Jill Emerson

Warm and Willing

Chapter One

That night she dreamed the dream once again. There was no rhyme or reason to it, and yet it terrified her each time. This time she awoke before the dream could end; awoke with her forehead damp with cool beads of perspiration, awoke with her heart hammering furiously, and her eyes staring, and her hands — small hands, narrow fingers, nails immaculately manicured — curled into tight little fists, with the nails digging harshly into the palms of her hands.

A dream of flight, of a chase with her own self cast as victim, as person pursued. And with the pursuer unknowable. In the dream she was running eternally down an endless hallway, a hallway which grew gradually but inexorably narrower as she raced through it, the walls closing slowly on her.

The walls, an ivory white, were unbroken by windows or doors. Sometimes, smoking a cigarette in the sweaty aftermath of the nightmare, she would force herself back over the dream and try to figure out its setting, and try to establish what sort of hallway she ran through night after endless night. A hospital? But hospital walls were always that weak gray-green of impending death, and the walls in the dream were white. And the floor was black, not tile or linoleum or wood or stone — an endless ribbon of black which seemed to be made of no particular material at all.

And she ran in the dream, ran until her legs ached, ran while her heart pounded, ran with a whirlwind behind her, and her mouth parted for a scream that never came, and something, something, behind her and coming ever closer.

She had dreamed the dream a countless number of times. She had never been caught. She had never reached the end of the corridor, if indeed it had an end. Each time she awoke with terror shrieking through her body.

Now she sat very still in the narrow bed. A shaft of light came through her window. She looked around quickly, making sure of where she was, focusing upon familiar objects in an effort to assure herself of what was reality and what was the dream. Her cigarettes were on the bedside table. She lit one, shook out the match, reached over to turn on the bedside lamp. There was a clock on the table beside the lamp. She looked at it. It was a few minutes past four. She had gone to sleep a little after midnight, so she had slept just four hours.

She would not be able to sleep any more now. She knew this. Once the dream brought her swiftly awake, sleep was over and done with for the night. She could only get up and bide her time, read a book or take a shower or have a few cups of inky coffee, waiting out the hours until it was time for breakfast and then for work.

There was a hot plate on her dresser, a teakettle centered upon it. She filled the teakettle at the sink and put water on to boil. Then she slipped into a cotton robe and sat down in the room’s one chair and smoked her cigarette all the way down. When the water boiled she made instant coffee and sat in the chair to drink it.

Her name was Rhoda Moore. Not long ago it had been Rhoda Moore Haskell, but the Haskell part had since been carefully cut away through the aseptic surgery of the judicial process. She had thought at the time that this was one of the chief advantages of annulment as opposed to divorce; one automatically returned to one’s maiden name. Legally, one had never been married.

Her lawyer had been against the annulment. “You’re not a Catholic,” he had told her. “You’ve got no basic feeling against divorce. And God knows you’ve got grounds, Rhoda. Why shouldn’t you make him pay?”

“I don’t want his money.”

“Any court in the country would award you a healthy chunk of alimony, a steady income until such time as you remarry. You could go to Reno and call it mental cruelty, or you could stay right here in New York and call it by its rightful name. Adultery. He couldn’t possibly contest it and he couldn’t get out from under.”

But she had held out. She did not want any money from Thomas J. Haskell. Neither a lump sum settlement nor a lifetime annuity in the form of alimony. She had already taken as much from the man as she wanted. He paid court costs and he paid her lawyer’s fee, but that was all he paid.

The annulment was easily arranged. Her lawyer selected the grounds — breaking a premarital promise to raise a family. They had been married two years and had not conceived any children, so this was a handy excuse for the termination of the marriage. It took hardly any time at all and she was free and away from him, out of their apartment and into a room of her own, out of their double bed and into her single bed.

She had been just twenty-two when she married Tom Haskell. She was twenty-four now, a slender girl with finely chiseled features. Her hair was that very dark shade of brown hardly distinguishable from black, and she wore it long so that it reached almost to her shoulders. It was versatile hair; she could spin it into a French roll, braid it into adolescent pigtails, bind it up into a severe chignon or have it teased into something still more flamboyant. But most of the time she wore it long and flowing, very simple but very effective. That was the way she had always worn it as a girl, and she could remember sitting for hours at her mirror, brushing it herself or having it brushed systematically by her mother.

She was five and a half feet tall, narrow-waisted, with high firm breasts and narrow hips. Her complexion was quite light, her mouth small, her eyes a very deep blue, her forehead high. When men looked at her quickly their first impression was one of facile attractiveness; they had to look a second time to realize that she was beautiful. Her beauty was a quiet sort, less than dramatic, the beauty of refinement.

Born in Pennsylvania, in Scranton, a town she scarcely remembered except for vague recollections of smoky air and dirty little houses. When she was seven her father, after a careful analysis of his assets and liabilities, realized the impossibility of increasing the former to the point where they compared favorably to the latter and, after setting his house in some semblance of order, drove his car to the outskirts of town, and blew out his brains with a.45-calibre automatic pistol.

She remembered little of her father. He had smelled of liquor and cigars, he had held her on his lap and had told her wonderful stories.

That was about all.

After the funeral, after the settling of accounts, she and her mother had moved north to Syracuse, in New York State. She had aunts and uncles there. Her mother worked and Rhoda went to school, and during her third year in high school her mother went to the hospital for an operation, and just eighteen months later, and a week before Rhoda graduated from high school, her mother died.

There was a little insurance money and there was a scholarship, and she went to Harpur College, in Binghamton, and majored in English. She worked nights clerking at a drugstore and she worked summers counseling at a girls’ camp at Lake George. After four years she had a diploma. She took it to New York and carted it around from one publishing house to the next, looking for an editorial position. A trade journal publisher hired her as a receptionist.

She met Tom Haskell there. And dated him, and took his ring, and married him. And lived with him for two years in an apartment on East Eighty-Fifth Street just a few blocks from the park.

“You’re done with it now,” her lawyer had told her. “Glad to be Miss Rhoda Moore again?”

“Yes, very glad.”

A brief touch on the shoulder. “You’re free now. You had a rotten time and he was a pretty rotten man, but you don’t want to let the experience sour you on men in general. We’re not all bad. You’ll take it easy now, relax a little, start building a new life. Pretty soon you’ll meet some guy and get married again. You’re a young girl, Rhoda and you’ve got a full life ahead of you. That’s a cliché, I know, but it happens to be true. You’ll remarry, and you’ll choose a better one this time, and it’ll work for you.”

Remarry?

No. Never.

At seven-thirty she put down the book she had been reading. She took a towel and a bar of soap and went to the bathroom down the hall. It was unoccupied. She locked the door and showered quickly, working a rich lather into her smooth skin, rinsing herself thoroughly. She toweled herself dry and went back to her room and dressed. It was early October, a cool and comfortable time in the city. She put on a lime green sweater, black wool skirt, black shoes, and carried a black calf bag.

Her room was in a four-story brownstone on Grove Street in the Village. It was a quiet street in one of the quietest parts of the Village, a section happily lacking in coffee shops and bars and tourist traps. She walked over to Seventh Avenue, and ate breakfast at Riker’s on Sheridan Square. She sat at the counter with an empty stool to either side of her. The counterman, a balding man with tattoos on his forearms, tried to start a conversation about the weather. She brushed him off easily. She concentrated on her ham and eggs and tried not to think about the nightmare. She drank three cups of black coffee and smoked two cigarettes, then paid the check and left a tip and went out into the morning again.

She liked the Village. At first she had moved there only to avoid the subway. She hated the crush of bodies on the subway, the rancid underground air, the hurry, the hustle, the little men who grabbed at you. Her job was in the Village, and it had seemed worthwhile to pay a higher rental than she could afford for a small and unimposing room, in return for the pleasure of walking to work. She had tasted gracious living for two years as Tom’s wife; she could live without it now.

Bu the neighborhood had turned out to be more than a convenience. She liked the small shops, the narrow, crooked streets, the low buildings, the quiet people who led unhurried lives. She liked the Italian markets on Bleecker, the Armenian restaurant on Charles, the benches in Washington Square. Parts of the Village were too noisy, especially on weekends. Parts were too loudly commercial, too cluttered with tourists, too overwhelmed by bearded boys and bra-less girls toying with rebellion. She avoided those areas and loved what remained.

