She felt that flush again as Angela's chest gently heaved, her eyes radiating desire. Angela watched her: her lips, her chest, her eyes. This was an exquisite new power Jefferson had found, this magical ability to excite another girl. It heightened her excitement in turn. Sometimes she felt exultant, like this was what she had been born to do. Other times she felt a little mean, like she was abusing the gift of love. She could never stop herself, though. The feeling was too delicious, the changes in Angela too pleasant, for both of them. Had that been what Iz had been feeling?

"Jefferson," Angela said, her voice lower than usual, as if every bit of her was focused on the sensual volcano that she and Jefferson became together. "One kiss."

Jefferson crawled to her then, propped on her elbows, and ground a kiss on Angela's mouth. It was short, but the voltage left them panting while Jefferson, going to her knees, slowly surveyed the park.

"That was dangerous," Jefferson said. It was not the only thing they fought about, but it was their most frequent conflict.

"More dangerous than taking me out in your grandfather's skiff in that storm?"

"Cripes, Angie, it was a little storm. I know what I'm doing in a boat and I wanted you to feel it. The excitement. How big Mother Nature is and how little we are."

"I feel that every time I look at you. Mother Nature wrote the book on getting hot, Jefferson. Everything from how I get here," she indicated her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, "to how I get here." Her hand swept across her nether parts.

"Angie," Jefferson said, her voice half-swal owed.

"I love how you want me," answered Angela.

She worried that sixteen was far too young to be speaking this language, but their sticky pa.s.sions enthral ed her. Why was she thinking of that movie, The Snake Pit, that they watched in reruns on TV? Its scene of lesbian madness and doom couldn't be farther from loving this girl than...than Iz's haughty seductiveness had been.

She sprang to her feet and pul ed Angela up, up, up-away from her doubts. She was who she was. They were fine together. Being the way they were was every bit as good as it felt. From now on she wouldn't think what everyone else thought, and she wouldn't let herself get slammed by that monster dark cloud that sometimes swal owed her whole. She'd push what she knew was wrong way back in her brain and never let it surface again.

Chapter Five.

Jefferson was always breathless by the time she reached Angela's candy store on Cannon Street. She wanted to make the most of their time together so she flew on her three-speed bike, though her parents disapproved, tore through the old streets of Dutchess down the hil , let herself out the gate, and raced across town through the park, rushed under the majestic trees and onto Cannon Street toward the center of town. Main Street had the banks, Town Hal , the library, but Cannon boasted the army-navy store, a laundry, two hairdressers, pharmacy, deli, dentists, the A&P, and Angela's candy store.

Angela's candy store. It felt like an amus.e.m.e.nt park, or the circus. She got those same tingly feelings deep down, although she knew perfectly wel she was too old for the cap guns and tiny military figures the Tabors sold, and she'd stopped considering ice-cream sodas to be the summit of her desires. Stil , the candy store had always been a treat in childhood and now Angela was there, and Angela was better than a mil ion cap guns. s.e.xy Angela was her fantasy figure; laughing Angela was her ice-cream soda. She gripped the bra.s.s door handle, warm from the sunny spring Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and peered through the gla.s.s, nerves jingling. No sign of Angela.

"Amelia," cried Mr. Tabor at the sight of her. He knew she hated being cal ed Amelia, but he always accompanied his gaffe with a loving bear hug.

"Mister Taborrrr," she'd croon in return, smacking his back like guys did. He probably thought he was another father to her, this stocky little redheaded guy with his bibbed ap.r.o.n and hairy arms. His welcome embarra.s.sed her, since she couldn't remember her own father hugging her and never quite knew what to do with her body.

