Christina
“Hey, honey, I have a surprise for you.” Kya’s voice sounded from the other side of my bedroom door.
“What?” I asked tiredly and lifted my head from my pillow.
She opened the door softly and popped her head in. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” I pushed myself up, not bothering to cover my naked breasts since we’d been roommates for years and seen each other naked plenty of times.
“I know you miss you-know-who and that you’re depressed that you’ll never see him again.”
Her words alone made tears rise in my eyes.
I’d asked Kya not to mention Boulder’s name because hearing it was like a knife stabbing into my heart every time.
“Oh, honey.” Kya empathetically took my hand. “It’s horrible to see you this way.”
“Don’t call anyone,” I reminded her and dried a fat tear from my cheek.
“I already promised I wouldn’t, but maybe you should get some help. Don’t you want to be happy?” Her eyes were moist too.
I didn’t answer that.
“Anyway, I wanted to do something really nice for you so I brought someone here to comfort you.” A nervous smile erupted on her face and then she looked to the door. “Victor, you can come in now.”
My eyes expanded when a beautiful man appeared in my doorway, smiling at me and opening his perfect lips. “Are you Christina Sanders?”
My hands snatched the cover up to cover me, suddenly very aware of my nakedness.
“Yes, I’m Christina Sanders,” I said and blinked in confusion. “And who are you?”
“My name is Victor.” Without an invitation, he walked into my room and sat down on my bed. “I’m here to make you feel good.”
My eyes darted to Kya. “What is he talking about?”
“Sweetie,” she said. “You haven’t had sex since you came back and Victor just wants to please you. It’s unhealthy to deny yourself sexual gratification. You could really use the oxytocin and endorphins that a good orgasm will release in your body. Don’t forget, sex is a stress reliever and you’re definitely stressed out,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I can’t be with him,” I whispered frantically. My forehead wrinkled in deep frown lines. “I’m not ready to be with anyone.”
Victor reached out and caressed my legs through the cover. “Don’t worry, we’ll take it slow. We’ve got all night.”
Kya stood up. “You may not like this, but I’m your best friend and I can’t just do nothing when you’re hiding in your bed feeling depressed. Either we get you some help or you enjoy a night with Victor to feel better. He won’t hurt you and you can just pretend that he’s Boul… I mean you know who. Victor will be okay with that.”
“Yes,” Victor said with a flirtatious smile. “You can call me any name you’d like. All I want to do is please you.”
I closed my eyes and when Kya left the room, I exhaled in a deep sigh of resignation and took a minute to study Victor. He looked harmless and pretty with his fine features and flawless skin. He was nothing like Boulder and had never been in a fight or fought for a woman’s hand in marriage, that was for sure.
“I heard you’re having a hard time,” he said softly. “I really just want to help and I’m a good listener.”
“Thanks.”
“Why don’t we lie on your bed and I’ll hold you while you tell me what troubles you. I promise you’ll feel better, and as Kya said: if you want to pretend I’m someone else, I’m okay with that.”
It would never be the same as lying with Boulder, of course, but then again. I would never get to lie with Boulder again.
“Okay,” I said and moved to the side, signaling for him to join me under the cover.
Victor smiled and stripped out of his clothes before he crawled onto the bed. A few months ago I would have thought he was male perfection but now he looked boyish with his hairlessness and lack of toned muscles.
I turned my back on him, unwilling to see him or smell him. I would just imagine he was Boulder.
“Do you like to spoon?” he asked softly and positioned himself up against my back and behind.
“Is this spooning?” I asked.
“Yes.” He kissed my nape.
“Yeah, I like spooning, but can you be quiet, please?”
“Of course. Just let me know when you’re ready to receive sexual pleasure and I’ll be happy to provide it.”
“Place your hand on my breast,” I said quietly, because whenever Boulder and I had “spooned” his free hand had always found my breast.
Without hesitation, Victor complied and I sighed contentedly, holding on to the memories of a large, virile Nman behind me, insisting that I was his wife.
A smile spread on my face as I reflected on how repulsed I’d been by the title “wife.” I had associated it with someone oppressed, obedient, abused – and yet being married to Boulder had been nothing like that. If anything, I had felt supported, protected, and loved. I tasted the word “loved.” Had he loved me? I would never know for sure, since no such words had been exchanged between us. Yet the memories of his tireless lust for my body and his need to be close to me even in his sleep had made me feel wanted, desired, even revered.
Another tear from my seemingly endless internal well ran down my nose and dripped onto the mattress. I clung to happy memories of falling asleep in Boulder’s arm, sated from our love-making and feeling cocooned in his safe arms.
