Scavengers

I tailed the speed-demon hostess as she steered me through an obstacle course of non-smokers, misbehaving children, and waitresses hell-bent on mastering their balancing act. I followed her all the way to the back of the restaurant: the loathsome, remote place that housed and ostracized the smokers.

"Coffee,” I instructed, sliding into the hunter green booth and retrieving the pack of cigarettes from my back pocket. “And she'll have an Earl Grey,” I added, nodding in the direction of Claudia, several paces behind.

Nearly side-swiping the waitress, Claudia neared the table. A newspaper hitched a ride under her arm. She sat down and without a word began to read the day's headlines. Historically, I avoided them, failing to find sense in starting any day with bad news.Give me caffeine or give me death!

And a flawless calm until the fog clears. Newspapers existed for potato peelings, birdcages, and puppy puddles.

Claudia was different, though: a self-proclaimed woman of the world who believed that information begets control. If she knew, she could take charge. If she knew, she could predict.

She did not like uncertainty.

The newspaper gave her those stock market codes and numbers that were gibberish to me. She had convinced herself long ago that her faithful eyes would somehow cause her nest egg to grow, incubated by sheer intent. Even I had to admit that the stocks she inherited from her grandmother, a few years ago, had steadily fattened. She wouldn't have to worry about her financial horizon, but I doubted that mere vigilance was the real catalyst. If you predicted enough times, you'd be bound to be right sooner or later.

And for someone who didn't have to worry ... This morning, her beetle-brow twisted more tautly than the blue band tethering her long French braid.

"Are you going order?” I asked, sliding a menu in her direction, forcing it under her newspaper.

She nodded in affirmation but failed to look up.

While the waitress delivered our beverages, I glanced over the menu as I prepared my coffee for desperate consumption. With one eye on each activity, I managed to pour cream, pick from the menu, stir, and get the cup to my lips without another infamous disaster.You look good in coffee.

Yes, you wear it well.

"Any idea what the theme is today?” I begrudgingly asked, interested solely in getting Claudia to talk rather than having to resort to self-conversation.

"Ginny wouldn't say."

I couldn't figure out if my interruption forced her to stop reading or if she came back to the world enough to realize it was seven thirty in the morning and she was having breakfast with her lover.

Either way, the paper came to a sudden, crunching close, and her eyes peered into mine. A glint of frustration flickered there.

"No idea, huh? Well, I just hope it isn't like the last one!” I began, knowing full well that my tone differed little from any other misbehaving child in the restaurant. It was a tone I knew would invariably capture her attention—even if to came to me via reprimand. “A murder mystery weekend! Whose idea was that one anyway? Christ, all I did that weekend was wish I had been the corpse."

"Come on, Kate,” she retorted, rolling her green eyes. “It wasn't that bad. I had fun. And come to think of it, so did you.” Her face contorted in analysis of me.

"Well, maybe,” I conceded, raising the menu, hiding my face from the sight of her. As long as I lived, I knew I would never get used to tension between us. Those eyes of hers could castigate or enliven me—slay or heal—discount or devour the entirety of my soul.

"So do you want to talk about last night?” I posed the question and regretted it as soon as it rushed my lips.

Hauntingly, she replied, “I'm not sure what there is to say, Kate. Words don't seem to cut it anymore, do they?” Her final words arrived as a standard query, but they lacked hope's crucial question-mark inflection.

An abrupt, tidal sadness washed over me. Its wicked torrent seized me, threatened to pull me under. I felt the need to gasp for breath as if I were drowning, and thankfully, the waitress’ return momentarily buoyed me up.

Despite the sudden disappearance of appetite, we both heeded the expectation and ordered breakfast. She chose pigs in a blanket; for what subconscious reason, I refused to consider. I chose eggs Benedict, my reason very conscious: I felt betrayed.

Once we were alone again, we merely stared at each other. Looking at her had always been like looking into a mirror: myself reflected back, a kinder vision because of the love I found in her face, a perception that proved an impetus to reach outside myself. And now? Now, there analogized the insidious vision of a carnival's hall of mirrors: my view distorted, contrary, and paralyzing.

"If words don't work, Claudia, then what do you suggest?” I asked as calmly as I could, afraid to mix desperation and anger. “What are we supposed to do?"

She yo-yoed her tea bag, manifesting an undivided interest in watching the golden drops ripple the surface of her tea. Then she shook her head, shrugged her shoulders, and minded a deafening speechlessness.

Was there really nothing to say?

If there was, for the life of me, I could not think of it.

Stalling for time, my mind scrambling for answers, I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the rays of morning sun slicing through the Venetian blinds. Confusion rose tantamount to reason.

Erroneously, I assumed that in the dying of something, in the close of a relationship, there would be a thousand things to say. Angry things. Damnations. Abominations. Goodbyes. Regrets.

Something. Anything. Who gets the microwave? Who gets the worn blue comforter, our years together having taken it from royal to an insubstantial sky-blue? Who gets the shame for having failed? Who retains the depleted dreams that prophesied us ancient and still side by side?

In the dying of something, in the closing of a relationship, shouldn't there be a million things to say?

I guessed not.

The impenetrable silence simply stationed itself between us: a stoic sentinel of our floundering, guarding a fortress built between—instead of around—what had always been sacred.

In the dying of something, how was I to feel life?

Wordlessly, we concluded breakfast and retraced our way through the eatery's obstacle course to the exit. With the clock wending its way swiftly to nine, we hurried to the car and headed toward Kris and Ginny's house.

