Paperback Romance

by Karin Kallmaker

  Sacramento’s spring was in full glory. Alison had considered living in the Bay Area, but spring was her favorite season, and Sacramento’s frosty winters faded into a cool, green thaw followed by weeks of wonderful spring. The ballfield grass went from slate-green to a verdant carpet of life. Along the sidewalks azalea bushes replaced dark winter leaves with vivid scarlet and violet flowers, and the delicate tips of daffodil bulbs cracked the soil in window boxes, and gardens put forth blazing yellow, peach and white blooms. The freeways were a delight to drive, lined with purple and red carpets of ice plant and divided by rows of rejoicing oleander bushes. The season of rebirth and new surprises went on for weeks, slowly easing into the hot summer. It had been a beautiful spring. Alison couldn’t remember when she had been more depressed.

  The window box outside her office offered two neglected irises and several tulips, and Alison opened the window to give them some water. Poor plants, she shouldn’t take her depression out on them. The soil rewarded her with a puff of mulchy aroma, the smell of something living. When she turned back, Devon was just laying an envelope on her desk, and he left without his usual jabs and sarcasm—it was air mail from Rome. Alison thought about reading it then and there, but her composure couldn’t risk it. It was only later that evening, after she’d finished a lonely Canadian Club on the rocks, that she finally read Carolyn’s letter.

  Dear Alison:

  I’ve given you some time to think and maybe by now you can better accept the new me. I’m sorry you found out that way, but when I began to accept how I was changing I planned to tell you anyway—I couldn’t go through my life without sharing my changes with you. And I’m very sorry you left, because I think we would have had a lot of fun traveling together. The new me shouldn’t affect our friendship, but of course I know it will. I feel toward you as I always have and so how much our friendship changes is up to you. I hope you can accept me. I hope you can accept how my life is going to change. I suppose on a business level I should tell you I doubt Carly Vincent will pen another book. She’s dead…but Carolyn Vincense is finally alive.

  I’ve decided for now to return home with Nick to London. I don’t know how long I’ll stay. Au revoir.

  Carolyn

  Alison read the letter again. She hadn’t thought about what she’d do when Carolyn returned. She hadn’t realized, until now, that she still had to come out to Carolyn. It was simply awful that she’d left Carolyn with the impression she was homophobic, for God’s sake. But she still had to decide how much she would tell Carolyn about how she felt.

  And how did she feel? As dead as Carly Vincent. And without enough emotion in her entire body to grieve. It seemed natural to call Sam and perfectly all right to accept Sam’s invitation to coffee so Alison could tell her about her trip.

  But as she sat with the cup of coffee in her hand, Alison couldn’t find the words to tell Sam what had happened. Her throat filled with an asteroid-sized lump. Sam, sitting across from Alison at the memorable coffee table, reached over and took the cup away. Then, when Alison found she couldn’t manage a coherent sentence, Sam moved next to her and rocked Alison against her shoulder. Sam said everything would be o-k.

  Alison was overwhelmed with images of Carolyn making love with the conductor. Her hands fumbled with Sam’s shirt. Then Sam undressed her and murmured in Alison’s ear, “Call it comfort for now.”

  ***

  In the West End of London, on a narrow street where the three-story residences were all identical, right down to the window boxes, Carolyn waited patiently for Nick to unlock the door to her flat. Nick grinned when the key turned and the door swung back. “My castle, only two flights up. After you.”

  Carolyn had not known what to expect, but the drama of the flat was entirely in keeping with the drama of Nick. The yellowed linoleum floor was almost hidden by thick rugs in striking black and red geometric patterns. The small living room was dominated by Mondrian prints illuminated by several precisely focused track lights. Nick pressed switches and more light sprang from art deco sconces mounted on the walls at about hip height.

  “The torchieres were here when I moved in. I’ve changed the fabric on the wall, though,” Nick said. “Decorating absorbed quite a bit of spare energy after I donned my male garb. It was actually a challenge to find a scheme that was neither masculine or feminine.”

