"It's really nice out," Sarah said, knowing she couldn't ask Melissa to go with her. They hadn't been out together in the evening for over a week.
"I don't suppose you'd bring back some eats? We're going to be at this for a couple more hours. It's getting pretty heavy."
Sarah's heart sank, but she managed a smile. "I'll pick up some vegetarian pizza."
"That would be great," Melissa said. "You're a doll."
The evening air was just edged with chill. Leaves crunched under her feet as she chose the uphill route toward Douglass. A Muni trolley rumbled by and after a few minutes of mindless plodding, to which she intoned, "You Can't Always Get What You Want," she stopped to look at the view.
The East Bay lights were just beginning to twinkle against a sky that had deepened to navy blue over the hills. A breeze had come up, and damp, cold air blew over her collar. She glanced up — yes, the fog was coming in. The gray waves fingered their way toward the Financial District, and Sarah knew they would soon blanket the city with a quiet akin to snow. She had come to love the air. It lacked the heady clarity of Seattle's, but it was rich with the sea and eucalyptus. She was beginning to sense the nuances of the different kinds of fog. This fog, brought in on the wind, would burn off slowly in the morning, promising sunshine for a few hours in the afternoon.
She caught herself sighing for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last week. She watched leaves curl and dance down the sidewalk and pondered her recent funk. Now that the situation with Leslie was smoothed out, she should be happy. Romance, Happiness and Fate were all satisfied. Her life should be perfect. Except it wasn't.
She hoped she wasn't just being jealous of Melissa's new friends and her documentary. Yes, it tied her up a lot of evenings, and they weren't making love at their pre-move rate, but that was to be expected. No one could keep up the pace they had set. If that was what was bothering her, she needed to get over it, and fast. Ellen would have called it poetic justice if Sarah couldn't handle a girlfriend with long work hours.
Okay, she told herself. Leave the negativity at the top of the hill. Tie it to an arrow and shoot it into the bay. She took a deep breath, then softly sang, "I've got sunshine, on a cloudy day," as she crossed over the two blocks to their favorite pizza parlor.
She felt braced and at peace until she went back to the apartment. Melissa beamed happily at her and invited everyone to dig in while Sarah went to the kitchen for plates and napkins. She noticed Janica helping herself to a large slice and thought cattily that she seemed to have no trouble enjoying the fruits of Sarah's capitalism.
She withdrew to the bedroom again with a slice of pizza and a glass of water, the liters of soda she'd bought a couple of days ago having been already consumed by the group. She looked disconsolately at the work she'd brought home, then, in a flash of inspiration, dug through her box of books in the corner. One of these days they'd buy some bookshelves to fit under the window.
Here it was, Pride and Prejudice, the copy she'd bought in Louisville and never opened. She settled down in the rocker to read.
Mr. D'Arcy had just insulted Miss Elizabeth Bennett's looks and disposition when the bedroom door opened.
"Hey, sweetheart," Melissa said. "You're still up."
Sarah saw with a shock that it was pushing ten o'clock. "I was reading an old favorite," she said. She held out the book and got up to stretch when Melissa took it.
"I could never get into Jane Austen," Melissa said. "Too dry for me."
"I've always found her hilarious," Sarah said. "I got into her after listening to Northanger Abbey on tape. Maybe that's the secret."
"Maybe," Melissa said, handing the book back.
"Mel, are you coming or not?" Janica's voice grated on Sarah's nerves, but she hid her irritation as she raised her eyebrows at Melissa.
"We're going to catch the last showing of The Killing of Sister George at the Castro. Want to come?"
It was the first time Melissa had invited her to join in the group for one of their social outings. Even though it would make her droopy in the morning, Sarah leaped at the chance. She bundled into her overcoat and clattered after the others down the stairs. It felt good to hold Melissa's hand as they walked down the steep incline toward the theater.
Leeza and Janica bickered all the way to the theater, and Sarah said sotto voce to Melissa, "Are they having some sort of love-hate thing?"
