Weekend (10 page)

“We were a mismatch from the get-go,” said Logan. “All sex fizz.”

“Sex be good,” said Joe. She grinned. “I think I remember that.”

Logan had a spot of white sunscreen on their nose that hadn't been rubbed in.

Joe said, “Don't sleep with Ell again, okay?”

Logan looked at her. There was history shooting between them, things said with eyes and yearning. “I'm not sleeping with Elliot or anyone else again, Joe. If Ajax says yes, I'm pledging fidelity tonight.”

There was a long pause while they listened to the baby suckling. “Well,” said Joe finally. “I really hope she says yes.”

They sat like that for a minute, listening to the hammering up at the cottage.

Joe said, “Isn't this just completely Elliot, how she tries to be helpful and she
is,
only not in the way that you need? Look
at these stupid life preservers attached to the dock. If someone was drowning, do you think we could get them loose soon enough? So Elliot.”

Logan laughed. “That time I broke my leg, she spent a day looking for the perfect crutches instead of being with me.” They scratched their head. “I'll keep the baby if you want to swim.”

Joe looked at them. Logan with a baby—oxymoron. “Here,” she said, passing Scout over, standing, stretching. “Just jiggle her a lot. I will swim.”

She stripped and dove in. Wished it was more refreshing—it was tepid, nearly hot, and her stitches burned something awful. Still, it was good. Good. And she needed more good.

       
AJAX

Ajax and Logan spent the rest of the day flaked out on the dock slathered in sunscreen, staying as much under the umbrella as they could. Every time the heat boiled toward them, they floated out on huge inner tubes. Once they snoozed, marooning themselves in lily pads. Ajax wore a bathing suit to cover up the sex damage—which she'd showed Logan was fully purple, an ecchymosis, a spectacular bruise. Whatever else happened between them, she would not be repeating last night every day of her life. “I must be careful with my lover's skin,” Logan had said, patting her bottom softly. “Because my lover is precious.”

Logan hauled out a third inner tube and an anchor; they floated out in the warm water with the third tube carrying an ice chest of lemonade and vodka coolers, their flotilla roped.

“There's such a thing as true love,” Logan said, nodding, head back, eyes closed.

“Maybe,” said Ajax. How true could love be when it would invariably crumple and die at some future juncture?

Logan half-opened an eye. “You're a cynic, McIntyre.”

“There's a whole goddamned lot in this world that works against relationships going forward.” Ajax chugged her lemonade.

“Like what, for instance?”

“I don't know. Infidelity.”

“I'm monogamous.” Logan said this with absolute clarity.

Always?
Ajax wanted to say.
Are you always monogamous?
Bull-pucky. “Look, I don't ask for monogamy prior to commitment, so you do what you want. But … money. Money is a big fucking issue.”

“I have enough. And there's always more where that came from.”

“Those kind of disparities—your income, mine. You being a top and me a bottom.”

“We fit,” said Logan.

“Yes, it fits, but it's a big power imbalance we've got going here, Beaumont, and incongruities like that have a way of rising up later to whack one across the face.”

Logan stirred, shielded their eyes to look at Ajax. “You're not exactly chopped liver yourself. You do pretty well, you know. I thought this was a love affair. I thought it was a birthday celebration. I thought we were up at the cottage on a lake on a blistering summery day. Do you
always
have to fret?”

Ajax sighed. “Point taken.”

“Give your heart a little break. Just relax and love me.”

Ajax pulled another can from the inner tube, popped the lid, swigged.

“Just float,” ordered Logan.

So they floated.

A couple hours later, Scotia and Elliot threw themselves off the dock amidst much merriment. Ajax thought how Joe would feel left out, maybe even crushed, and she wished Elliot would stop being a kid and just go back inside where she was needed.
Logan passed Ajax a colander full of warm peas. Ajax sat on a cushion on the stoop in the sunshine shelling them, rubbing her fingernail along pod seams. Logan blared swing music. Peas round as musical notes fell into Ajax's lap, rolled out along the paint-chipped stair boards. What came to mind was a little girl she'd loved when she was seven, on a back porch forty-some years ago, shelling peas in her Gramma's strainer. Eating more than went into the bowl. Shucking corn, ripping back husks, plucking off the silk threads stuck to the kernels. Racing barefoot to offer up husks to the neighbour's horses. Running back to beg for sugar cubes, which her grandmother dispensed from an orderly cardboard box. Horses' heads large and sweaty, skulls pressing the skin. Twitchy ears, swishing tails. Hair sweeping down over their faces, eyes brown and round with long lashes. Maggie was always nervous but Ajax led her forward, showed her how to hold the sugar cubes with a flat hand, fingers tight.

