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| In that wartime English summer Cleo had made me soar so high it
was hard to remember that I had never really left the ground.
Thirty-five years later, in 1978, her plane rose, banked, and left the sprawl of Anchorage dwindling in the distance. The horizon rolled ever outward, until, as the clouds lifted suddenly in the east, the towering glory of Denali and the whole Alaska Range blazed white in the sun. "The mountain's out," someone shouted behind me. "Sure is," Cleo said, above the hum of the engine. "Takes your breath away, doesn't it?" But it was Cleo Remington herself who took my breath away. I watched her strong hands on the controls of the de Havilland Twin Otter, remembering the way she had touched the Spitfire fighter plane that last night in England. Remembering, across the years, the way she had touched me. The man behind me leaned forward in a genial attempt at conversation. A few other passengers showed varying degrees of interest, diverted by a newcomer in their midst. "Cleo says you were in the service together, Kay. Were you an Air Transport pilot too?" What had Cleo called him? Len? All I remembered about the airport was the flash of recognition in Cleo's gray eyes and her brief, hard hug. "No, I was a nurse," I said, turning slightly toward him, which gave me a good view of Cleo's profile. Her once-black hair was silver now, thick and barely long enough to ruffle like an eagle's crest if I could run my hands through it. Her tanned face was a bit leaner, somewhat weathered by life, with tiny lines radiating from the corners of eyes and mouth; but my fingertips would recognize her in the dark, my lips would know the contours of her throat, her jaw, her expressive mouth–if I had the right to touch her. "A nurse?" Len asked. "Cleo's never mentioned being wounded when we swap war stories." Our wounds had been beyond any medical help. "No," I said. "We met in London, on leave, just a couple of weeks before she flew back to the States and I was reassigned to the South Pacific. But you know how it is in wartime; friendship isn't measured in weeks, or months." I felt his speculative gaze on my plain gold wedding band, and diverted him into less dangerous waters. "So tell me your war stories. Where did you serve?" That did the trick. The other passengers, most of them young enough for "the War" to mean only Vietnam, settled back to their books or newspapers or the insides of their eyelids. Len held forth on North Africa and Sicily, and I led him on with genuine interest until Cleo shushed him with a gesture and a flashing grin so familiar it made my heart lurch. "Hey, Len, give Kay a chance to see Alaska." So I followed her lead, asked questions about the magnificent scenery stretching below, and Len shifted into a tour guide routine. Denali, Mt. McKinley on the maps, was behind us as we flew south along Cook Inlet between the green Kenai Peninsula and the beginnings of the starker Aleutian Range. I tried to take in the beauty and grandeur, and make the right responses, but all the while my body was alert to Cleo's least movement beside me. I wanted so intensely to lay my hand on the band of sunlight curving across her thigh that my own thighs quivered. How had I thought I could carry this off? My only hope was to limit the anguish to myself. And, to be honest, savor it, every searing drop. In two weeks I would return to Jack, who truly loved and needed me, who had built a family and a life with me. My love for him had always been deep and sure, undiminished by memories of Cleo kept tucked away like rare, glowing jewels I could never wear again. "Never" has a different ring to it, though, when you're nearing sixty, and you know damned well that life is too short to waste on guilt over what you feel. What you want is what you want, whether you can have it or not. They didn't teach it in nursing school, or the courses I've taken since, but I can't be the only woman to find that as the biological imperative wanes, other passions intensify. That hidden glow can flare into a heat too intense to deny. Not that I would ever hurt Jack. He didn't need to know what aching dreams and fantasies impelled me sometimes to rouse him early and urge him hungrily into my already-slippery cunt; he certainly never complained. He didn't need to know how I had discovered, late in life, the fine art of masturbation, or whose hands and body I felt when I touched myself, whose name I cried out. He only needed to know that I would always be with him. When I wanted to take this trip while he went on his annual fishing expedition with our two sons, he understood, or thought he did. He'd heard all about how women these days need to "find themselves," and knew I'd kept in touch with several friends from the war. Long ago I'd had to tell him just a little about Cleo, anyway; there was no way I could hide the tiny wings tattooed above my left breast, and I wouldn't if I could. "I had a friend who was a pilot, ferrying fighter planes for the RAF," I'd said. "I was so jealous of her silver wings that we went to a tattoo parlor down by the docks in London and both got tattooed." He'd laughed, and teased that