Rafferty Street

by Lee Lynch

  “Tea’s hot,” Jo said, her eyes on Annie’s lips.

  “That’s not all,” she replied, tilting toward Jo. They moved together and kissed, then kissed again and again. “You’re different tonight,” she told Jo, who, ignoring the tea, had pulled her into a reclining position with unusual eagerness.

  There was a commotion. Annie sat up, startled.

  “Rexie’s in the bathroom,” Jo explained with a look of delight in her eyes. “She’ll snort and blow bubbles and make all kinds of messes and racket in the toilet. What can I do? It’s her new hobby.”

  They went to watch Rex blow bubbles in the bathroom, which was lovely. It was appointed with matching wooden soap dish, toothpick holder, toilet seat, and gold-colored scrollwork faucets. The mirror was ringed by light bulbs, like a movie star’s dressing room. The bathtub was oversized, half-sunken and equipped with a Jacuzzi attachment.

  Jo led her to the kitchen, heated more water and refilled the pig-pink mugs with curlicue handles. They sat on stools at a butcher-block counter in the middle of the kitchen. Cast iron pots and pans hung from a ceiling rack. There was nothing early-American about the stovetop grille and double refrigerator with ice water, cubes and crushed ice dispensed from the door. Annie swung around, arms displaying the room. “Your place has always struck me like middle America.”

  “You know all of us gay yuppies have disposable income to squander.”

  What she read in Jo’s eyes was, But money’s not enough.

  “At work,” Jo explained, “I’ve pretty much hit that glass ceiling. Branch managers aren’t much more than administrative secretaries.”

  “You do better than a cab driver.”

  “I’m not hurting, but not exactly on easy street. A big hunk of my salary goes to keep me in these togs—” Jo smoothed her long skirt over her knees—”so I can keep my job.”

  Very deliberately, Annie said, “They certainly become you.”

  The mood changed again. Rex was back in her bed. Jo looked as hungry as Annie felt. Annie touched Jo’s no longer neat hair. “Nice,” Jo said as they kissed some more.

  Annie felt deliriously light-headed. She’d follow these lips if they pulled her into Pastor Norwood’s church. After a flutter of kisses, Jo came forward off her stool to press herself to Annie.

  What a fine, fine feeling it was, woman to woman. Even behind clothing, the charges of passion were alive.

  They kissed until Annie pressed back against Jo. She felt the lines of pleasure that connected them rise up into her nipples, streak down through her thighs. She had a passing concern about Jo and closets and her job at the Farm, but she wasn’t about to bring that up now.

  “Here?” she asked, her voice not much more than a bark.

  “Rex would think we were playing with her,” Jo said as she paused between kisses.

  Annie swung away and, hand at the small of Jo’s back, propelled them to the couch. Jo lay down, arranging her skirt over her knees, the usual smile on her face. “Bankers need love too,” she joked.

  Annie knelt by Jo, hands poised. She blew the hair out of Jo’s eyes.

  “It’s been a long time, Annie.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Years.” Jo looked flustered.

  “Why?”

  “Why am I ashamed or why has it been years?”

  “Yes,” teased Annie, playing with Jo’s skirt.

  “There was only Marsha. It took a long time to even want anyone after I lost her. And then, well, it got scary.”

  She snuck a finger under the skirt. The scratchy feel of nylons turned her liquid. “All I can think of is getting to the top of your stockings.”

  “Pantyhose.”

  “Crap.”

  “Next time I’ll wear a garter belt.”

  “Okay.” She wasn’t sure how to proceed in this start-stop seduction. “Okay,” she repeated to buy time.

  “Since we seem to be functional at the moment, would you like to adjourn to my bedroom?”

  “Yeah. My knees are starting to hurt.”

  “Poor baby. Come up here off them.” Jo kissed her chinos at the knees. Annie bent to kiss the back of Jo’s neck, tracing a line across it with her tongue. Maybe, after all, Jo would be the one.

  “Annie—” Jo warned, but Annie had found Jo’s buttons and breasts and Jo had found her mouth. Their stiffness disappeared and by then the bedroom was too, too far.

