By November Tuesday

PAIRING: Jenny/Moira
RATING: NC-17
SUMMARY: "I want to give this to her, more than I want home."

I feel again as if I’m on the cusp of the world, on the same fucking scary wonderful precipice as when I moved West originally. Heading back to Los Angeles with a ghost-eyed stranger who feels already like home. I can’t believe I’m doing this. No, the precise opposite is true: I can believe it.

I stop and buy us some breakfast, let her sleep as we get on the road again. In sleep her lips form a pout; she is like a boy with overgrown hair.

I pull onto the highway and think about my mother. I’m sorry, she said. What I thought I’d never hear, uttered simply, as if she’d felt it all along.

I stood up to Warren. A flash of adrenaline victory swoops through me as I think about it. Some things I’ve assembled. Some things are coming together.

“Is that for me?”

Like every time, I’m startled by her high sweet voice. Square face, blue eyes. My heart skips a beat. “Hey. Good morning.”

“Morning?” She smiles, so sweet.

I’m smiling back. “Yeah. That’s your coffee and muffin.” She is stark, a plain rose in blue and white plaid. I want to feel the shape of her shoulder blades again. Feel how delicate and high-femme she makes me feel. All softness. So fucking good. I haven’t tasted her yet.

I try to imagine her in L.A., and can’t. A different sort of shiver hits my body, anticipation.

Moira stretches and I watch her stockinged feet point. Then she pulls her legs up and hunches over, Indian-style, looking out at the road with eagle eyes. “So tell me about your friends in L.A.”

“Um. My friends. Okay.” I flash on the Planet, on our living room. How to encapsulate that group in one word?

“Okay. Well, first there’s Shane. Shane’s amazing.”

“You sound like you’re kinda crushing on her.” I can hear the smile in that impossibly sweet voice.

“No,” I say, smiling. I can’t wait to see my dear friend. The image of that sweet-natured grin warms me up inside. “We’re just friends. She’s my best friend. She’s dating Carmen.”

“Your ex.”

“Yeah.”

“Go on.”

“Well, next door to us, there’s Bette and Tina. Tina just had a baby, this beautiful little biracial baby girl. They were broken up but they’re back together.”

“And what about Dana Fairbanks?”

“You know, she’s nothing like she seems on TV. She’s very... very much a girl, very schoolgirlish, sort of insecure and messy and sweet.”

“I can’t believe you know her.”

“I don’t know her very well. I know Alice better.”

“And what’s the deal with Alice?”

“Alice is like... I dunno. She’s this cute blonde nymphish type, very girly, very gossipy, very sweet. Shane told me that she and Dana broke up, and she’s not taking it well.”

“So who’s your closest friend other than Shane?”

“I dunno. I guess Carmen. And... that sounds weird, and I should feel weird about it, but I don’t, at least not that way. I never thought Carmen was mine, because she and Shane have always belonged to each other.”

“Wow.”

“It’s true. You’ll understand when you see them.”

“So where do you guys hang out?”

“We hang out at the planet in West Hollywood a lot. Bette’s sister Kit bought it...”

From Marina. That high proud face, that voice, those lips that smiled even when hurt was so evident in her eyes. The way she fucked me...

“Kit bought it from this woman Marina. It’s this cool café slash nightclub. Kit-"

“Kit’s the straight one.”

“Right. Well, I don’t know, she was dating this transman named Ivan.”

“Really?” Her ears and eyes seem to perk up. Moira doesn’t seem shocked, exactly, but intrigued.

“Yeah, Ivan was a woman who... did drag as a man, I guess. There are drag shows at the Planet sometimes. Anyway, we hang out there, and Carmen DJs. I think you’ll like it.”

“Do you go to the beach?”

“Not too much. We can go if you want.”

“I want to see the ocean,” she says.

“Then we’ll the see the ocean.”

We share a smile. I can’t look at her long or I’ll wreck, crash like a sailor caught by a siren’s song.

Moira tells me she gets carsick, but when I give her some old stories to read - Sarah Schuster, The Dozen Veils and of course the Venus de Mylar - she reads them in fits and starts, closing her eyes between.

“You’re gonna make yourself sick,” I say. Smiling at her, I can’t stop smiling.

“Naw,” she says, not opening her eyes. “I’m fine.”

I didn’t think she would actually come with me. I saw her as this sort of wannabe, not that there’s anything she wants to be that she isn’t, it’s just that I can’t see her in L.A.. And when she said she wanted to go I didn’t believe her really. But here she is, and I don’t know how I’d ever believed that.

After lunch I call Shane from a payphone. I never know if she’ll answer. Four rings and it doesn’t pick up, then a fifth. “Hello.”

