by Jae
“Hi,” Carol said from behind the kitchen counter. “Come in and sample our homemade falafel.” She smiled in Lara’s direction. “It’s to die for. Even if I do say so myself.”
“Oh…” Lara’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t know…” She waved hello to Carol. “I’m intruding,” she said, looking at Kate. “You’re busy.”
“We need a head taster,” said Carol.
“I brought wine.” Lara’s voice was almost apologetic, as if bringing wine was considered bad manners.
“I hope it’s vegan wine,” Carol said, “because we’re having an exclusively plant-based party here.”
Lara smiled. “Actually, it is.”
“Wine is just grapes, right?” Kate said. “How is a grape un-vegan?”
“Oh dear, you still have so much to learn.” Carol walked up to Lara, introduced herself while she shook her hand, and took the bottle from her. She studied the label, clicking her tongue admiringly. “An organic, vegan Merlot. Happens to be my favorite. And Kate’s too. Because in spite of what you might think, she actually can talk.” She walked back to the kitchen, sat the bottle on the counter, threw a cucumber on her cutting board, and began slicing it up.
“She knows I can talk,” Kate snapped. “We talked only yesterday.”
Lara nodded. “Which is why I’m here.” She stared at Kate intently for a second, then brought a hand to Kate’s face and ran a thumb down her cheek. “You have a little—”
“Flour!” Carol chimed in.
Lara stared at her thumb and wiped it on her jeans. “Anyway, I was going to ask you if you’d be up for me interviewing you.”
Kate gave Lara a blank stare, still feeling the spot where she’d touched her. She leaned her hand on the headrest of her easy chair for stability.
Lara tilted her head. “You know, for the magazine.”
“For your magazine?” Kate said. “Why?”
“For our series on powerful women.”
“But…” Kate laughed. “I’m anything but a powerful woman. I’m actually more of a house plant.”
“You’re setting up your own business, right?”
“We are, yes,” Carol hollered. “And pending our big break, Kate pays the bills by working her ass off at some dead-end secretarial job. She’s every inch the alpha female.”
“That’s great,” Lara said, never taking her gaze off Kate. “So when are you…available? To talk about this, I mean. I’ll give you the ins and outs, and then you can decide whether you’re up for it.”
“Why not give her the ins and outs now?” Carol pointed to the couch with the tip of her knife. “Make yourself comfortable. Have some wine and food.”
Lara shook her head. “Thanks, but I have things to do. Maybe some other time.”
“If you really think I qualify,” Kate said, “then I guess I’m in. Can’t think of a reason why not. It might even be good for business and win us some new customers.”
“I guess,” Lara said. “Not sure the readers of Glopax are the sort of people who have their parties catered, but I guess it won’t hurt.”
“That’s okay.” Kate wondered what sort of people the readers of Glopax might be and how many there were. “I have nothing planned tomorrow night. So I suppose we could set it up. How about we meet at your place?” She smiled. “I know where it is.”
“Good. That’s great.” Lara lingered and then suddenly turned on her heel. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” She looked over her shoulder, waved at Carol, and left.
“Now that,” Carol said, grinning from ear to ear, “was a booty call if ever I saw one.”
Kate walked back to the kitchen and leaned against the counter. She felt flushed and a little confused. “Stop it, okay!” She frowned at Carol. “You’re weirding me out. It wasn’t even a call to start with. It was a visit, to discuss a business transaction.”
Carol grinned mischievously. “She brought wine. She smelled like a goddess.”
“Still.” Kate pouted. She wanted it to be true, but she was afraid that saying it out loud might jinx it.
“You were right,” Carol said. “She really is… What’s the word? Luscious.”
“Don’t think I ever called her luscious.”
“In a Katniss Everdeen meets Lisbeth Salander kind of way.”
Kate shook her head. “Shut up, okay?”
“And the way she wiped the flour off your cheek. I thought I was going to faint.”
“Didn’t you say only yesterday that I wasn’t supposed to lust after her?”
“I changed my mind,” Carol said. “Go ahead. Lust! You have my blessing.”
For some reason, Kate hadn’t expected Lara to have a couch. But she did, a ratty one, but still. It was thin and faded, just like the carpet. Looking around, she didn’t know what she’d expected. Maybe bean bags. As she was waiting for Lara to get her stuff, Kate realized that the whole apartment was actually disappointingly boring. There was no telling what kind of person lived here. Apart from the couch, there were a couple of mismatched chairs, a fruit box that served as a coffee table, a withered potted palm, a small television on a console table, and a floor lamp. A wicker basket, half hidden under the couch, aroused her curiosity, and while keeping an eye on the door through which Lara had disappeared, Kate looked through the stack of magazines in it. There were no surprises there either—no seditious periodicals of any kind, just some issues of Cosmopolitan and a few fitness magazines. On the walls, a fairly tacky picture of the New York skyline by night hung next to two nondescript abstract paintings that looked as if they were done by a five-year-old. Lara’s apartment reminded her of a set for a low-budget movie, a room filled with borrowed stuff.
