Janet was flipping through a box of index cards: lending records that had gotten separated from their books. She nodded. “Sort of,” she said.
“Why, Janet? Did you have one of those dolls when you were a girl?”
Again she nodded. She pushed the index cards away and folded her hands.
“A time comes,” Ruth said, “when you must put away childish things.”
Janet shrugged.
“Will you at least keep an open mind?”
“Okay, Miz Spinks.”
“Ruth. You know you girls are supposed to call me Ruth.”
This, anyway, raised a smile. “You’re supposed to call us women.”
“Touché,” Ruth replied, though what she was thinking was that this was not a title they had yet earned. Nevertheless, she knew a conversation’s end when she heard one.
* * *
Over in Reeve Tennyson’s office, another meeting was about to take place. Reeve had an eleven o’clock conference with the “chairwomyn” of the Equinox College Gay-Straight-Bi-Transgendered Alliance. It was now eleven-thirteen, according to his watch, which he held up between his face and the window. Outside, the October day was sere and bright, the landscape afire with reds and yellows and oranges, and the air hazy with smoke from burning grass and leaves up and down the lake. It was, basically, a very nice day, but Reeve was incapable of enjoying it. He was annoyed by the chairwomyn’s lateness, of course, but that was par for the course at Equinox—nothing here was important enough for anybody to ever be on time for. No, he was still mooning over yesterday’s meeting with the board of trustees, that quintet of elderly matrons, who had approached him about the problem of aggressive grading.
“Aggressive grading?” he had inquired helplessly.
“Correct,” one or another trustee had replied—he tended to get them confused. There had evidently been complaints—where these had come from, and who had received them, he didn’t know—of Cs and Ds, and was it not true that grades were a matter of interpretation? These young women did not need performance anxiety to be added to their repertoire of emotional burdens, now did they?
No, Reeve had had to agree, they sure didn’t. He would pawn the problem off on shirking Dean Bullers, his toady—let Bullers curb the talent.
Because Reeve had a new problem to deal with—a credentials issue. A few professors did not, it turns out, have the degrees they claimed, nor had they taught where they said they had. Certain parents of certain students had discovered this, and informed the Mid-Atlantic States Academic Association, which accredited colleges in the region. That august body had requested, in a tersely worded letter, that the issue be quickly resolved. A few gentle phone calls to the professors in question had been returned by a lawyer from the union.
The trustees, upon hearing of this, had not been pleased.
Ellen leaned in and said, “April Cort is here.” He jumped, and his elbow banged against the window’s large cast-iron handle. “Yow!” he said, shaking his numbed arm, and he turned to find the Gay-Straight-Bi-Transgendered-Alliance chairwomyn standing in the doorway. Stocky, broad-shouldered, crew-cutted, she wore a white t-shirt tucked into worn blue jeans, and a pair of running sneakers. Her eyes were flinty, her biceps thick. She carried a clipboard. She had a default expression—stern, wary—that seemed to infer guilt and shame from everything it saw.
If not for the nose ring, April would look exactly as though she had come to read the electric meter. Reeve had long wondered about the relationship between lesbians’ resentment of men and their emulation of men. Perhaps those were two separate categories of lesbians? Anyway it did not seem like a safe topic to broach. April Cort’s round face—quite a feminine face, in spite of everything—registered disappointment, as if Reeve had already refused to grant her whatever she was about to request. He gestured toward a chair and sat down behind his desk. April Cort remained standing.
“Hi, April,” he said.
“Hi, President Tennyson. I’ve come to talk to you about the Sally Streit thing.”
It was with a familiar despair that he forced himself to ask. “Sally…Streit?”
“The nationwide expert on lesbian sexual issues? Who GSBTA wants to invite to give a talk? But there isn’t enough money in the budget? I’m sure you were briefed on all this. Anyway, we want your office to pitch in.”
Reeve folded his hands on the desk and took a breath. “What sort of talk are we talking about, here?”
