I Know I Don't Say Things Like How You Want to Hear 'Em

Helena

She hadn't been to the spin class in months, not since she had moved into Nate's house and had a spinning bike she could use at any time for as long as she wanted (which was never as long as she knew she should be on it). Actually, she had a choice of spinning bikes because Nate kept a few in his gym. It wasn't uncommon when he decided to work from home that one or more of his assistants would be expected to work with him, and if Nate decided he wanted a status update on various projects as he worked out, then his assistants should have remembered to bring along their workout clothes. It was during a spin class, in fact, as she and Gigi were transitioning from being not-very-well-suited lovers to the much more comfortable and natural position of being friends-with-an-edge that Gigi had suggested she consider trying to land Nate Robinson, as a client, of course. Nate was a "friend of ol' Larry" (an awkwardly manufactured acronym, Helena admitted, but it succinctly captured her opinion of Larry Jenkins and those who associated with him, Gigi being an exception . . . most of the time). Gigi, thus, was well positioned to arrange a meeting so Helena present to him the wealth of services that Future Image could provide.

She didn't want to think about that meeting now and all that had come from it. She felt guilty and ridiculous enough as it was tracking down Gigi in one of her lairs to find out what had resulted from her cozy tête-à-tête with Myka. The pool party had been two weeks ago, and while she hadn't expected to hear from Myka, she was surprised that Gigi hadn't called to snark or gloat or otherwise torment her. That was how they operated, she and Gigi; everything wasn't always a contest (Gigi's offer to set up a meeting with Nate, for example) but, on the other hand, there was nothing that couldn't become one. She would feel responsible if Gigi ran down Myka like a Thomson gazelle simply because she could. That was why she was here at 8:05 a.m. on a Saturday morning, in this windowless studio with a video of the Tour de France on the screen and house music blasting from the speakers, scanning the curved backs for Gigi's unmistakable lines. She made even crouching over a bike sexy.

"Hey, Helena, it's great to see you again. There's an empty spot right here in the front row." The instructor, a young woman probably half her age, was speaking around her Bluetooth and jabbing a finger toward said empty space, which wasn't next to Gigi. In fact, Gigi wasn't here, which evoked images worse than that of a lioness clamping her jaws onto a gazelle's haunches. Summoning a weak smile, Helena gingerly climbed onto the bike, murmuring apologies to the people on either side of her, and started pedaling.

Her mood hardly improved by 45 minutes of vigorous spinning, Helena carelessly tossed her gym bag toward the closet when she returned home. As usual, it was just her and Christina this weekend, Adelaide was in town with her mother and Nate was on a ten-day trip to Mexico and Central America. The thump of the bag hitting the tile sounded especially loud and hollow and . . . lonely . . . this morning. "Hey, Mom, you're home," Christina shouted, running into the house from the patio and sounding uncannily like the spin class instructor, all bubbling good spirits. Was it okay to intensely dislike your daughter for the space of a second? Helena had no sooner banished the alarming spurt of irritation than Christina was asking, "I finished Myka's t-shirt. Can we drop it off at her house today? Please?"

Helena felt another flash of intense irritation; this time directed at Myka. She was completely in favor of artistic expression – as a hobby, an avocation. Art was not an employer, art did not provide a salary or a 401(k) or health benefits, which was all well and good if you were Picasso or, alternatively, Thomas Kinkade, but disastrous as a career choice if you weren't supremely talented (either artistically or commercially). Helena wouldn't deny that Christina was talented, in fact, she was relieved that Christina showed interest in something, but Christina had many talents (she was a Wells, after all), and the more . . . remunerative . . . of them should be exercised as well. However, when Christina raced back down the stairs carrying the shirt she had wildly run up to find and snapped it out like a towel for her mother's appraisal, Helena had to admit that it was both striking and well executed; the dolphin or, rather, the dolphins were suggested, not drawn to life, several sinuous lines arcing up to rounded points, triangles clustered at the bottom representing their tails. They were presented like a bouquet, gleaming gray against the blue of the t-shirt, their noses or snouts the blooms. Helena thought the top of the bouquet would hit Myka about mid-breast . . . all those rounded points. She bit back her smile. Another woman less modest than Myka would enjoy the, ah, emphasis.

"That's the back," Christina said with what Helena could have sworn was a sardonic glint. She turned the shirt around. "This is the front." A row of tiny dolphins – drawn more true to life - lined the bottom hem and circled the cuffs and the neckline.

Clever girl to think of that and a bit of the wiseass girl to be putting her mother on like that. Helena said admiringly, "Very nice," at the same time she gave her daughter an admonishing look that signaled "Don't play your mum for the fool." Christina responded with an expression that was entirely unrepentant or, equally as possible, entirely uncomprehending. "Can you call her, please, and ask her if we can come by with the shirt?"

"This isn't the same as returning something you borrowed from next door," Helena complained, although she was already reaching for her phone. "I have work to get done today, and I don't have much time to be ferrying you back and forth to the city." That might be laying it on a bit thick – and she thought she heard Christina mutter sarcastically, "What do you call 'next door' out here?" – but despite her obsessive tracking down of Gigi, she didn't actually want to see Myka. She didn't want to see a permanent afterglow settled on her face like a glaze. After her own first weekend with Gigi, Helena had had fears that her lips might be permanently crooked into a smirk. But even more than that, she didn't want to see the afterglow married to a look in Myka's eyes that managed to be both stunned and reverent, the look that had been in them the first time Myka had told her that she loved her. Lust Helena could handle, none too graciously, but she could accept it. Gigi was . . . Gigi, and everyone else, including Myka, was merely human. Anything of a higher order emotion . . . . She wasn't sure why it bothered her so much. Maybe it was because only Myka, out of all of her lovers, had ever had that particular look, as if she were seeing in Helena the beginnings of the universe or an event nearly as marvelous to which she was the only witness. It was a look that, in making something out of her that was grand and beautiful, made Helena acutely aware of how small and ordinary she was. Humility didn't come easily to her, but it was what she had felt when she had been the recipient of that look.

