by Sacchi Green
“I’m good.” June sat down on the couch, laying her messenger bag across her lap. “So what is it? Arthritis? Just your hands or . . . ”
Miriam crossed the room to the small attached kitchen, busying herself with a kettle that needed filling. She looked a bit furtive, like someone used to hiding things.
“Rheumatoid in my hands, chronic pain everywhere else,” she answered, not looking at June. “Gets worse when I’m under stress. The end of my marriage didn’t help.”
“I’m sorry.” June felt suddenly out of her depth. “Is that why you’re here then? Getting away from it all?”
“I suppose so.” Miriam set the kettle boiling, taking two large pottery mugs out of the cupboard. It looked like June was getting tea whether she needed it or not. “Trying to do some work as well. I teach English at VIU.”
Of course she does, June thought. This polished, articulate woman screamed “English professor” from the tips of her blonde hair to the toes of her expensive boots.
“The thought of staying in my house, the house where we—it was simply untenable. I had to go somewhere.” Miriam pulled at the sleeves of her sweater. June watched the movements of her hands, nails short but manicured. “So how do we do this?”
Oh, right—business. June had almost forgotten. “Well. I can tell you a little bit about what I’ve got. Or you can tell me what you’re looking for. Have you done this before?”
“In college.” Miriam laughed shyly. It changed her whole face, that laugh. June hadn’t even realized she was pretty until that moment, and now she felt like someone had punched her in the heart. “A long time ago, as you may have guessed. And last year, when the pain was really bad, I used an oil. I had a prescription.” She lifted her eyes defensively, as if June was in any place to judge.
“Did it help?”
“Not really. It made me tired.”
“Okay. What I’m thinking for you . . . ” June unzipped her bag and pulled out a mason jar full of dried green buds. “Widow’s Walk.”
Miriam came closer, sitting down in the armchair across from June. There was a crease between her light eyebrows.
“Rather grim name.”
“I’ve got another client with chronic pain, he swears by this stuff. Good for inflammation, doesn’t make you sleepy, no paranoia. So I’ve heard anyway.”
“You don’t—”
“Not my thing. Not to say I wouldn’t smoke it if I needed to, just—not recreationally.”
Miriam studied her, and June wondered what she saw. A solidly built thirty-year-old, with curly brown hair and a cardigan she bought secondhand. A criminal, showing up at a stranger’s house and trying to sell her drugs. A nobody in snow-damp jeans.
“Can I be honest?” Miriam asked suddenly. “You don’t look like a drug dealer. If I imagined one, they wouldn’t look like you.”
“Do I need an eye patch, or a scar or something?”
Again, Miriam laughed and June was punched in the solar plexus. That laugh took the air right out of her lungs.
“That would be a start. How much?”
“Thirty dollars for an eighth. That’ll last you awhile. And I can always hook you up with more if you need it. Maybe with the quiet and the fresh air, you’ll be feeling better.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want to try it?” June had taken one of the smaller buds out of the jar, and was fishing out her grinder. “I’m assuming you don’t have a pipe or anything, but I could roll you something. No point buying a bunch if it makes you sick.”
Miriam smiled, wryly. “First one’s free, is that it?”
There was something indulgent about the way her mouth formed words, even though it was a tiny, razor-sharp sort of mouth. Miriam dragged her teeth against her lips when she spoke, like each sentence was being forced out of her.
“If you like,” June answered, remembering that she had been asked a question.
The kettle dinged sharply.
Miriam got up, going into the kitchen and bringing back two mugs of steaming tea. When she handed one to June, the pottery was scalding against her fingertips.
Instead of returning to the armchair, Miriam sat down beside her on the couch. Now June could smell the sweet bitterness of their tea, and the odd musty scent of Miriam’s sweater. There was something else, too—perfume or shampoo that smelled like some sort of flower. Orchids. June breathed through her mouth and tasted it on her tongue.
Yeah, orchids.
“Will you show me?” Miriam asked, setting her tea down on the coffee table. “How you . . . I don’t think I can.”
