by Sacchi Green
Phil and I sit together at supper and she holds up her knife, just a plastic thing because loony-bin inmates don’t get to have real metal silverware. She holds it up, waggles it slightly, her tongue poking out just a bit, and I know what she means. I lick my lips, red with cocksucking lipstick, wet with want.
She scribbles a note on a scrap of paper as we sit in group, the one where we have to fill in crossword puzzles together, the OT providing us with the first letter of each word. Phil’s note says, Rhymes with a common water fowl; what will happen for approximately a full day and night once we’re sprung and I get you to my place.
When the service dog comes in, a sweet chocolate lab named Blossom, Phil rolls up beside me, her hand finding mine as we rub Blossom’s round tummy as she lies flat on her back with her legs splayed, tail wagging. Phil grasps me hard on the skin between thumb and finger, pulls, then slots her fingers there and squeezes. It’s over in a flash, but I feel it. Nothing wrong with your brain, said Mop-Head earlier this week. Sad and tired and old, I said, but it turns out there isn’t anything wrong with my cunt, either, because it gets the message from Phil’s strong fingers and sends me a jolt. I gasp and Blossom turns her head, looking at me with concern, then flops back down with a sigh when Phil and I burst into laughter.
I wish she could come to my bed. The Queen snores and I wet down my fingers.
She’s gone the day after Blossom visits. We’d known she was getting out, but I hadn’t expected her to leave so early. Small Nurse sees me searching, and shuffles over to give me a piece of paper.
Phyllis asked me to give this to you,” she says. That voice. “How nice that you made a friend!” She all but pats me on the head, then shuffles off.
I go into the rec room and sit watching the cars on Mem Drive for a while with the paper in my lap. It has a weight, a heat. Finally, I open it. Where I am and where you’ll be. Already, I recognize her handwriting, the sloppy open As, the spiky Ws. An address in Somerville—I’ll have to take the bus, am I going to be able to take the bus? Yes. Of course. Then four boxes, like a crossword puzzle, the first letter filled in: F. I look over at Small Nurse, who must have read this, but she’s not even watching. “Flying under the radar,” Phil had said a few days earlier, copping a quick feel of my thigh under the table, no tablecloth or anything to hide us, if anyone had been watching. Do they have a policy about fraternization like a dorm or a barracks? “Right under the radar.” Phil put her hand higher, cupping the crease of my thigh, then my pussy so briefly, so sweetly. No one noticed, or if they did, it was only the Queen, who had her own affairs to tend to.
That evening, Linda is in the dining room when I get out of group.
“Look, Tatie!” she says, standing to hug me. “The first strawberries!” They’re slightly squashed from riding in her bike bag, jumbled together in their little wooden container, the thin slats stained with red. I can smell them.
“Oh, Linda, they’re gorgeous! Thank you!”
“You’re welcome, Tatie! Fuck, it’s good to see you smile!” I smile even wider, making a grab for the berries. It’s not very polite, with a couple of other inmates watching enviously, and the berries probably aren’t even washed, but I can’t wait any longer. I snatch up a handful and press them into my mouth.
The warmth of the sun. The smell of freshly plowed earth. The feeling of a cool little breeze caressing the back of your sweaty neck on a hot, hot afternoon. I close my eyes and throw my head back. “Mmm!”
Linda starts to laugh. “Tatie, you look like you’re going to come!” she hisses.
The Queen of All She Surveys glides up. “May I?” Her hand hovers over the basket.
“Of course.” I’m going home in three days, and I heard Small Nurse saying the Queen has at least another two weeks. I push the basket over to her, full of the loveliest things to have been in the dining room for as long as we’ve been there. “Please, take as many as you’d like.”
We finish the basket in short order and that night, when I lick my fingers to get them good and wet, they still taste like strawberries.
