Chapter 14

Epiphany

For Heather, who teaches me more than she knows.

Friedrich Schiller

Laci woke suddenly. One second she was asleep, the next awake. She was surprised that the room seemed bright. It was also surprising that she'd slept through the night without getting up to pee at least once. That's what woke her now, an urgent, almost painful need to pee. She rose up like a prairie dog from her warm burrow, and looked around, trying to make sense of her surroundings.

Karen was still in bed next to her, but she was sitting up propped against the headboard, doing something with her iPad. "Good morning Sunshine," Karen said cheerfully.

"What time is it," Laci said through a yawn.

"A little after seven."

"I hafta pee," she said, tossing back the blankets and sliding out of the bed.

"Don't let me stop you."

Laci stuck her tongue out at Karen, and skittered into the bathroom. As she relieved herself, she picked up the bidet control. She smiled. Who woulda ever thought of such a thing? she marveled. Done peeing, she braced herself and pushed the "Cleanse" button. Just as before, even though she knew what was coming, it made her jump. I hafta tell Emily about this, she won't even believe it.

Laci reluctantly turned off the warm, pleasing stream of warm water bathing her muffin, and patted herself dry. Before leaving, she stopped at the mirror. "Ewww, yuck!" she grimaced at her reflection. Her hair was like a rat's nest, and her face all puffy and sleep-creased. She did her best to unsnarl her mane, washed her face, and brushed her teeth. Now she could face Karen.

Laci climbed back onto the bed, and slipped under the covers. "Whatcha doing?" she asked Karen.

"Just looking at things we can do later on. I really want to take you to the observation deck in that skyscraper with mall that we were at yesterday, the Prudential Center. Then, maybe we can walk back on Newberry Street and see what kinds of shops they have. I figured we could have brunch downstairs before we go."

"What's brunch?"

Karen toyed with Laci's hair and smiled lovingly at her. "It's a cross between breakfast and lunch. They have food that's from both breakfast and lunch, you decide which you want, or both if that's your fancy."

"I'm learning all kinds of new stuff," Laci said. A thought flashed through her head, and she suddenly sat up, spilling the covers in a puddle around her. "I just remembered something," she announced.

Karen looked at her with a furrowed brow. "Oh really. What might that be that it made you spring up like a jack-in-the-box?"

"That first night when we got here," Laci explained, "I wondered what what we could see from here during the day, but yesterday was foggy, so you couldn't see anything." She grabbed Bearyanne before swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and slipping her feet into her scuffies. "But today, the sun's out, and I wanna see. I got up to pee in the middle of the night when we first got here, and I looked out the window, and I think I saw the airport."

Laci scampered over to the window, and Karen got off the bed and followed right behind. Laci, Bearyanne held in the crook of her bent elbow, tried pushing the gauzy drapery aside. Karen wordlessly found the cords to pull the drapes open.

Laci breath caught in soft gasp. The sky was sharp blue and cloudless, the world stretching out before them over the harbor islands to the ocean, and from there to the distant horizon. She craned her neck, and looking down eighteen floors below, cars seemed hardly bigger than Matchbox toys, and people were little more than indistinct miniature dolls. Off to her right, the imposing skyscraper they'd been to while shopping yesterday, soared up to dizzying heights, dwarfing the tower they were in now.

Though she wouldn't say it out loud, Laci didn't feel as antsy about the height when Karen stood behind her and wrapped her comforting arms around the girl. "You were right, that's the airport in front of us to the left," Karen said softly into Laci's ear.

As if to prove the point, a passenger plane rose up from the clearly visible runway, and seemed to be coming right toward them, growing larger by the second. Laci unconsciously rose up on her tippy-toes as the jet banked to their left and passed over the northern part of the city. "Karen," she said. "How come we can hardly hear it? It looks really close, and we could hear them yesterday."

"I imagine they have the building pretty well sound-proofed. People who stay here don't want to hear jets taking off from Logan all day. Pretty cool though, huh?"

Laci nodded her head slowly. "Yeah. Have you ever flown on a plane like that?"

"A few times."

