Butterfly Weed

Abileth, 2027

My mother always wanted the world for me.

Haute cuisine. Symphony. Opera. Fine arts.

That wasn't the world I cared about, but I was a good daughter, and I never declined her invitations. I didn't miss her cultured life when I moved down to Angels, but when I returned to care for her, saw her diminished, knew I would never attend another orchestral performance with her, something shifted.

My disinterest in the arts evaporated with her health. In our last months together, I spent hours each day watching concerts with her or doing virtual gallery tours, all through a laptop propped up on her sickbed.

As the end approached, I begged her for guidance. I lacked her refined taste, her ear, her eye. Where would I go, without her, to experience those wonders she'd tried for so long to teach me to love?

"Keep an eye out for this one," she said, tapping on the screen.

I frowned at the image. It seemed to me an absolutely ordinary landscape, oil on canvas, pine trees and granite boulders around Emerald Bay in Lake Edge. I couldn't glean what was so special about it. But I didn't need to understand. It was too late to learn how to form my own judgments. All I needed was my mother's instruction, tucked away behind my eyes, behind my ears, behind my tongue, where I would remember it whenever I tasted the world she'd fought so hard to leave me.

After it was all taken care of, when I was back in Angels, living out of boxes because it was too painful to unpack, I made myself leave my apartment at least once a week. Sometimes I stretched and made it all the way to a grocery store. Often it was just the short stumble to the 7-Eleven down the block.

But on nights like tonight, when dogs barked and firetruck sirens wailed and the sky was stained black long before sunset, I felt bolder. My own grief felt natural, comfortable almost, at home in a world of disaster and impending end. I would dress in shades of tar and crow and put on my ghoulish face and venture out into society, chasing what remnants I could of my mother in the pre-apocalyptic revels of the upper class.

And that's how I ended up at the Nouglas Sharpe exhibit at the Getty, tracing the path of his brush across landscapes that were anything but ordinary.

My mother would no doubt have had the language to describe the difference that I—not saw, but felt, knew deep in my soul, as I dragged my eyes across panel after panel. 

I had no access to that vocabulary.

In its place, I simply developed a naive mental model of my sensation of the art, and for some reason that mental model looked like a woman. Much like me, that woman was in her early forties, and sad, in love with another woman, one she could never have.

The woman in my head appeared in all of Sharpe's work, peeking out of his trees and bathing in his lakes and floating through his clouds. 

I wondered if she had a name, if Sharpe himself was aware of her. The wall labels simply named each piece "F 37" or "F 92" or "F 60."

Maybe F was a new shorthand for "Untitled."

(I once asked my mother why contemporary artists named so few of their paintings. "Why are they so lazy?" She'd smiled, softly. "It is the greatest hubris to bestow a name." We were at the de Young in Golden Gate Park. It was the summer before senior year. "You never know when your creation might pick another." I remember scoffing at her high-handed delivery, but teenage me did not yet know how malleable identity could be.)

I picked my way through a few more of these paintings, each brimming with Sharpe's invisible woman, before I turned a corner and came face to face with her embodied apparition. 

I stopped, as did she, each blocking the other's progress, and for a moment I simply stared. How had she stepped from the canvas into the gallery?

"Excuse me," she said, face shifting into worried sympathy.

I scrambled out of her way, unable to bear the weight of her expression. I knew I was unwell. I didn't need this figment to remind me. Just as I began to reconsider the safety of my grief in this decadent house of art, my toes turning instinctively toward the tram back to the parking lot, my gaze danced from one ghost to another: on the arm of Sharpe's invisible woman, tall, thin, blonde, masked and dressed in paisley, was Portia.

Of all the places.

Of all the times.

I knew better than to address wraiths without proper preparation, and anyway, I had no business reaching for her. We had never been friends, had never been anything but client and contractor. When I'd left her behind, along with Angels and every other vestige of my old life, I'd known it was good-bye.

So why, when her eyes caught mine, did she stop walking?

"Abi," she whispered.

Her hand slipped from the arm of her companion, who turned to size me up.

"You're—you're back." Her voice was more open, more her. I was transfixed. Portia furrowed her brow. "How's your mother's health?"

