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Bloodsong of Wycaro tour stop number one: Boston, MA. A fuckin’ Barnes and Noble, of course.
Carol hates them and their cookie-cutter lobbies full of daddy dom bullshit and cartoon cover meet-cute whatevers. She hates the artificial sugary stench of the incorporated Starbucks lounge. She hates the smiling, always smiling, staff. She hates the perfect straight rows. She hates the cold blast of air from the supercharged, industrial A/C.
She hates shaking hands with the corpo-drone district manager or whatever and chirping, “So glad to be here! I’m Carol Sturka, and this is my manager, Helen.”
And she hates it when some fangirl with a shitty handmade Raban doll wants her to take it, so she has to say, “I love it! My hands are a little full—could you please hand it to my manager, Helen?”
And she hates wrapping up the whole charade with a saccharine, “...and as always, the biggest thank-you to my manager, Helen, for putting this little shindig together. Can we get a round of applause for Helen, everyone?”
Because she hates sucking up to these dorks—until some later time, when she’s alone and will permit herself to preen and feel sentimental—but she fucking loves the little sparkle in my manager, Helen’s bright blue eyes. Each brighter than the pair of little diamond rings they keep in the little teal box on their dresser in Albuquerque, which neither of them ever wear, ever, but that always feel like they’re being left behind because they somehow take up too much space to pack for these “little shindigs.”
Which is her fault. Carol’s. She’s not under any delusions. About that, anyway.
In the employees-only restroom, the water is always too damn hot after the store was too damn cold, and she’s always too damn on-edge. “My manager, Helen. My manager, Helen,” she hisses at her reflection, hardly audible over the gushing faucet because these hellholes also always have fucked up plumbing. Bitterly, but still in that fake-ass customer service voice even though she’s got a moment alone, because she’s still here. “My manager, Helen. My ass. Fucking—fuckin’ tour. Fuck this shit.”
But waiting, so loyal and so patient, just outside the restroom door is as always my manager, Helen, chatting up a storm with the corpo-drone; and she, without missing a beat, mid-sentence, offers Carol a squeeze of fancy hand cream. Because of the always-too-damn-hot water after the always-too-damn-cold store.
My manager, Helen winks, because the corpo-drone turns his back on them to lead them out of the backroom, and Carol thinks about how the original-original Raban’s eyes were crystal clear blue. Not “wine green”, which she regrets immensely every day. But Carol thought that was too much—too “gay”, as in stupid and bad, to use the accepted terminology of the time—and so she scribbled it out on her legal pad until her Bic pen wore a hole through the paper, and so not even my manager, Helen knows that little fun fact.
The lotion soothes her hands, but the rest of Carol’s skin crawls until they’re in the back of the car, and the driver’s an old fart who would never clock them as a pair of dykes because they’re both wearing lipstick, and Helen—just Helen—reaches over and pats her knee.
“One down,” Helen says chipperly.
The sleek bun is her favorite style when she wants to look literary and put-together. And her blazer-turtleneck-slacks number is one of Carol’s favorites, too, the aged-like-fine-green-wine version of the smart-mouthed grad school babe who hung out at the shitty dive where Carol slung, and drank, copious PBRs to make ends meet between paying writing gigs.
The first time Carol had the guts to meet her eyes—to be caught looking—Helen had just flipped off some guy who was doing the same damn thing. But Helen smiled at Carol for it, all the way up to her bright blues, and Carol’s mind snapped to the heart-pounding, nauseating, impossible-to-resist peeks she used to sneak at the sexy librarian spreads in her cousin’s Playboys over Thanksgiving. If that knobby-kneed tween knew she’d grow up to snag a bookish brunette bombshell of her own—well, she’d probably just say, “god, mom’s gonna kill me.”
In the modern day’s moment, she could reply with literally anything else, but what slips out of Carol’s mouth is, “god, I need a fucking drink.”
She hears Helen sigh, but manages to turn away and stare at the back of the driver’s seat fast enough that she doesn’t have to know which long-suffering look’s accompanying it this time: the pleading one, the scowl, the cheeky oh-you eyeroll. She’s been too fried today to muster up a guess.
At the hotel, the annoying desk clerk twists the knife: “...and, Ms. Sturka, we have you ladies in adjoining rooms as your manager re—oh, that’s you, Ms. Umstead. Pardon me. As you requested.”
‘Your manager’, my ass, Carol thinks irrationally, watching Helen be oh so gracious to the clerk and oh so friendly to the bellhop who’s summoned to tow their shit up to their adjoining rooms, even though Carol can tell she’s also still feeling pissy about their mini-spat in the car. Somehow, it feels more absurd to hear it out of some stranger’s mouth, despite the refrain that’s battered her all day. She’s pulled tampons out of that woman’s vagina with her teeth. Manager. What do these twerps know about a quarter century and one billion Rick Steves specials under the belt.
Carol breezes into her adjoining-fucking-room and ignores the bellhop when he brings her suitcase and duffel in, since my manager, Helen handles all the tips. She really wishes she had a damn Xanax. Or that she could hit up the minibar without getting an earful about taking advantage of the agency’s generosity, which is well within Helen’s job description (manager) for her to pretend to give a rat’s ass about. Especially since Helen—her manager, FYI—has already made them dinner reservations, where Carol can freely knock back a few because the new-ish Rover with the new-ish ignition interlock is parked about two thousand miles too far away to spark an argument, so all Helen (her beloved beautiful loyal patient wife) is asking is for Carol to wait a couple hours. Which they both know she’s fully capable of doing, because the State of New Mexico’s probationary license program has already established her capacity for temperance, irrespective of her willingness.
