More Than a Kiss

Mirror, Mirror

"How do I look?" Jordan asked. She stood in the hallway, scrutinizing herself in the full-length mirror that leaned against the "wall." "Wall" deserved quotation marks because the "wall" wasn't really a wall. The old, crumbly drywall had been taken down and all that remained were two-by-four studs and bare electrical wiring. This was the motif for the entire second story of the house. Whenever Jordan complained to Edison about the "walls," Edison only said, "Sometimes it's necessary to tear something down before you can build it back up." That may be true, but when it was going to be built back up was the problem. So, the mirror was leaning against the "wall" and Jordan was checking her reflection. She asked again, "Tell me the truth, Ed, how do I look?"

Jordan did a complete 360 to give the full effect of her ensemble. Actually ensemble may have been too expansive a word. Outfit was more suitable for what she was wearing: khaki shorts, sandals and a white linen shirt.

"You look casually sexy," Edison replied. "Or sexily casual. Depending on who's doing the looking."

"Not too casual though, right?"

"Right."

"Too sexy?"

Edison shook her head. "I think you've found the perfect blend of casual sex."

Jordan stood with her back to the mirror and peered over her right shoulder. "I can't see my butt."

"It's there, don't worry."

"Does my butt make my pants look big?"

Edison laughed. "Your butt is perfect and you know it."

Jordan grabbed her butt cheeks and lifted them up higher. When she took away her hands they bounced back into place. She sighed and grabbed her cheeks again. This time she squeezed her cheeks together in an effort to make them look smaller.

"My butt's too big," Jordan moaned.

Edison's face lit up. She pulled a roll of duct tape out of her pocket and held it high. "I could tape it. I could tape anything you wanted. I could make your butt smaller and your boobs higher. Or I could make your boobs smaller and your butt higher. Your choice."

"Do you use it?" Jordan asked.

"I have. It works great. Hurts like hell taking it off, though."

"I'll pass."

"Whatever. It's here if you need it." Edison put the tape back in her pocket.

Jordan turned around and looked full on at her reflection. "I just don't want to look too planned. Looking planned is the equivalent to looking desperate. And looking desperate turns women off."

"I don't know about that," Edison said, "I kind of like a quiet air of desperation. It means they're easy targets."

Jordan whacked Edison in the arm with the back of her bandaged hand. "Ow!" she exclaimed. "Your arm hit my hand."

"Listen, Jordan, reality-check here. You're just going to see the Doc so she can take out the stitches. It isn't a date. She has a boyfriend, remember the guy in the photo."

"I know that. But I’m not competing with him. I would just be presenting another option so this could be the precursor to a date with a person who is offering another type of relationship. You have to remember most of us didn’t start off gay. We eventually realized it. Maybe Amy hasn’t realized it yet. That’s all I’m saying."

"So you are going to ask her out."

"If it comes up organically."

"How does asking somebody out come up organically?"

"You know like if her stomach growls and I hear it. I could say, 'You must be hungry,' and she'd say 'I am hungry' and I could say 'let's go get something to eat' and then she'd say…”

Edison picked up, "And she would say 'I'm hungry for you, baby' and you'd say 'Here I am, come and get it.'"

They laughed, but stopped abruptly when the door across the hall opened a crack and one eye peeked out.

Meet Irma Kalandarishvili. Irma had black hair, black eyes, and an entire wardrobe of only black clothes. Or maybe she just had only one black outfit. Jordan wasn't sure. Irma was tall and thin like a ballerina and her hair was slicked back in a severely lacquered bun. She never blinked. Nobody had ever seen her blink. She could've been mistaken for a stick of licorice.

Jordan had gone out on a date with her two years ago. The date was horrible but the sex afterwards made up for it. Irma and Jordan fulfilled a hunger in each other that other people couldn't. It wasn't based on banter or intellect or common interests. It was purely animalistic. So, Jordan and Irma became friends with benefits except they weren't really friends. And when Irma showed up one day needing a place to stay, Jordan rented her a spare bedroom.

Irma moved in and paid her rent on time with cash. Nobody knew where Irma was from – Russia? Germany? Or one of those Slavickstan kind of countries? Nobody knew how she made her money or what she did behind the doors of her room.

Ever since Irma had moved in six months ago, Jordan had avoided her. She didn't want to have a physical relationship with somebody that lived under her own roof. It had been fine to be fuck-buddies when your buddy didn’t live with you but now it was different. Jordan reasoned that it was too much like that old adage, "Don't shit on the hand that feeds you." Or something like that. She’d told Irma that but Irma wasn't giving up so easily.

Irma eyed Jordan up and down and said in her thick accent that sounded like Natasha from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, "You are dressing for big date?"

Jordan shrugged. "Just a maybe date."

Irma leered at her. "If maybe date is not what dreams are made, you come to Irma and Irma will un-dress you and show things you never experiment in wild dreams."

Edison said, "I think you mean experience in your wildest dreams."

Irma looked at her coldly. "No. Irma mean experiment in wild dreams." She looked back to Jordan and smiled wickedly before she ducked back inside and closed the door.

"Someday I'm going to scream in her face. Just to see if she blinks," Edison said.

Jordan laughed. "She won't. I think her hair is so tight in that bun she can't blink."

Edison laughed. "I don't get what you see in her."

"We had an arrangement, that's all. It worked in both our favors."

"What an arrangement," Edison said with a huge eye-roll. "If you two aren't doing somebody else then you do each other."

"Operative word here is did. We no longer do. But I'm sure you could find the same type of arrangement if you wanted."

Edison said in an imitation of Irma's accent, "Edison not want. Edison want love true not buddy fuck in experiment love."

"You don't really believe in true love, do you?"

"Sure. Don't you?" Edison said, brushing a stray hair off Jordan’s shoulder. She straightened her collar.

"Nope," Jordan said.

"Nope?"

"No." Jordan looked at herself in the mirror again. "I believe the concept of true love is just an illusion."

Edison looked at Jordan's face, at her reflection in the mirror, then back to Jordan. She imitated Irma's accent, "Edison think one of you is big fat liar."