Written by Ali Naro
Monday afternoon, July 11, 1955
Walking to the Tick Tock Diner with Debbie
(fictional) Arnett, Florida
Laura and Debbie walked downtown to the Tick Tock Diner since Debbie had to go back for the dinner shift. Debbie lived within walking distance of the restaurant so she usually walked to work instead of driving. Laura's new home was also walking distance away from Debbie's place and the diner, plus Laura had no car and no driver's license for that matter, having never been able to afford a car much less learn how to drive so she just walked everywhere whether it was walking distance or not.
On the rare occasions that Laura and Debbie did walk together in public, both of them did whatever they could to seem as least interested in each other as two people could possibly be. Laura had a couple of pockets on the front of her dress and she kept her hands in them during the entire walk so she wouldn't accidentally grab one of Debbie's hands and hold it while they were walking. She always put her hands in the pockets of her dresses when they walked in public together. Debbie did her own version of the same thing every time too, she always had one arm and hand occupied with keeping her purse on her shoulder and the other hand holding onto her cigarette while she smoked away on it at record speed then lighting up another one immediately as soon as she finished the last cigarette to keep both hands occupied always. Most times she would chew gum as well.
No chances were taken just in case even for a moment they forgot that they were no longer in the safety of Debbie’s home, because one slip of forgetfulness, one kiss, one intimate touch between them out in the real world, and that very real world could very well beat them or rape them or send them away to a mental hospital or even possibly kill them or just plain ole run them out of town with dirty looks and mean words and harsh accusations if anyone ever found out what their true relationship was.
Just a few hours ago they had walked the exact same way from the diner to Debbie’s house with at least a foot of space between them, Laura’s hands in the pockets of her dress, Debbie occupying her hands with her purse and cigarette, neither a word between them. But as soon as they had walked into Debbie's house and the door was closed, pausing for only a moment before they heard the click of the lock, then like a Pavlovian reaction, they immediately were in each other’s arms desperate for each other’s touch, desperate to just be themselves.
“I swear, I was going to catch up with you about your trip to St. Augustine before we got into this,” Debbie said as they slammed up against the closed front door, clawing at each other’s clothes, frantically trying to be rid of them.
Debbie had been referencing a recurring conversation that she and Laura often had about how they always ended up having sex immediately upon entering her house. Debbie would sometimes tell Laura afterward that she had sworn that this time they would sit and talk and catch up first, maybe have a bite to eat or a drink at least before making love, but that never happened. They always ended up immediately in bed or on the couch or on the floor, although the floor was becoming less and less of a habit simply because their bodies were tired of the bruises and the pain that always followed a love-making session on the hard, unforgiving surface.
Debbie and Laura made it to the diner without a word spoken or a touch between them. Laura started to say goodbye since she needed to head back to that enormous house she now lived in to interview the new maid, but Debbie stopped her, actually daring to touch Laura’s wrist, grabbing it and pulling on Laura, asking her to walk with Debbie to the alley at the back of the diner, the alley where sometimes they would meet up for brief moments of physical contact when Jack was in town. There were a set of walls in the alley that made no sense being there other than being the perfect place to keep out prying eyes if you wanted to get physical with someone right there behind the diner without anyone ever seeing you.
Debbie pulled Laura into the corner of the walls and just stared at her for a moment before finally speaking,
“Look, I’m sorry about earlier. I’m sorry that I kept saying ‘fucking’ about our lovemaking. I’ve had a lot of experience with fucking and what we are doing is not that, not at all. You are always so sweet and attentive and loving when we are making love because we are making love. You wouldn’t know how to fuck someone if you tried because you actually give a shit about the person you’re with. Well, sometimes when we first see each other after weeks apart we are fucking because we’re just so desperate for each other, but still, it’s nothing like what I said. I kept saying we were only fucking on purpose because I know you hate it.”
“Why? Why would you say something to me that you know would hurt me?” Laura asked confused by Debbie's confession.
