Chase Banter [02] Marching to a Different Accordion (23 page)

“Lacey, listen to me. This is a bar with books as part of the décor and waitresses that are dressed in short skirts and tight blouses supposedly indicative of schoolgirls and it’s called The Library. The real library is between Fifth and Sixth Street. Drive on.” Chase refrained from saying that if Lacey had ever gone to the library before she would know this.

“Oh.”

They found the library, only to discover that neither one of them had change for the parking meter. They scoured the car in search of lost change and found nothing. “Jasmine is kind of a neat freak. She details the cars once a week,” Lacey said.

Chase stood looking at the parking meter. “This is New Mexico.”

“And?”

“We have laws against littering, using your cell phone while driving, double fine speed zones and lots of drunk driving, all of which have hefty fines attached to them and for the most part very few of which are enforced. I don’t think we have to worry about a parking meter.”

Inside, Isabel greeted them and then took them to the reserved shelves where Lacey’s books were being held.

“You can check out up to fifty books at a time. I’ve collected forty-five so you’re under the limit anyway,” Isabel said.

Chase picked up Djuna Barnes’s
Nightwood
. “I haven’t read this in years. It’s really a good book.”

Lacey studied the cover. “Never heard of it.”

“That’s because it was written a long time ago and it never made it to the classics section at Borders,” Chase said, and then added, “not that you’ve ever been in the classics section.”

Lacey frowned at her. “What about this one?” she said, referring to Radcliffe Hall’s
The Well of Loneliness.

“Absolutely essential to your knowledge of lesbian history,” Chase said.

“Perfect,” Lacey said as she started stuffing the books into a canvas bag she’d brought with her.

Isabel cleared her throat.

“Lacey, you have to check them out. You can’t just take them,” Chase said.

“Well, then I’ll check them out.” She looked around as if in search of a cash register. “How do I do that?”

“With your library card,” Chase replied.

Isabel tactfully handed her a library card application. “Just fill it out and I’ll get you one.”

“You don’t have a library card?” Chase yelped. Several pairs of eyes stared at her and she lowered her voice. “That’s disgraceful.”

Lacey shrugged. “I’ve never needed one before. See, this is why I need you on board. You read a lot and you know things.”

Oh, no, Chase thought, “Strike Two.” She hoped she wasn’t going to be aboard a sinking ship. She blanched—a mixed metaphor. She chastised herself for not sticking to baseball if she was operating off the strike out theory. Life was so much more complicated than writing. At least with writing there were rules. A dangling participle couldn’t bitch slap you when you weren’t looking.

Lacey needed intense instruction on how to operate the self-checkout machine. Finally Chase gave up and did it herself.

“Isabel, I want to heartily thank you for putting forth such an effort in compiling this bulwark of lesbianism. I’m going to make you an honorary lesbian when we get things up and running,” Lacey said.

Isabel smiled. “Thank you.”

“I’m sure you’ll be receiving your plaque shortly,” Chase said, “along with a blender, instead of a toaster oven, and a subscription to
How to be the Best Lesbian You Can.”

“We have a magazine?” Lacey said incredulously.

“Not that one, thank god,” Chase said, hoisting up a stack of books that wouldn’t fit into the bag.

Isabel laughed. “Have fun, ladies.”

When they reached the car, Chase checked the windshield. “See, I told you.”

“I love this place.”

“Yeah, until someone who is texting while driving crashes into your car.”

Chase’s phone beeped. She pulled it from her pocket. “Oh, my god, it’s Bud.”

“I thought you liked to talk to Bud,” Lacey said, as she maneuvered out of the tight parking lot in her Lesbaru, as Subarus were known to the community.

It was a text message. “It’s lunchtime, but no one calls their moms so I don’t want to stick out. Everything is fine.”

Lacey leaned over to read it.

“You’re supposed to be driving,” Chase said, alarmed.

“We’re at a red light. Boy, for a kid, she’s a pretty good texter.”

“She’s got a BlackBerry with a keyboard,” Chase said. She wrote back, “Okay. See you soon.” She thought this was the epitome of self-restraint and then she handed the phone to Lacey. “You’ll need to keep this for half an hour while Bud’s at lunch.”

“Why?” Lacey said, taking the phone.

“Because I can’t control myself.”

“Is this like the Mentos thing?” Lacey said as she got on the freeway and headed uptown.

“Yes. Speaking of which, do you have any?”

“You told me not to.”

“Since when do you listen to what I say?” Chase stared out the window morosely. She wouldn’t see Bud for another two and a half hours.

“Let’s go to my place and we’ll look at the books until it’s time for you to pick up Bud. It’ll take your mind off it,” Lacey said.

