by Robbi McCoy
The feeling that there was something missing had grown gradually, almost imperceptibly, like the insistent strains of Ravel’s Bolero, eventually breaking into her consciousness with such force that it had finally led to her breakup with Eliot two years ago. Well, that, and the recognition that she preferred girls, of course.
Harper’s relationship with Eliot, her long-term, part-time boyfriend, had always been unconventional. They had lived together for a year during college, then split after graduation to pursue their careers. After a brief period of complete separation, they had gotten together again, but never really together, since they had taken jobs almost a thousand miles apart. Eliot was a math professor at Washington State, a pragmatist who appealed, she supposed, to her occasional need for an anchor. Or a father figure. Each year, for three, four or five weeks, he would arrive with the summer sun and they would be a couple again. He would repair leaky faucets, clean the rain gutters and change the recording on her voice mail, briefly assuming the role of head of household. Harper could stomach this male posturing without much difficulty because Eliot was always about to go back to his own life.
She wondered why she had kept the relationship up so long. Because it was comfortable and undemanding, she supposed. Harper had allowed him a harbor because she always had. As long as they had clung to one another, there was always an excuse to reach back through time rather than forward.
Now, she wanted to move forward. Two years ago, moving forward had meant leaving Eliot. Now it meant exorcising the ghost of Chelsea.
Some of the musicians were now making their way on stage. Harper lingered behind with Roxie.
“Why were you late?” she asked.
“Kevin decided to get sick right before I left. He threw up on my shoes.”
“Flu?”
“No, I don’t think so. Whenever I leave the house now he has these anxiety attacks.”
“Poor guy.”
“That’s one reason I’ve decided not to play the summer series this year. I want to spend as much time at home with the boys as I can. What about you? You’re not doing it either, right?”
“Right. Not this year.”
“So what are you going to do with your summer, Harper?”
Without hesitation, Harper replied, “I’m going to fall in love.”
Roxie laughed. “Oh, really? Who with?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I thought you were seeing someone.”
“Lynn, yes. Not anymore. She just didn’t do anything for me.”
“In that case,” said Roxie, lowering her voice, “how about that guitarist over there? She’s pretty cute.”
Harper smiled. Roxie wasn’t taking her seriously. That was okay. She wasn’t sure herself how serious she was. They went onstage to take their places. Falling in love wasn’t out of the question, though, she thought. Not at all.
She took her chair and placed her music on the stand as the cacophony of warm-up filled the space around her. Despite herself, she glanced at the seventh row—to Mary and Chelsea’s usual seats. They had season tickets, had been going to the symphony for years. Harper had memorized the location without intending to, and she could never stop herself from searching them out. They hadn’t arrived yet. She knew what to expect when they did. She had watched them many times, even before that incredible summer two years ago, when they were just acquaintances, interesting people she knew, and not two people who had conspired to break her heart. No, she thought, “conspired” was too harsh. None of it had been planned.
Mary, who was on the kind side of sixty, would be wearing something conservative, slacks with a blouse, a scarf, a stylish jacket. Chelsea, however, who was twenty-nine, would be arrayed in elegance, a radical departure from the knit tops and blue jeans she usually wore. She never looked more beautiful than when she came to the music hall. Her smart, close-fitting dresses, cut several inches above her knees, showed off her smooth, lean legs and sometimes revealed the barest hint of cleavage, just enough to tantalize.
She wore her hair up, usually, with a sparkly clip in it that reflected the bright ceiling lamplight, like a princess in a glittering tiara. When she walked in on her three-inch heels, men would watch her and fantasize about sweeping her into their arms and bending her backward, low and close to the floor, and then scooping her up again. All of those old men with their youthful dreams! But Harper’s fantasies were the same as theirs. When that radiant young woman entered the room, there was no way she could keep her head from turning.
