anyway.”
“You mean you know?”
Cricket peered at her over the tops of her glasses.
“Right. Okay.” Towanda picked up her coffee mug. “I guess that’s a yes.”
“Let’s break this down.” Cricket held the paper up. “Married White Male in search of Single Female for Adult Nursing Relationship. No Strings Attached.”