Heart's Passage

by Cate Swannell

  "You must have a lot of questions for me," Jo said after a while, keeping her eyes studiously on the fruit. "Yesterday wasn't exactly run of the mill."

  "No it wasn't," Cadie agreed. She's not comfortable with this. She's ashamed of what she was. Let's see if I can make it any easier. "Tell me about the nightmare?"

  Jo lifted faintly surprised eyes to Cadie's.

  "I wasn't expecting you to start there," she admitted with a small smile. "But it's as good a place as any. It harks back to the day I started in the business and the day I decided to get out for good."

  "Okay," Cadie said, reaching for a piece of pineapple that was calling her name.

  "I used to work for a man called Tony Martin. He was the biggest drug dealer in Sydney at the time. I was what they used to call his 'minder.' In exchange for rather large amounts of money I would... eliminate... his competition, or people who had done the wrong thing by him."

  "You would kill them?" Cadie asked quietly.

  "Sometimes, yes," Jo replied, her face flushed and her eyes downcast. "Sometimes it was enough just to hurt them a bit, or scare them badly. But yes, sometimes I had to kill them.

  "As time went on he had me take people out for less and less reason." Jo dropped onto her back and threw her right arm across her eyes. Cadie kept still and just let the dark-haired woman talk. "That last one..." She swallowed hard. "She was just a kid who made the mistake of giving him some cheek and re-selling some of the dope he'd given her for nothing." Cadie watched a tear slip from the corner of Jo's eye as she lay there. "She was like I had been 10 years earlier—scared and young and hungry."

  Jo dropped her arm down by her side and stared at the ceiling. She sighed deeply.

  "I chased her into an alley and held a gun to her head." She glanced over at Cadie who watched her somberly. "She had green eyes, too." Jo rolled onto her side and gazed up into the blonde's eyes. "Something clicked in my head—finally." She shook her head in wonder. "And I couldn't do it. But before I could let her go, our friend Marco came along and took care of us both."

  Cadie swallowed the rising lump in her throat. "So she died anyway?"

  Jo nodded mutely, playing with the piece of mango in her fingers. "He king-hit me then took her out with my own gun. When I came to, I lost it completely and called Harding. That was the beginning of the end."

  Cadie leaned forward and gently took the mango sliver from Jo's fingers, reaching up and placing it against her bottom lip. "Eat, darling," she urged with a smile. Jo accepted the fruit, taking the opportunity to place a few delicate kisses on the blonde's fingertips as she did so. Cadie tried to ignore the run of tingles the action sent up her arm and all positions south. "You said the dream also connected to your first day in the business. Tell me more about that?"

  Jo took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Where do I start that story?

  Cadie chuckled at the perplexed look on her friend's face. "Honey, just start at the beginning." She smiled. "How did you end up in Sydney in the first place? I remember you saying your parents own a sheep farm out in the country."

  "Mhmm," Jo confirmed, relieved to have a specific question to answer. "It's pretty isolated out there. Our nearest neighbors were about an hour's drive away, and the nearest town was a couple more hours beyond that."

  "Really?" Cadie blinked hard, trying to imagine those kinds of distances. "So the farm must be pretty big I guess?"

  Jo smiled and nodded. "About 60,000 acres," she said and laughed at Cadie's wide-eyed reaction. "Anyway, there was just me, Mum, and Dad and a few jackaroos most of the year. A jackaroo is like a cowboy," she explained in answer to the quizzical look on the blonde's face. "And the shearers for a couple of months in early summer. So it was pretty quiet." She paused. "Really, really quiet."

  "Where did you go to school?" the blonde asked.

  "School of the Air," Jo replied. "That's where you do all your work by correspondence and then once a week you catch up with the teacher by radio."

  "Wow, that's amazing. You didn't ever get to go to parties or dances, or stuff like that?"

  "Oh, Mum and Dad did their best to get me to and from places when they could," Jo replied. "But they were working so hard just to keep the station afloat, you know? There was the occasional B and S but that was about it."

  "B and S?"

  Jo chuckled at the puzzled look on the American's face. "Bachelor and Spinster's Ball. All the single men and women from around the district drive for miles to have a dance in an old shed. Lots of bush dancing, lots of drinking, and a lot of sore heads in the morning," she explained. "Happens a couple of times a year. But I was a little young for those, according to Mum and Dad."

