Chase Banter [02] Marching to a Different Accordion (8 page)

“Nothing bad. She admires you. She said you are talented and have a gorgeous wife and that she is in a monogamous relationship with Gitana’s sister, which I found rather miraculous considering…”

“Oh.” Chase was relieved. Those weren’t bad things but rather facts. That Delia had stuck to the facts was a wonder in itself. “So what do you do?”

“I own the Erotique.”

“Oh.” Chase said. She was using that word a lot. She could hear Lily telling her that she was doing a poor job at making conversation.

“I can see you’ve never been there. Delia does a lot of promo work in the online message board at her website. Reading erotica lends itself to buying some of the delights that we sell. You should really stop by. It’s a tasteful place,” she added, perhaps sensing Chase’s discomfort.

“I see.” Chase chastised herself. That response was not much better than the “oh.” Lily would be truly disappointed with her lack of garrulity. She could see it now, Lily in her lilting English saying, “So you, the woman of words, have turned monosyllabic.” Chase contemplated not telling her but then decided being dishonest would not secure her success. “I will do that. I might learn something.” She was even more astonished by this remark.

“That would be wonderful. It’s especially good for spicing up long-term relationships—not that it applies to yours. It’s just that sometimes as we are inculcated more and more into mainstream society we as lesbians seem to lose some of our sense of self. Our store is designed to rekindle that sense through a combination of sexuality and sensuality.”

This suddenly made sense to Chase. In her new career as mystery writer she had, in essence, ceased to be a lesbian writer. She had turned tail and joined the mainstream, forgetting her past and her allegiances. “I know what you mean. Being accommodated has broken our ranks and with the lure of acceptance we have let our sense of community wane.”

“Very eloquently put. Come by and we’ll have coffee,” Lou said, as the children, faces flushed, approached them.

Chase smiled as Bud put her hand out to shake that of Peter, who with equal solemnity, grasped her hand and shook it.

“You’ll be coming back?” Chase asked anxiously.

“Of course. I would not desert you in this bastion of soccer moms.” Lou smiled.

In the car Chase grilled Bud about Peter. “So you two seemed to be getting along splendidly,” she baited.

Bud didn’t look up from her
Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Dictionary
.

“What did you two talk about?” From what Chase could see Peter had done most of the talking.

“Ffuts.”

“Like what kind of stuff?” Chase realized she sounded like a neurotic overprotective parent of a well-endowed teenager. And this was the look Bud gave her—a mixture of annoyance and sardonic innocence. “I know you’re only four, but it’s never too early to be cautious around the opposite sex.”

Bud rolled her eyes.

“All right, I’ll leave it alone, but if he tries anything...”

Bud sighed in exasperation and went back to studying her dictionary.

Later that evening when Gitana arrived home she found Chase sitting cross-legged surrounded by a pile of books. Bud was painting the orbs of her model of the solar system.

“What are you two doing?” she asked as she kissed the top of Bud’s head. Bud looked up sweetly. Gitana studied the model. “I’m glad to see you’re including Pluto. I think it was extremely unkind to demote a planet to a cluster of debris like that.”

“Ditto,” Bud said.

Gitana glanced over at Chase in a meaningful way. They’d decided that it was best not to acknowledge when Bud used the linguistic mode of communication of the country they inhabited. They had used this same method with the dogs. Jane, as a puppy, had refused to eat unless she was hand fed. Worried about her nutritional needs they had succumbed. Then finding themselves short of a dog-sitter they had to resort to putting the dogs in the kennel while they went on vacation. Jane had returned from the experience with kennel manners—meaning she grabbed at treats and was suddenly able to feed herself. They’d broken the grabbing, but they counted each day that she fed herself. They didn’t praise her. They pretended not to notice and the psychology worked. Jane was now a self-respecting dog and not a coddled puppy.