he wished he'd known me in my drunken debauchery days, and was relieved, I think, that no other man was involved. But when we'd parted two days before, Jack had held me close and murmured "Have a good time, but please, don't get lost," and made me wonder how much, after all, he might guess. Now I glanced across at Cleo, wondering how she had explained her own tattoo to her partner Yelena. Directly, probably, the way she did most things. "Well, there was this nurse I used to know, a long time ago, back when I was ferrying Spitfires in England and envying you Russian women flying combat missions." Cleo had gone back to the States in 1943 with the full expectation of being among the first group of women accepted into the Army Air Force, pioneers who would, in the glare of public scrutiny, have to be utterly above reproach, of any kind. But politics had intervened, promises had been broken, and the WASPs were disbanded, instead. By that time I had more or less saved Jack's life after he was wounded on Guam, and he had more or less saved my sanity and trust in the future. It wasn't until 1977, when the first women were finally admitted into the Air Force, that the WASPs of WWII managed to get a little overdue recognition, and I found out what had become of Cleo Remington. A reunion organizer forwarded my address to her, at my request, and she wrote back. For a year we'd been exchanging letters like any old friends making up for decades of missed Christmas cards; newsy, casual letters that could safely have been read by Jack, or Yelena–although Jack might have been led to dot a few i's and cross a few t's, while Yelena probably didn't need to. Cleo knew all about Jack, our sons and daughter and grandchild, and my recent switch from nursing to physical therapy. I knew about her charter plane business and her move from Nome to the milder climate of Kodiak Island for the sake of her partner's health. Old stresses and war injuries had caught up with Yelena over the years. When Cleo invited me to visit, Yelena wrote as well. "You must come," she said, "as a most welcome guest. I know quite well what Cleo is plotting, but you must come only for the joy of friendship, not to give medical advice." So here I was, descending toward a great island of dark green forests and blue inlets and distant snow-slashed mountains that might have been the coast of Maine on a grander scale. Len kept up a steady commentary, pointing out landmarks and notable buildings in the town of Kodiak, including a salmon cannery he apparently owned. When we landed I managed to disembark quickly enough that his offer of a helping hand subsided into a handshake. "So few lovely women to go around," he complained with good humor, "and Cleo monopolizes the cream of the crop." "You gave it your best shot, Len," Cleo said cheerfully. "If Yelena feels up to it we'll come into town while Kay's here and you can pile on the charm over dinner at the Shelikof." "Is everybody in Alaska that–well–nice?" I asked when he'd left. "We get all kinds here, just like anywhere else," she said, assembling my luggage and some bags of her own, "but pulling your own weight is a hell of a lot more important than what the kids call 'lifestyle.' Len's a good client, and a good friend. Says he likes to fly with me because I know the territory as well as anyone still alive, and I'm still alive because I don't have anything to prove about the quality of my balls." My gaze, of course, dropped involuntarily to her crotch. The corner of her mouth twitched as she turned away. "You must have mellowed some since the old days, then," I said, following her still-trim ass toward a much smaller float plane, and wondering yet again what the hell I thought I was doing. Any hope, or fear, that seeing her at this age would cancel the spell of my memories had been blasted; and here I was, a graciously invited guest, ogling her like a thief with an eye on the family jewels. "Mellowed? Could be, but itching to blast a Messerschmidtt from the sky is a far cry from being a damn fool when it comes to challenging wind and ice and snow blindness." She began to load bundles into the plane with that economical grace I remembered so well. The hell with self-recrimination; I might as well at least enjoy the view. But suddenly she swore, and jerked, and bumped her head on the wing. "Damn, I'm screwed." "What is that?" I dropped my duffel bag on the dock and ran to help. Cleo lifted a small carton dripping with some thick white substance out of a plastic bag. "The sour cream I picked up in Anchorage. It tipped over. And not just any sour cream, but the one-and-only brand Yelena considers worthy of her borscht. She'll chew me up and spit me out." "Hey, I'd pay good money to see that." I took the bag from her. "I'll scoop what I can back into the carton and take the blame." I'd forgotten how much fun it was to see her flustered, all the more so for its rarity. I'd forgotten a lot, I realized, including who I had been, too, all those years ago when we were young. "Well, it's not that bad." Cleo shook white globs from her hand. "But she's been in a domestic tizzy getting ready for you. I think maybe she's nervous." "That makes two of us, then," I said. "Three of us, if you have any sense at all." I reached out, pulled her hand to my lips, and slowly and thoroughly licked the sour cream from between her fingers. "Mmm, Yelena has good taste." Cleo gripped the wing strut with her other hand until the knuckles whitened, but she didn't pull away. "Okay," she said. "Now I'm nervous." |
