An hour or so before their expected arrival at the club, Helen put her thinking cap on and realised that they would have to do some preparatory work for this social evening. They'd relaxed and mellowed out too much so they were in danger of being hopelessly untogether.
"The thing is, do we present ourselves as a romantic lesbian love story or do we put in a bit of a plug for our organisation, for prison justice and for rights in general? We have to devise a master plan," Helen said as she passed Nikki a cigarette to help her drive. They were speeding ever onwards towards the glorious red sunset with a a fairly tight driving deadline to meet . They'd become accustomed to driving on the right side of the road and were whizzing along one of the interstate highways that conveniently bypassed them through the lush countryside and detached them from it like motorways do the world over.
"I'm surprised you haven't got out your clip board, flowcharts and written bullet points. How to inflict death by power point presentation in one easy move," Nikki answered. Her black humour that caused her to flip jokes from off the top of her imagination concealed her fears that Helen might latch on to such crazy ideas. She took a drag on her cigarette as potential doom and disaster flashed towards her along with a stream of oncoming headlights.
"Don't be such a spoilsport, sweetheart. You know how I really love these devices to clarify my thinking,"Helen answered, a wicked grin spreading across her face as she prolonged the agony."However, that would be going too far even for me."
"Thank God for that," Nikki fervently replied, feeling that the switch to the electric chair had been thrown at the very last minute.
"But we do need to throw some ideas around," pursued Helen relentlessly."You don't get off Scot-free."
At the precise moment when Nikki's jumbled thoughts were shocked into coalescence, she spotted a turn-off for a service station approach and clicked her indicators to indicate her intentions. Helen did not so much as raise her well-marked eyebrows. She knew very well that Nikki never did anything without good reason and didn't need to study her expression, barely illuminated by distant lights. Nikki swung the car round in a circle and stopped with a screech of tyres
"OK , here's how I see it. It's about the most unusual friendship that could ever have developed between me, the original hard case prisoner wanting to screw all rules and regulations and you, the idealistic wing governor who wanted rules and regulations to work for a reason and each of us finding the missing half in the other. It was about old fashioned romantic love and fighting for justice all at the same time. I thing we can wing it from there. I know we can. You scrawl that down on your notepad and we'll get on our way. Is that a fair compromise?"
A little grin curved Helen's lips in response. She picked out her notebook from the glove compartment, scrawled down the lines, kissed Nikki full on her lips and put her thumbs up for approval. Nikki gunned the engine and they roared out of the car park, causing idle observers to wonder what the hell those two crazy women were doing.
Twenty miles and half an hour further on down the road, they finally got their game plan together and saw the welcoming lights of the café in the gathering gloom. Like going to the dentist, Nikki was pleased that her forced induction into Helen's guide to structured planning hadn't been so painful after all.
As they let themselves in by the front door, they were mildly surprised that the centre of attention was focussed elsewhere. They had mentally prepared themselves for a typically enthusiastic American style reception. Shrugging their shoulders they headed to where the action obviously was. In the centre of a crowd of women, a growing argument was being ratcheted up, step at a time and the sharp tones of a angry women were particularly prominent.
"Jesus. That woman sounds like I used to be," exclaimed Nikki under her breath. She was a believer that first impressions could intuitively tell her the truth.
"Someone had better sort this out. It's getting out of hand," Helen said in worried tones. Her glance was met by Nikki's obvious visual answer.
"Guess it's down to the usual clean-up gang," Helen said with a smile on her face. As Nikki was a footstep or two ahead of her, Helen prepared herself to act as backup.
Immediately, the two women did a lightning appraisal of the situation and figured out that Annabelle Tillman and Simone Bradley whom they'd read about were at the centre of the argument and they were impressed. The dark haired woman at the centre of the argument gave off 'don't fuck with me' vibes which radiated off her in waves. As soon as they'd restored order, they saw how this hardness was visibly melting as she turned cute and bashful in front of their eyes as only Annabelle could. The very serene blond-haired woman who was next to be introduced early on in the proceedings seemed strangely affected. Finally, Miranda made a very graceful introduction and generous apology to Simone and Annabelle which impressed Nikki and Helen as she went out on a limb to build bridges. This place was all right, the two women concluded and the atmosphere of this bar didn't feel a million miles away from 'Chix' the club which Nikki had co-owned with Trisha a million miles away geographically.
Nikki and Helen had brightened up immediately on hearing Miranda's suggestion and gladly mucked in with helping rearrange all the tables and chairs. Helen knew that this would help soothe her partner's residual nerves, especially as Miranda had gestured to them both to take their places. Simone had been chatting away in a friendly fashion to the one woman she appeared to know in the club but suddenly fell silent as did the others.
"Hey, what's the commotion?" Nikki asked of Annabelle as she suddenly became aware of awestruck looks that were bestowed upon them. She had been happy mixing with the crowd and had asked for silence before launching into her introduction without thinking. She should have kicked off into her talk but for some unaccountable reason, she felt disorientated.
"You're the commotion, Nikki. It's not just that you're English and somehow exotic and different in a nice kind of way,"Annabelle answered in a way that impressed the short-haired woman with her razor sharp observation but scared her at the same time.
