THE DOGHOUSE RESTAURANT (Max. Cap. 250) had been around since before WWII and hadn’t changed much in decor, menu or service since then. It had big soft booths you could lose yourself in and capable older waitresses wearing black skirts and vests and white shirts. The cocktail lounge had framed portraits of various canines all over the walls and Dick Dickerson nightly on the organ. It was probably the last restaurant in Seattle to still have plastic plants, toothpicks holding together the sandwiches, paperwrapped straws served with drinks, and Worcestershire, A-1 Steak Sauce and catsup on the table, every table. Both the placemats and a giant mural over the counter (with its towers of pie racks and constantly filled coffee cups, its smokers and its newspaper readers) displayed the motto “All Roads Lead to the Doghouse.” In one corner of the picture was a harridan with a rolling pin; in the other a sad-eyed pooch in the doghouse; and in between a hilly course strewn with signs that read “Matrimony,” “Blonds,” “Private Secretaries,” and “Boozers.”
Hadley was waiting for me, without a cowboy hat but still recognizable behind the tall menu, with her graying hair and slightly furrowed brow. No beauty certainly, but a solid sort of person. Dependable. Or so I needed to believe.
“Hey there, Pam,” she said, looking up, looking pleased. “This is quite the place.”
“Our parents used to bring us here on Sundays sometimes—as a treat.”
“They were nice, I bet. Your parents.” She said it factually, in a way that caught me in the chest. Yeah, they’d been alright.
“How about yours?” I asked, while skimming for form’s sake the menu. I already knew what I was going to have: a Bulldog, hold the onions. “My dad’s into oil and my mother’s into archaeology. She’s in Turkey now, I think, excavating.”
I tried to conceal my surprise. I wouldn’t have figured Hadley for a wealthy background. As if she read my thoughts Hadley smiled her one-sided smile and said, “Fran’s biggest dream was that the old man could be persuaded to bankroll the lesbian revolution.”
“Well, couldn’t he?”
“I’m thirty-six, honey. I’ve been away from home a long time.”
The waitress, a favorite of mine named Sally, came over. She wore harlequin glasses and a watch pin. “Long time, no see, sugarplum,” she told me, and then to Hadley, “I’ve known Penny and this little gal here since they were knee high to ladybugs.”
“I think it’s grasshoppers, Sal.”
“Never you mind those old ugly grasshopping things. Nice young ladybugs is what you and Penny are. Now, what are you and your friend having, Miss Pam?”
We told her and watched her go back to the kitchen with a swing in her step, a firmly-built woman in her sixties with a wigfull of auburn sausage curls.
“I’ve been wondering a lot about older women,” said Hadley, watching her. “My hair started going gray all of a sudden last fall. I don’t know what it was, maybe just the hair genes kicking over all at once, but it sure gave me some sense of what it’s all going to be like. Forty years of being called Ma’am and Mrs. Harper started last year.”
“You look good in gray,” I said, then blushed. But Hadley came back easily, “Thank you, Ma’am.”
“That’s Miss Pam to you.”
“You don’t fool me,” she smiled. “You’ve got a little experience under your belt too.”
I blushed again.
I was grateful that Sally brought our coffee just then. At some point I would have to explain to Hadley that I was straight, not at all wavering, and that I didn’t feel attracted to her, but just wanted her for a friend, even though I’d never had a lesbian friend before and had no idea if you even could…but fortunately we had other things to talk about now.
“If you had a list of suspects,” she said, “would they all be from B. Violet?”
I nodded and tried to defend myself. “Margaret and Anna seemed to hate the idea so much…and if you’d seen Fran drinking and how worried Elena is, after finding the car keys—well you’ve seen Elena. Fran must have been there.”
Hadley sighed. “And I have a disinclination to trust Ray and Jeremy, just because they said so little at the meeting—and because probably ninety-nine percent of the violence in the world is done by men.”
