Family Affair (17 page)

Gitana organized her literature and stuck it neady into the cubbyhole box labeled for work materials. She put her arms around Chase's waist and kissed the back of her neck. Chase felt the oudine of her body against her back. Pleasure coursed through her.

"What kind of friend?"

Chase turned around. "She's nine."

Gitana laughed. "I guess I don't have to worry."

Chase pulled her tight. "You never have to worry."

"You know this Saturday thing isn't going to work for me. I can't dump on Nora that way."

"It's all right. You're going to be a great mother. It's me we've got to worry about."

"You'll be fine." Gitana ran her hands under Chase's T-shirt.

"Oh, my."

"I think it's my hormones. I've been thinking about you all day."

"At the orchid show?" Chase inquired, raising her eyebrows.

"Yes, it was a major distraction."

The next thing Chase actually registered was being seduced on the kitchen floor. Gitana was straddling her and they were both making animal noises.

As they lay together catching their breath, Chase noticed an excessive number of fur balls under the stove. She was going to have to clean better when Bud arrived.

Gitana looked into her eyes. "What are you thinking about?"

"Fur balls under the stove and improving my cleaning skills."

Gitana pinched her arm. "That's not very romantic."

"And after that unromantic thought I pondered putting dinner out for the dogs while you lit candles and ran a bath so I could love you more."

"Now, that's better. Meet you in five," Gitana said. Gitana raced upstairs pretty fast for a pregnant lady, Chase observed. She filled up the dog bowls and got them a treat. They didn't seem to mind that dinner was an hour early because their parents were upstairs being naughty.

Chapter Twelve

"You've learned things. That's good. Writers are thinkers first—storytellers second," Alma said.

Chase sat with Alma under the veranda of Alma's house while the afternoon rain poured off the tin roof and splashed into the flower beds. The rhythmic pounding of the rain was like soft background noise. Chase had once read that if you were trying to get some sleep in a noisy hotel you should find an off-the-air channel and let the white noise lull you to sleep. Rain was like that for her.

The rest of the writing group hadn't shown up yet so Chase had Alma all to herself which she rather liked. Whenever the group meeting was at Alma's house she showed up early.

"I know," Chase answered Alma, "but it just seems so odd that I get stuck all the time. I can barely get a page out and I have to force myself. I look at that particular notebook with complete dread. I've never dreaded writing before. Now, I know why there are all those writing manuals. I never understood writer's block before."

"You love writing. You're the most prolific writer I've ever known." Alma poured them both an iced tea from the pitcher sitting on the white wicker table between them.

"I want to write more than moist-mound sagas. I've written so many and I'm sick of them."

"It would be nice to have a larger, more diverse audience." Alma handed Chase her glass.

She drank her tea and frowned. "Yes, it's not like I don't appreciate my lesbian readers..."

"But there are only a finite number of them." Alma was good at finishing Chase's sentences. Picking up her train of thought effortlessly as if picking up a shiny penny off the blacktop—so evident that its presence couldn't be missed.

"Yes." Chase bit her lip and moved a stack of books on the white end table so she could set her glass down.

Alma leaned back in a wicker rocker with floral cushions. Looking at her, Chase imagined Margaret Mitchell sitting on her porch, the magnolias throwing off their scent while she contemplated writing Gone with the Wind.

"Just write the story line and follow your plot—you're good at that. Block out the places that require forensic details. Write the scenes, develop the characters, and fill in the details later—those nuggets of authenticity that readers are so adamant about can be inserted later. They aren't the story, they're the reality bites."

"That's what keeps holding me back." Chase flipped her mechanical pencil between her fingers like a baton.

"If you insert the forensic details later you can weed through your research and put in only the most crucial." Alma sipped her tea and stared at Chase.

"An overabundance of factual detail is the sign of a novice." This seemed to be the correct answer because Alma smiled at her and refilled her tea.

"You got it."

"Thanks, Alma." She flipped up her pencil and expertly caught it.

"Chase, can I ask you a personal question?"

"Does it have to do with my sex life?"

"No."

"Then, yes." Chase couldn't imagine what this would be. Writing conversations were as close as Chase ever got to baring her soul to anyone other than Gitana.

"How many of those mechanical pencils do you have?"

