Girls Who Score

by Ily Goyanes

  The audience, subdued at first, was with me before the end, clapping, stomping, whistling. I rode their cheers, pumped with adrenaline as though we were all racing toward some simultaneous climax, and in the last minute I turned a planned double-flip, double-toe-loop into a triple-triple, holding my landing on a back outer edge as steadily as though my legs were fresh and rested.

  The crowd’s roar surged as the music ended. Fans leaned above the barrier to toss stuffed animals, mostly cats, onto the ice, and one odd flutter caught my eye in time for a detour to scoop up the offering. Sure enough, the fabric around the plush kitten’s neck was no ribbon, but a pair of lavender panties. Still warm. It wasn’t the first time.

  Suli waited at the gate. I gave her a cocky grin and thrust the toy into her hands. Her expressive eyebrows arched higher, and then she grinned back and swatted my butt with it.

  The scoring seemed to take forever. “Half of them are scrambling to figure out if you’ve broken any actual rules,” Johanna muttered, “and scheming to make up some new ones if you haven’t.” The rest, though, must have given me everything they had. The totals were high enough to get me the bronze medal, even when none of the following skaters quite fell down.

  Suli stuck by me every minute except for the actual awards ceremony, and she was right at the front of the crowd then. In the cluster of fans following me out of the arena, a few distinctly catlike “Mrowrr’s!” could be heard, and then good-humored laughter as Suli threw an arm around me and aimed a ferocious “Growrr!” back over her shoulder at them.

  Medaling as a long shot had condemned me to a TV interview. The reporter kept her comments to the usual inanities, except for a somewhat suggestive, “That was quite some program!”

  “If you liked that, don’t miss the exhibition tomorrow,” I said to her, and to whatever segment of the world watches these things. When I added that I was quitting competition to pursue my own “artistic goals,” she flashed her white teeth and wished me luck, and then, microphone set aside and camera off, leaned close for a moment to lay a hand on my arm. “Nice costume, but I’ll bet you’ll be glad to get it off.”

  Suli was right on it, her own sharp teeth flashing and her long nails digging into my sleeve. The reporter snatched her hand back just in time. “Don’t worry,” Suli purred, “I’ve got all that covered.”

  Don’t expose yourself like that! Don’t let me drag you down! But I couldn’t say it, and I knew Suli was in no mood to listen.

  I was too tired, anyway, wanting nothing more than to strip off the unitard and never squirm into one again, but Suli wouldn’t let me change in the locker room. Once I saw the gleam of metal she flashed in her open shoulder bag—so much for security at the Games!—I followed her out and back to our room with no regret for the parties we were missing.

  The instant the door clicked shut behind us she had the knife all the way out of its leather sheath. “Take off that medal,” she growled, doing a knockout job of sounding menacing. “The rest is mine.”

  I set the bronze medal on the bedside table, flopped backward onto the bed and spread my arms and legs wide. “Use it or lose it,” I said, then gasped at the touch of the hilt against my throat.

  “Don’t move,” she ordered, crouching over me, her hair brushing my chest. I lay frozen, not a muscle twitching, although my flesh shrank reflexively from the cold blade when she sat back on her haunches and slit the stretchy unitard at the juncture of thigh and crotch.

  “Been sweating, haven’t we?” she crooned, slicing away until the fabric gaped like a hungry mouth, showing my skin pale beneath. “But it’s not all sweat, is it?” Her cool hand slid inside to fondle my slippery folds. It certainly wasn’t all sweat.

  Her moves were a blend of ritual and raw sex. The steel flat against my inner thigh sent tongues of icy flame stabbing deep into my cunt. The keen edge drawn along my belly and breastbone seemed to split my old body and release a new one, though only a few light pricks drew blood. The rip of the fabric parting under Suli’s knife and hands and, eventually, teeth, was like the rending of bonds that had confined me all my life.

  Then Suli’s warm mouth captured my clit. The trancelike ritual vanished abruptly in a fierce, urgent wave of right here, right now, right NOW NOW NO-O-W-W-W-W! Followed, with hardly a pause to recharge, by further waves impelled by her teasing tongue and penetrating fingers until I was completely out of breath and wrung out.