Bristling, I said, “Ray would never destroy anything…and Jeremy—he’s just a little wimp, if you knew him.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t. But he kind of gives me the creeps, the way he hems and haws all the time. It seems forced somehow. Is he really as young as he seems?”
“He’s twenty-five and wishes he were ten years older like all his heroes. I think he had older brothers and sisters or something who used to lock him out of the garage where they smoked dope and played Jefferson Airplane in the sixties. He’s spent his life trying to get in that garage.”
Hadley laughed. “There are some of us who’ve spent our lives trying to get out of it.”
“But he’s harmless, really, and he does care about politics; he’s learning to, anyway. I’ve been noticing that he’s getting involved with June. I think it will be good for him.”
“Tell me about her, tell me about all of you,” Hadley said, digging into the monstrous Chef’s Salad Sally had just brought.
“June? She’s always been a little more Penny’s friend than mine. June likes danger, and so does Penny, in her rational way. They’ve done some amazing things—Whitewater rafting, kayaking, they go skydiving together if you can believe it. As for me, I’m a total physical coward…anyway, June’s about the same age as Jeremy, but what a difference. She grew up in Seattle, went to Garfield High and got married right after. To a nice guy, I guess, a really nice guy. But he was shot, in one of those weird freak accidents. June says a bunch of them were fooling around, they were still teenagers, someone had an ‘unloaded’ gun and somehow it went off. I think June was holding it, though she’s never been able to say it.”
“Christ.”
“There wasn’t a trial, just a hearing. No one was blamed…but June was left with a one-year-old and then found out she was pregnant again.” I paused to take a bite of my burger. “She worked days, went to school nights and did a printing course. She’s been working with us for three years, almost since the beginning.”
“Well, count June out of the sabotage. Zenaida too. I can’t imagine her wanting to scratch her fingernail polish.”
“Don’t underestimate Zee. She’s a cool character. Sometimes I wonder if she hasn’t got more guts than any of us. But she’s working with the anti-Marcos group and has more important things on her mind. She wouldn’t have time to think about B. Violet.”
“She’s got a thing with Ray, am I right?”
I nodded without saying anything. I still didn’t find it easy to talk about somehow, but Hadley didn’t notice. She said, “What about him? He’s definitely physically capable of wreaking havoc. Where’s he coming from?”
“Straight from the arms of pacifism. His parents are both doctors for the Red Cross. His mother’s Japanese, her parents died in Hiroshima. His father’s Mexican-American, but one of those people without a strong national identity anymore. They moved around a lot, Ray with them sometimes, in school in California other times. I know he’s got a temper, but he’s heard enough about violence and destruction to last him a lifetime.”
“He didn’t want a merger though.”
I tried not to remember Ray’s comment earlier about ‘Now, at least, we don’t have to merge,’ and defended him. “You heard his reasons. It wasn’t misogyny, but the racism issue, the starting all over again with a bunch of white women. He’s had to do a lot of educating—he likes having Zee and June there…”
Sally filled our cups for the fourth time with the dark, bitter brew. I was beginning to get a nervous, unpleasant buzz—a reminder of why I didn’t seek out the Doghouse more often.
“I hear you,” nodded Hadley. “I guess I don’t really suspect him, but then…?”
“There’s always me and Penny.”
“Or Elena.”
“Elena was the one who suggested the merger in the first place. And Fran’s her lover. You could never get me to believe that Elena would destroy B. Violet.”
“Stranger things have happened,” said Hadley, but without conviction.
“But Margaret and Anna could have,” I persisted.
“Now let me do my defender bit,” Hadley smiled. “I’ve known Margaret for about six years. We’ve worked on a lot of issues together, put out a newsletter once for two years, lobbied for gay rights in Olympia, spoke on lesbian topics all around town. Margaret is absolutely true blue. Sarcastic sometimes; bad-tempered occasionally, but not violent. It’s impossible, I can’t picture her touching anything at B. Violet.”
