as it was, Libbie was still the only one who knew. And now that she had it again, she planned to keep it that way.
* * *
Last August was only the third time that their friends—the friends who were most like Libbie and Alex—had come to Spite Manor to visit. This was just a few months prior, but now, with all that had happened since, it seemed impossibly long ago: a full week of sunbake and salted skin, of sand in their hair—sand all over the house, really, on the floors and in the bedsheets—all of them eating too much peach ice cream out on the porch because they could not stop themselves from doing so. It was rich and sweet and deliciously cold. It made their teeth and temples ache.
The night Sara Dahlgren had read those passages from Mary MacLane’s book the lot of them were, Libbie remembered, a little bit drunk and a lot sun silly from their day. The Eckharts were away at Max and Adelaide’s wedding in Pittsburgh, so Libbie and her friends had enjoyed the full run of the staffless house and were already stripped down to their nightgowns and silk robes, nothing at all on underneath. Sunburned Alex had even deigned to wear the striped boy’s nightshirt Sara bought for her in Spain, though she’d blushed and laughed at it when Sara had given it to her.
It was meltingly hot, each of Spite Manor’s windows open with the ocean crashing outside, all of them lolled around the dining table, goading each other on.
Their friends* had delivered to them all manner of gay surprises from the Continent: poems and novels, a book of nude drawings, and a set of artistic stereo cards purchased from the private stock of a prominent Parisian photographer. In those images, women in top hats and tails had their arms around each other, and women in far less clothing had their mouths upon each other.
“Good thing I decided not to invite Anthony Comstock,”* Libbie had joked when the stereoscope* was passed her way and she had the chance to view the most explicit of the photos.
“Can that whiskered rhinoceros really still be at it?” Sara had asked.
“He’s even worse than before! They gave him an ounce of power and he’s spun it into a pound of tyranny.”
“Have I ever told you that I had the great displeasure of meeting him once at a benefit?” Sara asked.
“We know!” Katharine said, trying to cut short the story they’d all heard, which never worked with Sara.
“Although that particular evening did also then offer me the very great pleasure of voicing a number of new obscenities in Mr. Comstock’s pitiful presence. I don’t think he even had time to write them all down for his records, so many came his way at once.”
“We’ve heard this before!” Katharine shouted again.
More drinks were mixed, more Comstock-condemned materials passed around.
However, for once the biggest success of the evening’s sapphic show-and-tell did not belong to the fashionable Europeans and their artistic photographs. On this night the winning item was as young and brash as its country of origin: American Mary MacLane’s portrayal, a book Sara told them she’d sought out as soon as she’d arrived stateside the month before.
“And that was all quite fortuitous,” Sara had said. “Something out of a novel. Did I tell you? My regular bookseller didn’t have a single copy left in stock—and I’d gone there especially for them. He said he would have to order them for me and I didn’t know if I’d have them before I had to leave New York and I was most vexed about that and was walking up Lexington, pouting, trying to think where else to look, and I ran into the most interesting woman selling them from a folding table right there on the sidewalk. Can you believe it? I practically stepped on her.”
“You think every woman you meet is the most interesting woman you’ve met,” Alex said, to the group’s particular delight because Alex did not usually speak this way, not even to Sara Dahlgren.
“Not every woman, Alex.” Sara blew her an exaggerated kiss before continuing. “As it was, this interesting woman sold me five copies. I would have taken more, and I told her that, but I couldn’t carry them, and unlike my regular bookseller she did not offer delivery.”
“You don’t say,” Alex said. “How remarkably uncouth of the woman on the sidewalk with the folding table.”
“What a queer thing to be selling on the