Just Like That

by Karin Kallmaker

  “I’m not signing that paper.” Mira waved a hand. “You can forget that.”

  “Fine, don’t sign it. I’ll sue your estate for it, with interest.”

  “You’ll look stupid if you try that.”

  “No. You see, I don’t need the money and everybody knows that. It must be about principle if I’m willing to sue over it. Some people might get the idea you’re Not Nice.”

  “You’d have to drag Crystal into it.”

  “You’re right. I don’t want to, but I will. And she’s angry enough that she’d agree. It’ll get ugly, mostly for you. You’re nice to that bombshell heiress with her own reality TV show, and you’ll even party with her, but behind her back I know what you and the other Blue Bloods really think of her. You don’t want to be her, with a sex-and-money scandal hanging around your neck, Lady Wickham.”

  Mira said nothing, but Toni could tell from the tiny flinch that she had scored a point.

  “You shouldn’t have fucked her.”

  “I was mad at you.” Mira picked at a fraying edge of the seat leather.

  Poor Crystal, Toni thought. She hadn’t even been real to Mira. “So here’s my offer. We’ll agree the money is a gift. Keep the jewelry. Stay away from my employees and my business deals, for, oh, forever. We’ll part friends.”

  “This conversation wasn’t even necessary. That was how I felt.”

  “I’m sure you did. But I think a business deal is better spelled out, don’t you?”

  Mira went half-limp, all the fight apparently gone. After a sigh, she said, “You don’t really know what it’s like to be me.”

  Poor little rich girl. Toni stopped herself from rolling her eyes.

  “I’m supposed to be rich. I’m not supposed to work for a living. But until I’m thirty-five I’m supposed to live on an amount that won’t even pay your rent. What am I supposed to do with my time if I can’t have a job? What except hang out with other people like me? And they expect me to have the money they do. And I will.” Mira’s eyes again glittered with tears, but this time Toni knew they were real. “But not for another four bloody years.”

  Toni thought, you could have gone to a top university and walked out the other side knowing your quarter million in student loans would be paid off like magic. You could have volunteered with the Peace Corps and seen what poverty really looks like. You could have studied art in Tuscany, or written that novel you talk about, and almost certainly have gotten it published. You could have done anything. But you only wanted to dance, ski and travel in your private flock of pretty birds. “There are billions of people who would love to have your hard life.”

  Mira’s eyes flashed. “I am what I’m expected to be. I was what you wanted, wasn’t I? You may not need someone like me on your arm to prove you’re successful, but you liked it all the same. You wanted a foot into my world and thought the admission could be bought. Only you didn’t fit in, no matter how hard you tried.”

  Stung, Toni said, “I loved you. I didn’t love your world. I didn’t like your friends. I didn’t think you were really as shallow as that whole scene, but I was wrong. Just like that, I realized I was wrong.”

  “That’s right, Toni, dear. You have all that money you made and you tried to get into the rich and famous category. But since it’s so obvious that you don’t fit in, now you’re saying you never wanted it. Right. Fine. You keep talking that talk. Take me back to the hotel.” Once upon a time Mira had made her laugh and feel like a lucky, happy woman. They’d enjoyed hot dogs from pushcarts and warm Friday nights strolling in the park. They’d made love slow, fast, soft, hard, everything in between. Mira had been adventurous and intense.

  “I loved you,” Toni had said then.

  “At least Nancy knows who she is and what she expects from me.” Mira had crossed her legs and retreated into wounded silence, not saying another word.

  A shaft of light made Toni flinch as the plane slowly banked, and she hurriedly pulled the shade down partway.

  I was not in love with her title, future money or social set, she told herself angrily. I was in love with her, with who I thought she was. I’m proud of who I am, and what I do with my life. I wasn’t trying to be something I’m not.

  It was getting harder to make herself believe it. When Doc Burbidge had accepted the preliminary contract Toni had faxed him later that day, she’d realized she needed to get the California trip out of the way before he demanded her full attention. It would be good to see Missy again, even though she had serious doubts about the beautiful women, the wonderful wine and assurances of lively song at some local dance, no doubt held in a barn. She expected nothing but a rapid conclusion of her business.

