Yet the ego is such a phenomenal animal that you will stand there and smile and soak it all up as if it had some meaning as a critique, because it flatters you to do so, she thought. Because it is exciting and meaningful. Tina allowed her smile muscles to go slack and took a deep breath.
“Just so incisive and brilliantly handled, and I—” The smile flashed back on in automatic response, but it was getting late and she had worked her butt off this week, and now this nothing lecture in North Buckhead, and she had to drive all the way crosstown to Buckhead Christian Church, and—she stole a look at her watch—it would be ten-forty-five, eleven o'clock before she got home.
The woman paused, an anxious look on her face, and Tina snapped out of it long enough to nod.
She'd already forgotten this person's name. White, was it? Janet WRIGHT—that was it, Wright. She was proud of her ability to retain name/face association. It was a vital skill to anyone who had the slightest glimmer of interest in a possible political future, which Tina Hoyt most assuredly did.
“Awfully nice of you.” She hurried on, starting to move. “I hate to rush off but I have another engagement clear across town,” she said moving, the smaller woman following her.
“I understand,” the Wright woman said, shaking her head no furiously. “It's wonderful how much in demand you are. And the consciousness-raising you...” jabbering on a mile a minute as she followed Tina outside to the glass doors. Tina felt a hand on her arm and turned. The woman with her fingertips resting on Tina's sleeve. Standing a little close. Not wanting her to get away now and telling her of her great interest. One of those moments when it could go either way. Tina speculating idly for just that instant as to motive. Wondering if Janet Wright was gay. Not particularly caring, but mildly surprised at the thought. She patted the fingers and said sweetly, “I DO appreciate it,” pushing on the heavy doors and striding out into the parking lot.
The woman was staying with her. “I wish you knew just how much it meant to hear you tonight. Such a remarkable experience for me...” Fine, but let it go. The persistent woman gushed on as Tina Hoyt stopped at her car, fishing keys out of a bag, “...feminist movement and the separatist...” the flexuous critique winding on.
Enough. She cut the woman off with a crisp and airy “Thanks again. Goodnight!” Slamming the door on Janet Wright's parting words, waving good-bye, and smiling automatically as she started the car and began backing out. She hitched her skirt up to get comfortable, exposing a pair of slim, shapely legs. She felt as if she'd been wearing her pantyhose for three days. She'd have to work to keep her concentration buckled down when she spoke to the church women. Tina was tired and she felt herself getting a little bitchy over nothing, and she cracked the window and breathed deeply.
The rural traffic was backed up behind big John Deeres and massive combines and cotton trailers, rolling their wide loads down the road to waiting fields. Tina braked, flipping her interior light on to check her wristwatch against the car clock. That was her first mistake. The woman driving the van coming from the opposite direction saw her lit up like an omen, an attractive young (?) woman alone in an ‘86 Toyota Corolla DLX 4-door, and she braked, making a neat, slow U in the next road, and easing up behind the cars waiting for the farmers to clear the way. The driver of the van appeared to be talking to herself in the rearview mirror, the way people sometimes do.
Tina tried to relax, remembering some of the things the talkative Janet Wright had said about how important she was to the movement, and she breathed in the smell of woodsmoke as she drove. The thought of fires in some adjacent field reminded her of zoning laws, and she rolled her window up and zoomed around the slow-moving farm machinery.
The woman pulled the van up a couple of car lengths behind the Toyota as Tina Hoyt found a parking spot near the basement entrance of Buckhead Christian.
Tina was moving in the direction of the church door, heading for the thickly carpeted stairway that led to the church basement, when she heard a voice behind her call, “Hey! Excuse me?” And she turned and saw the beautiful woman click-clacking across the street toward her on extremely high heels.
“Yes?"
“Could you spare me just a few seconds?"
“Gee. I'm sorry. I really can't. I'm running late as it is. If you can wait till after I finish, I'll be glad to speak with you then."
“Please,” the woman said in a strange, hoarse whisper. “You'd better come hear this.” The beautiful woman conveyed an urgency and Tina turned back. “Just a few seconds."
“All right.” Sigh. “But hurry, please."
“Get in with me for a second.” She opened the door on the driver's side and gave Tina a big flash of long legs.
“I don't have time to get in. Speak your piece."
“I've got something you need to hear—and see.” She held up an envelope and some papers. “Thirty seconds, I promise. You won't regret it. It's extremely important to YOU."
“Tell me out here.” Tina shook her head. She'd had every manner of woman put the make on her or try to. Something in a certain-type woman, she suspected, gave off a feral scent. She'd been cruised in the most surprising ways and by the most unlikely persons.
“Please,” breathy and hoarse in that sexy, somewhat kittenish whisper.
“Okay, but HURRY,” leaving the door open on the passenger side as she slid in, checking out the woman. She was gorgeous, but with more makeup than Tina liked, and she'd piqued her curiosity.
“Read this.” She handed a thick folder to Tina. “Pull the door to. You're not going to want anybody to see this."
Tina ignored her. “Who are you, by the way?” Tina asked, looking at what appeared to be a bill of sale for an automobile. She didn't recognize any of the names. She was starting to look up at the woman and forming the words “What's this got to do with me?” when she heard a metallic noise there in the van behind her and sensed someone's presence. Someone sitting back in the darkness had moved behind her and she was turning to look when she was penetrated.
She did not feel much pain at first, only her hair being pulled and twisted and the needlelike thing going in, and as soon as she felt something stabbing into her ear, she screamed but it was too late for screaming then as the awful sharp thing plunged all the way in and the blinding red-hot agonizing pain hammered her under without warning or preamble.
Vega, 1961
The first time they made it together was really not the first time at all. It was the first time in bed, together, both of them totally nude, nobody else in the house, a slow seduction-cum-rape scene. The first time had been years before. The first time he made her climb a tree with all the boys from the neighborhood standing underneath, the kids having coughed up a silver nickel each to “see London.” And she climbed innocently, sans underpants, showing the boys how well she could climb, but all of them laughing for reasons she would never fathom.
The first time, then, had been a series of firsts. First the tree-climbing exhibition. The second first was Playing Doctor and Nurse, as he called some young interns in to lecture them on the finer points of female anatomy. This time it was necessary for him to have her hold the full skirt “over her head” as he gingerly probed and pushed and prodded the mysterious folds and lumps and oddities around and in “the hole."
The next first time had been some sort of prepubescent folie a deux in which the two of them sprawled together in the deep weeds in back of the overgrown Colman place down the street, rubbings and gigglings and “messings,” as they called it.