Sparky chose two pieces of zucchini. “I think the trick is to have one cooking, one cooling and one you can eat. I’ll get us caught up and then I can say I cooked you dinner.” She tried her most charming smile. Sparky remembered times when she’d been at parties, ignoring Wesson as best she could, allowing other women to flirt with her and sometimes flirting back—wishing she were single but afraid to be so. What a miserable way to live—for both of them. Wesson would be better off in the long run, Sparky thought. It would just take some adjustment on both their parts.
Vibro smiled at her. “Okay, let’s try putting a piece of chicken followed by a chunk of purple onion.”
“That’s the spirit,” Sparky said.
Jennifer giggled and squirmed in her dress—apparently in response to something said in the text.
“Sweetie, would you like a chunk of something?” Vibro asked.
There was no response.
Pen was cooking for Phred, who had taken a shine to her. Perhaps she’d discovered Pen was a displaced person and felt an affinity. Pen was telling Phred about a woman she knew who couldn’t get her ingrown toenail fixed. She didn’t think it was fair.
“I concur. Poverty and a lack of proper health care due to overpriced services because of the HMO inflation due to regulation of its service prices is a crime. Do you see this?” Phred showed Pen and then Cheryl her forefinger, which had a protruding lump on it.
Sparky didn’t look. It never took much in the grossness department for her to lose her appetite, which was already tentative at best right now due to stress.
“It’s a cyst,” Cheryl said, turning her physician’s eye to the ailment.
“Yes, but it’s on a joint, which makes the old smash-it-with-a-telephone-book-and-let-the-ooze-out technique not a viable option,” Phred said.
Sparky looked at Vibro, who had a zucchini slice midway to her mouth. She set it down.
If there was such a thing as simultaneous blanching—it occurred between them.
“Ick,” Vibro said.
Cheryl, Pen and now Lexus were fully engaged in the “Saga of the Cyst.”
Jennifer was so engrossed in texting that she slurped at her now empty glass, looked up and blinked. Her eyes darted around looking for the margarita pitcher. Sparky deliberately had set it down at the far end of the table near Phred, who did not seem the type to tolerate excess. Jennifer glanced in Phred’s direction and tried to get her attention by lifting her empty glass and pointing at the pitcher. Cheryl was bent over her finger, and Phred, if she had seen Jennifer, was ignoring her.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough? You’re on your second pitcher,” Vibro said.
“I’m a grown-up,” Jennifer said.
“But I’m the one that keeps you from drowning in your own vomit,” Vibro said. She looked at the piece of cooked chicken Sparky had set on her plate.
Sparky looked at hers too and set it down as well. Talk of vomit and pus were proving to be major appetite suppressants. Jennifer went back to texting. Meanwhile Pen, Cheryl, Phred and Lexus were stacking up piles of fondued stuff and munching away.
Vibro studied their end of the table. “I wish I could be like them—even if they are talking about pus.”
Sparky nodded. “I think you’d need to get a different girlfriend for that.” Sparky blanched. “Did I say that out loud?”
Vibro laughed. “You’re right. Look at her. She’s so busy she doesn’t even know we’re talking about her.”
“I do too. Go sit with them. What do I care?” Jennifer said.
Vibro’s face flushed. “You’re supposed to be my girlfriend, engaging with our friends at a dinner party. Instead, you’re being rude, getting drunk and texting God-knows-who. Who are you texting anyway?” Vibro asked this as if it had just occurred to her. Sparky would have inquired long before.
“None of your business.”
This further infuriated Vibro. “I pay for the phone and it is my business.”
Jennifer set the phone down on the table. “Oh, we’re back to that, are we?”
“Back to what?”
“The I-pay-for-everything-so-I-own-you thing,” Jennifer said, raising her voice.
“I just want to know who you’re texting. If you’re not hiding anything, it shouldn’t be an issue,” Vibro said.
Jennifer eyed her, seeming to consider.
“If you’ve got nothing to hide—hand it over,” Vibro said, putting her hand out palm up.
“It’s my phone.”