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| The flight was scarcely more than climb and descent, maybe thirty
miles, but I could see from the convoluted coastline how much
longer it would have been by boat. "You don't have to be all that nervous on my account," I told Cleo. "I'll behave myself. Really, I will." "Don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed, but damn, it's good to see you, Kay." Her hand rested briefly on my thigh, and for that moment the wide world below, the years between, blurred, and I was in the cockpit of that long-ago Spitfire with Cleo driving me on until the seat was wet. "Yes...." I cleared my throat. "It's wonderful to be here. And to have the chance to meet Yelena. How's she doing now?" Cleo frowned as she eased the plane down toward a little cove looking like a bite taken out of the forested coastline. "That's what I'm hoping you can tell me. Some days she seems to move around okay, and some days she tries not to let me see how much she's hurting. I'd move into town if it would help, with phones and electricity and a doctor nearby, not that he's done her much good. I'd do anything–move down below, to a city, anything. She's been through so much.... But she won't even discuss it. When we came here two years ago she'd given up piloting but still liked to fly with me into Seward or Anchorage or wherever. The last few months, though, it's been all I can do to get her to go over to town to chat in Russian with the Orthodox priest there." The plane curved smoothly out over the water and back toward the land. "Are you sure she doesn't mind having me visit?" "That's about the only thing I am sure about. She really wants you to come. Beyond that...well, in thirty years there's never been a time when she didn't keep me guessing." Her face relaxed into a reminiscent smile. "Good for her." I said, in spite of a pang somewhere in my gut; and then we were touching down on the smooth surface of the cove and skimming toward the dock. A mixed-breed dog with more than a hint of wolf blood came down to the beach to meet us. I didn't need Cleo's hand on my arm to make me pause for the canine ritual of introduction. "Kay, this is Raksha," she said formally. I offered Raksha the back of my hand to be sniffed. My scent plus whatever messages my own dogs had managed to send via my shoes won me her polite but wary acceptance. Yelena waited on the cabin's screened porch. One hand gripped the doorframe for support, but she stood as elegantly erect as any of the tall blue lupines along the path, creating an illusion of height in spite of her slight build. I climbed toward her, my heart thudding, not from exertion but something close to panic as I glimpsed an alternate world in which I might have been standing in her place, might have been the one welcoming Cleo home with that look of fierce love. When she turned toward me I saw, in her dark, searching eyes, that she shared the very same thought. We assessed each other, scarcely breathing. Then she held out both hands, and I took them in mine. "I'm so glad to meet you," I said fervently, "so glad Cleo has you to love her." "How could I not?" Yelena said, in perfect sincerity, then added, with a sly smile, "A woman with such good taste in lovers, after all." Cleo let out a long breath of something like relief. "I'd better take in the bags," she said, "before you two make me blush." She hugged Yelena gently, as though afraid she might break. "The dinner is ready to go into the oven," Yelena told Cleo, "And the water for tea is hot. You could bring a tray out here for us while the air is so fine." When Cleo was out of sight Yelena invited me to sit with her. "Now perhaps we will plot together how to make Cleo blush." "I don't expect you need any help in that," I said honestly, taking the cushioned chair she offered; noting, too, how slowly and carefully she eased into her own. Raksha settled protectively at her feet. The view over the sparkling cove to the sea was glorious. A dense forest of Sitka spruce descended right to the blue water's edge in some places, while in others bands of lupine and clover and wild rose grew along strips of pebbly beach; but I found it hard to look anywhere but at Yelena's face. She had been at least half right about Cleo's good taste. In youth she must have been stunning. The sculpted arch of her cheekbones and curve of her brows were lovely beyond anything age or pain could diminish. Deep chestnut hair streaked with gray waved back from her wide forehead and down her back in a loose braid, making me wonder with a touch of guilt how gray my own hair would be if I ever stopped augmenting the once-natural red. She gazed at me just as intently then relaxed into a throaty chuckle. "Such a relief that you too have aged. Although I can see clearly what Cleo has treasured in memory all these years." I