June didn’t know what she was talking about until Miriam lifted her hands, gesturing to the grinder and rolling papers June had brought out of her bag.
“Oh. Sure,” June said, feigning a casualness she did not feel. She was acutely aware of the clumsiness of her hands as she folded up a filter, ground the plant fine as ashes. When she had packed the joint full enough, she brought the paper to her lips, licking along the seam to seal it. The only sound she could hear was the snap of the fire and Miriam’s steady breathing.
“There you are,” she said, offering the joint to Miriam. “Easy peasy.”
Miriam spun it between her fingers as if unsure what to do with it. She looked like an old movie star smoking her first cigarette.
“Do you have a light?”
“Um.” June had not been expecting that, and was still mentally shrieking at herself for the “easy peasy” bit, Christ, what was she, four? “You don’t have to smoke it now. I mean, you can, but . . . ”
“I’d like to. If that’s all right. In case—well, I’m a bit nervous.”
June should have found that funny, but she didn’t. Instead, she reached into her bag for her zippo lighter, feeling a bit apprehensive. She didn’t usually stay with clients while they smoked, she didn’t usually drink goddamn tea with them. She was usually in and gone, with money in her pocket enough to get the electrician off her back.
“Here.” June clicked the lighter and held out the flame. Miriam leaned in, joint held against her lips. As the tip turned black, she sucked lightly in and tilted her head back. June watched her pulse beat in her throat, watched a soft exhale of smoke roll out of Miriam’s mouth like perfume.
“All right?” June asked.
Miriam nodded.
“My wife rolled her own cigarettes,” she said on the next exhale, closing her eyes. “Fuck, I mean my ex-wife. Still getting used to that.”
Fuck, she had said, a jarring discord between that word and her elegant mouth. It took a moment for the rest of the sentence to catch up with June.
Miriam had had a wife. Miriam was gay—or a lesbian, or bi or whatever. None of which mattered, it didn’t matter who she slept with or wanted to sleep with. She was June’s client. They didn’t know each other. Not at all.
“What happened?” June asked, even though she knew she shouldn’t. Maybe it was the smoke in the air or the goddamn beeswax candles but her mouth was asking questions it had no business to. “With you and your wife?”
Miriam studied the glowing ember of the joint. “Are you married?” she asked instead of answering.
“No.”
“But you’re . . . ” Miriam gestured gracefully with one hand. “You know. Involved with someone.”
“Uh, no.”
“Oh.” Miriam traced her lips with the tip of her ring finger, a movement that June couldn’t help but follow. It was a distracted movement, and Miriam’s eyes were far away, but even so it seemed dangerously intimate. “How old are you?”
“Why?” June blurted, skin prickling.
“I hate not being able to place someone. Should I guess?”
“Jesus, no. I don’t want to hear it. I’m thirty-two.”
“Hmm.” Miriam took a slow, deep drag and waited a moment before slowly breathing out. “I think that’s enough of that for now.” She crossed the room to stub the joint out in an unlit candle, leaving it there smolderin
g. When she returned to the couch, she sat a little closer, her shoulder nearly leaning against June’s.
“She didn’t love me anymore. My wife. That’s what happened.” Miriam ran her hands over the short, blonde hairs on her head. “How many people have you kissed?”
Three. June had kissed three people in her entire life.
Kyle from the pharmacy was her first, both of them completely drunk at a pit party in grade ten. Grade ten was a bit old for a first kiss according to all of June’s friends, but it didn’t feel significant at the time. It felt like something to get out of the way. Felt like kicking in a door or jump-starting an engine. Violent and necessary.
Kyle puked shortly after and June puked the next morning, so the whole scene left a grimy taste in her mouth. She didn’t kiss Kyle again.
