Love by the Numbers

by Karin Kallmaker

  “I have no idea.” Her spinach omelet looked acceptable.

  “It was quite smart, actually. When you add early arrival time to a flight and the time to get to any of the airports from here, the train isn’t a lot slower—about five hours and it’s at least four by air. There’s more room, there’s Wi-Fi, there’s quiet cars for people who want to work or read.” Lily’s eyes were unfocused, as if she were consulting a timetable written inside her forehead. She gave her head a little shake and added, “And the route I’ve heard is quite beautiful, along the coast for much of it.”

  She couldn’t help her curiosity. “Have you traveled in the UK before?”

  “Yes, but never to Scotland.” With an odd smile she added, “I haven’t enjoyed Wales either though I’ve heard the people are friendly.” She paused to sip her tea. “There’s no time for that for us, unfortunately. Before, I was in a group. They were mostly interested in shopping. I had the same kind of rail pass we have now and sometimes I headed out on my own. They found it very strange that I took a train two hours each way to go to the Roald Dahl Museum.”

  She was so young, Nicole realized. In spite of the infinite poise, she was a fresh-faced girl eager to see the world. An innocent. An innocent with long, sexy legs.

  Appalled at where her thoughts had wandered, Nicole said, “So after the signing we’ll go to Brighton.” They might get back late, but the Cat’s Paw would still be open.

  “Terrific.” Lily grinned at her as she waved her phone. “I have a train schedule app that seems to work so we won’t get stranded.”

  They finished breakfast with more general talk, and Nicole was amused to see that Lily had cleaned her bowl of every last morsel of oatmeal. Travel made her hungry, apparently. Perhaps she had indeed spent time in the small fitness room earlier. Whatever it was, it had given her a glow.

  * * *

  The whoosh of the train doors opening let out an hour’s worth of stale air and Lily immediately smelled the ocean. Brilliant sunlight poured down onto the train platform. “Hard to believe that just a little bit ago we were in that crowded bookstore.”

  “It was very warm in there. But the turnout was good.”

  She hoped that Nicole didn’t find her eagerness to come to Brighton too bold. Music on an open stage, some local sightseeing—both good reasons to visit the seaside town. She was doubly glad for having suggested it when they’d left the stifling bookstore and discovered that the London afternoon had turned sticky and hot. The cool sea breeze was already refreshing her. Making their way out of the train station they waded into the exodus of other passengers from the crowded train.

  “This is no small local festival,” Nicole said.

  “I guess not.” They were surrounded by women, women everywhere, all shapes and sizes, some in leather, some in lace, some even in drag, but most in summer-at-the-English-beach attire: shorts, cute little shirts and big thick sweaters. Glancing down at her own business casual skirt and hose and the most practical of her high-heeled shoes, she added, “We’re not exactly dressed for it, I guess.”

  Nicole’s gaze was following a pale young woman in a skimpy bikini and a covering drape that was translucent enough to see the enormous goose pimples on her arms. “We’re not the only ones.”

  “You’re at least in pants.” Nicole seemed to have an endless supply of black slacks and white blouses. Her daily footwear appeared to be variations of black loafers and black socks. The lack of variety made life easy—and it wasn’t as if it didn’t suit her. The tidy, buttoned-down look combined with Nicole’s serious demeanor created an aura of expertise. Lily supposed if a woman wanted to be taken seriously in a field dominated by men she had to take “sexy” out of the equation. Given her mother’s and sister’s feminine flair, the lack of makeup or jewelry beyond simple gold studs was possibly just Nicole’s attempt to declare her own style. Bottom line, Dr. Nicole Hathaway, Ph.D., looked exactly like a professor of neurobiology and bio…bio-whatever. Lily supposed that was the whole point.

  She did envy the light New England tweed jacket that had been far too heavy for London, but was perfect for the strong breeze coming off the ocean. “I should have brought my jacket instead of this sweater.”

  “I’m sure we can find you a sweatshirt.” Nicole’s head turned to follow a willowy woman sporting a thick, long sweatshirt that declared Brighton in glittery letters. If she was wearing anything under it, it didn’t show.

