Punk and Zen (42 page)

“Marry me?”

“What?”

Samantha shifted and leaned up on an elbow to face me,
her eyes again glowing that deep, deep blue. “Marry me,” she asked again, with
that amazing smile, the one that had always reminded me of the sun coming out
from behind clouds, “marry me when you get back from your tour.”

How had she done that? Read my mind? Magic? Or
something I really knew nothing about? It was something I would have to get
used to, I thought, and surprised myself again.

I looked down our bodies, at the way we disappeared
into each other, at how her leg wrapped over my hip and mine fit between hers.

“I think I already did,” I smiled softly back at her,
“a long time ago.”

We didn’t sleep at all. We spent the rest of the night
mostly making love, although we took a few breaks—two for the bathroom and one
for water. We talked—about the past, about the present, about how amazing this
thing between us was. She wouldn’t talk about work, though.

“I can’t really tell you much about it right now,” was
all she said.

“Why, are you a government assassin or something?” I
teased.

For the first time that night, the sorrow that had
been banished from her eyes came back, and I was instantly sorry.

“Hey, I was only kidding,” I said and laid a hand on
her forearm.

“I know,” she smiled back, the sorrow hidden again,
but not fully, “and no, I’m not a government assassin.”

She flipped her arm over to take my hand, and that’s
when I saw it—the horizontal slashes across her wrist, the burn scar that
overlaid them. I wasn’t conscious of reaching for the charm that hung from my
neck, but as I rubbed it between my fingers, I could feel the similarity
between what I felt and what I saw. Samantha watched me silently until I
reached up to take the chain off my neck; I wanted to see if the charm matched
the scar.

“Don’t!” she warned, her hands immediately reaching
for mine, her fingers checking the security of the clasp. That’s when I saw the
scar on the other arm, also on the soft inside skin, midway between elbow and
wrist.

“Don’t
ever
take that off,” she told me with
dead solemnity. I ABC have no idea what my face must have said, but she
took my hands in hers and tried to explain. “That…it was a gift, a gift given
in love—it carries power.”

I stared at her, shocked at her words. A part of me
understood exactly what she meant, while another shied away. But the dominant
part drew my hands to her arm, pulling it to me so I could take a look at the
other scar.

It was burned into her skin like a brand, probably not
as raised as it had been when it was first made, but still, it stood in relief
to her skin, a shiny pale pink. I traced it with my fingertip, the exact size
and shape of the charm she wore.

“When did you do this?” I asked, looking up into her
eyes, eyes that had gone from deep blue to stormy gray.

“The day I spoke with Fran,” she said slowly, watching
for my reaction. “I had to sever a tie.”

I didn’t know what to think or make of that, but for
some reason, all I could think of was Candace—she’d broken her tie with
Candace. It would be a long, long time before I learned exactly how right and
wrong I was.

I carefully put her hand down on her knee and took up
the other. As I tracked the angry red lines that ran across her wrist, I could
viscerally feel the pain that had made her slash through her own skin, feel the
dark joy she had taken at the first bright red drops that had fallen, and
finally, the searing shock of a heated metal charm as it burned against the then
newly healed skin.

I can’t explain how much it hurt to see it, and
Samantha gasped when my tears fell on her wrist, running down the channels the
scars had left. She tried to pull her hand away, but I wouldn’t let her.
Instead I tenderly, carefully, kissed her scars.

“Why, baby?” I asked her, my words barely audible as
they tore their way up through my throat. “Why would you do that?” But I knew,
I knew, and my heart ached with the knowing as I looked up into her eyes,
wanting to hear what she would say.

Samantha gently took her wrist away and pulled me into
her arms, wrapping herself around me. “Shh…it’s over and I’m okay,” she
murmured into my ear as she rocked me, “you’re here, we’re here, it’s perfect.”
Once again, I was home and safe, safe in the circle of Samantha’s arms, safe as
I hadn’t been in years; only this time, instead of her graduating in June, I
was leaving in a few hours, and this time, I was the one who didn’t know when
I’d return—if ever. Hey, let’s be super-practical: shit happens, and some of
it’s pretty fuckin’ ugly bad.

