Curious Wine (21 page)

They sat on the floor in the living room, Lane leafing through the records in the cabinet. “We have to have
Pretty Eyes
,” she said, pulling it out. “Tell me, would you consider living in San Francisco?”

“I think I’d like it.” She was surprised by the calmness of her voice.

“It’s colder than you’re used to, but I could at least keep you warm at night.”

“Is that a promise?” She glanced at Lane, her tone light, her heart pounding.

“A guarantee.” Lane continued to flip through the records. “If you wanted to live in San Francisco, you wouldn’t have to live with me if… if it was better. But I would—You wouldn’t have to work. I’d take care of you.” “But I’d want us to take care of each other,” Diana said slowly, stunned and dismayed. She asked in blunt desperation, “Lane, are you trying to be a man for me?”

Lane’s hands paused on the records. She looked at the floor. “I suppose I am. You’ve always been with men. You’re used to men.”

“So are you.”

“But I know now what I really want. Don’t forget I had a month too, Diana. To think about this. All I care about is pleasing you as much as a man would.”

Why don’t you tell me how you feel about me, she thought. “Lane, what is it you think a man has ever given me that’s so wonderful?”

“The obvious, to begin with.”

“I take it you mean sexual apparatus. You know what I feel with you.”

“The novelty might wear off.”

“Novelty?” Calmly, but with a gathering of anger, Diana said, “You’re not a novelty and what I feel is not a novelty. And there’s nothing a man and woman do that we can’t.”

“I can’t give you a child.”

“Lane, I’m thirty-four. I’ve had two long-term male relationships. If I really wanted children, I’d have them by now.”

“A man’s strength, a man’s protection.”

“You’re strong for me in every way I need. I feel more free to be what I am, I feel more protected with you than I ever have with anyone.” She said vehemently, in heightening anger, “I’m not apologizing to you for being a woman. Don’t apologize to me. Tell me this. If you’d met me while you were with Mark, would you have let me happen?”

After a lengthy pause Lane answered, “Much as I would have wanted you, it’s difficult to say. I think you’d have taken me from Mark, but I’m not sure. There were other factors. Father was alive. And there was my own rather pitiful courage.”

“If I had known you before this, there isn’t a man in my life you couldn’t have taken me from.”

“You really don’t know me very well, Diana. I don’t know if I can take care of you… be enough for you in all the ways you’ll need.”

Diana thought: Take care of me? Be enough for me? Why doesn’t she tell she cares for me? That’s what I need to hear. She said, “Does anyone know that? I know you well enough. I know everything that matters. What kind of guarantees can any person give another? All I can be for you is what I am. I don’t want you to be anything but the person you are.”

As Lane continued to stare at the floor, Diana sighed and clenched her hands in frustration. “If I wanted a mannish woman I’d be attracted to Liz. God knows she’s rough and mannish enough. I love imagining you in jeans and a shirt.

I love the thought of you in a dress and high heels and jewelry.”

“Every morning of the month,” Lane said in a distant voice, “I woke up thinking I’d dreamed you, that you were the woman in my dreams and you’d never happened.”

Diana said furiously, racked with hurt, “You know what I think? You don’t care about me at all. You want to be a man for me? You are like a man, and the worst kind. I’m just a woman’s body to you. I’m just a dream figure, your faceless woman. Maybe I’m Carol. Maybe I’m just a symbol of the woman you really want to take to bed.”

Lane stared at her, eyes wide with shock. “That’s not true.” Her voice was distorted with anguish. “Oh God that’s not true. Carol and I were like children compared to this. I’m so afraid, Diana. I’m terrified of what I feel about you.”

Her voice had dropped to a barely audible whisper. Her lips trembled. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you hurt me.”

“Lane, look at me.” Diana reached to her, took her face in her hands. Lane’s eyes were tightly shut. “Lane, look at me.”

Gray-blue eyes, wet with tears, looked helplessly into hers. Diana said from the depths of her, “I’ll never hurt you. Never.”

Lane whispered, “I love you. I love you so much. I wanted to tell you so many times. I loved you from the first time I looked in your eyes in the encounter games. When you held my face in your hands like this. You’re so gentle, so open to me, so warm. God, you’re so warm. And when you cried in my arms I wanted to heal everything in you that hurt. Every time we touched I loved you. It was all I could do not to tell you. I couldn’t tell you. I came so close, so close the last night when you talked to me and I made love to you. When we talked on the phone I almost told you. Oh God Diana, I love you so much.”

Diana said, her voice breaking. “I love you. All I want in this world is to be with you.”

Sometime later, clasping Lane tightly to her, she said in a voice that was muffled against Lane’s sweater and still breaking slightly, “I was afraid too… afraid of you not loving me.”

“I was afraid to ask for too much… afraid to ask for what I really want… to have you with me all the time.”

They kissed again, without any gentleness at all. After a while Lane said, “Let’s find music to make love to. All I want now is to make love to you.”

“With me, not to me.” Her head on Lane’s shoulder, penetrated by the warmth of her arms, Diana said blissfully, “You make love with the person, not to them, when it’s equal. Am I ever going to get you trained?” “Maybe, but not tonight. It won’t be equal tonight. You won’t get a chance.”

Diana kissed her ear lightly and felt Lane shiver. “I’m pretty sure I can make you change your mind,” she said, smiling, and rested her head on Lane’s shoulder again. She sighed and tightened her arms. “I think there are just too many problems with loving a woman. For instance, there’s lipstick on your sweater.”

“The stewardess will be so shocked,” Lane murmured. “Will you come back with me in the morning? Take the day off and… be near me?”

“Yes. It would appear I’ll be quitting anyway.”

Lane stroked Diana’s hair. “I can practice law anywhere… anywhere we want to live. If you’d prefer—”

“I can work anywhere, too. I think San Francisco would be a beautiful place for us to live.”

“When did you know?”

“That I loved you? It was there all along, growing stronger. But consciously in the motel room. I knew I wanted to wake up every day of my life with you.”

“It’s fast, Diana, so fast for us to know… We’ll have problems, Diana, being together.”

“Yes, I know. But we’ll be together. You asked me when we first made love how I knew how to touch you and I told you I just knew. I just know about this, too.” Diana quoted,

“The Soul selects her own Society—

Then—shuts the Door.”

“I love you,” Lane said.

Diana said, trying out the words, tasting them. “My dearest.”

The End