The farm was just a couple of kilometres away. Mona hit the gas pedal, clearly seeking to impress their newly arrived Italian friend.
"Mona! Take it easy!"
Anna shook her head and turned to Luna.
"Last summer she almost ran over one of their neighbours' sheep. The miserable creature hasn't been itself since. Basically, all the farm animals in the village have some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder from Mona's reckless driving!"
Luna laughed.
"Reminds me of a guy in my class who had a crush on me. One day he was following me on his scooter, whistling and waving and doing everything to get my attention. Wanting to show off, he accelerated and ended up running into a panini stand on the pavement."
"Well, who'd blame him?" Mona commented from the driver's seat. "What were you wearing by the way?"
The Italian thought hard.
"One of my shortest skirts I think. It was very hot that day. I was sweating like a pig. Poor thing," she continued, "he ended up in the hospital. He's a good guy -- bit of a Science nerd -- so I came to visit him. I felt so sorry seeing him lying there all bandaged up that I went to the ladies room, took off my panties and just gave them to him. You know, to cheer him up. He clutched my panties like a mother would clutch her new-born child. He was really, really happy."
"Luna, you are a true humanitarian!" Anna exclaimed.
"I was planning to change into another pair of panties anyway, so I thought why not."
Mona changed geer and hit the accelerator again as they sped up the bumpy country road to the farm. Luna grabbed Anna's arm to have something to hold on to. The Ukrainian responded by burying her nose in her Mediterranean friend's hair. Over one year had passed since her first encounter with the young Italian, but it felt just like yesterday, the scent of Luna's dark hair bringing back all the memories from that crazy night in Follonica. The veranda of Valentina's bungalow, the dark mysterious sea, the night that suddenly turned to morning, the prosecco-flavoured kisses shared with an 18-year old Italian lesbian novice who was dying to give up her virginity to Anna. Only the fact that Valentina -- Luna's aunt and Anna's lover -- was sleeping in the bedroom next door held Anna back. She didn't want to break Valentina's heart. Then she ended up breaking it anyway, of course --
"Mona, look at the road!!!"
The redhead took a sharp turn.
"Ok, ok, I got it under control."
"You're gonna get us all killed one day! You DID leave those fucking drugs in the Ostkreuz appartment, right?"
"Anna, don't be ridiculous. I wouldn't smuggle amphetamine across an international border! Unless maybe I stuffed some inside your pussy last time I went down on you before we left?" the redhead laughed.
The Ukrainian was not amused.
"I really don't know where your limits are sometimes."
Luna, perhaps sensing that Mona's escalating drug habits were a hot potato, intervened to change the topic.
"Wow, it's so beautiful and hilly here. I love the pine trees."
The Italian girl opened the window and snapped a few pictures. Anna could see the farm in the horizon.
* * *
"Oh my God!" Marianne exclaimed, "I can't believe it. She's even hotter than on the photos!"
Marianne being Marianne, she had been killing the time with a gin & tonic while waiting for Anna and Mona and their Italian tourist.
"What photos?" Luna asked suspiciously. "You didn't show them the..."
Luna had sent Anna a few topless photos from a beach in her native Puglia last summer. Of course Anna had shown them to Mona right away and then Mona sent them to her cousin.
Mona -- who lied for fun, it sometimes seemed -- came to the rescue.
"Of course not. But one evening we were drinking vodka when reports came in that the neighbours' nine-year old daughter's cat got stuck in a tree. Anna left everything and ran to the rescue, fearlessly climbing the tree to fetch the panic-stricken pussycat. With her heroic act she practically stopped the little girl from committing suicide, but in her hurry she had forgotten to lock her mobile and me and Marianne, drunk as we were, just helped ourselves to her private pictures. Anna was very, very upset with us, I can assure you."
"Oh, really?" Luna responded. "I feel so objectified now. Anyway, I'm sure there were far juicier things on that mobile than a few topless photos of me."
"Don't worry," Mona continued. "We didn't get to all the nudes of your aunt!"
"Mona!" Anna reprimanded her girlfriend. Seriously, she had explicitly told Mona not to mention Valentina. Plus, well, she had actually shown her girlfriend nudes of Luna's aunt -- it wasn't something she was very proud of, but... things like that were just inevitable.
"No problem," Luna laughed. "You can talk about Zia" -- zia being Italian for "aunt" -- "all you want, I promise I won't freak out. After all, if it wasn't for her I'd never made friends with Anna!"
"If Anna likes a girl, she usually draws up a list of all the girl's female relatives she wants to sleep with as well."
God, Mona was uncontrollable tonight!
"Really?" Luna smiled. "So has she seduced your aunt as well, then?"
The answer to that question -- which was probably only meant as a joke -- was of course yes. Anna had indeed seduced and gone down on Britt, Mona's aunt and Marianne's mother. Luna was the only girl present not to know that, and Anna preferred things to stay that way, at least for now.
"She is thinking about Marianne," the Ukrainian rushed to intervene. "Marianne!"
"Yeah, you two are cousins, right?"
"Cousins with benefits!" Marianne smiled and gave Mona a big wet kiss on her lips.
"I know it's pervy," Mona continued, "but we grew up here in hillbilly country and what else were we supposed to do all day? Get cow tattoos on our titties?"
"Well, I heard stories that you were up to quite a lot of mischief outside of the bedroom as well," Anna said.
"Like the time Mona and I and our friend Tommy went to one of the neighbouring farms in the middle of the night and Mona anf Tommy cut upen the fence, expecting the cattle to flee," Marianne recounted.
"And the fucking moronic creatures just stood there!" the freckled Norwegian exclaimed. "I expected them to embrace freedom, and they just stood there chewing grass and staring at the big hole in the fence like it was a renaissance painting or something. It dawned on me in that moment that cows are very similar to people," she added philosophically.
"But what had the people on that farm done to you?" Luna wanted to know.
Marianne willingly explained.
"When Mona was in her early teens, she had short hair and loved competing with the guys in table tennis and listened to Led Zeppelin and Alice in Chains and stuff like that. Plus she hated girly activites like putting on makeup and chatting about boys and the rest. So all in all she came across as a little tomboyish." She paused to draw her breath. "Then one day we walked over to their farm to get eggs or something and the lady of the house was sitting on the porch eating meatballs and knitting and you know what that fat cunt said when she saw us?"
"So nice of you to bring your brother, Marianne!" Mona laughed. "That's what she said. What a cunt, I really hated her for that."
Marianne patted her cousin on the head.
"Poor Mona, how could they be so mean to you?"
"I guess it didn't help that I had no tits," Mona added. "Not that I have developed a pair of prize-winning udders since then."
With her very small breasts and lack of feminine curves, Mona might have a somewhat boyish body, but since her early teenage years, she had let her hair grow and would even apply a little makeup on special occasions. When Mona wanted she could be as feminine as anyone, Anna thought.
