Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10

Episode Eight

The Box

The New Year’s Eve party was raging full bore. Jan’s band was playing, Jan was belting out some loud, rank rock tune, and Adrian and Frances had ducked into the office no doubt to fuck the New Year in right.

Tammy sighed; she was getting tired of having no date. When midnight struck everyone was kissing someone except her. She sighed and, feeling dejected, decided to go home.

But the apartment was empty and quiet, and she wasn’t really tired, so she decided to just buck up and go back to Rhonda’s. She walked out of the apartment and Faye walked in the front doors of the apartment building wearing her scrubs and looking beat.

“You had to work!” Tammy said.

“Yeah, short end of the stick. It’s the emergency room; someone has to work.”

“You going to Rhonda’s?” Tammy asked.

Faye looked down at her scrubs then shook her head. “The big midnight thing has already happened and I’m just beat. What about you?”

Tammy made a face and shrugged. “I just left there because I felt like the only person without a date tonight. So I came here and then I was just lonely.” Tammy laughed. “So I’m feeling insanely pathetic.”

Faye sighed. “Me, too. It’s been so long since I got laid that when I masturbate I get dust on my fingers. I mean, what’s wrong with me you know? I’m good looking. I have good hygiene.”

“And Adrian and Frances are always fucking,” Tammy said. “I mean like all the time. Yesterday I woke up and went and answered the door because I thought someone had knocked but then I realized as I was walking back to my room that what I was hearing was Adrian and Frances fucking against their door and I’m thinking to myself, Don’t they have a God damned bed? and then they hit the door so hard it damn near opened and I was thinking, What the fuck are they even doing to each other? because Frances told me that Adrian doesn’t use toys and what could they possibly be doing that would do that if they aren’t using a toy?

Faye took in a breath and let it out as if remembering some fond memory. “Oh honey, you really are green. There are all sorts of things that women can do without toys that will make a racket and Adrian knows them all.”

“So Frances keeps telling me. Who needs sex guides when all I have to do is ask an innocuous question like, ‘What did you do last night?’ and I get everything but a slide show,” Tammy said, blushing as she remembered some of what Frances told her.

Faye laughed at the look on her face. “I’m going to get out of these bio-waste clothes, get a shower and get off my feet.”  She turned and started towards her apartment.

“Ah yeah, see you later,” Tammy said, kicking herself as she headed toward the door because she always wound up sounding like a huge moron.

“Hey Tammy!” Faye yelled. Tammy turned and Faye had turned at her door. “I’m not in the mood for a tumble right now, but I could sure use some company.”

Tammy smiled nodded and then practically ran to catch up with Faye at her door.

Jan and her band called Cold Jets – she didn’t remember why – were packing up their gear when a guy came up to her and handed her a business card. He leaned right up to her ear because as soon as they had stopped playing the jukebox had started up and even if it hadn’t he probably still would have had to scream in her ear to be heard over the party. “You guys have a great sound. I’m an agent; I’m always looking for new acts give me a call some time and we can talk.”

“Thanks, I will,” Jan said pocketing the card.

“What did he want?” Karen her drummer asked.

“Don’t know, selling siding,” Jan shrugged. She liked to play music, but she didn’t want to leave her friends and a job she liked and that paid the bills to go chase some dream that might not come to fruition or worse might threaten her sobriety. Karen didn’t question her further and she was glad of that. Besides likely as not the guy was just some con artist one of the all too frequent give me money and I’ll represent you type agents who preyed on the hungry and often naive artists of the B Street district. You didn’t have to pay a real agent; he got you work and then he got his cut off the top, but most people didn’t know that.

Maybe it was a real flaw, but Jan had no desire to be more than she was, playing with her band a couple of nights a week in one of the clubs in the “gay” district, cooking at Rhonda’s five days a week, hanging out with her friends. If she could get Faye back her life would be perfect, and if she left she’d have no chance of that. Right now she felt like she needed to be right where she was. If that changed then maybe she’d call that guy and see if he was for real, but for right now what the rest of her band didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt them.

Faye dried off and put on pajamas. She walked out of the bathroom and found Tammy in her living room sitting on the couch looking at a magazine. Tammy put down the magazine and looked up at Faye.

“You look like you feel better,” Tammy said.

“I do.” Faye flopped into her favorite chair, a big oversized leather thing that hugged her ass, and put her feet up on the matching foot stool, she smiled and sighed. “That’s better. What a night. Fire works injuries and alcohol poisoning and people stabbing and shooting each other. The holidays absolutely bring out the worse in people.”

