"Looking Glass"

 ~~~~~

"Thanks, Al, I owe you! We’ll go shopping for a new jacket when I get back!"

Bette and Shane waved goodbye to Alice, then headed home. Shane stretched her tired muscles.

"Can you plan a heist or what? Regular Danny Ocean."

"Well, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without my pals," Bette replied modestly.

Shane grinned, recalling something. "Hey, remember the time Tina got some guys from the prop department pretending to be repo men? Cleared out the loft of that artist who went with that museum?"

"Oh, God! The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art!" she exclaimed, laughing. "John Coldwell stole that ungrateful son-of-a-bitch right under my nose … " Bette’s smile faded, her eyes darting left and right. "That thing Alice said about Tina earlier: she’s full of shit, right?"

Shane turned to her with a sigh. "C’mon, you know the answer: gotta be full of shit to start it. Forget about Alice." She gestured over her shoulder. "You’re doing this thing for Jodi – you even said Tina gave you advice. That’s a friend."

Bette nodded and tried to smile. "Yeah. Friends."

~~~~~

"Your friends were really … nice."

Tina picked up an empty pizza box while Bette tackled the beer bottles.

"Just ‘nice’?"

"Well, they’re so much … younger than I thought they’d be." Tina shrugged lightly, unsure of how to put it. "I guess I was expecting – "

"Artists? Philosophers?" Bette smiled, not taking offense. "They’re interesting, but they’re just not … fun. And living in L.A., it doesn’t take long to figure out that friends are hard to come by. The gang, they’re loyal and true: the kind who’d post bail for you." She stopped and thought a moment. "Well, of course, it’s more likely that they’d get arrested with me … "

Tina cocked an eyebrow questioningly but let it go, determining that the story could wait for another date. "So Alice said there’s a new club opening next week?"

"Yeah." She smiled enticingly. "I’d love it if you went with us."

"So I guess I passed the Friend Test, huh?" Tina grinned, then made a face. "Y’know, Mimi and Ivy said that place was an S&M bar … "

Bette laughed. "An S&M bar in this case is an acronym for ‘Stand and Model’: people just mill around looking gorgeous."

Tina shook her head in embarrassment; before she could form a retort, her cell phone rang. She put a plate down and read the display. "Oh, shit."

"Who is it?"

Tina sighed and answered the phone flatly. "Hello, Eric." She listened a moment. "You’re drunk and I’m tired of hearing this." She rolled her eyes, exasperated. "Leave her out of it. Get over it and get a life." Tina hung up and tossed the phone on the sofa, then resumed clearing away the plates.

Bette looked on with a mixture of sympathy and guilt. "What’d he say?"

She shrugged her shoulders, unconcerned. "The usual tirade. Threatened to drop by your gallery this time – that was new."

"Yeah, well, he can grab his ankles and get fucked. I’d like to see the land shark try it," Bette fired back with customary brusqueness.

Tina unsuccessfully stifled a smirk. Bette’s hands automatically went to her hips defensively, a little North Philly rising to the surface.

"What?"

Tina fluttered her eyelashes. "You kiss your Yale art degree with that mouth?"

She chuckled at her own witticism and continued putting dishes in the sink.  Bette bit her tongue, her goat successfully gotten.

Deciding not to let Tina get away with it, she sauntered toward her and began backing her against the kitchen counter until there was only an inch of space between them. Bette teasingly brushed her lips against Tina’s, their breaths becoming more heated with each pass.

"And what do you suggest I do with my mouth?"

~~~~~