“I’m in your driveway. You need to come down.”
“Lacey?”
Gitana stirred and Chase crept to the bathroom.
“I want to show you something.”
“Lacey, it’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s eight thirty.”
“Oh, but everyone’s asleep.”
“You’re not. Come down or I’ll sit out here and honk until you do.”
“You’ll wake everyone up.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll be right there.” She pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and a T-shirt that read SUP. Delia, with all her marketing savvy, had designed the T-shirt and was now selling them on the Internet, telling the group, “Dudes, we are not the only ones suffering from this malady and we should be willing to share the wealth.” Chase slipped downstairs, grabbing house keys on the way out. She locked the front door and got in the car.
“Perfect. Buckle up.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the new center of the lesbian universe. I want you to be the first to see it.” Lacey glided out of the driveway like a ghost car.
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“No, it’s too important.”
“Because…”
“The fate of our people is at stake.” Lacey glanced at her as they passed the only streetlight in ten miles, the one that marked the entrance to the highway, and Chase saw the slightly crazed look in her eyes.
“Don’t speed. No one knows where I am,” Chase said, wishing she had had the foresight to write a quick note, something to the effect of, “My best friend has abducted me for some midnight mission. If I don’t return, I love you all.”
“I’ll be careful.”
They drove north toward Santa Fe on Highway 41. There were no other cars on the road, and it suddenly felt like they were the only two people on the planet.
“Lacey, please tell me what we’re doing.”
“I want it to be a surprise.” She flipped in a Lucinda Williams compilation disc and they drove in silence until they reached Galisteo. The tiny town was shut up for the night. Only a few lighted windows indicated that the place was even inhabited. Lacey turned on a dirt road and their headlights scattered rabbits and god-knows-what-else.
“You’re not going to murder me, are you?” Chase asked.
“Not unless you get in my way,” Lacey said, pulling up slowly to a gate. “I’m kidding. Could you get the gate?”
Chase obediently complied.
Lacey parked the car in front of an enormous building with four wings, each one ending in a tower that looked like a small observatory. They got out.
“What is this place?” Chase asked.
“I’m not exactly sure. The roofs of the four observatories fold back, but it doesn’t appear they had telescopes in them. I’m thinking they used these rooms for ceremonies. There are signs of Wicca activity.”
“Wicca?”
“I haven’t found any dead chickens. There were chalk circles, but the property company went to great pains to remove them after I bought the place.”
“This is the property you were talking about?”
“Yeah. Look at the stars out here and listen, no noise.”
A series of high-pitched yelps rang through the night. “See, just natural sounds, the coyotes singing and…”
A hellacious cry rang out as if something was being ripped to pieces. “What’s that?” Lacey said, fishing keys out of her pocket.
“That coyote singing noise you heard is the sound they make when they have savagely caught and killed something and are celebrating.”
“Oh, well, see, this is a place of celebration,” Lacey said brightly.
As they entered the great hall, as Lacey called it, Chase said, “Are you and Jasmine planning to live out here by yourselves?”
“With about two hundred other people,” Lacey said, switching on the light. The place was hollow and enormous. “Admittedly, the place needs work.”
“Two hundred people? Is this going to be like a refugee camp?” Chase gazed around. The great hall had arched doorways leading off in intervals of five feet. A second story that ran the length of the hall had larger openings.
“A refugee camp of sorts—a place for our people to conjoin, comingle and cavort.” Lacey looked around with the glow of one imagining the end product with little or no knowledge of the immediate requirements of the here and now.
Requirements like the services of a good pest control company, Chase thought, hearing things scuttling around.
“So what exactly is the plan here?” Chase said as she followed Lacey down the massive stone hallway toward one of the observatories that wasn’t really an observatory, but rather, as Chase imagined it, the place where ritualistic appendectomies were performed while Orion looked on and the moon covered her face in abject horror.
“This,” Lacey put her arms out majestically, “is going to be the Lesbian Illumination Institute, a place where lesbians can come to embrace their inner lesbian strengths, gain knowledge and go out and conquer the world, basically.”
“Conquer the world?”
“Well, at least control major portions of the world’s commercial interests, gain political office and manipulate the course of human history. Think of it as the Skull and Bones of the lesbian world.”
“Are you feeling okay?”
“I have never been better. And now we’re going to celebrate.” She pulled out of her enormous purse a bottle of chilled champagne ensconced in a cooler bag and two glasses wrapped in tissue paper. She popped the cork expertly. Chase was impressed. “A toast, to new beginnings.”
Chase raised her glass. “You are truly amazing.”
“Does that mean you’ll help?” Lacey gazed at her fondly. “Because I’m going to really need you.”
“This is insanity.” Chase sipped her champagne and thought of trust funds. She’d used hers to finance her early writing career and help Gitana start the orchid nursery—both dreams that normal people would have thought nonsense. Now Lacey was going to use hers to finance the most impractical of ideas, but the first important enterprise Lacey had ever been involved with. This was her friend, whose largest interests to date were clothes, hair and interior design. Lacey had never had a mission in life before. How could Chase let her down?