“I thought they were supposed to bring out the best in people?”

“Work in the ER any holiday and you’ll never think that again. We had a guy come in tonight had a fucking plastic rose sticking out of his chest. Drunk off his ass. His wife was drunk, too. They’d gotten into a fight, he’d fallen on the floor on his back, and she had taken this bunch of plastic flowers he’d given her for some occasion and pounded them into his chest so hard and so often that somehow one of the wires rammed into his skin, slipped up under his solar plexus and into his heart, and the whole time we’re trying to save this guy she’s right in the way and screaming ‘I love you baby’ over and fucking over again. And I’m thinking, yeah, that’s love all right.” Faye took in a deep breath and let it out. “I need a fucking drink.”

“I’ll get it for you.” Tammy got up and walked into the kitchen. A few minutes later she came out carrying an assortment of bottles and cans and a glass. She must have seen the smile on Faye’s face because she shrugged and said, “I didn’t know what you might want.”

Tammy set the assortment on the table and Faye eyed the selection. “I’ll start with the Zima and forget the glass.” Tammy handed her the bottle. “Get something if you want it.” Tammy grabbed the beer and flopped back down on the couch.

Faye looked Tammy over.  She was a nice kid, but still just a kid without enough life experience to really have much to talk about. In fact the most interesting thing about Tammy was probably her lack of baggage. Still she was desperate for human companionship, didn’t want to work at finding it, and she did like Tammy. After all, what was there not to like? She was like Tofu. “So how’s basketball?”

“Sucks. Back in high school I was the big shot on the team. Everyone knew me. I was the star. In college I’m mediocre and I doubt I’ll make first string. Then there’s the way the older girls treat all the freshmen, which is like scum, like we’re their rivals instead of their team mates. If you don’t play up to their standards, they call you a waste of skin, and if you do better than they think you should they accuse you of show boating,” Tammy said. That was more than Faye had ever heard her speak before, and she didn’t look like she was going to stop. “I have to kill myself studying, and I hate all my classes, and what’s the point if I can’t play ball? I know everyone thinks that’s a stupid way to feel because I’m getting an education, but I could give a fuck less. My father owns a business and he expects me to take over for him someday and I don’t really need an education to do that. I’m only going to college to please my parents and play ball. I keep training and training, and because I’m a freshman I’ll probably spend this whole season on the bench.”

“Wow that does suck.”

“I know it sounds really petty when you’ve been dealing with drunks and idiots who tried to blow their hands off and a guy who’s been stabbed through the heart with a rose, but… well being good at sports is really all I have. I’m not smart, and I’m not good looking, and I don’t have a single ounce of artistic ability, so if I’m not playing ball who the fuck am I?” She took a long drink of the beer.

Suddenly Faye felt a strange camaraderie with Tammy because she also didn’t feel like she was all that smart or all that pretty, and she also had no artistic ability whatsoever. Of course Faye thought Tammy was a damn fine-looking butch, still it wasn’t hard to commiserate with her. “Everyone here is wonderful. They’re painters or sculptors or writers or musicians, actors, dancers, and sometimes when they’re talking I just don’t have even one clue what they’re talking about.”

“Yeah!” Tammy said excitedly. “They might as well be speaking Chinese.”

“Exactly! They’re always talking about people I’ve never heard of, and if they’re talking about someone I have heard of they’re talking about their most obscure work that like two people in the whole world have heard of. I don’t consider myself to be shallow, but sometimes when I’m at the group discussion they’ll be talking and they’re so deep and it’s not that I don’t feel the same way, not that I don’t know what they’re saying, but I never in a million years could have said the same thing and have it come out like that. You know what I mean?”

Tammy nodded eagerly. “It’s like I could draw a picture of a dog and a boy walking by a lake and most everyone would be able to tell what it was, but when Adrian paints something it’s beautiful and you don’t just see it you feel it, taste it. That picture of the boy by the lake with the dog, I know that boy is important to her and yet I can’t see his face and I don’t know why I think it.”

“When Milly just moves it’s like dance, and when she talks, it’s like she wrote down the whole conversation and then did rewrites till she got it perfect and then memorized it till she had every emotion she wanted in every syllable just right before she opened her mouth. How does she do that? How does she make a list of what she had for dinner sound like a freaking song?”

