Excerpt from
In Deep Waters 1: Cruising the Seas
© Karin Kallmaker, 2008
No portion of
this work may be reproduced by any means
without express written consent of the publisher.
From "Twenty-One" inspired by the novel
One Degree of Separation
“Swear to freakin’ god, look at this place!” Liddy did a little dance as she ogled the big roulette wheel, the recessed area where poker tables were lined up like green jewels, the gleaming rows of slot machines, and over there they were playing baccarat, craps, everything. “Kid. Candy store. Me!”
Marian laughed and gave her an indulgent look. “I’ll go to my workshop and you play the tables. But stick within your budget, okay?”
“I know.” She gave Marian her most innocent look. “I can stretch a dollar a long, long way.” She glanced around—they were a long way from the openness of Iowa City—and there seemed to be plenty of coupled up women nearby. With a resounding smooch she bounded away to the change machine. Video poker was her first stop.
Twenty minutes and twenty dollars later, she thought if she wanted to just throw her money away she could play Keno. Buy an Edge or Top-Bottom ticket and kiss ten bucks good-bye. Or she could buy tickets to one of the many shows. The ones she could afford were likely still more entertaining than slot machines that ate her quarters like Marian’s dog ate kibble, and that included the Englebert Humperdinck imitators. She wished she could win something and afford tickets to Melissa or Madonna.
Banish that thought, she told herself. Feeling desperate to win attracted losing. It wasn’t logical, but it was true.
She had her employer’s hundred dollars, a gift for “research” Dana Moon had said. She was to spend it on blackjack, then write down every last impression she had of being an unskilled player at a middle stakes table.
Ten minutes later she tapped “Loser from loserville, that’s what it feels like” into her PalmPilot. Swear to freakin’ god, she’d never seen cards so bad. She’d had twelve, three times, and gotten a ten every hand. Nobody busts with twenty-two three times in a row, ka-ching, ka-ching. The dealer had looked a little chagrinned.
She glanced at her watch. Marian would be another hour at least. She would have gone along to watch her mostest favorite librarian participate on a panel discussion of cultural sensitivity in the labeling and display of young adult titles, but she was sort of banned from the proceedings because of last year. Not officially banned, but that idiot guy had so not known what he was talking about, and in her opinion any librarian who supported a censorship position ought to go to work at the department of motor vehicles alphabetizing license plates.
Marian had tried to calm her down after the altercation. “Liddy, honey, I know you love to ask questions, and I have never seen anyone who loves a good debate like you—”
Liddy had snarled in the general direction of petty fascists the world over. “Debate? I was kicking his ass, and if he calls you little lady one more time, I’m gonna kick his ass for real.”
“Honey, I know you feel strongly about it, and I know you really can kick his ass because I saw you get your black belt, but you can’t go around kicking the asses of the members of the board. Especially when you’re not a librarian and you aren’t even a paid attendee at the conference.”
When Marian was right, she was right, and Liddy had learned to accept it. And when she’d asked Liddy not to go into any of the sessions this year, and hinted she was just passing on a more or less official request, Liddy had promised to be good.
The panel was probably boring Marian out of her mind. She could hear her love right now explaining that librarians did not act in loco parentis, and that any so-called child with the wherewithal to find a book ought to be able to check that book out, and any parent who wanted to keep a firm grip on what their child was reading had the perfect recourse of not letting their child have their own card. It was that simple. But no, parents wanted to park their children at the library after school for a couple of hours, and then got upset when their children actually used the library to look up stuff that interested them. Number one search for males aged fifteen to eighteen was sex. Number two, sex. Number three, cars. Number four, cars and sex in cars.
So, she could see about making her next twenty dollars last an hour—unlikely—or she could think of something else to amuse herself.
Text messages were free, she thought. She punched up Marian’s number and asked her if she was able to get texts.
Marian replied her bit was over and she was seated in the audience and asked what was wrong. Liddy loved the economy of “done, off dais, okay?”
“1,” Liddy texted back, “A walk in a thunderstorm.”
“?”
“2 Your shirt soaked to your skin.” There was no reply and Liddy was pretty sure she had Marian’s attention. “3 My shirt soaked to my skin.”
Well, maybe she should play a little bit more video poker.
To the reader –
If you really enjoy something, I recommend doing it at least twice, especially if it involves partnering up with someone whose love of the results matches your own.
Working with Radclyffe is like finding
the perfect partner for tennis-one challenging enough to get you out of your
own zone, leading to the mutual goal of a fantastic volley. For this anthology,
she lobbed balls over the net and waited patiently to see if I could return
service. When I did, ooo baby, did we have fun!
Having collaborated before on In
Deep Waters 1 , we spent less time making sure we were in sync and more time
just plain playing. I hope readers are as amused and, err, excited as I am
by the results. Any resemblance of our characters to persons living are purely
coincidental. Let's just say that I suspected Radclyffe of having a twisted
and inspired sense of humor, and I wasn't wrong.
Speaking of characters, several of
mine from previous works make an appearance in this volume. With a librarian's
convention in town, "Twenty-One" of course makes Marian and Liddy
from One Degree of Separation a
natural choice. Brandy and Tess of "Lucky 7" first appeared in All
the Wrong Places. "Lucky 7" continues the storyline from
"Cruising Solo" in the first In
Deep Waters. Author Carolyn and her agent Alison, from Paperback
Romance, are attending the romance writer's convention, reaping the
rewards of fifteen years' pride in "Payout."
Though I want to say that such stories,
and the few other affectionate jokes in this volume, are all for the readers,
honesty demands that I admit that I love revisiting my old friends. I truly
hope that readers enjoy the results as much as I do.
Gambling is often compared to the
risks of love and relationships. I'm not sure why, since inherently gambling
means someone loses and someone wins, and the odds are always lopsided. So
while we play with the metaphor, it is flawed. In practice, writing with Radclyffe
about gambling, love and sex defies the metaphor completely, because everyone
comes out a winner.
-- Karin, January 2008
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In Deep Waters 2: Cruising the Strip
is a collaboration between Karin Kallmaker and Radclyffe, comprised of
lesbian erotica short stories set during the same Las Vegas convention
weekend.
Available from:
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