Yes, yes, she impatiently shushed the wistful little voice. That look from Myka had meant everything when they were very young and stupid in love with each other. But she was a grown-up now with a business and a child and fiancé, and she had no time to be a window onto the universe for a lover – or to inspire any similar romantic twaddle. Recklessly Helena called her, wishing, for the only time in her life, that she could use a rotary phone so she could watch how carelessly, how cavalierly she was flicking the dial. Jabbing her finger at a touch screen didn't have the same flair. Helena's irritation only grew when Myka answered the phone. Did the woman let nothing go to voice mail? Masking her dismay, Helena asked as offhandedly as possible if she and Christina could drop off the t-shirt "while we're running errands in the city." No need to let Myka know that the errands had yet to be invented. Given how her Saturday was turning out, Helena didn't expect that Myka would suggest another time, preferably far into the future when the irksomeness of having two former girlfriends dating each other would have subsided. Nonetheless, a part of her, the part that would open anyone from sternum to pelvis who didn't think Christina was talented (although Christina herself was to have only a nodding acquaintance with such unqualified maternal devotion) was gratified to hear genuine enthusiasm in Myka's "Drop by anytime. I'm looking forward to seeing her design."

Sometime later – though hardly soon enough for Christina, who stroked the shirt much like a fostered pet she was giving up to its forever home – Helena slowed her car in front of Myka's home. "Car" and "home" might be words that a neutral observer would use to describe her spotless new model BMW SUV and the utter horror Myka lived in, but they would not be her words. She reluctantly stepped down from the front seat and then very, very carefully made sure the SUV was locked and the equally expensive alarm system turned on. Christina was already racing across the "lawn" toward the decrepit porch, and Helena envisioned those barely shod feet slicing themselves open on rusted cans, broken bottles, and, it wouldn't shock her, used syringes. The last was an exaggeration, even she realized it, but the yard was both patchy and overgrown, as if it suffered from mange; the longer she stared at it, the more her skin itched. The true assault upon her senses was the house itself. Its Frankensteinian assemblage of styles was more than a visual affront to good taste, it didn't even seem structurally sound. The second-story tower was so grossly disproportionate –

"I promise, one, that the blindness is only temporary and, two, that the house will hold up for at least another 15 minutes." Myka was on the porch, Christina, clutching the gift-wrapped tee to her chest, all but dancing with excitement next to her.

"Hurry up, Mom," she shouted. "Isn't this the coolest place? And Myka says I can play with the dog."

Here she had thought the outside was the worst of it; inside, she was going to confront dog slobber and dog fur. As Helena picked her way to the porch, Myka, dressed in a varnish- and paint-stained university v-neck and ancient denim cut-offs, grinned at her evilly. That smile, those legs, the riotous hair barely restrained by a clip. How could a mess look so good?

Myka

She and Helena and Tracy were sitting at the kitchen table, and Myka thought about how often she had fantasized about a moment very similar to this one. Years after she and Helena had broken up, even after she was married to Sam, she had pictured Helena gathered to the bosom of her family and their child romping with her/his cousins. There had been many things wrong with that fantasy, not the least of which was why she continued to indulge in fantasies about an ex when she was a happily married woman. Of course the truth was that while she was married she wasn't happily married, and the persistence of the fantasy, to give it its due, was probably the first in a series of clues that she wasn't going to find happiness in a marriage to a man, any man. She had also wondered whether someone as dismissive of convention as Helena would be so easily gathered to the Bering bosom. Warren and Jeannie were descended from generations of sturdy Midwesterners, their greatest strength being their ability to suffer disappointment. They didn't take to the unconventional or the unemployed. Put more plainly, Helena would have needed to come to the door of the Berings' modest two-bedroom home with an accepted job offer in hand and a willingness to sleep on the sofa instead of in the oldest daughter's bed to evoke more than a lukewarm smile of welcome.

Truthfully, the only similarity between that ancient fantasy and this moment was Christina's playing with Remy outside. Because, considering the side-eye Tracy and Helena were giving each other, this Helena, whose strappy sandals, elegant "casual" clothes, and Hope Diamond-esque engagement ring screamed "I'm not to be 'gathered,'" was in no danger of being crushed to Tracy's pregnancy-enhanced bosom. Helena's perfume didn't carry the scent of a rare flower or unique spice provided at great cost in a tiny bottle – although it did – it carried the whiff of domestic spending cuts, tax reform, and the rollback of regulations. How could someone who wouldn't look out of place at a Koch brothers' retreat be so sexy? The scornfully arched right eyebrow, the dismissive glances at her weekend renovation attempts, they fanned Myka's attraction rather than smothered it.

She looked at the shirt in its wrapping beside her. It was clever and surprisingly accomplished, and, though she suspected the design would run the first time she washed it, offered with such pride in its execution that she refused to believe Christina wasn't as much Helena's child on the inside as she was on the outside. Somewhere underneath that one-percenter exterior beat the heart of her Helena, the woman who not only took time to smell the roses but was also open to rolling them like a joint and smoking them.

Yet what did it matter that this glossy woman with her glossy clothes might still harbor some vestige of her underachieving self? She was Nate's Helena now, all of her, and she didn't seem any more inclined to reconsider her choices today than she had that afternoon when she had glided in from the patio to thank "Maddie's mother" for bring her daughter home from summer camp. Myka resolved that if she were going to let her mind wander as Helena and Tracy failed to find anything in common, she would let it wander in the direction of Gigi Fourier, who was both sexy and, miraculously, interested in a mid-level university administrator raising a 'tween child.

