The Two Sisters

In the set, her counterpart is never naked, always shown with her dress pulled up above her waist and/or pulled down from her breasts. Here she is oh so definitely naked, white as the whitest paint. He feels himself stir again. How long has it been since he's come even twice in such quick succession? These days his normal rate is once a month.

"Here, have a sip," she lifts the bottle. He takes it and tips it and takes an eager gulp, perhaps it will clear his head as if it were fresh air. It's exciting to think that her lips were just on it.

"I could fuck them both," he thinks with amazement.

"Here sit, you must be tired. I myself was never much of a walker, the quarter mile up the road to church was my limit, and now!" she laughs and shakes her head. "Sit! I won't bite." She pats the sleeping bag. The air mattress makes a hollow sound.

He hesitates, some lingering spark in his brain tells him to get going, but her sister is out there, and he'd have to walk passed her and he feels a reluctance. From this part of the cave he cannot see Emily but he is acutely conscious of her out there in the morning sun.

There's a splash outside the cave. "Emily loves to swim," Mary says. She has the little superior smile of a fond older sister when talking of her little sister's activities.

He does sit, just below the ridge her legs, covered below the knee, make in the sleeping bag. He stares at those knees and her thighs, now so close.

"Won't she be late for work?" he asks, if Emily goes, it will be easy for him to be on his way too.

"Oh no, she doesn't really start until 10. She just likes doing some things early. She says the world feels clean. They don't care as long as things get done. She's an assistant manager," she says proudly, "She started as a waitress."

"Now Sam," she says, "Where are you from?"

He tells her and she sighs, "So far!"

"Your sister says you had an accident?" he asks awkwardly.

She waves her hand dismissively, "My sister and I both actually, we made a mistake and paid the consequences. I seem to be affected more."

"Now Sam," she goes on, "Do you have a family? You see, I like to know something about my Emily's men."

He feels a little spark of excitement at being included in that set. He imagines Emily swimming, the sun on her and glinting and fracturing on the surface of the water about her.

He says "No, no children," in a low voice. He feels briefly like shit, but then the feeling vanishes. Those children are just a complication here. They hardly exist. He's inventing himself a better cleaner existence.

"A wife though," she says.

"Yes," he admits.

"And not separated."

"No."

"But distant. Even when she's close?"

He nods.

"That's alright," she says lightly, then with a little laugh, "We're used to that."

It's a strange thing to say. He looks at her face.

"Never mind," she says, "It was just a little private joke. Since you're from so far away, it hardly matters."

He almost says that he comes here often enough for business but does not. It must be a dream he thinks and even if it isn't, tomorrow he will certainly remember it as a such.

His hand is on her thigh, moving lightly up and down her flank. She is the sort of girl who calls out for caressing.

With this sister he feels at ease. With Emily, he is on edge, worried about his performance, worried about being amusing, worried about his age. Mary is accepting, uncritical.

Mary takes his hand, hers is soft and round and delicate. She pulls him to her, puts a hand to his cheek and guides his face to hers, he does all the traveling. She doesn't have the hunger her sister has. It's like she likes it, but it's really for him that she's doing it. He thinks, "Why not."

"That's nice," she says, "You're nice."

He feels tired now. His walk and conversation with Emily and his exertions suddenly take their toll. She sees his eyes droop. "I like that!" she says with a laugh, "It's rude to fall asleep in company!"

He sees those fine breasts puddling on her chest, shaking when she moves, and he feels no desire to fondle them. He doesn't even want to be doing what he's doing.

He kisses her as in a dream. She squirms under him, pushes his pants back down to his knees. He feels her fingers on his sex. He is surprised to feel that it is hard. She gets him started and he presses in, gravity doing most of the work.

"She is so comfortable," he thinks. His face is buried in her hair, his chest flat on hers, it is like sex in a dream. It's been a long time since he's woken up from such a dream, semen on his pajamas needing to be cleaned up. He feels he could wake up now with just a little effort. There seems to be no effort in him anywhere. She shifts under him, making an amused complaining sound.

He moves lazily in and out, just once, then rests in her, on her, again. He would be content if that moment complete with his distant half conscious arousal could stretch out forever.

Unbidden he remembers the last of that set of pictures. He'd clicked and stared and felt sick. The very last shows the broad young man standing on a scaffold, a couple of suited guys standing by. There are numerous guards. The gallows is in a gray institutional courtyard, no green anywhere. The young man is weeping.

To stop the memories he starts working harder, pulling in and out with some vigor. The woman under him makes a soft satisfied sound.

