Breathless

by Radclyffe

  “Land deeds?”

  Nodding, Pagan wrapped her arms about Erith’s waist and read over her shoulder. “These are the deeds to the vacant lot next door to Ronchetti Security. I believe it’s crying out for a house where you and I can live. That way, we can move out of my room above the business and have our privacy, but we’ll still be just a stone’s throw away from the lighthouse when duty calls.”

  “You’re giving me a piece of land?” Incredulous, Erith’s mouth opened in surprise. “A piece of land to build a home on?”

  “We have family members who can work out the plans to design it, and ones to build it exactly how we want it.”

  In the dark of the night Erith’s sudden tears lit up like diamonds, sparkling as they fell upon her cheeks. Spinning around, she flung her arms around Pagan’s neck and hugged her tightly, laughing and crying all at the same time.

  “Do you like it?” Some of Pagan’s nervousness over the enormity of the gift finally eased.

  Drawing back, Erith gave her a watery smile. “It’s only the best present ever!” She tugged Pagan’s head down to kiss her soundly. “A home of our own, you and me.” She stilled as a thought struck her. “How the hell are we paying for this?”

  Pagan grinned. “The land is paid for. I used my money from the inheritance I got from my parent’s deaths. I never needed to touch it before now. Now we just need to mortgage ourselves to the hilt for the building and then we can wrestle with the payments while we grow old and grey together.”

  Erith laughed delightedly. “God, I love the sound of that. It’s a good thing I’ve gotten a job with your family now, isn’t it? We’re going to need steady wages coming in if we’re going to be homeowners.” She reverently folded up the documents and put them safely back inside Pagan’s pocket, patting them where they lay. “A home to call my own, somewhere I can be safe and sound. You’ve just given me the best Christmas present of my whole damn life.”

  “I hope it’s the gift that keeps on giving because I doubt I’ll ever be able to top it.” Pagan swung Erith’s hands in her own. “So, do you want to spend forever with me?”

  “Yes.” Erith’s answer was swift and sure. She shivered a little as the chill night air breezed past. “But you could have given me this surprise at home and gotten the same answer, very likely followed by lots of kissing where I wasn’t afraid our lips would freeze together.”

  Pagan drew Erith along with her to the roof’s edge. “I could have, but then I wouldn’t have been able to share this with you.” She turned Erith around so she could see what Pagan wanted her to witness.

  Below them the whole city was alight with the golden glow of homes interspersed with the bright flashes of a multitude of Christmas lights. The city’s seasonal decorations were all lit up, framing the buildings in the city centre, edging the parapets, some flashing to a silent rhythm while others blazed their trails around tall trees as focal points in every street. Pagan never failed to find the multicoloured display a delight, not since that first Christmas Rogue had brought her up this same building and shown her the city alight in celebration.

  “Oh my God, it’s so beautiful,” Erith whispered, her gaze searching as far as the horizon where the lights flashed with tiny pinpricks of coloured sparkles.

  “Merry Christmas, Erith.” Pagan gently kissed her cheek and held her close as they marvelled at the lights sparkling in the darkness of Christmas Eve. Pagan blinked as something floated past her eyes. Slowly, silently, the first flakes of snow began to drift across the city. Content, Pagan hugged Erith closer and watched the city at rest, ever the Sentinel watching over Chastilian and ever the lover keeping her sweetheart safe.

  Clifford Henderson is the author of three novels, including Foreword magazine’s Gold Medal Book of the Year and Lesbian Fiction Readers’ Choice Winner The Middle of Somewhere. The characters for “Holiday Gnomosexuals” originated in this novel. Clifford lives and plays in Santa Cruz, California, where she runs The Fun Institute, a school of improv and solo performance, with her partner of nineteen years. In their classes and workshops, people learn to access and express the myriad of characters itching to get out. Her other passions include gardening and twisting herself into weird yoga poses. Her third novel, Maye’s Request, will be published in 2011. www.cliffordhenderson.net.

