Forging a Desire Line

by Mary P. Burns

  “No.” The hint of Neely’s cocoa butter fragrance wafted over the counter. Charley breathed it in. It reminded her of the beach, and she loved that Neely wore it year-round. “Another painful dinner with my friends trying to fix me up yet again.”

  “Ah…and was Miss September a tempting piece of fruit or can I continue asking you out for that drink you keep refusing?”

  Charley enjoyed this teasing banter, which had begun not long after Neely showed up on the front desk a year ago, and Charley revealed in one of their morning conversations that she was gay.

  “Of course, you can ask. I count on it.” She winked at Neely and headed for the stairs. Keeping the charming young woman at bay had turned into a game of flirtation that Charley looked forward to every morning. She couldn’t imagine why Neely, who was probably half her age, was attracted to her, although she did occasionally daydream about what a liaison between them might be like. I can’t fool around with anyone’s heart like that. Or allow anyone to gamble with mine again. So she played with her every chance she got, which she hadn’t done with any woman in a long time, and let Neely continue her subtle pursuit. It was harmless fun.

  The locker room was swarming, and for half a second, she found it almost ludicrous that she was ecstatic. When she got to her usual row, the women from the yoga class were ensconced there again, one of them using her favorite locker. Charley gladly turned to the back row. And there was the handsome tomboy, stepping out of a pair of navy blue slacks. Charley’s heart rate spiked and she slipped by her, opened the last locker in the row, and hung her bag on the open door. The hint of lemon that Charley had detected the other night pervaded the area again, and she wondered if it was the woman’s perfume. She liked the way it lightly diffused into the air.

  “Busy in here again tonight. No space in my usual row,” Charley said, cocking her head toward the next row when the woman looked at her, that momentary irritation chased by the curiosity again. The crinkles at the corners of her emerald eyes, evidence of that certain age just past a woman’s youthful desirability but before that last blaze of mature beauty, made Charley weak in the knees. But she took in a deep breath and launched her first offense. “You were at Sally Simmons’s tea party yesterday, weren’t you, picking up Irene Palmer?”

  The woman turned to face Charley, surprised. “You know Irene?”

  Her voice was soft and smooth, honeyed, and a little deeper than Charley thought it would be. “My mother does. Vivian Owens. They’ve been friends for years. Although these days, it’s all correspondence and phone calls since my mother doesn’t go out much anymore.” Charley watched the woman’s eyes melt into warmth as she spoke.

  “Of course. I’ve mailed many notes to your mother for Irene. And read her responses to her. She’s quite a pistol.”

  Charley held out her hand. “That she is. I’m Charley Owens.”

  The woman shook her hand with a firm grip.

  “Joanna Caden.”

  “Have you been with Irene long?” As Charley began to undress, Joanna turned her attention to her earrings, removing the diamond studs and dropping them into a small felt drawstring bag on the locker shelf.

  “Almost a decade now, yes.”

  Joanna bent her head to unclasp her necklace, and Charley’s breath caught at the sight of the elegant curve of her neck. Afraid she might give herself away, if she hadn’t already, Charley grabbed her cap and towel, jammed her feet into her flip-flops, and hurriedly slapped her red lock onto her locker.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve got to dash to my class. Anita doesn’t allow latecomers into the pool.” Charley almost ran out of the locker room, mentally berating herself. She’d had physical reactions to women before, all of them completely controllable. But this one was visceral, triggering the need to run, and it had caught her short. And she knew why.

  She hadn’t been interested in any woman since the breakup with Tricia. Window-shopping, yes; there were a lot of beautiful women in this city, from runway types to the androgynous “bois,” some of whom could turn Charley’s head even though she didn’t always care for the look. But experiencing the shot of adrenaline that only hit her when she came across something, or someone, she instinctively knew she wanted but who was possibly just out of her reach? That hadn’t happened in a long time. It had proved worth it the first time, with Tricia. If she still had the range to grasp that far, would it be worth it a second time? She wouldn’t have considered it in the aftermath of Tricia. But now, she wondered if maybe her friends were right to push her…

  Charley hit the pool shower and delicately picked her way over the wet tiles to the shallow end where Styrofoam weights sat at intervals along the pool’s edge.