“Because I was mad at you about marrying Mark even though I told you to, and so I suddenly decided to convert into an immature, spoiled twelve-year-old and pick on you. And because I was too embarrassed to admit that the last three days you were gone, I spent every one of those nights getting drunk and crying myself to sleep thinking that I was going to lose you, about how lonely my life would be without you. And I couldn’t help but think about him, you know, your new husband...touching you. I’ve never had to share you before. I now understand what it’s like for you when Jack is home. It really is just awful being on that end of the relationship,” Debbie said as tears fell from her eyes.
“It’s certainly no picnic,” Laura replied, wiping away Debbie's tears with her fingers.
“I got jealous because I wanted to be him. I wanted to be the one spending three days in St. Augustine on a honeymoon with you. When I first saw you walk in the diner this morning, there was nothing more in this world that I wanted to do than to run to you and wrap my arms around you and tell you how much I missed you. But we can’t do that, we can never do that. So I did what I always do when I first see you after Jack goes away and we’re in public, I acted like it was no big deal. But it is a big deal seeing you, always, whether it’s been weeks or days or hell even hours. Did you know that the day you went out on your first date with Mark was exactly two years to the day that we made love for the first time?”
“Oh God, I had no idea…,” Laura said, upset with herself for not knowing the date or even thinking that such a date would be important enough to remember.
“See, me knowing little things like that and you being unaware of them are why I’m scared of losing you.”
Laura dried more of Debbie’s tears and then held Debbie for a few moments, but the whole time fearful someone would come into the alley and see them. Laura knew Debbie was worried about the same thing too because, despite the tears, she kept turning her head to make sure no one was there.
“You’re not going to lose me,” Laura said as she turned Debbie’s eyes away from the invisible person that wasn’t there watching.
“Oh, one day I will. One day you’ll find someone who is better suited for you than me.”
“Who? Who is this mystery woman that you keep randomly bringing up lately that I’m going to leave you for? Debbie, there’s no one else,” Laura said throwing her arms up in despair.
“It’s my own fault. It’s what I get for walking into this relationship with only the intention of getting laid, but instead, I got way more than I wanted or have a right to want. I just missed you so much and now I know how it’s going to feel when you leave me for good and then I’m going to have to sit down and make some hard decisions about my own life, decisions that I have spent far too long avoiding.”
“I’m back, Debbie, okay? I’m not going anywhere. I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay?” Laura said as she looked into Debbie’s eyes, trying to convince her lover that she was worrying for nothing.
They both then looked around automatically once again to make sure no one was around and couldn’t suddenly see through walls, then kissed briefly, and then both automatically looked around one more time to make sure no one saw them, and then finally they parted.
Laura made her way back out to the street and began to walk to…she still couldn’t think of it as home, so she decided to start calling it, only in her head, of course, The Big House, because wasn’t her new home already beginning to feel like a jail?
As Laura walked she thought about her relationship with Debbie. She didn’t know where the endgame was for them. Debbie having a husband was grating on Laura's conscious more and more lately and Debbie didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave her husband, and even if she did, Laura wasn’t sure if she wanted to continue her affair with Debbie. And if she was being honest with herself, Laura was beginning to feel the spark she once had for Debbie slowly fading away. But the thought of being utterly alone scared her as well and so whenever the thought of ending their relationship would creep into her mind, Laura would quickly brush it away because being with Debbie was still better than being alone.
Laura did still enjoy Debbie’s company when she wasn’t mad at Laura for not loving her back. Their relationship had slowly grown into a friendship or at least a friendship of sorts. Debbie in many ways was the sister Laura never had and the mother Laura had always yearned for. Debbie always made time to teach Laura about life and sex and how the world really worked. Debbie and Laura could spend hours talking when they weren’t spending hours having sex, so why wasn’t she enough? Why wasn’t Debbie enough? She didn’t want Debbie gone from her life completely. She very much wanted Debbie to always be a part of her life, but maybe not as a lover. Then again if their relationship changed into just a friendship then Laura would no longer have access to Debbie’s wonderfully wonderful naked body and she couldn’t help but feel a bit selfish about not wanting to let go of that particularly wonderful pleasure just yet.