Gitana glanced at the book titles. She picked up
The Memory Board.
Chase was marking passages with sticky notes on
The
Well of Loneliness.
Chase put the book down. “I feel like I’ve lost my sense of lesbian identity. I tried to count how many lesbian thoughts I’ve had today and I came up with two. Only two. That’s downright disgraceful.”

“What were they?”

Chase glanced away. “One was academic.”

Gitana smiled slyly. “And the other?”

Chase glanced over at Bud, who appeared to be absorbed with getting the rings straight on Saturn. “I was folding underwear and, well, you know it made me think of things.”

“What kind of things?” Gitana inquired, running her forefinger along Chase’s collarbone.

Chase blushed profusely. “We’ll discuss that later.”

“I certainly hope so. What happened to inspire this sudden reclaiming of your identity? Did the Pink Mafia pay you another visit?”

“No, but had they been more astute they could have.”

Chase thought back to when the Pink Mafia had accosted her. It had happened shortly after the publication of her second mystery. She’d pushed the memory aside for a year or so now, but as anyone who has received a visit will attest, the experience is unforgettable. It’s not that they threaten to sew your vulva shut, only that they remind you of your duty to behave in a fashion acceptable to the high standards of lesbianism.

Chase had been in Office Max replenishing her notebook and pencil lead supplies when two women dressed like FBI agents, including the dark sunglasses, had approached her. They were a tough-looking duo.

“Ms. Banter, a word please.” One of the women guided her back to the binder section, which was devoid of other customers. The other one pulled out the yellow gate that the personnel used to block off the aisle when a forklift was in use.

Chase frantically reviewed her list of indiscretions. She had promptly paid the parking ticket she’d gotten in Santa Fe. She’d immediately purchased Bluetooths when the hands-free ordinances had been instituted in Albuquerque. Both dogs were current on their rabies shots and she had refrained from looking up how to make bombs on the Internet despite the need to do so because one of her villains had used a bomb.

Unable to contain her panic, she blurted, “What have I done?”

One of the large women, the one with the black crew cut, took her glasses off to reveal penetrating blue eyes. “It’s what you haven’t done.”

This sent Chase into a review of her current procrastinations. “Well, I have been meaning to replace that gutter and fix the hole in the stucco or there’s my lapsed magazine subscriptions and I really did misplace the electrical bill,” she blathered.

The other woman sniggered but did not remove her glasses. This revealed her dimples. Her blond hair was cut short as well. She was of a slighter build but taller than the other woman. “We don’t care about that.”

“I can’t think of anything illegal that I’ve done.”

“You’ve violated the code.” The woman with the black crew cut glowered.

“Which is?”

The blond woman handed her a laminated card. Chase quickly read it. “You’ve violated rule number three.”

Chase looked at the card again. “I’ve shunned my duty to the cause? How?”

“You’ve deserted us by becoming Shelby McCall. Don’t think we don’t know about that,” the woman with the black crew cut replied.

Chase had enjoyed having a pen name then, especially given the success of her first two mysteries. In addition to helping her to create her persona of trousers and blazers without feeling a complete hypocrite—well, at the time she hadn’t thought that she was a hypocrite—it gave her a certain amount of anonymity in her life as Chase Banter. When she handed over her Visa card, no one said any of the socially unacceptable and ignorant things that were guaranteed to pierce an artist’s tender heart and psyche. Like “Hey, are you that mystery writer that lives around here?” Or “I only read real literature. You know, like Jane Austen and Harper Lee.” Right. As if Austen hadn’t essentially been a romance writer and
To Kill a Mockingbird
wasn’t in large part a mystery novel, Chase thought smugly.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Chase said, trying to buy some time. She looked around desperately for one of the red shirts that indicated the presence of a sales person.

