The Running Joke
(continued)
When her doorbell rang, Joy jumped involuntarily, pressed her rib cage with her palm. Je-sus! She's here!
Prior to that doorbell ringing, Joy's small, untidy living room had been, for the half hour after Donna's phone call, like the waiting room in a doctor's office. She'd showered and primped, chewed at her slim fingers, moved her hands around her hands, moved her hair aside with two fingers, moved in and out of the bathroom, hoping that the appearance of creases would seem less dramatic every time she looked in the mirror, looked into the deep-set brown irises, the thin lips, the furrowed brow. Not an entirely unpleasant face, Joy decided, with a smirk, tossing back her boyish mid-length dark hair and then sticking out her tongue at the reflection just to keep herself humble. A pink shirt, yeah, yeah. Pink was a happy, life-affirming color. Never mind the mess. This is who I am. Forget the mess. Joy formed a look of quiet resolve in the mirror, eyes open mildly, mouth set, teeth clenched behind them so that her muscular cheek quivered, betraying the hazard of her position. This is who I am, she heard again in her mind. If this Ms. DaVinci person doesn't like a messy woman, then they weren't meant to be together, that's all. Pink, yeah, pink long-sleeve blouse and blue jeans, faded. Casual enough, but not sloppy. Yeah, yeah. But she wished her hair wasn't so damp. And she wished she'd had time to pick up a bit around the apartment, suddenly self-conscious about that mess, after all. Ah well, ah well, Joy thought to herself. This is who I am.
"Don't you look lovely, Ms. DaVinci!" Joy's words sounded shaky, and maybe a bit too enthusiastic to be warranted as she stood before the open door. It was just a getting-to-know, drop-by-for-coffee type visit. Their third date. Nothing to be flustered about, the worst was behind her. But then, last night had been their first lovemaking. And there was Donna DaVinci, standing resolutely just outside the threshold of Joy's front door. Dressed professionally, in a tan skirt suit with a ruffle-buttoned blouse, the briefcase slung over her shoulder, the hair spun up tight atop her head, like a gleaming mahogany crown -- it made Joy feel silly to have settled on the faded blue jeans and pink blouse, after all. Reflexively, Joy tugged down on the blouse, shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other, averted her eyes from the phenomenal woman walking towards her, arms open. An awkward and blushing, "Hullo," slipped from Joy's mouth like a belch.
"Well, hello there, Joy." Donna's voice, like her carriage, was steady and self-possessed. "You have been missed." Her words cleft the space evenly, like smooth, solid stones, as if the syllables were affixed to weights that made them sink rapidly to the crux of the matter. The small metal weights you clamped onto fishing line, the kind that Joy used with her dad when they reeled in foot-long Halibut off the coast in Bangor. It seemed to Joy that Donna's words were clamped down with weights like those.
With a quiet certainty, taking two even strides that landing her directly inside of Joy's personal space, Donna DaVinci said, simply, "Glory."
And then DaVinci's arms. Her strong embrace. Joy had no choice. She relented to DaVinci; dropped her arms to her sides, let go the fear, and let herself be taken, simply taken, into a world of sensations. Donna's smoky-sweet perfume, the powdery scent of her make-up. The long, bass hum of her exhalation amidst the dark, creamy softness of her pressing form. The slow, sedate circling of her hands on Joy's lower back. That one kiss inside the cove of Joy's neck and shoulder followed by another deep and even, "Glory."
Joy closed her eyes.
Joy Fetter's and Donna DaVinci's love was like a secret joke between them, and every time they met each other the punch line was brand new all over again; a rare thing for two women to discover, a recurring humor, unprovoked, especially to find it at a point so moved on into their lives, well beyond the vim and possibility of young adulthood.
During the first week of their love, Donna and Joy laughed about the unlikenesses.
"You certainly are a messy character," Donna observed with a sharp nod, stepping around an assemblage of LP's on the floor of Joy's apartment, her heels knocking in a steady, hollow beat, like a feared parent or schoolteacher. Joy concealed her smirk behind her dainty fingertips as Donna picked up a lipstick-stained mug of evaporated coffee and placed it into the kitchen sink, gingerly, with two fingers. "Well, Joy, I suppose it does have a certain... ingenuous charm." Donna motioned to a tangled pile of unwashed silverware. "Still, dear, these dishes," she said with a Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Joy's reply, "Yuh kiddin'me, right?" Gazing over at her new lover with feigned disbelief, eyes wide and naive. "You really think I'm messy?"
And Donna's momentary shock, her head jolting up, her jaw slack.
Then the pause to inhale the breath before the laughter.
That was Joy's favorite part. That pause.
At Donna's pristinely neat ranch house. It amused Joy once she discovered how easy it was, setting DaVinci in a whirlwind over subtle misalignments. A pair of nylons draped over the South Western throw on the living room couch. A kitchen cabinet left blatantly ajar. A pair of shoes beneath the framed steer-skull print in the downstairs hall.
"JOY!" came Donna's bellowing reprimand. The panicked shuffle of her slippers through the house. "We can't have nylons on the couch!" "We can't have open cabinets!" "We can't have shoes in the hallway!"