understood completely. Memories stay forever young. "I doubt she's had much need for memory, with you to fill her life. I mean it truly, Yelena, I'm glad you are together." The inner door was open, and I hoped Cleo could hear us. "What might have been.... But there was the war, and the times, and, I guess, fate–nobody's fault. And I have a good life." Which was true, as far as it went. I thought of that last night together–the desperate intensity, the wrenching pain when I'd had to leave her. And she'd had to let me go. Even in this moment of startling frankness I wouldn't admit to the ache of longing I still felt. Yelena must have heard Cleo's approach as clearly as I did, but she said, quite deliberately, "Oh yes, she has remembered you, often." Cleo stepped down onto the porch, looking apprehensive. She was carrying porcelain cups of tea on a black lacquered tray glowing with jewel-toned Russian designs. Very carefully she set the tray on the table between us. As soon as it was safely in place, Yelena went on, "She thinks I don't know what she does, don't hear her, all alone, playing her recordings of music from the war time, remembering you.... But I know the steps to that dance." "Lena. Lenochka.” Cleo flopped down hard into a chair and buried her flushed face in her hands. I took a cup, trying to keep it steady enough to prevent a tidal wave. "For me," Yelena went on pensively, "it is balalaika music that ignites my memory. I knew a girl once as sharp and sweet as the balalaika she played." I raised my cup in mock salute. "Congratulations," I said, fighting the huskiness in my throat. "You do seem to have made her blush." I had a suspicion that my face was a bit heated, too. Cleo raised her head and gulped down some steaming tea. "I sure hope you didn't bet against her," she said unsteadily. "I warned you she always keeps me guessing." Yelena gazed at us serenely over the rim of her delicate teacup, but a hint of sadness shadowed her teasing. When Cleo took the tray back inside I leaned forward, searching for words. "I hope...." She brushed my lips with gentle fingers. "No need to worry. I too have memories. I do not grudge her the thoughts of you, the music, the...the passion. But...but afterwards, when she comes to me so gently, so sweetly...." I took a shuddering breath and tried not to melt entirely away. "That would be heaven," I said, not sure I had spoken aloud. "Ah, but could you be content with mere heaven?" she asked. "Sometimes one longs for more." "She's afraid of hurting you?" I asked, and then, seeing the glitter of tears in her eyes, "and you're afraid, too." She nodded almost imperceptibly. It wasn't the first time my physical therapy work had involved some sex counseling. But this was going to be profoundly, disturbingly different. |
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| In the long, bright northern evening, after a dinner of savory
borscht and fresh salmon and peas, we sat again on the porch.
Yelena seemed to have an endless fascination with details of my
life, so I did my best to satisfy her, even though I wanted to
hear about their life, to see the shifting expressions on Cleo's
face as she talked, to watch the lines on her face accentuate
the beautiful shape of her mouth when she smiled. Lines imprinted
by a life I hadn't shared. I was three or four time zones from home, and suddenly too tired to count the hours since I had slept. "How did you two meet?" I asked, hoping to just lean back and listen. "I scraped her up off the ice in the Bering Strait," Cleo said. "She claimed a storm had blown her off course on a mail flight from Yakutsk. That must have been some storm." "It is my story, and I stick to it," Yelena said firmly. "And there was a storm, raging still, when you so foolishly came to find me, Cleo." She made a small gesture with her hand; Cleo reached out to cover it with her own. "I never claimed I didn't go through a damn fool stage myself," she said. "Hunters reported seeing a plane with Russian markings go down, and I guess I was just too curious to wait for better weather." "When I saw you landing on the ice in the wind and snow," Yelena said fervently, "I thought it must be a miracle. I thought you were an angel sent from God." "I'm no angel," Cleo said, trying to keep her tone light in spite of an underlying huskiness. "And you were sure glad enough later to find that out." My throat stung. Something more than mere heaven, Yelena had said. It seemed like the right time to say good night. |
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| In the morning Cleo's canoe slipped silently into the mist rising
from the still waters of the cove. She was plotting some great