  Holiday Gnomosexuals

  Clifford Henderson

  Jameson looked over the rims of his glasses at Buddy Bud down on all fours by the small refrigerator in the corner. He was trying to coax a spider into his custom-made spider catcher, a pickle jar covered in colorful bug stickers. “Come on, you big Bo Bo!” he said, drumming his stubby fingers on the floor behind the spider. “I’m going to take you outside so nobody will kill you.”

  The tiny black spider didn’t move.

  Buddy Bud heaved a frustrated sigh. His thick-framed black glasses held in place by a neon green sports strap interrupted the slope of his forehead, and he wore his favorite Dolly Parton T-shirt, so tattered it really should be tossed into the rag bucket. His jeans rode low on his hips, revealing the elastic strip of his BVDs.

  Lily wouldn’t let him go out looking so ratty, Jameson thought. She would have found some creative way to get Buddy to make another choice. Like he’d tried to that morning, only Lily’s method wouldn’t have ended in Buddy Bud throwing one of his tantrums.

  It was the fifth anniversary of Jameson’s wife’s death. The small upstairs office of Jameson’s Market was covered in Christmas cards. Left to himself, he wouldn’t flaunt the cards—too painful a reminder—but Lily’s death had left him the sole parent to their twelve-year-old son.

  Jameson hunched over the oak desk that had once been his father’s and went back to paying the pile of monthly bills, unable to shake the feeling that he wasn’t doing right by his son. A grocery store is no place for a kid to hang out. He tossed his pen on the desk and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. But what else can I do with him? The small town, smack in the middle of the Texas Panhandle, had few opportunities for normal kids, let alone ones with Down Syndrome. And Jameson couldn’t move. The market was his life.

  “Dad!” Buddy Bud whined. “The spider’s not doing it right!”

  “You might need to try like I showed you.” Jameson didn’t have it in him to sound patient. He was too damn tired. “Put the jar over the spider, then slip a card underneath.”

  “Nooo!”

  Jameson removed his wire-rimmed glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Did Buddy Bud remember his mother’s death? Was that what was making him so cranky? More likely, he was picking up on Jameson’s brooding.

  “Maybe the spider doesn’t want you watching him. Maybe if you leave the jar on its side next to him, he’ll climb in all by himself.”

  “He’s a she!”

  The back of Jameson’s throat tightened. Was all this spider stuff really about Lily? “Maybe she doesn’t want you watching her.”

  Buddy Bud rocked back on his checkered sneakers as if considering this. “Like yesterday when I didn’t want you watching me tie my shoes? When I was being a handful?”

  Jameson smiled. It was amazing to hear what Buddy Bud retained. “Exactly. And I’m sorry I called you that.”

  Buddy Bud shrugged. “S’okay.” He leaned back over, his face just inches from the spider, and crooned, “I’m not looking, Mrs. Spider. You can climb in the jar if you want to.”

  Kitty, the youngest of Jameson’s cashiers, poked her hairdo-ed head into the office, gaudy ornament earrings dangling from her earlobes. “Mail call.”

  Buddy Bud looked up, his face glowing with delight. “More cards?”

  “You bet.” Kitty stepped into the room, revealing an even more gaudy holiday sweater over creased jeans. “A pile of ’em.”

  Buddy Bud reached for the clutch of mail, inadvertently knocking it from Kitty’s manicured fingertips and scattering letters and circulars all over the floor. Buddy Bud’s eyes grew wide and his hand flew to his mouth.


  “It’s all right, son,” Jameson said. “But you need to apologize.”

  “Sorry, Kitty!”

  Kitty laughed. “No prob, Bud, you was just excited.” She bent down to help gather the spray of mail.

  Buddy Bud picked up a large red envelope. “Hey! Look at this one! It’s got bugs!”

  Kitty took the envelope covered in creepy-crawly stickers. “Well lookie here. If it isn’t from you-know-who.”

  “Who?” Buddy said, looking bewildered.

  “Them two what breezed through last summer.” Kitty scowled at the return address. “Living in California now. Both of ’em. Together.”

  “Who?” Buddy Bud repeated, his timbre rising with frustration.

  “I think she’s talking about Eadie and Cadence,” Jameson said.

  “Eadie and Cadence!” Buddy Bud snatched the letter from Kitty and held it to his chest. “I love Eadie and Cadence. I’m gonna marry Cadence when I grow up. Ain’t I, Dad?”