  “It’s very like you, somehow.” Carolyn ran one hand over the jacquard pattern of white on white that was tucked and folded around the torchieres. She wondered how her own home looked, now that Samantha had probably finished it. The thought brought other images of home and with a twinge, she recalled Alison. The void she could feel inside was one reason she had delayed her return home.

  “That door’s to the other bedroom—my music library and instruments are in there. Come give our bedroom a look-see,” Nick said, dragging suitcases with her.

  “I can hardly wait.” Between their flights, performances, sightseeing and Carolyn’s period they hadn’t made love for four whole days. She was sure this feeling of wanting sex every minute of every day—or so it seemed—would fade in time, but she wasn’t in any hurry. She was mildly worried about her feelings for Nick being entirely too much on a physical level…but the worry was very easy to ignore.

  The bedroom had more of the same black and red decor, with modern art prints, but Carolyn didn’t focus on them. She jumped over the pile of suitcases with a whoop. Nick turned just in time to catch Carolyn and they tumbled onto the bed.

  Carolyn’s fingers found their way under Nick’s jacket, then under her shirt. She teased the nipples she knew were under the gauze. Carolyn’s fingers were getting very skilled at finding them. Right…there.

  Nick sighed as Carolyn continued her teasing. “You have a one-track mind.”

  Alarmed, Carolyn looked up at Nick’s expression. “Shall I stop?” She realized that Nick looked very tired. They’d left directly from a matinee concert for the airport. The journey had really been no further than Los Angeles to Seattle, but Customs had been a trial. Her fingers captured the swelling tips. “They’re undecided, but I think they want me to go on.”

  “I want you to go on, too, but I want a shower. Heathrow was an armpit.”

  Carolyn smirked. “I think I’ll take a shower with you.”

  “Lecher,” Nick said fondly. She went to a bare wall, pressed in on the fabric, and a door appeared out of the jacquard print.

  Carolyn laughed. “I hope I can find that during the night.”

  “It’s so French Renaissance, isn’t it? I think of Liaisons Dangereuses and The Three Musketeers every time I use it.”

  Carolyn followed Nick into the more prosaically decorated bathroom. The shower was over an old-fashioned tub with massive claw feet and porcelain taps. “I love this tub. It could be rather fun for two.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Nick said. “When I want a bath I have to heat water. The hot water in this flat is sporadic at best. It pays to plan on showering quickly.”

  Carolyn warbled “Mandy” as she showered, accompanied by Nick’s groans of protest. The hot water abruptly ceased, and Nick howled with laughter as Carolyn swore and stumbled out of the tub. Nick was wrapped in a man’s large robe that hung on the back of the door. She nudged a suitcase with her foot. “We’re going to have to find a place for you to hang your clothes. Your robe is in there somewhere.”

  “Let’s share yours for now,” Carolyn suggested.

  Nick turned around, a relaxed and happy smile on her face. She opened her robe and Carolyn snuggled inside it. “You may always share my robe.”

  Afterwards, when Nick was breathing steadily and deeply, Carolyn stared at the dark ceiling. She wondered what Alison was doing. The fact that she wondered, with the taste of Nick still in her mouth, bothered her. It took a long time to fall asleep.

  ***

  “I heard from Carolyn,” Alison said. She had received a postcard from London simply saying Carolyn was having fun and would be home soo
n. Carolyn wanted, it seemed, to go on as if nothing had changed. Sam turned over in bed, her body moving a little farther away. “She’s having fun in London.”

  “I didn’t know she went on to London. What’s there?”

  “Her new lover,” Alison said quietly.

  “So that’s what went wrong,” Sam said. “I’ve been patiently waiting for you to tell me.”

  “Sam, I’m sorry. I brought it up because that’s what I want to say to you. I’m sorry, so sorry.”

  “After last night and last Tuesday, and after the game Saturday—you’re sorry? I’m not.”

  “I’m using you. I feel like a total jerk.”

  “I meant what I said about comfort.” Sam’s voice was gentle and sincere.

  “But you’re hoping for more.” She looked over at Sam’s calm face. “I don’t think you should do that.”

