Solitaire and Brahms

by Sarah Dreher

  "You'd better," Shelby said. "This is personal."

  Fran hushed her. Her hand was warm and gentle and strong. Shelby could feel the love coming through Fran's fingertips. She let herself relax, knowing it was safe, and warm.

  Fran kissed the top of her head, like a mother kissing a child, then her eyelids and the smooth cavity between her eyes. She moved her hand across Shelby's breast.

  Electricity coursed through her. She reached up and threw her arm around Fran, holding her tightly. Her legs gripped Fran's legs.

  "No," Fran said, easing her back down. "Not yet."

  She thought she was going to lose her mind. Fran undressed her, and rubbed her hands slowly over Shelby's body. She kissed her breasts. She turned her over and stroked her back. Her loving fingers touched her legs, her buttocks. She stroked Shelby's whole body front and back with her hands, her fingertips, with the soft flesh of the insides of her forearms, with her face and mouth, with her breasts.

  One minute her skin was a million tiny pores opening and reaching to draw Fran inside. The next minute it was so sensitive she could barely stand to be touched. She wanted to pull away, to run, and she wanted to melt into Fran's body all at the same time. She was on fire one second, and caressed by a tropical breeze the next.

  "Finish it," she whispered.

  "No," Fran said again and went on touching her.

  She wanted to run to the top of a mountain and throw herself off. She was going to die if this didn't stop. But she didn't want it to stop, not ever.

  It went on and on. Her throat felt as if she'd been screaming, though she hadn't. Her eyes burned. She couldn't move. She tried to will herself to move, and couldn't. She started to cry. Fran kissed away her tears.

  Fran was in complete control of her. Everything she felt, every sensation and emotion—her body was like a pipe organ, and Fran played the music. All kinds of music. Familiar music, strange music. She was completely helpless, her body responding to Fran's every move and touch. It was terrifying, and the most comforting thing she'd ever felt.

  Then, when she was sure she was breaking into a million pieces, her body disintegrating into atoms, then sparks, Fran slipped her hand between her legs.

  * * *

  “Well," Fran said in the morning over breakfast preparations, "I guess we don't have to worry about you liking sex with women.”

  Shelby tossed ground coffee into the basket and filled the Pyrex pot. She laughed. "That's the understatement of the year." She felt off-balance, as if all the molecules in her body had gone into space and some of them hadn't gotten back yet. "Where did you learn that?"

  Fran blushed a little. "It's a God-given gift."

  "If God gives lesbians gifts like that, we must be the Chosen People."

  "You're good for me," Fran said. She split an English muffin and toasted it, buttered each half, then topped each with a slice of tomato, a lightly fried egg, and grated cheese. She slid them under the broiler until the cheese ran. "You're the first woman I've ever met who thinks being a lesbian is fun."

  "It is fun." She poured their coffee. She had to get her head together. She'd never be able to work today. Assuming she got there at all, assuming she didn't run the car off the road into a ditch. “I don't think I'm going to earn my keep at the magazine today.”

  “I'm not going to earn mine at the Health Service. Last night wasn't all one-way, you know."

  "That's me," Shelby said with a grin. "Highly skilled at doing nothing."

  "How're you holding up?" Connie asked as Shelby joined their lunch table.

  "Not bad." She unwrapped her silver ware and unfolded her napkin.

  "Have you heard from Ray?"

  "Yes, I did. He agrees it's the best thing for us to be friends."

  Connie leaned forward and rubbed her hands together greedily. "Does that mean he's available?" she teased.

  Shelby was a little shocked at that. It seemed sort of tactless, even as a joke. She tried to play along. "I suppose so. What about Charlie?"

  "Charlie has decided to join the Army." Connie rolled her eyes. "I mean, give me a break.”

  "Why?"

  "He says he doesn't know what to do with his life, so he's going in the service to figure it out. Gawd, that is so inconsiderate. But he'll get bored and come crawling back."

  "And if he crawls back and finds you with Ray?"