Her job was on one of those commercial streets. She worked at a small shop on Eighth Street near Macdougal called Heaven’s Door. Her employer was a quiet little man named Seguri Yamatari, a stoop-shouldered and myopic Japanese who eked out a tenuous living selling Oriental goods to tourists. He stocked prints, saki sets, salt and pepper shakers, long bamboo cigarette holders, ivory and teak Buddhas, remaindered sets of steak knives, small porcelain elephants, and similar functional and non-functional bits of bric-a-brac. Occasionally he would escort a customer into the back room, and the customer would leave five or ten minutes later, carrying a package wrapped carefully in brown paper. Rhoda had guessed that Mr. Yamatari carried on some clandestine backroom trade which had little to do with prints or saki sets or porcelain elephants, but she didn’t dig deeper.

She liked the man, and her work. He was always perfectly polite to her, calling her Rhoda or Loda depending upon his whim of the moment, and never much caring if she came to work late or spent extra time on her lunch hour. The work itself could hardly have been simpler. When customers came into the store (which did not happen too often) she waited on them. She showed them whatever they wanted to see, gave them whatever advice she guessed that they wanted to hear, and took their money and sent them on their way with their purchases in hand. For this Mr. Yamatari paid her sixty-five dollars a week. It was not much, but it was enough for her to live on.

This morning the shop was already open when she arrived. It almost always was. Mr. Yamatari seemed to be of that breed of tireless shopkeepers who never leave their shops; several times she had passed the shop well after midnight and had seen his light on in the back room. She went into the shop now, turned on lights, arranged counters, and prepared the place for customers.

It was a slow morning. Around ten, Mr. Yamatari brought out two cups of green tea and sat across a lacquered black desk from her. They drank tea together and Mr. Yamatari spoke politely about a book he had been reading and a movie he had seen. Half an hour later there was a sudden rush of customers. She sold two saki sets, one small screen, several fans, and a china tea service. A little later, a man came in and bought some dangling earrings. The pair he picked out was a terrible one, poorly made, poorly designed, and the ultimate in gaucherie.

“These are perfect,” he told her. “This is the kind of stuff my wife really goes for.”

Your wife must be a terrible person, she thought. But she wrapped the earrings, put them in a small gift box, and took his money.

Get up in the morning, have breakfast, go to work, have lunch, back to work, eat dinner, go home, change clothes, go to a movie, to a play, for a walk, home, to bed — until morning or until the dream made sleep impossible. A quiet life, she thought. A rather uneventful life. There were amusements to it, and there was pleasure, and there were high points and low points.

Sometimes she forgot how utterly alone she was.

That morning, she remembered. There was one young couple, a pair of just-marrieds who came in and shopped around endlessly, and finally bought a small ashtray with the figure of a running horse on it. And there was something so beautifully close about them that it caught at her heart and wrenched. She watched them holding hands, talking closely together, talking in whispers, and she thought of herself in her little bed in her little room, living an absolutely solitary life.

She managed to brush the thoughts away. It looked good on the surface, she told herself. The closeness, the lovey-love. But it didn’t work out. She knew.

There was something special about the blonde. She sensed it the minute the girl came into the shop, very tall, very blonde, very striking in a print blouse and Capri pants. The blonde was not a typical customer of Heaven’s Door.

She was not a tourist, for one thing. When you lived in the Village you developed a special sort of disdain for tourists — they were too noisy, too pushy, too tasteless, too stupid. The blonde was definitely not a tourist. While she didn’t fit any of the convenient stereotypes for Villagers, something about her made it quite obvious that she belonged here.

The blonde’s eyes were on Rhoda as she walked over toward her. She could almost feel the woman’s gaze, steady and confident, and it made her vaguely uncomfortable to be stared at that way. But the girl’s face softened into a smile as Rhoda drew close.

“May I help you?”

“You sure can,” the blonde said. “I’m looking for a gift for a friend. She’s fond of the Oriental motif.”

“A wedding present?”

The blonde seemed amused, “Oh, no,” she said. “Lord, not that, not for her. Although in a way—” She broke off suddenly and smiled again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have a tendency to go on talking to myself. No, not a wedding present. Nothing for her apartment. A personal present.”

“Jewelry?”

“Something like that.”

“A pair of earrings—”

“She doesn’t wear them.” The blonde picked up one of the white porcelain elephants, looked at it, put it back in place on the counter. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something rather nice. I was thinking of a necklace or a pendant, something like that. Would you have anything along those lines?”

She moved toward the jewelry counter and began to show the necklaces and pendants. But the blonde girl wasn’t looking at them. Her eyes were on Rhoda.

“I’m at a loss,” the girl was saying. “Could you select something? You have excellent taste. I like your sweater.”

“Why, I—”

“You pick,” the girl said. “Something that would make an appropriate farewell gift. For a very close friend.”

She chose a small green heart on a gold chain. The heart was veined with red like bloodstone. “It’s not very Oriental,” she began.

“It’s lovely.” The smile again. “And quite appropriate.”

That night she saw the blonde girl a second time. First she ate dinner alone at an Italian restaurant half a block from Heaven’s Door. She walked down Sixth Avenue to see what was playing at the Waverly but it was a picture she had already seen. She wandered around, then drifted over to Washington Square. The sun had gone down and the air was cool but not uncomfortable. There was a slight breeze. She sat alone on a bench on one of the less traveled paths that wound through the park and took a paperback novel from her bag. She read a few chapters, smoked a cigarette, started reading again.

When she looked up she saw the blonde girl. She was walking down another path about twenty yards away and had not noticed Rhoda. She walked slowly, her eyes lowered, and there was an air of infinite sadness about her. She might have been a character in some movie walking down the Champs Elysee in the rain with tears staining her face. That effect. Nothing so obvious, but the air.

Rhoda almost called to her, almost went to her. The girl had been friendly, but that was nothing extraordinary — customers were often friendly, and sometimes too much so. What was it? A feeling of compatibility, perhaps. A feeling that she and the blonde girl might be able to relax together, to talk, to have a meal or a cup of coffee together.

The blonde girl moved off out of sight; Rhoda went back to her book and tried to lose herself in it. She couldn’t.

She got up from the bench and went back to her room.

That night there was no dream. She slept soundly and woke easily, vitally anxious to begin the day. She had breakfast, and hurried to the shop. Nothing very much happened during the morning, but the time seemed to pass quickly anyway.

A few minutes after two that afternoon she sold a black lacquered commode for $79.95. The customer, a heavyish woman with bleached hair, paid cash for the commode and left delivery instructions. She lived somewhere on Long Island. When she had left the store, Mr. Yamatari danced out of the back room with an expression of glee on his face that was not inscrutable in the least.

“You sell it,” he said. “You sell that thing. You wonderful.”

“Well,” she said.

“Never think we sell it,” Mr. Yamatari said. “Cost... what? Sixteen dollar, fifty cent. Three year ago. Never think we sell the damn thing, and you sell it.”

She hadn’t exactly. The woman with the bleached hair had come in looking for some overpriced and foul object, poorly constructed and shabbily designed, and it had taken no special genius to guess that the black lacquered commode was just what she was searching for. From that point, the commode had sold itself.

“You get ten dollar extra this week,” Mr. Yamatari said expansively. “Ten dollar, no tax.”

That fixed her mood for the rest of the afternoon. She nearly sang as she moved around the shop. Customers who might have annoyed her did not get on her nerves, and when one woman’s young son smashed a china Buddha to smithereens she insisted that the woman forget the whole thing, that it was perfectly all right.

At four-thirty the blonde girl entered the store. Rhoda almost failed to recognize her at first, hadn’t thought of her since the night before. The blonde girl came directly over to her, and Rhoda thought that she was returning the little heart. The idea that her choice had been unsuccessful made her strangely unhappy, as though she herself had failed.

But the girl said, “I was just passing by. I thought I would come in.”

“I’m glad you did.” She hesitated. “Did your friend like the heart?”

“I don’t know. I mailed it to her.”

“Oh, you should have told me she lived out-of-town. I would have sent it right from here—”

“She’s in town,” the girl said. Her voice was oddly strained. “I just thought I would put it in the mail, just on the spur of the moment.” She paused, then looked directly into Rhoda’s eyes. Her own eyes were green, Rhoda saw.

