“So you think Amazons came from Grease? You think they opened a portal and invaded us?” I was playing dumb. Dick move, I know, but I’d gotten used to playing dumb as a diffusing mechanism. Force of habit. “You do realize that Grease is a mythical land; like Narnyah, or Auz, or Ohiyo, right?”
I couldn’t see Catherine’s eyes, but I could feel her glaring at me. “I don’t literally think Amazons came from some fairy tale land.” She slugged my shoulder again. “Jackass.” At least the “jackass” sounded a little less angry.
“We probably named them Amazons,” I thought aloud. The story of Heracleese and the Amazons was one of the few stories I could think of where the Little was the hero instead of the victim needing to be saved. There was a painting of Heracleese tying up the Amazonian Wunder Woman just above our bed. Catherine had painted it back in college and brought it with us when we’d moved into our house together.
I miss that painting.
“We named them Amazons, and they named us Littles,” Catherine said. Her temper was boiling over and she was starting to sulk. “How is that fair?”
I leaned over and gave her a hug. “It’s not. Not at all.”
She was still holding onto me. “You know, in Leutekan,” she said, “they’ve got an entirely different set of fairy tales.”
I knew this. We’d had this conversation before. I had some distant relatives in the Little countries, myself. But like a dance, the steps still had to be played out for the song to end. “Yeah? Like what?”
“Like Little Red Riding Hood isn’t rescued and adopted by the Amazon Woodsman.” she whispered. Then added, “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little saying ‘adopted’.”
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing her back. “My mother used to tell me a story where it was Three Little Pigs, instead of Two Little Pigs and their Mommy. Story was supposed to be about not taking shortcuts and being prepared. Not that Littles don’t know how to build stuff.”
Catherine squeezed me. “I’d never heard that one before you told me about it. Nobody in my high school knew that one either. Not even the other Littles.” We sat there. The pause growing pregnant; the fight draining out of both of us. “I heard that in the original Little Mermaid, she dies and becomes a wind spirit instead of going back to the ocean and wrapped up in seaweed diapers by King Daddy.”
“That one’s kind of depressing. She died.”
“Yeah,” Catherine agreed. “But at least she got to go out on her own terms.”
The dance was almost over. We’d both be drifting off soon before the alarm clock woke us up and I got ready to go back to work. Then, my brain betrayed me and I went off script. “Hey,” I asked, “what do they call the people of Leutekan? Since there’s no Amazons or Tweeners and everybody is the same size?”
Catherine got quiet. Finally, she said, “Littles, I think.”
“Not Leuts? Or Kans? Just Littles? Just like everywhere else?”
Catherine sighed. I felt all the fight go out of her. “Damn. They got us there, too.”
“Or maybe we just don’t know everything…” I said. The competitive part of me wanted to feel like I won our debate…but I didn’t want to hurt her.
“Maybe.”
We laid there, waiting for each other to start snoring so that the other one could drift off.
It wasn’t happening.
Finally, she rolled back over to me.
“Hey.”
I smiled. It was the way she’d said it. “Hey.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Worked yourself up too much?”
“Kinda…” she said. “But I’m not angry. Just…worked up. Heart racing. Feel hot.”
I reached out and caressed her cheek. We could see each other perfectly in the darkness, now. “Want me to hold you a little longer?”
My wife shook her head and peeled back our bedsheets. She kissed me, slowly, deeply on the lips. “No.”
I shuddered in anticipation as her mouth worked it’s way down my neck, pecking at my chest and continuing it’s journey past my belly button. I let out a low moan while I reached up and grabbed at her hair, twisting the strands of it around in my fingers. She loved it when I yanked hard enough to hurt her scalp.
No more talking.
We wouldn’t be snoring right away, either.
Tomorrow was gonna be a rough morning. We’d both be up late.
Worth it.
Completely fair.