Bell, Book and Dyke - New Exploits of Magical Lesbians

by Barbara Johnson, Karin Kallmaker, Therese Szymanski

  From university paperwork I turned to the large pile of reports and letters from all the specialists who had seen or wanted to see Kylie. Most of them wanted to see me as well. We were a pair for the medical textbooks. Our DNA had been sampled and resampled, compared, clucked over and declared a puzzle. Our genes were identical but our physical health had diverged wildly. I'd been tested for everything Kylie suffered from and been judged soundly healthy, if a bit too wide in the hindquarters.

  I had letters from geneticists wanting to clone us, scientists wanting tissue samples, researchers (sometimes with a shocking lack of humanity) asking to conduct Kylie's autopsy. Hospitals from Los Angeles to London asked for pieces of her as if she was a bit of furniture. They asked me, as if I knew, how two things that were the same could be so different.

  A lot of it I chucked, but a few things I kept to discuss with Kylie at some other time. There would come a point when she needed to be in a hospital. She had choices with a dozen worldwide offering to provide care in return for her body, both before and after her death. She'd accepted there was something to learn in the process of her dying, but we'd agree to be in denial, for a little while longer. If she could get out of bed, use the toilet and make a meal, she wanted to be here.

  As I swallowed back tears of bitterness and depression I would not allow Kylie to see, I came across our father's Christmas card to me, reminding me that I was obliged to send him some sort of response. Last year I'd put it off until nearly Easter, and then only written a letter so that his Easter missive didn't begin with a comment about not getting a reply to the Christmas card.

  Figuring a handwritten note might look longer than a few sparse paragraphs from my word processor, I found writing paper and pen, took the brightest oil lamp to the chair next to the fire, and sat down to compose something suitable. At the last moment I grabbed the mysterious book to serve as a writing platform.

  I supposed that Kylie had written him back, though it would have taken her some time to do so. When our parents had divorced they'd had the brilliant idea that they should each take one of us, and Kylie as a result could talk to our father in ways I could not.

  Dear Father, I wrote dutifully. My pen stilled as inspiration faded. I glanced at his Christmas card, postmarked Montpelier, for help. I am glad your rhododendrons will survive the frost again this year.

  The rare acquaintance who inquired about the rift with my father rightly concluded that it was due to the fact that he was a fundamentalist bigot and I was, though not put into practice recently, a lesbian. It did not help that I was also a "heretic" in his estimation. Kylie, who had embraced some of his religion during her teens, could stand him; I could not.

  We exchanged greetings at all major religious holidays when piety is at its most false and obligatory. I knew that somehow or other I was supposed to be old enough to forgive his rejection of me, but given how little actual affection there had ever been between us, I saw no reason to change the status quo. I was old enough to decide what was and was not worth my time and attention. Changing my father was not.

  My pen had not moved for several minutes and I set it and the paper aside with a heavy sigh. With just the book on my lap I could not help but turn it over to examine it one more time. Peering: through my glasses I studied the cover again, but whatever pattern,' I had seen earlier refused to reemerge. I set my glasses aside to rub the bridge of my nose as I idly flipped pages one last time. Just as I was about to push the heavy thing onto the floor, a log split on the fire. In the abrupt flare of light, the page under my hand appeared now to have writing.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, then cautiously looked again. A handwritten script spilled across the pages. The fire dimmed and so did the writing. Intrigued, I carried the book closer to the fire. The ink leapt into full color, deeply blue.

  I turned to the very first sheet and discovered what might be a title page, but the letters were so crowded and stylized I could still make out nothing of use. I studied it for a moment, turned the page to the next, studied it, then on to the next.

  After twenty pages or so I suddenly yawned. To my amazement the mantel clock reported that my next class began in less than five hours. Kylie had not stirred in all this time. Her meds knocked her out for the majority of the night and most of the day.

  Bast agreed reluctantly to share my bed with me, as long as I shared the down comforter with her. The deal was struck. My head spinning with fatigue, I plunged into sleep.