“When do you finish work?”

“Why... five-thirty. Why?”

“Would you have dinner with me?”

“I—”

“I don’t feel like eating alone tonight,” the girl went on “I’d like company. Unless you’re busy—”

She remembered how the girl had looked the night before, in Washington Square. A study in loneliness. She said, “No, I’m not busy.”

“Then I’ll pick you up here? In an hour or so?”

“Well, I ought to change—”

“You look lovely,” the girl said. “We’ll just grab a bite in the neighborhood. About five-thirty?”

“All right.”

The blonde girl’s smile was almost radiant. “My name is Megan,” she said. “Megan Hollis, sometimes called Meg. But not too often because I don’t much care for it. And you’re—”

She gave her name.

“Rhoda,” Megan repeated. Her eyes took in Rhoda’s face, swept downward, then up again. “A nice name. I like it. It fits you.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Five-thirty,” Megan said. “I’ll see you then.”

Chapter Two

The restaurant was a small Italian place on Thompson Street. I was low-priced and off the beaten track, and the tourists never knew that it existed. They sat together across a small table in the rear. A candle burned in a Chianti bottle, dripping wax over the green sides of the wine bottle. There was a red and white checked cloth on the table, a portrait of Garibaldi on the far wall, an air of shabby-genteel antiquity permeating the room. They ate spaghetti with marinara sauce and drank Chianti at room temperature.

“I’m very glad you’re here,” Megan was saying. “I couldn’t face the idea of eating alone not tonight. And you’re good company.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you like this place? It’s always been a favorite of mine.”

“I like it very much.”

“More wine?”

“Well—”

But Megan was already filling both their glasses. “I’m a real sinner when it comes to wine,” she said, grinning. “I don’t like to drink otherwise, because I don’t like to get drunk. I hate the idea of losing control of myself, and if I drink hard liquor that usually happens.” She took a small sip of wine. “But this is different,” she went on. “Wine just gives you a happy and heady feeling. And tastes good, too. Have you been in the Village long, Rhoda?”

“Five months.”

“But you lived in the city before that, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “Uptown for almost three years. On the west side first, while I was working. And then on the east side after I got married.”

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“I’m not. It didn’t work out.”

“Divorce?”

“Annulment. I suppose it amounts to the same thing. Except that I have my maiden name, and that I don’t collect alimony.” She lowered her eyes. “I didn’t want his money,” she said.

“A couple of bad years, huh?”

“Yes.”

Megan touched her hand very briefly. The contact was vaguely reassuring to Rhoda, as if the touch of another sympathetic human being helped make the world that much safer for her.

“You poor kid. What happened?”

She hesitated.

“I’m sorry, I’m just like that. Forgive me, Rhoda. I’m the nosiest girl in the state. When I ask personal questions, just slap my wrist and tell me to mind my own damned business.”

“No, I—”

“Because I don’t mean to pry.”

“It’s all right.” She sipped her wine, savoring the sharp, dry bite of the Chianti. She set the glass down on the table and closed her eyes. Her head swam pleasantly; evidently the wine was having more of an effect on her than she realized. “He ran around,” she said finally. “Other women.”

“He must be out of his mind.”

She looked up, startled.

“A girl like you,” Megan explained. “Any man married to a woman like you would have to be crazy to look at another girl. Maybe you don’t know it, Rhoda, but you’re a beautiful woman.”

Unconsciously, she felt herself blushing. She covered her nervousness first with another longer sip of Chianti, then by lighting a cigarette. She drew on the cigarette, took smoke deeply into her lungs, then blew it out in a long thin column that hung hazily together as it floated toward the ceiling. Her eyes followed the column of smoke while it rose. Then they dropped to fix on the base of the wine bottle.

“I don’t know whose fault it was,” she said. “I... it was a big mistake from the beginning, the whole thing. I met him and he gave me a big rush and proposed, and I managed to fool myself into thinking I was in love with him.”

“That happens.”

“I guess I made it easy. I was all alone here in New York. I didn’t know anybody. And family, not here or anywhere else. He was nice to me, and he was successful and good-looking and he wanted to marry me, and I managed to talk myself into being in love with him.”

She finished her wine, barely noticed when Megan refilled her glass. “He wanted to sleep with me before we were married.”

“Did you ever—”

“No. Never.” More wine. She was a little bit sleepy now, her eyelids very heavy. But she felt warm and comfortable in a way she had not felt in far too long. She was completely at ease now. The full night’s sleep, the good day of work at the shop, the sale of the black lacquered commode, the dinner, the presence of Megan, the wine—

“I should have,” she said suddenly. “I should have slept with him. Then maybe I would have known better than to marry him. But I was a scared little girl and I held out for that wedding ring, and we were married, and the wedding night was a fiasco. It was terrible.”

“Don’t think about it,” Megan said.

But she couldn’t help it.

She remembered that evening all too clearly. First the wedding, with no family present, just a scattering of his friends and those few acquaintances of hers from the office, and two school friends of hers who had also wound up in New York. No one else.

An afternoon wedding. A shower of rice, and then the trip in his car, speeding north out of the city and into Connecticut. He had arranged it all, had made reservations at a lodge called Hadrian’s, had planned everything without consulting her to any great degree. And he drove quickly, purposefully, as if he could not wait an extra moment to get her in a bedroom and steal her virginity.

She was terrified. She sat in the seat beside him, scarcely listening to the words he spoke, her mind on the night ahead of them. He would make love to her. They would be in a room together, shades drawn and door latched, and she — his wife now — would have to let him do as he pleased with her. At school she had known girls who let boys make love to them, but she had never been one of those girls. She did not know what it would be like and she could not imagine it without fearing it.

“I love you, kitten,” he told her. “And you’re my wife now. My wife.”

My wife. That was what he was saying, that she was his, that she belonged to him in the eyes of God and man. My wife. Not we are married but you’re my wife, as though the whole sacrament of marriage had been a specifically acquisitive act on his part.

“Tonight,” he said, speaking her thoughts. “I’ve waited a long time for you, sugar. I can’t wait much longer.”

But why did he have to talk about it? She couldn’t even think about it without trembling inside. Why did he have to talk about it?

Once he put an arm around her. “My baby,” he said. “My wife, my little girl.”

My, my, my. Possession, ownership. God!

Hadrian’s was a massive stone building, its decor suggestive of medieval England. The high ceilings were supported by rough oak beams, the walls paneled, the doors composed of wide boards highly polished. At another time she might have been captivated by the lodge, receptive to its atmosphere, but now it only conjured up images of a castle lord taking the chastity of a young serf according to the ancient droit du seigneur. His wife.

A gray-haired bellhop showed them to their room. A large room with a view of a patterned garden in the rear. A large room with heavy furniture and a massive bed that, in her frightened eyes, dominated the room utterly. She could not take her eyes off that bed. It fascinated and repelled her, like a snake in the eyes of a bird. She wished it were smaller or less imposing. As it was, it seemed slightly obscene.

And he mistook her feelings. He grinned and touched her arm. “That’s the bed, all right,” he said. “You’re getting excited just looking at it, aren’t you?” He squeezed her arm. “Don’t worry, sugar. We’ll be in it soon enough.”

They would be in it. She wanted to throw back her head and scream. This couldn’t be real, couldn’t be happening to her. And how could he think she was excited, how could he read her fear as passion? He didn’t know her at all. They were a pair of strangers united in a farce called matrimony and nothing good could come of it.

She was sure of this.

“You must be hungry,” he said. “We’ll eat first. The food is supposed to be excellent here. We’ll have dinner and then we can come back upstairs.”

A reprieve. She would have a meal first — that was his concession to her virginity. She would be appeased with food, fattened for the slaughter, then taken upstairs and possessed. How could he think that she was hungry? Didn’t he know her at all? Didn’t he have the slightest degree of sensitivity, of empathy?

Downstairs, they ate in a dining room with paneled walls and heavy furniture. There was no cloth on the table, just well-weathered old wood. The food could have been good or bad and she would not have known. She never tasted it. She sat across from him and tried to make conversation but could barely do that, and she ate without being aware of what she was eating.

