“Don’t you two look fantastic,” says Mrs. Henderson. “Matching little black dresses! How adorable. You don’t have to leave yet, do you? Sit here with me.”
“What a lovely top,” says Linda, sitting at one end of the couch. Jenny, sitting at the other end, rolls her eyes.
“Please,” says Mrs. Henderson. “Call me Kathy.” A hand on a bare knee to either side of her. “Kick off your shoes and relax a minute! You’ll have plenty of time to totter about on them later.” And Jenny, scowling, starts to unbuckle her slender high-heeled shoes.
“Oh!” says Linda, setting her bare feet on the stone floor. “It’s warm!”
“It’s heated from below,” says Mrs. Henderson. “If you weren’t about to go out, I’d urge you to lie down and roll around on it.” She leans close to Linda. “It feels wonderful on your back. But we can’t mess up these pretty little dresses.”
“Maybe,” says Linda, her eyes on Mrs. Henderson’s lips, “when we get back, Mrs. Henderson.”
“Maybe when we get back, Kathy,” says Linda, kissing Mrs. Henderson.
Jenny shakes her head and folds her arms and watches them make out for a moment, Mrs. Henderson’s arm snaking about Linda’s hips, Linda’s hand restless between her thighs, twitching the skirt of her little black dress higher and higher as they kiss. “Oh, Kathy,” moans Linda. Jenny’s hand untucks itself, drifts along the couch, finds Mrs. Henderson’s free hand. She tugs the hand close to her, wraps her fingers in among Mrs. Henderson’s fingers. “Mom,” she says. “Come on.”
“In a minute, darling,” says Mrs. Henderson around Linda’s mouth. She caresses her daughter’s hip with the back of her hand.
Hey, says Shelley between kisses, shouldn’t we, turn on the, the water, or something?
We can get clean in a bit, says Amy. Let’s get dirty first.
Hey, says Shelley again, as the bathroom door opens, as a girl comes in, long dark hair and a short red robe. Hey, around Amy’s mouth, we’ve got, Amy, who’s this, what’s.
It’s okay, says Amy, kissing Shelley and kissing her again. It’s just Marie.
Marie’s letting her robe fall to the floor and naked stepping into the tub.
Look, says Shelley, I didn’t know you had a girlfriend already.
She isn’t my girlfriend, says Amy. Turn around. Say hi to Marie.
Hi, Marie, says Shelley, as Marie leans in for a kiss, and Amy kisses Shelley’s neck, and Shelley laughing a little kisses Marie, hesitant until Marie licks her mouth open and then there’s nothing hesitant at all.
Marie’s my sister, says Amy.
Oh, says Shelley.
Don’t worry, says Marie, reaching past Shelley for Amy’s hips, pulling them all quite close together in the empty tub. We share everything.
“Bareback?” said Lucy, toying with the rolled edge of her sister’s stocking, there above her knee.
“Yes,” said Eliza. She licked her lips as her sister’s hand walked its slow, meandering way up the length of her naked thigh, and swallowed as it settled on her hip. “Bareback.”
“With but a flip of this switch,” cackles Dr. Isengrim, “all of downtown Urbopolis will disappear, in the swirling destructive energies of my decoherence vortex!”
“There’s no time to reach him!” thinks Inanna, the Marvellous Mistress of Might. “But if I can push the vortex, rotate it around the eigenstate of current consensus reality until it falls out of phase—but where could I find such energy?”
As Dr. Isengrim yanks the switch down and closes the connectors with a mighty spark, Inanna, the Lady of the Skies, throws wide her arms and opens herself to the orgonic energy of the city all about her as people woke and stretched and yawned and went about their Sunday morning business, heedless of their looming annihilation. As the decoherence vortex blared to life in the laboratory, as Dr. Isengrim threw back his head and cackled again, as in buildings all about her and out on the street, in restaurants and grocery stores, in lobbies and elevators and even the occasional office, men and women stirred, shifted, winced, smiled a little at private thoughts, shook their heads, licked their lips, stroked their chins, their hair, the knees of the people sitting next to them, as they harrumphed, blushed, looked away, thought longingly of someone they’d loved in college, or high school, or that summer abroad, as they stood abruptly, turned aside, draped napkins hurriedly over laps, resettled pants or coats or skirts, as they swallowed, as they closed their eyes, as the whining tearing roar of the vortex began to be heard all about them, as it gathered strength and began decohering the table it sat on, the mechanism that had generated it, the hem of Dr. Isengrim’s ratty lab coat, the first wild tendrils of Inanna’s magnificent hair, as the walls and ceiling fell away about them she threw wide her arms to the light and the heat and gathering all of that moment to one impossible point she pushed, and the vortex fell out of the world with a sound no one had ever heard before, that would echo for days in the ears of everyone in Urbopolis, and they all, every man and woman within a ten-mile radius, careened into sudden, inescapable orgasm, juddering, spasming, grinning, laughing, crying out, coming, all of them, coming.
“Watch,” says the Queen to the Bedding Maid, as the Privy Maid kisses the Countess My Lady.
