*
Later that night, on the way home, Laurie dropped off to sleep at least five times. Finally, she felt Kaatje scoot over to the far corner and tug on her until she was lying across the seat, head cradled in Kaatje’s lap. A gentle hand played with her hair, and she struggled mightily to remain sentient. “Everybody liked you.”
Chuckling, Kaatje said, “Everyone was very nice. I’ve got to say, it amazed me how open you’ve been with your co-workers. All I’ve heard are horror stories about how antagonistic people in the US are about lesbians.”
“Not at Luxor. The president of Theme Parks is a lesbian. If not for gay people there would be no Bear.”
“Do I have to blame gay people for taking you away?”
She blinked up at her, caught by her simple, classic beauty. “You can come with me. I have a ticket for you. Business class.”
Kaatje smiled that patient, knowing smile, but shook her head. “I don’t mind traveling alone, but it would trouble me to be wandering around all day while you’re just a few miles away working. And I don’t want to be one of those people who whines because you’re busy. I think that could be bad for us.”
“I really wish you could see the park. I’m…proud of it.”
“I’ll come for the opening.”
Laurie shot up, feeling the blood rush from her head. “You will?”
“Of course I will. I’ve been checking on fares. If I sell some blood I think I can swing it.” Her teasing smile was like a hug.
“Oh, Kaatje.” She leaned against her. “That would mean so much to me.”
“You’ve worked on this for years. You’d do the same for me.”
“Yeah, I would, but still…” She put her mind on overdrive, trying to think of an angle to keep her in LA for a while. “How about this? Have your sister come to LA. She could bring your niece and nephew. You could go to the parks…VIP treatment…stay at the best hotel…and you’d have someone to kick around LA with. I’d gladly…gratefully pay for everything, including air fare. Then you can just change the date on the ticket I bought for you and use it to come to Japan.”
“You can’t just change dates. They have all sorts of restrictions.”
“When you buy an unrestricted business class seat you can.”
“How much did that cost?” She looked like her eyebrows were going to land in her hairline.
“A lot. Courtesy of Teddy Bear. We get to bring our partner on one trip a year. And if an assignment lasts more than a month you can have your partner come visit every month.” She leaned over and kissed Kaatje on the cheek. “You don’t mind being my partner do you?”
Tears shone in Kaatje’s beautiful eyes. “No, I like it.” She kissed her, then let their heads touch for a moment. “I’ll think about it.”
“Great. Now put your arm right here and I’ll take a cat nap.” Kaatje put her arm across Laurie’s chest and held her tightly for the seconds it took her to fall asleep.
Chapter Thirteen
AS ALWAYS, LAURIE woke before dawn, her heartbeat thudding wildly in her ears. What time was it? What day? Was she late? But a warm body was pressed up against her and a massive sense of relief flowed through her like a sedative. Kaatje was there. She wrapped her arms around her and nestled against her body, tenderly nuzzling her face against Kaatje’s back. It took a few minutes to convince herself, but she eventually relaxed and enjoyed the sensation of having Kaatje in her bed. The cool breeze from the air conditioner wafted across her back, while Kaatje’s warmth seeped into her chest and her thighs. Nothing could have felt better.
*
Hours passed before they were both awake at the same time. When Laurie finally pried her eyes open, Kaatje was lying on her side, blue eyes blinking alertly.
“Hi. Been up long?”
“No, not very. I was just enjoying this bed.” Kaatje rolled onto her back and stuck an arm and a leg out. “It’s big.”
“Yeah, it is. The room’s really big, and my old bed looked silly in here.” Laurie sat up and brushed her hair from her face. “The room looks pretty sparse, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not sparse as much as not personalized. It looks like one of those apartments you see in a design magazine. No clutter.”
“I don’t like clutter, so you’ll never see that.” She lay back down and stretched out lazily. “I’m not the ideal home owner. I don’t get a lot of pleasure out of owning, but it looks better.”