I had things to tell her, things she had to know if
she’d meant what she’d said earlier.

“Samantha,” I stirred in her arms and faced her, “did
you mean that?”

“What?” she asked, kissing my shoulder, “about wanting
to get married?” ABC She stroked my cheek. “I’ve never meant anything
more,” she assured me softly, her mouth a sensual curve.

I took a breath. “We need to talk,” I told her
quietly, “before we discuss that again.”

Samantha reached around her neck and undid her chain,
coiling it and the little sword in her hand. “This is the third time it’s not
been on my neck,” she started, holding the ends out to put it on me. “The first
was when I burned it into my arm.” She stroked it as it lay on my chest, right
over my heart, just below the ankh. She kissed it and the skin that lay beneath
it.

“Now,” she said, “I wear it always,” and she took my
hand and laid it on her arm, over the brand. “Wear this one until you bring it
back to me—you carry a part of me.” She smiled softly and ran her thumb against
my cheek. “What you tell me won’t change anything, I’m sure,” she said. “I’ve
been sure since the first day I saw you.” She beamed at me with such gentle joy
that I had to kiss the corner of her lips, then taste them.

Still, either way, I had to tell her.

“Sam,” I spoke finally, “even if you’re that sure,”
and I smiled as I took her hands, “there’s stuff you need to know—things that
must come from me so that nothing,” I paused as I thought of how to explain,
“nothing surprises you, or anyone outright lies to you or paints a distorted
picture of the truth. No matter what the worst of it is, you heard it from me,
and you heard it from me first.”

In the past several years I’d learned one super
gigunda lesson: people lied. They lied about themselves, they lied about you,
they lied to themselves and to you, and when they had enough, they lied about
the lies.

I had no idea how long Samantha was going to stay in
New York, I had no idea where she’d go or what she’d do, but I figured that I’d
probably met way too many people who’d be way too happy to put in a bad word
for me. At least this way, no matter what anyone told her, she wouldn’t have to
ask herself, “Would/did Nina do/say that?” She’d know; I did, or I didn’t.
Anything that deviated from that? Wasn’t true.

Samantha nodded. “Tell me then, baby, tell me what you
think I need to know.”

I did. Everything. From Trace to Fran and all the
stuff in between. When I spoke about Candace (and I kept
that
brief),
her arms stiffened around me.

“All Candace ever told me was that you were beautiful,
you were sensually generous to a fault, and that you were a law unto yourself.”

Huh? I thought. “I, uh, I don’t understand,” I said
instead. Hey, I wasn’t about to act dumb in front of my potential future, um,
whatever, right?

“It means,” Samantha explained, tightening her arms
around me again and rocking me back against her, “that you, love,” she kissed
my neck, “wouldn’t ABC let her touch you.”

Her lips trailed sensually up my neck, and her hands
wreaked havoc on my body as she rolled the nipple of my breast with one, making
me sigh, and slid the other down to my pussy. She began to stroke my
clit—delicate, long strokes that made me roll my head back to search for her
mouth while my cunt moved of its own volition into her hands.

“Yes,” I hissed sharply as her fingers quested lower
and she shifted her thumb to my clit. She slowly but firmly entered me.

“God, if I’d only known sooner…” she murmured into my
ear.

All I could do was groan her name as she pistoned into
my cunt, and I met her every stroke. She let go of my nipple and reached for my
clit instead, milking it.

“I want to suck on that,” she growled and shoved deep,
deep inside me, sending shocks into my throat.

“I want to touch you,” I groaned, desperately caught
between the ever-growing, ever-better, satisfying cunt throb and the absolute
hunger to bury myself into her, into her cunt any way I could.

