Chapter 1
Stacked by Debra Anderson
I wondered what she’d be wearing. I had told her to meet me in the Special Arts Room Stacks. Early, I waited for her in the room with lecture-hall style seating.
It was a library, so I’d downplayed my usual slutty style for decorum.
Petra was prim and proper. Dresses hung modestly to mid-shin.
Black Mary Janes. No one would suspect the scalpel swirls, the designs decorating her chest under the delicate fabric.
Her short black bob always gleamed. Never any make up, as opposed to my usual smoky eyes and dark, crimson mouth.
She was gorgeous and had a light inside her that shined.
A slate miniskirt was glued to my body, leather boots rode to mid-shin, and a black top dove into my cleavage. True, it was a modest selection from my closet. But I purposely hadn’t entirely bowed to library decorum. The goal of my outfit was to embarrass Petra.
Petra promptly appeared, hesitant at the glass door. The librarian who had all but outright given me the stink-eye when I’d entered, looked at her suspiciously.
“Hello,” Petra whispered so quietly I could barely hear her.
The librarian stared at us through his oval, wire-rimmed glasses as I stood up to give Petra a hug, scraping the legs of my chair loudly against the floor.
Petra winced, having seen the Please Keep the Noise Down signs propped up across the tables.
She realized that she had immediate broken my No Talking instruction that had been given earlier.
Petra was ruled by decorum and politeness. She couldn’t not greet me.
We both absorbed the almost sacred silence in the room.
I enclosed her in the giant bearhug I always gave her, but longer than usual so it’d make her uncomfortable in this setting.
Petra felt so good in my arms, her bony body a sweet, fragile thing against the cushioning that was me.
I decided to let her speaking hello pass this one time.
I was, after all, head over heels for her.
“Hope I’m not too late,” Petra said, breathing against my neck.
Petra was never late. Details were her fastidious speciality. In fact, she would have made a wonderful librarian, except she’d have to deal with the public. An introvert’s nightmare.
We both sat down, dragging the heavy chairs again.
We were in a fishbowl together surrounded by the glass door and walls.
I stepped on her foot and messed up the shine of her Mary Janes to punish her for speaking again.
She rubbed her hands on the bottom of her teal wrap dress, a repetitive nervous motion as though she was wiping sweat off her palms. I wished I could hold her hand to comfort her, but that would ruin our dynamic that we had happily established years ago.
She looked at her ruined shoes that she had shined for our date.
Then she anxiously eyed the stiff, manila file folder on the table.
It was ominously labelled, Petra, in a big, black Sharpie marker.
I leaned in and kissed her while the librarian watched. No tongue. Dykes were always of special interest, especially in the nearly empty fishbowl. I despised putting on a show for men. Even if I was just being myself, I curtailed it.
I purposely picked up the file folder and needlessly rapped the bottom of it against the table so all the pages that were already aligned would be level.
Petra looked at me pleadingly, then at the signs bitching for people to be quiet, then back at me.
I rattled the file folder. I didn’t need to look up to know that the librarian was staring at us again. I didn’t care.
I laid the file back on the table, fingering the Petra label sensuously while she watched. My finger stopped at every large letter. Then I smoothed my hand slowly over the file. Half horrified, half mesmerized, Petra watched my slow, deliberate motions like the voyeur she was.
Last minute, I had told her to meet me at the library.
Then later, after that strange request, I instructed her to meet me in Special Arts Room Stacks.
She kept asking why we were meeting there.
What it was like. Every detail possible.
The more I refused to tell her, the more frazzled she got until I told her to just knock it off.
That she was lucky to be meeting at all.
That wasn’t exactly true, as I was dying to see her since I’d been working on a deadline that sucked up all my free time.
I hadn’t been able to see her as often as we liked for that week.
Our usual had been disrupted. She texted me a blushing emoji and the one with the hands together as if in prayer or gratitude.
She’d need both for this carefully planned date.
Petra loved receiving an order of any kind.