  “I thought I was supposed to be storing up energy,” I told her, when I could talk at all.

  “Jude, you’re pumping out enough pheromones to melt ice,” Suli said, “and I’m not ice!”

  It turned out that I wasn’t all that wrung out, after all, and if I couldn’t talk, it was only because Suli was straddling my face, and my mouth was most gloriously, and busily, full.

  The chill kiss of the blade lingered on my skin the next day, along with the heat of Suli’s touch. I passed up the chance to do a run-through of my program, which didn’t cause much comment since it was just the exhibition skate. Johanna, who knew what I was up to, took care of getting my music to the sound technicians with no questions asked.

  There were plenty of questioning looks, though, when I went through warm-up muffled in sweats and a lightweight hoodie. Judging from the buzz among my fans, they may have been placing bets. Anybody who’d predicted the close-cropped hair with just enough forelock to push casually back, and the unseen binding beneath my plain white T-shirt, would have won. The tight blue jeans looked genuinely worn and faded, and from any distance the fact that the fabric could stretch enough for acrobatic movement wasn’t obvious.

  It was my turn at last. Off came the sweats and hoodie. I took to the ice, rocketing from shadows into brightness, then stopped so abruptly that ice chips erupted around the toes of my skates. There were squeals and confused murmurs; I was aware of Suli, still in costume from her own performance, watching from the front row.

  Then my music took hold.

  Six bars of introduction, a sequence of strides and glides—and I was Elvis, “Lookin’ for Trouble,” leaping high in a spread eagle, landing, then twisting into a triple-flip, double-toe-loop. My body felt strong. And free. And true.

  Then I was “All Shook Up,” laying a trail of intricate footwork the whole length of the rink, tossing in enough cocky body-work to raise an uproar. Elvis Stojko or Philippe Cande-loro couldn’t have projected more studly appeal. When my hips swiveled—with no trace of a feminine sway—my fans went wild.

  They subsided as the music slowed to a different beat, slower, menacing. “Mack the Knife” was back in town: challenge, swagger, jumps that ate up altitude, skate blades slicing the ice in sure, rock-steady landings. Then, in a final change of mood, came the aching, soaring passion of “Unchained Melody.” I let heartbreak show through, loneliness, sorrow, desperate longing.

  In my fantasy a slender, long-haired figure skated in the shadows just beyond my vision, mirroring my moves with equal passion and unsurpassable grace. Through the haunting strains of music I heard the indrawn breaths of a thousand spectators, and then a vast communal sigh. I was drawing them into my world, making them see what I imagined… I jumped, pushing off with all my new strength, spun a triple out into an almost effortless quad, landed—and saw what they had actually seen.

  Suli glided toward me, arms outstretched, eyes wide and bright with challenge. I stopped so suddenly I would have fallen if my hands hadn’t reached out reflexively to grasp hers. She moved backward, pulling me toward her, and then we were skating together as we had so often in our private predawn practice sessions. The music caught us, melded us into a pair. Suli moved away, rotated into an exquisite layback spin, slowed, stretched out her hand, and my hand was there to grasp hers and pull her into a close embrace. Her raised knee pressed up between my legs with a force she would never have exerted on Tim. I wasn’t packing, but my clit lurched with such intensity that I imagined it bursting through my jeans.

  Then we moved apart again,
aching for the lost warmth, circling, now closer, now farther…the music would end so soon... Suli flashed a quick look of warning, mouthed silently, “Get ready!” and launched herself toward me.

  Hands on my shoulders, she pushed off, leapt upward, and hung there for a moment while I gripped her hips and pressed my mouth into her belly. Then she wrapped her legs around my waist and arched back. We spun slowly, yearningly, no bed, this time, to take the weight of our hunger. And then, as the last few bars of music swelled around us, Suli slid sensuously down my body until she knelt in a pool of scarlet silk at my feet. She looked up into my eyes, and finally, gracefully and deliberately, bowed her head and rested it firmly against my crotch as the last notes faded away.

