by T. L. Hayes
Steve barely heard him. She mumbled her thanks and accidently called him sir. He didn’t comment on it. She hung up and numbly put the phone back on her nightstand. She knew what had happened without him having to say it. Cairyn had succeeded this time. Her first sergeant didn’t have any other details and Steve knew it was because her mother had been discreet. Bless her. What she wanted to do was scream, but she didn’t want to wake anyone. Instead, she grabbed her pillow and held it up to her face and screamed into it, though it didn’t muffle things completely. Her roommate stirred in her bunk and turned to look at her.
“You okay?” she asked, half asleep.
Steve couldn’t answer her. She started dry heaving and then rocking back and forth. Her roommate got out of her bunk and sat down beside her and put her arm around her shoulders. That was all it took to break the dam. The tears started to flow. Gut-wrenching sobs tore at her as she cried into the pillow. Eventually, she collapsed against her roommate, a woman by the name of Regina, who had pictures of her children taped to the wall above where she laid her head at night. She would kiss them good night every night and go to sleep with a smile. It was to her maternal nature Steve turned now. Regina held her until morning, not knowing what had happened until the tears finally stopped sometime around sunrise, when Steve could finally articulate her thoughts. The first thing she said was, “Cairyn’s gone. Oh God, Cairyn’s gone.”
“Cairyn’s gone, Cairyn’s gone.” Steve twisted and turned in her covers, waking herself up with the sound of her own voice. She sat up, breathing heavily, and threw the covers off. Her heart was beating rapidly and she was starting to feel out of control. She groped on the nightstand in the dark, not bothering to turn on the lamp, until her fingers felt the cool metal of the chain, and she picked it up and brought the Capricorn pendant to her mouth and kissed it, then took a deep breath. She started to calm and she felt her heartbeat start to normalize again. Then she put the chain back around her neck and lay back down, staring off into space as she fingered the symbol of Cairyn’s birth, trying not to think of her death.
Instead, she remembered the night they’d met. She had been stationed in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, at the time, training the new female recruits. She had the weekend off and had been invited to a party off base by one of the other female sergeants, another lesbian. The party was at the woman’s house and she had invited all the lesbians she knew on base, as well as some local women. Steve hadn’t been there long, only long enough to know that there wasn’t much of a gay scene there, so she welcomed the chance to hang out with other lesbians and, possibly, the chance to get laid. It’d been a while. She dressed in nice slacks and a dark blue pinstripe men’s shirt, cuffing the sleeves over a white T-shirt. She kept her dog tags on, between the shirts, thinking they might be a conversation starter later. She smiled to herself as she splashed on her cologne, hoping it would last for the duration, then checked her hair in the mirror one last time, making sure everything was in place, then headed out the door.
After making small talk with the hostess, she walked around the house with a bottle of beer in hand, holding it lazily by the neck, scanning the crowd. Within the first hour, all the single people seemed to be huddled up with partners, so Steve found a spot in the living room to lean against the wall, feeling a little sorry for herself. She wasn’t there long before some woman came up to talk to her.
“You strike out too?” she asked, giving Steve an appraising smile.
“Not really.” Steve gave the woman an appraising look of her own. She was taller than her, with awesome legs, which she was showing off in a light summer dress. Her hair went midway down her back, dark brown with corkscrew curls. Her brown eyes danced as she smiled at Steve and she wore a challenging expression, as if she was daring Steve to take action, make the first move, maybe.
She laughed. “I know, everyone’s already coupled up. Some of these women work fast.”
Steve laughed with her. “Yeah. I guess I like to take my time.”
The woman gave Steve a sly look and asked, “Is that right, soldier?”
Steve inclined her head and grinned back. “It is. Especially on the things that matter.”
The woman gave Steve a long look, then finally said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good. What’s your name?”
“Cairyn. Yours?”
“Steve.”
“Nice to meet you, Steve.”
The music suddenly changed from the soft rock that had been playing to a Melissa Etheridge song. Steve smiled. “I know it’s a cliché, but I do love me some Melissa.”
“God, I know, she’s hot.”
“Would you like to dance?”
Eyes twinkling, Cairyn replied, “Yes, I would.”
Steve set her beer down on a nearby table and held out her arms. Cairyn stepped into her embrace and they swayed in their small spot on the edge of the room, oblivious to everyone else. It was only fitting that they share their first kiss to “An Unusual Kiss.” But there was nothing unusual about it. It was sweet and tender, and every year thereafter, on their anniversary, they made sure to dance to that song, kissing at the end of it.
Steve went back to sleep with a smile on her face, mumbling lines from the song, her fingers around the pendant.
* * *
Lou knew she was dreaming. It started sweet. It was 1992, she knew that, because Ani DiFranco’s Imperfectly album provided the soundtrack to her memories.
While the music played, loudly, she and her best friend, Tanya, were giggling about the song that was playing, “In or Out.” They weren’t laughing at the song, just what it very clearly implied. They had played the song over and over again, singing parts of it to each other, relishing in particular the line about having spots and stripes. That’s how they saw themselves or, rather, how Tanya saw herself. Lou couldn’t admit to her that she was all stripes. If she did, she feared she would lose the occasional make-out sessions she and Tanya sometimes engaged in in her room, always with music blaring. She might also lose her best friend, to say nothing of her secret becoming known. She couldn’t risk it, so she kept it to herself and told herself to be grateful for the kisses she was sometimes able to steal. Just last week Tanya had let her touch her breast—briefly, outside her shirt, but it was something.