Maybe it was because I hadn't actually spoken with another human in weeks. It's amazing how far you can get with nods and gestures when you still have one foot in the underworld. But I just stood there, unable to respond, unable to say anything. I didn't even shake my head.

Portia didn't ask any other questions.

She slipped down her mask, folded her arms around me, and touched her lips to my forehead.

They spirited me away.

First they called a service to get my car driven to their place. Then they ushered me to where they'd parked. Portia's companion—Frankie, apparently—took the wheel, while Portia cuddled me in the back seat.

They stopped by Taco Bell on the way, when my only response to the question of whether I'd eaten was a low rumble from my midsection. "What do you want?" Portia asked me, softly, and when I couldn't reply Frankie smiled in the rearview and said, "she's a Noug fan, I'll get his order."

When the food was placed in my lap I just looked at it.

"You've lost so much weight," Portia said, in that near-ethereal new voice of hers. I'd almost fist-fought my aunts over similar comments, but from Portia it felt less like a judgment of the previous world and more like a beacon from the next.

In the pitch darkness of smoke-choked Angels, the road was the river, Frankie's car the boat, Portia my psychopomp, Crunchwrap Supreme the pomegranate that would seal me deep beneath the earth. This was not a hard fate to accept: drawn to my demise by beautiful women.

I pulled the paper back, raised Death to my lips, and took a bite.

The shift was painless enough. Just a little drop back into my body. I phased into sync with my chaperones, felt more fully Portia's hand on my knee, heard more clearly the 80s city pop streaming from the car's speakers. The Taco Bell tasted like Taco Bell.

"Thank you," I said.

"She talks," laughed Frankie.

"Be nice," Portia chided her, grip tightening on my knee.

"Sorry, sorry." Frankie stopped at a red light. "You're back with us, then?"

I nodded. I was freed from my strange in-between, released into agency in this afterlife fantasy. I ate another several bites of my food. Portia dug into her burrito.

"If you want to tell us where you live, we can still drop you off," Frankie offered.

Portia made a disgruntled noise around a mouthful of food, and I shook my head. I assumed it was a false offer, anyway. How could I go back? I'd been unanchored for so long. I finally had a direction, a velocity.

When I'd eaten half the food they'd ordered me, I folded the wrapper back up.

"I guess Noug can really pack it in," Frankie laughed. "Don't worry about finishing it."

"Good job eating," Portia said, a tender whisper that inverted the dynamic we'd had in all our paid encounters. "Good girl."

Just as I was beginning to wonder if this might be it, forever—the endless road beneath the endless black sky—Frankie turned the car onto a side street I'd found just once, via GPS. I recognized Portia's house as we pulled into the driveway, an image from dreams too sad to count as nightmares.

"There's a guest room," Portia was saying, "if you need to sleep." But neither of them was tired, I was assured. "We could watch something, or catch up, or, I—I don't know, I haven't really... been through what you're going through."

"I'd love to get to know the famous Abi," Frankie said. "But yeah, if you need to rest..."

If I chose rest, would that be the end? Eternal slumber, release from it all? Would talking to my guides simply delay that oblivion? I dithered in their foyer, and then a sensation I wasn't used to feeling so clearly bubbled up inside me. I needed to pee.

"Bathroom?" I asked.

"Just down here," Frankie said, showing me the door.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror, then paused to properly examine my reflection. I looked no different from when I'd left my apartment. Tired. Human. Me. The recessed light over the sink flickered, and I laughed. Me and my imagination! Women in Nouglas Sharpe's paintings, Portia wanting to hold me, some horribly overwrought fantasy of Hades as I did something so mundane as allowing myself to be taken home by a couple.

Surely they'd be tired of my shit in short order. I relieved myself, washed my hands, and adjusted my bangs.

When I returned from the bathroom, Frankie was pulling unbaked cookies out of the freezer and Portia was making three mugs of hot chocolate.

"Hey," I said.

"Hi," smiled Portia.

She was different, so different. But despite the softening of her face, the swelling of her breasts, the falling away of the invisible beast that had once pressed her shoulders into that tragic queer slump, she looked at me with the same heat she'd had two years ago.

