The Love Sucks Club (6 page)

“Of course,” Sam says. “And this is my friend, Dana.”

“I’m Nan,” she says, putting her other arm around me. “It’s nice
to meet you.”

“And you.”

She squeezes us both and continues on, in the direction of the
bathroom.

“See?” Sam says after she passes.

“See what? You’re totally imagining things. Did you see how she
put her arm around me?”

“Yeah, and?”

“She’s obviously just a touchy-feely kind of person.”

“We better go over and sit with your sister for a while.”

“I guess.”

We gather a couple of beverages and head toward the table. As
we’re standing there arranging our drinks and chairs, the singer comes out of
the bathroom and walks past us to get to her table. As she walks behind Sam,
she reaches her arm over Sam’s shoulder and puts her hand directly onto Sam’s
crotch. Sam makes a kind of
blerting
noise and the
singer laughs. Giving Sam one squeeze, she removes her arm and walks on. We’re
all quiet for a moment, and then Sam glares at me.

“She’s just a touchy-feely kind of person, huh Dana?”

“Sam. Sammie-Sam Sam. You’re being paranoid.”

She laughs and we turn back to the table.

Esmé
is wearing a pale yellow
sundress that shows off her slim shoulders and her hazel eyes. Sitting down
next to her, I offer a quick hello and turn my attention to the dark beach. The
view of the stars from my deck is better. I should have stayed home.
Esmé
leans in close and puts her mouth next to my ear.

“I had a dream about you last night,” she whispers.

Most women would find this a turn-on. Instead, I’m filled with
trepidation.
“And?”

“You were standing on a cliff, looking down. I was behind you. I
kept trying to call your name, but I couldn’t open my mouth. When I finally got
my mouth open, you were stepping off the cliff. I raced toward you, but the
harder I ran, the further away the cliff got. You fell in slow motion.”

I’m silent, letting her words absorb.

She pokes me in the ribs. “You’re not planning on jumping off any
cliffs, are you?” She tries to sound as if she is joking, but I can just
discern the concern under the humor. Olivia obviously missed it, because she
laughs.

“If you are planning on jumping off a cliff, take Sam with you.”

“God, you’re hilarious, Olivia,” Sam grimaces.

“I don’t think that’s an appropriate topic for joking around,
considering the circumstances,” Susannah says, pointedly.

“It’s fine.” I wave my hand, dismissing the whole conversation.

“Sorry, Dana...” Sam starts.

“Sam is so insensitive,” Olivia sniffs.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had a lovely time for once instead
of always bickering?” Susannah is losing patience with Olivia and Sam.

“Actually, we do have a lovely
time,” Sam replies.
“Dana and I are quite adept at lovely times. In fact, we’re
thinking of starting a business. Lovely Times “R” Us.” she lifts her fingers to
put imaginary quotes around the “r.”

Esmé
laughs. “I’d hire you, Sam.”

If I’m not interested in this woman, why am I irritated that she’s
flirting with Sam? Susannah kicks me under the table. “Voldemort,” she says
without moving her lips.

Sam is facing the door, so she looks up. “Sure enough,” she
mutters. “Voldemort and Mandy, along with a few other
drunk
freaks.”

“Great.” I’m tempted to turn around, but I don’t want to give
she-who-shall-not-be-named the satisfaction of knowing I turned to look at her.
“What’s she doing?”

“Looking over here,” Susannah says.

Esmé
puts her hand on my arm. “Are
you all right?”

“Fine,” I grin. “I’m just fine.”

Sam shakes her head. “In a second, Dana should say something and
we’ll all laugh.”

She looks up at Voldemort and gives me the slightest nod. Turning
to look over my shoulder, I make eye contact with my ex across the restaurant
and turn back to my friends. I mouth something and the entire table erupts with
laughter. It lasts for a few minutes, culminating with Sam picking up a napkin
and pretending to wipe away a tear.