“You know,” April said, frowning. “A sex talk.”
A sex talk. Right. There had been a time when he would tell himself that he would eventually get used to having this kind of conversation at work, but the target date for that transformation kept getting pushed back, and now it had receded over the horizon, leaving only a wistful pink glow. There was no getting used to it, he understood now: it could only be endured. He spoke slowly and deliberately. “A lecture, you mean? On what exactly—gender issues?”
For the first time April Cort began to look a little bit uncomfortable. “Nnnnooo…”
“What, then?”
“Like…sex.”
“Like what about it?” he asked. Surely he could be forgiven for the sudden chafing discomfort underneath his slacks? Funny, he hadn’t really noticed it before, but April Cort was almost kind of…pretty. “Like, having it?”
“Like yeah,” she said, and then elaborated: “Lesbian sex.”
“Right. Sure.”
“Well, it’s mostly a talk, anyway…”
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Reeve said, “What do you mean…mostly?”
April sat down in sudden exasperation, clearly having said more than she intended. She leaned forward, setting the clipboard on Reeve’s desk. He was charmed to see that the legal pad it held read only, President Tennyson 11am Thurs. Discuss Sally S. She spoke in a voice increased in pitch and decreased in age. “Okay, it’s like, it’s like she’s a sex advice person. For girls. And we’re all, like, of the age when, you know, some of the girls here, they don’t know what it’s like to do it with a girl, and it’s, I dunno, it’s important for everybody on campus to be comfortable together. So she comes to a place and she sort of like gives a presentation about that, and so like then everybody’ll know where everybody’s coming from.”
“Well,” Reeve said impulsively, “not everyone on campus is…a lesbian. Right?”
She scowled.
“I mean, maybe you all are, as far as I know. But—but the ones who aren’t, if there are such, ah, persons, which I’m sure there are, maybe they would be…uncomfortable? With the idea of…of such a talk.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” April Cort said.
“Okay,” Reeve quickly replied.
“Anyhow she talks about sex, and how girls do it with girls, and it’s really fun and funny and intimate, and then there’s a sort of a demonstration.”
There was a beat. Reeve ventured, “Do you mean there’s a…what is there exactly?”
“A sort of show.”
“Like what,” Reeve said, “does she show?”
“Things. That she brings. And she does things, sort of with them.”
Reeve adjusted himself below the desktop, concealing it with a general backwards lean into his chair. If she noticed, she didn’t let on. “In front of everybody?”
“Uh-huh.” Staring at the clipboard.
“Without…that is…is she…naked?”
April looked up suddenly. “Semi-,” she said. And then she filled the silence that followed by saying, “It isn’t like it’s just her, I mean audience members participate too, if they want.”
Reeve was now completely flabbergasted. He said, “You mean this woman comes and has sex with students on stage? Sex, with things she brings? Are you serious?”
“So what?” April challenged, though he sensed that it seemed ridiculous even to her.
Reeve shook his head, at last feeling confident that he could take a stand
. “I can’t fund that!” he said. “It’s just not of any academic value. What you do in your private life is none of my business, but, you know.” He took a breath. “I mean…come on!”
Her hands were folded in her lap and she stared at them with singular intensity. Had he embarrassed her?
“What does she charge?” he had to ask.
“Five thousand dollars.”
“Holy Moses!” he blurted. “Five grand?! To come to Equinox and…and…” He groped for the words. “People pay this person to come screw, or whatever, eighteen-year-old girls? April, are you insane?!”
“Women,” April said flatly; the meter reader voice was back.
“Huh?”
“Eighteen-year-old women,” she said, standing. “And nineteen, twenty, twenty-one and beyond. That’s who you’re treating like babies, President Tennyson. You are insulting grown-up women.”
“Huh,” he said again, despite its having failed once already.
