Liz's tone was bitter. "Next you're going to tel me the Lavender Julies can win the tournament."

"Yes, I am. They're only three years old."

Liz laughed through her tears. "You're a hopeless optimist." She blew her nose.

"Not hopeless," Sal y said. "You know, I always thought we had to hide away in a dingy neighborhood, come and go in the shadows. I never expected Soho to take off like this. And you taught me to hold up my head here. To put that fancy lavender awning out front. To spil our dirty gay selves onto the sidewalk. To get those blatant lavender-and-red uniforms for the Julies." She pul ed Liz close. "You, baby. Maybe the neighborhood's not bragging about us yet, but I feel better. The kids do too."

But Liz had been looking at Jefferson. "They do? They sure don't bother to show it."

It was that night, that very moment, that she began to fight her way up. Dreams, she thought now, as the Julies fought not to lose. Dreams. She savored the word in the bright daylight, as coach of this bright lavender-and-red team. Every woman out there was dreaming of winning, as she once had.

And for al her awards, had she real y ever won yet? Won like Sal y meant when she spoke of Liz's dream? Won something for herself by winning for everyone? Was this a d.i.n.ky little team she coached? Hel , no. She'd learned what they'd taught her too. They were quick and smart, skil ed now; she'd made certain of that. Al they'd needed was a leader. And what did their leader real y want? To be a sad has-been al her life? Or to give them something to hold their heads up for?

She watched the batters on the other team more closely. The one up now would freak at a curvebal , she decided, and signaled the pitcher to throw one. As the pitcher struck her out, Jefferson saw it al in her mind's eye: the Julies, in bright red and proud lavender, at the street fair next month, behind the Cafe Femmes booth, under a big sign: al -city winners! The Julies, shaking cans at people to col ect funds for block improvements, block gatherings, for pro-gay political candidates who wanted the Soho vote. They'd carry the red-and-lavender banner through the streets, representatives of the community. And on Gay Pride Day they'd march, they'd parade, they'd storm the city, waving at the cameras. Shadows? Never again, Sal and Liz! They'd lead the d.a.m.n parade, triumphant, al -star champs: the players and their lovers, fans, mothers, fathers-their coach. Yes, she could use a little glory too.

Not glory like it used to be but, s.h.i.t, who remembered that now? Except herself. Except Ginger.

It was the last half of the last inning. Annie Heaphy stepped up to bat. The teams were stil tied. The sun was a little less hot. The gra.s.s was strewn with intent lesbians. She could see that the teenaged boys, pa.s.sing back through, seemed gripped by the tension. Marie-Christine had begun a cheer: Our Lavender Lovers Are Lavender Winners!

Jefferson remembered the very first time her own team had won, they'd been playing field hockey up in Rye. She'd been very together, in tune with her teammates, and had pushed and wheeled her way toward the winning point. The cheers sounded-the cheers that were, for that glorious moment, the only sound in the world.

She'd thought she'd never hear them like that again, and here they came now, rising, swel ing as Annie Heaphy hit the bal with al the power in her middle-aged arms and it sailed over the pitcher, sailed over second base, sailed over the outfield, toward the roof of the Plaza Hotel, and Annie came running, running, no longer nonchalant, around every base til she was home. Home.

Jefferson didn't care who saw her. She stood crying in front of everyone. Crying to see the batgirl twirl in excitement, to see Liz smiling and crying al at once, to see Sal y leaping with delight, to see Marie-Christine dance Annie around and around.

To see Ginger.

Where had she been? Watching out of sight?

And holding Jefferson's cap. Her winner's cap-looking faded, worn, but with a good stiff brim to it stil , bent in the middle, where she liked it.

"I thought you might need this again," said Ginger, always ready with the right gesture, a weary compa.s.sion in those green eyes that looked like home.

Chapter Twenty.

By the time she was forty-four, Jefferson had developed the habit of grabbing two cold ones on her way home from work. She'd quit alcohol for three years and knew she could handle a drink again now and then. She always stopped at Jogi's, the little store that kept its beer colder than the others on her route home. Tipping the beer back and pouring it into her mouth relaxed her from a hard day of teaching these crazy public-school kids. She was glad to get on with the city school system; the commute to Dutchess Academy had become a grind. When she left work now, the noise of the kids' excited shouts and her shril gym whistle faded from her ears; the iced liquid soothed the raspy feeling in her throat after a day of yel ing instructions. The act of chugging right out on the street felt like bursting the bonds of bureaucracy that tightly taped every muscle in her body.

