Rumours

by Alison Tyler

  When I went to the post office to check my box, Milly gave Sukie a nudge and tilted her head towards me. Was I being totally paranoid, or did everyone really know? As I left the building, I heard Sukie say, ‘Zeppelin says that Sheila’s up in arms –’ So the locals apparently had already decided that Alden and I had engaged in a torrid affair. I didn’t know if this was because he’d been with me all the previous day, and that people had seen us dining together. Or if someone had actually caught a glimpse of us in the firestation. Or if the gossip came simply from the fact that I’d had the nerve to drive his truck.

  Oh, shit.

  Why hadn’t I realised – this was small-town life. This is what Johnny had tried to warn me about. What had I been upset about in LA? Mrs Nelson and her ridiculous poodle – Johnny’s one downstairs neighbour who gave me a hard time because she thought I was a slut. Now, I found myself looking back fondly on the old busybody. At least in Brentwood there’d been only one person who had it in for me – here, it seemed as if everyone had judged me already.

  Things got even worse after I returned home with a copy of the Levee Road News. To take my mind off my situation, I turned to the Naughty Newsbite feature and scanned the column. Women in Dolores Beach piped in about their drunk boyfriends. Boyfriends in Dolores Beach phoned to complain about their shrewish girlfriends. It was only the very last item made my cheeks flush. Under the heading Near-Naked Nymphet was a report of a young woman exposing herself in a phone booth, although, when the police drove by to check out the situation, the girl was gone. It had to be me. But who had seen me? The two women I’d watched walking down the street – Alhambra and Geneva? They hadn’t even looked my way. At least, I didn’t think they had.

  So now I was the news on everyone’s lips, as well as the news in the local paper. And what could I possibly do about it?

  I was sure that Alden would call me when he saw the truck waiting for him, or when he heard the news spreading throughout town like wildfire. But my phone remained silent all day long. I tried my best to work, but found that I couldn’t focus my attention on the projects that awaited me. I considered going out again, but didn’t have the energy to pretend not to hear what apparently everyone was saying. Besides, the four-mile walk home had worn me out.

  I told myself to rise above the gossip since I was not actually able to ignore it. And, after thinking it over for a while, I went to the Cantina to order a lunch to go. I wanted to find out whether I was overreacting. I hoped so.

  But no such luck. There were several patrons from The Saloon at the Mexican restaurant, and all turned to watch me as I entered the building. They were quiet while I ordered, but quickly hunched together to giggle and gossip as I made my way past their table. Oh, I’d been so stupid. I’d done precisely what Mia had warned me against – jumped right into the gossip stew.

  Well, what would Mia have done in my situation? I didn’t want to call to ask, because I dreaded hearing her ‘I told you so’ snicker. Finally, I decided to return to the bar that night, in spite of my fears of being an outcast. Perhaps if I pretended that I had nothing to be ashamed about, people would respond in kind. If the local lesbians were accepted – with all their demonstrative affection for each other – then surely I could be.

  But, although I hoped I’d be able to fit right in, the climate had changed considerably, as it had at the Cowpie. The girls, who had previously been only standoffish, were now downright hostile. They turned their backs when I entered, continuing their conversation without gazing in my direction even once. Several men at the corner of the bar looked me up and down, and one of them said something in a low voice to the others, who laughed. I heard the words ‘fireman’s pole’ but that was it. The bartender didn’t seem unfriendly, but she did give me a different sort of a look, as if she’d sized me up incorrectly from the start.

  ‘The usual?’ she asked.

  I found that I was pleased to have a ‘usual’, even if the vibe in the place was decidedly unwelcome. ‘Yeah, thanks.’

  Cody wasn’t there. Neither was Alden. But the bartender parked herself in front of my stool. ‘That Alden’s a sexy bastard, isn’t he?’ she asked in her delicious British accent.

  My eyes widened. Was she implying that she’d been with him as well? And, if so, then why in the hell was I getting so much flak?