“But isn’t she, aren’t she and Anna, you know, separatists?” I asked, wading into dangerous water. “I mean, more than you?”
“Me?” Hadley laughed, mocking a southern belle. “Why, I just love men, honey.”
I pursued it doggedly. “That’s what’s behind this whole thing somehow. That’s what I think. Margaret and Anna might have preferred to wreck B. Violet rather than merge. To punish Elena and Fran maybe.”
“They’d only be punishing themselves.”
“Why did they seem so gleeful then this morning?”
Hadley shook her head. “I wouldn’t exactly call it gleeful. I mean, it’s true they and Fran have had their differences, but…”
She still hadn’t addressed the issue, I felt. My urgency increased. “Well, aren’t they lesbian separatists? Don’t they just want to work with women?”
Hadley wasn’t smiling now. “Your voice is raised, Miss Pam. Very unbecoming. I also detect a note of hostility to your own sex—maybe even lesbian-baiting—also rather impolite.”
We stared at each other, neither willing to risk a further exchange. I felt sure that she was hiding something, protecting Margaret in some way. I didn’t know what she thought, but there was a distance between us that hadn’t been there before.
“Shall we go?” she said.
For some reason I felt close to tears. “Ready when you are.”
We figured out the check, said good-bye to Sally, paid the cashier and went out into the balmy evening without saying much more than “So long.” Only as we reached our separate vehicles in the parking lot did I hear her voice.
“Hey Pam. I’m sorry. I hurt your feelings.”
I turned and saw her tall figure silhouetted against the Doghouse sign.
“Me too,” I said. I heard my voice carry strangely in the suddenly still evening air. “I guess I was, you know, baiting.”
Her truck door closed. She was crossing the parking lot, and her boots made a light firm clacking on the asphalt.
“I want to tell you something,” she said when she reached me. “I have known Margaret a long time, but Margaret and Anna together is a different story. They’ve gotten funny together about some things, reinforced each other’s ideas. The merger is one. I’m sure they didn’t wreck the place, but I wouldn’t be completely honest if I didn’t say that they seem sort of pleased about all this. It’s true too—they only want to work with women and they haven’t gotten along with Fran for months.”
“Listen,” I said. “It’s early.” I looked at my watch. “Not even eight-thirty yet. And I think we need to talk through some of this stuff. I’m glad you said something. I didn’t mean to be such an asshole in there.”
“I guess I could go with a beer or something after all that java.” Hadley smiled a bit wickedly. “Ever been to Sappho’s?”
I gulped a little. “No, but I’d love to.”
“Great,” she said, turning back to her truck. “Just follow me.”
“Wait,” I said. “Could we go by Best first, just for a minute? I want to raid the petty cash until tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’ve got plenty,” she said, but she seemed pleased when I insisted. “Okay, see you there in a minute.”
That’s funny, I thought, pulling up in front of the print shop on its quiet sidestreet near the Kingdome. Who in hell left the light on in there? I couldn’t imagine that anyone was working late. The whole week we’d been short of business; there were no rush jobs of any kind. Besides, it wasn’t the front light, but one way in the back. It made a dim red glow. The darkroom, the goddamn darkroom. When was Jeremy going to learn?
The door was locked. Just as I put my key in, Hadley pulled up.
“There’s a light on,” she called out.
“Yeah, Jeremy left the darkroom light on, I bet. He’s done it before.”
“I’m going in there with you.” Hadley leapt out, holding a softball bat. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.
“Don’t tell me you play ball,” I said.
“Hell, I’m the captain of the team.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, unlocking the door and striding boldly in. “All saboteurs out in the open.”
It was quiet. Everything was in its place, of course. There was only the red glow coming from the darkroom, through its partially opened door.
“I’ll kill Jeremy,” I said. “When the fuck is he going to learn?”
I went to the back and opened the door to the darkroom wide. Whatever Jeremy was supposed to learn was unnecessary now. As was my threat to kill him.
Someone had done it for me.