A/N: Hi all, sorry it's been a bit longer than usual for an update...crazy week. This chapter hasn't been edited; my dear friend and co-conspirator is in Europe with her gal on a well deserved vacation. Margaret and Efrat: I wish you as much fun in Barcelona as Jane and Maura are having on their cruise. Our usual process is that I birth the conjoined triplets, grunting and screaming with effort, and Margaret cleans up the afterbirth, cuts the cord and wraps the little ones in a clean blanket. Thanks for all you do, MB; Seasick would be a poorer tale without you. This may be messy and I know it's long, but I didn't want to lose momentum, so here it is.
"Ohhh, Oh God. Huuuuuuuhhhh."
Jane's eyes shot open. "Maura?" Her girlfriend was definitely not in the bed and the sounds were coming from below, way below, on the floor.
"Maura what are you doing?"
"I'm…oh…I'm just scratching an itch."
The doctor had wedged herself into the narrow crevice between the bed and the wall. She was writhing in the small space, her shoulders shimmying and her hips wiggling as she pressed herself into the pink and turquoise swirled carpeting. Jane watched her for a moment, mesmerized by the undulating movement of full breasts bouncing against a taut ribcage.
"You need some help, babe? That's what I'm here for; you don't need to…ahem…scratch any of your itches yourself anymore."
"Jane, I'm not masturbating. I'm having a dermal pruritoceptive episode."
"Like an epileptic fit?"
"No. The nociceptors in my epidermis are firing at an alarming rate causing the most uncomfortable sensation. The only relief is to…oooh…scratch."
Jane laughed despite herself. "You look like Jo Friday after a bath."
"Mmmph." Maura grunted. "The scratch reflex is common to all mammals, all vertebrates, in fact, who have sensory neurons with peripheral terminals located on the surface of their bodies."
"I don't know what's sexier, your google talk or those bouncy titties." She offered a hand and Maura pulled herself up, flopping face down across the mattress.
"Do your best, Jane."
Jane scoured the red and peeling back with firm scrubs from her close-cut fingernails, translucent slivers of dead skin coming off with each scratch. Maura purred and sighed in pleasure beneath her.
"Did you know…" The doctor freed her lecture finger from under a pillow and raised it vaguely in Jane's direction. "… studies have shown that relief of an itch outweighs sexual release in the hierarchy of human pleasure?"
"Oh? I can do both. I have two hands…and a mouth."
"The way I feel this morning, you'd need as many arms as Vishnu to scratch me."
Jane smiled and rested her lips against a freckled shoulder, kissing a patch of skin she had scratched nearly raw. She worked her mouth up to the nape of Maura's neck and suckled a sensitive spot she had discovered under her girlfriend's hair. "So sex is second to itchiness?" She murmured against Maura's ear, tugging at a pink earlobe with her teeth.
Maura whimpered. Jane could feel the struggle within her partner; the mind wanting to blather on about pleasure hierarchies and the Hindu pantheon and the body wanting nothing more than to be kissed and licked and filled with long, tan fingers. The lecture finger wavered as gooseflesh appeared in the wake of Jane's gentled caress.
"Mmm…fourth, Jane. Sexual release is fourth." The finger stood erect again, Maura's genius brain overcoming the the desire of her body. Her body is a genius, too. Jane thought. It's just as perfectly formed as her mind, maybe more so.
"Sex also ranks below the quenching of thirst and the alleviation of the need to urinate. It does, however, eclipse the satisfaction of hunger."
"So…" Jane brushed hard brown nipples against the doctor's shoulder blades, eliciting another soft whimper. "…people would rather lay around scratching themselves, guzzling beer and peeing than come, but they'd rather starve than give up fucking."
"Umm…essentially." Maura panted, almost losing the train of her thought. "That's part of the reason why birth rates remain so high in the developing world where starvation is a real th….oh, Jane." The lecture finger crumpled as Maura grasped the sheets with both hands.
Jane had spread the ivory flesh of Maura's firm ass and was grinding herself against the sensitive bud within, her other hand worked rhythmically between Maura's legs.
Maura's brilliant mind had gone blank, overloaded by all the sensory data flooding in from her body; the peppery scent of Jane's skin on the sheets beneath her, the tickle of Jane's erect nipples against her shoulders, the nipping of her mouth and teeth at her throat, Jane's warm wetness sliding down the seam of her ass and the strong fingers moving deftly within her as a thumb worked her clit. She spread her legs further and hooked her calves around Jane's. They were one being now, working toward the same end in tandem.
"Maura…Maur…now?" Jane rasped in her ear.
"Say it, Jane. Tell me."
"Love you…" Jane growled, and then. "I'm coming."
"Yesssss." Maura was over the edge with her. They collapsed in a tangle of limbs on the mattress.
Jane lay still, only her heart hammered loudly against Maura's spine. She imagined the doctor's ribcage parting and her own lacing itself in so they would fit together always, like a Chinese puzzle box or the joists and trusses of a cathedral roof. Tears sprang to her eyes. "You're my other half, Maura."
"I know and you're mine."
Reluctantly she rolled off of her lover and pulled the smaller woman against her chest. Maura reached down and found the blanket, snugging it tight around their shoulders. She looked out the balcony door to a sea that was rough and dark, jagged waves of graphite bucked and retreated toward the horizon and the air itself looked dank and grey. She burrowed closer to Jane who was warm and safe and sunkissed. "You're an amazing lover, Jane; intuitive, giving, skilled." She punctuated each attribute with a kiss.
"Nah. It's you, babe. I spent years fantasizing about making love to you. The reality just proves what a small mind I have."
"I did too, Jane."
"Hmm?"
"You've been the star of my every fantasy for years."
"Really?" Jane beamed at the ceiling.
"Yes, but not only sexually….I mean, yes, I thought of you every single time I've come, but I have fantasies, daydreams, about the more mundane aspects of our daily lives."
"I do, too, Maura. Tell me one of yours."
Maura blushed, laying her cheek against Jane's muscular shoulder, she spoke quietly into her girlfriend's collarbone. "When I wake in the morning, I like to pretend that you're next to me, growling about the alarm. I always say, 'Okay, Jane. I'll hit snooze one more time and then you're getting up.' I do hit snooze and hug my pillow against my chest, pretending it's you."
"Oh, babe." Jane kissed the messy head, spilling gold and chestnut tresses across her chest.
"Tell me one of yours."
"Laundry." Jane stated.
"You hate to do laundry."
"It's a boring job, but in my mind I'm washing our clothes, our panties and bras and…everything, all jumbled together, like they belong that way, like we're family. I separate your things and fold them as best I can and then you come in and tell me how it's all wrong."
Maura lifted her head and frowned. "That's not a very flattering fantasy."
"Oh, but it is. You're super cute when you're mad. You get all huffy and put your hands on your hips and…I just melt, Maur."