“Correction, it’s my phone. Give it to me.”
“No.” Jennifer clutched it to her ample chest.
“Give it,” Vibro said, her voice laced with venom. She snatched at it, missed, and the phone fell to the floor. Jennifer grabbed for it, but Phred, with surprising speed, picked it up. Jennifer smiled and put out her hand for it. Phred regarded her.
“It’s my phone,” Jennifer said.
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law, so technically speaking it’s currently my phone,” Phred said. “And I think it would be prudent for me to hand it over to the primary owner listed on the phone contract, which would be…?”
“Me,” Vibro said.
“Phred, sweetie darling, this isn’t really any of your concern,” Jennifer said.
“I have the uncanny ability to listen to more than one conversation at a time. I’ve been monitoring yours. It appears that something untoward is going on and I feel as part of the community that I should side with the morality that a trusting relationship is based on. If you truly have nothing to hide then Vibro’s suspicions will be put to rest by the innocuous banality of your texting. If not…”
Jennifer panicked. “I can explain everything,” she said.
“I don’t want to know,” Vibro said as she took the phone from Phred. She looked at it. She looked at Jennifer. And then at the rest of the group. Everyone had stopped fonduing—she and Sparky because of the pus story and Lexus, Cheryl and Pen because they’d eaten a lot and were taking a break.
“I’ll buy you a new fondue pot,” she told Lexus, and she dropped the phone into the boiling oil.
“You bitch! You fucking horrible, horrible bitch!” Jennifer got up fuming and marched from the room. They heard the door slam.
Pen leaned over to look at the fondue pot. “Wow, that’s, like, really neat.”
“Shall I make us some sandwiches?” Lexus said. “Or there’s more chef salad.”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m stuffed,” Cheryl said. She reached across the table and took Vibro’s hand. “You deserve better you know.”
Vibro nodded.
Phred got up and put her large hands on Vibro’s narrow shoulders as they slumped. “I think it was the right thing to do. Her disrespect for you had reached a level that required action.”
Vibro looked up her. “You know, for a woman who wears her vagina on the outside, you’re all right.”
Chapter Nine
The Nightcap
After having peanut butter and potato chip sandwiches and saying goodnight to their hosts, Sparky followed Vibro up the stairs to their respective apartments. At the landing to Sparky’s, Vibro said, “You want to come in for a nonalcoholic nightcap?”
“What would that be exactly?” Sparky asked. “I’ve never been invited for one.”
“I don’t know really. Hot chocolate?”
“It’s May,” Sparky pointed out. “You don’t do this very often either.”
“Like never. How about a Diet Dr. Pepper?”
“That’ll work. Will the texter be there? It might be awkward.”
“No, she’ll be gone,” Vibro said.
“How do you know?”
“She uses any excuse to spend the night elsewhere and this one is a doozy.”
“I’ll take that Diet Dr. Pepper then,” Sparky said, sticking her hands in her chinos.
“Come on in,” Vibro said, unlocking the door.
Vibro’s apartment was pos
h and tasteful without being pretentious. “Wow, great apartment,” Sparky said. “I love the couch.” Sparky ran her hand along its edge.
“Watch this,” Vibro said, flicking a switch to activate the ambient lighting feature.
“Okay, that’s really cool,” Sparky said. “I wonder how they did it.” She studied the couch. “They must’ve run the wiring down the frame and along the chaise.”
“These are my latest acquisitions,” Vibro said, pointing at the paintings. “They’re my first honest-to-God real paintings. I’m not sure they exactly go with the modern furniture, but I’m hoping for an eclectic look. Do you think it works?”
“Definitely,” Sparky said. There were oil paintings of rural scenes, mostly of cows, pastures and hay rolls that looked like spindles of thread lying on a carpet of green. “What inspired you to choose these?” she said, indicating the paintings.
