And when Ida came against Leona’s mouth, Leona was full, full as if she had dined five times at the center of Ida’s hips.
They often talked after, which was how Leona learned that Ida was a Gemini and grew up in Syracuse and was never formally trained to cook. It was also how Leona learned that in six weeks, Ida would be leaving for Paris.
Leona had reached up and smoothed out Ida’s thick eyebrows. But now she brought her hand back down, quickly, as if she had been scorched.
Ida would be personally trained by French Chef Something-or-Other and as Ida went on and on about it, Leona looked at her, looked for some sign of remorse that she had to say the words, or even better, that suddenly she thought she might change her mind and stay after all.
But Ida just kept talking.
“A spot suddenly became available. And all this time I’ve been telling myself that it’s just too late, that I’m too old for any more lessons and I already know everything I need to know, but it’s a very coveted position. I’d be a fool to turn it down.”
The excitement in Ida’s voice made Leona smile in spite of herself.
So, she said, “I understand, honey. I would go for it if I were you, definitely.”
Leona said the words only because she knew she had to say something. She said the words because, otherwise, she would cry. And Leona was twenty-four years old, and that was simply too fucking old to cry.
Ida was talking again. Her voice was soft and raspy now.
She turned to Leona and said, “How do you think your daddy would feel about it?”
Leona hoped Ida couldn’t detect the change in her voice. She hoped that the tears wouldn’t roll down her face and fall onto Ida’s arm.
Leona said, “Well, I know he loves your fried chicken, but he’ll find another caterer for his meetings.”
Ida laughed. “Silly girl. I’m talking about you. I’m talking about you taking off with me. What would he think about that?”
Leona tucked her head in the crook of Ida’s arm and inhaled the light scent of lilac from her skin.
No, Leona wasn’t sure how her daddy would feel, but she was already imagining herself awakening with Ida in a foreign land, eating new and exciting foods that Ida would cook for her and feed her from her hands. Already Leona was imagining whispering words in broken French in Ida’s ear.
As she chopped red potatoes, tossed in fresh scallions and added sour cream and mayonnaise, Leona agreed that maybe, yes, every young woman should learn how to cook. She herself had caught on, finally.
She stirred her pot of green beans. She covered the pound cake she had left cooling.
Her father would be happy with the meal, and he would most certainly be proud of her. And he would love the fried chicken.
He’d be just tickled about the whole thing.
And Paris. He’d get over that eventually and maybe one day he’d even be happy. Leona set up the dinner table nice and pretty with a six-pack of her daddy’s favorite beer in a bucket of ice.
Leona wished she could be there to see the look on his face.
But instead she would be sitting in the passenger seat of Ida’s convertible. And by the time he found the note, she and Ida would be on the plane.
And seven hours after that, Leona and her lover would be in Paris. They would both learn new things: Ida the ways of French cooking; Leona, new ways of loving Ida.
And that, Leona knew, was the most important lesson of all.
MORNING COMMUTE
Penny Gyokeres
Morning. Alarm, get out of bed, pee, feed fish, shave, shower, brush teeth, dress dyke-to-die-for in CK boxers, Carhartt and steel-toed breakers. Thirty-one minutes.
Coffee. Strong, large, homo milk splashed in. Get on the subway. Eight minutes.
Commute. Read digital paper: war, riots, famine, recession, murder, six-hundred-billion-dollar Apple, nuclear arms, hatred, violence, world’s smallest lizard discovered in Madagascar; awesome. My stop: off the train. Nine minutes. Up the escalator while checking smart phone Next TTC: Bus in three. Walk off escalator and see you. Morning routine shattered.
Three minutes turn into thirty seconds as I pretend to flip through my smartphone with heavy-duty case, eyeing you all the way. New job? Interview? Not a regular. In six years on the same bus, I’ve never seen you. Black brogues gleaming with buffed polish, pant-cuffs ironed, pleats crisp, butt round. Black leather jacket perfect fit to slim waist and strong shoulders. Black, trim hair screams dyke. Nose and ear piercings catch sunlight sifting through grimy depot windows. You look up and see me, I glance directly at you, shades covering my eyes that take you in, outwardly full of nonchalance, inwardly captivated. No smile from you, no smile from me. Butch dance.