"Fine. When we live together, you can be in charge of laundry."
"Okay, but I'm sure there will be a list of instructions as thick as one of your Russian novels."
"Not quite that long, but I do like my delicates washed a certain way."
"Mmm-hmmm. Your panties are hand-sewn from butterfly wings and they can only be dry cleaned in Paris using the Méthode Champenoise."
Maura poked her, but laughed. "I imagine us grocery shopping together, fighting about every item that goes into the cart. I'll pick out organic vegetables, lean proteins and grains. You'll sneak Devil's Dongs and Cheese Doodies when I'm not looking."
Jane snorted. "Devil's Dongs? I'm picturing a chocolate cake growing out of satan's crotch." She wiped a tear from her eye. "But I'm sure that's exactly what will happen. It's going to be wonderful."
"I know." They kissed softly. "What are we going to do, Jane? I don't want to sleep alone anymore."
"Do? I guess you could pack up your gigantic turtle, your art and books, your apartment-sized closet of designer clothing and move in with me. I'll push my hockey sticks aside to make room for you."
Maura's nostrils flared in distaste and Jane snickered, catching her lover's unconscious gesture.
"Babe, I already spend more time at your place than my own and you have my ma, so I may as well move in."
Maura relaxed. "I'm going to brush out your hair every night before we go to sleep. I've fantasized about that as well." She imagined her boar bristle brush combing through ebony tresses until they shone like onyx.
"Good. You can pluck the grey hairs out with a tweezer. I'll let you in on a secret…"
"Yes?" Maura's eyes shone with expectation.
"Tommy does that for me now. He comes over at least once a week and tweezes my greys in my kitchen. He teases me terribly about it, too. It will be nice to be rid of that ritual."
"He must be good, Jane. I've never seen a gray hair on you."
"I have plenty. I guess he is good."
"I have plenty as well, but I just go a little blonder every year to cover it."
"I'd be a terrible blonde."
"Yes, you would. Don't ever do that, Jane." Maura hesitated, then blurted out. "What about work?"
"What about it? Didn't you say everyone already assumes we're together?"
"Yes, but should we make a formal announcement?"
Jane squirmed. "How? Like stand up in the squad room and tell everyone we're doing it? Crowe and Martinez will have a field day with that information. Fuckin' douches."
Maura shrugged. "I'm going to tell Susie."
"That's fine." Jane sensed her girlfriend was disappointed. "Maybe we could have a little housewarming party when I move in, invite all the people we care about…Frost and Korsak, Susie, Sean."
"I'd like that, Jane."
"Good." She pressed her nose into Maura's hair and breathed in the clean scent of vanilla and citrus. "I'm sorry to see this vacation end, but I'm really looking forward to starting our new life."
"I am too."
"Do you want to snuggle some more or get up?"
"We should probably get up. It's our last day and I'm a bit peckish."
"Aha, the old pleasure hydroxy. Your itches have been scratched, you came, now you need to pee and drink some coffee and then have breakfast."
"Exactly, but first a shower. You still have lime gelatin in your hair."
Maura reluctantly extracted herself from her lover's embrace and stood, just in time to answer the knock at the cabin door. She wrapped herself in a towel and peered through the peephole. Millie-Joyce Ming paced in the hallway. With a sigh she turned the handle and the tennis legend bounded into the room.
She stopped in her tracks and sniffed the air, her nose twitching under her large glasses. "Whoa! It's like walking into a vagina. You two have been fuuuuuuckiiiiiiiing." She threw herself onto the bed next to Jane and buried her face in the sheets, sniffling and snorting. "Yup. I smell pussy. This bed stinks like the locker room at Roland Garros after the Women's Doubles finals."
"You're nuts, Ming."
"Yes, but only one week a year. On Monday morning I'll be back behind a desk at the Lesbian Sports Foundation trying to squeeze grant money out of rich douchehoses. I live for this annual cruise when I can let my hair down, pubes and all."
She lay back against the pillows and took off her glasses, polishing them on a corner of the sheet. "You two can bump uglies any old time, but there's only one day left to party, so throw on your gay rags and meet me in the Spinnaker Lounge. Lesbolympics begins in…" She checked her big pink digital wristwatch. "…an hour and ten minutes."
"Jane needs to wash her hair and I really need to eat." Maura explained.
"Eat? Isn't that what you've been doing all morning?" She leaned in and sniffed at Jane's mouth.
"Back off, Ming."
Maura looked confused and then her eyes widened. "Oh! You're using a slang expression for cunnilingus! Very clever, Milllie-Joyce, but that particular act was not in the rotation for today."
"Maura!" Jane growled.
"You rotate? I love it, keeps things fresh." She leaped from the bed and skipped three steps to the cabin door. "Spinnaker in an hour so skip the shower. Lunch will be provided. Don't you want to win, Rizzoli? Or have you resigned yourself to being a loser after you were Ming-ed in the Jello pit?"
"We'll be there, Ming. You can count on it and we will win."
"That's what I like to hear." She grabbed her crotch and thrust her pelvis toward the couple. "Twat-a-loo!" She sang as she exited the stateroom. Before Maura could close the door completely, she popped her head back in. "Nice ink, by the way. It's like carrying your own porn with you. You can just stare at your arm when you want to slam the clam, rub the nub, stroke the yolk, hit the slit, buff the muff, scratch the snatch, wrench the trench, slap the meat flap, rooter the cooter, squish the fish…"
"Out, Ming." Jane sprang from the bed and closed the door while Maura bent over, holding her sides, nearly breathless with laughter.
The lounge was crammed beyond capacity with sweatsuit-clad women, the cooler weather keeping everyone indoors. Jane slid a protective arm around Maura's waist, resting a hand on her hipbone, as she attempted to steer them through the crowd toward the small circular stage. Once they passed the buffet tables, the crowd thinned and they were able to approach the sign-up station.
A friendly woman from Botswana, wearing the pressed white uniform of the cruise line greeted them. "Good morning, ladies. Will you be competing today?"
Maura replied. "Dumela. O tsogile jang?"
The woman's smile lit her face and she covered her grinning mouth in astonishment. "Ke tsogile sentle. I haven't heard my native language in nearly a year. Ke itumetse, mma."
"Show off." Jane rasped in her ear, earning her a sharp poke to the ribs.
"But where did you learn to speak Setswana?"
"I had the pleasure of working with Médecins Sans Frontières near Sowa many years ago. You come from a beautiful country."
The woman nodded, tears forming in her eyes. "Ee. Yes, I do." She signed them up and asked if they had already joined a team or should she randomly assign them to one.
"We haven't. I suppose random is fine." Maura answered.
"No. Random is not fine. I want to win and to win we can't be randomly saddled with a bunch of losers. We'll make our own team and hand-pick our teammates."
