"Who programs a white party to run concurrently with a chocolate festival and a masquerade? It's bad scheduling." Maura pulled two hangers from the armoire and regarded each with a look of mild distaste. "The Chiara Boni is white, but it doesn't scream chocolate." She held up a snowy cocktail dress. "This one feels more like chocolate." She twirled a shirt dress on its hanger, patterned in deep earth tones.
"Who designed that one, babe, Willie Wonka?"
"No. It's Etro and it matches the eggplant ankle-wrap sandals I wanted to wear. Who's Willie Wonka? I've never heard of that designer."
"He's a fictional candy maker. We'll have to watch the movie when we get home. It was my all time favorite when I was a kid. Wear whatever you like, Maur, they're not going to kick you out either way." Jane pulled on white linen trousers and tucked her gauzy white button down into the waist.
Maura eyed her girlfriend appreciatively; the bleached garments contrasted with the warm bronze of Jane's tanned skin and wild black waves of her mane. Maura made a little mewling sound at the back of her throat and Jane's eyes snapped up. "You look like you want to devour me, Maura."
"I do. I know I just did, but we're still on vacation. Can't I go back for seconds?"
Jane grinned. "Thirds, if you like. Do you want to say 'fuck it' and have our own festival here in our cabin? The sheets are white, I have the milk chocolate Mickey Mouse I bought for TJ at Disney, and we could both wear our masks."
Maura stepped closer, a vision in her ivory lace panties and bra. "I'm very tempted, Jane, but it's the last night and I want to say good-bye to our friends. Keep TJ's mouse candy intact; I have a box of Godiva in my refrigerator…" Maura closed her eyes, picturing a milk chocolate truffle, nearly the same color as Jane's nipples. She licked her lips and sighed. It would take all her will to keep her hands and mouth off of girlfriend's body.
"Maura, baby, you'd better put on your dress in the next five seconds or else it's not going on at all."
The doctor took a deep breath and turned back to the armoire, pulling the Chiara Boni over her head and shimmying it down over her curves.
Maura struggled to keep up with her girlfriend's long strides, tottering on her silver Louboutin platforms. Finally she gave up and enjoyed the view from behind. The loose-fitting linen hid the outline of Jane's firm ass, but nothing could disguise the detective's swagger; she rolled her hips like a stalking puma. Maura imagined the muscles rippling under the billowy white trousers and her lover's supple form, burnished by the tropical sun to dark caramel. She conjured the salty taste of Jane's skin as she kissed her way up hard calves, lingering at the soft flesh behind her knees and the velvety expanse of toned thigh where she sucked and teased, leaving purple-red tattoos before burying her face in the thick wet fur of Jane's dark sex.
"Babe…" Maura's voice was a husky purr.
Jane turned, a sarcastic quip about the doctor's poor choice in footwear forming in her mind, but the look on Maura's face made her lose her train of thought.
"…can we take the elevator?"
"Sure." Jane waited for her girlfriend to catch up and took her hand. "Do you want me to carry you, princess? You're walking like one of those geishas with the bound feet."
"Geishas are Japanese entertainers. Foot binding was strictly a Chinese practice; it gained in popularity during the Song Dynasty among aristocratic women, but soon spread…"
Jane cut her off with a kiss and pressed the button for the elevator.
"If there's someone in the car, wait for the next." Maura ran a finger under the waist of her girlfriend's pants. Jane's skin was warm and silky.
"O..okay." Jane's eyes were locked to Maura's, she read desire and telegraphed it back.
The elevator was empty when they stepped in. "Make it jam, Jane." Jane hit the button for the top deck and then the emergency stop. The car shuddered and slowed, finally stopping between decks 12 and 13.
Maura pressed herself against Jane's lithe form, molding her breasts to Jane's sternum. They kissed, tongues sliding hotly together, stroking and circling. Jane grappled with the clinging fabric of the doctor's white cocktail dress, eager to push it up and aside. She growled in frustration as the smooth lycra eluded her trembling fingers. She roughly shoved a thigh between Maura's legs and her growl turned to a grunt of satisfaction at the feel of damp warmth seeping through the thin material. Maura ground against the hard thigh and then slid down the length of Jane's body, taking the white linen trousers and white boy-shorts with her. Jane leaned back against the elevator wall, resting her burning cheek against a cool wood panel, her hands wrapped tight in Maura's silky tresses as she watched their images reflected in the mirrored elevator door; the golden head moving between her tanned thighs as she stroked herself through her own ivory lace panties.
Maura stood, straightening her dress, as the elevator began to move again. The bell dinged and a pleasant British-accented voice announced, "Deck Thirteen." Jane caught the gaze of amused hazel eyes in the mirrored door just as it slid open. Maura wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and primly exited the elevator.
