Butt-Ends Of Days And Ways

It is amazing how some things still come back so clearly to her. The images are trapped in her memory like particles of dirt suspended in ice: hot air and freezing water, fingers swimming toward her like small pale fish, his wet eyelashes coming together in thick clumps that she'd wanted to touch. She's had to forget so much over the years, but some memories will not die.

The place: the Covarrubius cottage in Wisconsin on Big Sister Lake. The year: 1979; the Duke was dead and there were hostages in Iran, but Marita was eighteen that summer, and she had yet to realize that all things come to an end.

He'd turned the tables on her neatly. Always, in their odd, shared childhood, she had been the elder of the two, and had lorded it over him. She'd been the leader in all their games. Then the baby had come (and then gone, flowing down her legs as her father kicked her over and over) and things had changed. Alex had been sent away from her, ostensibly for more training. She'd been shipped off to a Catholic all- girls boarding school in France. She'd remained a girl; he'd become a man. It wasn't fair.

"It's good to see you again, Sasha," she said.

"Alex," he replied, curtly, it seemed to her. "I'm an American."

"Your accent is nearly perfect now." Actually, his accent was perfect, but it was hard to admit that someone else had managed to erase it from his speech when she had failed.

"You'd be surprised how easy it is to learn something under the right circumstances," he said.

"Not really," she replied. "I've learned some things, too." Like how to smoke without choking, and how to ease the ache within her by using her own hands, knowing there was no Sasha to ease it for her. She'd also learned that she could have no more children, something that bothered her now but would bring more and more comfort as the years wore on and her involvement in her parents' politics deepened. One day, she would silently thank her father for kicking her so very hard, again and again, but that day was far in the future.

"Little Rita, all grown up," he said, as if he wasn't a year younger than she was.

"Little Sasha," she replied, "no longer sucking his thumb and speaking Russian when he thought the grown- ups weren't listening."

He smiled at that, white teeth gleaming in a way that hurt her heart. A smile should not have so much power. "Truce, Rita. I didn't come here to fight with you. We're still friends, aren't we?"

Friends? Such a pale word for what she felt. "Yeah, of course. We're still friends." She ran one bare foot over her equally bare leg, wondering what exactly Alex was, if not her friend. Her lover? That word didn't fit, either. She only knew, deep down, that he was hers, and that she didn't like or approve of all the changes she saw in him that had nothing to do with her.

"Then let's go swimming. It's hotter than a witch's tit out here." He began undressing in front of her.

Marita wondered who had taught him that phrase as she watched him bare progressively more golden skin. She must have let out a little gasp as he removed his under shorts, because he looked up at her then.

"What?" he asked, flashing her another of those heart-rending smiles that he spread around with such casual disregard. "It's not like I've got anything you haven't seen before, Rita. Hell, we've been skinny dipping before. Don't you remember?"

Of course she remembered. "We were children then," she replied, as if she was forty and he thirty-nine.

"Don't be such a fucking stick," he said, then ran down the dock and plunged into the lake. "Jesus Christ, it's cold!"

Even though the June day was unbearably hot, the lake was deep and had not warmed up much from its spring thaw. Marita cautiously stuck a toe in the water and agreed that the water was indeed freezing. Served him right for undressing in front of her with so little self-consciousness. She wondered how many girls - women - he had undressed before while they'd been separated.

Suddenly, she felt her leg grabbed and then she was flying through the air only to plunge into the lake's frigid waters. The breath was knocked out of her and she started to flail until strong arms encircled her and brought both of them to the surface.

"Alex!" she shrieked, sounding even to her own ears like a wet cat.

He chuckled, then buried his face in the crook of her neck, licking away the moisture that beaded there. His legs kicked lazily, putting forth just enough effort to keep the two of them afloat. "Oh, Rita," he moaned. "I missed you."

Gratified by his words, Marita pushed away from him and started to swim. "That's nice," she said.

Alex swam after her, his fingers gliding through the water in search of her pale skin. He found her nipple and squeezed. "Stop it," she cried, not meaning a word of it, and paddled away, but not too quickly.

