Jefferson headed back into the store. Shannon came barreling from the back rol ing a ful dol y at top speed.

"Whoa," she said, stepping out of the way.

Shannon swerved to miss her, slammed into an end-cap display of boxed cereal, flung up her arms to protect herself from flying boxes of Life, and turned red. "Oh, b.u.mmer, you heard what we said, didn't you?"

"I barely got here."

"What's wrong with me? I mean, look at me. They al say I'm so adorable, but they don't want me loving them. Am I real y that awful?"

A man came in the store and went to fix a cup of coffee.

Shannon whispered with a desperate earnestness, "I never tried anything with Dawn from the get-go. Never. I only loved her. Love her. Dawn said it nicely, but she basical y told me I'm in her psychic s.p.a.ce and should get a life." She went to ring up the sale, head down, dejection in her walk. Jefferson picked cereal boxes out of the aisle.

"Catch anything, Jim?" she asked.

"More trout than I can eat. Want one for your supper?"

Shannon's voice brightened. "That would be super. I don't have an appet.i.te and I'm getting tired of sardine sandwiches."

Macy Gray's wistful, exciting voice repeated her combination love song and dirge, the music fanning a useless flame in Jefferson.

Shannon, feet shuffling a little to the music, turned to Jefferson. "And you're not out sel ing houses because?"

"On my way," she said, and looked at her watch. "I had some time to kil and thought I'd grace you with my presence."

The fisherman came in with a trout on a hook. Shannon wrapped it in a brown paper bag, then a plastic bag, and slipped it to the back of the dairy cooler. She came out yawning. "I hope I can remember to take that home. Man, I've got to get some sleep. I forget what I'm doing in the middle of doing it."

"Are you working a lot?"

"Not enough," Shannon said, turning out an empty pocket. "I'm having a heck of a time sleeping."

"That's not helping."

Shannon protested. "It's not al about Dawn. It's the National Guard thing. When I do fal asleep I dream of hundreds of little bombs fal ing from fighter jets and I can't find my cat to grab her and run."

The phone rang. Shannon gave the store's closing time to the cal er.

Partly because Jefferson wanted to know and partly to change the subject, she asked, "Hey, how do you cook a trout anyway?"

Shannon and the fisherman, who'd been making a phone cal outside, tripped over each other tel ing her their favorite recipes, and she faithful y wrote them down. When the guy left, Shannon was al enthusiasm. "We can have a fish fry. You want to have it at your place? Not that I'm inviting myself over, of course."

A group of kids invaded the store, and Shannon loped back to the register to ring up caramel apples. Jefferson wandered the aisles, letting the memories of the place as it had been forty-odd years ago move through her mind. When the children left, she led Shannon around the store.

"What happened to the post office? There was a little window right here and a woman who took the postcards I mailed to my girlfriend back in Dutchess."

"I remember the post office too," Shannon said with a heavy sigh. "My aunt and uncle lived in Pipsborough, and they let me open the box and pul out their mail."

"Fancy boxes too," said Jefferson. "Bra.s.s, with an eagle."

"And sun rays. Remember that?"

"My dad and I would walk from the cottage. He'd get cigarettes and I got penny candy. And a cap gun once a summer if he was feeling good."

Shannon smiled, looking at the floor. "This store had the best water guns."

"I remember," Jefferson said with a laugh. "I couldn't wait to get home to fil it. I climbed down to the stream outside." She pointed out a window to where water ran toward the lake.

"And got soaked? I did that too. Man oh man, I miss being a kid. Remember how we got al summer off?" Shannon's face changed, her shoulders drooped. She shook her head. "I should have stuck to water pistols."

"You learned to shoot in the Guard?"

"No, my dad taught me. We used to go out in the woods. He'd pin a paper target to a tree and we'd have contests between us two. I hit the bul 's-eye my first try and got pretty consistent. Do you shoot?"

"No. Never appealed to me. I was more into contact sports."

"Right. Gym teacher." Shannon stopped and held a half-ful case of Starburst candies in one hand. "Or are you talking about the other contact sports?"

She grinned. Was Shannon actual y starting to relax that tense, stringy self of hers? "You're right. I'd rather do those too."

Shannon's eyes flashed in a too-familiar way. The woman was sizing her up as a lover, wasn't she? That was pretty desperate. They were clearly both attracted to the Dawns and Gingers of the world.