Mrs. Tabor was suspicious of her, she thought, although she bowed to Mrs. Tabor, jol ied her along when she made jokes, hugged her hel o and good- bye and laughed anytime Mrs. Tabor said something funny. Mrs. Tabor was always inspecting her up and down like Jefferson might have forgotten to put on a blouse or wet her pants or something. It was probably the floppy dungarees Jefferson wore and the plaid Western-style blouses Emmy al owed because she thought they were cute. She tore off her dresses and skirts every chance she got. She felt stupid, unprotected in a big round skirt, unable to run, to sit comfortably, to fend off boys. The dungarees were getting a little worse for the wear, with the bike grease behind the left leg and the gra.s.s stains she couldn't scrub out of the knee. But Grandpa Jefferson had made the mistake of giving her the pair she asked for on her birthday, and he hadn't heard the last of that from Grandmother and Emmy. He wouldn't likely give her another pair. He was the one who bought her the bike and took the flak for that too.

"Got a boyfriend yet, Jefferson?" Mrs. Tabor asked.

The way Angela's Mom ritual y asked that gave Jefferson the creeps. "What would I do with one of those?" she would joke, giving her the big old smile that always won over her friends' moms.

"Ooh-la-la," Mrs. Tabor cried, fanning herself, as if her ribald hints would make the prospect tempting for Jefferson.

"Your usual?" Mr. Tabor asked while his wife went back to sweeping.

"If you would. Please." Jefferson settled in with her black coffee and cherry Danish until Angela heard her voice or name or sensed her presence and came to ask her into the back.

"You could serve off that floor, Mrs. T," Jefferson always said, to b.u.t.ter up Angela's neatnik mother.

Mrs. Tabor looked around the almost-empty shop and whispered, "Some of them I think would feel like they were home with the cigarette b.u.t.ts in the coffee cups and the chewing gum under the seats. Don't ask me to dinner at their houses."

"You'd come to my place?"

"The grand Jeffersons' house?"

"No, mine, when I get out of school."

"I thought you were going to col ege too, like my foolish Angela."

"After that school."

"Sure. But you'l have your hands ful without visitors," Mrs. Tabor warned in a teasing singsong voice so like and unlike Angela's. "Feeding your husband, maybe a little angel on the way."

She laughed. "You have such wonderful dreams for me, Mrs. T," she lied. "Maybe I'l be an old maid. Or maybe I'l enlist in the WAVES. See the world."

"Stop that talk," Asta Tabor hissed, her expression annoyed. "You're a pretty girl. You'l marry." Angela had told her that Mrs. Tabor hoped Jefferson would introduce Angela to marriageable boys from Dutchess Academy.

To herself Jefferson said, I'l marry your daughter. It was hard to like Mrs. Tabor, and she enjoyed a smal perverse satisfaction in defying her, but Angela's father was a different story. She always felt a trickle of hope that Angela's father knew she loved Angela, knew it and was glad somewhere inside. Looking at Damek Tabor, though, with his compact energy, his quick wit, his constant sunniness, she could see the innocence in his eyes. He didn't know. She felt empty at the thought. At al the trust this man placed in the world, in her, when behind his back she was touching his daughter in ways that would horrify him. She would die before getting careless and revealing what they did.

If Angela didn't hear Jefferson arrive, Mr. Tabor would cal , "Angel!" into the back of the store when he saw Jefferson come through the door.

She pictured Angela putting down her algebra homework, a hair's breadth from solving a problem, and blowing air from her pursed lips in exasperation. She wouldn't know if he was cal ing her for help or because someone was there to see her. Jefferson had rushed through the problems, not caring if they were right or wrong. Her cla.s.s wouldn't graduate tomorrow. Who could be serious about algebra homework now? Her parents would be disappointed in her grades, but she didn't want good grades. Angela wouldn't be able to afford a fancy col ege. Jefferson planned to do wel enough to get in where Angie did. They would room together.

Kids swarmed the candy store. Mr. Tabor moved swiftly back and forth behind the counter in his short-legged, bouncing way. He had original y bought the store so his parents would have an income. With his father, Hiram, sick and needing ful -time care from his mother, he had sold his own thriving rivet factory in the Bronx to be near them. He told Jefferson that he thought Angela's prospects would be better up here, away from the city. He wore his ap.r.o.n over brown baggy trousers and a plaid shirt that was frayed and gray at the cuffs. She checked the clock. The Sat.u.r.day-afternoon matinee at the Cliffs Theater had gotten out. No wonder kids were everywhere.