  She awoke jammed into the couch beside Jo, dog-breathed and sweating. Her sense of unease mushroomed with consciousness. When she heard the freight train whistle by she knew it was nearly two a.m. The sound made her long for her own bed even more. It was as if she were in her twenties again, rootless, desperate to flee from a one-night stand.

  She extricated herself from Jo.

  Jo stirred, opened her eyes, smiled wanly. “You okay?” Crap. She’d never get away gracefully.

  She answered by kissing Jo’s hand.

  “That was lovely,” Jo said. “Want to come over and do it again some time?”

  Didn’t Jo want to hold her there for the rest of the night? “I think that could be arranged.”

  “Let me see you to the door.”

  “It’s cool. I’ll lock it behind me.”

  She raced into the fresh air, twirled her softball cap on her finger and skipped to the Saab.

  Jo let her go! What a woman! Smart, hot and—cling-free?

  She was too good to be true.

  Chapter Six

  She began to settle into this newest life, watching the Morton River swill by Rafferty Street each day, its spring currents mad for release. The May weather continued to alternate between near-torrential rain and days so clear and balmy, she ached at the beauty of the world. From her bed at night, she heard the trains run through the Valley, crying with mournful yet comforting regularity. In the warehouse, product streamed in, was shelved and unshelved and streamed out. She never saw Kurt, but he liked her work and kept her on. The gay packers warned Annie if Mrs. Kurt was nearby, sometimes forming a phalanx around Annie, so she could scoot out of sight.

  Jo hadn’t been able to see Judy. Annie’s messages to Judy went unreturned. If she’d learned anything from dabbling in those philosophy courses back in the city, it was that time resolves everything. On the other hand, time takes its time, and won’t be rushed.

  One afternoon when she arrived home from work, when the sky was threatening yet more rain, she parked her car and stepped out to find two white boys around seventeen in grunge clothing, strolling toward her from the vacant lot at the end of the street. One of them she’d seen on the porch across the street. The other was the noisy idiot with a trail bike who thought the cobblestones of Rafferty Street were an obstacle course laid down specifically for him.

  She forced herself to move slowly, casually, and to meet their eyes.

  The shorter of the two, with arrogant eyes and a shaved head, said to his friend, “Yo. Here’s your new neighbor.”

  His burly companion, whose jeans hung lower than the band of his shorts, sniggered. “The dyke?” he jeered.

  She stopped dead. “Is that a problem for you guys?”

  They said nothing, but one brushed impudently against her as he passed.

  Her heart beat hard. Her breath came short. But she’d survived worse than these little shits. “I asked you a question.”

  The one with arrogant eyes turned to face her, but continued shambling backwards. “It’s a problem, yeah,” he answered.

  “Why? I scare you?”

  “Yeah, I’m, like, shaking in my boots.”

  “Then bug off about it. You do your thing, I’ll do mine.”

  The boys walked off, sniggering.

  In Gussie’s alleyway, she composed herself, dallying at the chorus line of tulips that Nan had planted alongside the house. Then a sound came from the street—the sickening impact of rock against metal. She sprinted back. No one was in sight, but when she checked her car, the hood had been dented, the ro
ck lying in the gutter.

  She was clenching the rock in her fist as she went in the back door of the house.

  Gussie was red-faced again, eyes blazing like the headlight of a midnight locomotive.

  “Look at this!”

  Annie reached for the Valley Sentinel, but wasn’t ready for the banner headline: ABUSE CHARGED AT DISABLED FARM.

  “Crap,” said Annie, pressing the rock to the stabbing pain in her belly. Did those boys know it was her in the headlines? “This is what I get for not taking things into my own hands. Jo’s too patient, too trusting.”

  “The paper,” Gussie explained, “didn’t use your name, but Lorelei’s parents went to the paper because Judy hasn’t officially discharged you yet.”

  “Oh, right. That’s why I’m hanging out with hairpins and aspirin instead of my Farm folks. I’m going to the Farm to see Judy. I don’t have to take this,” she said, tossing the rock up and down, fumbling, and dropping it on her toe. “Ow! If she fires me, so be it. The money’s better at Medipak and there are fewer hassles. At least they’re up front about hating gays. I know to leave my trust in the parking lot.”

