Keeping Secrets

by Penny Mickelbury

  “You’ll see,” Mimi breathed, pulling Gianna into the bed and onto her body and almost crying out at the perfection of her. She caressed her fully, finger tips exploring, searching, learning, matching the rhythm of their tongues. Gianna seemed not to breathe. Mimi turned her over, to be on top, and Gianna’s back arched and she pressed powerfully into Mimi. Mimi pulled her mouth from Gianna’s and began with her mouth and tongue the exploration already made by her fingers. She gently bit her neck and along her collarbone on both sides and the breath that had been caught in Gianna’s throat escaped in a little cry that became a louder cry when Mimi teased and teased and teased and then took gently between her teeth first one nipple and then the other. And as she brought her mouth, her tongue back to Gianna’s mouth, her hand caressed slowly and inexorably down the firm, muscled belly to rich, dark, luxurious hair and gently and slowly fingers parted and searched and found and the gentle, slow, oh so slow, touching began. And continued. Forever. And there was Mimi’s kiss, urgent, tense, tongue demanding, and then her teeth and tongue again urging her nipples to erection and all the time the soft, slow touching between her legs until Gianna could no longer stand it.

  “Mimi,” she whispered with rasping breath, and Mimi took her mouth from the exquisite breast and brought her ear to Gianna’s mouth and Gianna whispered to her and even as the breathless words escaped Mimi was obeying, her fingers being received into the deep, wet, warmth. Received and locked in and the touching was no longer soft but strong and surging and Gianna arched to meet her. Mimi encircled her waist with her free arm and Gianna wrapped her arms around Mimi’s shoulders and with every surge of the fingers she whispered, “Yes” until it was no longer a whisper and Mimi listened and felt and timed her fingers to the cries until they stopped and the body-racking shudders began. And then she wrapped her arms and legs around Gianna and kissed the tears from her face.

  Gianna stirred and stretched her body the length of Mimi’s and opened her eyes and looked into dark, liquid pools.

  “You’ve been watching me,” Gianna whispered.

  “Um hum.” Mimi smiled, continued to probe with her eyes.

  “What?” Gianna traced Mimi’s lips with her tongue before she allowed her to answer.

  “How long...how long since...”

  Gianna groaned and buried her face in Mimi’s shoulder, her response a muffled protest. “Oh, God, don’t ask me that, Mimi, please. Don’t ask me...”

  “I want to know, Gianna.” She lifted Gianna’s head from her shoulder, holding her face in her hands, and looked into eyes liquid with tears. “Oh, baby,” she breathed, kissing away her tears for the second time. “I didn’t mean for the question to hurt you. I’m so sorry...”

  Gianna shook her head free of Mimi’s hands and said defiantly, “Almost two years and I know that probably sounds ridiculous and dumb to you, that a normal, sane woman would go almost two years without sex!”

  “Well, maybe it is a bit worse than a normal, sane woman going one year, three months, and seventeen days without sex.” Mimi tried a little laugh that didn’t quite work but it didn’t matter because Gianna had rolled her over and climbed on top of her and burned her mouth with a kiss so intense Mimi thought she’d die from it. Then Gianna began to move on her, a rhythm so subtle, so faint, she wasn’t sure it was real until the heat in her mouth spread to her breasts and to her legs and she groaned and wrapped her legs around Gianna’s waist and Gianna’s mouth released Mimi’s lips and went to Mimi’s ear and she whispered and Mimi groaned again and breathed “Yes...yes...please...” And still Gianna whispered...

  Mimi held Gianna’s hair as if that would help her withstand the passion coursing through her body. Gianna had teased every inch of her with her mouth, stopping no one place very long but returning again and again to her breasts to lick, nip, suck, and then on to another spot and then again and again to the moist, hot triangle where her tongue would dart in and out and in and out and then move on to some other place until finally, on one such foray, Mimi held her head there, to force her to please...And Gianna took one of Mimi’s wrists in each of her hands and she slid herself up the length of Mimi’s body and kissed her mouth so softly and gently, her tongue so sweet, that Mimi wanted to cry and then Gianna whispered to her again and Mimi was unable to speak because she knew that Gianna’s slide back down her body would finally, blessedly, give her what was promised...Yes...Now...Mimi cried out as Gianna’s tongue quickly sought and found the place and explored and found all the places, and the hands that had gripped her wrists now opened and intertwined her fingers and Mimi held on as powerful release tensed and arched her body and eventually ebbed. She sighed. And then the tongue, like a lightning rod, sought and found the place again and again the storm gathered and grew inside her and again it broke, great waves crashing within but now she knew from the throbbing that did not cease with the crashing waves that Gianna’s tongue would find the place again...and again... Everything they knew about being women, about loving women, they shared with each other until the orange sun crept from behind the blue-bruised clouds and then they locked themselves into each other’s arms and slept.

