Chapter Text
It strikes Miranda as a last-ditch effort.
Last ditch.
What does that even mean? What is the hierarchy of ditches?
When Miranda had been a wayward adolescent and had arrived home past curfew, her mother had always shrieked,
“You couldn’t have found a pay phone and called to tell me you weren’t dead in a ditch somewhere?”
Was that the last ditch? Or was it the first ditch? Or some ditch in between? Was the last ditch totally unrelated to the ditch teen sluts might be found sex murdered in?
Was there some other meaning of ditch she’s been missing?
She pauses her useless etymological ruminations long enough to realize she’s packing her suitcase sloppily and inefficiently and in a way that will render most of her clothing wrinkled.
She groans and removes the last few garments that had been stuffed in haphazardly as she’d been distracted, surveys them.
Salvageable if treated correctly.
So she does, focusing on the perfect packing.
She gets careless again as she’s tossing personal hygiene items into a smaller bag. But they’re all self-contained, so she can afford to be thinking about something else:
She is aroused for no reason, and Stephen will not be home tonight.
Not that that has anything to do with her arousal. She cannot remember the last time she and Stephen were intimate. During their entire relationship—six months of courting and three years of marriage—they’d had sex maybe a dozen times, all tepid and uninspiring. The only time she’d climaxed had been when Stephen had been freshly clean shaven and she’d been just tipsy enough to convince him to perform cunnilingus, and she’d imagined he was the cute butch security girl at Elias-Clarke who had the same hair cut he did.
She’d been intensely attracted to Stephen when they’d first met in the lobby of their mutual lawyer’s office. She’d been there for a meeting about an HR complaint, and he’d been there for his recently deceased father’s trust, and they’d struck up a conversation.
He had been such a good listener and so kind to her and so handsome. He’s always so kind to her when he isn’t drinking. And he’s still so handsome even though he doesn’t satisfy her sexually and never has. That had always been a mystery to her. Usually initial attraction goes a long way for her, but they had just never clicked in the bedroom.
For several months now, she’d been bracing herself for divorce papers, but what had come instead had been,
“My mom’s having tax problems with her Christmas tree farm. The girls will be with their dad for the week. Come home with me.”
She’s never met Stephen’s family. When he talks about his kin it’s either sentimental and nostalgic or guarded and vague. Her parents are dead and she’s an only child and she’s never been shy about relaying this information, but it never segues into a deeper conversation as it usually does with a normal person. She knows more about Emily’s family just from what she’s overheard in passing, and she could list off a significant number of three generations of Nigel’s relatives. On the other end of the spectrum, she knows so much about her across the street neighbor Leona’s parents, cousins, and four ex-husbands she could probably write the family history from memory without touch-up interviews.
So it strikes Miranda as a particularly last-ditch effort to save their crumbling marriage.
She finishes with the toiletries and is halfway to the closet where she has a box of seldom used apparatuses tucked away, but then decides against it. She’s more tired than horny and figures she can give herself a quick orgasm during a commercial break of a rerun of Unsolved Mysteries, drink a couple glasses of Malbec, maybe rub another out if she feels like it, and be done with it.
It’s going to be a long week.
xxx
It’s taking an incredible amount of self-control not to disprove the claim that she is not, in fact, a snob.
The first—and really quite devastating—blow to her composure had been that when Stephen had said he was from Arkansas he had never specified exactly where, so she imagined he was from somewhere civilized, like Little Rock or Fayetteville or even Hot Springs, but instead of being picked up at Adams Field by a waiting sister or high school chum, they had rented a car to drive an hour on tiny, dangerously winding and steep blacktops with no shoulder, no railing, and poor visibility because of the tree overgrowth—and the winding and the steepness; and these were not just ditches to be found dead in but craggy precipices—to his hometown of Fiddler’s Knob.
She’d dated a violinist with the New York Philharmonic very briefly who would’ve gotten a kick out of this. Perhaps when this obviously ill-fated excursion is over and she and Stephen are divorced, she’ll call that woman for rebound sex. They hadn’t particularly liked each other, but the sex had been outstanding. She certainly wouldn’t mind handling that fiddler’s knob again.
She shakes herself out of that thought.
At least the town is cute—brick streets in the town square, many seemingly thriving local businesses, some very fine old houses. But once they’re out of the president streets and into the tree streets it’s a mixed bag of decent ranches, dilapidated Victorians, vacant lots with the remains of houses ravaged by fire or tornado or both, and single wides, which is not surprising or offensive for a small town in Arkansas.