The Grand Buffet was transformed; gone were the cafeteria tables and plastic chairs, the fluorescent lighting and stainless-steel salad bar. The cavernous room had metamorphosed into a stylish disco. Thousands of bodies bobbed and shimmied, hustled and jived on the dance floor, their white clothes blazing like blue ice under pulsing ultraviolet strobe lights. Running along the room's perimeter were massive sculptures wrought in chocolate: the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, a life-sized Venus standing naked on her clam shell and Michelangelo's David, sculpted from white chocolate instead of white Carrara marble. Someone had covered his famous phallus with a harness made of twizzlers and a chocolate dipped banana stood erect between his thighs. A white blur hurtled past, stopping long enough to nip the end off of the banana, before disappearing with a cackle. Ming.
A moment later she was back, nibbling on a skewer of dipped strawberries. "Where are your masks, ladies? Did you ruin them playing Lone Ranger and Tonto all afternoon, sitting on each other's faces?"
Maura chuckled and Jane rolled her eyes. "We forgot them in the room."
"Here, take mine." Millie-Joyce pulled off a white eye mask, embellished with white plastic feathers and rhinestones, handing it to Maura with a flourish.
"Thank you." Maura slipped the mask over her head. "These chocolate sculptures are astonishing. I can't imagine the time and talent it took to make just one, and there must be twenty or more here."
"Have you seen the chocolate Ming?" Millie-Joyce asked, strawberry juice and chocolate running down her chin.
"No. Not yet."
"I'm next to the milk chocolate Sappho instructing her pupils. When you see me, look up my tennis skirt."
"You wish." Jane grunted.
"You'll be impressed, I promise. I designed it myself."
"I'd like to see it." Maura linked her arm through Millie-Joyce's elbow and Jane had no choice but to follow, weaving her way through a sea of white-pulsing, strobe-lit bodies cavorting to the sound of Beata Frankenmeier singing The Pointer Sisters.
"Did you know…" Maura was standing between a 3/4 replica of the tennis star and Millie-Joyce herself. "…chocolate has an interesting etymology. The first half of the word choco comes from the Maya word xoco which means hot. The second half from the Nahuatl word atl which means water. So chocolate is literally hot water, which makes perfect sense if you drink it warm like the Mayans did. The Aztecs, however, preferred their chocolate…"
Jane reached between the pair and flipped up the white cotton tennis skirt, draped around the chocolate Ming effigy. "Holy shit."
Candy Ming's crotch was impregnated with hundreds of black licorice laces, cut into neat inch long sections and painstakingly attached in rows. The effect was a realistic pubic thatch.
Millie-Joyce smiled proudly, patting her cocoa doppelgänger. "Of course my snatch today is more grey than black, but they don't make vanilla licorice whips and this statue was modeled on my first US Open Championship photo in 1967. What a year; Johnson was in the White House, Janis Joplin was on the radio, and my bush was black and bountiful. Women lined the streets of Forest Hills just to get a lick. Yes, my friends, love-love was the score."
"TMI, Ming." Jane dropped the skirt.
"Trimethylindium?" Maura asked, confused. "That's a highly unstable thermal compound used in semiconductors."
"Well, Ming is highly unstable, but TMI means…."
"Too much information." Carl popped up at Jane's side, in baggy white cargo shorts and a white Chilmark PD T-shirt. "Can I see that again?"
Jane rolled her eyes and lifted the tennis skirt a second time.
"That's so cool." Carl poked the licorice pubis.
Millie-Joyce giggled, bouncing from foot to foot in anticipation, a move engraved in her muscle memory from years of prowling the baseline waiting for an opponent's serve. "Look under the hairs, Jane. This is the best part."
Jane's sigh was a vocal eye-roll, but she squatted in front of the sculpture and parted the lank licorice pubes. The realistic labia was fashioned entirely of swedish fish with a huge red gobstopper clitoris peeking out at the front.
"There's a metaphor here." Jane smirked and dropped the curtain of pubes.
"I love a metaphor, Jane, what is it?" Maura's eyes sparkled with merriment behind her white feathery mask.
"Her vagina…is made of…fish." Jane explained slowly.
"So?"
Ming was off on one of her patented rants. "My tuna taco, my red snapper, my carp carnival, shrimp bed, furry flounder, halibut hut…"
Maura waved dismissively at the statue's crotch. "I've never tasted fish on a woman. It's an insulting and indubitably false stereotype."
Jane was glad of the dim lighting at the edge of the disco, she felt the blood rush to her face as she remembered Maura's expert mouth against her own sex in the elevator. Despite just having had an orgasm that made her thighs ache and her abs burn, she felt a subtle throbbing begin again between her legs. Maura took her hand and squeezed. She knew.
