Groaning at the touch of her lips, I pushed until she was against the wall.

An almost painful cry escaped her.

"What did I do? Are you okay?" I brushed a shaking hand across her cheek.

"The wall's just cold." She grinned.

"Deal with it." A laugh escaped me as I ran my tongue along her ear. When I drew my thumb under the elastic of her briefs, she arched against me.

"Please, you gotta touch me." She raised her hips to mine. I gasped at the pressure. Desperately I tried to ignore the heat between my thighs.

The b.u.t.ton and zipper on her jeans seemed to open themselves at the touch of my fingers. I brushed my fingers down the soft shaved skin; the thick moisture flooding the tight s.p.a.ce between Finch and her underwear made me groan. I tried to draw a full breath but the air had left my lungs.

My lips found hers again as I began the slow circles I knew would drive her insane.

Finch twisted away from the wall. "Please." The air escaped her lips in short gasps. ''Now. Please, Tiff."

The sensation of Finch was killing me. She smelled the way she always had; only now, I could smell the s.e.x on her skin. The way she smelled and sounded and felt would have been enough to make me go off. I heard myself moan when I entered her. A cry tore from her lips as she stiffened. I came the moment she did. The o.r.g.a.s.m shooting through my body almost crippled me. I concentrated on standing and threaded an arm around her waist, whispering a.s.surances in her ear as she quieted.

Her knees did not seem to work properly and she fell against me. I slipped out of her feeling like my brain and body were no longer connected. When I wrapped my arms around her she molded against me.

I waited in silence still unsure if she was angry.

"Bed," she whispered before calmly taking my hand and leading the rest of the way. Once in the room, Finch stripped off her jeans and made a move to climb under the sheets, "Aren't you coming?" The look on her face was uncertain.

Awkwardly I stood by the door, not sure if I should leave or stay.

"I... I don't know if you want me here."

Finch motioned me closer. When I stood in front of her she lifted off my T-shirt and unb.u.t.toned the fly of my jeans and pushed them down until I could step out of the tight material. Gently she tugged my hand until we were lying facing each other.

My hand wandered up and down, tracing the planes of her bare body. Finch was clearly exhausted judging by the look in her eyes. I pushed the dark locks off her forehead and kissed her. "Finch, I'm... I'm sorry," I said, "about earlier."

She nodded and curled closer, her eyes now closing. "Don't worry about it"

"But..."

"It's okay, really. Just go to sleep."

"All right." I watched as Finch surrendered to sleep, hoping that tomorrow she would feel the same.

THE ART OF RECYCLING.

REMITTANCE GIRL.

lena, do you like girls?

Well, how else could she put it? Beatrix didn't think it was E appropriate to proposition someone working in a restaurant; it was a little like exposing them to secondhand smoke. After all, that person was stuck there, working, a prisoner to the whims of the patrons.

She had always smiled very sincerely at Elena, regardless of whether the interchange was an offer of more coffee or a request for the bill.

Beatrix stubbed out her cigarette and clicked her pen in consternation, staring down at the scrawl she'd made on the paper napkin. Second thoughts clawed at her belly and she whipped the tissue off the table, balling it in her hand. Why couldn't she just go meet someone in a bar like everyone else? Why was it that the only women she really noticed were the ones she was never sure about? Perhaps it was a subtle sort of masochism.

The couple at the next table broke out into peals of laughter.

Beatrix drained her cup of mocha, leaving enough at the bottom to soak the wadded-up napkin and make the note unreadable, irretrievable, when she dropped the thing into her cup.

"Ehr...ju want another mocha?"

Oh, the short, sun-streaked Eton crop and the serious wire-rimmed specs. They made Beatrix quiver. But nothing was as lovely as that Hispanic accent. Elena stood by the table waiting, pen poised at her order pad, weight shifted to one hip. She had tiny hips. Beatrix imagined that underneath the black waitress pants, delicate bones stretched white skin, taut, sinewy, a protrusion to nibble on.

"Eh, chica! Up here! Look at my face. More mocha?"

Beatrix's eyes flitted up Elena's body. "Yes. Yes, please."

" Por fin! " grunted Elena and whisked the empty cup bearing the soggy missive away.

After a year of late Sunday breakfasts, their interchanges had become less formal. Elena had slowly begun to take on the character of a harried, abrupt, but warmhearted mother. Beatrix was disconcerted by this; her feelings for Elena didn't run along familial lines. Moreover, there couldn't have been more than a couple of years' difference between them. Still Elena managed to make her feel like a wayward, daydreaming child.