"I don't really... know how to act here," I admitted, lingering in the kitchen threshold.

"Any way you want to," Frankie laughed as the oven reached temp.

"I guess... proper introductions may be in order." Portia finished pouring the milk and wiped her hands on a kitchen rag. "Abi—is Abi still good?" I nodded. "My name is Portia Bitters. This is my wife, Franklynne."

Frankie smiled and waved. "Huge fan of your work."

"My... work?"

"You know." She crossed the kitchen and put an arm around Portia's waist. "You treated my girl well." 

Portia blushed.

Was I supposed to blush?

The last time I'd seen Portia, I'd all but admitted I'd fallen for her. Was that part of "treating Frankie's girl well?" What about disappearing without a trace, leaving Portia without the strength she was clearly drawing from my indulgence of her feminization fantasies?

Even if I weren't floundering in grief and half-life, I had no social script for this situation. Taken home by the sex worker whose services I'd once engaged—and her wife? To what end? They'd offered me sleep, entertainment, company. What did they want?

Portia recognized my unease. She stepped forward and pressed a mug into my hands. "Will you let me fuss over you this time, Abi?"

I nodded, and she leaned her head on my shoulder and exhaled a barely audible "thank you."

I let Portia escort me to the living room, where she sat me down on the couch, drew a thin blanket over my lap, and curled up against me. Frankie sat opposite us in a well-worn armchair. I kept staring at her, but seeing Sharpe's landscapes.

"What is it?" Frankie asked. "Not that there's anything wrong with looking."

"It's going to sound stupid."

Portia caressed my arm reassuringly, and Frankie shook her head. "Stupid has its ways."

"I... saw you." I felt warm. Maybe it was the cocoa. "In the paintings."

"Not stupid at all," Portia purred. Exquisite to feel her against me again, even in such odd circumstances.

Frankie grinned. "I'm the model, after all."

"The... model?" I racked my brain for my mother's words. "But the exhibit wasn't... um, figurative?"

A timer went off, and Frankie stood. "That'll be the cookies. I hope you like oatmeal."

As much as I liked anything, I thought, in the brief space of time before Portia nuzzled my neck and planted a quick peck right below my ear. No, I didn't like oatmeal quite as much as I liked that. "Portia..."

"I don't want to make you uncomfortable," she murmured, taking my mug and placing it on the coffee table. "But I've missed you, and if you don't ask me not to I am going to do things to you."

I clenched my teeth as old embers stirred. "In front of your wife?"

"If you want."

"What if I'm not sure?"

"Then the cookies can wait."

I was not accustomed to this assertiveness from Portia, though it was undercut some by the way she leaned on me like a self-important cat. It was my own vulnerability that threw me off most. I'd never felt so exposed with her, except in our final moments. I had paid her to hand me control, and I had exercised that control quite well. This... other thing, being beset by her on unfamiliar ground... it was new, and surprising, and, I found, as I reclined into the cushions and she put a hand on my thigh, desperately welcome.

And yet.

"No."

Portia pulled back in a flash, leaving one hand on my shoulder, which I appreciated. It would not have felt good for her to recoil fully.

"I'm sorry," I started, but she shushed me.

"Never apologize," she said. "I want more than anything to know what you want."

I wanted my mother. I wanted my old life. I wanted safety, clear skies and solid ground. And Portia. Oh, I wanted Portia. But not before I had answers.

"You don't have to lie anymore?" I asked.

She gave me a shy smile. "Oh, I lie plenty. To my birth family, to the government." Her hand trailed down my arm until she could take mine, interlacing our fingers. "But I've stopped lying to the people I love." She brought my hand to her lips, didn't quite kiss it. "And that finally includes myself."

I tensed my facial muscles to hold back tears.

"And... your wife."

"Yes?" asked Frankie, sweeping into the room with a platter of oatmeal cookies.

"I'm sorry," I started, and Portia gave me a light tap on the cheek with her other hand.

"No apologies," she insisted.

I nodded. "Right. You—what is my, um, place? In all this?"

"You have my gratitude," Frankie said, as though it were self-evident and I really should have known. "And Portia's love." She sat back down in her armchair, taking a cookie with her. "And you saw me in Noug's paintings, so maybe you and I will love each other someday as well."