The sun dipped low toward the beams that photographers called sweet light; slanting in, it turned red blossoms orange.

Logan cooked Memphis-style barbecued ribs, and Ajax prepped veggies and potatoes. After dinner, under a banner that read “Happy Birthday,” Logan pulled out a cardboard hat sprinkled with glitter and set it onto Ajax's head. Made her close her eyes and wait. Logan re-appeared wearing a tuxedo, carrying chocolate cake and special ice cream they'd brought from the city, and singing “Joyeux Anniversaire.” They presented Ajax with several wrapped packages.

“Blow, blow!” said Logan.

Ajax laughed. “Do I still get a wish if it's a sparkler?”

“
C'est une jour spécial
. You get fifty wishes, and they all are guaranteed to come true.” Logan grinned at her. The kind of grin that made Ajax long for them again.

“I wish I could turn fifty every day, in that case.” Ajax made a private wish for the protection of her children, both of whom had called.

“I like you, McIntyre.”

Ajax smiled. “Only because I'm young and cool.”

“Oh yeah. Definitely young and cool. That's what I think when I think
Ajax
. I think,
She's so young and cool, such a stud.
”

Ajax cut pieces of cake, licked her fingers. “Maybe you just find it exciting that I could die at any moment.”

“Maybe I do.” Logan shrugged, started to eat; the cake was dark chocolate, not sweet, good with the sugary ice cream. “Or maybe, sweetheart, that one thing alone breaks my fucking heart over and over.”

Ajax cocked her head. “Please don't start having a rescue fantasy. Because you can't rescue me.”

“You don't have to remind me,” said Logan. “Fuck rescuing you. Just don't get sicker. Promise.” Logan scraped their plate. “Pinky swear.”

Ajax tore into her gifts. Logan had bought her shoes similar to their European brogues. She slipped into them, admired her feet—perfection. “I love them! Very fetish-y indeed. Now you can also like me because I have über cool feet.”

Logan surreptitiously wiped their eyes. “I want you to feel fetish-y every day. I want to make you feel special for the rest of your life.”

Gift certificate to a garden store in Vancouver; certificate for a spa day in Toronto. Ajax said, “I'm too sexy for your shoes. Too sexy for your cake. Way too sexy
pour ta copine
.”

“
Ma copine, elle est bonne. Mais, est-elle une femme? Elle s'identifie comme une femme, mais je pense qu'il est peut-etre un garçon
.”

“
Oui
,” said Ajax.

“
Et ne te l'oubliez
.”

“How could I?” Ajax laughed. She sobered. “Logan, damn, what do
you
want from your life at this point? What's important to you? What makes you weep? I need to know these things.”

Logan met Ajax's eyes and said, “I wasn't a popular kid. I'd get picked nearly last in games even though I was a decent athlete. I was lonely a lot, solitary.”

“That must have hurt your feelings.”

“Don't you know yet that I don't have feelings.” Logan grinned.

Ajax stuck out her tongue. “You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?”

Now Logan snorted. “You think you're so all-seeing.”

“You were a vulnerable little kid. You got hurt.”

“I got used to rejection quickly enough, because, well, no choice. Standing there thinking
Pick me, pick me, pick me.
Feeling shame like a blush stealing over me as more and more
kids joined the teams and I didn't.” Logan shrugged. “I guess every kid goes through that in one way or another. I was lucky to be good with grades, at least, if not popular.” They scratched their nose. “Okay, fine, if you want to go digging, here's something I vaguely remember from when we lived in South Africa. I had a pet dik-dik named Sally.”

“Oh, like a miniature antelope? They're adorable!”

“I was so young. It's hard to know if I remember her or I just remember my parents talking about her. I think I remember sharp hooves. There were baboons around, and my mother said I got pretty scared once when one tore the kitchen apart. They're the size of adult men, the males, with pretty crazy teeth. Not that baboon encounters are anything rare, in those parts. They're terrible citizens, very canny and highly aggressive and not afraid of people.”

“I would love to see a baboon. A dik-dik, for that matter. Why were your parents in South Africa?”

“My father was employed by a resource extraction company, my mother taught Italian at the university.”

“You're lucky. I grew up on a farm in a town without stoplights. First stoplight I experienced, I was maybe ten or eleven. I didn't really understand that restaurants existed.”

“I was positive I wasn't a girl, but they said I wasn't a boy, and nobody knew what to do with me—least of all me. Tomboy didn't quite fit, especially when I started … you know. Boobs. Kids were cruel. No beefs against Paris, but … When Mom got a job in Montreal, after she broke up with my dad, I was fifteen,
the worst age to move. Hell for a queer trans kid, I can tell you. But moving out, university—that made things better.”

