A. Homes - Music for Torching

The kiss, unbearably fragile, a spike of sensation, shatters the frame. Everything Elaine thinks about who she is, what she is, is irrelevant. There are no words, only sensation, smooth sensation. Tender, like the tickling lick of a kitten. Elaine feels powerless, suddenly stoned. Pat is kissing her. She is kissing Pat. They are standing in the middle of the kitchen, giving and getting every kiss they've ever gotten or given; kissing from memory. Kissing: fast, hard, deep, frantic, long and slow. They are tasting the lips, the mouth, the tongue. Elaine puts her hands to Pat's face, the softness of Pat's skin; the absence of the rough- scruff and scratch of a stale shave is so unfamiliar as to seem impossible. Pat rubs her face against Elaine's-sweeping the cheek, the high, light bones, nuzzling the ear, the narrow line of the eyebrow, finishing with a butterfly flick of the lashes.

Elaine's mind struggles to make sense, to find familiar coordin- ates-it spins uselessly.

Pat reaches for Elaine's hand. "Come," she says.

"Where are you taking me?" Elaine asks in an airless voice.

"Bedroom."

"No," Elaine says, fast, firm. Bed, that's breaking a rule-a rule she didn't know she had. It is like being a teenager again. There are things you will and won't do. Bed is too much. Pat and George's bed, the twins' twin beds-no. Bed is out of the question. So far it is a kiss, just a kiss, nothing truly unforgivable. "No," she says again.

"Am I frightening you?" Pat asks, coming in close, whispering the question right into Elaine's mouth. Kissing. "Am I?" Pat's hand is on Elaine's shirt, on the buttons.

Elaine, not wanting to offend, breathes, "No," even though she is terrified.

Pat undoes the buttons. It feels amazingly good. Pat is unbuttoning the blouse, brushing her lips against Elaine's neck, her clavicle, going lower.

Elaine fixates on the blouse, holding it against her body, worrying it will get wrinkled.

"Don't worry," Pat says, pulling the blouse away. "I'll iron it. I promise, I'll iron it again when we're done."

The shirt falls to the floor.

Elaine bends to pick it up. She stops to drape it over the back of a chair.

It's fine, Elaine tells herself, if it's only a kiss. Fine as long as the clothing is on, fine if only her shirt is off, fine if…She's making rules and instantly breaking them.

Pat is at her breast. A noise escapes Elaine, an embarrassingly deep sigh-like air rushing out of something. Elaine can't believe that she's letting this happen; she's not stopping it, she's not screaming, she's enjoying it. Pat is kissing Elaine's belly, tonguing the cesarean scar that no one ever touches. Elaine reaches for Pat-there's an incredible strangeness when they touch simultaneously. Elaine can't tell who is who, what is what-Marcel Mar- ceau, a mirror game, each miming the other. Phenomenal confusion. Elaine touches Pat's breast, pressing. Her knees buckle, she collapses to the floor. Pat goes with her.

They are in the kitchen, down on the linoleum floor. It is fine, Elaine tells herself, fine as long as Pat is dressed, fine as long as Elaine keeps what's left of her clothes on.

"Is this all right?" Pat asks.

"Nice," Elaine manages to say.

Luscious. Delicious. Pat is smooth and buttery, not like Paul, not a mass of fur, a jumble of abrasion from beard to prick. Pat is soft-enveloping rather than insistent.

Elaine is thinking that it'll stop in a minute, it won't really happen, it won't go too far. It's just two women exploring. She remembers reading about consciousness-raising groups, women sitting in circles on living room floors, looking at their cervixes like little boys in circle jerks, women taking possession of their bodies. Only this is far more personal-Pat is taking possession of Elaine.

Pat is pulling Elaine's pants off. Elaine is lifting her hips, her khakis are tossed off under the kitchen table. Pat is still in her robe. Elaine reaches for the belt, half thinking she will use it to pull herself up, she will lift herself up and out of this. The robe opens, exposing Pat.

