Lacey considered this. “I suppose some of their actions are my fault.”
Chase pulled out her desk calendar and made a notation.
“What are you doing?”
“Marking this day on my Calendar of Unlikely Events.”
“What’s so special about today—other than my nervous breakdown?”
“You admitted to being wrong. That doesn’t happen a lot. In fact, I don’t think it’s ever happened.”
“Am I really that bad?” She finished shredding the Kleenex and set the waste basket aside.
“Uh, let me think about that—yes.”
“Smart ass. Come sit next to me. I need some moral support.”
Chase obliged. “Do you want to talk about what induced the exodus or do you want to hear the plan Bud came up with for the new Institute?”
“I don’t think even Bud could save the Institute. No one, it appears, wants to be saved,” Lacey said.
“Tell me what happened,” Chase said. The sun hit the gold box trophy through the windowpane. Chase gazed at it. Damn, that was a good moment. She still felt the glow of success.
Divine Vulva poked Chase in the ribs and whispered, “Do try and pay attention. This is a pivotal moment in lesbian history and it might prove instructive.”
“Because?” Chase inquired, eyebrows raised.
“It’s a failed lesbian experiment,” Divine Vulva said.
“And we need those…because?”
“It shows our fallibility as a people.”
“And that’s good…because?”
“It means we are stretching our boundaries and growing.”
“And we got a really good library out of the deal,” Commercial Endeavor piped in.
“Chase, are you paying attention?” Lacey said, getting up and pacing. “I mean, if I am going display my failure as a leader and a person, I would really appreciate your full attention.” She glared.
“All right. Tell away,” Chase said, fixing a look of concentration on her face.
“Well, it started as a comedy seminar. I hired this local lesbian comedian. She does club gigs, and I’d heard good things about her. So I figured all the laughing had helped before and that keeping the momentum going would help, and it was all going so well until the joke.”
“What was wrong with the joke?”
“It was off-color.” Lacey sat back down and pulled out a Kleenex in anticipation of a crying jag.
“It was about black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American people?”
“No, not that kind of color. It was a nether regions joke.” Lacey sighed and put her head in her hands.
“You mean a vaginal joke? What the fuck is that?”
“Just listen. Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden…”
“A vaginally religious joke?” Chase said.
Lacey rolled her eyes and continued, “And Eve decided to take a bath, so she went to the river and was washing her hoo-hoo…”
“Hoo-hoo? You call it a hoo-hoo? Come on, you can say vagina.”
Lacey winced.
“What? You don’t like the word ‘vagina’? What’s wrong with it?”
“You have changed,” Lacey said. “You always use euphemisms. You’re the one that gets squeamish writing love scenes.”
“The new me does not hide behind language. She embraces it.”
Lacey glanced at her dubiously. “Yeah, next, you’ll be skydiving.”
Chase looked at her and then smiled.
“You wouldn’t,” Lacey said, alarmed.
“I might. I’ve been challenged.”
“Winning a gold box award and skydiving are two entirely different things.”
“Are they? They both address performance anxiety issues. And it’s not a gold box award—it is the much coveted gift trophy for the Tenth Annual Gift-Wrapping Regional Competition.”
“Are you going to let me finish my story or not?”
“You’ll have to start at the beginning. I’ve forgotten everything but the dirty vagina.”
“Well, the exodus began when...”
“No, I remember that. Start with the joke.”
“Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden,” Lacey blurted. “Eve decided to take a bath in the river. She was splashing water on her hoo-hoo, a.k.a. her vagina, when the heavens opened and God’s voice boomed down, ‘Damnit! Now, I’ll never get the smell off those fish.’”
Chase grimaced.
“Well?” Lacey said. “It’s awful. Go ahead and say it.”
Instead of answering, Chase turned over a poster board that was pinned up on her oversized bulletin board. “Let’s talk about this instead,” she said, dragging Lacey and the poster board over to the couch. She set the presentation piece on the coffee table in front of them.
