“I got these tickets to tour the Kindred Mother Ship,” she’d told Brandi excitedly, about a month before. “I won ‘em on an on-line poetry contest. You have to come with me.”
“A poetry contest?” Brandi hadn’t even tried to keep the disbelief out of her voice. The only reason her cousin had passed remedial senior English had been because Brandi had tutored her and had practically written most of her papers. Crystal didn’t know grammar from a graham cracker and Brandi, who was a confirmed book lover herself, doubted her cousin had read so much as a comic book her whole life.
In other words, Crystal was no Sylvia Path.
“Yeah, a poetry contest. Think you’re the only one who can write?”
Crystal arched an eyebrow and put one hand with its long, manicured fingernails on her bony hip. She always seemed to have money for fill-ins on her nails even when her gas tank was dry and there was nothing but month-old curdled milk in her fridge.
“Well, you have to admit—” Brandi started but her cousin cut her off.
“I saw a little flower
Open to the sky
The bloom was oh-so-pretty
It almost made me cry,” she recited. “That was my poem. There’s more—I talked about the clouds and the sun some too—but anyway it won. It won, Brandi! And now I got these tickets and you gotta come with me!”
Brandi had tried to put her off. She’d sworn to herself to see less of her cousin if possible—where Crystal went, trouble always followed and Brandi had had enough trouble to last her a lifetime. But Crystal had begged and pleaded and eventually Brandi had given in. Not because she was wild to see the Kindred Mother Ship—although it did sound interesting—but because Crystal finally wore her down.
Also, it turned out that her cousin had used Brandi’s name and information to enter the contest in the first place.
“Crystal!” she had exclaimed. “That’s freaking identity theft! What other information did you give them?”
“Nothing important,” Crystal protested. “Only your address and phone number. Oh, and your email address. But I didn’t give your real one—just your work one, okay?”
Brandi had been hard pressed to hold back a sigh.
“So that’s why I’m suddenly getting so much spam e-mail at work! I swear, Crystal, I keep getting these mails about penis extension pills and sex toys and crap like that. The other day I clicked on one by accident and my boss, Mr. Grabbar, saw it!”
“Mr. Grabb-ass, you mean?” Crystal had smirked at her. “What did he do about it?”
“Threatened to write me up, of course.” Brandi sighed. “Of course, he implied that if I let him feel my ass the write-up could just magically ‘go away.’”
“What a jerk!” Crystal said indignantly. “I hope you told him to fuck-off.”
Brandi sighed again. “Of course I didn’t say that, Crystal. I need this job and I worked really hard to get it. I managed to put him off but it wasn’t easy.”
“Well, just say the word when you’re tired of dealing with that dick-head and I’ll get Ricky down at the club to hire you,” her cousin offered. “He keeps a loaded shotgun behind the counter and don’t let nobody grab our asses.” She giggled. “Not unless we want ‘em to, anyway. I swear, I had the cutest customer the other night…”
And she was off and running.
Brandi had suppressed another sigh. The #MeToo movement had passed her cousin by completely. Not that Crystal cared. She was happy with the life she lived and she never seemed inclined to try to do or be more.
That was probably the real reason Brandi had agreed to go with her cousin. Maybe, just maybe, a trip to the Kindred Mother Ship would be the one thing that finally made Crystal start questioning her choices and looking for more, the way Brandi was herself …
Right…keep telling yourself that, whispered a voice in her head as she faced her cousin in front of the restricted area on the Kindred Mother Ship they were not supposed to go into. It sounds really noble and self-sacrificing but tell the truth and shame the devil, as Grandma Ida used to say. You didn’t come to the Mother Ship for the noble purpose of broadening your horizons or helping Crystal gain a new world view…you came up here for the men. And for the possibility of no-strings-attached sex.
And that was the ugly truth of it. When Crystal had told her she knew of a place on board the Mother Ship where a girl could have one-time-only, anonymous sex with a Kindred, Brandi had finally relented and agreed to come with her on the tour.
Brandi supposed that might sound awful to an outsider—somebody who didn’t know her life. But she hadn’t had sex in literally years. Not since Earl had been shipped down the river and the good Lord knew, Earl hadn’t been much in the sack department to start with.