Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

before Susan and the girl abandoned the effort and broke into frenetic German.
    Unable to join them, Mona downed her vodka, then let her eyes wander around the bender. There was a battered leather suitcase, a bottle of mineral water, a pair of blue cotton panties hanging out to dry on a branch. On the ground next to her knees lay a pamphlet for something called Fatale Video, printed in English; the headline FEMALE EJACULATION leapt out at her.
    She glanced at it sideways and read this:
FATALE VIDEO—By and for women only.
Thrill to Greta’s computer-enhanced anal self-love!
Sigh with scarf play, oral and safe sex with Coca Jo and
Houlihan!
Gasp at G-spot ejaculation and tribadism with Fanny and
Kenni!
    She smiled uncontrollably, then looked up to see if she’d been noticed. Susan and the girl were still nattering away in German. The return address on the pamphlet was Castro Street, San Francisco. While she’d been becoming a simple English country dyke, her sisters in the City had been building their own cottage industries.
    The conversation across from her grew quieter, more intense. Then Susan said something that made the girl laugh. They’re talking about me, thought Mona.
    “Well,” said Susan, addressing Mona again. “Ready to mosey?”
    “Sure.”
    Susan spoke to the girl again, then led the way out of the bender.
    Mona’s leg had gone to sleep, so she felt a little shaky as she left.
    Smiling at her, the girl said: “Bye-bye.”
    “Bye-bye,” said Mona.

    They didn’t talk until they were out of the thicket and walking back to town on the moon-bleached sand.
    “How long have you known her?” asked Mona.
    Susan chuckled. “Since…oh, four o’clock.”
    They had seemed like old friends.
    “I met her coming back from the beach today. She paints houses in Darmstadt.”
    “Why was she laughing just before we left?”
    Susan seemed to hesitate briefly. “She thought you were my lover. I told her you weren’t.”
    “Oh.”
    “She wasn’t laughing at you.”
    Mona accepted this, but she had the uncomfortable feeling she was cramping Susan’s style. “Well, look,” she said, “if you wanna go back…”
    “No, no.” The broad smile seemed brighter by moonlight. “She didn’t want me .”
    Mona stopped in her tracks.
    “Or just me, anyway. She was looking for a couple.”
    “You’re shitting?”
    “No.”
    “Both of us?”
    “Exactly.”
    “Christ,” said Mona.
    “Welcome to Lesbos,” said Susan.

    Just before midnight they drank thick. Greek coffee at a restaurant near the square. The breeze off the sea was chillier now, and Mona was sorry she hadn’t brought a jacket.
    “It’s almost winter,” said Susan. “You can practically smell the rain coming.”
    “Yeah.”
    “I always come this time of year. I like it when I’m right on the cusp. When the tourists are leaving, and they start to batten everything down. There’s something so poignant about it. And so purifying.” She stirred her coffee idly. “All those leaves being washed clean.” She looked at Mona. “What’s it like where you are?”
    “Right now?”
    “Well…anytime.”
    Mona thought for a moment. “It’s in the country. Gloucestershire.”
    “Oh, that’s magnificent.”
    She nodded. “It gets cold and damp any day now, but I really don’t mind it.”
    “Sure. You can sit by the fireplace with a cup of tea.”
    More often than not, Mona stood in her fireplace with a cup of tea, but it seemed pretentious to say so. She flashed for a moment on winter at Easley House: the lethal drafts, the frost on the diamond-shaped panes, the smoke curling out of the limestone cottages in the village. Then she saw the silly grin on Wilfred’s face as he dragged some lopsided evergreen into the great hall.
    Susan asked: “Do you live alone?”
    She shook her head. “I have a son.”
    “How old?”
    “Twenty. I adopted him when he was seventeen.”
    “That’s nice. Good company.
    Mona nodded. “The best.”
    “I have a daughter myself. She starts at Berkeley next year.”
    Mona smiled and sipped her coffee. If they weren’t careful, they’d start dragging out snapshots.

    Later she got another joint from her room and shared it with Susan as they strolled through the maze of deserted streets behind the promenade.
    “This is nice,” said Susan, holding a toke.
    “It’s Northern Californian.”
    “No.” Susan laughed, expelling smoke. “I mean this. Getting to know you.”
    “Well, thanks.”