  Lily feigned horror. “I couldn’t possibly. I’d go over weight on my luggage.” With a palm-dampening flash, she wondered what any of these women would think if they knew about the tryst in the alley behind the Cat’s Paw. Every time she thought about it she got a trilling sensation in places that she couldn’t even name.

  She searched Nicole’s expression for signs of disappointment that the festival was a large crowd, but Nicole was completely shuttered. Unable to see over the crowd, Lily followed in step along a narrow street and through a small park. The way abruptly opened up as women broke in all directions to stream across the broad boulevard, cordoned off from automobile traffic, that separated the beach from the restaurants and trinket shops.

  She glanced at Nicole and waved an arm. “The English Channel!”

  Nicole’s smile was almost wry. “So I see. It’s quite large.”

  Lily pointed. “Next stop France. Or is it Belgium?”

  A stocky woman in biker boots paused long enough to casually redirect Lily’s arm. “That way’s Belgium, love. You can’t see it from here.” She moved Lily’s arm again while Lily laughed. “That way is all France. And that way is my wife’s bakeshop. Best pasties in town.” She flicked a card into Lily’s hand and winked. “Combo special for the festival and some of your pence goes for the local shelter today.”

  The woman eyed Nicole and then glanced again at Lily. Lily realized suddenly that in her eagerness to experience the music and the outdoor celebration she’d plopped herself and her charge right into the middle of a huge lesbian event. She could see the woman considered the two of them a couple and she didn’t know how to set that right.

  Fortunately, Nicole was gazing toward the beach. After all, she’d never been to one before. What about a beach full of girls? Did Nicole find it strange to hear a woman say “my wife”? It gave Lily a happy little thrill.

  Lily waved a thanks to her guide. She glanced at the card for the location of bakeshop. Maybe they’d stop in.

  Recalling the visitor’s map she’d looked at online, she drew Nicole to their right. “Well, this is a huge event. I don’t know if the sightseeing tours will be running.”

  “Where would they take us?”

  “There’s a valley with old ramparts and on a clear day like today you can see the Isle of Wight. Devil’s Dyke—there are open-top buses there and back and it’s got great views, the book said.” Lily had to stifle a laugh. If Nicole were a friend she’d have added, “But we can just stay here and see the dykes.” But she had the feeling that while Nicole might get the joke, she wouldn’t be amused. “Do you want to do that? Or wander here—there are a lot of booths and it looks like the main stage is up the beach that way.”

  “You should feel free to do as you like. I am capable of enjoying myself on my own.”

  Lily wasn’t sure how to take the comment since Nicole wasn’t giving out any emotional cues. Was she regretting that they’d made the trip? Or did she just want some Nicole time? Well she wasn’t going to turn down time on her own either.

  “How about I go see about getting a tour and I’ll text if there’s any issues. Otherwise, meet back at this spot at…five? And take it from there?”

  “That sounds fine. Good heavens!” Nicole blinked at a sign in a nearby window. “Does that really say corn and tuna pizza?”

  “I’ll have to give that a try,” Lily said.

  Nicole brought her gaze back to Lily and finally she was smiling. “You do that. I look forward to your analysis.”

  She left Nicole window s
hopping, whipped out the handy GPS that she’d already programmed and quickly found the stall to buy a ticket to Devil’s Dyke. There were a number of women queuing up and they were all making gut-groaning but usually funny puns about dykes, the Dyke and devils. Glad she was on her own, Lily joined in and had a delightful tour, clued in to most of the jibes and ribald comments. As rowdy as the group was, they all fell into a happy silence when they crested the Dyke and looked across the river-threaded landscape of Sussex. There were so many shades of green and gold that it would take a master painter to capture them all, Lily thought. She knew the cheap camera she’d splurged on at the shop next to this morning’s bookseller wouldn’t do it justice, but she took a number of photographs anyway.