On the rare occasion that their eyes met, Chelsea usually offered no response, no acknowledgment other than an obvious averting of her gaze. Only once had she given any indication that she even saw Harper. Three months ago, seconds before the conductor finished his introduction to the third movement of Brahms’ Third Symphony, Harper had looked up to find Chelsea gazing directly at her, her eyes humorless, even sad, her face stark and world-weary, the expression of a much older woman. When she saw Harper looking back at her, one side of her mouth turned up in a selfconscious half-smile before she lowered her gaze. Then the lights went down over the audience.
Harper had been so distracted that she nearly missed her first notes. That would have been disastrous, since the opening of the piece highlighted the cellos and the cello section occupied the outer edge of the stage, easily seen by the audience. When the lights had come on at intermission, Harper had looked toward the seventh row, hoping to catch Chelsea’s eye again, but she was already out of her seat and walking up the aisle.
As she tuned, Harper prepared for Chelsea’s entrance. A few minutes before performance time, she saw Mary coming down the aisle. Chelsea wasn’t with her. Instead, there was a young woman with a broad smile and large round eyes. She was in her twenties, petite and pretty. Perhaps Chelsea’s sick, Harper thought. Or perhaps she just can’t bear Rimsky-Korsakov.
She watched with unease and disappointment as Mary and the stranger settled into their seats. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she looked forward to this fleeting encounter each month. Since this was the last performance of the season, she probably wouldn’t see Chelsea, wouldn’t experience even this meager crumb of her, for at least three more months.
But even if she never saw Chelsea in the flesh, Harper’s vibrant memories of those butterflies and nectarines were enough to bring her vividly to life as summer approached. Harper was like a sleeping toad buried in mud. All she needed was a certain angle of the sun’s rays to rouse her instincts, to draw her toward wakefulness. The sun had moved into its summer realm now, wrenching the most poignant of sensations from her mind and body. As the concert began, Harper tried to lose herself in the music. That shouldn’t have been hard to do, considering how brilliantly their guest soloist made her instrument laugh and cry. The guitarist and guitar seemed to fuse together in an ecstatic embrace during the slow movements, then to thrash about in violent combat during the fast ones, tightly coupled in a passionate struggle to the last exultant pluck of the strings. As the piece ended, the guitarist, spent but euphoric, opened her eyes and, lifting her head to the audience, let her right hand fall limp to her side.
As much as Harper wanted to be free of longing, she knew how truly difficult that was going to be. Two years later, she still vibrated from Chelsea’s touch like the note now lingering on the soloist’s guitar.
Chapter 4
SUMMER, NINETEEN YEARS AGO
Almost too stoned or drunk to play a recognizable tune anymore, Harper went into the house, leaving what was left of the party out by the pool. Stepping carefully over the guy passed out on the floor in the living room, she leaned her guitar against the wall by the front door, where she’d be sure to see it on her way out. Now she just had to find a comfortable place to sleep it off. Home, a dorm room on the U.C. Santa Cruz campus, was an hour away. There was no chance of getting back there tonight.
“Hey, Harper,” called Peggy from the kitchen doorway. Harper turned slowly to see her friend
standing there, looking like Harper felt, eyes lazy and half shut, her usually wavy auburn hair stringy from swimming and drying uncombed. She was still in her bathing suit, a yellow terrycloth wrap hanging loosely from her shoulders. “Looking for a place to crash?”
Harper nodded. Peggy approached her and took hold of her hand. “Come on. You can bunk with me. Nate’s got his parents’ bedroom, and he’s put Eliot on the foldout couch. We’ve got the guest room.”
Eliot was a friend of Nate’s, a congenial physics major that Harper knew only slightly, and Nate was Peggy’s ex-boyfriend. She had broken up with him months ago after an amiable few weeks of dating. They had remained friends, which Harper thought was cool and Peggy had mysteriously explained with, “We have an understanding.” Peggy hadn’t had a boyfriend since. She’d gotten deadly serious about academics instead. Harper thought that she should probably do the same, but she hadn’t yet managed to put that plan into action. Peggy, who was going to be an engineer, was the class brainiac all through high school, a girl who stayed in the background socially but could always be counted on to excel at every academic challenge. Harper, by contrast, got good grades but wasn’t driven to the level of performance that Peggy was. She had still not even declared a major. She was waiting for something to “click.”
