Outsiders. Part 23

"She knows me." Laurie blinked, surprised at her own statement. "My readers know me pretty well. Heck, there are thirty writers I can think of that I'd let use my place. When you really follow someone, you know them better than you know most of your friends."

"And you say you're a hack," Taj scoffed.

"No, I'm not really a hack. I write good stories. I can just do more. That's what's been bothering me."

"Then do more."

"My publisher will only publish three books a year for me. Even though I could easily write four or five. As a matter of fact, I've got four books ready for editing right now."

"Then write under a different name. Find another publisher."

"You make it sound so easy," Laurie said, smiling warmly at her.

"It is. If you want it badly enough, it's easy."

They reached the apartment moments before they were ready to expire from heatstroke. The building was, blessedly, a brownstone of a mere four floors. A neighbor had been alerted and gave Laurie the key.

When Laurie opened the door, the remarkably hot air hit them like a blow. She took a breath and dashed for the windows, flinging them open as quickly as she could. Then she leaned out of the nearest window and sat on the sill, smiling at Taj who did the same at the adjacent window.

After resting for a few minutes, Laurie went to the refrigerator, pulled out two liters of water, and handed one to Taj. They drank until they were full, then Laurie said, "I call dibs on the shower."

"After you," Taj agreed, flopping onto a loveseat. She stayed right there, trying to will herself to cool down. But in a few minutes Laurie stood behind her and dripped cool drops of water on her head. "Don't stop," she said, her head lolling on the back of the loveseat.

"Go take a cold shower. You'll feel fantastic."

Taj got up and saw that Laurie was wrapped in a towel that barely covered her hoo-ha. "I love blackouts," she said, grinning lasciviously.

After two showers each and clad only in towels, they sat on the loveseat, a repast of cheese, crackers and olives on a platter between them. A cool-ish bottle of white wine rested against the corner of the loveseat and they each sipped a gla.s.s, savoring the crisp sensation as though it were the finest French import.

"This is the life," Laurie said, raising her gla.s.s.

"You'll get no arguments from me. I can't remember the last time I had a nicer day."

"Hey," Laurie said, looking down at an olive that had fully caught her attention. "Why do you think you didn't want to keep kissing me last night?"

Taj put her cool hand on Laurie's shoulder. "I did want to. But I'm...gun-shy, I guess. I get my heart broken easily."

Their eyes met. "Really? That's really the reason?"

"Yeah. Really. It would have crushed me to get...closer...and not be able to see you again. I try to keep my distance until I know there's a chance of...something happening."

"Like what?" Laurie moved the tray away and scooted closer.

Taj smiled warmly. "Like seeing what you'd say to having me stick around for a couple of weeks. I'd love to spend some time with you. Riverdale isn't very far from Brooklyn, all things considered."

"You know what's even closer?" Laurie scooted even closer, so close she could feel Taj's warmth.

"What?" Her voice was soft and tender.

"Brooklyn. Come home with me."

Taj's face lit up in delight. "Really?"

"Definitely. I haven't been this attracted to a woman in years...maybe never. I'm gonna find your pa.s.sport and confiscate it so you can't get away."

"Well, I don't have an a.s.signment lined up. I was gonna go to Mauritius for a little R and R."

"Mauritius? You say that like I say I'm going to the grocery store."

Taj shrugged. "I love it there. I know a place where I can stay for about fifteen dollars a night. It's right on the beach, no tourists." She moved closer, closing the distance completely. "It's warm and sunny and tropical. A nice rain every afternoon, cool drinks while you lie in a hammock with the wind rocking you. I'd recommend it to anyone who wanted to start traveling."

"I'll give you two weeks to convince me," Laurie whispered as she grasped Taj's shoulders and pulled her in for a long kiss. "Then I'm going with or without you."

The End.

Billy Boy.

By Susan Smith.

It was all Achilles' fault. Heel. Achilles' heel was redundant, according to Joan. She, Joan, much against her own good will and sense, was suckered, shanghaied, press-ganged into covering Sheila's cla.s.s for her. Sheila had gone and diabolically done the one thing that Joan could not resist, she'd asked politely, backed up by more than twenty years of friendship. That was Joan's Achilles' heel; the sacrifices on the sacred altar of friendship had to be immediate, grand, generous and without thought, qualm or regret. A friend asked, an Old Friend, and it was done. Whatever it was. Now, it was Sheila's summer writing seminar.

