“You know better than that, Suzie,” she said sternly. “If you don’t, you’re not the person I thought you were.”
Suzie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Slowly, she let it out and opened her eyes again. “Okay,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” Celia told her. “And I’m sorry if I misled you into thinking that what we have here and now is more than what it is. I needed somebody to be intimate with and you were there. I love you, Fly Girl, and I always will, and I will always be grateful to you for being here for me when I needed you most, but ... I’m primarily heterosexual. I cannot change that any more than you can change the fact that you’re a lesbian. A long-term, committed relationship between the two of us simply cannot work. Please tell me that you understand that.”
Suzie was now fighting not to cry, but she nodded her head. “Yes,” she said softly. “I understand that.”
“Again, I’m sorry,” Celia said. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I know,” she said.
Celia put her head back down on Suzie’s chest. Suzie’s arms went back around her, caressing the naked skin of her back.
“How long do we have then?” Suzie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You just told me that what we have can’t last. How long do we have?”
“There is no expiration date on this thing,” Celia told her. “We have as long as we have. And when this phase is over, that doesn’t mean it’s over for good. There will be other tours. There will be visits when we’re not on tour. Who knows what will happen then? There are too many variables to factor in to come up with an answer to a question like that. Maybe I’ll meet the next man of my dreams tomorrow and it ends then. Maybe I never meet the next man of my dreams and you and I carry on a torrid affair with each other for the rest of our lives. We just don’t know what the future will bring, so we might as well live in the now.”
Suzie thought that over for a few moments and then nodded. “You’re a very wise woman, Band Geek,” she told her.
“You have to be wise to write songs,” she said. “It’s a requirement.”
“Will you write a song about me?” Suzie asked. “About us? About our time together?”
“Yes,” Celia said without hesitation. “I most certainly will.”
The phone on the nightstand began to ring. Both women looked at it, knowing who was likely to be on the other end. Celia sighed and rose up from the snuggle. She rolled over and picked up the handset. She put it to her ear.
“Marie Vasquez’s room,” she said softly, giving her hotel name.
“Hey, C,” came Pauline’s voice. “It’s me.”
“The New England Report has been released?” she asked.
“It has, and it’s causing quite the sensation. I just got off the phone with Darlene back in LA. She says the office phone is ringing off the hook with reporters trying to get information out of me about the tale. The proverbial shit has officially hit the proverbial fan.”
“Wonderful,” Celia said. “You’ve seen the article?”
“Got a copy of it about an hour ago,” she confirmed. “I think you need to see it. Suzie too.”
“I suppose we’ll have to,” she said. “How bad is it?”
“It’s much more detailed than I was expecting,” Pauline said. “We most definitely have a mole in your inner circle.”
“That’s what we figured from the start.”
“True, but now that we have the article to refer to, it seems our mole is not that bright. He gave himself away.”
“He did? What do you mean? Who is it?”
“I’ll fill you in after you read the article. You’ll probably come to the same conclusion without me telling you. Can I come up?”
“Uh...” she looked over at Suzie and then down at herself. They were both naked and smelled strongly of female sexual musk. Sure, everyone knew they were doing it with each other, but that did not mean they needed to have evidence thrown in their face, or up their nose. “I think maybe you’d better give us about thirty minutes or so.”
“I understand,” Pauline said. “Thirty minutes.”
SAPPHIC LOVEFEST ON THE CELIA VALDEZ TOUR?? screamed the headline of the New England Reports tabloid. Below the headline were three pictures. The first was a publicity shot of Celia up on stage, her microphone in hand. The next was another publicity shot, this one of Laura Kingsley in her green dress playing her saxophone up on stage. The other was an official looking photograph of Suzie—not the most flattering likeness of her—and she was identified by her full name and her profession in the caption.
“That’s my driver’s license picture!” she yelled, outraged. “God, I hate that fucking picture!”
The story, the smaller print promised, started on page 4. Celia, now dressed in her jeans and a peasant blouse, set the tabloid down on the suite’s dining table. She then planted her butt in the dining chair and flipped to page 4.
There were a few more pictures on page 4 and page 5. One was of Celia and Greg at last year’s Grammy Awards. One was a shot of Mindy Snow with her swelling belly. Mindy had pretty much been in seclusion since the Condom-gate episode and the disclosures by Smooth Operator of her slutty ways, but a member of the pap had managed to snap a shot of her on her property about three weeks before. Another shot featured Jake and Laura at their wedding reception, though it was not one of the official wedding pictures taken by the People magazine photographers, but an unauthorized shot that had been taken by Paul Peterson from out on the beach four hundred yards away. Each shot had a brief caption beneath, explaining the subjects’ role in the lesbian love scandal.
Celia shook her head in disgust at the innuendo contained in the captions and then began to read the main story. As Pauline had said, the story was very detailed and contained information that only someone who was a part of their immediate circle would know. The supplier of these details was identified as promised: “An anonymous source close to the band”. This source reported that Celia had gone into a funk after filing for divorce and the breaking of the Mindy Snow pregnancy by Greg Oldfellow story. She remained in that funk for quite some time but pulled out of it quickly once the copilot of their plane began spending the night in her hotel room with her. She stopped as she read this part.
“Copilot?” she asked Pauline. “What the hell are they talking about? Are they suggesting I’ve slept with Njord too?”
“Ewww,” Suzie said, disgusted. “Njord? That’s just gross!”
“They are not suggesting that,” Pauline said.
“But...”
“Just read on,” Pauline told her.
She read on. In the next paragraph, the copilot of which they spoke was identified as Susan Granderson of Peterson Aviation Services. Thirty-four years old. Formerly a captain in the United States Air Force with service in the Persian Gulf War. Discharged after the war under allegedly questionable circumstances. It was strongly implied, though not directly stated, that her discharge had been because she was a lesbian. They knew a lot about her, including how many flight hours she had accumulated and in what kind of aircraft, information obviously pulled from public records. But they did not know that she was the pilot-in-command of her current assignment and not the copilot.
“Why are they saying Suzie is the copilot?” Celia asked.
“Copilot?” Suzie barked, outraged. “They’re saying I’m fucking subordinate to Njord?”
“That’s what they’re saying,” Celia confirmed. She turned to Pauline. “Is it sexism? Are they assuming that just because she is a woman that she has to be the copilot?”
“No,” Pauline said. “I don’t believe that to be the case at all.”
“What do you mean?” Suzie asked.
“Who do we know,” asked Pauline, “who has reason to dislike most of the bandmembers in Celia’s band, with a particular personal dislike of Laura and Celia, and who has reason to be antagonistic toward you, Suzie?”