Pat spreads herself out over Elaine, skin to skin, breast to breast. Pat against her, hot, ripe, repulsive. She almost screams-it's like a living thing-tongue and teeth.

And Pat is on top, grinding against Elaine, humping her in a strangely prickless pose. Fucking that's all friction.

She reaches her hand under Elaine's ass to get a better grip. Crumbs. There are crumbs stuck to Elaine's ass. Horrified, Pat twists around and begins licking them off, sucking the crumbs from Elaine, from the floor, and swallowing them like a human vacuum cleaner. "I sweep," she says, wiping dust off her mouth. "I sweep every day. I'm sweeping all the time."

"It's all right," Elaine says. "It's fine."

Fine if it's only on the outside, fine if it's just a hand. Fine if it's fingers and not a tongue, and then fine if it is a tongue. Fine if it's just that, and then it's fine. It's all fine.

They are two full-grown women, mothers, going at each other on the kitchen floor. A thick, musky scent rises, a sexual stew.

Pat reaches up, pulling a pot holder shaped like a bright red lobster off the counter, tucking it under Elaine's head-from above Elaine looks as if she has claw-shaped devils' horns sticking out of her head. "That's better," Pat says.

"Thank you," Elaine says. "I was starting to get a headache."

"Mmmm," Pat says, spinning her tongue in circles.

"Mmmm," Elaine echoes involuntarily.

Pat's fingers curl between Elaine's legs, slipping in.

"Aooww," Elaine says, combining "Ah" and "Ow," pain and pleasure. It takes a minute to figure out what hurts. "Your ring," Elaine pants.

The high diamond mount of Pat's engagement ring is scraping her. Pat pulls off the ring, it skitters across the floor, and she slips her hand back into Elaine, finding the spot. She slips in and out more quickly, more vigorously.

Elaine comes in cacophonous convulsions, great guttural exaltations. She's filled with a flooding sensation, as though a seal has broken; her womb, in seizures, squeezes as though expelling Elaine herself.

And just as she thinks it's over, as she starts to relax, Pat's mouth slides south, and Elaine is flash-frozen at the summit of sensation, her body stun-gunned by the flick of Pat's tongue. She lies splayed out on the linoleum, comparing Pat to Paul: Paul goes down on her because he saw it in a porno movie, because he thinks it's the cool thing to do. Paul goes down on her like he's really eating her, like she's a Big Mac and he's got to get his mouth around the whole burger in one big bite.

Elaine is concentrating, trying to figure out exactly what Pat is doing. Every lick, every flick causes an electric surge, a tiny sharp shock, to flash through her body.

She is seeing flashes of light, fleeting images. It's as though she's losing consciousness, losing her mind, dying. She can't bear any more-it's too much. She pushes Pat away.

"Stop," she says, closing her legs. "It's enough."

Pat lies next to her. Pat kisses her. Elaine tastes herself on Pat's lips, a tart tang, surprisingly slick, a lip-gloss lubricant. Their mouths move over each other, hungry.

They begin again.

She owes Pat something.

Elaine's hand moves down, over the rolling hill of Pat's belly, the slow arch of her pelvis. The absence of balls, of the ropy, rock- hard root, is strange, simultaneously familiar and un-. Elaine rubs Pat, working fast and furtively in the swampy heat, doing what needs to be done, not lingering. Pat fills with blood, becoming thick, fibrous, seeming to swell, to tighten on Elaine's hand. Out of character and undignified, Pat writhes athletically, enthusiastically, on the floor. She comes with a long, low moan.

They are finished.

Elaine looks around the kitchen-at the cabinets, the counters, noticing that the coffeemaker is still on and that they kicked the kitchen table, knocking some of the do-it-yourself books to the floor. Her thigh is stuck to the linoleum; she peels it up; it makes a thick sucking sound. She is naked on a kitchen floor with a pot holder tucked under her head as if she's had some strange household accident. Her underwear is across the room, by the refrigerator; her khakis are under the kitchen table; her blouse, draped over the chair. She is doused in the queer perfume of sex, drowsy-as though awakened from a dream before it ended.