24 - Swapmeet

Frieda put her boot up on the glove box and crossed her arms tighter. She ground her teeth audibly. Frieda’s mother’s, Sasha’s, hands tightened on the wheel.

“He’s how much older than you? Twenty years?”

“Not that much!” Frieda barked.

“It might as well be,” Sasha sighed. “This is for your own good.”

“But not my own happiness. And not Owen’s!”

“I don’t give two fucks about Owen’s happiness,” Sasha said. They drove by the turn off to their street. She wasn’t driving her daughter home.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going nowhere,” Sasha replied. “What we’re doing is having a real conversation about your choices. And if we’re driving, you can’t slam a door in my face if your only way out is a rough roll across the asphalt.”

“No wonder you’ve been speeding,” Frieda said. “He’s cute. The sex is good. I want more.”

“What kind of birth control are you using?”

“That’s between me and him,” Frieda frowned. They hadn’t been using birth control. She was too red-faced and angry, too embarrassed and fearful of her mother’s rage to admit it.

“You quit the pill to tamp down your goddamned mood swings,” Sasha sighed. “Besides you know he’s fucking other women.”

“And I am too!” Frieda growled.

“Other boys?!” Sasha’s voice cracked. “They’re younger than him, right?”

“Yeah, they’re all younger,” Frieda agreed. She ignored correcting the “other boys” assumption. Frieda had just told her mother that she was fucking women. It was Sasha’s fault if she didn’t get that. Fucking moms! They don’t listen.

“Frieda,” Sasha said, taking a heavy breath. “You never were one to date and you don’t know what these emotions are going to do to you. You’re an adult, I can’t make you do anything, but I’m not going to stop worrying about your wild behavior. If only you’d been more like your father.”

“God I hope not,” Frieda scoffed. “I want to be with Owen forever!”

“You always do at your age.” Sasha’s voice finally showed some consideration. “But you don’t know any better. I guess, I’m stuck with you making this obvious fucking mistake.”

“Fuck you!”

“I’ll forgive that one,” Sasha said. “Frieda, I--”

The light ahead of them turned red and the car slowed to a stop. Frieda bolted out the car door before the wheels stopped turning.

“Goddammit! Frieda!” Sasha shouted after her daughter. Frieda’s door hung open as the eighteen year old ran off. Sasha hated that she was right, there was no door slammed in her face.

Wendy tried folding her tongue. She tried blowing lightly. She tried nibbling with her teeth. Everything she tried just made Zera pull Wendy’s hair and say:

“Do better! You’re supposed to be some goddamned prodigy. For fuck’s sake.”

She was trying! She hadn’t been a lesbian before! Sex with boys, or boy more accurately, as she had only experienced--She closed her eyes and wobbled her face around Zera’s reddened mess of a pussy. Straight sex was easy. The boy did most of the work just wanting Wendy to be there. Zera wanted something from Wendy that Wendy had no idea how to give.

Besides, we’re in the fucking library!

The Sexton Campus library wasn’t big like the ones at Upper Campus. It only had technical sections and two communal study areas. Zera claimed their little corner was private and quiet but how could she know! People were like thirty feet away.

“Goddammit!” Zera cursed again. At least the words coming out of her mouth were hardly audible. Wendy worried that Zera was only being discreet for Wendy’s sake. If Wendy could handle the demanding lesbian, then Zera would quickly forget to be quiet. “It’s the boss.”

Wendy had her face pulled out of Zera’s pussy. Zera lazily rolled her skirt back down. She reached to the floor and shoved her panties into her boot.

“What?” Wendy asked, frightened.

“Big day, time to skip class,” Zera said. “Do you like coffee?”

“I do. Skip class! Dammit, but ... It’s only enviro, I guess.”

“You’ll probably want to see if you can reschedule your late lab too,” Zera said. “Owen doesn’t pay much attention to our timetables.”

“If I--”

“Have you missed anything before?” Zera rolled her eyes. “Seriously, you’re the good kid. Everybody gets one. They’ll move mountains for you.”

“Not Dal.” Wendy took Zera’s hands and stood up. She brushed down her jeans but luckily the floor was clean and there was nothing on her knees.

“No, not the school,” Zera nodded in agreement. “The profs though, and the TAs. Now get that T and A ready.” Zera reached over and hefted Wendy’s tits. “We need to take you bra shopping. Or fuck it. Not me. Janice can do it. Or Liz and Darlene.”

“This is a booty call?” Wendy asked.

“It’s always a booty call,” Zera scoffed. “Boys.”

“And lesbians,” Wendy muttered. Zera had grabbed her three times today and all that had happened was Wendy had learned a dozen new ways not to eat pussy.

Katie hadn’t called home since she had checked in stepping off the plane. She turned her phone off. Three missed calls. Just a couple more days, right? Then she could tell her husband what the fuck she had run off too. Maybe she could even tell herself.

She white-knuckled the attache case she was carrying. She click-clacked her heels across the asphalt as she stepped around the snow. She had locked the pawn shop behind her and Kirk was parking just beyond the handicap spot before her. She frowned as a man and a woman got out of the back seat. Kirk dropped his forehead to the steering wheel and then stepped out himself.