"We don't know what the events are, Jane, so we may pick unwisely. A random sampling would afford the greatest probability of a positive outcome since in any group there is likely to be…
"Bullshit." Jane cut her off. "If you needed an operation, would you want a random dipshit dragged off the street to cut into you or a surgeon that you had personally picked? If your car broke down, would you want it fixed by the next fuckup who walked in the door, or a trained mechanic?"
"You're talking about a specialized skill set for which the requirements are known in advance; it's apples and orangutans, Jane. When the skill set remains an unknown, a random sampling is the best course of action."
Jane snorted. "The term is 'apples and oranges', Maur. It means to compare two very different things."
"Obviously, detective, apples and orangutans are far more different than two fruits of roughly the same size and shape." She smirked.
"You got me there, Maura. So we're going with random?"
"No, let's make our own team, but be sure to include a wide variety of women with different strengths and weaknesses." She turned to the friendly Motswana. "May we come back with our prospective team members?"
"Certainly." She consulted her list. "You will be the blue team. She smiled again and wished them both "O nne le masego."
Jane turned away from the table and then thought of a question. "How many to a team?"
"Eight." She reached under her table and passed Jane a neatly folded stack of blue T-shirts, each stamped with five conjoined female symbols and "Lesbolympics".
Maura eyed the buffet tables, the food was hidden from sight by the press of bodies, three deep in most places. "Jane, I'm very hungry."
"Okay. Stay here, I'll fight my way through the waddling vultures and get you something. I'm not promising steak tartare and ostrich eggs; you'll have to make due with what I can snag."
"That's fine." The doctor nodded agreeably, but as soon as Jane turned her back she added. "No partially hydrogenated fats or anything containing high fructose corn syrup."
Jane waved over her shoulder. "Yes, dear."
Maura wrinkled her nose in distaste at her girlfriend's offering of a soggy cheese danish, a wilted slice of pizza, liberally studded with pepperoni disks, and an enormous pistachio muffin that someone had already taken a bite from. With a roll of her eyes, she reached for the danish and unhappily nibbled at its edge.
"Sorry, babe. I promise as soon as we disembark, we can make a grocery run to Whole Foods and you can load up on goose-goose and kale and organic sea fungus. I won't try to sneak anything into the cart."
"Of course not; they don't sell Devil Dongs at Whole Foods, but they do have yummy gluten-free cookies with carob chips in place of chocolate; you can have as many of those as you like."
"Yay!" Jane clapped her hands with false enthusiasm, then stuck her finger in her mouth and mimicked vomiting. "Eat your lunch, babe, and then we'd better get our team together before everyone good is snatched up and we're left with a bunch of decrepit bench warmers."
Maura balanced the pastry between her teeth and drew out their roster sheet. "I think we should ask Lucy."
Jane groaned. "She's not…athletic."
"Neither am I, Jane. I've always been the last to be picked for any team and I'm sure she has as well. It hurts."
Jane stood silently scowling at the carpet with it's running pattern of anchors and ship's wheels, torn between disappointment at the thought of her big olympic win slipping away and shame at placing such a win over another person's feelings. "Fine." She relented and headed across the room to the small woman in the power wheelchair. She returned with Lucy who was beaming and already wearing her blue Lesbolympics T-shirt.
"Lucy, you're our first choice. Let's all put our heads together and come up with five more teammates."
"I'm first?" Her eyes filled with tears. "I've never been anyone's first choice for anything."
"Nor have I." Maura confided. "Jane wouldn't even let me join her softball team for years."
"Really? But Jane is…wonderful." Lucy stared at the tall detective with stars in her eyes.
Jane rolled her own eyes and snatched the roster sheet from her girlfriend's hand. "I want LaWandra Wilkens and Beata. If we have those two powerhouses, we may actually stand a chance of winning."
"LaWandra, Beata and Coco." Maura corrected.
"Right." Jane agreed. Coco was small, but wiry. She wouldn't be as much of an asset as her girlfriend, but she would do.
"They're at the spa, Jane, having their erotic hydro-colonic couples enema. Don't you remember?"
"Eww, how could I forget? Beata described it in such extravagant detail over dessert last night. It almost made me stop eating my chocolate mousse."
"No, it didn't. You finished your mousse and mine and then half of Faye's when Kaye wasn't looking." Maura tapped the bezel of her Tag Heuer. "Beata and Coco should be finished. Why don't you run up to the spa and ask them. Lucy and I will track down LaWandra Wilkens."
Jane knew she'd have better luck recruiting a professional athlete to their cause than the unlikely team of Dr. Isles and her wheelchair-bound friend, but the determined set of Maura's jaw told her not to argue. She kissed her girlfriend on top of the head and took off at a jog.
When she returned, Maura and Lucy were happily chatting with Faye and Kaye who, to Jane's dismay, were both wearing blue T-shirts. Shit. There goes any chance of a gold medal.
"Any luck, Jane?" Lucy asked.
"Beata and Coco are on board. They're just soaking their sore asses in the jacuzzi. They'll be down in a few minutes."
"Good." Maura pronounced. "We have our team."
"Did you get LaWandra?" Jane held on to the slim hope that the star basketballer would make the difference between a last place finish and a…a win? Impossible.
"No." Maura waved her hand dismissively. "She declined. She and her friends have formed their own team; they're all very tall. But, I did manage to convince Faye and Kaye to sign with us… and Carla." She smiled, showcasing two deep dimples and Jane's heart melted. They would be cremated, but Maura loved her.
The Olympic anthem began to play and the chattering crowd grew quiet, everyone looking around for the source. A thick fog rose from the floor of the circular stage, tendrils swirled around the legs of the grand piano, thinning as it dispersed into the surrounding air. A trapdoor in the stage floor opened and a figure ascended through the mist, wearing a lavender track suit and carrying a dildo-shaped torch. She stood solemnly until the music ended then bounced up and down swinging the flaming phallus. Even shrouded in fog, the mystery woman could be none other than four time US Open winner, Millie-Joyce Ming. She grabbed the microphone and yodeled. "Yo-do-lay-he-homos!"
"Ming!" A thousand voices shouted back.
"What's up, Lesbos?" Millie-Joyce shouted. "Is everyone ready to run their tits off around this ship?"
"Hell yeah!" Was the general response.
"Have you all fueled up on our delicious buffet?"
"This food is shit!" Someone shouted from the side of the room.
"Hear! Hear!" Maura seconded, waving her flaccid danish over her head.
The room erupted in whistles and hoots.
"Hey, hey, simmer down, ladies. This is the last day of the cruise. You ate up everything worth eating already and I mean that sexually as well. Seriously, is anyone still single here?"
A few hands went up.
"How is that possible? Beautiful weather, free-flowing alcohol, bikinis, dildos…Damn, I should just pair you off and send you to a dark corner to make out."
Jane wrapped her arms around Maura's waist and pulled her close. "We both arrived single." She whispered.
