Gretchen leaned in closer from the other end of the table and yelled to be heard. “Mara’s looking for someone who looks like Audrey Hepburn.”
“The one with the trousers?” the redhead asked.
Gretchen shook her head. “The big-eyed homeless cat one.”
“Renny,” the redhead laughed.
Two women raised their glasses, something lime green and another that looked too darned blue to be edible. “Renny.”
She’d never been a fan of jazz, not that she’d heard much of it or that she’d ever judged anyone who liked it. She possessed a couple of Michael Bolton CD’s and at least once a year played them just because he was so cute. She knew she’d spin Donny Osmond every decade if she still had a turn table, so she really wasn’t chucking stones at anybody’s glass house. But Renny…
First, she did look like Audrey Hepburn despite her tough girl black tank top and ripped jeans. She shared that elegant, slim brunette look Audrey had made famous, and she gave off the same physical vulnerability that made you want to feed her. Until you saw her eyes. Unlike Audrey, Renny had the eyes of a street cat, a wise, wily and onto-the-world kind of feline. But if put her in the right outfit, soaked her with a hose, and had her pet a wet cat, Mara knew she’d have the perfect picture.
It was too bad the picture wouldn’t capture the woman’s voice. The bar had become completely quiet when Renny had been introduced. They knew her here, and they knew what to expect when she took the stage and opened her mouth and made you feel something, something sad and a little bitter but so good you wanted to feel more of it. Accompanied by a pianist, every song she sang was new and wonderful. And every song made Mara long to hear Renny sing more even though it was like testing a bruise. It hurt, but she didn’t want to stop touching it.
The set ended, spun out on a note so beautiful and dark Mara didn’t know what to feel. The lone pianist stayed quietly behind and messed around at the keys like only the really talented could, but even though the entertainment had stopped, the bar didn’t immediately ratchet up its volume. Maybe everyone was still a little bruised.
Mara watched Gretchen get up and head backstage, lucky enough to know Renny that well. The server approached the booth and dropped off another round of drinks, some appley green, a clear, and three pinks, and there was shuffling until everyone had the appropriate color in front of them. Mara realized she and Gretchen each had a pink martini, but she had a spare. “Oh. This is extra.”
The redhead smiled. “It’s for Renny.”
She felt like a celebrity citing had been announced. They knew Renny so well she’d be joining them. Renny, who was probably good enough to make an actual CD that wouldn’t be lost in anyone’s drawer next to Michael Bolton and the vinyl Donny Osmond. She shifted the drink a couple of inches over and moved further into the booth. Renny was good enough to be a professional singer, and she’d be sitting next to her.
Gretchen returned first, her face without expression, as if she struggled with too much emotion and erred on the side of shutting down, but before Mara could check on her, Renny slid in. Renny, who could looked like Audrey Hepburn but could pull off Katherine Hepburn’s over-sized trousers, she moved so well.
“Renny.” Gretchen hesitated then shouted out her social obligations from the other side of the booth. “This is Mara. She’s just moved into the loft above my shop.”
Mara tried to offer a handshake, but sitting shoulder to shoulder, it was futile. Renny didn’t seem like she was a handshake kind of gal, and Mara felt watched by cat eyes, green close up. “Someone new. Good change.”
She sipped her drink, a little uncomfortable with the intensity of the woman. “Change is good. I’m actually from the States.” From the States. Didn’t that sound foreign and exotic? Mara wasn’t a night club singer and was, in fact, a middle school teacher trainer, but in the land of Canada where she could drink pink martinis with girlfriends, she was from
the States
.
Gretchen shot down her martini, waved her empty glass. “Mara needs to take a couple of pictures of you for Abundance.”
Renny slammed her martini in answer. “What kind of pictures?” She waved her empty glass back at Gretchen to mild laughter at the table.
“Not anything inappropriate.” Mara felt herself blush and took a deep breath. “I need a scene from
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
, a picture in an alley where you rescue a cat in a nineteen-sixty’s dress in the rain.” She thought about what she’d said. She must have had too many martinis if she was dangling her modifiers. “The cat’s not in a dress. You’d be in the dress.”