surprise with their neighbors on the far shore. "A commune, they say they have," Yelena said dismissively. "What do they know of communes? But they are young and strong and amusing, and glad to help when needed. Glad, too, of Cleo's help when they wish to fly somewhere. They think we are 'cool.' When they see the three of us together I expect they will think we are even 'cooler.'" I laughed, and continued massaging her back. I had already observed her range of motion and noted where and when she felt pain. Now she lay on a quilt on an impromptu examining table, while Raksha kept a close watch on me. The dog had been doubtful at first about letting me touch her mistress, until Yelena had put her arms around me and given my mouth a quite convincing kiss. "This she will understand," she'd said, with an impish grin. "But if you require me to take off my clothes, you must do the same, to allay her suspicion." "Why not?" So we had both stripped to the waist. The kitchen was warm enough, since Cleo had started a fire in the wood stove in the chill of early morning. I had emphasized the benefit to Yelena's back of soaking in hot water, and she had shown me the tank attached behind the stove and discussed getting a propane-powered water heater to augment it. The refrigerator and cook stove too were powered by propane gas delivered monthly by boat. Running water was piped from an uphill stretch of the icy stream flowing into the cove. Yelena's teasing had an air of casual intimacy, but I could feel the tension in her muscles, especially when my hands neared the areas of her injuries. "Tell me when anything hurts," I said. Very soon, though, she relaxed. Her skin was smooth except for old scars and her pleasantly padded frame was narrow but sturdy. Apart from her injuries she seemed to be in good health for her age. Our age. "Shall I tell you also when it feels very, very good?" she asked wickedly. "Sure," I said, "but I'll bet I can tell." She chuckled and wriggled slightly, purring from time to time as I kneaded some of her soreness away. There was no way for me to maintain professional objectivity. I didn't even try. Something in Yelena's blend of bravado and vulnerability had touched me from the start, just as it had, I was sure, touched Cleo. My unsupported breasts moved in interesting ways as I manipulated her, one part of my mind interpreting what my fingers felt beneath the skin, another, more primal area envisioning Cleo's hands moving over her, Cleo's body pressed against hers. Possibly even my own flesh pressed against hers. Time to get a grip. "Some of your pain is from injuries to the disk, here, and the vertebrae here, and here," I told her, "but some is from scar tissue, and muscles clenching to try to protect the spine. I can loosen the scar adhesions a bit, and show you exercises to strengthen groups of muscles in just the right ways to support your spine. It will take a few months to notice an effect, but there will be some help, I promise." "Enough for...." Her voice was tremulous, all bravado gone. I stroked her hair, and resisted an entirely unprofessional impulse to stroke farther, down across her back and under the loose slacks pulled low across her hips. "Turn over," I said, "and we'll discuss that part." She turned, slowly and carefully, moving a bit more easily than before the massage. A long vertical scar creased the lower half of her gently rounded abdomen and disappeared under the waistband of her slacks. There was a story there, but I wouldn't ask. "I've seen the notes from the x-rays in Anchorage," I told her, "so I know enough about what isn't wrong to tell you that nothing you really feel like doing will damage you. Too much bending will make you sore for a while, but the pains you sometimes feel here, and here, and here–" I touched her hips, and her inner thighs, and rested my hand gently on her mound, "–are misinterpretations by your brain. The nerve groups serving these areas branch off the spinal column just where your injuries irritate them, so you feel the pain lower down, where there is no injury." If the doctor had told her this, he probably hadn't been clear, or she hadn't believed him, or, most likely, she had never told him exactly where it hurt, or what her fears were. "You need to find ways to move that don't stress your back or knees, but being creative has its rewards, after all." "Sometimes," she said hesitantly, "sometimes even inside...." "Would it seem so much like pain if you knew no harm was done?" "No," she said, and a hint of jaunty smile returned. "There is pain that one chooses, after all." "So there is," I agreed, and helped her to sit. She rested her head against my side for a moment, on the way up, her cheek brushing my breast. My nipples tightened. I wasn't sure she'd noticed until she leaned back onto her elbows and said, glancing at me obliquely, "In all those years, Kay, did you never look at another woman?" "I've enjoyed the scenery now and then," I said, "especially in the last few years. Nothing more. I do love Jack, and never want to hurt him. But...sometimes a certain way of moving, a turn of the head, catches my eye, and something clenches inside me...except...." "Except that it isn't Cleo," Yelena finished for me. She eased all the way up, swinging her legs around so that she faced me. The small space between us seemed to shrink in on itself, seemed to be pulling our bodies together. As though my life weren't complicated enough already. "Tell me about the balalaika girl," I said, hoping for distraction. Her dark eyes searched mine as she took my hand and brought it to the long scar on her belly. "I myself," she said, so low I had to bend my head to hear, "was the balalaika girl. It was