  I woke with a serious ache in my back. I supposed it was from hunching next to the fire for so long the previous evening. The power was back on, and it took only ten seconds to discern that I had twenty minutes to get to my first class of the morning. Students hated eight a.m. classes only slightly more than their instructors did.

  I woke Kylie with a gentle hug after I set a steaming cup of Irish Breakfast tea, a cookie and her morning meds on the table next to the sofa. "I'm terribly late—will you be okay?"

  "I will when I'm not dizzy." Kylie closed her eyes again. "You go on."

  I swore my way through my shower, appeased Bast, then hurried out the front door, already late.

  My boots hit the first patch of ice and I involuntarily skated the short length of my walk. My yelp of alarm warned off other pedestrians as I windmilled madly for balance. A man grabbed for me but missed and—certain I was about to beat Kylie to whatever happened after death—I spilled across the hood of a slow moving Jeep.

  The amazing thing was that I landed on my feet. Though I was shaking like a leaf, I had injured my pride more than any part of my body. Oh, my shoulder would tell me all about it for a week, but that I was alive seemed miraculous to me.

  The driver of the Jeep clambered out with expressions of alarm and I recognized my neighbor. She'd moved into the cottage next to mine at the beginning of winter break, but I'd seen little of her after the moving van had departed. Kylie sometimes reported on comings and goings and the return of the odd piece of misdelivered mail.

  "Are you okay?" She put one arm around my shoulders, being about my height, and guided me toward the sidewalk. "That was some dance number."

  "I forgot about the ice. I'm fine, really. It wasn't your fault." I thanked the man who'd tried to save me and assured everyone I really was okay. "I'm late for class... power outage... no alarm."

  "Can I drive you? Though I don't know why I bother. It's such a short walk."

  "Driving is actually not a good idea today."

  She shrugged, her blue eyes alight with mirth. "I grew up in Phoenix and have been hoping to find someone who could tell me things like that. Oh—stay still."

  She had the look of someone who had spotted a spider about to bite my jugular. I froze. She very carefully reached toward my left eyelid, however, and pulled her hand back to show me a fine fiber from my snow cap.

  "It was headed right for your eye." There was no mirth in her gaze now, but an intent, evaluative look. "Why don't I put my car back and we can walk together. You can tell me how to assess this white stuff all over the ground and I'll convince myself I really didn't break four of your ribs with my car."

  A few minutes later we hurried toward the university gates with our breath steaming the air in front of us. Credentials were quickly shared and absorbed in academic shorthand. Her summary was, "Lit. comp, no tenure in Phoenix. Perishing for lack of paper, but hope to put out next year."

  I answered with, "Humanities, tenure barely. Unspectacularly published..." I hesitated, but decided that I had no energy for academic posturing. I am what I am. "See that building over there? Gray roof? That's the business and economics building. I've got the same last name as the robber baron who paid for it, so... I am left alone to research what is of interest to me and very few others."

  "Which is?" She tramped without hesitation across the icy ground, her shiny new boots breaking the crust easily, though I guessed she weighed a good twenty pounds less than I did. The slender frame was discernible e
ven under the winter wrappings. She looked perhaps in her early forties but I had yet to see her hair—it was tucked up inside her snow hat without a single tendril to give a clue.

  "The intersection of religion and social code. The divergence of morality and scripture."

  She avoided a snow-covered hummock. "You mean why is 'thou shalt not kill' a matter of morality and not religion?"

  "It is a nearly universally held law, regardless of supporting scripture."

  "If you don't count women and children." She had a tiny frown line between her light, finely sculpted brows.

  "Exactly. Religion can be surprisingly amoral when it comes to treatment of what is considered property. One can kill property in most religions. The differences are often in the definition of what a person is or isn't, hence one can kill nonbelievers and infidels, too."

  "The current climate in our country must frustrate you."

  "Not particularly. I'm a historian. This is a phase." Our steps matched in rhythm as we neared the social sciences building.

