Nevada Barr - The Rope

“Is Bethy gay?” Jenny sounded more shocked than questioning.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Anna said. “If she is, she’s not very good at it.” Carrying her wine in the jelly glasses Jenny kept for that purpose, Anna slid off the stool and spread herself more comfortably on the couch, feet up on the scarred coffee table. The entire doomed affair was ridiculous. Anna doubted Bethy was now, or ever had been, homosexual. She dove in for the kiss with all the romance of somebody bobbing for apples.

“Regis was acting like he was afraid she was,” Jenny said. “He seemed jealous. That’s why we so conveniently turned up. Regis, checking on his wife.”

That surprised Anna. That he cared enough to be jealous of Bethy surprised her as much as the idea that he thought he might be married to a follower of Lesbos. Then, again, jealousy was not about caring, it was about fear of loss: loss of love, loss of power, or loss of security.

“So he thought Bethy took me out to the overlook for, well … for exactly what she did take me out to the overlook for?”

“To deflower you,” Jenny said wickedly.

“Compromise me,” Anna added.

“Take advantage of you.”

“Ruin me.” They laughed together easily. “If he thought Bethy was up to something, she had to have been dropping clues,” Anna said. “It’s not like anybody watching us together would get the wrong idea. Unless, of course, they were prurient bastards.”

“I don’t know,” Jenny said teasingly. “Pumping iron. Running bras and sweat.”

Anna scooped a none-too-clean sock up from the floor and flung it at her housemate.

Jenny snatched it out of the air and lofted it expertly into the wastepaper basket on the far side of the room. “What are you going to do?” Jenny asked. “Tell Regis he’s got nothing to worry about? Tell Bethy she’s straight?”

“Nothing,” Anna said. “I’m going to do exactly nothing. This is the sort of situation in which not taking any action whatsoever is the safest course. In fact, I’m going to pretend it never happened. Maybe that will let Bethy save face.”

“Maybe she’s been locked tight in the closet and this was her attempt to kick down the door,” Jenny suggested as she settled on the opposite end of the couch and propped her feet next to Anna’s. Between them was a triangle of sofa cushion fenced in by their legs, precisely the right size for a little skunk to safely play in.

“Wish Buddy was still here,” Anna sighed.

“Me, too,” Jenny replied.

They shared a moment of remembrance before Anna said, “I don’t think this was a closet thing. Have you ever felt one shred of heat from Bethy? I sure haven’t.”

“Me neither,” Jenny admitted.

“Sexual beings exude pheromones, esters, vibes,” Anna said. “If Bethy is gay, she is flying so far under the radar I doubt she’ll ever know why she cried more at the end of Thelma and Louise than her girlfriends did. Does she have girlfriends?”

Jenny thought about it for a moment. Anna waited. Whatever else Bethy had done today, she had certainly given her and Jenny endless grist for the gossip mill. It wasn’t often that anyone took Anna as off guard as she’d been at Lover’s Leap.

“No, now that you mention it,” Jenny said. “At least I don’t think so. I don’t know what her social life is like in Page, but on the lake it’s always been about Regis. Her first season she had a female housemate. They occasionally did things together—lift weights mostly, I think. They had different lieu days. After Regis started paying attention to her, that was that. No more time for the girlfriend. Regis loved his fast boat; Bethy loved fast boats. Regis loved to fly; Bethy loved to fly. I think she even soloed. If Regis had loved rolling in bat guano, you can bet that would have suddenly become Bethy’s favorite pastime.”

Holding a tangy swallow of wine in her mouth, Anna closed her eyes and returned to the unfortunately named Lover’s Leap. Bethy hadn’t reached for her, touched her, or taken her hand; she’d just gone for Anna’s lips like a pelican going for a fish.

When Anna had fallen off her end of the natural stone bench, half stunned and cursing, Bethy looked affronted. Propped up on her elbows, her nose hurting and her eyes watering, Anna’d asked, “What did you do that for?”

“I thought that’s what you wanted,” Bethy had said coldly.

“Not even close,” Anna replied.

With that, Bethy stood up, dusted off the seat of her shorts, and left Anna there in the dirt.

Anna swallowed the wine. “I had to hustle down after her so she wouldn’t putter off in the Zodiac and maroon me,” she said.

“She was probably mortified,” Jenny said, and Anna heard genuine sympathy in her voice. “God knows I would have been.”

“Me, too. I’d want to dye my hair, change my name, and leave town for a while. I don’t think it was a sex thing at all. I think she wants to be a part of something. Maybe a part of our friendship and she thought those were the dues she had to pay,” Anna mused.

“That’s about the saddest thing I ever heard,” Jenny said.

“I don’t think Bethy thinks about too much more than Bethy. That wouldn’t make for a particularly happy life.”

Jenny levered herself off the couch, crossed to the kitchen counter, and brought back the wine bottle. She held it up to Anna. Anna shook her head. The congenial beverage had a way of turning on her if she didn’t watch it. Having sat down, Jenny poured herself a generous amount, then took a long swallow. Elbows on knees, eyes on the scratched surface of the coffee table, she looked to be making a serious decision. Anna stayed quiet, letting her think.

At length, Jenny set her jelly glass on the table, faced Anna squarely, and said, “I’m gay.”

“A lot of people are,” Anna said and waited for her to get to her point.

Jenny seemed to be waiting as well, her eyes on Anna’s face.

“And…” Anna offered to help her move past whatever had gotten her stuck.

Jenny relaxed. She shook her wild hair until it coiled Medusa-like in gravity-defying ways. Shrugging sheepishly, she said, “And you’re not.”

There was the barest hint of a question in Jenny’s tone. Anna considered her post-Zach sexuality for the first time. Many truths she held about herself and others—her ability to read people, her understanding of herself—had been uprooted as life repeatedly bulldozed its way through her preconceptions.

“I don’t think so,” she said finally, “but then I guess a lot depends on who you fall in love with.”

A scream, cut off in its infancy, brought Jenny out of a sound sleep. In T-shirt and panties, she stumbled to the door and flipped on the light.

“Anna?”

“Here.” Anna’s bedroom light came on, backlighting her. She wore a lime green tank top and men’s plain white boxer shorts.

“You?” Jenny asked.

“No. Outside.” Anna trotted down the hall. Jenny ran after her. The scream concerned but didn’t frighten her. There was nothing to be afraid of at Dangling Rope other than sunburn and bad dreams. Three seasons before, she’d been awakened by just such a noise and had to ferry a seasonal interpreter with acute appendicitis to Bullfrog to be medevacked out. Banging through the screen door, she nearly bowled Anna over.

Without a word, Anna made room for her, and they waited in the hot darkness, listening.

“What time is it?” Anna whispered.

Jenny pushed one of the buttons on her diver’s watch, and the screen lit ghostly green. “Quarter to one,” she whispered back.

No lights showed in Jim’s duplex. The alien gray from a television screen glowed in Gil and Dennis’s place. The reception couldn’t be all that great. Jenny wondered why they bothered.