Chapter 6

The knock at the door was nothing if not persistent, given that Tina hadn’t even had a chance to cross the small hotel room before another knock quickly followed the first. She looked out of the peephole and stifled a gasp at the shock of the woman standing behind the hotel door. She frowned, unsure of what to make of the woman leaning against the door jam with her arms folded across her chest.

“Are you in there?”

Tina stepped back from the door unsure of what her next move should be. She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling the tension of the day settle between her shoulder blades, and worked to control her reaction to the unannounced visitor outside the door.

Tina opened the door and stood staring at the woman that pushed herself off the door jam to stand straight up and face Tina head-on.

“Hey there,” Kate smiled as she stood rooted to the spot she had been standing in.

“Kate? What are you doing here?”

Tina’s eyes moved from Kate’s face to the bag that was resting near her feet. A look of panic washed over Tina’s face as she met Kate’s gaze.

“I can see you’re surprised,” Kate began to speak.

“You can say that.”

“Don’t worry, I have my own room.”

“What are you doing here?” Tina questioned not realizing the tone of voice she was using.

“I should have called to tell you I was here instead of just showing up,” Kate said as she ignored her hurt feelings rising to the surface.

“That would have been less shocking,” Tina said, her tone finally registering with her, causing her to soften it when she spoke again. “What are you doing here?”

“The studio sent me here to review some locations for Lez Girls,” Kate tried to explain. “It’s still full steam ahead in pre-production regardless of the status of the script. So, we’re at the step where I come and reject all of these pathetic locations that can serve as The Planet and push for an actual location in LA to shoot.”

“Makes sense for budgeting purposes as well,” Tina said slipping into her movie executive role quickly. “What a shame we couldn’t just start there and save you a trip out here to just go through the motions.”

“I actually don’t mind,” Kate said with a smile.

Kate’s eyes looked past Tina’s as if silently asking for an invitation inside Tina’s room. Tina smiled apologetically and stepped aside.

“I’m sorry, please come in.”

Kate picked up her bag and walked into Tina’s room with a smile on her face. She set the bag down to the side as Tina shut the door and leaned against it with her arms at her side.

“I have to apologize,” Tina started to say. “I just wasn’t expecting you and I admittedly didn’t handle it very well.”

“I can understand that,” Kate smiled once more to ease the tension between them. “The first thought you probably had was that I was stalking you, sort of Jenny-esque, but just in a different time zone.”

Tina couldn’t help but smile at the joke at Jenny’s expense.

“Am I that transparent?” Tina teased back. “Regardless, I am sorry that I reacted poorly to the surprise visit. I was just reviewing my notes on the script and enjoying a cold beer. Can I get you one?”

“Always one of my vices,” Kate said as she sat down on the couch and watched Tina retrieve her beer. “Where is Angelica?”

“She had such a busy day that she was asleep before Bette and I even made it here from the airport,” Tina handed Kate her beer and sat down next to her. “So, even in New York, I was planning on the same night I’d have had in LA.”

Kate arched her eyebrow in question.

“Ordering something in and working on this script to meet the deadline,” Tina admitted and rolled her eyes to mock herself. “Alice reminded me that I have a pathetic existence when she dropped us off at the airport.”

“One does what they have to do to create a ‘groundbreaking’ movie.”

“Is that how it’s being tagged these days?” Tina asked feeling the pressure begin to rise once again.

“Well Jenny’s manuscript is a piece of shit and everyone in the literary world knows it other than her publishers. But when we leaked it that it was going through major rewrites and that I had indeed signed on as the director, the buzz started.”

“Wonderful,” Tina said as she took a long sip of her beer. “That’s just what I needed to take some pressure off rewriting this literary nightmare.”

“The change in scenery might help.”

“It hasn’t so far,” Tina shot back. “In fact it’s almost made it worse because it’s hard to separate the Bette that is today from what she was back when all this was going on.”

“She’s changed that much?” Kate challenged. “I tend to believe a leopard never changes their spots.”

“She’s not the same person,” Tina said with a small amount of sadness reflecting in her voice. “There’s so much to her that Jenny missed that even if I take the scenes that she did write about and reflected the true participants, it’s like she left out chunks that make it all so real. It won’t make sense without the filler.”

“So fill it in,” Kate said minimizing Tina’s challenge. “If my memory hasn’t blocked out how awful her screenplay was, Jenny started by introducing the characters during a party at your house right?”

“Yeah,” Tina rolled her eyes and relaxed back on the couch with her beer in her hands. “There’s so much history though, before that, that needs to be included to bring everyone up to speed as to why that party was being thrown in the first place.”

“Why was it?”

