Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

her holiday. She felt wonderfully remote and unreachable, even a little mythical, standing here in the cradle of the ancients, naked as the day she was born.
    On an impulse, she tilted her chin toward the sky and had a few words with the Goddess.
    “You can’t have him yet,” she yelled.

    She was pink by nightfall, but not painfully so. In her monastic room at Sappho the Eressian, she smoked one of Anna’s joints and watched as the lights of the tavernas came on, string by string. When she was pleasantly buzzed, she glided down to the pristine little lobby and asked the desk clerk, just for the sound of it, where she could find a good Lesbian pizza.
    By the strangest coincidence, they sold just such an item at the hotel taverna. It was a truly awful thing, dotted with bitter-tasting little sausages. She polished it off with gusto, then she began to speculate about the quality of Lesbian ice cream.
    “Hello,” crooned a familiar voice. “Find those key rings?” It was the woman with the Carly Simon mouth, a good deal browner than before. She was still in her walking shorts, but her crisp white shirt was a more recent addition.
    “Yeah, I did,” said Mona. “Thanks.”
    “What did you think?”
    “Well…I bought one.”
    The woman smiled. “It’s all there is, believe me.”
    “It’s so stupid,” said Mona. “You’d think they’d notice there was…some interest.”
    The woman chuckled. There was a comfortable silence between them before Mona gestured to a chair. “Sit down,” she said. “If you want.”
    The woman hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “Sure.”
    “If you’re about to eat, I don’t recommend the pizza.”
    Wincing, the woman sat down. “You didn’t eat the pizza ?”
    “I can’t help it,” said Mona. “I’m sick of Greek food.” She held out her hand. “Mona Ramsey.”
    “Susan Futterman.” Her grip was firm and friendly, devoid of sexual suggestion. Mona’s current contentment was such that she didn’t care one way or the other. It was just nice to have a little civilized company.

    Susan Futterman lived in Oakland and had taught classics at Berkeley for fifteen years.
    “I’m surprised it isn’t Futterwoman,” Mona told her.
    “It was, actually.”
    “C’mon!”
    “Just for a little while.”
    “Oh, shit,” said Mona, laughing.
    Susan laughed along. “I know, I know…”
    “I had a lover once from Oakland.”
    “Really?”
    Mona nodded. “She runs a restaurant in San Francisco now. D’orothea’s.”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “You know her?”
    “Well, I know the restaurant.” Susan paused. “Do you live in San Francisco?”
    “No. England.”
    She looked surprised. “For good?”
    “I hope so.”
    “What do you do?”
    Mona thought it best to be vague. She hadn’t been Lady Roughton for almost a month and was beginning to enjoy the anonymity. “I manage properties,” she said.
    Susan blinked. “Real estate?”
    “More or less.” She gazed out at the strollers along the boardwalk. “There really are a lot of women here.”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “It’s funny how just a name can do that much.”
    “Isn’t it? Have you been down to the tents yet?”
    “I don’t think so,” said Mona.
    “You’d know,” said Susan.

    Susan was a seasoned Grecophile and tossed back several glasses of retsina without flinching. Mona stuck with her Sprite-and-ouzo and was feeling no pain by the time they set off in quest of the famous tents.
    They were down at the end of town, some yards back from the beach in a dusty thicket. Most of them weren’t tents at all but “benders,” like the ones the antinuke women had built on Greenham Common—tarps flung over shrubbery to form a network of crude warrens.
    She was astounded. “Where do they come from?”
    “All over. Germany mostly, at the moment. I saw some Dutch girls too.”
    “Is it always like this?”
    “Usually more,” said Susan. “This is the tail end of the season.”
    Like pilgrims in a cathedral, they kept their voices low as they passed through the encampment. Here and there, women’s faces beamed up at them in the lantern light.
    Sappho’s tribe, thought Mona, and I am a part of it.

    Susan, it seemed, knew a woman in one of the benders: a young German named Frieda, square jawed and friendly, with a blond ponytail as thick as her forearm. She poured vodka for her visitors and cleared a place for them to sit on her sleeping bag. There were faltering efforts at an English conversation