The first can would be empty when she got upstairs, and she'd stick the second in the freezer while she changed her clothes. Ginger taught afternoons and evenings, so Jefferson's time was her own. This was when she'd pay her bil s, clean the counters, correct hygiene-cla.s.s papers -whatever needed doing-while she downed the second beer. She was stil into whiskey, Irish whiskey, and after her ch.o.r.es were done she drank it with a short dash of water to open it up. If the beer was her bridge to life after school, whiskey and water was what mel owed her out.

She was aware that she'd developed a ritual over the years, but she considered it better than going from school to the bars downtown. This was her parents' ritual, the way the adults in her family relaxed in the evening. It felt natural. When Ginger was home, Jefferson drank no more and no less. Ginger might have nothing with her but one wine cooler. Every now and then they would share a bottle of wine with dinner or celebrate an anniversary or New Year's with champagne, but Jefferson drank most of it and was proud that she could hold her liquor while Ginger got giggly and sil y on a couple of gla.s.ses. In the early years it had never failed: alcohol made Ginger amorous. They'd had some good times getting Ginger tipsy.

It was Friday night. The usual crowd would be at Cafe Femmes, but she felt too tired to go schlepping al the way downtown. Spooners was a hushed little bar around the corner. They played old rhythm-and-blues and left her in peace. They also served Jameson, which was al she real y wanted from a bar.

Spooners, ironical y named for its original owner, Walter Spooner, was a mixed non-gay/gay male bar. She felt safe from temptation there, but comfortable. She slipped into her bomber jacket and walked the two blocks, feeling good. The night was soft, the traffic was light. Neon came and went in the windows. She felt a little neon herself, lightly buzzed, shimmering, an adventuring shadow. A couple of drinks, she thought, looking forward to joshing with Neal, the bartender, then she'd go home and watch a TiVo of Will and Grace with Ginger. Ginger had left her only once since that second time; Jefferson hadn't slipped up and gotten caught since then.

She loved the sound ice cubes made when warm whiskey cracked them. Inhaling, she smel ed the Jameson and knew life was perfect.

She didn't understand Ginger and knew she never would, no matter how many gay boy bartenders she unloaded to about her. That was okay, she thought. What she wanted to know was why she loved her so much. The older Ginger got, the more she withdrew from that warm, playful part of herself that Jefferson kept hoping would come back ful force.

Gladys had noticed it too. She'd asked, not long before she died, "What's come over your girlfriend, Jefferson? Would a smile make her face fal off?"

"She gets more like her mother every year," she'd told Gladys, rubbing her shoulders. "More silent, more frowny. My playmate is just about gone."

"Maybe it's some sort of inherited il ness," Gladys had suggested, letting her head fal forward. "Or maybe-"

"Uh-oh. You're going to blame it on me. I hear it in your voice."

"No." Gladys's voice was lower and slower from the ma.s.sage. "But did your dad pul on your mom what you do on Ginger?"

She tried to keep the pressure of her hands steady on Glad's shoulders. She'd never told anyone else, not even Ginger, about Jarvy's extracurricular activities. Angela never mentioned it either. It was too unreal, even to herself. Wow, what if Glad was right? It had never occurred to her that she was acting like Jarvy in her own way, or that Emmy or Ginger had been shaped by her spouse's behavior.

"Or early Alzheimer's."

"What? No! Not my Ginger."

"I read where there's a personality change first."

"That's crazy, Glad. There's nothing wrong with Ginger but a little stress."

"Which you add to."

"Stop being a pain in my b.u.t.t, Glad." She'd changed the subject.

Here at Spooners, no one knew about Ginger, and Neal was always trying to fix her up. He couldn't understand why someone as hot, as he cal ed it, as she was didn't go home with a woman every night instead of hanging around with the boys. She didn't tel him that this was as safe a place as there was for her: few women came in, and if one did and she felt compel ed to stray from Ginger, it wouldn't be with a lesbian from their circle of acquaintances.

"You're no f.a.g hag," he once told her. "Did you get your little heart broken?"