“How do you write fucking music?” Tammy asked, shaking her head. “I couldn’t even write the lyrics, but how the hell do you just sit and pull actual music out of your ass? What part of your brain takes an idea and makes it come to life?”

“So, why did you want to live here so badly?” Faye asked.

“Well mostly because when I’m here I don’t feel like I have to hide what I am, but also because when I’m around them I feel like maybe someday I’ll be special, too, not just some stupid jock. Maybe some of it will rub off and even if it never does… I don’t know when you’re with them… they’re all so much more alive than most of the idiots I’ve known. Those dorks I go to school with, even the professors, they’re all so plastic. Even though I may have no idea what they’re talking about I never feel left out, or like they’re looking down on me. I feel like I can be myself and even though I might not really fit in, I feel like I do. No one here ever makes me feel like I’m not part of the team. Those bitches I play ball with, they have no real substance. In high school the girls I played with, we were all in it together, and though I was never really close to any of them, we were a team, we worked together, and we liked each other. These girls hang in threes, and if you don’t have two more girls to hang with then you’re just on your own, and they’ve started a rumor that I’m queer.”

“Honey,” Faye said with a rye smile, “you are queer.”

“But at school I’m not out, and at least half those bitches on the team are just as queer as I am. It’s just that half of them don’t know it yet, and the other half are just covering like I am. I don’t like it when people whisper when I walk by, when they shower across the room from me because they think I might be checking them out. Like I’d want any of those great, huge butch bitches anyway. I just… I wish my whole life was here so I could just stay on B Street and never leave like Adrian does.”

And that was when Faye realized that the girl was really in no way dull or without substance, because until Tammy said it she had never realized that Adrian didn’t leave the “gay district,” but when she thought of it, it was true. Anything Adrian couldn’t get here she ordered and had brought in. Adrian never left. When they all went to concerts in the city or went out of town on vacation they’d ask her and she’d always have an excuse not to go. Even before she owned the apartment house and Rhonda’s. Adrian lived her entire life in about a two mile radius of B Street. Until a minute ago if anyone had asked her who the bravest person she knew was she wouldn’t have hesitated to say Adrian Bar, but Adrian didn’t leave the safety of B Street for any purpose. Even when she rode around on her bike she just rode it in the “district.” Sometimes just took it down and rode it round and round the park.

“Shangri-La,” Faye muttered.

“What?” Tammy asked.

“There’s this old movie called Lost Horizon about these explorers that find this hidden paradise while on an expedition… I have it you want to see it?”

“Sure.”

Faye got up and got the movie and put it in. “Do you mind?” She said indicating the space on the couch next to Tammy.

“Not at all.”

Faye sat down on the couch and Tammy put a nervous arm around Faye’s shoulders and they watched the movie. By the time it had ended they were laying side by side on the couch covered in the Indian blanket Faye kept on the couch, and Faye was almost asleep.

“So,” Tammy said, as if she had just gotten Faye’s reference, “B Street is like Adrian’s Shangri-La, and she thinks if she leaves it something bad will happen to her.”

“I guess,” Faye said.

“I better go let you get some sleep,” Tammy said.

“Why not just stay? We’re both comfortable.” Faye turned to face Tammy. “I don’t want to wake up the first day of the New Year alone.”

“Sure,” Tammy said.

And they just slept together, holding each other, sharing warmth. Faye decided it was the best New Years she’d had in a long time.

The second day of the New Year the box came. UPS had set it by the mail boxes just inside the front door. It was addressed to all residents, so Adrian picked it up and carried it to the rec room where she opened it.

            “What is it?” Milly asked, walking into the room still in her pajamas. That was just the way Stella’s house was, just the way Stella had wanted it. People left their doors open in the evenings and walked between apartments visiting, and they traipsed around in their night clothes in public areas, and they all felt completely comfortable doing so. Of course Milly was a stripper, so she basically had no modesty anyway.

            The rules of Stella’s house were pretty strict by some standards and more than a little esoteric. You couldn’t smoke anywhere in the building. You had to recycle. Everyone had to have at least three living plants in their apartment. You were subject to monthly checks to see if your apartment was clean, and if it wasn’t Adrian cleaned it and the tenant paid for it. No dogs, no cats, you could have any kind of caged animal as long as you kept them clean. No one was to leave a mess in the common areas. If you made the mess you cleaned it up as the sign in the kitchen so plainly stated. You couldn’t be overtly intoxicated and unruly outside of your own room. You weren’t allowed to argue with another tenant; if you had trouble with a tenant you were supposed to tell Adrian and she would take care of it. Or you could discuss it at the monthly discussion meeting held on the first Monday of every month. The sweeping of the hall ways and cleaning of the rec room were done on a rotating basis once a week by one of the tenants and breaking any of the rules was cause for eviction.

