Outsiders. Part 28

"I'm not sure."

"You could have told me," Sheila said more pointedly.

"I don't know what I'd tell you."

"That you are knocking boots with Billy boy?"

"That's not what this is."

"I'm glad I got here before Carol did."

"What?" Joan looked at her blankly.

"She called me, something about coming over to see the backyard for the party. I said I'd drop by...to keep you from being alone with her. Now that I'm here, I don't think that was a problem."

There was a waiting stillness, an indrawing of breath. Joan got up, and started cleaning up the room, whisking the German gla.s.s and cigar box away, piling the comic books back into the satchel. Sheila, hopping, helped her out.

Billy wandered into the room like a lost G.o.d, Hermes searching for the route back to Olympus. "Is it safe to tell you the coffee is ready?"

"Safe, no, but welcome. You, old friend, need coffee stat." Sheila waved Joan toward the kitchen. Joan followed Billy down the hall to the kitchen, trying to understand why she was so lightheaded. Lack of sleep? Lack of sense? An urge, formerly undiscovered, to dive off ideological cliffs headfirst? To question a few things that would, if questioned too far, shake her to her roots?

"How do you take it?" Billy asked, not making it sound at all like a double entendre, no matter how Joan heard it.

"Strong and sweet," Joan said, looking at the halo the sun slipping in the open back door made of his pale hair, bristling with light tongues of flame.

"Hope you don't mind about the door, I want to let the air in," Billy said, following her look.

"That's fine." The coffee was ready. She had to get close to him to take the cup. That was a problem, as she seemed to exert gravity over his terrestrial body, pulling him in before she knew she was extending the invitation. But his arms felt good around her back, one eventually sliding up to drape around her neck as he settled in against her. She cupped his chin, conscious of their pose belonging on an Athenian wine krater showing the courtship of men and youths. She need not importune him, unlike that pictured erastes, as he melted to her as soon as he had the chance.

"Hey," he said, rubbing his head against her cheek in broad, cheerful affection.

"What are you, a cat?" Joan pulled her head back, but she laughed.

"Least you didn't go the low route and call me a p.u.s.s.y."

"The next time we are doing anything violent, I am so going to hand you your a.s.s for your insolence."

"I'm glad we can still be friends the morning after," Billy said, laughing.

"We are."

"So we're friends. Am I still your boy?"

"You are."

"Awesome."

They kissed, hands entwined.

"I expect that you are drinking lots and lots of coffee in there," Sheila yelled from down the hall.

Joan tried to smother a laugh against Billy's lips, then his throat, when the laugh fought back and won. "Do you realize how very queer all this is?"

"You are Hadrian to my Antinous. You are my fine, dark Abelard and I your Heloise. We're so d.a.m.n queer we're right around the circle almost to straight again." Billy looked fully pleased with himself.

"This bravery, it can't be learned, you were born fearless." Joan looked at him, for the first time, with everything she was feeling open in her face.

"It's selective. I'm not all Hulk smash all the time. I know what is mine and who I belong to."

"Who?"

"You owl."

"Are you always this impossible in the morning?" Joan asked, knowing the answer already. His eyes were bright, dancing, not at all fazed by the night, holding the endless capacity of youth for rebounding. She was in for a world of trouble.

"I don't know. I'll check in with you in a few days."

"Pre...sumptuous."

"Fully sumptuous, thanks."

Joan kissed him. There wasn't anything else to do with what she was feeling. She went right on kissing him, forgetting the day and the open door. She pushed him back against the counter and kissed him with abandon, one arm around his lower back, the other hand on his hip. It took a strangled, gasping yawp, halfway between a cat regurgitating and a mouse getting stepped on, to push them apart.

Carol stood in the backyard, some ten feet from the wide open kitchen door, watching with a look of shock. Oh, p.i.s.s. Joan took her hands away from Billy where they'd lingered.

"Carol."

Carol, hand in front of her mouth, started to recover from the shock and babbled apology. "I am so sorry, I didn't know, I was just checking the garden out, the gate was open, and we'd made plans, and Sheila is here, I saw her car. Oh my."

"Carol, this is Billy," Joan said, deadpan. She would have to start locking doors now that she had a reason.

"Billy?" Carol hadn't been looking at whom Joan had been kissing, and her a.s.sumption was obvious. Carol's eye went from Billy's face to his shoulders, down his body, back to Joan. "Oh. My."

"Hey, how's it going?"

"Billy is one of Sheila's students," Joan said, then wished she hadn't tried to explain as Billy's hand was still resting proprietarily on her hip, curving around suggestively toward her a.s.s. There was plenty of explanation there already. Billy glanced at her for a fraction of a second, and Joan added, unable to not honor the relationship, "And my friend."

"You certainly seem very friendly."

