by Radclyffe
“Dober dan,” I had replied, keen to demonstrate I could at least manage a greeting in Slovene.
“Kako si kaj?” she enquired, asking how I was.
“Dobro, hvala, in ti?” I managed, telling her I was good, thanking her and returning the enquiry. My accent received the sympathetic smile it deserved.
“Dobro tudi, hvala,” she returned, with laughter in her tone. “You are English girl?”
“Yes, I am.” I offered her my hand, and she took it, “Carolyn,” I told her. The hand that gripped mine in return was strong-fingered and warm.
“Karmen,” she informed me. “I am student of English, but I am very poor.”
Deciding that it wouldn’t be polite to begin correcting awkward phrases when we had only just met, I simply smiled. “Do you live near here?”
It turned out she was from the nearest town, called Ljutomer, about ten minutes by car from my cottage. We’d talked for about half an hour before we’d been called over to take part in the lighting of candles on the mass of cream and sponge that passed for a birthday cake. Before she left, she had given me her mobile phone number, and we’d decided to meet for coffee in town in the next week. She told me talking to me was good practice for her English, and that I could maybe learn some Slovene from her. I worked hard to convince myself that was the only reason I agreed to meet her again, swallowing the attraction I felt. She was stunning. Of course I felt attracted. There was no need to act on that feeling every time I felt it. Besides, the chances of her returning the feelings were slim to none. I wasn’t aware that I’d met another lesbian since I’d been here. I wasn’t sure where they were all hiding in this country, but it certainly didn’t seem to be in the hills, vineyards and villages of brightly painted houses that surrounded my home. Honestly, I preferred it that way. The quaint conservatism of the people here asked no questions, so I told no lies. It made things simple at least. The likelihood of one of the most attractive women I’d met here being gay was so slight that it wasn’t even worth contemplating.
So when we’d met for coffee and Karmen, after some pointed questions about my lack of boyfriend and the exchange of a smile in which there seemed to be an unspoken acknowledgment of the connection between us, began clearly flirting with me, I’d been surprised, but happily so. It was pleasant to play the game with her, amusing to listen to her attempts at flirting in English, which were far more fluent than anything I could have attempted in Slovene. I’d felt the warmth growing inside me as we’d talked, and an unexpected feeling had come. I could love you. The sudden intensity of it had made me draw in a sharp breath. I wasn’t in love with her yet, but I could sense it hidden not far away in my emotions, ready to bubble to the surface. Forcing myself to relax once more, I’d enjoyed the notion, happy that I wasn’t emotionally dead after all.
It was later, alone in the silence, that I had grown frightened. I could have misread the situation. One thing I had learned here was that, even only a few countries away from home, the conventions of body language and manners were considerably different from what I was used to, and Karmen’s phrasing was not always straightforward enough to follow. And even if I had understood her intentions clearly, which I suspected, not being entirely an idiot, I had—that was even more frightening. I’d sworn that I wouldn’t get myself involved with anyone else for at least a full twelve months.
Three relationships in three and a half years had ended in disaster. The fault had been partly mine in the last two, but in the first I still considered myself blameless. They’d all hurt, a white-hot burning that shocked my heart, and I still could not grow immune to that sort of pain. Hence my self-imposed exile in the northernmost part of the former Yugoslavia, a little-known corner of Europe sandwiched between Austria and Croatia, Hungary and Italy, where it seemed likely I could hide from all my problems. Meeting Karmen had made it uncomfortably and frighteningly apparent that I could not hide from myself. I’d sent her a text two days ago, when we had been due to meet for coffee once more, and told her I couldn’t make it. It would be safer not to see her.
Now, I let the ever-deepening darkness envelop me and tried not to think about her, or my dismal relationship history. Maybe I was just meant to be alone. I certainly never felt lonely in my own company.
