Lover’s Leap. Bethy hadn’t reached for her, touched her, or taken her hand; she’d just gone for Anna’s lips like a pelican going for a fish.
When Anna had fallen off her end of the natural stone bench, half stunned and cursing, Bethy looked affronted. Propped up on her elbows, her nose hurting and her eyes watering, Anna’d asked, “What did you do that for?”
“I thought that’s what you wanted,” Bethy had said coldly.
“Not even close,” Anna replied.
With that, Bethy stood up, dusted off the seat of her shorts, and left Anna there in the dirt.
Anna swallowed the wine. “I had to hustle down after her so she wouldn’t putter off in the Zodiac and maroon me,” she said.
“She was probably mortified,” Jenny said, and Anna heard genuine sympathy in her voice. “God knows I would have been.”
“Me, too. I’d want to dye my hair, change my name, and leave town for a while. I don’t think it was a sex thing at all. I think she wants to be a part of something. Maybe a part of our friendship and she thought those were the dues she had to pay,” Anna mused.
“That’s about the saddest thing I ever heard,” Jenny said.
“I don’t think Bethy thinks about too much more than Bethy. That wouldn’t make for a particularly happy life.”
Jenny levered herself off the couch, crossed to the kitchen counter, and brought back the wine bottle. She held it up to Anna. Anna shook her head. The congenial beverage had a way of turning on her if she didn’t watch it. Having sat down, Jenny poured herself a generous amount, then took a long swallow. Elbows on knees, eyes on the scratched surface of the coffee table, she looked to be making a serious decision. Anna stayed quiet, letting her think.
At length, Jenny set her jelly glass on the table, faced Anna squarely, and said, “I’m gay.”
“A lot of people are,” Anna said and waited for her to get to her point.
Jenny seemed to be waiting as well, her eyes on Anna’s face.
“And…” Anna offered to help her move past whatever had gotten her stuck.
Jenny relaxed. She shook her wild hair until it coiled Medusa-like in gravity-defying ways. Shrugging sheepishly, she said, “And you’re not.”
There was the barest hint of a question in Jenny’s tone. Anna considered her post-Zach sexuality for the first time. Many truths she held about herself and others—her ability to read people, her understanding of herself—had been uprooted as life repeatedly bulldozed its way through her preconceptions.
“I don’t think so,” she said finally, “but then I guess a lot depends on who you fall in love with.”
FORTY-SIX
A scream, cut off in its infancy, brought Jenny out of a sound sleep. In T-shirt and panties, she stumbled to the door and flipped on the light.
“Anna?”
“Here.” Anna’s bedroom light came on, backlighting her. She wore a lime green tank top and men’s plain white boxer shorts.
“You?” Jenny asked.
“No. Outside.” Anna trotted down the hall. Jenny ran after her. The scream concerned but didn’t frighten her. There was nothing to be afraid of at Dangling Rope other than sunburn and bad dreams. Three seasons before, she’d been awakened by just such a noise and had to ferry a seasonal interpreter with acute appendicitis to Bullfrog to be medevacked out. Banging through the screen door, she nearly bowled Anna over.
Without a word, Anna made room for her, and they waited in the hot darkness, listening.
“What time is it?” Anna whispered.
Jenny pushed one of the buttons on her diver’s watch, and the screen lit ghostly green. “Quarter to one,” she whispered back.
No lights showed in Jim’s duplex. The alien gray from a television screen glowed in Gil and Dennis’s place. The reception couldn’t be all that great. Jenny wondered why they bothered.
“Maybe somebody saw a mouse,” Anna said in a more normal voice.
“Maybe Heckle and Jeckle are watching old horror movies,” Jenny suggested.
The faint ticking of insects and the hush of dry wind over arid soil went uninterrupted. Jenny’s stomach began to unclench. “Cougars sometimes scream. They can sound just like a woman,” she said to Anna, still and alert at her side.
Anna shook her head, a movement that caught the trickle of light from her bedroom window. It occurred to Jenny that Anna might have heard a lot of screams in her life, screams produced by actors and, in the dense hive of apartments that made up New York City, the screams of whichever of a multitude of neighbors happened to be feuding at any given moment.
The barely audible sound track of the desert night ticked away another minute, then two. “I guess whatever it was is either all the way dead or gone,” Jenny said. Then a short sharp cry, followed by the sound of a heavy object striking a solid surface, shattered the calm.
“The Candors,” Anna said and ran down the two steps of their porch, over and up the two to their duplex.
“Wait,” Jenny called, but Anna was already banging on the screen door. As Jenny ran the short distance in her bare feet to stand by her diminutive noisy housemate, she wondered where Jim was. Probably with Libby. Even in the national parks you could never find a cop when you needed one.
“Regis! Bethy! Are you all right?” Anna called, pounded again. Silence seeped from behind the closed door. The desert music had ceased.
Trying not to be obvious, Jenny insinuated herself between Anna and the door. “Let me,” she said and raised her fist to knock.
The porch light came on, blinding in its sudden assault on their eyes. From the door came the unmistakable sound of a dead bolt being thrown. Jenny’s duplex had only the key lock in the doorknob. The dead bolt must have been either Regis’s or Bethy’s innovation.
Behind the screen the door opened halfway. Regis, shirtless but wearing shorts with cargo pockets, stared out at them.
“Hey, Regis,” Jenny said, feeling both foolish and righteous. “We thought we heard something.”
Regis said nothing. His face was devoid of emotion. In Jenny’s psyche, foolishness was beginning to get the upper hand. It easily could have been a cougar or the death throes of an unfortunate rabbit in a fortunate fox’s jaws.
Anna stepped up next to her. A show of solidarity. Though she didn’t think it necessary, Jenny was honored. “Regis, we heard two screams. They came from your place,” Anna said. “Are you both okay?”
There wasn’t a tremor in her voice. It was as solid as granite and as implacable. Given that voice, Anna Pigeon organizing groups of artists—a skill Jenny equated with herding cats—seemed suddenly plausible.
“We’re fine,” Regis said coldly. “Thanks for checking.” He started to close the door.
“Is Bethy okay?” Anna demanded.
“Bethy is fine. Good night.”
Before he could make his escape Anna said, “Let me see her.”
Regis went very still. “She slipped on the rug by the kitchen sink and hit her head on the corner of the table. She’s embarrassed because she’s such a klutz, but she’s fine.” His voice had warmed significantly. He smiled ruefully and shrugged. The understanding husband.
“I want to see her,” Anna insisted.
Discomfort boiled inside Jenny, acute, but hard to define, containing as it did elements of insecurity, bad manners, guilt, and genuine concern for both Anna and Bethy. The curse of girls who’ve been raised right. For a second Jenny thought Regis was going to slam the door in their faces. Then what would they do?
