The right man had been angling for me; he'd been there in plain sight. He hadn't given up on me, though I'd rejected him any number of times.
He'd never tried to force it, and that, I think, was his key attribute: he was a very patient man. George wanted me, and he hadn't panicked when things looked grim. If he hadn't gotten me, he would not have committed suicide or turned to junk food and become a sad, tubby, unshaven drunk.
He'd have squared himself and gone on.
A complete man. A whole man.
How many such men had I known in my life? Off the top of my head I could only think of three.
Daniel.
Petey.
George.
"I never knew what the hell love was," I told my reflection in the window, superimposed over the small figure of the woman still striding along the street in the surging cream coat.
I'd known mother love, sure, that fierce tenderness that eclipses your life as soon as you give birth.
I'd known familial love. I'd risked everything for Gina. But that was just such a given, such a constant. You'd do anything for your family, and you're secure that they'll be there for you.
I'd known friend love. Daniel and I were each other's Stonehenges: the place you go for comfort, healing, and weird celebrations.
I'd known infatuation—God, don't talk to me about infatuation. I'd known passion; I'd known sex. Yeah, yeah.
I'd known basically-giving-a-shit, would-walk-across-the-street-to-tell-him-the-building-was-burning-down love.
And I guess it's fair to say that I'd known hate. On so many levels. I'd known all that.
But deep, true, rich, romantic love?
I was like a blind and deaf person feeling the ocean lap my toes and thinking oh, what a nice bathtub. I'd had no idea.
George, by saying nothing—making no drama out of it, not head-butting his way into my spotlight—he had shown me what love was.
Love was service.
Love was a smuggled plate of smoked salmon.
Love was being there, and being really there, and being fully there.
Love was that, and because of that, it was infinitely more than that.
I still didn't know, but at least now I knew that I didn't know what love was. And I knew that the person I needed to explore the question with was George.
Those thoughts had taken only seconds to race through me, as the woman in the white coat neared a corner, but right then something happened. She appeared to stumble, and veered to steady herself against a building. My heart caught, watching her lean there trying to pull herself together.
After a minute her head swiveled slightly; then she opened her purse—not too big, not too small, black like her other accessories—and withdrew a cell phone.
She listened, phone to ear; then she brought her other hand up to hold the phone in place, as if the first hand wanted to throw it away.
She spoke a few words, a question.
She bowed from the neck and listened for a minute, two minutes, three.
And gradually she straightened, her head coming erect, and I could see she was a woman with a hell of a backbone. She continued to listen to whatever devastation was coming to her through that little device. Her expression cleared and she nodded slightly. Yes. Yes. I accept it. I accept it.
I turned from the window feeling too much like an intruder, which for me is saying a lot. I had been privileged to witness a display of...what? Dignity? Grace? For all the pain that woman was enduring, I felt uplifted.
If a woman's complete, she's complete. Saying yes to George didn't mean that I had to stop being a complete woman. Was that what I'd been fearing?
A few minutes later he came in, somberly, quietly.
"You OK?" I said.
"Yes." He smiled softly at, perhaps, the same human mysteries that had been on my mind.
We kissed, and I felt his vitality, his giving of his life force to me through his kiss, his mouth, his body. His hands settled on the small of my back. He had washed this morning too, but I found myself searching for the woodsy guy-musk he'd emitted for the past couple of days, and I thought I caught an essence of it, there somewhere on his neck, a crushed-herb smell wafting from the vicinity of his top shirt button.
When I looked out again, the woman in the white coat was gone.
I've thought about her a thousand times since. You might say I've used that experience—those few offhand minutes observing a stranger being brave, being complete—as a touchstone.
George held me away from him, looking at me, sensing something new in me, seeing what I was feeling.
All he said was, "I know a nice place where we can get some lunch and talk." He offered me his arm.
__________
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About Elizabeth
Elizabeth Sims is the author of the Rita Farmer Mysteries, the Lambda and GCLS Goldie Award-winning Lillian Byrd Crime Series, and other fiction, including the standalone novel Crimes in a Second Language, which won the Florida Book Awards silver medal. Her work has been published by a major press (Macmillan) as well as several smaller houses, and she’s written short works for numerous collections and magazines. She publishes independently under her personal imprint, Spruce Park Press.
In addition, Elizabeth is an internationally recognized authority on writing. She’s written dozens of feature articles on the craft of writing for Writer's Digest magazine, where she’s a contributing editor. Her instructional title, You've Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams (Writer's Digest Books) has been specially recognized by National Novel Writing Month and hundreds of other web sites and bloggers. She has taught creative writing at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, and when time permits, she teaches at conferences and workshops around the United States.