Sergei who called me that. I was so thin, back then, but even sweeter, he said, than my music." She pressed my hand into her soft flesh. "You know, I think, what this is." "A Cesarean section scar." I stroked her lightly, knowing the pain went far deeper than the flesh. "My daughter was so beautiful," she whispered, "and Sergei so loving and proud...." She leaned her head on my shoulder. I put my arms around her, for comfort, only slightly complicated by the feeling of her body against mine. "We lived in Siberia after the war," she went on, "and I went back to flying when Marina was one year old. I was on a mail flight when...on the day when...." She drew a shuddering breath and raised her head. Her voice was bleak with anger. "In 1948 there was an earthquake. The destruction in the region of Ashkabad was all but total. In other places in the world, when there was such destruction, help would come, but Stalin would not let the world know that we had casualties. Even our own people, even in Moscow, no one was allowed to know. So there was no help. My baby died, and Sergei, injured trying to save her, died weeks later." My arms tightened around her tense body. Her cheek pressed against mine; her words vibrated directly into my bones. "So you understand how I came to be waiting for death on the ice." I'd comforted the bereaved more times than I could bear to count. But this time I had no words. "So you see, Kay...Katrushka...." She leaned back, groping for a corner of the quilt to wipe her eyes, since we were both shirtless. "Perhaps you live my other life, while I live yours." "Thank you," I whispered, "for doing it so well." Raksha whined behind us, sensing Yelena's distress. Suddenly her ears went up, and she trotted to the door. A moment later Cleo came briskly up the path, across the porch, and stopped short in the kitchen entrance. "Hey," she said, observing all the exposed flesh, "have I been missing out on something?" Yelena's transformation was startling. "Oh, Cleo," she said, brightly and wickedly, "Katrushka has magic hands. Can we keep her?" "Fine by me," Cleo said, "but just how many magic hands can one household stand?" I stepped in front of Yelena to give her more time to pull herself together. "I could show you a thing or two that might be useful," I said, meaning massage techniques but confident that Cleo wouldn't let the straight line pass her by. Her gray eyes darkened as she looked me over. My breasts might be a bit heavier than when I last flaunted them for her, my nipples somewhat farther away from the tattooed wings above them, but they were nothing to be ashamed of. Still sensuous–and still sensitive, as they were proving under the warmth of her gaze. "Kay," she said with feeling, "You show me much more and my concentration will be shot all to hell for the rest of the day." Yelena slipped off the table and went to her, moving more freely than she had since I'd met her. "And what about me?" she asked, mercifully without any hint of petulance. Cleo gently pulled her close and bent to nuzzle her neck, lifting the tousled braid aside for better access. "You, Lenochka," she murmured between kisses, "make we want to say the hell with the rest of the day entirely." Yelena gripped her fiercely, and I remembered with a tremor how it used to feel to hold Cleo's body close against mine and run my hands over her lithe back. I turned away and shrugged into my bra and shirt. "Kay says I won't break just from hugging," Yelena announced. Cleo glanced at me for confirmation, her gaze lingering in passing on my fingers buttoning my shirt. I nodded. "Let her be the judge of what she wants." "You do seem to be moving better," Cleo told her. "I was hoping, in fact, that you'd feel like flying to town this afternoon, and we could show Kay the sights and have dinner with Len. And then, when we get back, the commune kids should have my surprise ready." Which was what we did. I suggested ways to give the plane's seat better support for Yelena's back, and we took off just as a boat arrived from across the cove, loaded with bearded young men and stacks of piping and planks. Raksha, waiting on the dock with ears pricked and plumed tail waving, seemed to be well-acquainted with the visitors. Cleo took a much longer route this time, circling through the interior of the island so that I could see mountains and rivers and ponds starred with water lilies, and, not least, a huge Kodiak bear fishing deftly for salmon for her cubs. I wished suddenly, intensely, that Jack could see it; then I focused on the moment. No guilt, no regrets. When we landed I gave Cleo a lesson in massaging away Yelena's stiffness until Len met us with his car. Kodiak had been the first Russian settlement in Alaska, and Yelena took a proprietary joy in showing me the church with its sacred icons, and other traditional sites, even though much had been destroyed by the 1912 eruption of Katmai eighty miles across the Shelikof Strait or the great earthquake and tsunami of 1964. Then we had a magnificent meal of king crab at the Shelikof Inn, while Len entertained us with history and gossip. Yelena looked drawn but happy as we flew back. From the air it looked as though the cabin