The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica (18 page)

Then she located her belt and re-holstered her weapon. Before leaving the bedroom, she reached into her back pants pocket and pulled out a small gift card. A dark red rose was embossed on its
cover.

Lina read it out loud to Ruth’s corpse.

“To Ruth,” she said. “From your former husband’s family business associates. Best wishes in the afterlife.” She threw the card onto her lover’s body.
Ruth’s blood began to seep onto the heavy paper. “I made sure the funeral could be open-casket, baby. I hope you appreciate the effort.”

On her way out of the apartment, Lina tossed the bouquet of roses into the trash.

Flowers in the Garden

Antonia Nardellini

Rose swore under her breath as she realized her keys were still laying on the hall table where she had dropped them the night before. She caught the door before it closed and
retrieved her keys. Steve would make an issue of it if I did that again, Rose thought to herself as she let herself out of the house again, making sure she had her purse with her. She’d left
that behind a time or two lately.

She walked down to the corner, grateful the weather was decent and not rainy, because she wasn’t sure how long a wait she had until the next bus came. Thankfully, there was no one else
waiting yet, so she sat down on the bench.

As she settled herself on the seat she reached into her handbag and pulled out the crumpled piece of newspaper she had read and reread for the last two days.

Katherine Anne Peters, nee Weston, born
. . . She followed the words down until almost the end. There it was.
Survived by
. . . Again she read the name.

Thirty years it had been. Amazing how the days and the years just flew by. Rose stood as she saw the bus she needed turn the corner and wheeze to a stop in front of her. Hiking up her dress just
a bit to reach the first step, she pulled herself aboard the bus and deposited her token into the machine as the driver nodded at her and closed the door. She found a seat very near to the front
and sat down next to the window.

Rose had been a newlywed then. She didn’t even know how to cut a whole chicken into pieces for frying. That’s where it began, then. With the chicken and rice. Funny how she had just
remembered that.

She’d been married to Mike. The love of her life, she told everyone. The man of her dreams and her best friend. She chuckled to herself as the bus came to another stop and some teens got
on and went to sit in the back of the bus.

But it was the chicken. Mike had told her he’d love it if she made chicken and rice in the oven and have it ready when he got home after working the second shift at General Motors.

She had told him she’d have it ready for him, and there she stood, with a whole chicken she didn’t know how to cut up and no cookbooks in the entire apartment. It was nine
o’clock at night and she didn’t know who she could call for help. When the phone rang she was so startled she dropped the knife she was threatening the chicken with.

“Rose? It’s me, Melody. Did I wake you up?”

Rose laughed. “No, you didn’t. I’m wide awake and trying to guess how to cut a chicken into pieces for Mike’s dinner.”

Melody chuckled then, too. “Just start with the leg, Rose. Pull it out from the body and cut real close. It’s not
that
hard.”

“Right,” she had replied. “My hands are shaking as it is. I’m going to butcher this thing so badly that Mike won’t know what kind of animal he’s
eating!” The laughter took some of the tension Rose had been feeling from her body.

“Look, if you want, I’ll come over and show you how to do it. It’s not like I’m doing anything right now.”

“I can’t ask you to do that! It’s nine o’clock. After, now,” she said while turning and looking at the clock.

But she had come. And she had brought her own knife in a sheath. She had done the first leg, and made Rose do the second one. She had done the first wing and made Rose do the other. She split
the breast and also showed Rose the special parts to clean out where leftover innards still clung. She helped her put together her chicken and rice for Mike, then they sat down cross-legged on the
couch with glasses of white wine and began to talk.

Melody was Rose’s brother-in-law’s current girlfriend. She didn’t much care for her brother-in-law, but Melody seemed to be crazy about him.

“Rose, I think Dan is going to break up with me,” Melody told her.

“What? Don’t be silly,” Rose had replied. “If he was, I surely would have heard something and I haven’t.” She took a long drink of her wine then went to fetch
the bottle from the kitchen counter where she’d left it.