  “Hold your horses. It’s bigger than you are. This reporter looked into staffing at other places like the Herb Farm and says there is as much potential for abuse in those.”

  “Code for they hire queers too?”

  “Not code at all. Next to last paragraph: The presence of homosexuals on two staffs does not, according to management, increase likelihood of abuse. And then he quotes statistics about heterosexual men being the abusers over ninety-five percent of the time.”

  “So why carry on about this? I know, I know. It sells papers.”

  “’I’m afraid that’s not all.” Gussie pointed to a headline on the other side of the front page: LEGISLATION URGED TO LIMIT GAY EMPLOYMENT.

  “What the?” Annie asked, stomping from one end of the kitchen to the other as she read aloud. “’Representatives of several area churches are circulating a petition to urge the Board of Selectmen to draft legislation that would require employment screening on the grounds of sexual orientation in public and private agencies that provide services to minors or the disabled.’ Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Illegal is just a sick bird,” Gussie said, sounding disgusted. “Those ministers are rubbing their pious little hands, Annie. This will bring the wandering souls home. This will fill the coffers. The family that hates together enters the pearly gates together.”

  Annie noticed Toothpick rubbing against her. “What are you up to, you sweet little furball? You...” she said, picking her up and holding her high, “...you think dinner should be the minute I come home, even if my shift ends an hour earlier than it used to.”

  Gussie laughed. “She’s still not much bigger around than a toothpick.”

  Annie bent to change the kitten’s water. “I haven’t been looking forward to calling Jo because—” She hated to admit it, even to Gussie. She’d spent one more evening with Jo, just talking, and since then Jo had been too busy to see her.

  One Saturday noon she’d passed Jo outside her bank by the shopping center. She’d been about to call out when an old MG sports car drew up in front. Jo got in. The car had seemed familiar. Some imp in her made her trail the MG, but it took off up Route 83 so fast she knew she’d be flamingly conspicuous if she followed.

  “Last time I called she was tired, the next time getting her ‘friend.’ She hasn’t returned my calls since. Is she afraid to tell me the bad news? Or is it just because I’m from the wrong side of the tracks?”

  “There’s only one way to find out, Socrates.”

  She tried to read Gussie’s face, then paged through the phone book for banks and dialed. “Jo Barker, please.” She tapped her fingers on the counter. “I wish she’d just tell me if she can’t help.”

  Gussie fished through a tray on the table until her fingers found a pair of scissors. She clipped the piece from the paper. “If I were you I’d tell her off. But you won’t. You’ll be very polite and understanding, whatever she tells you. It’s one of the reasons I like you so much.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” She turned to look out the front window. Those boys were gone. Two motorcycles jolted along the bumpy street. One rider waved to a longhaired man entering the house across the street.

  A voice told her Jo was away from her desk. “Tell her—tell her Gussie Brennan called. And it’s urgent,” Annie said, supplying the number. “Is that all right, Gus? Maybe my name’s not involved at all yet, but I don’t want to blow the whistle on Jo.”

  “That’s fine. There’s no need to expose anyone.” Gussie sorted a pile of papers on the table. “I hate to give you more good news, but you got a message from Peg’s lawyer friend today.”

  Toothpick was making comforting crunchy noises at her bowl. “Go ahead, make my day.”

  “She can’t do anything unless you’re officially terminated.”

  “That settles it. I talk to Jo and if she draws a blank, then I pay a surprise visit to Judy.”

  Gussie said, “Listen to you, acting like the rock of Gibraltar.”

  “I wish I were a rock about now,” she confessed. The man across the street came out onto his porch with a beer. He tilted back in a chair and seemed to settle into staring at Gussie’s front windows. “Look at that subhuman specimen. Why do we even have to share the earth with cretins like him?”

  “If you hate them your hatred will eat you up.”

  She was startled by Gussie’s advice and told her about the encounter out front, showed her the rock. “Gus, you know what they’re like.”