“To find another donor,” Tina sighed as she played with the condensation on her bottle. “The endless pursuit of finding that perfect person since the donor we actually agreed on couldn’t produce a child. We spent 6 months, procedure after procedure, facing disappointment after disappointment not knowing that, it was hard to keep the dream alive.”

Kate noticed the anger and sarcasm laced in Tina’s voice, but chose wisely to ignore it while she watched Tina play with her beer bottle.

“So by the time that we threw that party, we felt so desperate that we asked everyone we knew. Maybe the party was fun for some people, but to us it was just a necessary evil in finding someone to father our child.”

“Not a fun party for you then,” Kate stated the obvious unsure of what to say to fill the gap of silence that had fallen over them.

“I’m sorry, this can’t be a fun topic to talk about.”

“Don’t,” Kate placed her hand on Tina’s thigh. “Don’t shut me out, if nothing else I need to know for the sake of the studio, but I want to know as someone that cares for you.”

“Every part of our life had become just trying to start our family,” Tina said shaking her head. “Just like that scene you read in my office, where it was more about starting the day to get the insemination done, rather than us being us. We just lost so much of who we were together when having a baby overshadowed all of that.”

“That insemination wasn’t the one where Angelica was conceived I take it?”

“No, that was the insemination that forced us into having a party to beg our male acquaintances for their sperm. All of our criteria for choosing a donor went out the window as we pitched our campaign to almost every male that attended the party.”

Tina shut her eyes as she felt tears form in her eyes at the memory of how desperate they had both become.

“It bordered on pathetic,” Tina said softly.

“Well it didn’t come across as pathetic in Jenny’s eyes based on what she wrote.”

“She didn’t even know what we were going through,” Tina shot back. “She was too busy being ignorant when she first found out that we were trying to have a child. She couldn’t even make the jump in her Midwest conservative mind that lesbians would want to start a family and still had all the functioning equipment to carry a child, just obviously not father one.”

Kate remained silent as she watched Tina’s face, her struggle with the emotions the memories were conjuring up evident in her frown.

“That entire party all she did was portray lesbians as predatory, based on her experience with Marina, but that party wasn’t anything like that for Bette and I. I was so beat up after it was over, just not understanding why no one would help us, and just sitting down and feeling so alone. Even though Bette was sitting next to me, I felt so lost, I had left a large part of my life behind when I quit to prepare for pregnancy. I had no way of really defining myself other than through Bette.”

“So when Jenny’s book starts, you had quit your job to get pregnant, and that wasn’t happening.”

“Yeah,” Tina said forcing a smile for Kate’s benefit more than her own. “The longer it took for us to get pregnant, the more I felt I was failing her, and the more I defined myself through her than through myself. That was so unhealthy.”

Tina took another sip of her beer finishing it and placing the bottle on the table in front of them.

“The only thing I had was getting pregnant,” Tina explained her mindset from that point in her life. “I felt like it was my job and so when Bette suggested a donor I was furious. I sort of felt like, because she had her life, I should have been the one to find the donor. I handled it so badly when I actually met the man that donated, because he was Bette’s choice, and she neglected to tell me he was African-American. I actually refused to use him at first.”

Kate saw the torment in Tina’s eyes and placed her hand on Tina’s leg to offer support.

“I remember our therapist telling me that because I had rejected Marcus, I was rejecting a part of who she was too because she’s biracial. I tried to defend my position, that it had nothing to do with that, but adding that to already having lesbian moms was going to be too much for a child. I can’t believe how wrong I was.”

“How so?”

“Marcus, the donor Bette chose, is Angelica’s donor,” Tina said with a smile through her tears. “I can see now how wrong I was because I know, now that she’s in our lives, how right the world is because of her.”

Tina wiped her tears away as she got up to get another beer. Seeing that there were only two in the mini-bar and they had consumed them both, she shut the door with a slight pout on her face.

“We’re out of beer.”

“You need to include all of that in the rewrite,” Kate simply said. “That one moment you just explained transcends everything Jenny tried to write about ‘Bev’ and ‘Nina’. That’s exactly what you should be striving for, adding dimensions to those characters.”

“It’s hard, it’s not just a rewrite for me, but my life.”

“Believe me, I know,” Kate got up and closed the distance between herself and Tina. “It’s bound to be hard, but think of it this way, if you write that down you’ve already set a different tone for the party and can easily show that. Just remove the ‘Bev’ and ‘Nina’ parts and add your quest for a donor in its place. Show the turmoil of asking person after person to be your donor, and them saying no, so the audience can feel the struggle ‘Bev’ and ‘Nina’ go through to have a child. It isn’t as easy for lesbians as it is straight couples, that much is obvious, but nobody explains just how difficult it can be.”