had pupped. As we touched down on the water I could see that the new, smaller structure was open at the front, and the young carpenters were in the final stages of nailing up screening. "Cleo, what is it? Is it for...what is that strange thing they do? Meditation?" Yelena asked as we helped her onto the dock. "Among other things." Cleo hailed the young man coming to meet us. "Hey Derek, are we good to go?" "All set, once the water gets hot enough. Works just like the one you saw over at our place. But look out for splinters on the benches." He rubbed his backside graphically, glanced over at me, and blushed behind his curly beard. I couldn't blame him for getting flustered. We were all at least as old as his mother, after all. And I knew just what he was envisioning. I was envisioning the same thing. |
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| "Ah, yes yes yes...." Yelena gave a long, sensual sigh as we helped
her ease down into the steaming water. The straight sides of the
classic California redwood hot tub had been padded with flotation
cushions from the plane to let her lean back with support. A gas
generator powered the jets of air and water massaging her. "Come in before you get cold," she said over her shoulder. With her hair coiled high on her head, the slim elegance of her neck suggested a ballet dancer far more than a bomber pilot. Cleo and I stood naked behind her, surveying each other. Cleo's body hadn't changed all that much; more sinewy now than slim, maybe, a few scars dramatic enough to have stories behind them. I had never quite been slim, and was even farther from it now, but Jack, I thought fleetingly, didn't seemed to mind. The achingly familiar look in Cleo's storm-gray eyes told me that she didn't mind the added fullness of breast and belly and hips, either. Then we both looked, with tenderness, toward Yelena. And quickly submerged our bodies in the water. Three pairs of legs intermingled. I flexed my toes, imagining a no-hands orgy scene in some risqué comedy. Cleo lay back with eyes closed, her body tense in spite of the soothing heat. I wondered whether she had fully realized until now what she was getting herself into. Yelena's eyes gleamed under half-closed lids. She was watching us, keeping us guessing, I thought, and enjoying the hell out of it. Under the swirling bubbles her toe gently stroked my calf; from the increased tension of Cleo's body I could guess where the other foot must be. "There is no harm in looking," Yelena said toward Cleo's firmly lowered eyelids. "I too can look at her, after all." She leaned forward, wincing slightly, then seemed to find a viable position. "And there is no harm in touching." Cleo's eyes flashed open at that, searching Yelena's face. "Lenochka," she said, her voice harsh in spite of the endearment, "tell me this isn't some kind of test." "No, Love," Yelena said gently, "it is a blessing." She reached out, clasped our right hands, and brought each of them to the other's tiny tattooed wings. My fingers crept upward to trace the shape of Cleo's lips; hers moved down to cup my breast. I looked into her darkened eyes. The weight of memory and longing pressed on us; I couldn't seem to breathe enough air for all my body's demands. "It's so hot in here..." I said faintly. Yelena leaned her head far back and closed her eyes. "The moon is full tonight," she said musingly. "Such a sight should not be missed." "True," Cleo said, her mouth curving into a slight smile under my fingers. "You could come with me, Kay, to see the moonlight on the cove." Though her words were for me, her questioning gaze was on Yelena's face. "Come back when the water has cooled a bit," Yelena said with apparent tranquility. "Raksha will fetch you if I have need of help." It was a gift I had no strength to refuse. |
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| The moon had been full over that wartime English airfield, but
all I recalled of it was the way its light had touched Cleo's
face and hair and reflected in her eyes. Now it lay a shimmering
path across the ripples of the Alaskan cove, and still all I could
see was Cleo. We went down the trail side by side, blankets clutched around our wet bodies. On the dock she leaned into the cockpit of the float plane, fiddled with something, and music flowed around us. A cascade of haunting notes from years past, a yearning voice; "Just give me something to remember you by...." Cleo turned and spread her arms so that her blanket formed great wings. I dropped mine, stepped into her embrace, and we were dancing as we had so long ago, bodies pressing into each other's heat, hungry for the thrill of each slow, urgent movement. I clutched at her ass to pull her thigh even harder against the pounding demand of my cunt. She kept the blanket around us both as she gripped me close, but not too close to move her breasts across mine to savor their fullness. "Cleo..." I murmured against her searching tongue, "Let me breathe you...." So she loosened the blanket, and the warm air saturated with our arousal rose around us, its pungency intensifying every shade of memory. The plane's wing above us might have belonged to that Spitfire ready for battle. My