"Yes and we had our very first kiss as a couple on that stage, albeit a chaste kiss on the cheek."
Jane bent over and kissed her girlfriend's soft cheek and then her lips.
Millie-Joyce whistled into the microphone. "Rizzoli, didn't you get enough this morning? I had to drag Detective Jane from bed, pulled her kicking and screaming from Maura's vagina. Their cabin was dripping with sex; I thought I had slipped into the folds of a labia."
Jane rolled her eyes, but Maura giggled in her arms. The genius doctor found Ming's crude humor unaccountably hilarious.
"You never laugh like that at my jokes, Maur."
"I don't understand your jokes, Jane. You know I don't comprehend sarcasm. Millie-Joyce is so outrageous that even I get it."
"I guess."
"Don't pout, Jane. I'm sure you're very funny."
"I am. I'm a fucking one-woman clown car."
Maura drew her brows together. "Doesn't the humor of a clown car come from the fact that there are so many individuals crammed within the small space?"
"Yes."
"Then a clown car occupied by only one clown would lose it's comic impact."
"Yup."
"I just don't understand your humor, Jane."
They returned their attention to the stage where Millie-Joyce had shed her track suit and was strutting across the small stage in a black unitard decorated with a three-dimensional vulva. A bright pink clit protruded from the middle of her torso.
"That looks like one of your Georgia O'Keeffe paintings." Maura whispered.
Jane was about to protest, but the doctor was right.
"Wheee-hah!" The tennis star shrieked, rubbing vigorously at her painted-on clitoris. "Last day Lesbolympics, lezzoids! If you can't be an athlete, you can still bet on one. We're in international waters, so the casino is open. Once our oddsmakers get a look at the teams, they'll post the numbers and you can wager your twats off. Titty trifecta, anyone? Pussy perfecta? You can bet it all and win a bundle. Don't forget the colored T-shirts of your favorite team are for sale in the gift shop and at the kiosk on the pool deck. Show your team spirit or even better, take off the T-shirt and show your tits!"
"Tits! Tits! Tits!" A chant began in the back of the room and soon everyone was screaming along. Millie-Joyce bounded off the stage howling and ran through the crowd, cramming her appliqué pussy into the faces of random women. Everyone good-naturedly took a lick. When the cheering had reached a frenzy level, she sprung back onto the stage and leaped on top of the grand piano."Citius, Altius, Fortius is the Olympic motto…" She panted.
"Faster, higher, stronger." Faye translated.
"But the Lesbolympic motto is: Clitius, Assius, Pussius!"
"Yeah!" The crowd screamed, fists pumping in the air.
"There are four teams and three events." Millie-Joyce held three fingers above her head. "In each event, the first place team will earn three points, the second place, two and the third place, one. The team with the most points after all three events wins gold. Second place wins…" She held the microphone out to the crowd.
"Silver!" Everyone shouted.
"Third place wins…"
"Bronze!" Came the loud response.
"Fourth place wins…"
There was silence. "Shit!" Someone heckled from the back of the room.
"That's correct. Shit! Put your team shirts on, ladies. I hope they're nice and tight; it's a little chilly so those nippies should pop nicely. First event begins in ten minutes on the pool deck."
Jane looked around at her teammates who were all grinning merrily, jogging in place and giving one another encouraging thumps on the back. We're fucked. She thought. Two senior citizens, one of whom was blind, a fragile woman in a wheelchair, an overweight opera singer, two women under five feet tall and Maura, who was brilliant and smoking hot, but couldn't catch a softball even if it was lobbed to her underhand. Carl had run to the casino to check their odds and just as Jane had suspected, Team Blue was expected to come in dead last. Maura had bet $1000 on them to win, but even with such an enormous wager, they were a longshot at 50-1.
"We should give ourselves a name. 'The Blue Team' is so boring."
"We're like the Bad News Bears." Carl laughed. "Can we be the Bad News Boobs?"
Millie-Joyce mounted the steps to the gazebo stage, shivering in her vaginal unitard. It was cool on the exposed pool deck, but bearable when the sun appeared from behind its cover of clouds. The band struck up a tune, Devo's classic "Whip It", the faux-rasta Filipino drummer, sang in heavily accented English from behind his drum kit. Beata twitched and looked longingly toward the stage, itching to be up there singing. Millie-Joyce began to dance, a Roger Rabbit/pony hybrid and soon she was sweating instead of shivering. She pulled a black leather horse whip from a box of props and flicked it about the stage a few times then jammed the end of it into her crotch, gyrating her hips so the whip flew in circles and figure eights over the stage. When the song ended, she tossed it into the crowd. "Whoever catches this wins dinner for two at the all-you-can-eat buffet on deck 12." A hundred women fell over each other to get at it.
"Isn't buffet always free and all-you-can-eat?" Maura asked.
"Yes. That's sarcasm, babe."
"She's funnier when she's being perverted."
"Are we ready for our first event?" Millie-Joyce asked the crowd.
"Yeah!"
"Event number one of Lesbolympics 2014 is Tug of War, also known as Don't Fall in the Shit Pit." She waved her arm and the same tarp that had covered the kiddie pool the day before was removed, revealing a thick brown lake of…
"Feces?" Maura asked, wrinkling her nose.
Carl squatted at the edge and poked a tentative finger into the morass. She pulled it out and sniffed and then licked it. "Chocolate pudding." She confirmed.
"I'd hate to take a plunge into that so soon after our erotic enema." Beata frowned at the quivering brown pool.
"That's right." Coco agreed.
The red and yellow teams were up first, each standing in a line on opposite sides of the pool, a thick rope with a rainbow pennant tied to its center stretched across the pit between them. Jane and Kaye studied the formation of the tuggers, planning their own strategy. Both teams had anchored their lines with their heaviest pullers.
"That's what we should do." Kaye gestured. "The heaviest goes in the back, but unfortunately, that means the weakest will probably be pulled into the muck."
"I'm the heaviest." Beat stepped forward.
"No, I am." Lucy rolled herself toward the center of the group.
"What are you talking about, Lu? I've carried you twice. I'd be surprised if you weighed a hundred pounds."
"I don't, but in my chair I'm over 350 and if I put my brakes on, I'm practically immovable."
"That just might work!" Jane's heart soared with hope. "I could kiss you, Lucy."
"Oh, please do." She batted coquettish lashes.
Jane bent over and planted a warm kiss on her temple.
The crowd was on its feet, groaning as two players on the yellow team were pulled precariously close to the edge of the shit pit and then with a final tug by Team Red over and into the ooze. The rainbow pennant had crossed the pool and the winners dropped the rope, pumping their fists in victory.
Millie-Joyce spun in circles around the pool. "Sooo-eeee, sooo-eeeee!" She grunted and snorted and pig called, one finger jammed under the tip of her nose to make it into a snout. "Do our piggies like their shit bath? Soooo-eeeee! Shit pit claims its first two victims."