“Just think what this could do for your writing career. You’ll have a microcosm to study human nature.” Lacey looked at her pleadingly.
“All right, I will help you, but it must not interfere with my family life or my writing.”
“I can work with that.” Lacey gave her a bone-crushing hug. “I wish we could have sex right now. That would make it perfect.”
“What!”
“Just testing. You are going to be surrounded by lesbians.”
Chase was discomfited.
“I was teasing.” Lacey poured her another glass.
When Chase crawled back into bed, Gitana rolled over and opened her eyes. “Where have you been?”
“Drinking champagne with Lacey in the middle of nowhere and selling my soul for the sake of our people.”
Gitana pulled her to her. “Let’s have sex.”
“Funny, that’s what Lacey wanted to do, but I declined.”
“You must have made her very happy. She equates getting her heart’s desire with clitoral stimulation.”
“I agreed to help her change the world along with two hundred other lesbians.”
“We better really celebrate,” Gitana said as she kissed her way down Chase’s stomach.
“Hmm.”
Chapter Twenty-Two—End
Respice finem:
Consider the end.—Latin proverb
Chase clicked on the speakerphone, dreading who was on the other end. Myra’s disembodied voice in the kitchen was more tolerable than her voice going directly into your ear, Chase had discovered. Myra had been on safari in Africa for three weeks and had just got back. Chase
pitied the animals who had had the misfortune to cross Myra’s path. She must have seen the webcast, Chase thought. It had to be faced, though. As Lily always said, as if it were the SUP motto, “Looking the other way when the lorry is coming will not prevent it from running you over.” The word “lorry” had to be explained to Delia. The statement would then be followed by a series of possible approaches. Lily seemed to feel that with enough repetitions, like muscle memory for a sport you’d given up and then taken up again—the proverbial bicycle—the group could be trained to see a situation and quickly assess and adjust accordingly, like soldiers who despite chaos would always remember what to do.
“Hello, Myra, I hope all is well in your world and that the weather is fine,” Chase said. She sat abruptly on one of the kitchen stools and put her head on the cool ceramic surface of the kitchen island. So much for muscle memory and approaching lorries, she thought, recalling that a lot of foreign pedestrians were killed each year in Great Britain because they failed to realize that the truck would be coming from the reverse direction and stepped into the oncoming traffic when crossing the street. How did negligence of customs figure into Lily’s scheme?
“Kid, you were fucking great! You looked fantastic in that suit. We should have fucking gone for that kick-ass look before. It never crossed my fucking mind. It’s bohemian, quirky and fucking outlandish. It’s like Tom Fucking Wolfe wearing that white suit. Everyone remembers the fucking guy even if they don’t like his stuff.”
Chase perked up. She reached around for a notepad and pencil. She began making scratch marks. Six for seven—not bad, every sentence except one had a swear word in it—this was a perfect example of Tom Wolfe’s fuck patois. During all her conversations with Myra, Chase ran a tally of the swear words because it kept her calm while she pretended to listen to what Myra was saying. Donna would reiterate it for her and Donna didn’t have an expletive in almost every sentence.
“Son of a bitch, that Jew tailor is my new fucking go-to-guy. Get him to make five more. I’ll fucking send him a check. And Christ on a bike that no shoes look was fucking brilliant. You better have had some clean ass toenails. Those web creeps can blow shit up and toe jam would be a cock-sucking pixel nightmare.”
Chase winced. When Myra was truly pissed or excited her level of cursing ascended to new heights.
“We’ll schedule pedicures before any appearances. We don’t want any of those cunt interviewers and prissy ass readers at book signings getting a load of anything, shall we say, fucking untoward.”
Chase wished Myra didn’t talk so loud. It must be a New York thing because everything was so noisy there. Bud had walked in the kitchen and Chase madly motioned her out.
“I know she swears like a fucking sailor,” Bud said.
Chase glared at her and shook her finger.
“Is that the kid? Hey, let’s get her a fucking little suit and she can go barefoot too—kind of like that Austen Powers mini-me fucking gig and what about the blue bear book? Can she draw? That would be the best. That would outdo that fucking Marley kid who painted abstracts. Bud could be an artist and a writer.”
“Who told you about that?”
“Who else? The ever-vigilant Donna, my eyes and ears.”
“It’s just a short story.” Chase looked in alarm at Bud, who was getting her breakfast out of the fridge. She shrugged.
“Donna said the fucking kid worked it into quite the kick-ass quest story and what was the short fucking story is now the mother-fucking end. How sweet is that?”
“Bud, is that true?”
She nodded nonchalantly as she filled the dog bowls with kibble. She took the food out to Annie and Jane, who were waiting patiently in the sunroom for their breakfast.
“So here’s your instructions, no shoes, get more suits made, and have a pedicure and get the mini-me to send me some picture ideas for her new book. You’ll have to sign the contract as she’s a minor. All right then, ta-ta. Oh, p.s., kid, you’re doing a good job, maybe this dancing to your own accordion thing is working—I know it’s supposed to be drum but in your case accordion is more apt.”
“Where’d you hear about that?”
“Lacey told me.”
