Toothpick House

by Lee Lynch

  “Looked kind of stuck up.”

  “She can smell hicks looking at you guys,” Peg teased.

  “I’m no hick,” Annie protested. “You tell anybody from Boston, aside from myself who gives you special consideration due to your origins, being from this filthy town—you tell any other Bostonian she’s a hick, you’ll learn,” she threatened.

  “Me neither,” Turkey added. “New Haven’s no small town. Besides, we treat you out-of-towners right, don’t we?”

  Eleanor patted a bobby pin back into place. “I’d like to issue an invitation to certain big city women to try a hick.” She smiled up at the waitress who was back with their drinks disinterestedly waiting to be paid. There was a scramble to give her money and she walked away.

  “Didn’t even say thank you,” huffed Eleanor.

  Peg hit a fist against the table. “Look what they do to gay women! Did you ever hear such prices?”

  “It’s New York,” Annie explained, taking it for granted.

  “Yeah,” Peg answered angrily. “So not only do we pay inflated prices to go to a bar not even as nice as one of ours, but we pay more because it’s a gay bar. They have us, alright. We’ve got no place else to go so they know we’re going to swarm in here to waste our money. It makes me sick.”

  “Plus a cover charge.” Eleanor, Turkey, Peg and Annie looked as one to the next table. A woman with long braided hair had joined their conversation. She was with two other women. None of them looks as if she’s been in a gay bar before, Annie Heaphy thought. She downed her first beer, staring at a woman who looked to her like a thoroughbred, except for her eyes. “They’re all alive and warm and excited,” Annie thought. “I could fall for those eyes.”

  Annie almost jumped when the sharp-chinned woman went on. “It’s just another way women are oppressed. But obviously you sisters know that.”

  Eleanor rolled her eyes. Turkey guffawed quietly and Annie glared at both her friends.

  “Right you are, sister,” Peg answered, toasting their neighbors with her Coke, wondering where she had seen “Sister” before.

  “It’s good to see you aren’t drinking,” “Sister” went on, apparently unaware of Turkey’s struggle to control her laughter. “The bar trap. How many lesbians fall in it?” she asked rhetorically. “If only lesbians would realize that liquor ambushes them into self-destruction to keep them down.”

  Annie glanced covertly at the thoroughbred’s glass and, relieved, saw a mixed drink before she signalled the waitress for another beer. When she looked back, “Sister” had quieted and the thoroughbred, who met Annie’s eyes, looked quickly away. Peg leaned toward Turkey and Eleanor and started talking intently. “Like I was saying, the arm is a magnificent example of the intricacy of the human body. Take the muscles of the upper arm .. .”

  “You take them,” Turkey gurgled. “And take your friends too. Is that what you go to your meetings with?”

  “Yuk,” Peg grimaced, almost whispering. “No way. I think I’ve seen her around somewhere, but I’ve never been to a meeting with her.”

  “Is that how they talk?” Eleanor wanted to know.

  “Listen, guys, she’s saying the right things. It’s just like she’s a cartoon version of a feminist: all politics and no woman.”

  “Personally, I think she’s got something stuck up her ass,” Turkey nodded seriously, setting Eleanor off into a gale of laughter.

  “Cut it out,” Annie chided them. “Look who she’s got with her.” All three heads turned back to the next table. “Not now, you jerks,” Annie whispered, mortified. All three looked quickly away while Annie hid her face behind her beer mug. She snuck a look toward the thoroughbred who looked uncomfortable.

  “All right, Rosemary,” the thoroughbred was saying, “you persuaded me to come, but not to stay all night. Are you almost ready to leave or shall I call a cab for myself?”

  Annie’s heart jumped. She wanted to tell the woman to stay. It would take more drinks before she had the nerve to talk to her.

  “We just got here a half hour ago. Aren’t you having a good time, Victoria?”

  Victoria, Victoria, rang in Annie’s attentive ears. “Shh,”she hissed at Turkey who had been trying to get her attention.

  “It’s not that, Rosemary. I’m just not sure that we belong here.”

