Substitute for Love (22 page)

She registered, finally, the significance of the past tense in reference to his daughter. “Where did she go?”

“Someplace called Hope and Healing. She was nineteen, and I made her go. She was a good kid—”

She let him recover and she wondered why he was telling her.

“She wanted to please me, and I was so ashamed. So she went. She came back two months later just skin and bones and so unhappy, but she said she was cured. She dated some boys for a while, then she had a relapse, and I felt like she had to go to the support group. She didn’t want to go, and I didn’t know why she didn’t want to.”

Reyna knew. She knew enough about the pattern of ex-gay support groups to guess.

“She finally told me it was like being an alcoholic and at every AA meeting everyone talks about wanting a drink. But more than that, about how much they want it, how the drink would feel going down their throat. Or that they’d had a drink and every little thing that had happened when they’d had it, every detail.”

Reyna waved one hand in a weak gesture of understanding. She spoke for him, probably more explicitly than he would have. “They talked about lesbian sex, wanting it, having it, getting off on other people’s weakness. She was hit on by everyone, including the group leaders. And somehow this was supposed to help her not want it.”

She’d read the stories in the gay press and been tasked to formulate effective rebuttals, to keep people believing there was a cure. Some gay men reported that the support groups were a reliable place to pick up other men. The next meeting everyone would confess, cry, pray, and then adjourn to pair off again.

“It was just like that, but I kept telling her to go — I was that ashamed. Her hair was falling out, she wasn’t eating. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be ashamed of her. She was an honors student in high school. She wanted to be a doctor. She even got a pre-med scholarship. And I was ashamed of her.”

Reyna knew what was coming. She’d heard this story before as well, but it never made it into the anecdotes offered by ex-gay ministries as a known result of their services. Unwillingly, she felt pity for him.

He couldn’t seem to stop, now that he’d come this far. “That last night, after the last support group she went to, she told me she only wanted two things — for me to be proud of her, and to be able to lie down with another woman and not feel like a diseased freak. And she knew she could never have either.” He took a long, ragged breath. “Then she blew her brains out.”

She gulped at his unsparing recital. She’d written press releases based on unsubstantiated anecdotes and unverified statistics, helping those people sell their lie. She helped them for her mother’s sake, but that didn’t keep the blood off her hands.

“There’s an air about you, and it’s gotten more pronounced. You’ve lost weight. I never see you eat anything but Raisinets, and she’d be your age, maybe a doctor by now. And I can’t let it happen again.”

“I’m not going to kill myself,” Reyna whispered. “I don’t hate that I’m gay. I hate that I have to hide it.” He’d trusted her with his pain so she told him the truth in a few flat, unvarnished sentences. “And if I’m not a good girl, all that care goes away. I think he really is convinced he has my best interests at heart, that some day I’ll be glad to have no known skeletons in my closet. But I don’t think being gay is a skeleton. He’ll never understand.”

Ivar put his head back on the seat and took a deep breath. “So you want the best for her, but what you have to endure to get it makes you wish for…”

“In my weaker moments, I can’t help it. God help me.”

They were quiet for a long while and Reyna felt an unwinding in her spine. Her headache eased. It had felt good just to tell someone, though she knew it was a risk. She couldn’t possibly trust this man. “How did you know? About the first Friday of the month?”

“Kubrick night. Can’t stand him so I waited out here. Everybody was leaving the theater around one a.m. but there was no sign of you. Turns out the film broke. Long about three-thirty you came out of the alley. I’ve never been quick enough to follow you, though, so I don’t know where it is you go.”

Her habits of self-preservation kicked in. This all could have been an elaborate, well-acted ruse to get her to reveal where she went. “And I’m not going to tell you.”

“Just as well. Listen, though. I’m not on every Friday. And most of the time there’s nobody on you Sundays, but not always.”

If he was sincere, then he was taking no small risk.

“Thank you,” she was able to say. “I don’t intend to take any more chances than I’m already taking.”

“Maybe not now. But how much longer can you keep it up?”