  She felt so far away from everything. The sunshine made her nose and cheeks tingle, while the wind whipped through her hair, chilling her to the bone. She didn’t feel the least bit self-conscious when a good-natured woman with a thick Cockney accent offered to put an arm around her to keep her warm. It was simple, nothing more meant than a kind woman-to-woman gesture, and it made bruised and raw places inside her ease.

  She abruptly thought of Nicole, and wished she had come along. Something about Nicole was wound tight and knotted hard—all work and no play made Nicole dull, that’s for sure. Maybe a walk on a beach and some music would help.

  * * *

  Eye contact had always fascinated Nicole. How and why people made eye contact had both sociological and neurobiological causes and conjoined her two favorite subjects. Socially, lack of eye contact might indicate a superior/inferior relationship between two people, but it might also be simple safety reflex. Don’t look the predator in the eye. Instead, look for an escape route.

  The other explanation could be that one person was attempting to deceive the other. Attempt to deceive also explained lack of eye contact in the neurobiological sense. Deception took focus and averting eye contact allowed for more attention to the deception.

  Though she tried to focus on the empiric subject matter, an increasingly strident inner voice asked her, And so which is it, Nicole? Why are you wandering through a huge crowd of lesbians and not looking any of them in the eye?

  Social conditioning? Did she feel inferior because she didn’t have rainbow earrings, a labrys tattoo or piercings in places other than her ears?

  Was she trying to deceive all of them, trying to hide from their recognition? Was she deceiving herself? After having kept her professional, personal and sexual lives completely separate, why did this venue bring out…uncertainties?

  From cluster to cluster she moved, observing the greetings to newcomers—squeals of recognition plus hugs and kisses. A tang of salt hung in the air as a mournful ballad of lost love streamed from the main stage. The sky was crackling blue with the occasional scudding cloud. The beach was mostly small pebbles with grit that got into her shoes so easily that she understood why nearly everyone was barefoot. She finally took off her shoes—it was an odd sensation to be dressed for business and yet have cold sand between her toes.

  Purple, pink and yellow banners snapped in the brisk wind over the rows of food and craft booths. The shops on the other side of the boulevard were a mix of quaint, historic and tacky, just like their tourist counterparts in Meredith. Turning 180 degrees she studied the ocean. The distant horizon was limned in silver under the bright sun. Nearer to shore the gray turned to a faded green broken by lines of whitecaps spitting spray into the air as the wind whipped them to shore.

  She saw the town, the beach, the sky. She studied everything except the lesbians. Cole did not know how to fit in here. Nicole should be at ease. There was no threat to Nicole on this beach…so why was her heart seemingly missing beats? Why was her respiration threatening to rise?

  You have two choices, she told herself. Stay and confront the stimuli and discover why it is triggering a fearful response, or leave and remove the stimuli. But she couldn’t leave without Lily. How could she explain to Lily that she’d seen the lesbians and retreated?

  She wanted to be back in her quiet office where students trembled to enter. Where colleagues might not like her but clearly respected her. Where her mother was near but still far away, and she never ever had thoughts like these. She wanted walls to hide her from the bright, burning light. But she couldn’t go back to that world right now, and had only herself to blame. Honestly, she chided herself, where was Cole when she needed her? Did Cole really only have control in a bar when the music was loud and the lights were low?

  She made herself continue her stroll, knowing that the heightened chemical activity in the brain triggered by physical movement often spurred insights. Well, Dr. Hathaway, as any therapist would tell you, analyzing this situation through an academic construct was just another way to keep emotional distance. If Cole could not exist in the light of day, in a nonthreatening place like this, she’d have to admit that Cole was a construct of convenience to meet lesbians for sex. The very idea filled her with confusion, which was an emotion she liked even less than fear.

  “Sorry mate!”

  The apology was ringing in her ears before she felt the cold liquid soaking through her jacket and shirt. She swung round to find a pair of aghast women, wide-eyed and digging in their beach bags for tissues.

  “Look what you did, Watty!”

  “Did not, you fell over your own feet.”

  “You bumped my elbow.”