"Your sister's new girlfriend introduced us," Helena was saying with a tight little smile that Myka was almost persuaded was a grimace meant for her.

"New girlfriend?" Tracy repeated, confused. Her smile was as pained and accusatory as Helena's as she turned to Myka. "How am I hearing about your new girlfriend from one of your old girlfriends? I ask an innocent question about Helena's fiancé, and I learn you're dating someone."

"I wouldn't call it dating," Myka demurred, suddenly wishing that the box fans she had going in the kitchen (because updating the cooling system in this house wasn't a budget-friendly DIY project) had a speed, and volume, setting called Wind Tunnel. "We've had dinner a couple of times, that's all." The statement was reasonably accurate. She and Gigi had gone out to dinner just twice since the pool party, but the second dinner had ended with them kissing goodnight on the front porch several times, each kiss lasting longer than the preceding one.

"Of course this would be the time that Sam decided to play the responsible father and fly Maddie out for a visit. Who's going to tattle on you, Myka, if not your kid?" Tracy said, chagrined. "Does she know you're seeing-but-not-dating someone?"

"It's too soon to tell her about Gigi." Myka rubbed the back of her neck, dismayed both at the knot her muscles were forming and the amount of sweat that was slicking her skin. "It's too soon to be talking about her, period." She flashed her own tight little smile at Helena. Why had she interjected that completely unnecessary piece of information? The old Helena had loved to tease her, but this had shaded toward the spiteful. Plus the old Helena's teasing had almost always had the purpose of getting her naked and into bed. That didn't appear to be the object here.

"Gigi? As in Leslie Caron? A French coquette?" Tracy squealed incredulously. "The only Gigi I've heard of recently is the mayor's 'spokesperson.'" She crooked her fingers to suggest air quotes. "Does every politician think he has to give the woman he's boinking an official title?" Her snickering trailed off as Myka felt that the heat from her face alone might be enough to immolate the three of them. Or at least fry an egg, if someone wanted to use her forehead instead of a sidewalk in demonstration of just how miserably hot this day had gotten.

"Ohmigod," Tracy said somewhere on the continuum between real and theatrical shock, "that's 'your' Gigi? I know, I know," she switched from making air quotes to crossing her hands like wiper blades in an effort to preempt her sister's weary objection that Gigi wasn't "hers" any more than she was a girlfriend or anything remotely approaching the definition. "You've 'gone out to dinner'?" She was helpless not to italicize any reference to a woman who seemed to give a double meaning to the most innocent of words.

"Yes, dinner," Myka said with equal emphasis. "I'm not at the stage yet where I have to ask her if she's sleeping with the mayor." Though she knew it was silly because, given the way they had kissed on the porch, she was two dates, max, from having to ask, she wanted to appear stronger and more virtuous than she was. While she might end up another name in Gigi's contact list scheduled for early deletion, she wanted to be the only one to predict her humiliation. So she added, a little loftily, "I may decide that we're not going to get to that stage."

Helena laughed, and Tracy, despite a brave effort not to goggle at her, ultimately failed. "You're going to have to be tied to the mast, darling," Helena said dryly, "because better people than you have washed up on her glorious shores."

"I'll admit that there's a lot I don't know about her, but I'm past the age when a woman with a great smile can get me into her bed simply by telling me that she's been in a waking dream since we met." There had been more to it than that, Myka acknowledged. An illicit late night visit to the rooftop of the science building, a gallant draping of a jacket around her shoulders, eyes as dark as the midnight sky but a million times warmer, hands trembling with fear and excitement both as they cupped and tilted her face for a kiss.

Helena nodded, remembering, but her voice was bland. "I'm sure you are, and for what it's worth, I've come up with better lines since then."

Tracy glanced from one to the other and back again. "I'm sure Gigi's a really nice person, Myka," she said, attempting to broker peace and turn the conversation in a different direction.

The kitchen door slammed open, the screens rattling as Christina raced in, Remy in full, joyous pursuit. "Gigi's great," she enthused. Planting herself in front of Myka, she pushed damp strands of hair from her face and announced, "Remy and I would like more popsicles."

"Please and no, at least for you," Helena said, nose wrinkling at the scent of superheated dog. "We're having lunch downtown, remember?"

Christina's eyes went both wide and blank. "Um, sure, yeah." Myka, with a consoling pat to her shoulder, had gone over to the refrigerator and opened the bottom freezer drawer. "I wanted you to meet Gigi not only 'cause she's my friend, but because you're nice and I thought you could be her friend too." Helena unsuccessfully suppressed a gurgle in her throat and reached for her glass of ice water. "Lots of people want to be her friend, but I don't think she has many." With the hard-won experience of one who has struggled with her own admiring throngs, Christina said, "People are staring at you all the time, but they don't see you. But you, you saw right away that I'm an artist."

Myka had pulled out only one popsicle, a bumpy translucent oblong filled with chunks of zucchini and carrots. Wordlessly she reached back into the drawer and pulled out another one, its cellophane sheath decorated with dancing bunches of grapes. One she gave to Christina, the other she dropped into Remy's bowl, and both were attacked with gusto. Above the slurping sounds, she locked eyes with Helena. "Like your daughter said, there's more to Gigi than meets the eye."