It is important to have a place where emotion carries against all sense, where it is honored and respected and let run free. For Joan, that was friendship. Relationships, for her, never seemed to touch that profound intimacy. Something about the flesh ruined everything. Friendships-we ride out into the hail of bullets together, we fight back to back, I will die in your place, blood brotherhood-were central to Joan's heart. She just didn't have many male friends. That was complicated by the severe case of lesbianism she'd discovered in grade school. Girls were mystery and excitement and terror. Boys were safe, nons.e.xual, staunch friends without complication or threat. Until later.

It was this growing up that gave Joan her only taste of acceptance and relief, male friendships. Before high school, they were her saving grace. They were devout, uncomplicated, robust, and doomed to end in tragedy. For what is adolescence, for those unready and without place to hide, but a tragedy? Adolescence, the poverty of p.u.b.erty, threw into high relief the differences she'd been trying to suppress. Her male friendships, as staunch and joyful as she'd imagined them, as bold and free as she was sure they saw her, changed forever. Once the secondary s.e.xual characteristics. .h.i.t, Joan's world ended. No more playing outside with the boys, in a tank top and shorts, just as they wore. No more running around in the woods until well after dark. No more riding bikes deep into the wilderness, into the farmland and away from everything manmade. No more. Outside the boundaries of civilization was danger. No longer was she the gay, bold adventurer. Now she was a girl, and the boys noticed.

Joan was gob smacked. What was wrong with them? Why did they keep staring at her shirt? Why didn't they touch her as they used to, hand clasps, shoulder slaps, punches, and now try to touch her in different, side-eye ways? Like there was something sly and ugly, but deeply interesting about her now. And she, the center of her, no longer mattered. They stopped talking to her. You can't look and talk at the same time, Joan thought.

So her refuge ended with p.u.b.erty. Girls got more mysterious and terrifying, and boys became drooling predators. Joan did what many fine queers faced with the same intolerable situation did, she retreated into a pa.s.sionate interest and pretended that s.e.x, and s.e.xuality, dating, boys, girls, and all that sweaty horror didn't exist. She rejected the experiences that had pre-rejected her. So in adolescence, when most are stewing in the hormone bath, Joan became a monk.

A bookish monk, which helped her sail into college and later, grad school. She was a professor of cla.s.sics by the time she was thirty-two. She was intellectually brilliant, driven, reserved, arrogant, or so it was whispered. Joan had learned her lesson in high school and stopped trying to be friends with men, or please them at her own expense. The severe, exacting precision she radiated kept everyone at arm's length, and what was insecurity at the core got interpreted, as it often is, as arrogance. The monkish look suited Joan, with the subdued, tailored clothing, the uniform simplicity. The lack of any makeup or jewelry gave her face a strange naked impressiveness, a mountain crag washed by rain. If her eyes were too shadowed, if her lips were held tight from habit, it added to her grim dignity. Pain, well tamped down, reads as strength. Her dark hair was first cut into a Caesar when she was twenty-three, and never varied from that. Gray now, at forty-two, crashed against her widow's peak and temples, but the stability of the cut remained. This was an area of her life where long ago she'd achieved a sense of peace, or armed truce, and she wasn't about to threaten that.

There were other areas like that, sealed off places, airless, in her that she'd learned to brick over and retreat from. Rarely did she take a pick axe to those doors. Friendship had been one of those airless places, until Joan hit eighteen and went away to college. Freshman year, she'd roomed with a girl that ended up becoming her best friend. Sheila. In those days Sheila was a vegan Marxist radical lesbian feminist. Now she was a Democrat pescetarian yoga enthusiast married to a lovely man, Chris. The span of time between eighteen and forty-two, those twenty-four years, had welded Sheila and Joan together.

When they'd first met, Joan had been astounded and thrilled at Sheila's in-your-face boldness and activism. At her prodding, Joan joined the campus gay and lesbian alliance and dipped a toe into political waters. Experimentations with recycling, not shaving, Patchouli oil, and s.e.x followed. Joan ended up liking the s.e.x best.