  Cadie nodded.

  "I was driving by the time I was 12, so that helped a bit, but then the more I mixed with kids my own age, the more I realized I was different from them," Jo said. She picked up a humungous strawberry and grinned wickedly at the American. "Remind you of anything?" she asked, twirling the fruit by its stalk and quirking an eyebrow at Cadie.

  The blonde grinned back. "Why don't you tell me?" she teased.

  "Lean forward and close your eyes," Jo said in her lowest, sexiest register.

  "Ooo, God you should patent that voice, woman," muttered Cadie, doing as she was told.

  Jo pressed the narrow end of the strawberry against the blonde's lips.

  "Open a little and kiss this," Jo whispered, mesmerized by the tantalizing way Cadie's lips surrounded the tip of the fruit. "Mmm, that's it. Now touch your tongue to it and stroke it slowly." She watched Cadie obey and then laughed as the blonde's eyes flew open. "I told you it would remind you of something," she teased.

  Cadie responded by grabbing Jo's hand and slowly, sensually devouring the strawberry like it was a part of the taller woman's anatomy that she had coveted for a very long time. Jo felt her temperature rising as she watched the blonde make love to the fruit with her mouth. She swallowed, wondering if the desire she was feeling was as obvious to Cadie as it felt to her.

  Clearly it was.

  "That'll teach you to tease me," Cadie said smugly around the last remnants of the fruit. Jo leaned forward and kissed off the dribble of juice that slid down the American's chin.

  "That'll teach you to tease me" Jo replied, smiling softly as she resumed her reclining position and licked her lips.

  Cadie cleared her throat. "Where were we?" she asked huskily.

  "Damned if I know." Jo laughed.

  They both took a moment just to be together before Cadie refocused the conversation.

  "You can drive at age 12 here?"

  Jo laughed. "No, not legally," she said. "But out in the bush kids learn early so they can help out on the farm. Tractors, trucks, utes, you name it, I was driving it."

  "Was that part of feeling different?" Cadie asked.

  "Nah, all my friends did the same," Jo replied. "No, it was like...I felt much more self-aware than everyone else seemed to be. What free time I had away from my chores and my schoolwork, I spent reading. My folks were pretty good at making sure I got as wide an education as they could give me. So I wasn't a naive kid at all. And from what contact I did have with other kids my age, it didn't take me very long to figure out that it was the girls who intrigued me and not the guys."

  She and the blonde exchanged grins as they each remembered their own moments of revelation.

  "Oh, I can relate to that," Cadie said. "I was at my junior prom in Madison, and I was dancing with a boy called Jimmy Hofsteder. He was shorter than me..."

  "Hard to believe," Jo teased and ducked as Cadie flicked a wet slice of mango in her direction. "Hey, no fruit in the bed sheets."

  "Brat." The blonde smiled. "Anyway, Jimmy was shorter than me, covered in zits and hair oil, and I found myself looking over his shoulder at Sally Doogan all night. That's when a clue ran in and bit me on the fanny."

  Jo spluttered, almost choking on the mango slice. "Fanny?" she managed at last, coughing as she tried to catch her
breath.

  Cadie was perplexed. "Yeah. Fanny. As in, bit me on the butt," she said, wondering why her companion looked like she'd swallowed a whole chili pepper. She was even more confused seconds later when Jo started giggling hysterically.

  "Whaaat?" she asked, poking the skipper in belly.

  Jo recovered her composure enough to speak coherent English. "So," she said, wiping the tears away, "fanny means butt in America, huh?"

  "Well, yeah," Cadie replied, a light beginning to dawn in her brain. "Why, what does it mean here?"

  "Not that, that's for damn sure," Jo said, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  "Tell meee," the blonde pleaded. "Or I'm going to be forced to tickle you."

  Jo snorted. "You'd have to catch me first," she replied, eyes widening as Cadie threatened to leap over the fruit platter and make good on her promise. "Okay, okay." Jo laughed. She beckoned with a finger and Cadie leaned across so Jo could whisper in her ear.