She didn’t answer as she got out of the car. She kept her head down as rain seeped under her collar. She supposed she ought to feel relieved that at least one detective wasn’t looking for any little thing to bring her down, but thinking she had more freedom than before was dangerous. Mark Ivar had never said he would help her beyond turning a blind eye to her monthly disappearance. It would be a serious mistake to think of him as an ally.

Her thoughts turned in circles as she drove home, and it wasn’t until she was shedding her wet clothes that she remembered the woman at the theater. It all came back in a painful, aching wash of desire. Eyes dark with anguish eased by sudden desire. Soft hair framing a kind, open face. The lushness of her body, the sweetness of her mouth. The curve of her waist, the swell of her breasts — all offered in a moment of elemental honesty. There had been more, or at least she had thought so at the time. But that could just be her heart talking, and it had no right to be thinking about such things.

How was she supposed to resist what her heart craved? It was the witching hour and the black hole waited. She let herself fall and shuddered in the dark until sleep came over her like a thunderstorm.

“It’ll be fun,” Tori urged.

“It sounds like a meat market.”

“Well, it is later on in the evening, but you can leave by then if you don’t like it.”

Holly chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

“As if. Black jeans and that black silk shirt — and you’re done.”

“I don’t know how to dance.”

“You don’t have to know if you do it right.” Tori smirked. “Ask that friend of yours — she sounds like a hoot and a half.”

She could ask Jo to go with her. It was a thought.

“Murphy will be there. I’ll probably end up with her.” She bit her lower lip, sorry to have brought up the subject.

“Avoid Murphy like the plague. It’s easy with practice.”

Geena, who was chopping broccoli at the counter, shrugged. “You know, babe, if you don’t stop having a thing about not wanting ever to see her, I’ll start thinking you’re not over it.” She looked over her shoulder, her expression serious. “I don’t care about it. I have no regrets. So why do you still care?”

“Because—” Tori’s face reddened. “You know why.”

“We were almost there anyway. Don’t give her credit for improving our sex life, because we’d have figured it out on our own, honey.”

There was a pause, so Holly volunteered, “I just want you to know that I don’t understand what you’re referring to, and I don’t expect you to explain. I don’t think I want to know anyway.”

Geena laughed. “It’s no big mystery. Just something we do that nice girls aren’t supposed to talk about. Murphy made us talk about it.” Geena seemed unperturbed, but Tori’s face was flaming.

“Nice girls don’t talk about it in front of third parties,” Tori muttered.

“As I said, I have no idea to what you are referring. I am a babe in the woods here.” Holly gave Tori a look of pure innocence that was not feigned.

“Murphy’s hands are apparently more slender than mine,” Geena offered. “We learned to work around it.”

“Geena! Oh my gaaawd…” Tori put her face in her hands.

Holly could not for the life of her think why the size of a woman’s hand might — oh. She felt her own blush begin. “Okay, I’ve got a clear picture on the radar screen.” She gulped. “Can I help with dinner?”

Geena assured her she needed no help, and she had a devilish smirk that made Holly abruptly realize that there was another side to Geena hidden under the serious professor. She felt honored to have seen it.

“I can’t believe you told her,” Tori spluttered.

“I’m not shocked,” Holly protested, but she was. She had thought, well, hadn’t known what to think when Jo had blithely described her escapades. It was time to get over being a prude. If they both liked it, what the hell did it matter? It was possible that she might like it, not that she had a chance of ever finding out since she couldn’t seem to get a woman to take a second look at her.

Except for the woman at the theater. Even now, almost a week later, she thought of that electric moment and didn’t know what she wanted but knew that she would have been willing to try just about anything with her. Her eyes … her mouth…

“Babe,” Geena said, still smirking. She dried her hands and then cupped Tori’s face and kissed her tenderly on the lips. “I don’t know why you’re so embarrassed about it. So you like it. I like to do it. We’re still decent people.”

“I know that. You just like to make me blush.”

“Yeah,” Geena admitted. “Because you look gorgeous all red and shy.”

“I’ll just take this opportunity to go to the potty,” Holly said. She didn’t think they noticed her departure.

She took her time, and when she returned Geena was tossing vegetables into the wok and Tori looked thoroughly kissed.

