Saxon Bennett - Talk of the Town

by Saxon Bennett

  “Can we go camping?”

  “If you’d like,” Angel said.

  “I would. I was cleaning out my garage and found my camping stuff and I thought I missed doing that. I figured since we hike together well, that camping might be fun,” Kim said.

  “What are you doing tonight?” Angel asked, suddenly missing her immensely.

  “Wondering what you’re doing,” Kim replied, blushing because she’d spent all day thinking about Angel. Sometime it scared her how attached she found herself to this woman and worrying about rebound action and all the advice columns she’d read that voiced caution but she couldn’t help herself. She felt like she was on a roller -coaster ride of high emotion.

  “Can I take you out to dinner?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Me too,” Angel said.

  “Is this a buddy date?” Kim asked, feeling shy and tentative but suddenly needing to know where they stood.

  “Do you want it to be?”

  “No.”

  “Me either.”

  “I’m going to kiss you tonight,” Kim said, her whole body filling with adrenaline.

  “Okay,” Angel said, her heart pounding in her chest.

  “Are you scared?” Angel asked.

  “Petrified,” Angel said.

  Kim laughed. “So am I.”

  “Are you all right with this?”

  “Angel, you’re not taking me anywhere I don’t want to go.”

  “I’ll pick you up in an hour,” Angel said.

  “Perfect.”

  Del was trying to track Mallory down. She wanted to see how Mallory’s physical therapy session went. Dr. Van Dyke was not happy. It appeared after fifteen minutes of physical therapy Mallory had called him a savage butcher, informing him that she was never coming back and he could go fuck himself. Del found her at Gigi’s.

  Gigi and Mallory were sitting on the couch out back, fishing with their play rods in the canal. Gigi smiled at Mallory.

  “We haven’t done this in a while,” Mallory said, suddenly feeling guilty for not spending time with her best friend because she was in love.

  “Yes, I’ve been ditched.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mallory said.

  “You love her.”

  “I do, more than I ever thought possible. It kind of makes me wonder about how I felt about Caroline.”

  “You were young. We were all young then. I thought she was the one for you. Maybe I was wrong,” Gigi said, thinking of a past she did not relish. She was starting to reevaluate some of her past indiscretions and wishing they hadn’t occurred.

  “I thought she was too. That scares me. I just don’t understand what I did to turn her away.”

  “It’s hard to tell,” Gigi said, looking away.

  “I don’t want that to happen with Del.”

  “It won’t,” Gigi assured her.

  “How do you know?” Mallory asked.

  “I just know,” Gigi said.

  Mallory’s cell phone rang. She handed it to Gigi, who was well versed in pretending to be her secretary.

  “No, I’m sorry she’s not available.”

  “Gigi, it’s Del, tell her I need to talk to her,” Del said.

  “It’s Del,” Gigi said, handing her the phone. “Are you in trouble?”

  “Maybe a little,” Mallory said, covering the phone.

  “What did you do?”

  “I told the physical therapist to fuck off,” Mallory said.

  Gigi laughed.

  “Mallory,” Del said.

  “He was a butcher,” Mallory said.

  “He is the best PT we have.”

  “I don’t like him,” Mallory replied.

  “He might be lacking in the people skills department but you have to work with him.”

  “I don’t have to do anything. I’m not going back,” Mallory replied.

  “Can we talk?” Del said.

  “I’ll take you to dinner. When are you off?” Mallory asked, feeling guilty for causing Del grief.

  “Six-thirty.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  “Mallory, you’re not angry with me are you?”

  “Because you’re one of them?”

  “Yes,” Del said.

  “No, I love you,” Mallory said, turning instantly crimson.

  There was a pause.

  “Del?”

  “You are an incredible woman,” Del said.

  Del called Angel because she understood women better than most from their old days of cruising women together.

  “What’s up?” Angel asked, trying to pick out an outfit.

  “It’s Mallory. She had physical therapy today. She told the PT to fuck off and left abruptly.”

  “The girl has spunk,” Angel laughed. “I’ve felt like that a time or two myself.”

  “This guy is the best.”

  “Her foot was badly broken, right?”

  “Yes,” Del said, remembering removing the cast and surveying the damage, hoping Mallory wasn’t going to have a permanent limp.

  “Give her some time.”

  “I don’t think that is going to make a difference. She’s really angry.”

  “But she’s not angry with you?” Angel asked, beginning to grasp the reason Del called.

  “No, she loves me, even if I am one of them.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Angel asked, picking out her one and only tailored suit, thinking tonight would be appropriate. She wanted to take Kim to the Bistro.

  “When she left the hospital she went to see Gigi,” Del said.

  “Instead of coming to see to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Like she said, you are one of them and Gigi is her oldest friend. It’s a natural reflex. Are you jealous?” Angel asked.

  “Yes,” Del said, embarrassed to admit it. “I know I shouldn’t be but I can’t help myself.”

  Angel laughed. “It’s perfectly understandable. It’s part of the loving-lesbian-syndrome.”

  “What?”

  “Meaning you love her and want to be all things to her, lover, parent, best friend, confidante, soul mate, advisor, and your feelings are hurt because you’re not there yet. But you will be. And you don’t like Gigi.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t trust her.”

