Her specific awareness of what Bonita was doing to her fell away. Someone behind her, outside the pool, lent knees to lean against. An anonymous pair of hands massaged her shoulders. The slow internal progression toward orgasm began.
As waves of sensation cleared her mind, the dull-wittedness of beer and confusion lifted. Against the blank slate of the pleasure that engulfed her, she saw projected a faint shadow of Freddie's buzz, still inside her. Then it was replaced by a new connection; Bonita was linking herself subtly with nerves in the walls of Lee's vagina. It was not as extreme as her connection with Freddie had been, but it was still deeply intimate, and the approach of orgasm quickened. As the connection widened and intensified, the character of Bonita's imprint became apparent. She compared the flat, sharp texture of Bonita's nervous pattern with Freddie's more sudden, unpredictable buzz. As her body began to stiffen and pulsate, her mind remained strangely detached and observant. She started to gasp, and a wash of thoughts flooded her. She saw, with a finality as sudden and unexpected as any orgasm, what made Bonita and Freddie alike; what made them different from her.
The realization interrupted her orgasm, and she was only half-spent when she straightened and grasped Bonita's shoulders again. She had to know. She pulled herself to Bonita's ear and said in a firm voice, "You were born a man, weren't you?"
Bonita opened her eyes, a look of surprise in them. Inside her, Bonita's fingers re-formed. For the first time, Lee felt that she had gained the upper hand. It lasted for only a few seconds.
Then Bonita smiled her devil smile. She took Lee's hand from her shoulder and pulled it down into the water. Through the rough fabric of Bonita's jeans, Lee felt the unmistakable hard form of a large, engorged cock.
Lee's voice was dry. "You've had this goddamn thing all along, haven't you?"
"I wouldn't leave home without it," he said, smug as hell.
"You son of a bitch!"
"What's your problem? Don't tell me you've never had a cock."
"I have," she said. She leaned closer, her grasp sharp on the back of his neck. "But this is not a place for pricks."
He pushed her away with one finger on the center of her chest, and spoke sharply above the music.
"That doesn't make any difference to us. Gender is a human thing." She realized that, as once before, he had used the word pejoratively. "Besides," he said, "what's it hurt these dykes? Their mothers'd probably be glad they're in the pool with a man."
He didn't see it coming. Lee gave no warning, because she didn't realize what she was doing. The blow hit him solidly, open-palmed and flat, the heel of her hand right at the edge of his jaw. His face shifted briefly at its impact into a strange comic mask of befuddlement. He pulled it back together, but it still held a look of shock. One cheek was red, his lower lip split on one side.
Then he regained control. "You dyke bitch!" His voice was deeper now. He moved suddenly, and she instinctively raised an arm to ward off a blow. But he was out of the pool. He strode to the stair and turned back toward her, and his face shifted again. For a sudden, insubstantial second, he glared at her through a bizarre mask. His mouth lipless and suddenly too large, eyebrows devilishly arched, eyes reduced to slits, skin taut as a corpse's over his skull. The look was literally monstrous. It passed so quickly she doubted anyone else could have seen it. If they had, they would have fainted.
He turned and disappeared up the stairs.
She realized she had to follow him. How could she ever find her kind again? As she ran to the stairs, women parted quickly, alert with the embarrassment with which people react to a lovers' quarrel. The stairs were still wet where Bonita had passed.
The crowd upstairs slowed her progress toward the door. It had become still more crowded and butch, the women standing firm as she tried to press through them. She reached the door and stepped into the warm, fresh night air. There was no one in sight. She spoke to the doorwoman. "Did a woman just leave?"
"No. Some guy with no shirt on did, though. Looked mad, too. Somebody cut his dick off?" The woman laughed a low throaty laugh to herself.
Lee looked up and down Sixth Avenue. Bonita was gone.
There was a hand on her shoulder. Her heart sank. She would catch hell for hitting another woman in the club. She turned. It was Kathy, wet and flushed, but cheery.
"Girl, you bopped that bitch!"
Lee opened her mouth to explain but found herself speechless.
"I don't know what she said to you, but I never liked her one bit." Kathy paused, uncharacteristically thoughtful. "There was something about her that just pissed me off."
Lee couldn't help grinning. "You don't know how glad I am to hear you say that, Kathy."
A cool wind came up, chilling them in their soaked clothes.
Together, they went back inside.
A few women downstairs looked at her coolly. They had seen the blow. By the pool, there was a discarded black T-shirt. Lee frisked it quickly. Kathy, a concerned look on her face, put a hand on her shoulder. In a shallow zippered pocket sewn into the left sleeve was a single faded receipt, a phone number scribbled on the back. Lee blew the edges dry where her fingers had dampened them and tucked the receipt into her shoe.
Kathy offered to buy her a drink. Wendy and the other New Orleanois had left. They were catching the red-eye flight back home after all. Lee accepted. Her daze of confusion and alcohol had been broken by the adrenaline rushes of the last few minutes. But another sensation, quite unfamiliar, had replaced the bewilderment - a vast feeling, empty and reverberant, with a thin line of panic in it. She squeezed Kathy's hand harder and harder as they waited at the bar.
Somewhere in this massive city, there were other people who could change. Like her, they were hiding. No one could hide better. She had, for a moment, grasped a chance to join them, her own tribe. Now the chance was gone.
She looked down at the floor, a million kilometers below. For the first time in a long time, she felt alone.
Their beers in hand, Kathy led Lee to one of the back rooms in the hall and wound a few dollar coins into the lock.
Chapter 3
CANDY
The next morning, she discovered that she had made it home.
Her brain was parched and beaten. She felt like something that had crawled out of the Bronx Free Enterprise Zone. A glass of water sat by her bed untouched. She swore. Her voice sounded like sandpaper trying to talk.