Beggar of Love Part 16

She sat with Gabby and Lily Ann, started to tel them how good it was to see them, and found herself crying. Her companions went dead silent.

"I'm sorry," she managed to say over a blast of rap out of the jukebox. "I don't know where this is coming from. I never cry."

"Du-uh," said Gabby, who had taken off her ap.r.o.n and closed the food side of the bar. "It's your first time back since-"

She could hear Lily Ann sock Gabby in the arm. She looked up. "It is, I know," Jefferson said. "I was thinking about it. I mean, I came here so often without Ginger."

"With good reason," Gabby said.

Jefferson asked, "You mean you didn't like Ginger either?"

Gabby looked embarra.s.sed. "It wasn't that I didn't like her, it's-"

"That you didn't like her," Lily Ann finished for Gabby.

"She was kind of a cold fish, I always thought," said Gabby. "You loved her so much and Ginger-I mean she'd laugh and joke around and al with us, but it was like she was always playing a part and ready to leave the minute you would. If she was like that at home, no wonder you ran around on her."

She sc.r.a.ped her fingernails through her hair. "So al those years I was trying to measure up and there was nothing to measure up to?"

Gabby shrugged. "Some things are too tough to do."

"Or we make them tough," Lily Ann amended. "You held that girl up on a pedestal and then couldn't meet the expectations you thought she had."

"But she didn't have them?"

"You have to care to have expectations of a person," Gabby said.

"She didn't care? That's ridiculous!"

"She couldn't care," Gabby said with finality.

"Why are you ganging up on her? I didn't know none of you liked Ginger."

"She wasn't so good for you," Gabby said. "She maybe wanted to be, but I would think about not going after her, if I were you."

That was because she didn't know the little girl in Jefferson. Only the lover knows the little girl who lets herself be held in the night and laughs at sil y things over breakfast and admits it when she's scared. She scooped petals from her pockets and drizzled their wilting whiteness from her hands to the table. "If I knew where she's hiding. I don't want to stalk her. I wouldn't even try to talk to her, but this knowing nothing-she could be in trouble. She could be wanting to come home. I feel like she's been gone for a lifetime and that she's coming right back."

"Ah-hem," Gabby said.

"What?" Lily Ann asked.

"I heard something."

Jefferson looked up. "Gabby," she said, reaching for her. "About Ginger?"

"About Mitch."

"Speak," Lily Ann commanded.

Gabby picked up a second napkin to shred. "This trick was in his apartment last summer. He saw a brochure."

"What trick?"

"A guy I run into because of work."

"How wel do you know him?" Lily Ann wanted to know. "Is he reliable?"

"What kind of brochure?" Jefferson asked.

"You know, one of those cult things."

"A Kool-Aid cult?"

"No. Where they brainwash you straight."

She stared at Gabby. "You're kidding."

"It was a brochure."

"Did he say anything about it?"

"Who?" Lily Ann interrupted. "Who are we talking about? Somebody making this up to sound in the know?"

"No. I see this guy like, daily, when I pick up ingredients. He sel s pestos and garlic spreads. Like that. We've been doing business for centuries."

"What's his name?"

"Nuncio. He's cool. Real y."

Jefferson asked, "Do you think he made her go to one of those groups with him?"

"He said he and Mitch talked about it, about Mitch wanting to change, being tired of tea rooms and tricking, and being scared of HIV. He said Mitch thought he might find some, you know, calm and serenity. Like that."

"And he needed a partner in crime," said Lily Ann.

"My partner," Jefferson replied.

Gabby asked, "Did Ginger ever say anything about that kind of thing?"

She thought back. "No," Jefferson said. "She used to say she could go either way, but she happened to love me."

"Oh, that's an old tune," Gabby countered. "I'm not gay. I only happen to have been with my girlfriend Muscles since 1953."

They al laughed. "Maybe Ginger was a little like that, but I thought she'd gotten over it. As you said, it's been a long time."

"Mitch must have worked on her."

"They were real y good friends. I thought we al were, but he performed with Ginger sometimes, playing flute."

There was a silence. Lily Ann asked, "Did Nuncio remember the name of the place?"

"There was more than one," Gabby said. "And no, he didn't remember details. I asked that."

"We can find them," Jefferson said.

"Do you real y want to?" Gabby asked.

Jefferson said, "You'l never get information out of one of those groups."

"Oh, but I could," Gabby suggested. "I could pretend I'm interested, get a tour."

Lily Ann laughed. "They might have a wax museum-famous conversions."

"The Gal ery of Gay Conversion Failures: El en, Rosie, Sir Elton," Gabby added.