throbbing body might never have known marriage, or childbirth, or any longing as intense as the need to feel Cleo's hand move deep inside me. The music changed to "As Time Goes By". Cleo bent her mouth to my breasts, and slid her fingers into the slick entrance to my heat. The urgency of here and now overcame memory, overcame everything but hunger. We sank down onto my blanket on the dock. I arched my hips, spread my thighs, and demanded everything she wanted to give, making the wooden boards shake to the rhythm of my heaving body, drowning the music with cries of need ultimately fulfilled. Cleo lay beside me then, panting, trying to give me space to breathe. As soon as I could I pulled her close again. In therapeutic massage, you have to know what triggers erotic reactions, in order to avoid them–or, as now, incite them. I nuzzled her throat, stroked inward from her shoulders, licked lightly across her breasts as my touch moved slowly down her spine to circle in the small of her back, and then urged her body on top of mine. I raised my thigh between her legs and dug my hands rhythmically into her buttocks. Her rapid breathing turned to groans, and when my fingers pressed insistently inward and downward she bucked so hard against me I thought the imprint of the creaking boards beneath might mark me forever. At last we lay peacefully together, cocooned in blankets, Cleo's head on my breast, my mind drifting. Surely we had been together like this always...the lingering violet twilight of summer, the long, frigid nights of winter, all mine, ours, to share through the years.... "Kay," she said gruffly, "I did try to find you. But it was too late." My fantasies dissipated like mist. "Yes," I said, stroking her vibrant silver hair. "And if it hadn't been too late...." What of Jack, I thought, and my children? But what I said was, "Yelena would have been alone on the ice...." "Yes," Cleo said. We clung together a little longer, in perfect understanding of how much, after all, we had. Then I struggled to my feet and tugged her with me. "Yelena needs us now," I said. "She thinks I can give you what she can't any longer, but she's wrong. We have to convince her that she can." "Are you sure...." Cleo stumbled on a path she could have traveled with sure-footed ease in her sleep. "Just let me run this." I forged ahead to where Raksha waited, whimpering softly. Yelena lay back in the tub, eyes tightly closed, though she must have heard us coming. Or even smelled us. I knelt behind her and lay my cheek against her soft hair. "Thank you, Lenochka," I murmured. Then I stood and beckoned to Cleo to join me in the still-warm water. "Therapy time," I said with authority. "You, on your knees. And you," to Yelena, whose eyes had flashed open wide at my stern tone, "on my knees." I sat close beside her and urged her onto my lap, then gripped her hips firmly. "Now," I said over her wet shoulder, "since I haven't convinced you any other way, I'm going to hold you so damned steady that no matter what you do, even if you beg, I won't let you move in any way that could hurt. And Cleo is going to fuck you, not gently, but with all she's got. If you say harder, she's going to believe you mean harder. No holding back, while I'm holding you." Yelena had been crying, I was sure, but now she giggled–an interesting sensation in a naked body on one's lap. Then she gasped as Cleo touched her, and the sensations got far more interesting. For all concerned. It may have been the most erotic, strangest, hardest thing I've ever done. Yelena's body squirming against mine, straining under my relentless hands, was no more arousing than the moans that vibrated through her flesh into mine. Cleo's low, husky voice, murmuring endearments that were not for me–and a few that might have been–sparked pain indistinguishable from pleasure. We leaned together at last, Cleo's sweaty brow on Yelena's shoulder, mine resting where silver hair mingled with chestnut. Yelena turned her head slowly, her lips brushing Cleo's forehead and then my cheek. "Thank you, Katrushka," she whispered. In her gleaming eyes I saw a fulfillment that went beyond the physical, and I knew at last why she had wanted me to come. Now, whenever Cleo thought of me, or I of her, Yelena would be as firmly entangled in our hearts and senses as she was now in our arms. "Just remember, Lenochka," I whispered, "take good care of my life." |
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12.07.06: Scarlet Letters -- in case it isn't glaringly obvious -- is currently
on an extended hiatus. The web has changed, we've changed, and
we're trying to figure out how we both fit together now, which isn't a process we want to rush. If you're looking for more current SL-related content, you can
have check out upcoming books from editor Heather Corinna and previous co-editor Hanne Blank, check out Heather's current sexuality sites, or explore sites through the femmerotic network. We hope to be back with you soon, as fresh, challenging and
unexpected as ever.
In the meantime, by all means, enjoy our years of past content,
all of which still remain in the public and subscription areas.
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