"Angel, serve for me, wil you? Your mother's by your Aunt Rose."

Angela tied on an ap.r.o.n and went behind the counter, rol ing her eyes at Jefferson. "That wedding dress is taking longer than the New York Central in a snow storm," she said.

Mr. Tabor explained to Jefferson, "She's Asta's only relative in America, four years old when we came over. It's a big deal."

"Mister Tay-bore," cal ed a little kid with an accent.

Like Angela, Dutchess was a mix of nationalities, a community that cal ed to people who, if rich, built summer or year-round homes, and if not rich, had enough ambition to get out of the city and establish a tenuous toehold in a better place to bring up the kids. The Tabors had always lived behind their businesses and gone without so Mr. Tabor could buy the little bits of land he wanted, and now his investments were paying off.

Angela's mother had returned from Aunt Rose's and now came out of the back room, tying a floral-patterned ap.r.o.n around a pink, blue, and white plaid housedress. She worked in slippers to accommodate the swel ing of her feet after a few hours of standing.

"Okay, okay," Asta Tabor cried. "Ragam.u.f.fins, scram." She grabbed a circular tray and marched along the counter, inspecting gla.s.ses. "Empty? You want more? No? Then go on home. These people want their peace and quiet," she told the kids, indicating Mr. O'Mear's booth and the other adults who had made their way more slowly than the children to the soda fountain.

"So beautiful, your Aunt Rose," she told Angela. "But not as beautiful as you'l be on your wedding day."

Jefferson could feel Angela cringe as she watched the children dawdle in front of the store. It was suddenly too quiet inside and she dreaded the words she knew tormented Angela.

"It wil be different for you. When I married Damek, over there, it was midnight. My mother cried like I was dying. My father looked like he would burn your father to cinders with his eyes. The priest was shaking like a leaf, afraid he'd be caught with this refugee, afraid G.o.d would strike him down for marrying me to an apostate, although Damek Tabor had been studying with him, hidden in the goat shed, since our first kiss." Her mother stroked Angela's short hair. "On your wedding day the bel s wil ring, the sun wil shine, the whole town wil be invited."

"Meanwhile my teachers would like me to get back to my homework," she said. "I can hear them in the back room."

"Asta Tabor and her big dream," said Angela, drawing closed the curtains that separated the living area from the store. "If she'd only had one or two more daughters to marry off, to show off, to count on, but she couldn't."

Angela was her mother's present and future.

Jefferson pul ed Angela to her and kissed her, hot but fast, eyeing the curtain. Angela pressed against her, took the stolen kiss, then moved away, fast.

"I want to run into the store and spil my happiness al over them. I'd shout, 'Jefferson and I are in love! We're going to move in together after graduation.' I'd fling my arms around these two people who made me the woman who loves you. Why shouldn't they be excited too?" She stirred the stew.

Jefferson could only agree. They'd made Angela bright and attractive, taught her to laugh. Why should she hide the rest of who she was? Why shouldn't they share her happiness?

Angela gave her a look that made her heart race. "It's al I can do not to run back out there and tel them right now."

"They'd keep me away," she predicted, part of her hoping that wasn't true, although she knew it was. "I'd never get to see you again."

"They couldn't," Angela countered. "What would they do, tie you up?"

Jefferson scowled. "They'd send me away," she told Angela, holding her hand under the jacket on her lap. "Bury me in some prep school where chapel is a requirement and the girls talk about boys from morning til night."

"I'd come to you. Live in the nearest town. I could get work as a waitress. We'd do it on the chapel floor at midnight. I'd steal you away on weekends, and we could be naked together in my little room at the top of some old lady's big house."