  Mimi awoke disoriented but quickly placed herself and her surroundings and the deliciously warm body spooning her. But what was that incessant, high-pitched tone?

  “What’s that noise,” she demanded with sleepy indignation.

  “Your beeper,” Gianna mumbled into Mimi’s shoulder.

  “How do you know it’s mine,” Mimi asked hopefully.

  “Because mine is in the bedside table,” Gianna mumbled again as Mimi reluctantly slid from beneath the covers, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering, following the demanding call of the beeper. “There are clothes all over the place,” she called to Gianna from the hallway as she located her slacks with the beeper still attached to the belt and howling for attention.

  “Wonder how that happened,” Gianna remarked wryly and almost immediately paid for her impertinence when Mimi came leaping across the room and onto the bed. She pounced on Gianna, tickling and biting her ribcage, reducing her to breathless, shrieking, laughter that quickly became breathless, shuddering, moans when Mimi turned her attention—and her tongue—to nipples.

  “Stop!” she moaned. “Mimi, stop!”

  “Why,” demanded Mimi, her tongue still active.

  “Because you need to answer your bleeping beeper,” Gianna groaned, pushing her away.

  “Oh, hell,” Mimi groused, looking at the digital display on the beeper, frowning as Gianna gave her the cellular telephone. Mimi punched in the numbers.

  “Hi, it’s me. What’s up?” she said to Freddy Schuyler.

  “Where are you, Mimi? I’ve been calling you since last night! You have worried me half to death!”

  “I’m sorry, Freddy, I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m fine.”

  “Where are you?” Freddy demanded again.

  “Never mind where I am, okay?”

  “Not okay but no problem. Dinner’s at eight.”

  “Dinner?” asked Mimi mindlessly.

  “Oh, you forgot! I’ll bet I know what you’ve been doing! Well, who is she? Anyone I know?”

  “No, Freddy. Good-bye. I’ll see you at eight.”

  “Bring her. We can have a double engagement party.”

  “Good-bye, Freddy.”

  “Bring her, Mimi. I want to see what’s left of the woman who had you after a year and a half of celibacy!”

  “I’ll ask her, okay? Now good-bye!” Mimi returned the phone to Gianna, turned to face her. “That was my friend, Freddy. I’m supposed to have dinner at his house tonight, to meet his new boyfriend, and you’re invited, if you’d like to come.”

  “And what else did he say?” Gianna wore her half smile.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said something and you blushed.”

  “I did not!” Mimi said hotly.

  “You’re doing it again.” Gianna’s smile grew as her light gr
een-brown eyes bored into Mimi’s dark brown ones. Mimi leaned closer to her and whispered in her ear and Gianna laughed a deep, throaty, golden laugh that made Mimi tingle.

  “Now, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?”

  “Right there,” Gianna whispered, pulling back the covers and pointing to a fully aroused right nipple.

  Mimi watched with amused amazement as Freddy melted before Gianna’s charms. Of all the women she’d shared her life with he’d liked Beverly best, and had been really angry with her over their breakup. He’d actually agreed with Bev that until Mimi learned how to treat women, she should leave them alone. And now here he was practically genuflecting before Gianna. Probably, Mimi mused, because she praised his lasagna up one side and down the other and ate three servings. Vanity, thy name is gay boy!

  Freddy’s penthouse apartment and everything in it—furniture, art work, even plants— were scaled to offensive tackle size. The living room was thirty feet long with a wall of windows that all but brought the Potomac River inside. The fireplace was almost as huge as the one in his mountain cabin. The sofa, constructed so Freddy could lounge comfortably in it, swallowed normal adult beings whole, making them feel like children with their feet dangling off the floor. And the entire offensive line would feel right at home at the dining table. For all its massiveness, however, Freddy’s home exuded warmth, thanks to a lighting design that always baffled Mimi because she could never find the lights, and to colors of sand and lime and coral and other mixtures that, unless witnessed, would never have been considered masculine.