  Nicole’s protests that she was fine were ignored. She was mopped with tissues and given advice on laundering her jacket interspersed with offers to buy her a beer. She was going to smell like a brewery later.

  “I’m all right, really.”

  “You’re a bit posh for the beach,” Watty pronounced. Her large, dark eyes were prominent in a slender face and Nicole found herself smiling.

  “I am. I wasn’t expecting the crowd.”

  “Woman Fest is huge!” The other woman, larger in every way, gestured at the crowd with what was left of her beer as she stuck out her other hand. “I’m Carleen. If you were looking for ladies, this is the place.”

  They shared a sticky handshake. Nicole nearly said that she wasn’t looking for ladies. Which she wasn’t, because that was Cole’s function and… She chose a more palatable truth. “I was hoping to hear the music.”

  “This is too far back from the stage. This is cruising and hook-ups, which makes sense because this is where the beer’s for sale. Let me buy you a beer.”

  Still protesting that she didn’t need one, Nicole found herself propelled toward the booths. She managed to convince Carleen she would be happy with a lemonade and they worked their way out of the crush of the queue.

  “Let’s go up toward the sta—” Carleen wheeled around to look at her. “What do we call you?”

  “Cole,” she answered. For a moment she couldn’t breathe.

  Watty had already downed half her lemonade. “Like Newcastle?”

  “Like short for Nicole.”

  Feeling a little dizzy, she was drawn by her merry companions in the direction of the performance stage. They paused occasionally to browse through a vendor tent of hand-crafted earrings, carved wood and some beautiful artisanal fabrics. After they reached the edge of the booths they stepped around, over and sometimes directly through thickets of women on blankets and beach towels enjoying picnics, books and occasional hot-and-heavy making out.

  She had to forcibly avert her eyes from the occasional bare breast. In her hunger and arousal she felt no more evolved than Pavlov’s dog.

  The low-key acoustic duo had been replaced by a full-scale rock band with a singer belting out a done-me-wrong song about picking up the pieces. Reaching a space just big enough for the three of them, Carleen and Watty plopped down. She looked at her black slacks, a fine gabardine, and wished for jeans. There was not really any other choice. Seated, she found herself again in the sea of women, not a shape, size, color or age unrepresented. The music battered at her ears while the glittering shimmer of sunlight and
laughter battered at her brain. It was exhausting to keep it out.

  She realized that Watty and Carleen assumed she was a lesbian, even if she wasn’t sporting pro-gay shirts like theirs. Watty’s was the more restrained, with a small appliqué of a rainbow-hued woman runner on her polo’s chest pocket. Carleen’s T-shirt could be read from 200 feet: BIG LESBIAN SHIRT.

  “It’s a party,” Carleen suddenly said. “You can’t cry at a party.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware I looked sad.”

  “Don’t pay her mind,” Watty said. “She thinks if you’re not smiling you must be depressed.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do too.”

  She was reminded of her own bickering with Kate. She had a feeling the two were friends, not a couple, not that it mattered to her.

  “So let me guess where you’re from,” Watty said. “Toronto?”

  She shook her head. “Due east of there—New Hampshire.”

  Watty nudged Carleen. “She’s not Canadian.”

  Carleen shrugged. “She sounds a lot like a Canadian, but an American is okay.”

  Nicole was inspired by the upbeat “Yes I Am” now rippling across the crowd to say, “Melissa. We gave the world Melissa Etheridge.”

  “I’ll see your Melissa and raise you Catherine Jenkins.” Carleen processed her blank stare. “You don’t even know who she is! You don’t watch Dancing with the Stars? A show you stole from the BBC?”

  “I don’t,” she admitted. “I actually don’t watch much television.”

  Watty pointed a thumb at herself. “Computers, sort of. What do you do?”

  “I’m a professor and researcher in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and biopsychology.” It occurred to her that she might have said she was a writer.

  Watty blinked at her. “You look familiar, but I don’t know why.”

  Nicole thought about not enlightening her, but Carleen abruptly said, “Oh! You’re that love doctor.”

  She laughed—nothing, she felt, could be farther from her reality. “No, not quite.”