Kaatje looked at her questioningly. “Looks better?”
“Yeah. Colin and I shared a cute house in Hollywood, but it was a rental. After I was made VP, Fernando suggested that I’d better put down some roots.”
“Interesting. Do they tell you what to wear? How to cut your hair?” She filled a hand with Laurie’s hair and let it spill from her fingers.
“Not technically.” She slipped out of bed and went into the bath, leaving the door open. Splashing cool water onto her face made her brain start firing faster, and she ran her toothbrush under the water, then applied paste. “They want their executives to live in a local neighborhood and be part of the community. They’d prefer it if we were on the right side of the hill too.”
“The hill?”
“The Santa Monica mountains. The road I showed you last night. Hollywood’s on the wrong side.”
Kaatje gave her a suspicious look.
No civilian had ever been able to understand the Luxor ethos. Maybe that was why every third person was married to a team member. “I’ve been able to slide along, but after Osaka I’m going to have to find a charity or a community organization and start donating my time.”
Kaatje sat up and stared at her. “They really do tell you what to do.”
Laurie started to brush her teeth. Speaking through a mouth of foam, she said, “Every big company does that. If I got arrested for a DUI or had the cops come to break up a fight with my boyfriend, I’d probably get fired.”
Kaatje’s eyes popped open. “You’d better not have a fight with your boyfriend!”
Laurie rinsed her mouth and walked back to the bed, falling onto Kaatje’s body, laughing when Kaatje started to wrestle with her. “I had to say boyfriend just as an example—’cause I’ll never fight with my girlfriend.”
*
After a quick but satisfying bout of lovemaking they got ready to go to Laurie’s office so she could get organized and work at home for the rest of the day. She was trying to think of something to do that would give Kaatje a sense of LA, without taking too much time out of her schedule.
“Hey, I know what we’ll do. When I first moved here, Fernando told me to start in downtown and follow Sunset Boulevard all the way to the end. That’s an easy way to see how the neighborhoods change.”
“I’d love to see anything you want to show me.”
“Great. Then we can stop at the grocery store and get some things.” She paused and grinned slyly. “I can use the GPS on my car to find one.”
*
When they reached her floor, the big “Theme Parks” logo was splashed across both doors, along with a picture of a happy Teddy Bear in front of his Bee Hive. “Here’s where all the magic happens,” Kaatje said, smirking.
Laurie used the card she had attached to a coiled cord tethered to her belt loop to open the door. Once inside, they went past masses of cubicles, many with a person inside, working away. Moving down an aisle of cubes, they passed a big glass door. “That’s Carolyn Smith’s office. She’s the president of the parks.” She leaned close to Kaatje’s ear and added, “Big dyke.”
Kaatje snorted as they continued down the row of offices. “Oh, there’s Fernando. Your office must be close.”
“Yep. Right here.” Laurie patted her office door, displaying just her name in modest typeface.
“No title? I’d expect something like ‘Her Royal Highness.’”
“Nope. We don’t do that.” She smiled sweetly. “We’re all just team members.”
They walked in and Kaatje turned her head slowly, ta
king in the big desk, two monitors, full-length sofa, round table with four chairs, and coat rack. Then she walked to the wall of windows. Before them was a beautifully manicured, garden-like setting with other buildings set around the perimeter of the square. “The other team members sit in boxes,” Kaatje said, a teasing smile on her face. “This belongs to a princess.”
“It is pretty nice.” Laurie once again felt the thrill of accomplishment as she took the time to really notice her surroundings. “Carolyn’s is just like this, but she has another wall of windows and two sofas. We call her the queen bee behind her back.”
“Is it worth the climb to have more windows and another place to collapse?”
“I have no idea.” She stood there for a second, trying to imagine how she could possibly work harder. “I don’t notice the perks much. What I’ve always wanted was to be promoted to have one less person to report to. Fewer is much, much better, even though the bosses are more demanding the higher you go.”
