More Wild West

The Visitor Has Company (Visitor #7)-3

Better, thought Lea and lapsed back into watching the movie.

After a while, when the movie had gotten to a part that she and Kirsten both hated — where Cher and Dionne decide to give a girl a makeover to make her more “popular” — Lea asked, “So you ever do that? Hump a pillow?”

“Say what?”

“You know. Use a pillow to masturbate. I used to do that all of the time before I discovered vibrators. Still do sometimes.” Not that I’ve needed to masturbate….

“What in God’s name —?” Kirsten’s expression was dubious and a little embarrassed, but Lea could see the curiosity fighting to come out.

“You know,” Lea said, grabbing the body pillow she’d been leaning against, “like this.” She threw her leg over the pillow and began to rock her pelvis against the cushion. She c****d her head and looked toward Kirsten.

Kirsten, whose mouth and eyes were open wide. “Uh. Lea? What the f**k?”

“You never did this?”

“No.” Kirsten, whose face was turning a pink that Lea didn’t think was entirely due to embarrassment.

“It feels good.”

“Uh. I bet.”

Continuing to grind her crotch against the pillow, Lea pulled her nightshirt over her head.

“Lea. Sweetie. What the f**k are you doing?”

Lea ran her hands over her breasts, tweaking her n*****s. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Driving your poor friend crazy.”

“Well, that’s kind of the idea.” A shiver passed through Lea. She turned her upper body toward her friend; her pelvis kept moving on its own. “K, I’m trying to make sure that my best friend, who has just had an awful couple of days, gets what she’s dreamed of. She deserves it.”

Kirsten licked her lips. She was having to work hard to keep her eyes from floating down to where Lea continued to hump away at the pillow. “You… You don’t want this. You’re not… You don’t have to —”

“Let me tell you a story,” Lea said, smiling. “Remember when I told you about us going up to the mountains for the wedding?”

Kirsten nodded. Her fingers were clenched in the legs of her pajama bottoms. “Andy’s friend. His ex.”

“Prior and Cherry. Yes.” Holding up her left breast with one hand, she circled the n****e with the fingers of the other, keeping her eyes on Kirsten’s, which slowly widened. “The night before the wedding, Andy and Prior… hooked up. Really energetically. And Cherry, Sean, and I could see them. Frotting. Sucking. Fucking.”

“Damn.”

“Uh-huh. We couldn’t decide —” She switched her hands to begin teasing the other n****e. “—whether we wanted to kill them, or whether we were really, really turned on. Both, I guess, but mostly turned on.” As the memory flowed back, the raw excitement of it flowed back as well, and Lea felt her labia spreading as she slid them over the satin-covered body pillow. “Sean bent me over, right there in front of the window where we were watching, and he f****d me and fingered Cherry, both at the same time. Cherry started playing with my t**s, but then she wanted to feel Sean’s c**k pushing into me, so she wrapped her fingers around that big, long, c**k as it was plowing into me, those fingers of hers pressing up against my p***y, and f**k, Kirsten, it felt so good. And then we kissed, me and Cherry….”

Kirsten whimpered. Her n*****s were pushing out against her silk PJ top, wide as old silver dollars. She was biting her lower lip.

“I realized, K, that no, I wasn’t attracted to Cherry. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy having s*x with her. I don’t know what that makes me, but I know it means that I would be more than happy to give my best friend, who I love with all of my heart, anything she wants. Anything.” Lea lifted both of her modest breasts, offering them. Offering herself.

“Sean —?”

“Suggested this. Thought you needed it.”

“A-andy —?”

“Said he’d be stroking himself at the thought until he came home tomorrow.”

Kirsten gave another whimper, her own, much less modest breasts dancing beneath the blue silk. Her hands raised as if against Kirsten’s will, fingers reaching toward Lea’s offered breasts, and —

And Lea’s phone screamed — a fire truck siren.

A text. An urgent text. From Andy. Lea pulled back, though it was not what she wanted to do to poor Kirsten. “Um. That’s actually an emergency. I need to get that.”

Kirsten fell forward, catching at the air.

“I’m so, so sorry K.” Lea was already off the bed, grabbing at her pocketbook. She pulled out the phone and gasped. “Sean’s been hurt. Andy needs us to meet him at the hospital.”

Any sign of lust evaporated from Kirsten’s face. “Hurt?”

“That’s all it says.” Lea pulled on the sweats that she had stripped off earlier that evening. Oh, God. Oh, God, please let him be —

“C’mon.” Kirsten had thrown a sweater over her PJs and stood, stony-faced, by the door. “Let’s go.”

Grabbing her keys and her bag, Lea ran over to her friend and gave her a kiss on the lips. “I’m so sorry, Kirsten.”

“I know.”

Looking up into Kirsten’s face, into the grim-set blue eyes and the clenched jaw, Lea was struck by how much she looked like her brother. “Yeah,” said Lea. “Let’s go.”

There is no car ride so long or so short as a ride to the hospital.

Since her own birth, Lea had only been in a hospital twice — both times to visit friends who’d just had babies. This didn’t seem anywhere nearly as exciting. It was, in fact, frankly terrifying. Driving well above the speed limit, not knowing whether Sean was even alive. Terrifying.

Andy did text once: Surgery.

Well. That implied that Sean was still alive.

Lea felt so f*****g stupid. Why was she upset? How could she not have seen this coming? She knew her boys bargained with death every day. They danced through burning buildings. They doused overturned tankers. They unstitched tangled metal and stripped away wood and soothed down flame, but death was always nearby. How could Lea ever, ever forget that?

