Kalisha Meets the Goddess (FF, mild exhib )

Kalisha Connors frowned at the woman across from her. Three tall glasses that once held cocktails lay empty before her, and she was starting to feel quite drunk. She certainly hoped the titian-haired stranger who had interrupted her solitude wasn’t going to be cheerful.

“Bad breakup, huh?” asked the woman. Her voice was melodic, sexy. Kalisha wished she had a voice like that. Drop dead gorgeous, too, in a suit that hinted at shapely curves. Kalisha wouldn’t have thought a blue suit would go with red hair and green eyes, but somehow on this woman it worked. Probably everything worked for her, thought Kalisha bitterly, and the only time she had a breakup was when she was ready to move on.

“Yeah,” said Kalisha, looking around for the waitress. One more, and then she’d stagger home. Hopefully, John would be gone, but if he wasn’t, at least he wouldn’t be able to try “talk sense into her” as he liked to put it. Storming out of the apartment would have worked better if they had been at his place, instead of hers. She hoped he wasn’t waiting for her. She hoped he hadn’t just left without a care, either. Maybe if he been too distraught to see an approaching bus, that would about do it. Jerk. “Howdja know?” she asked.

“A very pretty girl, in a very nice black dress, drinking all alone in a bar. It doesn’t take a psychic,” said the redhead.

“Guess not.” Her dress was what had started the whole argument. It showed a little bit of cleavage, and two inches of thigh above the knee. Kalisha thought it helped set off her naturally tan complexion, and went with her black hair rather nicely. It would have come to her knee if she hadn’t been five foot ten and long in the legs. John said it was trampy. “Glad somebody thinks the dress is nice.”

“He didn’t? He’s a fool.”

Maybe the redhead wasn’t so bad after all. “I’m Kalisha,” she offered.

“Pleased to meet you,” said the redhead, smiling.

“Who are you?”

“I’m between names right now.”

What an odd thing to say, thought Kalisha. The thought slipped through her alcohol laden mind, and she thought about John again, and the dress. “I wanted to be sexy, you know? A little bit on the wild side.”

“You succeeded. A little bit. Is a little bit all you want to be?”

Kalisha shook her head. It was hard to focus; things were blurry. “Not really. But it was all I thought I could get away with.”

“Because I’m looking for a woman who wants to be very wild indeed.”

That sounded like a proposition. The woman was very attractive, but Kalisha never considered herself to be anything but straight. And narrow, for that matter. Maybe it was time that should change. Thoughts flickered through Kalisha’s mind. If she ever was going to do something crazy, it would have to be with three drinks in her. “Like what?”

The woman shook her head, and touched Kalisha’s wrist. “I’d need you sober, first of al– what you agree to drunk doesn’t count.”

The touch of the other woman’s hand was cool and pleasant. Suddenly, the blurriness went away, along with the pleasant fuzziness in her brain. The three Whiskey Sour’s might as well have been cokes. Kalisha blinked. “What did you do to me?” she asked.

“Don’t worry,” said the woman. “I’ll buy you another set of drinks, if you want. But I don’t want to take advantage of you. I have an offer– if you are truly interested in life on the wild side.”

Kalisha took a few breaths, not answering. Who was this woman? “Maybe,” she said, too curious to just say no. Somehow she knew that if she just walked away that she would always wonder what the woman had to say, and how her life might be different.

“You’ve felt my touch. I have power. I can make you immune to disease, even pregnancy unless you desire it. I can help you out now and then — although not with everything, nor always when you wish it.”

“Who are you?” Kalisha asked.

“I have been called many names in many places, and I am far older than I look,” said the woman. “But all those names seem quaint somehow. Call me Love.”

“Alright, Love,” said Kalisha, thinking that sounded even odder than any name could possibly be. “There’s a catch, isn’t there?” She knew her fairy tales, even if she hadn’t ever actually believed them.

“I need your worship, Kalisha.”

John had gotten her to go to church a few times, but it wasn’t really her. She believed in something out there, or in there, but she never figured out exactly what. “This is the part where I sell my soul in a contract signed in blood?”

The woman laughed, melodically. “No, no. What a modern notion! No contract. Just that I can only help you as long as you help me in return.”

Kalisha thought of what John would think. A lousy way to make decisions, she thought, but she had to admit to herself that the fact that John would thoroughly disapprove was somewhat attractive. “And what would worshipping you entail, exactly?” Maybe the woman was a goddess, and maybe not. But if she wasn’t, Kalisha had never met anything or anyone closer to being a god.

“Once a week,” said Love, “I need you to do something wild. Wild and sexual. Uninhbited. Crazy.”

Kalisha took a moment to process that. “I need to think about it.”

The woman nodded. “Maybe we’ll see each other again, sometime.”

Kalisha nodded, and stood. Right, I run into goddesses all the time, she thought. She took one step towards the door, and turned. “I’ve thought. Yes. But– I need to know more about you– starting with a name.”

Love stood, and smiled. “You like to bargain, Kalisha. Very well. A name, for a kiss. One name for each kiss, each more passionate than the last.”

“Here?” Kalisha paled. All eyes, and most of them in the pub were male eyes, would be on them.

“Of course, here. Unless you have some place more daring in mind? Think of it as your first act on my behalf.”

Kalisha gave the woman a quick peck.

