Lonesome in the Country

eep thought it would be a kick to visit dinky little Blackberry

Casino on a Friday night, but the locals she'd want to go with had already checked it out. Tonight she was so desperate to escape the lonelies that she'd found herself pondering a move back to Reno where she had even more nothing than she had here. If nothing ever happened in Reno, what was she doing in Hickrock, Nowheresville? Donny and Chick were visiting Clara and Hector, Cat was M.I.A.-was she with her mystery lover?-the band didn't have a gig until tomorrow night, women's land was out of bounds for her as long as Katie was around, and she wasn't really friends with the people from school any more than she was with the band women. That left herself. She already knew she was no fun alone, but she'd have to do.

She put on one of the five faded rugby shirts she'd snagged at a garage sale for $2.50, grabbed her board, and glided alone through the misty night, skidding occasionally on sodden leaves. Somehow lonesome in the country was twice as severe as lonely in the city. Maybe that's why country-western music tended terminally toward the poor me's.

The bright blinking lights outside the casino and the roar of sound within immediately cheered her as she checked her skateboard and scoped out the machines. This was a taste of home, of Nevada, and not as little and dinky as she'd expected. Garish, obnoxious, but familiar. From an early age she'd been drawn to the neon-what a word: neo! on!-and the merrymaking crowds. Her family's old ranch house- operative word "old"-had belonged to generations of ranchers before they sold their land to developers and their house to the Morgans, Jeep's grandparents, who passed it on to her mom and dad. It was a rambling compound of add-ons and outbuildings, always in need of paint, completely different from the compact homes of her friends and set on a rise, like a standoffish neighbor.

A gang of kids from the subdivision around it would bike and skateboard into town, a mile north, on a Saturday afternoon in the fall or spring when it was cool enough to be fun. They indulged in minor mischief like chalking up the sidewalks and weaving through pedestrians on the sidewalks of the main drag. They were full of resentment that any grody out-of-town adult could go into the casinos while they, the natives, could only peer in through glass doors. Occasionally one of them would escape notice long enough to win a handful of coins from a grocery store slot machine, but they'd all get so excited and noisy that they'd be tossed out. Even the arcades got pissed at them. The best ones were at the casinos and hotels for outof-town kids in their best play duds. The sight of a crew in old jeans with skateboards under their arms was a tip-off to the change dragon who would hover and interrupt until they left.

The Blackberry Casino gave her a whiff of the old cigarette-smoke-infused excitement. Gambling equaled adulthood to the local kids. No matter that their parents made fun of the losers weeping in the streets and shuffling into pawn shops. Games of chance had seemed like real life. As she got change from a machine she thought of the irony: a bunch of children could see that gambling was a shabby substitute for life, like life was nothing but a trip to a game parlor where you played till you died at tables that dealt love and money and bad breaks.

She glanced around at the wall-to-wall machines. Had the empties been abandoned by losers? Did these players know something she didn't? The place was wall-to-wall slots. Bing, bing, bing, bing-the electronic sounds could make you nuts. On top of the endless binging came the tunes the machines played every time someone got a win. The only thing missing was the rush of coins down a metal chute. Passersby were shouting to be heard. You never saw so many empty slots at one time back home.

She roamed a row trying to pick up a good vibe, then grabbed a stool in front of a machine with a Western theme. No cherries, only cactus, boots, Ranger hat, crossed Colts. This was cool. Not Reno, but here she was, rassling with a one-armed bandit again, excited that she might win some money, but more excited that she'd become the grown-up she'd imagined all those years ago and the lesbian she'd dreamed of becoming when she saw Desert Hearts at fourteen. She pulled down the arm of the slot for old-times' sake. The pictures spun. Nada.

She'd already had a girlfriend by then, a guitar player all of sixteen whose permissive parents let her play on the street for change. The first time she skateboarded by Mindy she'd skipped to a stop. She'd realized immediately that this was a place she could fiddle. She'd been listening to her mom's bluegrass tapes and playing along for years. After an hour or so someone in the house would cry, "Enough, Gina Pauline!"

