Dale smiled slyly. “Our first weekend pass, we checked into a hotel in Chattanooga and didn’t come outta that room for two whole days.”
Sue slapped Dale’s leg. “Now don’t go telling that!”
“A while back,” Dale said, “when all that gays-in-the-military foolishness was going on, I couldn’t help laughing. The military’s brought more dykes together than any of them silly women’s music festivals has.”
“Hey, I went to one of them once,” Honey protested. “It was fun.”
Dale shook her head. “Not my kinda music.”
“Not mine neither,” Mick added. “When Honey dragged me to that thing, I thought I was gonna die of heat stroke or boredom, one. All that guitar strumming and singing about sisterhood ... I had to play nothin’ but Allman Brothers records for a week just to get all that strumming outta my head.”
“You liked Glenda Mooney, though,” Honey said, playing with the collar of Mick’s leather jacket.
“She was all right. At least she played somethin’ that had a beat to it.”
“Say, Honey,” Sue said, “speaking of music, why don’t you put on that record Dale and me like?”
“Oh, lord, not that thing,” Mick grumbled.
“Don’t be rude, baby.” Honey rose, sorted through a stack of LPs, and pulled out one marked
“Love Song Canteen.”
“I’ll Be Seeing You” began to play, and Dale and Sue rose and began to dance. They held each other close and moved together in a light two-step. Dale led.
“Come on, Mi-ick.” Honey was trying to drag her girlfriend out of the recliner.
“This ain’t the kinda music I can dance to.”
Honey rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Damn it, Mick, there ain’t no can or can’t to it. It’s just hugging set to music.”
Mick knocked back the rest of her beer and reluctantly stood up. Soon, though, she was resting her hands on Honey’s ample hips, and Honey’s hands had disappeared beneath Mick’s black leather jacket.
On one level, it was comforting to be in a place where women could dance together — a safe place (albeit a hot and tiny place) where dykes could be dykes together. On a deeper level, though, watching those women dance just made Lily more aware of her own loneliness. Looking at Mick and Honey, she wondered what her life would have been like in ten years, had Charlotte lived. And looking at Dale and Sue only reminded her that she would never have the pleasure of growing old with the only woman she had ever loved.
The song “I’ll Be Seeing You,” a wartime ballad about how love lives on even after the loved one’s death, wasn’t exactly helping Lily’s emotional state. She wiped what she thought was sweat running down her face only to discover it was a tear.
She jumped when Jack nudged her.