Then he hurried her upstairs

He carried her over the threshold. He was a tall man, a strong man, and as he lifted her in his arms she thought that this ought to be giving her a sense of security. But it had the opposite effect. She felt so very small and weak that she wanted to cry out.

“I love you,” he said.

She couldn’t answer.

“Don’t be afraid—”

When she saw him nude for the first time she began to tremble visibly. She was afraid, she couldn’t look at him. The sight of him, and the feel of his eyes on her own bare flesh, and the huge bed looming at her.

He lay for a long time on the bed with her, his hands busy with her body. She felt him touch her, his hands on her breasts, her legs, and she thought that this was supposed to be awfully exciting. But all his games of love had the opposite effect of what he intended. Every touch made her quiver, not with passion but with fear and distaste. Every kiss made her just that more aware of what was to come.

And she began to realize that this was wrong, that there was something specifically wrong with her. A woman was not supposed to be revolted by her husband’s caresses. Fear might be normal, fear at the onset of love, fear of pain and fear of the unknown. All virgins were frightened at first. But what she felt was a great deal more than the normal fear and anxiety of a virgin bride. Much more.

Finally, it was time. She felt her whole body go rigid, resisting him with the passive determination of a follower of Gandhi, and she felt his hands, strong, sure of themselves. And then a sharp stab of pain that seared her flesh and blinded her and brought tears to her eyes. She gasped from the pain, and he seemed to take that gasp for evidence of long-dormant passion.

The pain ebbed gradually but not completely, so that there was a subtle background of pain as an accompaniment to everything that followed. She lay inert, a living corpse, feeling nothing but the pain, feeling none of the pleasurable sensations you were supposed to feel when the pain receded and the man you loved made sweet love to you.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Afterward, when he had rolled aside and lay panting next to her, she stared up at the ceiling and wondered if this was really all there was to it. It seemed so small, so useless, so... so unpleasant. There had to be something wrong with her, something very wrong with her.

“I love you,” he said.

She said nothing.

“Baby?” His hand on her shoulder. “I hurt you, didn’t I?”

“I’m all right.”

“I wanted it to be good for you. But... well, maybe it has to be painful the first time, for a woman. How do you feel?”

Dead, she thought. Dead and turning cold.

“It’ll be better for you,” he said gently. “It’ll be better.”

It never was.

They walked through cool streets now, She was smoking a cigarette. It burned down until it began to burn her fingers, and she dropped it quickly and swayed, trying to step on the butt. Her foot missed the cigarette and she giggled. She tried again and missed again, and Megan stepped on the cigarette for her and they walked on.

“I drank too much,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Such lovely wine. Such lovely food, but such very lovely dovely wine. Oh, I’m drunk, I’d better get home, Megan.”

“Not like this.”

She stopped, stared owlishly at the blonde girl. “No?”

“No. First we’ll walk off some of this wine. Then you can come up to my place for some coffee. You need to unwind, Rhoda. If you went home now I would worry about you. You might start to cross a street and decide halfway there to try walking under a car.”

“I’m not that drunk, am I?”

“Almost.”

She giggled again. They had crossed a street and they had turned a corner, and she didn’t recognize the neighborhood. A narrow crooked street, mostly residential with a handful of first-floor shops. Little brick buildings three stories tall and brownstones four or five stories. A dark sky overhead, starless. A chill to the night air. Megan’s hand holding hers.

“I’m sorry I’m so drunk,” she said.

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have kept filling your glass. I can drink wine all night long without getting much of a glow, and I have a habit of forgetting that not everyone has the same kind of hollow leg. How do you feel now?”

She considered this. “My head,” she said solemnly, “weighs less than a trio of feathers.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s beautiful. I could walk forever, I think.”

“I live on the next block. Feel like coming up for coffee?”

Megan’s building was much nicer than the one she lived in, cleaner and newer and with less of a transient air about it. Yet none of the Villagey charm was lost. The old-fashioned atmosphere of a brownstone was maintained, merely enhanced by the renovation. The hallway was thickly carpeted, the walls freshly painted, the air fresh-smelling. Inside, the apartment was a perfect reflection of Megan herself. It was done simply but elegantly in blues and greens. The furniture was modern without being garish. There were surrealistic paintings on the walls, a few bits of sculpture, a pastel of Megan.

Megan, she knew, was an interior decorator. She worked free-lance, taking an occasional job and earning a small living without working very hard at it. She seemed to be good at her work. Rhoda was impressed.

“Beautiful,” she said. “Everything is beautiful.”

There was a bedroom, small but adequate. There was a minute kitchen and a small bathroom. The living room was quite large, with a part of it set up as a sort of alcove with a round teak table and four chairs. They had coffee there. Megan made thick, strong coffee and they both drank it black and smoked cigarettes. Rhoda did most of the talking. She had not really talked to anyone in far too long. The wine had loosened her up, and the coffee had not yet sobered her, and Megan was easy to talk to. She found herself opening up, found the words spilling out.

She talked about her marriage, about two years with Tom Haskell, two years that had never worked out for her at all. Sex had been the main problem, but from it all sorts of other problems had quickly sprung into existence. With the realization that she could not enjoy sleeping with Tom came the realization that she should never have married him in the first place, that she did not want to be a wife at all. And from that step it was only a short leap to the knowledge that she did not love him, that she had never loved him.

The sex part did not improve. After the first time there was no pain, but there was no pleasure either. Tom would take her — at ever less frequent intervals — and he would move around on top of her like a stallion, while she lay beneath him, the joyless recipient of his passion. Sometimes she could make herself believe that it was his fault, that his ineptitude as a lover was responsible for her failure to enjoy lovemaking. Other times she could not escape the conclusion that the fault was her own. She was a cold woman, a woman incapable of passion, and that sort of woman should have the sense to remain unmarried.

And yet she was not sexless. Sometimes she would be sitting home during the afternoon, sitting alone with a book, sitting listening to music, sitting perched in front of the television set while the monotony of a game show or soap opera went on in front of her. And a wave of desire would pass through her body, a rush of warmth that could only be the beginnings of lust.

This never lasted, nor was it ever directed toward her husband. It lacked direction, this flow of passion — it was anonymous, aimed at nothing and no one, quickly over and done with. She could never feel desire for Tom or for any other man, but these occasional spasms of desire made her aware that she was a sexual being, somehow.

“We never had much of a chance,” she told Megan. “Tom was a normal man. Maybe some men can live with a cold wife without caring. He wasn’t that kind of man. We bad fights, pretty horrible fights. He wanted me to go to a psychiatrist. I–I wanted to, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Megan squeezed her hand.

“I knew he was seeing other women. There was no reason why he shouldn’t. I was almost glad, after awhile, because that meant he wouldn’t bother me that way. We settled into this flat dead life. Sometimes he came home for dinner and stayed home, and we would watch television together or go to a movie. Sometimes he stayed downtown and didn’t get home until three or four in the morning. He would come home smelling of some other woman.”

“Heavens.”

“It might even have lasted. He never asked for a divorce, I think he hoped I would turn into a woman again.”

“You are a woman.”

“You know what I mean. He could still make love to me. I never refused him. That was one thing, at least. I never refused him. I thought something might happen, that it might change and it would be good for me. I couldn’t quite believe it, but I hoped so. Once I thought I was pregnant.”

“What happened?”

“I wasn’t, that’s all. I was terrified, because I knew that if I had a baby I was stuck, that the marriage would stay that way.”

She crossed the living room, walked over to the window. The blinds were drawn. She opened them part way and looked out at a battery of lights across a courtyard. Megan was at her side but she did not turn to look at the blonde girl.

“I’m running off at the mouth,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“Is it the wine? Why am I telling you so much?”

“Because you’ve got to get it out of your system.”

“You’re easy to talk to. You’re good to listen. Tom didn’t fight the annulment. He didn’t argue at all. It was something he would never have suggested, I don’t think. If he could stand living with me for two years like that, I guess he could have stood it forever.”

“Rhoda—”

“But he went along with it once I let him know it was what I wanted. He said he hoped I would be happy. He said I would probably like it better living alone, because then I could crawl into my shell and hibernate my way through life. He apologized for saying that. He was wrong anyway, because I don’t want to sleep my life away. I hate being lonely and I’m alone all the time and I dream bad dreams. The same dream, night after night. Running and being chased, that kind of dream.”