            The rules kept a lot of potential renters out and more or less made sure that it stayed an atmosphere where people felt comfortable to run around in their pajamas – or underwear – down to the rec room to see if there was any food left in the fridge – whatever was left after closing Rhonda’s at the end of the day they brought back to the apartment building and people could eat anything in there on a first come first serve basis. It was the sort of place where friendships were made and where they all felt safe from people who would judge them.

            It was home.

            “What is it?” Milly asked again when she walked out of the kitchen holding a bowl of cold chili. Adrian knew it was cold

            Adrian made a face. “You could heat that up you know.”

            “Nothing wrong with cold chili, Adrian. Makes my nipples say hi.”

            Adrian laughed and shook her head.

            “Now, what’s in the box?”

            “Stella’s new book. She sent copies for everyone.”

            “Why do you look like you’re ready to choke?” Milly asked.

            “I just have a bad feeling about this that’s all.” Adrian held up the book and Milly read the title out loud.

            “The Residents of Hanna’s House.”

They hadn’t had the meeting the first week in December because Adrian was just trying to get everything settled and had no idea who to let run the show, because it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her. Hell, she had yet to really talk during one. She had decided to let Judy do it. Judy worked as a counselor for a local high school, and Adrian figured if she could handle high school kids she ought to be able to handle a room full of queers. Besides of all the people she asked Judy was the only one who had said she would do it. No one really felt comfortable following in Stella’s shoes.

            Judy lived on the third floor with her partner of five years, Mary, and their infant son Michael who they all called Mikey.

            Adrian really didn’t want to be there at all. The arrival of the box had been followed by two days of almost complete silence as everyone read the book, followed by days of everyone muttering and looking at each other uncomfortably, unable to make eye contact. Milly had explained it as being like having a hidden tumor that no one could see suddenly erupting from your forehead so that you and everyone else knew it was there and you couldn’t ignore it any more.

            Jan was livid. So much so that she wasn’t talking to anyone but Adrian, and half of what she said to Adrian sounded like that sound a two year old makes when he wants something and keeps telling you what he wants but you can’t figure out what he’s saying. Adrian just nodded her head a lot and said yeah.

            Adrian had read the book, too, and what Milly had said was a pretty good description of how she’d felt ever since. And mad. So incredibly, blindingly enraged, that she had to work really hard at not letting it spill out on everyone around her. And Frances didn’t get it at all, not at all.

The words seemed burned into Adrian’s brain.

            Maxine had ridden into town on her motorcycle and hadn’t left Z Street since. She was talented in ways that no one else was, and frighteningly intelligent, and the most closed-off person Hanna had ever known. No one really knew where she came from or what she’d been through, but they knew it was bad because it cast a shadow on her features and over all her personal relationships.

            It wasn’t Adrian, wasn’t who she was. At least that’s what Adrian had been telling herself for the last three days.

            Maxine chose to fall in love with Hanna, a woman she could never have because it meant she never had to truly be intimate with anyone. All her connections with women could be superficial. If she never let anyone in, then she never had to tell her horrible secrets, and she was happy as long as she could just pretend that she didn’t really have a past, as if her life had begun and would end on Z Street.

            It wasn’t her, she was sure it wasn’t. But it hurt that Stella could say those things, that she thought them. Hurt to think that the relationship that she had so cherished had meant little more to Stella than a character sketch for her fucking book.

            She knew she and Milly and Jan weren’t the only ones feeling the sting of Stella’s words. Faye hadn’t talked to anyone in days and was jumpy and nervous. They all felt betrayed on a level Adrian doubted anyone could understand unless a trusted friend had chosen to tell their life story in a fictional book.

            It wasn’t hard for Hanna to guess at Maxine’s private hell, she’d shown up on her door step a 17 year old run away. In those first months loud noises made her cringe and in all the years they’d been friends Maxine had never once mentioned her family or her home town. Someone had beaten the girl. Someone whom she should have been able to trust had used her for a punching bag until she didn’t really love or trust anyone.