“Lesbian books—your books are necessary to keep the flame alive. We can’t have it like it was before, where women were scrambling for the few available books that had lesbians in them. What if Beebo Brinker hadn’t come along? Or Rita Mae Brown hadn’t written a few books before she bailed to write novels about fox hunting that do not contain even one lesbian character. We started her career and this is what we get.” The woman with the black crew cut glowered again. She moved forward, backing Chase up against a shelf of hard plastic binders of various colors. She pointed her finger at Chase’s chest. “We will not allow that to happen again.”

The blond woman pulled the finger down. “Let’s be diplomatic about this. You will continue to write lesbian novels—at least one per two-year cycle. That’s fair. And do not cheat us on page count. Books are expensive and less than two hundred and fifty pages will not be acceptable.” She pulled a sheet of paper from her inside breast pocket and handed it to Chase. “These are some issues we have decided need to be addressed through the medium of fiction.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Chase inquired, hoping it wasn’t something like the freaky right wing triumvirate that was supposedly threatening to take over the world through the financial control of all available resources.

The blond woman whispered, “The Council for the Continuation of Lesbian Culture.”

“This is a joke, right?” Had Lacey hired these women to come and yank her chain? She had also been adamant about Chase continuing to write lesbian fiction, whining at her, “You can’t just abandon us.”

The blond woman lowered her sunglasses to reveal nearly black eyes. “Do we look like we’re joking?” She cracked her knuckles.

“Maybe not,” Chase said.

“We’ll be going now. Just remember: We’re watching you and we expect results,” the woman with the black crew cut said.

Chase snapped back to the present. Bud had finished painting Saturn’s rings and now was looking expectantly at Gitana. Every afternoon they played what Chase referred to as Extreme Croquet. Bud had seen croquet in a movie and then pleaded for a set for her birthday. Chase had tried to explain that they needed grass and that seeing as how Bud’s birthday was around Thanksgiving that they couldn’t play then even if they had grass. Bud remained adamant and they ordered a set online. The day it came, Bud took it outside and set up an elaborate course atop snowdrifts, off rocks, around the garden and through a tree grove. It was absurd. But she got everyone to play that day and it turned out to be more fun than playing on grass because it was far more challenging. Thus Extreme Croquet was born.

“Is it time?” Gitana said mockingly.

Bud pursed her lips as if to say, “You know it is.”

“Can I beg off? I’ve got some work I have to do right now,” Chase said, leaping up.

Bud gave her the stink eye.

“It’s important,” Chase said.

“Yrev?” Bud inquired.

“Yes.”

Bud nodded. Gitana took her hand and called out behind her, “Don’t get too lost. We’ll be hungry soon.”

“I won’t.” Chase went to her writing studio, taking the dogs with her as Jane had a habit of stealing balls during Extreme Croquet, making the game even more extreme. The dogs settled on the couch with their chew bones while Chase rifled around in her desk drawers until she found the laminated card and list that the Pink Mafia women had given her.

Chase read the mission statement again: “We, the duly elected Committee members, are dedicated to the care and feeding of Lesbian Culture, the maintenance of our collective identities and the common causes that unite us as a people.”

Chase sighed heavily. They really did need a writer—a speechwriter. Just who had “elected” them, anyway? And who had drafted this credo, which was part dog food label and part Declaration of Independence, with precepts that had been lifted from the Hippocratic Oath and the Boy Scouts?

 “Precept #1: Do no harm.” That was good as far as it went, Chase thought, but then her mind delved deeper. Did this include not dating converts—as dating a straight woman becoming gay or, to be politically correct, realizing her true sexuality, could and did usually cause harm, as it had in the case of Lacey and Jasmine? That had broken up a marriage, albeit not a good one. And Delia had been instrumental in that because she’d first seduced Jasmine. Had the Pink Mafia visited her?

“Precept #2: Be clean, diligent and kind.” The diligent and kind part was simple enough. But clean? Did that mean hygienically clean, clean of drugs or linguistically clean?

The third one—the rule they said Chase had violated and for which they had deemed she owed reparations—was just as she remembered: “Do not shun one’s duty to the cause.”