“I’m not adding anything without another beer,” Tina joked to lighten the mood. “Do you mind staying here while I run down to the bar for 2 more beers?”

“I’d be glad to,” Kate smiled feeling a connection with Tina through her sharing her feelings.

“I won’t be long,” Tina said as she grabbed her key and walked out of the room headed for the bar.

Bette opened the door to her room after taking a walk around the hotel grounds to clear her head. The cool night air did wonders for her nerves, and she felt prepared to enjoy an intimate dinner with Jodi. She frowned when she walked in and saw Jodi putting a sweatshirt on and her boots lying to the side of where she stood.

“Where are you going?” Bette signed when Jodi made eye contact.

“Back to the site for a bit, we’re on a roll and I don’t want to lose the momentum. Everyone seems to really be getting into it.”

“I thought we were having dinner?” Bette said as she signed her sentence as well.

“You sent me a text saying that Tina and Angelica couldn’t join us,” Jodi signed back as she walked toward Bette and placed her hands on Bette’s hips. “I thought we could both go back to the site and watch it really take form. It’s so exciting.”

“It is amazing,” Bette agreed with a smile. “But I was hoping to have some time with you.”

“I promise we can have time after we’re done tonight, it’s just a few more hours.”

“Babe,” Bette nuzzled Jodi’s neck as her lips began to tease the sensitive skin there. She looked up and made eye contact with Jodi to ensure Jodi could read her lips. “What can I do to convince you to stay here with me and have an intimate dinner?”

“I promise it won’t take more than two hours,” Jodi said as she placed a kiss on Bette’s lips. “I love you and will make sure that we spend the rest of the evening together when I get back.”

Bette’s attention was diverted to the door when there was a knock at it, one that was quick and demanding. She opened the door to see Tom standing there, also in warmer clothes, looking at his watch.

“Such a slave driver she is Dean Porter,” Tom joked as he stuck his tongue out at Jodi. “And we thought you were an Ice Queen with no fun in your life.”

“I love you,” Jodi whispered as she kissed Bette quickly and stepped down the hallway with Tom by her side.


Bette shut the door, stunned that Jodi had walked out without any further discussion. Bette walked to the bed and sat down on the edge of it before giving up and lying back staring at the ceiling.

Her mind rationalized that this wasn’t the first time that she had asked someone for time and not gotten it. There was the failed attempt on her part to bridge the gap between her and Tina when they were fighting and she came home from work earlier than expected.

“I need to exercise some demons,” Tina had said.

Bette cringed as she remembered that moment with too much clarity given how long ago it had happened. She remembered lying in bed, reading, while she waited for Tina to come home from the gym. When an hour had turned into several, her body gave up and rendered itself to sleep before she had a chance to say goodnight to her wife. In the morning, she had found her book on the nightstand next to the reading glasses she had been wearing, but nothing was said about the missed opportunity to share an intimate evening together.

Bette shot out of bed and crossed the room quickly to where her briefcase was perched in a chair. She opened it and dug out a few files on funding for the College of Arts, reaching into her briefcase once more to retrieve her reading glasses, and laid back down on the bed opening the files.

She read a few sentences in the first file before she closed it abruptly and threw it to the side.

“This is ridiculous,” Bette muttered to the silent room. “I won’t let this play out like that again.”

Bette threw her glasses on the bed and got up, checking her reflection briefly as she passed the mirror in the room. She grabbed her room key on her way out the door and pulled the door behind her to insure it was locked.

Bette walked a few feet to the elevator and pushed the down button. She smiled as the doors opened and a young man stepped out nodding to her. She stepped in and pressed the lobby button, looking at her reflection in the metal doors that had just shut.

The elevator opened and Bette quickly walked out and to the left of the lobby where the hotel bar was located. It was almost empty, a fire crackling in the fireplace that was located on the one wall of the bar. It had chairs in front of it, a table for those sitting there to set their drinks, and a few menus scattered about to entice visitors to order food as they became mesmerized by the flickering of the colorful flames.

“What can I get you?”

The bartender’s simple question broke into Bette’s thoughts as she offered a smile and ordered a scotch on the rocks. She looked at the fire again, seeing a person standing up near it, watching the flames flicker intently.

“Ma’am,” the bartender called out to the woman. “Your Coronas are ready.”

Bette allowed her mouth to gape open when the woman turned around and she saw it was Tina. When Tina smiled at her, Bette offered a genuine smile back. She watched as the color of the fire flickered and reflected off Tina’s cheek, highlighting her soft skin in the romantically lit bar.

“What are you doing down here?” Bette asked as Tina closed the distance between them. “Where’s Angelica?”