  "You're kidding?" she asked when she pulled back. Jo shook her head, her smile wide. Cadie soon had a matching grin. "Well, what the hell do you call a fanny pack, then?" she asked, delighted when Jo dissolved into gales of laughter.

  "A... a... bum bag," Jo gasped between convulsions.

  That prompted a mini-explosion from the blonde and they both spent the next couple of minutes giggling helplessly.

  "So," Jo asked as they recovered, side-by-side, leaning back against the headboard, "was she cute?"

  "Who?"

  "Sally Doogan."

  Cadie laughed. "Not particularly, but she smelled way better than Jimmy Hofsteder, that's for darn sure."

  Jo chuckled and leaned in to kiss the blonde again. "I, for one, am glad you figured it out," she said softly when they pulled back from each other. "Anyway, to cut a long story very short, I muddled my way through puberty, bored out of my mind. Sydney was like this great emerald city by the sea, you know?" Cadie nodded. "All roads seemed to lead there, most of my friends were trying to get there one way or another. It was like the pot of gold at the end of a very dry and dusty rainbow. We all had this romantic idea that if we could just get to Sydney then our lives would suddenly become glamorous and exciting."

  She glanced at Cadie who was engrossed in the story. "But I was the only child of a third-generation farming family," Jo continued. "Mum and Dad wanted me to stay close to learn the business and for a while there I just didn't know how to tell them it wasn't for me."

  "Something must have happened to change that," Cadie said softly. "What was it?"

  Jo took another deep breath. "My best mate killed himself," she said simply, hearing the American's sharp intake of breath. "Phil...we were both 17 and he'd figured out he was gay too, so that kind of pulled us together, y'know?" Cadie nodded mutely. "He lived about 75 miles south of us so we didn't see each other too often, but we talked pretty much every day on the radio. Did our homework together, that sort of thing." She accepted another strawberry from the blonde and chewed on it thoughtfully.

  "He was a tough kid, light of his Dad's life. But that summer his father caught him with one of the shearers and it was all over. Up until then Phil was heading for university—he wanted to be a doctor—but after that his parents told him he wasn't going anywhere. His dad said he'd rather have him on the property where he could keep an eye on him than risk him living a life of deviation." She saw Cadie's jaw drop. "Those were his exact words.

  "Phil lasted about a week after that. I talked myself blue trying to buck him up. But one night he just went out to the big shed, took down his father's shotgun and..." The words stuck in Jo's throat and she fell silent, swallowing down sudden tears that surprised her so long after the event. She felt a soft hand on hers and looked up to meet kind sea-green eyes gazing back at her with sympathy.

  "That's when I decided I had to get out. Phil and I had a lot in common and I guess I saw my future in what he did if I didn't do something pretty drastic to change things. So one night while Mum and Dad were sleeping I snuck out, threw my things in the back of the old ute and just... disappeared." She dropped her eyes, ashamed all over again of what she had done to her parents.

  "It was as easy as that?" Cadie asked quietly.

  "Sure," Jo shrugged. "I drove straight through the night, dumped the ute the next morning once I hit a decent-sized town and hitched the rest of the way to Sydney. From there it was just a matter of blending in. There are thousands of street kids in that city, always have been. I was just one more face in the crowd."

  "You lived on the streets?"

  "Mhmm, for a while."

  "Did you tell your parents where you were?"

  "Not straight away," Jo murmured. "It was about a year before I felt established and that's when I called them." She paused. "I really regret waiting so long."

  Cadie looked at her quizzically.

  "Dad had a heart attack after I left because of the stress of not knowing what had happened to me," Jo continued. "They nearly lost the farm because they had to pay for extra hands to do what he couldn't anymore. By then I was earning money so I offered to send some back to help them out. But they wouldn't accept anything from me. I'll never make up for the pain I caused them."

  Cadie squeezed Jo's hand and then kissed the palm softly. "So how did you get off the streets and into a job?" she asked.

  "Tony found me."

  "This is the bit that relates to the nightmare, right?"

  Jo laughed wryly. "I have taken a while to get back to that, haven't I?" She paused for a moment to gather her memories together. "When you live on the streets of Sydney, you're never too far away from the drug scene. I managed to avoid using the stuff—that kind of thing had never appealed to me much. But guys like Tony made good use of street kids. He paid good money to me to make deliveries and run errands. If there's one thing a street kid needs more than food and shelter it's a few extra dollars in the pocket. So I played the game.