On the row above there is one of Mary waiting by the large spreading tree. The corn field green behind her. She has a hand absently on the stomach of her demure brown dress.

The next shows her greeting her lover. There is her look of horror when she sees the knife.

He slams in and out of the woman as hard as he can. "It must be a nightmare", he thinks, "I will wake soon."

He feels Mary tense and shudder under him. There is no release for him. He cannot stop the remembrance. Why did he look at the blasted things? He had been in a strange numb state, unable to believe that such a fine set with such lovely images could end in such way!

There's one of Emily emerging from the corn. Stepping out from the green rows into the sun.

There's the one of Emily arriving. Her ghastly look of amazement at her sister's bloody body, the amazement looks strangely like the expressions of pleasure she wears in many of the earlier shots. She sees the man, his clothes bloody, his knife bloody.

He sees Mary's eyes looking up at him from so close. He realizes that the horror of the pictures excited him then and excites him now. He feels sick. He keeps working. Longing for a climax that he knows won't come.

Mary shudders under him again. She makes a low whimper of pleasure.

There's the one of the man standing by both bodies, his shirt is ripped, there's a bloody scratch on his face, he is bending as if he's been kicked and kneed.

Mary's hands are under his shirt, her fingernails rake his back. He keeps working, desperate for release.

He tries to think of something, anything else but cannot.

There is the one of the man dragging Emily's body into the cave. A pick and a shovel are thrown on the ground at the entrance.

There is the one of the man naked in the river. Washing himself. His clothes spread on the bank to dry. The image would be almost bucolic if it weren't the preceding and his blackening eye.

There is one of men and dogs. The dogs straining at the entrance of the cave. Again if he'd chanced on it first, he'd've thought it was a nice hunting scene, maybe there's a bear in the cave, he'd've closed it and surfed off elsewhere.

There is the one of the man on his knees beside the plainer older woman, the one shown way back at the beginning, standing prim beside the man on the church steps. Here she is standing looking down at him with a look of anger, disgust and bitter jealousy. Two policemen are at the door.

Mary bucks under him, shudders convulsively and utters a suppressed cry. Her head is turned to the side and her eyes are closed, her breathing through parted lips gradually becomes easy. Tentatively he stops moving. He feels his need but is exhausted.

He struggles out of the cave. It is so bright out. His eyes hurt as they adjust, the greens and the blues and the whites are supersaturated. The ground feels unsteady.

Emily lies lazily in the water near the far bank where it's shallow, on a broad ledge of rock. Her blond hair flows away from her head. She is looking at the sky. The stream laps over her legs, but her chest is out, wet and gleaming in the air. Her arms are under her head, water white about them.

"Come in and get cleaned up," she calls.

He turns and stumbles along the path. He hears her laugh and he hears splashing behind him.

He comes to the embankment. Just before it is a large tree, from its halo of white fragrant blossoms he knows it's an apple. Once it must've stood by itself. Now it is hemmed and crowded by a junky growth of brambles and low maples.

Emily stands just before it. How she got ahead of him he doesn't know. Her skin is wet, in the patch of sun she looks like she's wrapped in cellophane. Wet, her hair hangs obediently about her shoulders.

"Sit for a minute and catch your breath, you look quite wild."

"I have to go."

"You've time."

He looks at his watch and is astonished to see that she's right. It's only just 9. He really should go. If the building he's going to doesn't have a shower! He sags with exhaustion.

She takes his hand, hers is cool, wet and clean. His is dirty and hot.

She steps through the brambles, they claw at his clothes, but seem to miss her. In the cool shade, the aroma of apple blossoms all around, he sinks onto the leafy moss. His back to the trunk.

She sits on his lap, leaning against him. "When I was a little girl," she says, "I used to come here. It was a farm then. I would climb up into this old tree and lie on a branch, my feet bare, and eat apples until I got sick and threw up. Those were real apples, not like the ones you get in the supermarket, they had this crisp sun bright sour taste. They were hot from the sun, it'd be August. They had little chunks bit out by birds, either for the fruit or for the worms I don't know. You had to watch out. The apples did have worms. I'd tell Mary it was the ones in which you didn't actually find a worm that you needed to worry about, 'cause you'd probably just eaten it. I'd throw apples at her and she'd throw them at me. Our mother would yell at us when we got home, our clothes a mess. I hit Mary a lot more than she hit me," she says with satisfaction.