“I think it has something to do with my roots,” Vibro said. She’d never fully admit her secret, but for some unknown reason she felt she could say at least this much to Sparky. When others had asked about the paintings, she had shrugged and said something flip about them being on sale. In truth she loved the scenes as much as she purported to hate the life they depicted. How could she ever explain that she’d run off and re-created herself? It would make this life the unreal one and the one she’d led previously the real one, when it was no longer real because the re-created one was the real one now. Christ-on-a-bike, she couldn’t explain it to herself. She wasn’t bipolar and she wasn’t schizophrenic, but she wasn’t sure she might not have a personality disorder.
“Have a seat,” Vibro said. “I’ll get the nightcaps and you can tell me why you don’t drink alcohol. Or not.”
“Okay,” Sparky said, picking up a set of ceramic coasters depicting cows with red silos in the background and white picket fences.
Vibro returned with two tall glasses of soda garnished with lemon slices. “I hate my girlfriend,” she said as she set the sodas down.
“I hate my ex-girlfriend.”
“I don’t drink because Jennifer is such a drunk I can’t stand the stuff.”
“Drinking was the only way Wesson and I could tolerate each other and our lives together. Not drinking is part of my new life.”
Vibro sat in the oversized leather chair and raised her glass in a toast. “To new beginnings.”
“Does that include your life?”
Vibro studied Sparky. She was handsome with her messy, short dark hair, her well-formed body and her intensely blue eyes. A poem was coming to mind—a new one. That hadn’t happened in a while. She’d been rehashing old poems in an attempt to improve them. Perhaps she found a new muse. Jennifer had been her muse, but she was lost now in a fire of indignation. It didn’t work if your Helen was fucking half of Troy.
“I need to throw her out, but it’s hard. We’ve been together for five years. I’m thirty-four, for God’s sake. In lesbian dating years I’m, like, antediluvian. What am I going to do? Go to the Scratch-n-Sniff Saloon and find someone else’s vagina to pet?”
“Only if it’s on the outside,” Sparky said.
Vibro laughed and pointed her finger at Sparky. “You’re bad.”
“Actually, speaking of vaginas, Phred seems all right.”
“For all the shit I give her, she is a very kind woman. The political is annoying, but she would do anything for you. She’s like this community pillar in the lesbo-scene. She won an award for her grassroots efforts from the HRC. She looked very handsome in her tailored suit at the awards ceremony.”
“Well, at least she’s following her passion,” Sparky said.
Vibro wondered if there was some deeper meaning to this statement. She certainly wasn’t following her passion. She didn’t have one to follow. She wrote very poetic, very morose fortunes. She did have a 401k program, but she also had a cheating partner. Things weren’t looking good.
“Yes, she is,” Vibro said.
“What are you going to do?” Sparky asked.
“Probably buy Jennifer a new phone. I’m such a wimp.”
“Is she really cheating or is she just having some sort of emotional affair?” Sparky sipped her soda.
Vibro pondered this. “Emotional or vaginal? Could it be an emotionally vaginal affair or a vaginally emotional affair?” She smiled at Sparky, who chuckled.
“What do you suppose vaginally emotional looks like?” Vibro said.
Sparky put the back of her hand to her forehead, eased back on the couch and said, “Oh, please, I’m so tired from my ministrations, I must have some mint with my julep. And bring me that curtain, I simply must sew a party frock for tonight’s ball.” She did a pretty good imitation of Scarlet O’Hara.
Vibro laughed until she cried. “I have never met anyone who did vaginal impersonations.”
“One of my many talents,” Sparky said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard or spoken the word ‘vagina’ so many times in one evening in my entire life.”
“Phred has that effect on people.”
“Does she have a girlfriend?”
Vibro snorted. “No, why? Are you interested?”
Sparky looked alarmed. Vibro couldn’t tell if it was from the idea of courting a woman who wore her vagina on the outside or the idea in general. She studied Sparky. She really was a handsome woman, and then there were those striking blue eyes. Christ-on-a-bike, she sounded like one of those lesbian romance novels where the soon-to-be lovers were always noticing the “sparkling eyes, the vivacious eyes, the intense eyes, the milk chocolate eyes, the brussels sprout-colored eyes.” Vibro mentally snickered. Yes, she decided, one’s mind could snicker. She imagined it standing in a doorway between mind-world and world-world like at a party and snickering at the going-ons.