The weekend after she found Mindy performing on a corner, she skated around town until she found her doing a classical guitar number outside a parking lot where tour buses by the dozen parked. She set her closed violin case next to Mindy's open, nearly empty case and began to play along with the guitar. Mindy scowled at first, but didn't send her away. When Mindy finished, Jeep asked if she knew "Beautiful Blue Eyes." Almost immediately after they began to play, money was tossed into the guitar case.

Over pizza that afternoon they named themselves Two Girl Dudes. A month later they were skipping the pizza and making out on a bench in the park along the Truckee River. That had been exciting-the girl, the music, the way people would stop on the street and tell one another she was a prodigy-they'd talk about her as if she wasn't there and guess that she was Mindy's kid brother.

"Assholes," Mindy would whisper.

Jeep loved it and let her hair grow a little too long. "I ought to be arrested for impersonating a male musician," she'd told Mindy. That's when she decided the word "impersonate" really meant "imperson," like "him-person," "ate," like consumed. Because the "him" persons of the world consumed it. Mindy called her a damn feminist.

Then Mindy started bringing big cans of beer in a paper bag to the park, then to the street, slugging from the bag between numbers. Jeep tasted the stuff and spit it out. That wasn't worth getting busted over, she'd tell Mindy. But she didn't mind kissing the smell at all and still tasted it sometimes even when she was with a woman who never drank. Too soon the beer got more important to Mindy than the kissing, and then it got more important than Two Girl Dudes and Mindy started flaking out on Jeep.

She got away with this for almost three years when somehow Jeep's parents, who were teachers and never came downtown, heard that their sixteen-year-old daughter was panhandling alone on the streets of Reno. Jeep tried to explain that it was the playing she went for, not the bucks, but Mom and Dad were afraid she'd get in with street kids and start on dope. She'd pictured herself aflame from a crack fire, like that comedian, fiddling till she dropped.

Those were her defining moments, though, playing old-time music for an audience lavish with praise and kissing a beer-breathed girl in the park. The memory of those kisses got her damp down under. She sighed and realized she'd been locked in a staring contest with the electronic one-armed bandit in front of her. She tried again and watched the Wild West icons spin. Nada.

Too bad Cat had been busy tonight. Kind of like Chick would say, she'd be a blast here. It was just as well she wasn't interested in a romance with Jeep. Even if she hadn't been clear about not wanting a girlfriend, Jeep would have hesitated, not eager to lose a fun chum. Gawd, she missed Sarah. Once in a while they'd take ten dollars and duck into one of the casinos to see if they could make their money grow. Even when they lost it was cheaper than two seats at the movies and usually more fun.

In their last months together, she'd become both restless and tired from managing the gift shop at The Lucky City Hotel and Casino. She'd worked there forever, starting after school in eleventh grade, then working whatever hours she could schedule through four years of college. The job market had been so bad by graduation that she'd jumped at the chance to be manager when her ex-showgirl boss retired.

Her work hours had been good for playing the shows for which she was sometimes called in, but she'd started wondering where temp gigs would take her. Did she want to be a full-time casino musician? In that world young was in; old never would be. There were a thousand musicians in Reno, and most of them expected to make it big tomorrow. She could see herself, age sixty-five, all wrinkled up from the sun, still breathing casino cigarette smoke, the oldest surviving member of the Lucky City Orchestra. Except they'd can her long before that.

There had been a railroad switching yard behind the apartment building where she lived with Sarah. It always got her dreaming of distant places. One day while she'd watched a freight train being assembled, the cars creaking and groaning and bumping with the effort, she'd said, "I was thinking about starting a band."

With a tone of loving exasperation Sarah called, "Tell me something new," and continued to rummage in the freezer.

