“It’s all right, Diana,” Lane said, looking at her briefly, her face calm.
“She’s drunk, Lane.” Diana wanted to tear at Liz, pummel her with her fists.
“No, my dear, just stoned,” Liz said. “There’s a world of difference. You piss-ant wine drinkers could take a bath in the amount of bourbon I can put away. George taught me how to drink. Among other things. But George liked me the way I was, too. He married me when he was thirty, after two other marriages and hundreds of other women. For twenty years he wanted me, only me. I know that as sure as I breathe. He used to call me the fastest come in the West.” She picked up her drink as the women stirred uneasily.
“One of the boys,” Liz said softly. “He always said I was like one of the boys. One of the boys. I reminded him about that when he wanted to be with her. I told him I knew why he smoked those big cigars, why he was always asking to fuck me in the ass. I took this cabin away, I wanted George to know how it feels to get fucked in the ass. One of the boys.” Liz chuckled, and Diana grimaced with pain at the sound. “That’s what I told that blonde chippy at his office, that slim little blonde. I told her right in front of George and everybody I hoped she liked getting fucked in her little blonde ass every night.”
In a flash of understanding Diana blurted, “Lane reminds you of the woman who took your husband away, doesn’t she.”
Liz stared at Lane. “Tell me dear. Honestly now. Do blondes really have more fun? Do you really have more and better orgasms than the rest of us?”
“Liz,” Chris said in her slurred voice. She sat slumped, her head nodding.
“Oh shut up, Chris,” Liz said wearily, and drank bourbon.
“I understand your pain,” Lane said.
“Do you,” Liz said in a low vicious tone, turning on her. “Do you really understand, pretty blonde lady? What do you know? Have you ever lost anybody?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you. You take anything you want. You’ve got those looks and brains besides. How could you lose anybody?”
“By not making him go to Canada. I could have made him go, even though he insisted it would complicate our lives too much, he’d just do his tour in the war and get out. And then do you know what happened, Liz?”
“Don’t, Lane, don’t,” Diana whispered, horrified.
But Lane and Liz were leaning toward each other, eyes locked. The fire crackled loudly in the still room. Lane said, “He stepped on a mine where there weren’t supposed to be any mines. They found a few pieces of Mark’s body for us to bury.”
Liz sat swaying, her eyes closed. Diana gazed at Lane through tear-blurred eyes.
Lane said, “It was a long time ago. Years ago, now. A lot of women did what I did. Your man is still alive. He’s fifty years old and from what I understand a lot of men his age have a serious affair, one final fling, then go back to their wives. If I were you, that’s something I’d consider, and you’re a bigger fool than I think you are if you don’t take him back if you get the chance. And I don’t think you’re a fool.“
“It hurts too much,” Liz mumbled, her eyes still closed.
“All of us have pain,” Lane said. “Some of us can recover from it.” She rose to her feet. “I’ve had enough.”
Madge said, “It isn’t right to leave it like this. We’ve worked all through the negatives now. If we stay and talk, all the positives will come out. We’ll be just like sisters when we’re through.”
“I believe you Madge, but I’m still going to bed. Diana, I wish you’d come too.”
Diana rose to her feet. Chris said thickly, “Do you realize it’s two o’clock?”
“We’re skiing tomorrow, too,” Millie said. “I want to ski while we still have good snow.”
“We’re not kids anymore, Liz,” mumbled Chris. “Come on, Liz.” She helped her sister to her feet and said blearily to the group, “Why don’t you let us have the bathroom first.”
The two sisters weaved unsteadily down the hallway, supporting each other.
Chapter 5
“Don’t get up, I’ll take care of us.” Lane pulled up the ladder and dropped the trapdoor into place. Diana lay in bed staring unseeingly out the window, her senses numbed and battered.
“An elephant is a good description for Liz,” Lane said quietly as she hung her clothes in the closet. “A wounded elephant. Incredibly strong and in great pain and just stumbling around bewildered, trampling things, striking out at anything, trying somehow to deal with it. She’s blinded by her pain.”
Diana was aware that Lane was standing beside the bed looking down at her. On the edge of tears, Diana did not take her eyes from the window.
Lane blew out the lamp, got into bed. She asked softly, bending over her, “Diana, are you all right?”
