Triptych
Twenty-three
WE SAT AROUND in the comfy living room having tea after dinner. Kate’s dad, Oke, had stumbled in about seven and he did look stoned. He was genial and welcoming, though.
“My baby has a boyfriend. My baby. Oh, Katarina, you have a boyfriend,” he kept saying over and over. About half past eight, he started to snore in a big easy chair in the corner. It was already dark and no one moved to turn any lights on.
“And you are both going to exhibit your paintings at this grand show?” Gypsy asked.
“Yes, Mama,” Kate said. “It was really because of Tony, but the agent wants both of our work. We need a dozen pieces each. We’ll be painting non-stop all winter.”
“Don’t neglect your classes,” Gypsy reminded us. “Tomorrow I want to see your new works. Both of you.”
“Can Tony draw you, Mama?” Kate blurted out. I was dumbfounded.
“Clothed,” I said quickly. “Dressed like you are tonight. I love the way fabric moves.”
“Oh? You like movement? Hmm. Maybe you should draw us tomorrow night, eh, Lyubitshka?”
“Excuse me,” I said. “What’s that mean? The name you call Kate?”
“Oh. It’s a Romani word. Lyubitshka. It simply means ‘Love.’ We use it as a little endearment,” Gypsy said.
“You really are a gypsy?”
“Oh yes. Didn’t Katarina tell you? I escaped from Romania when I was a little girl.”
“Sounds like an exciting story,” I said.
“Perhaps, but for another time. It’s dark. You should find your way to bed while you can still see. Do you have a light, Katarina?”
“Yes, Mama. Willow can show Tony to his room if it’s okay.”
“Nonsense. You are a big girl, Katarina. You know I am not critical. You may take Tony to the caravan.”
“But… uh… Mama…”
“It is all right, my little love,” Gypsy said. “It will be better this way.”
Gypsy got a flashlight and joined us after we retrieved our backpacks. I didn’t know where we were headed, but Gypsy led us out behind the house. I couldn’t see it very well, but running my flashlight up the sides and across the wheels, I realized we were being led to a Gypsy wagon. It was all painted and everything.
“Wow!” I said.
“Papa gave this to Mama for her birthday a few years ago,” Kate said. “He made it, but she painted it. We all helped.”
Inside, Gypsy lit a Coleman lantern. The inside was beautiful.
“This is amazing,” I said as I looked around. It was surprisingly spacious and there was a huge bed at the end of the room. In fact, the bed kind of dominated the whole place.
“It was for a retreat. Sometimes the community gets too noisy and crowded for me,” Gypsy said.
Man, she must really like isolation. There were only like a couple dozen people within miles of here and it got too noisy and crowded?
“Come into the house to use the bathroom,” Gypsy said as she turned to leave. “We don’t lock our doors.”
When she was gone, Kate glanced at me and then stood with her head down looking at the floor.
“If this is uncomfortable, Tony, I’ll go sleep with my sister. It’s okay,” she said.
I reached for her and pulled her into my arms.
“Kitten, do you think I’d pass up the opportunity to sleep with you?” I asked. I was trying to be light about it.
“But no…”
“We both made a promise, remember?” I said. We’d promised Lissa and Melody that we wouldn’t make love without them. It would be tempting, sleeping alone with Kate in the middle of nowhere. But no matter how much I like—love—Kate, I wouldn’t do anything that risked my relationship with Melody and Lissa.
We managed to get into the bathroom and back to the caravan, then turned our backs to each other while we changed into bedclothes. Me in my standard cut-off sweats and a T-shirt. Kate in… Oh my god! She was wearing the same cute little button-up pajama top and shorty pants she was wearing the first time I sketched her at the party last spring. I reached for her and for the first time on this trip we kissed.
Seeing her in that pajama set reminded me of the soft tentative kiss she’d given me in the contest. This kiss was like that. Oh, we’d shared some pretty steamy kisses over the past few weeks, but this kiss was all sweetness and uncertainty, exploring how the other would respond, waiting, advancing. We might have kissed for five minutes or more. Out here in the backwoods of Oregon, time didn’t really make a difference.
When we finally pulled away from our kiss, Kate reached over and turned out the lantern. We felt our way into the bed and cuddled up with each other.
It was heavenly.
Kate was in my arms, spooned against me. I nuzzled her neck and she turned her head far enough that we could renew our kiss. It was beautiful. My right hand slid up from her hip to cup her breast and I realized I’d slipped up under her pajama top. Kate gasped into my mouth as my hand wrapped around her breast and her nipple pressed into my palm. She didn’t pull away. Instead she moaned a little and pressed back against me—into my very hard prick, lodged between her nether cheeks.
Then Kate jumped away from me like I was on fire.
“Oh!”
“I’m sorry, Kate. I… it… just…”
“I know. It just surprised me,” she said. “I’m flattered. Really. I just…”
We couldn’t really see each other. It’s not like there were streetlights outside the window. In fact, I couldn’t remember if there was a window. It was pitch black. I took the opportunity to rearrange myself so I was pressed against my belly instead of tenting straight out.
