"So where is she?" Kristina asked.
"Excuse me?" Parker responded
"Your wife. Is she home?" Kristina insisted. "Do I get to meet her?"
A spectre of guilt distorted Parker's perception of Kristina's feigned interest. Distracted by her decision to invite Kristina into her and Amanda's home, Parker didn't catch the sarcasm in Kristina's voice nor did she notice Kristina roll her eyes.
"She works nights at the hospital," Parker said. "It's a 12-hour shift."
Parker looked about the living room searching for something to tidy up, to put away. She pictured herself grabbing the book she wanted and sending Kristina off with it; home, out of hers. But she didn't.
"In the E.R.?" Kristina asked.
"Yes, she specializes in head trauma."
"Of course she does," Kristina mumbled. It was exactly what 'the wife' was causing Kristina at that very moment.
Parker's home was everything Kristina expected it to be; inviting, orderly. It was the type of home where you didn't want your visit to end once you settled into the comfort of their warm, brown leather couch. Yes, their home was one of those places where engaging conversations happened with intellectuals and artists during a dinner party that started with aperitifs, ended with after dinner coffee and was filled with genteel laughter, wine glasses replenished in white and red, and aged cheeses in between.
Several pictures of Parker and her wife crowded the mantle. Kristina turned her back to them. They made her skin crawl, her ire rise. A ceramic mug with stains tracked in its veins and a film of leftover coffee sat atop a folded copy of The New York Times. The coffee still looked warm to Kristina, like 'the wife' would come back into the room at any moment to finish it.
"Can I offer you something to drink?" Parker asked. She picked up the coffee mug that Kristina inadvertently pointed out with her stare. Parker tucked the mug and the newspaper into a semi-hidden nook. "I should have offered you something earlier. We have water, sparkling water, juice, soda..."
'We' Kristina scoffed on the inside.
Her mind had been set the minute Kristina walked into the living room. She needed something to settle her nerves, to temper her agitation, and she found it on a shelf just above a closed cabinet.
Pinot. Sauvignon. Chiraz.
Kristina opened the cabinet doors.
Rum. Bourbon. Whiskey….there it is.
"Isn't that weird," Kristina said seizing a bottle of Scotch by it's neck. "It's exactly what my Dad drinks."
"Kristina, you can't…," Parker started to say but realized that Kristina was completely ignoring her as she unscrewed the cap and poured herself a drink. She then filled another glass which she extended to Parker.
The audacity. The irreverence. Parker studied Kristina, amazed and profoundly interested. The amber drink was suspended in midair by a lure that even Parker resisted to resist. She cocked her head, raised an eyebrow.
Impatiently waiting for Parker to accept her shameless invitation, Kristina left the glass on the cabinet's ledge and nestled herself in the warm, brown leather couch. Parker watched her do it. Walk past her. Every step. Every movement. Kristina walked into and through Parker's personal space. Her arm brushed against her teacher's blouse but Parker didn't bother to move out of the way. The shampoo scent in Kristina's hair teased at Parker's senses, just like Kristina's swinging gait which Parker had never noticed before. And she wouldn't forget it now.
Parker browsed a bookshelf in the corner of her living room and pulled out a selection.
"I think this'll interest you," Parker said handing the book to Kristina. "Read from the dog-eared page to me. "
Parker didn't recall when she decided to pick up the glass of Scotch Kristina had poured for her, nor did she recall deciding to ignore it. All she knew is that the glass was in her hand, still warm from Kristina's grip, and she was nestled at the other end of the brown leather couch entranced by the student she was destined to teach who was about to give Parker a lesson of her own; an impromptu lesson in seduction.
Kristina read the passage, "'...but my favourite would always be one I could look at without letting her out of the compass of my eye...(i)' '...I think the passion that devoured me at that time was the passion of curiosity.'(ii)"
Kristina looked up and paused before she said the word, "curiosity" - deliberately, slowly, with the gradual realization that this was about her. Their eyes met.
"Louder," Parker said. "So I can hear you."
Kristina continued, "'...I met the others and they made no impression on me at all. I only wanted her...Wanted her seriously and not merely to trifle. Loving her, sliding deeper and deeper into loving her, the improbable choice, her age, her looks new to me…'(iii)"
Kristina read the words with her eyes. She read the intimacy of being in Parker's house, on her couch, just one bold movement away from her. Kristina read the self-consciousness of being watched, evaluated...explored.
"'...the fire burning in the big room...nights once, or afternoons, long late mornings of being every experiment in the great mahogany bed.'(iv)"
Even with her focus on the pages before her - reading them, turning them, searching for the next meaning - Kristina felt Parker exploring her.
"'...the most private of names, the dearest and most secret. Pronouncing it like a kiss, the sound in the mouth like lips grazing over soft flesh.'(v)"
Kristina was unprepared to read with her body.
"'Remembering now how she enters me...her fingers at the core and center of consciousness, places within me I knew not…'(vi)"
A quiver seized Kristina in parts of her she didn't know could quiver.
"'At first I thought I could not endure it, completely unused to that force...I didn't understand that a woman could even be that strong. That fierce, that passionate…her long, slender, most beautiful hands. After that I was hooked. After that there was no going back.'(vii)"
i. Strachey, Dorothy (1949) Olivia. Berkeley, CA. Cleis Press. p. 43
ii. Ibid. p. 46
iii. Millett, Kate (1977) Sita. New York, NY. Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. pp. 20-21
iv. Ibid. p. 8
v. Ibid. p. 9
vi. Ibid. p. 22
vii. Ibid pp. 21-22