  Cedric served coffee and dessert: a pear torte he’d made himself and which was absolutely, sinfully delicious. Mimi studied him again for perhaps the sixth time that night, thinking that Freddy’s loving description barely did the man justice. Cedric was almost as tall as Freddy, but much thinner: he had the runner’s lean, lithe body compared to Freddy’s bulky offensive tackle body. Cedric was the color of a chocolate bar and had the voice of a nineteen sixties doo wop crooner: slow, deep and scratchy. Freddy had said Cedric was forty, but the mischievous eyes that crinkled behind the wire-rimmed glasses, the ready laugh that kept the dimples showing deep in his cheeks, made him look fifteen years younger. Her joy for Freddy bubbled over.

  “With you both cooking like this, you’ll have fat thighs and pot bellies in six months,” Mimi teased.

  “Ah, but what a way to go,” sighed Freddy, smiling at Cedric, and Mimi noticed he’d looked at his watch again, the third time in the last forty-five minutes.

  “If we’ve stayed too long, Freddy, just let me know. After all, I do have plans for Gianna and the fireplace,” Mimi said. Freddy laughed good-naturedly and reached for a second helping of the torte.

  “I’m sorry. You two are welcome to stay in our lives forever, though I know what a poor substitute we are for the fireplace.”

  “I think you two are swell, but this is the first I’ve heard of this fireplace, so pardon me if I’m intrigued.” Gianna looked expectantly at Mimi. “Well?”

  “Good things come to those who wait,” Mimi chuckled, and turned to Freddy. “So, why the attention to time tonight?”

  “It’s nothing, Mimi, really.”

  “Oh, tell them, Fred. These are your friends,” urged Cedric. “They deserve to know.”

  “It’s that outing business,” Freddy said miserably.

  “Oh, God, that’s tonight!” Mimi exclaimed. “I’d forgotten!”

  “What outing business? What are you talking about,” Gianna asked, and as Freddy explained, a change overtook her that startled Mimi until she recognized it and realized that it was the Lieutenant Maglione persona: the utter stillness, the intensity of her gaze, the low, controlled tones of her voice.

  “And what do they plan to do, stand outside and tell everybody who goes in that you’re gay?” Gianna was in a cold rage. Freddy shrugged dejectedly, mumbled that they hadn’t told him their plans, and looked at his watch again. It was a little after ten, and for the next two hours the upwardly mobile and the already-arrived beautiful people from D.C. and the neighboring Maryland and Virginia suburbs would line up to pay their way into Schuyler’s to hear, see and dance to the hottest reggae or jazz or rock in town; to shoot billiards upstairs; to eat hickory smoked barbecue in the back room. By midnight the place would be packed and from that moment until the four a.m. closing time, the place would pulse with fevered energy. And Freddy was always a welcoming, sporting presence, slapping high-fives with the football fans and gracefully receiving the adulation of the women who swooned in the presence of his handsome bulk. How would these people respond to the knowledge that their hero was gay?

  “Would it really be so tragic, Fred, if you’re out of the closet? I mean, if there’s nothing to hide, there’s nothing to reveal.” Cedric spoke in the matter-of-fact tone typical of the British, sounding ever so reasonable.

  Except to Freddy. “Why can’t you understand? My private life is my private business! It’s not a matter for public discussion.”

  “Do you actually believe your life will be the topic of discussion in the homes of Washington? I rather think there’s a young boy somewhere, a soccer player or a baseball player or a long distance runner, who’ll hear the news about Freddy Schuyler and know with relief that it’s all right for him to feel what he feels deep inside himself.”

  “Cedric, I didn’t ask to be anybody’s role model,” Freddy said wearily.

  “But that’s what you are, Fred, whether you asked for it or not. Do you know how many kids—boys and girls—wear your number on their jerseys? You were an institution in this town for fifteen years.”

  “And now I’m just a guy who owns a restaurant.”

