Substitute for Love (3 page)

“I’m so glad you called — oh honey…” Tori choked. “I got fired. That fucking bastard Felker, that’s who. I think I will — do you still know that lawyer? Holly says he was making all these remarks about us. Holly — Markham, yeah, the math whiz. You won’t believe this — you still there? It’s always bad when it rains. Anyway, she quit in protest. She’s driving me home. No. No, I’m sure. Not family. Oh God, honey, I can’t believe this is happening…”

She wouldn’t be able to tell Clay about it until later tonight, even though he was probably home by now. His Thursday schedule was light. It wasn’t exactly news she wanted to give over the phone. After she left Tori’s she had a scheduled duty call on Aunt Zinnia. She stifled a grin. Aunt Zinnia would be appalled that Holly had quit over such a matter. I probably shouldn’t be feeling quite so happy, Holly told herself. This is a tragedy for Tori. But it felt like a triumph to her.

Tori directed her to a 1920s bungalow not far from the 405 in northern Costa Mesa. She accepted the offer of coffee — they’d both gotten soaked putting their boxes in the backseat and trunk. Holly could not believe that she’d accumulated so much junk in six years. To add to their chill, her old Taurus had stopped providing heat a few weeks earlier. It really was time for a new car, but she hadn’t yet broached the subject to Clay. Clay had strong feelings about buying something new when the old thing could be repaired. One of those sixty-five-miles-to-the-gallon hybrid cars was awfully appealing. Of course, being unemployed, perhaps it was not the best use of her savings right now. Clay was right, fixing the heater would be much cheaper and more responsible to the planet.

“You want to make that coffee Irish?” Tori hefted a slender bottle into view. “I’ve got some whipped cream, I think.”

“Sure, why not?” Spontaneity seemed to be the watchword of the day. Red meat, alcohol and quitting her job; she was racking up quite a list. They sipped companionably and talked about everything except what had just happened. Holly was amazed that pressing research problems she’d been pursuing, that had seemed so important to complete, no longer mattered at all to her. She had walked away without a backward glance, at least where the work was concerned. The work was Sue’s problem now.

She would miss her co-workers — the Friday night ice cream socials they had in the summer, the Wednesday afternoon popcorn parties. Monday morning she’d be craving the special high-caffeine blend they’d perfected just for the beginning of the work week. She would miss the birth of Romy’s baby and the big celebration they’d been planning for Jamillah’s retirement. She had e-mail addresses and phone numbers. She would make an effort to keep in touch. As she left, she’d also made a point of formally saying good-bye to everybody. Ng and Liz had been in tears while Sue had looked on, more grim with each passing moment.

“We’ll both be able to find new jobs — I bet within a week,” Holly observed when Tori began to look depressed again.

“I know — but I liked Alpha because it was so close to home. But now I’m leery of working for any of the other local companies. Felker belongs to the actuary society. What if he tries to get me blackballed?”

Holly said honestly, “I wouldn’t put it past him. He was always hinting that there was something wrong with you. Not your work, but you. I was too obtuse to put two and two together. For me, pretty ironic.”

Tori’s eyes filled with angry tears. “Bastard. What does he know about me? So I sleep with a woman. Does he know I also support my dad? Does he care that I have a house payment to make and that I’m still paying off my student loans?”

“He doesn’t care. Once he realized you were a lesbian that’s all he could see. Everything you did was tainted by it.”

“Shit — I mean, most of the time, minute-to-minute, I forget I’m gay. I mean, I’m just not thinking about it all the time. Like I don’t think about the fact that I’m blond either. I just am. Okay — every payday when I saw the taxes I paid because I got Geena’s health insurance through Alpha I thought about it because it made me mad, it’s so unfair. Damn — her insurance, too. I’ll need to find a place where I can insure her. After COBRA runs out I wouldn’t want her to be stuck with the crappy university health insurance.”

“Tell me about it.” Geena and Clay worked at different colleges, in different state-regulated systems, but the benefits were all the same for part-time instructors. It was probably just as well that she’d never added Clay to her benefits as her domestic partner. It would have saved them some money, but Clay was intellectually opposed to unnecessarily registering with any kind of government agency, and they couldn’t get the coverage unless they registered as domestic partners.