“And you say I’m dramatic,” Olivia scoffs.

“That was just adding visual interest,” Sam replies.

We all laugh again.
Esmé
squeezes my arm
again so I put my arm around her. I’m well aware that I’m doing it to make sure
my ex knows that I have a pretty woman with me, but it also feels good to touch
her.

“Do you want to leave?” Sam asks me.

“I’m ready.” I’m suddenly tired. Having my arm around
Esmé
suddenly feels uncomfortable. We look into each
other’s eyes and I feel that she’s looking into my mind and seeing all of my
hidden skeletons. Needing a break from touching her, I casually remove my arm
from her shoulders and stand up. Susannah stands up, too.

“
Esmé
needs a ride home,” she says. “She
shouldn’t be walking home after dark.”

Sam pulls her keys out of her pocket. “No problem. I can drop you
off after I take Dana up the hill.”

“Good,”
Esmé
says. “I want to see where
she lives anyway.”

Doubting that my opinion matters, I interject
anyway
.“
I
don’t suppose I have a say in this.”

“None,” Sam and
Esmé
say at the same
time.

Bracing myself for the inevitable run-in with Voldemort, I set my
face in what I hope is a look of complete nonchalance. The five of us walk
toward the door. When we reach my ex, she smiles at me and reaches out her
hand.

“Hey, Dana,” she says, smiling. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, thank you for asking.”

“Did you get my letter?”

“Yep.
Just wondering how you got it
in my house.”

She smiled. “I stopped up there looking for you. Since you weren’t
there, I just went in and set it on the counter.”

Making a note to start locking my doors, I nod. “Well, you aren’t
invited to just stop at my house.”

“Come on, Dana,” she says, laughing. “I lived there for five
years. I think I can still stop over when I want.”

“Guess I’ll have to invest in a moat.”

Voldemort laughs again. Her girlfriend, Mandy, grabs her hand and
glares at me. “Come on. We don’t have anything to say to her.”

My ex gives me a wink before they turn back to the bar. I have to
admit that she still has some kind of sex appeal. She isn’t as gorgeous as she
was when we got together. The years of drinking and smoking have taken a toll
on her skin, giving her a drawn look. The ever-present anger shows in the deep
grooves around her eyes and the tight set of her mouth. Still, her eyes are
still a pretty shade of blue and her hair which is almost as brown as mine, has
only just started to go gray. She’s as tall as Sam, but thinner. She used to
work out a lot when we first got together, but lately, she has been doing
nothing but drinking, so she’s getting soft and saggy.

Esmé
takes my hand and tugs me
along. I notice my ex noticing and fight to keep the smile off my face. She’s
going to be wondering about this tonight. I give her a big grin and squeeze
Esmé’s
hand. Sam laughs and we all head toward the door.
When we reach it, I turn around once more. “Hey, how’s that twelve step thing
going?”

Mandy looks sharply at the
ex,
and for
just a moment, Voldemort’s composure and her smug smile slip. Catching herself,
she shrugs and smiles again.

“I’m taking it one day at a time.”

“One drink at a time,” Sam responds.

In the parking lot, we say goodbye to Susannah and Olivia and pile
into Sam’s truck.
Esmé
props herself up on my knee.
Her bony butt digs into my
thighs and I’m forcibly reminded of Fran.
Esmé
isn’t
quite that skinny, but the comparison is there. I stare out the window,
ignoring the fact that she is on my lap. Sam, determining that
Esmé
lives relatively close to the grill, decides to drop
her off first. I’m partly grateful. I’m sure she wants to talk to me about the
run in with Voldemort. I never did get to tell her about the letter on my
counter. On the one hand, I’d like to talk to Sam alone. On the other hand, I’d
kind of like to be by myself for a while.