She turned from the window. Megan was looking at her, infinite pity in her eyes.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I know.” A sigh. “I’m frigid.”

“No.”

“Of course I am. An iceberg. A female zombie.”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Megan looked at her. “You really don’t know, do you? You really don’t know what you are.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t. You poor kid, you poor sweet kid, you don’t understand, do you?”

And Megan kissed her.

Chapter Three

Megan’s hands upon her shoulders, Megan’s lips against her own. She stood, stunned, and was kissed. And Megan ended the kiss and took a short step backward. Rhoda stared at her wide-eyed. She did not know what was happening.

“Do you see?”

“See what?”

“Oh God,” Megan said. “God in heaven.”

“Why did you kiss me?”

“Because I wanted to. Very much.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re beautiful. Sometimes you move as though you don’t know that. You are beautiful, Rhoda.”

“Why did you kiss me?”

“Because I’m in love with you.”

Her heart was pounding. She didn’t understand, did not even want to understand. She said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why not?”

“Because... because we’re both—”

“Yes?”

“Both girls.”

“So what?”

“But—

Megan touched her shoulder. The contact was electric, slightly frightening. “You’d better sit down,” she said softly. “There are some things you have to hear.”

They were sitting on the couch. Rhoda wanted a cigarette very badly. She took one from Megan’s pack and lit it and wondered why her hand was shaking. She seemed to be afraid but did not know what she was afraid of. Megan loved her, Megan had kissed her. She did not understand anything.

Megan said, “There’s no way to say this. No way at all. I don’t know how to get started, Rhoda.”

She waited.

“Do you know what a lesbian is?”

“Of course. I’m not a child.” And then suddenly she stiffened and the cigarette dropped from her fingers onto the couch. She snatched it up, drew on it, then leaned over to stub it out in the ashtray. She could not believe it.

“Are you—”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes. “Lesbians are girls who wear dungarees and men’s jackets,” she said levelly. “Lesbians have low voices and short hair and they swear a lot. You see them at night on Macdougal Street, walking along arm in arm. They have a mannish walk. They look like men, act like men.”

“Some of us are like that.”

“But you—”

“I’m not that kind, no. I’m not a butch. But I’m gay.”

“Gay?”

“Homosexual.”

“I can’t believe it. You’re not like that, you’re a woman.”

“Yes, I’m a woman. So are you.”

“But—”

Megan touched her arm very briefly, then withdrew her hand. “Let me talk,” she said. “This is hard to say. Will you let me talk and try to get things straight? This isn’t easy.”

She nodded.

Megan said, “Not all people are the same. Ordinary people are — normal. Ordinary women fall in love with men and marry them and sleep with them. But some woman... some women can’t love men that way. Some woman fall in love not with men but with other women. They don’t have to be mannish to do this. They can be completely feminine, even as you and I.”

She wanted to say something. All she could think was that Megan had said she loved her, that Megan wanted to sleep with her. This seemed to be a fact, a very definite fact, and yet it was so startling that she could not entirely accept it as such. Her mind fought with this thought, struggled with it, and she could not think of anything else. Megan loved her. Megan wanted to sleep with her.

It was incredible.

“That’s the way I am, Rhoda. A lesbian. I can’t have sex with men, I can’t find them attractive, I can’t bear the thought of all those things the world calls normal. I know that they are normal, but they are not normal for me. For me, for Megan Hollis, sexual relations with a man would be a perversion.

“Something quite different is normal for me. For me normal sex is sex with other women. Normal love is love for other women. Some people find this disgusting. Others are afraid of it. A great many people think that it’s morally wrong, a sin, evil. But I know that it’s right for me. It would be sinful for me to make love to a man, it would be evil and everything else. I am a lesbian.”

She looked at Megan, at the blonde hair and fine features. She looked at Megan’s lips and remembered their touch when Megan kissed her. How had it felt? Soft, warm. How had she felt about it? She realized that she did not know. She had been too confused to react, favorably or unfavorably.

“I think that you are like me, Rhoda.”

“Oh, no.”

“I think so.”

“Why?”

Megan lowered her eyes. “A feeling, partly. When I saw you I felt it. I wandered into your shop just by accident. I was looking for a gift for a girl I had been... very close to.”

“A girl you loved?”

“Yes, a girl I loved. You asked me if it was a wedding gift that I wanted. Do you remember that I smiled at the thought? And in a way it was a wedding gift. Not that Carolyn was getting married. Girls like us don’t marry. But Carolyn had been living here, and then she fell in love with another girl and left me, and that was my farewell present to her. A very appropriate one. A heart, jealousy-green, with red streaks like blood.”

“Did you love her very much?”

“Very much.”

“And you came back to see me today because you wanted — to make love to me?”

“Partly that. Partly because I liked you and I wanted to know you. I was surprised when I realized you weren’t an overt lesbian. And then I figured you out.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, I decided that you were gay without knowing it. The instincts are there. The way you reacted toward your husband, the way heterosexual relations did nothing for you. You were a lesbian but no one had shown you the way.”

“Maybe I’m just frigid.”

“No.”

“You seem so certain. How do you how that?”

“You know it yourself. You’ve had sexual feelings. You’re a sexual person, Rhoda. It shows in the way you talk and the way you move and everything else. It shows in your own awareness of your own body. You couldn’t possibly be sexless.” She smiled. “There are sexless people, Rhoda. I’ve met some of them, women with no feelings in their bodies. Some of them play with lesbianism when nothing else works for them, and lesbianism leaves them just as cold. They can’t love, they don’t have love living inside them. I’ve met them and I know what they’re like. But you’re not like that, Rhoda.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do.”

She lit another cigarette. Her hands were steadier now. She felt excitement percolating within herself, but she had no immediate fear, no odd feeling of anxiety. The discussion was a calm and cool one now. They were talking about her sexual impulses, analyzing her possible homosexuality in a slightly dispassionate fashion, and she was quite relaxed about it. The undercurrent of tension and excitement was not unpleasant or disturbing.

“You were made to love,” Megan told her, “You tried to give that love to a man. You know how impossible that is. Why don’t you try giving it to me?”

“I—”

“You can’t bury it. You’ve been trying to do that. You know how it works out.”

“It hasn’t worked out so badly.”

“Hasn’t it? You have the same nightmare over and over again. You live a lonely life and you feel the loneliness of it. You’ve been trying to starve your own need for love and you need to give love and you need to receive it. It’s a stubborn force, Rhoda. It won’t let itself be starved out. It’s too real a need to be dismissed that easily.”

She started to say something, to offer up some objection, then changed her mind. She smoked her cigarette and asked if there was any coffee left.

“I’ll get some.”

Megan brought back two cups of coffee. The coffee was hot and strong. Rhoda sipped hers, set the cup down in the saucer. She took a last drag on her cigarette and put it out. A line from Eliot — I have measured out my life in coffee spoons. In coffee spoons, in cigarette butts, in days awake and nights asleep. She had been measuring out her own life, parceling it out piece by piece. Years were passing, filled with nothing, and she was twenty-four years old and unutterably alone.

How much was Megan offering her? And how much would it cost her to accept Megan’s offer?

She sipped more coffee. “I’m all lost,” she said.

“Poor girl.”

“Poor girl. Yes. I had such a sweet time tonight. Dinner, the wine, being with you. I haven’t had an evening like that since I left Tom. Or since longer than that. I needed it, the friendship, all of it. I thought you would be my friend.”

“I am your friend.”

“I thought that was all you wanted.”

“I want that and more. I want to be your friend. And your lover.”

“My lover.”

“Yes.”

“What would we do? I don’t understand.”

“Does it matter?”

“I—”

“I would make love to you,” Megan said, “I would make you feel like what you are, like a woman made for love. I would show you the dark side of the moon, I would make you laugh and cry. And we would be close and warm and nothing would matter, nothing at all.”

“You make it sound beautiful.”

“It will be beautiful.”

“Will?”

“Will. Because you can’t deny yourself the world, Rhoda. You can’t cut out a part of yourself. And sooner or later you’ll realize this.”

“I can’t.”

“You will.”

“I can’t.” She lit another cigarette, nervous again now, afraid of what she might do, more afraid of what she might desire to do. She smoked nervously and missed the ashtray when she went to duck her ashes. She tried to scoop up the ashes and brushed them onto the floor in her clumsiness. Megan told her to forget it. She looked down at the ashes on the rug and thought that she was going to cry. She didn’t know why she ought to cry but she felt tears welling up behind her eyes and was afraid they would spill out momentarily.

