Pair of Diamonds

Ginnie seemed enigmatic to many acquaintances and even some of her friends,  although few of either had the temerity to tell her so. Fewer saw the humor in her customary reply, “Ridiculous! I’d be over a hundred years old—and, besides, I’m not that crazy about  Elgar.” Those who did get the joke tended to be the people whose company she most enjoyed. Those who thought Ginnie an enigma simply misinterpreted the exceptional breadth of her interests.

Although she obtained a PhD. that certified her as a herpetologist, Ginnie did not confine her interest to snakes or even to squamates. She found snakes fascinating, and many of them beautiful, but appreciated other animals, cold- and warm-blooded. Indeed, one might almost say she liked all animals—possibly excepting mosquitoes, she thought. “All animals?” people sometimes asked.

“Yes,” she usually replied, “even humans.”

Her riposte contained more than a germ of truth. Geek or not, Ginnie enjoyed human company, enjoyed social interaction with other members of her species. She most enjoyed the more intelligent and thoughtful ones and felt fortunate to know a few of those. The only teacher in her rural school district with a doctoral degree, Ginnie also appreciated the company of young people who enjoyed learning.

Ginnie found men’s interests too often centered on motor vehicles, professional sports, and sometimes hunting—subjects that lay outside even her extremely broad range of interests. Ginnie’s interests included not just zoology but all the sciences, and also literature and music, ranging from classical to bluegrass, baroque to Western Swing, Renaissance to traditional Celtic. Her interests encompassed politics, geography, history, hiking, gardening,  volleyball, and an equally broad array of other subjects. Even with such a vast array of possible subjects, she rarely met men with whom she shared interests.

Sometimes, therefore, Ginnie felt annoyed that her proclivities remained so firmly heterosexual, although she also rarely met women with whom she could share any of her interests. On occasion, Ginnie thought it would be convenient to be able to reproduce asexually, like copperheads, water moccasins, pit vipers, some species of boa constrictors and pythons, the Komodo dragon, hammerhead and black-tip sharks, some bony fish, several lizards, and even domestic turkeys.

The evening after vote counting had assured the election of a new government that, at last, would provide increased and perhaps adequate—some even said generous, but Ginnie considered them wildly optimistic—funding for education, health care, and the arts, Ginnie attended a celebratory post-election party. Not surprisingly, everyone at the party, including Ginnie—despite that week’s diagnosis of malignant tissue in her right lung—shared a good mood. Ginnie’s mood got even better when she noticed Rob, another science teacher at a different school in the district and someone she knew and liked, and one of those familiar with the Enigma machine and Elgar’s Enigma Variations—headed in her direction.

Seeing Rob made Ginnie think, I wouldn’t want to be like the little Brahminy Blind Snake or the New Mexico whiptail lizard, though, and not have sex with males at all.  Although a physics teacher and not as big a fan of snakes as Ginnie, Rod impressed and delighted her on their first meeting by demonstrating he knew and understood the differences between Elapids and Colubrids.

The intervening years gave the two humans opportunities to discover they shared many likes—and dislikes—and each had begun to appreciate the other more in the months just past. Both liked most animals and most plants—and most people—plus walking and acoustic music. Both abhorred bigotry, urban noise and congestion, and waste—and disliked mosquitoes and the proliferation of cordless and wired devices. They had even begun tiptoeing around the possibility of more intimate sharing. Both volunteered for the same environmental groups and on their most recent such outing had discussed walking to a remote local waterfall the day after this evening’s post-election gathering.

Rob shared a glass of fruit juice with Ginnie and asked whether she still wanted to make the trek the next day. She replied in the affirmative, and he suggested they could make an earlier start if she spent the night at his place. Feeling the right time had arrived and  wanting to seize the moment, Ginnie said, “Rob dear, I bet we’d make a considerably later start if I stayed at your place.”

“That would be nice, too.”

“Yes, it would.”

The couple thanked their hosts, bade farewell to friends and other fellow-volunteers,  and headed out the door and then up the narrow rural roads to Rob’s place.

A full-time professional entertainer and musician, Cora Tate has written five novels, five novellas (two published), ten novelettes (three published), and a hundred short stories, of which 81 have appeared in 91 literary journals in 11 countries. Her short story “While The Iron Is Hot” won the Fair Australia Prize.