Beggar of Love (11 page)

“Oh, my God,” was all she could say, over and over, as she kissed Lily Ann’s bumpy nipples and learned with gentle, slow fingers how tiny and delicate a tall, broad-boned woman’s genitalia could be.

Jefferson at nineteen had the kind of thick, unruly butterscotch-twisted-with-brown hair that most people got out of a bottle. She also had the androgynous, well-defined cheekbones and jawline of certain models. Her nose was slender and straight, perhaps a little long, with a decided, but not unattractive, little dip at the end of it. Lovers liked to play with the slightly pointed tips of her ears. Her eyes looked lost in dreams until, drawn up in a smile, they seemed hardly able to contain some secret impish jubilance that only intensified when a woman smiled back at her. At the same time, Jefferson’s eyes had a slant of sadness to them, and it was that contrast that made them so memorable.

As young as she was, Jefferson’s was a graceful, proud figure with an air of competence worn lightly: command without effort and easy, easy laughter. It was obvious why she’d always been selected captain when she was on a team, yet when crossed, or troubled, her silence cowed everyone around her. She was slender, but solid; she was not masculine, but you couldn’t picture her in a dress or nightgown. She wore her clothing loosely, but it was well cut for her body and tended toward muted solids and subtle stripes with jeans and, at work, shorts that did not hide her powerful thighs. She did not walk, she strode. She neither flaunted nor hoarded the money in her family.

Jefferson loved to dance, and disco was at its height. She would have liked to wear a white suit and black shirt and be the star of the dance bars, but that would require time away from school and sports. Angela came down to the city about once a month to see her arrogant older girlfriend, Frenchy, a tiny butch woman in black jeans, a button-down shirt, and a denim jacket, with her hair cut like Elvis Presley’s, who played a miniature John Travolta, but danced so well with Angela no one laughed at her. After Jefferson finished breaking up with Angela completely, she spent more time with the German professor, but Margo wanted Jefferson at her side or on top of her every minute she wasn’t in a classroom so Jefferson made herself scarce.

Ginger Quinn was a junior in physical education when Jefferson was a sophomore, so it wasn’t until they roomed on the same floor that she really noticed Ginger. The woman might or might not be gay, but she obviously lived to dance—and danced to live too. She was putting herself through college by teaching kids at a dance school in Washington Heights, not far from where her family lived in the Bronx. The more Ginger didn’t notice her, the more she watched Ginger: in the lounge, at the dining hall, in the gym, and at modern dance performances around town. She’d go up to Ginger after each show and compliment her.

The third time she went to a performance, she’d been so down, she almost couldn’t get herself together enough to don a clean shirt—white with light blue stripes and a starched collar from the laundry down the street—and black cords. She pulled her leather bomber jacket off as she entered the storefront art space where Ginger was dancing in the West Village. The minute Jefferson saw her, her gloom lifted. Ginger did a dance choreographed for a poem set to music, by that guy Yeats again: “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Jefferson remembered it from class and got tears in her eyes again because it reminded her so much of her family’s vacation cottage in New Hampshire. She wanted to introduce Ginger Quinn to her lake.

When Jefferson approached Ginger afterward the woman seemed to snap awake, as if she’d been in a trance. “You go to Hunter?” she asked Jefferson.

After a little chitchat she said, “Ginger, there’s a women’s bar a few blocks from here.” She gave the smile that won over, she’d learned, not only the mothers of her friends, but the young women to whom she found herself attracted. “Come have a drink with me.”

Ginger hesitated.

“I’m your biggest fan,” Jefferson said. “The poem you danced to made me cry.”

That had been the right thing to say.

She never forgot her pride the first time she walked into a gay bar with Ginger. The fact that they weren’t yet together didn’t matter because they would be, and soon. Heads turned at table after table. She knew they made a knockout couple, both tall and in charge of their bodies, Ginger in black tights under a short black jumper and mint green turtleneck. She nodded to two classmates and accepted hugs from three women she’d met at the bar and danced with once or twice.