  “Why not? Claudia and I are lesbians,” she said, putting an arm awkwardly around Claudia’s shoulders, careful not to touch anything but the soft white v-neck sweater across Claudia’s fleshy shoulders. “And you’re our friend. Why shouldn’t we be here?”

  Victoria looked at Annie’s table just as Annie peeked again from behind her mug at her. “I don’t know,” Victoria sighed.

  “Victoria,” Claudia reached her hand across to her. “Please just relax. I’m enjoying it here, but I wouldn’t without you. Honest. Pretend I’m observing for a psych class,” she smiled. “Help me take notes for another half hour and if you’re still uncomfortable we’ll go home.”

  Victoria could not resist Claudia’s sincere plea. “All right, but I don’t think we belong, whether you’re gay or not.”

  “I’m sure it’s the class difference, not sexuality, making you uncomfortable,” Rosemary said.

  “You may be right.”

  “There is a definite difference in class, Victoria, but that’s no reason not to be here. We need someplace to meet other lesbians and our so-called class just doesn’t provide that.”

  Claudia suggested, “Maybe there are clubs for dykes with Ph.D.’s. Who knows?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use that word, Claudia,” Rosemary complained. She toyed with the lime in her glass.

  “Dyke? What’s wrong with it? I kind of like it.”

  “It implies something bad.”

  “But, Rosemary,” Claudia protested, “so does lesbian and all the other words people use to describe us. It’s what they put into the words that does it, not the words themselves, right, Victoria? You’re the lit major.”

  “She’s right, Rosemary, you know that,” Victoria looked at her puzzled. “Words are used by too many people to control. Dyke is a good old fashioned Celtic word.”

  “I’d rather be called that than homosexual,” Claudia said. “Imagine having to live with the word sexual so close to you all the time. Why, it defines you in purely sexual terms. Dyke is kind of cute.”

  Victoria stole another look at Annie’s table at this, thinking that the word dyke was cute and she smiled toward the woman in the hat. Annie Heaphy smiled back at her. “Oh,” she said almost aloud, and “I didn’t mean to smile,” to herself, still smiling, then abruptly frowning at the lesbian. The woman turned away, her shoulders sagging, then shrugged as if to say, “I don’t care either.” Victoria wanted to correct her signals again, to step over to the lesbian and say, “It isn’t that I don’t want to smile, I just didn’t mean to and then I got confused,” but she realized that she wasn’t sure that she would have wanted to smile in any case because she did not know exactly what she was feeling. She slipped her pea jacket off her shoulders and stretched out the neck of her sweater to let some cooler air touch her body. How warm the bar was!

  Annie ordered another drink. “What are you looking at,” she glowered at Turkey.

  “Hey, I can’t help it if she isn’t interested, man. Maybe she’s not out yet.”

  “Then what in the world is she doing here?” wondered Eleanor.

  Annie mumbled, “Her friends are gay.”

  “You really don’t think she is?” Turkey asked, staring at the woman again. “You ought to know.”

  “Me?” asked Annie. “Why me?”

  “Cause you see more of the world in that little box of a cab of yours than the rest of us. Me, shut up in classrooms, Peg in a gym.”

  ldquo;And all’s I see are truck drivers devouring hamburgers.” “You’re our woman of the world, alright.” Turkey leaned back to describe her image of Annie. “Every kind of character there is gets in and out of your
cab. ANNIE HEAPHY, STAR CABBIE,” she went on, gesturing grandly, “haunting the city to build her collection of Types.”

  “Cut it out, Turkey,” Annie protested. Turkey only became more involved in her game. She hunched forward and pretended to speak into a microphone. “She starts her day in the subterranean world of a diner. Sharing coffee with the workers of the world who are on their way home from the graveyard shift, indistinguishable from them except for the filth of her cap.” Eleanor began to giggle. “Ah, but now she goes into the world to ferry streaming humanity to the places it earns its daily bread. The harried executive,” Turkey stood surprisingly quickly from her tiny seat and pretended to hold an attache case awkwardly out from her body. “The lady executive. . . .” Here she flipped open an invisible compact and patted her cheeks manically with powder. Peg was chuckling. “The shopper comes in from the suburbs to spend, spend, spend!” She struggled with armloads of packages that fell with each step she took in place. Annie broke into a smile. “The furtive lovers who must part after a sordid night in their dingy hotel room.” Gazing adoringly upward, Turkey put her arms around non-existent broad shoulders and smacked wet lips, fishlike, toward the air. Then she turned and bent down as if holding a small woman, all the while sneaking glances out the cab windows to see if they are being observed. Eleanor and Peg were laughing aloud now as Turkey sat and quickly portrayed a frantic racing fan checking a scratch sheet on his way to a bookie’s, a pair of nuns clicking rosaries as they began a trip to the airport, and, finally, a mother taking her sick child who is vomiting all over Annie’s back seat, to the doctor. At this, even Annie broke into laughter because it had happened to her.