A counselor had suggested library science to her because, when questioned about her interests, she said that she would be happy to spend her entire life locked in a library reading. It happened that she had just discovered Aphra Behn, the seventeenth-century playwright, spy, and bisexual bon vivant and was, in fact, spending huge chunks of her life in the library reading her plays and several biographies. This included a biography by Vita Sackville-West, another fascinating writer who was now on Harper’s must-read list. Behn described her own life as “dedicated to pleasure and poetry,” and that philosophy resonated deeply with Harper. She was enjoying the biographies more than the plays, for it was Behn’s lifestyle that intrigued her most. Behn satisfied Harper’s ideal of what an artist should be. A true artist should live her life as if she were creating an interesting character. Her life, as much as her work, should be her art.
The idea of library science as a major was working on Harper, but she was uncommitted so far. She loved libraries and felt at home in them, but had never given any thought to making her career in them. She needed a little time to absorb the idea and make it her own.
“You know I love that song,” Peggy said, rummaging through a dresser in the bedroom. “The one you just played, ‘Baby Can I Hold You.’”
“Duh,” Harper said, kicking off her sandals. “Why do you think I played it? I learned it just for you, of course.”
“Thanks. That was sweet.” Peggy pulled a big blue T-shirt out of the dresser drawer. “Try this,” she said, tossing the shirt to Harper. “It’s Nate’s. Ought to make a good nightshirt.”
Harper fumbled the shirt, dropping it to the floor. She picked it up as Peggy started humming the Tracy Chapman song and pulled a similar shirt out of the dresser drawer for herself. She peeled off her damp bathing suit and slipped into the shirt, flashing her round rump briefly at Harper.
Harper unbuttoned her blouse, tossed it into a corner, then unhooked her bra and threw that into the corner as well while Peggy sat on the bed, staring dispassionately at her. She’s stoned, Harper decided, observing her friend’s unfocused eyes. Peggy’s humming trailed off to silence. Harper quickly slipped out of her shorts and threw them into the corner with her bra, then pulled on Nate’s shirt, which fell to mid-thigh, covering her underpants completely.
“I wish I had a body like yours,” Peggy said as Harper hopped into bed beside her. Peggy was much rounder than Harper, more feminine with well-defined curves. Of course, Harper envied that and would have preferred it. “You’re so strong, so athletic. Your boobs don’t get in the way of everything.”
“I’ll trade boobs with you any day,” Harper said, glancing at the soft curve of Peggy’s breast under her shirt. “That’s why the boys like you.”
Harper was convinced that Peggy’s pronounced bustline, not her personality or her lovely clear skin and dimples, was the reason boys hovered around her. She was never flirtatious, nor did she go out on many dates. She was admirably selective.
“Boys, what do they know?” Peggy said, dismissively. She reached out to Harper’s chest, cupping her left breast loosely, as if weighing it. “Your tits look very...winsome to me,” she said, her eyes glazed. “Winsome, that’s the word I’ll use for them. They are tantalizingly winsome.” Harper laughed nervously, knocking Peggy’s hand away. “Shut up!”
Peggy’s eyes were trained on Harper’s chest, avoiding her eyes. “Winsome,” Peggy said again, taking both of Harper’s breasts in her hands, caressing her through the shirt, her thumbs finding and bringing the nipples to attention.
Stop her, Harper told herself, but it felt really nice, the friction of the cotton against her skin, and so she waited. She would tell Peggy to stop in a minute. Peggy was just teasing her anyway, just playing around, trying to make her feel better about her body. She would stop herself.