“There was a really gay-friendly company in West Hollywood that wanted me, but that commute is horrible. It’s two hours each way on the four-oh-five. Geena might be able to change colleges — there’s UCLA and Cal State Long Beach, though it would be a step down to leave the U.C. system for Cal State. Not when she’s so close to tenure. Oh.” Tori stopped abruptly. “No offense, sorry.”

Holly smiled reassuringly. “It’s the truth, and Clay knows it. University of California standards are higher and it looks better on a resume. I went to Irvine because my mother did. Clay went there, too. But he’s happy teaching at Fullerton. He knows if he wanted to teach at Irvine then he would have to finally finish the dissertation, but I think he feels it’s too late to keep up with the publish or perish requirements. Too many arbitrary academic hoops to jump through.”

“Isn’t that the truth? Geena went through hell. Writing papers was always easy, until her dissertation, then she just hit a wall. She told me once she felt like she was bleeding every word onto the page and all without knowing if anyone would take it seriously. But she finally finished and got her doctorate. She hates the publish or perish thing, but she loves teaching and research.”

“Clay really loves the teaching. He’s very devoted to his students — lots of office hours, molding young minds, and all that.” The Irish coffee was chasing away the chill.

“Yeah, that’s what Geena gets off on. I just wouldn’t want to uproot her, not for a job.”

“You’ll find something ideal. You’re too good not to.” Holly tried to be reassuring. “I don’t know if it would help but I’d be glad to give you a reference.”

Tori visibly tried to calm herself. “Thanks. I may need it. I just don’t want to move. I don’t want to be that far from my dad. I like to stop by a couple of times a week, just to check on him.”

“You shouldn’t have to live someplace special to be treated like everyone else,” Holly said.

Tori blinked. “That’s very enlightened. If only everyone thought the way you do.”

Holly shrugged. She’d never really thought about what gay people had to put up with it, but she was sympathetic. It had always seemed to her that the rights of gay people were restricted only because of other people’s religious convictions. That wasn’t supposed to the way things worked in this country. “It just seems fair.”

There was a bustle at the front door and Geena hurried in. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry…”

Tori began to cry in earnest, angry and hurt tears. Holly turned her gaze away from their embrace because it was an intimate thing, Geena’s arm wrapped firmly around Tori’s waist, Tori’s forehead pressed into Geena’s shoulder, as if they were meant to fit exactly like that.

She stood up to go, both because she wanted to give them privacy and because it was time to weather both the traffic and the storm to reach her aunt’s.

Geena was wiping Tori’s tears away with her thumbs. “We’ll be fine, you know that.”

Tori took a deep breath. “I’m not crying over it anymore. Bastard. And Sue! I can’t believe she didn’t stand up for me, either. Just Holly.” She sniffed.

Geena gave Holly a taut smile. “Thank you for driving her home. I left as soon as I could.”

“You can’t exactly walk out on a class,” Holly acknowledged. “It was no problem. But I have to get going.”

“Have lunch with me tomorrow,” Tori said suddenly. “We can talk job-hunting strategies. And I won’t be depressed at having nothing to do. One o’clock at Tish’s. It’s near Culver and Walnut.”

“Okay,” Holly said. “Let me give you my number so you can call if something comes up.” She had not given any thought to what she would do with her tomorrows.

She tucked Tori’s phone number in her pocket and took her leave. Running through the rain to the car, she realized she could literally do anything she wanted until she found a new job. Anything at all. She would have to ask Clay for some ideas.

The 405 was a parking lot, so Holly decided to traipse up Harbor Boulevard all the way to Garden Grove, where Aunt Zinnia had lived for at least the last thirty years. National Public Radio didn’t hold her interest, and flipping radio channels just bounced her from commercial to commercial. She dug out cassette tapes as she drove, dismissing one after another as just not quite right for her mood. It was going to be a boring drive.

She was so distracted she didn’t merge out of a right-turn-only lane in time and was forced to go around the block to resume her northward journey. It seemed like fate when she noticed the books-and-music store just up ahead. She got rained on yet again, but the store was steaming warm. She left a half-hour later with two new cassettes, a replacement copy of The Mathematical Tourist — the binding on her old one had finally disintegrated past saving — and a decaf coffee concoction so thick with cream it was like drinking a hot milkshake. Loaded with refined sugar, she noted to herself. Deeee-licious. Burger, alcohol, refined sugar, quitting her job. The list of chaos was getting longer by the minute.

