Part 3 (1/2)

”Where is her therapist's office?” she asked. ”What's her....”

Krista shook her head. ”I don't know. Melanie was very...private about her.” She was flus.h.i.+ng, and Alison thought, you fought about it. You didn't want her to talk to anyone else about queer problems, and by the time you came around she wouldn't tell you anything.

”How long had she been seeing this woman?”

”About a year.” Krista hesitated slightly. That you know about, thought Alison. But she said nothing. It was time to stop, before Krista either broke down or became hostile.

As she pulled her wallet out of her bag she thought of one more question. ”How did she pay? Did she have duplicate checks? Would the name be there?”

Krista's mouth tightened. ”We had a joint checkbook. But she always paid in cash.”

Didn't want you to know how much it cost, thought Alison. She shook the woman's hand, offering condolences again and gave her a business card, knowing that it would probably go right into the trash the moment she had time to rethink.

”Do you know what the killer took?” Krista asked in a voice both bitter and heart-torn. ”Her necklace. They left her wallet and her credit cards and took the necklace I gave her, and it didn't even cost twenty dollars.”

Mulling over what Krista had said, especially that Melanie was seeing a therapist, Alison was almost late in meeting up for dinner with Stacy.

Alison hadn't been to this particular restaurant since she had broken up with Sandy five years before. It was a little disconcerting to find it exactly as it had been then, like some kind of personal time capsule. Alison looked over the hostess' shoulder, hoping to dispel the odd sensation with a glimpse of Stacy. ”Mmm, I'm meeting someone. A woman.”

”A couple?” the woman suggested, as if it were something negotiable.

”No, I...,” Alison tried to protest, but the hostess swept away, beckoning her to follow. A couple or nothing, take it or leave it.

”Alison!” Stacy, wearing a blue dress, called from a booth, sounding delighted. The hostess smiled smugly, flicking her eyes over to the young man sitting next to Stacy, as if to say, ”I told you so.”

”Alison, this is Mark.”

Alison stuck out her hand, trying to hide her irritation. Call her a pig, but she hadn't expected an extra man on her date. Mark's hand was rough, as though he had been handling brick, or lumber, and so big that it swallowed hers up. She felt an odd sense of disconnection, as if her fingers had actually vanished.

”We're doing a little business. It came up after I asked you to join me. It will only take a couple of minutes.” Stacy gave Alison a little wink that said she recognized the flash of jealousy and hoped she could be a good sport for five minutes. She gestured towards the table. The silverware had all been pushed back and the cloth covered with a jumble of photographs.

”My portfolio,” Stacy said. ”Mark is my photographer.”

Alison attempted to drop her hand, but the man did not loosen his grip in response. Disconcerted, she glanced into his face. He was good looking, blond hair cut short on the top and a blue stone in one ear. Maybe ten or twelve years younger than she. When she met his blue eyes he smiled and released his grip immediately as if, having bested her he could now afford to be a good winner. On the table beneath his other hand was a legal-size manila envelope.

”We're working on the display for my show,” Stacy continued blithely, unaware of the exchange. ”They want to put together this little 'at home with the artist' display.” She waved a photo.

Alison took it by the corner. It was an excellent shot of a geometrical piece done all in blues.

”This is the best.” The boy's youthful voice confirmed her age estimate, although he was beginning to get a touch of smoker's gravel. The photo he handed Alison was surprisingly good. Stacy, in an old pair of shorts and a loose tank top, stood staring at the bulletin board. Her left hand was folded across her chest-in it she clutched a forgotten pair of shears. Her right hand was up stroking her mouth, which was slightly open in contemplation. She was totally unaware of the camera.

”I hate that one,” Stacy protested. ”I look like a geek.”

”It's the best one,” Mark repeated. He met Alison's eyes and smiled, as if they shared a joke about how silly and vain Stacy was. She could not keep from smiling back. As they talked, choosing this photo and that, she sorted through the pile on the table. Unlike other portfolios she had seen, there were at least as many pictures of Stacy as there were art shots. There was Stacy with her headphones on, bent over a piece of red and white fabric. Stacy in a tatty bathrobe, her hair twisted back in a braid that had obviously been slept in, her forehead propped against the sewing machine as if she were about to fall back asleep. Alison wondered about the sense of intimacy inferred by the photos. If Stacy had just gotten up, where did that mean Mark had been?

A bit troubled-Stacy wasn't, please, G.o.d, no, not bi, was she?-Alison put the photo down. Stacy and Mark were arguing fiercely over another photo. Her two cents would probably not be appreciated, especially since once again she agreed with Mark's 'artistry over vanity' approach.

She went through the pile of photos again, picking out, in her mind, the ones she would put on the wall were Stacy her girlfriend. She noticed that Mark, in his agitation, had lifted his hand off the envelope. Without really thinking of it as snooping, but moving stealthily nonetheless, she eased it towards her and snaked two fingers into the envelope.

She was startled enough by the one picture that she let out a tiny little, ”Oh!” which she immediately wished she could recall because it sounded so girlish. The photo was black and white, and it had the grainy look of being shot through a scarf. There was a quilt on the wall in the background (in Stacy's apartment it was hard to get a picture that did not have a quilt in the background) and Stacy was turning away from it, still contemplative. Her hair, which had been pulled back for work in most of the others, swung across her cheek with the turning motion. A dangling earring reflected a tiny point of light in the dark ma.s.s. She was dressed in the same leather outfit Alison had seen her in at the bar. She was wearing the beaded gloves-one hand reached up to brush the hair back.

”I don't think we'll use that one.” Mark's voice was without inflection, but his eyes were unsmiling. It was all Alison could do to keep from dropping the photo before his look.

Stacy craned to see. ”Guess not,” she said, and immediately went back to the quilt pictures. Obviously she had seen it before.

”The other one is better,” said Alison in a voice that she fought to keep disinterested. She handed the envelope back as if it were nothing. Mark took it without thanks.

”I've got to go,” he said abruptly, sweeping everything into his briefcase. To Alison's great relief Stacy did not urge him to stay.

”Nice to meet you, Alison. I'm sure we'll see one another again.” He had turned the charm back on. His smile, as if they had shared a joke, was hard to resist. Alison allowed the corners of her mouth to lift in response.

”Are all the men you know weird?” she asked Stacy after he had gone.

”That's a little redundant, isn't it?” asked Stacy, lifting her head from the menu. '”Weird men?' Anyway, the vibes were because of that last photo, which, incidentally, you were being a little nosy about.” Alison smiled her most appealing 'that's-the-way-I-am-love-me-anyway' smile. Stacy returned a smile of forgiveness and continued. ”He's been taking my quilt shots forever-he's really good. So last year I got asked to submit some photos for this leather woman calendar, and I couldn't connect with any women whose work I really, really liked, so I thought, what the hey, Mark knows what I do, he can handle it.”

Alison opened her mouth. Stacy, catching the look, said, ”No, they weren't s.e.x shots and no, I didn't get in it, probably for that reason. They were all kind of like that one-I decided to go the leather girl-with-real-life route. But the point of this long story that is keeping us from getting food, and I'm starved, is that he couldn't handle it, and we had kind of a confrontation about it and had to process, and it was a giant pain in the a.s.s and I don't know why the h.e.l.l he still carries that picture around. I think it's so he can remind me of how wicked I am now and then. Huevos rancheros,” she said to the waitress.

”Actually,” Alison said, trying to keep her voice matter-of-fact when it wanted to break like a thirteen-year-old boy's, ”this kind of brings up some stuff that I wanted to talk about.”

”Oh, dear.” Stacy, who was wearing her gla.s.ses, pulled them way down on her nose and peered at her worriedly. ”Do we have to do this?”

”Yes,” answered Alison, much more firmly than she felt. ”Because I have to get clear how I feel about this before we-”

”Make mad, pa.s.sionate love?” Stacy interjected in a low, s.e.xy voice, leaning over the table so that her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were dangerously near the candles. For a moment Alison almost forgot herself, and just put her hand across the table to be led away. Then she steeled her resolution.

”Go any further,” she said as if Stacy had not spoken, though her heart was pounding. ”I mean I-” She stopped abruptly, afraid of feeling like a fool with a schoolgirl crush.

”This is the dating thing, isn't it?” asked Stacy, fidgeting with her fork.

”Yeah! I mean, I have to decide how I feel about what you do. It would be like-well, if I made plutonium triggers up at Rocky Flats or worked as a furrier or something. You'd have to think about that, wouldn't you?”

”Let me ask you something, Alison. Don't you think that there's a certain similarity between what you do and what I do? That maybe I'm having little second thoughts about dealing with your line of work? I mean, at least what I do is consensual.”

”No! What are you talking about?”

”You don't think that being a cop is all about power? You don't have any qualms about working in a system that is still incredibly oppressive to women, not just as criminals but as victims, and on the force as well?” Stacy leaned back and folded her arms across her chest, all traces of seduction gone.

”I think that this is just stonewalling. This is just attacking what I do as a way of keeping from being attacked yourself.” The waitress had brought by a bowl of chips and salsa, and in her agitation, Alison tore into them. Stress eating was always good.

”If you believe that then you don't understand what I do and you don't think about what you do. S/m play for me is not about tying someone up and beating them b.l.o.o.d.y. It's about power and giving up power. Now, you tell me all about how n.o.body with the police department is in it for the power.”

Hmm, definitely time for a new line of attack.

”Don't you think that it's oppressive to other women to play a dominating role? Don't you think it supports stereotypes that we really need to move away from rather than reinforcing?”

”Look,” said Stacy ”if you have a real objection, then go ahead and tell me about it. But don't just give me something you've gleaned from reading back issues of Lesbian Connection because you think that it's the PC thing to do. Because if you're really concerned about perpetuating stereotypes, what the h.e.l.l are we doing here, doing the butch/femme thing?”