“She’s in the room,” Tina said as she smiled and paid the bartender for her two beers. Tina looked over at the bartender that was intently listening to their conversation as the bar was empty other than the two of them. “Why don’t we talk over there?”

Bette followed the direction Tina nodded in and found herself focused on the fire once more. She motioned for Tina to walk ahead of her, and followed close behind, curious to find out why Tina left Angelica in the hotel room alone.

“Is everything ok?” Bette asked as she sat down next to Tina.

“She’s fine,” Tina reassured her. “I’m fine, everything is fine.”

“Why are you down here? You said you were ordering in and relaxing a bit.”

“I had planned on that, and I was beginning to work on the rewrite of Lez Girls, when a surprise visitor showed up.”

“Oh?”

“Kate’s in New York,” Tina said in a softer voice, almost hesitant to tell Bette. “She’s here for some pre-production stuff for Lez Girls.”

“And wasted no time in looking you up,” Bette pointed out with a forced smile.

Bette brought the glass of scotch to her lips and took a bigger sip than she usually did. She felt the cool ice cubes against her upper lip as the amber liquid traveled down her throat, warming the path it took to her stomach.

“We were discussing Lez Girls when we drank all of the 2 beers that were in the mini-bar so I came down here to get some more.”

“Ah,” Bette took another large sip and signaled for another one to be brought to her in front of the fire.

Tina watched Bette as she got lost in the flames of the fire. Her brown eyes were reflecting turmoil as the amber lights highlighted the depth of her soulful eyes.

“Bette?”

Bette turned to face Tina, seeing the hues of the fire caress Tina’s beautiful face.

“What’s going on?”

Bette arched her eyebrow in question forcing Tina to verbalize a more specific question.

“I thought you were going to dinner with Jodi?”

“When she gets back from the site I’m sure we’ll eat.”

Tina sensed the anger and disappointment in Bette’s voice, but opted for not pushing her to discuss what was going on with her if she wasn’t ready. Silence fell over the two women as Bette watched the fire, working on controlling her confusion over Kate showing up in New York, and Tina watched Bette.

“Are we meeting for breakfast tomorrow so you can see Angie?”

“I’d love that,” Bette said as she forced a smile and turned to face Tina. “What time works for you?”

“You know how she loves to be up early.”

“You set the time,” Bette said as she accepted another scotch on the rocks and handed back her empty glass. “I don’t want to intrude on your morning.”

“Why would you be?”

“I’m sure that things have changed somewhat because Kate’s in New York….”

“No,” Tina said quicker than she had meant to. “She has her own room and won’t be staying too long tonight. She was working on unblocking me since I wasn’t making any progress on Lez Girls.”

“Why not?”

“It’s hard to paint an accurate picture with no starting point since Jenny’s starting point voided out everything that had happened before then.”

“Yes she started out with the infamous party where we were all so blessed to meet her,” Bette said sarcastically as she sipped her drink and watched the flames flicker in the fireplace. “Is that where you’re starting?”

“No,” Tina offered a small smile. “In order to show why our behavior was what it was at the party, I thought about starting with events that led up to that.”

“Which events?”

“The last failed ovulation when we tried Sean’s contribution,” Tina smiled. “The party was a result of that and I think we should show a little of what the prior 6 months was for us.”

Bette nodded feeling a sense of dread settle in the pit of her stomach. She had made no effort to hide that she wasn’t a fan of the rewrite of Lez Girls, yet she knew how important it was to Tina to accurately portray their relationship. The manner in which both ‘Bev’ and ‘Nina’ came off in Jenny’s work of fiction was less than flattering. If Bette were honest with herself, she would admit to hating how Jenny portrayed them, but she resigned herself to believing the mantra that Jenny had been repeating to all of them.

‘It’s a work of fiction.’

“Since I’m stuck I’m assuming that after this beer Kate will leave and I can get back to pulling out my hair since I have a deadline to meet and I’m not making any progress. I won’t make it a long night though, so whenever you want to meet for breakfast is fine.”

Bette shuddered as she remembered the words that she mumbled earlier that day.

‘She deserves to be put first’

“How long does it take to down a beer these days?”

“What?” Tina looked at Bette puzzled at the question. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Give me the amount of time it will take you and Kate to drink your beers.”

“Maybe a half hour at most,” Tina answered hesitantly. “Why?”

“Because maybe this would be easier with a sounding board who knows the real story,” Bette said as she stared into Tina’s eyes. The light from the flames reflected off both of their skin as they sat for a moment and stared at one another in silence. “I’ll be at your room in 35 minutes to help you rewrite Jenny’s blather.”