And then there was that whole marriage thing that Laura had going on with her life now. Shouldn’t she be planning a future with her husband and not what her future with and without Debbie would be like? But Debbie bluntly, as always, stated the obvious, Mark was gay just like Laura, just like Debbie, and doing what he has to do in order to survive in a world where people like them are not allowed to exist as anything more than a disease no one wants. Mark was not really Laura’s husband any more than she was really his wife. Legally, yes, but otherwise they had joined the great game of rouse. Look over here so you won’t look over there. Debbie had taught Laura all about the rouse and how to play the game, so Laura was thinking of herself as a fool for not picking up on Mark being a player of the game sooner.
Although,
She had.
Hadn’t she?
Didn’t Mark’s strange behavior and suspicious mannerisms that Laura had witnessed long before he had said two words to her make her wonder about Mark?
Make her wonder that something about him seemed awfully familiar.
Laura had heard some of the guys from the printing press make fun of Mark’s feminine voice and feminine mannerisms long before he asked Laura out on a date. And even though she didn’t like the insults they made about Mark, still, she would find herself agreeing with their observations that he had a feminine quality that made him suspicious.
And wasn’t her immediate thought upon seeing him for the first time that he was such a pretty and effeminate man that it was a pity he wasn’t a woman instead?
Laura then wondered how hard it was to get a divorce. She had an aunt who got divorced years ago and caused such a scandal that she was forced out of the family even though she divorced her husband because he was cheating on her. Divorce just wasn’t something people did unless they lived in Hollywood and Laura was a long, long way from Hollywood.
So, with no other options, Laura decided that for now, it was best to just keep things as they were; stay married to Mark and continue seeing Debbie.
But then from around a corner, she came...
The woman Laura had been secretly admiring from afar ever since she moved into town a little more than two years ago. The very first day Laura was living in Arnett, she saw her and immediately fell in…
Infatuation?
In like?
It couldn’t be love because you can’t fall in love with someone you’ve never spoken to, right?
But Laura had fallen in love.
In an instant, she had fallen in love with someone she didn’t know, had never talked to, didn’t even know her name, and probably never would.
Some days when Laura was walking around town she would suddenly see her in the distance and it made everything in Laura’s life seem possible for a moment. Sometimes Laura would find herself walking around town with no other purpose but just hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Laura had no idea where the woman lived or where she worked or anything at all about her. Laura was too scared and shy to approach the beautiful woman, so she only ever admired the pretty lady from afar; that is if she were lucky enough to have caught sight of her.
A couple of years ago, soon after first spotting her, Laura had figured out that the older woman shopped for groceries every Saturday morning at 9:00a.m.; and so every Saturday at 9:00a.m., Laura would find herself hanging out around the grocery store.
For almost two years, everything in Laura’s life revolved around Saturdays at 9:00 a.m. It was the one thing in Laura’s life for a time that she looked forward to. It was the one thing in Laura’s life for a while that kept her going.
Saturdays at 9:00a.m.
Laura would find herself counting down the days and then counting down the hours and then counting down the minutes for Saturdays at 9:00a.m. Laura’s father had given Laura his pocket watch just before he died and she would carry it in her dress pocket and found that it was her lucky charm because it would tell her when it was 9:00a.m., and as 9:00a.m. got closer and closer, she would stare at Daddy’s watch, urging time to move just a little faster, please.
Laura found herself always unavailable on Saturday mornings to meet up with Debbie. Instead of spending her time making love to a beautiful woman, Laura would stand across the street from the grocery store and pretend to window shop at the radio/TV store just so she could catch a glimpse of her. Laura could see the reflections of people coming and going from the grocery store in the radio/TV shop’s window and so she would stare at the window waiting for the woman to enter the grocery store and then she would wait to catch a glimpse of the woman as she was leaving. It never took the woman more than ten or fifteen minutes to get the two bags of groceries she always came out with. Laura would only stare at her via the store shop window until she had passed her by, too shy and in awe of the woman to see her in the flesh. Laura would only turn to look at the real woman instead of her reflection once she had passed by and the woman’s back was to Laura, only then did it feel safe to see her in the flesh instead of as a reflection. Laura would follow the woman with her eyes until she turned onto a different street and walked away from her life until next Saturday at 9:00 a.m.
