Rafferty Street

by Lee Lynch

  “Let me make you some coffee. Usually El—” Dusty’s voice went thin as she stumbled over her words “—does those little things.” Dusty trod around the kitchen trailing her sneaker laces, pulling mugs from the drain board. “I know we’ve got instant here someplace.”

  Annie wanted to cry for her. She blurted, “Dusty, you don’t have to be a woman of iron tonight. I know what it feels like to have your lover want to be with someone besides you.”

  Dusty leaned forward over the sink, back to them, and covered her face with those battered, big-knuckled hands. Her shoulders heaved once like hurricane waves. One cat leapt onto the counter and stared at her. The other flopped over on her feet. This shouldn’t happen after a dyke passes fifty, thought Annie. Voice muffled, one hand stroking the counter cat, Dusty said, “I don’t fucking cry, Heaphy. It takes the end of the world to make me cry.” She straightened, blew her nose into a paper towel and exhaled noisily.

  “This type of thing fucking feels like the end of the world, Reilly,” said Annie, her voice breaking.

  “Chantal,” Dusty said, pulling a chair out from the kitchen table, “why don’t you have a seat?”

  Chantal bobbed her head in a way that made Annie think of a curtsy. “Thank you. It’s been a hard night.”

  “I’m sorry if my little upset made it harder.”

  “Even if it did, it was worth it,” Chantal replied. Despite the circumstances, the woman obviously couldn’t stop smiling at the two butches. Chantal told Dusty, “The best way to get to know someone is to live through a crisis with her.”

  “I guess I’m having one of those all right. Damn it, sit down, Heaphy. You look like you’re standing on hot coals.” Annie obediently sat. Dusty rubbed the fist of one hand against the palm of the other with a dry-sounding, anguished motion. There were innumerable small burn marks on her forearms and hands from cooking at the grill. Her eyes darted toward the front door. “What was I looking for out here?”

  “Coffee?” suggested Chantal.

  Into the silence that accompanied Dusty’s preparations Annie nervously chattered, “Tonight’s been intense. I’d say Chantal and I have crammed about two years of getting to know each other into these few hours. Plus I spent the early part of the evening with Jo.”

  “Nice woman,” Dusty commented absently, spooning coffee into mugs, “but isn’t she a little on the snooty side?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed,” Annie lied, annoyed with herself for doing so, annoyed with Dusty for bringing it up.

  “That’s right, you and your ivy league women.”

  “What’s this?” asked Chantal, her tone playfully taunting, her eyes mischievous. She straightened a stack of napkins in their holder.

  “She just means Vicky, the woman I told you about in Oregon. She went to Yale. Vicky and I were getting together about the time Dusty and Elly met. We all hung out at the same bar. I guess I have a slight history of getting in over my head. I would’ve liked to have finished college back in Boston, but, you know, it was the dropout era and I got tired of being a starving student with a dyke agenda. No education, just educated girls.”

  “Like the last one,” Dusty said, sliding steaming mugs onto the table. “I always felt like us Morton River types were like quaint villagers to her.”

  “Marie-Christine was from France, Reilly.” Her loyalty to the woman might no longer be reasonable, but she’d loved her hard and long. “For her, Morton River was like walking into American history—the old factories, the mill houses.”

  “She was nice enough about it, but you couldn’t talk to her. She was so artsy-fartsy,” concluded Dusty, setting one foot on a chair, leaning on her knee with both hands and giving Chantal a conspiratorial look. She turned to Annie. “Remember when you brought her over here, Heaphy, and she got a gander at my bookshelves? Who’s the reader? she asks, like she’s surprised we know how to read.”

  Annie had been embarrassed by that, even though she knew it hadn’t been what Marie-Christine meant. “You’re exaggerating,” she objected. “I remember her trying to talk books with you. She was just looking for what you had in common. And you said, I don’t talk about ’em, I just read ’em. Marie-Christine thought you were the original Butch National Monument. And you are, Dusty.”

  “Yeah, the original asshole. Or I wouldn’t be putting up with this shit from Elly like you did with M-C.”

  Chantal asked, “What happened?”