“I could do that too.” Renny leaned her head toward Mara like a girlfriend sharing a joke then waved at the server. “Another round for these ladies.” She turned to everyone. “But not for me. I’ve got a couple things to do before my next set.”
Jodi or Jillie, maybe, called to Renny as she rose from the table. “Hey, party after.”
Gretchen shook her head. “No. Last time the guy in the apartment below complained to the landlord.”
Mara considered that her neighbor below was Gretchen’s empty shop. A night out with girlfriends and then hosting an after bar party? That would be as divine as trousers. Then the suburban hostess voice kicked on in her head that she didn’t have anything at her place, no appetizers, no wine, certainly no whatever went into a pink martini. Janie would have needed planning and cleaned the soap scum out of the tub before company came even though Janie wouldn’t have taken enough baths to acquire soap scum. “You can all come to my place.”
“Great.” Renny waved and headed toward the stage, calling out over her shoulder, “this one’s for the American.”
The lights went up again on the stage. The pianist took her seat and began to play something less jazzy and more energetic. It was perky even, like the kind of romance ballad a rocker guy growls out to his woman. The women at the table shook their heads when it started, but Gretchen polished off her drink, got up, and moved to sit in the spot Renny had vacated. “Love Tonight.”
“Love Tonight? Who does that one?”
Gretchen sighed. “It’s an original.”
Mara sat up straighter in the booth. “Renny wrote it? That’s amazing.” She focused on the stage.
Renny leaned over, her tank top gaping. She might not have Mara beat for cleavage, but Mara was pretty sure she couldn’t work hers. Renny made her breasts shimmy. And she sang really well. “You can be lonely. You can be free.”
Mara turned to her new friends and smiled. She was having so much fun.
But they weren’t watching Renny. They were watching her, waiting for something. Waiting for what?
“You can be curious right now with me.”
Be curious? Mara looked around the bar again and spotted one of the messy men she’d seen on the way in. Short, slicked back hair. Heavy frame. Oxford shirt. Breasts. She looked into her drink to buy herself a minute and tried to casually take a sip, although she felt her hands shake. She looked at the guy again. Yep. Breasts.
She turned her attention back to the stage as if everyone in the booth wasn’t staring at her, but when Renny smiled and sang, “tonight there’s no room in my bed for guilt,” she felt her cheeks catch fire in what had to be unmistakable pink. She squared her shoulders and turned to the women in the booth. “I’m not even Catholic.”
They tried not to laugh, and she appreciated that, although the redhead did choke on her drink. Gretchen grimaced and whispered to her. “Sorry, I thought you knew.”
Mara raised her hands and shrugged her shoulders. “How?”
“Everybody knew.”
Dylan. That poor boy had such a huge crush on Gretchen. “Dylan.”
Gretchen laughed. “That’s why.”
The redhead yelled over the music. “Men love lesbians. They think we’ll let them watch.”
Watch? Mara swallowed, and Renny sang. “Let it go, girl, say yes.”
Mara waved with her whole arm for the server.
“No one said we were right. No one said we were pretty.”
She kept waving but turned back to the table. “You’re all very pretty. You are.” She felt a bubble of hysteria as the server approached. She indicated another round then gave into her nervousness with full-out laughter, and it spread like wildfire down the length of the table.
Renny sang louder. “Tonight, tonight, tonight. My bed’s right for two.”
Maybe they’d think the box of wine that came with its own spigot was ironic, kitschy and fun, as opposed to all she could afford. No one seemed to mind. They’d brought whatever bottles they’d come upon at the various stores between the bar and her loft. There was rum and vodka, a couple of red wines, and a bag of Oreos. And God bless the woman who’d brought potato chips. Mara knew she really needed some food in her system before she drank any more.
In the darkened loft the beam of the streetlight gave a city feel to the place, and the candles softened the edges of everything. Mara stood near her couch and watched the women gathered in the kitchen. They all seemed to talk at once and yet had no trouble following the strands of conversation. They’d known each other a long time, had things in common. Some of them had probably even dated.
She tried to match them up but had no experience to draw from. She knew rich guy/beautiful woman and tall man/petite woman and bad boy/stupid girl and even responsible principal/teacher trainer warehouse shopper mom. Some worked. Some didn’t. But she at least had the templates for men and women. This was unmapped territory, and she could feel left out or different or new, but she didn’t. It just felt like she’d been invited to step inside the circle for a night and all that solid friendship and fun was hers to share.
