Punk and Zen (34 page)

“Perhaps because she wasn’t yours to begin with?” she
answered.

I gave her a hug and a kiss to remind her I was there,
and she looked over her shoulder at me and threw me another brilliant smile,
then settled more comfortably against me.

“Well, perhaps you’re right,” Candace laughed, “but
then again, who could tame that? Hold on…are you saying that’s her?”

Fran said nothing, she visibly stiffened and angled
forward.

I straightened with a sigh. It seemed like the moment
we’d been so carefully avoiding was upon us, like a bucket of water perched on
a door frame. It hadn’t fallen yet, but we were about to get soaked.

I reached over to the nightstand and grabbed my
cigarettes.

“Oh, Annie, come here, this is just too rich,” I could
hear Candace call in the background. “Francesca has bagged my bird.”

Fuck it. I lit her a butt too, as she raised eyes
filled with anger and pain to me.

“It’s okay,” I whispered and tried to give her a
smile. Hers was small and tight in return as she took the cigarette I gave her.
We both knew I lied.

And then, I heard it, through the miles, through the
static and that ridiculous tiny speaker. There was no mistaking that sound, the
sound I thought I’d never hear again—

Samantha’s laugh as she picked up the phone on her
end.

“Hey, Fran,” I heard her greet, still laughing,
“Candace has convinced me to go back to the States for a visit, and since I
have some things to take care of, it’ll be New York specifically. Can I use the
keys?”

She looked at me, trying to gauge my reaction, and I
shook my head, not knowing what to say, because the moment I heard that voice,
a tingle had spread through my skin until it felt like the top of my head, no,
my whole body, was going to dissolve into an electric spark.

Fran took a slow, deep breath. “When were you thinking
of coming?” she asked, exhaling softly.

I decided to stare at the wall. I didn’t want to hear
this conversation, but I couldn’t help it. I could at least pretend I wasn’t
paying attention.

“Why, Fran, is that a no?” Sam, I mean Annie, chuckled
sarcastically.

“Of course not,” she answered, obviously flustered.
She jumped off the bed and began to pace. “It’s just that I’m leaving for
California in a few days and…”

My head snapped back around. “California?” I mouthed
at her, shocked. I don’t know why I was so surprised—I mean, that’s where she’d
done her ABC internship, and where she wanted to go after she was done
with her studies, and I knew that. But it was so far.

She nodded at me and continued her conversation. “…and
I was just wondering if we’d get a chance to meet on your trip.” Fran breathed
hard, her entire body was flushed, and as she paced the floor again, she bit
her lip nervously.

“Oh,” Annie answered, “I thought perhaps you were
trying to keep your new girl a secret.”

Her lips tightened. “Annie, I just thought that—”

“I’ve an idea!” Annie interrupted. “Let’s go to the
Red Spot and see if we can find Candace’s favorite attempt!”

“Ann, don’t go there,” she warned. “That’s a hell of
way to talk about an old friend—and someone you haven’t even—”

Annie blithely ignored her and spoke over her.

“Sounds like she’s enough to take us all on. Maybe
it’ll take all of us to keep her, what do you say?” She laughed.

“Watch your fucking mouth, Blade.” She spoke sharply,
fire cracking through her voice.

It hurt to hear those words come through the phone, to
know that Candace had considered me more casual than I had thought. I’d
considered us, at the very least, anyway, friends. But it hurt even more to
know that after all these months, Samantha, I mean, Ann, Annie, whatever, had
not only not tried to get in touch with me, but that I was probably the source
of foreplay conversation between her and Candace.

The concept made me nauseous, crumbled something
inside me. I looked up from my introspection to see Fran’s eyes focused on me,
fiercely concerned, hurt for me. She gestured to ask if I’d take the phone.

There was absolutely no fucking way, and I shook my
head violently. “Candace knew how to get in touch with me. She could have
called me months ago,” I said in an angry stage whisper.