"I'm staying away from that sort of thing. I've made some bad decisions in my life," she told Shannon.

Shannon quickly reached to pack the candy into a counter display. Jefferson caught the one that dropped.

"You couldn't actual y cal them decisions sometimes. My heart would up its rate and I'd be off on the chase again."

They were at the cash register, Shannon behind the counter, Jefferson in front, paying for a pack of gum. Shannon was watching more schoolkids, who were eyeing the cigarettes and Shannon in turn.

"There was this butchy senior in a high school where I taught," she told Shannon, "one of those posh uptown schools high-income parents al want their kids to get into. It was the week before graduation. The kid was eighteen, age of consent in New York is seventeen. Not that I would have taken her to bed.

A student and not my type. But that's what she wanted. I figured, show her some places, let her meet gay kids. That's what I did-after she graduated.

"Turns out the parents-overprotective? Never saw anything like it. I mean, one look at the two of us, you know we're not into each other, chasing skirts together. Kid picks another butch. Mom catches her with said look-alike. Dumb kids. In the graduate's bedroom, playing at sleepover. Of course the mother wants to know. Kid tel s al , dad cal s the school. I have to meet with the parents and admin. Mom cal s me another one of those masculine women.

I get fired, like it was me in bed with darling daughter. Nothing good ever comes of mixing butches."

She'd been interrupted a few times while Shannon rang the register, but they were alone for her point.

Shannon shrugged, but didn't look at her. As she locked the register and walked into an aisle she asked, "What are you going to do about a girlfriend up here?"

"Again, I'm retired from al that. I've had enough," she proclaimed, knowing this was no longer quite true. A great sadness came at her like a hurricane of tears yet to be shed. She felt a deep pang for intimacy and for the place she and Ginger were supposed to be sharing, the place that was to have been their togetherness.

Shannon started cutting a box open. It was a case of huge cans of Hawaiian Punch. Shannon lifted the big blue cans one at a time and slid them along the wooden shelf, stopping off and on to ma.s.sage the smal of her back. "Pretty slim pickings around here." Her eyes were narrow as she studied Jefferson.

"We could start a lesbian inn, bring up the touro-d.y.k.es."

Shannon moved the dol y to another aisle and slid it out from under two cases of soup, then sat on them, studying Jefferson silently.

"What?" asked Jefferson, who was ready to leave.

"What? What? Didn't you hear your bril iant idea? An inn. A lesbian B-and-B." Shannon's arms waved as she spoke. Her eyes had come alive with enthusiasm. Jefferson didn't see how a femme could resist her. "Build it and they wil come, right?"

Shannon held the sharp edge of the box cutter against her thumb. With the forefinger of her other hand, she was tracing the veins in her wrist.

Jefferson looked at her watch. She had to get going.

"You're the realtor," Shannon said, slipping the cutter into a back pocket. "Find us one of those old farmhouses gone to rack and ruin. I'l get my dad to help us fix it up-" Shannon slumped again. "I'm not running anything from Iraq, am I?"

"I'l be on the lookout, Shannon, for when you can. You're a natural for the manager. Can you cook breakfast trout?" she asked with a smile. Macy Gray sang on.

"Cook breakfast?" Shannon reached out two hands toward her and Jefferson slapped them. "I am the waffle whiz, the superb scrambler, the bagel boiler. I can cook bacon, omelets, flapjacks, and home fries that would leave you begging for more if you weren't already stuffed to the gil s. Trout is a specialty of mine. Start looking, Jefferson. Start now, okay? Give me something in my d.a.m.n life to look forward to."

"I actual y have a place in mind, come to think of it."

She watched the life drain from Shannon's eyes. Shannon turned away to the Hawaiian Punch. "Nothing ever works out for me. Never mind."

"I've got to go to work," Jefferson said, remembering when she'd felt that down. "I might stop by that house I'm thinking of, which is conveniently empty." Getting Shannon's mind off Dawn would be a good thing.

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

It was a little chil y to be hanging out half inside, half outside of Dawn's garage. These Sat.u.r.day gatherings had become an inst.i.tution for Jefferson, though, and she always at least stopped by between showings. Today she'd only had one retired couple to squire around, obviously in town for the fal foliage, and they had narrowed their sights to two pieces. She'd gone home after that and put on her jeans and brown leather jacket, which was keeping her warm on this damp day, but was, after half a lifetime of wearing it and working to keep the leather supple, getting snug on her. She needed to lose weight, p.r.o.nto. When the rain came down they al moved inside the garage, but kept the door open.