The door opened and Lara walked in, not with some kind of state-of-the-art recording device in her hand, but with a notepad tucked under her arm and a pencil in her mouth.
“It’s very different from your apartment, right?” she said with some difficulty. She grabbed the pencil from between her teeth. “I was actually wondering if you’d give me some pointers. The place could do with a woman’s touch.” She laughed.
Okay. Kate’s mind went into overdrive. What did she mean, a woman’s touch? Was she playfully mocking her own butchness? And was the butchness a gay thing after all? She looked her over. It might be. It might so be. But what about her symbiotic attachment to Boy Wonder? If she was gay—which was definitely too good to be true—than where was he in the equation?
“I’d be happy to,” she said, trying to process it all.
The interview wasn’t a ploy or a smoke screen or any kind of excuse to do anything other than to actually conduct an interview on the subject of women executives and the alleged glass ceiling, the question of whether the world would be a better place if women called the shots, and the pitfalls of starting one’s own business.
Lara scribbled on her notepad like a maniac, and even when she asked questions, she hardly made eye contact. She seemed distant. A little timid, even.
Kate searched her face for a clue as to what she was thinking, but she couldn’t manage to establish a connection. Her heart sank. Where was Lara’s spirit? And where was all that wonderful sexual tension she’d felt between them? Where was the thumb wiping the flour off her face?
It was barely nine when they said good-bye. Lara promised to let her read the interview before running it, and it wasn’t until Kate was halfway out the door that the spark seemed to return to Lara’s eyes, and she said, “Oh, before I forget. I actually have another huge favor to ask you.”
Thank God. Ask me something, anything, no matter how inappropriate or weird. Or even illegal. Let’s salvage this night.
“You probably know,” Lara said, “that most journalists dream of writing a book, right?”
Kate had no idea. “I guess
.”
“Well, I do anyway,” said Lara. “Because, as fulfilling as it is to make the world a better place or to at least contribute to doing so, I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t match up to the joy of creating a fictional world.”
“You write fiction? What are you working on?”
“I have something… Hang on.” Lara disappeared again, only for a minute, leaving Kate in the doorway, and when she came back, she handed Kate a pile of paper.
The pages were printed, to Kate’s relief—she had half feared, as she stood waiting, that the masterpiece might be written by hand. On hemp paper.
Lara looked at her, her eyes dark and large and moist. “This, I hope, will one day be a novel. I would love for you to read it. I really trust your opinion.”
“Okay.” Kate tried to think of abandoned puppies and gory stuff to stop herself from planting her lips on Lara’s. “I’ll be glad to take a look. A novel in the making, wow, that’s so great. Good for you.”
Lara put both hands on her chest. “This piece is very close to my heart, Kate, but I want you to be brutally honest. Tell me exactly how it makes you feel.” She smiled. “Is that all right?”
The smile made Kate melt. “I’ll get on it right away.”
And she did. Once back in her own apartment, she took a shower, made tea and a sandwich, and then crawled into bed, with just her bedside lamp on and the manuscript in her hands like a Christmas present she’d stolen from under the tree before anybody was up. If Lara’s writing turned out to be really bad, she would have to find a way to break that to her gently, but if her stuff was Pulitzer Prize material, then it was incredibly exciting that she was the first to see it. Some of Lara’s future fame might even rub off on her, and then her and Carol’s business would skyrocket if they played their cards right.
The top page was blank, followed by a page with just the title, in italics.
The Force.
Lara’s name was at the bottom of the page in admirably modest lettering.
She wasn’t sure what to think of the title. The Force? May the force be with you? She was almost sure it would be a sci-fi or fantasy story. Maybe Lara was dreaming, like so many, of being the next J.K. Rowling.
She started reading.
The first chapters weren’t badly written, and they meandered pleasantly enough, if not very excitingly—no sorcerers or vampires; no intergalactic warfare; definitely no having sex while flying. It was a coming-of-age story. An idealistic, small-town girl and her equally righteous twin brother, born to a family of tobacco-chewing, dim-witted hillbillies (who sat on a porch all day, trying to shoot birds out of the sky—the family was so stereotypically portrayed that Kate found herself cringing at the description), move to some big city more than a thousand miles away, where they embark upon the task of writing manifestos about the deplorable state of the world and what world leaders (and indeed citizens) should do to avert the decline.
Kate was relieved to find that the manifesto writing and the following struggle to publish some sort of underground periodical were no more than a backstory—the focus was on the way the twins tried to make a life for themselves in the dazzling complexity of the unnamed metropolis.
All in all, it wasn’t bad, although it might not be the sort of thing she was willing to lose any sleep over.
But then, there was chapter four.
And like any good writer must, Lara presented her main character with a problem that deterred her from her chosen life path. While her life path was to end famine, male supremacy, dictatorship, and a great many other unsolvable wrongs, something happened—she fell in love. And being in love completely filled her heart and mind and senses, to the point where all she could manage to think about was getting her hot crush into bed and fucking until the sun came up.
