Music from Another World

by Robin Talley

  But this wasn’t last year, so Abby forced herself to keep talking instead. “No, but in France calling someone your flea is the same as calling them, like, sweetie or something.”

  “You wrote a poem about how much you adore your sweet pet flea?” Linh grinned.

  “Basically.”

  Their faces were still only inches apart, but Linh had made no effort to move away. Was Abby imagining it, or was there some decidedly nonplatonic tension in the air this afternoon?

  When they’d broken up, back in June, Abby had been sure it was temporary. They were both going out of town for the summer, Linh to visit family in Vietnam and Abby to creative writing camp in Massachusetts, but once they were back home in DC she was positive they’d put their summer-of-breakup behind them.

  So far, though, there had been no definitive progress in that direction. Sometimes the two of them still acted mildly flirty with each other, and sometimes they acted like friends. But since Linh never gave any clear signals of what she wanted, they seemed stuck in this constant awkward limbo.

  And so, once again, Abby kept talking.

  “It was the only term of endearment I could find that was always female.” Abby tried to sound breezy. “You know how I was back then—all about the gay.”

  “Oh, as opposed to now.” Linh smiled again.

  Okay, this really, really felt like flirting. And more than just the mild kind.

  Abby loved flirting almost as much as she loved kissing. She loved all the trappings of romance. Sending flowers on Valentine’s Day. Picking each other up for dances. Posing for couple-y selfies and going for long walks in the park hand in hand on sunny afternoons.

  And being held. Abby loved being held most of all.

  She should know better than to get her hopes up. It had been months since there was anything romantic between her and Linh. Still...

  “Well, I have a more nuanced understanding of gendered nouns these days.” Abby held her gaze. She remembered how to flirt, too. “I’m still all about the gay, though.”

  “Obviously.” Linh laughed again. “So when’s your project plan due anyway?”

  Oh, who cared about the stupid project plan?

  Abby broke eye contact. She flopped back against the couch, and the moment between them evaporated in an instant.

  Everything had been going so well. Why did Linh have to keep asking about her project? Sometimes Abby wished she went to one of those schools you saw in shows, where everyone cut class and no one cared about homework.

  “I keep forgetting.” Abby turned away. “I just need to pick my genre.”

  “What? You don’t even know when it’s due?” Linh’s tone shifted from flirty to concerned. “Do you seriously not have any ideas at all?”

  Abby squirmed, but this time she didn’t laugh.

  Fawcett was a magnet school, and all the seniors had to do a yearlong thesis project. Linh was doing a big, complicated experiment Abby didn’t understand for her Molecular Techniques and Neuroscience Research class, and Abby had chosen to do hers in Advanced Creative Writing. She was supposed to write a novel, or a collection of short stories or poems that was long enough to be a novel.

  Usually, for Abby, coming up with creative writing ideas meant choosing from the dozens of possibilities that had already been circling through her mind. This time, though, she was at a loss. The creative part of her brain had fizzled sometime around the day she and Linh broke up.

  Or maybe her entire brain had fizzled. That would explain a lot, come to think of it. Lately, Abby seemed incapable of remembering anything she was supposed to do except obsess over her ex.

  “This is a big deal, Abby.” Linh sat up, putting way too much space between them. “I turned in my plan two weeks ago. If you don’t get started soon, how will you have time left for your college applications?”

  “I know, I know.” Abby tried to think of some explanation that would get Linh off her back. “My brother’s been sucking up all my time lately. I keep having to take him to dance class since my parents are always out of town.”

  The truth was, just thinking about college applications made her shudder. She hated how competitive everyone got over that stuff. As though they were all suddenly reduced to SATs and GPAs and other quantitative acronyms that had nothing to do with who they really were. And the essays weren’t any better. How could anyone seriously sum up their view on the world in five hundred words?

  Senior projects were the same way. Everyone at Fawcett obsessed over them as if they were curing cancer or painting the Sistine Chapel instead of doing glorified science fair projects and book reports.