  "Trouble is Marco had other things in mind for me. One night he cornered me—just like I cornered that girl five years ago—only he wasn't out to kill me."

  Cadie gasped. "Oh God, Jo, he didn't..."

  Jo smiled wanly. "He certainly tried," she answered quietly. "Tony intervened, luckily for me, and gave Marco a beating for his trouble."

  "No wonder he came after you," Cadie said.

  "I'm surprised he waited as long as he did, frankly," Jo replied, wincing as she shifted, catching the bandage around her arm on the bed sheet.

  Cadie noticed. "Where's the first aid kit, Jo?" she asked. "I'm going to change the dressing on your arm."

  "It's okay," Jo demurred.

  "Don't argue with me, okay? Where is it?"

  Jo smiled, relenting. A little pampering wouldn't do me any harm. It's been a long time since anybody wanted to. "I put it back in the main bathroom," she replied.

  "Stay right where you are," Cadie ordered, swinging her legs out of the bed and bounding out of the room.

  Jo lay back on the bed, gazing up at the ceiling. Dredging up all the old memories was giving her the strangest sensations. I haven't thought of Phil in the longest time, she realized. I wonder how his folks are doing. She struggled to pull their faces out of her memory banks.

  Shortly, Cadie was back, clambering up onto the bed again, first aid kit in hand. "Come on, turn over, so I can get at it," she said. Jo sat up and turned around, lifting the right arm of her t-shirt so the blonde could remove the old bandage. Carefully Cadie started peeling the fabric free, wincing a little in sympathy as the dried blood caught and pulled. "Ouch, sorry," she muttered.

  "No worries," Jo replied, gritting her teeth.

  "So what happened after Tony rescued you from Marco?" Cadie asked.

  Jo sighed, another flood of memories sweeping over her. "He took me off the streets and handed me over to the kung fu school," she said.

  "Kung fu school?"

  "Yeah. Tony ran a martial arts academy in the middle of King's Cross. By day, the instructors took classe
s, and by night they patrolled the streets in pairs."

  "Why'd they do that?"

  "Well, ostensibly they were doing the community a service. You know, keeping the streets safe and all that." Cadie nodded. "But in reality it was a protection racket. Restaurant and store owners paid Tony a fee and in exchange he didn't torch their buildings, or let anyone else torch them. Damn, that smarts."

  Cadie stopped cleaning the wound for a second. "Sorry, there's a bit of infection in here, Jo-Jo. Are you sure we shouldn't have a doctor look at this?" She carefully prodded again at the angry-looking graze with a cotton bud.

  Jo pulled a face as she tried to get a good view of the wound. "No," she said. "It'll just mean a needle for me and a ton of paperwork for the doctor,"

  "Don't tell me a big, strong girl like you is a wimp about needles," Cadie teased, resuming her careful exploration of the swollen edges of the cut.

  Jo raised an eyebrow and shrugged her shoulders slightly. "Actually, yeah. Can't help it. Lays me out flat every time." She watched as the American started to rewrap the wound. "Anyway... Tony installed me at the kung fu school, gave me a roof over my head, and kept me well away from Marco. I showed a bit of talent for martial arts and he began grooming me to be his personal bodyguard. He was getting to the age where he didn't think he could protect himself enough. And he didn't quite trust Marco."

  Cadie finished wrapping a fresh bandage around Jo's arm. "I take it by 'a bit of talent' that you were actually kicking everyone else's butt?" she asked.

  "Yeah, I guess so," Jo muttered. "If I'd known where it would lead...I don't know, maybe it would have been different..." For a few moments she seemed lost in a haze of memories.

  Cadie fixed the end of the bandage with a clip and gently patted the Australian's arm. "All done." She watched as Jo glumly swung back around and lay down on her back again. Cadie picked up the now-empty platter and carefully placed it on the bedside table before resuming her spot next to the dark-haired woman. She propped herself on an elbow and looked down at Jo.

  "Thanks," Jo said looking up into Cadie's smiling face. "Why isn't any of this bothering you?"