“Did you and your mom always fight?”

“Pretty much, yeah. Let's just say she didn't appreciate my kind of person.” Logan reached to stroke Ajax's arm. “Still doesn't for that matter.”

“I'm sorry.”

Night slipped toward them.

“She wants me to be someone else. It wrecked me. I was already an outlier, and she just made it harder. My dad was better; my dad seemed to like me no matter what, but then he and my mom would fight about it—what I could do to fit in, how I was going to find my way in the world, if they could have done something differently when I was little, if I was ever going to find happiness in my aberrance. When I brought girls home, my mother would just freak out.
Freak out
. Once, she walked in on me and a girl in flagrante delicto; the girl was giving me a blow job, but I think my cock at the time was a stuffed balloon held on with elastics.”

“Jesus,” said Ajax, laughing.

“It's a bit more solid these days.”

“A wee bit,” agreed Ajax.

There was a lengthy pause. “Sit in that chair.” Logan pointed.

“As compared to this chair?”

“As compared to this chair,” Logan said, raising their eyebrows.

“Okay,” said Ajax slowly, reluctantly, frowning.

“Not asking,” said Logan, “telling.”

“Okay,” said Ajax. She walked to the chair Logan was pulling away from the wall, sat, winced.

“Pull off your shirt,” said Logan. They paced.

Ajax did, a slow peel, licked chocolate from her fingers.

“Bra,” said Logan.

She yanked her sports bra off.

Logan had her strip completely before they offered her a pillow. “Don't move,” they ordered.

Logan bent to kiss Ajax's neck and throat, special places under her ear. Logan told Ajax to bend forward, then grabbed her wrists. “Safe word.”

“Nitro,” said Ajax. “And put it right beside us, because if I say it, I'm going to need it fast.”

Logan sat across from her, cockless, and opened themselves where they were raw and vulnerable, touched themselves. The two of them masturbated and sparked without even touching each other. Ajax saw that they could not stay in one piece. They would love hard, until they broke themselves on it.

The chair hurt Ajax's ass.

Finally, Logan took her to the bedroom, asked her to lie on her back on the bed. Logan straddled her head and lowered themself onto Ajax's mouth, and Ajax licked and sucked them and carefully slid her fingers inside Logan and Logan climaxed, crying out.

When Logan came back to themself, they said, “It's not easy for me, fucking
sans
cock.”

“I know,” said Ajax.

Logan went down on Ajax, kissed her, said, “You snuck up on me from behind.”

Ajax started to cry, rolled onto her side away.

“What, Ajax? What'd I do?”

Ajax shook her head. Her voice was small and full of tears. “It meant something to me, being inside you. I'm sorry.”

Logan rolled onto their back. “Sex with girl bits is always going to be a just-occasional thing.”

Ajax said, “I can't be a masochist, you know.”

Logan looked at her.

“And you can't be a fucking sadist with me, all the time.” Ajax said loudly. This was a bit ripe, she realized, coming from a woman with a swath of purple-blue on her ass. “I mean, of course you can be, but … I can't be a masochist. I don't want to be a masochist. I'm
not
a masochist. You've probably given me more bottoming than I've had in my lifetime, and I'm already stuffed full of it.” She ruefully smiled. “As it were. This needs to be a sometimes thing because I love vanilla sex, too.”

“You love
all
of this. You love the way I touch you.” But Logan had pulled back and sounded hurt.

“Yes,” said Ajax. She didn't want Logan to think it was their skills that were being questioned. “You please me completely.”

“Why do you have to label it, then?”

“It's just that it looks a lot to me like I'm a masochist and also, not to put too fine a point on it, apparently heterosexual again.”

“For god's sake,” said Logan. “No, you're not. That is an impossible interpretation.”

Ajax rolled onto her back. “I'll bend toward you as you bend toward me. But understand; I'm queer; I'm not into guys. I've been screwing women for decades. I can't go back to just hetero sex, only with a trans guy. Boobs turn me on. Cunts turn me on, way on. I
like
fucking women. But I like fucking your power. I like your power fucking me.” She turned onto her belly. “I'm confused, is all. I'm just confused.”

“Really, get this through your skull: I'm not a trans guy. I don't know if I'll ever take T. Think more: Logan, dude with boobs.”

“You call yourself trans sometimes, and I think we both know it's a possibility. A dude with sometime-boobs and basically no cunt. I get that,” said Ajax, but she felt lonely. Very lost and afraid suddenly, because of all she might be giving up to stay with Logan, all the unknowns ahead. “It's not your gender. It's that our sex is so cock-centric … I love a clever dick, but it's not all there is.”