Periphery (28 page)

I wheel over to the cupboard and pour myself an Organic Essentials Booster Beverage. I think this one has grape somewhere in it, but I can’t really taste it. “C’mere Coleman,” I call. “Give Mama a kiss. And maybe a round of ammo, if you’ve got some in your pack.” My Golden-Border service dog presses her silky butt against my legs, wagging lazily. “Yeah, yeah,” the tension is draining from my face, my jaw loosening. “You’re just in it for the ass rub. So why should you be different from any other girl?”

I decide to continue my anti-stress protocol with a whiskey in the shower and some intimate one-on-one action with the hand-held shower nozzle before Serena gets home. I’ve just finished toweling off, with Coleman lined up to help me transfer back into my chair, when I hear Serena slam in. It amazes me how stealthy she can be as a photojournalist—coiled still as a snake in some Hollywood hedge or sauntering right past the police line to get a shot of the latest gun-down—yet she can’t enter our home without flinging six things in seven directions, recounting her day in a screeching voice that would do the Budweiser Transit System proud.

“The good news,” Serena plunks herself down on the toilet lid, flinging off her sandals so that one lands in the shower stall and the other is under the sink, “is that I didn’t catch any buzz about Barns’s ho-mo-sex-u-all proclivities from ExxonMobilCBS/PBS. And since I work for the other news outlet….” She shrugs extravagantly, palms in the air, “His secret seems to be safe in the hands of moi—and the mouth of mystery-boy.” She raises her eyebrows suggestively, then seems to notice me—wet and naked—for the first time.

“Oh, mama,” she crosses the little room with two lanky strides and slides onto my naked lap. “This is what I like to find when I get home,” she murmurs into my neck, her dark hair, fine as spider’s thread, on my cheek. “My silver-maned San Fran—damp and bare and so delicious.” She continues nibbling my neck, her fingers tracing circles around my nipples, which harden pronto. There’s something to be said for having a lover twenty years younger, who still thinks that sex is an exciting, new sport.

I chuckle, grab her hands and hold them gently behind her back. “Hey Photon, much as I’d love to roll you off to bed, don’t you want to talk about what happened today?”

“No, fuck it. I don’t even want to think about it.” She tosses her head, slides a hand out of my grasp and puts her arm around my neck. “Let’s just pretend you’re the CFR candidate and I’m your naive intern, ready to commit mortal sins in the name of campaign victory.” Seeing the two of us in the foggy mirror, I marvel for the eight-hundredth time that I snagged Serena: young, smart, ambitious, AB, and as dirty as a minister’s daughter and a cop’s son, all rolled into one. “Come here, you.” I kiss and bite her lip ’til it bleeds and Serena is groaning, writhing in my lap.

“Hey Coleman!” The dog looks up groggily from the cool bathroom tile where she’d been napping. “Let’s go, buddy! Mama’s gettin’ lucky!” Holding Coleman’s harness in my left hand, I expertly steer the opposite wheel with my right. We whip down the hall to the bedroom. “Mm, strong arms,” Serena croons, running her nails up and down my biceps. She breathes like Marilyn Monroe, “I just love a woman with arms.”

“Good thing,” I poke Serena in the side, making her giggle, as she scoots under the covers, “Cuz if you were a leg woman I’d be shit-out-of-luck.”

“Eh,” Serena scoffs, “legs are overrated” as she slides down to where mine end—where my knees would be. “It’s what’s between them that counts,” she murmurs, nuzzling my bush. I haul her back up to me and kiss her, hard.

By now we’ve been together eight years, so we know which buttons to press, which words to whisper. Today, it takes us twenty minutes, tops. First, I pin her down and finger-fuck her, the heel of my palm slapping her clit, telling her she’s a nasty girl for liking it. She arches and shudders satisfyingly. Then she slides down and darts her nimble tongue in and out of my cunt, begging forgiveness for being a dirty girl, promising she’ll make it up to Mama by making me come—which she does.

By unspoken agreement, we keep our fetish to ourselves. After all the teasing we endured at the beginning of our relationship from both circles of friends—mine howling about me “robbing the cradle” and hers giggling that an experienced woman was one thing, but a crone was another—our alacrity at slipping into Mama/girl play feels too close to the bone.