  Connie grinned. "That'll be entertaining, won't it?"

  That's so like Connie, Shelby thought. She treats Charlie like a character in a movie.

  As a matter of fact, she treats herself like a character in a movie. "Are you OK with it?"

  Connie smiled, a little too broadly. "Sure. The sun'll rise tomorrow, just the way it did yesterday."

  "First Shelby and Ray," Lisa said with a sigh. "Now Connie and Charlie. This is shaping up to be a September to remember."

  Penny giggled. "September to remember?' Gee. Lisa, you're a poet and you don't know it."

  "Your feet show it," Connie picked up.

  "They're Longfellows!" Lisa said, and shrieked with laughter.

  The rest of them joined her.

  Shelby glanced over at lean, who faked a yawn. Shelby smiled.

  "I tried to call you last evening," Connie said. "You weren't home."

  "I must've just missed you," Shelby said. "Fran and I went out for a drink at Willy's."

  "Willy's?" Lisa said with a shudder.

  "It was an appropriate place to celebrate my return to the single life."

  "You should have called us," Penny said. "You could have celebrated with all your friends."

  Now, that would have been something to behold. And they could have all gone back to her place afterward.

  She caught herself before she laughed out loud. "This was a spur-of-the-moment thing," she said. "We'll do some real celebrating later."

  "It doesn't seem right," Lisa said, "celebrating the death of something."

  It's not a death for me, she thought. It's a beginning. But it does call for celebrating. Real celebrating. Maybe I could take Fran out for dinner tonight. Somewhere really special. Maybe the Andover Country Club.

  She giggled.

  "What's so funny?" Connie demanded.

  “My mind is slippery as ice today.”

  "I'm not surprised," Connie said sympathetically. "You've been through a lot lately."

  "It's been like a roller coaster that's gone out of control," Shelby said. "But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel."

  "I think," Jean said, "we're dealing with serious mental illness here." She turned her soft eyes on Shelby. "Maybe you need a vacation. Or a change in diet." Her eyes took on a mischievous sparkle. "I have some excellent recipes..."

  It wasn't really very funny, but it sent her over the top. She started to laugh, tried to stop but couldn't. She put her face in her hands and laughed until her stomach ached. Then someone touched her, and she realized she was crying. Crying hard, as hard as she'd laughed.

  An arm slipped around her shoulders. "It'll be OK," she heard Jean murmur. "Let's go to your office."

  She nodded, and felt herself being led up from the table and toward the door. Jean tightened her arm around her.

  "Don't worry about what anyone's thinking," Jean said quietly. "You just broke your engagement. It's perfectly normal.”

  No, it wasn't perfectly normal, not what she was crying about. And they weren't tears of sorrow. They were tears of relief. Relief that finally, after years of pushing and pulling herself, she'd come home.

  Jean got her settled in her chair. The rest trailed in behind. "Somebody get a glass of water," Jean said.

  Someone did. She drank it. Jean rubbed her back.

  "Better?"

  Shelby nodded.

  "We're going to give you some privacy," Jean said in a voice of finality that no one would dare argue with. "If you need anything, or want to talk, I'm as near as your phone."

  "Me, too," Penny said.

  Connie and Lisa "uh-h
uh-ed" in agreement.

  "Thanks," Shelby said. "I just need to put myself together."

  Jean herded them out the door, turning at the last minute to look back at her. “OK?”

  "OK."

  She leaned back in her chair, exhausted.

  She should probably go tell Spurl her engagement was off. No doubt he knew, but he did like to think anything that might affect his employees was shared with him immediately if not sooner. Which was why they sometimes called him "Big Daddy."

  He'd probably be in his office now. On the other hand, she no doubt looked like something that had been run over and left for dead. She reached for the phone instead.

  “Mr. Spurl's office, Miss Myers speaking.”

  "Hi," Shelby said. "This is Shelby Camden. Is he in?”

  “I'm afraid not, Miss Camden.”