“All right.”

“We’ll stop at Smith’s and get a Papa Murphy’s pizza for lunch and some Mentos. It’ll be fun.”

“Pizza usually does cheer me up,” Chase conceded.

“Great,” Lacey said.

At two o’clock, Chase’s car was the first one in the queue for student pickup. She had meticulously studied the system of child pickup and delivery, which had a one-way entrance and was sectioned off by traffic barriers. If you weren’t early, it could take some time to maneuver through the line. She had brought her laptop but was unable to concentrate as she kept looking at the clock in the corner of the screen. Finally, she heard the bell ring and waited anxiously for Bud to spill forth. It seemed like an eternity before she saw her. Bud was jostling between Summer and Collins. She waved and smiled at Chase. The three girls did some kind of funky handshake thing and then Bud got in the car.

“What was that about?” Chase asked, resisting the urge to hug her really tight because she knew it would embarrass Bud.

“It’s our special handshake signifying eternal devotion to our newfound friendship,” Bud said, pulling a granola bar out of her backpack.

“I saved you a piece of pizza,” Chase said, pointing to the backseat.

“Really,” Bud said, leaping for it.

“Now, about this handshake, I mean, eternal devotion is kind of a big step for people you just met today.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just Collins’ histrionics. It’s entirely possible we won’t like each other in a month, but if it makes her happy, what does it hurt?” Bud took enormous bites of her pizza.

“Be careful, you’ll choke,” Chase said as she maneuvered the car through the traffic barriers until she reached the street, which was heavily patrolled by crosswalk guards in brown and orange outfits. This was another time-consuming endeavor. “Didn’t you eat lunch?”

“I had to share, that’s another part of the eternal devotion thing. Collins wants to be a vegetarian, but her mom won’t let her so I gave her half of my lunch because she said she couldn’t possibly eat her cow meat sandwich.”

“Tomorrow I’ll pack enough lunch for the two of you. What about Summer?” They were finally free of the school zone cluster fuck. Chase breathed a sigh of relief as they approached Indian School and the freeway entrance ramp.

“She only eats tomato sandwiches with peanut butter crackers.”

“Every day?”

“Apparently, she’s been heavily influenced by
Harriet the Spy
and is mimicking some of her behaviors. She feels that to truly experience literature one must adopt some of the protagonist’s proclivities. She wants to be a theatrical performer when she grows up.”

“Harriet didn’t eat peanut butter crackers.”

“Summer doesn’t really like tomato sandwiches so she brings along the peanut butter crackers.”

“And I thought we were weird,” Chase said as they drove for home.

“Apparently not.” Bud leaned her head against Chase’s shoulder. “I missed you.”

“Ditto.”

Learn to make a body of a limb.—Shakespeare

“Do you realize this is the first time we’ve been alone in the afternoon for the longest time?” Chase said. She and Gitana were sitting on the deck of the writing studio admiring Chase’s jewel garden, an elaborate display of flowers that had gotten larger and larger each year so that it covered almost half an acre and was still a work in progress.

“That is because I’m playing hooky and Bud is at school and you’ve just finished your latest lesbian novel to the outstanding cheers of the Pink Mafia,” Gitana replied.

“I had to send them every chapter to see if it met their approval. I’ve never had a counsel of beta readers before.”

“Donna told me that you had to make some of the sex scenes more tasteful,” Gitana said.

“Yeah, we’ll see what Ariana has to say about that. The evil editor was the one who made me write graphic sex and the Pink Mafia disapproves of it. Go figure.”

“I think the publishing world might want to do a series of focus groups on what kind of sex scenes lesbian readers like,” Gitana said, sipping her lemonade.

“Don’t say that in front of Lacey.” Chase pinched off another piece of tortilla and threw it to the mountain jays. She’d been feeding them when Gitana arrived. “She’ll have us all doing another panel discussion and it’s taken me the entire month of August to get over the last one.”

“I think you did beautifully. In fact, I’m sure your lezzie has officially returned.”

Chase reached over and took her hand. “And how do you figure on that one?”

“I don’t know. You just seem more lesbian. For awhile there you were getting a bit suburban.”

“What!”

“Well, you were. Your clothes have also improved,” Gitana said playfully, pulling at Chase’s cream-colored silk shirt and coffee-colored linen Capri pants.

“My mother took me shopping. I can’t look like a bag lady at the coffee klatch. I would embarrass Bud.”

Gitana squeezed her hand. “I don’t think Bud cares.”

“She does. She clandestinely got Stella to suggest a shopping trip, mentioning that as a writer of prominence I might need a bit of a spruce up.”