Ming blathered on. "Very true, Maura, though I did once date a woman who tasted just like fried chicken; I used to call her the Colonel and she had no idea why. She thought we were role playing and started calling me Radar."
The doctor tilted her head, not understanding.
"It's from M*A*S*H, Maur, didn't you watch television when you were a kid?"
"No, not really."
Faye and Kaye rounded the corner in matching white nehru collared blouses, wheat jeans and Birkenstocks. Faye held loosely onto her wife's arm and balanced a martini glass the size of a Starbucks Grande in her free hand.
"Here are our friends, love. Jane and Maura, Carla and Ming the Magnificent."
"Who wants a chocolate martini? They are delicious; too delicious in fact. I've had three and if I didn't know it was physically impossible, I'd swear I can see again. Jane, are you very short and chubby?"
"Yes." Jane chuckled. "And Maura is butch as hell and flat-chested."
"I'll try one."
Faye held out her glass in the direction of Maura's voice, but was way off. Maura stepped around her and took a sip. "Delicious."
"I'll be right back. Watch my woman, Jane. Don't let her run off with any sailors." Kaye passed her wife's hand over and disappeared in the direction of the bar.
"Last night, Faye. Maur and I are going to miss you two."
"We're less than three hours by car from Boston. You and Maura must come up when you can get away. I'm not just saying that, Jane; I don't say things that I don't mean. Kaye and I both feel a deep connection, and poor Kaye has no one to talk to about the things that interest her; her sports teams and police matters. Our son is very much like me, an egghead."
"You're not an egghead, Faye. You're like my Maura…wonderful."
"And an egghead."
"Well, maybe a little. What's your son's name?"
"Tom, after Tom Seaver, the Mets pitcher."
"Right. I forgot you're both native New Yorkers. I'm glad Kaye isn't a Yankee fan. If she was, I might have to rethink our friendship."
Faye laughed, a goofy chortling snort, much like Maura's. "The Yankees are anathema in our home."
"Good! You and Kaye have to stay with us in Boston this summer and we'll all go to Fenway and boo the Yankees."
"It's a deal." Kaye arrived, her hands laden with drinks; a chocolate martini for Maura, a beer for Carl, Jane and herself and a soft drink for her wife. "I got you a Fresca, babe. I think you need a break from the vodka. Where's Millie-Joyce? I got her a Jello shot."
"I'm here." The tennis legend was on her knees in front of chocolate Sappho. Jane noticed that the lesbian poetess had one finger raised as she lectured her adoring pupils, just like Maura.
"What are you doing, Ming?"
"I'm going down on the mother of all lesbians, but I have an ulterior motive. Just give me a minute; she's close." Ming stuck out her tongue and continued licking the statue's crotch. The five women watched her in equal parts interest and bewilderment.
"Okay. Done." Millie-Joyce removed her glasses and swiped at her sweating brow. "Have a look."
Maura peered into the hollow between Sappho's thighs then poked her finger into the gap. "Fascinating and brilliant."
"Isn't it?" Ming asked.
"What?"
"It appears that the statuary is not actually sculpted of chocolate. These are styrofoam molds with a thin layer of chocolate sprayed over them."
"After the party, the staff will hose them off and put them in storage for the next cruise."
"I for one am greatly relieved. I had been calculating the amount of chocolate it would take to produce solid statuary and it's a staggering amount both in poundage and price." Maura began to raise, then sheepishly lowered, her lecture finger.
"I'm disappointed." Carl admitted. "I was hoping they'd break everything up at the end of the night and I'd get to take the armless lady's titties back to my room." She gestured to the Venus de Milo.
"Why don't you try for some real titties, Prince Charming. There's a bunch of wallflowers hanging around the crepe station." Jane poked her with her empty beer bottle.
"Nah. I don't want to fall in love the last night of the cruise and have to go home alone to the Vineyard. But if you don't mind, I'd love to dance with your girl."
"I don't mind, just keep your hands where I can see 'em. I'm going on a beer run. Who needs?"
The band was playing The Village People. Beata shimmied across the stage in her white beaded gown and a construction helmet while Coco danced beside her in a police hat, miming the letters Y-M-C-A over her head. Jane began to dance, despite herself. Angela had this album and she remembered her mother's smiling face as the two of them boogied to this song in their small North End living room before Tommy was born. Frankie was a pudgy toddler watching them from the couch and Frank Sr. had grumbled about there being no plumber in the group.