“I feel so funny,” she said.

“Of course you do. Poor girl, you have to look at yourself all differently now. It’s a new world, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“A brand new world. Right now it’s frightening because it’s so unfamiliar. When you learn to know it you’ll find out that you belong in it, that it’s the only world for you. The world of shadows, the twilight world. There are a great many clichés for it. But it’s my world. And yours, Rhoda.”

“I feel like crying.”

“Go ahead.”

“I—”

“Let it out. Don’t try to hold it in, baby, just relax and let it out. You can cry in front of me, Rhoda.”

She cried. She couldn’t help it.

“I have to go home, Megan.”

She was standing now, her tears washed away, fresh lipstick on her lips. It was late and she was tired and frightened and she had to go home.

“Stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Sleep here.”

“Oh, Megan, no I can’t. I honestly can’t.”

Megan was holding her arm. “Don’t go now,” she said. “It’s late and the streets are dark.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“And you’ll go back to a sterile little room and lie awake all night. Or fall asleep and dream bad dreams. You can’t be alone tonight, Rhoda. Too much has happened to you already. You need a settling time, a time to digest it all, and you ought to have somebody near you. Letting yourself cry was part of it. Being with someone is another part of it. You’ve had quite a night. You got drunk and you got shocked, and you’ve been forced to start seeing things in a different light, and this is no time for you to be alone.”

“But I can’t—”

“What?”

“I can’t let you make love to me, Megan.”

Megan smiled. “You silly girl.”

“I—”

“Silly thing. I in not propping you, honey. No propositions. I want you to stay here. That’s all.”

“Is it?”

“Yes” Megan turned from her, walked over to the window. She said, “I don’t want that kind of a seduction scene, baby. I’m not the rapist type, really I’m not. I’m no sex maniac. If I had wanted it that way I would have let you stay drunk. I wouldn’t have poured a bucket of coffee into you. I would have poured in some more wine, and before you knew what was happening I’d have had your clothes off and I’d have had my way with you, as the books so coyly put it.”

Megan turned, faced her again. “But that’s not exactly my style. I don’t want to make sex to you, I want t make love to you. And I have to be honest. I’m not good at deception, not at all. I could have let tonight go by without tipping my hand at all, you know. I could have let a very firm friendship come first, and then by the time you found out I was a lesbian you would have been too emotionally involved to resist me. Believe me, I could have done that. But I’m not like that.”

Megan smiled gently. “I want you to sleep here. That’s all, Rhoda. You’ll take the bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s a comfortable couch. If you want to talk, I’ll be here to talk to. If you have bad dreams you can wake me and I’ll hold your hand and tell you that everything is all right. Whatever you want, I’ll be here.”

She didn’t say anything. Her heart was beating furiously now. She felt choked inside. A lump in her throat, tremors in her hands. She swallowed.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you trust me?”

“I trust you.”

“Then what are you afraid of?”

She swallowed again. “Maybe myself.”

“Don’t ever be. Will you stay?”

But she didn’t sleep in the bed. She insisted on that much. She took the couch and Megan took the bed. They sat talking for a few more minutes, and then Megan gave her a nightgown and she went into the bathroom and got undressed and washed up and put on the nightgown and went back to the living room. Megan had made up the couch as a bed. Megan looked at her, and she felt Megan’s eyes flash very briefly over her body in the nightgown, and she felt suddenly self-conscious, as though she were nude and a man was looking at her.

“If you can’t sleep—”

“I’ll sleep.”

“If you can’t, wake me. If there’s anything you want, wake me.”

“All right.”

She got into bed. Megan hovered over her, and for a tiny moment she thought that the blonde girl was going to stoop over and kiss her goodnight. This did not happen. Instead Megan straightened up and turned out the lights and left the room. A door opened and closed. Later she heard water running, and then doors opened and closed and Megan called goodnight to her, and then there was silence.

She couldn’t sleep.

Who was she? What was she? She did not know. She tossed all these questions around in her mind and none of the answers came. In the beginning, the world had told her that she was a woman. Then she had learned that she was not a woman, that she was frigid and sexless. And now Megan was telling her that she was something else.

A lesbian.

She tried to imagine herself with Megan. It was hard to do. She did not know what Megan would do to her, what sort of love they would make together. She remembered Megan’s words: I would make love to you. I would make you feel like what you are, like a woman made for love. I would show you the dark side of the moon. I would make you laugh and cry. And we would be close and warm and nothing would matter, nothing at all.

A poem, she thought. A poem. And she let herself imagine not the mechanics of it, but the feeling of it, the feeling of sharing love with a woman, with Megan. It seemed somehow less strange than it had seemed at first. Now it seemed possible.

But could she? Could she let herself do it? It was forbidden. It was wrong. It was not normal, and all the gods in all the heavens made normalcy a religion in itself. Could she stand that kind of life? Could she be that kind of person without dying a little inside?

It would be hard. But was it any easier to be the kind of person she was now? She lived a life that was no great pleasure, a life without a future, a life that promised eternal sameness. She measured out that life in coffee spoons and cigarette butts and lonely days and lonelier nights. Megan was offering a way out of that. Megan was offering a life that might be better.

Did she dare to try?

Did she dare not to?

Once, she almost slept. She felt herself drifting off, and she may have dozed, and then she was awake again. You can trust me. I won’t do anything that you don’t want me to do.

What did she want?

She fought with herself. And there was a point at last when she knew that sleep was impossible, that a great many things were impossible. That, for the moment if not forever, only one thing was possible.

The nightgown rustled gently as she walked. She opened Megan’s door and slipped quietly into Megan’s room. She spoke Megan’s name.

“I’m awake, dear.”

She took a small breath. “I’m ready,” she said, moving over to Megan’s bed. “I’m ready. Love me.”

Chapter Four

At first she thought, Oh, no, it won’t work. Another mistake. It won’t work. Not at all. Because nothing touches me, nothing reaches me, and I remain forever detached.

Megan held her close. They lay side by side and she saw Megan’s eyes shining catlike in the darkness, and she felt the gentle pressure of Megan’s breasts against her own. Megan kissed her, lightly, and Megan’s legs moved to brush against her own legs and thighs. Another kiss, and again the pressure of Megan’s warm body.

Something familiar, something known. A fine female body against her own body. A partner not different, but similar. Megan’s mouth, soft and faintly sweet like her own mouth, meeting hers gently but firmly. Megan’s chest, not bristling with hairs and corded with muscles, but soft and smooth and warm and blooming with the sweet luxury of Megan’s full breasts.

Then knowledge came, knowledge, awareness. She was not a cold woman. She was not frigid. She was responding, going soft and liquid inside in the silky mechanism of sexual response, and this response was a specific one, a special response to Megan.

There was a short period then of fear, of tension, of fright. For two years she had meticulously buried sexual response under a deadening blanket, and the sudden change scared her. She had spent too much time schooling herself another way, teaching herself that she was dead and empty inside. Now Megan was teaching her to be a woman, and she was afraid to give in either to Megan or to herself.

“Easy, baby. Easy, Rhoda, darling Rhoda. I love you and you love me and we are together. My flesh and your flesh. Easy my darling.”

Megan held her close, patted her, kissed her. And warmth bloomed again, less tentatively than before, coming with a rising tide of passion that swept her up and would not be beaten down. She did not fight it any longer. She was caught, caught as she now ached to be caught, and the sweep of passion held no fear and brooked no argument. She was alive, dizzily alive.

Megan’s hands moved all over her body, touching, petting, sending shivers of delight through flesh that had gone far too long without this sweet delight. They were friendly hands, they were familiar hands. They did not probe or invade. They came gently and they were welcomed by the flesh they touched.

“Rhoda, Rhoda.”

Until she was lying on her back, eyes closed, arms heavy at her sides, her whole body limp as fallen flowers. Megan touched all the secret parts of her woman’s body and made them open to the light of love. Megan held her breasts and kissed them. Megan’s hands and lips stroked desperate tides in her liquid flesh.

More.

