I’d tried, but I just couldn’t help my little interjection. I knew I’d be receiving a quick admonishment.

“Alice, you really are impossible sometimes!”

“Sorry,” I grinned. “Seriously, though, I understand. I’ll help you, Bette. You wanna know how I figured out Helena’s got a mad crush on you, how long it’s been going on, blah blah blah. Right?”

“How articulate, Alice. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Blah blah blah.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, and Angelica blew carrot bubbles at me.

In the next half hour, I busied myself relating my conversation with Helena, my ‘close encounter of the first’ kind, to Bette. I told her how Helena said she’d come to L.A. because she was ‘captivated’ by a woman who she said she’d do anything to win. That she ‘ached’ and was ‘mad with desire.’

“Helena told me things got out of hand and she did a lot of things she regretted, that she wasn’t proud of. She said she knew her actions had caused a lot of people pain. I could tell she was really sorry, Bette. It was like she’d had an epiphany or something. She was trying to forgive herself for all the heartbreak she felt she had caused.”

Bette sat with her right elbow on the table, her chin in her hand. She was listening intently, as she stroked the back of Angelica’s head with her other hand’s fingertips.

I stopped for just a second to sip my beer before continuing.

“Then she asked me why I thought people always hurt the ones they love. We started talking about why school boys pull the pigtails of the little girls they had crushes on. She basically said it was to get attention and to disguise to the rest of the world their real feelings, so that if the little girls didn’t return their crush, nobody was the wiser.”

Bette removed her chin from her hand and hung her head, rubbing her forehead.

“So that’s it,” she said. “That’s why you kept talking last night about her pulling my braid.”

I nodded. “Uh-huh. Now you’ve got it.”

Bette stood. I watched her. As she lifted Angelica from her highchair, she was deep in thought.

“Let’s go sit in the living room so Angelica can play,” she said quietly.

She sat Angelica on a pallet on the floor to play with her toys. And we each sat on opposite ends of the couch.

After a few moments of reflection, Bette asked, “Sooo Tina? How did Helena wind up with Tina, if she was interested in me? And why was she interested in me? How did she even know me?”

“Can I have another beer, Bette?” I asked.

“Sure, go ahead.”

When I returned to the living room, I answered Bette’s questions to the best of my ability.

“Bette,” I said, very seriously, “why wouldn’t Helena be interested in you? You are one of the most beautiful, passionate, fascinating women in all of L.A.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“You are!” I affirmed. “How did she know you? I don’t know the answer to that question. You’d have to ask her that one. And as for how she wound up with Tina, well, that’s another question for her to answer. But I have my suspicions.”

“Which are?” Bette inquired.

“Bette, you know sometimes people do crazy things. I’ve actually been thinking about this very question today. How did Helena end up with Tina, when she was so crazy about Bette?”

“And your conclusion?” she asked.

Off the wall, I just started singing, “ ‘If you can’t beeee, with the one you love, baby, love the one your with, love the one your with, yeah, love the one your with’.”

“Oh, God, Alice, no! Not the Buffalo Springfield!” Bette chortled.

I looked down at Angelica. She was “ahhhhh…..ahhhhh…..ahhhhh-ing” with a mighty force, imitating me, her Aunt Alice, and flailing her arms up and down.

Bette and I looked at each other and laughed hysterically.

When we finally gained control of ourselves, I regarded Bette very seriously, eyeing her straight on.

“Bette, surely you know, that when you’re really attracted to someone, you’ll do absurdly wild things just to feel, or to be, close to them.”

*******************

As I readied myself for bed that evening, I thought about my conversation with Alice. I knew she was right. Often, people infatuated with another do engage in rather bizarre behaviors.

Kissing Tina in my office, when I returned her earring after we’d just met, didn’t exhibit the soundest of judgment. After all, she was in a relationship with a man and supposedly ‘straight.’ But that hadn’t kept me from pursuing her relentlessly.

Now, after one honest conversation and a shared dance, I was finding myself compelled by a woman who I once detested beyond words.

My libido was in overdrive. It had been so long since I’d had sex. I had to take this into consideration when trying to understand the urges I was having where Helena was concerned. Also, the few times Tina and I had made the attempt to connect, after Angelica was born, were certainly less than satisfactory. That had done nothing to boost my self-esteem or to give me any confidence in my sexual prowess.

I was enjoying the past twenty-four hours knowing a beautiful, sexually provocative woman felt impassioned towards me. The titillation was more than pleasurable. It made me feel alive again.

When I awoke Sunday morning, I found myself still eagerly anticipating my evening with Helena. Finally, in the early afternoon, after taking Angelica for a ride in her stroller, I phoned Helena to finalize a time for our meeting. I was reluctant to call it a date.

As the phone rang, several times in fact, I grew nervous and anxious. My palms began to sweat. I actually grew concerned that we wouldn’t meet that night. What if something had come up, and she couldn’t see me?

Finally, I heard her voice, “Hello.