“Hey stranger.” I’m grinning and bouncing around. No wonder Moira thinks I’m crushing.

“Hey, Jen! Where are you?” I forgot how deep her voice was. She sounds... warm.

“I am... currently in East Bumblefuck... on my way there.”

“That’s awesome. I can’t wait to see you.”

“I can’t wait to see you.” Okay, bouncing up and down like a little girl. “How are you?”

“I’m...” She pauses as if to take stock. “I’m good.” She sounds surprised.

“And things with Carmen?”

She laughs. A deep ha ha. She’s unsure of what to say. I know her so well. “Uh, good. Unbelievably good.” I can tell that she’s smiling, and it makes me feel fucking great.

“I met someone,” I blurt, knowing it will make her feel better.

“You did? That’s great! But... you met them at home?”

“She’s coming back to L.A. with me.”

“No way! Are you serious?”

“Totally. You’re gonna love her.”

“Cool. Hey guys, say hi to Jenny!” I hear a bunch of yells. It sounds as if she just stepped into the Planet.

I laugh. Moira comes out of the convenience store, carrying a soda in each hand. “Tell everyone I said hi. And we’ll be home in a few days.”

“Okay.”

I say goodbye. Moira stands there, unsurely, and I hang up the phone without looking at it. I walk to her, pull her close, kiss her lips hungrily. So sweet, she’s surprised and for a sec doesn’t know what to do. Then she kisses me back. A horn blares from the highway. We’re not in West Hollywood yet. I raise my finger to the car that is probably too far gone to see me.

She smiles. “Let’s drive a few hours then stop for the night.”

“Yeah,” I whisper. My beautiful girl.

So she drives as the sky gets darker. I like it better when she drives, cause then I get to watch her. I sit with my back against the passenger side door and sketch random words into a ratty old journal, occasionally looking at her. Her eyes are like a sliver of sky, indigenous to the heavens. It’s three days into this trip, and she’s used to it. At first she looked over at me every few minutes, amusement crinkling the corners of her eyes and mouth. She still does, but it’s not the same kind of look.

We walk across the gravel driveway of a roadside motel. Country music is playing and I can hear the flash and sizzle of the neighbor’s bug light, splashes from a pool somewhere over the fence. She holds the door for me, then asks for a room for the night in her simple butch way. She is so simple and elemental with her earnest eyes and calm fingers signing the credit receipt, it’s strange that the fucking bitch behind the counter is staring at her so strangely.

Anger rises in me, cements my jaw and making me see blood. I flash for a moment on Dr. Perez. The woman gives Moira a copy of the receipt, smiling uncomfortably but genuinely. My anger fades.

Inside the room, we play the local radio and she moves inside of me with her fingers. I’d forgotten the wonderful rhythm of fucking. Carmen was all about the lips and tongue. But Moira fucks like a man. No, not like a man, no man I have ever been with was anything like the way Moira is when she watches me.

I’m on the edge, writhing all sexy, spitting expletives, and when she smiles, just before she comes, she is so fucking beautiful, her own orgasm causing her to blush and waver and shudder as she rides, because she is without any artifice or embellishment.

I come, and in that instant my heart falls. Something inside me is rearranged, some L.A. thing that has become complicated and contrived is touched by her simplicity, her stark honesty, and I become hers.

The morning we come into L.A. Moira sleeps, oblivious to the usual gridlock. I’m itching for home, for Shane and the shadows of our bungalow and for the messy Planet matrix of friendships, but something keeps me from taking that exit, instead I drive West all the way to the ocean. She sleeps with the improbable peace of a child who knows of no harm, and I want to give this to her, more than I want home.

I go the place I found once when lost, a private beach, but I’ll take my chances. I drive until I can hear the seagulls looping in the air, then park. Come around to her side, open the door. In sleep she shifts toward me, as if falling out. But I hold her, wake her with a kiss, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty all in one.

Her eyes open. I smile. Welcome her. Will she know the scent of the ocean? I realize that I’m holding my breath. “Breathe,” I say, taking in the salt air.

She looks around, looks at the dunes, hears the gulls and waves and she indeed breathes deep. I reach out and she takes my hand, squeezing tight, and we walk over the dunes to the beach.

I thought she’d kick her shoes off, dip her toes, but she stops where the sand is wet, and holds me in her arms. Her kiss is thanks, her tongue grateful. I can taste the morning funk of her mouth, sweet and real, as she gives me more than I expected.

It washes over me, warm, and my hands tremble a bit as I tangle them in her hair. She thanks me with the shape of her smile, and I feel myself home, falling hard, all the way to the ground.