  Dusty hugged a cat to her chest. “The beginning was no big deal. El went to this art class.”

  Dusty set the cat down and walked from window to chair, back and forth. “She stopped telling me the truth. She had to stay late at school. She had to make a call to somebody in class and whisper on the phone like a teenager with secrets from her mother. Like I was the enemy! I told her to have her friends over, but no, she needed something separate from me. True, but I know enough about lying to recognize it.”

  There was a sudden sharp tapping on the back door.

  “Oh,nuts. Lorelei climbed out her window again.”

  She went to unlock the door.

  “Annie!” cried Lorelei. “I saw a purple car!”

  She found herself with her arms full of a crying, smiling Lorelei in flowered pink flannel pajamas.

  “It’s great to see you, Lor!” Then, as if Lorelei were a great electrical bolt, she dropped her arms. “Okay, let’s back up here. This is what got us in trouble in the first place.” She took a few steps away from Lorelei. Although she still hadn’t a clue how to act with her, she figured that she’d better learn. “Sit down here, and I’ll sit across the table here.”

  “You’re mad at me,” Lorelei said, eyes downcast.

  “No way,” Annie said, struggling for a way to explain. “I’m glad to see you. It’s just that people like your parents get upset when you hug me.”

  “Why? Are they afraid you’ll die too?”

  Annie looked toward Dusty for help, but it was Chantal who leaned over and took Lorelei’s hand.

  “Lor, I’m Chantal. I’m a friend of Annie’s too.”

  “You have a pretty name. Chantal.”

  “Thank you. So do you.” Lorelei smiled. “You know how softball has rules?”

  “Yes! Balls and strikes and outs. Dusty taught me.” Her head fell again and she mumbled, “When I used to go.”

  “Lor, life has rules too. They don’t always make sense.”

  “I break the hugging rule a lot.”

  “It’s a hard one. Knowing when to and when not to and how hard and how many hugs you can give someone. Even whether someone would be sad that you didn’t hug her.”

  “I like to hug everybody.”

  “You know what might help you to keep from breaking the rules?”

  “I don’t know if I can remember any more rules.”

  “How about asking?”

  “Asking?” Lorelei watched Chantal’s face. “You mean, ask can I hug you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Lorelei looked at Annie and at Dusty then back at Chantal. “Can I hug you?”

  “I’d love a hug, Lorelei.”

  Annie thought she’d fall in love with Chantal that second.

  “Nice and soft,” Chantal coached. “It scares people when you slam into them and hang on tight.”

  “Can I hug Dusty?”

  “Ask her, Lorelei.”

  Lorelei couldn’t meet Dusty’s eyes, but mumbled, “Can I?”

  “Not tonight, Lorelei. I feel sad. I’ll probably be in a hugging mood next time I see you.”

  “Can I hug you, Annie?”

  “How about a little one, just for practice.”

  They embraced briefly. Annie touched nothing but Lorelei’s shoulders, but she gave them a firm squeeze. “Good hug, Lor. That was just my style.”

  “Thanks,” Lorelei said.

  “I really miss you guys, you know,” she told Lorelei.

  Someone pressed the door buzzer and didn’t stop.

  D
usty looked at her watch. “What is this, Grand Central Station?”

  Lorelei whispered, “It might be my Pop. I better go.”

  As Lorelei slipped out the back door, Dusty went to the front. Annie, ready to lambaste Leon Simski, followed.

  “Mr. Simski!” said Dusty.

  “Have you seen my daughter?” he demanded. Tall, beefy, eyes hard, he looked from Dusty to Annie, studying each face as if to memorize it. Chantal came to stand by Annie. “Bad enough you have your friends trooping up and down the street at all hours. Don’t think I don’t know who you are,” he said, looking at Annie.

  “Who am I? Jack the Ripper? Son of Sam? The Hillside Strangler? Look at me, Mr. Simski. I’m just a woman, not a monster.”

  But he wouldn’t look at her again. “Where’s Lorelei?”

  Chantal was right. He couldn’t hear her.

  Dusty said, “Don’t be coming to my house and making trouble, Mr. Simski. I don’t keep tabs on your daughter.”