“Soon, baby, I promise,” she swore into my ear,
“just…just come for me, now, like this, in my arms and wrapped around you.” Her
words were positively sweet and loving, and somehow they blended beautifully
with the absolute gut-level way she pumped me, pushing me closer and closer to
that point of light.

“Samantha?” I practically gulped for air as I asked
her, almost at the edge of thought, wanting to take her with me and wanting
even more to give her something that was unmistakably hers and hers alone. “Can
I ask you something?”

“Anything, baby, anything,” she assured me, her voice
ragged.

I knew she was close too, almost as close as I was,
and knowing how entirely turned on she was pushed me even closer. I trailed one
hand up and over her shoulder to her neck, pulling her down to my mouth so I
could feel her lips on mine. The other I trailed along the tensed muscles of
her forearm. I circled her wrist lightly and felt the straining tendons, then
let my fingers flow down her hand, feeling how wet I really was, the amazing
vanishing point where she drove into me again and again.

I took a long breath—and went with it.

“Fuck me, baby. Please fuck me.”

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

Trans-Europe
Express

All my life I waited for a ABC time

For a dream to come that’s locked inside my mind

And my days? I paint the ceiling blue

And I tell everyone that it’s got nothing to do with
you

“Paint the Ceiling
Blue”—Life Underwater

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

We flew to Heathrow, and my first glimpse of London
was from inside a train-tunnel in a car packed with people and equipment,
followed by a dizzying unpacking session, loading everything into a car,
dropping it off—somewhere—and then being driven to a hall. Stephie, Jerkster,
and I were handed sandwiches and, of all things, cups of Tang—ugh!—told to
hurry up and eat, our sound check was in ten minutes. It was a good thing we’d
worked our set out before the flight—which I managed to sleep through until the
last few minutes.

That was the relaxing start. After the show we
unloaded from the stage and packed all our crap into a van—we had another show
in less than twenty hours. Played still another in Leeds and a third in
Liverpool. Slept on a train to Glasgow. We learned to like cucumbers and
watercress. Okay, that’s a lie. I liked them, Stephie barely tolerated them,
and Jerkster would eat anything that didn’t crawl fast.

We caught another train back to London, then Heathrow,
then a flight to France. I didn’t get to see the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre in
person, dammit. A cold-water shower in a shared apartment in Paris—and I
couldn’t remember how to ask where the bathroom was! Boy, did that ever result
in some mayhem, because I kept ending up in a washroom. Argh! Paulie-Boy took
the time to explain to Jerkster what a bidet was.

From France, we took trains everywhere—and it was
absolutely no fun waiting at a station madly paranoid about getting everyone and
their gear on board. Train food was mostly these weird little sausages that
tasted somewhat like hot dogs, with lots of coffee in the morning, more weird
little sausages with wine at night. I’d never had so much coffee before, but it
was either that or Tang orange-flavored crap. Why does everyone think Americans
drink Tang? Everyone knows that you can use that stuff to scrub your bathroom
with. And another thing—what’s with the wax-style toilet paper? Sheesh!

There were broken strings in Belgium and the hunt for
their replacements—I think in Antwerp. The little bit of French I knew did me
absolutely no good there because they spoke Flemish—that wasn’t even an option
in any of the schools I went to! Ended up ordering strings from the
States—Mandolin Brothers, to be precise.

Graham took us out to drink absinthe somewhere—I don’t
even know where anymore, if I even knew at the time. I kept dreaming about
swords, vampires, and Tang. I think I was more afraid of the Tang. Then more
traveling. We slept ten on the floor in Berlin where people said we were
absolut
uber feist
, which I think meant we were cool, and learned that it was okay
to call the booking agent (who occasionally forgot to pay us)
das Arschlock
,
then showered in cold water again in Prague. It ABC was back to Germany
for one night (!) and we raced from there to Paris. There may have been
breathtaking views into Spain, but I slept, one hand wrapped around my guitar,
and I think both Stephie and I leaned against Jerkster—he made a good pillow.