The second blow is that they will not be staying in the charming looking bed and breakfast on Garfield Avenue but in Stephen’s mother’s farm house, which had originally been built circa 1850 and haphazardly and sometimes shoddily added onto several times throughout the years so the floors are uneven and it’s a veritable maze to traverse even without all the stumbling hazards from threshold to threshold, and it does not have central heat and air.
The guest room she is occupying—Stephen had informed his mother and younger sister who lives with his mother that Miranda will need her private space to work remotely; they do have Internet, fortunately—had come with a long list of instructions from Penelope, the sister, about how to cajole the radiator to produce just enough heat not to freeze to death in the middle of the night. Per Penelope, it will be uncomfortable either way, but if she turns it up too high, she’ll sweat through the sheets and there’s a risk of burning the entire house down.
This is all fairly reasonable.
Except that the dog—a preternaturally smart and dexterous mutt who had wandered up the gravel drive three years ago after presumably having been discarded in the country, information that had been relayed during the tour—is named Jefferson Davis, whom everyone calls Jeff, and he has taken an inexplicable liking to Miranda and will probably be opening her door at night and hopping into bed with her and sharing his fleas with her.
And also except that the farmhouse and the eighty acres of Christmas tree farm are located three quarters up a mountain where the county has not yet deigned give the residents street addresses. It is called Stubby Hill.
The dick jokes write themselves in these parts, Miranda thinks as she organizes her luggage. She doesn’t fully unpack, just hangs what needs to be hung in the small cedar closet and places her toiletry bag on top of the dresser. She doesn’t have an ensuite. There’s a guest bath somewhere a few funhouse corridors away, if she recalls correctly from Ma Tomlinson’s tour.
Is she really going to have to call this woman Ma Tomlinson? Surely she has a Christian name. Jefferson Davis is scratching at the door as she thinks this.
She doesn’t have time to fully bathe and remove the stale airplane air and ensuing grease her body had produced to protect itself from foreign contaminants because Penelope has scheduled them all for a welcome home dinner in town—at the restaurant adjoining that bed and breakfast Miranda covets. She’s brought a wet wash rag in with her for a whore’s bath, which is better than nothing.
She’s just patted her face dry and is reapplying her makeup as she allows all the other parts she’d wiped down to air dry as Jefferson Davis opens her door and barrels in.
“No,” she says softly as she turns her face over her shoulder to glare at him.
To her surprise, this works, and he sits next to her, looking up at her.
She turns back to continue with her makeup.
He licks her calf.
Again, she turns her head to look at him, says,
“No.”
He stops.
“I don’t suppose you might go shut the door?” she says.
He cocks his head, ears perked.
Miranda rolls her eyes at herself, at the dog, at the whole situation. She walks to the door and shuts it, returns to the vanity.
“I doubt you care if you by some Doctor Dolittle miracle understand on any level what I’m saying, Jefferson, but your namesake’s wife was a fascinating figure,” she says as she applies powder. “Varina Davis publicly supported her husband and secession, but she was privately anti-slavery, anti-war, and pro-women’s and—to use the era appropriate term—coloreds’ rights.”
The dog’s tail thumps rhythmically against the oak floor as he continues gazing up at Miranda.
Miranda pats him on the head as she crosses to her luggage.
The third blow that she’s turning over in her brain as she dresses is how viable could a Christmas tree farm be here? Why wouldn’t people just go out onto their own kinfolks’ acreage and cut down one of the abundantly growing evergreens themselves for free? Seems like a stupid business model. No wonder Ma Tomlinson is in financial trouble.
Miranda and Stephen and Penelope and Penelope’s perpetually sticky toddler—who also has taken a shine to Miranda and will sit nowhere but in Miranda’s lap—and Ma Tomlinson pile into Ma Tomlinson’s diesel dually and careen back into town, park half in two different spaces in front of the bed and breakfast.
Baby Girl—her name on her birth certificate is Mikayla but everyone calls her Baby Girl—clings to Miranda, says,
“Sit on Randa lap at supper!”
Miranda is very proud of herself that she does not toss the child aside and step on her throat with her four-inch stilettos.
At their designated table at the wood-paneled and red-vinyled restaurant adjoining the bed and breakfast, there’s a woman approximately Ma Tomlinson’s age, an attractive blonde woman approximately Stephen’s age, a man in overalls but also a tie approximately Stephen’s age, and a very pretty twenty-five-year-old-ish brunette who looks as exhausted and exasperated as Miranda feels.