As she made herself comfortable on the couch again she saw that Melody really was upset. Tears spilled out of her green eyes and down her cheeks.

Rose remembered that moment now. All of a sudden she had seen Melody with new eyes. She was beautiful, with her long, chestnut-coloured-hair, and her perfect body. She made Rose feel fat and
awkward.

Rose put her glass of wine on the coffee table and sat next to Melody and wrapped her arms around her. She remembered thinking that Melody was like a hurt doe and just needed to know that
someone cared. As Melody sobbed into her shoulder, she stroked her hair and patted her back. The smell of her hair and her perfume wafted up and Rose unconsciously buried her nose deeper in
Melody’s hair. She took a deep breath and felt the softness of Melody’s breasts brushing up against hers. She squeezed her tighter and let her right hand fall to Melody’s side and
she gently cupped a breast to see if it really was as soft as it felt against her chest. Melody made no movement to stop her. She dropped her hand down and under the blouse Melody was wearing and
in a move she could never understand, unclasped her bra and took an unencumbered female breast that wasn’t her own into her hand for the first time in her life.

That’s when Melody raised her head and looked at Rose. Rose put her other hand underneath the shirt and took the other breast in her hand. She felt Melody’s nipples harden underneath
her palms and wasn’t aware that her breathing was coming in short gasps. She leaned toward Melody and gave her a gentle kiss on the lips, and liking it, gave her another. They touched tongues
and Rose felt as if her body was on fire. She pinched Melody’s nipples just a bit and heard an answering gasp.

She stood up then and held out a hand to Melody. Without a word she took it, and Rose led her back to the bedroom. Melody stood there as Rose slowly undressed her, taking in every bit of her
loveliness. In the half light from the kitchen, Rose laid her on the bed and ran her hands over every inch of Melody’s body before leaning over and taking a nipple into her mouth and gently
sucking on it.

Melody moaned. Rose’s hand dropped down to caress her stomach, her belly button, and going further, she ran a hand up the inside of Melody’s thighs just to feel the softness of her
skin. She found the furry mound, and knowing her own, she quickly found the nub of pleasure and gently stroked that with a finger.

Melody grabbed Rose’s head with her hands and brought their faces together for another kiss, an urgent kiss, and Melody was fumbling with the buttons on Rose’s shirt and the bra and
then they were naked together on the bed and their hands seemed to be everywhere at once.

Rose straddled her then, kissing her face, then her neck, moving to her breasts and down her stomach. She backed off the bed and, stroking Melody’s inner thighs, got her to open her legs.
She slid a finger inside, then two, then gently stroked her clitoris while Melody writhed and moaned. Pulling her fingers out, Rose then bent to take a taste, and then another and then another.
Reaching up with her hands, she played with Melody’s nipples while Melody’s hands lay on top of hers. It was over too quickly. Melody came with a rushing force and Rose had to hold her
hands to keep her from crushing her face into her crotch and drowning her.

Afterwards, Melody had brought Rose to orgasm with her fingers and then they had lain in the bed, talking in soft whispers while their hands roved over each other’s body.

Later, they had taken a shower together, each backed into a corner of the shower and brought to orgasm again using soap and gentle rubbing. They washed each other’s hair and dried each
other off, stopping to nibble and taste and kiss.

Melody left and fifteen minutes later Mike was home to eat his slightly overdone chicken and rice.

The bus wheezed to another stop and Rose, shaken out of her daydream, realized her stop was a block before. She got up and made her way to the front of the bus and out on to the sidewalk.

Today she would see Melody for the first time in thirty years. She was scared, she realized. She sat down on the bench by the bus stop to gather her thoughts.

Melody had been correct; Dan did break up with her, but that only meant that they could steal more time together. They experimented with sex toys and vibrators and tasty body oils. They bought
edible underwear and ate them off each other. They bought sexy lingerie for each other and wore it when they got together. They had whipped cream and shaving cream.