  “All right,” Anita called out, snapping her cap over an abundance of light brown hair wound into a bun and lowering her chubby body into the shallow end of the pool. “Let’s warm up by gliding from wall to wall.” Anita’s reputation was well known at the Y. The only teacher who got into the pool with her classes, she ran them with an iron fist. No talking was allowed; she demanded total attention and expected full compliance with the paces she put them through. David, the morning instructor, had, on the other hand, perfected a routine that Charley had memorized by the third week; nor did he seem to care that the dozen or so people in the pool every morning treated the time like a big coffee klatch as he called out the exercises from the side of the pool. While she loved the camaraderie of David’s class, she lived for the drive of Anita’s regimented boot camp.

  Charley slid into a spot in the second row and let her body sink into the warm water, hoping to forget the opportunity she’d just blown as Anita led them through stretches, balancing movements, and resistance exercises with the weights. But when the woman to her right bumped into her, she realized she was so focused on Joanna that she had no idea what the class was doing. Anita was staring at her with one eyebrow cocked.

  “We’ve moved on to another exercise. You might want to keep up.”

  Charley could feel the flame creep up her neck and focused on the class.

  Afterward, Charley approached the locker room with trepidation, trying to formulate a breezy remark to cover for her quick exit if Joanna happened to be there. She walked through the door, and as she turned the corner, Joanna was walking toward her, already dressed and on her way out.

  “Hey, I’ll see you again sometime,” she said, her green eyes seeming to sparkle as she smiled at her.

  “Sure…” Charley said, watching her disappear up the stairs, her resolve not to get involved with anyone again floundering in her wake.

  Chapter Five

  The bartender set a gin martini and a Johnnie Walker Black in front of Brooke. She handed him several bills and turned to Charley, her glass raised. “Peace offering?”

  Charley raised hers back, took a sip, and glanced around the noisy bar, annoyed. “Annie made you do this, didn’t she?”

  “I was going to call you next week, make you sweat a little.” The bartender put Brooke’s change on the bar, and she tucked it under her coaster.

  “How badly did Karen take it?” Charley asked.

  “She got over it, seemed to understand that it was you, not her. Lindsay took it worse.”

  “Aww, crap.” Charley closed her eyes in frustration, and then took a big gulp of her scotch. “I didn’t mean to do that to her.”

  “She can be a sensitive little flower. Plus, now she feels she’s put her student in a compromising position. Maybe you should call her.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Charley spotted a couple across the bar taking turns intimately talking into each other’s ear. Watching them seemed an act of trespassing and she immediately pictured herself and Joanna in their places.

  “Charley?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Where the hell did you just go? I was talking to you and you checked out.”

  “Sorry. I’m looking around this bar and it’s date night special. On a Tuesday?”

  “That’s why I bro
ught you here.”

  Charley looked at her, confused.

  “Look, we had a long discussion after Karen left the other night, and I think we realized that if you thought your only option was to leave without telling us…well, that spoke volumes.”

  “Oh, my God, hallelujah!”

  “No, this does not in any way absolve you or otherwise let you off the hook.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I said that you leaving us holding the bag was a sign that we need to let you—”

  “Alone, you need to let me alone, Brooke.”

  “You need a woman, Charley, even if it’s only for one night.”

  “I don’t do one-night stands.”

  “You used to. You were Queen of the Love ’Em and Leave ’Em Brigade in college. People joked about installing a toll booth in your doorway.”

  “I was nineteen. I was young and free. And stupid.”

  “Well, now you’re old and jaded. And apparently still stupid.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t get on your high horse, Lady Godiva. Look, it’s been three years, and quite frankly, we all know that what went wrong between you and Tricia didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it was coming for a long time, so it’s more like six years. I mean, how long are you going to carry this emotional baggage around? You do realize it’s stopping you, don’t you?”