CINEMA FANTASTIQUE
Victoria Janssen
The old Mackenzie Theater downtown was an utter dump. In its heyday, the 1940s, it had been lauded as a palace of cinema, but by the time Sunshine Jackson was a teenager in the 1970s, the green-velvet seat covers were worn bare in spots, and the swathes of faded green-and-gold curtain reeked of dust, mildew, weed, and cigarettes. Evening shows cost a dollar, the afternoon matinee was fifty cents, and the popcorn was always stale. The Mackenzie was the most popular date venue in town, not because of its historic charm but because there was a balcony, and the balcony seats were cushioned pews instead of armchairs. If you didn’t mind company a short distance away, those pews were much better for fucking than the backseat of even the most capacious LTD, especially in winter. Or so the gossip said.
In high school, Sunshine and her pack of five friends went in a herd to the Mackenzie almost every week, to the cheap matinees, critiquing action flicks while sneaking victoria janssen joints. Occasionally they would deign to cast disparaging glances at the paired-up older kids, who would head for the balcony without a second glance. Her pack was half girls and half boys, but they weren’t together. They were above that, plus Sunshine liked that nobody could tell she was more into girls than boys, even though she wasn’t with any of them. No matter how cute Amie Itzkoff happened to be, with her skinny yet graceful body and tiny round glasses and plaid ties. The pack went for the movies, not the sleazy groping. Or at least, that’s what they pretended. It was good to have a pack, to never have to wonder what you were going to do on a Friday night, or with whom.
The pack saw Star Wars at the Mackenzie eighteen times in total; twice on some days. They memorized lines and quoted them to each other like their own private code. Sunshine wanted to be Han Solo, only with tits. If she wished, in her secret heart, that Amie would invite her into the balcony, she reminded herself that Han Solo ought to be the one asking, and would get dressed for the movie hoping her black vest or her tall boots would lend her mercenary-pilot bravado. But she never quite had the courage to ask, in the end, because she wasn’t Han Solo; she just wished to be. And she’d feared what would happen if Amie said no, and feared even more what would happen if Amie said yes.
Sunshine left her whole hometown behind, including Amie, when she went to Oberlin, but she kept the Mackenzie. The grimy balcony lurked in her subconscious for decades. She and Francine, her first girlfriend in college, went to an Italian art film on their third date, and she was painfully disappointed when the modern theater turned out to be balcony-less. It was just a movie, just a room where movies were shown, and it smelled only of popcorn and sugar, not cigarettes and mildew.
The Mackenzie emerged unexpectedly in her dreams, her daydreams, and her fantasies for years; it took up permanent residence in the sexual halls of her mind. The most forbidden fantasy, which she only let herself have a few times, was of her and Amie, still back in high school, sneaking up just before the rebels set out in their X-Wings to destroy the Death Star. She always felt a little depressed after she’d indulged in that one. She’d lost touch with Amie after The Empire Strikes Back came out, because Amie had gone out to California for college, and Sunshine never found out what Amie thought of Return of the Jedi. She had let it happen, even though they’d both eventually gone into architecture at graduate schools separated by a thousand miles. She never even knew for sure if Amie liked girls. Amie had never had a boyfriend in high school, but then, neither had any of the girls in their pack. Two of the other three were married now, both to men, and one had transitioned to male and moved to Des Moines.
If Amie had married a man, Sunshine didn’t want to know.
Then one day, her cell rang. She didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
“Sunshine?”
She knew the voice immediately. They exchanged quick histories of recent years. Amie had spent time in Chicago before sh
e moved back to their hometown when she learned of plans to revive the main street and several of the historic businesses. There was a sizable grant to support the work, and she was putting in two more applications. “There’s an incredible amount to do, Sunshine, but I think it’s a terrific project. I always loved all the old buildings in town when I was a kid, and it was a real heartbreaker to see some of them with collapsing ceilings and basement leakage.”
“Did the theater ceiling collapse? That painted ceiling?”
“No, it’s still intact, though the paint’s flaking, especially in the corners. I was in on the inspection for that. I never realized before how much the mural figures had been darkened from dirt and smoke. They were naked! Just imagine if we’d known about that in high school.”
