Josephine released her. "I... I don"t understand."
"Remember how I said I had something to show you?" Rosie pulled off her long black gloves and unb.u.t.toned her dress until she stood before Josephine in just her chemise.
Josephine, who was used to causing shock in others but not to being shocked herself, gasped. Rosie"s fair skin-her shoulders, arms and hands, her legs and feet, were now decorated with trailing green vines, thorns, and leaves which led to fully blooming red roses. On her left forearm a b.u.t.terfly lit on a rose. On her right thigh, a hummingbird fluttered over another rose to sip its nectar. A honeybee hovered above a blossom on her shoulder.
"You see," Rosie said. "I"m not Rosie Bell anymore. I am La Belle Rose, the Tattooed Lady. And my life isn"t out there with the ordinary people. It"s here with you."
Josephine moved closer and trailed a finger down a snaking vine on her arm. "So beautiful. But so much pain... for me?"
"It was nothing compared to the pain of being away from you."
When Josephine"s and Rosie"s lips met, the two worlds they knew-the normal world and the carnival world-faded to black, and there was nothing but the two of them.
Josephine led Rosie to the narrow cot, pushed her back, unb.u.t.toned her chemise and gasped again to find another surprise- Rosie"s lovely b.r.e.a.s.t.s were white and devoid of ink except for a heart-shaped vine tattooed on the left over Rosie"s own heart, with the name "Josephine" in script inside it.
With tears in her eyes, Josephine leaned to Rosie"s ear and whispered, "Your name is written on my heart, too."
Josephine kissed each picture on Rosie"s body: licking the rose petals, biting the b.u.mblebee, tracing her tongue and fingers up the vines that trailed from Rosie"s ankles to Rosie"s calves to Rosie"s thighs to the part of Rosie that was free of ill.u.s.tration and exactly the way Josephine remembered it. There Josephine lingered, her face dipping down like a nectar-thirsty hummingbird over a rose.
And to Rosie it felt like the speed of a hummingbird"s wings with which Josephine"s tongue flickered against that most sensitive spot. This sensation, she knew, was what she had always wanted even before she knew she wanted it. Rosie was soaring with joy, carnival lights shimmering in her head, her breath coming in great gasps, her hands tangled in Josephine"s long black hair. When the carnival lights burst into fireworks, she cried out, "Oh, Josephine! My sweetheart!" Her thighs quaked, and her hips bucked so hard that the flimsy cot collapsed beneath them.
Rosie laughed as she sprawled naked in the sawdust, but Josephine still asked, "Are you all right?"
"Never better," Rosie said.
Josephine held out her hand to help Rosie up. "We"d better get dressed. It"s time for the second show. And as delighted as many audience members would be to see you in your current state, I think it would be wise for La Belle Rose to make her debut with at least a few st.i.tches on."
Rosie smiled. "Will my old costume from the knife-throwing act do?"
"It will until I sew you a new one. You"ll need a new costume now that you"re here permanently." Josephine kissed Rosie"s shoulder blade as she zipped up her costume.
"Yes, permanently," Rosie said.
The love she and Josephine carried in their hearts was as permanent as the ink on her skin. It would be with them all of their days.
A Butch in Fairy Tale Land Therese Szymanski
Chapter 1.
I knew something was up with Sal and Sheila. I mean, it really didn"t take a brain surgeon to figure it out-a few months ago, they started arguing a lot. They tried to hide it from me, but I knew. Every time I walked into a room, they"d suddenly shut up and go into a tense silence. What other explanation could there be but that they were fighting?
But then one day, Sheila came over to return some books. She was sporting a nasty black eye.
"I ran into a door," she said.
"Yeah, right." I couldn"t believe she"d hide the truth from me, of all people. "What"s going on, Sheila?"
"It"s nothing to worry about. Everything"s all right, really Cody."
"That doesn"t look like all right to me. And I know you didn"t run into any door."
"Okay, fine, you"re right. I didn"t run into a door. But you don"t have to worry about it."
"It was Sal, wasn"t it? I mean, I"ve seen how you two have been acting lately."
"Fine, it was Sal-but you don"t have to worry about it. Everything"s fine."
"You keep saying that, but-"
"Cody, I know how much you love saving damsels in distress- but I"m not one. There"s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. I just can"t tell you what it is right now."
Sheila was making concern for a friend sound like a psychological disorder. " "Damsels in distress?" I don"t have a thing for damsels in distress! I just worry about my friends is all."