Gretchen refilled her wine glass from the box, a move Mara appreciated. Gretchen had validated the cheap one, given it a drinkable seal of approval. She crossed the room and Mara wondered if she should feel embarrassed for being so naïve that someone could accurately accuse her of falling off a heterosexual turnip truck. She heard Gretchen take a deep breath. “About tonight…”
Mara waved her hand. “It’s fine. More than fine. I didn’t know because I’m, well…” She hadn’t exactly fallen off anything farmlike. She was smart she knew and not completely inexperienced, but somehow…
“Young.” Gretchen smiled.
She returned the smile. Young was good. She’d take young. “Yeah, about some things. Maybe lots of things. But I think it’s great that—”
Gretchen held up her first two fingers. “Two conversations we can skip because I’m less young about this, and I’ve had this conversation too many times to count. One, I know that it’s great that I’m lesbian. I appreciate the impulse, but you don’t need to make me feel any better about it.”
Mara sighed with relief. It saved her saying something in earnest nervousness like
you people
or
some of my best friends are
… Whatever she’d blurt out would surely do the opposite of what she wanted her words to do.
“Number two, I’m not interested in dating you. Oh, and I’m going to add number three because it also comes up. You don’t need to wonder about your attractiveness, or why another woman wouldn’t want you, or what you did or didn’t do to make me only think of you as a friend. You think of me as a friend, and I assure you it’s not driven me to therapy, so don’t you go there.”
Mara let out a big sigh. Those three things were exactly what she needed to hear.
Gretchen leaned in a little closer. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” She checked to make sure it was true. Yep, it was true. “Gretchen?”
Gretchen nodded, waited.
“If I could pick teams, I’d at least be bi-sexual.”
Gretchen laughed in surprise. “You go, Mara.” And she felt a rush of confidence at the atta-girl. She was, as every minute went by, less young, more worldly, more experienced, and she’d said something pretty damn witty. It wasn’t just the cheap wine… she really was enjoying some abundance in her life.
Gretchen tipped her head toward the party in the kitchen, and the two of them turned to join the rest of the party. “Just watch your back. Renny’s trying to prove something.”
Mara froze as Gretchen returned to the kitchen, and she heard Renny’s voice. “It’s time to dance.” She had flashes of junior high slow dancing. Randall Simpson’s groping fingers had migrated well below the waistband of her moon jeans, and Mrs. Carpell had yelled out
hand check
. Randall’s hands jerked up to the appropriate region of her lower back, but they’d crept again and again the whole time Lionel Richie had sung
Penny Lover
. But the worst of it was she hadn’t wanted Randall Simpson’s sweaty palms on her rear end at all. She’d not been that kind of girl. She wasn’t sure she was that kind of woman.
She watched Renny move over to the CD player and considered that even with a man she might not be that kind of woman and wasn’t that depressing? For more than a decade she’d somewhat routinely had sex with Dan, made sure her legs were shaved, the lights dim, nobody bonked heads. While not bad, she’d have to honestly rank a Luscious Bubble bath and a good book above it. Also placing higher than intercourse? Food, any food. Naps. That parking space you never get and suddenly find open. A sale on kids’ sneakers. Banana peppers. Plastic flip flops. Her list of pleasures higher than sexual ones was surprisingly extensive, even to her.
Renny gathered up CD’s from everyone who’d raided their cars for one and began to sort through the possibilities. Mara wondered if she’d recognize any of them. Madonna’s
Like a Virgin
had been popular during her middle school dance years, but Mrs. Carpell had banned it based on the title alone, even though a virgin was someone pure, chaste, and unspoiled. Mrs. Carpell must have seen Madonna and realized it was ironic. Mara realized she was sweating. She did sweat a little in John’s presence, maybe felt something she didn’t want to think about, but it might have been the vat of bath cream she’d gotten zingy with and not John at all, and sure, she’d experienced some new and exciting dreams during her time in the loft, but if she studied it enough, she had to conclude her sexual, whatever it was, motor, animal, system, seemed under-powered.