“No more khaki shorts and Thrift Town cast-offs?”

“Well, I can’t swear off that. I just have to look more presentable to pick her up at school. Bud says it’s like having a uniform. I still get to have play clothes. Speaking of which, I need to pack my bag for yoga and then Lou wants to talk to me about something so we’re taking the kids to the park afterward. We should be home about seven thirty. Will that be all right?”

Gitana checked her watch. “I’ll help you pack.” She got up.

“I don’t have much, just my yoga outfit and then my play clothes,” Chase said.

“We’ve only got a couple hours,” Gitana said, pulling on Chase’s hand.

“It’s not going to take two hours to pack,” Chase said, following Gitana back to the house.

“You’re thinking suburban again. I want to spend the next hour and forty-five minutes fucking your brains out between the Wonder Sheets.”

“Oh, but I still have to pack.”

Gitana was pulling Chase’s T-shirt off as they went upstairs. “Think lezzie,” Gitana said as she slid out of her panties.

It didn’t take much persuading for suburban thoughts to subsume to thoughts of lesbian delights.

After yoga Chase and Lou hung upside down on the monkey bars while Bud and Peter designed their own game of Frisbee golf using smashed up cans they’d retrieved from the recycle bin. After Chase had disinfected them with the can of Lysol she always had on hand, Bud had smashed the cans flat using the hammer from the tool kit Chase always kept in the trunk, wired various small rocks to the center of the cans that were now discs and then put electrical tape around the edges so they wouldn’t cut themselves.

Peter watched her intently but did not appear to be amazed, only interested in how the whole thing would turn out. Lou, on the other hand, stood in wonderment. “The kid is like MacGyver.”

“Well, you know…” Chase trailed off. She didn’t want to go into Bud’s intellectual abilities.

Somehow or another they’d ended up on the monkey bars. “I think these things really do straighten out your spine,” Lou said.

“It’s definitely along the lines of an inversion table,” Chase said.

Lou sighed. “I’ve got a problem.”

“Anything you need,” Chase offered up. “What is it? A babysitter, a car tune-up, plumbing issue, financial…I don’t do gynecological work, but I do have a good therapist.”

“You have a therapist?”

“Let’s just keep that between us.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Therapy is like a mind tune-up.”

“That’s a good way to look at it,” Chase said.

“What I need is advice,” Lou pulled herself up. Her face was very red. Chase did the same. They sat on top of the bars and swung their legs.

Chase bit her lip. “I can try. I’m not the soundest-of-mind kind of advice giver.”

Lou laughed. “You’re better than you think. Marsha asked me out.”

“That was entirely my fault. When I told her to have a go at it I didn’t mean you and I tried to explain to her that I didn’t think you were ready. She just said she’d wait.” Chase looked glum. She stared out at Bud and Peter—childhood suddenly seemed much easier.

“Don’t worry. It wasn’t your fault,” Lou said, touching her arm. “The thing is I thought I might go out with her.”

“Really?” Chase was incredulous.

“We talked and she’s got a good head on her shoulders. She agreed that going slow would be prudent and if at anytime either one of us changed our mind about the direction of our friendship—that’s what we’re going to call it instead of relationship—we would tell the other. I think that’s a rational way to approach it.”

“You’re probably going to go to bed on your first date.”

“I know.”

“Well, it’s easier jumping into cold water than it is sliding,” Chase said.

As she lay awake in bed, Chase thought about jumping into cold water. Hadn’t that been what she and Gitana had done, having Bud, becoming parents, writing herself in and out of lesbian fiction, learning to be social or socially adapted as Lily had taught her. She leaned over to kiss Gitana, who nuzzled against her. Then the phone rang. She leapt up to grab her cell phone on the nightstand. She kept it there in case there was an emergency—what if her mother or Jacinda had a heart attack? Or there was an intruder? Or one of her friends died in a car crash and the body needed to be identified, although that probably wouldn’t be an issue because the police would already know who it was by the car license plate… These thoughts blazed through her head as she clicked on her phone.

“I’m in your driveway. You need to come down.”

“Lacey?”

Gitana stirred and Chase crept to the bathroom.

“I want to show you something.”

“Lacey, it’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s eight thirty.”

“Oh, but everyone’s asleep.”

“You’re not. Come down or I’ll sit out here and honk until you do.”

“You’ll wake everyone up.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll be right there.” She pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and a T-shirt that read SUP. Delia, with all her marketing savvy, had designed the T-shirt and was now selling them on the Internet, telling the group, “Dudes, we are not the only ones suffering from this malady and we should be willing to share the wealth.” Chase slipped downstairs, grabbing house keys on the way out. She locked the front door and got in the car.