“Oh, yes,” coos the Bedding Maid. The endless afternoon light in that ruddy room licks the sweat that coats their bodies. The Privy Maid’s undone hair is heavily damp with it. The Bedding Maid’s curls are limp. The Countess My Lady spreads her kneeling thighs with a rustle on the silken pillows as their kiss too slow to be called hungry opens and deepens.
“Touch someone,” says the Queen, and the Bedding Maid leans forward, and the Countess My Lady chuckles deep in her throat at the feathery touch of the Bedding Maid’s fingers on her sex. She breaks off the kiss with the Privy Maid and swings her mouth to the Bedding Maid’s, open and waiting, sipping the thickly humid air.
“Now,” says the Queen, licking the Privy Maid’s lips, “touch someone else,” and the Privy Maid frowns. The Bedding Maid sits back on her dainty bare heels. The Countess My Lady, smirking, reaches across for the Queen’s hand. “Go on,” says the Queen. “This is the red room. You must.”
The Bedding Maid on her hands and knees crawls between the Queen and My Lady, over the pillows and into the Privy Maid’s lap. “I told you,” whispers the Privy Maid into her sister’s ear, “I told you to go before she saw you.”
“It’s all right,” sighs the Bedding Maid into her sister’s mouth, her hands on her sister’s sweat-slick thighs. “Don’t you want this?”
So the day after the awards show my next-door neighbor burst into my apartment. I came out in my robe towelling my hair to find her crawling around the living room, picking up bits of the costume the pop star had worn to the show. They were very small and hard to see in the light. Is she here? asked my neighbor, excitedly, and I shook my head. The pop star had left at about dawn. She wanted biscuits, she said. She didn’t have anything to wear but the costume which was ruined now so she borrowed one of my T-shirts. I went back to sleep. It was now three in the afternoon.
Wow, said my neighbor, holding up a glittering bit of something that had been wrapped around the pop star’s thigh, or arm. It must’ve been incredible.
I shrugged. Oscar still wouldn’t come out from under the bed.
Is that one of the shoes? My neighbor pounced on it, sitting on the couch, fondling the simple white leather pump. Such classic lines, she said.
It’s an original Irish Scull, I said.
Really? said my neighbor.
That’s why it’s so warm to the touch.
My neighbor planted her feet on the coffee table and spread her legs and stroked the heel of the shoe up and down, up and down, her eyes closed. Licking her lips. Oh, yeah, she said.
There’s a button, I said. I leaned over her. She’d just had a shower, too. Her body gel smelled like cloves. I found the button, inside the shoe, and pressed it, and the shoe began to tremble in her hands.
Oh fuck, she said, plunging the heel of the shoe inside, pumping it in and out, her back arching. Oh wow. Pulling the shoe out and licking herself off the heel of it with a wicked smile. Bend over, she said. You have got to try this.
“Are you sure it’s okay?” says Margot. “I mean, I don’t wanna interfere, or anything – ”
“Girls!” hollers Katie from the back bedroom. “I’m waiting!”
“Oh yeah,” says Joey Rose, dragging Margot in her wake. “It’s better’n okay.” She stops just short of the bedroom door and swallows Margot in a hug and a sloppily eager kiss, kicking off her flip-flops. Stepping back to skin Margot’s cropped T-shirt up over her head and off. Arms back around her for another kiss, and Margot’s hands on Joey Rose’s ass, fingers wiggling under her bikini bottom.
“I hear kissing!” hollers Katie, and the girls start giggling. “That’s totally unfair!”
“What,” says Joey Rose, leading Margot into the back bedroom by the hand. “Is my Katiebelle all horny?”
“Wow,” says Margot, pushing up her glasses.
Lying back on the queen sized bed white blankets kicked to the foot of it Katie’s completely naked her sunbrowned legs spread wide. One hand up behind her head, the other lazily stroking her pussy. “What do you think, huh? Joeydoll?”
Squealing Joey Rose jumps onto the bed beside Katie and kisses her and kisses her again as Margot watches. Joey Rose’s hands on Katie’s breasts and belly. Katie untying Joey Rose’s bikini bottom and tossing it aside. “Oh yeah,” groans Katie, as Joey Rose sucks Katie’s fingers, her hand now on Katie’s pussy. As Margot still stands there by the bed eyes wide. “Oh,” groans Katie again, and then, “So are you just gonna stand there?”
“She didn’t want to intrude,” says Joey Rose.
“You guys,” says Margot. “You guys. You really do it. I mean it’s not just kissing for show.”
“Yeah,” says Joey Rose. “Oh, yeah.”
“Always say yes,” says Katie.
“Yeah, but,” says Margot.
“Really it’s Ashley’s fault,” says Katie.
“Except for the bits where you’re so sexy,” says Joey Rose.
“Oh heck, Margot, if she ever knew what you’re about to do,” says Katie.
“Yeah,” says Joey Rose. “This is not like out in the open yet or anything. Even with the club.”
“So no graffiti in the girls’ room or anything,” says Katie.
“Except maybe like Jay plus Kay forever,” says Joey Rose.
