by Lee Lynch
“Can she keep quiet about visiting?” Gussie asked.
“We’ll remind her what’s at stake,” Dusty said firmly. “We can only stay briefly anyway.” She glanced at Elly. “Gotta finish packing.”
Hope Valerie, Ralph Zak and Louie from Medipak had volunteered to set up the party. They’d cordoned off a parking space for the Grape.
“Where are all our ruffians?” Gussie asked.
Annie scanned Rafferty Street. “Cece put herself in charge of security. She’s probably playing pool with the ringleaders right now, keeping them off Rafferty Street. Wait—there’s some on the porch across the street, smoking. Maybe they’ll just watch.”
Gussie crowed. “Let them. I invited the next-door neighbors and told them just how gay a celebration it would be. Oh, and the gay cop too. I think, from the hubbub out back, that we have enough bodies to defend ourselves tonight should any troublemakers show up.”
As they walked along the dark alleyway beside the house Gussie said, “Stop for a minute, would you, Socrates?”
From the alleyway, they could see that the backyard was decorated with balloons, colored lights, Chinese lanterns and spotlights of blue and red. Jake had outdone himself with the lights. There were dozens of people waiting for the graduate. Sheryl and Nicole from Medipak arrived with the bookkeeper Nettie Wilson in tow. Maybe, thought Annie, the long-term battle in mind, just maybe, there are enough of us.
“You know,” said Gussie, “Nan and Mr. Heimer were never party-givers. I wonder what she would have thought of all this.” In a choked whisper, she answered herself. “She would have delighted in it. Perhaps she’s delighting in it, right here in our midst. Look at the flowers! She helped decorate for us.”
Annie slipped a hand onto Gussie’s shoulder.
“I want you to throw a party once I’m gone, Heaphy. You make sure to think of me then, won’t you?”
“At every party I ever go to, Gus. But that won’t be for a long while. We need you right here.” She got on her knees. “You’ll stick around a long time, won’t you, Gus?”
“Get back up here. I’m not going anywhere just now. Still, there is a certain peace that comes with knowing my world is in good hands. A sense that I can let go and you and Paris, Hope, Cece, Peg and Dusty, Elly and young Maddy—and now Chantal—will take care of things and, when your time comes, pass on the work.”
“You know, once upon a time I thought life was about having a good time.”
“Oh, it is, Socrates, it is. But you’re wise enough, or honorable enough, to know that our best times are the ones we work hard for.”
Jo waylaid Annie once Gussie was installed at the head of the picnic table, under a lantern gold as a harvest moon and swirling with moths.
“I’m so pleased you’re going back to the Farm, Annie,” said Jo with her wide elfin smile.
“Thanks to you,” she answered, her heart a stew of feelings about Jo.
“Thanks to Judy. She’s resting up for her return to work or she’d be here tonight.”
“Good. I’ll need her there Monday,” Annie told her, unable to resist an unsuccessful scan for Verne. She saw Elly and Dusty arrive, a thinner but beaming Lorelei between them.
When Lorelei caught sight of her, she flung herself toward Annie, then stopped short.
“Can I hug you?”
“Yes.” Annie tried to be less stiff, but it was still too hard.
“You need hugging lessons.”
“It’s true,” she admitted, “I’ve never been as good as you at hugs, Lor.”
“You still happy, Annie?”
“I’m happy to see my favorite passenger.”
“Why don’t you come back?”
“Don’t you like your new driver?”
“Donald is Errol’s brother! We sing! We sing, Hi ho, Hi ho, It’s Off To Work We Go! And Whistle While You Work!” She tried to whistle the tune but ended sputtering with laughter.
“Lor!” said Dusty. “Let’s get some eats.”
Lorelei followed Dusty, but not without a last plea to Annie. “Donald has to go back to his old job and in the rain all Kim’s sorrel got drowned and she cried and you weren’t there.”
“How does next Monday sound?” Annie asked, her face flushing with pleasure.
Lorelei stopped short. “You mean it?”
“Don’t be late!”
“Aw-right!” cried Lorelei, fist pumping the air.
