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“We’ll do it,” she said.
    “So, are we finished now?” Zee’s clear voice broke in. “I’ve got another meeting. An important one.”
    “Looks like it,” said June, getting up and exchanging glances with Jeremy. “Coming?”
    Penny looked at me. Was this something new? But suddenly all of us were on our feet. Chairs were pushed back, jackets and bags retrieved from the floor and the desks. Penny and Ray started talking about whether the new theater would accept our bid and how much credit we could give them; Zee ran out quickly, earrings flying, followed in short order by June and Jeremy, Margaret and Anna. I turned to say something to Hadley and found Elena at my side—Elena with her fluffy blond hair and soft, milk chocolate eyes.
    “How about going out for a beer or something, Pam?” she asked me.
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hadley approach Ray and Penny and start talking. “Well,” I said to Elena, “I’m pretty tired.” But then both my conscience and my better judgment smote me. Not only did I want to find out what Elena’s role in this whole thing was, but I’d better find out, if things weren’t to get completely out of control. “Sure,” I said, “sounds good.”
    “Great,” she said and then called over to Fran, who was already standing by the door. “Pam’s coming too.”

5
    S HARING A PITCHER WITH Fran was not my idea of an enjoyable end to the evening, but there was no way to get out of it now. Fran drove Elena in her VW wagon and I drove myself in my ’67 Rambler to the University Bar & Grill. It was a pretty upscale place but I liked it because of its lack of hassle.
    Fran had suggested Sappho’s but had dropped the idea when I asked what it was.
    As soon as I’d said it I realized it must be a lesbian bar. Sappho was a lesbian, right? I felt both stupid and defensive. Hey, it’s not my scene, Fran, okay?
    “Anyway,” Elena had said quickly. “It’s too noisy there. The Bar & Grill’s fine.”
    Driving alone now I wondered what Sappho’s was like. Dimly lit tables, a dance floor filled with bulky women like Fran, in jeans and flannel shirts, or silk blouses with plunging necklines and tall boots maybe, the way Elena had been dressed once when she’d been going out after a meeting…gyrating under the strobe lights or pressing close together in the dark.
    My hands sweated lightly on the steering wheel and it wasn’t just the warm evening. I felt a mixture of attraction, revulsion and fear, with the latter predominating most recognizably. Girl, I said to myself as I parked my Rambler, for someone whose scene this isn’t, you sure are worked up by the thought of it. But why, all of a sudden?
    I met Elena and Fran outside the bar and let them go in front of me. I observed them closely, in the interests of scientific investigation, and observed how they were observed by others.
    I’d always thought Elena an extremely attractive woman. Conventionally pretty of face, she had more than a conventionally good figure: slim legs, narrow waist, full breasts. She wasn’t tall but she moved as if she were, confident and upright. I tried, with others’ eyes, to place her: an executive, a professor, a suburban housewife, a shop steward, a construction supervisor…she looked sure of herself, at any rate, and she fit in well with the crowd in the bar. There was nothing particularly “lesbian” about her, I thought, watching the appreciative glances she received.
    Fran was a different story. She looked every inch the traditional dyke, with her flannel sleeves rolled up, her big, unbound breasts propped up on her full stomach. She strode through the room with the toes of her hiking boots turned outward and her arms swinging away from her sides; she was handsome but far too powerful somehow for the Bar & Grill, and I felt the trendy people turn away a little, amused or discomfited. For the first time I had an inkling of what had given Fran that prickly attitude of hers.
    But