Jane choked on a mouthful of beer as a warm body pressed up against her back, grinding into the curve of her ass. "Whoa, babe." The grinding grew more intense. "You're insatiable, Maura, and I love it." She tried to turn around, but her arms we're pinned at her sides. She closed her eyes and leaned back.
"Warm breath tickled her ear and a voice said. "Jane, let's engage in anthropologicagorical photosynthesisical intercourse." A tongue flickered across her neck.
She opened her eyes and caught a glimpse of Maura dancing goofily with Big Carl Timmons fifteen feet away.
"Ming! What the fuck."
Maniacal laughter was the only response as Millie-Joyce unpinned her arms and skipped around to face her. "I almost had you fooled."
"No you didn't."
"I thought if I whispered something nerdy in your ear, you'd definitely think it was Maura. Did I make you wet, Jane?"
"You made my mouth wet as it filled with vomit."
"Live a little, Rizzoli. If this was the '70's we'd all be naked in a pig pile, snorting cocaine off each other's tits."
"If this was the '70's, the only tit I'd see was my mother's as she nursed me…and I'm a police officer, don't talk to me about cocaine. That shit don't play with me."
Millie-Joyce shrugged, unperturbed. "Picture it, Jane, Studio 54 in New York City. I just won the US Open for the third time. I glided into the disco and within five minutes I had my left hand up the dress of a supermodel and my right under the skirt of a certain actress with the third most popular show on television. Both of them 'straight' and married." She made air quotes around the word straight.
Jane was curious, despite herself. "Who?"
Ming whispered the name in her ear.
"Really? I had her barbie doll…er, action figure."
"I had the real thing. She was delicious." Ming licked her lips lasciviously and pranced away.
Maura returned, flushed and sweaty from her dance. She wrapped her arms around Jane's narrow waist and rested her head against her shoulder, her nose was tickled by soft raven tresses. "I've danced with everyone but you tonight. How about it, detective?"
"I'm not much of a dancer." Jane finished her beer and placed the empty on a table, already overloaded with glasses and chocolate-smeared plates.
"Sure you are." Maura raised an eyebrow. "You have excellent rhythm and timing. I should know…"
"That's not the same thing."
"Yes it is. If you can fuck, you can dance."
"Maura!" It still shocked her to hear her elegant girlfriend swear, but from Maura's mouth the word was erotic and sensual, not dirty. It conjured up the image of trembling limbs and sweat-dampened bodies moving together, very different from the way Jane used the word as a catch-all intensifier; "Fuckin' Yankees","Fuck this fuckin' paperwork" ,"Damn, Frost, we're fucked."
Maura pressed in closer, her breasts heavy against Jane's chest. "Dance with me, Jane."
"All right."
Maura took her girlfriend's hand and led her to an empty patch of dance floor near the starboard windows. Beata was just finishing a fast tempo number with comically dirty lyrics about a woman with an enormous derriere. Hoping for a slow number, she wrapped her arms around Jane's neck and looked into dark eyes. Jane's hands found her hips and rested there.
"Last dance, last chance for love…" The song started out slow and the pair swayed gently together, feeling like the only couple in the room. Maura slipped off her shoes and rested her head in the hollow of Jane's neck. She liked being smaller, feeling herself surrounded by Jane, tucked up against her, warm and protected. When the tempo picked up, they remained pressed together, holding each other while the rest of the room waved their hands in the air and bounced in time to the music.
"See, Jane, you can dance and it isn't so bad, is it?"
"No, it's good. Perfect."
The Donna Summer song ended and Beata curtsied deeply. "Yes, that was our last dance, ladies. My partner Coco and I would like to wish everyone a safe journey home tomorrow. We hope that the memories you've made on this trip will keep you warm and smiling for the rest of this cold, miserable winter."
"Boo! Winter can lick my asshole!" Someone shouted.
"It's still early. More dancing!" Came a loud voice from behind the stage.
The fluorescent lighting hummed as it switched on and the chic nightclub was once again only a cafeteria. Maura looked around at the white-clad revelers, confirming her initial assessment that a chocolate festival and a white party were not a good mix. Crisp white shirts were splattered with cocoa drops, snowy pants smeared and smudged with brown where sticky hands rubbed themselves clean. What the darkened disco had hid was revealed in the bright light of the buffet. The crowd looked like the aftermath of a toga party in a mud storm.
Millie-Joyce moonwalked across the stage in her tennis whites. She turned to the crowd and asked. "Who wants to see my Wimble-dong?"
Whistles and hoots greeted her; with Ming up there, the party was bound to continue. She rolled her hips and pulled up her skirt revealing a huge brown dildo in a harness, a pair of white tennis balls hung from below the phallus. She toggled a switch on her thigh and a stream of white mini marshmallows erupted from the tip. Women pushed each other aside to catch a sweet fluffy morsel on their tongues.