The new, steaming cup of mocha arrived. Elena slid it onto the table in that inimitable way waitresses have of putting something down in front of you with considerable force but still managing to keep all the liquid neatly in the cup.

''Thank you." Beatrix beamed upward, trying to look as grateful as she could without actually appearing insane.

" De nada. "

It's nothing.

Oh, it's not nothing to me, thought Beatrix.

The slim, work-worn hand slapped the bill down on the table with determination. The gesture said, "Drink up and leave, there are other people waiting for a table."

Patisserie Valerie was always a very busy place on a Sunday. The gold lettering on the door slated proudly that it was established in 1926.

It had been a meeting place for radical students in the sixties. Now it was full of late-blooming yuppies coaxing toasted hot-cross buns down the throats of their screaming offspring.

Beatrix left the restaurant with the second paper napkin sitting unused and unblemished on the table along with the tip.

The January drizzle turned the quiet London street to watercolor as she walked back to her pokey studio flat. Sunday mornings were set aside for brunch and Elena (although Elena didn't know it), and the afternoons were dedicated to playing domestic catch-up.

Beatrix let herself into her flat; it smelled of must and cigarettes and was furnished in postmodern skip. The overstuffed sofa where she often fell asleep was slowly spilling its guts onto a worn Afghan rug.

The walls were lined in raw plank and cinderblock bookshelves, overflowing with ratty paperbacks and even rattier hardcovers. A mournful aspidistra corpse sat in a dried-up pot by the window awaiting proper burial. It was her Sunday custom to prod it and consider throwing it out, only to spot some minute but encouraging sign of life. She watered its leafless skeleton with a mugful of tap water and opened the window wide, letting in the damp breeze.

Her sleeping area was screened off from the rest of the room by an enormous and very bad oil painting rescued from the back of the London School of Art. It had cost her eight pounds to get it home, strapped to the roof of a minicab. The monstrous abstract had no artistic value that Beatrix could see, but it made a decent wall.

Beatrix opened the window beside her bed as well and looked down at the nest of rumpled bedclothes on her futon. It always looked so empty. Sometimes when she lay in it, she saw herself from a perch somewhere near the ceiling. It still looked empty, even with her in it.

A goose-necked reading lamp sat atop a pile of encyclopedias, doing duty as a bedside table. Along one wall, obscuring the baseboard, books stood in line, waiting to be read.

Pulling the bedclothes off, Beatrix wondered what it might feel like to have a bundle of linen, warmed with someone else's body heat, in her arms. She'd had women in her bed before, occasionally, but they had never stayed long. Invariably, they couldn't stand her silence. She, for her part, could never understand why people needed to talk so much.

They always seemed to need to fill up the silent s.p.a.ces, flooding time and volume with chatter, as if it would collapse if it weren't stuffed full of noise.

Right at the moment, of course, her inability to talk was clearly a problem. She wasn't ever going to be able to ask Elena out if she didn't get around to popping the question. But it wasn't done to just come out with a question like that; one had to build up to it with inane chitchat.

Beatrix thought about this dilemma as she gathered up the hospital sheets from her bed and made a bundle. In the tiny bathroom, she pulled the Excelsior Hotel towels off the rail and sorted her clothes by smell, finding the ones that needed washing.

Finally, having stuffed everything into a large bin liner, she selected a book and set off for the launderette.

There was almost no one at the launderette and Beatrix finished her washing in record time. She folded the clean clothes and linen and put them back in the black plastic bag.

On her way home, she approached the bus stop. It was Elena, standing propped up against the post, waiting. Beatrix's pulse raced as she walked toward her, trying to order the sequence of ba.n.a.l sentences she knew she was expected to deliver. At the very end of it all, she had mentally tagged the question: "Would you like to have a drink, or dinner or something?" Did that sound too desperate? Too needy? Well, it would have to do.

But as she came close, all that careful planning had to be dispensed with. Elena's face was tear streaked and miserable. Her eyes were red.

Her mouth shut in a determined line, her throat moving, swallowing, as if she was trying hard to keep herself from crying out loud.

Beatrix hesitated for a heartbeat and then touched the other woman's shoulder. "Elena? Are you all right?"

Elena looked at her mutely and handed her an open letter.

Notice of Termination of Employment We regret to inform you that we currently find ourselves overstaffed, now that two of our long-term employees have returned from their maternity leave.

