White Horse Point

by Jean Andrews

  “I train horses, not idiots.”

  “I’m not an idiot. I don’t let anyone call me that.” My face was hot.

  “You’re right. You’re not an idiot. You just behave like one.”

  “Angelique obviously doesn’t think so, and she wants us to be together. I think she picked me out for you.”

  “I told you she and I have different taste in women.”

  “You haven’t even tasted me to know that.” I smiled at her, and this time she reddened and glanced away. “Look, I know you’re freaked over Frank, and for good reason. We’ll deal with it. I wish your aunt would just get rid of him.” I was only half joking. “And while we’re seeking otherworldly help, where’s my aunt?”

  Levade smiled. “Alice is with Angelique. They’re here in the wind.” I could feel the wind kicking up even through the screen, and its presence was sexually arousing.

  I tried to get close to Levade again. “I’m here in the wind too.”

  Her voice sounded cold. “Then you might want to blow over to the red cabin, where someone gives a shit.” She went back in the house and slammed the door. I backed off the porch and tumbled down the steps. These damned cabin steps are deadly. She isn’t even checking to see if I’m hurt. She’s not someone to get involved with.

  “I twisted my ankle, and I don’t need this shit!” I shouted. “And the cat is better off with me. A more stable environment!” As I got to my feet and limped back to the cabin, my ankle torqued and throbbing, I lectured myself. What in the hell have I gotten myself into? A teenage shouting match! It must be the lake causing it, like Maynard said. Warm sun, waves lapping up against you, pine trees whispering to you, and pretty soon…bang…you’ve turned into a fucking lesbian!

  * * *

  Sasquatch must have had a bigger house with his former owner, or the run of a backyard, or more attention than I was giving him, because he was obviously getting cabin fever, picking up paws-full of peanuts right out of the bag and throwing them across the room, shredding the toilet-paper roll, racing around the house intentionally sliding into the furniture, toppling lamps, and sometimes just howling.

  I swept the floor because he was throwing kitty litter out of his wading pool like he was planting corn. I cracked the back door to toss the debris out, and Sass blew through the tiny opening, moving so fast he was just a flash of fur headed for the woods. I flew after him on my weak ankle. If he’s eaten by a bear, I will sob, after which Levade will kill me. Or if Frank finds him, he will kill him and stuff him and use him as a doorstop.

  My shouting brought Marney and Judith out of their cabins, and they quickly joined in the hunt. Marney peeked around trees, baby-talking, “Here kitty-witty-Sassy-frassy!” Judith shouted, “Here, Sass. Come on, Sass!” And I screamed, “God damn it, Cat. Get your ass back here before you’re shot and fucking stuffed!” Apparently, Judith’s approach was the preferable one, because within a few minutes she rounded the corner, the large feline pressed to her chest, and she deposited him in the kitchen.

  “Oh, my God, thank you!” I hugged her and thanked Marney, waving her off.

  “Pussy delivery,” Judith said, giving me the eye as she dusted the hair off her shirt and then immediately began pawing me, trying to pick up where we’d left off, saying she wanted a night together.

  I don’t know if it was anger over being rejected by Levade, or the pain in my twisted ankle, or the ridiculous circumstances of life, but I was not in the mood for Judith, while at the same time I was in her debt for the Sass-catch.

  “Listen to me, Judith.” I tried to be low-key and kind. “I just can’t get interested in a dip with a rubber dick, regardless of who it’s attached to. And although I’m sure your factory-installed equipment is lovely, I just want to stop having sex for sex’s sake. It’s not rewarding, and it makes me feel bad. Does that make sense?” I didn’t give her time to answer. “I want to write and be left alone. You need to find a nice, normal woman to sleep with, and live with. You’re smart and talented, and it’s time to trade in the trapeze for a porch swing. I’m sorry if I offended you, or used you, or led you on, but I just need to break this off.”