  * * *

  “Is she here yet?” Jane bounced on the balls of her feet, looking so much like a puppy that Syrah wanted to whop her on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

  “Not yet, for the tenth time in ten minutes. Dance with me. I’ll watch the door with you.”

  Jane dutifully, if unenthusiastically, pulled Syrah onto the still uncrowded dance floor. The Fling would not be in full swing for another hour, but the prospect of being a wallflower even this early in the evening was daunting. Syrah loved dances and dancing but she didn’t like feeling as if she were once again in high school. She normally didn’t have to ask Jane to dance with her, but Jane was irrevocably fixated on Missy Bingley. Syrah wanted to believe it was temporary, but the way Jane was behaving was so very Not Jane that it was starting to scare her.

  They gyrated in time with “Don’t Leave Me This Way.” Jane was a good dancer, full of exuberance and willing to let go to the music. Her arms raised, she snapped her fingers as she twisted to the beat. Her nipples strained against her purple muscle tee, which had ridden up enough to display a washboard stomach.

  Not for the first time, Syrah thought if she didn’t love Jane like a sister, she’d want to jump her very graceful, elegant bones. Her own dancing, and attire, was slightly more reserved, but tonight it liberated her from her worries.

  The Fling was getting off to a slow start, and at the moment less than half of the thirty to forty women were dancing. Toes were tapping and many bright eyes cast around for someone willing to make the first move. There was a small flash of light as the bar door opened and closed, foretelling of new arrivals. Syrah turned in place to see Missy enter, followed by a stranger. Missy was smiling broadly, already nodding at women she knew. Her gaze was sweeping the room when it suddenly froze about two feet behind Syrah. The easiness of the smile waned, then redoubled.

  Syrah glanced behind her at Jane, who had frozen in midstep, then hastily recovered her poise.

  In that flash of an instant, Syrah had a terrifying but undeniable thought. Someday I will be the best friend toasting them at their wedding.

  She was so absorbed in the palpable exchange of electricity between Missy and Jane that she didn’t immediately study the stranger at Missy’s heel. When she did focus on the taller, black-haired woman, what she noticed first was the complete lack of any kind of smile. The Dark Shadow, Syrah thought, then she connected the unsmiling reaction as the woman watched Missy greet Jane.

  She felt a surge of protectiveness for her friend and did what a best friend ought to do. “Lovely to see you again,” she said heartily, and she gave Missy a decent dyke hug while clearly ceding her position as Jane’s dance partner.

  Missy introduced Dark Shadow to Jane, and then Syrah, but a blast of music drowned out what she said. Syrah had no desire to ask again. Wherever this woman was from she had gone out of her way to overdress. Missy was fittingly clad in jeans and a tank top that was woven with something that sparkled when she moved—a casual, stylish femme to the max. Dark Shadow’s black slacks looked like raw silk, and the long-sleeved blouse was crimson silk, and shot with golden threads to boot. Given the rising temperature inside the bar, she’d be soaked with sweat in ten minutes, and with the way she was continuing to glower at Jane, Syrah was going to revel in the woman’s
discomfort.

  Jane and Missy continued to smile at each other without saying anything deeper than “This is fun” and “Yes, it is” back and forth. Jane abruptly offered to buy drinks—an extravagance Syrah wouldn’t have allowed, but Dark Shadow quickly said, “I’ll take care of it.”

  Syrah frowned. Dark Shadow seemed to think that Jane was penniless or something. She shook her head with a distant no when asked what she would like. “Thank you, but it’s a little early for me. Besides, I want to dance.”

  “Fine,” Dark Shadow replied, with that steady, frozen regard. The dark hair thick around her shoulders was so glossy Syrah wanted to believe it was fake. “Your usual, Missy?”

  “I feel like a Long Island iced tea tonight,” Missy said, her soft gaze still fixed on Jane.