"I think I'd be scared. Unless you were with me." Laci came down from her tippy-toes. "Just like being here. Everybody is so rich, and everything looks so expensive, I'm kinda scared I might break something, or someone might think I'm, like, a slum-bitch loser and call the cops or something. But not so much when I remember you're with me."

Laci half expected Karen to dismiss her nervousness and fears as silliness. Instead, Karen tightened her embrace and gently rocked Laci. "It must be pretty nerve wracking for you, everything so new and different from what you're used to."

Laci mentally sighed with relief that Karen wasn't dismissive of her of worries, even though they were probably dumb. Yesterday, she'd been too awestruck to have a chance to be really nervous. But what about later this morning? She didn't even know what brunch was, and how stupid was that? And Friday, she didn't even know what a bee day was, so was it really a stretch to think she might unintentionally break something, or say or do something really dumb?

Why should I be surprised she doesn't blow me off? She loves me, and she knows everything important, and she isn't going to let me look stupid or clueless. Laci pushed back closer to Karen, and said, simply, "Yeah, but it's OK when you're with me, I know you won't let me break things, or act lame or anything."

Karen chuckled very softly. "You've handled yourself really well this weekend, kitten. I've kinda given you a long leash, sort of like seeing how you'd do riding a bike the first time without training wheels. I'm happy to say you've made me very, very proud of you." Karen kissed Laci's head, and continued, "You've handled yourself like an old pro. You should be proud of yourself."

Laci's tummy somersaulted delightfully at Karen's praise. How was it that Karen always seemed to know exactly what to say to make her feel better? Laci simply shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. "Like I said, knowing your there with me makes me feel better."

Karen brought her hand up, cupped Laci's chin, and gently tilted the girl's head back. Karen was just tall enough that Laci could see her whole face, though upside down, from this position. Karen, smiling, softly swooped in and planted her lips firmly on Laci's. A delightful shudder trickled over Laci, and she returned the lingering kiss. When Karen pulled her lips back, Laci kept her own lips parted as if in anticipation. Karen didn't disappoint her. Gently holding Laci's chin, she dipped in and kissed the girl again and again.

Laci made a purring sound in her throat. At last, she brought her head level and turned in Karen's loose embrace to face her lover. She tucked her head under Karen's chin and nuzzled her face against the woman's neck.

Karen rocked herself and Laci side to side, making her own throaty purrs at Laci's nuzzling. "You give the best kisses, my little Laci baby. You could sell them for a hundred dollars apiece, and I'd buy every last one because I want to keep them all to myself."

"Me?" Laci looked up at Karen, a smile dancing on her face. "I think your kisses are pretty awesome. If mine are so good, it's cause you taught me how."

Karen chuckled and hugged Laci tight. "How am I supposed to argue with that?"

"You're not."

"Touche! Maybe I can't, but let's see you argue with this. It's seven thirty on a Sunday morning, and we have nothing to do until noon at the earliest. Why on earth are we standing around in what's basically our undies, when there's a warm bed we can be lazy in just waiting for us."

Laci giggled, "Yeah, what's up with that?" Karen released her, and Laci scampered back to the bed, kicking off her scuffies and tucking Bearyanne back in her special den between the pillows. Scuffies or not, her feet were cold from the visit to the window, and it felt good to slide them under the covers.

Karen got in the bed and stretched out on her side. Laci rolled onto her tummy, bent her elbows, and propped her chin on the heel of her hand. Her ear picked up on the music playing over the sound system. Karen Music of some kind. "What music is that?" she asked.

Karen cocked her head, seeming to zero in on the music for the first time. "Mozart, a violin concerto from the sounds of it."

"What's that? A violin concerto?"

"Well, a concerto is a bit like a symphony, but it revolves around a solo instrument, like a violin, or a piano, or a cello. The orchestra plays along, but the instrument the concerto is written for, the violin in what's playing now, is basically the star of the show. It's more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea."

"Is that what we're going to tonight?"

Karen laughed, her eyes glowing. "No, baby. We're going to see two full symphonies by Beethoven. This is very sweet music – powerful in its own way – but Mozart wrote music that could be taken as warm and fuzzy – it isn't always so, once you get used to the basics, but Beethoven didn't really do warm and fuzzy. He's more like thunder and lightning, raging storms and the hand of God, especially the ones being played tonight. They have warm and fuzzy parts, but they're not at all like the Love Music I usually play for us. You'll get what I mean when you get to hear them tonight."