  “She plays around?”

  “From what I’ve seen she does.”

  “Why does that worry you?” Angel asked.

  “Because she’s in love with Mallory, always has been. Neither one of them will admit it, but it’s there.”

  “Where do you think that’s going to go?” Angel asked.

  “Nowhere I hope,” Del said.

  “Del, I’ve seen her look at you and if love can be written across a face it was. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Okay, it was reflex.”

  “A bad reflex. She loves you.”

  “Okay. How are you doing?” Del asked, feeling guilty for not even inquiring.

  “I am outstanding. Kim and I are going out to dinner and she said she’s going to kiss me tonight.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes. I know it’s not prudent but I can’t help myself,” Angel said.

  “She let you know, which means she’s ready. Oh, Angel, if you only knew how badly Ollie treated her. You are a saint.”

  “I hope so. I am there. We get along so well and I can’t get through a day without seeing her,” Angel said.

  “That’s good.”

  “It is.”

  “Call me tomorrow.”

  “Del, if you get a list of what Mallory can do with her foot from the PT I’ll work with her. I’ve been through enough of them and maybe she can work back into it.”

  “I don’t know if she’ll go for it.”

  “Oh, she will,” replied Angel.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I will tell her stories about yo
u.”

  Del laughed. “It’s worth a try.”

  At ten o’clock Del was carrying Mallory up the stairs to her house. Mallory was celebrating not having a cast on her foot anymore and the subsequent pain of learning to deal with her newly repaired limb as well as telling the PT to fuck off. She told Del this as she finished her fourth glass of wine and Del took her car keys away.

  “I always kind of wondered what it was like to be carried over the threshold,” Mallory said, gazing into Del’s eyes.

  “Now you know,” Del said.

  “I think it’s the idea of promising to take care of someone for the rest of their lives no matter what, even though that promise is broken almost as often as it is spoken. I’d like it to mean something,” Mallory replied, continuing on her philosophical loquaciousness fueled by the four glasses of wine.

  Del set her down, took her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. “With us it will mean something. I will always take care of you. I will love you always.”

  Mallory was about to kiss her when her cell phone went off. They both searched for their phones out of habit.

  “It’s you,” Del said, suddenly cursing technology.

  “Mallory, I’m at the 12th Precinct. Will you come get me?” Gigi screamed into the phone.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I’ll tell you later. And bring a credit card. I need bail.”

  “You got caught smashing shrines? Gigi!”

  “I got to go.”

  “Gigi got arrested. I have to go get her,” Mallory said.

  “I’ll drive,” Del said.

  “Good idea. We don’t need both of us in prison,” Mallory agreed.

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Do you suppose we shall always be interrupted?”

  “Interrupted from what?” Del asked, opening the car door for Mallory.

  “From that moment when we are about to fall into each other’s arms and into bed,” Mallory said, leaning on Del’s shoulder and sighing.

  Del kissed her cheek while she put Mallory’s seatbelt on.

  “No, one day everything will be right and we will spend the whole day in bed. I promise.”

  The police station lighting made the place look even dingier, and aside from motivational posters and duty rosters, Gigi could not find one redeemable quality about this kind of public space. The detective sat down and slipped his report in the typewriter.

  He looked at Gigi and swallowed his bile once again that he had slept with the Chief’s wife and was now demoted to the Domestic Violence squad which reminded him only of his divorced wife, his own violent upbringing, and the piss-poor state of the human condition as he now knew it to be.

  “You guys really need to hire a better interior decorator.”

  “Yeah, like put a lavender wall and then some nice chintz pillows and a lovely bowl of fruit,” Detective Gonzalez replied.

  “Perfect,” Gigi replied. Finally, she thought, someone to talk to in this hell-hole.

  “So why don’t you tell me what happened tonight?” Gonzalez asked.

  “From the beginning?”

  “That would be a good place to start.”

  “It goes way back,” Gigi replied.

  “How about you start with telling me how it was that we found you tied to a chair in your mother’s kitchen, broken dishes everywhere and you screaming you were going to kill her while she was snapping photographs of you and quoting scripture,” Gonzalez said, thinking it was one of the more bizarre crime scenes he’d come upon. Not to mention they had to run her into Emergency first to get her stitched up and cleaned up enough to arrest her.

  “She lassoed me while I was taking a sledgehammer to her Virgin Mary shrine.”

  “She lassoed you, like the cowboys?” Detective Gonzalez asked, adding this to his list of mental pictures, none of which entirely made sense.

  “My mother was in 4H most of her junior years. She used to rope calves in exhibitions. She won a lot of medals,” Gigi explained.

  “So roping you in the front yard is not that unusual?”

  “For my mother it’s not. Catching me is.”

  “You’re usually quicker?”

  “Much,” replied Gigi proudly.

  “Not tonight obviously.”

  “I think she got a tip that we’d be around,” Gigi said.

  “We?”

  “I mean me, the royal we, I always refer to myself in the plural. I don’t feel lonely that way. It’s like a trinity of self, me, myself and I,” Gigi said, scrambling, knowing that Aunt Lil and Fran were out desecrating other shrines across the city. Hopefully, they hadn’t been apprehended. Gigi was worried. The police had confiscated her cell phone so she couldn’t warn them.