"Eighty-one. It's three times nine equaling twenty-seven added together seven plus two equals nine which is a multiple of three. Three is my magic number. Purple is my preferred color but blue or gray will work. I avoid red." Chase curled her lips in her best version of I-can't-help-it-if-I'm-crazy look.

"The trinity. The power of three. It makes perfect sense to me.

"Let's just keep this to ourselves."

"Of course. Always the same black and white marbled composition books as well?"

Chase nodded. "It has to be that way. It's how I write."

"Lots of writers have their little quirks. I'm not judging—just observing. You worry too much."

"I know."

Chase looked up unsurprised as Bo and Jasmine came out the back door. At Alma's house she expected you to let yourself in. She knew you were coming so it was kind of stupid to ring the bell. It seemed so relaxed to Chase whose house was rigged like a fortress—there was a gate at the bottom of the driveway, then there were the dogs and several more gates before you actually got to the front door. Bo had made mention of this fact once. Chase reminded him that she didn't like people.

"She was lost again." Indicating Jasmine, he flounced down on the wicker love seat. "I had to chase her down. She thought I was some kind of stalker."

Jasmine threw her hands up in total resignation. "I'm terrible with directions. The streets are so convoluted here. I can't keep it all straight. Chase's house is the only one I can find. I get on the freeway, take a left at exit one-forty, go straight, turn at the mountains. I can handle that."

Alma poured her a glass of iced tea. "Sit down and relax. We're still waiting on Delia."

Jasmine took her iced tea and made Bo move over. "Thank you."

"As a writer, you're supposed to be studying details. Next time someone is honking and flashing their lights you should recognize it means something." Bo said, taking the glass Alma offered him.

"Jasmine, he drives a green Pacer. How many Pacers are still around?" Chase said.

"It is an unusual car," Alma said. The rain had stopped and she eyed her saturated flower beds. She smiled.

"That car should never have been made," Jasmine said.

"It's ugly, but Laura-Lie has taken me any place I've ever wanted to go."

"Who names their car?" Jasmine said.

Chase and Alma both raised a hand. "What's yours?" Chase asked.

Alma drove a nineteen sixty-four faded red Volkswagon van. "Vaughn."

"Mine's Pauline the Passat or rather was. Now, it's Henrietta the Hummer."

"I give," Jasmine said.

"How's the story coming?" Chase said.

"It's progressing. I'm past page one hundred. I've never gtten that far." Jasmine flushed.

"That's fantastic," Chase said.

"I'm so excited. Maybe criticism is a good thing." Jasmine tuckd an errant hair behind her ear. She was attempting to grow her hair out again and this ear-tucking thing was becoming a nervous habit.

Like she had any room to talk, Chase thought as she flipped her pencil between her fingers. She caught Alma's eye and put the pencil back inside her notebook. She was obsessive. She knew it. This was another thing she'd have to curb if she didn't wasn't to raise a kid with weird lifelong habits.

"See, we need each other," Chase said, glancing at Bo who was scrutinizing her.

"Except you. Where's the mystery novel? You use us for beta-readers on novels that are safe for you. Don't get me wrong—I think they are well-written, funny and redemption bound—all admirable traits, but you already know how to do that," Bo said.

Chase got up to refill her already full glass. Alma put her hand over the top of the pitcher. "Avoidance tactic." Chase sat back down.

"We all suck. So what if your first mystery novel sucks? Isn't that the kind of stuff you tell us?" Bo said, refilling his empty glass.

"Point taken. When it's my turn I'll bring it. Deal?"

Delia came flying out the back door, letting the screen door slam behind her. Alma cringed. "Sorry I'm late. I had to drop Graciela at work. Jacinda removed the radiator on her car, with her bad hip no less."

"There's going to be nothing left of that car," Chase said. Graciela better start looking around for another clunker. The bus system in Albuquerque was not good. She needed to get around and Chase didn't want to be her emergency taxi service.

"I didn't know Jacinda had a bad hip. What's wrong with it?" Alma asked.

"We're not certain she does. It's more a sporadic sort of martyrdom. We added the phrase, with her bad hip no less, as a family joke of sorts," Chase said.

Delia passed out copies of a short porn story she was hoping to sell to an erotic anthology. They all began perusing it except Chase who was still concerned with family dynamics.

"Is Jacinda still mad about Graciela's jail stint?" Chase asked.

"Probably, but there's this other thing." Delia took a chair.