By this point, Kate had sort of understood that the story, while written in the third person and featuring a protagonist named Hermione, was strongly autobiographical. And she knew that in chapter four, she was in for a cringe-worthy description of Hermione’s (read Lara’s) hot nights with Boy Wonder. And even if she was willing to read it (she had promised, after all), it would probably be easier to do if she had a little something to cushion the blow. So she went to the kitchen and poured herself a big glass of the wine that the object of her affection had brought her—using it, ironically enough, to console her while reading a detailed account of said object’s straight sex adventures.
Once more snuggled under the covers with her glass in her hand, she drew a deep breath, and started to read.
Chapter 4
The first time Hermione met Sam, it was as if her soul recognized Sam’s, as if they were twins, separated somewhere in a cruel space and time, but reunited, now, in this most unlikely of places—a dimly lit hallway in a less than impressive apartment building.
The coincidence of there being another person pining for someone in the darkened hallway of an apartment building didn’t escape Kate. It made her heart race—here was someone sharing her plight!
There were moments in Hermione’s life when she felt not just out of place, but out of time—not in the way one longs back for a period of more happiness or stability, but like a time traveler, misplaced in the wrong era. But when she met Sam, her life made sense for the very first time. She was finally where, and when, she belonged—Samantha was her home, her destiny.
Whoa! What?
Sam was…(something inside her seemed to explode) …Samantha?
Hermione had been with women before.
Kate sprayed a mouthful of Merlot all over the bed. The wine sloshed over the rim of her glass.
“Shit!” She put the glass on the nightstand. The sheets were wet, but who cared? She got up, rounded the bed, and got in on the other side, her head spinning. She took off her drenched T-shirt, threw it on the floor, and got back under the covers, half naked, because that felt okay.
Hermione had been with women before!
She flipped the pages impatiently.
She had fallen in love with women, slept with them, drinking their nectar (Kate rolled her eyes—oh Jesus, their nectar? Ugh!), waking numerous times in the arms of attractive but nondescript bedpartners. They were one-night stands, and at best, they relieved her loneliness for a couple of hours. They were interchangeable. They satisfied her physical needs as she did theirs, but none had touched her heart.
It was obvious, from a literary point of view, that Lara was trying just a tad too hard. Kate struggled to overlook the flowery style as she waded through the pages, stopping herself, with some difficulty, from skipping ahead to the good bits.
But the endless exposé on the merging of the souls and Hermione’s nocturnal ponderings on the nature of time and space really got on her nerves after a while, and so she cheated a little, skipping about twenty pages and picking it up again at the beginning of chapter six.
Chapter 6
Hermione had bought a bottle of her favorite wine at the organic market—the wonderful Merlot that was her own favorite. A wine for a very special occasion. She loved to give Sam presents. Loved helping her. Even if it was simply by knocking on her door when she was afraid of oversleeping.
Kate stared at the page wide-eyed, gasping for air. Her heart began to pound at the thought… But she shook her head—surely this was a coincidence.
She was worth it. Hermione wanted to give her so much more. Everything, down to her very soul.
Kate made a face. Enough with the souls already!
It seemed that tonight the universe was calling the shots, for while she had decided to wait for the right opportunity to tell Sam how she felt, this night seemed to present itself in a way that wouldn’t take no for an answer. Hermione knew that Sam was home; she could hear her on the other side of the door when she was standing out in the hall. She imagined her, in a
ll her long-legged glory—her wonderfully creamy skin, her eyes blue as the ocean, the wavy, strawberry blonde hair cascading down her shoulders. She was a picture of femininity, in her short skirts and her tight, satin tops. But she was also a go-getter like no one else Hermione knew—determined, energetic, ambitious; a master chef whose talent would one day be recognized by all.
O, God, Kate thought, as the dizzying truth began to dawn on her. Did she really just read what she thought she read? Was the resemblance between her and Sam not a coincidence at all? She brought the page so close to her face it touched her nose. She squinted. Was this about…her? Or at least about some perfect version of her? She took a second to consider if there was any other explanation, and when she failed to find one, she raised her hands in the air, causing the manuscript to slide to the floor.
“She’s me!” she shouted. “I’m Sam! This whole thing is about us!”
And as she realized this, she understood, in a flash, that Hermione’s twin brother was, in fact, Lara’s twin brother. Boy Wonder was her brother! No wonder she’d felt as if they were the same person. They were. Well, kind of. A surge of heat went through her, and she threw back the covers, remembering only when she saw her naked breasts that she wasn’t wearing a shirt. How fitting!
She exhaled loudly as she picked up the pages off the floor.
The disappointment, on calling, that Sam had company over, made her want to lie down and weep.
“No!” Kate said out loud. “Don’t be a wuss! Kiss her! I mean me. Kiss me!”