  An instant of silence, of stillness, followed, until the crowd erupted in chaos, cheers and applause mingling with confusion and outrage. TV cameras were already converging on our exit. I pulled Suli up so that my mouth was close to her ear; her hair brushing my cheek still made me tingle.

  “Suli, what have you done? What will—?”

  She shushed me with a finger across my lips. “Sometimes, if you can’t stand to be left behind, you do have to jump without knowing exactly where you’ll land.”

  So I kissed her right there on the ice for the world to see. Then, hand in hand, we skated toward the gate to whatever lay beyond.

  HAIL MARY

  Shanna Germain

  Love

  I know it’s her by the back of her neck. Something so simple—the curved pale length of her neck as she shifts her head—and I know without a doubt that it’s Mary. Her hair is darker now, more gold and less pale blonde, and shorter too, cut in tight curls that stick close to her head. She’s writing on something behind the counter, her back to us. As thin as she always was, boyish with just a swell of hips inside her dark jeans. My heart lobs its aching beat into my throat. At the same time, the pulse between my legs beats so hard and fast I can feel it all the way up my stomach.

  I stand, frozen. For a moment, I think I can turn and walk away. I can pretend I never saw her. I can pretend I was never here.

  “Mom…” My daughter, Elsie, tugs my sleeve, her voice full of awe, and pulls me toward the wall of racquets. She’s fifteen and just made the school tennis team. All week she’s talked of nothing but getting her own racquet, her own set of neon-green balls, to practice and play with.

  The woman behind the counter, the one that I know is Mary, turns at the sound of my daughter’s voice, her smile the kind that’s for customers, especially ones that have been accidentally ignored. Her V-necked T-shirt is icy blue; the color makes her eyes glow in the pale heart of her face. She sees me and opens her mouth, her soft pink lips parted slightly, but she doesn’t speak. There is a silence, one of those that feels like forever, and then as soon as it’s over, you know it was only a second, half a second, tops. Heat slides up through my face. I can feel the prickle in my cheeks and my forehead.

  “Mom,” Elsie says again, her voice reminding me: fifteen, tennis team, new racquet. The rules of decorum and polite society can hardly be expected to apply to her at this moment.

  “Go ahead and look.” I try to pretend my mouth hasn’t lost all its feeling, all its ability to do the work of talking to my daughter. “See which ones you like.”

  Elsie bounds off. Endless energy, long legs, her blonde ponytail flipping behind her. Mary and I both watch her go.

  “Well. Maggie-May,” Mary says, once Elsie is fondling racquets and racquet strings off in the corner. Mary leans her elbows on the counter, cants her body toward me, her smile big and a little off center. The years have carved small wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, more on one side than the other. There’s a black design inked along the inside of her wrist. It looks like a word. “Holy fucking shit,” she says.

  I laugh, even though that’s the last thing I expect to do. No one’s called me Maggie-May since Mary. No one says “holy fucking shit” like she does, either, like it’s all one word. Probably no one ever will.

  “Yeah, holy fucking shit.” I can’t remember the last time I had those kinds of swear words in my mouth, and it feels good to say them. I push my hair back off my shoulder—it’s long now, darkened even more by time and a good colorist—but now it feels too long for my age. Too wild and needy.

  “And a daughter?” Mary asks.

  “Yeah.” I wish I could find another word, or another rhythm for my words, but this is all that I can find around the small bits of breath my lungs are giving me.

  “Looks just like you,” she says.

  We both turn our heads again to watch Elsie move, the way she steps sideways on the balls of her feet as she practice swings with one racquet, then swaps it out for another.

  “She play like you?” Mary asks.

  “She does,” I say, and my heart does this big swell thing that it does when I talk about Elsie and know that what I’m saying is true and right.

  Mary nods, turns her hand upward to touch the side of her mouth. The word in black ink on her wrist is truth, all lowercase, in a script of letters that touch each other at the curves. “She’ll do fine, then.”

  I stand in the middle of the tennis store, between the two loves of my life, watching my child move the way I used to, and I wish I believed that was true.