“Like I said, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just an old fart who doesn’t care about anything. You had your woman and you threw her away, and now you hate us all. Well, the hell with you.”
“Wait a minute here!”
She snatched the clipboard from the desk. “Goodbye, Reeve,” she spat, and flung open the door and stalked through it. He heard her sneakered footsteps squeaking down the hallway.
After a few minutes, Ellen poked her head in. “I’m going to lunch?” she said.
“Sure.”
“Nice try, there,” she added.
“Thanks,” Reeve said. “Thanks a heap.”
* * *
In the cafeteria, April was livid. “That fucker is a fucking sexist racist asshole pig.” She threw down her fork and knife in disgust, then almost as impulsively grabbed them up and began eating again.
“He’s a racist, too?” Rain wanted to know. Her round face peered out from between two panels of uncombed hair.
“Probably,” April said through a mouthful of lasagna.
“I’m not surprised the man is squeamish,” Ty drawled, and she dabbed at her mouth with the linen napkin she carried around in her handbag. “What did you expect?”
“Dunno,” April grunted.
“Actually?” Sara said. “He is a racist? That’s how he got fired from his last job?”
“Really?” Janet asked. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the conversation until now, instead concentrating on her food, which was really very good, and her impending assistance of Happy Masters. She had the shakes, on account of midterms and lack of drinking. She thought there might be a chance she would fail French.
“I Googled him,” Sara went on. “He said black men shouldn’t fuck white women.”
“He said that?” Rain gasped.
“I say,” Ty muttered, “men shouldn’t fuck women, period.”
“I am so not surprised,” April said. “So not surprised. He’s a menace to the communal environment.”
“I don’t like the way he walks,” Sara said. Her torn dress seemed to be itching her and she reached over her shoulder to scratch. “He walks like he’s got a stick in his butt.”
“Maybe he’s secretly a fag,” Ty offered.
“We should out him,” Sara suggested.
“No way,” April said, “that would be like a compliment to him. We oughta protest. We should picket his office or something.”
“I don’t know,” Rain said, hesitantly. “I think this whole sex chick thing is a little weird.”
“You know, hon,” April came back, “you’re not as hetero as you think.”
Rain appeared taken aback. “No?”
“No. How come you hang around with us all the time? You’re the only straight girl.”
“I’m straight!” Sara said.
“You don’t count, you’re twisted,” April said. Sara appeared for a moment to struggle not to beam with pride.
“It’s just you guys are more relaxed,” Rain said, sounding rather doubtful.
Ty appeared to be licking her lips, and her eyes had grown sad and distant. She gazed at Rain with longing.
“Okay, that’s it,” April said. “We’re protesting to get Sally Streit on campus. Stop the bullshit, I say. Meeting tonight in my room. Who’s with me?”
“I am,” Sara said.
“I’m in,” Ty said.
Rain sighed. “Okay, I guess.”
“Babe, how about you?”
Janet had polished off her lasagna and was mopping up the sauce with a piece of bread. “I don’t know. I don’t feel so good.”
“You look okay to me.”
“I think I’ll beg off.”
“Whatever,” April said, attempting to conceal her disappointment with a shrug. Janet felt bad, but she had other priorities. She reached out and touched April’s hand, which lay on the table curled into a fist. April twitched a little but didn’t take the hand. Well, whatever. Janet got up.
“Goodnight, everybody,” she said, and walked off and slid her dirty tray into the rack. Her heart gasped with relief. She smoothed her dress with both her hands and hurried out into the night, and to her first glass of wine.
14. Things you have to sneak around after dark doing
“I’m done.”
“I’m not,” Happy said. “Sit down.”
