The Big Sugarbush
Page 26
Storm shut her eyes and sighed. “I couldn’t tell you back in rehab. It scared me.”
“I?” Poppy poked a finger into her chest. “I scare you?”
“Duh? Yeah.”
“You scare me, too,” Poppy confessed, her voice a whisper.
“How come?”
Poppy squeezed Storm’s hand. “I get this feeling that if I ever fall into your arms, I might not come out again. Might not want to.”
“Is that bad?” croaked Storm.
“No, I imagine it could be quite good. It’s just …”
“What?” asked Storm, attempting unsuccessfully to sit upright. “Just what?”
“I never fancied anyone the way I fancy you.”
“I think I feel the same way.”
“Think?” shrieked Poppy.
“Erase that,” said Storm. “I know. Look, I was thinking as soon as I get out of this place, maybe you and I could go on a damned date.”
Poppy twisted her lips. “A date?”
“Dinner, maybe?”
“You buying?”
“Of course I am. I’m the butch, right?”
“You better be.”
“It’s settled, then. We’ll date?” Storm squeezed Poppy’s hand in a way that made both women wish Storm wasn’t restrained, slathered in medical creams.
Storm wasn’t much for words, but then Poppy didn’t feel she needed a lot of words. One look from the depth of Storm’s ice-blue eyes and Poppy felt, for the first time in her life, as though she understood the universe, and her place in it.
Epilogue
Life passes one day at a time. Some days shimmer with promise while others hang dim with despair. Most days are mediocre, passing quickly, forgotten ripples in the ever-flowing river of time. That said, the future can sometimes be forecast with alarming accuracy. The women of Sugarbush did all right for themselves as time slid by.
Dylan Redford received an unexpected two-million-dollar licensing offer from the French government to turn her Big Pink Pussy art installation into the world’s most memorable carnival ride in Sexland, the world’s first X-rated theme park for adults, now under construction south of Paris. She’s still single, and still sober.
Nan Goldberg and Birge Hathaway took time off from work to travel around the world on a yearlong recommitment honeymoon. They were last seen chain-smoking expensive English cigarettes together outside the Taj Mahal. Birge was complaining about her festering bunions and bad back, and Nan was letting her.
Wee Gee Judd recovered completely from writer’s block. Her latest novel, Desert Hearts Gone Wild (wink-wink) takes places on the battlefields of Iraq and involves the undying love of Prudence (a tough British army nurse) for her handsome, swaggering, Yank war hero, Sergeant Storm, who loses one leg but wins Prudence’s heart in his noble fight for freedom. (And yes, Wee Gee did get laid by you know who.)
Dr. Candice Antwerp got to keep her medical license, which is good considering how much time she donated to help Dirk through her transition. One of Hollywood’s leading lezzy spokeswomen, she no longer lives in the closet. Her mother, Ellen, left her father the reverend, and now lives with Candice in California where, to make amends to her daughter, she administers the Hollywood chapter of PFLAG.
Dirk McGraw is now living as a man, a world-class surfing instructor, with his own branded line of boards, clothing, and sports products for women. A reality TV show will soon feature Dirk bronzed and practically butt naked on the beaches of Malibu teaching a gang of adoring Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders to ride the wild waves.
Thumper McGraw and Mary Lou Lippenfield were married in a civil ceremony in the rose garden on Thumper’s mother’s dairy farm in East Hardwick, Vermont. Everyone cried a lot (especially Mary Lou). Mary Lou is now pregnant with twins (turkey-baster babies) and will accompany Thumper to the World Cup.
Bunny Van Randolph is, sad to say, just as we left her. Flirting, drinking, and doing drugs. (We can only hope she’ll find her way. Perhaps in Sugarbush II?)
Betty Frump still tokes her old friend, Mary Jane. She had a close call when, during the divorce proceedings, her ex-partner, Alice Everwright, tried to run her down in an environmentally correct Toyota Prius hybrid. (The Prius lacked the acceleration needed to take Betty down; the stoned activist crawled out from under the Toyota with little more than a bruised ego.) In the end, the public sympathized with Alice as a battered woman, awarding her full custody of all adopted children along with generous child support. Alice, her thirteen children, and her new partner, Frances-Wearer-of-Dildos, live together in one obscenely large yurt in the middle of an organic flower field outside Northampton, Massachusetts. (They have started a womyn’s drumming circle, to which all are invited.)
Oh, and Poppy Zigfield and Storm Waters live and love together in well-feathered nests around the world. Both travel a great deal, so instead of buying one big home they purchased several cozy little bungalows at strategic locations: one in the Seychelles, one in the Shetland Islands, and one in the British Virgin Islands. Storm gave up war reporting in exchange for her own travel show on the National Geographic Channel. Taking the World by Storm is a huge ratings hit. Poppy and the Pop Tarts are hotter than ever, especially in America, where a carefully orchestrated wardrobe malfunction during a performance on Saturday Night Live earned Poppy the jaw-dropping adoration of a new generation of late-night bush babies.
— The End —
Want to read more Sugarbush novels? Go to Ana’s blog, www.thebigsugarbush.com and make suggestions for new characters and plotlines. Subscribe and receive weekly doses of humor, lesbian wit and culture, book reviews, cartoons, and other cool stuff for free. You’ll also receive advance notice when Sugarbush II hits the street.
About the Author
Ana B. Good resides in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Her stories and essays have appeared in Salon, Out, On Our Backs, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Bay Times, Berkeley Fiction Review, and several literary anthologies, including Penguin’s Storming Heaven’s Gate: An Anthology of Spiritual Writings by Women, and the Crossing Press’s Breaking Up Is Hard to Do and Love’s Shadow. Her articles and essays have appeared in over three hundred markets ranging from CNN Online to Home Office Computing. The Big Sugarbush is the result of Ana’s efforts to ward off cabin fever one particularly long New England winter. This is her debut novel. She loves to snowshoe and disappear into deeply superficial pulp fiction. She wrote Sugarbush so people would know not all lesbians live in Los Angeles or San Francisco (though Ana herself spent her twenties learning how to be gay in the Baghdad by the Bay). She can be reached anytime at www.TheBigSugarBush.com.
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