But she didn’t stop. Instead, she leaned closer, slipping a hand under the shirt and kneading a bare breast with her fingers and then pushing Harper flat on the bed with her body. She lifted the shirt up, exposing Harper’s chest to the pale light from the bedroom window. She then replaced her hand with her mouth, sucking the nipples, each in turn. That felt even better, and Harper let her continue, telling herself that it was just innocent petting, that it was okay because they were both drunk. Her priest and her mother had warned her frequently about sex, about boys and their insinuating penises, but nobody had ever told her not to let a girl suck her boobs. So this wasn’t sex. This wasn’t what they were talking about. And Harper had already rationalized that anything short of a penis inside her was okay anyway, because this wasn’t the first time someone had touched her this way. It was, however, the first time a girl had.
As Peggy fondled and sucked her breasts, Harper became more and more excited. Peggy reached one hand down across her stomach and between her legs, feeling her through the fabric of her panties. No one had ever touched her there before. Not that they hadn’t tried, but she had always deflected them at this point. She didn’t deflect Peggy and didn’t really think about why. The sensation was divine. Harper heard herself moan softly, and her body moved under the rhythm of Peggy’s touch, fingers stroking lightly through nylon. Peggy rested her head on Harper’s shoulder. “I’ve wanted to touch you like this for so long,” she whispered.
This was a surprise. Her best friend since the age of sixteen, Peggy had never done anything before to alert Harper to this possibility.
As Peggy slipped her hand under the elastic encircling her hips, Harper made a little cry of alarm. She twisted sideways in an unsuccessful attempt to free herself, an automatic response to such an intimate move. In a brief scramble of arms and legs, Peggy grabbed hold of her, one arm firmly around her waist, holding her fast from behind. Harper quit struggling, feeling the roundness of Peggy’s breasts against her back. She liked the way it felt, she decided, liked the feeling of being held so commandingly.
“I love you, Harper,” Peggy said urgently, and again she slid her hand under the elastic. Harper didn’t resist this time. What Peggy was doing to her felt delightful. She felt like she would go crazy with delirious pleasure. She let her body move without restraint. She held back the cries trying to burst from her throat, however, because she knew that the boy sleeping on the other side of the wall might be a light sleeper or even still awake.
As Harper’s body strained harder, Peggy’s grip around her waist got tighter. She climaxed almost silently. Peggy relaxed the arm around Harper’s waist and slipped her other hand away, then kissed the back of her neck tenderly.
Harper felt her body slowly cool as Peggy fell asleep beside her.
In the morning, she woke to find herself alone, an already hot sun shining through t
he bedroom window. Her mouth was dry and, predictably, her head felt like it was going to split open. She gradually remembered the previous evening, the swimming, the drinking, the music—and the sexual encounter with her best friend. She lay in bed for a while thinking about that. She could hear movement in the house, the clatter of dishes and sonorous male laughter. Will Peggy remember? she wondered. Maybe not. What should she do? Keep quiet about it? Pretend she didn’t remember either? Or just dismiss it as a silly side effect of too much drinking? There were a lot of ways to sweep this under the rug.
She dressed and arrived in the kitchen barely in time for breakfast. Nate was cooking. Peggy was putting dishes in the dishwasher. She was a sort of mystery now, Harper thought. Her best friend, that sweet, funny girl she adored, was someone she didn’t really know. In high school they had been inseparable. When Peggy, intent on getting as far away from her family as possible, announced that she was applying to colleges in California, Harper had been distraught. Peggy told her she had to come along, insisted that they had to stay together. “Can you imagine us being four thousand miles apart?” Peggy had asked.
Harper couldn’t. She had never been to California, had never even considered going there, but she had applied to all the same schools Peggy had. When they both managed to get accepted at Santa Cruz, that settled it.
“Good morning,” Peggy said, holding her hand briefly. The affectionate smile on her face told Harper that she hadn’t forgotten. “Nate, give our troubadour a couple of those flapjacks.”