"Cody," Sheila said, running her soft hand lightly over my cheek. I felt a flush start to rush up my neck. "Face facts. You like helping femmes."
"And that"s a bad thing?"
"It is when they don"t need saving. I mean, Linda"s cat, for example."
"It was up a tree for chrissakes."
"The same tree it always got into-and out of-all by itself. If you had bothered to ask her, you could"ve avoided another trip to the emergency room."
"I still don"t know why it bit me when I was just trying to help." Why did they have to keep bringing up that cat? It was an honest mistake-and I paid for it with the st.i.tches and two days in the hospital!
"Word to the wise-most people would have dropped the cat after the first dozen bites."
"I"m tenacious if anything."
"What about the time Diane was worried about her ex stalking her, so you decided to keep track of her?"
"I was just trying to help, I-"
"Cody, Diane"s paranoid. If you had remembered that, Sal and I wouldn"t have had to bail you out." She took my hand in her warm one and led me to the couch. We sat down facing each other. "You jump to conclusions and take your own actions. That time Diane just thought you were her stalker. But then there was Patrice, whom you really were stalking."
"Oh, c"mon, that girl was so lost she made Hansel and Gretel look like they knew the way home. She was always losing her keys, tripping her circuit breakers, driving over nails and misplacing her car."
I shuffled nervously. Sheila had her pegged. "Plus she was cute."
"Cute? Uh-uh. She was drop-dead gorgeous! But she did need help!"
"And you wanted to be the one to always give it to her. Cody, you spooked her so bad, she moved to another state."
"Have you heard from her lately?"
Sheila rolled her eyes as she stood up. "Cody, we"ve known each other since high school. We roomed together in college-I know you." She leaned over to ruffle my short brown hair, just like she"d been doing for more than a decade. "I love you, but you"re an incurable romantic."
I shrugged. "I just want to help."
"You read way too many romances, too many fairy tales in college. The real world"s never as easy as all that."
I can"t remember how many times she"d hara.s.sed me about that d.a.m.ned fairy-tale cla.s.s I took as an English major. I was devoutly grateful I had never told her I"d toyed with the idea of doing graduate studies in fairy tales. A butch could only take so much teasing.
"Listen, just know that everything"s all right with Sal and me- never better, in fact. So don"t worry." She turned back for one last parting warning. "And don"t be going all stalker-butch on us either."
I knew there was something going on. After all, Sheila had displayed all the cla.s.sic signs. In fact, they both had, for several months. I was an idiot not to have seen it sooner.
Fortunately, for me and Sheila, all reason indicated that it would be some time before Sal got really out of control-after all, didn"t the anger and fighting escalate before an abusive spouse finally went too far?
I couldn"t believe this was surfacing now. They had been together for more than a decade, but I had known Sheila for longer than that. I remember when they first met, how Sheila went on and on about this hot new butch she was seeing, and how gallant and s.e.xy and smart she was and everything. Then she"d finish by saying, "But she"s just after my money, like every hottie I meet."
Made me wonder when they filed their wills.
Thank goodness it was Spring Break and the swim team at Paul K. Cousino High School didn"t need me. I decided to follow them. But if there"s one thing I"ve learned through all my many misadventures, it"s how to properly follow someone so they won"t know I"m there.
During the week I didn"t see anything overtly threatening, though it did look as if they had a few heated conversations-apparently about some paperwork, which I figured was their wills, because they kept pulling out bound ma.n.u.scripts of some sort. Sheila had money, and some property, stocks and such, so her will would be very long and complicated, especially if she was giving stuff to more than one person. If she wasn"t planning to leave everything to Sal that could explain the fighting.
When the weekend rolled around though, it looked like I"d hit the jackpot. They were obviously preparing to go away for a few days, or maybe longer, considering how much they were packing.
I quickly went back to my own place to pack my car, and then carefully tailed them out of Royal Oak to 1-94, then out past Port Huron, and even the village of Lexington, to a cottage secluded in a forest. It was at least an hour off the main road, so that even I was worried about them seeing me. As soon as I saw the cozy little place that was their apparent destination, I immediately backed down the road, out of sight. I waited plenty long enough for them to unload their copious baggage.