"Surely not, Annabelle. Hey, we're not celebrities. It's not as if we're going to hang around on the front pages of Hello or whatever dumb celebrity magazine you have around these parts. We've fluked our way into the gay press, that's all. It won't stay that way," protested Nikki. Helen knew that her partner suddenly felt awkward about being somehow on stage rather than chatting to equals but it wouldn't be right to barge in and take over. Annabelle picked up on the way these two women interacted and this won her admiration especially after their earlier Action Women intervention. To her jaundiced eye, her mother seemed to live forever in the public eye and never had the faintest idea as to how to live like an ordinary woman, let alone a mother. These women were so completely natural and Nikki's vulnerability was touching.
"Hey, don't let it throw you. Just say what comes natural to you,"Simone said serenely. She'd read how the English were modest and self-deprecating and Nikki seemed classically British to her in this respect. This was just the reassurance that Nikki needed and she was tremendously grateful for this act of kindness. Finally,she got her bearings, took a sip of wine to moisten her throat and,with the consciousness of her lover's support alongside her, she dived in head first.
"OK, so where do we start? It all happened in my third year in Larkhall women's prison about four years ago. It changed us both so much. I got life for stabbing a policeman who tried to rape my ex-girlfriend whom I'd lived with for nine years. In one sense, wrong copper, wrong place and wrong time or else I'd never so much as got a ticket for traffic violation. According to the bigoted, homophobic tabloid press, I still am a lesbian cop killer. In a higher sense, I still think I did the right thing. I'm sure you'll know that what's legal isn't necessarily moral and vice versa. Out talk tonight is about living and loving if need be against the grain of narrow minded small town values or what you learn in school. Our profound friendship and love remained secret or else Helen would have been fired for breach of prison regulations even though we were both trying to make prison a better place. I'll be honest, prison bars stay prison bars, loss of freedom is something you can't begin to imagine. Imagine inviting your loved one to 'come back to your place' but it's not the same as a nice romantic flat when it is a eight foot by five foot prison cell that a screw can enter any time he or she pleases. Prison is better when there's no favouritism for sexual services rendered, no discrimination by homophobes and most of all, no cover ups. Helen founded a lifer's group to give some hope for those banged up for life and most of all, arrange education opportunities such as the Open University degree which I studied in English. The crusading that Helen started hasn't been in vain because, although she was forced out of the prison service and I won my appeal and got my freedom, we're still working side by side for Women In Prison and being as much a pain in the arse to the reactionaries as we ever were. So this is where our love has taken us to where we are today."
" So how do you want us to handle things from now on? I mean, how many of you have read the Diva interview which is an English publication? It got a whole lot of things dead right?" Helen followed up politely, thinking on her feet as always. Seeing that her partner
really was uncomfortable at blowing her own trumpet, she changed their game plan.
"We've all read it,"Sadie said, intercepting looks from Simone and Annabelle."We'd love to ask questions if that's all right with everyone."
"Do you want fresh drinks passing over?"Miranda asked in her regal but kindly tones. It was touching to see her making up for earlier on in in trying be nice. There was a glow in her sharply defined features that showed that she was as smitten by her guests as much as anyone.
"Another glass of white wine please," Nikki said, her voice sounding husky from her talking. Sadie picked up two glasses from the bar which were passed round the tables, hand by hand to the two women who gratefully moistened their already dry throats while Nikki lit up a cigarette. Miranda gestured to the circle of women to speak but there was a certain strange diffidence amongst the alpha females that formed this mutually supporting circle.
"I've got one for either of you. Just how difficult was it for both of you to break ranks and just how unusual was your friendship when you first knew each other?" Simone finally asked in her soft quiet way
"That's a really good set of questions," Helen remarked, savouring the space this carefully wrought question offered."Most of the prison officers I was stuck with were backstabbing bastards. Normal organisational theory was useless so I looked for something more unorthodox. I saw Nikki was a natural leader whom the other women respected if only she would let down her barriers."
"I didn't make things easy for her. I was so bitter and twisted from being made the outcast, from being locked up for days in solitary confinement on a number of occasions that my attitude towards any authority figure was 'fuck you.' It took a lot for Helen to earn my trust,"chipped in Nikki whose casual reference to being sent down the block drew shocked gasps from the audience.
"My first though was that Nikki would be a great ally if I could only win her on side. I had no idea where it might lead," added Helen, by now leaving her notepad in her handbag. Nikki was right after all.
"Whose side?" Annabelle interjected quickly. Both women smiled appreciatively at another sharp-witted question. This helped them to get to the heart of the matter where they were most comfortable.
"I thought I could enlist her for my crusade as Nikki outlined earlier on but I came to realise that I had to see the world as Nikki saw it. It wasn't easy especially as, for the first time in life, I was falling in love with a woman. I can't properly describe the feelings of confusion I was going through but I suppose such experiences are universal to some extent. On top of this, I was stuck with being a good cop but a cop nevertheless while Nikki had always been the prisoner's spokeswoman when dealing out hard truths when talking out in the open was needed. Despite our best intentions otherwise, a riot broke out and it broke up our relationship for a short while. What made it worse was that the prison situation denied us the opportunity to really sit down and talk. How we got back together was nothing short of a miracle."
Helen's final passionate words resonated throughout the club and throughout their own inner spaces. It brought back the feelings of uncertainty as Nikki's appeal approached, Helen was dead set on her master plan to be rid of the embodiment of evil, Jim Fenner that misogynist conniver with whom she'd been locked in hatred and emnity from the word go with the world hanging on Nikki's appearance in court for her appeal for justice. She temporarily closed her eyes and they remembered.