Melissa giggled in response. "I think so. Janica's practicing celibacy, but I don't think she's going to last much longer. Leeza's pretty persistent. Want a cookie?"
"You betcha, double chocolate chunk. I'll get the tickets and meet you at the door." Sarah waited through the short line and handed Melissa her ticket in exchange for the cookie and, after an awkward head-tilt misunderstanding, a brief kiss.
"Come on, guys," Janica said. "We'll miss the beginning."
Melissa hurried into the theater as Sarah glanced at Janica. She wasn't prepared for the unveiled distaste on Janica's face. Sarah's hackles rose.
"After you," she said politely. Janica didn't answer as she stalked ahead of Sarah.
Pardon me for living, Sarah thought as she settled into her seat beside Melissa. Luckily, she neither worked nor lived with Janica, so she didn't really care what her problem was. It would be different if it were Leslie acting this way. .
Sarah had seen the movie long ago on video but had forgotten how outdated and vicious the stereotypes were. The central character, an older actress who played beloved Sister George in a soap opera, was painted as a brutal butch who at one point forces her lovely and fragile femme girlfriend to eat a cigar. The scene was presented as if all lesbians behaved that way and Sarah joined the rest of the audience in hissing.
She had to control her laughter at the end of the film, however, because the theater had gone very quiet. She noticed a few other people holding back snickers, but they were far in the minority. She knew that the killing of Sister George in the soap opera was a metaphor, but she found the decision to film the death scene drunk as a skunk funny, heartening even. The character knew that she'd never be on screen again—her agent had found her a part mooing in a children's show. The movie closed with the young lover leaving her for a female network executive and the former Sister George sitting on the stairs, mooing with an edge of hysteria, but mooing nonetheless. Sarah wanted to applaud her will to survive.
After the movie, the three new faces, whose names she'd never caught, drifted toward the Muni stop, while the rest of them went in search of latts and cappuccinos. Sarah was longing to head for home as well, but Janica, Leeza, Molly, Melissa and she crowded around a little table with barely enough room for their cups. Sarah stifled a yawn.
"Well, that was the biggest load of homophobic crap I've ever seen," Leeza said.
Molly, who spoke quietly if she spoke at all, said, "I rather liked it."
"Me, too," Sarah said. "Yes, it was homophobic, but given the odds stacked against her, I liked Sister George's tenacity."
Melissa sipped the decaf double-mochaccino Sarah had bought for her and looked a question at Janica.
"I'm with Leeza. They made a lesbian seem dirty and cruel, and then they stuck in a slapstick ending," Janica said. "They would never have treated a straight woman that way."
"Certainly not," Sarah said, too tired to hide her sarcasm. "They didn't do that in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane or, what was the movie Joan Crawford made? Trog. Straight women were treated with great respect in both those movies."
"Those were horror films," Janica said dismissively.
"And this wasn't? This movie came out in the period that started with Baby Jane, when older women were figures of horror. I think Sister George had the same agenda underneath the lurid evil butch story. Sister George was not just a lesbian in this movie —"
"Just a lesbian?" Janica made it sound as if Sarah had just insulted the entire lesbian nation.
"Well, I don't know about you," Sarah said carefully, "but being a lesbi
an is only one facet of me. And it was only one facet of Sister George."
"I think since she stalked around most of the film looking dirty and menacing, lesbian is the label we're supposed to stick with," Janica said.
"Exactly," Sarah answered promptly. "Let's forget about her being old, fat and unattractive. Let's not think about how just being a woman made her disposable to the men who ran the soap opera. Susannah York is young and beautiful, and the worst thing that happens to her is inflicted by the evil butch. But Sister George loses her career and her dignity. I guess you could argue that butches get treated worse than femmes, but age and appearance are the real messages. At least that's how I saw it."
"I tend to agree with you," Molly said quietly. "I hadn't seen it before. I was watching and thinking about how, if I'd seen it when it was first released in sixty-eight, it would have depressed me so much because I was gay. But I thought about what any older woman must have felt seeing it. Because it wasn't a horror film. They were supposed to sit and laugh at the story of an older woman being discarded by her lover and her career. It reminded me of that saying about it being hard to laugh at the sight of your own blood."