Which is not—she’s not exactly being unreasonable, Helen, even if she’s also not exactly being fair. Carol has enough sense to recognize that despite her own ego, but she’s an ink-on-the-page person. She’d prefer black and white, but that’s never been Helen. She’s always been all colors.
And besides, they both know that if they’re looking for a transparent villain to dump all the blame on, they can always find one under a marble slab in a Virginian suburb.
Sighing, tasting acid, Carol shrugs off her blazer. Kicks off her shoes. Scrubs her face with a makeup wipe. Knows she can’t reach this dress’ zipper without twisting the elbow she fucked up golfing years ago, which is one of the reasons she still wears it—because she likes dolling up for something special with Helen here and there, and now she regrets wasting this effort on those common dipshits—, and stands around feeling like a burnt-out asshole for a few more minutes before opening her adjoining-room door and knocking on Helen’s.
Helen opens it so quickly that Carol infers she was doing the same exact thing. They joke that they’ve been together so long, they’ve managed to crawl into each other’s DNA and create a new lifeform, some kind of twin-flame hivemind of only two.
So, Carol turns around silently, and lets the tension bleed out of them both from the nape of her neck as Helen’s cool fingertips meet it. She can smell the last of Helen’s perfume, the one she bought her in Reims. That one time when Helen wanted to hold hands in Sprouts, so Carol took her to Les Crayères.
Flicking her chin toward the pristine king bed, guts untwisting as her dress loosens (albeit not all the way, because they never do), Carol lilts, “I’m thinking, quickie in mine now, strawberries and cream in yours after dinner?” And she hates to be called a grinch, but her shriveled heart is wont to grow three sizes at the haughty laugh puffed at the back of her neck. “What? They’ll strip both anyway. Might as well make it worth their time.”
“Can’t help but notice you’re planning to pin the mess on me,” Helen teases. She finds the elastic band of Carol’s bra through her open zipper and snaps it briskly against her skin, which Carol does not dignify with a squeak. “What’s gotten into you? Did getting fawned over by all those Rabanoholic babes get my little wife all hot ‘n bothered?”
Carol scoffs—those dorks are not babes, unlike her babe—and turns in Helen’s arms, letting Helen’s hands slide around her waist and pull her in like it was her idea all along. Like she, Carol, isn’t too fucking clingy and asks too much sometimes. In her own opinion. Helen would never tell her if she ever thought so, not even in their bitchiest fight, so there’s no point in wondering; which means Carol only wonders sometimes, like she sometimes wonders if Helen really likes her writing at all, or if she just loves her.
The sexy turtleneck is a little annoying now; the cashmere is warmed through and fragrant with the scent of Helen’s neck, but it keeps Carol from feeling the softness of the skin there for herself. It’s gotten softer over the years, more relaxed, more lived-in. The smaller versions of herself that Carol carries around could never have pictured a life this long, let alone a life this shared. Despite being a writer, Carol struggles to come up with words to explain just what it’s meant to her, that Helen has stuck around so long despite all her shit.
But then again, if Helen had the ego to press her on it, Carol would probably just take the easy way out and buy her a thousand monkeys and a thousand typewriters and let them hash it out. Another consolation prize for another quarter century half in the closet, of my manager, Helen.
Carol hates that it’s been damn near forty years and she’ll never be able to leave it behind her. How it follows her everywhere, but especially to Barnes and freakin’ Noble.
“First stop’s the hardest,” Helen whispers softly into the hair above Carol’s ear. In turn, Carol nuzzles down her turtleneck to press against her pulse point, feeling the steady thump of Helen’s heart that feels like Carol’s lifeline, too.
Helen means, for us both, but she doesn’t say that. She’ll keep it to herself in Boston, Atlanta, SLC, Dallas, wherever the hell else they’re going—in these foreign territories away from their hive of two. It’ll be after, back in Albuquerque with her voice on their answering machine and Carol’s interlock on their Rover, when she’ll float a suggestion. Something that Helen wouldn’t call easy, because Helen knows her, but that would be simple. A step, not a marathon. Black and white, like ink on the page.
Admitting that, yes, she has seen and likes the “female Raban” fan art. Holding hands anywhere west of Provincetown. Joining that women’s league at their golf club that’s mostly but not technically all lesbians.
There’s really no reason to think that this time, when Mayor Tim Keller’s smiling face welcomes them back to the A-B-Q, that anything will be different because Carol knows that would require her to be different. And she’s not sure she knows how, or even if she could be.
But she does sink deeper into her wife’s warm embrace, and she think about the document on her computer she’s already started to pick at for Wycaro #5. Barely, that is—it mainly just lists several bullet points of variations of “fuck this shit.” But, just to tell herself she’s already completed “a page”, she had already copied in the dedications from Bloodsong.
She won’t say it aloud—that’d be a promise, and there are far too many freezing Barnes and Nobles left to give her cold feet—but she resolves to delete the ‘my manager’ and let it read just, ‘for Helen.’