The sound of a car approaching along the road from town penetrated the night. Moments later headlights appeared over the crest of the hill, yellow and bright in the deep twilight, as the car descended toward my house. I waited for the familiar swoosh of air as it passed but instead I heard the engine slowing and the unmistakable crunch of tires on the gravel driveway at the front of the house. My heart thudded. I hated being caught off guard by visitors. I wondered if I could stay hidden. There were no lights in the house, no evidence that I was home. If I just stayed silent here at the back of the house maybe whoever it was would just go away?
I heard the sound of someone knocking on the front door. About thirty seconds later whoever it was knocked again. Then there was nothing, and I felt relieved that he’d given up so easily. But in the next moment I heard the whisper of footsteps in the grassy lawn to the side of the house, and, “Dober večer?” Good evening.
The Slovene accent is not dissimilar to the Russian, but with the dual twists of a more Mediterranean musical tone and a harsher Germanic pronunciation. In Karmen’s deep voice, even the simple greeting sounded wonderful. My heart fluttered. Why was she here?
“Karmen?” I demanded, sitting up in the lounger, as she appeared in the shadows at the corner of the house.
“You are hiding?” she asked, matter-of-factly.
“No, just sitting in the garden.”
“Oh, I see. It is quiet here.”
“Yes.”
“I come to see you. I want to give you this. Cookies!” She handed me a foil packet. I unfolded the wrapping to find several slices of what smelled like chocolate and rum cake.
“Thank you. But this is cake, not cookies,” I corrected, because she’d told me to whenever she made a mistake.
“Ah, yes, cookies are different, I remember. And you, in England, you call them…what is it?”
“Biscuits,” I supplied.
“Ah, yes. I made the cakes by home.”
“You mean they’re homemade? Well, Hvala lepa,” I expressed my gratitude, touched by the gesture since Karmen didn’t really seem like the baking type.
“You are welcome. I—kak si reče? Looked for you?”
“Er…you mean…er?” I replied, trying to follow her train of thought.
“When you sent me message, I wanted to see you,” she insisted forcefully.
“Oh, you missed me?” I clarified, glad of the gloom since my face flushed as I said the words.
“Yes, that’s right. I missed you,” she agreed, and I immediately wished it was light enough to see her expression.
“Thank you.” My heart was surging again. It was no good. I needed to see her face, that voice in the darkness was too much for me. “Do you have your lighter?”
“What?”
“Er, your, er…fire, for cigarettes?” I knew Karmen, like virtually every other woman I’d met here, was an occasional smoker—with coffee, after a stressful day—and always carried her lighter.
“Aha, yes.” She fished about in her pocket for a moment and produced the lighter. I took it and reached over to the surface of the upturned log I used as a small and uneven table out here on the patio behind the house, where I lit the citronella-scented candle that stood in a terra-cotta dish. The flame flickered and then flared into brightness bathing us in a halo of amber light. I looked up at Karmen as she stood by the side of my lounger. Her face was half in light and half in shadow now, magnifying the dark of her eyes, the sharpness of her features, even as she smiled. That smile was enough to make me glad she had come to see me.
“I’m sorry you missed me,” I told her. “I was just too busy that day.” I didn’t really want to lie to her, but I couldn’t admit to my cowardice either.
“What were you doing?” she pressed, and I got the distinct sense that she saw right into me. The breeze made the candle gutter, shadows playing wildly over her skin as she looked back at me with those intense eyes. She almost made me lose all of my self-possession.
“Oh, you know…” I shrugged and looked away from her.
“No, I do not know,” she replied, with characteristic bluntness. Tact wasn’t a common Slovene trait and she had none whatsoever. Maybe that was what I needed. “I think you were afraid.”
“What of?” I challenged, though I didn’t deny her conclusion.
“How can I know?” She raised her hands in a small gesture.
“Of you?” I wondered if that was what she thought. She was very intense after all.
“I hope not, I am not to be afraid of. Maybe you afraid of you?” There was enough light for me to see the way she raised her eyebrows in question, though her tone suggested she knew she was right. I stared back at her, dumbfounded for a moment. However much had been lost in translation between us, her understanding and perception of me were clearly sharp and accurate. “I do not understand however,” she went on when I didn’t reply. “One day you will become death, and then you will know that life was too quickly.”