"We'd get away with it for about two weeks. We'd get caught. You'd be sent home. I'd be locked in my room except for cla.s.ses. The other girls would hound me for being...strange. You're such a kid about these things, Angie. If we don't do everything the way the adults want, they have more ways to punish us than G.o.d could even imagine. Your parents would be the same."

"So we're going to sneak around forever?"

"Yes."

Angela got angry then and lashed out at Jefferson. "I think you like al this hiding and conspiracy, Amelia Jefferson. I think you get a charge out of being scared al the time, that's what I think. It dresses up your little-rich-girl country life, like playing cowboys and Indians when you were a kid. In the Bronx, we played n.a.z.is and Jews on our front stoops, while you were rol ing down your green hil s."

Jefferson stood up to go. "I'm not a rich kid," she protested, although, compared to Angela, she must seem so. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I do make a game of it in a way. Maybe I've always felt safer than you because my family's been in this county since the dinosaurs. Maybe we're too different to be together."

Outside, she was Gary Cooper in High Noon. She could feel the holstered pistols on her hips and scowled at pa.s.sersby. That did nothing to chase off the black-cloud monster in pursuit. She swung a leg over her bike and rushed toward the hil .

Chapter Six.

In certain sunlight the quarried stone blocks in the magnificent Tudor-style railroad station in Dutchess looked Mediterranean pink, in others, a rough gray. The pointed arches gave the many doorways a beckoning depth as the elaborately decorated pa.s.sageways, brief tunnels most of them, suggested destinations more exotic than Kingston or Albany. One night Angela and Jefferson arrived at the station before the sun set and watched from a bench outside as the stone glowed a rosy gold and the shadowed portals were curtained with a velvety darkness fil ed with promises.

"Looks like a castle," Jefferson said. She wore a yel ow V-neck sweater vest with a wide-col ared white blouse and her jeans rol ed up into a cuff.

Emmy was giving her money to buy her own clothes now. She and Jarvy's crowd had become big drinkers. Jarvy went off to work every day, but Emmy stayed in bed with a hangover. Jefferson told the housekeeper what needed doing and delivered b.u.t.tered toast or ice to Emmy after school, then left the house until they were gone in the evening to go touch Angela every moment she could. On weekend nights Angela could come over for a while if she wasn't working, but she had to lie; the Tabors thought she was spending too much time alone with Jefferson.

Angela told her parents she was studying with other kids at the library, and they met wherever they could be close to, but out of sight of, the candy store. No one was around outside the railroad station.

Jefferson captured Angela's hand. A year after their first kiss, that neat, warm hand stirred her stil . She clasped the narrow fingers and walked her thumb along the pads below them, straying frequently onto that sensitive flesh toward the palm. Jefferson gave Angela her bold, one-dimple smile. Aloud, she said one word: "Angel."

The 6:10 clacked into the Dutchess station. Balding businessmen in sports coats and unbelted slacks, carrying black molded briefcases, strode to their cars or walked toward houses off the main streets. Jefferson scuttled behind the last one, imitating his weary, hunched walk, then swirled around and sped back to Angela.

There wouldn't be another train until Jarvy's at seven. Jefferson pul ed Angela up and they wandered toward the building, skirting it to avoid the main room and ticket windows, then strol ing down a familiar set of stone steps. Jefferson tucked Angela's arm under her own. She felt as wild and cool as James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.

The platform was deserted, but pa.s.sengers came and left at al hours, so the station was never locked. The bathrooms were downstairs, as wel as wooden benches hidden from the street. The slightest echoing footfal on the wooden platform would break the sentry silence that fil ed the arches and high-ceilinged room of the empty station. They ducked into a short arched pa.s.sageway that led to a locked wooden door. It was dark and out of the way.

Jefferson rested against the uneven stones, almost at the door, arms extended. Angela, eyes on Jefferson's lips, moved to her so quickly she put her hands out as brakes. Jefferson's lips touched hers again and again.