“Inanna am I,” said the woman. The name meant nothing to Kalisha. She gave Inanna another peck, and the woman shook her head. “That was not our deal,” she said, and pressed her lips to Kalisha’s. They were warm and soft, no mustache to tickle her. Kalisha pulled away. “Ashtar, too.”

Wasn’t there a movie with a name like that? It was some Middle eastern thing. Kalisha’s mother had been from Iran, but she had died when Kalisha was young, and Kalisha had never gotten in touch with that part of her heritage. She could go to a library and look it up. She smiled at Inanna-Ashtar-Love. “Thanks, that’s enough.”

“Is it all you want?” asked the woman, with a smile. But she was looking past Kalisha. Kalisha turned to follow her gaze.

John was there. He had just entered the bar, and was looking around. For her, probably. Got tired of waiting to tell her how wrong she was. He spotted her.

She turned back, and pressed her lips against Ashtar’s, putting her arms around her. She felt thin, feminine arms enclose her, felt the other woman’s breasts compress against hers as the held each other close. “Freyja, the Norse called me, and gave me a brother.”

Kalisha pulled back slightly to whisper, “He is watching, isn’t he?”

“Oh yes,” said Freyja, her voice teasing. “But don’t you have enough names?”

For answer, Kalisha kissed her hard. A soft but insistent tongue pressed against her lips, and she yielded, tongues touching and dancing. “Aphrodite,” murmured the goddess at last, as if breathless.

She felt John’s hand on her elbow. “Kalisha, stop this! You’re drunk!”

“Actually,” said Kalisha, turning on him and shaking her elbow loose, “I’m perfectly sober. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“The woman sound sober,” said a strange male voice, belonging to a man in his fifties a few inches taller than John, who was a bit on the short side. “Keep your hands off her.”

“And who are you?” asked John belligerently.

“I’m O’Malley,” said the man. “As in ‘O’Malley’s bar,’ So get out. And you two– you’re welcome to stay, but this isn’t the place for that kind of display.”

“Awww,” groaned one of the nearby patrons.

“We were kind of enjoying it,” said another.

“I’ll buy a round for the house, if they keep it up,” said another, a man in a three piece suit whose date, a pretty thing in a red dress, seemed to approve. She gave him a squeeze on the knee, and whispered in his ear. Kalisha had the sense that they were going to have fun tonight.

John backed up, and then turned and headed for the door as quickly as he could. The bartender shook his head. “Things have changed,” said the man. “For the better or for the worse, I don’t know. I guess this *is* the place.” He too, turned, walking behind the bar and busying himself polishing theglasses.

Kalisha watched John go. “Once more, for the crowd?” purred Aphrodite from behind her, her breath hot on Kalisha’s ear.

Kalisha turned back to her. “Love?” she asked. “More like Lust, I think.”

“A fair accusation. You’ll need to find love for yourself, I won’t be a lot of help for that. But I won’t hinder, either.”

“Fair,” said Kalisha. “One more.”

She slipped her hand into the Aphrodite’s silken hair and pressed her lips to the goddess. This time it was Kalisha’s tongue that thrust forward, to be met by Aphrodite’s in a wet dance. Kalisha’s other hand slipped downward, along Aphrodite’s back and over the curve of her behind. After all, thought Kalisha, it’s not often you get a chance to grope a goddess. Even if I am straight.

Or be groped by one. She felt the woman’s hands behind her, tugging up her skirt. Black panties, thought Kalisha. They can all see my black panties. For a moment she found herself wishing she hadn’t worn any panties at all.

Then the hands were gone, and Aphrodite pulled her head back. “Venus,” she whispered.

“I knew that one,” confided Kalisha.

“Yes, but that’s not why you were kissing me, that time,anyway.”

Kalisha blushed. “No, it wasn’t.”

“I’ve chosen well.”

“One more?”

“No. You need to play with mortals, dear. But I shall remember the taste of your lips on mine.” The goddess stepped back, slipping out of her grasp. Kalisha’s stare never left her, but somehow the goddess disappeared into the crowd of patrons effortlessly.

Kalisha forced a smile through the look of puzzlement that she was sure had overtaken her face. There were people clapping– not everyone in the bar, but enough. She grinned, and waved.

“Good night,” she called, and there was another round of cheers. The waitresses were busy delivering drinks to everyone, and the owner and the bartender were busy making them. Whether they were cheering her or the free beer, Kalisha wasn’t sure.

She walked outside into the cool evening air, and then had a nasty thought. John could be out there, waiting for her. He wouldn’t hurt her, but he was likely to cause a scene. She looked around, and spotted him. But his back was turned to her, and he was in rapt conversation with a young woman with long brown hair and glasses, whose loose blue sweater had a neckline right at the neck, and whose beige skirt covered her ankles.

Kalisha quickly, and quietly, slipped down the street, glancing back just in time to notice the brown haired woman wink at her. Her green eyes looked vaguely familiar.

So that’s what Aphrodite, or Venus, or Innana, or whatever, meant by helping me out now and then. Very discreet. Kalisha smiled, and hummed a little as she walked back to her apartment. It was had been a long day at work, and a long evening, and she was tired.

It didn’t take her long to get home. Something wild, crazy, sexy, thought Kalisha, as she pulled off her dress. I have a week. I’ll think of something.