He rapidly caught her waist and pulled her toward him. She decided that she'd put up a sufficient fight, and let him kiss her. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. "Who taught you to kiss?" she gasped.

He winked at her, and she noticed that his eyelashes lay in delicious spiky clumps. She wanted to run her tongue along them. "If you're good, I'll tell you."

"You. . .oh!" She started to flail away from him, but Alex held her fast, and it was either let him have his way or drown.

"No, no, Rita. Today, you're not getting away from me."

"Really?" she challenged.

"Fuck yeah," he replied, and kissed her again.

This time, she didn't make any move to pull away, even when he drew her under the dock into the lake weed where she normally wouldn't have swum in a million years. She let him strip her first of her bikini top, then bottom. Her hand caressed his cock as his mouth moved over her breasts and his fingers stroked her clit. Cold water entered her and sent shivers up her spine.

"Oh, God, I want you," he moaned, sounding less and less like the sophisticated adult he appeared to be.

"I don't know," she said, wanting to hear him beg, needing it, in fact. "What if someone sees us?"

"We could go in the boathouse," he said, his voice pleading. "No one ever goes in there, you know that. Please, Rita. Please, I'll do anything."

"Anything?" she had to ask.

He grinned at her, looking more wolfish than handsome, and suddenly much older than she. "Anything, Rita." Then, breaking down, his tongue lapped at her earlobe and he begged, "Come on. Let's go."

"Okay," she agreed, pulling her suit out of the lake weed and putting it back on. Alex pulled a face at that, but if he thought she was going to walk around the lake naked, he had another thing coming.

Inside the boathouse, Alex sat down on one of the benches of the pontoon boat. "C'mere, little girl," he said, "and sit on my lap."

Giggling, she did as he bade, straddling his thighs and the erection between them. She sighed with pleasure as he rubbed against her, because it really had been so long. Too long, and using her own hands was never as good as this. With Alex there was heat and a bond that she hadn't missed until it went away. Now that she knew, however, he was hers. For always and forever, world with out end, amen.

She wanted to tell him that she loved him, but then he slipped inside of her and all thought left her. She meant to say it later, as she cleaned up in the lake, but he told her a joke and she was distracted. She was going to say it as they walked back to the cottage, but her mother came out at that point and announced that lunch was ready, and could Marita please take a shower and try to look presentable? Then later, there never seemed to be a right moment, and it never got said at all.

Marita ended up at Georgetown, studying political science. Alex ended up God knew where, training to do God knew what. Most of time, Marita didn't want to know, and the rest of the time, she knew and wished she didn't. They saw each other sometimes -- they did, after all, work for the same people -- but it wasn't the same. Intimacy stretched into friendship and from there into a wary alliance.

She didn't cry when she found out about Scott, the first in a parade of men that would end with Mulder, the ultimate unobtainable prize. Instead, she made sure he was sent to Siberia for awhile, to think about things. Not that it mattered. There was no Alex and Marita. More to the point, there was no Sasha and Rita.

There was some regret for each of them, but regret didn't warm Rita's bead, or fill Sasha's arms, so she smoked too much and he lingered, when he should have been doing other things, outside of Mulder's apartment.

But that was long ago, and their worlds have since moved on. Oh well. Perhaps they will get it right in the next lifetime. Perhaps not.

Alex told her once that he wished things could have been different. She dreams sometimes of erasing the years and going back. She swims through time and meets Sasha at the lake, his fingers gliding through the water to catch her. Then she wakes up alone.

It is funny, when you think about it. Funny and fucked-up and sad. So sad, in fact, that Marita lights up another cigarette to commemorate things.

"There's no smoking in here," says the attendant, so Marita drops the cigarette and crushes the butt underneath her heel. The attendant frowns, but apparently decides not to push the matter, and says nothing.

'It's not right, Sasha. Not right,' she thinks, then leans down to kiss his eyes. His lashes are still long and silky, still beautiful.

"Yes, he's mine," she says to the attendant, finally claiming what is hers.

"You'll make the arrangements, then," he says, not caring one way or the other.

"Of course," she says, then turns away and walks out of the morgue.