"I hope I don't do something stupid and look like a loser to all those rich people."

Karen laughed. "I think you're looking at that bass akwards. I think all those rich people need to worry about staring at you and doing something stupid themselves, like stumbling and falling on their faces, or their asses, whatever the case may be."

"Tch," Laci clucked her tongue. "Karen, be serious," she said, but the flush that spread over her belied her skepticism. "Rich guys aren't like that, they can't be."

"Oh no?" Karen said, her eyebrows arching sharply. "And why's that, Little Miss Eliza Doolittle?"

"'Cause they're, I dunno, too stuck up to notice things like that." There was Karen, speaking in riddles again. "Who's Eliza Doolittle, anyway?" Laci shifted so she could lay her head on Karen's midriff and look up at her lover.

Karen raked her fingers through Laci's hair and let it spill like water through her fingers. "No fair, I asked first," she said, her voice soft and playful. "So," she continued, "rich guys can't be 'like that' because they're stuck up? That makes them even more apt to be think they're all that and a bag of chips. They're men, sweetie, which means they think with what lives betwixt their legs more often than with what's atop their necks, rich, poor, or middle class.

"And to answer your question, Eliza Doolittle was a poor woman from the Cockney part of London, a flower girl, in a play by George Bernard Shaw, which you might well read when you take AP English in a couple of years. A 'rich guy', Professor Henry Higgins, made a very cynical bet with a friend that he could take this uneducated, poor commoner, and train her so she could pass for royalty – wealthy royalty. And Eliza, being naive and thinking 'rich guys' were above such trickery, thought he was teaching her how to be a lady for very noble reasons. But he wasn't, he was being a rich asshole. No sweetie, like I told you Friday night, rich people, men or women, are not automatically better than you because they have money. Those rich guys will see you tonight and they'll be undressing you with their eyes and minds."

Laci sighed. For better or worse, Laci knew Karen was right. Much as she might try to come across as naive about her looks, years of hard experience made her acutely aware of the effect she had on men, including some who were interested in more than just looking and mentally undressing. She'd held out some hope that wealth might cause men to behave with more class. In the end, she wasn't really surprised it did no such thing.

Laci shifted mental gears. "Did you notice yesterday at the museum that a lot of the places were named after people? Is that because the people were rich and they donated money to, like, buy paintings and sculptures?"

"More or less," Karen said, still toying with Laci's hair, a soft smile of affection on her face. "I'm not saying rich people are bad, just not better because of their money. They might love art but not be able to draw a straight line without a ruler, so they become patrons of the arts – which means they'll buy art, or pay an artist to produce it for them on commission. Or they'll donate money to museums, or galleries."

"A gallery, that's a place that shows art?"

"Mmm hmm, usually to sell it, kind of like an art Abercrombie's. There are some really impressive ones on the coast back home, which is where all the pretentiously rich spend their summers and money. When warm weather rolls around, we'll have to take a weekend and go check them out."

"That'd be cool. Do you really think I could, like, be a real artist?"

"Honey, baby, yes I do, and I'm not just saying that. Meg sure thinks so."

Laci quietly scrutinized Karen's face to judge her sincerity, and she was relieved to see Karen wasn't just being nice. Thus reassured, and craving validation of sorts she decided to pursue the subject a bit. "You know what I was thinking last night? I think I'd like to try painting. Mr. Belden taught us a little bit about colors and how to make them, that there's only three colors all the rest come from, red, gyellow, and blue, and it only matters how you mix them. He told us about color wheels, which show you what colors to put together to get a new color."

"Well then, I think we need to find out from Mr. Belden what you need to get started."

"Are you really going to meet with him about me?"

"You bet your sweet bippy I am. Whether you like it or not – and I have a funny feeling you won't mind one bit – your teachers, all of them, are going to find out that when it comes to you, there's a new sheriff in town."