Sarah decided right then that she liked Molly.
"You're talking as if you liked her character." Leeza leaned toward Janica, giving every impression of being totally in tune with Janica's every word. "She wasn't a character, she was a caricature."
"We're not supposed to like her," Molly answered. "We're supposed to find her disgusting, but I didn't. She is what her society made her, and in spite of it, she was going to survive."
Janica gave Sarah an evil look, as if Sarah was responsible for Molly's having a mind of her own. "What did you think, Mel?"
"I guess if I were going to review this movie, I'd have to stick with the lesbian context. It overshadows everything else, especially in the context of gay cinema."
Sarah tried to appear nonchalant as she sipped her decaf latte. It was too bitter, but there was only real sugar on the table. She had never felt the six years difference in their ages more than she did at that moment. And she was realizing that no one in Melissa's group seemed to be over 30. She remembered a billboard she'd seen earlier that day with a grungy, 20-year-old Mick Jagger wannabe hawking Calvin Klein cologne. Her first reaction had been that the last thing she wanted to smell like was how the model looked. And then she had felt old. She was too young to feel old.
Janica shot Sarah a triumphant look, then licked the coffee off her stir stick. Sarah shared a "whatever" glance with Molly.
"So, tell me," Janica said to Sarah, "if you're not just a lesbian, what are you?"
Sarah arched an eyebrow and thought that she didn't care enough about Janica to waste an arrow on her. "I'm a thirty-something woman, an attorney, a nature lover..." She thought suddenly of her archery class and Bryant, September, Sue, Tina, Carrie, Pam and Dorothy. And Geno, what a sweetheart he was. She was finding herself more comfortable with the kids than she had thought she would be. "A teacher," she added, "and an archer."
"So multi-talented," Janica said in a flat voice.
"And a great lover." Melissa took Sarah's hand. "Kind and generous—"
"Oh stop," Sarah said in a voice that meant Melissa should go on for days if she liked.
Molly put her mug down with an air of finality. "I've really got to get going. Mel, can I make a suggestion for our next meeting?"
"Sure," Melissa said.
"Can we start putting an action plan down on paper? I'd like to have an idea how long we'll be working on this, and when I'll be needed the most. So I can plan, you know?"
"Sure, sounds like a good idea," Melissa said.
"I mean, I got an offer to do the lighting for another local documentary and they're asking me to commit to dates already."
"That's great," Melissa said. "You're probably right. It's time to get down to business."
Sarah blinked away the fog of sleep and her brain caught up to the conversation. The group had been meeting for over a month and they hadn't put anything on paper yet? They didn't have a production schedule? She looked at Melissa and made a mental note to ask about the terms of the grant. There must be a deadline or time limit. But it's not your grant, Sarah thought. Don't be co-dependent.
But it worried her. As they walked home she wondered how to bring it up and couldn't find a graceful way. She turned up her collar and unintentionally let a cold draft of damp air down her back.
"Chilly, isn't it?" Melissa snaked her arm around Sarah's waist. "I bet I can warm you up."
"As absolutely heavenly as it sounds, all I can think about is sleep. I have to get up in about five hours —"
"I promise to put you right to sleep." She preceded Sarah up the stairs to their door and turned back with the key in the lock. She unbuttoned her coat and slowly pulled her shirt out of her slacks. Sarah paused on the steps and looked up. The porch light outlined Melissa's golden hair, but her face was in shadow.
Sarah wanted to say, "I don't know you and I feel like I should," but her mouth was too dry to speak and the sight of Melissa unbuttoning her blouse too absorbing. At least that hadn't changed, Sarah thought. I still want her.
Everything would be okay, she thought. What was a little lost sleep to make everything okay? She surrendered to Melissa's eager lips and reveled in the heat of her body against the cold sheets. And for a while, with the world quiet outside, everything was okay.
"Is this your son?" Sarah picked up the framed photograph on Leslie's desk. In it a boy hung upside down in some sort of amusement park ride.
