Seer (7 page)

I searched through to see what I wanted. I wasn’t sure what to give Dolores, so I picked one of the generic gifts for her, a restaurant gift card. Then I eyed the booby prizes, digging through the
m for a minute before I found the one I wanted.

Elsa was going to hate it.

When I got back downstairs, I saw the last of the tiramisu was disappearing. I eyed a plate longingly; I had hoped Dolores would leave a piece or two. She caught me eyeing it and smiled. “There’s already a piece waiting in your fridge for you.”

“Oh, you’re a darling,” I said. I raised my voice. “All right, with a score of six and two, Dolores is our grand prize winner tonight. Congratulations.” I handed her the envelope.

“Do I open it?”

“Yes.”

She did, looked at it, and then smiled. “Will you help me use it next week?”

“I’m out of town next week, but we can get together the following week. I don’t know when yet. I took that client’s work, and it’s going to be a lot over the next two months or so.”

She nodded. “We could make it a working lunch.”

“Absolutely not. That is recreation not work.”

I turned to Elsa. “Elsa had a bad night, only winning one game, and so I have a carefully selected booby prize for you, Elsa. You may open this in the next room and then return, wearing it.”

She sighed, but she had to know she’d lost tonight. She accepted the gift and disappeared in the direction of my bedroom.

“What is it?” Dean asked. He always asked. I didn’t even bother to respond to him. I never answered.

However, I wasn’t surprised when cell phones came out. Everyone prepared their camera app, and I knew there would be Facebook posts by the morning.

That was when we all heard, in very loud, very clear German, “Scheiße!”

There was a pause, and then Dolores said, “I already knew that one.”
Dean high-fived her again.

Elsa didn’t make an immediate appearance. I wondered how upset she was. Finally Gabby stepped out into the hallway. “Come on, Elsa. Let us see.”

“No photographs!” came her voice.

“Of course not,” Gabby said in a singsong voice. “We
promise
.” She poked her head back in. “Lots of pictures,” she whispered. “Lots.” She looked at me. “It’s a good one, isn’t it?”

“I may have gone too far. You would have laughed.”

“Ooh, even better,” Gabby said.

I heard Elsa’s voice from somewhat closer. “Gabby, get back in there. You do not get to see any sooner than anyone else.”

“Of course, my love,” Gabby said sweetly. She rejoined us in the living room. “Hide your phones,” she muttered to us. “She’s going to peek at us, I just know it.”

And sure enough, Elsa’s head appeared around the corner a few moments later. We couldn’t see the rest of
her, just her head. She eyed us all carefully, but everyone had hid her phone. She took a deep breath and stepped fully into the room.

She was wearing a tight, cropped tee shirt. She had changed into it properly, taking off her other shirt, which actually showed she was being cool about it.
It was green, and across the chest it said, “Kiss Me! I’m Irish!”

There was a pause, and then nearly everyone began laughing. Elsa immediately colored, but she stood there and let us
look. And then the phones came out, and she shrieked, but she didn’t run as everyone began taking pictures.

Gabby waited a moment then stalked closer to her girlfriend. “Irish, hmm?” She pulled Elsa into her arms and gave her what looked like a soul-wrenching kiss. Elsa didn’t care for PDA, and so she looked even more flustered when the kiss was over. A few phones caught the kiss.

Gabby stepped back. “Well,” she said. “You all see the shirt. Don’t you people follow directions?”

“Gabriella!” Elsa protested.

It was Dean who stepped forward first. He grabbed Elsa by the arms and pulled her close, but then he paused. Dean was, deep down, a good guy, and he wouldn’t actually kiss an unwilling woman. And so it was Elsa who put a hand on the back of his neck and accepted the kiss.

After that, Elsa got passed around. She blushed the entire time, but she got kissed by all her friends, a
lthough Frank and Patty’s kisses were upon her cheek, and then Patty’s kiss included a hug.

I got her second to last. I exchanged a brief, very chaste kiss with her, but Gabby scoffed. “What the hell was that, Sid?”

Again, it was Elsa who took charge. She pulled me into a better kiss, and she was a really, really good kisser. I’d never kissed her before, and it was a little weird at the same time. Then Elsa stepped away and turned to Dolores.

“Well, Straight Girl,” said Gabby. “What are you going to do?”

“Leave her alone, Gabriella,” Elsa said. She only called Gabby by her full name when she was exceedingly serious, and so Gabby shut up.

“I don’t think Elsa wants to kiss me,” Dolores said. But Elsa stepped up to her, pulled her into a hug, and whispered something into her ear. Elsa wasn’t a hugger any more than she was into PDA.

And then we all watched as Dolores kissed Elsa. As kisses go, it was brief, but it was sweet at the same time.

After that, the guys put my card tables and chairs away and rearranged the other furniture the way it belonged. They did it at the end of every party, and I appreciated it. We all sat down in the available chairs and spent some time dissecting the games for a while.

Elsa took more teasing about the shirt, including a few comments about her sexy tummy. She had a good body, and I thought she looked really good, but I’m sure she was deeply embarrassed.

As usually, it was Patty who announced that it was time to go. We all stood up, and people began moving towards the front door, but Elsa kept Gabby back, and I saw Dolores busy herself cleaning up coffee cups.

At the front door, I took hugs from everyone. Patty told me she hoped we’d have Dolores around some more. Dean told me she was cool.

Once they were gone, I got a brief hug from Gabby, who said, “I’ll wait in the car, Elsa.” Dolores was nowhere in sight.

Elsa moved to the front door but closed it with her back to it.

“Are you angry?”

“No,” she said. “Gabby really, really liked it. I’m going to wear it at home for her.” She smiled. “Sidney, do not stop with these booby prizes. They are good for us. They are embarrassing, and I dread losing, but I admit they are funny, and they bring us closer.” She paused. “And thank you for treating me the same as you do your other friends. It has meant a lot to me.”

