Chapter Five. Beth’s breath escaped abruptly, leaving her instantly light-headed
Beth’s breath escaped abruptly, leaving her instantly light-headed. Had they not been holding hands, her feet would have remained frozen, but Mary used their physical link to pull her closer. Her arms slid around Beth. They were face-to-face, inches from each other. Beth could smell the sweetness of beer on Mary’s breath. All she could think about were Mary’s lips. On hers. Automatically, she pushed Mary away.
There were at least five seconds of excruciating silence. Beth needed to say something, to explain her actions. But her mouth froze slightly opened. When she couldn’t form any words, Mary offered some.
“Should I apologize?”
“I’m not sure.” Which was true. Beth felt drawn to this woman, but she didn’t want to play along. If Mary was playing.
“Do you feel the need to slap me?”
“No. It’s just that I’m not used to kissing someone I hardly know.” And I’m not going to hand you a tissue and the keys to my apartment, either.
“Hmm, that stranger stuff again.”
Someone turned the door handle. Mary ignored the shuffling on the other side, but Beth saw an opportunity to escape. She wasn’t comfortable hiding out in a bathroom with a woman she felt like kissing. She had enough problems.
“Mary, can we take a time-out, here?”
“The kind where I have to go sit in the corner?”
“No, the kind where I have to get some air.”
Mary opened the door without a trace of embarrassment. The look she gave Beth was either brazenly confident or entirely guileless. Beth wished she could read her, but Mary was not as obvious as she seemed. She was one complex woman.
They went out to the back porch again. Most of the partygoers had gone inside to dance, leaving the wooden tables empty.
Mary scooped two beers out of a cooler and took the chair next to Beth’s. “Just how long will it take before we’re not strangers?”
“That depends.”
Mary refused to echo Beth’s flippant tone. Meeting her eyes, she asked, “On what? Whether we’re honest with each other?”
Beth’s neck prickled. Mary could see too much. “It’s funny how that works. Or not.” She couldn’t stop the bitterness from leaking into her voice. “You think you know someone. After years. After living together. But it’s no guarantee.”
Because it wasn’t about time, she thought; it was about trust.
Mary smiled at her so gently, tears rushed into Beth’s eyes. “Tell me your last name, Beth.”
“It’s Standish.”
“So even though you’re on the lam from a woman, are you at least considering this a vacation of sorts?”
“I guess, in a way. I mean, I had planned on taking some time out, just not like this. Not now.” She looked at Mary. “Does that make any sense?”
“Yes. Sometimes we don’t have the opportunity to pull out the travel brochures and select just the right vacation destination.”
Beth nodded. “I registered for the race but had no hotel reservations. I didn’t know where I was going to stay until I showed up here.”
“Well, I think you made a good choice.” The reply could simply have been a polite platitude, but Beth could tell that Mary really meant it.
“How long have you known Alder?”
“About three years, I guess.” Mary seemed to spend a moment in happy recollection. “A friend of a friend dragged me to a party at the Coop one night. I must say, Alder’s shindigs were a far cry from the hairspray-and-attitude parties I’d been used to.”
“Hairspray and attitude?”
“That’s L.A. Not all the L.A. parties are that way, but one is one too many.”
“Say no more. It’s nice in a crowd like this, where the music is great and no one is fighting or too drunk.”
“Alder wouldn’t stand for that and everyone knows it,” Mary said.
“Would you call yourself a regular here at the Coop?”
“Not really, though I imagine living here would be quite fun. What’s your opinion on that?” Mary looked genuinely interested.
“Well, I hardly count. I’m just a visitor, really. But I like being here. It’s quiet but there’s company when you need it. And Alder’s like everyone’s mom.”
Mary nodded. “She always seems to have just the right thing to say at just the right time, doesn’t she?”
A silly old expression came to Beth: You ain’t just whistling Dixie. Smiling, she said, “Maybe she’s psychic.”
“Or maybe she just pays attention to life’s lessons a little more than the rest of us impulsive slobs.”
Beth laughed. “You may have a point there.”
“What is it that you do that allows you to take unplanned time off?” Mary asked.
“I own a business doing home appraisals. The market is pretty flat. I just made the decision to go.”
“You just walked away?”
“No.” Beth was amused by the shock in Mary’s face. Obviously she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would simply abandon her career on a whim. Mary was right about that. “I left one of the women who work for me in charge.”
“Will the business survive without you?”
“Oh, I’m sure. Candace is almost better at my job than I am.” Beth tapped her beer bottle against Mary’s. “So tell me, what do you set your alarm clock for every workday?”
“I’m a firefighter.”
“Really?” Beth was impressed. “That must be intense.”
Mary nodded. “I only work about ten days out of the month, but those ten days can be brutal.”