“Maxim!” Katie put on her best smile as she reached tall, dark, and filthy rich. She accepted the hug and kisses on the cheeks. “You have been keeping very fit. C’est beau!“

“Your French remains even worse than Kirk’s, my dear,” Maxim said. The coldness was unmistakable. “You remember my associate, Giselle.”

He gestured to the tall beautiful woman in glasses. Katie saw it in Giselle’s eyes. The hate, the scorn, that was to be expected. The guilt, the recognition. Katie sighed. Giselle had something to do with Katie’s unmistakable urge to find that man again. Katie wanted to take Kirk’s car and drive madly after that feeling. She tightened her grip on the case in her hands and affected her fakest smile. It was hardly convincing. “Hello again, Giselle.”

“Bonjour,” Giselle could fake civility well enough to deserve an Oscar.

“Where’s Val?” Kirk asked. “No, I don’t care. Thank you for getting everything.” Kirk opened the case after thanking Katie. He nodded twice. He hadn’t slept in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe forty-eight. Katie wished she had the bandwidth to worry about him.

“Monsieur. Le banque,” Giselle handed a cell phone. It wasn’t a phone call, Maxim read the screen and then returned it to Giselle.

“C’est ma fille...” Maxim was unhappy but proud. “We need to know where Mr Lahey’s grandson is. You have everything you are supposed to?”

“Yes,” Kirk said, snapping shut the clasps of the attache.

“Ou est ... Do we know where he is?” Maxim said. “I do not wish to remain in this frigid country a second longer than I must.”

“And this is just Halifax, back home in Alberta it’s...” Katie shut up. Halifax was cold enough for someone who wintered in Egypt.

Kirk’s phone rang. “Excuse me.” He gestured. “What?”

Kirk went white-faced as he walked away from the car for a bit of privacy. Katie, Maxim, and Giselle could hear his worry and anger, but Kirk stepped into the store to finish his conversation.

“Vous deux,” Maxim gestured between Giselle and Katie. He frowned at Katie’s response to his French. “Can you find him?”

“I don’t--”

“Almost,” Giselle said. “It’s not exact. Getting within five blocks is possible, but it could take hours rolling up and down a street if he was in one of the buildings and stationary.”

“That’s about right,” Katie said, not having tested how much her newfound magic radar had drawn her to Halifax from Edmonton. When she got on the plane, she had felt like she knew, to the millimeter, where she was going. When she got off the plane it was much more of a fog. Giselle’s nose scrunched as she frowned away Katie’s compliment.

“Merde.“ Maxim drummed his fingers on his suit pants. “Call him.”

Giselle picked up her phone and dialed. It went to voicemail. She left a polite business-like ask-to-call-back-and-confirm message.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Katie said, shook her head, and snatched the phone from Giselle’s fingers. She redialed. Voicemail again.

“Your success is--”

“Oh, Owen!” Katie ratcheted her sexuality up to eleven. “I’m here with Giselle. She’s so-oo hot! I can’t handle her alone. You gotta call us, tell us where to go! I need you!”

She put the phone to Giselle’s face. Giselle looked darkly at Katie.

“Fais-le,” Maxim said, quietly.

“Katie’s breasts are so-oo big!” Giselle’s French accent played up the bimbo sound enough to piss herself off. When she mimicked Katie’s ‘so-oo’, Giselle had never been more embarrassed in her adult life. “They’re too much for one little girl, Master. Please! We need you!”

Katie yanked the phone back.

“Wherever you want us,” she rasped, huskily into the speaker and hung up. She tossed the phone to Giselle who scrambled to catch it. “You know what can happen with the coins.”

“Better than he does,” Maxim nodded. “When they’re mine, you’ll come with me. I’ll sell you back to your husband.”

“That can be done?” Giselle asked.

“I can’t separate you as a pair,” Maxim said, mockingly. “And I don’t want to deal with your shit.”

“She was with him,” Kirk interrupted the three as he returned.

“I’ll lock the store again,” Katie rushed past her worn down old friend as he trudged to the car.

“She’s going back,” Kirk said.

“Going back?” Maxim asked. “To Owen. Where is your daughter?”

“How am I supposed to know?!” Kirk growled.

“Wouldn’t her phone have GPS?” Katie put her hand on Kirk’s shoulder and handed him the keys she had borrowed. “Can you access it?”

“No,” Kirk shook his head. “We disabled our access to that when she turned sixteen because she had earned our trust.”

“Stupid,” Maxim said, in frustration. “Children cannot be trusted.”

“Vous pouvez accéder au mobile de votre fille, Maxim, “ Giselle said. She was red-faced angry at herself for not having the solution Katie had suggested.

“Do it,” Maxim said. “Give Katie the phone. Kirk!”

“What?” He lifted his head. “I may not be the broker you need.”

“And yet I need a broker and I have you,” Maxim said. “And at this moment, I need you to drive.”

Maxim entered the back of the car. Giselle followed. Katie frowned and gave Kirk a hug from the side. She looped the car, sat shotgun, and took the phone from Giselle. “You’re going to want to back out and turn left on Robie.”