“Oh Elsa,” I said. “You’re welcome. You know, I love you to pieces. We all do.”

“No,” she said. “I am hard to love. But I think I am liked, and when I moved here, I did not know what to expect. I did not know how to find the right friends.” She glanced towards the other room. “And now you have taken in another lost sheep. I want you to ask her if Gabby and I may have her phone number. I don’t want to ask her directly in case she is uncomfortable.”

I smiled. “I’ll ask. Thank you, Elsa. I think you helped her fit in tonight.”

“I remember what it was like. I know what Dean is like.” She stepped away from the door and turned to go, but then she turned to me and pulled me into a tentative hug. As I said, she wasn’t a hugger, but she hugged me, and I held her for a moment.

Once she was gone, I went looking for Dolores, finding her in the kitchen, washing dishes. I stepped to her side and began drying.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I was stalling so I could thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Elsa wants your phone number.”

“Really? Did you give it to her?”

“Not without permission.”

“Please do,” she said. “I liked them. Elsa is very sweet.”

“She is.”

We finished the dishes quietly.
We finished, and then Dolores looked like she was thinking of cleaning the stove.

“Did you want to hang around for a few minutes?” I asked. “We could go sit down.”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Um. I mean…”

I smiled at her. “Come on.” I led the way back to the living room, and we soon found ourselves on opposite ends of the sofa.

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” she replied. “I’ve never had such a good time.” She paused. “I’ve never done that.”

“Done what?”

“Kissed a woman like that.”

“Ah,” I said.

“I couldn’t believe Gabby was encouraging all of us to kiss her girlfriend.”

“Wife,” I corrected.

“Oh, sorry. Yes. Wife.”

“Gabby wishes Elsa would chill out. Gabby is exceedingly outgoing, and Elsa is far more reserved. It maybe wasn’t obvious tonight. She has never hugged any of us before, and she doesn’t let Gabby do so much as hold her hand in front of us. I don’t know why tonight was different.”

“She was breaking the ice for me,” Dolores said. “She was showing me how to be gracious if I lose the next time you invite me.”

I considered what she said. “Wow.” Wow indeed. For Elsa to do that meant she had really liked Dolores. And for Dolores to recognize it was just as impressive. I was going to have to ask Elsa about it.

“Did you like the kiss?”

“I was embarrassed to kiss Gabby’s wife in front of her. Well, to kiss a married woman at all. Um. I didn’t think about her being married, but about being in a committed relationship. You know what I mean.”

“Did you want me to point out you’re avoiding my question?”

Dolores smiled but didn’t answer.

“You were wrong about the gay powder,” I said. “It wasn’t in the curry. I bought special cream. It comes from gay cows.”

Dolores laughed.

“I made sure you got a lot of it.”

She laughed louder.

“It was in the soup and in the cream that went into your coffee. Frank used cream, too. Did you notice the way he was looking at Dean later?”

“Stop it!” Dolores said, wiping tears from her eyes.

“I didn’t realize Gabby would want us all to kiss Elsa though,” I said. “I picked that shirt so you’d start thinking about kissing a woman.”

“Sidney!”

I let her figure out I was the only unattached lesbian at the party tonight. It wasn’t hard to figure out.

“I probably taste like straight girl. Do lesbians like the taste of straight girls?”

“Some lesbians do,” I said. I paused. “I did, once. It went very badly.”

“She remembered she was straight?”

“Yeah. After I fell head over heels for her.”
I paused “There are a few clichés about straight women who decide to experiment. In the first, she goes all out. She can’t get enough, and acts like a super-dyke in public. In the other, she hides everything about it, although she keeps promising she’ll tell everyone real soon. Of course, she never does.”

“Yours was the latter?”

“No. If she’d been like that, I’d have been cautious. She was the other way, and I thought she was like a lot of women who don’t realize they’re gay until after a failed relationship. They realize they’re relieved to be free to be themselves and discover that means they like women. But no, she liked guys, and we out shopping for a house together when she suddenly turned to me, right in front of the realtor, and said, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore. You were fun, Sid, but I met a guy at work. I want to see where it goes.’ “

“Wow.”

“Yeah. She’d already gone on a date with him.”

“Wow,” Dolores said again.

“Yeah.”

We sat quietly, each contemplating
her own thoughts for a few minutes. Then Dolores said, “Sidney?”

“Dolores.”

“Would you let me cook you breakfast tomorrow?”

I stared at her. It took a moment to realize my shock, and she began blushing.

“Oh my god!” she said. “I can’t believe what I just said. No, no, no. I’m not asking to spend the night. I’m asking you to come to my house tomorrow for breakfast. Innocent. Platonic. No kissing involved. Well, maybe a little kissing, cause I have this dead sexy apron that says, ‘Kiss the Cook’, and I know you won’t be able to resist, but not stay overnight kissing.”

I began to laugh.

“I’d love to come to breakfast tomorrow, Dolores.”

We talked for a few more minutes,
then she announced it was time to go. I walked her to the door, but she set her back against it, just like Elsa had.

“Sidney?”

“Are you about to ask me to kiss you goodnight?”

She laughed. “I’m feeling very grateful, and I don’t know how to express it.”

“Tight hugs are good,” I said.

The resulting hug was very good. She clung to me for a while, and I held her just as tightly.

“Text me when you get up,” she said on her way out the door.

* * * *

Dolores told me not to bring a thing, but I arrived with flowers for her. She took one look, pulled me into a crushing hug, and then led me to her kitchen. It was a truly fabulous kitchen, and I was jealous. Together, we arranged the flowers in a vase, and then she offered me a choice of drinks.