Lacey didn’t look at it. “Why won’t you tell me the joke was bad and that’s why people are leaving the Institute?”
“Because it’s pointless. The people in your Institute are not fun. In the past, countries that did not have fun people in them have really sucked. You can’t make the lesbians at the Institute happy, relaxed, motivated and funny. Some people are simply not capable of those things. You’ve inadvertently created a world full of them. I think, if you want to help them, you should see about buying an island or a self-contained post-Soviet country where the non-funny lesbians could live—call it Uptightovenia,” Chase said. “Or Stuckupthebuttovia or Needtogetlaidovia.” Chase chuckled.
Lacey laughed. She put her arm around Chase’s shoulders. “It was a bad plan from the get-go and you tried to tell me.”
“I did warn you.”
“So what am I going to do with this big empty building in the middle of nowhere?”
“Turn it into an IKEA.”
“Hmm…” Lacey said, appearing to mull over the idea.
“We don’t have the demographics for that, but look at this,” Chase said, pointing at the board sitting on the coffee table. It was covered in photographs, diagrams and profit margins.
“What is it?”
“First off, I can’t claim credit for it. My part is to sell you on the idea. Addison and Bud came up with the plan and they put this together. Now don’t say no before thinking, really thinking, it over. Okay?”
“Agreed. Tell me about it.”
“Think Club Med, only we’ll call it Panocha Alta,” Chase said.
It took Lacey a minute to process that, and then she slugged Chase in the arm. “Sorry I couldn’t help myself,” Chase said. “I don’t know what to call it…”
“Desert Dykes,” Lacey said, appearing to catch the spirit of the thing. “It’s better than Spanish for ‘Tall Vaginas,’ which is linguistically biased against non-Spanish-speaking lesbians.”
Chase took this as a good sign. Lacey seemed more like her old self—enthusiatic and politically correct. Divine Vulva winked at her and nodded.
“No, that sounds like a bad lesbian film. How about Vulva Ventures? We could have this double ‘V’ intersecting logo thing,” Chase suggested, not meaning a word of it. She had learned over the years to go way out there with Lacey because like a pendulum she’d come halfway back to normalcy.
“I like it,” Lacey said, studying the photos.
“No, I think we could come up with something else that’s catchy but corporately minded. Vulva Ventures sounds like Rosie O’Donnell selling jeep rides into the wilds of Labia Majora.”
“That’s why I like it. It has the affirming message that this place is about and for women.”
“There you go with that save-the-world crap again. This is Vacation Land, not Affirmation Central,” Chase said, jabbing a finger at the photo of a bunch of women sitting around a sparkling blue pool drinking margaritas.
“We’ll need a pool and several Jacuzzis,” Lacey said, studying the photo closely. “And a liquor license.”
“Which can all be written off. You will lose your nonprofit status, but with the increase in fees, not to mention the bar tabs, y
ou’ll make money,” Chase said, amazed at her own business acumen. “I think we should study the business model of the Dinah Shore Weekend and Olivia Cruise lines.”
“You do realize that this is the kind of superficial, sex-riddled attitude that you despise,” Lacey said.
“I don’t have to see it. Besides, as you pointed out, what are you going to do with an enormous building out in the middle of nowhere? You might want to hire some horses too. The dudette-ranch thing would work well with the New Mexican theme.”
“So, now I’m going to have women wandering around in neon thongs and tight Wranglers.”
The door opened and Bud came in with her aunt, Graciela. “Did I hear something about tight Wranglers?”
“What are you doing here?” Chase asked by way of a greeting. Graciela had been conspicuously absent from their lives recently for reasons unknown.
“I’m lonely, and my sister,” Graciela emphasized the word “sister,” “was running late, so I offered to bring Bud home. Gitana said she’d feed me. Of course, I was counting on you doing the cooking.”
“Why are you lonely? Did Delia throw you out, and where have you been anyway? We haven’t seen you in months. ” Chase said, going to the fridge and getting three beers. She figured they all needed one excepting Bud, for whom she got a squeeze box of grape juice.