  “But wait,” Turkey continued, whispering suspensefully into the microphone. “Through all this parade of humanity, our Star Cabbie must see through these facades and play the game we all know so well . . . ,” she paused, “the game of-Who’s the Dyke?” Laughter came from tables around them. “The sick kid!” called one listener. “The nuns!” cried another. There was more laughter as Turkey became the game show host explaining the game to his studio audience. “It’s a well known fact that one out of every ten people is gay. It’s the sad fate and the trusted office of the gay cabdriver to penetrate the disguises of every ten people and ‘Find the Dyke!’” The women around her broke into a light applause and Turkey stood to bow.

  When she sat again she whispered, “Well, Star Cabbie? What’s your conclusion about ‘Sister’s’ friend? Is she or isn’t she?”

  Annie looked thoughtful. “I conclude,” and she paused dramatically to place her cap over her heart, catching Turkey’s comic spirit, “that if she isn’t, she will be. And I personally guarantee it.”

  Peg, Eleanor and Turkey cheered Annie. The waitress brought more drinks. The four friends sat silently, still smiling over Turkey’s performance. Annie was half listening to the conversation at Sister’s table. The woman called Claudia was telling stories about the farm where she grew up. “Why don’t you ask her to dance?” Eleanor asked. “Even if she isn’t as pretty as some.”

  Annie scowled at her. “I’m not interested.”

  Eleanor looked at Peg. “Why don’t you two dance?” Peg asked.

  “Yeah, Annie, won’t you dance with me? My feet are getting itchy. Come on, Annie.”

  “No, you dance with her, Peg.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, goody!” Eleanor squealed, jumping up from her seat. “Maybe somebody real nice will cut in.”

  “Ain’t I real nice, lady?” Peg asked.

  Eleanor took her arm and they stepped into the crowd on the dance floor, squeezing their way through to the center of it. Annie looked over at Victoria again, but she was arguing with “Sister.” Claudia tugged on “Sister’s” puffed peasant-blouse sleeve, asking her to dance, but it was Victoria who rose to dance with the shorter woman. Annie watched them follow Peg and Eleanor to the floor.

  “She your type or what, Annie?” Turkey wanted to know.

  “I guess if I have a type, that’s it.”

  “Yeah, you like them educated, don’t you?”

  “That seems to be who I go for alright, Turkey.”

  “Then ask ‘Sister’ to dance.”

  “Don’t make fun.”

  “Who’s making fun?” Turkey straightened her overall straps. “She looks lonely. Probably doesn’t know how to dance.”

  “Then, Turkey, I think it’s a good idea for you to teach her on account of you being such a good Samaritan and all.”

  “Oh, Annie, I’m sure she prefers blondes. Look at her, so lonely over there, computing her millions.”

  “Studying weighty matters . . .”

  “Her head in the clouds . . .”

  “Lusting after your body ...”

  “Annie Heaphy! I’m shocked you could even think such a thing about her.”

  “Hey, Turkey,” Annie whispered conspiratorily, “do you think she knows what to do with her little friend?”

  Turkey finally bellowed with laughter. “I hope not, ‘cause I can’t imagine it!”

  “We’re being mean, now, Turk.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” She paused to giggle. “But it’s so much fun.”

  The couples were leaving the dance floor. Annie spotted Victoria leading Claudia back, a bright flush on their cheeks. Peg and Eleanor were right behind them.

  “Come on, Annie, it’s your turn. Listen, a slow one,” Eleanor invited.