When Laura had to wait weeks at a time until Debbie was free because Jack was in town, Laura wouldn’t dream of Debbie, but of the older, mysterious woman instead. Without uttering a word to Laura, without even knowing of Laura’s existence, the older, mysterious woman had somehow made Laura’s life worth living.
But then a couple of months ago the pretty lady stopped showing up at the grocery store on Saturdays at 9:00a.m. Laura was crushed the first Saturday she never showed. Laura stood in front of the radio/TV store window for over an hour before the man who owned the store finally came outside to see if she wanted to buy a radio or television. Then the next Saturday came and still no sign of the woman. After a couple of more Saturdays, Laura finally gave up and she was still mourning this loss in her life.
Laura had worried that maybe the pretty lady had moved away and she would never get to see her again. Laura didn’t know why, but she always had a feeling, a fear that the woman was going to move away and Laura would never see her again. But here Laura was finally seeing the older, mysterious woman for the first time in two months and Laura’s heart leapt. The older, mysterious woman hadn’t moved away after all, at least not yet.
The pretty lady was walking away from Laura, a purse in her hand, a simple blue dress on, and simple black shoes. Laura was never sure what it was about the woman that had first caught her eye and continued to over two years later.
A strength she had.
A sadness she always wore.
A beauty she possessed.
It was all of these things, yet it was so much more.
Debbie was currently worried that Laura would leave her one day for someone else, yet Debbie had no idea that Laura had found someone else before she had even met Debbie. But Laura didn’t and probably never would have the courage to do anything about it.
How could she?
The older, mysterious woman Laura had fallen in love with at first sight over two years ago and continued to love from afar was black.
If two women being together was nearly impossible, then two women from different races was definitely in the category of never.
Laura was curious enough to contemplate following the woman to see where she was going, afraid she might never see her again now that she didn’t know what the woman’s grocery shopping schedule was, but the great clock on top of the bank was chiming the hour. It was 4:00 p.m. and Laura was going to be late if she didn’t get going right now and so she ran in the opposite direction of the woman hoping her legs would be able to move fast enough to get to The Big House on time for her meeting with the new maid.
Laura ran down the street as fast as she could, turning the corner down the long driveway of The Big House too sharply, causing her to trip and skid her right knee across the hard path. Laura stopped for a moment to assess the damage to her knee. She was pretty sure if she didn’t have to wear stupid dresses she wouldn’t have fallen. Why couldn’t she wear pants instead? Kathrine Hepburn wore pants and Laura had long been suspicious that she had more in common with Kathrine Hepburn than the movie star let on or as Debbie once told her thanks to her costume designer friend in Hollywood who worked on a couple of Kate’s movies,
“That bitch is queerer than a three-dollar bill.”
Most of the skin on Laura’s knee was gone and blood was already rising to the surface as her brain began to catch up to the fact that her knee was in tremendous pain, but she couldn’t stop now, she was officially late for the meeting, so she ignored the injury and got up and went right on running, slamming through the front door. She suddenly came to a halt when she got inside, her breath so loud she couldn’t hear anything else for a moment. It was two minutes past four, but no sign of the maid. Maybe she was late too then? Laura looked out the window next to the front door, but there was no sign of a woman walking up the driveway.
There was, however, a slight noise that Laura could barely make out coming from somewhere else in the house.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Went the noise.
Or was it a knock?
Laura opened the front door to see if the new maid was indeed there, but just knocking quietly.
Nope.
No woman.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
There it was again.
It was a little louder now, so Laura began to move toward the noise.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The noise continued.
Laura hobbled through several rooms totally lost once again in The Big House, trying to ignore her throbbing knee and the blood she could feel dripping down her leg and soaking through her sock, trying not to get frustrated and cursing silently that no one should have a house so big that they can get lost in it.
