“romantic overnight getaway” was born. Last night, while picking at pasta and complaining about the agonies of compulsory heterosexuality, Lily had thought aloud, “Hmm ... I wonder if your mom would be willing to keep Mimi overnight.”
“I’d venture to say that nothing would make her happier than having an extended length of time in which to dress her granddaughter in frills and stuff her full of junk food. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know...I was just thinking, I’m sure you’d like to spend some time with Ken, and there’s this get-together thing tomorrow night that Jack told me about... all dykes, apparently.”
“So what are we going to tell my mom? That I’m hoping to finally have sex with this guy I’ve been dating, while you go and familiarize yourself with the Faulkner County, Georgia, chapter of the lesbian nation?”
“Actually, I was thinking we could put it in the terms of a romantic overnight trip. After all, we’ve been under so much stress lately with the hearing coming up...maybe we want to go away for a night, have some time just for the two of us.”
“Boy, it’s true what they say about women being devious, isn’t it?” Ben laughed. “Let’s do it.”
A pinprick of worry stung Lily’s brain. “Of course, it would be the first time I’ve left Mimi overnight.”
“Hey, don’t worry about that. Mom raised three unruly boys to adulthood; she’s perfectly capable of taking care of one tiny girl.”
Lily couldn’t push back her anxiety “But what if something goes wrong and we’re not where we’ve said we are?”
“I’ll tell you what. Ken has a friend who runs a bed-and-breakfast just north of Atlanta. Ken’s been dying to take me there. If he can get us a room for tomorrow night, we could give Mom the bed-and-breakfast’s number. If she calls me there, I’ll call you where you are, and you can go see to Mimi.”
“Okay, but you have to remember: If the phone rings in your room, you answer it, not Ken.” Lily felt as if she had to resort to the tactics of a double agent just to have a normal evening out. “God, our lives are complicated.”
“Yup.” Ben flashed one of his uncharacteristically wide smiles. “But I’ll tell you what. I’m willing to resort to all manner of subterfuge to make tomorrow night possible. I’ve been dreaming about a night alone with Ken Woods since I was a freshman in high school!”
The old road known by the locals as Peacock Alley was a ghost road, marked by crumbling monuments to the tourist trade of the days before the construction of the interstate. Low-slung motor courts with signs announcing AIR CONDITIONING, COLOR TV, and VACANCY dotted the road, and Lily marveled that these little places managed to stay in business. She imagined that the family vacation motels of yesterday became the sites of today’s clandestine trysts.
A clapboard building with a Confederate flag-bearing sign proclaiming JOHNNY REB’S
SOUVENIRS made Lily think of the chenille peacock bedspreads that gave this road its nickname. The windows had been painted with yellow block letters reading BEDSPREADS, DISHWARE, and CIVIL
WAR GIFTS. Lily couldn’t tell if the store was closed for the day or for good.
As she drove north, toward Fort Oglethorpe, the roadside attractions took on a seedier appeal.
Concrete block taverns called SHOOTERS and COWBOY’S appeared to be doing a good business, judging from the number of pickup trucks in the parking lot. One bar, the PINK PUSSYCAT, even claimed to have EXOTIC DANCERS. Lily wondered what passed for exotic in rural northern Georgia.