"No, this is different. I need to face it, Sar. I'm never going to make it into the classical world. And I'm pretty good with that old-time music number in the show. The director gave me the solo last night. He's going to let me go electric tonight. If the crowd keeps liking me, it could turn into a regular routine."

Sarah had stopped what she was doing and moved quickly to Jeep, arms out to hold her. "You see? It's happening! You and your old-time music are going to make it. You're going to have a rockabilly hit, lover!"

"It's not a hit I'm after. It's the chance to play music. Electric violin is like beyond description, Sar. He went ape shit when I used a pickup on my acoustic, but I want to get the real thing, maybe a vintage Fender if I can find one on eBay. They are so retro." With a thump the engine connected to a length of cars. "Want to come hear me? My number's around 10:15, then 11:15."

"I wish I could. I've got a meeting with Housekeeping first thing in the morning-Management's changing our health insurance. With Benefits off on pregnancy leave, I'm it in H.R. Friday night if you're working?"

"Date."

"Date," Sarah agreed, smiling.

Jeep tried to stop her restless fidgeting. "I'm sure glad you like old-time music."

"Growing up on Mom and Dad's Dylan and The Band LPs sort of prepared me."

"You could be road manager!"

"Jeep, dearest, you hate the idea of touring."

"Not if you were with me."

"Right. Ms. Homebody '01 suddenly has roaming feet?"

"Probably not," she answered.

It was true. Normally she liked nothing more than coming home after work and staying there. She had so much she wanted to do. Find that old Fender fiddle for one thing. Practice, for another. She never missed practicing on days she wasn't playing. And her refinishing projects were getting stacked up-the blue ukulele stenciled with daisies she'd found on the sidewalk in somebody's trash, the $2 clarinet from a garage sale, and the ancient banged-up banjo one of her teachers at the U had given her. She'd learned enough watching her dad refurbish instruments that she was about ready to string it. She wasted a lot of lunch hours roving garage sales, picking up old sheet music, original tapes of local groups, and all manner of clothes she dreamed of wearing in an old-time music band-vests and hats, suspenders and striped collarless shirts. Sarah said she was her garage sale dyke. The memory made her smile. Part-time teacher wages didn't leave enough money to do much garage saling now.

Sarah slid a gordito covered with shredded cheese into the microwave, but Jeep's appetite had been whetted for adventure, not burritos.

"I am a homebody, but nada times nada happens here. If aliens were coming to earth? Reno would be their last choice for a good time. Let's apply for jobs at The Magnet in San Francisco. I'll bet there's a radical music scene on the Coast."

"Radical old-time music? That's an oxymoron. San Francisco," Sarah said slowly as if testing the words for flavor while she spun lettuce dry for the burritos, "it's really, really far from the mountains, Jeep, and nervous-making. My parents wanted me to go to school there. We went a few times when I was small, but even Reno's too big for me, Jeep. I never want to go back to San Francisco."

She'd tapped the floor frantically, practicing her solo in her head. Maybe someone in the audience that night would be out from Nashville looking for a techno-country fiddler. Maybe this wasn't such a weird idea, but, kind of like her destiny. She composed a newspaper item aloud: "Mr. and Mrs. Robert Teitel proudly announce the appointment of their daughter-umm-Sarah Teitel-Morgan to the position of Design Engineer for the San Francisco Magnet Hotel."

"Based on my vast experience?" Sarah asked with a laugh. She took salsa from the refrigerator. "And I am so sure there's a dire shortage of wanna-be architects in San Fran," she mocked. "Maybe the casino will give you more solos?"

"I don't want casino solos. I want to play real music with a real band and get out of that toy store for flabby tourists." Jeep clenched her fists. "It hurts, I need to play so bad. But you! You could go to the architecture school at Berkeley, Sar." She sniffed at the warm food smell venting from the nuker.

"Between tours?"