"Oh really? Well if we can't then we can't, Donna. But I think yuh too rigid, hon. And I like my women soft and flexible. You should know that about me from the get-go."
Joy grinned. Put her small bare feet up on the coffee table. Bit down on her lower lip and crossed her arms on her chest. Donna was getting it now, walking into the room with a sly smile, shaking her head and chuckling inaudibly, her body moving with the silent laugh.
"Don't bust my chops there, short order," Donna quipped, shaking a mock-angry finger down at Joy. She lifted Joy's legs from the table, spread them apart and kneeled between them, wrapped them around her wide hips. Staring dotingly up at Joy with unblinking cat-like eyes, Donna said, simply, "My, my, my."
Joy couldn't help but to smile, Donna's gaze was so generous. "What, heh?"
DaVinci tilted her head and furrowed her eyebrows. "What what?"
Joy wrinkled her nose. It was a running joke. "Wha wha wha?"
"What what what...." Donna winked coyly. "...what what?"
But Joy took the cake. She crossed her eyes and bared her front teeth like a rodent. "Whut whut whut whut whut whut?
The women's laughter started with a bang and faded into suffocating kisses.
After making love to Donna for the first time, it took several lethargic hours for Joy to crawl back down to reality. The exhilaration and amusement was part of what took her up so high to begin with; the physical pleasure, the emotional pleasure, the shuddering culmination of pleasures -- and the agonies that stood to contrast these. The hazard. The fear. The pangs of longing.
Donna DaVinci wasn't as invulnerable as she appeared at first glance, which was part of her erotic charge; that all too sudden accessibility, the exclusivity of the permission Joy had been granted, to delve into Donna's deep physical and emotional interior. But Joy also found this troubling. Donna's "Oh Gods" seemed to say, Please God make this good thing last! Her "Don't stops" sounded more like, "Don't hurt me, little lady, don't hurt me!" But Donna wasn't alone in what she hazarded.
Donna DaVinci's soft body was thick, ample, muscular, overwhelming. Joy gravitated to the nipples of her breasts as if to tether down to something central. When she drew one taut nipple inside of her mouth, Joy felt she was drawing it inside her to the core of her being; a primordial sucking, the kind of sucking that creates a hollow ache in a place that might never located, let alone nourished. And the frenzied breath in Joy's nostrils implored of this stranger's brown breast, Why do you love me? Her frantic squeaks and squeals insisted, I will never be worthy, lovuh. Of you.
Donna DaVinci walked down the block like a force to be reckoned with, her arms swinging in time with the beat of her walking stride, her gauzy-brown wrap fluttering backwards in her wake, her chin slightly upturned, a suppressed curl of a smile at the corners of her lips. "Good morning to you, sir." Donna tipped her chin concisely to an elderly gentlemen with a cane standing by the newsstand with an unpeeled banana in his hand. His twinkling eyes followed her all the way down the block. She could do that to you, DaVinci. She could catch your attention. It was of tremendous power, the way she knew exactly what she was and wasn't afraid to show it to anyone. Her haughty, unstoppable march. Her perfect composure. Even when she tripped her heel on a raise in the pavement, Donna DaVinci made it look dignified; clutching a hand to her briefcase and hopping smoothly back into the rhythm of her stride, with a small blush in her cheeks and a sigh of good-natured laughter.
Damn you're good. Joy smiled and bit the tip of her tongue. You're good and you're mine, she thought, watching Donna's progress down the block, watching her clearly identifiable contours turning into smaller, fuzzier versions.
The steam snaking up from the Styrofoam cup of coffee on Joy's dashboard was making a drippy crescent of condensation on her windshield. But I don't deserve you, good lookin, Joy mused, taking up the coffee with both small hands and blowing softly across the surface. There was a dull, repetitive ache in her head and the familiar sweeps of nausea in her belly. Last night had been a late drinking night and so Joy's Monday routine was slightly out of whack. It would take a few cups of coffee, a bit of coaxing and prodding, to get to the diner in time to change and open register for her shift. I'm getting too old for this crap, Joy thought, tasting the sour rise at the back of her throat, sipping off some coffee to wash it back down.
It was hard enough, putting it all away on the weekends, when she was single. Hard enough showing up for a Monday morning of brunch specials and the noisy commuter rush. But hiding it from Donna was taking too much out of her. Joy had crawled into Donna's bed early that very same morning, close to 3 a.m., had curled up slowly beside Donna's soft, warm body; pressed her nose into Donna's back; inhaled the fragrance of her lover until the spinning passed and she could close her eyes to the darkness. Then, at half past 5, Joy jolted at the sound of her alarm. Rolled out of Donna's arms. Rushed to the bathroom. Dispensed her nausea into the clear toilet-water. Stepped directly into the cold shower, toothbrush and toothpaste in hand. Her eyes yet bleary and unfocused, Joy swigged on Listerine as she soaped her armpits; brushed the whiskey off her teeth as the conditioner set into her hair. Wondered, all the while, what time it was exactly -- between 3 and 5:30 a.m. -- that Donna DaVinci decided to put her arms around Joy. And, considering Joy's rude, unexplained absence at dinner the night before, what compelled her to do so.