Boulder
The trip to New Berkeley took forever. The drone was incapable of flying fast like ours. Clearly they didn’t live their lives on the edge much.
When the sun rose in the early morning hours I took in the Motherlands with fascination and was surprised at how different it was from what I’d imagined. Whenever I thought of this place, I pictured it like an ant farm with people living in impersonal cubicles and dressing like clones.
I was wrong.
Everything was clean and inviting, with every building covered in flowers or greens. They had bike lanes all over and David explained that not only did the bikes produce energy but the lanes themselves were designed to suck up energy from the sun. We didn’t have anything like that. We went from place to place in drones or hybrids that would fly over water, gravel, fields, or mountains if needed. Outside the towns, there was no need for roads in the Northlands.
People here had a lot of pets, it seemed. I saw a lady walking five cats, a man jogging with both a dog and a mini horse, and I saw a child with a rabbit under his arm.
“Stop the drone,” I barked when we passed a group of mothers with babies on their arms. I’d never seen a real baby. Boys came to us when they were three years old, and I’d never been lucky enough to see one of the few babies that were born in the Northlands.
“What’s wrong?” David asked.
“I want to see the babies,” I said with my nose almost pressed against the window.
Magni leaned forward by my side. “Hard to believe that we all start out that small and fragile,” he said, but he quickly resumed scanning the streets for Laura.
“Remember,” he said to Jonah and David. “Laura is about five foot nine, large blue eyes, long red hair, and cute freckles across her nose.”
“You’ve told us a billion times,” David muttered.
“I need to eat soon,” Jonah exclaimed. “I get really cranky when I don’t eat.”
“Girl,” Magni muttered low.
“Say sorry,” Jonah insisted.
“For what?” Magni didn’t even turn his head to look at Jonah. His eyes were scanning the streets.
“You made an attempt to insult me.”
“So?”
“Apologize.”
Magni rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry you’re such a whining pussy who needs food not to be grumpy.”
Two loud gasps came from David and Jonah.
“Look,” I interfered before Magni got us in real trouble. “It’s just how we talk. Don’t be offended, we’re just more crude than you are.”
“And tougher,” Magni muttered low.
I slammed his shoulder hard. “Shut the fuck up. They are helping us, so cut the crap and leave them alone, you miserable fuck.”
David’s and Jonah’s jaws were hanging open and when they finally spoke their voices were shaken. “I’ve never heard anyone talk that way,” Jonah said and whistled. “My friends won’t believe me when I tell them about this road trip.”
“You can’t tell them,” David reminded him. “It’s forbidden to speak about Nmen.”
Jonah lowered his brows and gave David a sideways glance before he looked to me and Magni. “Talk about forbidden, I know a crude joke,” he said conspiratorially.
“Oh, yeah? Then let’s hear it,” I encouraged him and saw his lips twist in a wicked closed-mouth smile. “Why is a man the smartest when he is having sex?”
“Why?”
“Because he’s plugged into a woman.” With an expectant smile he waited for our reactions.
“What the fuck?” Magni breathed and shook his head at me. “Do they even understand how fucking disturbing it is to hear shit like that from someone with a dick?”
I leaned forward. “You need to work on your repertoire,” I told Jonah. “Next time you tell a crude joke, tell this one,” I said. “How do you know when a woman is about to say something smart?”
“How?” Jonah asked.
I smiled. “When she starts her sentence with, ‘A man once told me...’"
They laughed. “Do you know anymore jokes?”
“Sure, why did the woman cross the road?”
“Why?” David asked.
“Who cares? What the hell was she doing out of the kitchen in the first place?”
Jonah and David frowned in confusion.
“Ahh, forget it,” Magni grunted and waved a hand dismissively in the air. “They have no sense of humor.”
“We have a sense of humor,” Jonah insisted, “but what’s funny about a woman in the kitchen?”
“It’s a sexist joke suggesting that a woman’s place is in the kitchen to serve her man.”
“Ahh,” they said but still looked puzzled.
“Look, I’m hungry too, so let’s take a break and find something to eat,” I suggested.
“I could eat a big juicy burger,” Magni sighed wistfully.
“Do you want one too?” Jonah asked me.
“We can have burgers? But I thought meat wasn’t allowed.” I grinned in surprise.
“Of course it is.” Jonah gave me a what-do-you-take-me-for look and walked off to a group of shops nearby. The rest of us stayed by the drone.
I was drooling when he returned with four small containers of food, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I unwrapped my burger and saw it had actual meat inside. I took a big bite and chewed with a sound of appreciation.”