Elizabeth earned degrees in English from Michigan State University and Wayne State University, where she won the Tompkins Award for graduate fiction. She's worked as a reporter, photographer, technical writer, bookseller, street busker, ranch hand, corporate executive, certified lifeguard, and symphonic percussionist. Elizabeth belongs to several literary societies as well as American Mensa.
Books by Elizabeth S
ims
Have you read them all?
Nonfiction
You’ve Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams
Writing a book is easy and fun—yes, EASY AND FUN—but it may not always feel that way. How do you find the time to write? How do you keep momentum? How do you deal with the horror of showing anyone a single sentence of your work-in-progress? The answers remain fun and easy, and author Elizabeth Sims will take your hand, dispel your worries, and show you how it’s done in this stress-free guide to accomplishing your dream of writing your book.
Buy it HERE.
Fiction
It’s not necessary to read either series in order.
The Lillian Byrd Crime Series
Holy Hell [#1]
Lillian Byrd is a small-time reporter with a flair for making big-time mistakes—like getting fired for fending off the boss's son with an X-Acto knife and breaking up with her girlfriend for no good reason—so her investigation into the disappearances of women in the Detroit area might not be the best idea. But when one of the missing women turns up dead and Lillian recognizes the bizarrely mutilated corpse, she's in too deep to get out. Of course, it doesn't help that she's still fighting off the boss's son and ducking the intensely aggressive amorous overtures of the roughest dyke in town. Now, after simultaneously blowing the case for the police and revealing herself to the off-kilter killers, she's completely on her own. Can she catch the murderers before they catch up with her?
Buy it HERE.
Damn Straight [#2]
- Lambda Literary Award Winner -
After her narrow brush with death in Holy Hell, you'd think Lillian Byrd would have learned to keep her head down, but when a friend in crisis calls from California, Lillian jumps on a plane and wings her way from Detroit to Palm Springs—and danger. It's the weekend of the Dinah Shore golf tournament, the wildest women's sporting event in the world, when thousands of lesbians descend on the desert community and take over.
At a pre-championship party, Lillian leaps into a slippery romance with a top LPGA star. But her superstar athlete has a secret: Someone is quietly terrorizing her. Lillian, eager to help, goes undercover as a high-profile reporter, an unhinged nun, and a professional caddie while uncovering layer after disturbing layer of the golfer's past. Finally, with violence erupting at every turn, Lillian discovers her lover's ultimate horrifying secret—and it is not at all what she had guessed. Damn Straight sizzles and zings and will have you laughing through your shivers.
Buy it HERE.
Lucky Stiff [#3]
Once again Lillian Byrd is down on her luck, strumming her mandolin for spare quarters alongside Blind Lonnie, Detroit's resident blues guitarist. But a chance encounter with her childhood friend Duane is about to completely turn her life upside-down. One summer night when Lillian was twelve, flames ripped through the Polka Dot, her parents' beloved tavern. Three bodies were found in the ashes: those of her mother, her father, and the barmaid, Trix Hawley. Or so Lillian has always thought. But when Lillian and Duane put their stories together, the past erupts into a wild enigma.
As the two friends travel—accompanied by the tenacious crime writer Minerva LeBlanc—to the underbelly of Las Vegas to find the truth about their parents, Lillian must face the demons of the past in ways she never dreamed possible.
Buy it HERE.
Easy Street [#4]
Lillian Byrd's battered Caprice is convulsing through the last of its death throes; her pet rabbit, Todd, ails; and as usual she's single—and flat broke. For a few extra bucks she signs on to help an old friend, retired police detective Erma Porrocks, renovate her house, but of course nothing ever goes smoothly in the life of Lillian Byrd. The end of her first day on the job yields a partially demolished wall, a mysterious stash of cash, and a fresh corpse. And Lillian's attentions are diverted by the appearance of a drop-dead gorgeous neighbor.
Nonetheless, Lillian throws herself into chasing down every complex thread, especially after Porrocks is injured in a suspicious accident. The action ranges from Porrocks's Detroit riverfront neighborhood to a nursing home in Cleveland, where Lillian and Todd pose as animal therapy workers to shamelessly coax information from an elderly resident. From there Lillian goes undercover to Boise, Ft. Lauderdale, and points beyond, facing deception and danger the whole way—as well as the bewildering emergence of her own dark side.
Buy it HERE.
Left Field [#5]
Lillian Byrd has been searching her soul after the gut-wrenching experience of killing someone in self-defense. Scrabbling to make ends meet, she takes a job as a quasi detective, solving life’s little mysteries for a pair of eccentric women in one of Detroit’s last prestigious neighborhoods. When she spots a corpse on the next-door lawn, she jumps back into honest work as an investigative journalist.