When we reach
Esmé’s
house, she gives me
a quick hug before sliding off my lap. She thanks Sam and starts up the
sidewalk to her house. We watch her until she’s inside the door. Backing down
the driveway, Sam is silent for once. Staring out the window, I try to clear my
mind, not wanting to think about Voldemort or Mandy or even
Esmé
.
As Sam turns onto my dirt road and starts the long trek up the hill to my
house, I’m once again struck with the urge to cry. Blinking furiously, I stare
out the window the whole way home.

Chapter Five

The third official meeting of The Love Sucks Club has come to
order. We’re hunkered down in a back booth at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on
Fifth Street. The Pit is a dirty, ugly place and the service
sucks
,
but the pizza is awesome. Since most of our friends tend to like to sit in
places where you can be assured of not sticking to the seat, we are practically
guaranteed privacy. Being the founder and the co-president, I rap the table
with my gavel and call for order. Since there are only three members, this is,
perhaps, not strictly necessary, but I like to do things by the book. Sam calls
attendance.

“Dana?”

“Here.”

“Roxanne?”

“Here.”

“Myself? Here.” She makes a check mark in a spiral notebook and
looks up at me. “All present and accounted for.”

“Excellent, excellent.
Do you want to read the minutes
from the last meeting?” I nod at Roxanne.

“Sure.” Roxanne is a sixty something woman who lives in my
neighborhood. We met years ago when she was a co-worker of my ex. For a brief
time, I had speculated that they were having an affair, but I eventually came
to the conclusion that Roxanne was too classy and smart to get involved with an
idiot like my ex. Once my ex got fired from that office and went out to work as
a bartender in a string of bars, we didn’t see much of Roxanne. After the
breakup, she called me and asked if I wanted to start walking with her. We
still meet three times a week in the wee hours of the morning and walk several
miles. The first time we walked, I’m pretty sure I didn’t say more than three
words. After a couple of weeks, we were talking about everything from our exes
to lesbian invisibility to the issue of Trans people in women-only spaces.
Despite the twenty year age difference, Roxanne is vital and strong and fit and
she keeps me laughing, even when I feel like shit. She’s kept an amazingly
positive attitude despite her recent discovery that her long time ex was using
her for years. When Sam and I came up with the idea of starting The Love Sucks
Club, I instantly thought of Roxanne. Despite her zest for life, she has more
reason than anyone to be bitter about love.

She clears her throat and looks down at her notebook.
“Notes from the second meeting of The Love Sucks Club.
Sam
complained about how a cute waitress at the resort told her, ‘I wouldn’t
date
you if you were the last dyke on earth.’ Dana
professed vehemently that she would never date again. Roxanne raised a motion
that the purpose of the club should not be to bemoan the
suckiness
of love, but to find a way to change said
suckiness
in our own lives. The motion was postponed to be discussed at a later meeting.”

Sam smiles.
“Roxanne, you don’t belong in
this club. You’re too optimistic.”

“If I wasn’t in this club, it would just be you two miserable
dykes sitting around whining about love. I’m here to provide a positive spin.”

“We’re not miserable,” I protest. “Why does everyone keep saying
that?”

Laughing, Roxanne pats my hand gently. “Okay, you’re not
miserable. But are you happy?”

“I’m not unhappy.”

Sam shrugs. “Neither am I. I have a good life.”

Roxanne smiles.
“Yet here we all are.” She
gestures around the bar. I have to admit, it’s a far cry from the grill. The
few pieces of art are hanging crookedly and covered with dust or grease or
other items not worth thinking about. The two employees are an
eighty
-year-old man who cooks the food and an angry
waitress who complains bitterly about her varicose veins whether we ask about her
health or not. Most of the tables are in varying states of dilapidation and the
chairs are so beat up that Roxanne actually broke one last week. That speaks
volumes since she weighs all of about a buck twenty. As I said, this place
sucks, but
man,
their pizza is to die for.

“Well, look.” I’m trying to think of a way to defend this stupid
idea. “It’s just a great way for the three of us to make sure we get together
once a week.”

