“You mean is it snowing indoors? I’m afraid so. But only in that one little spot, and it just clings to the bricks, it never… accumulates.”
“You seem close to her,” Big Swiss said. “Why don’t you talk about her more?”
“She’s away, working in the city, and I feel like she’s hiding something from me, but I can’t figure out what it is.”
“Are you also hiding something from her?”
“Now that you mention it,” Greta said, “I never told her that I lusted after her son, who’s decades younger than me. Otherwise, we don’t keep secrets.”
“How many decades?” Big Swiss asked.
“Two,” Greta said.
Big Swiss seemed to bristle, and Greta wondered if she was jealous. They were standing in the drawing room, and Big Swiss asked if people drew pictures in drawing rooms, and Greta said no, people withdrew into drawing rooms for more privacy, and was it Greta’s imagination, or was Big Swiss blushing?
“So, where do you sleep?”
“Through that door,” Greta said. “In what used to be the living room.”
Big Swiss took off her hat as if entering a chapel and looked around. Her hair was bright and staticky.
“Wow,” she said. “These walls… the ceiling… it’s really… something.”
“It’s difficult to heat this room because the windows are so large, which is why—see that crooked little door? That’s the tiny room I call the antechamber. I sleep in there sometimes.”
They sat in the armchairs in front of Greta’s woodstove, facing each other. Big Swiss cleared her throat. Greta stared at her black fur coat. Christ, was it chinchilla? Chinchillas were cute.
“I have something to tell you,” Big Swiss said grimly. “I think about you. When you’re not around.”
“Don’t tell me you talk to me in your head.”
“I do,” Big Swiss said. “All day, all night.”
“Well, we’ve been spending a lot of time together, so it’s only natural. I think about you, too.”
“If I don’t see you every day, I feel restless and unsettled.”
Greta waved her hand. “It’ll pass.”
“When?” Big Swiss said.
“Is it sexual?”
“It’s… amorous.”
“It’s probably a phase,” Greta said. “I mean, have you messed with poon before?”
Big Swiss shook her head.
“Imagine my pussy just inches from your face,” Greta said. “What’re you going to do? Think fast.”
Big Swiss blinked.
“Now imagine it hugging your face like the alien in Alien.”
“Maybe it’s me who wants to hug your face,” Big Swiss said. “Ever consider that?”
Greta swallowed.
“I’m just letting you know I’m attracted to you,” Big Swiss said. “I never told you this, but before we met, I once saw you at a farm stand. I was there to buy tomatoes, but I noticed you in the meat section, pulling venison cubes out of a freezer, and I fell in love with your forearms. I obsessed about them for weeks.”
Greta coughed. Forearms?
“I liked to imagine them in different settings,” Big Swiss went on. “Hanging out of a car window, resting on furniture, floating underwater.”
Sweet Jesus. She recalled a recent transcript in which a new client of Om’s had identified as a sex and love addict whose drug of choice was “fantasy and intrigue.” The client was married but addicted to fantasizing about and flirting with coworkers, service workers, the kid who bagged her groceries. Maybe Big Swiss had the same problem? Nevertheless, Greta crossed her arms and did some subtle flexing.
Now they were kissing. Or rather, Greta was kissing Big Swiss. Were her lips soft? Very. But they did not move. It was like kissing a mannequin. Then Big Swiss suddenly opened her mouth too wide.
Greta pulled away. “Is this your first kiss?”
“You kissed me the other day.”
“You’re straight,” Greta said. “Don’t worry.”
“I just said I’m attracted to you.”
“You’re confused. Forearms are phallic. It’s not like you imagined my boobs hanging out the window.”
“I only thought about your forearms because they were pulling meat out of freezers. Boobs can’t do that. If you’d been breast-feeding at the farm stand, I may have—”
Greta unbuttoned her shirt.
“Stop,” Big Swiss said, and looked away.
Greta laughed. “Gotcha.”
“It’s not like that—it’s just—well, in my fantasies you’re fully clothed,” Big Swiss said. “I’m the one naked.”
* * *
HER JUTTING HIP BONES reminded Greta of a ship’s sails. Otherwise, she was straight, supple, somehow taller without clothes, and covered in tiny blond hairs. So, less like white asparagus, more like white peach. Greta wasn’t always a fan—she preferred nectarines and shaved everything, even her forearms—but the fuzz made Big Swiss seem both sturdier and sweeter, and Greta wanted to devour her immediately. So had someone else, it appeared.
“Are those… bite marks?” Greta asked.
“Bruises,” Big Swiss said.
Greta was reminded of Poland. The country. During high school, she’d accompanied a Polish friend to Kraków to visit relatives. At some point, they’d driven around the countryside in a borrowed car, sharing two-lane highways with horse-drawn carriages and huge semitrucks. There had been many kilometers between villages, and the highways were terrifyingly dark and narrow. One night, Greta noticed a woman walking. Since the highways had no shoulders, the woman walked directly in the road. Her ass cheeks, hanging out the bottom of her micro-mini, had been caught in their headlights, and her bare legs were covered in bruises. “Pull over!” Greta had shouted. “She needs help!”
She’d figured the woman had been raped, but she’d calmly leaned into the car, looked at their pimply teenage faces, scowled, and then kept walking. She’d been the first of many hookers Greta saw that night, trolling for truckers in the middle of nowhere.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Greta said now, “but you remind me of a Polish prostitute.”
“I’m a quarter Czech,” Big Swiss said. “On my mother’s side.”
Most women would’ve focused on the prostitute part.
“Some ground rules: I can penetrate you, but you can’t penetrate me.”
“Oh? Why’s that?” Greta asked.
“I’m married,” Big Swiss said. “So, no fingers, just to be clear.”
“Oral doesn’t count, I take it.”
“Ten minutes,” Big Swiss said. “No longer, and no kissing.”
“Should I pay you now or later?”
“Not funny,” Big Swiss said.
* * *
HER PUSSY LOOKED like advanced origami. A crisp pink lotus flower folded by a master. Greta briefly rearranged it with her mouth. The flower transformed into an acorn. Then a unicorn. Then back again. Greta dragged her tongue over it diagonally three dozen times. Now it resembled two dragonflies languidly mating on a lily pad. She reached for her phone.