When she looked back, red and blue spotlights intersected on Jo, staining her white pants and light blue striped jersey a fluorescent lavender glow. Jo’s eyes were excited.
“I came out at the bank.”
Annie felt her jaw drop in amazement. “You didn’t.”
Now the smile turned unexpectedly bashful. She found her anger at Jo was not very deep. “They were pretty shocked, but most of them are only fiscal, not social, conservatives, and a couple of them promised to put all the pressure they can on the Selectmen to laugh those right-wingers out of the meeting.”
“Great!”
“We’ve been asked us to pack the room tomorrow night. Did you see that Giulia’s new husband brought one of the new Selectmen tonight?”
“To the graduation?”
“No. Here. To the party.” Jo indicated a smiling white-haired man whose picture was often in the paper.
“Geez. It’s working. I didn’t believe Gussie that this quiet sort of organizing she started would make a difference.”
“Most people are decent. The loony radical right was just steamrolling over them.”
“Will you make an announcement about the vote? We need to make sure we have that big turnout.”
“I don’t think so, Annie. Word of mouth might be best where there’s an insider involved. Besides, I still have to survive at the bank.”
“I thought you were on your way to bigger and better things.”
The brown eyes seemed to fill with sorrow, as palpable as tears. “So did I.”
Annie raised an eyebrow, guilt struggling with vindictive relish.
Jo shrugged fragile-looking shoulders. “Things didn’t work out the way I…” She stopped, cleared her throat, shrugged again.
“She’s seeing someone else?”
Eyes down, Jo nodded. “I seem to have a thing for cads.” She reached for Jo’s hand, pleased beyond words.
“You’re made for better things,” she counseled very seriously. “I’m glad you’re sticking around.”
Jo looked at the crowd, a smile returning to her lips. Annie followed her eyes.
Maddy, gown and all, barreled around the yard with Jennifer, to Louie’s accordion rendition of the polka.
“I love seeing Maddy act like a kid!” Annie said. “Maybe she’ll trust us grownups not to mess up too badly even if she takes a minute off once in a while.”
Just then, Gussie, looking like a dyke matriarch, bellowed with laughter under her golden lantern and patted down a cowlick.
Annie and Jo watched the Santiagos from next-door peep through the hedge and find the widow who lived on the other side of Gussie’s house. Paris herded all three under the blinking Christmas lights to the punch bowl; introducing them to everyone they passed. These three would not be silent if Gussie’s home ever came under attack again.
“I’m glad Morton River’s my home,” Jo said, still lavender in the light. “Next time there’s a party I’ll bring someone from work.”
Annie remembered something Vicky had said: Out here, we’re trying to put human faces on prejudice. “This really is how we’ll win, isn’t it, whatever the politicians, the ballots, and the courts say,” Annie remarked, feeling a billowing majesty of emotion. When had she last felt that?
“Parties?” asked Jo.
“By coming out one by one. By introducing the widowed neighbors to the gay guy playing the polka, the bankers to the gym teachers, sending the kids out as emissaries into the big world, announcing who we are from podiums. It makes me feel powerful, like gay people have a mission, like
we can, you know,” she faltered for words, “try to save the world from fascism or something.” She thought about her dad. Again.
“You have a hero complex, Annie.”
She thought about that. “You’re the hero—for coming out at work. I just kind of staggered out of my closet,” she said, suiting action to words, eyes closed, and bumping into someone short and soft. “Sorry!” she cried, backing off.
It was Ralph, his mother on his arm.
“Is the punch that strong? Let me at it!” Ralph said.
Annie embraced Chantal, laughing, and wrapped her other arm around Jo.
Ralph rushed Maddy and lifted her with a cheer.
“That’s my boy!” cried Chantal.
Giulia’s husband Mario laughed as Ralph and Maddy spun into him. Mario caught Annie’s eye and came to where she stood with Chantal and Jo.
“I want you to know this. I am in the real estate business. It happens that I own some of these properties.” He gestured with his hand toward the houses across the street. His Italian accent was strong. “And the unimproved lot at the end of Rafferty Street. For a long time I have wondered if I should sell, build, put up a fence to keep the hoodlums out. Now that I know what went on here while we were away I will build a home for Giulia. A big house, for Sophia and Maddy too. What do you call it? A showplace. This will chase out the children of Mussolini and maybe even improve property values for Augusta. I will get the city to replace those old cobblestones—”
“NO!” cried Annie.