One of the regulars had suggested, "She's Mrs. Jameson. Married to the bottle. It's sort of like being a bride of Christ, only your savior is liquid."

"You'd think I spent every night in this bar," she'd answered. "I have a life, you know."

By then a new arrival had taken the men's attention. She'd been troubled ever since by the impression the regular had of her.

Tonight, Neal, the forty-something balding flirt, was in a matchmaking mood. "The babe in the back booth with Alvaro? I'd almost give up boys for her."

Jefferson glanced that way and found an impish-looking, animated, slim white girl crowded into a booth with three large queens, who, in an unqueenly way, seemed to hang on her every word. Jefferson could hear the woman's Southern accent rising and then fal ing to a hushed hoa.r.s.eness. Oh, yeah, she thought, and sent a round to the booth when she ordered her next drink. She felt less b.u.mmed out than she had in a week. She was on a new SSRI for the depression, but it didn't do much more than take the edge off so far.

The girl was probably straight, she was thinking, when she felt the little hand on her forearm.

"I wanted to thank you in person." The woman got closer to Jefferson. "That was so sweet."

She could see now that the woman hadn't needed more to drink by a long shot, but then she didn't either. The woman also looked older close-up, perhaps early forties or a hard-lived late thirties. Her eyes, besides being slightly unfocused, had a shocked hardness to them, as if something terrible had happened to her and she'd never recovered. It was a look she a.s.sociated with straight women. They accepted such horrors, some of them, at the hands of men.

"My pleasure." She pressed the delicate hand that was offered but, inside, turned away. Al women are good, she thought; they're just not al good for me.

"May I sit with you a while?" the woman asked. "I'm Delia. My cousin and her friends are getting a little much."

The part of her that wasn't excited by these slumming straight women felt apprehensive. They can come and go as they please, she thought, taking from the gay world and scuttling, t.i.til ated, safely back to their own. She was angry at their invasion of her sacred ground. The woman was already settling on the stool next to hers, and she already had a friendly arm around Delia's waist.

It turned out that Delia had never been to New York before, was staying with her cousin, one of the queens, and had divorced her third husband. Delia was a driver for a linen service and gave Jefferson an earful about running a sales route.

"Aren't there gay bars with more women in them?" she asked Jefferson, but when Jefferson started to write out a list of addresses in her whiskey- sloppy hand, Delia insisted that she couldn't go alone and bought Jefferson another drink. "Unless," asked Delia, "I shouldn't be buying? Is that some kind of insult to you?"

She was at the stage of inebriation where it was so easy to shrug off qualms and Delia was so brashly cute, she said, "I'l chaperone you to one women's bar, but then I need to go. My partner wil be home waiting for me."

"I'd wait for you too, sweetie." Delia's words were a little slurry.

At that moment Jefferson experienced the transition from the world of gravity, atmospheric resistance, and common sense to being high. Delia was no longer a confection of makeup and alien experiences, but of womanly grace and a commanding desirability. She steered Delia out of the bar. They were barely out of sight of the bar when they began groping each other, staggering into doorways, tilting against gates as they kissed, and coming to dead stops on the sidewalk for long clinches.

"I was never with a girl before."

"We need to get off the street before someone sees us."

"I have my cousin's key."

Final y, they reached the subway.

Delia read an address in Bay Ridge from a sc.r.a.p of paper she found in her purse.

"You're kidding."

"Is that too far?" asked Delia, her face expectant, her eyes roaming Jefferson's face and body.

"For you?" she replied with a smile and once again slipped her arm around Delia, pul ing her snug against herself as they navigated the stairs and turnstiles to the platform and keeping her close once they were seated on the nearly empty trains. How could she deny Delia now? She'd committed herself with that first round of drinks. She could be home in a couple of hours. Why, she thought with drunken logic, disappoint this woman who needed badly to come out?

They were over the bridge, it seemed, in record time, and outside a tan apartment building near the Eighty-sixth Street subway stop. There was no camera visible on the elevator, but Jefferson had come down enough to refuse to fool around. She also didn't want to miss Will and Grace. Ginger would be home soon and wondering where she was. In the cousin's apartment, Delia immediately poured Old Mr. Boston whiskey over rocks and added soda.