Besides, the age gap isn’t necessarily the biggest difference between us. Yes, it’s part of what makes us look so unlike: her—tall, willowy, long-haired, creamy skinned, appearing younger than her scant twenty-eight years. Me, who would be short even if I had legs, husky, blunt-cut steel-gray hair, my face wrinkled and scarred by old acne. More essential are our inner opposites: her fieriness, my calm; her chattiness, my brevity; her impulsiveness, my cool calculation. Without her I’d go to bed every night at nine o’clock with a book in my hand. Without me she’d leave late every morning, sans equipment, keys, or any decent food in her stomach or bag. Really, the one place we’ve always come together—in all senses—without fights or the need for negotiation, is in the sack. There, we fall into each other’s rhythm. The rest, well, the train runs, but it’s definitely taken some major engineering skills to get all the parts moving in the same direction.

The aftermath to this afternoon’s fuck is running true to our oppositional styles. I feel energized, restless, and know I’ll be spending the night on the net. Serena conks out right after I come. She’s snoring softly. I call it her “girly snore” because it’s got a quiet, weepy sound that she almost never has in her “hard as nails” street persona. My snore, on the other hand, Serena likens to “drowning water buffalo with hay fever.” That’s one of her less endearing pet names for me. But even the obnoxious ones feel tender, somehow—unique. Like, everyone else calls me Fran, which suits me fine. It’s the normal and obvious nickname for my not so run-of-the-mill given name, San Francisco, the city where my fathers met.

Serena called me Sisco at first, which later morphed into Sis. I’ve pointed out many times that this moniker supports people’s already annoyingly common misconception that we’re sisters, or that I’m a nun. After all, how else could a crip like me be out with a hottie like her? But for Serena that’s half the fun: calling me “Sis” loudly in a restaurant and then lazily running her tongue up my throat and into my mouth. I’m far too familiar with strangers staring at me to share that particular thrill.

Still, since I got involved with Serena, half the looks we get are envious, hungry stares—at her, of course—a startling change from the pity and NutraSweet smiles I got when I used to emerge into the AB world solo. Of course, a lot of the stares are still quite nasty—that we have the effrontery to appear in public together: this raven-haired dish with her endless legs, and grizzled old me and my stumps. It’s not limited to dirty looks, either. Men, women, they’ll call out to Rena—even grab her—“Why’re you with that (shoulder jerk toward me) compostable? I’ve got what you need (crotch grab or Bible thump, depending on the situation) right here. Let her rot.”

Oh, my Rena—she’s no fun when that happens. I like that she’s a hellcat, but there’s a limit. She’ll be screaming, “I got what I need right here!” and thump my back so hard that my eyes water, “and here” and then she’ll grab for her crotch or mine, whichever’s more convenient or shocking for the situation. No matter how calmly I explain that it’s better to ignore people, that she’s escalating the situation—or plead with her that it embarrasses me and makes me a target, she doesn’t see the danger. The only way I’ve found to short-circuit her tirades is a little trick I taught Coleman. I just give Coleman a minute thumb’s up signal and she grabs Rena’s pants or skirt and pulls back. Totally flips Rena out. She’s such a clotheshorse, and practically everything she owns is some silky, dry-clean-only garment. Coleman’s ruined several beloved minidresses and gauzy pants suits this way, but there’s no denying its effectiveness as a distraction. Rena starts shrieking at the dog to let go and forgets about whatever human asshole had earned her wrath. I pretend to scold Coleman, but then I slip her a few treats while Rena’s not looking. The funny thing is that Rena is convinced that the dog acts this way out of a natural instinct—that Coleman senses that public confrontations upset me and is trying to protect me. Of course, I act all amazed and impressed with Rena’s brilliant insight into canine psychology for coming up with this theory. Not only does it save my marriage, but the Foundation would take Coleman away if they knew I trained my assistance dog to do something that could be seen as “aggressive,” not to mention the Foundation’s policy of prohibiting clients from training any new behaviors. So, Coleman and I just keep it to ourselves. Works great for both of us—she helps me shut down Rena, and in return I give her extra goodies.

I get my goodies, too. This is the perverse thing: after one of these altercations, when Rena and I get home, the woman practically rips my clothes off. And it’s never our routine fare. I know I shouldn’t be so into it. I know that with every thrust of her tongue or fingers, every bite of her teeth and nails, she is screaming in her head at the latest asshole who has judged me—and by extension, her—to be living a wasted life. It’s revenge sex. It feels like revenge sex: angry and raw. We both like it rough, but sometimes when we’re bruised and sore the next day, I wonder if it was sex…or something else. Don’t get me wrong—we love each other, and we both come buckets when we fuck hard like that. In fact, after I’ve brought up welts on Rena’s ass, I can get my whole fist inside her. She’ll just turn into an orgasm machine: six, seven, eight in a row, my hand being crushed. I feel like God Almighty with this force I’m commanding through my arms, but also like I’m owning her in a way nobody else can—that I’ve got this freedom I never have otherwise. And it’s partly that she’s giving it to me, but it’s partly that I’m taking it, too.