"Shit pit! Shit pit! Shit pit!" The crowd roared.
The Bad News Boobs stepped up to the the pit and picked up the rope. Coco looped the end around the wheelchair and Lucy backed up fifteen feet and hit the power brakes. With such a heavy anchor, Beata was free to take up the first position with the rest of the team behind her in descending size order. The big diva grinned across the pool at the frontline of Team Green, gesturing that they would soon be under six thousand gallons of chocolate pudding, then she blew them a kiss.
"Bullshit!" LaWandra Wilkens countered; she was anchoring for her team. "I feel bad, yo, pulling a bunch of grannies and handicaps into the pit, but y'all going down."
"We may be grannies, but Millie-Joyce kicked your ass in the Jello pool and she's our age. I hope you like chocolate as much as you like lime." Kaye had stepped out from behind Jane to taunt the basketballer.
"Remember to lean back and pull with your legs; the rectus femoris and vasti medialis, intermedius and lateralis are far stronger than any of the muscles in your upper body." Maura exhorted her teammates from her spot behind Kaye.
"We should all pull in tandem, like crew members on a racing shell. I rowed in college and I can't stress enough how important the rhythm set by the coxswain is." Faye added from behind Maura.
"I'll set the rhythm, girls. Pull on my downbeat, but I hope to end this quickly." Beata assured them.
There was a shriek overhead and Milllie-Joyce swung over the pit on a bungee cord, strapped to the railing on the sun deck above. "Wheeeee!" She screamed, swinging back the other way. "On the count of three…."
The spectators counted in unison and on three, Beata threw herself backwards crashing heavily into Jane and sending the first two Green Team members into the pit. The rainbow pennant came within an inch of crossing the pool's edge, but LaWandra and her remaining team held fast, pulling the pennant a precious six inches toward themselves while Beata adjusted her grip.
"Okay, on Beata's signal pull like your twat is on fire and LaWandra is the holding the fire hose." Jane ordered.
The diva inhaled, her massive lungs filling like twin zeppelins, expanding her ribcage. She opened her mouth and sang. "Day-o…pull…Day-o…pull…daylight…pull…and we wanna…pull…home." Her trained voice carried across the deck.
On each downbeat the team tugged smoothly on the line. Carl and Coco fed the few inches of slack behind them to Lucy who unlocked her brake, moved back accordingly and locked again.
The spectators cheered loudly as the underdogs gained on LaWandra and her hulking friends inch by inch. Shouts of "Day-o" resounded from the bleachers and Millie-Joyce swung across the pool again with a banana in her hand just as Beata reached the line, "Come Mr. tally man, tally me banana."
LaWandra had dug her heels in and was leaning backwards at a 45° angle, but one woman alone could not hold the line. The Green Team was losing ground and with a loud "motherfucker", a third green shirt skidded into the pit.
"Shit pit! Shit pit! Shit pit!"
LaWandra groaned as her sneakers skid out beneath her. Lucy reversed her chair, tightening the line and the rainbow pennant tickled the edge of the pool.
"One more good pull." Kaye grunted.
"Fall backwards, use all your weight on the next Day-o." Lucy released her brake and pushed her chair full throttle in reverse, everyone tightened their hold on the line and leaned back, dropping to the ground. The pennant crossed out of the pool and four green shirts fell forward into the muck. LaWandra Wilkens teetered on the edge of the pit and then fell, face first into the pudding.
Maura dropped the rope first and reached around Kaye for her girlfriend. "We did it, Jane!"
"Yes we did! You we're right, babe." She bent over for a gentle kiss, but Maura captured her tongue, sucking hard.
"The epinephrine released through this athletic endeavor has made me very libidinous. I think I understand now why athletes are constantly slapping one another's buttocks."
Millie-Joyce landed on the stage, unhooking her bungee belt. "Wow, that was dramatic. I hope we have eight more green shirts somewhere or else Team Green will have to change it's name." Six unhappy faces, covered in chocolate pudding stared back at her, the other two having remained behind in the pool where they were humping cheerfully in chocolate.
"Where's the scoreboard?" Millie-Joyce spun around with her hand out. "Hot booger fuck! I miss having you up here with me, Beata."
The diva wasn't listening; she was pressed up against the railing, making out with Coco. Maura wasn't the only competitor feeling libidinous.
A cruise staffer arrived carrying the scoreboard and Millie-Joyce swiped at the numbers with a flourish. "Jane's Blue Boobs sank all eight of their competitors; first place with three points. The Red Rib Bumpers shit-pitted two; second place and two points. The Yellow Ya-Yas get one point for losing less badly than the Green Gazongas. You have time to eat a hot dog or have a quickie back in your cabin. Lesbolympic Arm Wrestling starts in ten minutes in the Grand Buffet on deck 12."
"Strategy meeting, Boobs." Carl rounded up the team, passing out hot dogs and bottles of water. "We could really win this."
"That's right." Coco agreed, one hand on Beata's ass and the other wrapped around a foot-long frankfurter with extra mustard and relish.
"I don't think so. Beata is really our only sure win."
"So we pit Beata against their strongest and hope for the best with everyone else."
"No." Kaye paced in front of the cardboard pig cutout next to the empty rib station. "We match our two weakest with their strongest, a strategic sacrifice which will give Beata a better chance of winning her match against their number three and the rest of us a fighting chance."
"Bingo!" Jane agreed. "I see why they made you a captain, Kaye."
A young blonde with a crew-cut and bulging biceps dropped to the table. She cracked her knuckles and winked at Beata. Beata winked back and rolled Lucy's chair to face her. The woman blushed, turning as red as her T-shirt. "I thought I was wrestling you." She addressed the big diva.
"No, you're wrestling our secret weapon."
Lucy reached out her thin pale arm and clasped the body builder's large hand. "I'm ready. Be gentle with me, my bones break easily."
Millie-Joyce beat a gong with an enormous metallic dildo and the wrestling began. LaWandra Wilkens, still dripping chocolate from her hair, easily defeated her opponent, earning a check mark in the green column on the scoreboard. Lucy and her adversary sat unmoving across from one another, lightly holding hands. Finally the blonde sighed and rested her arm on the table palm up with Lucy's smaller hand on top; a check in the blue column.
"Do your bones really break easily?" Carl asked.
"Of course not. I was just fucking with her and it payed off." They bumped fists.
A burly Latina was up next and Kaye walked her wife to the table, pulling out her chair and seating her, guiding her hand into place. "Get 'em, tiger." She whispered, kissing the top of Faye's grey head.
"May I have a moment to acclimate myself?" The blind doctor asked.
"Yeah, sure."
Faye ran her hand down the other woman's strong forearm, feeling the corded muscles beneath the skin, lingering over the solid wrist and acquainting herself with the architecture of the calloused hand above it. She nodded. "I'm ready, dear."
