Rose Red
by Hth

	There were a lot of things Elaine would miss about her old neighborhood, not
least of which was June from the floral department of her nearby grocery store.
June was a retired grade-school teacher in her late fifties, a motherly woman
with short hair greying at the temples, and Elaine didn't know if she was a
lesbian, or she had a daughter who was, or if she was just spectacularly cool,
or what, but June always waved hello to Elaine and Frannie when they went
shopping, and she obviously knew what was what. She was one of the good ones.
And it was helpful, if not absolutely essential, to have the services of a
really good and tolerant florist when you were dating Francesca Vecchio.
	"Hi, June," Elaine said, and she could maybe hide the weariness in her eyes 
by taking off her uniform hat and playing with her eyebrows and her hair a little,
but it definitely came out in her voice, and June looked unamused.  "Is it too
late in the day to get a dozen long-stemmed roses?"
	"Birthday, anniversary, or in the doghouse?"
	Elaine was tempted to say, Which one happens more than once a year?  But there
was no need to dwell. Just get the flowers and go home. "I just - it's just a
thank you. She's been helping me pack all day."
	"Are you girls moving?" June seemed almost worried about that idea.  Great,
one more person to make her feel bad about it - and no, that wasn't fair, and
Elaine almost didn't care anymore.
	"I am. Getting a place closer to my new precinct."
	"I know I have some white roses left."
	Ah, and in a sane world, that would be just peachy sweet. "I'm really going
to need red, I think. She - likes red roses."
	What can you say? She likes things the way she likes them. She likes old
movies not new releases, Italian food not Thai, sixty-dollar shoes not twenty-dollar 
shoes, zinfandel not cabernet, red roses not white or pink or yellow or anything else. 
Red long-stemmed American Beauties. Not lilies, not daffodils, not carnations, not 
black-eyed susans.
	"Well, let me check on that for you."
	"Thank you, June."
	While June was in the back, Elaine checked the list that she'd managed to
scrawl on the back of her ATM receipt while sitting at a red light.  Roses,
wine, DiGiorno ravioli, French bread, angel food cake, strawberries.  Everything.
	"Elaine, I found eleven that my manager was having thrown out tonight. 
They're in fairly good condition, and I can give them to you for half price."
	The green tissue paper rustled as Elaine took the bouquet carefully out of
June's hands, like picking up a baby. They looked all right. Eleven long-stemmed roses. 
What a beautiful metaphor. Just like her and Francesca, always just one shy of a whole. 
"I appreciate this."
	"Oh, it's nothing. Just watch out for those thorns; I stuck myself on one
back there."
	What can you say? It's okay, June. I'm getting pretty good at working around
the thorns. Hell, if Elaine wasn't willing to lose a little blood now and then, she'd 
be with a daffodil kind of girl.
	When she let herself into the apartment, Elaine surprised herself with a
little pang of loss. The place looked totally alien, stripped bare of everything but 
boxes and a pile of stereo equipment. Even the blinds were gone from the windows; 
it wasn't Elaine's home at all, the sixth-floor apartment that had been her refuge 
for more than four years. It was just someplace where the lease was up.
	"Hey, girl," Elaine said softly, trying not to startle her lover, whose
forehead was leaned against the window as though she might have gone to sleep
sitting there on two crates of books.
	But she looked up wide-awake and clear-eyed, fixing Elaine with that doghouse
gaze, all wounded pride and scorned-diva flash. "That was the longest two hours in 
known history."
	To the tune of six. Yeah. "It was pretty hard to get away. You know how it
is with a new job; they're still watching you like a bug all the time. Did everything 
go okay?"
	Francesca shrugged.
	"I've got some dinner here. You hungry?"
	She shrugged again.
	Okay. Okay. "I'm sorry you got stuck with all this work, Frannie.  But you
really helped me out. Here, I brought you these." Elaine crept a little closer, and 
then realized she was being silly. This was her girlfriend - admittedly, her somewhat 
temperamental and prone to overreaction girlfriend, but still Francesca, not some 
kind of guard dog. She laid the shopping bag on a convenient box, the flowers in 
Francesca's lap. Automatically, Frannie's arm came up to support them, just like a 
brand-new Miss America. Only without the Teflon smile.
	Jesus - the skin around her pretty dark eyes was a little puffy, like she'd
been crying. Gently, Elaine ran her thumb under one of those eyes. "Are you okay?"
	"Is this my fabulous parting gift?"
	"Wh-what?"
	"I can't believe you made me pack you up to send you away. This wasn't my
idea, you know!"
	Although the cooler part of Elaine's mind was insisting that she wasn't
actually capable of *making* Francesca Vecchio do much of anything, she was smart 
enough to realize that this was the wrong moment for cool.  Elaine knelt down and 
put one hand on Francesca's knee for balance, and just for contact.  "Hey. Look at 
me, okay? I'm not *going* anywhere. I'm just moving to the other side of town."
	Francesca snorted, a remarkably un-ladylike sound. "*All* the way on the
other side of town! It's almost an hour to get over there when there's traffic. Don't 
you think this is going to change things, even just a little tiny bit?"