Yolanda Whale was working on a six-pack; Rayanne was laying borders around the photos in a sc.r.a.pbook she was doing of the group and trying to get them to come up with something they could cal themselves.

"Jygrs," Dawn said. "There must be way to use our initials. Ryj-"

"The Old Crows," Jefferson suggested at the sight of two crows on a swaying electrical line.

"Sounds like a whiskey," Yolanda commented.

"It would to you," Rayanne shot back.

"Wel ," Dawn said with a sigh, "the initials I'm coming up with sound like an Icelandic city."

"Maybe Shannon wil think of something," Rayanne said. "Where is she?"

Yolanda said, "The Goonies."

"She went to the movies without us?" protested Dawn.

Rayanne said, "That's our name: The Goonies. I loved that film."

"Oh, gross," said Dawn.

"She could be at the movies, though. Or someplace."

"Good thinking, Yo," said Rayanne. "I'd have to agree that she's someplace."

Jefferson remembered the day Shannon helped her work on the boat, how impossible her dilemma was. Iraq was no fit place for a New Hampshire d.y.k.e. The service was no fit place for someone who was used to being out or who had a back as sore as Shannon's appeared to be. "Hey, what about loons? They're al over the place now."

Yolanda laughed. "The Loonies! We can be The Loonies."

"You are the loony," said Rayanne.

Jefferson was always amazed that Rayanne was a successful financial wiz, with her lousy people skil s, but Dawn said she made money hand over fist for herself and her clients. Drew and Ryan raved about her. Jefferson was surprised to learn that Buck and Serena put what they cal ed their spare change in her hands, whatever they didn't have committed to property. She wondered, if she'd been fifteen years younger, when women were entering fields like finance in greater numbers, if she might have been good at something like that. Real-estate sales seemed to suit her. She used to laugh at the feminists, but they'd real y opened up the world for the women who fol owed them. Stil -Rayanne, goonies, financial savvy-it did not compute, as Rayanne herself might say. "Goonies definitely has a fun-loving feel to it," Jefferson said, laughing, "but then, so does the one Shannon came up with last week: The Bean-Supper Gang."

Dawn looked at her watch, then at Jefferson. "This isn't like Shannon. She usual y lets one of us know if she isn't going to be here."

"Try her cel ," Yolanda suggested.

Dawn said, "I did. And I left her two messages."

"Then her battery must be dead because the day Shannon Wiley doesn't respond to Dawn Northway-"

They al looked at one another. Jefferson was the first to say, "I think Shannon's got a lot on her mind."

The floodgates opened and everyone spoke at once.

Yolanda set her beer down on a sawhorse, hard. "She came to every one of us for help. Who helped her? I know I couldn't."

There was a general shaking of heads.

"And now she's what," Dawn asked, "sitting alone somewhere contemplating-"

"No," said Rayanne. "Not that."

"I didn't mean suicide. Maybe she's just sad."

"Shannon doesn't sit around and think about things, women. She acts. That's how she got into the Guard in the first place," Yolanda told them. "She thought her life was going nowhere so she signed on."

"And now," Jefferson said, "she's stuck again."

"Only this time, the Guard is definitely not the answer," Rayanne told them.

Dawn dialed again, then put the phone down. "I'm driving over to her place."

Jefferson was up and had her keys out. She reached for Dawn and pul ed her toward her car. The Avalon's lights blinked as she unlocked the doors while the others grabbed what they needed and fol owed. Dawn sat in front with her. Rayanne and Yolanda got in back.

She imagined, as she drove, that Shannon was a lesbian, like herself, with ghosts. Would Shannon grow out of her ghosts or would she, Jefferson, someday be as down as Shannon? She could see herself, alone, thrashing in her bed to a nightmare. Al the women she'd abandoned would drift through the mist to terrorize her. She'd feel haunted and vulnerable as giant trees dripped loudly around her. Shannon needed to face her ghosts, yel back at their taunts, prod the empty shadows with the sharpened stick of her future, or become another Donna Quixote, a victim of her own too prolific loving-or longing.