Finally, Laura found her way back to the living room, and then after getting lost a couple of more times, she found the kitchen where she was sure the noise was coming from, so she looked around for a few moments until she saw a door at the back of the kitchen. The door had a few window panes at the top of it and she could see through the window panes that someone was moving just outside the door.
Laura hadn’t noticed the door at the end of the kitchen before, so she was surprised to see that the kitchen even had a backdoor. Then again she had been in the kitchen only once before and that was just this morning when she was trying to find something for breakfast only to discover that the enormous kitchen, which was bigger than any house or cramped one-room apartment for that matter that Laura had ever lived in before, only had molded cheese and a few slices of molded bread, so what exactly was the point of all this ridiculous largeness if the giant kitchen had less food in it than the cramped one-room apartment that she had just recently spent the last couple of years living in.
At least the grand kitchen’s lack of food had given Laura the excuse she needed to go to the diner this morning to see Debbie. Laura had been contemplating seeing Debbie since the moment she got back from her honeymoon, but once she had assessed the breakfast situation this morning it was all the excuse she needed to go to the diner to see her lover, knowing that when she saw Debbie that she was never going to be able to resist sleeping with her even if that meant she would now be committing the sin of adultery too.
But she had to have breakfast, right?
And if Debbie just so happened to be working at the diner as well then…that wasn’t so wrong to seek her out just a day back in town after getting married, right? It wasn’t like she had showed up at the diner on the exact same day she had come back to town from her honeymoon. She had waited almost an entire 24 hours before seeing Debbie.
Maybe that was why Laura had felt so defensive when Debbie said she was surprised Laura had gotten back into bed with her because Laura had been lying to herself and Debbie when she said that she had no plans to stop seeing her. But she did, way in the back of her head, when she had all of that time alone during her honeymoon to think, she had begun planning how to leave the relationship.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Went the noise loud and clear this time, waking Laura from her daydreaming mode.
When Laura looked through the window panes at the top of the kitchen door, she could only see the top of the person’s head, but she realized immediately that it was indeed the maid at the backdoor.
But why would she come to the backdoor instead of using the front…oh…wait…
Laura suddenly remembered one of those rules that blacks and whites had with each other, but no one ever really talked about unless someone broke the rules. There were so many of these ridiculous rules that Laura would try her best to stay on top of them, but most of these rules seemed so nonsensical that she would often have a hard time grasping the whole point of them and then would somehow lose track of them.
Until she had moved into town a couple of years ago, Laura had never really needed to know the rules anyway because she was just rarely ever around black people. She had lived on her parents’ farm out in the middle of nowhere so she wasn’t around black people very often. Once a month when they went into Arnett to get supplies or during harvest time when the sharecroppers would come to the farm were the only times she ever saw or was around black people. Daddy could usually only afford to hire three or four sharecroppers when it was time to pick the potatoes and cabbage for harvest and they were always black and usually always male, but sometimes a woman would be hired as well. Laura found herself fascinated by these people, especially the women. Since she could remember, she was always hearing all kinds of awful things about these people, but only to discover when she spent any time with them that most of what she had heard, if even any of it, wasn’t actually true.
Spending time with them really meant that Laura mostly just looked at them from afar, watching, waiting. Mamma had told Laura to be cautious of them and so that is what Laura did at first, she kept a cautious distance, waiting for all of these awful things that she was told that these people did to happen. But all of that waiting was for nothing because all she ever saw was people who worked just as hard as her and Mamma and Daddy did to get the potatoes and cabbage picked. They were always overly polite, even weary it seemed of Daddy and Mamma and even her.
Why would they be wary of me? Laura would wonder. I’m just a poor girl trying to survive in this harsh world, just like them.
And wasn’t it she who was supposed to weary of them? That’s what Mamma was always telling her.
When Laura got a little older and a little more confident, she did try talking to some of the sharecroppers when they were out in the field together. But they would barely mutter a “yes, ma’am” or a “no, ma’am” to her and they seemed so uncomfortable and scared of saying just those two simple things that Laura decided maybe it was best to just leave them alone because she was only making a bad situation worse, although she didn’t really understand why.