Maura guffawed, leaning heavily against Jane. "She's endlessly entertaining."
"And endlessly revolting." Jane grumbled.
When her member was empty, Millie-Joyce reached for Beata, hugging her long and hard. "It's been an amazing seven days. I'll miss you, my dear friend." She turned to the crowd, wiping a tear from under her glasses. "See, I have a heart. I'm not all butt plugs and whoopie cushions."
"Yes you are." Beata teased.
"Well, mostly, but I do have a soft spot when it comes to love. The gyrating and humping on the dance floor may be over, but here we all are dressed in white so…. Let's have a wedding!"
The band launched into an uptempo version of Mendelssohn's Wedding March. Beata took Millie-Joyce's arm and the pair glided solemnly across the stage to where Coco waited. The tennis star kissed the diva's cheek and handed her off to her girlfriend. The music changed and Beata, still holding Coco's hand, belted out the Dixie Cups' Going to the Chapel.
When the song ended, Millie-Joyce once again took the stage, a gauzy white veil over her face. "We are still in international waters and our Captain has graciously agreed to perform as many ceremonies as it takes to bind you all in wedded misery. Ladies, please welcome our Captain, Tors Hebsgaard."
A huge man with a neat red beard took the stage. He blushed and waved shyly, stooping his shoulders, trying to make himself small enough to disappear behind Millie-Joyce and Beata. "Captain Hebsgaard, tonight you are an honorary lesbian." The two women leaned in and kissed him on his flushed cheeks.
"I am very pleased to accept this honor." He smiled and nodded, his gentle manner and lilting sing-song English making him instantly popular with the crowd. "I am hoping that there will be maybe one happy couple that wishes a wedding." He scanned the crowd with expectant blue eyes.
"Who's steering the ship?" Jane asked out of the side of her mouth.
Maura downed the last of her chocolate martini. "The captain of a cruise ship is the head of all personnel and answers to the company, but is not the person at the helm. The staff captain actually navigates and steers the ship. Our staff captain is a woman; her photo is in the hallway outside of the bridge."
"Interesting."
"Yes. Did you know…" Maura raised her lecture finger. "…that the captain of a ship is always called 'sir,' even if she is a female?"
"I didn't."
"And the position of staff captain is…"
Millie-Joyce's voice over the microphone interrupted Maura's discourse on maritime hierarchy. "Jane, why don't you make an honest woman out of Maura?"
Maura drew her brows together, frowning. "I am unequivocally honest. I find it nearly impossible to lie."
"Maura." Jane growled. "It's a saying; it means I should marry you."
"Oh." The doctor flushed nearly as brightly as her fading sunburn at its apex. She lifted her empty martini glass to her mouth and poked her tongue into it's depths, eager for the last few drops of double chocolate truffle vodka.
All eyes were on them and the room had gone silent. Jane looked to Maura, but the doctor was staring into her empty glass which she clutched tightly in both hands. Marriage? After only four days of being a couple. Jane ran a nervous hand through her messy curls. She was sweating along her hairline despite the cool breeze blowing in from the open doors at the back of the ship. "Maur?" She croaked.
Maura looked up, meeting Jane's anxious gaze. "Jane, I love you, but I think we should wait."
The detective let out a long breath, her tight muscles relaxing. She pulled her girlfriend close and murmured into her soft hair. "Someday, babe."
"Yes." Maura answered, her lips at Jane's clavicle. "If you're asking, my answer is yes, but let's wait until we've been dating at least a week."
Jane laughed and pulled her tighter. The crowd grew noisy; women speculating with their friends about the whispered conversation between their favorite couple. "Did Jane ask?" "What did Maura say?" "Will there be a wedding?"
Millie-Joyce lifted the microphone to her mouth. "Hey vagitarians, who remembers this?" She cleared her throat and began to whine in a childish voice. "Jane and Maura sitting in a tree F-U-C-K-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage…" Twenty-eight hundred voices joined in, everyone remembering the ditty from her own childhood. "…then comes baby in a baby carriage, sucking her thumb, pooping in her pants, doing the hula-hula dance."
Everyone clapped and congratulated each other on remembering the playground rhyme after so many years, like a group of lapsed Catholics called on to recite the Apostles' Creed who are stunned that the words trip easily off their tongues decades later.
"Detective Rizzoli?" Millie-Joyce called. "What did she say?"
Jane rested her cheek against Maura's head. "She said yes, but…"
Cheers resounded through the room, drowning out the steady thrum of the massive diesel engines. "The queen is getting married! A royal wedding!" Jane was lifted off of her feet and carried toward the stage on the strong shoulders of LaWandra Wilkens. "Here's the groom, yo!" She deposited Jane in front of Captain Hebsgaard.