“Yes,” Roxanne says. “But if we didn’t have an actual purpose, we
could just have a standing date once a week. Making it a club means we have an
ultimate goal.”

“Not really.” Sam has two beers in front of her. Since we know the
waitress won’t be back for a long time, we tend to double order. Sam opens one
of her beers and grins at Roxanne. “The Italian American club just meets to
play
Bocci
ball and vote on agenda items.”

“At least they have agenda items,” Roxanne laughs.

“We have agenda items!” I look down at my notebook. “Item number
one – dues.”

“That’s only going to work when we get more members,” Sam says.

“See? It’s our ultimate goal,” I explain. “We get more members and
collect dues. The whole thing takes off. We start franchises in other cities.
In no time, we’re millionaires.”

“I don’t want to be a millionaire,” Roxanne says. “I just want to
be content.”

“Maybe the purpose of our club can be to find Roxanne another
wife,” Sam pipes in.

Shaking her head, Roxanne holds up a hand in Sam’s direction. “Not
a chance. I’d never trust myself to be a good judge of someone again.”

She has a good point there. Roxanne has spent the last decade
taking care of her ex-partner, Evelyn. Roxanne has owned the house here on the
island for almost thirty years, but when Evelyn moved in, she basically took
over. She’d go off for trips with her friends and come home to dump her dirty
laundry on
Rox
. When she was home, she sat on her ass
and let Roxanne make all of the meals, do all of the housework, and pay all of
the bills. They ended up breaking up because Evelyn was insisting that Roxanne
put the house in Evelyn’s name.
Rox
finally put her
foot down over that and Evelyn left not long after. A few days after, Roxanne
realized that their joint account had been completely drained and with it, all
of Roxanne’s retirement money. Instead of looking forward to retiring in a few
years as she had planned to do, she’s working full time to pay the bills with
no foreseeable stopping point. It’s hard for me to look at someone as positive
and loving as Roxanne and understand how she could let someone railroad her
like that, but I guess no one really understands what goes on inside another
person’s relationship. I know most of my friends and family looked at my time
with she-who-shall-not-be-named and shook their heads in bewilderment.

“How did that work, anyway?” Sam is curious. “I mean, didn’t you
know somewhere deep inside that she was using you? Did you know she was
cheating on you?”

Roxanne pats Sam’s hand. “Don’t you know somewhere deep inside
that Josie is never going to become a lesbian?”

Stung, Sam pulls back. “I do know that. I’m not counting on her
for anything.”

“Yet, you’re in a holding pattern because you’re waiting for her.”

“I’m not waiting for her!”

“I still think The Love Sucks Club could be a money maker.”
Wanting to lighten the mood, I interrupt their exchange. “We could print
t-shirts. There could be a picture of a huge mouth sucking on the word love.”

“Well, technically that would mean that love is the
suckee
, not the sucker,” Sam points out.

“Fair enough.
Maybe love could have a huge
mouth and it could be sucking on something.”

Roxanne chuckles. “Like what?
A giant lollipop?”

“Plus, how do you make love have a mouth?” Sam asks.

“Well, it could be a graphic of a heart with a gaping mouth in the
middle of it.”

Roxanne shakes her head. “Now you’re just getting obscure. I think
that’s a little too art
noveau
. Nobody will get it.”

“
Heartsucker
.”
Sam nods to herself. “That’s
what people will think.
Heartsucker
.”

“That doesn’t even mean anything,” I complain.

“It does to a vampire,” Sam answers.

“That would be bloodsucker.”

Roxanne is laughing. “Forget the t-shirts. I have a plan.” She
pauses as our waitress, finally tiring of leaning on the bar swatting at flies,
comes over to the table and asks us what we want to eat. We order a veggie
supreme pizza to share. The waitress leaves and Sam says, “Well, that gives us
another hour until we’re interrupted again.”