Laura could only see the top of the woman’s head as she looked through the panes of glass at the top of the back door, but she could tell that the woman knocking on the other side of it was black, and so it finally started to make sense why the woman interviewing to be a maid was at the back door and not the front door. It was one of those ridiculous rules that Laura had forgotten about. Black people were never allowed to enter the front door of a white person’s house. If they were allowed to enter the house at all; it was always at the backdoor.
Laura hadn’t even thought about the maid being black, basically because Laura didn’t think about the new maid at all other than she didn’t want one. But as Laura began to open the door, her heart suddenly began to beat rather fast and loud. Laura thought at first it was because she was nervous, maybe from all of the rules she had forgotten? But when she opened the door and began to let the woman inside, Laura suddenly understood that her heart had known before she did who was on the other side of it.
“Oh God,” Laura thought the moment her eyes realized that the woman on the other side of the backdoor of the kitchen was the older, mysterious woman she had spent the last couple of years secretly watching from afar.
It took Laura a few seconds to wake up from her dream and open the door all the way to let the woman inside.
“Hello ma’am,” the pretty lady said as she stepped into the kitchen, “I’m here to interview for the position of maid and cook. Mr. Downing sent me and…Oh my, ma’am, are you okay? Your leg is covered in blood.”
Just then Laura suddenly realized that she was in tremendous pain. She had been so caught up in finding the thumping noise and being late for her meeting with the new maid that she had completely forgotten she had blood dripping down her leg and into her sock and shoe.
Oh, God!
Oh, God!
Oh, God!
How embarrassing!
How awful!
Why of all people did it have to be the pretty lady who was on the other side of that stupid, stupid door?!
Here Laura was finally meeting the woman of her dreams and she was covered in blood from being so clumsy.
“Please ma’am, sit down in this chair,” The pretty lady said, pulling a chair out from the kitchen table as she put down her purse and took off her hat.
The pretty lady then took a kitchen towel and wet it with the water from the kitchen sink before she bent down in front of Laura and began gently wiping away the blood. Laura just sat there watching the pretty lady, amazed and confounded that she was touching Laura; that she was taking care of Laura’s clumsy wound.
Once the wound and the rest of Laura’s leg and foot were cleaned, the pretty lady took another dish towel and ripped it into strips to make a bandage that she then wrapped around Laura’s knee to help stop the bleeding.
Laura’s knee was perfectly cleaned and bandaged in a matter of just a few minutes as if the pretty lady was meant to be a nurse or a doctor and not a maid and a cook.
The pretty lady then handed Laura one of the strips from the ripped-up dish towel that she didn’t use as a bandage so Laura could dry her eyes because she had started crying the moment the pretty lady began to nurse Laura’s wound.
How many different ways had Laura fantasized about meeting the pretty lady? So many scenarios she had come up with while lying in bed at night waiting, waiting, always waiting for sleep. Laura had thought of so many ways of meeting the pretty lady. From movie-worthy introductions to just mundane everyday ways of meeting her, Laura had thought of them all –
Saving the pretty lady from a speeding car just in the nick of time as she tried to cross the street;
Offering to help her carry the groceries;
Accidentally bumping into the pretty lady and then somehow being able to strike up a conversation with her.
But never had she come up with the scenario of not being able to figure out where the woman was, but then greeting her with a knee gushing blood.
And then, why oh why did she offer to shake hands hello with the pretty lady after she was done bandaging her knee and Laura didn’t know what to say but to introduce herself?!
Oh, God!
Even that stupid rule Laura knew about because that was one of the nonsensical rules that people actually never shut up about because there were signs everywhere that said, “Whites only” from water fountains to public restrooms to the public library. Laura knew all about being separated physically from the other race, yet what does she do when she finally meets the pretty lady who is black? She puts out her hand as a giant offer of touch me, touch me!!
Well, didn’t Laura want the pretty lady to touch her?
Oh God, yes she did.