            Stella never should have said that, not knowing that everyone was going to immediately know that Maxine was Adrian. And it wasn’t true. Adrian did love, and there were even people she mostly trusted. Of course the person she’d loved and trusted most in the world had been Stella, and now Stella had done this to her, to all of them.

            It wasn’t hard to know what everyone wanted to talk about tonight. Everyone was clutching a copy of Stella’s book and no one looked happy.

            She looked for and found Frances across the room talking to a very angry Milly, and Adrian found herself gravitating towards Frances. Why? Frances didn’t understand at all why she was so upset about the book. So why was she moving towards Frances as if her life depended on reaching her?

Security. Why would she expect that being with Frances was going to make her feel better about what she knew was about to be a really embarrassing and hurtful experience? She felt raw and exposed, and she decided not to analyze it. If being with Frances made her feel better, why not go to her? Frances had wanted to talk to Adrian about the book and Adrian had just said no. Frances had tried to get Adrian to tell her what was wrong, and Adrian had told her to drop it and she had. Now they were all going to talk about the book and maybe she should just leave and go find something to do, but she felt like she had to be there to defend herself and be there for her friends who had also been struck by Stella’s ‘mightier than the sword’ pen.

            As she walked up she could hear Frances saying, “The book is brilliant, Milly.”

            “That’s easy for you to say you’re not a fucking character in the book,” Milly said.

            “She’s right, Frances,” Adrian said, but then she just walked right up to Frances and slid her arms around her anyway.  

            God, I’m using her like a security blanket, like some sort of shield. When did I become so needy? But even as she thought it she knew. When I gave up on Stella and Frances was there. When Frances gave herself to me completely and denied all others for me.

            “What about you Adrian?” Milly asked, holding up the book and shaking it. “What do you think?”

            “I’m pissed,” was all she said.

            Judy stood up and looked around the room which was stuffed damn near to capacity. The tenants weren’t the only people who came to the discussion groups at Stella’s House, people from all over the community came, and tonight Adrian was sorry that they hadn’t closed the meeting. But that wouldn’t have been fair because even the people who weren’t tenants had been used as characters and they had their books and everyone had little sticky tabs of different colors hanging out of their copies.

            Everyone was whispering, or at least thought they were, until the sound in the room was like a roar. She could pick Jan’s voice out of the din. She was hot and way past brooding now. Standing beside her Faye was silent and looked like she was on the verge of tears. Odd that they had gravitated towards each other now. Adrian was a little surprised when she found herself saying loud enough to be heard over the din, “Let’s get this shit over with.”

            “All right,” Judy said, starting, nervous and no doubt thinking that this was a hell of a way to start her career as the new discussion leader. She must have known it was going to be heated because she and Mary usually brought the baby and tonight she had left Mary and Mikey at home. “Who wants to start?”

            “I do,” Jan said loudly.

            “All right, Jan.”

            Jan held up the book. “I want to know if we can file a class action suit against Stella.”

            There was a mumbling that said many members of the group were in agreement.

            “No,” Chad said, and from the tone of his voice Adrian guessed he’d actually checked. “She didn’t use a real place or our real names. We’d have to prove she had used actual events from our lives and even then, well she’s changed everything just enough that it isn’t libel. Besides, does anyone really want to admit to some of the stuff in this book in a court of law?”

“Would you like to tell the group how you feel, Jan?” Judy prompted.

            Jan opened the book to one of the places she’d marked. “Sam was damaged in unimaginable ways. Her head was so screwed up Hanna doubted she’d make it through another night. The girl was shaking, though she didn’t know whether it was from the drugs she’d poured into her system for the last few years or the cold. Her arms bore the scars of a failed but truly-tried suicide attempt. An attempt like that wasn’t a cry for help. Her scars were a testament to how much she just wanted to check out of this life.” Jan closed the book. “I thought she was my friend, but…” she flipped to another section of the book and read again. “Sam hadn’t really let go of her past, hadn’t really moved on till that night when she told us all just how low she had sunk and Hanna realized that part of Sam was always going to be that scared, strung-out girl who had shown up in the caf� all those years ago.” This time Jan slammed the book closed. “And that’s just the shit I’m not too fucking embarrassed to read. So I’m what, some emotionally crippled, child like, ex-druggie, what?”