  “Wow! You have issues. All this bullshit over sex toys? That’s why straight women are such a pain in the ass. Of course I use sex toys! Because my bedroom is more fun than yours. You marry some guy, and whatever he’s dangling is all you get. And now, thanks to your prude-tude, I have four days of an empty cabin. Had I known you were a walking basket case, I would have lined up someone else!” She stalked back across the lawn to her cabin as Marney watched through her window.

  “Lined up?” I screamed so Judith could hear me. “What are you, a booking agent? You know who books sex? Pimps and hookers! Otherwise it’s called dating! And you don’t show up on a first date wearing a fucking tool kit!”

  I could see the whites of Marney’s eyes clear across the lawn.

  * * *

  I tried to write, but my blood pressure was up, and my throbbing ankle needed attention, so I headed to Jensen’s juke joint for whatever pain relief they had on hand. I was entering the front door just as Judith was walking out the back with a six-pack of beer. My God, this town is so small, you can’t fart without someone opening a window.

  I looked at the limited array of balms. Ben Gay. Done that, I thought.

  A silver-haired woman in jeans and a biker vest, who sat at the bar, drunk out of her mind, spotted me and stage-whispered, “I knew your uncle real well. He and I used to get it on when your auntie wasn’t around. Wilma Swensen.” She extended her hand, causing her to lose her balance and nearly topple off the bar stool.

  “So you’re Wild-Wilma, who fucked Jake, Rake-of-the-Lake.” I enjoyed giving her a double descriptor.

  “Your aunt didn’t know how to handle a man like Jake.”

  “My aunt didn’t want to handle him because she was madly in love with someone else, and she was happy that Jake was stickin’ his dick in a drunk lake chick! Let’s drink to that!” I made an air-toast while Wilma apparently tried to decide if she was being insulted or celebrated.

  “You tell ’em, Willie,” one of the boys at the pool table shouted, goading her. Wilma was emboldened. “We got it on almost as good as you and that professor did. She was here a minute ago.” That put a cork in my cleverness. Were there cameras in the cabin, or did Judith tell the boys, or the whole damned place, what had happened?

  “Whatever she told you didn’t happen,” I said under my breath.

  “Of course, honey. That’s what we all say.” She gave me a raspy barroom laugh as she patted me warmly on the arm.

  I paid for Icy Hot and two reusable ice packs and walked out the back door and through the woods, rather than take the winding highway home. I heard male voices and a twig snap, then laughter and men stumbling through the woods.

  “Hey, Taylor. Talk to us. Come on now.” They laughed and shrieked and giggled like girls. They were having fun taunting a woman, but I was terrified and ran as if I were being chased by a pack of wolves that could encircle me and tear me apart. Do I have to start taking my shotgun to Jensen’s, for God’s sake?

  By the time I got home, my ankle had turned a brighter purple, and I crawled into bed. Sasquatch had settled back into being a house cat after his run through the woods. He curled up next to me, and after a few minutes I picked him up and draped him over my head.

  “Let’s stick to our routine. I’ve had all the change I can take.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The first draft of the book was wrapping up. A twist in plot had finally allowed the wife to escape her stalking ex-husband and to realize love in the form of the woman she had only dreamed about. But would her lover feel the same, and would it last?

  * * *

  It was late in the afternoon when I put the manuscript to bed, and I decided to celebrate, taking a glass of wine down to the dock and dangling my feet, and my nearly healed ankle, in the clear, icy, lake water, staring at the most peaceful
scene imaginable. Despite what was going on inside me, the lake was calm.

  A few minutes later, I heard a screen door slam in the distance. Sounds carried like musical notes along the quiet lakeshore. Teens laughing, motors buzzing, doors slamming, they were all muted and distant, reminding you that people were around, but it would take them a while to reach you.

  Soon, over my left shoulder, I spotted Judith headed my way, working her way down the hill. I casually took my feet out of the water and dried them off on a towel, preparing to leave, as she shouted, “Keep your pants on. I’m here for détente.” She’d obviously been watching me, because she’d brought her own wineglass.