Jefferson had to smile. "Sounds like fun. How's Sunday for you?"

"Seriously," Lily Ann said with a sigh that sounded like resignation. She reached under the table and pul ed out her laptop. "A little Wi-Fi and we might get a handle on this."

"But," Gabby interjected, "Mitch might have gone there first, gotten fixed, and then dragged Ginger off."

"How could she," Jefferson moaned. "She might as wel have stabbed me right through the heart. Not saying a word-it feels like an attack."

Lily Ann reached for her hand. "No. It's a retreat. This has been building for years, J."

She stopped herself from whining. "You're my friends. You've never criticized me for my acting the way I do. I hope you know me wel enough to understand that I accept ful responsibility for being an out-of-control dog. But I always came back. And never-how could she-"

"A man. Disgusting," Gabby said.

To hear another butch say that was soothing. She nodded to Gabby in thanks. She felt such shame. It wasn't something she could explain to anyone.

Even Lily Ann didn't understand how deep it went. Another woman was one thing, but this...

Lily Ann came up with a list of groups in the metropolitan area that Mitch could be working with. "They must go back for fol ow-up. We could get schedules."

Gabby shook her head. "Five places. What are they, churches?"

"Al but one," Lily Ann answered.

"That's the program then," Jefferson said. "Mitchel is Jewish."

"Observant?" Lily Ann asked.

"He didn't keep kosher or anything, but he did a seder every year and was into cooking. He made a mandelbread you wouldn't believe. Maybe if I'd cooked more-"

"J," Lily Ann intoned. "It isn't your cooking. It's who you cooked with."

She nodded. That truth was inescapable.

She had slowly realized that she'd never been hurt before. She'd skipped away from other women as she would from a drinking buddy, which some of them were, or a work friend when she changed jobs. Or she got too deep into their egos or dreams and they didn't want to let go. Not one had walked away from her.

Now that it was her turn, she was stunned by her pain and jealousy; she had never learned this side of love and was completely defenseless. She might have to move. The city had become Ginger, pirouetting around her in long skirts, long hair, and tights, her colors always somber and her occasional bright laughter al the more startling.

Even if she'd been hurt back in her drinking days, she'd been too pickled to feel much or to remember. She'd started drinking in her teens, and her sponsor told her that might be where she was stuck: her feelings al these years like a teenager's.

That Sunday they actual y went to the smal box of a building in New Rochel e where Straighten Out held its seminars. Lily Ann Lee was driving and Gabby sat in back. There was a seminar scheduled for three o'clock. They were watching for Mitchel 's black Hyundai SUV, but the smal parking lot was almost ful and there was no sign of it. A row of forsythia bushes blazed yel ow in front of them. She stil saw their brightness when she closed her eyes to dim the spring sun and the sting of salt in the tears she refused to let fal from her eyes.

"This feels humiliating," she said.

Gabby agreed. "What are we going to do, grab her back?"

"Jef wants to know where she is and if she's safe. Seeing her here would give that to you, Jef, wouldn't it?"

She nodded, eyes closed, one hand on each of her friends. "I could sit on the sidewalk with a tin cup, begging for information."

"Maybe there's a secretary inside-"

"What I was thinking," Lily Ann said. "I'l go in, say I was supposed to meet Mitchel here."

She gave Lily Ann an encouraging push toward the door. "You go, girl."

Gabby handed her a bottle of green tea from the cooler. She held it against her hot cheek, watching the doorway for Lily Ann now. "You guys are good to me."

Gabby harrumphed in the backseat. "What the heck. Amaretto's working today, there's no games on the tube. It's a nice ride in the country."

"This is what you cal country?"

The street was al but treeless, the pavement littered. A vacant lot stood to the other side of the yel ow bushes, and across the street was a storefront church, abandoned after the morning services.

"New Rochel e was country when I was growing up."

"No secretary," Lily Ann said when she returned. "But there was a guy smoking outside the back door. Tried to register me. Told him Mitchel Para had recommended them. Nada. Not a flicker. He either real y doesn't know Mitchel or he's a good poker player."

"Thanks for trying, Lil." She squeezed Lily Ann's upper arm. "You're too good of a friend for this old sad sack."

Gabby rol ed her eyes. "So what's Plan B?"

Lily Ann started back toward the city and suggested, "Jef, I think you should leave a message asking Ginger to cal you."

"I already did. Three times."

"Hoo, boy," Gabby commented.

"They can't stay away forever," Lily Ann said. "We watch Mitchel 's apartment."

"We have jobs," Jefferson said.

"Yo-what about where he works?"