But it was such an automatic response to put out her hand when meeting someone for the first time. She was just doing what she had been taught. Mamma was a stickler for manners and this was one of those manner situations Mamma was always teaching, when you meet someone you tell them hello and your name and you shake their hand. Ugh! Why did Mamma have to teach her that?! She had barely taught her anything about life, but this she teaches me, Laura thought, completely frustrated once again at her mother’s serious lack of parenting skills.
And to make matters worse, greeting the pretty lady with a giant slab of skin missing from her knee and a gallon of blood that went with the skin, covering the lower half of her right leg because that was certainly the perfect way to meet such a perfectly beautiful woman.
And then what does Laura do as soon as the pretty lady begins to clean up her leg? She cries. Oh yes, that was brilliant. Just cry and bleed in front of the pretty lady. That’ll make her hot for you, Laura thought in anguish. Laura just wanted to dig a hole, curl up in a ball in it, bury herself, and die already.
Laura didn’t mean to cry and certainly not so much. It was just all too much. Lately, things had just been too much. Her whole life had felt like too much. Daddy and the way that he died…and then getting married to someone she didn’t know and didn’t love, and then coming home finally to Debbie only to get her jealous anger…it had all been too much and Laura had finally hit a wall when she had gotten back to The Big House and everything had gone so wrong.
But hadn’t the pretty lady been brilliant? Hadn’t she been just as wonderful, if not more so in person as Laura had imagined the last two years in her head? The pretty lady actually took the time to take care of Laura’s embarrassing wound. And in a way, wasn’t that better than any scenario Laura had ever thought up over the last couple of insomniac years’ worth of nights. The pretty lady saved her, just like in romance novels, except it’s usually the handsome man who saves the injured girl, but still, it wasn’t like Laura was ever going to find a book about a romance between two women, but if such books were written then no one could have made up a better saving the damsel in distress scenario like that.
Laura had been so embarrassed though when the pretty lady lifted up Laura’s dress a bit to clean and bandage the injury. She was embarrassed because she had rather enjoyed that part of the saving. The pretty lady’s hands had felt so soft and warm on Laura’s leg and she couldn’t help but wonder, despite all the pain and embarrassment, what one of those hands would feel like if they had continued to move higher and higher up her leg until they had reached…
But the pretty lady couldn’t even shake Laura’s hand without disapproving stares. If they couldn’t even do that, then what was the point of wishing or hoping or praying endlessly for something to happen that never will, never can, never unfortunately must…
After the mending of the wound was done and the pretty lady had cleaned up the mess and put everything away, she had come back into the kitchen and sat down next to Laura and then asked her something Laura had only dreamed about before,
“So, what would you like to know about me?”
Laura had been so embarrassed and flabbergasted and overwhelmed by all of it, she forgot completely that she was supposed to interview the pretty lady. That is what all of that stress of getting back on time and running around getting lost in The Big House, falling and scraping every last bit of skin off her knee had been about.
But because of all of that she had completely forgotten about the interview, so she answered instinctually without thinking, just saying the very first words that came to Laura, and embarrassingly what true words they were,
“Oh, everything,” Laura had said, the words coming out like a long sigh.
Laura did want to know everything, anything, all things about the pretty lady. But that was not the question the pretty lady had asked and then she had to remind Laura of that.
“I meant about the job. Would you like to know my qualifications and experience?”
Oh, God. Had she known? Had the pretty lady known that Laura was so smitten with her that she just blurted out that she wanted to know everything about her because she was in love with her? Oh God, please don’t let the pretty lady have figured that out. Laura prayed to God to please let the pretty lady think instead that Laura was a dimwit because of all the blood she had lost, not because she was in love with her.
But despite all the bad, embarrassing things that had happened, Laura finally at least had one answer to a question she had been asking herself for over two years – what was the pretty lady’s name?
Kathy.
Her name was Kathy and to Laura, it was the most beautiful name in the whole wide wonderful world.
The End...
For now...
Although, I have no idea when or if I will ever be able to finish this series. I got no time now that I'm a mom, which is the best reason ever not to finish a short story series.