  Gigi tried to send Mallory telepathic messages.

  “Is there any particular reason you smash Virgin Mary shrines, including your mother’s?” Detective Gonzalez inquired.

  “Because I’m rebelling,” Gigi replied.

  “Against religion or your mother?”

  “Both,” Gigi said. “She loves the shrine more than me and it’s nothing more than idolatry but of course I am an abomination against her religion so the way I figured it I might as well live up to her worst nightmares.”

  “You don’t look like a pedophile,” Detective Gonzalez replied.

  “I’m the next best thing. I’m a lesbian.”

  “I think I’m beginning to get it now,” said Detective Gonzalez.

  “Funny, isn’t it. You tell people you’re gay and suddenly everything makes sense,” said Gigi.

  “Yes, so why’d she tie you to the kitchen chair and then take photographs?”

  “For the Catholic Herald. It will make front-page news. They’ve been looking for us, I mean me, for a long time.”

  Detective Gonzalez shook his head. There was a commotion down the hall as Mrs. Dupont was screaming prophet curses at the police officers that were taking her back to her cell.

  “Boy, I don’t know what we’re going to do with this one,” Detective Gonzalez muttered.

  “Technically speaking the damaging of private property is only a misdemeanor,” Gigi said, looking at him with her wounded and abused child eyes.

  He fell for it. His own childhood had these unkind moments. The kid could use a break.

  “It’s not you I’m concerned with. In fact, if you want, you can file charges against your mother for assault.”

  “I don’t want to get her in trouble,” Gigi said, laughing.

  “She’s already in trouble. She decked one of my officers with her purse. You got a friend coming?”

  “Yeah,” Gigi said.

  “I’d stay away from your mom for a couple of days.”

  “Good advice.”

  ***

  Mallory sat up straight in her seat. “Aunt Lil!”

  “What?” Del said, turning left on Adam Street.

  “Aunt Lil and her fellow crones are out doing the same thing,” Mallory said, scrolling through her cell phone for Aunt Lil’s number.

  Lil picked up. “Hello?”

  “Lil, this is Mallory. Where are you? They got Gigi.”

  “Who got Gigi?” Lil said, shushing the party behind her.

  “The police,” Mallory said. “We’re going to get her right now. You’re not out smashing shrines are you?”

  “Goodness no, we don’t do that until the witching hour. Gigi was supposed to meet us here at Valerie’s and then we were going to head out. Did she start with her mother’s?”

  “I think so.”

  “Bring her here when you get her.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is Del with you?” Lil asked.

  “Yes,” Mallory replied, puzzled.

  “Bring her too. I’d like to meet her.”

  Mallory smiled queerly at Del.

  “What?” Del said, pulling into the parking lot of the police station.

  “The Ladies of Yarnell would like to meet you,” Mal
lory replied.

  “Should I be nervous?”

  “No, I’ll protect you.”

  When they got in the police station to rescue Gigi there was a ruckus down the hall as some crazed woman was screaming biblical curses upon the heathens in her cell as well as her captors.

  “Is that your mother I hear screaming?” Mallory asked Gigi as they signed her release papers.

  “Yes, she assaulted a police officer with her purse.”

  “I can hardly wait for the whole story. Have you called Alex yet?” Mallory asked.

  “She’s not home. I tried her first. Hey Del, thanks for coming,” Gigi said.

  “I called Lil, we’re supposed to meet her at Valerie’s.”

  “So everything is fine there?” Gigi asked, taking a quick look around.

  “All is well,” Mallory said, in a conspiratorial tone.

  “Should we bail your mother out?” Del asked, listening to another wail of insults.

  “No,” Gigi said, walking out.

  Del looked at Mallory, who shrugged her shoulders.

  There were two lights on at Koontz and Koontz Public Accountants. Alex looked up from her desk to find Taylor Koontz, hand on hip, shaking her head.

  “You’re making me look bad,” Taylor said.

  “Excuse me?” Alex said, rubbing her burning eyes.

  “I thought I was the quintessential workaholic around here, aside from Daddy of course, but you’re burning more midnight oil than we are. Not that I’m not grateful, mind you.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said, leaning back in her chair.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m starved. Let me take you to dinner,” Taylor said.

  Alex faltered.

  “I’m not taking no for an answer,” Taylor said, pulling Alex’s blazer off the coat rack. She wrapped it gently around Alex’s shoulders.

  Alex smelled her perfume and when she met her gaze Alex felt the chemistry of two women coming together. For the first time since Taylor had come to work for her father, she realized that maybe the favorite daughter was not the straight girl Alex had automatically assumed. Gigi was always telling her that everyone was a lesbian until proven otherwise.

  “I have to make a phone call,” Alex said.

  “Sure. I’ll get the car and meet you out front,” Taylor said.

  Alex called Gigi but didn’t bother leaving a message, since her girlfriend was out why shouldn’t she do the same? Alex, being a conscientious lover, felt a pang of guilt for going out to dinner with an attractive woman.