  "Ah. So, all of history is one passing phase after another?"

  "For the most part, yes."

  She smiled then, a perfectly readable I-know-something-you-don't-know smile. I hate that. "When does a phase take on permanence?"

  "Depends on your timeframe. Humanity is a phase in the longevity of the planet."

  "But the planet is not?"

  "It is in the timeframe of the universe."

  She held the door open for me. "Then it really does matter where one sets one's frame of reference, doesn't it?"

  Ahead, I spied two of my grad students whisking into the classroom, no doubt immediately relieved to see I was not yet there. "A day trader sets it in seconds. A geologist in eons." I shrugged.

  She waved in parting as I put my hand on the classroom door. "Our souls set the only timer that matters. Thanks for the walk."

  Hoping her last comment didn't indicate some sort of cultish adherence to the latest God of the Week, I breezed into the classroom to apologize to my students and begin the working part of my day.

  It was only later, feeling tenderness in my ribs and reflecting on a surprisingly intriguing conversation that I realized I did not know my neighbor's name. I would have to ask Kylie when I got home.

  "Aurora Lowell." Kylie stretched her feet toward the fire as she picked at her dinner. "She's hot and she's gay."

  Kylie's frank assessment startled me. "How would you know? Are you finally coming around to my way of thinking about sex?"

  "We got her On Our Backs." Kylie's wan face lit with a teasing smile. "Good article about G-spot stimulation." She took a shaky breath as a laugh threatened. "You girls aren't shy."

  "No," I agreed. "When it comes to pleasure and the female body, I think we dykes lead the way."

  "Pity I never tried."

  Oh, how I agreed. Our father's attempts to indoctrinate both of us into his Temple of Righteousness had failed utterly with me, but Kylie had been attracted to something in it. The ritual, the comfort of knowing your spiritual place in the order of things, whatever it might be for her, I didn't understand it. But I firmly believed that it had kept Kylie from exploring her sexuality fully. "Honestly, I can say there are a few high points to it, though I've not often experienced them."

  "You should ask her out."

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  "Hayley."

  I looked up from my monitor. "What?"

  She gazed at me for a minute before saying, "I won't be here forever."

  My eyes stung with sudden tears. "I know that. I want to spend all the time with you I can."

  "I worry about you."

  "Don't waste the energy, I'm fine."

  "When was the last time you laughed?"

  "Today, reading the latest government promises to build unity between the parties."

  "Danced?"

  I shrugged.

  "Fucked?"

  "And your point?"

  "Life's short, even if you live to be a hundred." She set her barely touched dinner to one side. "I wish I'd tried a lot of things."

  I surreptitiously dabbed at my eyes. "Such as?"

  "Xstasy—wish I'd tried it."

  "You're not serious!"

  "Just once. And I wish... I'd danced naked around a bonfire."

  "Sounds fun until the cops show up."

  "There was a woman who loved me."

  I blinked. "Really? I mean, I'm not surprised, but you never mentioned it."

  "I wish I'd said yes. I think..." She turned her head to gaze into the fire. "Wasting love is a real sin."

  "Didn't you love what's-his-name? In college. You wore his ring for a while."

  "I think I did. I got sick and he left." She shrugged, or at least I thought the tiny movement of her shoulders was a shrug. Then I realized she was crying.

  I held her gently against me, trying not to cry myself. One of us had to be strong, but with our bodies so close I could feel our hearts beating in the same rhythm. Her depression echoed in me.

  "I'm so scared, Hayley."

  "I know."

  "What happens afterward? Where am I going?"

  I cursed my academic mind that could so easily distance me from the emotion in her plea. It was the eternal question of all societies. But this was not some theoretical discussion—this was Kylie.

  And there was no comfort I could give her, no superstition or faith that she would believe from me. Kylie hadn't been shocked when I said I'd been to bed with one of her teammates in high school, but she'd turned ashen when I'd announced I did not believe in God. There was no tale of Cloud Nine or Heaven Hereafter that I could convincingly offer. Our father would pour her full of his assurances that there was a Plan for us all, and when she surrendered to the Will she would be Healed or Taken, according to the Design.

