Everywhere she looks she sees dyke couples smiling, holding Just Married signs. The coming threat of Prop 8 isn’t stopping them.

The joke should be rewritten: What do lesbians bring to a second date? A marriage license.

There is actually a wedding in progress in one relatively empty corner of the lawn, away from the main stage: two dykes in short white dresses and long white flounces, one brunette and one blonde, a crown of daisies on each head, are being married by a pastor in a black robe and rainbow stole, surrounded by a small circle of friends. Seema wanders in their direction, stands watching for a while: the women are exchanging vows, turned laugh-crying toward each other, but she’s too far away to hear what’s being said over the music from the stage. She and Bill had decided to do without vows—at her insistence, of course—and were married only a short distance away.

Throughout the ceremony a South Asian woman in the circle keeps glancing at Seema. Someone from the old Trikone crowd, Seema thinks, pretending not to notice. But later, when their eyes accidentally meet again, the woman smiles and, excusing herself from her group, makes her way toward Seema.

It’s too late for Seema to draw back. She braces herself, turning over in her memory faces and names. Late twenties, she guesses, as the woman approaches—she must have been a teenager if Seema had met her at a Trikone potluck when she used to frequent them.

“Hi, I’m Divya. Remember me?” A graduated bob with red-brown highlights, expertly lined eyes and lips, not too much taller than Seema, dimples. An off-the-shoulder dress in silk, sapphire. “I attended one of your training camps in the South Bay last year?”

Seema is relieved, and ashamed to find herself excusing her presence here: she’d come with a gay friend who’d since abandoned her for a bunch of guys.

“Men would do that,” Divya says.

The conversation moves safely away, Divya voluble about the South Asians for Obama group she started last year. Divya’s had some success fundraising in the South Bay. Actually, she’s being modest—the response has been fabulous. She’s been recognized by the campaign as one of Obama’s top fundraisers in Silicon Valley. And Seema deserves some of the credit—Seema’s camp was one of the most instructive and inspiring trainings she’s been to.

Divya is chirpy, confident, upbeat. She flashes her dimples often, as if secure in presumed camaraderie. But her enthusiasm on meeting Seema doesn’t seem all an act. Seema thaws—at least Divya is not twenty-two, naive, and White.

What is Seema doing for the rest of the election season? Divya is clearly disappointed when Seema admits she’s not officially employed by the campaign in any capacity. Seema finds it even harder to add she has no fixed plans for the fall. She becomes defensive: “Work’s very busy, I’ve just been promoted. I may do something in Nevada on the weekends.”