The climax was beyond belief. She had never understood the mechanics of this glimpse of heaven, had never heard the word and been able to translate it into terms compatible with her own sexuality. But now it was happening — a sweet explosion, a lovely eruption, a halfway touch of death.

Megan’s voice, from far away, said, “Sleep, darling, sleep,” and she slept.

“What time is it?”

“Four-thirty.”

“In the morning? How long did I sleep?”

“An hour. Maybe a little more.”

She yawned luxuriously. A bedsheet covered to the throat and a pillow cushioned her head. Megan was sitting at the side of the bed, wearing a pale green robe and smoking a cigarette. Rhoda started to sit up in bed. The sheet slipped away and bared her body to the waist. She snatched at it in embarrassment, then realized the inconsistency of being embarrassed in front of Megan. She let the sheet fall.

“I can’t believe it,” she said slowly.

“It happened.”

“God, I know. I couldn’t have dreamed it. I don’t have such heavenly dreams. I never knew.”

“What you are?”

“And what I was missing. I can’t believe it, it’s a new world. I must be babbling like an idiot.”

“No. Like a girl who just became a woman.”

“Mmmmm.” She took a cigarette, let Megan light it for her. “I feel slightly sinful,” she said. “Is that bad?”

“Does it bother you?”

“No. I have the feeling that it ought to, but it doesn’t. I rather like it, this sinful feeling.”

She ducked ashes in the ashtray on the bedside table, then propped her pillow behind her and sat back against it and drew again on the cigarette. She closed her eyes and bathed in the memory of Megan’s lovemaking. She opened them and looked at Megan’s body concealed by the folds of the green robe. She had a sudden urge to see Megan unclothed, to know the blonde girl’s body. And she looked down at her own breasts, and then at Megan again, and she leaned over and put out her cigarette.

“I have to work tomorrow,” she said.

“On Saturday?”

“Six days a week, nine to five-thirty. Number One employee for Mr. Yamatari-san.”

“Then we’d better get to sleep.”

“But I’m not tired,” she said. And she turned away and said, “I want to see you, I want to hold you. I want to look at you without any clothes on or any robe. I want to touch your body. I want so much to love you, Megan.”

“Baby—”

She turned to face Megan again. “I don’t know anything,” she said miserably. “I have to learn everything.”

“Like what?”

“Like how to make love.”

“You’ll do fine, baby.”

“But I don’t know anything—”

Megan’s hand, cool and soft, on the side of her face. “Don’t worry. And don’t be in such a rush to learn. The first times are so sweet and warm, so new. It’s wonderful to discover yourself. Don’t hurry past those times. Let it come slowly.”

“I want to be good for you.”

“You are. You couldn’t help being good for me.”

“I think I love you, Megan.”

“Oh, baby.”

She sat up straight. “What do we do now? Do you love me, Megan?”

“God, yes.”

“Well, what do we do? That other girl, the girl you bought the pendant for—”

“Forget her.”

“Did she live here? With you?”

“Yes.”

She thought about it. No more being alone, no more sleeping in that narrow bed, no more living in that little joyless room alone by herself. She would live in this apartment, with Megan. She would sleep every night in this big bed, with Megan.

“I love you,” she said.

“My darling.”

“Take off your robe. I want to see you.”

And Megan stood up and let the robe slip off her shoulders. The robe fell to the floor and Rhoda let her eyes take in the full perfection of the blonde girl’s body. Arms and shoulders tanned golden by the sun. Firm and large and flawless breasts, larger than Rhoda’s own. A narrow waist, a flat stomach. Wide and almost shameless hips. Long, long, long legs.

“My love,” she said. And she said the words not so much to Megan as to herself. This was her love, this was the person whom she loved. This goddess, high breasted and gloriously blonde, this was the person who warmed her and excited her.

“Lie with me,” she said.

The phrase seemed slightly biblical. Lie with me. As Adam knew Eve, and she conceived and bore—

Megan was beside her. In the bed. Megan’s body was next to her own body, close to her own body, and she could feel the heat of the blonde girl, could smell the perfume of her. The lights were on this time. Before, they had come together in darkness. Now she could see the sweet flesh of the girl who had made sweet love to her.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said.

“Just kiss me.”

“I—”

She took Megan in her arms, drew Megan close. At first she kissed her very tentatively, not knowing quite how to go about it, not wanting to do anything that wasn’t good form. Her arms were around Megan and her lips touched Megan’s lips gently and briefly, and she felt Megan’s body against her own, and all at once she knew what to do, knew precisely how she ought to behave.

Her tongue moved to caress Megan’s lips. Megan’s mouth opened in response, and Rhoda’s tongue probed that mouth, stretching the kiss and turning it into something much greater than any kiss had ever been. And she thought suddenly that Tom had taught her to kiss this way, or had tried, and that she had thought it disgusting and unpleasant. But now it was neither, now it was good.

Her hands moved, moved instinctively. And she kissed Megan and taught herself the contours of Megan’s body, and she looked into Megan’s half-lidded eyes and saw how they swam in passion, and she knew that she would be able to learn all that had to be learned, that in her she already seemed to know all the secrets of love. She would be good. She would make Megan happy.

Afterward, she never quite dropped off to sleep. She dozed lightly. Outside, the sky grew light with the overture of dawn. She stayed in bed until seven-thirty, then slipped out soundlessly and went into the living room to dress. She looked at the couch, all made up with sheets and a blanket, and she thought how she had tried to sleep there, how she had fought a battle with herself and had neither lost or won, this depending upon one’s point of view.

She had won, she knew. She had gained a world, and all that she had given up was better lost. Loneliness, frigid independence, unsound self-sufficiency — these were gone, and she was better off without them. So that battle on the narrow couch had been a victory.

She dressed quickly, went back to the bedroom to look for Megan. The blonde girl was sleeping soundly. In the kitchen she found a pad and pencil. She wrote: My love, I’m off to work. Meet me for lunch, if you can. Or meet me after work and help me move in with you. She paused, chewed on the end of the pencil, then added: I feel so wonderful, so very wonderful. I can’t believe it. I did not think I would ever be this gloriously happy. See what you’ve done to me? You’ve got me running off at the mouth. Not at the mouth, I guess, because I’m writing this, not saying it. Running off at the pencil? Oh, I’m silly. I ought to tear up this silly note and start over. I love you, I truly do.

She was outside on the street before she realized that she did not know where she was. Megan had told her what street they were on, but she was bubbling with wine at the time and the street name had not sunk in. She memorized Megan’s house number, then walked to the nearest corner. Megan lived on Cornelia Sheet, she saw and she was now at the corner of Cornelia and Bleecker, which meant that she was only four or five blocks from her own room. She had probably walked past Megan’s building a dozen times, never dreaming she would know a girl who lived inside.

Not so strange, she realized. The Village was not so very large, and she had walked down all its streets at one time or another. Now she headed over to Seventh Avenue, found a diner and had a quick breakfast, smoked several cigarettes and drank three cups of black coffee. She had had hardly any sleep at all during the night, and yet she was somehow not at all tired. She paid her check and hurried off to work.

The shop was as she had left it, the work itself the same as always. And yet everything was entirely different this morning and she knew it, could feel it in the air and in herself. Her step was quicker and lighter, her voice firmer and easier when she spoke. People seemed different — more human, even. They were the same hurrying tourists with the same lack of taste as always, and she knew this, but she found herself relating to them in a different fashion.

It took no stroke of genius to guess what was responsible for the change. The world had not turned suddenly rosy; it was she who was wearing rose-colored glasses. And all of this had come about because of the night with Megan. It was that simple. All at once the words to all the silly popular songs seemed to make sense.

Megan met her for lunch. They sat in a booth around the comer and ate hamburgers. Megan said, “I got your note. You’re sweet.”

“It was a silly note.”

“I loved it. Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You were sleeping so well.”

“I didn’t see the note at first. I was afraid you had left me.”

“Why? How could I leave you?”

“I thought you were sorry for what we had done. It’s hard to face the fact that you are out of step with the rest of the world. Society has a pretty picture of normal people and an ugly picture of us. Homosexuals are supposed to be sick or twisted or evil. When you grow up believing that, when the image is reinforced at every turn, it’s hard to wake up and realize that you’re one of the sick and evil and twisted creatures. I didn’t know how you would react.”

“I don’t know myself.”

“How do you feel?”