I move toward the platform and ensure I almost graze you, seated on the bench. Not looking back, I feel you rise and follow as I exit through the doors into the cool morning air. I turn on the platform; you are behind me, flipping madly through your smartphone with heavy-duty case. I stand still: you stand still next to me. We flip in silence, electricity flashing between us. The bus arrives. I sit; you sit across from me, able to see me in peripheral. I face you and cannot avert my eyes beneath my shades. We are still flipping as the bus departs. Four minutes.
If I knew you, we would be fucking. We would sleep in, late for work or appointments or interviews, and not caring. We would sleep in and be late because the night before we would have been out and up late.
You said pick you up at eight: dinner for two then a little dirty dancing, per se. We were dressed identically; black steel-toe garrisons polished, black leather jackets and chaps gleaming. Only subtle differences defined our one from the other. Your T-shirt said EAT ME, mine said BITE ME. The jeans covering your ass were black, mine blue. Your hair was black, short, curled with gel; mine light brown, shaved short.
We held hands into the restaurant, eyes locked: hungry. Ravenous actually. Eating was divine in your company and I know you felt the same way about mine. One hundred and six minutes.
Out of the restaurant, hands locked, straight to the not-so-straight kinky queer bar where we were welcomed with warm smiles, sly glances and lusty leers. Ice-cold beer in hand, you pulled me to you and whispered for my ear only:
Fuck me tonight? I squeezed your ass.
No, fuck me.
Play first?
No, just fuck me.
’K.
Planning an evening was that easy with you.
We were surrounded by sex; patrons dripping, shirtless; hot-as-hell staff; porn offering suggestions on the big-screen. My cunt became a throbbing brute. Beers flowed and I had to piss. Big shock…so did you. Bathroom was dimly lit and steel, stalls were dimmer and offered guaranteed good times; just dial…you hauled me in. Guaranteed good times.
Our lips met with fervor, supple butch lips wanting every taste of our kiss. Tongues intertwined, needing full submersion. Calloused hands grasping leather pulled us closer: tough, butch hands. My cunt was gripped, full-hand-hard through my jeans; I was so fucking wet. My earlier request was honored as you slid my hand over your open fly. Dick. Hard-rubber-no-questions-asked-dick. Fuck me.
Fingers first, I got a taste of and for your lust. Fuck and ring finger to open me up: index and pinkie heading toward my ass, palm pressed and powering my clit. My back leaned against the stall wall, steel and black leather hard against each other. My legs were open, my chaps and jeans well below my ass as you gave me a warm-up before the meet. You dipped down to run your tongue over my clit, depriving me of my kiss. I wasn’t worried. Fuck, don’t stop! Fingers in my cunt, mouth hard over my clit: I’m coming dyke, don’t even bother with that cock, your hands and face are bliss! Not so fast, butch.
Your eyes rose to meet mine and I tasted my lust on your lips. Hmm, horny? Said quiet while the guy pissed in the urinal behind steel only inches away. Fuck you. Really? Cocky now that you’ve got your cock in your hand and my full attention. Fuck me, fuck I need you in me. Your body hard and covere
d in leather like mine, working with me as I slid slightly down, legs spreading just enough for your blissful black brilliance. Fuck that feeling.
Your cock impaled me. My cunt was so amazingly ready. Lips held to yours, tongues tasting full mouth, I was stonewalled in ecstasy as you crushed my body to the steel behind me. No more minutes in the day. Nothing more than us fucking dykes. Your strength pumped and hauled my body back and my cunt forward. I grasped the leather of your shoulders as the wonder of your cock filled me and I came. My legs gripped your hips grinding: rhythm in tandem. Your tough hands grasped my ass and pulled yourself into me; I was in heaven for fucking you. I came again and again: lips locked to yours, releasing my passion through every pore in my body.