For fuck’s sake, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t worked at
the same place for months, and it wasn’t as if Mickey and everyone at the Red
Spot didn’t get in touch with me from time to time. If someone had tried to
find me there, Mickey would have passed the information on to me. I knew that
for certain because he had. Fucked up, this was fucked up.

I jumped out of bed and stretched, then crushed the
cigarette I hadn’t been smoking in the ashtray.

“Blade? Blade? You haven’t called me that since…” The
phone went silent ABC a moment, and as I focused on crushing the
remaining embers, I glanced over at Fran long enough to see the spark flaring
in her eyes.

“Since?” she prompted, her lips twisted in an angry
curve.

“C’mon,
Kitt
,” Annie drawled sarcastically,
“don’t fuck around. You know how I—”

“How you feel about her,
Sam
?” she interrupted.
“Yeah, in fact, I do, every day. So watch your fucking mouth.”

I couldn’t listen to any more of this—not that voice,
not that tone, and not Fran’s responses. There was silence on the other end as
I stalked to the closet, grabbed the closest T-shirt I could find, and yanked
it over my head. I looked at it as I strode to the door.
Love and Rockets
,
Vida Loca
, or “crazy life” in English. How appropriate, I thought.

“Where you going?” Fran asked me in a worried
undertone.

I gave her the best smile I could manage. “Just
getting us some water.” With the way my legs shook and threatened to buckle
under me while waves rose in my gut and punched my throat, I figured I needed a
bottle—and Fran looked like she could use some, too.

I opened the door just in time to hear Sam’s voice cut
across the planet. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

Fran closed her eyes and swallowed before she
answered. “You know what? I wish I was.”

I closed the door quietly behind me as I padded to the
kitchen. Fuck. I’d forgotten my smokes. Back to the bedroom for me, then. I
entered to see Fran had sat down again on the edge of the bed, smoking one of
my cigarettes while she gripped the phone in her other hand.

“Hey, don’t blame me, this isn’t my fuckin’ fault,”
she fumed into the mouthpiece. “Candace should have told you about Nina months
ago,” she said as I quickly grabbed my pack and left again.

I could barely hear the reply squawk to that—for which
I was grateful. My heartbeat hadn’t returned to normal yet.

I waved to catch her attention as I reached the door
and blew her a kiss. This might not have been the world’s happiest moment, but
no matter who liked it or not, Francesca DiTomassa and Nina Boyd had something
going. Besides, I loved her and didn’t want her to think I’d forgotten.

She gave me a sweet and sad smile, then blew me a kiss
in return. I spent a moment miming that it had landed on my cheek, caught it,
and put it down my shirt, rubbing it over my heart. Fran grinned, and I sent
her another one before I left.

Once in the kitchen, I forgot all about getting some
water. I sat at the table and simply stared out the window where it overlooked
the fire escape as I smoked. Finally, I muscled up the frame and sat on the ledge,
just staring at the sky, watching my smoke float into it. The metal from the
fire escape was a little too cold on my bare feet, so I tucked them up into the
frame where I’d wedged myself—back against one side, feet on the other.

I thought of absolutely nothing, and I don’t know how
many cigarettes I smoked before Fran came into the room. She’d put on my shirt,
the one I’d been going to wear to the show, over a pair of sleep shorts.

“Do you want to talk with her?”

I took a deep drag, then exhaled. “No,” I said and
shook my head, “I don’t. She could have found me months ago.” I took another
deep drag and exhaled slowly before I faced her. “You didn’t tell me you were
going to California.”

Fran eyed me, a bit warily I thought. She didn’t have
to worry—I wasn’t going to bite.

“I was going to tell you, before the phone rang.” She
walked over and put a hand on my shoulder.

I blew the rest of the smoke out the window, then put
my free arm around her waist, swinging my legs back in and onto the floor. Fran
took the cigarette from my hand and took a drag while I put my other arm around
her, burying my head against her ribs.

“Don’t go,” I asked quietly. “Stay with me or,” and as
it occurred to me, I thought it was a brilliant idea, “delay a few days and
I’ll go with you.”