And then I waited a bit longer. Well, okay, I kinda snuck through the woods to peer through the trees so I could keep an eye on them to make sure they were actually gonna stay at this cottage out in the middle of nowhere. Once I was sure they were there to stay, and they were out of sight inside, I slunk over to it, carefully hiding behind whatever objects were available. As I approached, I heard Sal"s and Sheila"s raised voices. Well, h.e.l.l, they weren"t raised voices, they were yelling. Screaming. At each other.
I peered through the window, not wanting to make any abrupt moves. If it was just shouting, that was one thing. Hitting was another.
Given Sheila"s lecture of earlier in the week, I didn"t want to go barging in until something actually was going wrong. I couldn"t jump the gun, not this time. I had to wait.
But I didn"t have to wait long. Sal"s arm went flying, and then so did Sheila-all the way onto the couch. Had Sal been working out?
I was through the door in less time than it takes for The Scottish Play to go bad. After all, given my life, I had practice breaking down doors. Of course it helps when they"re ajar so I go flying into the room like a total idiot.
"Cut!" I heard someone yell. Then that someone turned to me, looking very irritated. "Who the h.e.l.l are you?"
"Cody!" Sheila yelled, jumping up from the couch. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?"
"Ummm... helping?"
"G.o.dd.a.m.ned d.y.k.e," Sal said, turning from me in disgust. "I told you to stay away from her," she said to Sheila.
"She"s been my friend for longer than I"ve known you. I couldn"t just tell her to get lost, not without a reason."
I looked around at the camera and lighting equipment that hadn"t been visible through the barely open blind. Out the back window of the cottage I spotted a large van and two more cars. "What"s going on here?"
"We were shooting a movie, until you came charging in," the snotty butch who had first spoken said. I was sure I could take her and Sal at once. But there were several other women in the room as well, all in the shadows. I had an impression of a pair of fine black eyes from behind the camera, watching every move I made.
"Cody, I told you not to worry-and I believe I specifically mentioned that you should not follow us," Sheila said. She looked up at me from the couch, completely uninjured.
"But the black eye-"
"Darcy here-whom you might remember from college?-is making a movie. It"s very low budget, so she asked Sal and me to star in it."
"But . . ."I suddenly remembered Sheila had been a theatre major. "But why couldn"t you tell me?"
"In case it sucked totally and we didn"t want anyone to know about it. Sal and I were rehearsing this fight scene, by ourselves, when she got too close and clobbered me. I told you everything was all right-so why the f.u.c.k didn"t you believe me?"
"Now we"ve got to take it from the top," Darcy said, throwing her hands up.
"Why couldn"t you for once listen to someone?" Sal asked.
"I... I"m sorry-"
"Just get the f.u.c.k out."
I looked around at all of the accusing stares aimed at me and gave them a slight smile. I felt like an a.s.shole.
"I specifically told you not to follow us, Cody," Sheila said.
I did the only thing I could think of-they wouldn"t let me apologize, so I turned and ran. I didn"t pay any attention to where I was going, I simply ran into the woods. I didn"t even think to try to find my car. I just needed to be elsewhere.
Chapter 2.
Iran and I ran and I ran. Okay, so maybe I just ran and ran. Gotta give up that pack-a-day habit. Anyway, it was quite enough running for me to get totally turned around in the dense forest. I had no idea where I was, nor where I had come from.
Maybe in more ways than one.
I tripped over something and went flying into a tree. Fortunately, I was still together enough to put my arms up to protect my head. But it still knocked the wind right out of me and gave me a mouthful of dirt. I spit the dirt out the best I could.
I lay on my stomach for a moment, still catching my breath while I listened for sounds of pursuit. Then I put my head down in my arms and cried for a while. I couldn"t believe the disappointed look in Sheila"s eyes when she said she"d told me not to follow them. I couldn"t believe they were just making a b.l.o.o.d.y movie!
Really, I was the injured party here. C"mon, I was just trying to help out a friend. I"ve read all about battered partners and all that, and of course I look out for Sheila-we"ve been friends since grade school! No one could ever be good enough for her. Not even Sal.
Now, okay, fine. Maybe sometimes in the past I was a bit over eager and all, but I knew this time I had been fully within my best-friend rights. I pushed myself to my feet, wiped my face on my sleeve, and sat down on a rock to catch my breath and try to figure things out. And light up a smoke.
I already knew I felt like an a.s.shole, and should"ve listened to my best friend when she told me it was all right. But still, I would have expected Sheila to come after me, to look for me. I couldn"t have come so far that I"d be beyond her yelling my name.
But I didn"t hear anything.