He is half asleep. Her hand undoing his zipper and slipping through his underpants doesn't really rouse him. He's aroused down there none the less. She works onto him. Tighter for having been in the cool river. She puts her hands on her shoulders and begins pulling herself up and down. His eyes open and close. When open he admires how her breasts bounce and jiggle, how her shoulders and the muscles in her arms work, how her face sometimes looks up, sometimes looks down, sometimes leans to his so their lips can brush. He admires the way the sun slowly drys her hair and it too begins to bob and float about her shoulders. When his eyes are closed he thinks he's in heaven.

She twists on him when her pleasure hits, clamps about his cock, and she buries her face in his shirt so her cries won't carry up the embankment, over the guard rail and onto the parking lot.

After a moment she feels down between her legs, feels where he enters her and finds he's still hard. She chuckles with satisfaction and slowly starts up again.

When he comes it is sudden and catches him unawares. He tenses. The act hurts. "Over strained plumbing" he thinks, then his eyes close.

He opens them with a jerk, it seems only an instant has passed. She is sitting beside him, her back against the trunk, her side leaning against him, peacefully smoking a cigarette, watching bees in the flowers above them. You can't hear their buzz because of the highway sounds which swell about about them.

With a knot of fear, he looks at his watch. It reads 9:30. He sags with relief and jumps up. He slings his laptop bag over his shoulder and looks down at her.

She is dry and relaxed and so naked. She looks up at him with an expression he can't read.

What can he say? He doesn't believe that it has happened. He says goodbye. He knows she won't meet him that afternoon. He clambers up the rocks, careful of the thorns and steps over the rail. He sees that the office building across the lot isn't the one he wants, he'll have to look further. In front of the building stands a small group of smokers, talking in the sun. They are intent on each other and don't notice him.

He turns and looks back. He sees her running away along the path. She is light and fast. From the parking lot the path can't even be seen, it all looks like weeds and bracken. He sees just a last hint of white and then hears a muffled splash as she dives into the water. He turns and heads across the asphalt for the road.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Five years after that morning she works as a receptionist for the mortgage company that occupies the first floor of that building. It is a beautiful day. She stands on the front sidewalk, smoking a cigarette and talking office politics with a couple other smokers. Two Canadian geese and 3 little goslings peck and clip at the grass near by. The day before there'd been 4 little goslings which has caused some expressions of concern and sympathy.

On the far side of the parking lot a man clambers up the rocks and onto the asphalt. The others don't notice this strange behavior, their backs are to the parking lot. She does. She's been waiting for it. She watches without expression as the man turns and looks back into the woods. She watches as he hurries passed the office building and turns onto River Rd.

An hour or so later she is out again.

"The poor little thing," her companion says, "I wonder what happened to it."

"A fox or a cat," she says.

"It's so horrible. It was so cute yesterday."

"It's parents and siblings don't seems so concerned," she says, drawing on her cigarette. Indeed, the geese are hungrily clipping away as if no tragedy has taken place.

"You're right, heartless, nasty things." Then she says, "Now isn't that odd."

A hot disheveled man half runs half stumbles along the edge of the parking lot. They watch as he gets to the far end, clambers over the guard rail and vanishes, possibly tumbling from sight.

"Where's he going, you suppose?" her friend asks.

She shrugs and draws on her cigarette

"There's nothing back there but brambles and shit," her friend continues.

"Oh I don't know," she says, "It's kind'a pretty along the river."

Her friend looks at her like she's lost her mind. "There's a river back there?"

She nods.

They start talking about a salesman who's been hitting on her friend. Her friend says, "You know, I don't really like him and I am seeing a lot of Joe. I told him he should give you a shot."

"Thanks."

"Do you good. You never get out. Or you never talk about it anyhow."

She smiles, "Well, maybe I'll let him try."

Her friend says, "Will you look at that!"

A police car drives into the parking lot and comes toward them, its lights flashing. The patrolman in the passenger seat rolls down his window. Without waiting for a question her companion points to where the white of the apple tree can be seen beyond the asphalt. Where the man'd disappeared a moment ago.

The patrol car accelerates along the parked cars and stops at the end. The two patrolmen get out and vanish over the edge into the trees. Shortly they reappear with the man walking docilely between them. The man gets in back, the two patrolmen in front. As the car glides down the driveway, the man sitting in back sees her. He begins shouting and waving and pounding on the glass, though the two young women can hear nothing.

"Wonder what that was all about," says her friend, "We've something to talk about at lunch now for sure. Wish I'd said 'He went that'a way.'"