“No, Delia did not throw me out.” Graciela said, indignantly. “She’s with Jasmine at that book conference thingy. And I have been taking classes.”
“Jasmine not being here has been very hard on me too. I think that not having my ‘rock’ is taking its toll,” Lacey said. She took two swallows of her beer, and Chase wondered if alcohol was a good idea. She didn’t want to encourage maudlin behavior.
“I thought I was your rock,” Chase said to Lacey. “Classes in what?” she inquired of Graciela. This was multitasking conversationalism.
“I’m studying to be a life coach. I’ve got to get out of real estate. It’s killing me,” Graciela said.
Chase spewed beer everywhere. “A what?”
“A life coach. I’m going to teach seminars on how to reach the pinnacle of one’s personality. “I’m calling it ‘Getting Grateful with Graciela.’”
They all stared at her.
“What? Not being grateful is a serious problem in today’s world of ‘It’s all about me.’”
“I think it’s great,” Lacey said. “Now, can we get back to my problem?”
Bud sat next to Lacey on the couch. She took her hand in hers. “I see you’ve been studying the new business model. I know the kidney-shaped pool seems more organic, but when considering cubic space a large rectangle supplies more deck space.”
“A pool?” Graciela glanced down at the plans. “What is all this?”
“We think Lacey should turn the Institute into a Club Med kind of place,” Bud said.
“Can I be the activity director?” Graciela said. “I’m getting burnt out on wearing suits and licking rich assholes while trying to sell them a house.”
Chase gave her the don’t-talk-like-that-in-front-of-Bud look. Graciela smirked.
“Selling real estate does involve a lot of ass licking,” Bud agreed. “And I know she was speaking figuratively, not literally.”
Graciela smirked again.
Chase imagined Graciela dressed in white khakis and behaving like the lecherous doctor on the Love Boat. “I don’t know if that is such a good idea for a married woman.”
“What do you mean? That’s like the best person for the job,” Graciela said, hiking up the trousers of her Brooks Brothers suit.
“Losing some weight since Delia left?” Chase inquired.
“Yeah, it’s awful. Why do you think I came out here? I need some sustenance.”
“Big word,” Chase said.
“I got it from Bud on the way out. I thought sustenance was a Greek salad or something until Bud explained it to me.”
Lacey studied Graciela. “Do you think lesbians would come to a place like this where they just had fun and didn’t attend seminars on self-improvement and methods for attaining world domination?”
Graciela’s jaw dropped. So, people really did do that, Chase thought. Sometimes she wondered if the fictional gestures writers used were actually performed by real people. Next thing you knew, somebody would purse their lips. What does pursing lips mean anyway? Chase thought.
“Is that what you’ve been doing up there in the wilderness?” Graciela inquired.
Lacey nodded.
“Good God, no wonder it’s such a mess. You can’t put those types together and expect harmony—that’s like oil-and-water stuff, baby.” She sat next to Lacey and put her arm around her.
Lacey looked like an invalid that Bud and Graciela were consoling and going to help get to her feet and to the lavatory. Chase supposed she was, in a way. Lacey had done her best by the Lesbian Nation only to discover that lesbians were ordinary people with the usual goals, gripes and grievances—they were no better problem-solvers than the rest of the world.
“Dude, I totally think you should go this way. First, it’s a lot more fun, and second, there is some serious cash to be made in the vacation industry. Did you know that per capita gay people have the most expendable income? Harnessing that cash cow is definitely the right move,” Graciela said.
“Ya think?” Lacey said.
Chase noted that Lacey had adopted some of Gloria’s Oklahoma linguistic tendencies in the “Ya think” department. “Now, Gloria would make a great activities leader,” Chase said.
“Seriously, sister, this is the wave of the future, but you gotta fire Chino and Dixon. Those two are a definite buzz kill,” Graciela said.
“How do you know about them?” Lacey asked.
