Lola couldn't guess, but she knew she wanted to be there. The curves on the tomato's hips were hypnotizing her, and she thought that maybe she wanted to touch them.
'To meet a man?' she guessed timidly. 'My boyfriend's in love with you — maybe it's him?'
Cherry tomato laughed again, a long rollicking laugh, a laugh that Lola wanted to climb inside of and ride on, knowing it would carry her to a new place. 'They're all in love with me, sweetheart,' Cherry finally said. 'Let's go eat meat.'
The steakhouse was wood-paneled with high leather booths, an old-style male bonding place, complete with a private cigar room. Cherry tucked Lola into the booth seat and then slid in beside her. They each ordered the 14 ounce prime rib, baked potatoes with sour cream and butter, no salads, and chocolate amaretto pie for dessert.
'It's just phone-sex for me, sweetheart,' Cherry explained between bites. 'But as soon as I tell them I have long red hair and big tits, they're in love. The attention is great, along with the money. It supports my other passion.'
'Keith has phone sex with you? Keith…pays…for phone sex??' Lola repeated in amazement.
'Keith? I don't remember their real names very well — what's he like?'
'Well, he's really smart… and he talks a lot, but I guess everyone must to have phone sex. His words — they're fancy, poetic, sometimes a bit over-the-top — he's a writer.'
Cherry scooped up the last bite of pie and turned to feed it to Lola. 'Open wide, sweetheart.' As it melted in Lola's mouth, Cherry began to kiss her and lick her lips clean. 'Yes, I know which one he is, baby,' she whispered through the kisses. 'I call him 'Bacon' — I give them all meat names, my little joke, but they think it's a macho compliment — he's a bit… greasy, isn't he, doesn't seem like your type.'
Lola couldn't imagine why she should care, and could barely remember who he was herself. This woman, this tomato, this lovely plump mirror image of herself, was driving her wild with her lips and her fingers running up and down her legs. Maybe this is why I just keep eating so much, she thought, to be worthy of someone like her.
Cherry's fingers were high up her thigh under her skirt, beginning to stroke rhythmically toward her clit, when the waiter reappeared with the check. 'Thanks,' Cherry said to him, 'we do have to hurry, we have someplace to be.'
Lola assumed it would be her bed, or the backseat of the car, or anyplace nearby where they could continue. 'No, sweetheart, I'm an organizer,' the tomato explained to her on the way out. 'We have a demonstration this afternoon. Consider yourself recruited — I promise you'll think of yourself differently after the day is done.'
A group of about twelve women had gathered in the park just off of the Walnut Street open-air mall. They were holding signs, and there were hundreds of other people on the mall, most of them barely paying attention to the women. A few of the women were on rollerblades, one was doing tricks on her skateboard, and another had a baby on her hip.
Cherry parked the car and turned to Lola.
'They're waiting for me…for us, to start, baby. Take your shirt off.'
'What?'
'Your shirt — take it off. Here, I'll help.'
Lola decided this was a game, a tease, so she let Cherry unbutton her shirt and slip it from her shoulders.
'Nice, baby, good girl…' Cherry was unhooking Lola's bra and kissing her nipples, sucking on them, pulling slow and hard, sending the tingle right down to Lola's toes. 'We should get them pierced,' Cherry told her between kisses. 'That always stops the cops.'
'Cops?' Lola pulled away, just as two women with their picket signs approached the car and banged on the window for Cherry. The sign that Lola could see said: TOPFREE! TAKE YOUR SHIRTS OFF FOR EQUALITY!
'Yeah, you know, cops — pigs — that other mostly white meat around here,' the tomato answered. 'Technically, they can arrest us, but they rarely do, as long as we get the girls with the best tits to talk to them.'
Cherry pulled Lola out of the car before she could answer, looping Lola’s shirt into her jeans belt beside her own top she had stripped off. “You're a goddess,' Cherry said as they joined the group on the lawn, 'and you have as much right to be shirtless as any man does.'
It was hot, and there were lots of men on the mall with their shirts off, and nobody looked twice at them. Lola watched as all the women around her took their tops off, in awe at the variety of breasts and backs and skin tones.
'They're beautiful,' she whispered to the tomato.
'Exactly. So why is it that women have to keep their shirts on? Because they can feed babies from their nipples, a purely natural act? Or is it because women are nothing but sex objects to men, almost like pieces of… meat?'
Lola laughed and stood up a little prouder, her newly plump breasts perking up a bit more. 'I've never even thought about it,' she confessed.
'I know. Yet if you go out and do it by yourself somewhere, even on a beach, it's a criminal act. Equality for women is my passion, sweetheart, and nothing makes a stronger statement than this.'
Lola had to agree as they began their march down the mall. Some people cheered, some booed, and a lot of men hooted and cat-called at them. But no one stopped them — Cherry went in the record shop to buy a CD, and though the manager asked her to put her shirt back on, she said 'no,' pointed to a man in the jazz aisle with his shirt off, and then proceeded to make her purchase and leave.
' No. That's about my favorite word for women.' Cherry had big, gorgeous, heavy breasts, and though Lola was trying to think about politics and women’s rights, sex was churning between her thighs. 'No whining, no fuss, just 'no, I won't' does wonders.'
Lola trailed behind her like a puppy dog, trying to remember if she'd ever said 'no' very firmly to Keith or any other man anywhere in her life.
'Hey, T-Bone, what's happening,' the tomato said to a tall dark-haired man who greeted her near the central water fountain. Lola watched as the man kissed Cherry's hand, never touching her breasts, chatted for a few minutes, and then turned to go into a pizza shop.
'One of my clients,' Cherry explained.
'Your client? They come here to see you? Does Keith…come… see you?' Lola raced over her words as she tried to wrap her mind around the sudden image of Keith seeing her half-naked in a public street mall.
'Bacon? He has. Some do — after I know them for a while, I tell them to stop by one of our demonstrations, it's good for them — seeing me in the flesh raises their consciousness and their cocks at the same time.'
Lola stood speechless as she watched a security guard approach the group. He looked them all up and down — one woman was quietly breastfeeding while sitting on the edge of the fountain, others were chatting, some had packages from their purchases, and one woman with lovely brown breasts who looked like she might be 60 or so had pulled some yarn from her fanny-pack and was happily knitting and purling while waiting for the group.
'What do you think you're doing?' the guard said, a bit tentatively.
Cherry held Lola's hand. 'Well, she's shopping for some new clothes, Afton there is making her granddaughter a sweater, and the rest of us are just relaxing.' Cherry's breasts were about two inches from the guard's chest while she was talking, and Lola knew, just knew, that when he put his hands in his pockets it was not to pull out a gun, or even a ticket, but to keep himself from stroking her nipples.
'Well… I think you should all put your tops back on, ma'am…'
'No. We can't do that. I know you believe that women and men are equal, right? So if you ask us to do that, you'd have to ask Bratwurst over there to do the same.' She nodded toward a stocky brown-skinned man who had his shirt off and was talking with the woman on a skateboard. The guard looked toward him for an explanation.
Bratwurst just shrugged toward Cherry. 'She's a hot tomato,' he said with a wink at the guard.
“Yeah,” echoed T-Bone, overhearing as he rejoined the group, pizza in hand. 'And she’s explained it clearly enough to me. Tits just want to be free.”
“Well done,” Cherry whispered to the giggling Lola. “I train them well.”
The security guard rolled his eyes and shook his head. “OK, girls, just be gone when I come back this way later.”