“Yes,” Diana said tightly.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not that sure you are.”
“I’m okay. Good night.”
Diana lay rigidly, emotions sweeping her in warm waves, each wave weakening her further, trying to prevent tears and failing that, trying to stop them. Lane lay unmoving; Diana could not hear her breathing.
Involuntarily, Diana made a gasping sound as hot tears streamed down her face, and Lane said, “I knew you would be like this. You would have to be.”
To her intense mortification, Diana began to sob, and Lane moved to her. “Let me hold you,” she said, and took her into her arms.
“I’m sorry,” Diana cried into her shoulder.
“Just cry. It’s okay. It’s the best thing for you to do.”
She clung to Lane, weeping, wrung with emotion, each attempt to stop seeming to bring a fresh paroxysm. “I just don’t do this,” she wept, her body in Lane’s arms wracked with sobs.
“It’s all right, Diana, it’s all right.” Lane held her gently, her face against Diana’s hair.
After a while her sobs diminished, and she managed to say in an almost normal voice, “I’ve made your pajama top all wet.”
“It’ll dry.” Lane held her face in her hands and brushed tears away with her fingers. She touched her cheek to Diana’s face and rubbed moisture off with her warm skin.
“I’m not even the one who should be crying,” Diana said, her voice choking again with tears. “I’m so sorry about Mark.”
“Please don’t cry for me.” Lane’s hands held her face gently; her eyes were closed.
“I can’t stand to think of the pain you’ve had.”
“It was a long time ago and I’m much better about it now.”
“And then to lose your father. Sometimes it seems like all the love in the world has no power to change anything. There was so much pain down there tonight. Does everybody have that kind of pain?”
“At some time or other.”
Diana closed her eyes; they stung and burned. “I guess. I’m through crying.” Reluctantly she added, “I need a Kleenex.”
Lane’s hands released her face, and Diana sat up and reached to the nightstand. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose energetically, looking at the stains of her tears, dark patches in the starlight, on Lane’s pajamas, and feeling more and more foolish. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. Please don’t feel that way.”
Diana lay back on the bed. “I guess I’m just a big baby,” she said, turning to Lane, trying to smile.
Cool fingers touched Diana’s face, brushing her hair back. Lane said, “We didn’t know what we were doing down there. Women can’t tough each other out, we aren’t any good at that. We don’t know how. We don’t get enough practice.” Lane’s fingertips stroked her forehead and traced down over her cheekbones. “And you’re much too sensitive and feeling a woman to be involved in those kinds of games.”
Diana looked at her with overwhelming awareness of her beauty, a beauty intensified by shadows and starlight. In the silver light of their room her eyes were a deep gray, her lips a sensual curve, her face a lustrous, austere sculpture of contours and shadows. Blonde hair was tumbled and lying thickly on the pillow. Lane was stroking Diana’s hair and stopped; she rolled strands in her fingers and watched Diana look at her. Diana’s eyes closed as Lane pulled her face toward her.
“Okay now?” Lane asked softly.
“Okay now,” Diana whispered, her eyes still closed. She thought their lips had touched, barest feather-light contact.
“I’ll hold you till you sleep, okay?”
“Yes,” Diana said, wanting the gentleness of her again.
Lane’s body felt almost inconsequentially slender in her arms. She held her face against Lane’s throat, feeling strands of hair on her cheek, and she breathed a fragrance intricate and delicate from her hair and skin. Diana lay quietly, aware of pliant breasts that pressed softly against her with Lane’s breathing. Lips touched for a moment on her forehead, a melting softness. Diana tightened her arms and turned her face into Lane, brushing her lips over her throat, over silky smooth softness, against the hollow of her throat, feeling the pulse beat.
Then it seemed so very easy, so natural for Diana simply to raise her face and feel the melting softness of Lane’s mouth with her own. Her mind vibrating with alarm, she drew away; but Lane’s mouth came to hers. Their lips met again and again with tender, brief kisses that became lingering and still more tender, and Lane held her gently, closely. Diana was warm in her arms, her body softening with release; and she yielded as in a dream, her lips parting; and Lane’s mouth became the most exquisite velvet, and they kissed deeply, slowly, endlessly, unhurriedly.