“Dude, they are like famous for being freaky. I think even the Pink Mafia is afraid of them.”
“But they are the Pink Mafia,” Lacey said.
“In some organizations there are certain people who are uber, and in this case I think that applies to Dixon and Chino,” Bud said.
“Uber?” Lacey said.
“Dude, that is a cool word,” Graciela said.
“Do you use surfer rad linguistics with your real estate clients?” Chase said. Graciela’s misuse of the English language closely resembled Jetsam and Flotsam, characters in Joseph Wambaugh’s Hollywood Hills series who spoke in surfer lingo.
“Of course not. I kind of do that My Fair Lady gig where I put on the highfalutin thing and sound all uptown and boarding school. It’s only when I’m hanging with my peeps that I turn on the ‘me’ lightbulb.”
“What is uber?” Lacey asked again.
“It means they’re over the top,” Bud said. “It’s the German word for ‘super.’”
“They are rather diligent in their pursuit of their goals,” Lacey said.
Chase rolled her eyes. Now that was a gesture people actually did perform. As a writer, she should pay closer attention to these sorts of details. “To say the least,” she added.
They watched Lacey as she scrutinized the business plan. Graciela sat with her fingers crossed. “Why are you so excited?” Chase asked Graciela.
“Dude, vacation land in our backyard, and Delia can do some major business at a gig like that, right, Lacey?” Graciela said.
“Sure,” Lacey said. “I mean if we’re going to promote a sexually charged fatuous experience why not sell erotica while we’re at it?”
“Perfect,” Graciela said, squeezing Lacey’s shoulders.
“You could still have a few seminars,” Chase said.
“Yeah, dude, there will always be those serious lesbians and some of them actually have girlfriends who might want to sit by the pool and have a fruity one while Ms. Save-the-World goes off to learn how to facilitate it,” Graciela said. “It’s a definite win-win.”
“This isn’t how my dream was supposed to go,” Lacey said and sighed heavily.
“But think about the money,” Graciela said.
“It was never about money,” Lacey said. She took a swig of beer.
“With the money you can start a Save-the-Lesbian fund,” Chase said.
At this Lacey’s eyes lit up. “That is a fabulous idea. I would be providing a safe environment for lesbians to have fun, and I could use the profits to help underprivileged lesbians,” Lacey said.
“We’ll all help with the changeover,” Bud said. “I think we should set a target date of May fifth. Cinco de Mayo is the perfect party attitude.”
“What would I do without you guys? You are my guiding force,” Lacey said.
Graciela popped up. She patted Lacey’s shoulders. “Things happen for a reason. Maybe you were meant to make people happy and relaxed, instead of all uptight looking for revolution and spoiling for a fight. Now, let’s put the feed bag on, I need some serious sustenance.”
“You staying for dinner?” Chase asked Lacey.
“Sure, we can celebrate,” Lacey said in a tone not exactly full of excitement but trying for it.
“That’s the spirit,” Graciela said, slapping her on the back.
Bud squeezed her hand. “You’ll get used to the idea.”
Chase gazed at Bud. She was such a wonderfully intuitive child.
“I hope so,” Lacey said.
“What do you mean? The gala opening party alone is worth it all,” Graciela said, scooping Bud up, which was no small task, and dancing across the front yard with her.
“Maybe we can skydive into the Gala Night Extravaganza with each of us holding the end of an enormous banner,” Lacey said.
“Now, that’s the spirit,” Chase said. It wasn’t until later that night in bed that it occurred to her that Lacey already had a title for the opening ceremony—The Gala Night Extravaganza. She just hoped Lacey had been kidding about the skydiving.
Epilogue
Lacey wasn’t kidding about the skydiving. On Cinco de Mayo the new Fearless Chase found herself sitting on a bench inside a Cessna 208B turboprop airplane with a roll-up door. Bud had researched all about Cessna aircraft previous to Chase jumping out of one. Well, if one was going to die, doing it on a holiday at least provided a marker, Chase thought.
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