"Um, I just wanna say sorry in advance, abuela."
"That's quite all right, dear." Faye nodded again.
Millie-Joyce vaulted on top of a nearby table, stroking the swollen clitoris on her unitard. "Ming-ming-ming-ming-ming." She screetched, her fingers moving faster, frenzied. She dropped to her knees, spent. Maura leaned against Jane, breathless from laughter.
Jane rolled her eyes. "I still think I'm funnier."
"You're not."
The tennis legend pulled a kazoo from her pocket and blew into it. "Begin!"
Faye's opponent hunkered down, preparing for an easy win. Faye fluttered her fingers against the other woman's hand, searching, and then pressed. The younger woman yelped, her arm frozen and cramped. Faye pinned the paralyzed arm to the table and with a butterfly touch released her opponent from her agony.
"Damn, abuelita, how did you do that?"
"A lifetime of studying anatomy."
"Go granny! Go granny! Go granny!" A thousand voices cheered. Kaye helped her wife to her feet and led her in a victory lap around the packed room where she cheerfully accepted praise and high-fives.
"I got it all on video, babe." Kaye whispered in her ear. "Annalise is gonna be so proud of her Nana."
Beata surprised no one when she crushed her opponent's hand to the table, winning her match in under two seconds. Carl and Coco both lost and sat pouting in front of the pizza station, sharing sorrowful looks and a bag of Doritos.
Kaye locked arms in an epic battle, the longest in the event. Her opponent was middle-aged and broad-shouldered with the lean muscles of a distance runner. Neither woman would give in and so they sat, arms trembling between them, losing and gaining the same millimeter again and again. It was stamina that finally won the contest, the younger woman having just a shade more than the police captain.
"I'm sorry I let the team down, Jane." Kaye shook her white head sadly.
"Bullshit, Kaye. You drew the toughest match of the day. You did good." Jane clapped her shoulder and Carl passed her an opened Heineken. "Hell of a match, captain. Hell of a match."
Jane shook hands with her opponent, a sturdy black woman with a close-cropped afro. "I'm Paige." She smiled.
"I'm Jane."
"I know."
Jane placed her left elbow on the table and Paige placed her right.
"Oops. Better call Millie-Joyce."
"Hey Ming, what do we do if we have opposite dominant arms?"
Millie-Joyce bounded over. "Let me consult the rule book." She pretended to page through a large tome. "Ah, here it is…stick your thumb in your snatch and your pinkie in your ass and then switch." She cackled and skipped away.
"Well that was useless." Paige shook her head. "I don't see the humor in that woman, but everyone else does. There must be something wrong with me."
"You and me both."
They flipped a coin and Jane called tails. "Heads."
Jane's weaker right arm trembled as it drew closer to the table top. She closed her eyes and the unbidden image of Maura, unable to move and cut by Hoyt's scalpel, came to mind. She could smell the ammonia scent of the prison infirmary and feel the trickle of blood running down her own neck. "No!" She screamed, her right arm rising strait up and over, pinning Paige to the table. Her eyes shot open. "Sorry. I don't know what…" She looked at the other woman with frightened eyes.
"That's okay, Jane. Whatever you just conjured worked. I'm a clinical psychologist in Boston. Paige Powers is my name; I'm in the book. You can call me if you ever need to talk about it."
"Okay."
Maura lay a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right, baby?"
"Yeah. I'm fine. My mind took me to a bad place, but I'm okay now."
Maura frowned.
"Really. Don't worry. You're up, babe, worry about your own match." She rested her forehead against Maura's soft breasts for half a moment, breathing in the spicy vanilla scent of her lover and then pulled back, smiling. "No pressure, Maur, but we really need this win." She glanced at the scoreboard. "If you pull this out, we'll come in second and the two points here guarantee we'll medal, even if we crap out in the final event."
"Thanks, Jane. I was calm until you told me that." She closed her eyes and lifted her leg in the vrksasana position. "I'm going to meditate."
Maura's opponent was tall and butch with tattooed half-sleeves and spiked dark hair.
"She looks like a tough one, Maura. Do you have a secret weapon you can pull out of your arsenal?"
The doctor smirked. "I do have a pair of assets that may do the trick. Carla, run to my room and get me my black push-up bra. Hurry. Beata, can you stall them."
"Sure. I'll belt out a little Gloria Gaynor. The lesbians love her; it's like catnip to them." The diva trilled a high D and held it. Conversations stopped and all eyes turned to the center of the buffet. Beata grabbed a hot dog and raised it to her lips like a microphone. She began to sing. "At first I was afraid I was petrified, kept thinking I could never live without you by my side…"
The audience clapped it's approval and sang along. Millie-Joyce grabbed a kitchen worker in a white apron and danced the bewildered man across the room, twirling and dipping him to his stunned delight. "You have no tits, but otherwise you're kind of cute." She told him
Carl returned, panting, with a black brassiere in her hand. "Here you go."
Maura appraised the dark undergarment. "This is Jane's bra."
"Shit." Carl stamped her foot. "That will never fit you. You'll be spilling out all over."
"Exactly." Maura beamed at her friend and impulsively kissed her cheek. "This may be an even better prop than the balconette. Jane, I need your help in the bathroom."
Maura smiled sweetly at her opponent and the woman grinned back. "Are you ready to hold my hand across the table?" She asked.
"Sure. I'll hold it under the table if you like." Her opponent was a flirt. Perfect. "Nice ink, by the way."
"Thank you." Maura glanced at her forearm and very consciously licked her lips. "I like a woman with a hard polymerized siloxanes phallus."
Her adversary looked confused, but her expression changed to lust when Millie-Joyce counted to three and Maura shrugged out of her blue T-shirt. Jane's bra fit poorly, barely covering the bottom half of the doctor's breasts. She had strategically arranged her bosom so pink areolae were visible above the black fabric and as a coup de grâce, had run an ice-cube across her nipples until they hardened to stiff peaks. She won her match in under fifteen seconds.
"Wow!" Millie-Joyce strode through the buffet, clutching her microphone. "The Lesbolympics are half over and the Blue Boobs are still in first place. I haven't been this surprised since I met the girl of my dreams at a Barbra Streisand concert and found out she had a dick." She mimicked groping a curvy woman and then grasping an enormous penis, a look of confounded bafflement on her face. Someone passed her a hot dog and she clenched it tightly in her fist, shrieking in horror before tossing it over her shoulder.
"Our next two events do not test your physical prowess and athleticism…"
"Oh no." Jane groaned. "We're going to be feeding each other oysters off our tits and shooting hard-boiled eggs out of our pussies, I just know it."
Maura's nostrils flared. "I hope not, Jane, at least the egg part. I wouldn't mind eating oysters off of any part of your body."
"…the second half of Lesbolympics is a battle of wits."
"Yes!" Maura did a happy little jig and reached for the blind doctor's hand. "Here's where we shine, Faye."