She remembered the weekend Mike went fishing with “the guys” and she and Melody had spent the weekend together. She remembered the way Melody’s naked body looked in the
moonlight as they lay on the living room floor in Melody’s town-house. She remembered holding her all night as they slept in each other’s arms. She remembered being woken up by
Melody’s tongue playing songs across her bare skin.

Six months they had loved each other by then. Six months of pleasure and sharing with Melody while her marriage went down the tubes. Strangely, she never saw the end coming. She thought that she
was maintaining her double life rather well. At least until Mike came home and packed a bag and said he’d “had it” and was leaving. That was two months after the weekend of
fishing.

He had told her, “I knew you and Melody had a little something going on. I just didn’t think you’d carry it on this long.”

He hadn’t gone fishing, it turned out. He’d spied on her and followed her and had even peeked into the windows and seen them making love on the floor.

Surprisingly, Rose felt devastated. She knew her parents would be disappointed in her and what could she tell them about the reasons her marriage came to an end? Surely not the truth.

Rose sighed. She wanted children – eventually. She wanted a little house with a white picket fence and a flower garden. She didn’t want to settle for anything less than her
dreams.

“I can give you most of that,” Melody had said then, her deep, green eyes full of love and longing. “We can build a life together. I’ll make you happy, Rose. You will be
the most beautiful flower in my garden of life. Come live with me and be my love.”

But Rose had been horrified. “I’m not a lesbian, Melody. I can’t live with you! What would people say? What would my
family
say?”

And so, she had run. She had run so fast and so hard that thirty years had passed and here she sat, trying to work up the nerve to go see Melody one more time. Perhaps one last time.

“Are you all right, lady?”

Rose looked up to see a young man standing in front of her with a look of concern on his face. “Are you lost or something?”

Rose smiled. “No, I’m not lost. But thank you for asking. I’m just resting a bit before I go to church.” She smiled again.

“OK, if you say so,” the young man said. “But you looked a little lost and confused there for a couple of minutes.”

“I’m fine. Really. Thank you for caring. I’ll just be on my way before I’m late,’ she said as she got up from the bench.

Katherine had battled leukaemia for over a year, her obituary said.
Time enough for family and friends to say their good-byes,
Rose thought.
But still too young. Still so many years
taken away from her.

She made her way to the corner, then turned left. Half way down the block on the right side of the street was Saint Matthew’s. That’s where Melody’s sister was, lying in a
coffin while priests said Mass concerning her eternal soul.

Rose wasn’t sure she had made the right decision. Maybe coming to this funeral was a terrible idea.

But she had to
know.
She had to find out if the years had been kind to Melody. She needed to know that Melody had found love and had been happy. She needed to know that her leaving
hadn’t ruined Melody’s life.

Rose crossed the street and went up the steps to the church and went inside before her courage failed her. She took a seat in a pew two rows behind the last person on the right hand side of the
church and caught her breath while she looked around.

Her hand reached up to her neck and found the crucifix there. How funny that she still had it after all the years.

She had taken it from around Melody’s neck one night and said, “This I will keep as something to remember you by,” and they had both laughed because they really didn’t
believe it would ever end between them.

But it had. Rose had run and Melody had never called.

Rose had wondered in the intervening years what she would have done had Melody just called her once to ask her to reconsider. Would she have? Would she have defied her family and followed her
heart?

Rose had married again. She had a son, Steven, who lived nearby, and a daughter, Patricia, who didn’t. She had stayed married to their father for twenty-seven years until he had a heart
attack driving to work and died. That was two years ago.

It wasn’t until her husband died that Rose realized how unhappy she had been for most of her life.

The children brought a certain amount of joy to her life, for sure, and there had been happy moments and times along the way. But Rose realized she was just going through the motions of what she
thought others expected her life to be and here she was, approaching the end of her and wishing she had done things differently.

I would have been happy with Melody, she thought to herself. After all these years I can finally admit it to myself. I made the biggest mistake of my life thirty years ago. I wasted my whole
life. I can never get that time back.