The High Cost of Living (17 page)

Finally she stumbled forward. Just inside the kitchen door Valerie paused, looking around with an expression of dismay. “Here I am, hello!” Leslie bellowed, to wipe off that look of disappointment or whatever it was. “How are you!” She wanted to bolt forward and embrace Valerie, but she did not dare. She did not know how things stood; if they were only to debate, discuss, remember, be polite and distant.

Valeria shrugged off her coat—suede with cuffs and hem of fur and new to Leslie—and sat with a half-checked gesture, stopping to remove a child's crumpled sock by one corner and put it after a moment's hesitation on the table. “So sorry I'm late. I couldn't get away sooner. I have to leave here at four at the very, very latest. We're invited out tonight.”

We
. Coupledom, excluding her. Lena and Val. Setting sharp time limits like the blade of a guillotine descending. All right, ask something, get her to talk. “You're back in school?”

“Part time. I don't think I could stomach it in bigger doses. It's harder when you've been out—been a real adult.”

“Are you in art school?”

“Lena says the art school here sucks. All hard-edge male stuff. I'm taking a women's theater course. We're into creating new rituals, and I'm doing the set designs.… And parapsychology. We've done the
I Ching
and palmistry and now we're doing the tarot. That's the course I was going to cut, but I realized Beta, who's teaching it, will be at Grace's tonight. If she asked me where I was, it'd be awkward. I felt I did have to put in an appearance.”

In other words, Valerie was studying nothing whatsoever. “What made you go back to school?”

“It's silly not having a degree. It won't take that long. And the theater course is exciting. I like doing art work that's part of something else. School's amusing.”

“Are you working? You must have quit your job at Bolt's.” I.e., is Lena keeping you?

“I can't go to school and work full time. I work Fridays and Saturdays in Lena's shop in the Grandville Mall.”

“Do you like that job?”

“Leslie! How could anyone
like
working at some boring job? Do you like brushing your teeth? Would you like to do it for eight hours?”

Boring: it was Val's universal condemnation. It was boring to be poor; it was boring to have to take rotten jobs to survive, it was boring to be out of the closet and hassled all the time. “Boredom isn't the worst fate. If you want to learn any real-world skills from plumbing to chemistry, you have to be willing to be bored for a while.”

“Real-world skills! You mean the male world.”

She was on the verge of starting an argument, as she had at Christmas. Their words seemed to come out in flat plastic trays covered with transparent wrap, boxes in which each word was displayed like a bright red waxed apple or a dyed orange. She had lost Valerie, lost her entirely, lost her to new suede coats with fur hems and a jaunty red Toyota and classes in palmistry and doily making. She tried to form a question: something not dangerous. Something that wouldn't explode. “Would you like some coffee? Or tea? Herb tea?” Valerie drank them all according to mood. She always wanted one absolutely and the other would not do. Since Val still hesitated, saying only, “Mmmmm,” Leslie went on: “Or wine? There's red wine.”

“Red wine at noon?” Valerie laughed, a sharp expulsion of breath in a single “huh,” dainty as a cat's sneeze. “Why not?”

She would buy more wine to replace what they drank. The gallon jugs were stored on the porch with the fruit and potatoes, wine brought in by the case from a dealer in Grand Haven. Mary and Liz claimed it was better and cheaper than anything closer. It was certainly cheaper. She poured them each a tumblerful. What did asking for wine mean? Valerie was not a drinker. Had she become one? Lena drank scotch, she drank fancy aperitifs. Or was it a sign that Valerie too was nervous? Her own heart was hammering, the pulse working in her wrists, her throat, her temples as she carried the tumblers to the table and then the jug. Then she dragged her chair nearer to Valerie's and held out her full tumbler. “To
you
.”

Valerie laughed the short hissing laugh and her small chin dipped. “To me? Should I drink to me?” She held out her tumbler and they clunked dully, heavy practical glass against glass. Val's face was round, her features delicate. She had an upturned nose like Leslie herself. Her eyes were a much darker brown, her skin was dark honey. Her eyebrows were high and thin, stylized like the painted brows of courtesans in Hokusai, whose prints Valerie had put up on the wall of their bedroom. Her hands were small, her feet small, her body compact and tightly made. Her lower lip was bigger than her upper, giving her face in repose the impression of being always about to smile. “Red wine at noon. Anyhow in the afternoon,” Valerie said, watching.