  “Hey, maybe I could get credit for writing Broken Dreams fanfic.” Abby grinned. “Do you think I could just write a bunch of short stories about Velma being a lesbian and change the names?”

  That did the trick. Linh laughed and pulled off Abby’s cat-eye glasses, balancing them on the tip of her own nose.

  Okay, this couldn’t only be happening in Abby’s head. They were definitely flirting.

  “You and your fifties obsession.” Linh flipped the glasses up at Abby, giggling. “That show’s been canceled for, what, a year?”

  “Two years. Anyway, Broken Dreams wasn’t the fifties, it was the early sixties.” Abby smiled and grabbed her glasses back. As much as she wanted to keep up the playful vibe, she couldn’t let Linh have her glasses. Abby loved how they looked, but she could also barely see without them.

  “Is Broken Dreams fanfic even a thing?” Linh asked.

  “Definitely.” Abby slid her glasses back on and reached for her laptop. “Want to read about Walter and Earl getting it on in the back of the accounting office?”

  “Ew. Although kind of, now that you mention it.” Linh pulled the computer onto her lap and started a search.

  Abby laughed. In ninth grade, she and Linh used to read fanfic together every day. They were obsessed with a dumb show called The Flighted Ones. Their favorite pairing was Owen/Jack, or “Ojack,” as the true fans called them. Abby had stayed up late at night writing long, overwrought stories describing Ojack’s first date, or their first kiss, or their First Time. (This was back before Abby had had a First Time of her own, so writing fictional versions felt deliciously scandalous.)

  “Ha, look at this.” Linh turned the screen so Abby could see it. “Someone made a list of all the gay stuff that ever happened on this show. Do you remember a woman trying to lick Velma’s neck?”

  “What? No!” As Abby leaned in to see the screen, an ad off to the side of the main article caught her eye.

  In the image, a woman in a tight red dress with a gorgeous flipped hairstyle stood behind a bed. In front of her another woman, wearing an old-fashioned skirt and blouse, was lying down. The words I PREFER GIRLS loomed beside them in giant red font.

  Abby pointed. “What’s that?”

  “Huh, I don’t know.” Linh clicked on the image. “Are those characters from Broken Dreams?”

  “I don’t think so. Those look like fifties outfits to me.”

  If there was one thing Abby knew, it was fifties fashion. She’d been a devotee since middle school. She used to make her own fifties-inspired outfits, starting with simple wrap tops and pencil skirts, until the year her grandparents gave her a sewing machine for Hanukkah and she upgraded to sailor suits and cocktail dresses.

  Finding the old patterns and sewing them was fun, but it took forever. After she’d spent months making her prom dress sophomore year, Abby decided she’d had enough of ironing musty old fabrics and sorting through tangled piles of thread. Now her sewing machine sat in the attic and she ordered retro-style clothes online.

  Which meant the outfits were the first thing Abby noticed when Linh clicked through to the page with a bigger version of the same image. The women under the I Prefer Girls label were dressed simply—a clingy sleeveless dress
on one, a pink blouse and black skirt on the other. The blouse was unbuttoned nearly down to the woman’s waist, so you could see her slip beneath. Or maybe that was her bra.

  The page’s headline read “The Best of 1950s Lesbian Pulp Fiction.”

  “Wait a second. Is this seriously from the fifties?” Abby pulled the computer onto her own lap. “Is that a book cover?”

  “I didn’t know they had lesbian porn back then.” Linh leaned in to see. “Oh, wait. There’s another one—Wow. Scroll down.”

  Abby scrolled. Below the picture of I Prefer Girls was another cover. This one was called Warped Women, and it also featured a woman in a red dress. She was holding a whip and leaning threateningly over another woman who was crouched on the floor. The crouching woman’s blouse was unbuttoned, and underneath she was wearing a black lace bra. Her left boob was basically hanging out of it.

  “What kind of books are these?” Linh’s mouth was agape.

