This is a continuation of the Salt & Vinegar series.
We're now getting to the stage where there are enough threads that you may wish to consider reading from the start of the series - or at least from Chapter 4 - for some context. Of course, if you're just reading for the sexy bit rather than the story and character development, then feel free to skip to the last section (Justine).
Enjoy.
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LENA
Fingers of near-naked, gnarled catalpa trees playing with ghostly tendrils of mist.
[Click].
The bright gaze of the early morning orb softened to an ethereal glow by the blanket of fog.
[Click].
Jewels of dew winking in a perfect sea of manicured emerald lawn.
[Click].
Justine. Head bowed. Wisps of hair the colour of the season escaping from beneath her anorak hood and drifting in the cool fall air.
[Click].
The plaque on its concrete plinth glistening with moisture from nature's nightly blessing. An echo of the tears we had shed, and which still threatened to flow even now.
'Christina Louise Anderson (1987 - 2013)', it read, with the simple epitaph 'Much Loved'.
[Click].
I sighed as I let my camera hang from the strap around my neck.
Oh, Chrissie.
A week after our wedding (see Chapter 9), we'd received a call from a distraught Angelica. Chrissie had been riding pillion behind a guy on a motorcycle. A fucking truck driver had run a red light at speed through an intersection. They were both killed instantly. A small mercy for her, I guess, though not for her family. Nor for me.
She was my best friend, not counting Jus. We'd been friends since high school. We'd done everything together. We'd even done each other on occasion. Not as a regular thing, or even a serious one. Just that, like me, Chrissie loved sex and fun with her often meant a good fuck. More importantly, she'd introduced me to Justine. Chrissie was my friend, but Jus was my life.
On the morning after our wedding, Jus and I had given Chrissie a sort of farewell fuck. A thanks for being a friend and a promise that we wouldn't forget her even though we were now married and lived in another city. Her last words to us as she got into the cab to go to the airport were, "Don't forget to visit me, bitches!" And of course, we'd said we wouldn't. We kept that promise. Every year, we visited her here around the anniversary of her death.
This year, Paul and Angelica had invited us back to San Diego for Thanksgiving. We'd shared a great couple of days before saying goodbye after an early breakfast. We'd detoured to Poway at the start of the return drive to San Francisco to pay our respects. Chrissie's family had been in the area for generations, so she'd been interred out here rather than in San Diego.
There was something incongruous about the peace and beauty of early morning here in the memorial park.
Or perhaps not. Maybe it was nature's way of reminding us that, while humanity lived in a brief, bright instant, the world went on in its unchanging seasons in a terrible, uncaring permanence of glory and majesty. This silent, beautiful dawn a foil to the grief in my heart; as fresh now as four years ago.
Justine must have been reflecting similarly, for she quoted softly as she knelt and placed a blood-red rose at the base of the plinth.
"I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, a formula, a phrase remains — but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love — they are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.
Elegant and curled is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world."
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JUSTINE
The words just came to mind. They seemed to go with the rose. I wasn't angry; I wasn't grief-stricken - at least, not anymore. The words just seemed to express the sense of melancholy and futility I felt when I thought about the tragedy of Chrissie's life cut short.
Humans are self-centred creatures. We see everything through the lens of our own self-interest. We interpret everything with reference to ourselves as though we were the centre of the universe and everything exists for us. And then we feel hurt, angry, aggrieved, outraged when something happens to upset our comfortable existence. Something that doesn't seem fair, or just, or right according to our reckoning. As though the universe cares about the feelings of an individual member of a single species on a tiny rock in a corner of a single galaxy amongst trillions.
I still shared the faith of my parents and I believed in more than random time and chance. But it didn't take away the deep sadness of loss. Maybe it isn't meant to. Perhaps there is a lesson in that I am still to learn.
For now, I choose to remember and cherish the memory of the friend I had. Chrissie may be gone, but she still lives on in my heart. And in Lena's. And in many others. A woman of joy, charm, exuberance and generosity with a lust for life and - let's face it - a lust for sex.
Lena's voice broke into my reflections.
"Do you reckon the family meant the innuendo in that?"
"Don't think so", I laughed. "Chrissie would have appreciated it though."
She was definitely 'much loved'. By her family and friends, certainly, but also as a willing and enthusiastic participant in many sexual encounters. Her appetite was on a par with Lena's. Unlike Lena, her sexual adventures were invariably episodes of light-hearted fun and frivolity. In contrast, many of Lena's partners tended to suffer emotional collateral damage.
"Sorta glad that we were the last ones to give her 'much love'", she said.
"You can't be sure that we were, though. She might have hooked up with any number of guys within that week. Probably did you know. Even that guy she was on the bike with."
"True, but I like to think we were anyway. And we did her good."
I heard the smile in her voice as she remembered.
"We did, didn't we?"
Lena tucked an arm around my waist and put her head on my shoulder.
"I miss her, babe", she whispered.
"I know. I miss her too. There wouldn't have been an 'us' without her."
"Yeah."
The sun won the battle against the morning mist and the light brightened to the accompaniment of bird song.
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LENA
The crunch of wheels pulling off the asphalt onto the verge of the lawn. I turned to see a big-ass pickup slowing to a stop opposite where we stood at Chrissie's grave.
The passenger side door opened, and it took me a moment to recognise the woman who got out. I'd last seen her at a café in San Diego when I'd told her our brief thing was over (see Chapter 4). Gone was the goth: Beth looked for all the world like a fucking soccer mom. No surprise when she turned to open the back door of the dual cab and let out a couple of kids. A boy scrambled out with all the uncontained energy of a dog let off a leash and Beth made a fast grab for the back of his shirt. A younger girl followed, still a little unsteady on legs getting use to walking. One kid secured in each hand, Beth walked over the lawn toward us.
I nudged Jus. "Company."
"Oh?"
She turned and it was obvious she didn't recognise her.
"Beth", I said.
"Who? No way!"
Beth walked up to us, smiling. The boy looked up at us curiously. The girl hid shyly behind her mother's leg.
"Long time", she said. "Hello, you two."
Justine went forward and gave her a hug.
"Good to see you, Beth. You're looking really well. And who do we have here?"
