said, waving her arms, though no one could see her. “But we never step over each other’s boundaries. I seldom even ride over there.”
“All the same,” the woman said, and asked if she could come over that afternoon—”and just take a peek at your mare?”
Ophelia was a gorgeous creature, it was true. Franny had fallen in love with her as a foal. Sired by True Diamond, a champion horse, Ophelia was of middling size, a light bay color, with bushy mane and tail; she was altogether smart and classy. If Franny hadn’t been drawn to her partner, Henrietta, whom she’d met in Falstaff ‘s Bar after the fifth performance of Othello that season, she’d have been happy enough to spend her life with Ophelia. There were nights she actually fantasized that Ophelia turned into a human being after midnight and the two of them rolled happily about in the hay.
“We-ell, after lunch then,” Franny said. “Shall we say two o’clock? You can ride her if you like—perhaps a half hour? And we’ll sign the contract? Set a date to bring your stallion over. Ophelia should be in heat in two weeks or so. I don’t know about that missing woman. Who knows when they’ll come to terms with her? But I do have another breeder interested—a prize stallion with impeccable credentials. I’m not sure we can wait.”
It was a lie, there was no other stallion panting at the gates, though there were possibilities. At any moment the phone might ring. Though with that woman missing from Willmarth’s . . . She silently cursed the dairy farm. What stupidity anyway to allow gypsies to squat on one’s land, a virtual encampment. She’d ridden past one night and heard all the singing, stopped to listen. What had Ruth been thinking about? She seemed a practical woman, but really! Gypsies! And now the whole neighborhood in peril. They’d come in with armed troops, she’d read, to take the sheep from those people over in East Warren. Imagine! Yet there was still no proof of any disease, and it had been five years since the removal. There was only the fear, the suspicion.
Franny and Henrietta had come to Vermont to avoid that kind of suspicion. For the most part folk left them alone here in Vermont. The fight had died down over the civil union legislation. Would it crop up again? There were still people trying to overturn it.
Oh woe. Alack a day! She felt a scourge coming on the land. “A plague of sighing and grief!” she quoted from one of the Henrys— she’d forgotten which. “It blows a man up like a bladder.” And she and her partner in the middle of it.
She hung up the phone, then realized she hadn’t said good-bye. But the woman had already committed to the two o’clock visit.
“Franny?” It was Henrietta, calling from the bedroom where she was still in bed at ten o’clock—she’d been up till two writing her fifth lesbian romance. The first four lay unpublished in a drawer.
“Orange juice in the fridge and freshly squeezed,” said Franny, who was the breakfast cook, while Henrietta was pastry chef. “I made pancakes. You’ll have to heat them up.”
“You know I don’t eat pancakes,” Henrietta said, her voice groggy with sleep. Henrietta was on a new diet. She weighed 170 pounds and no diet had ever removed an ounce, not the Atkin’s protein diet or Weight Watchers or a macrobiotic diet or Dolly Parton’s portion control diet where you ate ten tiny meals a day, or the one where you could eat all the cake and ice cream you wanted just so you ate them all within a single hour. That diet had actually added 5 pounds to Henrietta’s buttocks. Though Franny didn’t mind a fat partner at all; the weight made her partner sexier than any skinny femme. It was seeing Henrietta’s fat butt leaning over the bar at Falstaff ‘s that had attracted Franny in the first place.
“You love my pancakes, you know you do,” Franny yelled, and added, “Louella Clark is coming over at two to have a peek at Ophelia. She still
“All the same,” the woman said, and asked if she could come over that afternoon—”and just take a peek at your mare?”
Ophelia was a gorgeous creature, it was true. Franny had fallen in love with her as a foal. Sired by True Diamond, a champion horse, Ophelia was of middling size, a light bay color, with bushy mane and tail; she was altogether smart and classy. If Franny hadn’t been drawn to her partner, Henrietta, whom she’d met in Falstaff ‘s Bar after the fifth performance of Othello that season, she’d have been happy enough to spend her life with Ophelia. There were nights she actually fantasized that Ophelia turned into a human being after midnight and the two of them rolled happily about in the hay.
“We-ell, after lunch then,” Franny said. “Shall we say two o’clock? You can ride her if you like—perhaps a half hour? And we’ll sign the contract? Set a date to bring your stallion over. Ophelia should be in heat in two weeks or so. I don’t know about that missing woman. Who knows when they’ll come to terms with her? But I do have another breeder interested—a prize stallion with impeccable credentials. I’m not sure we can wait.”
It was a lie, there was no other stallion panting at the gates, though there were possibilities. At any moment the phone might ring. Though with that woman missing from Willmarth’s . . . She silently cursed the dairy farm. What stupidity anyway to allow gypsies to squat on one’s land, a virtual encampment. She’d ridden past one night and heard all the singing, stopped to listen. What had Ruth been thinking about? She seemed a practical woman, but really! Gypsies! And now the whole neighborhood in peril. They’d come in with armed troops, she’d read, to take the sheep from those people over in East Warren. Imagine! Yet there was still no proof of any disease, and it had been five years since the removal. There was only the fear, the suspicion.
Franny and Henrietta had come to Vermont to avoid that kind of suspicion. For the most part folk left them alone here in Vermont. The fight had died down over the civil union legislation. Would it crop up again? There were still people trying to overturn it.
Oh woe. Alack a day! She felt a scourge coming on the land. “A plague of sighing and grief!” she quoted from one of the Henrys— she’d forgotten which. “It blows a man up like a bladder.” And she and her partner in the middle of it.
She hung up the phone, then realized she hadn’t said good-bye. But the woman had already committed to the two o’clock visit.
“Franny?” It was Henrietta, calling from the bedroom where she was still in bed at ten o’clock—she’d been up till two writing her fifth lesbian romance. The first four lay unpublished in a drawer.
“Orange juice in the fridge and freshly squeezed,” said Franny, who was the breakfast cook, while Henrietta was pastry chef. “I made pancakes. You’ll have to heat them up.”
“You know I don’t eat pancakes,” Henrietta said, her voice groggy with sleep. Henrietta was on a new diet. She weighed 170 pounds and no diet had ever removed an ounce, not the Atkin’s protein diet or Weight Watchers or a macrobiotic diet or Dolly Parton’s portion control diet where you ate ten tiny meals a day, or the one where you could eat all the cake and ice cream you wanted just so you ate them all within a single hour. That diet had actually added 5 pounds to Henrietta’s buttocks. Though Franny didn’t mind a fat partner at all; the weight made her partner sexier than any skinny femme. It was seeing Henrietta’s fat butt leaning over the bar at Falstaff ‘s that had attracted Franny in the first place.
“You love my pancakes, you know you do,” Franny yelled, and added, “Louella Clark is coming over at two to have a peek at Ophelia. She still
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