  I put my feet back in the water as a gesture of peace. She walked the dock planks that bounced with her every step and plopped down next to me, putting her feet in the cold lake beside mine.

  “We live too close to be aggrieved lovers,” she said.

  “We were never lovers.” I smirked.

  “And I’m completely over you.” She punched me with her right shoulder, and we both laughed, since we knew she’d never had any real feelings for me in the first place.

  “So Marney tells me you spend a lot of time down at the Point,” she teased.

  “Marney has turned us all into a soap opera for her viewing entertainment.”

  “Are you attracted to the woman who lives there?” she asked, feigning mild interest as she splashed her feet, making noise and spraying water. “Well, are you?” She intentionally splashed water up onto my shorts, and I shrieked.

  “Why are you asking me that?” I laughed.

  “I’m just here, therapist of the pines, and thought I’d offer a little friendly lesbian advice. That’s all.” She intentionally said nothing more.

  “You’re going to make me beg for this advice?”

  “No. But if you don’t, you won’t get it.” She paused and cut me a mischievous look. “And it’s damned good advice, because I’ve been at this decades longer than you have. But then if you don’t need it, I understand. We all have our own styles.” She pulled her feet out of the water.

  “Okay, spill it. Please.”

  “You’re not forceful enough,” she said flatly.

  I burst out laughing. “Oh, forceful like you, Don Juan of the Flying Dick?”

  “Gotta stake out your territory. Gay women know this. Straight women, you’re totally clueless. You’re trained to ‘wait for the man.’ Well, there’s no man, in case you missed that. You’re older, taller, and the one with the biggest hard-on, so take charge.”

  I gestured at her as if to say she was crazy. She shrugged and got up and headed back to her cabin.

  “Hey, Jude.” I imitated the song, and she turned around. “Thanks.”

  She gave me a little toast. “Good luck.” And she sauntered off.

  * * *

  It was late at night when the yearning became unbearable and I could no longer stay away from Levade. I told Sass if I was lucky, I wouldn’t be back home tonight, so I was leaving him food and water, and a view of the lake from our bed. Then I walked through the trees along the lake and over to the Point and her cabin.

  Levade was arguing with Tony, the same man she’d thrown out of her cabin before. Tony’s shiny head and nearly featureless face, with his permanent squint and thin lips, made him look like a gray alien.

  “You tell Frank he broke his promise, and that has consequences,” she said. “He tried to rape her.”

  “Guess he forgot.”

  “Leave, and don’t come back.” The two shepherds were on him, and Levade never spoke their names but just gave them a hand signal to wait.

  “Those two could have a bad accident,” he said of the dogs.

  “If that were to happen, I’d be standing graveside as they throw dirt on you.”

  He spat and walked off into the woods.

  I stepped out of the shadows. “You want to tell me what that was all about?”

  “He’s a local guy who tries to act like a thug. Why are you here?”

  “Why are you still so angry? I let Judith know it was a ridiculous thing, and nothing happened really, just so you know.”

  It was bad timing, because Levade was operating off a full head of steam from feuding with Tony.

  “How fucked up are you?” she asked, and I was shocked. “You think sex with one lesbian will tell you if you like lesbian sex with me? Is a love relationship just mechanical for you? Why did I ever stir up Frank over you?

  “What does that last thing mean?”

  “Frank believes I’m attracted to you and that you make me happy, so of course he wants to put an end to that.”

  “Are you attracted to me?”

  “You certainly don’t make me happy!” she said, sounding so intensely angry that I was startled.

  “Yet,” I said forcefully, “I intend to rectify that situation.” I walked up the cabin steps, pulled her inside with me, and locked the door. Then I took her hand and led her back to the airy bedroom with the linen drapes blowing in the wind, and a white, puffy, down coverlet.

  “No. We can’t do this,” she said, looking surprised and worried.

