The One That Got Away (6 page)

“You mean the imperial blonde? She's not
with
Maxine, she's her
friend
.”

“I see someone I know,” Erica said to me. “Stay here; I'll be right back.”

I looked around the room and saw Natalie; then I realized that she was standing next to Maxine Huff. Natalie had to be the imperial blonde they were talking about; no one else in the room had that royal quality.

Another waitress came by with chicken satay. I hoped the two women would eat quickly and continue their conversation.

The blonde swallowed the last bit of chicken, patted her lips with a cocktail napkin, and picked up where
she'd left off. “I used to see her in Maxine's office practically every day.”

“And you're sure they're just friends?”

“What I'm sure of is that Maxine's friend goes with that pretty butch with the luscious hair—the one with the cutie clinging to her.”

I looked for Bridget, and saw that the mystery woman had her arm around Bridget's waist.

“For a couple, they're awfully far apart.”

“Maybe they need some space in their relationship.” The blonde giggled. Her friend chuckled. I pondered what it all might mean. Perhaps tonight was one of those “date nights” Bridget had told me about?

Erica returned. “It looks like people are starting to go into dinner. Shall we?”

As we made our way toward the ballroom, Erica said, “Well, I think I understand your attraction to—”

I grabbed her wrist hard and looked around us.

“I had no intention of saying her name,” Erica said. “As it happened, she looked at me as I walked by. She appears to be comfortable in her body and secure in her sexual prowess. I must say, that woman with her—the one you said is not her girlfriend—is particularly affectionate.”

Our table was at the back of the room. We sat down and introduced ourselves to the older couple already seated. Thelma and Valerie were both on the board of an organization called Older Dykes Still Doing It. Thelma had been married for thirty years. When her husband died, she learned computer skills to support herself, and through the Internet connected with Valerie, the gym teacher she'd had a crush on in high school. She went to visit her, and they fell in love. They had just returned from an Olivia cruise. Thelma handed Erica and me invitations to the premiere of the eagerly anticipated documentary
Secret Lives of Spinster Aunts
.

Bridget, the mystery woman, and Natalie were sitting
with Maxine Huff at a table close to the stage. Their backs were facing me, so I had an excellent view of the mystery woman's arm draped across the back of Bridget's chair, and of Natalie leaning into Maxine Huff.

Two more women arrived at our table. It turned out that each had come to the event alone. As they took their seats, the waitress came by to take our orders. The entree choices were broiled salmon, chicken Kiev, or pasta with vodka sauce.

Erica ordered the salmon.

“What kind of pasta is it?” I asked. I preferred not to deal with long strands of noodles in public.

“Penne.”

“I'll have the pasta,” I said.

“Are you a vegetarian too?” the woman to my left asked.

“No, I'm just craving a little carbohydrate comfort. Could you pass the bread basket, please?”

“I was hoping there would be more single women here,” my table companion said. “I haven't met any lesbians at my Hadassah meetings.”

No one responded to this remark; everyone picked up their programs and began reading them. I turned to the page featuring Maxine Huff.

“Maxine Huff is a tenured professor at Sisters of the Apocalypse College. She is best known for her erudite yet accessible monograph
Tea for Two: An Extremely Critical Analysis of Co-Dependency in Lesbian Relationships
, published by Pink Slip Press. Maxine is also the author of two other books,
Unseen Yet Omnipresent: Queer Infiltration of Popular Culture
and
Lesbian Bed Death and Resurrection
, which will be published next spring.”

Maxine was introduced while people were finishing their entrees. She spoke briefly, and returned to her
table. The band began to play, and couples began moving toward the dance floor. I wished that I could just go home, but I knew Erica wouldn't let me leave. And actually, I didn't want to miss the dessert buffet.

A tall, slender woman with short, silvery hair walked up to Erica. “Would you like to dance?”

“I'd love to.”

I turned my chair away from the table so I could watch. Bridget was dancing with the mystery woman, while Natalie danced with Maxine.

“You two looked pretty good out there,” I said when Erica returned after the music had ended. “But isn't she a little old for you?”

“I don't care what her age is; I think she's hot,” Erica said. “And she wants my phone number. Thanks for asking me to come to this with you, B.D.. Can I persuade you to shake your booty?”

I sighed and started to get up from my chair. At the first few notes I cried, “Oh God, it's a salsa,” and sat back down.

“B.D., you should just have fun. Look at all those women—most of them don't know what they're doing but they're having a great time doing it.”

“I can't,” I said. Where was the damn dessert buffet when I needed it?

“Look at your friend Bridget and her—well, let's just call the woman her date,” Erica said. “They aren't really doing a salsa, but they're really into it.”

“People are watching them,” I said.

“People are watching them because they're heating up the joint,” Erica said.