Helena

Helena put a hand to the back of her neck. She had been in the office for less than two hours, and her muscles were as tight and sore as if she had been working for 12. "Working" gave her possibly too much credit. She had read most of her emails, sent some of her correspondents responses, and categorized the rest of the messages as "Reply is not urgent" or "Delete and forget." Most of Charles's emails to her ended up in the latter category. He had sent her yet another message about "attending to Mr. Bradley." She had attended to Aaron, advising him that they had no legal recourse for removing the court records of his "youthful offenses" that were variously summarized, linked, or posted in full. They were public records. His best option was to offer heartfelt apologies for his transgressions and busily employ himself in as many good works as possible. The more pain, suffering, or embarrassment they would cause him the better. Don't only donate money or volunteer at the Special Olympics. If there's a flood in Louisiana, swamp out basements. Go on a hunger strike for a cause. Donate a kidney. Do something that shows you're truly sorry, that you understand what penitence means.

Tell her that you gave up New York for the nation's so-called heartland, yanked your daughter from a pricey, academically-sound-but-educationally-progressive school to plunk her into the intellectual equivalent of a one-room schoolhouse . . . for her. Tell her that you gave up your pride for her, that you paced the campus of the university where she worked trying to marshal the explanation for why, after almost 15 years of silence, you tracked her down. It was simple, really. You had tracked her down because nothing had ever felt as right or as good as those few months you had had together. Only eight of them compared to the 180 the two of you had been apart, but you could remember virtually every minute of every day of those eight months whereas those 180 months sometimes seemed 180 years, tedious, forgettable. There had been lovers, many lovers, since her but not one had eclipsed her.

Helena closed her eyes. Her neck still hurt. Aaron Bradley wasn't hoping to win back the love of his life. He wanted a television network to offer him a job . . . as anything. Besides, she didn't believe in rubbish such as an eternal love or a once-in-a-lifetime love. She had thought her parents had permanently disillusioned her, but Myka was both the proof of and the remedy to her lapse. After having thoroughly walked the campus, twice, and composed a succinct but heartfelt speech ("I've thought about you every day of every year since we split up, and I can't bear not seeing your sweet, beautiful face for every day that remains to us"), she had seen Myka leave the administration building. She had started to run on the snowy, icy sidewalks to intercept her, trying to call out her name, but Myka had turned at another's voice and hugged and soundly kissed another woman, that sweet, beautiful face alight for her. There had been no hesitation in that greeting, no reserve in that kiss. Myka might have spent the past 179 months missing Helena Wells terribly but not the 180th.

All that had happened three years ago, Helena reminded herself, and her life had changed. She was not the same woman who had anxiously waited for Myka to emerge from a citadel to higher education bureaucracy and inefficiency. She had successfully expanded Future Image's footprint (although 90% of her work remained centered in New York or Los Angeles), she was raising a daughter who had a keen appreciation of the arts and good business sense (Christina had had the foresight, at least, to charge Myka for her work), and she was very, very soon to marry (once she could get Nate to focus on setting a date) an industry giant and – it was no great exaggeration to say – future political leader. She was happy, damnit.

Christina raised her head as if the outraged cry of happiness had been shouted. She dropped her head back over her phone, on which she had been reading, with greater diligence than Helena had seen her devote to anything other than drawing or painting, articles with titles like "What's the Perfect Dog for You?" and "Ten Best Dog Breeds for Families." She supposed that in the not-too-distant future, most likely as tit for the tat of agreeing to take part in the wedding, Christina would demand that they get a dog. Helena more closely observed her daughter. Christina had borne with remarkable fortitude the news that her new "best friend" was visiting her father for two weeks, only lifting a shoulder at Myka's apologies for Maddie's absence and then asking, as if Maddie weren't merely away but banished forever, "Can Remy come stay with me?"

Whatever those two had cooked up together to move their immovable mothers closer together wasn't likely to withstand Gigi's irresistible force. Even at a remove, Gigi's power of attraction was strong enough to captivate Myka's sister, a lesser version of Myka in every way, Helena had decided, including her probable location at the very bottom of the heterosexual end of the spectrum. However, she was willing to admit that her assessment might have been influenced by the faint air of disapproval Tracy had assumed every time she had looked at or spoken to her. Tracy's nose was sharper, her chin was sharper than her sister's, and they had seemed to thin to an accusatory point whenever Tracy had turned her face to her. You broke her heart. You abandoned her. That was what the chin and nose were saying at the same time that Tracy was asking her something as neutral as "How did you meet your fiancé?" But had it been neutral? Hadn't Tracy lingered a little too long on "fiancé," as if to imply "You're willing to commit to a man whose net worth dwarfs the combined net worth of the residents of this state, aren't you?" In Tracy's mind, it probably didn't matter that Gigi was the mayor's . . . whatever. She wasn't the one who had dumped her big sister. But it wasn't like that, Helena began to argue in her own defense, you weren't there . . . .

With a slam that had probably just cracked the screen of her laptop, Helena said abruptly, "Let's go. We'll visit a few shops and then we'll have dinner in town. How does that sound?"

Christina once more looked up from her phone, not a little warily. "Visit a few shops for what?"

How she loved to delight her daughter. "New clothes for school." And how she loved to torment her. "We'll look at wedding dresses, too. Before we know it, I'll be Mrs. Nathan Robinson."

"Better make sure you remind him. Sometimes I think he forgets we live in his house."

Christina never failed to get her own back. She was her daughter, after all. Yet, at the moment, Helena could have wished for a little more Bianchi in her and a little less Wells.

Myka

What had that been all about? Why had Helena jabbed at her about her resistance, or lack thereof, to Gigi's attractions? And why had she, in turn, made that passive-aggressive dig about being too old for cheesy lines? When you're 21, there are only cheesy lines, and when you're 21, you're also too horny to care. She stepped back from the wall she had been stripping of decades' worth, perhaps centuries' worth, of wallpaper, and instinctively looked for Tracy, but Tracy had long since left. She knew it was selfish – and she would adore Baby McKelvey when he or she was born – but she missed her sounding board; between the stockpiles of chemicals for the renovation projects and the lack of air conditioning, Tracy had had to flee for the pregnancy-accommodating comforts of her home.