The oldest woman locks eyes with Ma Tomlinson, says,
“Didn’t think you’d have the gall to show up here tonight.”
Ma Tomlinson scoffs, says,
“Oh please. If you think you’ve got any claim on my land, you’d better think again.”
“We’ll see what the survey says,” the other geriatric woman says.
“Ladies,” Stephen says. “There are bigger fish to fry.”
The man in overalls says,
“Yeah. Dwayne was killed over a dispute about a donkey.”
Oh for heaven’s sake. A donkey-induced murder on Stubby Hill on the outskirts of Fiddler’s Knob. It’s too much.
Miranda makes eye contact rather accidentally with the pretty young brunette and they simultaneously roll their eyes.
A whole backwoods verbal brawl ensues, during which the brunette and Miranda make a lot of increasingly heated eye contact. The brunette winks at her surreptitiously, and while Stephen and the overalls man—she’s sure they all exchanged names at some point, but she’s entirely unsure what any of those might have been—argue with a lot of menacing gesticulations, Miranda deposits the now thankfully sleeping Baby Girl onto the booth and slips out to the bathroom.
She’s splashing water onto the back of her neck when the pretty young brunette enters.
They lock eyes in the mirror.
“Don’t pretend you don’t want me to me to fuck you,” the brunette says.
“Wanting something and being willing to indulge in it are two different things. Besides, you’re someone else’s guest. It would be rude for me to—” Miranda starts.
“Oh hush. We’ve got limited time here. Take off your panties.”
For a reason Miranda cannot quite fathom, she does so, says,
“I would like to at least know the name of the person penetrating me. That child was yelling patty cake into my ear during introductions.”
“Andy.”
“No.”
“Andrea.”
“Better.”
Andrea laughs and presses Miranda gently against the counter.
“Hey hi I’m Andrea, colloquially Andy, and I’m gonna kiss you now.”
She leans in, but Miranda stills her with a hand at her collarbone.
“You do know I’m married to that man I was sitting next to, right?”
“That man who has not looked at you or touched you once all evening?”
“That’s the one.”
Andrea attempts to lean in again, but Miranda pushes her back once more:
“I was under the impression you were here with the blonde.”
“Under duress.”
“Her clothing is too tight for there to be a pistol concealed anywhere that I’m comfortable thinking about…”
Andrea laughs, says,
“I’m not a kidnappee. It’s just a last-ditch attempt to save the relationship.”
Andrea does not seem to register the stunned look on Miranda’s face at the phrase—which is not uncommon just coincidental—continues,
“I thought we were going to Branson, but instead she drags me into some Hatfield and McCoy Christmas tree farm drama. How can this weirdo place sustain not one but two Christmas tree farms? I was willing to give Fiddler’s Knob the benefit of the doubt for its dick joke name alone, not to mention that really cute old timey pharmacy with a gin-u-wine soda jerk downtown, but her brother’s all dressed up because he has a Klan meeting later in some Godforsaken location called Stubby Hill.”
Miranda snorts a laugh.
“I am currently residing on Rural Route 5 Stubby Hill just past the dilapidated one-room school house but not yet to the old Otis place. I hope they can’t tell I’m half Jewish.”
“Not with that WASPy-ass name of yours, but you do seem like the type to have slept with a black guy before.”
Miranda shrugs,
“So do you.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t. Can we have sex now before someone comes looking for us and tries to wrangle us into some white sheets?”
“Do they allow women in the Klan?”
“It’s the New South, sweetheart.”
Miranda laughs, and Andrea places a hand on her hip and snakes the other up her skirt.
Miranda yelps in surprise as Andrea goes straight for her vulva and presses her entire hand against her. Miranda fists Andrea’s blouse, braces herself on the counter with her other hand.
“This is a nice surprise,” Andrea says into her ear, pushing the heel of her hand against her clit. “What were you thinking about instead of listening to The Ballad of Ma Tomlinson and Big Sue Stewart?”
Before she can respond, Andrea is kissing her somehow with the exact amount of tongue she likes. She hasn’t kissed anyone without stubble in many years—in fact, that black guy she’d had sex with couldn’t grow facial hair to save his life and had the softest skin she’d ever felt on a man. Not as soft as Andrea’s though, and his technique had been less polished.
She moans around Andrea’s tongue as Andrea strokes her, seemingly experimentally.
Andrea withdraws her tongue and kisses across her jaw and then tongues down her neck.
“You never answered my question.”