Suddenly she recognized: a phrase from a song, from an album they had played a lot. Joy of Cooking's first record. The album had come out a couple of years before they met, but they had bought all Joy of Cooking's records. She waited for the song to move in her head, rhythmically sad and slow. Piano. Two women's voices intertwined:

The life that I chose

is nothing at all

without white wine in the morning sun

red wine at noon

and I'll be here when the evening comes

and where have you been so long?

Valerie put down her tumbler half empty. “I don't enjoy sitting in this kitchen. A drag. It kind of leans on you saying, Clean me, do something!”

“We could sit in the livingroom.”

Valerie walked before her, shorter and slenderer. Leslie walked after, carrying her glass. The wine was already flushing her face. She had not eaten since seven-thirty. I could put on a record, she thought, like that one if they have it. We could dance. Drink more wine. Then slow-dance. I'll put my arms around her neck, hold her close. The hell with it; she hasn't given me enough time for a seduction. It's now or never.

Stooping, she put her glass on the floor and threw her arms around Valerie from the back. Arms over arms, clutching, embracing, she pulled Valerie off balance against her. She burrowed into Valerie's shoulder-length glossy black hair to kiss her nape, to move her lips into the curved niche between shoulder and ear. Her mouth grazed in the hollow of the delicate ridge of collarbone. Her hand moved under Valerie's crossed arm and gently circled the nearest breast, five fingers radiating to stroke toward the center where the nipple under the light jersey was already hardening.

Valerie twisted then, turned around all at once in a swift dancing catlike swirl, and they were embracing mouth to mouth. She felt feverish. She wanted to touch every place, to caress entirely, to take all of Valerie on her tongue, to kiss every mound and flatland of her world of skin. Under the graceful curve of half-shut lid, Valerie's eyes glinted. Ha-ha, they said, amused, delighted. They gleamed under the sensuous lids until she kissed the eyes shut, and then they gleamed again as her mouth sank back to Valerie's.

They were turning about, half wrestling, half walking. Before them the mattress lay like a plain of snow. They were thrashing from their clothes, sweaters and socks flying. How skin dived into skin. How they fitted, silky, furry, sleek. This is what she should have done at Christmas instead of being rational and arguing and sulking. Yes. The right way, the right place to be. It was flower into flower, breasts making love rubbing against breasts. Diana of Ephesus. The secret meaning of that image besides the mother of wild things was a woman making love with a woman, a mound of living breasts nudging each other swift and squirming and hot and passionate as little piglets, little piglets at the tits. But the tits were hungry piglets themselves, both question and answer. Mouth on mouth. Eyes becoming one round huge eye staring into the other.

Gently Val drew back from her to unloop the rubber band that bound Leslie's club at the nape and her hair fanned out to mingle with Val's, red-amber and black-cat black. First one cheek and then the other joined, silken peonies. They rubbed noses, they had almost the same nose. “The same, the same,” Val crooned. Upturned, delicate, a little flattened. Their mouths joined again. Sucking the juices from a peach. Honey and peach and peony, mound of belly heaped upon mound. Mons on mons gently rubbing, half ticklish, half torturous, all desire. Your flanks, Valerie, are petals of a yellow rose. Buttocks slung lower and softer than mine.

When she slid her hand between Valerie's thighs, first twitching the labia together, gathering, then slowly, gently parting, Valerie was already creamy and hot. But Valerie immediately slid away from her hand and went down on her. They hardly ever made love to each other at the same time. Usually Valerie made love to her first—because invariably she came more quickly—and then she made love to Val, taking as long as might be needed. Today she had expected to make love to Valerie first because she was the suitor, the beggar, the pilgrim.

When Valerie touched her, a bolt almost of pain went high into her. She could not bear for Valerie to tease or excite her long, touching gently with her fingers and then with her lips. “Please,” she said. “Now.” Valerie's tongue lapped at her, enfolded her, grew large and molten and seemed to penetrate her as her three crossed fingers actually did, plunging in. She could not move, she lay absolutely still while the wave rose, stood, crested and broke into pleasure. She came within a couple of minutes, her thighs squeezing Val's head.