  Charley looked at the young couple once more, hating Brooke for being right. “What would you really know about it, Brooke? If Annie cheated on you tomorrow, what would you do? If one day, everything that was perfect disappeared the next day because you weren’t enough for her. What do you think you would do?”

  Brooke swirled the last of her drink in her glass. “It would kill me.” She drank the dregs, set the glass down, and signaled the bartender for another round. “But we’ve been here before, you and me. And I’ve told you I would eventually pick myself up and dust myself off because I need someone in my life. And I think you do, too.”

  The bartender set the drinks down in front of them and extracted two bills from the pile beneath Brooke’s coaster.

  “I think the possibility of Karen scared you.”

  “The possibility of anyone scares me.”

  “And that’s what we were trying to get you through by setting you up with all these women. That’s all, just to get you over that hump.”

  Charley turned to face Brooke on her barstool. “Why is this so important to you?”

  “Because…” Brooke clasped Charley by the shoulders and she saw the concern in her eyes, noticed for the first time the delicate “worry” lines beginning to appear on Brooke’s forehead and around her mouth. “I don’t want you to be that woman we all read about in the Times article last year who’d been dead for weeks among her nineteen cats before the smell signaled her neighbors.”

  “Oh, for God’s sakes!” Charley swatted Brooke’s arms away.

  “Charley, they ate her face!”

  “I will never be that cat lady, you idiot!”

  “What I really want is to know that you’re having fun again. I want to know you’re eating cheese and crackers in bed with some woman after having wild sex.”

  “I will never eat crackers in bed, either!”

  “You’re not hearing me, Charley.”

  “What!”

  “You’re stagnating. You go to work, you go to the pool, you go home. We haven’t even been on a hike since April…I miss that.”

  “I know. We should go out to Pelham Bay before the weather turns. But I like my life the way it is. I like being single. It’s very orderly. And stress-free.”

  “And emotion-free,” Brooke added. “And, frankly, boring. You’re boring, sweetie.”

  Charley was stunned. “Are you saying that without a woman in my life, I’m of no value? That is so post-feminist, post-lesbian sexist!”

  “It’s post nothing. It is a word of advice from your friends who think you’re shriveling like a raisin. You need to walk on the wild side again, babe. There’s nothing wrong with being single if you’re living it up, but you’re just hiding.”

  Charley glanced at the young couple again. Their foreheads were touching; the man leaned in to kiss the girl, and Charley could picture the curve of Joanna’s neck as she unclasped her necklace, her emerald eyes as they’d talked about Irene yesterday evening…

  “Dare I ask…has anything transpired between you and Gym Woman? If she actually exists?”

  Charley was surprised. Had something shown on her face? She searched Brooke’s countenance for any trace that she’d been caught out. And then she did something that she hadn’t done in a long time. “No. Nothing,” she lied.

  “Well, I’m just going to keep asking until my questioning drives you to make it happen.”

  “Then I’ll have to begin dodging your phone calls, won’t I?”

  “Honestly, Charley,” Brooke said, the exasperation evident, “if you’re not going to put yourself out there to meet anyone, how is it going to happen? What fairy tale has her showing up in your life without you opening the door?”

  “Maybe it doesn’t. You know I really don’t want anyone in my life again. It’s a lot of work. And I’m sorry if that doesn’t sit well with you.” Charley watched beads of sweat trickle down her nearly empty glass. “Or…maybe she’s already in my life. Maybe she’s a friend and we haven’t connected those dots yet.” The ice left in the glass succumbed to the heat of Charley’s hand, plopping over into the centimeter of water that had pooled, and she sucked it into her mouth. “If I already know her, the hard part is done. That’s how I’ve envisioned her.”

  Brooke sighed. “If.”

  * * *

  Charley was too tired to go to Anita’s Wednesday evening class. She and Brooke had stayed out far later than either of them had intended, drinks turning into dinner as they analyzed all their friends’ lives, laughing at their own gossipy arrogance. But she hated the slippery slope of laziness she felt came with skipping a workout, so she fed the cats, shouldered her gym bag, and walked to the Y.