Fran gave a light laugh under her breath as she
stroked through my hair and rubbed the back of my neck.

“I have to,” she answered just as solemnly. “It’s the
only time I can, where I’m…it has to be now.”

“Why?” I asked, kissing her nipple through the shirt.
I accidentally tore the button when I reached for the curve of her breast. “Why
now?”

Her fingertips strayed from my neck and began to dig
into my shoulder as I breathed across her hardening nipple.

“Because…” she sighed as I teased that hardened end
with my teeth. “There are some cycles you can’t break…just like that…” She
pressed my head against her while I massaged her beautifully firm ass with one
hand. The other began making the journey where I knew it would please us both
most.

When I reached the junction of her thigh and slipped
beneath the leg of the shorts she was wearing, I smiled because they had been a
gift from me.

“Don’t…don’t you want to talk about it?” Fran gasped
as I pressed along the tendon, then ran my thumb along the groove.

I looked up at her finally, to see her undoubtedly
trying to be rational, though her eyes were half hooded with desire. “No,” I
told her, my breath ragged with want, the need to touch her, “I just want you.”

“She didn’t know…Candace didn’t tell her.”

I heard her words, but they had no meaning, although
some part of my brain realized that Candace had lied—to all of us; she’d known
from the beginning exactly who I was. But right now, it didn’t matter, it
didn’t matter at all. Fran, my glorious Kitt, was before me, and the scent of
her desire was burning through my mind. All I wanted to do was make her call my
name, her voice a trumpet to the sky when she did.

“I don’t care,” I told her as my fingers grazed her
cleft. God, she was wet and she was mine. “Kiss me,” I demanded, and she did,
her mouth perfectly sensual, demanding, against mine.

I slid my fingers between her folds and glided along
her ache, enjoying the moan that sang from her lips as I focused long strokes
on her clit. My other hand had strayed from her delicious ass, and I pressed my
fingers, gently insistent, into her waiting cunt.

Fran gasped and swayed, trapped between my arms and
hands. I guided her to me, onto my lap.

“God, baby!” I choked out when her pussy encased my
fingers and she threw her arms around me. She raised herself off me only to
shift her hips a bit, because when she sat back down, she shoved me deep inside
of her. Her face glowed and her eyes were both tender and fierce as she grabbed
my shoulders.

“Kitt, baby, baby Kitt…you are so beautiful…just so
fucking beautiful,” I whispered into her ear because it was true, so true. I
burned with the vision of her, lived and died with her breathless sighs, and I
wanted more—more of her. I teased another finger by her cunt, feeling the other
ones fly into her while my other hand lavished attention on her hard, hard
clit.

“God yes, please…just…please…” she gasped as I began
to slide that third finger inside her.

Ohgodohgodohgod I was going to die I was going to
come—her pussy was so hot and tight, and she was so fucking amazing.

“Is this what you need, baby, is this what you want?”
I breathed out as she pushed herself onto me again, and I was so deep inside
her I could feel her womb, its hard prominence pressing against the back of my
fingers. She rubbed her face against mine.

“Yes…” she hissed in that satisfied my-cunt-is-full
voice as she rode me, her body a sensual wave, her pussy gliding off my ABC
fingers. “Just…God,” she groaned aloud when I was sheathed in her
again. I began to thrust into her—shorter thrusts, deeper thrusts, loving her,
wanting her, needing her inside me, under my skin like bones, in my cunt like
God.

“Just what, baby?” I asked as she buried her head in
my shoulder.

“Don’t stop,” she groaned into my neck, “don’t fucking
stop.”

Her words set me free and my body jolted with the
feeling. I began to fuck her, really and truly fuck her with everything I
had—my heart, my mind, I poured my soul out into her cunt through my fingers.

“I won’t,” I swore wildly as her pussy gripped me
tighter. God, her clit was so hard and so big I wanted it in my mouth, between
my lips, under my tongue.