“You mean life’s too short?” I said quietly, though I’d understood her well enough.
“Yes, that is what I mean.” She sounded mildly irritated by my correction this time.
I could say nothing in reply, and she was silent too. The night was thick and increasingly black now, the moon still hazed by light clouds that obscured many of the stars. The brightest light was the candle flame reflected in her feline eyes as we contemplated each other. Despite the cool of the breeze, I felt hot suddenly, claustrophobic in the silence, and longed for some noise to break the tension between us.
I jumped when she took a step toward me. When she tried to take the foil-wrapped cake out of my hands, I almost hung on to it, as if it protected me somehow. She tugged it free and placed it on the log next to the candle. The next moment her legs were astride the lounger, as she faced me and lowered herself into my lap. She was very petite and light, and the lounger didn’t even groan as it took her extra weight. Which is more than can be said for me. It was all I could do to repress the sound that threatened to escape my lips. The contact of her thighs against mine, and now her hands on my shoulders, sent a bolt of heat through my entire being. My head felt light and a heaviness settled between my thighs.
“You want me?” she asked.
“You seem to know that already.” I tried to laugh, not succeeding through the thickness in my throat. My heart beat wildly as she moved her face a little closer to mine. She smelled of body heat, floral soap and a hint of cherry-sweetness.
“I want you,” she said simply, and the accented words were more eloquent than anything she could have said had she been a native English speaker. Her face came closer to mine, and before I could even think about it, our mouths were melting together. Her lips were hot and soft, but surprisingly insistent. Her kiss was a tease at first, and I allowed my lips and tongue to dance with hers in return. It was when, with a moan into my mouth, her tongue pushed in harder, with more apparent lascivious intention, that I felt the surge of fear rising inside me, overriding the heat she stirred in my blood. I pulled back.
“It’s not a good idea,” I told her. I was doomed to failed relationships, and I didn’t want Karmen to be another one of my victims. It always started this way—from the flirting to the irresistible kiss, to the ripping off of clothes and the first night of the best sex ever. It was usually the morning after that I found things started to deteriorate. Either I wasn’t emotionally mature enough or it was just cruel destiny. I didn’t want a relationship with Karmen that I’d remember for great sex and then a gathering sense of impending disaster. Still the thought came; I could love her, some day soon. If we went too far now, the chance of that was gone.
She was still sitting astride my thighs, her body warm where it crushed into mine. That ache low in my abdomen cried for attention, but the warnings of my heart, my sudden awareness of what it yearned for, were stronger. Karmen was looking at me curiously, and I was relieved she wasn’t offended.
“But what is wrong?” she inquired, a new softness in her tone.
“I can’t. I mean, I want to, but I don’t…” I tried to explain incoherently.
She leaned in again and brushed my lips with hers, oh, so lightly. My whole body stirred. “Carolyn, I don’t want to fuck with you.”
Not sure quite how she meant her statement, I was silent for a moment, waiting breathlessly to see how she would continue. “For me you are very beautiful. I want to look at you and to kiss you and talk with you. I want only to go to bed with you if I love you. I do not love you now.” She said it so plainly, with her soft tone smoothing the edge of her accent, that her words were hypnotic to me. I couldn’t imagine a girl in England saying the same things to me. Not the girls I’d met anyway.
“I don’t love you either. Yet,” I told her in a whisper, leaning forward to kiss her tentatively and with a little more passion when she returned the pressure. The spark of arousal reignited inside me, but I allowed the fire to spread through me, relishing it, knowing I didn’t have to act upon it. I wanted to kiss her and look at her too.
“You know, it does not have to be so fast,” she murmured, “we can go slow.” She kissed me again, deeper but slowly, sensually. My body came alive for her, but the overwhelming urge was to wrap my arms about her slight form, just feel her close to me. It was such an innocent need, compared to my usual lusts, and its novelty made it intoxicatingly wonderful to me.