The Starstruck Theater was filled to capacity; women sat on the floor in the aisles and leaned against the back wall. Cruise staffers circulated selling cracker jacks and pretzels, beer and soft drinks, from massive trays hung about their necks. Maura clutched tight to Jane's hand as they climbed over bodies on their way toward the stage. "I wonder if it will be some sort of trivia contest. I hope there's a buzzer to hit when you know the answer."
"You might as well keep your finger on the buzzer the entire time because you know all the answers."
"Yes. I probably do."
"That's what I love most about you, babe; your modesty."
"Really? I though it was my breasts."
"They're second to your modesty."
"This is you being funny, right Jane?"
"Maybe."
The lights dimmed in the large theater and Vangelis's Chariots of Fire played through the speaker system. Millie-Joyce appeared on stage, jogging in slow motion. She made her way to the proscenium and the music stopped. "Who watches the Amazing Race?"
A thousand hands shot up. "I put together a pilot for a similar show a few years back and shopped it to all the major networks. It was called 'The Amazing Sit on My Face'. I traveled the world with only a strap-on and a toothbrush and tried to pick up a hot babe in every city. Can you believe no network was interested? Even the Women's Tennis Channel turned me down."
"I'll sit on your face, Millie-Joyce!" A woman yelled from the upper balconies.
"It's a date. I'm on deck ten, cabin number 234. Meet me after the Lesbolympics."
"I fucking love that show." Carl couldn't contain her enthusiasm. She bounced on the balls of her feet and swung her arms. "Do you think we'll have to travel to different countries?"
"We're on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, are you going to stick a firecracker up your ass and fly to Europe?" Jane deadpanned.
"I doubt they allow firecrackers onboard, Jane. They're dangerous even under the best of circumstances. They should never be used aboard a ship or inserted anywhere in the body." Maura advised.
"Do you care to share your thoughts with us, Maura?" Millie-Joyce was standing next to the lecturing doctor with her microphone held out.
"I was just telling my teammates that it would be perilous and foolhardy to insert explosive pyrotechnic devises into their anuses."
Millie-Joyce pulled her microphone back. "And there you have it, ladies, expert advice from a Harvard educated physician. 'Keep your cherry bombs out of your assholes.'"
The crowd whistled and stamped their feet; Maura was a popular figure on the ship, always good for a sound bite.
"Competitors, are you all ready for the third event?"
Everyone nodded and whooped.
"You're going on a scavenger hunt. Each team will be supplied with the same three clues which will point you to three specific destinations aboard the ship. Decode your clue, race to your destination and snap a photo for posterity. The entire team must stay together; no splitting up the clues or the group. Your photo must show all eight members just to keep you honest. You can solve them in any order you like and when you're finished, come back here."
"Ming, what are all these people going to do while we run around the ship?"
"Ah, we're all going to watch you, of course." The tennis legend raised her arm and a huge projection screen descended from the rafters behind her. "One member of each team will wear a camera helmet to record the action."
"Me! Oh, me! Please, Jane? Me." Carl jumped up and down waving her arms.
"If you wear the camera, all we'll get is pictures of my girlfriend's tits. I know you can't keep your eyes off of them."
"In that case, Carl is definitely wearing the camera." Millie-Joyce picked up a white helmet and tossed it to the small policewoman.
"Carl! Carl! Carl!" Half the audience chanted. The other half answered with, "Tits! Tits! Tits!"
"I've secreted your clue cards someplace on my body. Your first task is to strip search me; no need to be gentle."
LaWandra Wilkens stepped forward, towering nearly a foot over the tennis star. "I'm not putting my fingers in your pussy, no matter how much you beg, so just hand over the damn clues, Ming." The basketball player was clearly still smarting from her drubbing in the Jello pit. Jane wondered if Ming had violated her beneath the lime gelatin as well.
"Fine." She reached into her bra and extracted four pink index cards, passing one to each team. "Party pooper." She muttered. "Just test your cameras and begin."
Teams Red, Green and Yellow all projected images of grinning team members, arms around each other's shoulders, some flashing peace signs or blowing kisses. Carl captured Maura's glorious rack straining against the thin fabric of her blue T-shirt, nipples just visible under the "e" and "c" of Lesbolympics.
"Go Team Blue! Go Team Boobs!" The spectators screamed.
The competitors exited through the back of the stage and Jane passed the card to Maura for interpretation. "This is all you, babe, all you and Faye. Whatever you two say, we do."
Maura read the first clue aloud. "Where oh where is Rita Mae Brown?"
Faye raised her own lecture finger. "Rita Mae Brown is a famous lesbian author. She wrote Rubyfruit Jungle which I'm sure we've all read…"
Everyone nodded except for Jane. "You read that, Maur?"
"Yes, years ago; it's a classic of lesbian literature."
"Why we're you reading lesbian literature?" Jane husked in her ear.
Maura smiled mysteriously and Jane growled, remembering the three women her beloved had bedded before her.
"Rubyfruit Jungle…what does that mean?"
"I assume it's a reference to the vulva; like your O'Keeffe paintings, Jane."
"Ah, O'Keeffe…" Beata sighed. "One could almost masturbate to her flowers."
"What else did she write?"
"She's probably most well known for her cat mysteries. Kaye reads the to me. I would say that Rita Mae is nearly obsessed with cats these days."
"So…vulvas and cats."
"Or pussies and cats, Jane." Carl clarified. "Is there a cat on this ship?"
"There are over 2800 pussies on board." Beata guffawed. "We'll never finish if we have to check all of them."
"Rita Mae Brown anagrams to 'Brain Art, Meow!'" Faye added.
"Cats again!"
"Cat…cat…cat…Maura, read the clue again."
"Where oh where is Rita Mae Brown?"
"A cat on the ship…Sea cats!" Jane snapped her fingers. "Let's go."
Sea Kat brand lifeboats hung above the railings of the promenade deck, each white-hulled craft was large enough to hold 160 passengers and crew. Jane pointed to the red lettering stamped on each hull. "What do you think?"
"This must be it." Kaye agreed. "All the clues point here, even the anagram."
"I can see a writer hiding out in one of these to commune with her muse and maybe have a secret assignation with a charming gal she met on the dance floor."
Coco nodded. "That's right."
"Maura? Faye? Carl? Lucy? Do we all agree?"
Everyone agreed. They pressed in close to the boat and Jane snapped a selfie, making sure she got the words 'Sea Kat' in the photo.
Back in the Starstruck Theater, the audience roared with laughter.
"Next clue, Maura. I wonder if we're the first to figure that one out. I don't see any of our adversaries on this deck."
"Of course we're first." Lucy answered. "We have two geniuses on our team."
"Amy and Emily drank from this and they were 'Closer to Fine'."
"Amy Lowell and Emily Dickinson!" Faye exclaimed.