Later Lea would swear that the ride lasted five minutes, though even on a quiet night it was a half-hour drive from their apartment to the stocky eight-story building that was Atlanta Medical. The hospital was, incongruously, lit in a lurid rainbow of color.

Neither Lea nor Kirsten paid the bizarre decor any mind. Holding hands, the friends sprinted in through the hospital door. At the front desk, a middle-aged black woman — she reminded Lea of the lady she’d flown out to Atlanta next to, the one who’d been gleefully reading Fifty Shades the whole way across the country — directed them to toward the ICU.

There, in the waiting room off of the Trauma ward, Lea and Kirsten encountered a surreal tableau.

Violet O’Connell sat in one of the plastic hospital chairs, her face streaked with tears, her expression indomitable. In her lap, she was stroking Andy’s large head while he sobbed. Around her stood three firefighters, still in their turnout gear, their faces stoic and begrimed. Ignoring their nods, Lea slid to her knees and hugged Andy from behind. “You’re okay,” she found herself crying. “Oh, God, Andy, you’re okay.”

“Sean!” Andy howled into Violet’s knees.

“Shh,” said Violet, and Lea found herself echoing Sean and Kirsten’s mother, though it was as much to calm herself as to calm Andy. Perhaps Violet was doing it for the same reason.

“Sean’s out of surgery,” said Joanie, the one female firefighter at the station, “but they won’t let anyone in yet.”

“What happened?” Kirsten asked.

“Floor gave way,” moaned Andy. “Pushed me.”

“They were up on the fifth floor of an empty office building on Poplar,” Billings said. He was young and black and looked terrified. He’d joined the department only a few months before. “Squatter’s cigarette started it.”

Captain Olson put his hand on Billings’s shoulder. “Fire started on the floor below. If they’d both fallen together, their weight might have carried them all of the way through. Sean probably saved both their lives.”

Andy trembled and Lea hugged him harder. Violet’s hand trembled in Andy’s short hair.

Kirsten gave a shuddering breath. “What happened? To Sean.”

“Broken leg, compound,” answered Joanie. She blinked at Kirsten. “Banged his head hard. He’s been unconscious since Andy here carried him out.”

“Thank you, Andy,” whispered Lea.

Kirsten echoed, “Thank you, Andy.”

“Kirsten?” said Violet. Clearly disoriented, she blinked up at her daughter. “What are you…? Did you…?”

It was frightening to see the preternaturally self-possessed Violet so shaken.

“Surprise visit,” Kirsten answered, and Lea could hear a sad attempt at a cheerful tone that made it sound even more miserable. “Was gonna come by the school tomorrow but…”

“Wow,” said Billings. The fireman stared at Kirsten.

The captain cleared his throat. “You must be O’Connell’s… Sean’s sister.”

“Yeah,” Kirsten said. “Just flew in from California. I’m his younger sister —”

“Kirsten?” The gravel-voiced question hung in the air. Lea looked up to see a man in his sixties — a shock of white hair and denim-blue eyes wide in wonder. “My God, girl. I haven’t… You’re… beautiful.”

Kirsten grabbed Lea’s shoulder. “Papa?” She sounded as if she were speaking to a ghost.

“Thank you for coming, Rob,” Violet said, barely audible.

The man — Kirsten and Sean’s father, whom they hadn’t seen since they were children — suddenly grew cold. “Of course I came.” He said this without turning to Violet.

“Mr. O’Connell, Mrs. O’Connell,” said Captain Olson, “we need to get back on duty. No, Andy, you stay. I think you’re needed here more than at the station.” Billings and Joanie fell in behind the captain, who said to the room, “Sean’s a brave man. A fighter. I know he’ll pull through. Good night.”

“Good night,” answered Lea and Kirsten. Andy was quietly crying again, and the elder O’Connell’s seemed to be locked in some silent argument — an argument they’d clearly been fighting for a quarter century.

Trying to break the already strained mood, Lea stood and extended her hand. She was struck that Robert O’Connell was nowhere nearly as tall as his son — was barely taller than his daughter — and was narrow-shouldered, unlike either of them. But those eyes, and the square chin: those proclaimed him as their father. “Mr. O’Connell, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Lea. I’m… I’m Sean’s fiancée.” The last word seemed to weigh down Lea’s tongue as it left her mouth.

Those pale blue eyes widened and that look of wonder returned. “His…?” He took her hand. “The pleasure is mine —” He stopped, staring at the ring on Lea’s finger. The ring that he had given Violet for their engagement. He continued to shake Lea’s hand, but he shot an arctic look toward his estranged wife.

“We… haven’t exactly announced it,” Lea whispered.

Robert O’Connell left his hand in hers, but it was if she had ceased to exist. “You are my wife, damn it, Violet. I gave you this ring. How could you?”

Violet looked up at her husband, a portion of her usual dignity back in place. “You are my husband, Rob, and always will be, no matter what the court said today. But you and I both know that ours has always been a marriage in name only.”

“Violet.” He said the name like a curse. His hand tightened on Lea’s. “I don’t give a good God damn what the Supreme Court has to say. Nothing they say will change the fact that you offended me and the Lord when you —”

“Supreme Court?” Lea mostly wanted to derail the argument, but she honestly had no idea what they were talking about.

“Mama?” Kirsten asked.

“I’m a lesbian, dear. I have always loved women, though I wouldn’t allow myself to see what that meant until your father and I were nearly ten years married. I’m sorry —”