	Change things. June hadn't even realized they didn't live together, since
everywhere one went nowadays, so did the other. Dinners together, dates together, 
nights together, coffee together in the morning, Francesca reading the paper over 
her shoulder. Showers together, grocery shopping together, picking out videos 
together.
	"Sure. In some ways. But not all change is...bad change."
	"You think I *want* to be rid of you?" Francesca's voice spiraled up at least
an octave, vibrating on the edge of hysteria.
	"No, no. Your mother, maybe - not you." It was meant to be a joke, but
Elaine winced away from the bitterness in her own voice.
	Francesca's mouth opened in exaggerated shock long before she managed to
respond. "My *mother*? You're leaving me because of *my mother*?"
	"Francesca. Hey, come on, girl." Elaine reached up, running a thumb underneath 
Francesca's eye. "I'm not leaving you. I...."
	"You what? You love me?"
	I love you. I love you. I love you. You cook for me and you go upstairs and
yell at the neighbors for vacuuming at three in the morning when I'm too tired
to get out of bed and you drag me along and make me play Chutes'n'Ladders when
you babysit for your sister and you have that smile, that shockingly sweet patented 
Vecchio special smile. I love you.
	"I'm just changing apartments."
	"My mother hates you."
	Who in their right mind could help but snap at that? "I *know.*"  "I don't 
*care*!"
	"Francesca, if you didn't care, you wouldn't be thirty-two and living with
her! You damn well do too care what she thinks!"
	"You ever think maybe I was waiting for someplace better to go?"
	You're the reason I own a spice rack. You're the reason I learned how to give
pedicures. You're the reason this place smells like Shalimar perfume. You're
the reason I know my florist's name. You're the someplace I go to.
	"Frannie. We're both tired. Let's have some angel food cake, all right?"
	Francesca reached out, her bright-pink nailed fingers cradling Elaine's skull,
tucked underneath her long hair, and the bouquet tumbled out of her lap and
into Elaine's, unnoticed. "I hate that look in your eyes. When I know you're
thinking, and I know you'll never tell me what."
	"I'm...I don't want to talk, okay, honey? I just...I'm hungry, and I went to
the store so we could eat together. Just...be here. Just be here with me."
	"Are you gonna be here with me?"
	Sometimes I want to run. I want to be anywhere but here. You fill up every
inch of space in this fucking apartment, with your voice and your smell and your 
endless wants, and if you ever went away I'd want to lay down and sleep for a hundred 
years. I want to slap you, and I want to marry you, and I've never felt this way for 
anyone, let alone a mostly-straight white girl, and there's been no such thing as 
peace and quiet, a simple day off, in my life since I met you.
	"Never mind. You know, just..." Francesca waved her hand excitedly in the air
to silence her, to shoo her away, "forget it, Elaine. You're never gonna talk
to me, are you?"
	"I don't know what to say."
	And suddenly she was even *more* there, collapsing on top of Elaine, and
Elaine was looking at the bare ceiling, her arms full of American Beauty, and
eleven long-stemmed roses crushed between them, sharp little thorns digging
through Elaine's blouse to draw blood. Francesca kissed her, chaste and deep
and dry, and those fake fingernails rested on Elaine's throbbing temple, and
Elaine took her arms, holding her carefully.
	"I don't want your goddamn apology flowers, Elaine." She could feel Francesca's 
eyelashes fluttering quickly against the bridge of her nose, like she was blinking 
back more tears, and Elaine slid her hand up to the back of Francesca's neck. "I just 
want to know what I am to you."
	"You're...the only person...that I know what her favorite flower is." And
Elaine didn't think she'd be the one to cry, but a tear was caught on her lower
lip, and she knew it was her own.
	"You're really alone, aren't you?"
	She didn't say it cruelly. It just came out, the way so many things tumbled
out of Francesca Vecchio's mouth, startling her as much as anyone else half the
time. And for a while after that Francesca said some more things, mumbling in
a soothing hush against Elaine's hair, but Elaine couldn't make them out through the 
sound of her own sobbing.
	Yes, I am. I always was. I like it like that. You've changed everything and
I hate it and the world is so much more than it used to be and I feel so small
in it. All the time, I'm in love with you now. There's no more getting away
from it, even for a while, even in my own apartment, even in my own head.
	When she could think again, Elaine noticed that her arms were sore from
holding Francesca so closely, and she relaxed a little, felt Frannie breathe a
muted sigh of relief. "I'm sorry," she said, not totally sure what she meant.
"I can't believe I killed your pretty flowers. What was I thinking, you know?" She 
tried to get up, but Elaine wasn't ready to let her go quite so free yet. "You're 
hungry?" she tried again in a little, nervous voice that rose up a bit unnaturally 
at the end.
	"I love you...."
	Francesca kissed her again, warm and firm on the forehead, and Elaine kept her
eyes closed for it. "I'm starving."
	"I love you."
	"I wondered how long it was going to take you to notice that." She could feel
the shape of Francesca's shockingly sweet patented special smile against her
cheekbone. "You know, I've got a thorn poking me in the ribs. Can I get up?"
	"So do I."
	//I'm really going to need red, I think. She likes *red* roses.//
	And so did Elaine.