  “But we’re going to,” I said, and kissed her passionately, pressing her up against the wall so I could feel the full length of her, pulling her shirt aside to kiss her breasts. Her lips trailed my neck as my belly sought hers, and my pelvis rocked against her. The heat generated could have caused a cabin fire. I wasn’t sure what I was doing exactly, but I knew what I wanted, and that desire seemed to drive everything. Wanting to be inside her was an overwhelming sensation.

  “Slow down,” she whispered. I kissed her again, while pulling her slacks off onto the floor as she unbuttoned my jeans. And then she propelled me onto the bed on top of her. It was the most exciting, erotic moment I’d ever experienced. I felt so light-headed I could have been deemed delirious.

  “You are incredibly soft,” she said.

  “Is that a good thing?” I managed to breathe.

  “A very good thing.” Her eyes were shooting off sparks, and I knew at that moment that she possessed me. I breathed in hints of her exotic perfume on her hair and behind her ears, and my lips sought hers as I slid my fingers up her thigh and played at the edge of her desire, keeping her mouth locked to mine, connecting us like an electrical circuit, now so highly charged I thought we might simply short out. Then, unable to hold back any longer, I entered her suddenly, and she immediately thrust her hips into me, pushing her wet heat into my hand, open and throbbing, her intense, prolonged arousal having nearly brought me to climax. I held her as she clung to me, pounding against me, again and again, moaning her pleasure and then finally collapsing in a trembling, torrential release. I hoped her loneliness had been swept away in the tidal wave of her climax. And I waited only for that moment when I could entice her into climaxing again.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. “That was so beautiful!”

  She pushed me onto my back and kissed her way down my chest to my pubic hair, and then her face disappeared, and her hot mouth took all of me, her tongue pushing its way deeper and deeper inside me, then pulling away as if to demand that, if I wanted more, I would have to come to her, thrust myself into her, and I did, again and again, my hands entangled in her hair to keep her from leaving, from torturing me further.

  I was nearly out of my mind in an orgasmic state I wanted to last forever. The tension, the rhythm, the sensation of her tongue in me disengaged my brain as I lunged into my own lust and erupted into a raging river. Then satiated, and silent, I lay exhausted, not knowing what had happened to me, the person who was never fully satisfied, the woman who could remain unemotionally attached.

  Levade raised up on one arm to gaze into my eyes as her hand trailed over my breasts. She looked extremely pleased with herself.

  “I suppose you think you’ve shown me who I am.” I could barely whisper.

  “I’ve only shown you who you are with me.” And she was on top of me, putting her
strong fingers inside me as I gasped and writhed and came in the intensity of her grasp.

  * * *

  We made love all night, falling asleep just before dawn and then rising only to make love again. I was addicted to her. It was all I wanted to do—make love to her, be inside her, hold her, go down on her, be on top of her. It just made no logical sense for someone who wasn’t new to sexual experiences. I wasn’t hungry, or tired, just completely inexorably aroused by her. I ran my hands through her glorious hair and looked into her eyes, and she spoke softly. “Are you aware that I am in love with you?”

  My heart stopped. I could never remember saying those words to anyone. The best I’d ever mustered was “Love you!” Saying a person’s name, followed by ‘I’m in love with you,’ felt so committed. I pushed her back playfully, kissed her in lieu of response, and hopped up, saying, “I’m going to take a quick shower!” I needed to get away. I needed time to think.

  This is the best I’d ever felt in my entire life. So why can’t I just go with it…trust my instincts…trust her? Because it means making decisions, changes that might be irreversible. She is nothing short of the crossroads of my life.

  I jumped out of the shower, toweled off, and put my jeans back on as she made coffee for me. I watched her move around the kitchen in her short, white, sexy nightshirt, with the collar up and the low-cut front. Every step she took, every gesture she made produced heat between my legs, and I deserted caffeine for her hot lips and beautiful naked body, pulling her back onto the bed, where I intended to stay forever. I was addicted to every part of her.

  We were still in the bed when the knock came at the door, startling us both. I glanced at my watch. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.

  Levade went to the door, and I was two steps behind her, feeling protective and wanting to communicate ownership.