Jefferson drank, chasing her high regardless of the fact that this brand would give her a horrible hangover in the morning.

While Delia was in the bathroom, Jefferson wandered the living room of the one-bedroom apartment. The queen had fil ed his wal s with posters, photographs, and framed headlines from gay-pride parades and political protests. Jefferson wondered if he had attended al of these events or was a col ector of memorabilia or both. This year, maybe she and Ginger would march. It had been a while for her; Ginger never had.

Delia's body surprised her. Thin though she was, she fil ed out her lacy black nightgown admirably. Jefferson, starting on her second Mr. Boston, admired the woman from the bedroom doorway. Although she'd told Ginger how negligees got her motor running, Ginger consistently opted for her flannel nightgowns.

"Aren't you ever going to come touch me, Jefferson?" Delia asked in that hoa.r.s.e, husky voice.

Jefferson, back in mel ow mode, smiled and started unb.u.t.toning her own shirt.

"Oh, boy. I never thought this could be so exciting." Delia's drawl had become more p.r.o.nounced with each drink.

Jefferson lounged against the door frame, shirt untucked, hanging open, both covering and promising. She wanted to go to Delia, but no, she didn't want to. She remembered the last time and how she'd sworn she was through with strangers. Wasn't it time to show some respect for what she had with Ginger, despite how little they had? When she wasn't blaming Ginger for her absences, both literal and s.e.xual, she was blaming herself for giving Ginger such spa.r.s.e al egiance and violating their love, if that's what it stil was. They hadn't had s.e.x since Florida. No, they hadn't had s.e.x since she told Ginger what she needed. Boy, had that backfired.

While she wondered whether love without desire on Ginger's part was stil love, Delia, on the bed, ran those delicate hands down her nightgown and Jefferson felt herself stir. Delia raised one hand to her right breast and rubbed the nipple. Jefferson's eyelids became heavy. Through her narrowed vision she watched Delia pul at the lace that lined the bottom of her gown and inch it up her thighs. Jefferson responded as actively as if Delia had been going down on her. Then Delia reached under the covers and brought out a vibrator. She started it and moved it over her gown. She could see the outline of Delia's other hand, under the gown, moving one finger. Jefferson was throbbing and drank deeply to slow her reaction, fascinated and at the same time saddened.

What got into these women's heads? Why would it be so exciting to have another woman, a complete stranger, watch from across a room? Had Delia been fantasizing al her life about a moment like this: the drunk butch lesbian in the doorway, shirt open, excited by Delia's excitement? Jefferson had never imagined anything like it, but it fed something in her. Not a s.e.xual need, something a little dark. Something that got a minor kick out of being the one standing and in control of herself while this woman wriggled on the bed. She had her period anyway, so this suited her fine, but what had happened to the high-spirited kid she'd been?

"Somebody's got to," Delia said, her voice barely there. She pul ed her gown up to her waist, spread her legs until her heels overhung the mattress, and replaced her fingers with the vibrator. Jefferson's impulse was to go to Delia and put her fingers inside her while the vibrator stimulated her. She knew the woman would push her shirt aside and touch her b.r.e.a.s.t.s while Jefferson made her come, but before the impulse made its way to her slowed-down brain, Delia sucked in one loud breath and squirmed against her hand, saying, "Oh. Oh, oh, oh, Jesus."

Jefferson drained her gla.s.s at the sound of the queen's key in the front-door lock, thinking, for the thousandth time, if I never drank again, would I stil go prowling for strangers? She quickly b.u.t.toned her shirt as Delia fled the bed for the bathroom. The queen, his makeup a ma.s.s of fissures like bleached, dried mud, looked puzzled, then scared, then knowing, al in the moment that Jefferson fled past him. She bounded down seven flights by swinging over two or three steps at a time, grasping the rails. At the second floor she missed a step, almost went down, but caught hold of the bar. Al her weight hung on her twisted wrist for a long, painful moment. She tackled the next flight more slowly. Outside it had begun to shower, and the cool raindrops splashed against her face as she jogged to the subway stop, ignoring the misery of her wrist.

She caught the R train back into the city, cradling her left arm in her right, angry that she would have to play handbal this way for a while. She knew what sprains felt like and this was a sprain. Tomorrow, she promised herself again, she would drink nothing, not even a beer. Sordid nights like this were not how she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Jefferson paced under the hotel canopy. She moved away from the gray building, out to the curb, back along the red mat to the gla.s.s double doors.