"Noug..."

"Nouglas Sharpe. My best friend." She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. She was friends with Nouglas Sharpe? "He helped us a lot, after you left."

"After I..."

"Please, have a cookie. I suppose I should tell you what the last two years have been like."

By the end of Frankie's story, Portia was dozing with her head in my lap.

Frankie and I had each had a handful of cookies. They really were good, and I told her that, to which she chuckled that she had a lot of time to practice while I was banging her wife.

Such a line, delivered in any of the media I'd consumed in my life, would have been provocative. Instead, Frankie spoke with tenderness. I felt her gratitude.

"When I wasn't yet able to make her feel comfortable in her new self, you were there."

I ran a hand through Portia's hair, and she nuzzled deeper into my skirts. "I can't imagine how you made her uncomfortable in the first place."

Frankie shrugged. "I doubt it was any one thing I did, so much as the belief we both held that I knew my 'husband' as well as anyone could know anyone."

"And now?"

"We've both become more comfortable with not knowing."

I'd always struggled with not-knowing.

That had been the crux of my friction with my mother's world. It was all this interpretation of experience. I'd wanted to know what the play was about, or what the abstract artwork depicted, or what the piece was named. I'd tried to let go of my need to understand, in my mother's twilight. To see the world through her eyes, because I couldn't trust my own. Very rarely had I seen something and known what it was, what it meant.

But seeing Portia for Portia had been one of those times, and seeing Frankie in Sharpe's landscapes had been another.

"I guess it sounds like a bunch of hippie mumbo jumbo," Frankie laughed, revealing that I'd taken too long to respond. "But—"

"No, I don't think so." I brushed Portia's cheek with my thumb. "I had this fantasy, tonight, that the two of you were dragging me into the afterlife." Portia opened one eye. "I see it was the opposite."

And I bent over, in front of Frankie, and kissed the temple of the woman I loved.

Portia smiled. I looked up, and Frankie was also smiling.

"You mentioned a guest bed?"

Frankie nodded. Portia got up and offered me a hand. She led me down the hall to a cozy bedroom, one wall covered in books, a cute little lantern on the nightstand.

"I can tuck you in," she said.

"Stay with me?"

She smiled like I was doing her a favor, and I don't remember when in the night she stopped holding me.

Portia was still there when I awoke to sunlight streaming in through the lace curtains. She was so pretty, sleeping lightly on her side, all soft lashes and round cheeks. Estrogen suited her. 

When I stirred, she blinked and rubbed her eyes. She turned toward me, and the loose collar of her sleep shirt fell away from her clavicle.

"Morning, beautiful."

"Good morning yourself," I said. When was the last time I'd felt playful?

She followed my gaze to her chest, looked back up at me and bit her lip.

I shook my head softly.

I just wasn't ready.

"I want to take things slow," I said. "This... situation is new to me, and I've only just begun to put myself back together."

She nodded. "Thank you, Abi."

As she moved to right her shirt, I stayed her hand. "But let's not pretend I don't want you."

She grinned a well-earned grin, brought both hands to her tits and jiggled them in a way that was somehow both comical and arousing. I got out of bed, pulling down the hem of the oversized T-shirt she'd lent me only after she whistled.

I thought back to our parting, tried to conjure an echo of my farewell. "How long before you can tell a sex worker you're in love with them?"

"I'm still not sure," she laughed. "But I think you're probably in the clear by now."

We said the words we'd swallowed two years earlier.

After some relatively tame kissing, Portia and I decided to listen to our stomachs and scrounge up breakfast. Frankie was in her office, already at work. In the kitchen, a strange man was humming and preparing four mugs of tea.

"The prodigal Abi returns," he said, when he saw us.

What? "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?"

"Oh, that's Noug," Portia said, back turned to both of us as she rummaged in the fridge, with all the fanfare one might afford a boring neighbor. You'd never have guessed from her intonation that this was the hottest up-and-coming artist in Angels.

"How d'you do?" he asked, extending a hand.

As I gripped it, I lost my long fight with my tears.

"My mother loved your work."