“Perfect. Buckle up.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the new center of the lesbian universe. I want you to be the first to see it.” Lacey glided out of the driveway like a ghost car.

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“No, it’s too important.”

“Because…”

“The fate of our people is at stake.” Lacey glanced at her as they passed the only streetlight in ten miles, the one that marked the entrance to the highway, and Chase saw the slightly crazed look in her eyes.

“Don’t speed. No one knows where I am,” Chase said, wishing she had had the foresight to write a quick note, something to the effect of, “My best friend has abducted me for some midnight mission. If I don’t return, I love you all.”

“I’ll be careful.”

They drove north toward Santa Fe on Highway 41. There were no other cars on the road, and it suddenly felt like they were the only two people on the planet.

“Lacey, please tell me what we’re doing.”

“I want it to be a surprise.” She flipped in a Lucinda Williams compilation disc and they drove in silence until they reached Galisteo. The tiny town was shut up for the night. Only a few lighted windows indicated that the place was even inhabited. Lacey turned on a dirt road and their headlights scattered rabbits and god-knows-what-else.

“You’re not going to murder me, are you?” Chase asked.

“Not unless you get in my way,” Lacey said, pulling up slowly to a gate. “I’m kidding. Could you get the gate?”

Chase obediently complied.

Lacey parked the car in front of an enormous building with four wings, each one ending in a tower that looked like a small observatory. They got out.

“What is this place?” Chase asked.

“I’m not exactly sure. The roofs of the four observatories fold back, but it doesn’t appear they had telescopes in them. I’m thinking they used these rooms for ceremonies. There are signs of Wicca activity.”

“Wicca?”

“I haven’t found any dead chickens. There were chalk circles, but the property company went to great pains to remove them after I bought the place.”

“This is the property you were talking about?”

“Yeah. Look at the stars out here and listen, no noise.”

A series of high-pitched yelps rang through the night. “See, just natural sounds, the coyotes singing and…”

A hellacious cry rang out as if something was being ripped to pieces. “What’s that?” Lacey said, fishing keys out of her pocket.

“That coyote singing noise you heard is the sound they make when they have savagely caught and killed something and are celebrating.”

“Oh, well, see, this is a place of celebration,” Lacey said brightly.

As they entered the great hall, as Lacey called it, Chase said, “Are you and Jasmine planning to live out here by yourselves?”

“With about two hundred other people,” Lacey said, switching on the light. The place was hollow and enormous. “Admittedly, the place needs work.”

“Two hundred people? Is this going to be like a refugee camp?” Chase gazed around. The great hall had arched doorways leading off in intervals of five feet. A second story that ran the length of the hall had larger openings.

“A refugee camp of sorts—a place for our people to conjoin, comingle and cavort.” Lacey looked around with the glow of one imagining the end product with little or no knowledge of the immediate requirements of the here and now.

Requirements like the services of a good pest control company, Chase thought, hearing things scuttling around.

“So what exactly is the plan here?” Chase said as she followed Lacey down the massive stone hallway toward one of the observatories that wasn’t really an observatory, but rather, as Chase imagined it, the place where ritualistic appendectomies were performed while Orion looked on and the moon covered her face in abject horror.

“This,” Lacey put her arms out majestically, “is going to be the Lesbian Illumination Institute, a place where lesbians can come to embrace their inner lesbian strengths, gain knowledge and go out and conquer the world, basically.”

“Conquer the world?”

“Well, at least control major portions of the world’s commercial interests, gain political office and manipulate the course of human history. Think of it as the Skull and Bones of the lesbian world.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“I have never been better. And now we’re going to celebrate.” She pulled out of her enormous purse a bottle of chilled champagne ensconced in a cooler bag and two glasses wrapped in tissue paper. She popped the cork expertly. Chase was impressed. “A toast, to new beginnings.”

Chase raised her glass. “You are truly amazing.”

“Does that mean you’ll help?” Lacey gazed at her fondly. “Because I’m going to really need you.”

“This is insanity.” Chase sipped her champagne and thought of trust funds. She’d used hers to finance her early writing career and help Gitana start the orchid nursery—both dreams that normal people would have thought nonsense. Now Lacey was going to use hers to finance the most impractical of ideas, but the first important enterprise Lacey had ever been involved with. This was her friend, whose largest interests to date were clothes, hair and interior design. Lacey had never had a mission in life before. How could Chase let her down?

“Just think what this could do for your writing career. You’ll have a microcosm to study human nature.” Lacey looked at her pleadingly.