“I can imagine. Tell me about a day in the life of a San Francisco firefighter.”
Mary chuckled. “There’s a lot of hurry up and wait. Every morning we have a meeting to discuss issues to do with the firehouse, the community, new laws, things like that. There’s a workout room and a basketball hoop out back. I mostly keep myself busy.”
“How often do you get called out?”
Mary took a swig of beer. “It varies. Most calls are for car accidents. We treat people at the scene and put out engine fires. House calls are usually routine. Smoke from overcooked dinners. Cats up trees.”
She seemed to be avoiding talking about real emergencies, the dangerous ones. Curious, Beth asked, “What’s it like when you get there and it’s something really serious?”
Mary was silent for a moment, tapping her fingers on the table. “Not so long ago we got to this house in Noe Valley. Flames were shooting out of all the front windows and the neighbors were screaming that there were children inside. A babysitter came crawling out of the back door. She was dragging a toddler. She told us a five-year-old was still inside.”
Dreading what was to come, Beth whispered, “Oh, no. Did you go inside?” She could picture Mary stumbling into a flaming building searching for a child.
“No, the baby was almost unconscious so I stayed with her to try to bring her around before the ambulance arrived. Two of the other guys went in. They found the little boy, but before they could get out there was another explosion.”
“Oh, my God.”
Mary nodded. “It could have been worse. They were right by a window, lifting the child out of his bunk bed. The explosion blew them out of the house. They landed on the grass not twenty feet from me.”
“Did they survive?” Beth asked nervously. She wondered if this experience was the reason Mary had initially seemed reluctant to talk about the more frightening part of her job.
“Other than some good cuts and big bruises, they were okay. And the kids made it, too. Just a few nights in the hospital.”
Beth shook her head. “Don’t moments like that scare the hell out of you?”
“Yes, but it’s the kind of fear that catapults you into action. You just react. There’s no other choice.”
Mary fell silent, seemingly lost in thought. Beth wondered where she’d gone. Was she reliving another call, where the victims hadn’t been so lucky? Or was there some personal moment that was coming back? Whatever it was quickly vanished as Mary seemed to catch herself.
Raising her beer bottle, she said with humor that seemed forced, “Of course, it’s easier to react when you’re trained to do so. And I am at your service, ma’am.”
Beth had no clue what caused her next statement, but it slipped out of her mouth. “Are you trained to put out every fire you see?”
A grin appeared instantly on Mary’s face. “Only the kind I can control.”
They stared at each other, not moving. Strangely, Beth was intensely excited but relaxed at the same time.
“Alder says you’re up here to run the Half Marathon in two weeks.” Mary said.
Beth nodded. “It was a good excuse to get out of L.A.”
“Are you registered?”
“Yes, although the last half marathon I ran was in San Diego about five months ago, so I’m a little rusty.”
“What’s your PB?”
“My personal best? Usually only other runners use that term.”
“I’m running in the Half this year as well. Helps me keep up with the fire hose pulling and stair climbing.”
Beth wasn’t sure how she felt knowing that Mary would be among the crowd of runners at the start line. “My PB was 2:03:29 two races ago. What about yours?”
“I’m just over two hours as well.”
Great, they would even start in the same wave. “Are you running the first or second half?” Beth asked.
Runners could choose which half of the San Francisco Marathon course they wanted to run. The first half included an out and back across the Golden Gate Bridge. The second half was a longer race, but runners finished alongside those completing the full marathon.
“I registered for the first half,” Mary said, dashing Beth’s hope that they would be on different courses.
“The streets here are pretty hilly,” Beth said. “I imagine my time will be slower.”
“Well, I suppose it depends on how the weather affects you. It’s usually pretty chilly out, and I find that it helps my time. I hate running in hot weather. Slows me down a lot.”
The San Francisco Marathon was unique in that runners could aim for personal best times despite the race being held in summer. This wasn’t important for Beth, but athletes were seeded by their times for the Boston Marathon. Those who planned to run both races tried to make a good showing in San Francisco.
“I’m not worried about my time,” Beth said. “I just want to run, you know?”
“I do.” Mary drew up her legs to sit cross-legged on the bench. “Sometimes just finishing is good enough for me.”
Beth raised her beer. “Amen to that.”
The evening moved stealthily toward late night. As they talked, the party raged around them. The back door opened and closed more times than Beth could count, but no one interrupted them. When the nippy night breezes began needling through their clothes, Mary asked Beth inside for a dance. The dance turned into another, and then a slow one.
Beth closed her eyes and let herself get lost in the swaying motion of their bodies. She couldn’t keep her mind off the almost-kiss in the bathroom. She now half wished Mary had just tackled her and kissed her. As soon as she thought that, she scolded herself for getting carried away with fantasies about a wild woman who obviously knew her way around the ladies.