  "Oh. Do you know when he'll be back?"

  "He's meeting with the people from Redbook. It could be quite a while."

  And that was quite a bit of information for Miss Myers to give out.

  “OK, I'll try him later.”

  There was a polite cough on the other end of the line. "Miss Camden?"

  “Yes?”

  "Is it true that you've been..." She cleared her throat. "...forced to dissolve your engagement?"

  Shelby smiled. "Well, yes and no. I mean, I broke the engagement, but no one forced me to. It was mutually agreeable, actually."

  "I see." There was a long, strained silence. "Miss Camden, if there's anything I can do for you..." She didn't seem to know what to say next.

  "Thank you," Shelby said. "I appreciate that."

  "Try Mr. Spurl tomorrow," Miss Myers said abruptly, and hung up.

  This was beginning to make her nervous. People were being too easy. Too nice. It made her think she must be missing something.

  On the other hand, maybe people were generally nicer than she expected, and they were genuinely concerned about her.

  That was a very strange thought.

  She went to the ladies' room and washed her face. Her eyes were so puffy they looked as if someone had stuffed marbles under them. The successful young career woman...

  It was getting late. Mid-afternoon already and she'd spent most of the day in one kind of state or another. The magazine was crazy if they paid her for this week's work. She decided to call Fran, see what time she got off, arrange for them to meet for an extraordinary dinner.

  The receptionist at the Health Center paged her a number of times, and finally gave up. “She's either stepped out for a moment, or she's left for the day.”

  That was strange. Shelby knew she wasn't due to leave there until at least five, maybe even six or seven. Fran never left work early. She said there was always something to catch up with or plan ahead for. An extra half hour now would pay off later.

  Still, she thought she'd give Fran's number a try.

  The phone rang and rang. On the seventh ring she was about to give up when the connection went through.

  "Hello?" Fran said. Her voice was tight and strange.

  "Hi, it's Shelby. What are you doing home? Are you sick?"

  "No."

  "You sound funny."

  "Sorry." There was music in the background. Classical music. Brahms.

  "Fran, what's wrong?”

  "I just got fired," Fran said.

  Chapter Twenty

  "What happened?" She tossed her pocketbook on Fran's couch.

  Fran gathered up the remnants of her solitaire game. "They fired me," she said with a shrug.

  "Why?"

  "Three guesses."

  Fran's face was pale and pinched and tired. She looked beaten. She was just sitting there, taking it. Shelby sat down across from her. "You can't let them do that. You have to fight it."

  "Any suggestions?"

  "They have to give you a reason."

  "I'm a bad influence on students, and reflect negatively on the Health Service."

  "For God's sake, you're not selling drugs or performing abortions."

  Fran shook her head wearily. "You know the answer to that, Shelby."

  Shelby picked up the deck of cards. She turned up the top one, looked at it, and slid it onto the bottom of the deck. She turned up the next one...

  "It was your mother," Fran said softly. "She sent them one of those reports. They showed it to me."

  "Bitch!" She slammed the cards down on the table. It was inadequate. "Fran, I’m..."

  "It's not your fault. Look, these things happen. Inevitably."

  Shelby dropped her head into her hands. "Shit, shit, shit.”

  "Indeed." Fran forced a smile. "It's not a total disaster. They agreed not to put it on my academic record, as long as I behave myself."

  Her body was stiff. It reminded Shelby of a puppet without hinges.

  "What can I do?" she asked.

  "I'll survive. I always survive."

  "I'll help you find another job," Shelby said.

  "Thank you," Fran said with a tight little smile.

  "This is my fault. If I hadn't..."

  "If you hadn't met me, this wouldn't have happened. If I didn't love you, this wouldn't have happened. If you didn't love me… If I didn't live here. If you didn't live here. There are a thousand 'ifs'. But it happened, and that's all there is to that."