She was being a good girl. Wordlessly watched me open the folder.
Inside, on top of papers, was an index card I’d prepared.
I slowly passed the index card to Petra.
On it was a series of numbers and a few letters at the end.
It could have been anything. But we both knew it was the Dewey Decimal system.
I had done my research. I motioned for her to take it up to the desk.
She hesitated and under our table, I pinched her thigh.
Hard. She winced and pleaded with her eyes.
I flicked her thigh a few more times. It meant, quit stalling. Petra never usually disobeyed, but I had known this would be particularly challenging for her. She got absolutely mortified by strangers viewing her in any type of compromising position.
When Petra rose, of course, her chair also heaved across the floor with a sound explosion.
I don’t know what the people who had ordered them for a library had been thinking.
The three other people in the fishbowl all turned their heads to see who was disturbing them.
The man with the ugly mustard toque, the woman who wore all pastels (very spring-like), and the older woman with the puff of white hair rising on the top of her head like smoke all glared at us. I grinned.
They each slowly turned back around to their research, all a respective hump over their books. But Petra and I were going to do our own research.
She walked painfully slowly up to the desk, not knowing what book she was even requesting.
Petra didn’t realize that by creating an almost comatose step, she was calling extra attention to herself.
Plus, she looked ridiculous, like she was heading to walk off a plank.
She handed the card to the librarian with agony slapped all over her face.
A gift from her to me and a gift to her from me.
I loved when we reached a reciprocal place in our play together.
The librarian looked up the number in his computer, lightly click-clacking on the keys. Every single bit of noise echoed in the fishbowl. Petra was trapped, standing uneasily and waiting for the mystery book she had requested. What would he bring her?
Whatever it was, after retrieving it, the librarian looked at Petra distastefully. A deep red blush bloomed on her face. It spread across her neck as though she’d been dipped in boiling water.
It was a large book and it overpowered her small frame as she carried it back to our seats step by creeping, careful step.
I knew Petra was afraid she would drop it.
Especially because it came from the precious book section.
But Petra was careful with everything. On the other hand, she was more afraid of reaching me and having to sit back down with the book than dropping it.
At this point, anything would be better than having to come back and convene with me.
When she got to me, Petra put the book tentatively on the table and pulled out her chair with a loud thunder again.
Our unhappy threesome whipped their heads around again.
The woman with the smoke hair had been stroking it as she concentrated.
It now looked more like fire than smoke, wispy, twisted strands flying every which way.
Mustard hat had put on a ratty, ugly beige sweater.
I guess he was cold but should be choosing his wardrobe more wisely.
The woman in the pastels surprised me with her laser death stare because she’d seemed so meek.
Well, there was a dark side to everyone.
It went without saying that the librarian blazed laser eyes at us as well.
There was a giddiness I couldn’t escape from disturbing all these people who were usually complacent and there to do real work. I can be such a bitch most times.
We both stared at the book in front of us. It was Madonna’s Sex book.
Petra thought the surprise was over. She was wrong.
I tapped the cover firmly. Much to Petra’s chagrin, she now understood we’d be viewing Madonna’s Sex in a special, private collection room in the library, under the gaze of an evil owl of a librarian where serious people did serious research. Everyone, except for us.
“What’s one of the pivotal moments when you knew you were a dyke?” I’d asked her months ago.
We were sucking back milkshakes (her, strawberry like the pale pink dress she’d been wearing, and me, chocolate, like always).
We’d been in a small booth in a diner. I was busy cramming her petite frame against the wall.
Petra was loving every minute of it, but pretending not to, as she had to pretend this wasn’t happening in public for her to enjoy herself.
Anything that made her feel small and powerless as possible was one of her things. And mine.
She immediately answered.
“Sex,”
“Uh-huh.”
I got that. Queer sex made me turn into a dyke, too.
“I mean Madonna’s book. Sex. My friend’s parents had it. Whenever I’d go over, my friend Allison and I would pore over it. It turned me on so much,” she’d confessed, eyes downward.