  ‘Don’t look so shocked,’ she said, filling up a glass of fizzy water for herself and then adding a perfectly curled slice of lemon rind. ‘You’re not the first one to go for a round on that particular ride.’ She grinned at me. ‘You do know what people say out here, don’t you?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, what do they say?’

  ‘You don’t break up with a boyfriend in Raysville. You lose your turn.’

  Suddenly, I heard the unmistakable sounds of Leonard Cohen’s cheater’s anthem ‘Everybody Knows’ blare from the jukebox in the back. I didn’t need a meter on my bed to disclose what everybody knew. It seemed my behaviour had already been broadcast throughout town without any added assistance necessary.

  ‘Clever bitch,’ Nica said under her breath. ‘That’s Sheila’s way of sending you a message.’ She gave me a wry smile. ‘Look, I’m not taking sides – there are no sides to take. I’m just saying to watch out. Sheila’s wound pretty tightly. She’s an emergency-room nurse in the city.’

  At my look of disbelief, Nica said, ‘I know. She doesn’t appear to have the most patient bedside manner. But that’s not what she’s about. She’s the one who deals with the trauma. When someone’s rushed in, she’s the first person there. It’s not her style to be comforting. It’s her style to save lives. But she has odd hours. She might be on call for thirty-six hours, and then off for three days. It’s a highly stressful job.’

  God, I hadn’t thought her in the least bit like a nurse. There was nothing Florence Nightingale about her in the slightest. If pressed, I’d have pegged her for an ill-tempered waitress at an all-night truck stop. Pretty, but bitchy.

  ‘She and Alden met years ago, and they’re on again, off again. You happened to arrive in the middle of an off-again phase, but you’ve disturbed the natural course of their relationship. If you hadn’t arrived, he’d probably be back with her by now, simply for lack of options.’

  ‘But if you’ve slept with him, too –’

  ‘I’m no threat,’ Nica said with a grin. ‘And she knows it. Because I don’t want him for the duration. Probably half the girls in this room have sampled each other’s boyfriends at one time or another.’

  ‘You make it sound like one big flesh-filled buffet –’

  ‘I’m serious about what I said. Everyone gets a turn in a town this small. The only people who don’t sleep together are the ones who are related. And it’s not just the heteros, you know. The girls who like girls swap with each other frequently, as well. You just watch what goes on between Geneva and Alhambra. They’ve got their own personal soap opera going on.’

  ‘I met them the other night –’ I remembered.

  ‘And watch out for that one, too,’ Nica warned me. ‘Alhambra is the town’s biggest gossip. At least, she’s one of them.’ Nica gave me a smile, as if she realised she shouldn’t diss somebody else for spreading rumours, as she was doing the same thing right now.

  ‘But why would Sheila keep going back if Alden’s always on to someone else?’

  Now Nica gave me a look that seemed to say I should be able to figure this out for myself. When I didn’t respond, she continued in a matter-of-fact manner. ‘It’s not as if she stays home knitting while he’s out with other girls,’ she explained. ‘She’s tried plenty of the sweets in town herself.’

  I took ‘sweets’ to be a play on Noah’s name, but before I could ask if I was right, Alden’s sylphlike ex-girlfriend came towards me from the other room, a fierce look on her face. We were both green-eyed redheads, but that’s where our resemblance stopped. She had several inches on me, and was taller still in her high-heeled cowboy boots, faded boot-cut blue jea
ns and a tight T-shirt with the letters RFD emblazoned in white on the front over the firehouse insignia, as if by naming Alden’s place of work she could claim rightful ownership of him. As she glared at me, the wail of a siren filled the room. Not only did she have on the RFD T-shirt, she had sound effects.

  ‘You’re making yourself right at home,’ she said sharply.

  I noticed that Nica had moved aside on the pretence of rinsing out glasses, although I could tell from her stance that she was listening to every single word.

  ‘Good for you,’ Sheila continued. ‘You see how far it gets you.’

  I tried to think of something clever to say, but words failed me.