"Carol, why don't you and I take a look at the s.p.a.ce?" Joan looked at Billy, knowing he waited for her signal. He nodded nigh imperceptibly and went back to pouring coffee, ignoring them. Joan walked out the door, closing it behind her with slow deliberation. Joan and Carol walked the perimeter of the yard-Joan a step ahead, Carol with arms folded and eyes evasive, Joan wide open and brazen about it, having already stepped into the tar pit. Why swim now?

"I was thinking five tables, three along the fence there, one at each end of the garden."

"Was that your date the other night?"

"Yes. So, we could put the food table on the deck. It should be fine for buffet style. Drinks coolers underneath. I have a grill, but it is older than time itself."

"I'm sure that's fine."

"Great. Do you need me to order the chairs?" Joan asked, knowing Carol already offered, but needing something to say. Carol wasn't much looking at her, more looking back at the closed kitchen door with thin little glances, like slices of sashimi, pink and hot and translucent.

"That'd be fine."

Okay, Joan thought, Carol was disengaged from the conversation. Joan could hardly blame her, as they had the same source of distraction who was now waiting in the kitchen with coffee, and not out here in the unforgiving noon sun with a disgruntled lesbian potluck planner.

"Great! Thanks for coming by, Carol. I appreciate your help." This, Joan thought, was a mighty funny way to shape the events for memory.

Joan wasn't back in the kitchen moments before Sheila came clacking down the hallway urgently. "Carol just came storming out the front in high dudgeon. She didn't even stop when I spoke to her. What is going on today?"

"h.e.l.lo, Sheila. Carol came by early. Around back where the kitchen door was open. While I was pushing Billy back against the counter and ravishing him." Joan tossed up her hands, the world having tipped over into absurdity for her some hours ago. Billy perked up at this description, puffing up a bit.

"What? What did you do?" Sheila looked from Billy to Joan and back again.

"Introduced them. Walked Carol around the backyard. I let the G.o.ds know I was happy and called down fate on my head."

"You've sucked me into a Greek tragedy? Joan, really. Autumn is much more important a season for those. Can we all go sit down and drink coffee, please, if we are going to keep having ridiculous conversations?"

They sat on the couch, Joan between Sheila and Billy.

"So you are knocking boots?"

"Not yet," Joan said.

"We're going to be knocking boots?" Billy asked, hopefully, leaning in to her.

"You'll be the second to know."

"But you are keeping company, and now Carol will let the FFF phone tree know you are dating a young man."

"I'll roll that rock up a hill once I get there." Joan looked to her left, then to her right. "Sweet friends, I am exhausted. I'm for bed."

"Care for company?" Billy asked, his tone light enough to be a jest, but none of them took it to be.

"Not just now. I need some time on my own," Joan said gently. It was enough for Joan; she needed the people she dearly cared for to go away.

Billy shrugged.

"You'll get used to it. She does this hermit thing every so often," Sheila said, across her, to Billy. Sheila read her impatience immediately, and knew enough not to take it personally after all this time. Joan walked Sheila to the door. Sheila tilted her head back toward the couch and the couch's occupant.

"You okay?"

"I'll let you know when I do."

"Call me later."

It took Joan longer to ease Billy out. He lingered, transparently wanting to stay. He seemed a little baffled, and deflated, when she kissed him lightly and led him to the door. You don't have the right to declare that you're staying, not just yet, Joan thought. Though he seemed to sense his power, that he might be able to do it if he wanted and get away with it, he hesitated, and left.

For Joan, thoughts had to be encountered, developed, examined, conversed with, then flipped over and reworked from all angles. Occasionally they had to be seized and hauled down for the death roll. It took time. Joan was one of those people who rarely felt anything without stepping back and thinking through it. The habit was strong and deep; as if, to reach her heart, emotion-born from her mind like Athena from the head of Zeus-had to filter down slowly, drip by drip. Like bile.

Joan felt like she needed more time, this time, than she'd ever needed. Last night had changed things. But in what way and with what fallout? She and Billy were involved? Well, yes, they were involved, but in doing what she wasn't sure. What Joan was sure about was that, in the same fragile moment it began, she and Billy's companionship went public in a big way.

There hadn't been time to plan or stage or spin or shape, just the primal reaction of emotion pulling the flesh together. Admiration and desire got tangled up and the border was crossed into no-man's land. One man. Was she ready for this? Coming out again to her entire community?

Erastes and eromenos, lover and beloved, Hadrian and Antinous. Queer enough to be almost straight again. Could she get used to saying "boyfriend"? As far from extroverted as she was, Joan still loved her community, her people. Coming out had been one of the great defining moments of her life, so caught up in l.u.s.t and terror and raw joy at the potential, the possibility that there might be love in the world for her, s.e.x and pa.s.sion in her way, in the way that would touch her neglected heart. That was the moment when she decided to accept herself for who she was and build the future on that, not on the false. It had been her most courageous moment, aside from standing by and up for Sheila when she had come out the second time as bis.e.xual.