  Abby kept scrolling. Image after image, with more of the same. The covers showed women in varying states of undress, and they had titles like When Lesbians Strike and My Wife the Dyke and Twilight Girl. The captions beside each cover listed publication dates—1963, 1955, 1959, 1965...

  “Fifties lesbian porn.” Linh laughed harder than ever. “Hey, I think we’ve found your genre!”

  “Can you even imagine?” Abby kept scrolling. The images got sexier the farther she went. “I can’t believe they got away with this. I mean, there aren’t even books like this today, as far as I know. Plus, they had censors in the fifties. That’s why all the movies sucked.”

  “Here, let’s make a new one. For your senior project.” Linh leaped to her feet and grabbed the cement column that stood next to the couch. She pulled down the neckline of her T-shirt, stuck out her chest, lifted one knee onto a cushion and tilted her head forward, imitating the woman on the cover of the last book on the page, Dormitory Women. “Did I get it right?”

  All Abby could think was that there should be a law banning your ex-girlfriend from doing sexy poses in front of you before you’d officially gotten back together. Seriously, this had to be a legitimate form of torture.

  But she did her best to keep acting nonchalant as she held up the computer screen to compare. Linh did look kind of like the woman on the painted cover, with her dark hair and thick eyebrows, even though Linh’s warm eyes and inviting smile were a thousand times prettier than the cover model’s. Not to mention that Linh was wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs, and the Dormitory Women model was in a tight white blouse and severely belted skirt.

  “Hmm—I think your hand needs to be lower down...” Abby carefully adjusted the position of Linh’s hand on her thigh and brushed her hair forward over one shoulder, trying to act as if her intentions were solely artistic. As if touching Linh didn’t activate any still-in-love-with-her segments of Abby’s brain, or other body parts. “Pout your lips more. There, that’s perfect.” Abby lifted her phone and snapped a photo.

  “You do one next.” Linh pointed her chin toward the laptop screen.

  “Okay!” Abby scrolled until she found a cover she liked. The book was called Woman Doctor, and the cover showed a woman, a psychiatrist apparently, sitting in a chair taking notes on a pad while a younger woman with curly blond hair lay on a couch behind her. The whole design seemed to be some bizarre male fantasy, because the patient appeared to have gone to her therapy appointment wearing an old-fashioned slip and nothing else.

  Abby’s hair was brown, straight and boringly plain instead of blond, thick and curly like the woman on the cover’s, and she was wearing a green shirtdress instead of a tight-fitting slip. Still, she tried to imitate the patient’s pose, throwing herself facedown on the couch and twisting so that her butt and her boobs were angled toward Linh at the same time. “Ow. This is not a natural position. Ow.”

  “That’s awesome, though. You’ve almost got it, but you need to pull your hair over your face more.”

  Abby pulled. “How’s that?”

  “Better.” Linh laughed and reached for her phone. Abby laughed, too, lifting her head from the cushion. “Hey! You’re breaking the pose. I didn’t get a photo yet.”

  “I can’t help it. I’m a warped woman!”

  Linh was still laughing, but when she sat back down she moved to the other couch, putting two armrests between them. Abby sat up, trying not to let her disappointment show, and tugged the hem of her dress back down.

  “I want to read one of those books.” Linh pointed to Abby’s computer. “I bet they’re hilarious. Plus, those covers are pretty hot.”

  “The covers are basically just ads for cleavage.”

  “There are worse things to advertise.”

  “True.” Abby flushed. “Let’s find an ebook.”

  She balanced her computer on her knees and turned so Linh could see the screen, then ran a search for lesbian pulp fiction. While the results loaded, Abby drummed her fingers on the edge of her laptop and tried to think of a good excuse for her to move to the other couch, too.

  “Huh, okay, so there’s like five million results.” Linh pointed to the screen. “Here, that one has a list.”

  Abby clicked through and skimmed the article. “I was right about the censors. This says the books basically always ended with someone either turning straight or dying. Otherwise the publishers could’ve gone to jail.”

  “Whatever, I don’t care. I just want to read the sex scenes.”