Her second kiss was better: Dylan Samson, on a class trip to the city. He was just on the outskirts of cool, his features delicate and pretty as a girl’s, and he’d barely spoken to June before that trip. On the last night, Dylan’s friend snuck a mickey of vodka into their hotel, and they hung out in his room after the chaperones were asleep, passing it back and forth among a group of them. June had just turned eighteen, and Dylan’s pink lips tasted like cinnamon when she kissed him. All his friends hooted and jeered but by then June was too tipsy to give a damn. She and Dylan made out in the en suite bathroom with the door locked, and fooled around for a bit after the trip was over. It clearly didn’t mean anything to either of them. Dylan hung around town for a few years after graduation, but by that time he and June were more friends than anything else, and he left for some job on the pipelines not long after.
Her third kiss was the worst.
There was—a girl. Woman. June had been twenty-six. The woman had only been in town for eight months, teaching at the local school while Alison Meadows was off having her baby. June had seen the woman around town but hadn’t really spoken to her until one night at the Stag. It was crowded for once (all the snowboarders in town) and they ended up sharing a table. It had been karaoke night and the woman had sung “Edge of Seventeen” with a pint glass in her hand, while June fell wildly and stupidly in love with her. They kissed for the first time five days later. June had always really considered herself bisexual in the dark, secret privacy of her mind, but that first kiss with the woman felt nothing like her previous two. They spent the night together, and June walked home the next morning feeling like a sun that was rising.
They slept together most nights after that, June (still deeply in the closet) sneaking the woman in and out of her room at the Wander-Inn, the two of them shaking with silent laughter that turned into gasps when their bodies touched. They were together right up until the woman’s contract ended, and she had to leave.
The woman told June it’d “been fun.”
June didn’t kiss anyone else after that.
* * *
“Three,” June answered before she could ask herself why she was answering. Before she could tell herself it was none of this stranger’s business. “Just—three.”
“Three,” Miriam repeated, tilting her head. Again, June was reminded of a bird, fine-boned and soft-feathered.
“Going through a bit of a dry spell.” June shrugged. “It happens.”
“No one at the Wander-Inn to catch your eye?”
“Ha, no. When we even get customers it’s like—happy families or frat-boy snowboarders.”
“Too cool for the frat boys?”
June paused. She took a breath.
“Not too cool.” Just say it, fucking say it. “Too—uh—gay.” There. There. The sky hadn’t fallen, the cabin hadn’t caught fire. June was fine. It was fine. “So.”
Miriam said nothing. She folded her hands and then unfolded them.
“They don’t hurt so much,” she said at last, looking down at her hands. “Should it happen this fast? Or is it just a placebo effect? Or does that even matter if it’s working?” She laughed softly. Was it June’s imagination or was Miriam even closer to her? It seemed like the woman was shifting with each breath, leaning in until June could feel Miriam’s breath against her face.
“Should I roll you some more?”
“Yes.” Miriam looked up, pinning June in a clear, pale gaze. For a moment, June couldn’t move, couldn’t even swallow or breathe. “But first—”
“But first?” June’s heart was hammering in her chest, a feeling like adrenaline or panic.
“But—if you wanted . . . ”
“If I wanted . . . ”
June stopped speaking at the first touch of Miriam’s hand. The tips of her fingers were rough and warm as they traced June’s knuckles, slipped into the sleeve of her cardigan to stroke her wrist. June could feel Miriam’s thumb drawing a circle against her thundering pulse point.
“If you wanted,” Miriam said, lifting her other hand to tangle in June’s hair. June’s hair was perpetually wild and knotted with curls, but it seemed to part like water beneath Miriam’s fingers. June wanted to purr like a cat until Miriam’s hand suddenly tightened, tugging her roughly closer.
June’s fourth kiss was the best one.
Miriam’s mouth was warm from tea and tasted like smoke. Her tongue was insistent, sliding between June’s lips without hesitation, tasting the back of her throat and sucking the breath from her lungs. It was a hostage-taking kiss, and June would gladly have put her hands up in surrender if those hands weren’t latching on to Miriam’s sweater, pulling their bodies together.
A voice in June’s head was screaming at her, saying things like “married” and “rebound,” but June tried to ignore it in favor of biting down on Miriam’s lower lip.