“How do you know Lacey?” Chase was puzzled and concerned. Lacey, as far as she was concerned, was a loose cannon.
“She had Donna run an idea for a radical lesbian anthology gig by me and I’m going to run it by you-know-who. Lacey might fucking be onto something. I didn’t fucking really give this lesbian culture thing any credence until now. You dyke bitches might be onto something here. Nothing like drumming up some kick-ass business. I didn’t think you mother fuckers had it in you.”
“Dyke bitches? Myra, that’s not exactly a politically correct description.”
“Relax, it’s a term of endearment.”
Chase clicked off as Donna came running in the kitchen door.
“Look at this!” She was waving a printed e-mail at Chase. She danced something that resembled a hip-hop move and the Cabbage Patch hula-hoop hip swirl. “You won!” She grabbed Chase and kissed her cheek. “You won!”
“I won what?” Chase poured herself more coffee. “You want one?”
“Yes, please, with lots of milk. Of course, we’ll have to plan a celebration.”
Chase handed Donna her coffee.
“I knew you had it in you. I have to get you a plane ticket.”
Chase sat on a kitchen stool. She’d had enough surprises for one dyke bitch in a day and it was only seven thirty in the morning. That was the problem with dealing with New Yorkers—a three-hour time difference. Myra could ruin your day before it ever got started. She gave Donna the stink eye, silently demanding elucidation.
“The Best Lesbian Novel of 2010,” Donna shouted. “The judges loved it.”
“What do I have to do?” Chase felt sulky and perhaps a little ungrateful.
“You’re not happy?” Donna said.
“That panel thing really wore me out. I’m not good at stuff like this.” She got up.
“Where are you going?”
“To talk to the Divine Vulva and Commercial Endeavor. I need some guidance.”
“Oh, well, I’m going to call Gitana. She’ll be excited about it.”
“Can you take Bud to school? I don’t think I can face the queue today.”
“Sure. Bud will be thrilled about your award. Have you seen her scrapbook and wall of recognition? She’s very proud of you.”
“Great.”
Chase walked through the jewel garden, picked a few weeds and studied the condition of the path. It needed edging. Then she went to her writing studio.
“Isn’t it fabulous?” Divine Vulva said, swirling around in Chase’s desk chair. They’d obviously heard the news.
Commercial Endeavor said derisively, “I think it’s going to hurt your career as a mainstream author.”
Divine Vulva threw a cocktail sauce-covered shrimp in her direction. It hit Chase’s writing mascot, Curious George, square in the forehead. “You’re such a party pooper.”
“And why is that?” Chase asked Commercial Endeavor, flouncing down on the couch and scrubbing the cocktail sauce off Curious George’s forehead with a corner of her T-shirt. She ate the shrimp, figuring it fell under the five-second drop rule.
“Because it will only serve to encourage you to pursue this senseless path of moist-mound sagas when you have real work to do,” Commercial Endeavor said.
“That’s not true.” Divine Vulva flung another shrimp, which landed several feet short of Commercial Endeavor.
“Will you stop throwing shrimp?” Chase said petulantly.
“Sorry. But getting this award means that this work does have value.” Divine Vulva retrieved the shrimp and ate it.
“That’s disgusting,” Commercial Endeavor said. “You don’t know where that floor’s been.”
“Five-second drop rule,” Divine Vulva said.
Chase looked at her fondly.
; Divine Vulva sat down next to her and swung her legs onto Chase’s lap. “We rock,” she said.
Chase studied Commercial Endeavor, who was brooding in the corner. “Come sit by us. We’re a family. I’ve proved I can do both so maybe we could all just get along.”
Commercial Endeavor sat on the other side of Chase, pushing Vulva’s legs to one side so she could put her own legs on Chase’s lap. “I’m just looking out for you because I love you.”
“I know you do,” Chase said.
“How about we put a lesbian in the mystery novel and some mystery in the lesbian novel, then we could work together. I think we’d make a good team, except,” Divine Vulva pointed a finger at Commercial Endeavor, “you have to stop being so homophobic.”
“I’m not homophobic. I’m just not attracted to you.”
“Why not?” Vulva pouted.
“Because you dress like a prostitute and you eat entirely too much shrimp,” Commercial Endeavor said.
Vulva looked down as if seeing herself for the first time. She was wearing a sequined black miniskirt and a low-cut white frilly blouse with cocktail sauce stains on the front.
“She does have a point,” Chase said.
“Okay, hold on.” She disappeared into the bathroom.
“I can’t wait to see this,” Commercial Endeavor said.
“Me either.”
Vulva came out wearing khaki shorts and a black T-shirt that read “I like girls.”
“Now, that is an improvement. She looks just like you,” Commercial Endeavor said.
“I promise to eat more vegetables,” Vulva said.
“I’m going to do some gardening,” Chase said, “and then we’ll go over the galley proofs for the mystery novel, all three of us.”
Later that afternoon there was a tap on the door and Lacey, Bud, Gitana and Donna came in. Now this really was a surprise, Chase thought, looking up from her computer.
Chase Banter [02] Marching to a Different Accordion Page 22