“No?” He paused, looked into her eyes. “You’re right. The cobblestones make this a special street. We will keep them. Repair them. Yes?”
He was gesturing toward the end of the street and, as if his hand could throw images against the dark, Annie saw a circular drive, if not cobbled, then brick, a two-story home in stained wood, the old trees still standing, azaleas, dogwood, roses blooming in season, birds raiding bushes laden with berries. She saw peace too, the desire of an ordinary man to keep life decent for everyone. And the image of strange Giulia trying, like all of them, to get through life the best she could. Of Maddy, who’d go through the tortures of the damned as she lived in comfort while wanting to make changes more fundamental than a Band-Aid over a neighborhood.
“I feel so connected to everyone, Mario. Thank you for telling us.” He bowed his way back into the crowd.
More dancers joined the first few. Chantal tugged at Annie’s hand, startling her out of her amazement at Mario’s plans.
“Dance with me?” Chantal’s eyes, around the seductive blueness, were tinted with lavender light.
“How about after the Board of Selectmen votes?” But even as Annie said it, she knew the vote would end nothing. She needed to celebrate every chance she got because they were in it for the long haul, all of them.
Louie quickened the song. Maddy escaped from Ralph and dragged Sophia into a dance. Dusty and Elly and Lorelei lurched by, a polkaing threesome, their laughter loud enough, Annie imagined, to be heard all along Rafferty Street.
Annie looked at her watch, excited. “Ten-thirty-three,” she said to Chantal, sweeping a hand toward the railroad tracks. “Listen.”
The train gave its customary hoot as it approached the crossing at the end of Rafferty Street, and then added another long toot. Was there traffic at the crossing or had the engineer heard the music, seen the lights? Then the train was tearing through the night with a sound almost like bells under the roar—could they be the old train bells of her Chelsea childhood clanging, not a siren call, but a welcome home?
Its groan became a background noise off and on, long, short, as it hit the curves going north along the Morton River, and still she heard that ghost of a bell growing more faint as the party sounds once again filled her ears.
Annie, laughing, took Chantal’s hand and they danced into the passionate, widening circle.
About the Author
Lee Lynch’s new novel, The Raid, will be published by Bold Strokes Books in October, 2012. Bold Strokes published Ann Bannon Award winner Beggar of Love and Sweet Creek. Her books are offered through http://goo.gl/6neqS. She writes the syndicated column The Amazon Trail. Lynch has received the inaugural Lee Lynch Classic Award for The Swashbuckler, the Alice B. Reader Award, the James Duggins Mid-Career Author Award, the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Bronze Award, the Golden Crown Literary Society Ann Bannon Popular Choice Fiction Award for Beggar of Love, and was inducted into the Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame. She is married to Elaine Mulligan Lynch.