"Now LaWandra, you know that's not politically correct; there is no groom here. Jane and Maura are equals and both will be brides." Beata chided half-heartedly.
The basketball star sucked her teeth. "Jane wears the dick. She's the stud, the butch…the groom, but whatever." She snapped her fingers and leaped from the stage into the waiting arms of her very feminine, very curvy girlfriend.
"Jane." Beata coaxed. "Get on your knees and ask nicely so we can all hear." A large hand rested on her shoulder and pushed her inexorably toward the ground. Millie-Joyce shoved a microphone into her hand. She frowned and looked into the crowd, searching for her girlfriend, but someone had herded Maura to the front of the stage where she stood with panicked eyes, chewing her lip.
"Maura…" Jane squeaked. Maura took off her mask and met Jane's espresso eyes. "Maur, I love you. You're my best friend, my…my everything. I'm so proud to be loved by you. You make me laugh, you make me think, you've opened up my world and my mind. You're the kindest, funniest, goofiest, sexiest woman I've ever met." Maura was blushing, but happy. Her smile reached her eyes and they glittered: green and gold and dark silver. "You made a home for my mother…for all of my family. You never…" Jane started to tear up. She closed her eyes and shook her head. "…you never left my side when I was…wounded. You healed me and you waited for me until I was ready. Will you marry me…when you're ready?"
"I will." Maura nodded.
Everyone clapped. A collective "awww" resounded through the room.
"That was very lovely." Captain Hebsgaard pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his watering eyes. "It reminds me of my own proposal to my dear Dagmar. Ladies, I am at your service."
"We're not going to get married tonight, Captain."
Words of disappointment and anger filled the large room. "We want a wedding!" Someone shouted from behind the chocolate fountain. "Marry her, Jane, before she changes her mind." Another woman added from behind the stage.
LaWandra Wilkens stepped forward and rested her hands on Maura's hips. She lifted the petite woman easily onto the stage and pushed her gently toward Jane.
"A marriage is not something that either of us take lightly and it's not something we feel comfortable doing on the sperm of the rodent."
Laughter bubbled from all around them. "Ain't no sperm in here." A voice called from their left.
Jane snorted. "Spur of the moment, Maur."
"That makes no sense."
"Right, not like 'sperm of the rodent,' which makes perfect sense."
"Idiomatic speech is not my forte."
"Ya think?"
Jane put an arm around her shoulders and took the microphone. "When we get married, it's going to be overly orchestrated, planned, and argued about for months. Maura will want to fly in a pastry chef from Sarafina's in St. Martin to make the cake. Her mother will kidnap Stella McCartney and Vera Wang, chain them in the basement and whip them until they produce the perfect gown. Yo-Yo Ma will have to be dragged to Boston with his Stradavaginus to play during the cocktail hour…"
Maura snatched the microphone back. "Actually, we could never marry without Jane's mother here. She was the one who realized we were in love and pushed us towards each other."
"She's very pushy." Jane agreed. "If we got married without her, she'd kill us both and then herself so she could continue to torture us in the afterlife."
"Your mother would be the final vote on anything wedding related. She'd make the cake herself, arrange the flowers, and plan the honeymoon."
"You're right, babe. She'd probably come along on the honeymoon just to make sure we were doing it right."
Millie-Joyce joined them, putting on the voice of an old woman with a heavy Boston accent. "Jane, yuh nought doin' it right. Yah gotta lick it hah-duh." It sounded nothing like Angela, but the crowd didn't know that and they guffawed and chortled.
"So no wedding?" Beata looked disappointed. "My Ave Maria is legendary. The Grimaldis keep me on retainer to sing at all of their weddings, though the cute princess seems to have given up on marriage and just takes lovers now. No matter, they pay me either way."
"There must be someone who wants to get married." Captain Hebsgaard looked crestfallen as he searched the room, but no one stepped forward.
"What about you, LaWandra?" Jane called out the towering center who was draped over her girlfriend with a Coors Light in her hand.
"Not gonna happen." The girlfriend shook her head. "They don't call her 'Wandering LaWandra' for nothing. We hooked up three months ago, but I know come summer time, she be ditching my ass for another thick honey."
"Nah, baby. We good. I ain't going nowhere."
"Mmm-hmm. You gonna marry me then?"
"Nah, marriage…that's not my way."
"See. Look in your lesbo magazine come July and LaWandra gonna be professin' her love for some woman, but it ain't gonna be Chantel." She gestured to herself and shook her head again.
Jane turned to Beata. "What about you and Coco? You've been together forever."
"Marriage is not for us." The diva held up a ringless hand. "Coco says…"
Coco stepped forward in her jaunty white tux and tails. "Marriage is a patriarchal institution that enforces the hegemony of heteronormative values." She bit hard on her cigar and sat back down.
"That's right." Beata agreed.
"Anyone?" The Captain asked.
Kaye approached the stage, holding her wife's hand. "My gal and I already tied the knot back in 2004. We were one of the first couples to marry in Massachusetts, even though it wasn't recognized right away in Vermont. But this cruise is a celebration of our 40 years together. If it's all right with you, we'd like to renew our vows."
"Yee-ha!" Millie-Joyce tossed her dildo in the air. "We're having a wedding!"
Captain Hebsgaard smiled, putting down his half eaten chocolate chip cookie. "This is wonderful. I am humbled in the face of such love. I can do a Lutheran service or nondenominational or even Buddhist. I hiked through Nepal when I was a younger man."
"I can sing the sheva barachot, the seven blessings." Beata added. "I considered being a cantor before the opera stage beckoned.
Faye tilted her head in that way that reminded Jane so much of Maura. "We're not Jewish or Buddhist or Lutheran, but why not? Let's do it all. What do you say, lover?"
"Bring it on, babe." Kaye grinned. "Jane, will you stand up with me as my best… woman?"
"Absolutely."
"Maura, would you be my maid of honor?"
"I would be delighted."
"I want to be something, too!" Carl pushed her way toward the stage.
"You can be the flower girl, brat." Jane stuck her tongue out.
"Fine."
"Where's Lucy?" Faye looked around with sightless eyes, a habit that she would never break. "She should be part of this."
A loud honk, like a dying foghorn, sounded from the far side of the room and Lucy wheeled to the stage in her chair, which was festooned with white feathers and balloons.
"Lucy, would you be our ring bearer?"
"My pleasure."
Faye slipped off her wedding ring and handed it to her wife who had a bit of trouble removing her own. "I think I gained a few pounds this week." Eventually it came off and she passed both to Lucy.
Millie-Joyce led the crowd in a chant of, "Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue." The requisite good luck items to ensure a happy marriage.
"We're old." Kaye laughed. "So we got that covered."
"And we're sharing our day with new friends."
"You want to borrow my dildo?" Ming asked.
"I think we'll pass on that." Kaye frowned.
"We have our own downstairs." Faye added to the delight of everyone.
"Kaye!" The old police captain flushed and sputtered. "My wife has a tendency to over share."
"Another characteristic she shares with Maura." Jane winked.
"How about my veil?" Millie-Joyce dangled the prop she had worn earlier.
"Yes. Perfect."
LaWandra Wilkens reached behind her neck and unclasped a thick gold chain with a glimmering sapphire pendant. She bent nearly double as she fastened it around Faye's neck. "I bought this in Sint Maarten. They got some fine jewelry stores there, yo. Keep it, granny. It suits you. Much happiness." She kissed the old doctor's cheek and stepped back to her girlfriend.
"Why you don't give me no sapphire necklaces, LaWandra?" The chubby woman pouted.
"See, Chantel. This is why I ain't gonna marry you."
Beata put on her most angelic expression, clasped her hands in front of her and sang. The poignant notes of Schubert's Ave Maria filled the colossal space. Carl processed toward the stage, strewing not flowers, but plastic feathers. Every guest had doffed her mask, filling a paper sack with the white plumes and now they fell like snow onto the path that the bride would walk.
Lucy followed in her chair, holding the two rings on a white buffet plate atop a solid block of dark chocolate.
Jane and Kaye stood on the stage, to the Captain's left. Coco had removed a white lily boutineer from the lapel of her tux and pinned it to Kaye's nehru shirt.
"Are you nervous?" Jane asked.
"Nah. I'm happy. I'm the luckiest dog in the pound."
Ave Maria ended and Beata sat next to her partner, taking her hand. Coco reached into her jacket and pulled out a crisp white handkerchief and passed it to the diva, who blew her nose loudly and dabbed at her eyes.
The band played Pachebel's Canon in D and the bride walked down the feathery path, holding tight to her maid of honor. The two women could have been mother and daughter, so alike were they in stature and bearing.
"It's not too late, Maura. We could have a double wedding." Faye whispered.
"No, this is your day, Faye. Someday Jane and I will do this and you will be there for me."
"Yes. I will. We both will."
Maura counted out the steps up to the stage and held fast to Faye as the older doctor ascended.
Kaye took her wife's hand and they faced the Captain. "What are your names, ladies?"
"Katherine and Francine Capasso. Well, since we're getting married again, she can take her maiden name for a few minutes. Katherine Capasso and Francine Beekman."
"Are you going to be a Rizzoli when we get married?" Jane whispered.
"Maybe, it depends; if we decide to have a family, I would want the same name as our children."
Jane grinned. She was certain she looked like a complete idiot, but she didn't care. Maura Rizzoli and…children. She really should kiss Angela's feet when they got home.
Maura, too, was lost in her own thoughts. Jane looked stunning in her white linen trousers and blouse. She imagined her tall detective striding toward her in that very outfit, barefoot, with her pants legs rolled up to reveal muscular tan calves. She'd wear a simple dress and go barefoot as well…on the beach in Martha's Vineyard with a small gathering of friends; Faye and Kaye, Beata and Coco, Carl, Lucy, Millie-Joyce, Susie Chang, Barry and Vincent, her mother and Jane's family. After the ceremony they would boil lobsters in a big pot in the yard of her summer cottage, eat together at long picnic tables, laugh and dance. Beata would sing…
Beata was singing, her clarion soprano ringing a capella through the cavernous space as she pronounced the seven blessings in Hebrew, "Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha-olam, bo'rei p'ri hagafen." In her daydreaming, Maura had missed the vows and the exchange of rings.
The diva finished and returned to her seat and Captain Hebsgaard spread his hands. "You are married, ladies. Please kiss your wife."
Faye reached up a gentle hand, feeling for her wife's face. She touched cheek and then lips. Kaye kissed her fingertips and then leaned in and captured her lips with her own.
Twenty-eight hundred women shouted and cheered as the brides descended the four steps from the stage, holding hands.
They fed each other a forkful of chocolate cake, Maura guiding Faye's hand to her wife's waiting mouth.
"What shall your wedding song be?" Beata was once again fronting the band which had switched repertory from classic disco to old standards; Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole and Connie Francis.
"For our first wedding it was Unchained Melody. Shall we stick with that, Mrs. Capasso?"
"Yes, I think we should, Mrs. Capasso."
"Good choice." Beata lifted the microphone to her mouth and closed her eyes dreamily. "Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch a long, lonely time…"
The brides swayed together, sharing soft kisses. At the second verse everyone was invited to join them on the dance floor. Jane reached out her hand and pulled Maura close. "This is beautiful. You're beautiful. I wish…"
"What do you wish, Jane?"
"I wish we'd get lost in some time warp like in a science fiction movie and we could stay here forever."
"Part of me wishes that, too, but I want to go home and start our life together. It's going to be wonderful, Jane. I promise."
"I know, babe."
The song ended and Millie-Joyce wended through the crowded dance floor with her microphone. "Ladies, what do you want to do next? Shall we throw the garter?"
"I'm not wearing a garter." Faye admitted.
"I think it's time we went back to our cabin." Kaye winked at the crowd. "We're docking in a few hours and I want to make love to my bride before we go to sleep."
Jane unlocked the door to the stateroom as Maura sniffled behind her. "Don't cry, babe. We'll see everyone again soon." Their friends had all promised to come to Boston for Beata's big spring concert at Symphony Hall. Beata and Coco had already booked a suite at the Mandarin Oriental and Millie-Joyce would be staying there as well, but everyone else would be bunking in Maura's townhouse for the weekend.
"We have so much to do, Jane." The doctor blotted her running nose with a tissue from the bathroom, emerging without her dress but wearing her heavy framed glasses. "We need to make our home handicap accessible for Lucy and buy a sleeper sofa for my office on top of moving you in and making room for your things.."
"It's exciting, isn't it?"
"Yes, but daunting. What's that box on the bed?"
"I'm afraid to look, Maur. Ming said she left a parting gift for us in our cabin. This must be it, but I'm afraid to open it. Best guess, babe, what do you think it is?"
Maura pooched air through her lips and shook her head. "I have no idea. It could be anything from fuzzy nipple clamps to a double ended silicone phallus."
"Ouch and double ouch."
"Open it."
Jane tore the paper from the box and with a deep breath removed the lid. "Oh…"
"What is it?"
"Not what either of us expected." She lifted out a heavy silver frame and gazed at the picture within, shook her head, smiling, then passed it to Maura.
The photo had been taken on stage that afternoon during the Lesbolympics. The entire Blue Boob Team, grinning in their pudding stained T-shirts, gathered around Millie-Joyce in her labia unitard. There was a note card in the box as well. "Jane and Maura, It has been a distinct joy getting to know you both. Don't forget me. Love, MJM."
"That will never happen. The women is quite simply unforgettable."
"Jane?"
"Mmm?"
"We have the first thing that is 'ours' to put in our home."
"Yes, we do." Our home.
A/N: One more to go. Thanks for reading.