Next to me, Magni nodded his head, chewing and speaking with food in his mouth. “This is good beef.”
I opened my burger, taking off the bun and poking at the patty to make sure it was real. It was cooked just right and had that pink center that I preferred.
“I thought you were all fucking vegans,” I said and took another big bite. “Like against eating animals and all that nonsense. I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re not feeding us some stupid kale-shit but an actual burger.”
“This is cultured meat,” David explained. “You know, produced as part of cellular agriculture.”
Magni stopped chewing and his “What?” was muffled because of his full mouth.
“We don’t actually kill the animals to eat their meat. My friend is a farmer, and all they do is take some tissue from cows, from their muscles to be exact, and then they extract the stem cells and grow muscle under tension to bulk it up. That’s the meat that is then minced and turned into burgers.” He smiled. “It’s good, right?”
Magni and I looked at each other for a long second and then he shrugged and kept chewing. “Yeah, it’s good if you don’t think too much about it being grown in a fucking lab.”
I finished my burger and we continued for another forty minutes, Magni and I constantly scouting the streets for Laura while David and Jonah chatted like women.
I rolled my eyes when they talked about a male beauty competition they had both seen last night, and I tried holding my tongue when they analyzed my joke about women in the kitchen.
“Don’t they know how relaxing and rewarding cooking can be? Why would the Nmen not want to be in the kitchen?” David said softly to Jonah.
“I don’t know.” Jonah shook his head, signaling that the whole thing was a puzzling matter to him as well.
“You’re missing the fucking point,” I said. “The joke is only funny because it infuriates women – and just to set things straight,” I said and leaned toward them, “women can be as violent as men.”
Jonah’s eyes grew big and round.
“What?” I asked him.
“If your women are so violent, Boulder, then why would you let them near the kitchen?”
I shook my head. “What? No, our women aren’t…”
“Yes, I agree with Jonah.” David cut me off in support of his friend and continued with a troubled expression. “Clearly it’s not the brightest idea to let a violent person into a kitchen when that’s where all the sharp knives are kept?”
“Magni, is your wife violent as well?” Jonah asked and Magni, who hadn’t been paying attention to our conversation, looked at him with a big question mark virtually visible above his head.
I thought it safer to change the subject to something I’d been wondering about.
“Look, can I ask you two the obvious question?” I said.
“Of course.”
“So, how many women have you been with? I mean with one man per fourteen women, surely some of them are still interested in you guys.”
They exchanged a glance before Jonah turned his chair around to face me. “I’m not attracted to women.”
“You’re gay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But I like women,” David said quickly and added softly, “and men.”
“Wait a minute,” Magni barked out. “Are you two fuckers telling us that you have access to unlimited numbers of women but that you prefer men?” He scowled at them. “I fucking knew it.”
“I’m not gay,” David argued. “I’m attracted to a person and not their gender.”
“So how many women have you had?” I asked David but got distracted by Jonah’s laughter.
“I don’t think you understand how our women work. Sex isn’t high on their list.”
“I’ve had a few,” David said and puffed out his chest. “Women have a thing for me.”
“Why?” I asked, genuinely curious, because in my mind a woman would have to be a lesbian to be attracted to someone as feminine as him.
He smiled smugly. “Because I’ve got a smooth move that works every time.”
“And what is that?” I asked intrigued.
“My magical hands.” He lifted his palms as evidence. “I offer them a massage and once they’re relaxed, I pleasure them with my hands and then when they’re ready for more, I give it to them.”
Magni leaned closer. “Is that all it takes?”
“Uh-huh.”
“We fucking have to kill to get our hands on a woman and you just rub their neck.”
“Well, some aren’t interested,” David said. “But as you pointed out: with fourteen women per man there’s always someone open to a massage.
When we finally reached the university that Christina had said she worked at, my heart was pounding like crazy.
“Now what?” I asked and looked up at the building.
Jonah opened the door. “Now David and I go talk to people while you two stay here.”
Magni and I sat for at least an hour, watching the two flutter around like butterflies talking and smiling with a bunch of different people until at last they came back.
“Christina doesn’t teach here anymore,” Jonah said. “But one of the woman told me she’s famous for riding an antique bike with flowers in front.”
“Is that all you’ve got?” I asked.
“No, someone else said he’d seen her at the senior center a few days ago.”
My heart instantly leaped. “Really?”
“Yes, so maybe they know where she lives.”
At the senior center a receptionist confirmed that Christina taught in the evenings sometimes, but she didn’t know when she would come next and she wasn’t allowed to give out her contact information.
She did, however, allow us to meet a few of Christina’s students and ask them questions.