Chapter 6
Diana lay across Lane’s body sifting the silk of her hair again and again through her fingers. Lane’s arms were around her, hands slowly caressing her shoulders. They were kissing deeply. Faint, intermittent sound intruded insistently and assumed coherence: women’s voices and the vibration of footsteps. Reluctantly, Diana drew her mouth away, pushed aside the blanket that covered them in the cold of their room, and opened her shocked eyes to daylight. Lane’s arms tightened, and Diana said very quietly, “It’s time for you to put on ski clothes.”
Eyes shut tight against the light, Lane murmured indecipherably and reached up and drew the blanket over them again, and dissolved all Diana’s thought with her mouth.
Some time later, they heard Liz’s shout from below, “Hey up there!”
Lane’s arms released Diana, but she held her face with gentle fingers for moments longer and her mouth left hers only slowly. She traced a finger across Diana’s cheek. “We’d better get down there,” she said softly, and sat up. But she stared unmoving, out the window at the Lake.
Diana rubbed her eyes and said, choosing her words hesitantly, “Thank you for… for being here… for… for what I needed.”
Lane said, “I’m glad we could be together.” She leaned her head back, shaking her hair, then got up and donned her robe and slippers, and opened the trapdoor, sliding the ladder down. “Give me seven minutes in the bathroom,” she said, with the briefest of glances at Diana as she climbed down.
Diana absently selected pants and a sweater, and went to the window. She felt tired but relaxed, almost languid. She thought it had been very good for her to cry; she had needed to. She stared at the blinding white snow and the distant glistening blue of Lake Tahoe, her mind blank, emptied of thought.
A few minutes later she nodded and said good morning to the group drinking coffee around the fire, and went into the bathroom and closed the door, leaning against it with her eyes closed, breathing the lingering fragrance of Lane’s perfume. She brushed her hair with long, automatic strokes, arranging the soft waves with pats of her hand as she always did, looking intently into the mirror, examining herself as she would a peculiar but fascinating stranger. She splashed cold water on her face.
When she came out of the bathroom she watched Lane climb gracefully down the ladder dressed in her royal blue ski clothes, blonde hair swaying and changing its patterns with her movements. Diana pulled her gaze away and went into the kitchen and poured coffee, and joined the group at the fireplace.
All the women were dressed for skiing. Their conversation was sporadic, forced, subdued. Diana realized she had completely forgotten the events of the previous night, the disastrous disintegration of the encounter games. The women were solemn, thoughtful, evading each other’s eyes.
“Anybody as hung over as I am?” Liz asked, grimacing as she massaged the back of her neck.
“I am dying, Egypt, dying,” Madge intoned, clutching her head.
“I feel fine,” Millie said.
“I’m getting too old for this,” Liz sighed. “George and I used to party all night at the clubs and then go skiing without even going to bed. We could do it in those days. Today I’ll consider it a penance.”
“I hope just for your hangover, Liz,” Lane said. “No other damage was done as far as I’m concerned.”
The two women looked at each other with a gaze that was lengthy and unflinching.
“Good,” Liz said, nodding.
“We’ve been friends for years,” Madge said. “It’ll take a lot more than just one evening with all of us smashed on booze and grass to change that.”
Millie said, “We know each other so well. Friends are too hard to find.”
“There were some good things too, last night,” Chris said.
“Yes,” Diana said, knowing that some statement, however brief, was expected of her.
Liz said, “Good friends, let’s have breakfast.”
Diana pushed at her scrambled eggs, pricklingly aware of Lane. Lane finished her breakfast quickly and sat drinking coffee, staring out the window, seeming to have no awareness of Diana.
The women left for the ski slopes. Diana drove to Harrah’s.
She sat in her car in the parking lot, fingering her keys, head back against the headrest, looking at the white mountains, and thought of her own femininity, the femininity of Lane—the elegance of her gestures, her movements, her clothes.
What had happened between them was inexplicable. But with astonishing ease she constructed an image of Lane’s beauty adorned by the simplicity of jeans and a white shirt, and she was pierced by the beauty of the image. Disturbed, she pushed this forcibly from her mind, reminding herself that she had never been physically attracted to a woman in her life. Defiantly, easily, she conjured up her favorite fantasy of a beautiful man in a white silk shirt, his hands and his mouth tender on her.