  Abby laughed, delighted, and scrolled down. The article had a list of books at the bottom, with more of those ridiculous covers. “These titles are so weird. Strange Sisters. In the Shadows. Voluptuous Vixens.”

  “Voluptuous Vixens?” There was so much glee in Linh’s voice that Abby giggled, too.

  “Edge of Twilight. The Third Sex. A Love So Strange.”

  “Boring. See if you can find that Warped Women one.”

  “Hey, wait, the article says this other one’s good. And it’s free to download.” Abby cleared her throat and read.

  “The classic and enduringly popular novel of two young girls coming of age in Greenwich Village. The story’s heroines, Paula and Elaine, stand alongside such classic lesbian pulp characters as Beebo Brinker and Leda Taylor.”

  Linh cracked up. “Beebo? What kind of names are these?”

  “Fifties names. Here, get this—the author’s name is ‘Marian Love.’ So cheesy. Her book came out in 1956. It’s called Women of the Twilight Realm.”

  “Why do so many of these books have Twilight in their name? Is there lesbian vampire subtext?”

  “Well, I’m downloading it, so I guess we’ll find out. Wow, check it out, this cover is cheese-tastic, too.”

  The image on the screen had rips running through it, as though someone had taken a photo of an old, beaten-up copy of the book and uploaded it as the official cover. The picture didn’t have as much cleavage as some of the other books, but Abby could tell it would still have been shocking by fifties standards. It showed two women sitting on a bed together, one with short brown hair and one with long blond waves. The blond one, dressed in a filmy nightgown, was crying onto the brown-haired woman’s shoulder. The brown-haired woman was smoking, wearing a necktie, patting the other woman’s shoulder and staring at her boobs. Above the title a tiny line of type read “They were women only a strange love could satisfy. A daring novel of the third sex.”

  “I didn’t know people were allowed to smoke on book covers,” Linh said, studying the screen.

  “Everyone smoked everywhere in the fifties. They didn’t know it was gross yet.”

  “Whatever. Turn to the beginning. I want to read about the strange love these two ladies get up to.”

  Abby clicked into the text and read the first line out loud.

  “Elaine had already had her heart broken once. From now on, she was keeping it wrapped up in celloph
ane.”

  Abby stopped reading. “What’s cellophane?”

  “You don’t remember that song from Chicago? ‘Mr. Cellophane’?”

  “Oh, right.” Abby and Linh had both done theater in middle school, before their schedules got so packed. “Well, is cellophane bulletproof or something? Why would you wrap your heart in it?”

  “How would I know? Come on, find the sexy parts.”

  “Here, you can look.” Abby passed her the computer.

  “Okay...” Linh clicked through the pages. After a minute, she frowned at the screen. “This is all just talking so far. Everyone’s sitting around in a bar with all their clothes on.” She clicked again and again, still peering down. “And...that’s the end of chapter one already. What kind of porn is this? These covers are false advertising.”

  “Keep going. Maybe the porn’s in chapter two.”

  While Linh clicked, Abby turned to her phone to look up cellophane.

  The characters on the cover of Women of the Twilight Realm didn’t look that much older than Abby. She wondered who’d broken Elaine’s heart so badly that she needed to protect it.

  And would that even work? Wrapping your heart in metaphorical armor? Maybe you could keep yourself whole just by concentrating hard enough.

  Before she could find anything, her class-reminder chime popped onto the screen.

  “Shit!” Abby’s panic bubbled, wiping away all thoughts of vintage lesbians. She snatched the computer from Linh and shoved it into her backpack. “I forgot. I’m supposed to meet with Ms. Sloane in three minutes. Shit, shit!”

  “Ms. Sloane?” Linh didn’t get up, but there was alarm in her eyes. “Isn’t she your project advisor?”

  “Yes. Shit, shit!”

  “Wait—is this your meeting about the project proposal? The one you still don’t have a topic for?”

  Abby pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes.”

  “Abby, this is serious! You could get in real trouble!”

  “I know, I know. I’ll figure something out on my way there.”