  Fifteen

  Mary had a ponytail then. Long and blonde, with high-sprayed bangs that tried to claw at her forehead. She didn’t have any curves. None of us tennis girls did. Just long and lanky, with reaches that seemed impossible for our height.

  “What do you say, Maggie-May?” she’d say, and swat me on the ass with a racquet as she slid to her place on the court behind me, her pockets bulging with tennis balls. It was part of our ritual, the way we started every match.

  “I say…” And I’d flip her the bird in response. Such a dirty thing back then, that simple upturn of a finger. I look at it now and laugh to myself. What rebels we thought we were. Such big shots.

  We were the girls’ doubles team for Petersonville High. Her, long ponytail swinging from side to side as she moved, blue eyes watching everything that happened on the court, her thin calves bouncing as she rolled on her toes. And then me, not as tall, nowhere near as pale. I had the beginnings of curves where she didn’t, but nothing to speak of, and thick, muscular calves. I was growing my dark bob out and it plagued me constantly—the bangs always pinned back by a million barrettes, the back never staying in its short, tight tail.

  “Bird is the word,” she’d say, and raise her one eyebrow into an arching V. And we’d be ready, just like that.

  She had this serve, this high, slow lob that was just impossible to hit. A lob like that, it’s called the Hail Mary in tennis circles. I think opponents first thought it would never make it over the net, or they thought its slow height would make it an easy return. Then it landed, aced, and they were determined to hit the next one. Which they’d miss, and then they’d be psyching themselves out for the next two or three.

  It got so that we’d actually get a crowd—unheard of for something as non-cool as tennis—and they’d be chanting, “Hail Mary, Hail Mary,” every time she served.

  I couldn’t serve like that to save my life, but I could dig and return just about anything on my good days. It wasn’t something I had to think about. I could just do, my body always reacting faster than my brain could understand.

  We played hard and good, an unbreakable team from our freshman year to our senior year. And that last year, we went all the way to the top, or what was the top in those days—state finals. And we swept them, nothing to it. Our opponents barely got a chance to unpack their racquets and start swinging before she and I had taken over the court, teamed up, doing what we did best.

  “What do you say, Maggie-May?” Mary asked, after we’d won. We were spending the night in Trumansburg after the finals, draped over each other on the hotel bed, pretending to do calculus, but really just reliving our kills, our aces, the way we’d tromped the Waverly gi
rls into the dirt.

  “I say…” And I flipped her the bird, like I always did. Mary nipped it with the point of her teeth, laughing against my skin.

  “Bird is the word,” she said.

  And we were together, just like that. I’d never kissed a girl before, had never kissed anyone but one boy, a tennis player too, and that had been meat and onion and something I never wanted to go back to. Mary’s mouth against mine was soft and sweet, wet as misty rain. Her breath tasted like sweet ice tea and the mint gum she chewed while she played. I thought maybe all girls tasted like this, or maybe it was just Mary, sugar and spice.

  I wasn’t sure how to touch her with anything but my mouth, just tongue and teeth and lips. My body wanted to move, to press and arch, but I didn’t know how.

  “Like this, Maggie-May,” she said, and I wondered how she knew so much, how she knew to put her fingers between my thighs with that soft, fluttered touch. She took my hand, covered it and slid it over the length of her waist, up beneath her T-shirt, then down. On my own, I touched her barely there hips, the lean muscles of her thigh.

  I came for her, that first time, my first time, and I hadn’t even gotten undressed.

  Deuce

  Being the best at high school tennis didn’t amount to much when it came to paying for college. You either had money and went to Cornell, or you had nothing and you went to the local community college.

  Tennis didn’t buy us an entry into the big C, so Mary and I roomed our way through a two-year degree in doing everything but going to class.

  If it was nice out, we were outside, hitting balls on the court, practicing. When we weren’t at official practice or at games, we’d play whoever would put their quarters up. It wasn’t nice, the way we whipped them so badly, and it sure wasn’t a challenge, but Mary and I needed to play the same way we needed to breathe, the same way we needed to fuck.