the way.”
“Nice to meet you. Love your sleeves.”
Honey surveyed her tattooed arms with genuine pride. “Thanks. Designed ’em myself. Here, letme introduce you to the usual suspects here. The ingrate hogging the La-Z-Boy over there’s Mick. She’smy old man.”
“Hey.” Mick raised her Bud tallboy in a half toast. Her hair was cut in a salt-and-pepper dykespike, and she wore a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt and a black leather jacket — a shocking fashionchoice, given that Honey’s apartment was cooled only by two oscillating fans, which were doing nothingmore than stirring the hot, soupy air.
“And over here’s Dale and Sue.”
On the overstuffed tan sofa sat a couple who were at least as old as Granny McGilly. The butchmember of the duo — Dale, Lily presumed — had close-cropped, snow-white hair and wore a GeorgiaBulldogs jersey and sweatpants. The femme’s silver hair was shampooed and set, and she wore a lilacshell top with matching slacks. She put a long cigarette to her lips, and Dale dutifully leaned over to lightit.
“Hey, babe,” Sue said to Lily, her voice a husky smoker’s rasp.
“Lord, girl, how old are you?” Dale asked, her voice having all the subtlety and modulation of BigBen McGilly’s. “Seventeen?”
Lily smiled. “Twenty-nine, actually.”
“What a coincidence!” Dale whooped. “Me, too!”
“Don’t you pay no attention to her,” Sue said to Lily. “I ain’t heard a word she’s said in thirtyyears. I just keep her around ’cause she lights my cigarettes.”
“Now, I’m good for a little more than that,” Dale teased, letting her hand rest on Sue’s knee.
“Oh, that’s right.” Sue waved her cigarette for emphasis. “You do take the trash out. I forgot aboutthat.”
Lily laughed. Butch/femme, it seemed, had never gone out of style in northern Georgia. Lily hadalways enjoyed the butch/femme dynamic in a postmodern, theatrical, and mainly reserved-for-thebedroom kind of way. But these women played their roles without a trace of irony.
Settling down in a nest of oversize floral-print cushions on the floor, Lily wondered what thehyper-politically correct women at Athena’s Owl Bookstore in Atlanta would make of these dykes. Wouldthey think these rural women were living their lives according to oppressive patriarchal standards?
Who cares if they are? Lily thought. The two couples obviously loved each other, and the sexualsparks between them were warming up the room faster than the Georgia summer heat. Lily ached forCharlotte.
Honey was sitting on the arm of the La-Z-Boy, running her sky-blue nail-polished fingers through