There was a part of me that wanted nothing more than to go home, to slip back into a Saturday morning coma, with a sheet over my head and tag on the big toe. The thought of socializing with my friends, her friends—ours?—well, suffice it to say, sadness made me uncivilized.

Perhaps she sensed this. “You're not going to make this day unbearable for everyone, are you?”

her question came, barely wrapping gauze around her threat.

Somewhere inside I thought to apologize for my attitude that deepened the abyss between us. I really didn't want it to be this way. I really didn't. I didn't know what else to do. An apology would change nothing. Instead, snidely, I responded, “No, I'm surethey'll see to that."

We were off to the Lesbian Adventure Club. For well over two years now, Claudia and I had participated in this caper.Dykes Who Dare, I called it, but only because it riled her, made her beam with exasperation. She'd run her fingers through her long hair, raise her skirt above her knee, and look to me, her eyes direly scanning for sincerity. “I really don't look like a dyke, do I?"

Maybe one day she'd fathom that the word had evolved since she had come out some twenty-years prior. When our teasing lacked a sharp edge, I hoped she would never understand; there existed something so luscious in her self-defense.

The theme of the adventure club rotated monthly between couples. Each became responsible for concocting and executing their own idea. Our wintry excursion consisted of inner-tubing on Suicide Hill, halfway up Windsor Peak. We also orchestrated a weekend of camping—really roughing it, out in the middle of nowhere, but the weather transformed it into the last two suites at a posh hotel. Hardly an adventure. Unless one considers a dozen lesbians and only two beds, a dangerous expedition. All right, so we sprawled sleeping bags on the floor. You can't blame a girl for stretching the truth just a little.

Despite what I had just petulantly indicated to Claudia, I eagerly awaited the get-togethers of the club, the camaraderie, even the anticipation that came from not knowing what would be expected of us. I took delight in the challenge, the stretching beyond and outside myself.

Each Saturday that we presented ourselves portrayed a mile-marker to me. It meant we were together once more. Another month had passed, each of us still clinging to the other. Initially, the need for this arose not so much from worrying about our future, but rather, it came from watching the group itself: how it shifted, partners switched as if it were a freshman dance, and how some of the women simply drifted away from the nucleus. I did not want that for myself; I did not want that for us. We were different; we had pledged to be different, faithful, to remain together no matter what tried to drive a wedge between us.

Those ideas began in utter innocence: a way of reaffirming the bond between us. Now our monthly appearances amounted to a sigh and a symbolic wipe of sweat from our brows. We were still together—but neither of us could quite fathom how.

Claudia finally eased the car next to the curb, our destination reached. She turned off the ignition and just sat there, staring blankly, straight ahead. I failed to find a reason for her hesitation, so I distractedly noted the cars on the street. I counted heads: who had arrived, who had failed to show. Then my attention returned to the utter silence and stillness between us. As if in suspended animation, we paused our mission, the world—perhaps, breath itself.

Then her hand slowly made its way to my thigh. She squeezed my leg so intently that I could almost sense the transference of energy, of emotion. I watched her hand, studied it, so unsure of its meaning.

And then my hand clutched hers, tentatively.

The silence thickened.

I expected words from her. Some clarification. Some indication. Something from the worldly woman who believed that information begets control. But she said nothing. She simply held on. I held on—suddenly in need of our touch.

And then she looked at me. For the first time in a long time, she really looked at me, pupils riveting soul to soul.

Tears spiraled in my throat, as if their presence had just received permission, or validation, or maybe, an invitation itself.

She smiled. As simple as that. No words, no bridges or bandages. Just a smile.

And then she looked away and reached for the door handle.

I swallowed hard.

I followed her.

* * * *

Flitting their way up the sidewalk, my eyes consumed the old Victorian house. I swallowed the whole of it inside me, into my soul. Something sacred abided here; something warm and welcoming replenished me. From the flowerbeds awaiting July sun, to the huge front porch with its white, tottery swing, all the way up to the antique lightning rod on the roof's peak. The house blended into its surroundings as if it had always been this sturdy and beautiful, as if it could no longer remember the painstaking years Ginny and Kris spent renovating. I wondered if it felt any fondness toward me, recalling how I had helped scrape and paint andoo andah. In its monstrous grandeur, it always allowed me passage, and just as consistently, it neglected to neither hail me nor boast a grateful kinship. Nonetheless, I smiled whenever I passed into its hospitable bosom.

Before Claudia's finger completely depressed the doorbell, the immense front door creaked open.

Ginny suddenly emerged from the gape, leaving half her sentence still inside the Victorian.

"—were ever going to get here."

"Sorry,” Claudia responded, more out of reflex than sincerity.

Ginny's inquisitive eyes scanned the both of us. I knew she was determining the depth of the tension between us. Almost protectively, I grabbed Claudia's arm, stared cockily, defiantly at Ginny, and said, “Come on. Let's get this show on the road."

We entered the house. The door closed behind us, as if hoarding. We passed through the dining room. Incredible rays of sun gave the room a sense of the surreal; I imagined that this was what entering the afterlife would be like. We grazed the sun-soaking leaves of the Ficus tree and headed to the study.

Before our feet had even managed to take us wholly into the room...

"A murderer is among us. Run for cover, girls!” came an unidentified, shrieking voice.

In unison, every woman in the room hit the deck and teetered between hysterical laughter and melodramatic screams. Muse, the small gray cat on the back of the sofa, arched her back and scrunched her ears.

Needless to say, I was not amused—at least not until I sat on Alison's stomach as she writhed on the floor, pretending to be gasping for her last breath of life. “Need some help?” I asked as I teasingly wrapped my hands around her neck.

"Don't kill me! Don't kill me!” she yelped.