The doorman, about sixty, whose uniform sported golden brown shoulder braids that almost matched his skin, watched her with a scowl on his face. At first, she'd explained that she was waiting for a guest. That had been half an hour ago, when she was fifteen minutes early. Now she scowled back at him.

What was he going to do? Cal the cops because she wanted to make amends to Shirley and was a little bit anxious?

She looked quickly up, but saw only a family leaving the hotel. The sharp scent of the father's lime aftershave hung behind him in the wet air. A tiny girl in a hooded red rain cape held his hand. He lifted the girl over the water in the gutter and set her in a waiting limousine next to her mother, then waved until they were out of sight.

Jefferson recombed her wet hair. "Amends, Jefferson," she told herself. "You're making amends to the woman, not seducing her al over again." Then why had she put on cologne? Why the new burgundy shirt she'd been saving for a special occasion? Why her brown leather jacket and her softest cords?

Why was her heart doing the tango, double time, inside her chest?

Again, there was activity in the lobby. Again, it was not Shirley. What would she look like after ten years on the West Coast, writing comedy in movie land? Would she be harried like some of the LA career women Jefferson had met? Or her zany old self, cracking jokes with every breath, unable to relax long enough to make love decently, despite having come on like a hurricane, despite acting like a mini-s.e.x G.o.ddess? Why in hel had Jefferson been obsessed with getting the woman to bed?

Because that's how she'd been in those days. It hadn't been Shirley, it had been al of them. And for what? What was left? She should at least have good memories. When it had come time to sort through what she'd done, and to whom, she'd found that the histories of al those beloveds, not to mention the details of the relationships, eluded her in a way the women never could. Now she was tracking every one of them down. She had to clean up yesterday to make today work.

d.a.m.n. Where was Shirley? It was half an hour past their meeting time. Jefferson felt clammy, chil ed through by the late fal rain. Did she get the day wrong? The time? The hotel? Should she go up? No. That was the last thing she intended to do. She'd already spotted a coffee shop around the corner where they could talk safely. She'd even purposely left her big black umbrel a at home, the one she'd used so often as an excuse to pul a woman near for the first time. Had she used the umbrel a with Shirley? Would Shirley be expecting it? In any case, she herself would not fal into any of the traps she'd set for others.

For a moment, Jefferson stopped pacing. She stood at the edge of the canopy, peering through the downpour at the yel ow cabs, the black cabs, the mail jeeps, the limos, the beat-up economy cars that jammed Broadway at the end of this crosstown street. Rain seemed to trap the exhaust smel s. A few people with umbrel as squeezed through the gridlock, then turned up Broadway at a furious pace, as if to make up for lost time.

Lost time. Jefferson jammed her hands back in her pockets and whirled into her pacing again. Almost thirty years she'd lost in her games of sodden pursuit. Because it was true, what her new AA sponsor had said, that as soon as Jefferson stopped drinking, she had also stopped whoring around. The same sponsor had practical y promised that her depressions-and she'd final y admitted to herself that's what they were-would lift if she practiced the twelve steps. Obviously, she'd have to practice harder.

She thought of Ginger, left at home, burying herself in work, left without a whole lover, or plain left. That feeling of guilt was compounded by al the guilt she carried around about the rest of her little love-them-and-leave-them liaisons.

What could they have had if Jefferson had stayed home? A little of the peace she sometimes experienced now? A feeling of freedom, like she could do anything, go anywhere, and it would be good without fighting or tears or conflict? Without the feeling that some malevolent creature lived inside her and busied itself tearing her up, so that everything demanded a hundred times more effort because first she had to st.i.tch herself back together again?

Jefferson pul ed her hands out of their hiding places. She stood, half under the side of the canopy, half in the rain, looking at them. First the backs, pale and chafed from early tastes of winter. Then the palm, cal used a little from working out recently. Her right palm col ected rain in a tiny puddle at its center. These were the hands that had stopped dragging themselves, one over the other, up an endless rough rope. She licked the rainwater in her palm.

Its taste was metal ic, almost bitter, and snapped her right into the present, into this moment of waiting to make another apology for being such a creep in the past.