  “I haven’t forgotten. But you can stand up to them without hating them, Socrates.”

  “I’m running on anger, Gus.”

  “Anger, hate—they’re the flip side of fear.”

  “So I’m scared. Sue me.”

  Gussie joined her at the window. “Not a pretty picture, I agree.”

  Two other men lounged, smoking, on the steps.

  Annie admitted, “I don’t know that hate is the right word. I don’t understand them at all. What do they get out of hassling gays?”

  Instead of answering, Gussie said, “I wonder if your girlfriend’s been keeping us away from the Farm to protect it?”

  Annie didn’t admit to having wondered the same thing.

  Jo finally called back. “There’s a New Way board meeting tonight, Annie. I thought you might have seen it in the paper. It’s open to the public. I’ve been meaning to call you—but part of me wanted to protect you. It could get ugly.”

  “It is ugly, Jo.”

  *

  Annie was fidgety with nervousness at dinner with Gussie. When the six-fifteen commuter train squealed into the station across the river, she was out the door.

  A drizzle had begun. She used it to scrub off the dirt in this first dent. The Saab had clearly been the car she had been looking for. It had been in a wreck, but Jimmy 0’, who spent his days doing what he called “gentrifying” battered cars, had bought it and rebuilt it, body and guts.

  The first time she’d seen it—painted. popsicle purple, she’d vowed to Jimmy, “She will be mine. Oh yes, she will be mine.”

  “No! A dyke Wayne’s World freak?” he’d said with a groan.

  She’d known she’d have to commit to years of payments, but she wasn’t leaving without her Hot Rod Grape, Gussie’s immediate nickname for it. She had to go on juggling mouthwash at Medipak if only to keep the Grape, although she was beginning to suspect that buying such a conspicuous car had not been the wisest of moves.

  The meeting was at City Hall. She pulled behind Jo’s Prelude with the PBPIG license plate. Something teased at the back of her mind—where else had she seen that old grey MG that had picked Jo up outside her bank? Then it came to her. Elly’s art teacher had parked it across from the Sweatshop one night. Why would Verne have picked up Jo? Because she was from the right side of the tracks?

  The room held a scattering o
f people. In the back row sat Hope Valerie, Venita Valerie, Maddy Scala, Dusty Reilly, Louie’s boyfriend John, and the pharmacist—what was his name?—Jake. America Rodriguez rushed in behind her with five non-gays, all of whom greeted Venita with hugs.

  “What are you all doing here?” Annie whispered.

  Maddy leaned forward. “I spotted this in the paper and I thought fuck this shit. They don’t get the last word, right?”

  America said, “Even on short notice we have, what—seven PFlaggers here.”

  Hope quietly applauded.

  “That’s my baby,” said a balding black man, loving eyes on Hope. “They mess with us because we’re black, they mess with us ʼcause we’re poor, now they messing with us ʼcause my child has a girlfriend. What do they think; God only gives love to some in-crowd?”

  Judy Wald was at the front table, with an array of white men in suits and ties. She looked wraith-like, pale and skeletal.

  “I’m Jack Plant,” said a robust man in his sixties. “Judy’s not feeling too well tonight, so I’m going to wield the gavel for her and try to fill her more than competent shoes.”

  The usual droning reports, budget discussion and announcements seemed to go on so long that Annie wondered if Jack Plant was trying to outlast the back rows. Finally, he asked for old business and a gravel-voiced short guy with a grey crew cut and military bearing stood.

  “I move that we open the meeting here to the public.”

  “Can we do that Judy?” asked Plant.

  Judy shook her head. “No; public comment is welcome after the Board completes its business.”

  The retired soldier grumbled his objection, but raised his hands toward the front rows in a gesture of helplessness when Plant asked him to be seated.

  Annie just wanted to get this over with before someone from Medipak showed up. Down the row, Jake’s foot was jiggling at about 80 m.p.h. and Venita resettled her red felt hat for the dozenth time.

  Plant had barely opened the meeting to the public when a heavily perfumed woman with a matronly figure stood.

  “I want to know what you people are doing about improving your hiring practices.”