Free After Delores by Sarah Schulman Page B

said.”
    â€œDid you do it right there in the woods?” I asked Coco and then felt bad for the crassness of the question.
    â€œNo, we made it back to my floor, and I, being taller, younger, and the lesbian, unbuttoned her shirt until one forty-year-old breast showed with a nipple as dark as the eyes of Latin women. Do you know what was the most surprising? That she was so caring and willing to desire me. I was really touched, in that sexual way that leaves waves of sweet nausea that always end in the cunt.”
    Coco slurped her iced tea. She was really talking now.
    â€œWe enjoyed everything and kissed each other’s mouths more than expected. ‘Your breasts are great,’ she said to me. ‘Do all your girls tell you that?’ When I went to her asshole, it was a cave inside a rock formation. When her fingers went inside me, they flew.”
    Coco got very quiet then, like she was feeling something dreamy and romantic, like all she wanted to think about was those fingers.
    â€œYou know,” she said, “when you love women the way I do, when your life has been built around the pursuit of women’s love, there are a hundred moments bathed in shadows cast from a fire or candle or the strange yellow light of an old kitchen. She was so tender with me.
    â€œâ€˜So,’ I asked, ‘when was the last time you made love with a woman?’ And she said, ‘Eleven years ago.’
    â€œAt that moment,” Coco said, “I saw her pain right away. It jumped out at me. I touched her face and asked, ‘She hurt you, didn’t she?’
    â€œâ€˜Yes,’ this woman said, so real. ‘The woman I loved hurt me. She left me for a man. She was incredibly selfish. I wasn’t heaven either, but she was incredibly selfish.’
    â€œI touched her face like she was my baby, because she was so brave to have made love with me that night. I knew the humiliation she had been carrying longer than decade. I’d seen it many times before, across tables in bars, whispered in dark rooms and in the mirror.”
    Coco got sad for a moment and fixed her hair.
    â€œSo she looked up at me beautiful and naked and said, ‘Women are so much easier to love than men,’ and I wondered what would become of all this because I was so very deeply touched.”
    Then Coco was finished. She took a little bow my way and started chewing on her ice cubes.
    â€œCoco,” I said. “That was a great story. What happened next?”
    â€œHer husband came up the following day,” she said, sucking the lemon. “And that was that. Oh, she called me a few times in the city, but she wanted to run around street corners where no one would see us, holding hands and kissing. I couldn’t get involved in a trip like that. I wanted to have sex in my life.”

12
    COCO’S STORIES HELPED me think through things. They were like therapy or hypnosis probably are. But as soon as I got home and was alone again, it was back into the real self. I couldn’t get away from the sprit of Delores that haunted my apartment and clawed its way back into my mind. Every time I sat in that place, the demon took hold. The only thing that led me away from my pain was to think about Charlotte. Then I could forget who I was.
    I finally decided that the thing to do was to ask Charlotte if she honestly thought that Beatriz could have had anything to do with Punkette’s death. If she was guilty, I wonder how long it took her to plan the murder. What was the final blow that made her decide, “Yes, I will take this step now”? If I killed Sunshine, I wonder what would happen next? I’d probably just sit in the apartment waiting for the police to come. There’d be no need to run away. Where would I go? Why? They’d come and take me to one of the women’s prisons and I’d have to wear green smocks, trade cigarettes, and learn how to play cards all day long with the