She slipped the Gypsy Kings cassette into the player and turned it up as loud as the Taurus’s tinny speakers could manage. Spanish guitar virtuosity combined with unstoppable rhythm had her slapping the steering wheel as she drove.

She could not remember being so energized and happy in a very long while. She turned her mind to searching out a memory of previous highs like this one and had to go back much further than she had imagined. Six years ago? Yes, six. They’d been lovers by then for about two years. It had been Clay’s idea to join an eco-tour of Death Valley and the surrounding wilderness.

They had been backpacking for two days in a group of eight, plus the guide, leaving the valley floor finally for the red-dirt foothills that yielded eventually to the Sierra Nevada mountains. Toward dusk their guide called a halt and she had dropped where she stood, not quite ready to tackle opening out the small tent that she and Clay shared. She was enjoying the trip, but she ached, every inch of her, and she felt like a soft, city girl. Which is what she was. But she was trying to become more, and Clay was committed to helping her.

Clay looked as if he could have hiked another fifty miles. Even the guide, Kevin, looked more tired than Clay did. Clay ambled up the hill for a little bit, and called down that the view of the valley floor was even better.

“We made good time, people,” Kevin announced. “We’re a good two hours beyond where we usually get to on the second day, so I brought us around through this pass because of the view. It’s very important tonight for you to check for and treat any walking blisters — there’s plenty of antibiotic ointment. We’ll get to water early tomorrow, so don’t hoard it tonight. Dehydration is a serious threat.”

Holly wearily unzipped her pack and wished that Clay would come back. He was shouldering their water and she was thirsty. Suddenly the guide hollered at someone, “Look out!” Then a cry of pain had them all exclaiming and turning.

The rattlesnake smashed into a tree not far from where Holly sat. Kevin was staring at his stomach in stunned surprise, then slowly he lifted his shirt to confront the two puncture wounds.

“Oh, my God!” Jerri tended to hysteria, but Holly didn’t begrudge her, not when she was feeling faint herself. The echo of the crack as the thrown snake smashed into the tree was louder than the pounding of her heart. Jerri was gasping out, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see it on the boulder — he stepped right in the way.” The last to her husband, who clutched her close to him.

Clay came running from the hilltop and was urging Kevin to stay calm. Another man grabbed the guide’s battery-powered CB radio and followed Kevin’s instructions. In minutes they were patched through to air search and rescue. Kevin began to shiver, but he managed to tell Clay how to administer the anti-venom and they all waited for the welcome thrum of a helicopter.

Only it didn’t come. They took turns signaling with a mirror into the sun, and the rescue teams still couldn’t find them. They weren’t where they were supposed to be. In spite of the anti-venom, Kevin had quickly slipped into unconsciousness without telling them the name of the pass they were in.

“It’s just a matter of time until they find us,” Holly tried to tell Jerri. “They have to expand the radius of the search, that’s all. When the sun goes down we can build a fire.”

“Does anyone have matches?” Clay asked the question heavily, as if he feared the answer.

Kevin had an emergency supply of them, even though fires were illegal in this part of the wilderness, for reasonable fear of forest fires. The wind began to rise.

The sun went down and Kevin grew more feverish. “It’s just a matter of time,” Holly kept telling herself. But how much time, and would it be soon enough for Kevin?

Their signal torches all went out in the wind in spite of the tinder-like condition of the scrub. Jerri’s husband was reporting in to the frustrated pilot that he still could not hear any sounds of a helicopter. A second helicopter was on its way from Edwards Air Force Base, but the time was slipping away. They had two cell phones among them, but they received no signal, and wouldn’t have been much help anyway.

The stars came out, with a sudden sharpness that was unknown nearer to civilization. There were so many of them, including the North Star, Polaris, glittering magnificently. It was of no help — they had a compass and knowing where north was wasn’t enough. They needed to know where true west was. What they really needed, Holly thought, was a mariner’s sextant. A couple of readings, a little calculation, and they would know their longitude and latitude. Until the advent of radar, it was how all travelers knew where they were.