Roxanne continues her previous train of thought. “What if The Love
Sucks Club was about learning how to love again?” She holds up a hand to our protests.
“I’m not ready to even think about dating again. Dana, I think you feel the
same. Sam, you date, but you tend to gravitate toward women you barely like.
It’s your way of keeping yourself distant.”

“And?”

“What if we used the club as a way of reminding each other that
love comes in many forms and we just have to be open to it?”

“I’m not following you,
Rox
.” I actually
kind of get what she’s saying, but I’m not willing to admit it, yet.

She puts her hand on mine. “I’m not saying we should all go out
and start a relationship. I’m
saying,
let’s just do a
couple of positive things every week that will help to open us up to love. It
can be something as simple as having a conversation with someone we find
attractive, or going on a date.”

Scoffing, Sam opens another beer and gulps it. “Please. The name
of the club is The Love Sucks Club, not the Love is just around the corner
club.”

We all laugh and Roxanne nods. “Yes, you’re right. But maybe we
can help each other change our attitude.”

Sam nods toward the door and I turn around to look. Mandy has come
in with some guy I don’t recognize. They’re both already obviously drunk.
Mandy’s eyes slide over and past our table without a hint of recognition.
Raising her eyebrow, Roxanne catches my eye. “Isn’t that you know who’s new
girlfriend?”

Sam answers for me.
“Yeah, Mandy.
She
used to be married to a guy until she started dating Voldemort.
Looks like she might be missing the old ways.”

We all watch as the couple takes to the dance floor, wrapping
themselves around each other in a way that would be obscene anywhere but here.
We’re silent for a few moments until the guy slides his hand into Mandy’s shirt
and starts squeezing her nipple.

“Oh my,” Roxanne is flummoxed. “Is that appropriate?”

“This is the Pit, Roxanne,” Sam says. “You could walk around naked
with safety pins in your nipples and no one would bat an eye unless you knocked
over their drink.”

It’s true. Mandy and her guy aren’t the most offensive couple I’ve
seen at the Pit. A few months ago, Sam and I saw a woman flat out going down on
a guy in a back corner. Tonight, however, they are the only couple on the dance
floor. A local drunk is bobbing around them, weaving and dancing beside them.
He accidentally bumps into the couple and Mandy gives him a shove, sending him
sprawling across the floor. Oblivious, the drunk keeps dancing on his back,
arms and legs waving around in the air.

Roxanne shifts and I put a hand on her arm. “Just leave it be,
Rox
.”

She sniffs and turns her chair a bit so her back is to the dance
floor. “I just don’t think I have the hang of this place.”

Smiling, I give her the once over, taking in her beautiful white
hair, usually tied into an elegant bun. Her fingers are long and slender and
devoid of jewelry. She’s slender and graceful and very fit. She tends to wear
long, straight dresses and sandals, even when she’s out working in her garden.
I once stopped over to her house in the middle of the day and found her hanging
laundry in an ankle length denim skirt and an old button front men’s shirt that
I’m sure belonged to Evelyn. Even in that outfit, with clothespins in her
mouth, she looked elegant and classy.

“What are you
lookin
’ at?” Roxanne makes
an attempt at a New York accent.

“You’re right,” I say. “You definitely don’t look like the average
clientele of the Pit.”

“The question,” Sam says, “is whether or not we have an obligation
to let Voldemort know that her new girlfriend is obviously not interested in a
monogamous relationship.”

“We don’t know that,” Roxanne says. “I mean, technically, they’re
just dancing.”

We all look up again in time to see Mandy throw her leg up over
the guy’s hip and his hand disappear under her tight skirt.

“Okay, maybe a bit more than dancing,” Roxanne amends.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, making room for the pizza that the
waitress has brought over.

Sam gets up and grabs napkins and paper plates from the other side
of the bar. Taking a big bite of pizza, I chew for a couple of minutes. “We
don’t know anything about their relationship and I certainly don’t owe her
anything.”