Sunshine cradled her phone closer to her face. “I knew. My granny told me. She thought they were scandalous. But I think my mom might have been conceived there, so . . . ”
Amie laughed. “Maybe that’s why no one bothered to clean them up before this—keep down population growth. But ceiling art restoration is way in the future. What I’d like you to do is inspect the interiors. We can put that together with the reports we already have on the facade and the overall structural integrity—I can email those to you. Oh, and I especially want you to have a look up in the balcony. You remember what it used to look like, don’t you? I never went up there back in the day, not once.” Amie paused. Sunshine could sense her wanting to ask, and hesitating.
Sunshine changed the subject. It was easy. They’d always had a lot to talk about. It turned out Amie had loathed the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, and lacked confidence in the longevity of Leia and Han’s relationship.
They rang off with a promise they’d go out to dinner when Sunshine arrived in town. They’d meet up at a new restaurant on Main Street, a Thai place neither of them could have imagined when they were in high school.
Amie wasn’t married. Amie was single. Amie now knew that Sunshine wasn’t straight.
Sunshine bought a plane ticket before the week was out.
Walking into the Mackenzie in the summer of 2016 was like falling into a swamp of memories. A steamy swamp, as the ancient, cobbled-together air-conditioning had failed about a decade earlier. Sunshine left her roll-away suitcase just inside the green double doors opening from the lobby. The old familiar fug of ancient cigarettes and mildew invaded her nose and soaked into her clothes as she climbed ladders and scrambled over piles of old construction trash, tapping out notes on the details of the building’s features and their current state. Dust glued itself to her sweaty bare legs and arms. She felt like an archaeologist, and briefly entertained images of herself in an Indiana Jones–style fedora.
Then it was time for the balcony.
Climbing the narrow stairs made her feel weak in the knees. She took a couple of swigs from her water bottle; it was ridiculously hot in here, and she was probably dehydrated, though her hands were sweaty on her tablet and her camera strap stuck to her neck. She laid her tablet on one of the long pews and began taking photographs. Lost in her work, she startled violently when someone shouted her name from down below.
She leaned over the plaster-embellished railing and saw familiar carroty hair below. It was cropped very short now, very butch. Amie apparently couldn’t wait until dinner tonight. “Up here,” Sunshine said.
Amie had grown taller since Sunshine had last seen her, or maybe it was her dinged-up cowboy boots; gold caps adorned the pointed toes. She wore an ancient pair of Levi’s that clung to her slender thighs and a sleeveless cotton button-up in an orange plaid that clashed with her hair. Sunshine didn’t care. Amie was grinning at her, and when Amie hugged her she felt solid strength all down her front. Sunshine’s fingers fisted in Amie’s shirt, gripping her muscled shoulders, before she remembered how sweaty and filthy she was. “Agh! Your shirt! Sorry!”
Amie gave her one last squeeze, leaned in, and kissed her forehead. “You are more beautiful than I ever imagined you could become.”
That answered one question.
“I know,” Sunshine said, and grinned. Amie caught the reference to Han and Leia without losing a beat, and they both laughed. “Here, have a look at my photos.”
They sat closely together on one of the pews, legs touching despite the close heat. That answered another question.
Amie’s arm brushed Sunshine’s arm or her chest while hitting the camera controls, flipping back to something she’d missed. It was like when they’d shared X-Men comics from the drugstore when they were kids, and Sunshine couldn’t stop smiling. But it also wasn’t like sharing comics, because the slick heat between her legs wasn’t all sweat.
“I bet you’re wondering why I showed up here instead of at the restaurant tonight,” Amie said at last, and brushed Sunshine’s shoulder. “Cobweb,” she said. Her eyes were locked on Sunshine’s, her breathing faster than before.
Sunshine didn’t say anything, because she wasn’t wondering. She lifted her camera strap over her head and hung it from the end of the pew. Then she cupped Amie’s face in her hands and kissed her.
The sound Amie made was delicious, sending a dizzy bolt through her. Amie’s arms went around her; long-fingered hands slid up Sunshine’s back, mirroring the slide of a tongue in her mouth. Sunshine gripped Amie’s head more firmly, craving smooth skin against her aching palms.
One of Amie’s hands crept around to cup her breast. Sunshine said, “Yes,” and set to work nibbling Amie’s earlobe and stroking her fingers through Amie’s soft fuzz of hair. After a while, she took Amie’s hand and slipped it beneath her shirt. She sighed when Amie opened her blouse, flicked her bra open, and teased her nipple until she felt as if she would dissolve into a pool of desire.