I loved the way you fucked me, every time, every way. Gasping together with me, you pulled out and grinned that cocky grin; you know I love it. Let’s get home, the morning’s only just begun. Two hundred and thirty-four minutes.
You ring the bell one stop before mine. Fourteen minutes.
I barely remember getting on the bus. I wonder if we’re thinking in tandem, flicking and swiping away on our smartphones. My screen timed out ages ago, its blackness stares back at me, daring me to fill in the blanks. You stand, turn your back to me, head to the front of the bus. I look up at you full-on through my shades, willing you to look back. The driver opens the door and you step off, but not before glancing back at me, right back at me, and I know we are on the same page. The door closes behind you and I sit, grinning in my seat under the red of the streetlight. I stand and ask the driver to open the door again. I call out to your back, not twenty feet ahead of me: “Hey, can I buy you a coffee?”
You turn, and say, “I thought you’d never ask.”
Fuck, I’m going to be late for work…
AFTERMATH
Valerie Alexander
It had been over a year since Kai left me, when I drove over to her new house. My visit wasn’t intentional. She’d ordered takeout from the Thai café where I worked, but I didn’t realize the address on the delivery slip was hers at first. The thick August heat had fogged my glasses, and when I took them off and squinted at the slip, the name GRUNDER at the top jumped out at me.
I started to shake.
Visions of everything she could possibly say to me filled my head. Apologies, explanations. I knew she was still living with the woman she’d left me for, Venetia Dale, because every dyke in town would have told me if they’d split up. I tried to imagine her opening the door and saying, “Come on in,” Venetia waving from the kitchen like Hey, it’s been a year, let’s let bygones be bygones. Once I would have said Kai was too sensitive to do that, but that was before the night she told me it was over, and asked me seven minutes later to cry in the bathroom because I was upsetting Slater, her dog.
I turned the corner. I could have gone back to the café and made someone else deliver it, and I probably should have, but instead I pulled up to her new house. It was a big gray Victorian, shaded by towering elms. There seemed to be a large fenced-in yard, which complicated the mystery of why she had left Slater behind with me. I pulled up to the curb, adjusted my sunglasses and got out, bag in hand. There was a taste like cardboard in my mouth as I walked up the porch steps and knocked.
Venetia opened the door.
I had disliked Venetia Dale for years, before Kai even met her. Everyone in town knew of her; she was a performance artist and she performed everywhere she went, from long, melodramatic stories at the salon to holding court at cocktail parties to theatrical speeches at the gallery where she worked. She was a walking spectacle of artifice, from her white-blonde hair to her made-up name to her fluttery, actressy gestures. Practical Kai falling in love with her was an insane idea, I would have said once, but that was what happened and it upended everything I knew.
Venetia leaned against the door in a black polyester slip. Her platinum hair was in disarray around her shoulders and her mascara had flaked under her eyes. Her bare lips looked oddly flat and pale without their signature dark-red, creamy lipstick.
She looked like sluttiness crossed with heartbreak. It was the first time I’d ever seen what everyone found so beautiful in her.
“Hello.” I held out the bag like I delivered food to her all the time. “That’ll be fifteen eighty-three.”
“Come in.” Venetia swept out her hand like a conquered sovereign conceding defeat.
I’d never wanted to see their house. I didn’t want to know where Kai ate breakfast or what new dog she had adopted when Slater had watched out the window for weeks after she left. The shades were pulled, but I could see the house looked like an empty Pottery Barn set, exposed wood beams over cream walls and hardwood floors. I tried to picture Kai living here, her surfer girl muscles sprawled on the sofa and her ruffled leonine hair on the throw pillow, and couldn’t.
A scratchy old Van Morrison album was playing. I remembered it well. Kai had an immense LP collection. “Nice house,” I said.
Venetia’s thin shoulders moved in a shrug as she moved the turntable needle to a different song. She slumped on the sofa. “You won,” she said, and picked up a green glass. She swirled the liquid around before drinking.
“I what?”
“Come on, Becca. You were dying for Kai to leave me.”
They were over. Now I knew why I was so calm in this house: Kai’s absence. “I didn’t even know,” I said. “Not everything revolves around you, Venetia.”