"Pride of my life and bane of my existence," Leslie said. "He's going on thirteen."
Sarah made a groan of sympathy. "I remember thirteen. My mother and I did not get along at all." They still didn't.
"We get along really well," Leslie said. "As long as he does what I tell him to do. I've raised him to think for himself—"
"And it's such a bitch when he does," Sarah finished.
Leslie laughed. "You said it." She took the frame and ran a finger over the boy's face before putting it back in its place. "I love him to pieces. By the way, Mark Davis gets the prize for naming Tigger for the market."
"Was there a contest?" Sarah was startled by the abrupt change in topic.
"Not exactly, but all the programmers had an idea. His was Motion, and I've decided I like it. We can do a lot with the name both audibly and visually. Motion, ocean, notion, commotion, love potion. We can have some real fun."
"It sounds great," Sarah said. "I'll do a run on the trademark indexes and see if anyone beat us to it."
"Terrific. You can mark something off on the action plan. Hey," Leslie went on, "I got this invite to a dinner reception sponsored by..." She dug through her top drawer, "Here it is, sponsored by Nestle. This year they're honoring Digital Queers for their commitment to empowering the gay community through technology," she read. "The keynoter is Wendy Fujamora from Sun Micro, who I think is possibly the smartest woman in computers today. Do you want to go with me? It's up your way — at the Grand Regency."
"Sounds exciting. Corporate dollars usually buy great meals. When is it and what do I wear?"
"Three weeks from Thursday. Last year I went — they honored Glide Memorial — and people were pretty dressed up. Something in basic black, cocktail-length would do." Leslie snickered and Sarah realized her shock was showing. "I may dress like this every day," Leslie said, with a wave at her jeans and T-shirt, "but under this scruffy exterior beats the heart of a woman who owns purple high heels."
Sarah chuckled. "I'll confess to having a few such items in my closet." She studied the invitation. "Cocktails at six. So why don't I bring my duds here and that way we can be the first at the whores dee-ovaries and free booze."
Leslie laughed outright. "Whores dee-ovaries?"
"Hey, that's what it looks like on the page. The first time I ever said it, I shocked my mother, who promptly told me to never say it again—"
"And y
ou've been saying it that way ever since."
Sarah was grinning as she stood up. "Some things never change. Maybe I can get my girlfriend to drive me to work so we don't have to take separate cars. Parking won't be easy."
"It's a deal," Leslie said. "And if dinner is so beautifully presented — you know the type — a single curl of endive showing off the miniature carrot and a delectable bay scallop in a dollop of ginger cream — well, I know where we can get a greasy burger afterwards."
"I thought you were a health food nut," Sarah said. She nodded at the poster on Leslie's wall promoting Whole Farms Whole Fruit — Natural, Organic and Wholesome.
Leslie smiled was tinged with wistfulness. "I decided life was too short for tofu and bulgar. Just ask Richard. I corrupted him on the topic of food."
"Don't let her get away with saying I'm the one who drug her out of the commune and into business. Who came up with the Healthy Submarine stores?"
Sarah looked over her shoulder at Richard. "The commune?"
"Hey," Leslie said to Richard. "We franchised two locations. And I was ahead of my time. There's a Subway practically on every corner now, they're just not organic."
Richard inclined his head. "You were right. But we didn't know what we were doing—"
"As usual—"
"And the good thing is, now we do."
Leslie looked a little skeptical. "Like not hiring an accountant until after I commit suicide?"
"Hey, who's committing suicide?" Gene peeked over Richard's shoulder.
"Well, now that we're all here, let's have a staff meeting," Leslie said. "Agenda Item One: my imminent demise."
Richard and Gene groaned, but Sarah said, "Hey, I like staff meetings."
"I'm not kidding," Leslie said, running her hands through her already wild, black curls. 'We have to make up our minds about accounting staff. I've got a half dozen things on my desk because no one else wants them and they're all finance type stuff. Which I hate as much as you do. We've put this off far too long, and we're getting big again and paying too much for outsiders to do it."
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