  Excitement hit her on the way over at the thought she might see Joanna. In the locker room, her favorite row was empty. She went right to the last row, though, closed her eyes for a second, and turned the corner. Joanna was there.

  “Hey,” Charley said. “Nice to see you tonight.”

  “Oh, hi there.” Joanna worked her way out of sweat-soaked shorts and a T-shirt. “I’m a little bit of a mess here. They chose today to turn off the air conditioning in the weight room.”

  “Well, that’s no fun.” Charley opened a locker, stowed her bag, and unbuttoned her shirt.

  Anita appeared around the corner. “Charley, good, I caught you, I wasn’t sure you were coming tonight. We have to hold class in the slow lane of the east pool. The west pool is closed, there was some kind of accident there this afternoon.”

  “Oh, crap,” Charley groaned. “I hate that pool. It’s so cold.”

  “Don’t worry,” Anita said as she walked away. “I’ll make you guys work so hard you’ll sweat.”

  Joanna chuckled. “That pool you hold class in is a warm bathtub.”

  “And your east pool is cold enough for ice fishing!”

  Joanna had wrapped a towel around herself and picked up her soap and shampoo. “You’ll be fine, lightweight.” She headed toward the shower.

  Charley was sure she’d picked up a slight tease in Joanna’s voice.

  In the lap pool, Anita drove them like a Marine drill sergeant in the slow lane. Fifteen minutes in, just when Charley thought the muscles in her bad knee might seize up from the cold, Joanna walked in in her blue Speedo. Charley immediately forgot her knee as she watched Joanna slip into the lane marked “Fastest” at the far end, and she did, indeed, slice through the water with speed. She was grace personified. And a total distraction, as she thought of other places where Joanna would move with equal athletic flexibility. Anita caught her attention with a look of disapprova
l several times.

  Joanna was still doing laps when Charley’s class was over. She wondered how awkward it would be if she waited for her, decided she’d figure out something to say that would make it feel utterly normal, and took a seat on the low white tile wall. The workout Anita had just put them through began hitting her in places she’d forgotten could hurt. She was going to have to sit in the sauna before she changed and went home.

  Rubbing her knee while she concentrated on a good line that would sound breezy and possibly “new friend hanging out and waiting for you,” Charley didn’t see Joanna get out of the pool until she was standing right in front of her, a half-smile on her face, one eyebrow raised.

  “Need a pool buddy to walk you back to the locker room?”

  There was that barely perceptible tease again, and Charley could feel the heat and color rising right out the top of her suit and up her neck as she looked up at Joanna. And then came the answering surprise in Joanna’s glittering green eyes. Charley picked up her towel. “I had a couple of cramps from Anita’s class I needed to work out. But I’m going that way, yes.”

  They walked in silence, Charley feeling more than a little foolish. She’d never been able to control that blush, and she couldn’t help wondering what Joanna must be thinking. But if ever there was a time to capitalize on it, it was now. “So…as my new pool buddy, would you be interested in going out for a coffee some time?”

  Joanna stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Are you asking me out?”

  The question caught Charley by surprise. It was exactly what she was doing, but Joanna’s reaction told her she might’ve stepped on a land mine. “Uh…coffee…would only be a date if you wanted it to be.”

  “No, I don’t. Want it to be. Charley, I’m toxic right now. You should really only think of me as an acquaintance.”

  Charley nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  They continued to the locker room, the silence seeming heavier, and when they reached the sauna, she opened the door. “I have to sit in here for fifteen minutes or so or I’ll turn into a pretzel before midnight.” Charley watched Joanna walk down the hall, all graceful athleticism, and was struck with a pang of desire. Minutes later, the dry heat was soothing every ache in her body, but not the one in her mind. She leaned back and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Joanna was coming down the hall, dressed to leave. She stopped and pulled the door open. Cool air rushed in.