A small corner table magically emptied once she had her drink and Ginger had her Tom Collins. She pulled out a chair for Ginger, who didn’t seem to think it odd that she, a woman, would do so. They talked about their favorite music—Jefferson’s devotion to Liszt and Queen and Ginger’s to Granados and Kraftwerk. She got Ginger to tell her about her kind of dancing.

“I saw a performance on TV, I was maybe five. Women and men, a rainbow of leotards, it was so beautiful.”

“So you had lessons.”

“Sure. Ballet. That was as close as I could get, but it was good training. In high school I had a teacher who was into modern dance. She helped me audit classes at Hunter, which is how I got in. I wasn’t much of a student otherwise.”

“So, you want to be a famous dancer? Do this for a living?”

Ginger’s face was flushed talking about her passion, and light from the bar’s neon advertising signs sparked in her eyes.

“I guess I’m trying to say I don’t care,” Ginger said. “So long as I’m dancing.”

Jefferson rubbed her chin and listened hard while Ginger talked about dancers she’d seen perform and music she wanted to use and how she was saving money to go to Europe—

“When?” Jefferson asked quickly.

Ginger looked at her, copper-colored eyebrows drawn together.

Had she guessed Jefferson’s quick anxiety? A trip overseas did not mesh with her plans to be with this woman. She covered, saying, “I want to go over there too. Some day.”

“That’s exactly my plan. Some day. It’ll be a long time before I can save enough.”

Would Jefferson’s parents pay for two? Her grandparents had offered to send her to the Salzburg Music Festival. She slowed herself down. First things first. She imagined herself kissing this woman, stroking the strong muscles in her thighs, in her calves, as she pressed her mouth between Ginger’s legs, as those legs extended over her head, quivering with tension, as they hugged her shoulders. She wanted her for keeps. This, she thought, higher than drinking ever got her, was the woman she intended to marry.

Ginger was asking her about herself.

“I’m a PE major too. I’ll probably teach.”

“Here, in the city?”

“Where else can I play handball?”

“Handball.”

“Handball is more exciting than field hockey, basketball, and softball combined. Kind of like a poor man’s racquetball.”

Ginger was looking at her with more interest now. “My brothers are big players. They’ve been in tournaments all around the city.”

Jefferson caught the waitress and asked for a refill. Ginger pulled some of her drink up through the straw, but was only about a third down.

“The other reason I want to stay here is for the life.”

“The life?”

“The gay life.” She watched for Ginger’s reaction.

“Sure,” Ginger said quickly. “The gay life.”

“Well, come on, you’re a PE major. You didn’t notice the department is crawling with us?”

“Not so much in dance. I mean, some of the guys, sure.”

“You don’t go out much, do you? I mean, except to dance.”

“There’s only so much of me. I work, I go to school, I rehearse, I set up performances, and I dance. Plus I serve in the dining hall to earn my board, and I’m an RA to earn my room. I go home to see my family a lot. Plus, the guys at school are, I don’t know, childish, I guess.”

“Do you like this kind of dancing?” She indicated the jukebox. Natalie Cole was singing “Our Love.”

Ginger listened intently for so long the song ended.

“That would be fun to choreograph, but the rights would be really expensive.”

“Ginger, listen,” she said, putting her hand on Ginger’s arm. “I wasn’t talking about that kind of dancing.” Abba came on, singing “Take a Chance on Me.”

“Do you want to dance, now, with me? Here? For the fun of it?” She gulped down a big swallow of her Irish whiskey, all of a sudden more nervous than she could ever remember. It was as if her whole future depended on Ginger’s answer.

Ginger looked at the people on the dance floor, possibly seeing grown women dancing together for the first time in her life. She studied Jefferson, her face beyond serious. “I’m not gay.”

“That doesn’t matter. I want to dance,” she pleaded.