"Touch me, Jef. Touch me, touch me, touch me."

"I love you, Ange. I love you," she whispered.

"Jefferson, we have to find a way to be together. Al night. Al alone." She already had Jefferson's blouse out of her dungarees and was fingering her b.r.e.a.s.t.s through their bra. "If only you were going to col ege here. Why do they have to send you away?"

"Angie, Angie, come on, baby, it's only Hunter in the city, a train ride away." She wasn't entirely sure how it had happened, but Hunter Col ege, her family's second choice, had accepted her, mediocre grades and al . It sounded better to her parents than a state school, and it did have a great reputation for physical-education training. She could do anything, according to her school apt.i.tude tests, but she trusted her body most, so Hunter sounded great to her.

And then there were the bars. Eventual y she could go to the gay bars. With or without Angela. She stil loved Angela, but she was headed for a whole city of girls. They could be together again after col ege. Nothing could stop them then, could it? "You'l transfer there on scholarship," she said to comfort Angela.

"Sure, and I'l be your first lady when you're president of the United States."

"Stranger things have happened," Jefferson said, final y touching Angela's b.r.e.a.s.t.s under her bra.

Angela was moving against her like she was desperate. She never got enough of Angela's excitement and wanted to be closer. She reached under Angela's skirt. As always the act excited her past reason. She stopped talking, one hand on a nipple, the other inside Angela's panties. Angela had jumped when she pul ed up the skirt. Jefferson laughed quietly, then let herself get swept away. Angela spread her legs as much as she could while standing. She pushed against the heel of Jefferson's hand. There was no effort involved, such slight friction before Angela sighed into her shoulder to the familiar sound of Jefferson's exhaled, "Ange."

"I want to marry you," Angela whispered, hand reaching for Jefferson's zipper. "A big wedding with 'The Wedding March' and flowers and you kissing me in front of al of them." Angela's kiss was wet, ful -lipped, lazy with satisfaction, and Jefferson's fingers meandered on Angela's wet parts. Angela stopped trying to get Jefferson's zipper down and opened herself wider, knees bent. "I want to do this again and again on our honeymoon. Who needs to travel? Al I want is a bed and a locked door."

"Angie, Angie, we'l have it al ," Jefferson promised, open-mouthed kisses m.u.f.fling her words.

"What are you two doing?"

Jefferson's heart felt like a ma.s.sive bel struck by a clapper. She stepped minutely back from Angela so that the bottom of the hiked-up skirt would fal .

Angela pul ed her hands away from Jefferson. She felt cold as a glacier when she met Angela's shocked, unblinking eyes.

The deep, accented voice seemed to boom from the alcove to the now-wide-open wooden door. The man was heavy enough to fil the doorway. He was almost bald, with gray tufts of hair everywhere: on his head, sprouting from his nose, ears, from the back of the hand that held a push broom. Angela tried to hide her face with her jacket. Jefferson stared him down. In a second the frozen feeling was gone. She straightened and summoned an angry defiance, born of defending her teammates, that now prepared her to kid and cajole their way out of this.

"No," Angela whispered. "Don't let him see your face."

"He already did, Ange." She knew seconds, perhaps thirty, had pa.s.sed, but that they would only have the advantage for a few more.

"Run," Jefferson whispered. "Keep your head down. I'l meet you behind the band shel in the park."

Angela only hesitated for the length of time it took Jefferson to speak. Then they were moving, Angela swift as the shadow of a bird as Jefferson was stil pivoting to run-Angela was away-and the hairy arm, like a fat rol ing pin, grabbed Angela's arm. Jefferson stopped. Angela pul ed away from the hand, twisted, ducked, slipped free, but the hand, the size of four of Jefferson's, caught her skirt. She heard the rip, pushed him, heard the skirt rip more, should have pul ed Angela, should have accused him of attacking them, but she stil held a hope that no one would find out. He had Angela by the arm again.

"Is that the candy-store kid? What's going on here, girlie?"