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The first time it happens, Robin bounds up the stairs onto Nancy’s floor and hears the unmistakable strains of Patti Smith. It’s loud enough that she can hear the lyrics distinctly—Oh, she looks so good, oh, she looks so fine, Patti drawls. Well, Robin thinks, one of Nancy’s neighbors has good taste.
As she gets closer to the end of the hall, she realizes the music is coming from Nancy’s apartment. Only it can’t be Nancy, because Nancy’s never expressed anything but the vaguest interest any of the, oh, roughly six million times Robin’s gushed about how cool Patti Smith is. And I got this crazy feeling, Patti croons, that I’m gonna ah-ah make her mine.
When Robin knocks on the door, the music cuts off sharply, and she could swear she hears something crash over inside. A moment later, Nancy comes to the door looking flustered.
“You’re early,” she says irritably.
Robin shrugs and pushes her way into Nancy’s apartment. “They let me out for good behavior.”
On the kitchen table, she can see the cassette case for Horses, fresh out of its cellophane wrapping. Several more tapes are spilling out of a Rose Records bag—Joan Armatrading, Tracy Chapman . . . if her eyes don’t deceive her, the Indigo Girls.
“They got you doing music reviews now?” Robin asks, leaving aside the fact that none of these albums are recent enough to be news, at this point.
Nancy’s cheeks are a wild pink, and she won’t meet Robin’s eye. “Just . . . trying something different.”
It doesn’t escape her notice that these are all albums Robin has talked Nancy’s ear off at one point or another in the past few years. They’re all albums she could have easily borrowed from Robin, if she’d wanted to. But she didn’t. So Robin props a grin on her face and says, “OK. Want to order a pizza?”
*
The second time it happens, Robin turns a corner in Women & Children First to find Nancy studying the back cover of Rubyfruit Jungle with such intensity that she doesn’t even look up when Robin almost runs into her.
“Hey, Nance,” Robin says softly, and Nancy jerks, dropping to book and then almost bashing her head on the shelf when she bends to pick it up.
“Hi,” Nancy says, fingers flexing around the spine of the paperback. “Robin. Hello.”
Robin can’t help grinning. “Howdy.” She gives Nancy a little wiggle of her fingers for good measure. “Sorry I scared you.”
“It’s not—you didn’t—” Nancy is blushing again. It looks good on her, Robin thinks hopelessly. “It’s fine.”
“I hereby offer you a free pass to scare the living daylights out of me at some undisclosed future moment.” She mimes handing over an invisible coupon, and Nancy, apparently too startled to resist her nonsense, pretends to take it, staring down at her empty hand with a bemused half smile.
There’s a knock on the window, and Robin sees her date standing on the sidewalk outside. “Oh, shit, sorry,” she says. “I’m meeting—someone. Gotta go!”
As she dashes out of the shop, she doesn’t think too hard about why she didn’t tell Nancy she was going on a date. She just didn’t want to make Nancy uncomfortable, that’s all.
And later, after her date is long gone, she doesn’t stay up into the early hours of the morning, wondering what it means that Nancy is checking out the lesbian fiction section of Robin’s favorite bookstore.
*
The third time it happens, they’re in Robin’s living room, deciding what movie to watch. Nancy is leaning over the bookshelf where Steve and Robin’s video collection lives, pulling out tapes apparently at random.
“What about this?” Nancy asks, holding out the sky blue box for Desert Hearts.
“Uh,” Robin says, and this time she’s the one who’s blushing, the heat rushing all the way down to her collar bones. “I’m not sure you’re ready for that one.”
“Why not?”
The truth is, Robin’s half afraid Nancy would notice how worn the tape’s gotten, that she’d realize how many times Robin’s watched it over and over. Maybe she’s a little afraid, too, of sharing something that has meant so much to her, only to find it doesn’t mean the same things to Nancy.
“That’s all right,” Nancy says, slipping the box back on the shelf. “I’ve already seen it.”
“You—what? Really?”
Nancy nods, her eyes back on the shelf, half turned away from Robin so that all Robin can see is her delicate profile behind a haze of curls.
“But—why?” Robin blurts out, before she can think better of it.
That gets Nancy to look at her. “Maybe I just wanted to try something different,” she says, and this time it’s not the self-conscious excuse it was in her kitchen. The words are almost defiant, almost a dare, and Robin really doesn’t want to be reading too much into this, but she has to know.
“Is that all it is? Just . . . curiosity?”
“Not . . . just.” Nancy comes over and sits next to Robin on the couch—not at the other end of the couch, like she usually does, but right next to Robin, so that their knees bump when she settles down. “You say that like it’s something trivial, to be curious.”
“For some people it is,” Robin says carefully. “And it’s OK, if that’s all it is, I just . . . don’t think I can help you with that.”
Nancy puts a tentative hand on Robin’s, her eyes so clear and blue this close up. “And if it’s not?”
Robin realizes she’s been holding her breath, and the remedy stings her lungs, almost makes her dizzy. “Well,” she says, “I guess we could find out together.”