Tanya went up to the CD player on Lou’s shelf and skipped the next two songs, until “If It Isn’t Her” began to play. She cocked her head and looked at Lou and smiled and held her arms out. In a teasing way, she asked, “May I have this dance?”
Giggling, Lou accepted and stepped into her best friend’s embrace. They swayed to the music naturally, as it wasn’t the first time they had danced together. Lou felt like she was at a school dance as she swayed in her Star Wars socks, a gift from Tanya for her last birthday, barely moving, her arms around the girl whom she knew beyond a doubt she loved. She nuzzled Tanya and Tanya giggled.
“That tickles,” she whispered.
“You like it,” Lou teased.
“Mm-hmm, that does feel nice.”
“I knew it,” Lou whispered.
When Lou realized Tanya had put the song on repeat, she giggled and they continued to sway and kiss along to the music. Occasionally, Lou would sing softly to her, feeling with all her heart the message of the song applied to them. She was looking into Tanya’s eyes when her bedroom door opened, and she saw her father standing in the doorway, a question dead on his lips and anger building in his eyes. Tanya backed away from Lou instantly, as if she’d been jolted by electricity.
Her father said in a controlled tone of voice, never taking his eyes off her, “Tanya, I think it’s time you went home.”
Tanya looked from him back to Lou. Lou gave her a small nod of encouragement and Tanya quickly left without a word. Before Lou could say anything, her father was upon her. He grabbed her upper arm roughly and spat out, “What the hell were you doing?”
“Dad, that hurts.”
Her father gripped her tighter a
nd she yelped in pain. “I don’t give a damn if it hurts, you baby. What were you doing in here with her? Don’t try to deny it, girlie!”
Lou’s voice came out in a strangled cry and she hated herself for it. “Nothing!”
“I said, don’t lie to me. You were doing queer things, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”
“No, Father.” When the blow came, it was the last thing she expected. His fist came swift and hard against her face and he released her, and she fell into a heap on her bedroom floor, clutching her bleeding nose and crying in pain.
“No child of mine is going to be queer. Girl or boy. You hear me? Now, I don’t want to see that shit again. Go clean yourself up.” With that, his final word on the subject, her father turned and left.
Lou groped around on the floor until she found a discarded T-shirt and held it to her bloody face. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. She mumbled under her breath, “Fucking bastard,” vowing to herself that she wouldn’t let anything like that happen again.
The next day at school, everyone believed her story about rock climbing. Everyone except Tanya. She looked at her sympathetically and even came up to her and caressed her cheek, but pulled back quickly to make sure no one saw them. That was the last time she and Tanya were ever alone in her room together. And it was the last time they ever shared a kiss. Tanya started to distance herself from Lou after that, but Lou, though heartbroken, wasn’t mad about it. Tanya was doing what she was doing for Lou’s own good. Lou figured it was for the best, as she knew that until she was older and on her own, she couldn’t show affection at home, not with her dad around.
Chapter Thirteen
Lou woke up the next morning feeling out of sorts, though she wasn’t sure why. She had a vague idea of what she had dreamed about the night before, and if part of what she recollected was true, then she knew what the rest of her dream must have been. She rubbed her eyes and reached for her phone on the nightstand, checking the time: 7:50. Ten minutes before her alarm was set to go off. She canceled the alarm and set the phone back on her nightstand, then grabbed her covers and brought them back up to her chin, rolling over on her side. She was awake enough that she knew she wouldn’t fall back asleep, but she didn’t feel like moving yet. The prospect of actually putting her feet on the floor and starting her day seemed like a daunting task, one that was beyond her capabilities this Monday morning.
But it was the first day back after the holiday weekend and finals were only two weeks away. She had the panicked students who would be demanding her attention, as well as mounds of grading to look forward to.
“Ugh.” She gave a disgusted, weary sigh as she flung the covers off and sat up, then reached for her glasses. No matter what type of frames she had, they always felt crooked on her nose, and her current thin wire ones were no exception. Sighing again, she stretched her arms out wide and leaned back, reveling in the movement of her muscles and the feel of her back popping. Finally, she smiled. “Good stretch.”
She realized, as she walked to her closet to look for clothes, that what she needed to cheer herself up was a good dose of Bill. She knew where to find him this early, and she quickly got dressed and combed her unruly hair, putting it in a clip to keep it in place, then grabbed her bag off the kitchen chair and her keys off the table and left the house. She made a quick stop at her favorite coffee shop to grab herself a cup of Colombian and a sweet caramel concoction they made in-house, giving it some chichi froufrou name that Lou was almost embarrassed to even say, reminding her of those old IHOP commercials.
As she was waiting in line behind all the other people in a hurry to get to work, she heard the person behind her give a slight cough, almost as if they were trying to get her attention, even though it seemed unlikely that anyone else she knew would be there, especially that early. Next, she heard a voice behind her say, “This is your favorite place, isn’t it, Dr. Silver?”