She gave me an I deserve that nod. Narcissists always know how to feign humility.
“So,” I said. “That’s fifteen eighty-three.”
She looked up at me with tragic eyes. “Don’t leave. Please? You’re the only one who knows her like I did.”
I started to bristle, but got control of myself. “I can’t help you.”
She finished her drink. “It’s been two weeks. She didn’t even take her records with her.” She started to cry.
I was surprised at how little I cared about this. They had broken up, so what. Kai was still gone. It was only amazing that it had taken me this long to find out.
But I sat down on the other sofa and listened to the Van Morrison song fill the almost empty room. I could see into the kitchen from here, another magazine room of exposed brick and copper pans, and I tried to picture Kai having her daily breakfast burrito with Diet Coke in there. I couldn’t. There wasn’t even a ghost of her in this house. She was so gone.
“I went to a party last night—I have to leave the house at night or I go crazy—but all I want is her back. You’re the only person I can think of to talk to. And now…” She gave me a crafty look. “Here you are.”
I couldn’t help it: I smiled. I thought of everything I had lived through this last year and what now awaited her.
“Amazing that this happened,” I said. “Who would have thought Kai would be the type to just walk out on someone.”
She wiped her nose. “I know you think I’m an asshole—”
“I’ve thought that for a long time.”
“But I am not a home-wrecker—”
“You are totally the type who loves to think of herself as a home-wrecker. Femme fatale, Venetia Dale.”
“You don’t even know me, Becca.”
“Just stop. Even right now, you’re making it about you. You don’t know how not to be the center of attention. Who cares what I think of you?”
But I was talking too much and showing that I did care about this situation. I got up and walked into the dining room and looked out the varnished oak French doors. The backyard was slightly overgrown, a deathly afternoon stillness hanging over the grass. A half-grown black Lab puppy was watching the doors with his chin on his paws, and he got up, tail wagging, when he saw me. A woman with short hair, finally come back to him.
I walked back into the living room. She swallowed and made a visible effort to be composed.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said. “I thought you’d be more femme.”
I i
gnored the implication that she hadn’t known what I looked like. She had known where to order her lunch from, after all. Instead I pushed the bag of takeout at her and said, “I’m sorry you’re so upset. You should eat something. But I have to get back to work, Venetia.”
“You could come back later,” she persisted. “And talk to me.”
“Except I don’t want to.”
Her eyes narrowed in speculation. I had just lied and she knew it. I felt oddly riveted to this house that was a mirror world to my own, one year ago. Some pang of nostalgia recognized the fresh grief and bewilderment hanging in the rooms. This was my house when I was only weeks past coming naked in Kai’s arms. When her socks were still in the bureau, her conditioner in the shower, signs that she hadn’t really left for good. Nights when I refused to change the sheets so I could still smell her in them, humping the bed facedown as I fingered myself and buried my face in her pillow.
I looked at Venetia in her black slip and smeared mascara. She was foreign to my world. Yet she was also Kai’s most recent sexual landscape, the last recipient of her mouth and body. It was Venetia’s sheets that smelled like Kai now. I wondered if Kai liked to come on Venetia’s tits the way she liked to come on mine.
Venetia got up and moved the needle again to the start of the album. “Tell me what’s going to happen,” she said. “You obviously know her better than I do.”
“If she left her records behind, I don’t know her at all anymore.”
I walked into the kitchen, despite a vague awareness that it was rude to wander the house like it was my own. And there it was under a surfboard magnet on the fridge: a picture of them toasting the camera with shot glasses, Kai sunburned and grinning. It was true. Their relationship had really happened. I looked at another picture, more formal, of Venetia in a vintage dress and pouting at the camera like an Old Hollywood star. Unbidden images of their first date flooded my mind. How it must have felt for Kai to fuck a woman so different from me, so skinny and feminine and artificial and demanding. Prom queens and actresses had never been my taste or hers and I wondered exactly what she found down that rabbit hole that was so enticing it lured her away from her entire life.
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