Laci chuckled at the image of Karen, hands on her hips, foot tapping, telling her math teacher to stop being a dickhead. But a knot of excitement began to smolder in her tummy. Finally, for the first time in her life, she had someone who cared, someone she could talk to about anything and not be told to fuck off.

Laci had a sudden need to love Karen. Laci climbed atop Karen, and got on her knees. She sat back, and Karen didn't need any more cue than that to open her legs and bend her knees to create a place for Laci to sit. Laci held out her hands and beckoned with her fingers.

"Oh, so now I suppose you want me to sit up," Karen said playfully.

"Yup," Laci said simply. Karen gave Laci her hands, and the girl pulled until Karen was sitting up.

Laci bent her own knees to create a place for Karen to sit, and thus situated they could come together. "It must be nice to be so young and limber that you can sit like that without help. I on the other hand, haven't been that flexible for at least ten years."

"Ha!" Laci cried. "You're plenty flexible when you want to be."

"Well now, young, flexible, and sassy," Karen declared. "Who knows what's next."

Laci pushed herself close to Karen. A sudden surge of hot emotion as heavy as legs made of lead burst inside her. She wrapped her arms around Karen's chest, and her face between the woman's breasts, she hugged her lover as tightly as she could manage. "I love you, Karen," she said in a quiet but strained voice. "I love you, I love you so much I want to explode." How did I ever live without her? Laci's inner voice cried out. How do I deserve her? Why do I deserve her?

Karen tightened her own embrace, and she rocked Laci. "I know you do, my precious baby girl, and I love you. God help me, I love you, don't ever worry about that, I love you my precious Laci. I do, I do, baby."

Karen stroked Laci hair, ran her fingers through it, and Laci felt soothed. Tucked as close to Karen as she could get, embracing and embraced, she felt safe and warm. She could almost hear Karen's heartbeat say, "Love you, love you." The vibrant sounds of the Love Music Karen chose for them somehow seemed exactly right. She began to not just hear the music, but feel it inside. No wonder Karen listens to music like this, who knew these guys from the olden days could think of music that you can feel inside, and make you warm. Listen to it sing without words, how do they do that?

Thus soothed, Laci could let her other hunger spread out over her and spill like a river of liquid gold inside her tummy. She lifted her head and looked up. Karen looked down, her smile like the one an angel might wear, and her eyes captured Laci. Karen's brown eyes looked like ponds of dark honey, and Laci could surely drown in them.

Karen's voice came soft and sonorous. "You are so incredibly beautiful, Laci. How did I ever come to deserve a love as beautiful as you? How is it that I am the one who's blessed to have your love?"

Laci's flesh rippled, and something shifted inside, a warmth that settled in her pelvis and swelled. They weren't just words with Karen, and that gave them a special heat. Laci wordlessly lifted her lips up and snared Karen's lips. She held her tongue back and simply kissed.

When she momentarily released Karen's lips, a logy warmth settled over her, and her breathing deepened. She returned her lips to Karen's and felt the woman's love in her return kiss. Laci gently opened her mouth and invited Karen's tongue in for a visit. Karen accepted the offer, and gently nudged her's in to play with Laci's.

Laci shuddered when Karen stroked her nails up then down the girl's back. Laci signaled her interest by returning the favor. She let herself float in the river. For some reason she didn't care to pick apart, she had a sudden image of she and Karen on a beach somewhere warm, alone, and the ocean waves lapped at her feet, making her toes sink in the sand. A poem rose up from some song she must have heard somewhere, She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she doesn't give you time for questions, as she locks up your arm in hers, and you follow till your sense of which direction completely disappears. There was no desire to question where the words or the image came from, she simply basked in Karen's embrace, safe, secure, warm, loved.

Love music in her head, Mozart and the strange but perfect poem, Karen's tongue caressing hers. Nothing else mattered. Karen pulled her lips back and snuck them to Laci's ear. A nip on her earlobe, Karen's warm breath whispering, "My love, my beautiful Laci, my girl, my love."

Laci didn't know that she moaned softly. Love is like a drug, oh yes, love is like a drug. She slid her hands up Karen's neck and her fingers found the nest of Karen's silky curls, and she gently pulled her lover's head back to her so she could bring her lips back to Karen's.