Surprised to hear her name from an unfamiliar voice, she turned around and came face to chin with a young woman with a short cropped blond haircut, definitely young enough to be one of her students. She didn’t recognize her, though, and thought she must be a nonmajor who had taken her intro class last spring, or just another theater student who recognized her from the building. She was used to students, whether they had once been hers or had just seen her in passing, remembering her more often than she remembered them. After all, they outnumbered her. She smiled at the girl, trying to be polite. “I guess you could say that. I do come here quite a bit when I need a place to escape to.”
“I know, I’ve seen you.” The girl’s smile remained in place.
It was almost flirtatious, Lou thought. She chalked it up to aging vanity and decided the girl was just being polite to a professor who was probably at least twenty years older than her. Lou nodded. “I’m not surprised.”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Lou looked chagrined. “Was I that obvious?”
The girl chuckled. “A little. I saw you in here a couple of months ago. You were sitting at that table in the back corner.” She pointed to the table in question. “I was in uniform, not my civvies.” She gestured to the jeans and T-shirt she was currently wearing with a grin. “It’s no wonder you don’t recognize me.”
Lou smacked her forehead as the memory flashed. “Bolen! I do remember you.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Now there was no mistaking the drop in tone in the girl’s voice—she was clearly going for flirtatious. “My first name’s Mel. Kinda cool that you remembered me.”
Lou recognized what was about to happen and smiled wanly but said nothing, not wanting to jump the gun in case the girl chickened out. She didn’t want to give the speech if she didn’t have to.
“I guess I should ask this before it’s your turn and you’re gone. Would you like to go out sometime?”
Lou looked at the girl with kindness when she said, “I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m seeing someone. And, to be honest, I don’t date students, either mine or someone else’s.” Plus, I have T-shirts older than you.
Mel visibly deflated for a moment, but she let it pass and smiled. “Ah, okay. Totally understand. I had to try.”
Lou kept the smile plastered to her face. Thankfully, she was up next and she went to the counter and put her order in, then made a hasty retreat when it was completed, securing the drinks in the cup holders in her Jeep before heading to campus.
She parked in the lot next to the theater building, then grabbed her bag and her keys, along with the coffee, and headed down to the basement where Bill spent most of his time. The entire south wing of the basement was his lair. She knew where his workshop was, as most of the rest of the space was used for costume and prop storage. She headed to the room he referred to as his studio and found him bent over a large work table, working on a drawing of some kind, blaring Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” at top volume. She walked up behind him, knowing he couldn’t see or hear her, and started to sing along with the country icon. Bill turned around with a smile on his face.
“Well, hello there, sunshine. I do love your voice.”
“Thank you. Here.” She held out the cup of caramel concoction and he took it with a smile.
“For me? Oh, thank God, you must have seen the Bat-Signal I put up.” He took the lid off and took a generous sip. “Oh, that is good.”
“I knew you’d like it. I think it’s equal parts sugar and coffee.” Lou grinned, as she took a seat on a nearby stool, drinking her coffee.
“You know me well. You know I can’t resist sweet things.” He cuffed her gently on the chin with a wink.
“Aw, you’re a sweetie. And a bullshitter.”
“You say that like they’re different.” Bill placed the cup on the table where it wouldn’t be in his way, then bent back over his drawing. “So, what brings you down to the dungeon?”
“I just wanted to see you. Feels like forever.”
“Yes, a whole three days. I’m surprised y
ou’ve lasted this long.”
Lou laughed. “It’s been difficult.”
“Sgt. Hottie been taking up all your time?”
Amused, Lou asked, “Why do you keep calling her that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“I thought you weren’t into girls?”
“Well, I never get into them”—Lou laughed—“but I can recognize beauty when I see it. It is my job, you know?” He held up the paper he was drawing on and showed it to Lou. “What do you think?”
It was an elegant flapper dress, Lou supposed it was called, black, and off one shoulder. “It’s very lovely. Planning on wearing that to the New Year’s Eve party, are you?”
Bill grinned and tapped her on the nose with his pencil. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know our party’s always informal.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Pity, it would show off your legs.”
“I know, wouldn’t it? Maybe another time. So, my wayward little lesbian, why are you in my lair?”
“And why exactly am I wayward?”
“How would I know? I’m sure you’ve done something naughty recently. And if you have, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t know if my delicate sensibilities could handle it.”
Lou snorted. “Delicate sensibilities? Excuse me, I must have wandered into the wrong lair. I was looking for Bill. Maybe you’ve seen him?”
“Maybe you took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.”
She mocked laughing at him by opening her mouth wide and pointing at him, as if he had made a good joke. “No, I don’t think so. Any turn I made leaving Albuquerque was the right turn.”
“I forgot you grew up there. Your father was Air Force, right?”
“No, Army.”
“Ah, just like soldier girl. I didn’t know Albuquerque was known for Army.”
“The reserves are there. He left active duty when I was a kid but stayed in the reserves. That’s how much he loved it.” Lou became lost in her own thoughts for a moment.