If she wanted to talk over the strangely tense encounter with Helena or her blossoming "thing" with Gigi, her only immediate recourse was Remy, who was sprawled on the floor contentedly gnawing a flip-flop poached from the hall closet and which she was too hot and too preoccupied with other matters, frankly, to take from her. If she had to take Remy to the emergency vet because a chunk of the flip-flop ended up obstructing her bowel, so be it. Myka pointed the scraper at her, much as she might a laser pen to highlight a key word during a meeting, "endowments," for example, on a PowerPoint slide, asking, "What did you make of Helena?" Remy looked up at her, cocking her head and thumping her tail. Myka scowled at her. "Don't give me the bright eyes. She cringed every time you came within two feet of her. You're mistaking her for Christina." Remy was just hopeful that the sudden attention was a precursor to a treat, Myka knew. Had she said, "How about a bath, Remy?," Remy would have given her the same gaze of utter devotion, calculated to soften the hardest heart into offering her something better than a flip-flop. God, even the dog had an agenda.

If she needed to brood over the inexplicable and the ungovernable, it didn't have to wear the face of Helena Wells, it could just as easily display the ruddy cheeks and disarming blue eyes of Sam Martino. Unlike Helena's eyes, Sam's weren't simply windows to his soul, they were French doors flung wide. Try to get those eyes to steadily meet your own, however, and you would discover how elusive Sam could be. After months of no more than phone calls and an occasional meal with his daughter when he happened to be passing through town on his way to an alumni event, Sam had invited Maddie to spend a couple of weeks with him at his home in Florida. He had found yet another university that believed his perpetual aura of former jock and Business Administration major, married to a knack for instantly making friends, was the key to increasing alumni support. For the past 20 years, he had successfully sustained the illusion that he had only just graduated, though his hair was thinning and his waistline was beginning to attest to the consequences of holding alumni get-togethers at bars and microbreweries.

Was he remembering to feed her? Maddie wasn't a houseplant that he could water occasionally and forget. She could also get so engrossed in a book that she would stay up all night, if no one took the Kindle or tablet out of her hand, to finish it. Was he making sure she was getting enough sleep? Lately Maddie had been worrying that she wouldn't be a competitive enough candidate to get into the college of her choice. Was he reassuring her that, yes, she would have the academic pedigree sufficient to someday replace RBG on the bench? Myka had talked with her a few days ago, and Maddie had seemed muted but quick to reassure her mother that she was having a wonderful time. Her dad was taking her to Disneyworld . . . again. "He thinks I haven't gone on enough rides," she had said in a tone that suggested her "fun" quota had been more than met, but that her father's, perhaps, hadn't.

Myka's scraper encountered something that might have been wood just as she heard a voice tentatively call out, "Myka?" She didn't need to see Remy whine anxiously and search for somewhere to hide to know what other past mistake had shown up in her kitchen. "I'm in the dining room, Michelle."

Michelle hovered just inside the doorway, gauging the progress that had been made and tactfully keeping her evaluation to herself. Myka knew the room looked awful; with the exception of the one she was working on, the walls were covered in a flocked wallpaper that must have been put on in the '70s, the original hardwood of the floor was stained and even splintered in places from years of student keggers, the wainscoting was scored and gouged, the window frames were so warped that water leaked through the gaps between wood and wall every time it rained. Michelle hadn't shared her interest in renovation, particularly when it came to restoring this old Victorian; at some point during a visit, she would coolly survey whichever room they were in, looking past the disrepair to its former glory, and darkly wonder, "How many men and women labored for pennies a day in a factory or grain mill to build some robber baron his dream home?"

Said robber baron had, in fact, owned several grain mills and was one of the founders of a cereal company that more than a century later had become a global food company. So Michelle had a point. Yet the same robber baron had, at his death, directed in his will that the house was to become a home for unwed mothers, "in which they can deliver and nurture their babes without shame and without want." People had speculated at the time that he had made the bequest because of his own uncertain origins, having been famously left in a basket as an infant on the steps of a church. Eventually the trust he had set up to fund the home was dissolved, and the house had gone to a distant relative. But for 25 years, there had been at least one place in the city at the turn of the century that had been less benighted than others. The information had done little to soften Michelle's opinion and, if Myka remembered correctly (which, of course, she did), their heated discussion had quickly found a different avenue of expression in her bedroom.

Looking at Michelle now, Myka didn't find it hard to remember what things had been like between them – the first time. She found it hard to re-experience the emotions. All of it was gone, except the admiration. Michelle had been what Myka thought she herself should be. If Michelle deemed the cause worthy, she wholly committed herself to it – fundraising, marches, phone calls to their congressmen. Because of her, Myka contributed more, volunteered more, expressed her opinions more confidently. Everyone made the mistake of thinking that because they were the same age, shared the same coloring and build, they were alike, but they weren't. Michelle couldn't spare the time for ambiguity or ambivalence; there was too much about the world that was wrong to indulge in them. Myka sometimes felt that ambiguity and ambivalence were her world. How else could she have loved her father except by acknowledging that as crabbed a life as he had lived – and forced his wife and daughters to live as well – it had harbored his dream of becoming a famous writer? They had both sought refuge in books, she to escape his anger and depression, he to escape his failures to become a success at anything. He had been a teacher, salesman, bookkeeper, security guard, and custodian before finally taking over a decrepit bookstore. Every one of them had worked in the bookstore and taken other jobs too in order to keep the debt collectors away, and she couldn't ever once remember him saying to her "I'm sorry" or "Thank you." Still, she had loved him. What was there to "do" or legislate about such a muddled mix of affection and resentment?

"You're looking pensive. Did I come at a bad time?"