It was like she was half dreaming. The ocean in her mind gave up soft, warm breezes, and it stretched to far away horizons, and her heart surged. Somehow, they let their nimble fingers tug at each others suddenly confining clothes. Hardly letting their lips part, clothes were removed and tossed aside so they could come together unfettered, flesh to flesh, lips to lips, breasts to breasts.

Time had lost meaning. All that mattered was the warmth of being connected to Karen, and feeling the woman's kisses and caresses. The deliciously throbbing ache in her loins was growing. She opened her eyes, and was immediately swimming in Karen's brown eyed gaze. "Lay down, my precious love," Karen said in a soft voice that seemed to come from inside, and she didn't argue about who loved who first.

Laci leaned back, letting Karen hold her hands to ease her down. She stared at the ceiling, smiling. Her legs were splayed open, exposing her most intimate parts, her butt on Karen's chest, her upper body between Karen's spread legs. Laci was vaguely aware that Karen was resting back against a pile of pillows, her face inches from Laci's sex.

There was a change in the music, and she knew the melody, a slow, swirling cry of violins, a melody at first associated with sadness, of The Bad Night, but then it became a sound of pure love, she and Karen back on the warm beach, embracing on the sand as they step, swayed, step, swayed to the music.

A memory, just as she felt Karen's lips on her sex. "It's beautiful, Karen, what is it?" "Mozart. Elvira Madigan." But this time, it didn't make her want to cry except in exultation. Karen's tongue stroked her sex, and her passion rose with the music, rising up on the gentle strokes on the piano's keys. Each stroke of Karen's tongue seemed to happen just as a piano key was struck. When the piano sang a vibrato note, so Karen's tongue rattled over her sex, sending shocks of hot pleasure through her.

She felt the sleeve of her sex yielding under Karen's fingers, opening the magic place never touched or explored by anyone other than Karen, the secret entrance to her as yet undefiled inner body. Laci was hardly aware of her movements or her soft whimpers. She was in a place only Karen could bring her, a place of love and secret passion, a place where Sappho and Anactoria knew the same things she was feeling, and where did that come from, she wondered with a smile.

It was almost as though Karen's loving tongue was searching inside the secret spots where her passion lay, waking it, and now she was being born aloft on warms winds. How were such things possible, she wondered distantly. No, it didn't matter how, only that it did happen.

The music turned bright and cheery, fingers rattling on the piano's keys in perfect time with Karen's magic kisses with her equally magic tongue. Laci was laughing now, with sheer delight, whether out loud or only in her head she did not know nor did she care.

The music grew more intense, just as the sensations jolting through her body were growing more intense, rising up, carried high into some magic cloud.

When the release came, she was no longer in the clouds, but laying on the beach, the warm waves coming in and breaking over her in soft surges. Would the awe at how anything could feel so much like Heaven ever leave her? Please God, no, she cried inside, but it was a smiling cry because as long as it was Karen bringing her, it would always be like Heaven.

She lay there panting, and the dreamy image of laying in the warm surf on a faraway beach was slow to leave. The clouds reluctantly gave way to the ceiling, the beach to the luxurious bed, the waves to Karen's savoring the wine Laci's young body gave up. The odd song from somewhere deep in her memory, released for it's visit above, lingered as a reminder. But the drumbeat strains of the night remain, In the rhythm of the new-born day.

No, it mattered not a whit where she heard the song that locked itself in her brain, nor how it was released, or why it came to her. It only mattered because it was there.

Brunch as a concept was foreign to Laci. Who knew, she thought, that there was an entire meal mixing breakfast and lunch. Karen told her it wasn't even something indulged in only by the wealthy, or as Karen put it, the blueblood country club set. Plenty of more or less ordinary restaurants back home had them.

It was almost noon when they headed down to the restaurant. The residue of the morning's passion lingered like a pleasant summer breeze. While it wasn't actually familiar to Laci, at least the restaurant wasn't completely foreign anymore. Perhaps half the tables were occupied by people in casual dress, many in jeans, which assuaged some of her fears about standing out as too casually dressed in her coral pink and black print tunic top, midnight blue leggings, and ankle boots.