  He turned and stomped into the yard shouting over his shoulder, “That better be the truth. If I ever find her over here,” he muttered something unintelligible as he disappeared.

  Dusty closed the door. “How do I tell Lorelei she can’t come here?” She looked at Chantal.

  “If something doesn’t get resolved in that household soon,” said Chantal, shaking her head, “you may need legal protection, Dusty.”

  “You were so good on hugging,” said Dusty. “That’ll really help.”

  Annie pulled Chantal close and squeezed tight. “This one’s a great hugger!”

  Dusty worried aloud. “It would ruin me to fight some stupid lawsuit. Simski could accuse me of anything.” Dusty sat heavily in her chair. “You know guys, sometimes life feels like one kick in the pants after another.” She looked at her watch again. “Where the hell is that woman? The diner’s closed. When I got here, I turned up the music so I wouldn’t be listening for a car in the driveway. I had the TV on to force myself to look at it and not at Puddle Street.” She raised her face to the ceiling and cried, “Puddle Street! Everything I love hurts now. Will she ever come home?”

  “Dusty,” Annie blurted, “I can’t swear to it, but I don’t want you going through so much pain for no reason. Elly probably wasn’t with Verne tonight.”

  “She tell you that, Heaphy?”

  “Yes, but I also know it’s true.” She swallowed her feeling of humiliation. “Jo is with Verne.”

  “Your Jo?”

  Chantal chimed the words, “Jo-Barker-the-banker-with-the-pot-belly-pig.”

  “I don’t know whether I want to read her the riot act for fucking you over or thank her for saving my marriage.”

  “I ought to thank you for showing me the light, if that’s what’s going on. Her car was near Verne’s place. We didn’t go up.”

  “Hell, nobody but that puffed up peacock would live around there. What else was she doing, checking out the twerp’s etchings? Shit, Heaphy, I’m sorry. Is there a good woman left in this world?”

  Both Dusty and Annie’s eyes drifted over to Chantal.

  Chantal fluttered her eyelashes. “I love listening to you two butches dish your femmes.”

  Dusty sat heavily at the table. “Dish nothing; these are the facts of life as we know them. It’s a bitch living with a woman and it’s a bitch doing without, right Heaphy?”

  Annie grinned. “In a nutshell.”

  “I sit here racking my brain: is she bored, did I do something to turn her off, was she really no good all along and should I cut my losses? I know she says I work too much, but that’s what small business is like. I thought we would work too much together.”

  “If you think you’ve put up with a lot, you ought to have lived in my shoes a while.”

  As if to demonstrate Chantal slipped her shoes off under the table. A toe crept up under Annie’s chinos. Annie had to stifle a grin of pleasure.

  Chantal went on. “I had one woman live with me who made my mouth water every time she came in the room, but she was hell on wheels when it came to pulling her weight. I might as well have called her your royal highness. Like I should be glad, she’d chosen me to sponge off. Proof, Annie, that I know firsthand how dumb love can make people. I’ll take a roving eye over a faithful couch potato any day.”

  She looked at the kitchen clock and laid a hand on Annie’s, toying with her fingers. “We’ve got to be up in a few hours, Sugar.”

  “You going to be okay, Reilly?”

  “As okay as I can be until she gets that fancy-pants from the city out of her system. Not to put what you’re going through with Jo down, but this isn’t any two-months’ worth of fooling around.”

  Annie interjected, “She claims she and Verne haven’t done anything, Dusty.”

  “Does that matter, the way they flaunt themselves all over town? I feel about two inches tall. El’s paying court to that worthless dauber just like she’s the royal highness on your couch, Chantal.”

  “Is there anything we can do?” Chantal asked. Annie could hear her asking the same question, the same way, of her children—what were their names? Crap, she couldn’t remember.

  “No. Pretty soon she’ll come dragging her ass in here all sweetness and light and talk me into some sleep. Tomorrow night it’ll be the same unless the little turd is seeing your woman. Er…” she corrected herself, eyeing Chantal, “your friend. I tell you, it feels so good to have her home where I can see her, I just about roll over and do tricks when she’s around.”