"No." She held up her hand as Michelle seemed about to venture farther into the room. "Remy's been with me and there are chemicals all over the place. I don't want you taking any of it back to Ethan."

"Gwen has him this weekend." Michelle's smile was uncharacteristically diffident. "We're finally at a good place, Gwen and me, about Ethan, about what we are to each other now. I feel like I'm ready to move on in a way I wasn't before."

Myka fiddled with her scraper, uneasily sensing that Michelle's words were only a prologue to something she was pretty sure she was no longer interested in hearing. Tracy had once said about Michelle that she had no trouble committing to causes, she had trouble committing to people. But that was another thing many got wrong about Michelle. She had been deeply committed to Gwen, long past the end of Gwen's commitment to her. If she had to be honest, and Myka thought that in a very few minutes she was going to have to be brutally honest with Michelle, so why not start with herself? Perhaps even more attractive than Michelle's devotion to making the world a better place was her continued devotion to a woman who maintained that she didn't want it (but who never failed to play on it, Myka thought cynically). Whereas some, like Tracy, saw a doormat, Myka saw a rock. It was indestructible, irreducible, Michelle's fidelity. It demonstrated an understanding of commitment that none of Myka's other lovers had had.

All the same, maybe that fidelity was so attractive precisely because it hadn't been directed at her. Because, despite the headiness of the first few months of their first stab at a relationship, all the fieriness that Michelle's commitment seemed to promise actually failed to light a fire in, um, certain areas. Novelty could disguise only so much and what should have been enriching and ardent like some of their other experiences together (sleeping in a cardboard box for several days to protest the inadequacy, in number and services, of the city's homeless shelters, for instance) simply wasn't. Myka remembered a blustery January day, when she had been looking at the clock and counting down the minutes until she could meet Michelle for lunch. Unable to wait any longer, at such a pitch to see her that she had rushed out of the administration building's doors, she had heard a voice intoning (like a bad special effect in a 1950s sci-fi movie), "This one is not for you." The only person around had been a woman with long, dark hair walking rapidly in the opposite direction. There was no voice, fate wasn't whispering in her ear, it had been nothing more than her own anxieties about the course of a new relationship. And yet . . . .

" . . . I haven't heard from you since you and I and Ethan went to the movies," Michelle was saying plaintively. "I know with Maddie back you've been busy, but I was hoping that we could get together again, just the two of us. Dinner, possibly?"

Myka tried to steadily regard that face, which, despite having green eyes and being framed by an even wilder mass of brown waves, looked nothing like her own. Michelle's features were stronger, less blurred and softened than hers by a willingness to compromise. That mouth was rarely tremulous. "I don't think there's a 'third time is the charm' for us." For a moment, she was tempted to say she was seeing someone, which was true but which, if she used it, would also be a disservice, to Michelle, who deserved as much honesty as Myka could bear to deliver, and even more so to this new whatever-it-was with Gigi. She didn't know that it had a future, but she didn't want to blemish it at the outset by making their dates seem more significant than they were. "I want to be your friend, and I want to see you happy, but I don't see a relationship between us anymore."

Michelle nodded, disappointed. "It's too soon, isn't it? You need to see that I'm truly over Gwen." Her features firmed with a resolve that Myka had come to know all too well. "I can be patient. Capitalism hasn't collapsed under the weight of its injustice, not yet, but I'm still waiting, still hoping. I'm here for the long haul, Myka."

Myka knew that she hadn't been honest enough, but she couldn't bring herself to say the words. I don't love you enough to try again. I never did. She knew it was less cruel to own to her less than sterling devotion and commitment than to let Michelle have hopes that maybe, possibly someday if only . . . . But she watched Michelle leave wearing a much more confident smile, and, for the first time that she could remember (and, of course, she knew it was the first time), she felt a little sorry for Gwen.

Helena

Christina picked at her pasta, more interested in the passers-by outside the partition that separated the restaurant's patio from the sidewalk. The city's downtown, its blandness and homogeneity always an affront to Helena, had become more diverse, in all senses of the word, in recent years. Street performers, sometimes in competition, sometimes in impromptu harmony, played on the corners, and people were window-shopping, pushing strollers, or simply taking in a late summer evening redolent of barbecue and warmed concrete, twilight indistinct from the haze of heat and car exhaust. Helena would have preferred to eat in the restaurant's air-conditioned interior, but Christina had clamored for a table on the patio. Taking into Christina's account that they had spent the last two hours shopping for a dress and shoes to match, Helena had indulged her. She automatically glanced over the side of her chair at the shopping bag. It held the shoes, not the dress. The dress would be delivered to the house next week once the tailoring was finished. Not a wedding dress – her ability to torment her daughter by oohing and ahhing over wedding dresses was limited because, in addition to the fact that she wasn't fond of white or lace or trains, her wedding dress wouldn't be off the rack. It would be an event for an event.

Nate might not be a celebrity and the wedding would be his second, but his name carried more weight than that of George Clooney (at least in certain circles) and, consequently, this wedding would be far more newsworthy than his first. Twenty years ago, he had been the president of a little known ethanol company; now he was CEO of a colossus that processed corn into everything from ethanol to cornflakes. He wanted the wedding to be small and quiet, but small and quiet on his scale was larger and more opulent than most people could afford, and his bride would *not* be wearing a dress bought from Bridal Bonanza.