Kaatje wandered around while Laurie got some reports ready. Poking her nose back into the office, Kaatje said, “Is this the Aaron you talk about?”
Laurie walked out and patted the name “Aaron Rosenberg” on the office next door. “That’s my boy. He’s in Osaka right now. It’s tougher for him than it was for me. When I had his job I was still able to have a social life. Not so for him.”
“When did you get this job?”
“It’s been a couple of years.”
“Two?”
“Yeah, right around then.”
Kaatje stood there, her eyes scanning the floor in front of them. Quietly, she said, “Isn’t that when you and Colin broke up?”
“No, I don’t think so. I know we were together when I was promoted.” She thought for a few seconds, trying to get the dates straight in her mind. They definitely went out to celebrate her promotion. She recalled sitting at a great restaurant in Marina del Rey, then extemporaneously checking into a five-star hotel on the beach with a smuggled bottle of champagne and a box of condoms from a liquor store. And Colin did all of the legwork in finding the condo. Did they really break up that close to her promotion? She remembered how pleased he was to be able to pick out the Lexus they leased for her, but it must have been shortly after that when his complaints about how little time she was home escalated into fights. “I…I guess it was. It all seems like a blur.”
Kaatje put her arm around her and held her close. She gently kissed the top of her head. “I bet it was a blur. And it still is.”
*
They stopped at a grocery store on the way home. As always, Laurie was chattering away as they got in line, and after a wait of just a few seconds, she scanned the various lines and said, “This is so poorly set up.”
Kaatje was standing there, looking perfectly happy. She blinked and followed Laurie’s gaze. “What is?”
“This system.” Laurie pointed to the middle cashier. “The single line should start there. It should run down the wide freezer aisle and loop back on the housewares aisle, since that’s not a high traffic area.”
“Why does it matter? There are only four or five people in each line.”
Laurie stared at her, wondering what kind of perspective led one to believe five people wasn’t excessive. “It’s Saturday afternoon. That has to be one of the busiest times of the week. Every register should be open. Supervisors and managers should man a register. When each cashier has a separate line the customers are punished when they get a slow cashier. A single line is the only way.” She shook her head, wondering why everyone didn’t put their full efforts into their job. There was no job too small to do it poorly.
Kaatje slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in for a hug. She was smiling when she said, “Do you do this all the time?”
“What?”
“Think of ways to improve every situation you encounter?”
Laurie pulled away and looked at her. “Of course. Everyone does.”
Letting out a soft laugh, Kaatje assured her. “No, they don’t. I promise you, they don’t.”
That made no sense at all. Why bother getting out of bed in the morning if you weren’t going to do your best?
*
Laurie spent the day working at her laptop, the time flying by with Kaatje beside her. They were out by the pool, and she stopped for a while to get a drink. When she sat down again she said, “I should work from home more often. It’s really nice out here.”
“Yeah, it is. Why don’t you?”
“Oh, it’s a lot of trouble to make sure I have everything I need. It’s a huge drag to get involved in something and find you’re missing some report that’s not on the system. I usually just go in and stay until I’m finished.”
“Which you never are.” Kaatje reached over and tugged on her earlobe. “You’ve got awfully cute ears.” She lay back against her chaise and her eyes drifted upwards. “Do people live on those hills? I didn’t see a lot of lights up there last night.”
“I have no idea. I think that’s a different set of mountains. But we could drive over that way later.”
“I’d rather go down Sunset Boulevard. I want to see the neighborhoods change.”
Laurie looked at her watch. “Let’s go at four. Then we can get to Santa Monica in time to see the sunset.”
“Sounds great. I’ll tell you when it’s four.”
Grinning, Laurie said, “I just bet you will.”
*
At five thirty they sat on a bench in Santa Monica in a park overlooking the ocean. Kaatje had brought a bottle of wine and some plastic cups, and they sipped a nice rosé while the sky turned a fantastic shade of pink, then burst into a vivid orange that covered the horizon. “This is the life,” Laurie said, sighing in pleasure. “We don’t get many sunsets like this. LA must know you’re here and want to impress you.”