She’d spent the previous evening with Audra, who, as it turned out, was in a burgeoning relationship with another teacher also nearing retirement. They were full of plans to travel, perhaps buy a motor home together and visit every single Civil War battle site. Holly was happy for her. She was happy for Geena and Tori, and happy for Flo and Nancy, who needed to close their blinds more often than they did. Nancy had an amazing back. Flo’s voice carried when she was particularly excited.

She was happy herself, alone. She felt as if she’d entered a cocoon, and someday she would break out to fly free. She would find the variables and constants that formed the equation of her life.

She’d sent out about twenty form letters to universities all over the country and felt she had entered a period of waiting for something to happen. After so much occurring so quickly, she was learning to be patient again. She did not have to remake her world in a week, or a month, or even a year. She would really — really, really — enjoy a night with a woman, but she wasn’t desperate for it.

At least… well, not recklessly desperate.

They were finishing up the stir fry when Tori asked, “So you’ll come tomorrow night?”

Geena snickered.

“I don’t know about that.” Holly discovered she could bat her eyelashes, if she concentrated. “But I guess I’ll go to the bar with you guys. If you really don’t mind my tagging along. I’ll ask Jo if she wants to go, too.”

Ginger Rogers sans Fred Astaire was on the marquee, and if it hadn’t been the first Friday of March, Reyna would have stayed all night. As it was she had to tear herself away from Vivacious Lady, with the lady vibrant and Jimmy Stewart befuddled. She walked slowly to the end of the alley, then waited. She’d seen the tan sedan behind her on the way and had thought she’d seen Marc Ivar’s silhouette during the film’s opening credits. But she was alone in the alley, and no one seemed interested when she walked down the block toward the motorcycle repair shop.

It felt different, tonight, dangerously different. She had always gone to escape, to lose herself, to experience renewal. Tonight she could not shake the feeling that she was going in search of something, something she could not have. She didn’t know if it was the pounding headache that never seemed to stop that drove her, or the awareness of the growing void inside her. She’d once thought that the black hole was a place she fell, but now she carried it with her.

The weather had turned to spring, but the night wasn’t warm. The chill lacked bite, however, and she left her jacket unbuttoned and imagined the wind blasting her free of hypocrisy and self-contempt.

Another bike passed her, slowed up, and they were side-by-side long enough for the other rider — a woman — to sketch a low-key biker greeting. Then she revved her Ninja into high and was gone in a heartbeat. Reyna wanted to take her up on the implied chase, but the consequences of a traffic ticket were too extreme to risk it. She was taking enough chances tonight.

The music was too loud for talking, but Holly stayed near Geena and Tori. She tried not to look alone and desperate. Jo was dancing with her Sandi, lost in the pulsating sea of women which seemed to cheer each new song as long as it was faster and louder.

Struggling to be heard over the siren wails in a souped-up version of the Charlie’s Angels theme, she shouted into Tori’s ear, “Is it always this loud?”

“It’s just the beginning,” Tori shouted back.

She didn’t want Holly’s Orgasm Quest to turn into Holly’s Loss of Hearing. “I’ll be back,” she mouthed, and she moved toward the bathroom, which was as far away from the giant speakers as she could get without actually leaving the club. The line was long. No one seemed inclined to talk, though the volume might have allowed it when the music finally keyed down to something pulsating and sultry.

She was on her way back toward Tori and Geena, who were spooning as they watched the dancers, when a voice said in her ear, “Hello, mouse that roared.”

She didn’t have the same reaction she had before, thank God, so she could smile when she turned to Murphy. She said, “Roar.”

Murphy grinned. “I’d heard that you were family now. I had you pegged from the moment I met you, of course.” Smug, but somehow likeable.

“I supposed you did. Congratulations.”

“Would you like to dance? I’ll be good.”

Holly shot a glance at Tori, not wanting to be disloyal to a friend by consorting with the enemy. Recalling Geena’s point of view on the matter, however, she decided what the hell. It was better than being a wallflower. She had barely nodded when Murphy whisked her onto the floor.