Once, when I was fisting her like that, the bureau door was open, and I saw the expression on my face in the mirror. Freaked the shit out of me. I just pulled out and said I wasn’t in the mood anymore, that I wanted to go to sleep. She knew something was wrong, but I wouldn’t talk and eventually she had to let it drop. Now I make sure the bureau doors are shut before we fuck. I guess Serena isn’t the only one who wants revenge.

But this warm April evening, the Serena I’m tucking under the covers isn’t the raging, confrontational Serena, but the fragile, scared young woman who called me from her car. With her face smudged with makeup and tears, she looks like a little girl who got into trouble for playing with her mother’s make-up and cried herself to sleep. I leave quietly and rummage in the kitchen for another Booster Beverage. I shake some caffeine powder into it and head for my desk. It’s gonna be a long night.

Coleman settles under my desk as I open the net. My Not Dead Yet cell is Boston and surrounding. The connected cells are northeast Mass., southeast Mass., central Mass., and the Cape. We’re all part of the NDY Northeast Network, or Nornerk. Fortunately, there are four decent photographers in NDY Boston or connected, so I probably won’t have to deal with Nornerk.

I start with the person I know best, Jill, a post-post polio whose husband Burt clicks for MerrillChaseNBCFox. Jill could be a professional photographer, too—she’s that good—if she was allowed. She and Burt consider the photo equipment “communal marital property.” She told me at their wedding that that was a condition of their marriage, and I’ve never been sure if she was kidding or not. This evening, I catch her at the Perrier Cup between BMW Germany and IBM Brazil. Her curly red hair is extra frizzy in the windy stadium.

“Hey Fran,” Jill hisses, “I’m trying to enjoy a day off. Can’t we forget ERTD for just one day so I can watch a freakin’ football match? Burt’ll divorce me if I don’t spend some normy time with him.”

I hear a grumble from the seat to Jill’s left and catch the words “would be better off dead if y’all can’t take a day off….” Jill moves off screen. There’s a baritone “Ow! Okay, okay, need a sense of humor is all….” Then Jill’s face reappears, slightly flushed. I decide to dive back in before I cause any more marital disharmony. “I’m sorry Jill, but this is important. Serena’s gear got pinched. She’s only got one lousy analog. And she’s got a mondosanto story. I mean, gatesian big.”

“Yeah?” Jill shifts to the right, brings the net closer. “So, spill. Anything to do with who’ll be taking over the Pepsi Oval Office?”

“Sorry, I can’t.”

“Just a hint. Anything about EnMHAg’s additions to the Medical Detention Act?”

“No, it’s her scoop. But it’ll be good if she catches it—for all of us.” I realize too late I’ve come at this the wrong way. Jill’s leaning in, breathing heavy. She smells the story. I switch tacks.

“Serena’s so upset, you can’t imagine. She’s blaming herself for not being professional enough.” (True.) “She’s embarrassed to ask you herself—she looks up to you as a mentor.” (Not so true. Serena doesn’t really look up to anybody. She thinks she’s the best. And generally, she’s right.) “She’s crying so hard right now that she can’t even get the words out.” (Total lie. She can’t get the words out because she’s too busy making Z’s. But I might as well go whole-spam.) “Mascara smeared all over the armrest on the couch.”

“Alright,” Jill sighs, but is cut off as the crowd around her surges with cheers and shouts. A blue-jeaned ass obscures the right side of Jill’s face and she lets loose with a string of profanities long enough to decorate a Christmas tree. “One team must have scored,” she grouses. “But of course I won’t be able to see a fucking thing ’til these fucking ABs sit down!” she bellows uselessly.

“Forget the ABs for a sec, alright?”

“Okay, okay,” Jill looks me in the eye, her face softening. “We’re on vay-cay for another three days. Serena can come by and pick through what I’ve got. Except the new Nikon. I haven’t even had a chance to learn all the bells and whistles, myself.”

“Yeah, sure, of course—whatever you can do is great. Thank Burt, too. You won’t regret it, Jill. I owe you one.”