  ‘He’s not really a one-woman sort of man. He’ll get tired of you before you know it. All you are is the flavour of the week.’

  Sheila put her palm down hard on the bar, and Nica immediately handed her over a beer, as if she’d been expecting the silent request. When Sheila turned away, her ponytail whipped me in the face, and I felt the sting of it in my eyes. Was that a call to action, the way a glove slapped across the face indicated some sort of duel in years gone by? Was I supposed to fight her now? I’d seen write-ups in the Levee Road News about catfights between women in Dolores Beach, but I’d never engaged in one myself.

  Then suddenly I felt the attention in the room shift. There was a trio at the window table made up of two girls and a guy, all college-aged and all attractive. Both of the women were white and the man was black. I’d noticed them upon entering, because they were dressed well enough to be easily spotted as out-of-towners, down to the girls’ open-toed sandals. Their clothes were casual but clearly expensive, and the colours matched, as if the three had been plucked from a double-page Abercrombie and Fitch ad.

  Now I realised everyone was watching them not because of their chic style, but because the two girls were kissing seductively, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. This was no quick lips-to-cheek smooch. This was a hardcore liplock, with plenty of visible tongue action, like something from a porn movie. Even though there were an abundance of lesbians in town, this particularly overt public display of affection seemed cause to gawk. And when the man, who watched with obvious pleasure for a moment, broke into the embrace, kissing first one girl and then the other, I heard actual gasps of awe explode throughout the room.

  The male member of the party pulled one of the young women on to his lap, and, as he focused his attention on her, the second girl took turns fondling both of the others.

  I found that I was staring as intently as the rest of the gawking locals. Not only were all three participants young and undeniably attractive, but also they didn’t seem to give a damn who was watching them. The man used his hands continually, caressing one woman and then the other, and the girls made happy noises of delight whenever he touched them. I admired their nerve, and my mind took off on a fantasy trip about what the rest of their evening might look like: a sexual sandwich with the women playing the parts of the bread, and the man the delicious filling between their youthful bodies. Or maybe a topsy-turvy menage, with the man moving back and forth between one and the other, dipping here, thrusting there, making sure that everyone got a turn.

  Others in the room must have been thinking something similar, because, when the three finally left the building, the chatter immediately arose about what they might do next and where they might be heading off to. As I listened to the gossip, I realised exactly what I needed to do to resolve my own sticky situation.

  Book Two

  ‘The flying rumours gather’d as they roll’d,

  Scarce any tale was sooner heard than told;

  And all who told it added something new.

  And all who heard it made enlargements, too.’

  Alexander Pope

  Chapter Eight

  Back in college, Mia, Joelle and I were like the three musketeers. That is, if the three musketeers had made their careers out of helping each other out of difficult or embarrassing sexual situations. I don’t know how our little trio managed to find ourselves in so much X-rated trouble, but we did. Constantly. It’s a wonder we actually managed to graduate with all the outrageous sex we had.

  As might be expected, I was the least bold of our threesome, and yet I was the one who had to be bailed out the most often. That’s because Joelle didn’t really care about her reputation. If people thought she had a highly tuned libido, well, that was fine with her because it was true. And a reputation as a sex guru seemed to wrangle her even more bedpartners than she might have otherwise lassoed. In fact, this reputation was how she won her nightly spot as DJ on the college indie music station. It was also how she wormed her way backstage when any cute bands visited campus to play for the student body, searching out ‘exclusive interviews’ that often took place between her open, hungry mouth and some bandmember’s lucky cock, with a live microphone nowhere in sight.

  Mia was less showy in her exploits than Joelle, but she had a deeply feminist belief that girls should be allowed to do exactly what they pleased. That girls should, in fact, have the same opportunities as boys, in whatever subject they wanted, including sexual relations. Mia was the type to date a professor, or to have a fling while on a yoga retreat, hooking up with one instructor for half the time and another for the rest. She didn’t play favourites and she didn’t play by anyone else’s rules. She was known for her experimentation, and had even spent one solid quarter in the femme role of a girl-girl relationship.