Her friend Mercedes reveals that the dead woman, Abby Rawson, played on a women’s softball team she manages and pressures Lillian into taking her spot. Softball turns to hardball when Lillian not only plunges into a love affair with the team’s sought-after pitcher but also goes undercover as an exterminator, a squatter, and a charity worker to investigate Abby’s death and the corrupt medical organization she worked for. No one on the team is above suspicion, and as they get closer to snagging the coveted championship title—and Lillian gets closer to discovering the dark truth behind Abby’s murder—she fights to keep her new love in her life and literally save her own.
Buy it HERE.
The Rita Farmer Mysteries
The Actress [#1]
Aspiring actress and single mother Rita Farmer has gone from struggling to find work to downright desperate. If she doesn't land a paying job soon—horror movie, soap commercial, anything—she's afraid her ex-husband will use her dire financial straits to take away Petey, her cherished four-year-old son. While she's charming the crowd at storytime at the L.A. public library, a celebrity defense attorney approaches her with an unusual job offer: So long as she's discreet, Rita can rake in a thousand dollars a day preparing his client for her appearance in court.
Easy money? Hardly. His client, Eileen Tenaway, is not only a wealthy heiress and a queen of the tabloids but she's been charged with the murder of her own child. The attorney needs Rita to coach Eileen secretly to help her seem more sympathetic, more human. He needs the jury to believe not only her words but the subtle cues of body language, facial expressions, even vocal style. Rita knows she can do it, but what she doesn't know is how determined she'll become to find out what really happened to Eileen's family—once her own life and Petey's life depend on it.
Buy it HERE.
The Extra [#2]
Rita Farmer knows what it feels like to be flat broke. Even now, when studying to be a lawyer, Rita is so far in debt that she has to scrounge for acting jobs to keep herself and her son afloat. Decked out in police uniform as an extra on a low-budget movie shoot, she wanders into a rough part of town and is pulled into a vicious assault. Rita chases off the assailants but doesn't escape unscathed, and the boy they attacked isn't out of danger yet. His injuries could last the rest of his life.
Rita's heart goes out to him and his grandmother, Amaryllis B. Cubitt, the director of an urban mission that Rita had turned to for help years ago. But the mission has changed from its unassuming past and is now flush with secret donations and gruff guards posted at the doors. Rita can't but wonder if now Amaryllis is too proud to ask for the help she needs.
Buy it HERE.
On Location [#3]
Rita Farmer knows exactly how hard it is to break into the movie business. Acting was the big dream that brought her out to L.A. in the first place. And while she never made the red carpet, that big dream did turn into a modest profession that kept her and her son afloat. So from time to time she'll lend her talents as a favor.
Kenner and Lance de Sauvenard, heirs to a timber fortune, don't really need a favor to make their art film, but since Lance is dating Rita's sister
, Gina, there's no way for Rita to worm her way out of a read-through. Gina is all for the project—or at least her new boyfriend—and she goes with Lance to scout locations on his family's land holdings in the Northwest. When they don't return as planned and flood waters start to rise, Rita can't help dashing into the wilds to bring her sister home, and when foul play becomes more and more likely, her sometime lover, George Rowe, is right on her heels.
Buy it HERE.
More Fiction
Crimes in a Second Language
Elnice Coker and her husband Arthur, retired schoolteachers, move from Indiana to the Hollywood Hills in a last-ditch attempt at novelty and happiness. California alone can’t do the trick, but when Elnice befriends her housecleaner, Solita, her life opens up to friendship and intrigue. Elnice teaches Solita English, although Solita’s common-law husband, Luis, is against it. The women build a secret, tentative friendship.
Meanwhile, wannabe novelist Jason M is busy writing faulty information into tech manuals for airplane-making machines at a factory in the Valley. One of a swarm of corporate saboteurs scattered around Los Angeles, he’s bossed by a nameless, exacting mentor. But when he begins to have ethical doubts, he discovers it’s harder to get out than it was to get in.
The lure of easy money casts its spell over everybody, and as Elnice and Solita grow closer, they encounter treachery and danger where they least expect it. The saboteurs intertwine, innocent lives hang in the balance, and as Elnice risks everything to dig deeper, she learns the value of rejecting safety—and living life to the max.
Buy it HERE.
I am Calico Jones
Four Short Stories
These four short stories are close to Elizabeth’s heart. Love stories? Happy endings? Tough breaks? We got ’em. If you’re a fan of the Lillian Byrd crime novels, you’ll be delighted to finally know what Calico Jones thinks about when she’s tied up, awaiting execution at the hands of geopolitical terrorists. Regrets? She’s had a few. The three other stories explore a range of lesbian experience from wacky to warm, from heartbreak to hilarity. Says a reviewer: “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to go camping.” We might add, you’ll never feel the same standing in front of a bank teller again.
On Location Page 29
