Amy felt the electrical charge that Jordan had infused her with draining away. "Sorry," she said. "I'm tired. How was Mrs. Markus' mole?"
"You were right about the diagnosis. I intentionally made her angry and it turned red."
Amy laughed.
Jeremy continued, "And then I intentionally stopped by hoping to help you out with the hottie."
"Hottie. That's so derogatory. I don't understand why women like you."
"Touchy touchy. You're the only woman I know who doesn’t throw herself at my feet."
Amy looked at him smugly. "Yeah, well, I didn't see Miss Hottie throwing herself anywhere in your direction."
He feigned hurt by clasping his hand over his chest as if he'd been shot in the heart. Then he laughed. "She's probably a lesbian."
"As a matter of fact she is," Amy said. "And she was flirting with me."
Jeremy eyes widened. "Really?" He clasped his hands in front of his chest, begging, "If you two go on a date can I come too? I promise to be real quiet and just watch."
Amy rolled her eyes and stalked out the door. She was halfway down the hallway when Jeremy poked his head out the doorway and called after her, "Just kidding!" He added under his breath, "But not really."
Conversion Version
"You like her," Edison said as she opened the door of her ancient Volkswagen bug.
"Maybe," Jordan said, climbing into the passenger seat.
"But we don't even know if she's family," Edison said. She started the car, ground the gears until she found reverse and backed out of the parking space without looking behind her. A car slammed on its brakes and honked angrily at her. Edison ignored it.
"Does it matter?" Jordan asked.
"Only if you want to date her." Edison steered the car out of the hospital parking lot and toward the exit.
"Maybe I can finally get that toaster oven I've always wanted," Jordan said.
"She's a little on the short side for you."
"You're going out a one-way," Jordan said.
"So?"
"The wrong way."
Another car honked at them and the driver shook her fist. Edison waved brightly at the angry woman.
Jordan said, "I don't think she's waving."
"What makes you say that?"
"The pinched red face and the spittle spraying out of her mouth."
"Some people are so excitable," Edison said. She screeched tires onto the street and the angry driver laid on her horn and sped past. Edison shook her head and sighed. "You'd think one-way signs are written in stone or something."
"Well, they are kind of the law and all that."
They drove the next five minutes in silence. Jordan closed her eyes and held her breath each time Edison cornered the car without braking.
"How old do you think she is?" Edison asked.
"Who?"
"You know who."
Jordan shrugged. "Thirty."
"How do you know that?"
"I don't know that. You asked me how old I thought she was and I think she's thirty."
Edison frowned. "Kind of young for you."
"I'm thirty-two. It wouldn't be like I was robbing the cradle."
"Your last one was much older." Edison punched the gas to make it through a yellow light.
Jordan braced herself by pushing her undamaged hand against the dash. "Age is relative."
"I'm pretty sure she had a straight vibe," Edison said.
"Everyone's straight until proven guilty."
Edison took her eyes off the road and looked at Jordan for a long moment. "So, what's the verdict? Are you going to ask her out?"
"No. Please watch the road."
"No?"
"No. I don't do conversions." Jordan pointed out the windshield. "The road, please."
Edison looked out the window, saying, "You converted me."
"That’s your version. My version is that it was an accident."
"You make it sound like you tripped and fell on top of me until I came," Edison said.
Jordan sighed. "Ed, I don't want to talk about us again. We're best friends. We're better off that way. And as for the doctor… I'm not going to try to convert her, that's all, end of story."
Edison looked doubtful. She said in an off-handed way that meant it wasn't really off-handed, "Some conversions do themselves."
It was true that Jordan had met Edison when she was straight. No, erase that. Jordan met Edison when she wasn't a practicing lesbian. She had hired Edison to hang some new cabinets in the kitchen. Only half the cabinets were hung before Jordan had introduced Edison to the world of practicing lesbianism and it had been kind of an accident.
Jordan didn't blame herself. She blamed her overactive vagination. If Edison didn't want to be seduced and taken on the kitchen floor she shouldn't have bent over like that with her butt crack showing.
Jordan sighed. She loved Ed. But she loved her like a best friend. The problem was that Ed loved her like a lover. Jordan wasn't sure how it had happened, but Edison had moved into her house kind-of-sort-of uninvited. Something about her apartment being flooded and being broke and she worked all day at Jordan's house anyway and she had more than enough room and her portion of the rent could be taken out of what Jordan was paying her to remodel. The problem was that the remodeling was going on forever. Jordan wondered if that was intentional.
Edison pulled her Bug into the driveway of their home. They looked at the old house and sighed. Once upon a time it had been a beautiful old Victorian but now the paint was peeling, the yard was overgrown and the windows looked like the cloudy cataracts of a senile old lady. If the house were a person it would be Mrs. Haversham from Great Expectations.
"I wish this conversion would do itself," Jordan said, pointing at the house and referring to the ongoing house renovations.
"Where would the fun be in that?" Edison said. "Isn’t putting in elbow grease and sweat and hours upon hours of work worth having something of your very own, something special and worthwhile, something to give your life meaning?"
Jordan got out of the car. "Are we talking about the house or the doctor?"
"You tell me." Edison shut her car door and headed for the porch.
Blue Amy
Jordan sat cross-legged on the floor in her drawing studio, in the middle of plastic tarps, paint buckets and half-painted walls, drinking Pinot Gris out of a coffee mug and contemplating her own conversion. There were three distinct stages of her conversion.
Before she fell out the window: Jordan did not believe in true love. She did not believe in romance and happily-ever-afters. She thought all that malarkey about love was brainwashing doled out by men to keep women barefoot and pregnant. It was so ingrained in the female mind that even lesbians had contracted it like it was a pandemic flu.
During the falclass="underline" The moment she slipped, the exact moment she reached for something to grab hold of and there was nothing there and she realized she was hurtling toward earth and imminent death, Jordan thought of how she was dying too young. She thought of all the things she hadn't done yet. She hadn't traveled to New Zealand. She hadn't been to the top of the Empire State building. She hadn't written the novel that would be her seminal masterpiece. She hadn't experienced true love. That was her last thought and it was the clencher. True love. She was going to die a virgin, metaphorically speaking, of the heart.
After the falclass="underline" Jordan saw Amy in the emergency room. Maybe it was too many endorphins caused by the fear coursing through her veins, maybe it was the loss of blood, maybe it was the full moon, maybe it was the chili peppers she ate for dinner last night, but whatever it was, Jordan was now pretty damn sure she was in love.