“Uh, I’m staying away from women.”
“Forever?” Vibro said.
“Yes.”
“No equivocation?”
“I don’t think so,” Sparky said.
“I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.”
Sparky sipped her soda. Vibro studied her again. Sparky’s eyes were a cerulean blue, and she thought she had a shirt that color. “I’ll be right back.” She leapt up and made for her closet. She returned with the shirt.
“Do you mind?” She held it up next to Sparky.
“Not the eyes,” Sparky groaned.
“How did you know?”
“Because I get it a lot.”
“Sorry, but they really are quite remarkable. Are they colored contacts?”
“No, they’re real. You’re not a novelist, are you?”
“No, I’m a poet. Wanna know my nom de plume?”
“Sure.”
“S. Kip ToMaloo.”
Sparky puzzled it out. “Seriously, as in ‘Skip to My Lou, My Darling,’ the song?”
“Yep, I’m not a very good poet, so having a crazy name helps to remind me not to take myself too seriously.” Vibro played with one of the rural coasters, rolling it between her fingers.
“Sure, I mean Vibro is such an everyday name. I can see that.”
Vibro threw a pillow at her.
“What is the origin of your name?” Sparky said. “I’ve been puzzling it out and haven’t found any references to it anywhere.”
“That is a long and convoluted story that I may or may not tell you some time.” Vibro wasn’t about to tell Sparky that it was The Chink’s mispronunciation of her once real, but no longer, real name. Now was not the time. There might never be a time.
“Oh, all right. So tell me the story of Jennifer,” Sparky said.
“I met her at a writers’ convention.”
“Jennifer is a writer?”
“No, she sells expensive pens to writers. I bought a pen—and by the second night of the weekend event I let her in my panties, which, as you can see, was a mistake. So like any good lesbian, I took what should have been a weekend fling and turned it into a relationship complete with a commitment ceremony
,” Vibro said. She remonstrated herself. “If I hadn’t gotten caught up in that silly fantasy of being a poet I wouldn’t have gone and hooked up with that whore.”
“Did you do the whole ‘ring, have cake and presents’ thing?” Sparky sipped her soda.
“Yes, and it was first-class. Of course Jennifer wouldn’t have it any other way. Of course, it wasn’t legal to get officially married back then. What about you and Wesson?”
“Wesson thought it was stupid to get married if it wasn’t legally recognized—why bother.”
“I’m inclined to agree with her on that, but Jennifer insisted, begged, pleaded and cajoled until I gave in.”
“Did you wear the dress?”
“No, I had to be the boy. I always have to be the boy and it’s not really my nature. I am actually more girlie.”
“Can’t you both be girlie?” Sparky asked.
“Unfortunately, no. Well, not in Jennifer-Land. Somebody has to be the hersband and she has bigger boobs so she got wife duties.”
“What’s a ‘hersband’?”
“The female equivalent of a husband. Ugh, I hate being called that.”
“I bet you looked nice in a tux.”
“You’re sweet.” She really was, Vibro thought. Pity she hadn’t met someone like Sparky at the convention. They would’ve lived happily ever after.
“Wesson thought I was an asshole.”
“I can’t see you being an asshole, but then I never saw myself as a sucker,” Vibro said. She crunched a piece of ice.
“You’re not a sucker. I think you’re a secret romantic,” Sparky said, picking up the pillow Vibro had thrown earlier and throwing it back at her, hitting her right in the crotch. Sparky blushed. She hadn’t meant to hit her there.
Vibro laughed. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear they were kind of flirting. Sparky would make a nice friend. Vibro had friends and many acquaintances and a shithead for a partner. What she didn’t have was a good friend that she could really talk to about important life things. She’d left her one good friend, Rachel, a long, long time ago in another lifetime, it seemed. By now Rachel would be married and have a bunch of kids. They probably wouldn’t recognize each other anymore.
Love Over Moon Street Page 8
