Lawrence Block - Warm and Willing

“I’ll sleep.”

“If you can’t, wake me. If there’s anything you want, wake me.”

“All right.”

She got into bed. Megan hovered over her, and for a tiny moment she thought that the blonde girl was going to stoop over and kiss her goodnight. This did not happen. Instead Megan straightened up and turned out the lights and left the room. A door opened and closed. Later she heard water running, and then doors opened and closed and Megan called goodnight to her, and then there was silence.

She couldn’t sleep.

Who was she? What was she? She did not know. She tossed all these questions around in her mind and none of the answers came. In the beginning, the world had told her that she was a woman. Then she had learned that she was not a woman, that she was frigid and sexless. And now Megan was telling her that she was something else.

A lesbian.

She tried to imagine herself with Megan. It was hard to do. She did not know what Megan would do to her, what sort of love they would make together. She remembered Megan’s words: I would make love to you. I would make you feel like what you are, like a woman made for love. I would show you the dark side of the moon. I would make you laugh and cry. And we would be close and warm and nothing would matter, nothing at all.

A poem, she thought. A poem. And she let herself imagine not the mechanics of it, but the feeling of it, the feeling of sharing love with a woman, with Megan. It seemed somehow less strange than it had seemed at first. Now it seemed possible.

But could she? Could she let herself do it? It was forbidden. It was wrong. It was not normal, and all the gods in all the heavens made normalcy a religion in itself. Could she stand that kind of life? Could she be that kind of person without dying a little inside?

It would be hard. But was it any easier to be the kind of person she was now? She lived a life that was no great pleasure, a life without a future, a life that promised eternal sameness. She measured out that life in coffee spoons and cigarette butts and lonely days and lonelier nights. Megan was offering a way out of that. Megan was offering a life that might be better.

Did she dare to try?

Did she dare not to?

Once, she almost slept. She felt herself drifting off, and she may have dozed, and then she was awake again. You can trust me. I won’t do anything that you don’t want me to do.

What did she want?

She fought with herself. And there was a point at last when she knew that sleep was impossible, that a great many things were impossible. That, for the moment if not forever, only one thing was possible.

The nightgown rustled gently as she walked. She opened Megan’s door and slipped quietly into Megan’s room. She spoke Megan’s name.

“I’m awake, dear.”

She took a small breath. “I’m ready,” she said, moving over to Megan’s bed. “I’m ready. Love me.”

At first she thought, Oh, no, it won’t work. Another mistake. It won’t work. Not at all. Because nothing touches me, nothing reaches me, and I remain forever detached.

Megan held her close. They lay side by side and she saw Megan’s eyes shining catlike in the darkness, and she felt the gentle pressure of Megan’s breasts against her own. Megan kissed her, lightly, and Megan’s legs moved to brush against her own legs and thighs. Another kiss, and again the pressure of Megan’s warm body.

Something familiar, something known. A fine female body against her own body. A partner not different, but similar. Megan’s mouth, soft and faintly sweet like her own mouth, meeting hers gently but firmly. Megan’s chest, not bristling with hairs and corded with muscles, but soft and smooth and warm and blooming with the sweet luxury of Megan’s full breasts.

Then knowledge came, knowledge, awareness. She was not a cold woman. She was not frigid. She was responding, going soft and liquid inside in the silky mechanism of sexual response, and this response was a specific one, a special response to Megan.

There was a short period then of fear, of tension, of fright. For two years she had meticulously buried sexual response under a deadening blanket, and the sudden change scared her. She had spent too much time schooling herself another way, teaching herself that she was dead and empty inside. Now Megan was teaching her to be a woman, and she was afraid to give in either to Megan or to herself.

“Easy, baby. Easy, Rhoda, darling Rhoda. I love you and you love me and we are together. My flesh and your flesh. Easy my darling.”

Megan held her close, patted her, kissed her. And warmth bloomed again, less tentatively than before, coming with a rising tide of passion that swept her up and would not be beaten down. She did not fight it any longer. She was caught, caught as she now ached to be caught, and the sweep of passion held no fear and brooked no argument. She was alive, dizzily alive.

Megan’s hands moved all over her body, touching, petting, sending shivers of delight through flesh that had gone far too long without this sweet delight. They were friendly hands, they were familiar hands. They did not probe or invade. They came gently and they were welcomed by the flesh they touched.

“Rhoda, Rhoda.”

Until she was lying on her back, eyes closed, arms heavy at her sides, her whole body limp as fallen flowers. Megan touched all the secret parts of her woman’s body and made them open to the light of love. Megan held her breasts and kissed them. Megan’s hands and lips stroked desperate tides in her liquid flesh.

More.

The climax was beyond belief. She had never understood the mechanics of this glimpse of heaven, had never heard the word and been able to translate it into terms compatible with her own sexuality. But now it was happening-a sweet explosion, a lovely eruption, a halfway touch of death.

Megan’s voice, from far away, said, “Sleep, darling, sleep,” and she slept.

“What time is it?”

“Four-thirty.”

“In the morning? How long did I sleep?”

“An hour. Maybe a little more.”

She yawned luxuriously. A bedsheet covered to the throat and a pillow cushioned her head. Megan was sitting at the side of the bed, wearing a pale green robe and smoking a cigarette. Rhoda started to sit up in bed. The sheet slipped away and bared her body to the waist. She snatched at it in embarrassment, then realized the inconsistency of being embarrassed in front of Megan. She let the sheet fall.

“I can’t believe it,” she said slowly.

“It happened.”

“God, I know. I couldn’t have dreamed it. I don’t have such heavenly dreams. I never knew.”

“What you are?”

“And what I was missing. I can’t believe it, it’s a new world. I must be babbling like an idiot.”

“No. Like a girl who just became a woman.”

“Mmmmm.” She took a cigarette, let Megan light it for her. “I feel slightly sinful,” she said. “Is that bad?”

“Does it bother you?”

“No. I have the feeling that it ought to, but it doesn’t. I rather like it, this sinful feeling.”

She ducked ashes in the ashtray on the bedside table, then propped her pillow behind her and sat back against it and drew again on the cigarette. She closed her eyes and bathed in the memory of Megan’s lovemaking. She opened them and looked at Megan’s body concealed by the folds of the green robe. She had a sudden urge to see Megan unclothed, to know the blonde girl’s body. And she looked down at her own breasts, and then at Megan again, and she leaned over and put out her cigarette.

“I have to work tomorrow,” she said.

“On Saturday?”

“Six days a week, nine to five-thirty. Number One employee for Mr. Yamatari-san.”