David and Jonah told us to stay back in the drone, but I refused, not trusting that they would ask the right questions.
“Stay quiet,” Jonah warned me as we walked down the corridor. “They’ll hear your accent.”
“Marie and Martha,” the receptionist said when we reached an open area where two old ladies sat. “These gentlemen are looking for Christina Sanders; do you know when she’ll be back to teach her next lesson?”
One of the old ladies lit up in a bright smile and signaled for us to come closer. David stayed by the wall, while Jonah and I walked closer.
“Are you friends of Christina?” the little woman asked.
“Yes,” I said quickly before I remembered to shut up.
“That’s good.” She nodded. “She was just here a few days ago and she’ll be back next week at the usual time.”
I cursed inwardly. I couldn’t wait until next week.
Jonah took a seat opposite the women. “Do you have any idea where we can find Christina?”
“Is she in trouble?” one of the older women asked.
“No, Christina isn’t in trouble.” Jonah explained. “But her friend is trying to find her. They share a special bond.”
“Oh, that’s nice.” The smaller of the women turned to the other. “Martha, didn’t Christina live with that teacher friend?”
Martha leaned her head back, thinking. “That’s right. I remember her. She had funny hair and she sniffed her food.”
“Right. I had forgotten about that, but where did they live?”
Martha was quietly shaking her head as if to say she didn’t know.
“I’m sorry.” Marie held her hands to her head. “My memory isn’t as good as it used to be.”
We prodded them for a few more minutes, asking them about the bike, which was our only clue.
“We never see her outside, only in here, and no one bikes indoors,” Marie explained patiently.
My shoulders fell when I realized we had hit a dead end.
“May peace surround you,” Jonah said in goodbye to the women before we all left.
My steps were heavy walking back to the drone. Christina was somewhere in this city and I needed to find her now.
“We’ll just have to circle the area and look for the bike,” David said but was interrupted by a female voice from behind.
I turned to see Marie standing all winded right outside the entrance to the senior center, waving her hand to get our attention.
Quickly I ran back to her. “Did you remember something?”
She nodded and waved me closer with a crooked finger.
I leaned in.
“Closer,” she said with a twinkle in her eye and when I complied, she said, “I apologize for being such a forgetful old woman, but there was a time when we made a beautiful quilted blanket for Christina’s birthday.”
“And?”
“And we wanted her to have it on the day so we had it brought to her.”
I held my breath. “Please tell me you have her address?”
“I do.” She smiled. “And I’ll give it to you, if you do two things for me.
“Anything,” I said quickly and smiled.
Three minutes later, I was back in the drone facing Magni, who gaped at me.
“What the fuck was that?” he asked with his hand in the air.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, we’re gonna talk about it.”
“No!” My lips were tight. “I have Christina’s address and that’s all you need to know.”
He shook his head with disbelief but let it rest for now.
“It’s Magnolia Circle, building seven.”
“Got it,” David nodded and looked down at the navigation system. “That’s three minutes from here.”
My body reacted physically to the fact that I was close to her. Butterflies fluttered between my ribs and I could feel my heart racing like a drum. “Be home, Christina,” I muttered, “please be home.”
Nobody spoke. Not even when we arrived at the long row of small townhouses. Magni, Jonah, and David just got out and looked at me.
My eyes fell on the yellow bike parked outside with a basket in front that had silk flowers. “This is the right place,” I mumbled with terror in my chest. What if she rejected me? Or reported me?
Taking a deep breath, I stepped up to the door and knocked on it.
Thump, thump, thump. The sound of my heart was in my ears when the door opened and I looked into the eyes of a beautiful brown woman with clear cognac-colored eyes and the most voluminous curly hair I’d ever seen.
“May peace surround you,” she said politely and looked past me to the three men still standing by the drone.
“My name is Alexander,” I said softly as not to scare her. “I’m here to see Christina.”
Understanding spread on her face. “Boulder?” she asked and when I gave a sharp nod, she lowered her voice and looked up and down the street. “Are you crazy?”
She ushered me in while pointing to Magni. “You too – hurry, get in here before someone sees you.”
He jogged up the five steps to the door and came in with me.
The brown woman closed the door behind us and leaned against it with her arms spread out as if to shield us from whatever threats were on the outside.
“You came all this way?” she said, staring at us.
“Yes.”
“How did you find us?”
“Is Christina here?”
Her eyes flew to a door right behind me and back to my face. “She went to bed early. Give me a minute to wake her up.”
I didn’t have a minute and barged in through the door she had looked at. The vision I saw made me lose my shit completely.