Jeep decided to work on that banjo tonight after practicing. She'd teach herself to play it. She filled her plate at the kitchen counter and took it to the window seat over the parking lot. Did she have to bail on Sarah to get where she was going? The food lost all its taste. She sluiced extra salsa on her burrito. "Maybe they have an architecture school in Nashville. You could design the Brand New Opry."

"Nashville? Are you totally out of your gourd?"

Jeep snagged a chunk of escaping avocado and pointed her green fingertip at Sarah. "Sarah, it's kind of like it'll never be a new century again in my life even if I live to be a hundred. It's a time when I want to do it all! You never even want to dream."

The big living room window faced the street. She watched as an office worker left through the glass front door of a spiff old-style building. Next door recovering addicts smoked on the steps of a drug and alcohol rehab house that needed rehabbing itself. Had she hurt Sarah's feelings? She had to say this stuff or explode. Maybe she had exploded. Poor Sarah. "Geez, talk about beauty and the beast. Somebody designed these fab twenties buildings and what happens? People grind out dirty cigarettes on the porch rails. It's like playing music to a casino crowd."

Sarah took her hand, kissing Jeep's knuckles and looking up shyly at her from under his eyebrows. "I do dream, Jeep. I still dream of getting work in Idaho and adopting a slew of kids to raise there. I haven't begun to show you how beautiful my hometown is. Mountains and waterfalls, cool air, green grasses, elk and bear. And you could fly anywhere to make music, or paint up a big bus like that old hippie writer and travel the country to old-time music festivals. And women's festivals, if you had a women's band. I'd be waiting in the house I'm designing for us. With a barn-shaped music studio, where your band could rehearse. We could even have a homegrown band like your family did."

The lights went off in the office building and, one by one, the rest of the staff dispersed through the summer evening to their SUVs and minivans. Soon the air outside the city would fill with the smell of mesquite charcoal burning in backyards.

"Yeah," said Jeep, made a little uneasy by Sarah's family talk, "we can turn our backs on adventure and devote ourselves to a quiet, normal life, sputtering out in Idaho."

"Can't we have both?"

Jeep watched a neighbor, an old dude on a walker, make his way along the street. "Don't you want everything on the menu?"

"I'm afraid of your dreams, Jeep. Afraid they'll take you away from me. Take these delicious fingers away from me too."

She felt a quake of love for Sarah. "I am absolutely warped over you."

"Still?" Sarah said in her sweetest small hopeful voice.

"Still." Jeep kissed her, but she wasn't at all sure she'd feel the same about Sarah-the-mom. And did Sarah expect her to enjoy having a houseful of screaming-meemie loud-mouth kids when she was trying to rehearse?

"Let's go country dancing this weekend!" Sarah cried with a chirp of laughter.

Jeep had darted to their CD boom box and punched buttons until the Dixie Chicks' high-energy voices propelled her into a jittery dance.

Sarah had slipped her hand into Jeep's and slowed her down until, pressed together, they danced.

"Nothing in the world will take me from you, Sarah." Jeep felt kind of weird, like she was saying something she only wanted to be true. She quickly pulled the shades on that thought.

The peppy little six-guns and cactuses on the slot machine came back into focus, and she found her eyes were wet. She'd had to leave Reno, she told herself. She had to get out into the world and see what she could accomplish. She shook her head and checked to see how much she had left to play. Here she was, looking for fun in front of a video terminal display again. She played a line. At least she liked her job here. Sarah had always said that teaching kids was for saintly people. She would be so surprised, but only if Jeep told her, and so far she didn't have the nerve to get back in touch with Sarah. What if she was living with someone new? The very thought filled her with pain. The whirling display stopped. She'd blown another dollar. Maybe she was blowing her life too, she thought with the hopeless bitterness that sometimes overtook her. Why wasn't there anyone to tell her what to do?