            And then they were all just taking turns reading the sections of the books that applied to them till it was Milly’s turn. “Beverly tapped at the keyboard all day letting her imagination sore in amazing ways, but she never finished a single book. No doubt because as long as she never finished a book she never had to move foreword with her life, step out of her fantasy world and play in the real one.” She flipped to another section of the book and Adrian found herself holding Frances tighter. “Beverly stripped for a living, and she made a small fortune shaking her tight, perfect ass for a bunch of horny men who wanted her. Men that she didn’t want at all. It was easy money and she didn’t seem to mind that it was debasing or beneath her because there was no fear of rejection there. She was beautiful, she knew it, and men would stick money in her g-string till it popped. If she finished a book and sent it in she could be rejected and she’d already been rejected by her parents and society. She just couldn’t risk it.” She skipped to another ear-marked section in the book… “Beverly used her body and her sex appeal to get everyone she came in contact with to jump through the hoops she created for them…” “What’s that even fucking mean? And then there’s the very graphic scene where Hanna catches Maxine and Beverly screwing in the stockroom, and I don’t scream like a kid losing their candy when I come! She had no right to use us like this without even asking. And I got off easy. There were things about me she could have used and didn’t. The things she said about Adrian and Jan and Faye were completely fucked up, and she made Marcella basically sound like she has not even one brain cell in her whole head!” And this was the real reason that Milly was so mad. Milly was fiercely loyal. You could say whatever you liked about her and she’d just be mad, but you couldn’t go after her friends or her lover.

            “There are some things…” Faye started and had to stop because she was close to tears. Jan patted her back in a comforting fashion, and then Faye just collapsed on Jan’s shoulder. Jan held her and finished for her as if she knew what she was going to say. “You don’t exploit something like someone’s childhood molestation for profit. She couldn’t have written any of our experiences the way she did if we hadn’t opened up to her, right here like we’re doing right now. She’s the one who told us we had to let it all go, talk about it so that we could get past it, and then she puts our private hells in print for the whole fucking world to see. We’ve always felt like we were safe opening up and talking about our deepest secrets…”

            “Except for Adrian who has never said shit about her past, and so Stella just makes one up for her,” Milly interrupted angrily.

            Jan nodded and finished her thought. “What we’ve told each other over the years, we’ve always assumed it was private.”

            “Exactly,” Jerry said. “I’m hanging onto my childhood by not telling my parent’s who I really am so that I can still be their golden boy?”

            There was more mumbling and grumbling in agreement. And then everyone was just talking at once. Judy whistled and they were quiet. “One at a time. Adrian do you have anything to say?” Judy asked, looking at her expectantly.

            Adrian was unprepared to be called out. She’d never talked at one of these things, what made Judy think she was going to talk now? Because until now it’s all been me not talking about what happened to me before I came to B Street and now something has happened to me on B Street. And they all want to know how I feel about it. If I agree with them or not.

Everyone looked at Judy to see if she realized she’d erred, and then they were all

looking at Adrian, and she found herself holding Frances even tighter until Frances was pushing on Adrian’s arms a bit, no doubt because she selfishly still wanted to breathe. Adrian took a deep breath, realizing there was way too much silence, and then it spilled out of her mouth.

            “I’m pissed off because she’s right about me, all right? I’m pissed off because I never told anyone where I came from or what had happened to me because I wanted there to be one safe place in the world for me where everyone didn’t know because where I grew up everyone knew, no one did anything about it but they knew, and Stella guessed and she told everyone.” Then she was breathing again. She let go of Frances and Frances turned, looked at her, and then looked all around the room at everyone else.

            “Did any of you actually read the same book I did? The whole book? Stella didn’t put any of you down. Yes, she tells all your stories and all your problems, but she also shows how really put together you all are. How you triumph. How you make it all work by helping each other become whole. How you all complement each other, make connections despite everything you’ve been through, and despite having all the hang ups you have.” She turned and looked right at Adrian. “The character she based on you connects with everyone despite the fact that she can’t open up about her past. People open up to her and she makes human connections despite all odds. It’s obvious from that character sketch that she adores you, and that she admires you more than any other single person she knows.”

She turned back to look at the crowd. “All you saw were the negative things she said about you and how she told your life stories. You don’t see how much she loves you. How much she showed that love by holding you up as an ideal and saying that you’ve found a way to cope as a community. Yes, she used you all as a template for the characters in the book, but this book isn’t about you. It’s all about her own journey. Look at all the negative things she says about Hanna. She wants to make up for her past by helping people, to be forgiven by the world for the sins she thinks she has committed against mankind. She agonizes over whether she can ever be forgiven for the things she’s done. She wrote this book because she had to write this book. It’s all about teaching people that there’s an alternative to the self-destructive lives too many people, especially gay people, choose. You are all horribly upset by something you should be proud of. Hell Adrian’s so upset we haven’t had sex in three days.”