"It must be." Maura concurred. "They were both natives of Massachusetts and this ship sailed from Boston."
"I've heard of Dickinson." Carl scratched under her helmet. "But who's Amy Lowell?"
"A poet, she wrote a generation after Dickinson…and she was a lesbian." Faye answered. "Dickinson may also have been a lesbian, but that has never been proven to my satisfaction."
"Nor mine. Coco, Amy Lowell was an avid cigar smoker, just like you."
"Is that right?" The little woman bit on her cheroot.
"Where would two lesbian poets drink on a cruise ship?" Lucy asked.
"In the library and I'm pretty sure there's a water cooler or fountain in there."
They raced to the library and found LaWandra Wilkens and her Green Squad snapping a picture inside. "Damn, they're ahead of us."
"They may not have gotten the cat clue yet; Millie-Joyce said we don't have to solve them in order."
"Coco, Carl, hit the shelves, see if there's a poetry book by our ladies."
"Got it!" Carl yelled, waving the complete works of Emily Dickinson.
"And Lowell?"
Coco lifted a slimmer volume above her head.
"C'mon everyone, let's gather around the water cooler and take our proof picture. Make sure you get the books in the photo."
The audience watching on the giant screen howled. Millie-Joyce picked up her microphone and began singing a very off-key version of Indigo Girls 'Closer to Fine' and two thousand women sang along, each knowing all the words by heart. "I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains. I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain. There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line. The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine. "
"What's next?"
"What does Ellen drive?"
"That's it?" Beata asked. "It must be Ellen DeGeneres. Can we all agree on that?"
Everyone nodded.
"What does she drive?"
"A hard bargain." Lucy suggested.
"Drive could refer to golf." Jane mused. "Does Ellen golf? I mean, is she known as an avid golfer?"
"I think she is." Kaye squeezed her temples, trying to summon a memory. "I remember seeing some charity golf classic on ESPN and Ellen was definitely there."
"I think I saw that, too." Carl nodded. "Yeah, she's a golfer; a good one, I think.
"Is there a driving range on the ship?"
"There is. It's on deck 14."
The air had grown colder and everyone huddled together under the blowing green netting. The sea, which had been a deep cerulean just a few hours earlier was now dark grey and a wet wind blew off of the ocean coating everything with a salty brine. Maura pulled Jane tight against her and rubbed her hands up the detective's goosebumped arms. "It's beginning to feel like home."
"Nah, if we were home, we'd be in parkas and snow boots and I would be shoveling a path for Jo Friday to make her poopies. This isn't T-shirt weather, but it's not Boston." She took the doctor's hands in her own and kissed each soft knuckle. "Arm wrestling and pulling on ropes; another few days and your hands will be just as beat-up and calloused as mine." She reluctantly let go of Maura.
"Are we all here?" Faye and Kaye had accompanied Lucy on the elevator while everyone else had sprinted up the stairs.
Jane snapped a photo and returned her iphone to her pocket. "Let's go."
The Bad News Boobs returned to the theater to a standing ovation. Beata pirouetted down the center aisle, curtsying and blowing kisses to her fans. The other teams had not yet arrived. "Coco, it appears we've won once again."
"That's right." The smaller woman tucked her cigar into her back pocket and dipped her girlfriend, planting a lusty kiss on her full lips.
Millie-Joyce stood on stage with her hands on her hips. "Look what Rita Mae Brown's cat dragged in."
The audience roared.
"So we've won this event as well, it's practically a shut out. You might as well hand over the medal now, Millie-Joyce. Coco and I have some olympic sports we'd like to try in the privacy of our room."
"A little muff-diving and finger-curling, Beata?"
"Oh, that's just the beginning. Coco will ski a giant slalom around the snowy mounds of my breasts and ride me like a slick luge, hugging my curves until we both jump the track and collapse in a sweating mass at the finish line."
"That's right." Coco agreed.
"Yeee-hah!" The tennis legend squeezed her own breasts. "That's one olympic event I'd love to be part of…but your team is not getting the gold. In fact, I'm going to deduct 69 points from your score for making a mockery of lesbian culture, but then I'll add one for creativity and making us all laugh."
The rear doors to the theater flew open and a mass of women in green, yellow and red fought their way in, jostling one another to get down the aisle. LaWandra Wilkens picked up a small woman in a yellow shirt and dunked her like a basketball into a side row. Maura's arm wrestling opponent tripped the tall woman and ducked out of the way as she fell, only to be tackled by another giantess in green. The crowd was on it's feet, shouting for their favorites. Kaye narrated the events in a booming voice for her wife as they played out. Millie-Joyce called the winners as they reached the stage. "Yellow, by a busted titty, followed by red and green."
"Let's see your photos, lesbos." She swiped her finger across a tablet and an image rendered on the huge screen overhead: Millie-Joyce naked in a bathtub, her tongue lolling out of mouth, her glasses fogged up with steam and her hand between her legs. "Ooops, that's not supposed to be there." She giggled and swiped again.
The screen split into four squares. Three images of smiling competitors in the library and the fourth of The Bad News Boobs in front of a lifeboat. "You can find Rita Mae, or at least her novels, in the library."
"But her angiogram said 'meow'." Carl protested.
"You over thought that one, girls." Millie-Joyce swiped her finger again and an another nude photo, the tennis legend wearing nothing but knee socks and licking a lolly-pop, blazed on the screen. "Damn! How did that get in there?" She swiped again and three nearly identical images of the statue of Neptune above the fountain in the Grand Gallery appeared, only the color of the women's Lesbolympic T-shirts changed as they posed sitting in a line along the sea god's tail. "Emily and Amy are…" Millie-Joyce held out her microphone and the crowd screamed. "Indigo Girls".
"Not 19th century New England poets. Sorry, Maura."
With a final swipe of her finger, Millie-Joyce's nude form once again filled the screen, this time splayed across the hood of a black Porche Carrere in the Car Bar on deck 13. "Ellen drives Portia, her wife, not a damn golf ball."
Maura laced her fingers through Jane's as they walked leisurely back to their stateroom. "What a strange day. Would you ever have guessed that my brawn would trump my brain?"
"Never, Maur."
"Are you mad that we lost?"
"No. As far as I'm concerned, I'm the biggest winner on this ship."
"We both are. Do you want to try some lesbian olympic events in our cabin like Coco and Beata are doing right now?"
"Sure. I already rode you like a luge this morning, but I wouldn't mind doing the breaststroke followed by a little rhythmic dancing and synchronized coming."
Maura chuckled. "I think a marathon session is in order."
"Then a shower and the farewell midnight chocolate buffet."
"I wouldn't eat that chocolate, Jane. What do you think they did with the six thousand gallons of pudding from the shit pit?"
A/N: We're in the home stretch...I'm thinking one more massive chapter or two modest ones to see our gals back home. Thanks for reading.