“Sure. Why not?” She reached for Jefferson’s hand. “Hurry, before the song ends.”

Jefferson considered herself not a bad dancer, but Ginger was terrific. Forty-five minutes later, they had danced to Eric Clapton’s “Lay Down Sally,” Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are,” and Yvonne Elliman’s “If I Can’t Have You,” among others. Jefferson, ebullient, wanted to go on forever, but Ginger looked at the clock and said she had to leave.

“That’s set fifteen minutes fast, to get us out of here at closing.”

Ginger shook her head and started toward the table, but Peter Frampton started singing “Baby, I Love Your Way.”

“This is your song.” Jefferson caught Ginger’s hand. “I’ll deliver you to school in a cab. Stay for one more song.”

“A cab? All the way to the dorm? Are you insane?”

“Yeah,” Jefferson answered, dancing to Ginger.

“I’ve never danced slow with a woman before tonight,” Ginger said, her body taut, but following.

“And I’ve never danced slow with anyone as beautiful as you before.”

“If you were a guy I’d think that was a line.”

Jefferson smiled. “Ah, but it is. Are you going to have your brothers beat me up?”

Ginger let loose with an unexpected sun-ray smile. “Maybe beat you at handball.”

“I’ll get Lily Ann Lee for doubles.”

“I know Lily Ann.”

“See? We have friends in common already.”

Ginger slowly shook her head, smiling. Jefferson did something a little faster with her feet and Ginger followed step for step. This match began to feel like a dream to Jefferson.

“Would we be as good together in bed?”

Ginger brought them to a stop. “What makes you think I’d go to bed with a woman?”

“Instinct.”

Ginger was looking into her eyes. They swayed as the song came to an end. Still, their eyes held. Jefferson imagined Ginger’s surprise, her denial, her growing feeling of fascination. Jefferson suspected that Ginger would never have been intimate with a boy—too busy, too disinterested, too naïve to know she was a lesbian.

When Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” came on, Ginger stepped into it and Jefferson found herself following. Something about Ginger’s boldness in taking the lead got her juices flowing. A lot of women were watching them. She felt four-footed compared to Ginger, but inside, she was flying. Best, Ginger was dancing with her eyes locked on Jefferson’s. No matter how Ginger turned or dipped or which way she directed her body, those green eyes held hers. She was so high on this girl she forgot to drink.

What was Ginger thinking? Feeling? Was dancing her way of evading Jefferson’s interest—or of connecting? Maybe she was buying time. After a game of handball, Jefferson sometimes realized she had the answers to whatever she’d been trying to work out.

What was Ginger’s body feeling? Herself, she was sweating and aware of some muscles she didn’t use playing sports. The restraint, the care she employed to move with Ginger were taking a toll on her. She wasn’t used to that.

What could she make Ginger’s body feel?

“Come with me,” she said, fitting her hand around Ginger’s wrist. Ginger looked at the hand, at Jefferson’s eyes.

“My parents are at our place in New Hampshire.”

“I didn’t sign out at the dorm.”

“We’ll call.”

“No. I have to be there. I’m the RA.”

“And RAs get single rooms, am I right? No one would know.”

“What if there were a fire? This is nuts.”

“I’ve been nuts about you for a long time.”

“About me? Why? How didn’t I know?”

“You haven’t found out there are other ways to dance?”

She could hear Ginger’s startled intake of breath.

“What?” Jefferson asked.

“I never dreamed—”

“You’re full of dreams.”

“But not of this—of—”

“Your knight in shining armor being a woman?”

“Sure. There was never a woman—”

“In your dreams.” She pulled Ginger to herself, pressed her cheek to the side of her coppery hair, and experienced something she didn’t recognize. She’d been in love before, of course. Angela was still like ivy entwining her heart that some day would leave impressions, fossils of love, but her sensations now moved inside those ivied walls. She smiled as she pulled away from Ginger.

Ginger raised one eyebrow, gazed on Jefferson.