Mary whispered close to her ear, “This full body contact feels great.”
Beth swore she heard Mary moan, but a crackle suddenly came from Jay’s microphone. “Everyone ready? Let’s all do the Teddy!” he bellowed as the next song began, Teddy Pendergrass singing “Close The Door.”
A group of people moved to the middle of the dance floor and began gyrating and lip-synching to the song. One of the women reached out and grabbed Mary, pulling her into the group. Without much protest, Mary joined in so fluidly that Beth was enthralled by what she saw. Everyone knew the words perfectly, all the way down to the “uhhs” and “ahhhs.” The group seemed to be doing some sort of sexual line dance, the kind where only a few people know the steps and everyone else watches and admires. They thrust their hips to punctuate each grunt, moving together in a pulsing erotic spectacle Beth thought was intended to be funny. She found it incredibly arousing, probably because the only person she was looking at was Mary.
She knew she was staring rather obviously, her whole focus concentrated on Mary’s seductive moves. When Mary looked her way, she seemed to be singing to Beth, and only Beth. Her lips moved wetly and her eyes narrowed a little, languidly feasting. Beth knew she was not imagining the promise in their depths. Her gut reacted, tensing so sharply she wrapped her arms around her waist. The crowd was going berserk around her and she felt short of breath. People were too close and Mary’s hips were grinding too suggestively to allow rational thought.
Beth started to back away but the crowd surged forward, quickly filling in the space around the singers as the song ended. As everyone converged, Mary ended up on the other side of the room. Beth stood frozen in her tracks, still taking in the erotic dance she’d just witnessed.
“Is she hot or what?” A woman nudged Beth’s right shoulder and she recognized Maureen, a Coop resident she’d chatted with during the party preparations. “Mary’s a wild woman. Don’t let her scare you.”
“Oh, I don’t think ‘scared’ is the word I’d use.”
“And do you care to share what your word would be?” Maureen was calmly teasing. “Or is don’t let her devour you more apropos?”
Beth caught a glimpse of Mary between the bobbing heads of dancing guests. She was talking with a cute brunette, her smile just as alluring and her expression just as intent as it had been five minutes earlier, when Beth thought that look was just for her. Feeling foolish, she made excuses to Maureen and slid away to the kitchen. The table had been turned into shot glass central, with one of the Coop residents playing bartender.
Beth threw back an Alabama Slammer and chatted to a few people before escaping to her room. In the safe little retreat, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, and changed into a T-shirt and underwear before crawling into bed. The sheets felt crisp and cool against her body. She exhaled a big sigh and thought about the one thing that had dominated her mind all night.
Mary Walston.
The woman had cornered the market on sex appeal. Thinking back on her first impressions, Beth remembered thinking her “vainly cavalier.” Now that she’d had the chance to talk to her, she decided to revise the description. The night, the conversations, her actions, all sketched out a new word. Confident. Tenaciously confident.
Beth shook her head. She had heard that somewhere out in the world there existed people who possessed that attribute. She could remember feeling something close to confidence herself, a long time ago.
The first time the knocking occurred, Beth thought it was part of the party commotion downstairs. When the noise persisted she got out of bed and opened the door to find Mary. Her warm olive green eyes trailed over Beth, making her self-conscious that she’d selected her most wrinkled T-shirt for bed and was only wearing a pair of skimpy panties beneath it.
“I didn’t get to say good night to you.” Mary leaned against the door. The expectancy in her gaze was unmistakable.
“That’s sweet of you.” Beth almost stepped aside to let her in, but she pictured Mary chatting with the brunette. No doubt she could take her pick and expected any woman she chose to fall gratefully into her arms.
“Maybe we should have stayed in the bathroom,” Mary said. “I like talking to you without being interrupted. It’s hard in a crowd. Someone always wants to take me away.”
“You didn’t seem unhappy about that.” Beth was about to mention the brunette, but realized how jealous that would sound. She had no right to guilt-trip Mary.
“I know,” Mary conceded. “I get caught up.”
For the second time in ten seconds, Beth wanted to invite her in. The idea startled her more than it excited her, and she blurted out, “I’ve got to get some sleep.”
She realized, with alarm, how lame that sounded. All she wanted to do was pull Mary inside and re-create that moment in the bathroom, but this time with a different outcome. With horror, she recognized how close she was to making the kind of careless decision women on the rebound made. What she really needed to do was end the conversation as quickly and impersonally as possible.
“Thank you for a nice evening, Mary.”
Mary stared into her eyes and it was obvious that she could read Beth’s true thoughts. She acknowledged the polite brush-off with a knowing smile and a nod of regret. “Sleep well. I guess I’ll see you later…sometime.”
Beth forced a smile. Even though Mary was the one being adjourned, it was Beth who felt disarmingly awkward.