  “Aren’t I,” Jameson said.

  “Aren’t you what?” Buddy Bud said.

  Jameson gave Kitty an apologetic look. He knew it was time to quit humoring his son’s obsession with Cadence, but he hated to upset the boy. Still, he should—

  “You can’t marry her,” Kitty blurted, then scooped up the rest of the mail. “She’s a homosexual.”

  “A what?” Buddy Bud said.

  Kitty glanced briefly at Jameson as if to say, “If you won’t tell him, I will,” then went on in a schoolteachery voice, “She’s a homosexual, and you don’t want to mix yourself up with a homosexual. The Bible tells us they are sinners.”

  Buddy Bud stared at Kitty as if she were speaking in tongues, his face contorted in confusion.

  Jameson, annoyed more with his own passivity than Kitty’s audacity, deliberately shoved his chair back and stood. “That’ll do, Kitty.”

  “I just think he should know—”

  “I said, that’ll do.”

  Kitty got up off the floor where she had been kneeling and handed Jameson the mail. “Sorry if I spoke out of line.”

  “I appreciate your concern…” Jameson cleared his throat. “But I’m not sure we see eye to eye on this. Now, I think it’s time for you to get back to work.”

  Kitty sniffed her disapproval before parading out of the office.

  Jameson, unsure what to do next, just stood there. Buddy Bud, clearly troubled, was turning the card round and round like it might somehow help him make sense of Kitty’s words. Jameson examined his motives for not speaking with Buddy Bud about this matter sooner. The problem was, he was unsure of his own heart. He’d taken a shine to each of the girls before they’d gotten together; then, once they became a couple, well, quite simply, their returning to California took away any burning necessity to think further on the subject.

  A weak man’s excuse.

  He walked over to the couch and sat. “Let’s take a look at that card, Bud. See what your friends are up to.”

  Buddy Bud crawled up onto the couch next to him.

  Jameson took the card and opened it.

  “Look, Dad. It’s hand-drawed!”

  It was one of Eadie’s pen-and-inks: she and Cadence riding a lavender reindeer through a sky full of shooting stars. Eadie had drawn herself wearing forest green slacks and a flowing white blouse. A Santa hat, pulled low on her head, forced her black mop of hair to stick out comically on all sides. Cadence was in a red dress trimmed in white fur, blue cowgirl boots, and a holly wreath with a tail of ribbons atop her copper-colored hair, and, of course, her lime green cat’s-eye glasses. Riding behind, she had her arms tightly wrapped around Eadie’s waist, her head on Eadie’s shoulder. They looked happy.

  Jameson read the caption for Buddy Bud. “May your Holidaze be full of love and magic.”

  Buddy Bud ran a finger lightly across the picture. “It’s sparkly.”

  Jameson sighed. He missed the two of them. They were so different from the young women of Rauston. So spirited. Feisty. He opened the card and read it out loud.

  Dear Buddy Bud,

  Santa Cruz doesn’t have near as many bugs as Rauston, but there are other things here you would like. Seals for one thing, and lots of fish. Including dolphins. You should see the way they jump out of the water! I put the rubber snake you gave me on the dashboard of my car. It looks cool.

  Miss you, Needy Eadie.

  Beneath this, Cadence had written:

  Hey Buddy Bud,

  No sick or injured birds so far, which is lucky.

  Who would fix them up?

  Miss you. XXXOOOO Cadence

  At the bottom in Eadie’s handwriting was a note to Jameson.

  Hey Jameson! Miss you, too.

  We’re planning to get back out there one of these days.

  Maybe around April? (Before it gets too hot. Ha. Ha.)

  Love you. E

  Jameson decided against reading this part aloud. No use getting Buddy Bud worked up over a tentative plan.

  Buddy Bud grabbed the card. “I love Eadie! I love Cadence!” His tone was defiant, as if warding off Kitty’s words.

  Jameson ruffled Buddy Bud’s short brown hair. “Me too, son, me too.” He had to address the topic that Kitty had broached, but how? Her judgmental stance made such a difficult jumping off point.

  Lily would have known how.