Laci sat down and softly thanked the pleasingly plump hostess, who gave her the menu. "Your server will be Annalisa," she said in a genuinely bright voice. "Can I have her bring you something to drink?"

Karen thought for a second or two, then said, "I believe I'll have an Irish Coffee, with a bottle of whatever sparkling water you have."

"That would be Poland Spring. And for the lovely young lady?" she smiled at Laci.

Laci hesitated for a second. "Umm, I think I'd like a hot chocolate and a glass of orange juice. I can have both?"

"Oh absolutely, you sure can. Would you like some marshmallows in the hot chocolate?"

"Ummm, sure, if I can?" she said softly, almost shyly.

"Of course you can, dear. OK Ill have Annalisa bring these right out for you."

When they were alone, Laci said, "What's an Irish Coffee?"

"It's a coffee with sugar, heavy cream, and a shot of Irish whiskey."

Laci scrunched up her nose. "Yuck! Sounds awful. I didn't know you liked whiskey."

"I like it once in a great while in certain drinks."

Laci looked down at her menu. Most of the stuff was at least familiar. It didn't appear there was anything resembling octopus or the like on the menu. Her gaze fell on something instantly recognizable which she knew she liked. "I think I'm gonna have the buttermilk blueberry pancakes," she announced.

"That sounds good. Be careful, they use real maple syrup here, not the fake Log Cabin stuff. It's got a much stronger maple taste."

"That's OK. Is it true that they make maple syrup from tree sap?"

"Yup, it's true. They collect it in buckets and boil it down until it's a syrup. They usually start collecting the sap right about now. There are all kinds of places that make it at home. Maybe in a couple of weeks, we can go visit a sugar house – the French in Quebec call it a cabane a sucre -- where it's made. My grandfather used to do it."

"Really," Laci said, a mildly surprised look on her face. "Your grandfather sounds like he was a real character."

"He was that and then some."

"So what did he do? How do you get the sap from the tree."

"Well, he didn't make much, just enough to last him a year, and to give some to family, so he didn't have a big operation. He'd take a tap, which is a cone-shaped metal thing with a hole in the narrow end and lip on the wide end, and a hook underneath, and he'd hammer it into a hole he drilled in the tree trunk, and hang a bucket from a hook. Once you get enough sap, you boil it down until all that's left is syrup."

"That'd be cool, I'd like to see that. I think I would've like to know your grandfather."

"I think he would have loved you to pieces, given you tractor rides and told you lies about things he claimed were true."

At that, the server came with their drinks. Karen said they were ready to order. "I'll have the eggs Benedict, with a croissant and raspberry compote on the side."

When it was Laci's turn, she ordered her blueberry pancakes. The smell of her hot chocolate was rich and inviting, and a dollop of marshmallow swam over the surface. She took a sip and immediately decided it tasted like a melted chocolate bar, nothing at all like the powdered kind she was familiar with.

The server Annalisa came out with their breakfast plates. Laci's plate held a stack of four pancakes, each as big as the plate, and it came with a crockery carafe of maple syrup and a small cup with whipped butter that smelled a bit like vanilla. She looked at Karen's plate, with its English muffins topped with eggs and some sort of yellow sauce. "What the heck is that?" she asked.

"Eggs Benedict, English muffin halves with a slice of ham, poached eggs, and Hollandaise sauce – that's a sauce made from egg yolks and a little bit of butter and lemon. Very good. How are you pancakes?"

"Umm, Karen," Laci said ominously, "they're better than yours."

Karen laughed. "At least it took a four star chef to do better." She sipped her fortified coffee and dove into her eggs. The Eggs Benedict looked like it was worth trying sometime, Laci decided. It didn't appear radically different from an Egg McMuffin. Maybe she could get Karen to show her how to make it some weekend morning.

For the next twenty minutes, Karen regaled her with memories of previous trips to the Museum of Science, the New England Aquarium, the USS Constitution, the USS Cassin, a Navy destroyer very much like the one her grandfather was on in World War Two, Fenway Park, and other Boston landmarks. Maybe when it was warm, Karen said, they could come back and do a tour of the sites. That, Laci decided, was something she would love to do.