The dress she had bought today was for a production far less grand than her wedding. That was how she saw it, although she wasn't sure she could say the same for Nate. Every September he hosted a charity "supper" at his home, simultaneously mocking and elevating the potlucks and church suppers of his youth by hiring the staff, including, of course, the chef, of the latest exclusive restaurant to catch his fancy to cater it. A multiple-course meal served on Chinet accompanied by wines poured into Solo cups. There was music, performers flying in from New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville, with the exception of the polka band that Nate invited every year who drove down in a mini-van from a little town brushing the Canadian border. At the end of the supper but before the polka band was brought on to start the music for dancing, Nate would gather the businessmen (and they were almost exclusively men) whom he had invited to join him in his latest philanthropic venture and announce the particular charity that they would be actively supporting and promoting for the next year. Then, amidst all the clapping, he would hold his hand out to Helena, and she would join him, smiling brilliantly, in a lead-off polka, the 75-year-old accordion player leering at her as they hopped and skipped across the terrace.

Nate didn't neglect his other charitable efforts, he remained on the same boards and attended the same galas and auctions, but the charity he announced at the supper was the one he would mention during every interview, yoke together with cereals and fast food burgers and actresses hawking rejuvenating body lotions (because there was hardly a product or a business line, Helena had learned, that didn't rely on corn in some way), and blazon its name across everything from pro-am golf tournaments to the visor and polo shirt he would wear when he presented the winner with his trophy.

It wasn't a jeans and t-shirt affair. Any guest showing up in jeans and a t-shirt would most likely be directed to the cleaning detail that would eliminate all evidence of the supper from the house and grounds by early the following morning. However, it also wasn't white tie – not technically – although guests frequently dusted off their formal wear for the occasion. Nate would usually dress "down" with a blazer and button-down shirt, while she was expected to find something suitable at Nordstrom's or the equivalent, preferably from the clearance racks. It's just a supper, he would chide her. While the planning and the organizing of the event was largely left up to an event planner, his fussiness about even small details gave the lie to his "just a supper" nonchalance, and Helena, at the height of her irritation with him, would wonder why he didn't invite his hometown to the supper – the entire population would fit comfortably within the bounds of his property. Nate was gesturing at his roots only to demonstrate how far he had traveled from them.

Christina was looking expectantly at her. "CanwegetdessertandbringsometoMyka?"

Helena stared meaningfully at the large portion of chicken alfredo still on her daughter's plate. Somehow Christina still labored under the delusion that speaking rapidly would so blister her mother with its machine-gun-like force that she wouldn't notice whatever it was she wasn't supposed to notice. "We'll talk at greater length about all the reasons that it's not a good idea, but let me say now that it's a waste of money. Myka doesn't like sugar."

"She doesn't think sugar's good for you, it's not that she doesn't like sugar. There's a difference." As if Helena were being backward about picking up on the implications, Christina added, "She'll pretend that she doesn't want any of it, but she really will want it, and if we say we waited until we could eat it with her, she'll have some."

Christina didn't strongly resemble her father, but she had his eyes, a deep chocolate brown, which, right now, had a thoroughly un-Bianchi-like calculating cast to them. "You just want more time with Remy," Helena accused her.

Christina shrugged, not bothering to deny it. Helena wasn't sure which she felt more, pride that an 11-year-old could be so shrewd or dismay that an 11-year-old could be so shrewd. She should put an end to the discussion, pay the bill, and drive them home. That's what a good mother would do. Actually, a good mother would insist that her daughter go to bed at a reasonable hour once they were home, but Helena knew she would more than likely retreat to the family room (one of the family rooms, she corrected herself) with a glass of wine and let Christina wreak whatever havoc she wanted on the upstairs. But a part of her wanted to see Myka again, she felt she had left the field of battle (i.e., Myka's kitchen) at a tactical disadvantage. She didn't care that Myka and Gigi were dating; in fact, Myka and Gigi could elope, and she would barely lift an eyebrow at the news. She was engaged, she was happy, she would look sumptuous at the charity supper, so sumptuous in fact that Nate would be helpless to do anything at the end of it but set a wedding date. She had only to make Myka see how happy she was. Realizing that something was wrong at the heart of her reasoning but unable to divine what it was, Helena said, in admonishing surrender but surrender nonetheless, "We'll stop by, but only for a minute."

Myka

It had never felt this good, ever. She had suspected that Gigi's soft, strong hands might be her undoing, but not like this. Myka let out another long groan . . . and blushed. If her neighbors should hear her, but, thankfully, she lived on a corner lot, and it was only a shoulder massage. A shoulder massage while she was pinioned between Gigi's soft, strong thighs – this was foreplay, and Gigi's laugh at the end of Myka's groan signaled that she was fully aware of it. When Gigi had shown up at her door earlier in the evening, bearing bags of take-out and wearing faded shorts and an old polo shirt - "Thought you might be ready for a break, and I'll be happy to pitch in . . . spackling, staining" – Myka had thought she was in a reversal of A Christmas Carol, in which, out of the three girlfriends past, present, and future who had shown up at her door, the girlfriend Yet to Come was the harbinger of her greatest happiness. She wasn't being punished for her mistakes but recompensed. She hadn't hesitated; she had joined Gigi on the porch, taking the bags from her hands and giving her a long, grateful kiss. Gigi had looked a little nonplussed afterwards, one hand flying to her lips, those silver eyes blinking in bemusement. "I was hoping you had missed me, but . . . ."

Gigi had been in Arizona for the past several days, combining a trip to visit her mother with a scouting expedition to determine the level of support for the mayor's possible run for governor among some of the richest and most influential of the state's snowbirds. Many observed the migratory ritual more in adaptation (if not outright breach) of the six-month rule, limiting their stays north to the minimum number of days necessary to keep their home state their state of legal residence. As they sampled a variety of appetizers that Gigi had brought from one of the city's trendiest cafes – and, not coincidentally, one of Larry Jenkins's favorite places to see and be seen – Myka had listened with one ear to Gigi's wry stories about her mother – a woman whose greatest achievements were her eight-stroke handicap and perpetual tan ("Put her next to a piece of petrified wood and I'll dare you to tell me who's better preserved," Gigi said, not without admiration) – and with another to the faint echo of Tracy's "woman he's boinking."