  “If you were just a guy who owned a restaurant there’d be nobody who cared whether you slept with me or your cow.” Cedric’s tone was a plea for Freddie to hear, to understand. “You’re important to people, Fred, and it’s important that people know who and how and what you really are.”

  Mimi saw that Gianna was listening to the exchange with a similar degree of unease. Undoubtedly she also was thinking of the four murder victims, apparently dead because of their secret lives. And yet...

  “But Cedric, doesn’t Freddy, don’t I, have a right to a private life?” Mimi reached across the table to touch Cedric’s arm.

  He took her hand. For the first time the little-kid light in his eyes dimmed and his deep voice went deeper, the clipped British accent becoming more pronounced. “You’re talking about keeping secrets, Mimi. That’s different from a private life. When you keep your sexuality a secret it suggests you’re somehow ashamed of it, and it’s that sense of shame that gives people who hate us their best and biggest weapon. If we all lived as if we didn’t give a damn what anybody thought, pretty soon nobody would think about it at all. And who we love certainly wouldn’t be a source of fear and danger.”

  Cedric gave Mimi’s hand a gentle squeeze before releasing it and then he turned to Freddy and took his hand. “Come on, Luv, let’s drive over to the club and take a look, shall we?”

  Gianna pushed back her chair and stood up. “I’m ready.”

  It was a short distance from Freddy’s Georgetown waterfront penthouse apartment to the Adams-Morgan location of the club, but Saturday night traffic tripled the normal driving time, so there was plenty of opportunity for Mimi to bring Gianna up to date on her research on outing— every available newspaper article on the subject from New York to Los Angeles and everywhere in between; the not always congenial interview in the Blade with the guy from Queer Nation; the endless discussions with her own friends, most of whom shuddered at the thought of being forced out of the closet.

  Mimi concluded, “But even those who hate the outers with a passion don’t believe they kill people.”

  “They’re lucky not to be victims themselves.” Gianna spoke with such venom that Mimi turned to look at her and then had to slam on brakes to keep from hitting the car in front of her in the bumper-to-bumper
traffic snaking up 18th Street.

  “I was in New York last year for a seminar and I was walking in Greenwich Village and I saw posters plastered all over, on walls and telephone stalls, photographs of actors and singers—big stars—and under the photos the words DEFINITELY QUEER and I remember being shocked, not that they were gay, but that somebody would expose them so...so... brutally.” Gianna shook her head at the memory. “Do they say why they do it, Mimi? Did you ask why they do it?”

  Mimi had asked one very vocal outer that exact question. His response still disturbed her: “Homosexuality is not a privacy issue.” But Cedric’s words reverberated in her head: “Keeping secrets is different from privacy.” The concept whirled around and around in her brain until Gianna interrupted the process.

  “I wouldn’t have this job if the entire police department knew about me. Ironic and stupid as it is, there wouldn’t be a Hate Crimes Unit if the people on the City Council who had to approve the money knew I was a lesbian. But according to the outers, the world would be a better place if everybody in it knew I made love with you? I’m sorry. I don’t get it.” Gianna snorted in disgust.

  “Does the Chief know about you?” Mimi asked casually.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. That old buzzard knows everything. He probably knows about you, too,” Gianna said offhandedly, causing Mimi to stop short. The screech of brakes followed by a bellowing horn testified to the proximity of the car behind them.

  “What do you mean he probably knows about me, too?”

  “Well, he’s always asking if we’re getting along like he predicted we would— you’ve heard him yourself. Besides, your own editor knew about you so what are you so snippy about?”

  Mimi heard the laugh beginning in Gianna’s throat and sought quell it. “He didn’t know, he asked,” she replied haughtily, and Gianna did laugh at her, running a hand up Mimi’s thigh and causing her to swerve into the adjacent lane.

  “He asked because he knew, Mimi. Now pay attention to your driving. We’re almost there.”

  They could see the crowd in front of Schuyler’s from a block and a half away, a crowd, Mimi knew though she was not yet close enough to see—was comprised of young women in skimpy, slinky dresses and spike heels and young men in full, Italian-cut suits. She could, however, see Freddy very clearly—bigger than everybody— walking up and down the line shaking hands. And then she could see a small knot of perhaps ten people, definitely not dressed for entry into Schuyler’s, passing out flyers.