  Sam’s expression didn’t alter. “When it comes to controlling who we love and how we love them, you’re not exactly the best advisor, sweetie.” She smiled faintly.

  Alison could only nod at the truth of Sam’s statement. “I’ve been thinking about what I’ll do when she comes back. I have to come out to her—I can’t let her go on thinking I reacted the way I did because I’m homophobic or something. And the only way to explain myself is to tell her I’ve been lusting after her for years. That’s the part I’m having trouble with.”

  “And you still feel the same way?”

  Alison slowly shook her head and Sam’s eyebrows raised slightly. “No, I don’t feel the same way at all. Now I love her.”

  “You loved her before.”

  “I loved a china doll in a shop window. I acted like a child because someone else touched it. I didn’t love Carolyn, I loved unrequited love, and all the excuses it gave me for not making permanent attachments to people. Including you. She…she was my straight-woman shield.”

  Sam’s gaze dropped and fixed on a point somewhere near Alison’s earlobe. “I think I understand where you’re going with this, but truly, I’m not sure you know your own mind, not yet.”

  “But I do, Sam. She scares me to death now that I know I could be with her if she wanted me. That postcard put my heart rate up to about two hundred. I was always in control before. I could have told her how I felt at any time, but I pretended it was her fault I couldn’t come out to her.” Alison laughed ironically. “I loved a Carolyn that didn’t exist. And now I see her as another lesbian, a full-grown adult—and I love this new woman. I never really loved the old Carolyn because I never trusted her. But now I do. Now I have to tell her how I feel. I have to accept her answer.”

  Sam cleared her throat. “That part’s not particularly easy.” Alison put her hand on Sam’s shoulder, but Sam was rolling out of bed. “Want some breakfast?”

  “I’m sorry, Sam.”

  Sam looked back as she put on her robe. Alison had a feeling it was the last time she would see Sam’s dark body in all its gorgeous nakedness. “I’m sorry, too. But I’m a big girl. There are other f-i-s-h in the sea,” she said, her philosophical tone at odds with overly bright eyes and smile.

  “And better fish, too.” While Sam was in the bathroom, Alison quickly dressed. She took up the question of breakfast with false cheer and appetite, and they got through muffins and coffee somehow. Sam was smiling when Alison finally left, without a kiss goodbye.

  ***

  Carolyn bent over the score Nick was studying at the piano in the second bedroom. Four violins were carefully wrapped on shelves, along with a lute, a collection of harmonicas and a saxophone. Otherwise, the room was stuffed with sheet-music-laden shelves. Only the area around the piano was reasonably ordered. Carolyn brushed away the crumbs her crumpet had dropped on the keyswhen she bit into it. Toast done on one side…it was weird, but it was food. She liked the Seville orange marmalade that Nick smeared on her crumpets and scones, but the thought of an Egg McMuffm made her stomach rumble.

  “So tell me about this little number you’re recording.” Carolyn smiled innocently at Nick’s narrowed gaze.

  “This little number has over six hundred performers.”

  “Like the USC Trojans Marching band, right?”

  Carolyn didn’t get the expected rise out of Nick. Nick said, her eyes wide with consideration, “A marching band version of Mahler, now there’s a thought.”

  Carolyn realized she was being teased and asked Nick to show her how an orchestral score was read. She’d had a few years of piano lessons and knew which way was up, but these sheets were a bewildering mass of staves and notes.

  Nick traced notes on the score with one hand, while her other chose chords or rippled out melody lines to illustrate her point. She sang the melody line in a steady contralto while her hands demonstrated percussion and string work on the piano. “So while the violins are playing this melody and holding this note, the kettle drums come in softly and it lingers while the oboe comes in, then the choir…slowly, like this.” She played the page over again, vocalizing the effects of the kettle drum and oboe. “So you have boom wait wait wait hand hand and wait.” Her finger punched the page at the corresponding bunch of notes. Carolyn was speechless with laughter by the time Nick finished the next page. Nick looked at her in mock disdain. “There’s nothing funny about it. This is my craft.”

