has.”
“Hey, I went to one of them once,” Honey protested. “It was fun.”
Dale shook her head. “Not my kinda music.”
“Not mine neither,” Mick added. “When Honey dragged me to that thing, I thought I was gonnadie of heat stroke or boredom, one. All that guitar strumming and singing about sisterhood ... I had to playnothin’ but Allman Brothers records for a week just to get all that strumming outta my head.”
“You liked Glenda Mooney, though,” Honey said, playing with the collar of Mick’s leather jacket.
“She was all right. At least she played somethin’ that had a beat to it.”
“Say, Honey,” Sue said, “speaking of music, why don’t you put on that record Dale and me like?”
“Oh, lord, not that thing,” Mick grumbled.
“Don’t be rude, baby.” Honey rose, sorted through a stack of LPs, and pulled out one marked
“Love Song Canteen.”
“I’ll Be Seeing You” began to play, and Dale and Sue rose and began to dance. They held eachother close and moved together in a light two-step. Dale led.
“Come on, Mi-ick.” Honey was trying to drag her girlfriend out of the recliner.
“This ain’t the kinda music I can dance to.”
Honey rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Damn it, Mick, there ain’t no can or can’t to it. It’s justhugging set to music.”
Mick knocked back the rest of her beer and reluctantly stood up. Soon, though, she was resting herhands on Honey’s ample hips, and Honey’s hands had disappeared beneath Mick’s black leather jacket.
On one level, it was comforting to be in a place where women could dance together — a safeplace (albeit a hot and tiny place) where dykes could be dykes together. On a deeper level, though,watching those women dance just made Lily more aware of her own loneliness. Looking at Mick andHoney, she wondered what her life would have been like in ten years, had Charlotte lived. And looking atDale and Sue only reminded her that she would never have the pleasure of growing old with the onlywoman she had ever loved.
The song “I’ll Be Seeing You,” a wartime ballad about how love lives on even after the lovedone’s death, wasn’t exactly helping Lily’s emotional state. She wiped what she thought was sweat runningdown her face only to discover it was a tear.
She jumped when Jack nudged her.
“Say,” Jack whispered, “you wanna dance?”
Lily was grateful that Jack didn’t ask her if she was okay, which was an obvious question with aneven more obvious answer. “Uh ... I don’t know.”
“I promise I’ll be a perfect gentleman, what with you being a married lady and all.”
Lily felt herself smile. “Oh, okay. What the hell?”