As a brand-new, young d.y.k.e impatient for life now that she'd caught a glimpse of it, Joan decided to kiss Sheila. Sheila was her roommate, which made things potentially disastrous, and Sheila was her friend, which seemed more complicated still. So, one night, after smuggled bottle of Rolling Rock, and because she was sure despite how she felt about it, that this was a cultural imperative, Joan kissed Sheila, who promptly giggled hysterically. This did nothing for Joan's budding romantic sense of self.

"It won't work, Joan. We're friends."

Joan, stung, humiliated, sat down on the bed with her hands hanging between her knees. "But how do you know? We're both gay. We get along. Aren't we supposed to date?"

Sheila allowed that this was likely true. So they tried for a week. The anemic handholding added nothing to the conversation, and tension over the eventually dared kiss kept Joan from enjoying Sheila's company. They agreed to give it up and went back to being friends, to a much-relieved Joan.

After that, Sheila started introducing Joan to every girl she knew. Sheila and Joan worked out the standard tie-something-to-the-door-handle-to-indicate-mating-rituals code. At first it was a rainbow plastic lei, carried back from a protest against Army recruiting on campus. Joan liked that signal. She giggled every time she put the rainbow lei on the doork.n.o.b.

So her second adolescence began, and at eighteen, brilliant and monkish, Joan became a fourteen year old boy. Girls were still a paradox, but now they were individual paradoxes Joan could touch with her hands, with her lips, try to decipher the questions of why this sweet wet destruction of her dorm bed was so incendiary to her. Flesh and friendship were still separate realms.

Joan's devotion to Sheila was threatened, over the years, but always held true. When, at thirty, she'd been confronted with her weeping friend's coming out to her as bis.e.xual, Joan had stood by her when many in the d.y.k.e community tossed her off. Joan felt the initial denial, the stab of sadness that Sheila was leaving her, leaving their whole world, jumping the fence and grabbing fistfuls of that heteros.e.xual privilege. She'd escaped the prison. Thinking of her life as a prison made Joan recoil internally, so she shoved the whole uncomfortable mess aside and reduced her reaction to the simple, cla.s.sic. Sheila was her friend; therefore, whatever Sheila did was to be understood and defended. That was what Joan did...eventually. There were awkward moments along the way-getting used to meeting Sheila's boyfriends, double-dating, realizing, even as she didn't want to be right, that Sheila wasn't coming back. She was with men.

This sawed at Joan's deepest convictions. If Sheila was with men, she wasn't with Joan or their people. Joan smothered the reaction when around Sheila, but was convinced, convinced, that Sheila would keep going away, piece by piece, now that her loyalty had shifted. If that could shift, anything could, and there was no certainty or security in the world. Joan was left alone on the sh.o.r.es of a world Sheila had guided her into. Her friend was leaving her. Joan tried not to let that show, but how could she not to the one person who knew how to read her? The one person who knew how to interpret pained silence and false, determined smiles?

It put distance into their friendship. That shoving away was needed; it let in air, movement. They took jobs in different states. Joan learned to make friends on her own of a sort, a painful, awkward stage to be in when you are in your thirties. Eventually, Joan learned humility, when she called Sheila and told her that she missed her. The friendship grew closer again, and Joan made such an effort to like and get to know Sheila's boyfriends that eventually, she liked them. It was an effort that needed much soul-searching and determination on her part, to climb back over that fence to her younger self, even a little. She'd stood apart from men for years. It wasn't like her early friendships; there were too many chasms to breach at one leap. Yet, this was for Sheila; therefore, it would happen. Chris, thankfully, she'd liked from the first, bonding with him in a simple, masculine way. They never got particularly close; their friendship was good, but not the fiery romantic adolescent blood brotherhood. When Chris and Sheila got married, Joan stood as Sheila's best man. Pleasant years followed, jobs taken back in the same state, same city. Houses purchased nearby. Long-term relationships came for Joan, two that gave an added stability to their time together. Joan relaxed into her own open-mindedness-even congratulating herself on it-forgetting the early years of wrestling like Jacob with her soul. What was more important, belief or love? Love asked compa.s.sion and understanding. Not forgiveness, as there was no need. What had Sheila done, really? Shown great courage as she always did, faced things head on, been true to her own desire, and trusted her friend, Joan, to be an adult. Eventually, Joan earned that trust and their friendship thrived. Joan hoped that she'd covered her early turmoil.