  So it was down to me to call on my musketeers for help. I cared what people thought about me. I tried to keep my nose clean. Trouble simply happened to me. Sometimes, though, I didn’t have to call. My two saviours found me first, as if they were wired into my needs. They kept an eye out, helping me before I even knew I needed help. Like the time with West. He was my number-one vice. All tanned and blond and gorgeous. Sweet smile, slightly devilish expression in his steel-blue eyes. He had everything going for him, including a girlfriend in a nearby sorority. Yet he liked me. Even if I was just a fling, he liked to be with me.

  I didn’t mind being kept secret from his girlfriend because, after our first tryst together, I decided that I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I wasn’t like the girls out trolling for a husband already, searching for that elusive Mrs degree. I only wanted to have fun. But what wouldn’t have been fun was to be discovered in flagrante delicto by his witchy girlfriend and her sadistic sorority sisters. This is why Joelle and Mia rushed to save me when West’s girlfriend showed up unannounced in the dorm one evening. Mia saw her first, down in the lobby, and went running to Joelle’s room to let her know.

  ‘Charlie’s with West. In his room. If she doesn’t get out now, Witchwoman will find them both. And the phone must be off the hook. I tried calling –’

  Joelle didn’t hesitate for a moment. She ran across the hall to her favourite fuckbuddy’s room, a junior named Carter who was far more interested in partying than studying, and invited him to a private showing in the shower. The fact that she invited him in front of his rowdy group of beer-drinking friends meant that in moments everyone on our floor knew what was happening: girl in the boys’ bathroom. Show on at twelve.

  Joelle was a true friend. She showered in the boys’ room in order to take the heat off me, or really to give me time to get dressed and sneak out of West’s bedroom unnoticed. As soon as Mia felt it was safe, she went knocking on West’s door, and when he, opened it a crack, naked save for a pair of blue silky boxers, she explained the situation in hushed tones. I understood immediately what the problem was, and I hurried to dress, trying to find all of my clothes and slip them on to my sweat-dampened skin. We’d been in a sixty-nine in his bottom bunk, with West’s tongue dreamily tracing circles between my thighs. At the point of our disturbance, I had been teetering on the brink of a climax and, even as I hurried to pull myself together, I could still taste his cock in my mouth. I felt confused from the proximity to pleasure, and I fled from the room, my clothes in disar
ray, my thong balled up in my fist, breathless when I realised that I’d actually made it back to safety. And that’s when Mia and I heard West’s girlfriend, dissing Joelle for being a slut.

  Inga’s catty comments could be heard echoing down the hall, which pissed Mia off so much that she grabbed my hot-pink thong from me and stormed back into the room. So I’d escaped. But poor West didn’t. Inga’s shriek of disgust at two a.m. brought half the dorm outside West’s door.

  ‘Who the fuck is she?’

  West’s voice offered a muffled explanation. I could tell he was trying his best to placate her, and that he was embarrassed by all the noise she was making.

  ‘I don’t think so, West. Try again.’

  He must have suggested that the naughty knickers were a set left by his roommate Marco’s lady.

  ‘Then how did the panties get in your bed?’

  ‘Geez,’ I whispered to Mia, ‘why’d you have to do that?’

  ‘ ’Cause she called Joey a slut.’

  ‘But, you know …’

  ‘Yeah, I know. She is a slut. But nobody’s allowed to say so except you and me.’

  We collapsed back into our room in a fit of giggles. I felt bad – or at least a little bad – for West. But mostly I wished I had some of Mia’s sparkiness or Joey’s nerve.

  Now, here I was all over again. Forced to hang my head in shame – or at least do my best to avoid a catfight at the local bar – because of one sizzling day at the beach followed by a fire-hot night against Engine 387 at the local station. And Alden and I hadn’t even ‘gone all the way’, to use an overly quaint expression from high school. At least, we hadn’t yet. Sure, we would have if the alarm hadn’t broken in on our frisky business. But so what?