Unfinished Business (Kit Tolliver #12) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) (4 page)

And, a little later:

“Kimmie? I guess we’re lesbians, huh?”

“I suppose so.”

“But we’re still us, right?”

“Well, we don’t have to learn the secret handshake. Or deepen our voices.”

“Do we have to wear those plaid shirts from L. L. Bean?”

“No way. We don’t have to get a cat, either.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Or adopt a Chinese baby.”

“Kimmie? You’ll move in, won’t you?”

“If you can stand it.”

“You can have your old room back. But we’ll sleep here. Unless we try your room occasionally as a change of pace.”

“To ward off boredom.”

“You think we’ll get bored?”

“No.”

“Me neither. I want us to do everything.”

“We will. And Ree? There’s no reason you can’t have a guy anytime you want.”

“Really? You wouldn’t be jealous?”

“Why should I? I’m not jealous of the ones you’ve been with. You’re not jealous of my lovers, are you?”

“Kimmie, they’re all dead.”

“That’s a point.”

“But if they weren’t? No, I wouldn’t be jealous.”

“Because it doesn’t subtract from what we’ve got.”

“No, it adds to it. Right now I don’t want anything but you and me in bed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want us to tell each other stories. And sooner or later we might want to have new stories to tell each other.”

“Right.”

“And I’ve always liked fucking guys, Kimmie.”

“Me too.”

“And now I’m thinking about doing some new guy and then telling you about it, and I don’t know what’s getting me hotter, the idea of doing him or the idea of telling you.”

“Over the phone?”

“Silly. Lying in bed, and feeling your breasts against mine, and looking into your eyes—”

“Like you’re doing right now.”

‘Like I’m doing right now. And telling you all about it.”

“I suppose you realize that you’re sopping wet.”

“Like I’m the only one? And I am definitely getting a Brazilian.”

“But not right this minute.”

“No. Right this minute I’m busy.”

She spent the next several days settling in, and by Friday she had a working set of ID in the name of Kimberly Austin. She liked Austin for a last name, but she wasn’t crazy about the Kimberly part. Names had never mattered much to her, she rarely kept them any length of time, but maybe that was going to change, maybe she’d take a shot at being the same person with the same name for, well, as long as she could.

No problem. Kimberly could turn into Kim, and she’d fill out her kit with a library card and some generic Student ID cards as Kim Austin, and by the time she picked up a Washington State driver’s license, she’d be able to shrink Kimberly to Kim once and for all. And then maybe get a lawyer to have her name changed by court order? If she did that, she’d be able to get a passport. Not that she had any urge to leave the country, but suppose Ree wanted to see Paris?

Omigod, Kimmie, here we are in the country where they invented eating pussy.

Had to keep your options open, didn’t you?

It was all so easy.

Because she was usually the first one up, and because Ree always prepared the evening meal, she took over the role of making the morning coffee and putting breakfast on the table. Her first omelet was a failure, but all that cost her was a couple of eggs, and it didn’t take her long to get the hang of it.

“We’re getting so domestic,” Ree said. “I think we’re definitely lesbians. I think there’s no question about it.”

“I can see how upset that makes you.”

“Plaid flannel shirts and cats,” Ree said, “are just around the corner.”

“We’re lipstick lesbians.”

“No plaid shirts, huh?”

“Not even to sleep in. And no cats, either.”

“And no Chinese babies?”

“They’re cuter than cats,” she said, “and way cuter than plaid shirts, but not just yet, okay?”

“Okay.”

So easy.

Later that day she was sitting on the couch reading, and Ree was doing a crossword puzzle, and their eyes met. That was all it took, really, and half an hour later they were lying side by side in Ree’s bed in the shared afterglow.

And Ree said, “I guess I’m safe, huh?”

“Safe?”

“Well, nobody’s ever safe. Like earthquakes and tornadoes and, I don’t know, tsunamis? Not that I spend a lot of time worrying about tsunamis, but you never know, do you?”

Where was this going? “And there’s always sinkholes,” she said.

“That’s right! No warning, nothing, and the ground just opens up underneath you. Gone, no forwarding. Just like that.”

“But you guess you’re safe.”

Ree was looking off to the side. “What I figure,” she said, “is if you were going to kill me, you’d have done it by now.”

“Ree!”

“Well, you killed everybody else you ever slept with. Kimmie, I knew you weren’t planning to do it, but suppose you couldn’t help it? Suppose it got under your skin, and you couldn’t rest as long as I was alive?”