Gigi had stopped mid-story. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Myka had said hurriedly. "I guess I'm a little sore from all the scraping today."

"I have the cure for that."

Granted, she had half-expected something else, but this massage was . . . incredible. It was as though Gigi's fingers had eyes, identifying and then working every sore spot in her neck, shoulders, and back. They were sitting in the parlor that Myka, with some success, had transformed into a contemporary family room. The original hardwood of the floor had been sanded and refinished and the walls had been successfully scraped clean and painted. The fireplace was in working order, and the large area rug had a pile thick enough to blunt the unaccommodating surface of the floor. Gigi was resting her back against the front of the sofa, while Myka was resting against Gigi. She reached up for Gigi's arms and drew them down around her waist. This, like the massage, felt wonderful, too.

Then why were these words coming out of her mouth? "Are you sleeping with the mayor?"

Gigi didn't tense, didn't flinch, didn't drop her arms. Instead she kissed the back of Myka's neck, and Myka fought not to squirm, both from the fact that she knew how much sweat her skin had produced over the past several hours and from the pleasure of the touch. "No, I'm not sleeping with Larry. My relationship with him is complicated, but it's never been complicated in that way."

Myka hung her head, believing that her neck didn't deserve to be kissed like that. Acting like a jealous girlfriend when she wasn't Gigi's girlfriend, she had likely, with that stupid question, given up any chance to be Gigi's girlfriend. "I'm sorry. It was none of my business."

"I want it to be your business. I want you to care about whether I'm with someone right now." Those lips unerringly found her neck again. "I'm not. I don't date much." Myka's head shot back in such shock that she thought she might have clipped Gigi on the jaw, but, apparently used to reactions of utter amazement, Gigi deftly avoided the missile that was Myka's head by swooping in and gently biting the side of Myka's neck. "It's true. I let people think what they will because it's generally worked to my advantage. But I'm pretty choosy."

Myka sat up straighter, twisting around to face her. "You have to admit, even if you're not sleeping with Larry Jenkins, it's kind of strange that we've both slept with Helena."

Gigi smiled. "I don't think it's strange. What I had with Helena, and what I think we could have together are two different things. There wasn't a whole lot of emotion with Helena," she paused, adding sheepishly, "although that's not to say there weren't . . . um . . . other urges. But with you," she took a breath and displayed in the sudden, almost liquid roll of her eyes a hint of anxiety, "there's everything, or at least there might be, if we're lucky. I want to choose you, Myka, if you'll let me."

Myka felt all the parts of her body begin to pound, her heart being only one among them. "What do you mean, exactly?"

"That I want to get to know you more, that I want to make the first time between us special. Don't get me wrong – I've never wanted to give a naked massage to someone so badly in my life, but I want you to be sure of me, and I need to a little surer of you." Gigi's eyes didn't harbor the dark wonder of the universe in them, but Myka remembered looking up at the moon as a child and wishing she could walk on it. Gigi's eyes invited her to take her first step. "Nate Robinson will be hosting a charity event in a couple of weeks. Usually I go as Larry's 'date,' but I want to let him go stag this year. I want to take you. I want people to see us together, to see that you're the one I'm with. I know, I know, people say that Nate Robinson is an evil genius who's despoiling the state by turning it into a huge cornfield. It also means seeing Helena, seeing me and Helena, but you've got more money and power in that house than most countries could claim. It's a networking opportunity, Myka. A lot of CEOs will be there who can help out the university, and I'll make sure –"

She didn't get a chance to finish because Myka sealed her mouth with her own. The ghosts of Past and Present who had visited her today had rattled their chains, but Yet to Come was here, and she was in her lap.

Helena

She had recognized the car in the driveway, but Christina was out of their SUV before she could stop her, carrying three slices of Bird of Paradise cake carefully packaged as if she were carrying frankincense or myrrh and Remy was the baby in the stable. Then just as quickly Christina was flying back down from the porch, the cake forgotten, and she wrenched open the door, saying so bitterly "Go, let's just go, Mom," that Helena fumbled at the gear stick in surprise. They backed out of the driveway as the porch lights were coming on, and Helena wondered what Myka – and Gigi – would make of the container of cake on the porch. A rather garishly frosted cake – blue and orange in fidelity to its name – with chunks of pineapple, mango, and papaya baked into the batter; not a dessert she would have chosen, but what else could she expect when she let a child choose the dessert and . . . . Helena inhaled a long, steadying breath. Never mind that she was rattled, she needed to comfort her daughter. They had already had "the conversation," but it was one thing to hear about an act when it was strategically euphemized and described in glowingly romantic terms and quite another to witness it.

"Darling, I'm sorry you had to see that, but sometimes adults, when they're carried away, they don't think about who might 'happen upon them,' as it were –" Helena recognized that she was adopting the diction – and shrinking, ladylike tone – of a Victorian grandmother, but this was the last thing she was expecting to have to talk about with Christina tonight.

"They weren't having sex, Mom. They were still wearing clothes," Christina cut her off coldly. "But they were kissing," she said with utter contempt, "and Gigi had this . . . this gooey look on her face."

Gooey . . . . Gigi? Helena convulsively swallowed and gripped the steering wheel tighter. Oh, dear, this could be horrid, the Victorian grandmother in her said.

"We had a deal, Gigi and me," Christina said in an icy fury that sounded familiar to Helena, "and she broke it."

Then Helena realized where she had heard such fury before. It was how she sounded when a client, against her wishes and what they had explicitly agreed upon, struck out on his own. Her anger was only temporary, while his regret for his rashness would last forever.