  That was why he did not know how sick Kylie was. If our mother had still been alive I'd have told her. But not him—he'd take Kylie away to pray for healing and forgiveness because only a sinner was struck down. In his world, the sicker Kylie got, the more it must be Kylie's fault.

  I held her tight until she cried herself out, then helped her to bed, feeling utterly inadequate.

  It was barely nine o'clock and there was certainly work I could do. The study always seemed quiet and dark after Kylie left, as if she still cast light wherever she went. Bast made a huge show of loving me, but I knew she was really after the warmth from the computer monitor. We settled which part of the desk I'd be able to work on and she curled up, watching me with her pleased yellow eyes.

  The damn mystery book took up too much space. I didn't know how to send it back from whence it came, and I could hardly spend another long night poring over pages that only revealed themselves by firelight. The scribe had been very clever, to be sure, but it was useless to me.

  I pushed it away, then decided I could at least get it off my desk. Next to the fire would be fine. I'd show Kylie the writing tomorrow night. As I set it down I saw the remnants of my ill-begun letter to my father and cast it wearily into the flames. I sank down in the chair with the book on my lap, warming my hands, and considered what to do next.

  I jumped when Bast brushed past my ankles with her "I want out of this room" yowl. I had no recollection of opening the book, but it was on my lap and I was tilted awkwardly toward the firelight to make the writing visible. I shut it, annoyed with myself, and then gasped in pain as I tried to stand. My left leg was asleep and my back stiff.

  Stamping to get the circulation going in my leg, I stared in amazement at the clock. It was past midnight. And yet I'd just sat down.

  I let Bast out and she resentfully scrambled downstairs toward her litter box. I peered in on Kylie, but she appeared to be asleep. I felt stupid with fatigue and guessed I had simply fallen asleep after not enough rest last night.

  Chapter 2

  "Professor Carnegie?"

  I paused on my wa
y out of the classroom. "What can I do for you?"

  Greg, one of my favorite grad students, looked uncommonly nervous. "Your last notes, I'm afraid I can't read part."

  "Handwriting that bad?" I took the paper he proffered as I slipped my reading glasses onto my nose.

  Consider Shaeffer and Pollard, I'd written, then... I blinked. The rest was unintelligible. It looked like... but couldn't be... the script from the book that I had been studying for a week now. What on earth had I been thinking? More importantly, why hadn't I noticed?

  "Oh for heaven's sake," I said, letting my chagrin show. "I must have been really tired." Unbidden, I temporized, "It's shorthand. They're letter groups formed into single characters."

  Greg seemed satisfied but I was stunned at what I'd just blithely said. Looking at what I'd written, I was flabbergasted to realize I could read it. "It says this is very good work." Which was, in fact, what I had written.

  We talked a little bit more, but inside, I kept asking myself how all of a sudden the damn book was now understandable to me. I knew no such code. Osmosis had been thoroughly debunked by science, so I didn't believe that, either. Where had this knowledge come from?

  My obsession with the book was inexplicable. I hadn't told Kylie about it because I couldn't explain it myself. I was missing hours and hours of my time and the more I told myself I was dozing off, the more I knew it wasn't the right answer. I've never been big on meditation but that was likely closer to what was going on. If I told Kylie she'd worry that I ought to be having an affair with a real live person, not a book.

  "How are the ribs?"

  I spun around to face my neighbor, and felt myself flush as I remembered Kylie's succinct assessment: hot and gay. "They're fine. I'm fine."

  "Good. You know, the other morning I didn't realize at first that there are two of you."

  I stuck my hand out for a proper introduction. "Hayley Carnegie. You met my sister, Kylie, I believe."

  "Over my magazine and your water bill. Aurora Lowell. You're twins, aren't you?" She shook my hand and gave me another of her evaluative stares.