“Was I supposed to sign my response into your chest à la Helen Keller?”
Andrea chuckles and bites her earlobe, circles her opening with her fingertips and drags them up slowly to do the same to her clit.
Miranda bucks her hips at that. She’s already quite worked up. She’d fallen asleep before she’d finished herself off last night, and she’d woken up slightly hungover and slightly more annoyingly and inexplicably aroused than she’d been the day before.
What had been the question? Ah yes.
“Ma Tomlinson’s sworn enemy can’t weigh more than one hundred pounds soaking wet. Why on earth would she be called Big Sue?”
Andrea laughs, says probably faux incredulously,
“That’s what got you this wet?”
She punctuates this with another fingers’ journey through her folds to her vagina. Miranda moans, then,
“No. That’s a separate inquiry. As I mentioned, I did not have the capacity to register or retain any names exchanged at the top of the evening. Except for the baker’s man. His name is Paddy Cake, of course, but he is not a new acquaintance, so I don’t think that counts.”
Andrea laughs again and suddenly enters her. Miranda groans, moves her hand from the counter to the back of Andrea’s neck.
“This ok?” Andrea says into her ear, fingers unmoving inside her.
“Very. Although I did hear a rumor you wanted to fuck me before Paddy Cake’s best friend Baby Girl realizes she’s no longer drooling on my thousand dollar Gucci blouse and seeks to rectify the situation.”
“Rumor substantiated,” Andrea says, starting up a languid rhythm. “Although I did appreciate that Baby Girl kept pulling at your neckline in such a way as to give me a very good view down your blouse. Dinner and a show. Better than Branson, and I don’t say that lightly.”
Miranda laughs and then pulls Andrea in for another kiss, and it’s a slower, deeper kiss this time with Miranda in charge of it. Andrea shifts her weight and speeds up her thrusting, and Miranda’s hips rocking into Andrea’s hand and tongue exploring Andrea’s mouth follow her lead.
It’s a little surreal that the best sex she’s had in years is fully clothed, standing up, with a woman she does not know in the bathroom of a restaurant that serves fried alligator in Fiddler’s Knob, Arkansas, while her husband engages in a decades old land dispute with sundry knights, dragons, and wizards mere yards away.
Andrea’s mouthing at her neck and unbuttoning her blouse to glide a hand into her bra and cup her breast and skim a nipple and flicking her clit with her thumb now, and it all feels so good, but she needs more.
She squeezes the back of Andrea’s neck, slithers the hand at Andrea’s collarbone down to enclose around her wrist. She—a little reluctantly, but it’s necessary for this maneuver—pulls Andrea’s fingers out of her and then rucks up her skirt so she can more easily hop up to sit on the edge of the counter.
She guides Andrea’s hand back between her legs, says,
“So. Big Sue?”
Andrea blinks a few times, seemingly in incomprehension, but then her face shows clarity and she’s immediately again pumping into her, saying,
“Right, that. Although she’s tiny, she’s Big Sue because her daughter is Lil Sue.”
“Ah,” Miranda says, and it’s a rejoinder as much as it’s a grunt at just how right Andrea’s fucking her.
Andrea adds a finger and skims Miranda clit fast and feather-light, and Miranda’s clenching, jutting her hips, chasing the orgasm she knows is imminent. She’s hot all over and tingling and clutching at Andrea’s C7 and tricep of the arm that is not involved in fucking her so hard and deep and fast now.
So, so good at the perfect angle. Exquisite fucking. Reaching into her and pulling out the melody line of pleasure with clitoral stimulation descant. Counterpoint working her into a frenzy.
But even as Andrea’s fingers inside her and at her clit are sending her, she remembers she still has yet to answer Andrea’s question, chokes out,
“For the record, I have been baseline… concupiscent… for several days for no discernible reason. And then you looked at me the way you did throughout ‘supper,’ as the evening meal is called here.”
“Yeah, I figured as much. Just wanted to hear you say it,” Andrea rasps into her ear as she adds pressure to Miranda’s clit and adds another finger.
They kiss, then, and it’s wet and sloppy, and Andrea doubles down with her thumb on Miranda’s clit.
Miranda climaxes.
It’s the most intense orgasm she’s experienced in quite a while.
Rather dazedly she says,
“Shall I take care of you, as well?”
Andrea beams at her, says,
“Nope. No time for that. You’ll catch me next time.”
Miranda raises a questioning eyebrow.
Andrea’s washing her hands as she says,
“We’re both here for at least a week, right? Surely we’ll run into each other again.”