They lay still a while resting, relaxing. She noticed that in their haste they had forgotten to shut the door. She hoped no one would come into the house. After she made love to Valerie, she would close it before they began again. She did not think Liz would come back to the house if she could avoid it, for Valerie's car was plainly visible from the hill where they were planting parsnips in the recently turned soil.

Then she rolled over and began to nuzzle Val's breasts, small and firm with large nipples like dark purple tulips. The tongue tip went back and forth, back and forth, round and round, while her fingers stroked toward the center. Then she paid court to the wide honeyed belly, kissing in wide circles, fingers trailing after, now barely touching, now the nails just scraping, now seizing fistfuls of flesh. Then she parted Val's thighs to blow on her while Val giggled. Then she began again with the toes, making love individually to each brown pillow. When she came slowly back along the thighs, Val began to move her hips in slow circles, and she went straight to the small rosy nub of clit with her tongue and then, as Val rocked harder, entered with her hand. Her head was pillowed on the supple thigh. Val tasted of soap and perfume, of salt and cream, ammonia and marshland. Val moaned and thrashed and Leslie went on, now slower, now faster. She felt calm, patient, her hand steady and love pushing on her from inside like a roaring flood of sweet juicy wine.

Kitten Val. Stray kitten, sleek and pampered now. Val who had cried and cried. Who stared into the mirror with hungry eyes and turned away pouting, sulking. Beautiful Val who mistrusted her beauty and her self. Val came in from the cold kitchens of a divorced and remarried and married again mother, this child wrong name, wrong color, wrong sex, wrong father, wrong face. This child on speed at seventeen, straight again by nineteen. This baby born again crying at Leslie's breasts. Val the kitten, Val the tough-talking sour skeptic disbelieving in love. Who cried and cried against her until the pillow was soaked, until the tears ran down over her breasts like sweat, like salty broth, who shuddered with tears and clutched her hard enough to leave bruises and slowly, slowly, slowly uncoiled. Val who said, I'm frigid, so what, sex is a scam. Who believed in pain and cold and loneliness and relief that came in pillboxes.

The first time she had taken Val in her arms a look like a sneer had come over Val's face and Val had leaned back looking at her as if to say, What a fool you are. Then, eyes shut, mouth closed on a grimace, Val had permitted herself to be kissed. Who said, Go ahead, what do I care. But whose eyes had filled with the first tears between them when Leslie drew away immediately and stepped back, rebuffed. Who Leslie knew managed to run into her at carefully contrived accidental meetings for weeks, Leslie had known Val loved her long before Val had realized that, and that knowledge had given her patience. Patience flooded her now like gentle warm milk as she labored on with her mouth and hand to give pleasure, to open the knot that locked in her lover.

At last she felt the vein start to throb, the beat inside as Val contracted, and she moved faster, till Val came moaning. Slowly she ebbed, waited, stopped at last, her face resting against Val's wide-spread thigh.

Finally she got up and shut the door, realizing they would pay for privacy in cold air. Well, they could keep each other warm. Val reached out a languid arm and read her watch (new, fancy, on a plaited leather band) where she had placed it beside the mattress. If I could love the thought of time from her head.

They lay with mouths joined and bodies intertwined, legs and feet, playing between each other's thighs in hot stickiness, sometimes teasing, withdrawing, teasing with fingertip and pushing with joined fingers or fist, while occasional waves of orgasm swept over one or the other, never quite beginning and never quite leaving off, a strangely peaceful state on the edge of too much where she felt as if she were an extension of Val, could feel every motion, every sigh and shudder. By now there was no difference in responsiveness between them. Val was roused to full openness now, and she was satisfied and wearied to half relaxation. She imagined dying. What would ever end this? They could remain locked into each other until they peacefully, happily melted together. She was willing. She would fuse into Val. They would fade into each other. They would melt and dissolve smeary as nebulae. They would steam away to make a pattern on the ceiling like a double flower. She was willing.