There was a collective gasp from the room.

Frances turned to Milly. “Hand me that fucking book.” Milly handed it to her and she took it and opened it to the last page. “And I quote, ‘Hanna was reminded of a story she’d been told about a man who had many sons who wouldn’t stop fighting among themselves. He brought them together, showed them a pile of sticks, and told them to watch as he picked up a stick and snapped it in two and then another and then another and he told his sons, One alone is weak. Then he bound the sticks together and he tried to break it and he couldn’t. He handed the bundle from son to son and none could break it and then he said, But when you bind them together they are strong. It was the same with the residents of Hanna’s house – alone they could be broken, but together they never could be.”

“My God, don’t any of you get it? You’re the heroes of this fucking book. Stella had to write it. and I’m guessing the way you’re acting right now is why she had to leave. No one outside B Street has any idea that “Hanna’s House” is a real place or that any of those characters are any of you, and guess what? The people on B Street already know all this shit. Now I know you’re all thinking what Milly said, that it’s easy for me because I’m not in the book, but damn I wish I was. I wish I’d gotten a book like this in my hands when I was a teenager. Faye, people who read this book who have lived through the same things you have they’re going to take comfort in the fact that they can get past it. You’re not a victim, Faye, you’re a survivor, and Stella has portrayed you that way. The same is true of all of you. What did she say near the middle of the book?” She flipped through the book again; it took her a second to find it.

“Hanna often listened to her friends laughing or singing or just talking to each other and she would think to herself they’ve all walked through the fire and they’ve all been burned but they’ve found a way to heal their wounds. I wonder how different we might all be if we’d never been scared or abused or abandoned or addicted, and I think we would all be different people but I doubt we’d be better. I think we are all what our experiences – good and bad – have made us, and I wouldn’t change any of them. Not one bit.

Adrian heard every word Frances said. She started to go through the book in her mind and decided Frances was most probably right. After all, if Stella had meant to dis them she certainly wouldn’t have sent them all free copies, and she really had laid a dose of crap on the character she based on herself. She hadn’t pulled any punches on herself, either, or Toni for that matter.

The mood in the room had changed, and Judy said, “I think what Frances says makes a lot of sense. What do you think? Who wants to go next?”

“I do.” It was Milly. “I’m a writer and… well I’ve based characters – loosely mind you, not down to what sounds they make when they come – but I’ve based them on people I know. I guess it just made me feel a little raw but… actually now I think about it the book is really, really good.”

Jan nodded silently, still stung, but she’d get over it. Adrian wasn’t sure she would. That she could. She waited till someone else was saying that they agreed with Frances, and then she left, sneaking out behind everyone else. In the hall someone took hold of her hand and she liked to jump out of her skin.

“Where you going?” Frances asked in a whisper.

“Home.” Adrian looked at her and forced a smile. “You’re right about everything, but… Well, she’s the one who taught me that you can have more than one best friend, and I’m supposed to be one of hers yet she exposed things about me that I not only never told her but that I never told anyone. I just feel like I had a safe place and she ruined it, and it’s not the first time she’s done that to me, Franny.”

“You still have a safe place, Adrian. I’ll go home with you.”

“I need to be alone, Franny. Nothing personal and I’m not mad at you. I just… I need to be alone.”

Frances nodded, turned and started to go back into the rec room. Adrian took a deep breath and grabbed Frances’ arm. “I’m sorry. Do come home with me. I really don’t need to be alone; hell I’m not even sure I really want to be alone. I don’t know what I want right now but what I do know is that I feel better when you’re with me.”

Frances gently took Adrian’s hand and started leading her towards the apartment.

Once inside Frances sat down on the sofa and Adrian went in the kitchen. She came back with a couple of beers and handed one to Frances. Adrian flopped in her recliner, reared back and took a long sip of her beer before she moved the bottle from her mouth and said looking at the ceiling, “Go ahead, ask.”

“I don’t want to psychoanalyze you, baby, I’m your lover not your shrink,” Frances said gently. “I just want to be whatever you need me to be right now.”

“I need…” Adrian took a deep breath and let it out. “I think I need you to ask me something you’ve always wanted to know but were afraid to ask me and see if I actually have the balls to answer you or if I’m just exactly what Stella said I was in her book.”