Unfortunately this means we can no longer offer you a position in our establishment.

We will be happy to provide you with an excellent letter of reference which we are certain will enable you to find alternate employment.

Yours sincerely, The Management Patisserie Valerie "Oh dear," murmured Beatrix.

''Eh, it's nothing. Stupid to cry about it." Elena took off her gla.s.ses and smeared the flat of her palm over her cheek. A new flood of tears spilled down over the wet skin.

It had started to rain again and the light was fading. Some of the streetlamps were beginning to flicker on, making little difference to the twilight. Colder now, a gust of wind picked up the droplets of rain and hurled them sideways.

"Would you..." began Beatrix. She swallowed and tried again.

"Would you like to come and have a cup of tea? My flat's just around the corner." Suddenly she could hear the blood pushing against her eardrums, her pulse throbbing in her dry throat.

Elena put her gla.s.ses back on and looked at her seriously. Beatrix was almost sure she was going to be told to f.u.c.k off and mind her own business. Then, quite suddenly, Elena's face broke into a small smile.

"Oh... so in de morning I esserve ju and now ju esserve me? So ironical! Why not?"

The response shocked Beatrix and, while she was waiting to find out that she'd hallucinated the answer, Elena slipped a strong hand into Beatrix's. She stood there, feeling it grow warm.

"Well? Ju change jor mind?"

''No! Not at all," Beatrix said hurriedly and began to stride up the street, pulling Elena and her bag of laundry behind her with indecent haste.

They didn't speak as they walked, or as they climbed the stairs to the flat. It was only when Beatrix opened the door and led Elena in that she mumbled, "It's a mess, I'm sorry."

She dropped her bag of clean laundry and rushed to slam the windows shut against the cold gusts rain-heavy wind. The room was freezing and dark. Suddenly Beatrix was heartily ashamed of where she lived. This woman deserved better-somewhere welcoming and warm, cozy. Elena's expression did nothing to a.s.suage her embarra.s.sment. She took in the surroundings looking stunned. Her eyes fixed on the canvas that separated the living area from the bedroom.

"Oh... it's my wall," said Beatrix sheepishly. "Look, sit down and I'll put the kettle on." She led Elena to the sofa and practically pushed her down on it.

In a frenzy she filled the kettle, lit the gas ring, and pulled out the mugs. She ran into her bedroom and grabbed the electric heater, yanking its cord out of the wall plug. Finally she pulled the quilt off her bed and dragged it back, along with the heater, into the living room.

Beatrix plugged in the old three-barred heater into a socket near the sofa, pointing it in Elena's direction. The quilt she wasn't so sure about. She thought a moment and then shrugged, jumping a little as she heard the kettle start to scream.

"Here, look, you'll be warm in no time!" she insisted, draping the quilt over Elena and tucking it in around her.

It suddenly struck her that Elena must think she was a bag lady or something. But the woman said nothing. She had started crying again, silently, sitting like a stone statue as Beatrix wrapped the quilt around her legs.

She warmed the chipped teapot with boiling water, made the tea, and bore it all into the living room on a tray that she set down on the floor, near the heater. Lacking a sugar bowl, she plunged a teaspoon into an old coffee jar full of sugar and looked up at Elena.

"How many sugars?"

"Two."

"Milk?"

"Jes."

"Do you like girls?" It had just tumbled out with the other questions. Beatrix held her breath and waited. Suddenly she realized what a stupid question it was, considering the circ.u.mstances.

"Jes."

"That way?"

"Jes, dat way."

Beatrix brought her the mug of tea, on bended knee, by coincidence. She smiled and watched Elena wriggle a hand out from underneath the quilt to take it.

She went back to fix her own. The electric fire's artificial heat washed over her face, roasting it red, or perhaps she was blushing. But she kept her face toward it as she asked, keeping her voice casual.

"Do you like me?"

Elena gave an abrupt little grunt that made Beatrix turn her head.

"Maybe... let's see how ju make tea." The voice was stern, abrupt.

Beatrix watched Elena take a sip out of the unchipped mug with a FedEx logo. She held her own cup in both hands, trying to equalize the temperature difference between her cheeks and her fingers.

"Mmm. Come sit here," said Elena. She pulled an edge of the quilt up and looked at the empty expanse of ratty sofa beside her.

Gingerly-very gingerly-Beatrix rose and walked to the couch.

She settled herself at a discreet distance, not touching her but close.