  “Do you make such funny noises in front of the musicians?”

  “I only make funny noises for you,” Nick said. Her smile softened and Carolyn saw her swallow.

  “Nick,” Carolyn said, putting her crumpet down, “you’re never going to get any work done if you keep looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?” Nick didn’t protest as Carolyn pulled Nick’s sweatshirt up.

  “It’s the look you get when you want me to…you know,” Carolyn said, her face burning. “And when you look like that I immediately want to.” She spun the piano stool around, bracing Nick against the piano. Her hands slipped down Nick’s sweatpants and then she pressed Nick back against the piano rack where the Mahler score was spread.

  “We’re wrinkling the music,” Nick murmured.

  “Mahler’s dead. He won’t care.” They slid to the floor together amidst a shower of music sheets.

  Later, Carolyn helped Nick smooth out the crumpled paper. Just to ensure the sanctity of the score, Carolyn decided it would be best if she continued her scheduled tour of the British Museum and left Nick to study in peace for the day.

  She was unfocused as she meandered from exhibit to exhibit and from building to building. She found herself in a special exhibit of goddess figurines which included a lifesize simulation of how the agrarian goddess-worshippers might have built their homes. The exhibit was sparsely attended and Carolyn thought she was alone until she stepped into the room marked SHRINE. She surprised two women who were fervently embracing.

  The women sprang apart, looking everywhere but at Carolyn. Carolyn cleared her throat and said, “So sorry. Uh, I think I’m the only one in here and I’m leaving.” Even as she backed out of the room the two women were moving together again.

  Carolyn’s pulse was racing. It seemed now that all of the other people attending the exhibit were women. Had she by accident wandered into a lesbian equivalent of a gym or bar? Was this how lesbians met? She looked around again, surreptitiously examining the other women. She was appalled at her incredibly explicit sexual fantasies as she looked at each body, but she couldn’t help herself—it felt too natural. The whole experience somehow made her stronger inside.

  When she left the exhibit area she noticed a tall, raven-haired woman walking toward her. There was only a superficial resemblance to Alison, but it was too late—her heart had leapt, she was already smiling in welcome. The elegant woman looked at Carolyn with a frown of disapproval, drawing her coat around her as if to say, “How dare you think I’m one of you.”

  Carolyn colored furiously and hurried away. The woman’s response bothered her, but her own reactions when she had thought of Alison disturbed her mor
e. It was obvious she had feelings for Alison that she had never examined closely enough. It was also obvious that her feelings for Nick had not supplanted these hidden longings for Alison. She had wanted to come to London with Nick, but if she was going to be frank with herself, she hadn’t wanted it nearly as much as she had wanted to put off going home.

  Carolyn wandered back to Nick’s flat, taking enough time to allow an afternoon appointment—a student sent to Nick by another conductor for appraisal—to come and go. Nick was ready to relax when Carolyn climbed the stairs.

  “So was the violinist the new Perlman?”

  “Not hardly,” Nick said. “I was brutal.”

  “Oh dear,” Carolyn said. “I could never do it. I’d feel so sorry for them.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for the boy wonder,” Nick said. “I was brutal, but I had to be. If I raved I’d be irresponsible. Hard work makes the difference, not my opinion. He wouldn’t give it up if I told him to, but if I encouraged too much he might stop working. He’ll need all the hard work he can muster.” Nick smiled. “I certainly couldn’t have told him he plays the violin better than I do.”

  Carolyn laughed and ruffled Nick’s hair. She liked it with a little curl, and she admitted to herself she was starting to feel uncomfortable about the deception the slicked-back style symbolized.

  They had a quiet dinner out and then went to a jazz club Nick liked. When Carolyn stumbled sleepily into bed she heard a rustling sound in the bed.

  “What on earth?”

  Nick’s voice laughed softly in the darkness. “After the effect the Mahler score had on you, I thought I’d try Bach. I hope you like the fugues.”

  Carolyn loved fugues. They traded point and counterpoint well into the night.

  ***