  “No wonder she’s not mending her ways then,” Chantal counseled.

  “What do I do? I don’t want to keep losing it like I did earlier tonight. What would bring you home for good?”

  Chantal shook her head, her sprayed hair never losing its shape. “I’m not the one to ask, Dusty. I can’t imagine leaving a good woman like you for a minute. What have you tried?”

  “Tried? I don’t have any miracles up my sleeve. I just keep the business going and try to keep the house up since she lost interest in it.” Dusty bent to pick up one of her cats from a pile of newspapers on the table. “I never even got around to taking the Sunday paper out this week.” She reached for it.

  “Wait,” Chantal said. “May I see that travel section?”

  “This? Bermuda? Ireland—wouldn’t I like to take off and see Ireland tomorrow. Maybe absence would make a certain heart grow fonder.”

  “Go,” Chantal said quietly.

  “Sure, just like that. And leave El here with Rembrandt Jr.”

  “You butches can be as obtuse as men sometimes,” said Chantal, lining up some pencils and pens she’d found on the table, from large to small, then pointing at one after the other as she spoke.

  “Take her with you. She’s looking for excitement—take her on a trip. Ireland, Bermuda—it doesn’t matter where. You give her excitement, Dusty. You take her romantic places. Verne’s charms will fade the minute you put the tickets in Elly’s hand.”

  “Genius!” Annie cried, dancing around Chantal in a little circle. “You’re a living genius. That’s one of the things I hate about being single. No femme to just turn things around and make them work like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  “It’s the view from the bottom, girls,” Chantal said.

  Even Dusty cracked a smile at that one. “Yeah, right,” she said in a skeptical tone.

  Annie squeezed Chantal’s hand. “It’s hard to be morose around you, woman.” She felt a flash of jealousy. Chantal and Dusty would be a natural match. “Dusty, I think you ought to take Chantal’s advice. I’ll bet Elly hates herself for how she’s acting, but it’s the only way she’s ever known how to play.”

  Dusty scratched her neck, her lips pursed, eyes scanning the article on Ireland. She flipped the paper open. “Look at these ads for tours to Ireland. Bargain rates. I suppose people are afraid of the troubles, but, you know, Elly’s as Irish as I am. That wouldn’t stop her if she wanted to go.” She tore an ad off the page. “On the othe
r hand, I’d hate to be all the way over in Ireland and get a call that the Queen of Hearts had been torched.”

  Chantal rearranged the milk carton and sugar bowl. “What about making it an art trip? She could take her pencils with her.”

  “Maybe,” said Dusty slowly, “that would convince her that I respect her talent. It’s just this damned Verne that gets in the way so it looks like I don’t want El to draw. But I do. She’s never had a passionate interest before, like reading is for me.” She fell silent as a car pulled into the driveway. “El’s home.”

  At the door Chantal said, “I’ll be glad to help out at the diner after work if you need me while you’re in Ireland.”

  “Me too,” Annie volunteered without hesitation.

  “You’ve got me packed and on my way already, you two,” Dusty complained with a small smile.

  “Hey,” Annie said, flicking her cap at Dusty with affection. “What the heck are friends for?”

  On the front walk, they met Elly, wan-looking under her umbrella. She seemed to drag herself past the wet, bright azalea bushes. “What’s going on? Did you bring the ferocious bulldagger home?

  “Didn’t need to,” Annie said, her annoyance with Elly gone at the sight of her drooping spirit. “Take it from me, sweetheart,” she said in her Bogart voice, “lover-girl was here the whole time.” She lifted her cap and said seriously. “And, El, I told Dusty that you weren’t with Verne tonight.”

  “You didn’t have to take me on faith, Annie.”

  She smiled. “I wasn’t being a great hero, El. We went over to Verne’s. Jo Barker’s car was outside.”

  Elly’s eyes got wide.

  “Oh,” she said. “Does Jo like art?”

  Damp, chilled through, disillusioned and tired, she was damned if she’d cushion this blow for Elly.

  Tugging Chantal’s hand to follow, she told Elly over her shoulder, “I never got a chance to ask.”