“It’s not too hard to relax, is it?” Kaatje teased.
Laurie nuzzled against her warm body. “Not when I’m with you. Actually,” she said, “I have a heck of a time concentrating when you’re here. I took more breaks today than I normally do in a week.”
Kaatje started to laugh, then caught herself. “Are you serious? You touched me a few times and told me I looked cute in my swimsuit, but other than going to the bathroom or getting a drink you didn’t flinch.”
“Oh, I normally put my head down and don’t pick it up until I’m ready to wet my pants. I was all over the place today.”
“Laurie,” she said, earnestly, “that’s no way to live. I know this is important to you, but you’re not in the emergency room trying to save people’s lives.”
“I know, I know.” She let her head settle on Kaatje’s shoulder, feeling her heartbeat slow down when they touched. “I just get involved. I don’t know how else to be.”
“You’ve got to try. Your life will be over before you know it if you don’t learn how to nourish your soul.”
“I’ll just try to copy you. You’re a very good teacher.”
“But I can’t keep an eye on you when you’re at work.”
“Maybe I’ll let Wendy take an easier job and hire you. My life would be perfect if I could walk out of my office and see your pretty face smiling at me.”
Kaatje blew out a short burst of air. “Only one of us could be happy if I was sitting in front of your office, and it wouldn’t be me.”
Kaatje hadn’t hidden her disdain for corporate life. It was hard to imagine leaving Luxor, but it didn’t look like there was another way. Kaatje would just have to get used to having a vice president in charge of something-or-other on The Flying Dutchwoman.
Chapter Fourteen
LAURIE WAS AT work by five thirty on Monday. They’d agreed that Kaatje would take her to work and then have the use of the car, but when Laurie woke without the alarm, she couldn’t bear to rouse Kaatje. She looked serene, lying in the big bed with the covers pulled up to her chin, so Laurie called a cab and snuck out of the apartment without a sound.
/> She had a million things to finish before she left for Osaka, and just two days to finish them. Normally, she would have been able to focus with pinpoint precision, but her mind strayed to Kaatje a dozen times before lunch. What was she doing right now? Was she still in bed? Would she remember how to use the coffee maker? If she went out, was the GPS easy enough to use?
It was a struggle all day to keep her eye on the ball, and by the time she got home at seven thirty, the day seemed much longer than usual.
But Kaatje was there, smiling at her when she walked in, the scent of something tasty coming from the never-before-used kitchen. “There’s heat coming out of that room,” Laurie teased, pointing at the kitchen. “Call the fire department!”
Kaatje went to her and enveloped her in a hug. “Welcome home, honey bear.”
Laurie kissed her, nearly swooning with pleasure when Kaatje’s arms encircled her. There was something so primally fulfilling about merely having her close that she spent a moment puzzling over why she’d never felt this way before. At the time, she’d been certain she’d loved at least two of her boyfriends, but this sensation was entirely new—and it struck her heart like a dagger to know she would only be able to enjoy it for two more days.
*
Kaatje had spent the day in Marina del Rey, on a busman’s holiday. She’d checked out the harbor, poked around the moored boats, and enjoyed a long session on a rented kayak. Laurie could tell that she was tired, but Kaatje insisted on cleaning the kitchen while Laurie took a bath.
Relaxing in the cloud of bubbles, Laurie reflected on how wonderful it was to have such a generous woman sharing her home. Kaatje was neat, quiet, and thoughtful. She was also beautiful, sexy, and fantastic in bed, and Laurie spent the rest of her bath thinking of ways to exploit that talent.
After emerging from the bath, Laurie dried off, brushed her teeth and went to find Kaatje and pull her into bed. To her surprise, Kaatje was lying on the bed, fully clothed. When Laurie sat next to her she was greeted with a lazy smile and half-lidded eyes.
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