Her last relationship, with Cody, had ended months ago. After seven years, they'd drifted apart. What else could Joan say? There was no argument, no fire, no yelling. It burned itself out. Without the deep friendship to buoy it up, their relationship vanished like smoke. Cody left, and Joan was sad, but not too much and not for too long. There was her work, there was the summer stretching golden and endless before her, and there was Sheila and Chris. She'd be fine.

Joan hadn't wanted to take over Sheila's writing seminar, but Sheila had asked. That was all there was to it; her friend needed her. Not that Joan would be a saint about it; she'd grumble and b.i.t.c.h until she was sure Sheila had suffered along with her, then she'd let it go.

"One cla.s.s a week, Wednesday nights, for a non-major, summer creative-writing seminar, mostly chock full of Women's Studies majors," Sheila had said to a pouting Joan.

"I hate creative writing. More like adolescent masturbatory exercises. I don't give a d.a.m.n about the content of their souls, the depth of their personal insights. They are teenagers."

"You are such a curmudgeon, I want to pinch you. Most of them are grad students, and two of them are our age."

"What do I do with them?"

"Enflame their minds. Ignite their souls. And do a basic write-a-letter-to-a-mythological-figure writing exercise."

"Can I include Jesus and Santa Claus?"

"No. You're a cla.s.sicist. Do Zeus and that junk."

"Lovely. Do I talk about your work this way?"

"All the time. Blame Chris. He got me the stupid dog that decided to lay down on the stupid second step in the dark, and thus helped me along to my stupid torn tendon. We could say it is his fault."

"No, I'm not willing to do the bloodguilt back seven generations. I'll do your letter thing. Is there anyone I should watch out for?"

"No troublemakers. There is one standout, reminds me of you actually. A young you, brilliant and focused, but unlike you in personality. Impish. I won't tell you who, I want to see if you spot them."

The art annex was supposed to provoke creativity with the rusting insectoid welded sculptures in the courtyard and the muddy local bucolic paintings. Joan's nostrils flared slightly, unconsciously. The modern world offended her aesthetic sense. For Joan, the world ended with the fall of Rome. Her dissertation had been on Hadrian.

It was always the same, walking into a new cla.s.s. She had to remember to smile after she set her briefcase down, or they would stay closed off, unsure of her, until well into the second hour of the cla.s.s. These weren't her students; she didn't need them to be scared of her. This was a creative seminar, what Joan imagined to be as touchy-feely as an empowerment weekend. So she was expected to make them feel good, not her normal burden. It gave her an awkward sweetness of which she was entirely unaware.

There were fifteen people in the cla.s.s in a room designed to seat fifty. The chairs were arrayed on risers in a circle, ascending from the central stage. Joan noticed that the students tended to map out a great deal of s.p.a.ce for themselves, even after entering together in friendly bunches. This cla.s.s was used to working alone. Good.

"Good evening. I'm Dr. Ligurious. I'll be covering the seminar for the next two weeks. Dr. Cross will return after that." Joan picked up the stack of a.s.signments and started handing them out.

"What happened to Sheila?" The boy sat with his feet hooked over the back of the chair in front of him, retro canvas sneakers artfully untied, which annoyed the living h.e.l.l out of Joan. She didn't bother to look at the rest of him; she swatted his sneakers off the chair.

"Dr. Cross is attending to some personal matters."

Most of his head was a baseball cap, pulled low, brim rolled but at least, Joan thought, facing forward. It was summer; nearly everyone wore the uniform of t-shirt and jeans or shorts. He had jeans on, and two t-shirts, layered despite the heat. Foolish things we do for fashion, Joan thought. The edge of his jaw was spiky with stubble, days' worth. With the cap tilted back his eyes were as disturbingly blue and large as a child's picture on a bottle of mashed apricots. He grinned and held out his hand for the a.s.signment.

"I hope Sheila feels better soon. Her ankle, right?"

He brought out the stern in her, in that instantaneous animal bristling she could neither explain nor address. It was the type of thing teachers never tell their students. They strive to confront and root out their own biases, be aware of treating students differently, of favoring or disfavoring any individual or group. Despite all that, when two people meet, and for reason neither of them might be able to explain, there might spring up an instantaneous reaction light years ahead of rational thought, where liking or disliking is sealed. He evoked such a reaction, though guarding against it, Joan wasn't sure which. He was used to being liked, she could tell that at once, much as a puppy is used to being liked. His sunny lounging body language didn't change; he seemed unfazed by Joan's scrutiny.