Then Joan slowed down, and did what she had avoided for more than twelve years. She looked back at her own behavior during that time, without the comfort of self congratulation after the reconciliation of the friendship. She looked dispa.s.sionately, from the outside. Joan had, after the initial shock, said the right words in public to defend her friend's defection from the community. When confronted on Sheila's behalf, she staunchly a.s.serted that Sheila had devoted years and energy to the community, that her own actions should be her defense. Her decades of activism on women's and lesbian issues, the organizing, and the shifts at the battered women's shelter, the LGBT student alliance, the s.e.xuality Education Center, the Feminist Film Festival committee. Sheila was involved in the health, safety, justice, and artistic expression of the community, and dating men wouldn't ruin that.

Fine, staunch words Joan spoke, but she hadn't believed them, had she? She'd held on to the form of friendship, the public form, but retreated from the intimacy. How was that honorable? She stood up for Sheila's name and reputation, and stopped asking how she felt. Joan hadn't been a real friend to Sheila, not in the years she wandered away, hurt. Joan had gone off into her solitude to think things over for years. Where had that left Sheila?

Joan called Sheila that evening, after a few hours sleep, a few hours of thinking, a light haze of brooding now burned off.

"Hey."

"Why, h.e.l.lo! Are you calling me from the horizontal, and are you alone on that plane?"

"I'm vertical and alone," Joan affirmed.

"That always was your problem. How's puppy boy?"

"Sweet William is home, I'd a.s.sume. I haven't contacted him yet. I wanted to talk to you first."

"Am I being asked for my blessing?"

"I'd like to ask you for your forgiveness."

"Oh, sweetie, I'm not that mad you didn't tell me about Billy."

Joan drew in a large breath and clenched it behind her teeth for a moment before exhaling.

"I owe you an apology. As not just your friend, but your best friend, or so I thought. So I congratulated myself on, these past couple of decades."

"You are and always have been my best friend."

"Let me get through this. I let you down, Sheila. You trusted me enough to come out to me, after I came out to you twelve years before. You had every right to expect compa.s.sion and support, after what you had shown me, after our years together, and in consideration of who we were to one another. You got lip service. I said the right things, but inside, I felt betrayed. You left me. I felt that. I felt that you left the community too, and that it would never be the same between us. Your loyalty was shifted. I couldn't deal with that, with losing you, so I held on, and said the right things, acted the part of your friend. But I pulled away, and I didn't talk to you. I didn't trust you, or love you enough to tell you any of this, and it cost us years of friendship. You are the finest woman I have ever met. You teach me daily about action, not just words, about compa.s.sion, about devotion to the community. You should love who you love, and all I should say is congratulations. You never left me, I left you. I'm so sorry I was a coward."

Joan could hear that Sheila was crying.

"I never thought I'd hear you say that. I thought we got back together, that was the best possible outcome. We'd just skip over the pain and never talk about it again. Thank you, Joan. For all your bombast, for all your retreat and brooding, you hold yourself accountable to your own standards and don't forgive behavior in yourself you find shameful elsewhere."

Joan e-mailed Billy shortly after hanging up with Sheila. She felt better than she had in years. Her friendship with Sheila was more grounded and real than it had been in years. There was something in that to look at. Friendship was more than the high gallantry of romantic words and gestures; it was full of places to screw the h.e.l.l up, places to ruin what was essential to happiness. There was responsibility, follow-through. If she, Joan, were serious about taking on a new relationship at that level, possibly a lover at the level of friendship for the first time, she had to keep her eyes open going in. She and Billy would have to talk.

Antinous, I have a bottle of single malt, twenty-five years old. A year older than you are. Would you drink some with me, and talk for a bit? It is time to make a new memory for scotch.

Hadrian There, Joan thought, that seemed to be the right tone. Warm, requesting, allowing for possibilities. Allowing, she thought, for the possibility that he would say no. She didn't have his sunny certainty, but it was best to be upfront about that. It was the difference in experiences. He might not know yet, but she did, that most relationships end. Most end sooner rather than later. Going into a romantic relationship, allowing herself to fall, for Joan, involved the cold-eyed look toward the end of the day, the division of spoils after the final fight. Infatuation was sweet, pa.s.sion was wonderful, but eventually somebody will hit a deer at three a.m. two states over and call you, hysterical, and you come running. That relationship, the deer guts sacrificed on the chrome altar, was the one Joan yearned for most deeply. She had sense enough to realize it might not exist at all, or perhaps it was so rare that the flesh rarely intersected at the same time. It might be asking for too much from the Universe to have both.

Joan checked her e-mail after an hour. He'd responded in five minutes of when she'd first sent hers.

Joan, Come get me.