“I think I will love you,” I breathed, pulling back from her for a moment and reaching up to stroke her smooth face. She trailed a finger from the corner of my moistened lips, over my throat and between my breasts, over my T-shirt.
“I think maybe I will love you too. And then it will be hot between us,” she replied, and in the promise, the anticipation, I found a greater arousal than anything I’d ever known, since that first, nerve-fueled time all those years ago.
She pressed toward me once more, her hands reaching for mine. My hot fingers entwined with hers as our lips met and parted, as our tongues caressed and explored gently. She moved into me, and I felt the swell of her breasts against my own, the warmth of her body close to mine. Stunned, I realized I needed nothing more but that tender mouth, the reassuring grip of her fingers, our shared heat and the promise of a love that could grow. We’d planted the seed and watched the first green shoot push to the surface. The blossoming fulfillment would take patience and cultivation, but it could—and would—come.
The evening had become night. The heady floral fragrances of twilight faded with the lingering remnants of the day. The night was emptier than the dusk, colder, but Karmen filled my senses now. An owl hooted in the woods, and the trees rustled their flowing music in the breeze, but my surroundings were like a dream. I was only aware of Karmen’s breathing, the throb of her heart in time with mine, and the echo of those accented words, I think maybe I will love you too. Tonight, in the flickering candlelight, they carried magic with them, and I was transported out of the dysfunctional life I had grown accustomed to, the constraining fear that had descended upon me, and swept into the realm of possibilities.
CAMELLIAS
Anna Meadows
Shore Vista in late July and early August—the most well-manicured ghost town on the face of the earth. BMWs and Land Rovers are tucked into garages. Mail has been put on hold. Children clad in J. Crew or Lilly Pulitzer don’t run on the side-walks, because they’ve either been shipped off to Grandmother’s house, or taken to Santorini or Nice with their parents.
Everything else runs as though the residents were still here. Walkway lights stay on their timers. Landscapers, paid in advance, still come to trim the hedges and see to the begonia borders—because you never know when Architectural Digest might be stoppi
ng by to snap a few photographs.
The sprinklers still soak the sod lawns to keep them green as malachite. If they didn’t, the grass would turn to straw in the heat, the same heat that drives families from the area on yearly vacations scheduled to coincidence with the area’s two or three scorching weeks.
Shore Vista residents pay yearly dues that include guard-attended gates, private security and a homeowner’s association that decides what three colors the houses can be painted each year. Only a few residents, my cousin and her husband included, hire house sitters: some because they have a collection of rare orchids whose gravel needs humidifying on an hourly basis; others because they’ve just remodeled and want someone looking after their granite countertops and smooth-coated walls. In my cousin’s case, she has two cats and can’t bear to put them in a kennel, which is where I come in. I can count on everything I bring to my cousin’s house being covered in orange and calico fur by the time I leave. Saffron and Cinnamon curl on my clothes, nap in my suitcase and sleep on my head.
Most summers house-sitting is a way to pick up extra money. This summer it’s how I’m scraping by. I lost my job last month when the dress boutique where I worked folded, and a rent hike forced me out of the apartment I had leased for a year. Half my stuff is at my parents’ house, the other half is with friends.
I’ve been doing this just enough summers to know by muscle memory that the kitchen and living room are upstairs, not down, and the bedrooms are downstairs, not up. After I turn off the alarm, I tuck my bags into the guest room, water the hanging fuchsias and make sure nothing’s on that’s not supposed to be. Then I get my clothes off as quickly as I can, stripping off my jeans and cooling my bare feet on the guest bathroom’s travertine. My inner thighs are clammy, my hairline damp with perspiration.
The Henleys next door are out of town until the end of the month. They left my cousin the gate key so I could use their pool, and I want the sun-veined water against my skin so badly it’s like my body is thirsty.