  Peg grabbed Annie’s collar and playfully pulled her up. “Come on, Heaphy, quit mooning.”

  Annie glanced over at Victoria as Eleanor found her hand and pulled her onto the dance floor. Victoria was picking up her jacket.

  “Hey,” Eleanor tugged at her, “You going to dance or not?” Annie silently put her arms around Eleanor, her eyes following Victoria. Was she leaving without her friends? Annie’s heart pounded as she thought of herself approaching Victoria and asking her to stay. Eleanor’s arms tightened around Annie. “Finally I’m holding you again,” she said, nestling her head on Annie’s shoulder. Annie felt impatient. She wanted to think, before Victoria went out the door, of a way to stop her and learn who she was so she could find her another time when she had more courage. “I guess you didn’t enjoy our night together as much as me,” Eleanor was saying.

  Annie barely controlled her impatience. “Sure I did, Elly.”

  “You sound very convincing, let me tell you,” Eleanor replied sarcastically.

  Annie pulled back from her. “Sorry,” she said, feeling bad about her divided attention. She turned Eleanor around on the floor to see the door better. “I enjoyed you,” she whispered, pressing her cheek against Eleanor’s hair.

  Eleanor’s body relaxed and she pressed herself against Annie. Victoria was going toward the door. Annie’s heart slowed and she exhaled deeply. “Thank you, Annie. I had a good time too,” Eleanor breathed back at her as she leaned away to smile at Annie. “Maybe we can do it again.”

  “Maybe,” Annie agreed. They danced in silence for awhile, Annie trying to forget about the woman who had just left, the stranger who had caught her fancy, and think instead of her friend’s needs. “I don’t know, though,” she looked at Eleanor, hoping she would not be hurt. “I like you an awful lot as a friend. I think that’s very important to me.”

  The music stopped and they started back to their table. “I know what you mean, Annie,” Eleanor said reflectively, swinging her hand in Annie’s. “I’d hate to lose our friendship for some sex.”

  “Exactly,” Annie said as they reached the table. They squeezed hands once more and smiled. “Come on, Turkey. This one sounds just like you, doesn’t it?” she asked, directing her question to the whole group.

  “This is a lindy, you guys. I’m not a social historian, just a sociologist,” Turkey said, struggling up from the tiny low seat.

  “Don’t sociologists dance?” Annie laughed as they moved to the floor. She secretly wanted Victoria’s friends to notice her and led Turkey i
n that direction, just far enough away not to be obvious. Perhaps they would talk about her to Victoria, perhaps, she daydreamed, Victoria would come back looking for her exactly a year from this night and Annie would pledge to herself to remember the date and come back herself. . . . Annie woke from her daydream suddenly when Victoria returned. Filled with relief, Annie lindied even more frantically and smiled widely at Turkey who did a complicated set of steps in response. Annie’s joy overcame her inhibitions. She copied the steps, till Turkey became more inventive. Annie matched her again. When the music stopped they were panting and thirsty and laughingly pushed their way to the table. Peg had ordered more drinks and Annie lifted her beer can, chugging through a smile, spilling the cold stuff on her white shirt and jeans, then laughing and looking at Victoria who was again talking with her friends. Annie was high, finally, and not afraid.

  “Would you like to dance?” she found herself asking the woman, intently seeking her eyes through their glasses as if her life depended on Victoria’s answer. Victoria looked at Rosemary and Claudia and back to Annie while Annie wiped the sweat of the last dance from her forehead with her sleeve and lifted her cap to run her fingers through her hair in quick, rapid motions. Victoria felt herself warm under her peacoat again and knew she would say yes. Annie looked like a tense, determined dyke-goddess fresh from the heavens as she stood in her white shirt and jeans, her sleeves rolled up to her forearms, her ruby pinky ring making tracks in the air as she moved her arm under the swirling bar light, her short hair messy under the cap, her breasts round and tender-looking just under her shirt. Astonished at herself for thinking of the woman this way, Victoria met her blue eyes and said, “Sure, thank you.”

  She took off her jacket and followed Annie briskly to the dance floor. “This is a real slow one,” Annie said. “I need it after that last dance.”