  Dark Shadow quirked an eyebrow and for just a moment Syrah thought she looked familiar. A visitor to the tasting room, perhaps, but not recently. It might have been several years ago, before that discontented furrow had marked the olive-tinted brow. The hint of silver hair at each temple further stumped her memory, and Syrah gave it up.

  “A beer, no glass necessary,” Jane said when queried. “Thank you very much.”

  Becky Argost swooped down on Syrah at that moment, her gamin grin a welcome sight. “Two-step, come on!”

  Jane didn’t exactly seize Missy’s hand but they were right behind Becky and Syrah as they swung into the rhythm of the Johnny Cash song. The music brought more women onto the floor and they circulated with a flurry of laughter and flashing arms and shoulders. From over Becky’s shoulder, Syrah delighted in watching Dark Shadow waiting virtually alone in one corner, a tall glass in one hand and two beers by the neck in the other. She was sure the beer was an attempt to slum it with the local yokels.

  Briefly, just before Becky steered them through a thick patch of other dancers, she thought Dark Shadow was studying her, but later, she wasn’t sure.

  * * *

  “Toni, I’m in love. I am absolutely in love. Isn’t she gorgeous? A wonderful dancer and her fingers—I mean, what they felt like on my back was giving me incredibly explicit ideas!”

  Toni, having endured an hour of watching Missy dancing with Jane, handed her friend another cocktail napkin to mop her brow. “Do you want another drink?”

  “This water is fine, or I’ll fall down. The only place I’d want to fall tonight is on top of Jane. She’s an artist.”

  “Will she show you her etchings?” Toni gazed across the empty field that the bar’s back patio overlooked.

  “God, I hope so.” Missy drank deeply from the bottled water, letting out a refreshed gasp. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like her.”

  It wasn’t the first time Toni had heard Missy voice similar sentiments about other attractive butches. “How successful is she in her career?”

  “I asked her if there was someplace I could see her work, and it’s displayed in a local gallery. But she’s so unpretentious. She said she sold enough paintings to keep her in landscaping work.”

  Toni knew when to keep her thoughts to herself with Missy, but her tone was overly dry when she observed, “A riveting success, I take it then.”

  “Oh, don’t be disagreeable and dour, T.B. You are not going to take the fun out of this for me.”

  “Have fun. Have lots and lots of fun.”

  “Oh, and by that you mean, fun and nothing else? I’m in love, I tell you.”

  Missy’s eyes were sparkling but Toni suspected the Long Island iced tea was responsible. She merely nodded.

  “And have you ever seen such a great group of good-looking women? Must be the country air. I hope it does me as much good. You should dance.”

  “I don’t see anyone I’d like to dance with.”

  “What about Jane’s friend? She has wonderful eyes.”

  Toni grudgingly agreed about the eyes—large, luminous, dark and expressive. Of course, the expression in them hadn’t been very welcoming to either her or Missy. “Really, you’ve lost your perspective. The women here seem no more exceptional than anywhere else I’ve been, in spite of all the hype about California girls. Several are definitely below the par. You think everyone is beautiful tonight.”

  “Well, someone else then. There are plenty of women obviously waiting to be asked.”

  “They can dance with one another, can’t they?”

  Missy heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what to do with you when you’re in this mood. The reech beech, she was very, very bad for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it.” Toni might have added more, but like a faithful slave, Jane arrived in the patio doorway. She followed the star-struck pair back into the bar, although it was much cooler outside, and all she saw of Missy for the next hour was her backside, increasingly covered by Jane’s hands.

  * * *

  “Yes, yes,” Syrah said for the fiftieth time. She frowned into the dark outside Jane’s truck window as she rested her forehead on the cool glass. “She’s beautiful and nice. But she has poor taste in friends. You should have heard that woman going on about women here being ‘below the par.’”

  Jane slowed for a yellow light. “Perhaps you misheard.”

  “I could hear perfectly fine from the other side of the tree. ‘Below the par’ is exactly what she said. And you didn’t have to give me a ride home—you could have gone with Missy. It wouldn’t have been the first time we arrived together and left separately.”

  Jane gave an indignant snort. “Aspen was angling to take you home and you’re drunk.”