Dollar number three went the way of the first two. Number four. Hey, she was just warming up. A pop melody chimed up the row and a change dragon hurried over with a receipt for the player's winnings. Bummer. She liked the old coins better; there was a romance to games of chance. This was like going to the grocery store. Okay, her last dollar. She rubbed her earring for luck, crossed her toes in her muddy running shoes, and was about to drop the coin when she felt arms squeeze around her from behind.

"Holy shit!" she yelped. "Katie?"

"Yeah, sweetie." Katie kissed her very lightly on the cheek. "I couldn't believe it when I saw you here. Love the cowboy hat. You working on a new addiction?"

Now she felt embarrassed about buying the black hat with its lavender band. "Get over yourself. I was never addicted to anything but you. What're you doing here anyway?"

"Truth? Getting a feel for rural America. Talking to some folks."

"You mean being a journalist."

Katie's coy look still made Jeep's hands sweat.

"I stand accused. How'd you guess?"

"Duh. The Sony?"

A silence came between them. Jeep looked at the pattern of the casino rug, wanting instead to look into those always-burning eyes. She listened to the clatter and curses and yelps of triumph that filled the cavernous room, wanting instead Katie's love talk.

"I heard about your project," Jeep told her. "The land babes are coming into Natural Woman fuming about losing their privacy to advance your career."

"Why is it only dykes are slamming me about it? If I can get this story out-Jeep! It's not my career I'm working on here. Don't you think an epic human interest documentary would help stop the rape of the old-growth forests?"

Jeep was getting ready to play the last of her money. "Are you getting this wild gambling junkie action?" she asked with a sneer. "Maybe I don't think trees are more important than protecting lesbians. Hey! Turn that thing off!"

"Why? You're doing good. The first dyke to dialogue with me."

"You're using me, Delgado."

"Jeep, remember we didn't know why we wanted to do this women's land thing? We felt pulled here? I think this is my reason. I'm not looking to out anybody. There's a common denominator somewhere between the tree-huggers and the people losing jobs that, once I find it and get my message out there, may change our world."

The noise level around them had lowered with the camera's presence. Katie's charm level was at 300%. But Jeep was inured to that charm now.

"Why bug me?" she asked and turned her back.

"I miss you. I miss bouncing ideas off you. You have such incisive, cut-the-crap insights."

"Until your insight, not mine, that we were over. Until this insight that I should be part of your project whether I want to be or not."

A few months ago she'd been thrilled to be part of Katie's ventures. A few months ago she would have-and had-followed Katie anywhere. Katie was awesome at getting what she wanted out of people.

"I'm feeling beyond manipulated," she said.

Katie moved closer, whispering, "I'm not filming, Jeep. I'm trying to get some of the natives interested. If you'll work with me for a couple of minutes, they'll be into it. Please?"

Jeep shoved the electronic button instead of pulling the arm down. Nothing. She could hear voices coming closer, the curious crowd closing in. She felt so confused. How could she long for Sarah one minute and regret losing Katie the next?

As she took chances on her machine she could hear Katie telling the mike, "Many natives simply don't make a connection between the environment, a family-values agenda, and their own problems. Are their children's disabilities caused by a degraded environment? Can they accept making a livelihood inside a gambling establishment rather than continuing to gamble that Mother Nature and the increasingly multi-national timber corporations will provide? Could the drama of gay people in this state, where there are still remnants of attempts from the nineties to try to vote away the rights of gays, possibly be related to the anger and fear of generations of logging families now running clandestine dope farms?"

Jeep still had a last play and as she mashed the button, she heard the camera. Bing, loser! Bing, loser! "Damn you!" She felt about as smart as fish bait. Katie was filming. She stood.

Some woman, obviously clueless about Katie's ambush and purpose there, trilled, "Is this going to be on the TV, honey?" She planted herself at Jeep's machine.

Jeep was no more than ten feet from the door when she heard the woman whoop and call "Bingo!" Man, she thought, there must be a journalism muse who spent her life by Katie's side. That winner would tell Katie anything she wanted to know now.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN