Disclaimer: Only the plot is mine.
So evening came, and morning came; it was the first day and then the second before they left the van. They walked down the streets as if in a bubble, one of those scenes you shake and the snowflakes fall. It wasn't snowing yet, but the air was heavy, and neither regretted firing Kaz.
They bought coffee in paper cups and continued on, going nowhere. Yumi stopped in front of a vendor hawking hats, modeling a few as Ami sipped coffee through a crack in the plastic lid. She chose a black knit cap, the kind worn by urban thugs on television. "Are you planning on turning over a candy store?" Ami asked. She smiled, said the hat made her feel tough. But she was more of a sap than Ami was. When they passed the multiplex just as the feel good movie of the season was about to begin, she begged to go inside.
"Come on, Ami," she cocked her upper lip. "Ever make out in the movies"
Ami didn't have to answer. She'd always been urbane about movie going, arriving early to be drink-and-snacked by the first preview and barring all communication once the lights went out. On occasion, she'd even shushed a peanut-gallery commentator or two. But there she sat kissing in the back row like any other clumsy adolescent.
They were feeling good, so much so that they skipped out before the movie ended-yet another filmgoer's faux pas-and ran back to the van, forgetting that they'd originally left to get food and toilet paper.
Home again, as if they'd never left the bed, she was overwhelmed by her craving for Yumi, her longing to bind her hands and feet so she couldn't leave. Yet, whenever Ami tried to express these feelings without sounding mildly neurotic, too-needy, intimacy-shy woman she was, her language retreated to the vapid patterns of pornolinguistics.
"I waiting for this to blow up," she said, moving her leg beneath her.
"What?" replyed Yumi.
"This you and me against the world thing"
"Don't say that"
"It can't last"
"Yes it can," Yumi said, and despite the barrage of phone messages they ignored, she believed her. She would have believed anything Yumi told her, their bodies together, Yumi's fingers slipping inside her, and her teeth biting playfully at Ami's nipples, which they both liked. Though Ami couldn't come, the girls felt closer than ever, beyond it even, the way the graze of a finger can, in the right circumstances,be more intense than a grasp. Still, there was the dark-continent part of her that believed their relationship would not be fully consummated until she had an orgasm.
Day four, alone in the shower, Ami gave in and masterbated. Though it wasn't the climax she'd wished for, she came in about two seconds. It was insidious, a litmus test that left her feeling physiologically defective. A sexual misfit. Not like Yumi who could come when they fucked, but only if she used two fingers at a forty-five degree angle so the base of her hand hits her clit and, even then, only after she'd gotten off some other way. This kind of specificity amazed me. Clearly, Yumi's was a sexual history spawned by trial and error, along with a few creative lovers all of whom Ami had become insanely jealous of; jealous because they'd been with her, but also because of things they've done together. None of the men Ami had been with even liked being on their backs.
In all fairness Ami couldn't blame them entirely. She never said what she wanted, what she liked, and through her frustrated silence she'd grown contemptuous of their easy orgasms. She'd lorded her frigidity over them as if it were a sacred cow. But it ruined her sexually. "I understand now," Yumi said. It was day six, and she'd finally confessed that she was indeed troubled by Ami's not coming.
"What"
"The other night, at the benefit. There's just no letting go for you, is there"
"I guess not," Ami looked up from the couch where she'd been clipping her toenails. Yumi was sitting at the counter in Ami's bathrobe, drinking a glass of orange juice and not reading a magazine.
"It's all inside," she pointed to her temple. "That's the real sex organ, the rest is just friction"
Ami pursed her lips, returning to her clipping.
"No really. We'll figure it out"
Let her hope, Ami thought, but I know better. People who came easily never understood this, how it felt to be perpetually on-the-verge, revved-up, and good-to-go, but then you're going and going and going and suddenly everything shuts down like someone flicked a switch in your head. Whatever you do next is inconsiquential, you've passed the point of no return. Bottomed out.
Sometimes when Ami hit bottom, she became so dejected and angry she couldn't speak for hours. Other times, she would pretend she had come, feeling sated enough by wet sheets and a lover's arm. With Yumi it was mostly the latter.
She took the nail clipper from Ami's hands and sat down next to her. "There's something I want to ask, don't be mad, but..." She giggled so I knew it wasn't serious. "In your closet, I saw these...these boots."