She was at her desk, bent over her legal pad, where she had written a list, for Sheila and Silas Klam, of things she wanted incorporated into the new Inn. Buying it had been easy—the owners, plump New Jerseyans, didn’t like the people here, or the public schools, or the profit margin, and had been waiting for her to come and rescue them. It didn’t hurt, either, that she had given their daughter—the church-bound child who danced on the grassy embankment that summer day when Happy thought all this up—a limited-edition Happy Girl and accompanying book: Pioneer Kate, who knew how to shoot arrows and could catch fish with her bare hands. So delighted were the former owners of the Inn that they agreed to be out by the end of the week, and Happy didn’t even have to overpay.
The list, so far, read:
multiple staircases
two restaurants
Edwardian carriage house
Second Empire carriage house
four turrets (charge extra)
50 units min.?
elevator operators (footmen costumes?)
hot tubs (ball & claw?)
period décor accdg. to room theme
knot garden
row of lake cottages—various
“Hey, man, I haven’t got all day. Your boat’s done. I’m leaving.”
She looked up. Kevin Russell had not sat down—indeed, he wasn’t even in the room. He lingered in the hall, poised to go.
“Sit down, I said.”
“I’m finished, lady.”
“I didn’t pay you yet.”
He shook his head. “Paid me yesterday.”
“That was to get you here.” She opened the middle drawer of her desk and took out the hundred-dollar bill she’d secreted there this morning, for this very purpose. She held it up and set it on the desk, then returned to her pad. “Sit down.”
This time he sat down. He waited at least thirty seconds before he reached out and took the bill, but he didn’t dare get up again. Good boy.
When she felt she’d tortured him enough, she pushed the pad aside and met his gaze. It was trained directly on her, and she was surprised to find flashes of intelligence in those dark eyes. He sat straight and alert in the chair, in contrast to the slouch you’d think his body would naturally assume. She had high hopes for Kevin Russell. He said, “You gonna come look at it?”
“The boat,” Happy said.
“Yeah, the boat.”
“Fine.”
They walked down the stairs and out around the house to the lake’s edge. The beach had been muddy and littered with dead fish and rotting branches; she’d had it cleared and covered with sand and stones, and a small dock built. Much better. The
boathouse stood a few yards north, underneath a copse of cottonwoods, and beside it the rowboat was propped up on a quartet of cinderblocks covered with towels. He’d painted it sky blue, with a stripe of green along the bow, and the oars were white and gleaming.
“Is it dry?”
“Oh, yeah. I was just replacing the oarlocks. She’s ready to float.”
“Give me a hand,” she said.
They hauled the boat to the beach and towed it alongside the dock. Kevin Russell got in first and Happy hopped in neatly, maintaining her balance with ease.
“You row,” she said, and his “Yes, ma’am” was not without irony.
Kevin rowed them out about fifty yards before he ran out of breath. He sat, panting, leaning against the crossed snub ends of the oars. Happy said, “You should quit smoking.”
“You should quit caring.”
Neither spoke for a few minutes. Eventually Kevin’s breathing grew regular and Happy said, “I have plans for this town, Kevin, I guess you know that.”
His only response was a glare.
“You can glare all you like, because I don’t care what you think of those plans. I don’t care what you think of dolls, girls, books, or this town in general. Your opinion is of no importance to me whatsoever. I’m going to do what I’m going to do regardless of whether or not people like it.” So disgusting, that word, just now, like a hardened cat turd on her tongue. She spat, almost involuntarily, into the water. “I have a feeling that if you were in my position, you’d do the same. That’s why I asked you to come to my house and fix my rowboat. I want you to do things for me, and I don’t want you to think about whether or not you like them. I just want you to do them.”
“What things.”
“Dirty things. Sins. Things you have to sneak around after dark doing. Things I’ll pay you for.”
“You’ll pay me a lot for,” he drawled.
Ahh—now this made Happy smile. “Very nice. I will pay you a hundred dollars for every task you perform. If the task takes more than a day, I’ll pay you at a rate of fifty dollars a day for every extra day. Not many of the tasks will take longer than a few hours. Do you understand?”
“Sure. I bet I can satisfy you faster than that.”
Happyland Page 13