I could see that Bridget was definitely working her hips. Natalie and Maxine sat out the salsa but returned to the dance floor for the next number.

Eventually the dessert buffet was set up. I was the first one to pick up a plate.

At the end of the evening, Erica and I followed the quartet out onto the sidewalk, keeping them in sight while maintaining a respectable distance. Natalie and Maxine hugged. Bridget's friend kissed her, and then Bridget and Natalie walked off together toward the East Side.

“What do you think?” I asked Erica.

She put her arm around me and hugged me. “I'm so proud of you, B.D.,” she said. “You're barely out of the closet and you're already in the throes of a dyke drama. What do I think? I think those four are the only ones who know the real story, and they're not about to tell it to us. Want to come to a party with me tomorrow night? I just found out about it.”

“Where?”

“At a loft down in Noho. It's a fund-raiser for a lesbian filmmaker. No dancing.”

“OK.”

“I'll meet you there,” Erica said, handing me a card with the date, time, address, and phone number.

As I reached the landing of the stairs, I was disconcerted by the appearance of two women sitting on chairs outside the entrance to the loft. One sported boxer shorts, the other wore plain, cream silk tap pants. Both had on cowboy boots. They explained that they had recently returned from a vacation in the Southwest.

“You have to take your pants off before you can go into the party,” the woman in the tap pants said.

I cursed Erica silently. Had she known about this? I wasn't wearing anything particularly seductive or festive
or even flattering underneath my black jeans—just black Jockey-for-Her briefs.

“That's OK. I'm just teasing you.” The woman laughed and waved me on. I blushed, embarrassed by my credulity.

I went in, grabbed a beer from the bathtub that had been filled with ice, and began looking for Erica. There was an impressive spread on the table to one side of the room—cheeses and salamis, tomatoes, olives, pickles, grapes, Italian bread, plus potato chips and pretzels. I looked at the bottle in my hand. With a bottle in one hand and a plate in the other, I wouldn't be able to eat anything. I decided to finish the beer. Out of nervousness, I hadn't eaten anything before leaving for the party, so I began to feel the effects of the alcohol fairly quickly. I watched enviously as a woman loaded a plate. She wore a sturdy, faded denim shirt under a black blazer, and black pants. Her cinnamon hair angled across her brow and was tucked behind her ears. Her glasses had thick, black frames that made me think of photographs I'd seen of the Hollywood costume designer Edith Head.

I have a bit of a thing for girls who wear glasses. I still remember the scene from Truffaut's
Bed and Board
, where Antoine is in bed with his wife, who is wearing glasses and reading a book. When she closes the book, takes off her glasses, and turns to kiss him, he puts the glasses back on her. I found that very sexy.

The woman turned away from the table, looked up, and caught me staring at her.

“Not enough hands. That's the problem with buffet style, isn't it?” she said.

“Yes. I'm almost done,” I said, holding up my beer bottle.

She smiled. I noticed that her lips, which were bare of lipstick or gloss or any kind of artificial enhancement,
were a beautiful rose color. I decided that if I could market it I would call it Roseate Dawn. I tried to think of something interesting to say.

“Do you know anything about lesbian trios?” I asked.

She didn't seem at all disconcerted, and her response was gratifying. “Actually, I was one third of a trio for a while. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I think that someone I know—I mean, there's this woman I sort of, I guess you could say I have a thing for her, and I saw her girlfriend with this other woman, and then I overheard a couple of women talking about the three of them.”

The woman nodded, carefully eating a piece of bread topped with salami and cheese. “Trios are a lot of work,” she said when she'd finished. “In fact, at the end of the first year I was exhausted. I liked one woman more than the other, and I spent a lot of time and energy trying not to show it. What's your name?”

“My friends call me B.D.”

“Sylvia Murray. So tell me more about this trio of yours, B.D.”

“This woman I have a thing for—I'll call her Heart's Desire . . .”

Sylvia nodded as she popped a grape into her mouth.

“Well, Heart's Desire is in a relationship with a really beautiful woman. And last night I was at the All-Girl Gala with a friend—”

“So was I!” Sylvia said.

“And during the cocktail hour I saw Heart's Desire with one woman while her girlfriend was with someone else. And then these two women beside me started talking about the woman who was with the girlfriend.”

“What did they say?”

“Apparently both of them had taken a class with the woman who was with the girlfriend.”

Sylvia nodded again. “Were they talking about Maxine Huff?”

I stared at her, wondering if she could have been eavesdropping too.

“Well, Max was one of the honorees last night. But she also makes quite an impression on her students,” Sylvia said. She thought for a minute and then continued, “So, if one woman was Max, the other had to be that blonde that she's always hanging around with. Now, someone—I can't remember who, but someone—definitely told me who the blonde's real girlfriend is. That would be the third woman, right? Heart's Desire I think you said. Shit! It's not Bridget McKnight, is it?