“Um… I know about this stuff,” Kate said. “If… um… you need… you need to… I could…”
“Kate?” I said. What was she getting at?
“I could wait outside a while,” she gasped.
I broke up laughing. In the darkness, I could hear her tittering, too.
“You’d step outside so I could masturbate?” I asked.
“Yeah. I know boys…”
“That’s it, Kate. You know boys. I’m not like that, at least not any longer. I don’t need to relieve it.”
“But…”
“I can’t do anything about getting an erection,” I said. I knew by the heat in my face that I was blushing and I was willing to bet Kate was, too, but the complete darkness made me bold. “I’ll try not to point it at you, but Kate, you turn me on big time. I don’t need to go out and relieve myself. In the first place, it wouldn’t do any good. I’d just get hard again as soon as we cuddled up or started kissing.”
“You like being hard, don’t you, Tony?” Kate said.
“Uh… yeah. How did you know? There’s something about being aroused that tells me, man, I really like this girl. She makes me feel way good. She turns me on. All my nerves come alive and every touch is better—not just a touch of my cock, but my fingers, my lips, my back. When I touched your breast, I felt so alive.”
“You understand,” Kate said. She closed the space between us and we hugged. She had to feel my hardness, but at least it wasn’t poking straight out at her. “I love being excited. I love the feeling of being near you or Melody or Lissa. And I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to get to the point where I say, ‘There, it’s done.’ I want this to last.”
“It will last, Kitten. Even when we get to the point where we can’t hold back any longer, it will just start building again,” I said. “But we don’t have to rush it.”
“We should get some sleep,” Kate said. “How about if you face that way and I curl up behind you? Would that be okay?”
“Of course it would, Kitten,” I said.
I rolled toward the other side and Kate spooned behind me. I felt her hand as it slid under my T-shirt and lightly brushed my nipples. Well, turnabout’s fair play. I willed myself not to come from her touch and eventually was able to just lie there and enjoy her soft caress. Just before sleep claimed me I heard her whisper.
“I love you.”
“Katarina, your brother and sister haven’t seen you since Christmas. Go walk with them. All they’ve talked about for the past week is you coming home. I’ll play cards with Tony,” Gypsy said.
“Mother…” Kate began.
“Katarina. Lyubitshka. Go.”
Kate slipped up beside me and kissed me on the cheek. We’d been sitting at the breakfast table after we cleared and washed the dishes, just chatting and having another cup of tea. Apparently they didn’t drink much in the way of coffee out here. But the tea was good.
“I’m sorry, Tony. I’ll see you after while. Momma… be kind, please?”
“Don’t worry, child.” Kate and her siblings left. “Now Tony, do you play cards?” She pulled a deck of cards from her pocket and began shuffling them. Then she handed them to me. “You shuffle.”
The cards were so worn it was almost like shuffling tissue—an old blue Rider Back deck of Bicycle playing cards.
“I know a few games. We played back in Nebraska. I don’t play Bridge. I know Pinochle and Euchre, Michigan Rummy and Canasta. What game would you like to play?” I asked. I was beginning to get the knack of shuffling the flimsy cards and even managed to bridge them once. “I should say though, that I don’t gamble. At all.”
“All life is a gamble, Tony. But skill helps stack the deck in our favor. The better we are at living, the better our chances of winning.”
“I never really considered life a game. It’s serious business.”
“You don’t have fun? You don’t enjoy yourself?” She placed her hand on mine and guided it to put the cards down on the table, but she held my hand over them. “Now let’s see who Tony Ames is. One card.”
I figured out what was happening. Slow on the uptake, I know. She had me shuffle the deck, so she couldn’t stack it, but she was going to do some kind of card reading. Well, this could be interesting.
I turned over the Joker. Great. No romantic King of Hearts or anything. Just a stupid king riding a bicycle past a rock that says, “808.” I snorted. Gypsy let out a belly laugh.
“You see? You do have a sense of humor!” she roared. I laughed, too.
“I thought readings were done with a special deck. What do they call it? Tarot?” I asked. She sighed.
“Yes. A deck of cards for cripples. You see, it isn’t about what the card is or what it means. It is about what I see in you when you play the cards. For example, the Joker is not an idiot. Look. It is a king, grounded in the real world, riding a bicycle. And what is in the corner?”
“A dollar sign. No. Wait. A dollar sign with a U in it.”
“It is simply the initials of the manufacturer, United States Playing Card Company. But to you, it looked like a dollar sign. You are concerned about money, but it does not consume you. You know there are other things that are just as important. Laughter is one of them,” she said. “Now who are you deep inside?”
I turned the Jack of Spades. Well, at least it was a male. I could have turned a queen.