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
Speed Demons by Gun Brooke. When NASCAR star Evangeline Marshall returns to the race track after a close brush with death, will famous photographer Blythe Pierce document her triumph and reciprocate her love—or will they succumb to their respective demons and fail? (978-1-60282-678-6)
Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel by Winter Pennington. The Rosso Lussuria vampires face enemies both old and new and to prevail they must call on even more strange alliances, unite as a clan, and draw on every weapon within their reach—but with a clan of vampires, that’s easier said than done. (978-1-60282-679-3)
Sometime Yesterday by Yvonne Heidt. When Natalie Chambers learns her Victorian house is haunted by a pair of lovers and a Dark Man, can she and her lover Van Easton solve the mystery that will set the ghosts free and banish the evil presence in the house? Or will they have to run to survive as well? (978-1-60282-680-9)
Into the Flames by Mel Bossa. In order to save one of his patients, psychiatrist Dr. Jamie Scarborough will have to confront his own monsters—including those he unknowingly helped create. (978-1-60282-681-6)
OMGqueer edited by Radclyffe and Katherine E. Lynch, PhD. Through stories imagined and told by youth across America, this anthology provides a snapshot of queerness at the dawn of the new millennium. (978-1-60282-682-3)
Coming Attractions: Author’s Edition by Bobbi Marolt. For Helen Townsend, chasing turns to caring, and caring turns to loving, but will love take five steps back and turn to leaving? (978-1-60282-732-5)
Oath of Honor by Radclyffe. A First Responders novel. First do no harm…First Physician of the United States Wes Masters discovers that being the president’s doctor demands more than brains and personal sacrifice—especially when politics is the order of the day. (978-1-60282-671-7)
A Question of Ghosts by Cate Culpepper. Becca Healy hopes Dr. Joanne Call can help her learn if her mother really committed suicide—but she’s not sure she can handle her mother’s ghost, a decades-old mystery, and lusting after the difficult Dr. Call without some serious chocolate consumption. (978-1-60282-672-4)
The Night Off by Meghan O’Brien. When Emily Parker pays for a taboo role-playing fantasy encounter from the Xtreme Encounters escort agency, she expects to surrender control—but never imagines losing her heart to dangerous butch Nat Swayne. (978-1-60282-673-1)
Sara by Greg Herren. A mysterious and beautiful new student at Southern Heights High School stirs things up when students start dying. (978-1-60282-674-8)
Fontana by Joshua Martino. Fame, obsession, and vengeance collide in a novel that asks: What if America’s greatest hero was gay? (978-1-60282-675-5)
Lemon Reef by Robin Silverman. What would you risk for the memory of your first love? When Jenna Ross learns her high school love Del Soto died on Lemon Reef, she refuses to accept the medical examiner’s report of a death from natural causes and risks everything to find the truth. (978-1-60282-676-2)
The Dirty Diner: Gay Erotica on the Menu, edited by Jerry L. Wheeler. Gay erotica set in restaurants, featuring food, sex, and men—could you really ask for anything more? (978-1-60282-677-9)
Sweat: Gay Jock Erotica by Todd Gregory. Sizzling tales of smoking hot sex with the athletic studs everyone fantasizes about. (978-1-60282-669-4)
The Marrying Kind by Ken O’Neill. Just when successful wedding planner Adam More decides to protest inequality by quitting the business and boycotting
marriage entirely, his only sibling announces her engagement. (978-1-60282-670-0)
Missing by P.J. Trebelhorn. FBI agent Olivia Andrews knows exactly what she wants out of life, but then she’s forced to rethink everything when she meets fellow agent Sophie Kane while investigating a child abduction. (978-1-60282-668-7)
Touch Me Gently by D. Jackson Leigh. Secrets have always meant heartbreak and banishment to Salem Lacey—until she meets the beautiful and mysterious Knox Bolander and learns some secrets are necessary. (978-1-60282-667-0)
Slingshot by Carsen Taite. Bounty hunter Luca Bennett takes on a seemingly simple job for defense attorney Ronnie Moreno, but the job quickly turns complicated and dangerous, as does her attraction to the elusive Ronnie Moreno. (978-1-60282-666-3)
Dark Wings Descending by Lesley Davis. What if the demons you face in life are real? Chicago detective Rafe Douglas is about to find out. (978-1-60282-660-1)
sunfall by Nell Stark and Trinity Tam. The final installment of the everafter series. Valentine Darrow and Alexa Newland work to rebuild their relationship even as they find themselves at the heart of the struggle that will determine a new world order for vampires and wereshifters. (978-1-60282-661-8)
Mission of Desire by Terri Richards. Nicole Kennedy finds herself in Africa at the center of an international conspiracy and is rescued by the beautiful but arrogant government agent Kira Anthony—but can Nicole trust Kira, or is she blinded by desire? (978-1-60282-662-5)
Boys of Summer, edited by Steve Berman. Stories of young love and adventure, when the sky’s ceiling is a bright blue marvel, when another boy’s laughter at the beach can distract from dull summer jobs. (978-1-60282-663-2)
The Locket and the Flintlock by Rebecca S. Buck. When Regency gentlewoman Lucia Foxe is robbed on the highway, will the masked outlaw who stole Lucia’s precious locket also claim her heart? (978-1- 60282-664-9)