  It was very still and quiet in the house. She could hear Fran's alarm clock ticking in the bedroom. A squirrel ran up a maple outside, its nails making tiny scratching, jittery, nervous stop-and-start sounds. She checked her watch. "Three o'clock. Dead time. Day or night, everything stops. Except the squirrels. If the universe stops for a moment of silent worship, it's worship of a God the squirrels don't believe in.

  The shadows of the trees worked their way across the lawn and up the sides of the houses. The sun set in autumn yellow, the sky clear blue with trails of cloud near the horizon. Color followed the sun, first the reds and golds, then the blues, and finally even the grass and leaves. The gray went dark.

  Shelby reached over and turned on the lamp. It sent pockets of light among the shadows.

  They couldn't sit here forever, Fran staring at the floor, Shelby staring at Fran staring at the floor.

  Libby did this, Shelby thought. Because I didn't do what she wanted. It's too late to take it back. This can't be undone.

  We're not dead. You can always do something if you're not dead. We can't take the chance of provoking the serpent, but we can do something to prove we're not dead.

  "Fran," she said, "get up."

  Fran looked at her, dazed.

  "We're going out to dinner."

  "What?"

  "I planned to take you out to dinner tonight, to celebrate. We're going to do it."

  "After what's happened..."

  "What my mother did has nothing to do with how we feel about one another, except in her dirty eyes. If I want to take you out to dinner, the only person who has a right to prevent it is you."

  Fran blinked. "I don't get it."

  Shelby leaned over and took her hands. "I spent my whole life up to now being afraid. I’m not going to do it any more. I don't want you to, either."

  “I haven’t…”

  "They drove you out of your home," Shelby said. "They drove you out of college, and out of the Army, and now out of your job. Nasty little people did that. It has to stop." She pulled her up from her seat. "This is our world, too. And until they gun us down, I plan to enjoy it."

  "You were right," Fran said. "I do feel better.”

  Shelby twirled a string of spaghetti around her fork. "We had to get out of that apartment."

  "I just hope we don't run into anyone you know."

  "That's why I wanted to come here," Shelby said. "If there's one spot in the county I'm likely to not run into someone I know, it's this place."

  The restaurant was cozy and a bit elegant, with brick walls and oak tables and real hanging plants. A little too expensive for the college crowd, a little too casual for West Sayer's
"old money." It was well-lighted, and looked out onto the main street. Shelby had insisted they sit next to the plate-glass window.

  The only person who came by was Connie's Charlie, who saw them through the window and joined them. He wanted to talk with Fran about the Army.

  She told him it was easy time, as long as you forget you had desires, opinions, or a personality of your own.

  Charlie said that'd be simple, he'd been doing it for years with Connie.

  When they got back to Bass Falls, it was nearly eleven o'clock. Fran thanked her for the night out, it had lifted her spirits considerably, but she still had a little more pouting to do, and would really rather do it alone if that was all right. Shelby said it was fine with her. She was completely tired out, couldn't recall a single moment of sleep the night before, and needed to get some rest before tackling her undone work at the magazine in the morning.

  She was exhausted, too, from trying to keep Fran from knowing how frightened she was.

  * * *

  Next morning there was a message on her desk. Mr. Spurl would like to see her as soon as she got in.

  Barely stopping to run a comb through her hair, she climbed the stairs to Spurl's office. Miss Myers greeted her with a tight, grim face. Clearly, Miss Myers was recovering from a night of wild passion and debauchery. She looked at Shelby, shook her head in a way that told her nothing, and said, "You can go right in."

  Spurl still had his jacket on and his tie straight. He must have just gotten in himself. He nodded her into the chair by his desk and placed his hand on a stack of folders as if he were about to take the oath of office.

  "I'm glad you could see me," Shelby said. "I wanted to tell you before it's all over the office, I've broken my engagement."

  “Yes,” he said. "I've heard."

  Shelby smiled. "You have to get up before the birds to keep any secrets around here.”

  "It must have been painful," he said.

  "It's turned out OK. A mutual decision. We're still friends."

  He cleared his throat.