A bunch of guys back in high school would play poker for pennies. I sometimes watched. Not close enough for them to get mad at me, but from above them in the bleachers at lunch. They’d play wildcard games and one of them was “One-eyed Jacks and the Man-With-The-Axe.” The Jack of Spades is a one-eyed Jack with a curly mustache and blond hair. He’s holding a… What the hell is that thing? A rug-beater?
“Well, we should have known that,” Gypsy said. “An artist. Perhaps even a magician. Your back is turned on menial pursuits as you gaze off in the distance at an ideal that only you can see. What is that ideal, Tony? No. Don’t turn a card. You see a perfect world. You wave your wand over and over, trying to make it appear.”
“You really know how to make up stories out of the cards,” I said. I wasn’t being unkind. In fact, I was pretty much in awe of her, but I wasn’t going to contribute suggestions. I’d heard that one of the things fortunetellers do is make a vague suggestion and let the subject fill it in. You tell her the story and suddenly think she’s told it to you. I was determined not to fall into that trap.
“Stories are all around us. You make them with paint. I tell them with cards. Are we so different, Tony?” she asked. “But now, you must tell me who my daughter sees when she looks at you.”
Hmm. I wondered. I turned a card and stared at it. I swallowed hard. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. How did this woman do this?
“Who are the others?” Gypsy asked as I stared at the three of hearts.
She reached across the table and grasped my hand, rotating my bracelet toward her. A Celtic heart, wrapped in a trefoil. She’d seen it before, I was sure. I wasn’t expecting how much she found it amusing.
“A threesome,” she chuckled. “How the circle comes round.”
She had to be making assumptions based on the observations she’d made all through breakfast. But there was the three of hearts staring up at me and there was no doubt in my mind that Kate saw all three of us when she looked at any one of us. Instead of answering her question, I slid two cards off the deck face down next to the Jack. Gypsy smiled at me and I turned over the first card. The Queen of Spades.
“The sceptered queen,” she said. “Have no doubt about it; this woman guides your ship. She introduces you to things you’d never know. Her wisdom may not have matured yet, but in what looks like impetuous leaps, she sends you in the right direction. Her hand clutches six lotus blossoms. Her spirit can hold a universe together.”
Oh shit! Every time anything was amiss, Melody fixed it. She’d introduced me to love and sex, and, in a way, to Lissa. And that left hand in the picture looked like she was holding a panel of her robe with the lotus blossoms printed on it. I wasn’t going to offer this up, but it was too spooky. I flipped over the second card.
“The Queen of Hearts,” she whispered. She sat and stared at the card without lifting her eyes to look at me, as if the card itself would answer her question. “A great beauty. Deeply in love. The flower she holds is fresh, not wilted like the other queens. She holds it low on the stem, letting it stretch upward toward the sun. Her beauty is doubled by her… motherly… kindness. Hidden beneath her outward beauty is a great strength and great, untapped potential. And look at how she looks… toward your eyes. She sees into your soul, Tony.”
I sighed. The description she used could only be of Lissa. I thought all those things about her. She’s incredibly beautiful. She’s incredibly strong. She has two unbelievable children. And she is able to pull me out of any depths by turning to me and snapping, “Focus!”
“Who is my daughter to you three who are so complete you act as one?” Gypsy asked. “How can she possibly fit within your structure? Are you playing with her?”
There was no answer that I could make that would be adequate. But so far Gypsy had made a believer in me, so I silently pulled the next card off the deck and turned it next to Lissa’s queen. The Queen of Clubs. There is no way Gypsy could have stacked this deck. I shuffled it myself. I drew all the cards. But three queens in a row?
“The virgin bride,” Gypsy said. She took a deep breath and then went on. I saw a tear escaping from her left eye. “Her bridal gown, in case you hadn’t noticed, accents her breasts. Her hair is long and flows out beneath her veil. She holds her flower wistfully… hopefully. All five fingers are wrapped around the stem of her virtue which she holds aloft for all to see.” Gypsy reached for the cards. “Perhaps I am reading what I want into the cards instead of what is really there,” she said.
I stopped her hand before she picked up the deck. She looked at me curiously, but withdrew her hand.
“Mamma Gypsy,” I said. That brought a smile to her lips. “It’s a good thing I drew the three of hearts. We’re running out of queens.”
“What? No kings to add to your household?” she laughed.
“Hmm. If I did, they’d probably also be queens.” She really got a chuckle out of that.
Part of me wanted her to just put the cards away, but I’d been so impressed that I just wanted to sneak a peek at the next card. What does my future hold? Out of all the love and art and sports and work that were in my life, what should I expect next? I was so frightened of it that I was compelled to look at the next card.
I didn’t flip it over for her to see. I just lifted the corner and stared at it. Then I cut the deck, burying the card in the middle and gathered up the remaining cards, shuffled once, and handed them to her. She took them from me and smiled.
“Did you get the answer you wanted?” she asked. I shook my head, but it wasn’t a negation—more in bemusement.
What were the odds that all four queens would end up at the top of the deck?
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