The balcony was hot and dusty and dark. She could smell her own sweat and desire, could smell Amie in the soft skin behind her ear.
“Yes, yes,” she murmured, as she was pushed back onto the pew. It was narrow and hard, the velvet cushions long since disintegrated. Amie stretched out over her, one of her feet braced on the floor. Her cowboy boot thumped against the splintery wood as she shifted position, trying to squeeze closer.
“This is so much better than I ever imagined,” Amie said in her ear, before bending down to suck her nipples, switching from one to the other as if she couldn’t decide which she liked better.
Sweet hard thigh muscles pressed through denim, pushing hard against Sunshine’s cunt. She slid her hands under Amie’s shirt, nails lightly scratching.
Amie groaned and rubbed against her leg. Muffled by breasts, she said, “I want you so much, but it’s so nasty up here.” She stamped her heel on the floor. “I think I stepped in some prehistoric gum.”
Sunshine laughed, holding Amie to her so they wouldn’t fall onto the dirty floor. Amie grabbed the back of the pew. They rocked together, unsteadily, and that was sexy, too, their breasts smashing together and their hips bumping. Sunshine wriggled experimentally. Amie gasped. “The filth wasn’t part of my fantasy, either,” she said. “There was never any mess. We always just shared glorious orgasms just before I fell asleep. But I don’t want to stop now. I’ve—”
“—been waiting a long time for this.” Amie leaned her face close to Sunshine’s, so close that vision smeared and there was nothing to do but open her mouth to draw in Amie’s scent and then her breath.
Amie had to scramble to her feet to get her jeans and underwear unfastened and shoved down. Sunshine grinned as she watched, and then delicately lifted the hem of her flowy short skirt and tossed it over her belly. Her bikini underwear displayed Darth Vader’s helmet, right over her mound.
“I want those,” Amie said, in tones of deepest desire. She knelt beside the pew, her jeans protecting her knees, and buried her face in Darth Vader, breathing out hot moist breath and curling her fingers under the thin black waistband, slowly tugging down. She had to stop twice to giggle like a maniac.
Sunshine’s fantasies had never gone this far. This
was better than any movie. She writhed beneath Amie’s tongue and the hard press of teeth behind her lips. She gripped the smooth back of the pew with one hand and cupped Amie’s shorn head with the other. “Touch yourself,” she said.
“Oh fuck,” Amie said. She eased a finger into Sunshine, teasing her clit with her thumb, and then began to tease herself left-handed. “Do you like what I’m doing to you? What I’m doing to me? The whole theater down there knows. They know why we came up here. They know why we came up here together.”
“I know. I want them to know. I want you. I want them to know I want you. I wanted . . . but I couldn’t . . . ”
“I know, Sunny. I know. Me, too, though it took me a while to figure it out.”
Sunshine wasn’t sure how long they worked together in the hot darkness. Amie had to shift position on the hard floor more than once, and Sunshine crooked her leg over Amie’s shoulder while Amie worked at her with both fingers and mouth, her other hand teasing herself with increasing intensity.
Amie’s second finger, inside Sunshine, curled up to meet her thumb’s intense pressure. Sunshine squeezed around her hand, clenching every muscle as she strained for her peak, gasping out Amie’s name when she came.
Amie withdrew her hand and eased Sunshine down gently with lips and tongue. Drowsily, Sunshine asked, “You?”
“Oh, hell yes.” Amie shifted position, splaying herself open so Sunshine could watch; Sunshine reached out and fondled one of Amie’s nipples as she brought herself off, silent and intense, her skin flushed from cheeks to chest.
“Next time, I want to make you scream,” Sunshine murmured, stroking Amie’s cropped hair. Because there would be a next time.
At last they stood and put their clothes in order.
Sunshine turned around and Amie brushed at her shirt, with what seemed to be a futile effort, if Sunshine could go by the sounds she was making. “Don’t tell me what’s on me,” Sunshine pleaded. “I have clean clothes in my bag downstairs.”