Frances was starting to wish she hadn’t followed Adrian now. She had a feeling that playing this little game out with Adrian just might be the kiss of death for their relationship, and she was by no means ready to end it, but her curiosity got the best of her.

“Why don’t you cry?”

“How do you know I don’t?”

“Because you didn’t cry when Stella left, and you aren’t crying now, and I’m thinking that if I felt the way you’re obviously feeling now I’d be crying.”

Adrian took a breath and let it out. “My father would beat me till I was bawling and then he’d beat me for crying, so… I learned not to cry. Then I realized that he’d beat me more when I didn’t cry because he wanted to make me cry, and so… I didn’t want to give him what he wanted so I didn’t cry. Now I don’t seem to be able to and I’m afraid that if I ever did start to cry now I wouldn’t be able to stop. Ask me something else.”

Frances sighed. “Adrian I don’t think…”

“Why is it that people want you to spill your guts and then when you are they don’t really want to hear it?” Adrian asked in a low, grumbling voice. “I’ve seen it during the discussion groups a dozen times. People will break down someone’s barriers until they’re just crying and telling their whole life story and then no one wants to hear. They want to hear some cleaned-up movie of the week version and real life is never that fucking clean.”

“Only a heartless bastard wants to see someone – especially someone they love – in pain,” Frances said. “I sure as hell don’t want to see you hurting.”

“Ask me another question.”

Frances took a deep breath and realized that she had no choice but to do what Adrian wanted. “Why don’t you ever talk about your family?”

“Well you can guess why I don’t talk about dear old Dad. When that bastard finally left when I was twelve I thought we were all finally free, that me and Mom and my little brother could finally be like a real family. But my mother… she and Dad had a very sick, co-dependent relationship, and when he ran off with another woman she just fucking lost it. Had a nervous break down I guess. She didn’t beat us, but she started screaming all the time that she wasn’t drinking. And of course while she was drinking she wasn’t really taking care of us or anything else. My dad just disappeared. There was no child support, Mom didn’t work – he’d never allowed that – we were broke. I had to take care of my little brother because she couldn’t and I was afraid she’d hurt him because when she lost it… well, you couldn’t be sure what she might do. One time she caught a trailer we were living in on fire. We had to move all the time; we were on welfare. I had to work with my uncle. He’s a nice guy but he’s a drunk, too, with his own family problems. I started working with him every once and awhile when I was just eight – did I tell you he was a remodeling contractor?”

Frances shook her head.

“Well he was, taught me everything I know about construction… well everything I didn’t learn on the home garden channel, from books or just taught myself. But he just spent more and more time drunk and I wound up doing more and more of the work. Hell I had to drive half the time, drove all by myself the first time when I was ten. I barely got through high school and wouldn’t have been able to if it wasn’t for GCE. Any way I ran away just before I turned eighteen because I got caught fucking this cunt who blamed the whole thing on me. Well actually my mother kicked me out, so I guess I didn’t really run away. My uncle gave me two thousand bucks and said he’d get me for jobs when he was in the city. I never had to actually use his money, so I paid him back about two months after I got here. I put a money order in an envelope and mailed it along with all my contact information but I never heard from him again. I called him a dozen times and got his answering machine. He never called back. My little brother, I called him every week for awhile but then he said he never wanted to talk to me again because I was a sick, twisted pervert who was going to hell. Those are pretty big words and concepts for a ten year old, so I’m guessing my loving mother taught him and he was mad anyway because I had left him so…” She looked at Frances and she still wasn’t crying. “So I don’t really have a family anymore except for these people on B Street.”

Frances took a drink of her beer while she tried to think of something, anything, to say. Finally she wiped the tears from her eyes and said, “See now was that so hard?”

Adrian moved into a sitting position, looked at Frances and then she started to laugh. After a minute she sighed and shook her head. “No it wasn’t so hard at all.” She noticed the tears in Frances’ eyes. “Franny, why on earth are you crying?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Frances laughed then, her tears falling harder and choked out, “I told you I didn’t want to see you in pain, dumb ass.”

Adrian got up, walked over, dropped to her knees in front of her and held her tight. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Frances was still crying. “You didn’t do anything.”

Adrian wiped the tears off Frances’ face with her thumbs and then she gently kissed Frances’ lips. “Come on, it’s late. Let’s go get a shower and go to bed.”

When they made love that night it was warm and comforting and just what they both needed.

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