  Syrah hiccupped delicately. “That’s true. Thank you. Go home with Aspen and next thing you know you’re joined at the hip.”

  “Plus, well, Missy and I were really hot together and, um, I got scared.”

  “Scared? You?” Syrah slowly turned her head to look at Jane. Well, there were two Janes, so she focused on Jane-on-the-left. “Since when has sex scared you?”

  “Not sex, it’s the morning after. I take her to my place and in the morning she realizes it’s an aircraft hanger.”

  “A very comfortable, spacious artist’s workspace, a studio, not an aircraft hangar. You think she’s going to freak on you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then she’s not worth your time.” Syrah experimented with opening and closing her eyes and eventually found just the right amount of open so there was only one Jane. “Not worth the time of the most gorgeous woman in the room, my friend Jane.”

  “You are going to be so unhappy in the morning.”

  “I’m not that drunk.” Syrah rubbed the side of her nose and Jane-on-the-left came back.

  “Sure. I’ll pour you into bed.”

  “I’m worried about business. Worried about that business consultant. Sooner or later she’s going to show up, or call or something.”

  “If you want, I could make sure whoever it is ends up in the peat moss, no questions asked.”

  “Doesn’t solve anything. There are a million more like her. The banks won’t stop charging inner-est. Okay, stop. Stop now.”

  Jane rolled to the side of the road and leaned across Syrah to push open the passenger door. The fresh air was nearly enough to stave off the sudden spasm in Syrah’s stomach, then she stumbled onto the dirt and unceremoniously threw up in the weeds.

  The small part of her that was sober was spewing invectives at the rest of her that had just had to have one more drink, then one more. She’d not been this drunk since high school, and she had thought she was over being so foolish.

  Jane, like a good friend, provided napkins and even had a slightly stale bottle of water to sip from. Syrah was starting to feel like maybe she wouldn’t die when, just then, headlights illuminated them.

  Within a few moments a low-slung sports car slowed to stop. “Are you okay?”

  Jane hurried to the car. “We’re fine, Missy, really. Syrah…” She couldn’t hear what Jane said but she kept her back to the car because the headlights were going to stab her eyes out if
she didn’t. It was a mercifully short while before the car resumed its journey and Syrah was left in peaceful darkness.

  Great, just great. Jane’s fixation-of-the-week had seen what class of company she kept. Her best buddy Syrah, barfing on the side of the road, great. And Dark Shadow was probably there, too, just great.

  They were underway again before she muttered, “Below the par, my ass. She never did dance with anybody.”

  “Maybe she’s married.”

  “Married women can dance. Nothing wrong with that.” Syrah thought about the chiseled, humorless face as she kneaded her hands into her stomach, willing it to settle. “If you ask me, that woman needs to get laid. But who’d bother to seduce her, let alone marry her?”

  “She’s very attractive. And has that money thing, I’m sure.”

  “Like money builds character.” Syrah stared out the window, fighting the urge to cry. Great, she was an unhappy drunk now. She didn’t really know how much money they needed to get out of their problems with the loans and shareholders. Even thinking shareholder made her stomach turn over.

  The truck lights illuminated the driveway entrance to the winery grounds and Syrah was grateful for Jane’s strong arms as they navigated the stairs to the second floor. The tasting room had been renovated several times over the years, but the rest of the house rambled in a grew-like-Topsy way, and Syrah didn’t have the balance to navigate the twists and turns. Alone, she’d have probably passed out on the kitchen floor.

  Horizontal felt heavenly. She was aware of Jane being a good valet by pulling off her shoes and socks, and she didn’t protest when her jeans hit the floor. She felt so much better.

  “You,” Jane said in the dark, “are going to be very, very sorry tomorrow.”

  “I know,” Syrah thought she said, then a hammer hit her between the eyes.

  Chapter 5

  “I’m usually better prepared, but I haven’t even looked up the directions.” Toni twisted her hair back and clamped it firmly with a comb. It had felt good around her shoulders last night, but today was not about Warm and Friendlies. The late night hadn’t helped the jet-lag bags under her eyes, either.