“That only happened with men.”

“You’ve killed women.”

“My mother, and I explained that to you. And I never had sex with her, anyway. It was just—”

“And what about Angela?”

“Angela.”

“She picked you up in the dyke bar, and her husband was hiding in the closet—”

“Oh, Angelica.”

“I was close.”

“And his name was Brady. He wasn’t in the closet, he was hiding behind a Japanese screen.”

“Thanks for clearing that up, Kimmie. The point is you slept with her and you killed her.”

“Yeah.”

“Strangled her with a scarf or something.”

“A silk scarf.”

“Herpes, I think you said.”

“Hermés.”

“I know, silly. Ehr-mehz. Poh-mahr.”

“Ree, they were going to murder me. He wanted to do me just for the thrill of it, and she loved the idea.”

“I know, you told me.”

“She was one vicious cunt. She brought me home so her husband could rape me, and when I turned out to be eager and willing, they decided the only way to keep it interesting was to kill me. She had it coming.”

“I know.”

“And how could I let her live once I’d killed him?” She frowned. “Okay, I have to admit I enjoyed it. Doing her with the scarf, feeling her squirming underneath me. But it’s the way I’m hard-wired, Ree. Killing gets me off. I can’t help it.”

“Kimmie, it’s one of the things about you that gets
me
hot.”

“I would never, ever, hurt you. Not for anything.”

“But how could you know you wouldn’t feel the need? The only woman you ever went to bed with wound up with a scarf around her neck and her eyes bulging.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s not?”

“Boise.”

“Huh?”

She took a breath. “After Provo,” she said, “I went to Boise. That’s in Idaho.”

“And?”

“All I wanted,” she said, “was to come here. To you. But I couldn’t do that if it meant putting you in danger. So I had to find out.”

“How could you do that? What would—oh, you slept with a woman! In Boise? They have lesbian bars in Boise?”

“Well, they had at least one of them. They made it hard to find, I’ll give them that. But I went there and I found a woman to go home with.”

“And you had sex.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And she’s still got a pulse?”

“Unless she stepped in front of a bus.”

“You didn’t mention it.”

“No. I thought you might be jealous.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, yeah. Or that it might trivialize what we’ve got, or something. Stupid, huh?”

“So how was it?”

“A successful experiment, because I had absolutely no desire to hurt her. Not at the time and not afterward. I didn’t want to see her again, either, but I had, like, warm feelings toward her.”

“What was she like?”

“I don’t know. Late thirties, dark hair. A little dykey, I suppose.”

“Was she better than me?”

“Absolutely. That’s why I spent the rest of my life in Boise and never gave you another thought.”

“What was the sex like with her?”

‘Sort of vanilla. Kissing, touching. You really want to hear this?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s see. She went down on me and I came. Then I went down on her, and she couldn’t come.”

“With that magic mouth of yours? That’s hard to believe.”

“She said she’s pretty much non-orgasmic. Her big thing is getting her partner off. Which she managed twice, because I came again while I was eating her.”

“Just from doing it?”

“I was touching myself at the same time. And beside that—”

“What?”

“Well, I was thinking about you. That’s what I did while she was doing me, too. Thought about you, made believe it was you I was with. Jesus, Ree, you honestly thought I was going to kill you?”

A shrug. “I thought there was a chance. But I figured it was worth the risk.”

She reached out, took Ree’s hand in hers. She was at a loss for words, but that was all right. She didn’t need to say anything.

“So I’m Luke,” the fellow said, “and this is my buddy, Gordo. His folks named him Gordon, and he had the nickname for years before he found out it means
fat
in Spanish.”

“By then it was too late,” Gordo said. “So I’m at the gym five days a week, making sure the name never fits.”

“So why don’t the four of us take a booth? It’s hard to hear in the crush at the bar. Like, I didn’t manage to catch your names.”

“You guys get the table,” she said, “and we’ll join you in a minute. Right now Nature calls.”

“The only thing men can do and women can’t,” Gordo said, “is go to the bathroom alone.”

“It’s true,” Ree admitted. “We need company.”

And in the bathroom she said, “What do you think, Kimmie?”

“I think they’re morons.”

“But are they morons we want to fuck?”

“I don’t know. Which one would you want?”

“No, you pick.”

“I can’t. I don’t want either of them.”

“Then let’s get out of here, Kimmie. I know another place.”