“Come here,” Miriam said with a gasp, leaning back against the couch and pulling June up onto her lap. June felt huge on top of her, a great beast compared to the elegant woman between her legs. She tried to ignore that thought as well.
“Take this off.” Miriam tugged at June’s cardigan, pulling at the neck of it so that she could lean up and fasten her teeth there. “I want to see you. Please, can you?”
“Yes.” June kissed the word into her mouth and then promptly forgot what she was answering. Miriam’s tongue licked sweetly against June’s own, and June tilted her head, opened up to more of it. She felt Miriam’s hands at the small of her back, pulling her closer against her. The voice in June’s head shouted “stoned on drugs that you sold her,” and that—that was something June really couldn’t ignore.
“Wait.” She pulled back from Miriam’s kiss. “Wait.”
Miriam watched her, breathing silent but rapid. Her hands still moved restlessly up and down June’s back, as if she couldn’t help herself.
“You’re high and I’m not.”
“So?”
“I don’t want you to do anything you change your mind about later.”
Miriam rolled her eyes. “Darling—first of all, I barely smoked anything and I’m well in control of my faculties. And second, I really, really want to touch you, and my hands don’t hurt for the first time in months, and as the clear-headed one of course you are welcome to say no, but please don’t say no because you think you’re—taking advantage. My god, if anything the opposite is true.”
“You’re taking advantage of me?”
Miriam raised one eyebrow, the corner of her mouth curling to match. “The older woman . . . luring a young innocent up to her secluded cabin in the woods . . . ”
“Jesus.” June laughed, leaning forward to kiss Miriam again. “Forget I said anything. You’re obviously a predator.”
“Damn right.” Miriam bit June’s earlobe sharply before soothing it with her tongue. “Now take off your shirt.”
June didn’t want to think about how much that sentence turned her on. She pulled her cardigan and T-shirt off over her head, not caring that she was only in a boring white bra. The way Miriam looked at her made June feel delicious, the way Miriam touched her made June whimper.
“Christ, you’re beautiful. Loo
k at the size of those, they’re practically spilling out.” Miriam grabbed June’s breasts with both hands, squeezing almost to the point of discomfort. After a moment, Miriam slid one hand inside June’s bra, pinching at a large soft nipple.
“Knew you’d be like this,” June gasped.
“Like what?”
“Sharp.”
That startled a laugh out of Miriam, and she snapped her teeth against June’s lips, sucking June’s tongue back into her mouth. June could feel Miriam’s hands now at the button of her jeans, feel slim fingers slip beneath the elastic of her underwear and slide between her legs.
“You’re so wet. Is that just from me? Just from kissing me?”
June knew that she was wet, could feel herself clenching and unclenching with anticipation. Miriam’s hand tugged June’s pubic hair once before fluttering over her clit, circling her entrance. June wanted Miriam’s fingers inside her. She wanted Miriam’s tongue and Miriam’s teeth.
“Or do you get like this for everyone? Just aching for someone to touch you.” Miriam’s tone was steady, but her voice broke slightly on the word “touch.” “You seem the type.”
“You don’t even know me,” June said, looking the other woman in the eye. She watched Miriam take her hand out of June’s pants, drag those fingers over her tongue.
“I know what you taste like.”
At this, Miriam toppled June sideways, stretching her out on her back against the couch. She was on June like a starving woman, pulling June’s pants and underwear down her legs before diving forward, wrapping June’s legs around her neck. Instantly June cried out at the feeling of Miriam’s tongue against her, rougher and stronger and warmer than her hands. She couldn’t help rocking her hips forward, seeking out more and more of the sensation. She was going to come. Just like this, with a stranger. She was going to come and it was going to be shattering.
“Please, fuck—please, please—”
“What do you want?” Miriam pulled that deadly mouth away, even though June cried out brokenly at the loss.
“Something—anything please, don’t stop please—”
Again that tongue was back, but there were also fingers at her entrance. June couldn’t tell how many as they slowly pressed inside her—two—no, three, four—too wide, too wide to take but she opened for them, arching her back as every part of her clenched and howled and came.