“That’s okay,” says Katie. “But not something like Joey Rose is a low-down dirty sisterfucker.”
“Katiebelle!” shrieks Joey Rose, falling on Katie, and they collapse into a wrestling, giggling, tickling, kissing, kissing, moaning pile of arms and legs and hands and backs and asses and feet. Margot pushes her glasses up and swallows. She’s pushed her other hand into her swimshorts and she’s biting her lip.
“I,” says Margot, as Joey Rose steps off the bed. “I wouldn’t want to,” as Joey Rose squats before her, tugging her swimshorts down and off. “Interfere,” says Margot, and Joey Rose smiles and says, “We want you to interfere,” and her chin between Margot’s parted thighs she licks Margot’s pussy once, a long lingering lick from bottom to top like an ice cream cone. “Come on,” she says, standing up, helping Margot up on the bed. Taking her glasses off. Kissing Margot there between Katie’s upraised knees.
“It’s only been one minute so far,” says Katie quietly, her ghostly face swallowed by the darkness as she shuts her phone. “This is all your fault.”
“My fault!” says Joey Rose in a hoarse whisper. “I was in the club before you were!”
“Like I knew who was in the precious club before they ganged me and stole my underwear,” says Katie. “And Ashley never would have picked me if Margot hadn’t picked you.”
“Well you didn’t have to come tonight,” says Joey Rose.
“Likewise,” says Katie, and Joey Rose says nothing in response. Katie’s face appears again in the bluish light of her phone. “Not even two minutes,” she says.
“What do they expect,” says Joey Rose.
“I don’t know,” says Katie. “Sex, I guess.”
“Sex!” hisses Joey Rose, a rustle in the darkness as she draws back against the coats hanging about them.
“I’m not gonna jump your bones, Joeydoll,” says Katie. “But that is what the club’s about. Always say yes.”
“I’m not asking,” says Joey Rose.
“I know,” says Katie. “I know. I’m not either. Two and a half minutes.”
“So what do we,” says Joey Rose, “what do we do? I mean when we walk out. They’re gonna laugh at us. I say we give ’em something to guess about.”
“What do you mean?”
“I dunno. Like we walk out holding hands with our shirts undone or something. Or our panties in our pockets. Or I give you my panties and you give me yours, except it’s not like they’d know which were mine and which were yours.”
“Don’t say panties,” says Katie. “It’s undignified. And anyway I didn’t wear any.”
“Katiebelle!” gasps Joey Rose.
“What?” says Katie. “I wasn’t gonna let them play any more stupid initiation games.”
“They weren’t,” says Joey Rose. “We’re in. We’re both in.”
“Except they sent us both to the closet together,” says Katie.
“Yeah, well,” says Joey Rose. “But now I’m wondering how far you went with Ashley when you were both in here.”
“How far I went? Sweetiebabe, Ilya is not a quiet girl.”
“You heard that, huh.”
“The neighbors heard that. And she was still quivering when we opened the door.” Both of them lit up now by the phone as Katie flips it open. “Four minutes,” she says. “Over halfway.”
“You really like Ashley, don’t you,” says Joey Rose.
Katie smiles in the light. “You really like Ilya.”
“Yeah,” says Joey Rose, smiling back. “And Margot. And Morgan. And Georgia. And Ms. Ackerman. And even Ashley.”
“Yeah, but Ilya,” says Katie. “You know her mother? Totally hooking up with Ms. Ackerman.”
“No way. Did Ashley tell you that? She is totally putting you on.”
“I saw it,” says Katie.
“No!”
“I even, ah – ”
“Katiebelle!”
“What?” says Katie. “I said yes.” She looks down at the phone. “Five minutes.”
“Katie?”
Katie looks up at Joey Rose and says quite firmly, “Yes.”
“I didn’t ask for anything,” says Joey Rose.
“Doesn’t matter,” says Katie, as Joey Rose leans closer. “Yes. Yes. To whatever it is,” murmuring against Joey Rose’s lips, “yes.”
It’s a brief kiss, a light kiss, an eyes blink shut kiss, and they look at each other a moment in the bluish light of the phone, nose by nose, and then licking her parted lips Joey Rose leans in again and Katie opens her mouth and plunges after her. Coats rustle and jangle on their hangers. Katie opens her eyes wide, pulls back from the kiss with a jerk, her mouth torn between surprise and a smile. “Joey!” she says with half a laugh.
“What?” says Joey Rose. “Now I know you really are going commando.”
“In a minute,” says Joey Rose, pushing the blouse from Katie’s shoulders, following it down with kisses, “we’re gonna walk out of the closet and we’re not gonna say anything.”
“Yes,” says Katie, her hands on Joey Rose’s shoulders.
“We’re just gonna walk out to the car hand-in-hand and we’re gonna go home,” says Joey Rose, her hand in the darkness under Katie’s skirt.
“Yes,” says Katie, her eyes closed, her breath sharp.
“And we are gonna do this all night long,” says Joey Rose, as Katie’s hips begin to rock.
“If you, wake up, Mom, and Dad,” says Katie, “I will kill you.”
