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"Let me guess: Jeanette was the instructor."
"She moonlights from her programming job to do stints with a firm that runs seminars all over the country. She designed her own course, aimed strictly at female computerphobes. It's a bit of a cause for her, so women won't be relegated to the sidelines during the digital revolution."
Kate felt her throat tighten at the memory.
"You should have seen her, Jack. She was wonderful. Took control of the room with her presence. She kept it light but we could sense how she truly cared. And she was so fu
"Was there some sort of instant chemistry?"
"I couldn't take my eyes off her. She tended to wear te
Jeanette gives her a long look, a little half smile gently twisting her lips.
"Lessons in what?"
"Why, um, computer lessons." What a question. "I need some sort of accelerated course."
"Why don't we discuss it over di
Kate loves the idea. The kids are home; she left them money for a pizza delivery. A hot meal with this fascinating woman is so much more enticing than snacking alone on a leftover slice or two when she gets home. She'll just have to let them know that she's going to be a little later than she'd pla
"Sounds good," she tells Jeanette. "I just have to make a call first."
They settle on the Italian restaurant right in the hotel. Jeanette starts with a light beer while Kate has a Manhattan. Jeanette protests when
Kate orders a veal dish so she settles for spaghetti puttanesca. Over the meal, during which they split a bottle of Chianti, Jeanette does a lot of asking and Kate does a lot of answering.
When they're through she invites Kate up to her room where they can use her laptop to determine how much she knows and how much tutoring she's going to need. Wonderful idea. Kate's feeling so warm and relaxed and comfortable with this woman that she doesn't want the night to end yet.
She steps into Jeanette's room, dark except for the glowing screen saver on the laptop. She starts forward but never reaches it. Hands grip her upper arms, turn her around, soft lips find hers. Kate stiffens, instinctively begins to recoil, then gives in to those lips. Jeanette's hands move from her shoulders to the buttons of Kate's blouse, tugging at them, freeing them, slipping the fabric off her shoulders. She's insistent, will not be denied. And Kate has no will to deny her or to fight her rising heat, for a new sensation is filling Kate, something she's never fully experienced. Lust.
She lets Jeanette guide her to the bed, lets her take her on the flowered spread, and feels transported to a place she's never been before, another realm. And for the next two hours she has her first private lesson from Jeanette, but not in computers, as a patient, expert teacher tutors her in the ways of warmth and wetness.
"One thing led to another and… we became lovers. Then partners. And I began my double life. A very eligible divorcee in Trenton; half of a luppie couple here in New York."
"Luppie?" Jack said, then waved his hand. "Never mind. I just got it."
"Jeanette said her gaydar picked me out during class—she called me 'a Talbot's dyke'—but had no inkling that she'd be my first."
"But she's been good for you?" Jack asked, and she saw real concern in his eyes.
"I don't think I've ever been happier or felt more… whole. Jeanette has been wonderful to me and for me. She's so tuned in. She's been my guide into this world I barely knew existed, while I've smoothed some of her rough edges and taught her to take a longer view on some things."
After coffee and sweet rolls they left the Greek Corner and wan-dered up to the urban garden that defined this length of Sixth Avenue, the Flower District.
"Where do you go from here?" Jack said as they threaded through the foliage.
Potted greenery lined the curbs, everything from rubber plants to oversized ferns to small royal palms. The storefronts were riots of color—reds, yellows, blues, fuchsias—and behind them, inside, dimly glimpsed through condensation-layered glass, lay deep green pocket rain forests.
Last week Kate might have picked out some flowers for the apartment, but not today… not in a flower mood today.
"In two years, when Lizzie's off to college, I'll tell the kids and Ron. After that it won't take long for the news to leak to my patients, and then the you-know-what will hit the fan. I'll lose a fair share of them. Trenton may be the state capital but it's a small town at heart. People will decide they'd rather not bring their kids, especially their daughters, to a lesbian pediatrician. Especially when there are five other straight doctors in the same office. And that won't make my partners happy."
"So come to New York," Jack said, slipping his arm around her shoulder. "Lots of kids here whose parents won't care how you spend your off hours. And it'll be great having you close."
She leaned against him. "You can't imagine how much I appreciate being able to talk to you like this. And I'm sorry for going on so. Listen to me: the love that dare not speak its name ca
"But you and Jeanette must have some friends. I mean, there's a huge gay community down here that—"
"Yes, but I'm a forty-four-year-old baby dyke who isn't out. That makes me a sort of pariah to the younger dykes, the grrrls, the twenty-somethings who've been out since their teens. They think we all should be out and eff anyone who doesn't like it."
"'Eff'?" Jack gri
"I always have trouble saying the F-word."
"That's because you're a square. Always were."
Kate sighed. She couldn't take offense. It was true.
"I'm still a square in so many ways. A square dyke—can you imag-ine? A walking, talking oxymoron. Born square, doomed to die from terminal squareness. It's just that I was always trying to set a good example—for you when we were growing up, and later for Kevin and Liz."
"And you did," he said softly. "Just as I'm sure you still do."
"I don't want to change the world or be part of a movement. I just want to be me. It's taken me so long to get to this point that I just want to relax and enjoy it. And I never cared what others thought as long as I had Jeanette. We're both a little old for the gay club scene; we'd have di
"No dressing up and going out on the town looking like Wild One Marlon Brandos?"
"Just being a vanilla dyke more than fills my deviancy quota."
"Don't call yourself a deviant."
"It means deviating from the norm. And that's what we dykes do."
"Can't help how you feel. Not as if you're hurting anyone."
"Not yet at least. But when I finally come out… who knows?" She shook her head. "All because of a chromosome… one lousy chromosome."
"There's a gay gene?"
"Maybe. But I'm talking about the Y-chromosome, the one that makes you male. We females have two X-chromosomes, but if I could change one chromosome, change just one of my X's to a Y, my feelings for Jeanette would be considered perfectly normal."