"Tendon." Joan answered automatically, walking away.

The boy mumbled something that might have been, "Can't count on Achilles in the clutch." He might have said "The Achilles"; Joan wasn't sure.

"Your a.s.signment for tonight: write a letter to a mythological figure. You may ask them the truth about a myth or legend; you can praise them, warn them, and scold them, as long as you interact on a personal level with the figure," Joan said evenly. There, it should be quiet for a while. Joan went to sit at the desk.

"What do you mean by mythological figure?" This was one of the older women, clearly returned to school after her kids were grown and gone. Joan addressed her with careful respect.

"Why don't we stick with the Greek G.o.ds for ease? Zeus and the Olympians primarily."

The woman nodded, satisfied, and Joan was pleased.

"Can we be mythological figures too, writing the letter?" It was the sneakers boy. This was why Joan hated creative writing. You could argue for endless exceptions to any rule. It was all arbitrary. If things did not have the decency of being evidently true, they should at least be overwhelmingly possible and most plausible.

"Fine," Joan said, not giving a d.a.m.n. He seemed to take this as a triumph, grinned again, and set to work.

It was blissfully quiet for more than an hour. Ten minutes for coffee and cigarettes and cell phones, then back to it with a vengeance. She had to hand it to Sheila, these were devout students. That spoke well of the environment she created. At the end of the cla.s.s, sunlight going from gold to bruised orange crept across the rows, turned the students in that moment into castings, bronzed like baby shoes in Joan's memory. The end of day in summer always brought out her melancholy, brought out the yearning for the brief golden years of n.o.ble friendships, the unified trunk of humanity before it is split into men and women. "Are we nothing but the scars left on us by love's pa.s.sing?" Joan thought, very much in the creative writing mood, influenced and buoyed up by the enthusiasm and seriousness of the cla.s.s.

Students dropped their papers off on the desk as they headed out, nodding to Joan, most shyly. They hadn't had any time or interaction to bond; they were being polite for Sheila's sake. But when sneakers boy came up to the desk, last and five well-doc.u.mented minutes past the end of the cla.s.s, he was more than polite. He held Joan's gaze longer than necessary, smiling broadly as he handed the paper in as if they were already old friends, no time or distance between them. It was an inclusive camaraderie-warm, fast, generous. Familiar. He didn't respond to any of Joan's distancing signals, as if they weren't directed at him. They were coconspirators already. Joan looked down at his paper. His scrawled name, in a broad and careless hand, was Billy. Joan glanced back up and saw as he exited in profile, backlit, the clear outline of b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath his shirt. Joan nodded to herself, feeling foolish. Of course. It was the instant intimacy of the tribe. He read her, and was letting her know he was family. He'd seemed very happy about it.

Joan brought the papers over to Sheila's two nights later. Chris was cooking and Sheila was recovering and refusing to sit still, so Joan was imported to keep her entertained. This ended up being reading student papers while Sheila was altered on pain meds and Joan on a few gla.s.ses of wine.

"What have you got?" Sheila asked, tossing a paper on the pile.

"Oh, an eco-fable about Gaia. Polemic, but good. As far as I can tell. How do I rate these stories? By how much I like them?"

"In vino veritas," Sheila said, pouring Joan more wine. "You don't have to grade them. I'm just flaming bored. I'm glad to hear that they were well behaved. You met our Billy, I take it."

Joan frowned. "Yes. Bit too casual for me. This was the student who reminded you of me?"

"Not the grim, dour Puritan you, the remarkable force of your mind. Strip the flesh away. He doesn't think like anyone I've ever met, except you. You can tell him anything, and he will listen, and nod, and smile, and go do whatever he was going to in the first place. He's following his own drummer."

"Better than his own Pied Piper. Still think it's funny that golden retriever of a boy reminded you of me. He's trans?"

"Yes. His voice is starting to crack; I'm surprised you didn't notice."

"I wasn't looking for it. He needs a shave."

Sheila poured Joan another gla.s.s of wine. "He's pretty enough for a boy band."

"He probably looked great as a girl too. Why are so many young d.y.k.es changing these days? Is it just me? In our day, half these kids would have stayed in the community, instead of leaving us."