  Buddy Bud let the card drop to his lap. “Um. Dad?”

  Jameson braced himself. “Yes?”

  “What’s a gnomosexual?”

  Jameson couldn’t help but smile. “The word is homosexual, Bud.”

  Buddy Bud rubbed his fists on the sides of his pant legs. “Um…well…what is one? Is it bad?”

  “Nope. But it might be kind of hard to understand.”

  Buddy Bud groaned. “O-kaaay.”

  Jameson felt like groaning, too. Where to begin? The logistics weren’t all that difficult to describe, girl loves girl or boy loves boy. Thankfully, Buddy Bud wouldn’t know enough to ask the harder questions, like how they consummated their love, which Jameson himself would be hard-pressed to describe. When it came to Eadie and Cadence’s sexuality, he simply chose not to think about it. He didn’t think about other people’s bedroom activities, why should he think about theirs? But now, with Kitty casting this negative light on the girls, he was going to have to broach the morality of their love, and this got trickier, because, quite frankly, Jameson had no idea where he stood on the topic.

  He wrapped his arm around his son and forged ahead like a truck driving with no headlights into a pitch-black night. “The thing is, sometimes instead of a girl and a boy falling in love, two girls fall in love, or two boys.”

  Buddy Bud stuck his finger up his nose. “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t pick your nose, Bud.”

  Buddy Bud wiped his finger on his pants. “Sorry.”

  “And when that happens, say, two girls fall in love, like Eadie and Cadence, well then, they don’t want to marry a boy.”

  “Because they want to marry each other?”

  “Sort of. Only they’re not allowed to get married.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, some people don’t think they should.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because some people think it’s wrong.”

  “Is it wrong?” Buddy Bud asked, his fingers twisting into a knot.

  Jameson stared across the office to the picture of a five-year-old Buddy Bud sitting on his beautiful Lily’s lap. What do I do? he asked his wife, as he often did when he was flummoxed by parenthood. Tell the truth, was what he heard her say, although he was never really sure if it was her sending him the messages or just his idea of her.

  “I’m not sure what I think, Bud. But I do know it’s unchristian of us to wish ill on someone just because they’re different.”

  Buddy Bud stretched out his legs and then let them drop back against the couch. “Like Kitty?”

  “Well, yes, like Kitty.” The last thing Jameson w
anted to do was turn Buddy against Kitty. She was just young, and narrow in her thoughts, a product of her upbringing. “The thing you need to know is, there are many who pass judgment on people they don’t understand.” Jameson said this definitively, praying it would be the end of it, that Buddy Bud would get bored with the conversation and want to go back to his spider, but Buddy Bud wrinkled his nose, a sure sign that he was far from done with the topic.

  “But, Dad, that’s stupid!”

  Jameson massaged the back of his neck. “How do you figure?”

  “Well,” Buddy Bud said, using his grown-up voice, “Mom always told me that God lives in people’s hearts, right?”

  Jameson nodded. “Right.”

  “And when you fall in love, that comes from your heart, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So how could God be mad at a girl falling in love with a girl, when he’s the one making the love?”

  Jameson let out a short, audible exhale. “That’s some quality thinking there, Bud.”

  Buddy Bud held up a thumb. “Quaaaality!” Then he knit his eyebrows. “But you still haven’t told me what a gnomosexual is.”

  “A homosexual is what we call a girl who falls in love with another girl, or a boy who falls in love with another boy.”

  Buddy Bud slipped from beneath Jameson’s protective arm and stared at him incredulously. “So Cadence won’t want to marry me because she’s in love with Eadie?”

  “Yup.”

  Buddy Bud fell over sideways on the couch and grabbed his head as if he were trying to loosen a giant vise grip. “That’s crazy!”

  Jameson wasn’t sure what to make of this declaration. He gave Buddy Bud’s pant leg a tug. “You okay?”

  Buddy Bud giggled then pressed his hand to his mouth and spoke through his fingers. “Want to know what I just thought of?”

  “I can tell you’re fixin’ to tell me.”

  Buddy Bud shot back up to sitting. “If Cadence loves Eadie, and Eadie loves Cadence, and I love them both, then we could all three get married!”