“Beautiful.”

“You should feel beautiful. Because you are.”

The morning had hurried by; the afternoon crawled. She kept waiting for it to be five-thirty so that Megan would come for her. Now that she was set to move in with Megan, the idea of remaining for an extra moment in her furnished room was horrible. The squalor of the room did not bother her. The room was sterile and shabby compared to Megan’s apartment, but this shabbiness had never seemed to depress her unduly. It was more that the move was a move from the old life to the new, from life alone to life with Megan.

She remembered the apartment she had shared with Tom during those years of marriage. It had been a pleasant place in a good neighborhood, expensive to rent and expensively furnished, although the decor had been generally unimaginative. And yet she had never liked that apartment. There were times when she actively loathed it, times when she was on the verge of begging Tom to move to some other place in some other area of the city.

The apartment itself had not been at fault. It was the life she led there which made her loathe the place itself. A reaction to an apartment, she thought, was an intensely personal thing. It was based less on the place itself than on the life one lived there. She had spent a bad two years with Tom; it would have been inconceivable that she could have liked the place where those two years were spent. And she had spent a lonely and wretched batch of months on Grove Street, so that room could only emerge as a symbol of loneliness.

She had spent the finest night of her life at Megan’s apartment on Cornelia Street. How could she help falling in love with the apartment, as with Megan?

Megan was there at five-thirty. They hurried through crowded streets to her rooming house and climbed the stairs and went into her room. Megan looked around the little cubicle and shook her head.

“This isn’t you,” she said.

“It was. For awhile. I was someone else before last night.”

“A bud that hadn’t opened.”

“I’m open now.” She felt giddy, ready to break out into foolish laughter. She danced into the middle of the room and threw her arms wide apart. “I’m a flower,” she said. “See my pretty petals? I’m a flower in full bloom.”

“You’re a little idiot whom I love.”

“So kiss me. Be a bee and steal my precious nectar.”

“I think you’re a little bit crazy.”

“Is that bad?”

“Not very.”

“I feel so young,” she said. She got a suitcase from the closet, opened it on the bed and began throwing things into it. “I’m twenty-four and I feel about seventeen. How old are you, Megan?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Just a year older than me. You know so much more.”

“Clean living.”

“You make me feel like a child, sometimes. Have you slept with very many girls?”

“You’re the only one.”

“Seriously. Have you?”

A pause. “Not so many.”

“Is that something I shouldn’t ask? I’m sorry. I just want to know everything about you, that’s all. Were you ever with a man?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t married or anything?”

“Hardly.” A long sigh. “I was young, very young, and in college, and there was another girl, and we made love. I was too young to know what I was doing, I guess. And then I was very scared. You know how it is at that age. The most important thing on earth is to be like everybody else, and here I was so obviously different from everybody else. I couldn’t let myself believe that I was really different. I managed to convince myself that it was a question of adjustment. That I could be perfectly normal if I tried hard enough.”

“Heavens.”

“Uh-huh. Oh, I tried, all right. I very nearly got pregnant in the process. I tried with half a dozen different men, tried my damnedest to feet something more profound than boredom and disgust while they grunted over me.”

“And it didn’t work.”

“Of course not. It took a while for me to understand what I am, and to accept it. It may be hard for you.”

“It isn’t now.”

“But it may be.”

There were three suitcases and an armful of coats and dresses. They carried everything downstairs and Megan hailed a cab. They rode to her building. Rhoda paid the driver and they carried the suitcases and loose clothes inside and upstairs to Megan’s apartment. Their apartment now. The Apartment of Megan Hollis and Rhoda Moore.

She took half the closet and one of the two dressers in the bedroom. She hung her toothbrush in the holder in the bathroom, put one of her towels over a towel bar. She came out. Megan was holding two glasses of red wine. She took one and they touched glasses.

“Hello, roommate,” Megan said.

“Hello, lover.”

They drank deeply.

Megan did not refill the glasses.

They turned and looked at each other, and Rhoda felt passion flow through her flesh like an electric current. From that moment on neither of them spoke. Words would have been in the way.

They walked to the bedroom, bodies brushing lightly together as they walked. They left the lights on, undressed quickly and efficiently, and they turned to look at one another, and passion caught Rhoda by the throat and shook her. She looked at Megan, at Megan’s body, and she thought that she had never seen anything beautiful or so desirable. She moved toward the blonde girl, her hands outstretched, groping. Megan stood still, waiting. Rhoda’s hands fastened on Megan’s shoulders, moved down over her bare arms, slipped over silken skin to embrace Megan’s full and beautiful breasts.

They sank together to the bed, wordless, breathless. Their mouths met in a kiss, and their tongues tangled and the world went black and white and black and white. They kissed, and their bodies were drawn sharply together, breasts against breasts, belly against belly thighs urgently drawn against thighs, loins speaking love to loins.

Rhoda was caught up in it all, unable to think of anything, unable to do anything at all but surrender herself entirely to the waves of desire that dominated her. She moved on the bed, aching to embrace the totality that was Megan, mad to touch everything, to kiss everything, to give pleasure and get pleasure until the world sank under the sea. Her lips found Megan’s breasts and teased them into a turbulence of love. Her hands stroked the sheer silk that was Megan’s hips and thighs. Her fingertips were alive with the shimmering glory of Megan’s secret beauties.

Her hands were fierce with Megan’s breasts. Her mouth was busy, planting a trail of burning kisses along a perfectly formed leg.

Pleasure screamed in the night. The bed rocked urgently. The peak of passion was sharply etched, clear and beautiful, and sleep came fast on its heels.

Chapter Five

The weekend had the quality of a dream. Time was suspended, thoughts were never pressing. Sometimes they strolled together through Village streets, walking easily side by side. And no one could tell a thing by looking at them, Rhoda thought. They walked together like two friends, and nobody could guess that they were so much more than that.

The walks were an education in themselves. She had lived in the Village for several months, had walked back and forth over these streets, but when she went walking with Megan she felt as though she had done that walking with her eyes closed, or wearing blinders. There was so very much she had simply failed to notice.

The men and boys who loitered by the western rim of Washington Square at twilight. “Gay boys,” Megan told her. “Male prostitutes, mostly. Young ones who sell themselves to older men, for a meal or for money. They tend to have a more cavalier attitude toward sex than we do, kitten. They’ll go for hit-and-run love or even buy it on the market place. Pickups in filthy men’s rooms — that sort of thing. You rarely find girls like that. We tend to be more long-term in our love affairs, we sensitive lesbians.”

A small dark coffeehouse on Sullivan Street. “No one ever goes there, Rhoda. Not for coffee or companionship. I understand they sell mescaline there. It makes you hear sounds and see colors, it creates psychotic hallucinations. It’s not strictly illegal, like narcotics, but it’s only handled on the black market. I’ve heard they sell marijuana there, too, but I’m not sure of it.”

A subterranean bar on Barrow. “One of ours, honey. A dyke joint. That’s one of the more compelling names for girls like thee and me, you know. Dykes, lessies, butches, lady-lovers — they call us the nicest things. This place is more refined than most. No dancing and not too much in the way of a butchy element. A lot of the uptown career girls come down here, and it’s all right for a quiet drink. Places like The Shadows on Macdougal are so cruisy that you have to be very hard-up or very scummy yourself in order to tolerate them, but this place isn’t bad at all.”

A girl passing by. “Did you see the way she looked at us? I’ve seen her around but I guess she doesn’t know me. She was trying to decide about us, whether or not we’re gay. You didn’t notice, did you? Gay girls can’t afford to be obvious. Just a glance, a stare held a moment too long, subtle signs like that. Like passwords.”

There was a whole world in the Village she had never known, a furtive homosexual underground with its special places and its own recognition signs, and she was becoming a part of it without ever having been aware of it. A men’s shop that catered exclusively to male homosexuals, a beauty shop where a crowd of gay girls got their hair done, gay bars, a gay coffeehouse, a gay restaurant. These weren’t necessarily meeting-places, Megan told her. They were refuges as much as anything. When you were more or less obvious about your homosexuality — a short-haired butchy bull dyke, a mincing queen — you ran into trouble even in the Village. You wanted a place reserved for your own kind.

And even if you weren’t obvious, you needed the relaxation of gay society. “I know a gay man who works at Manning and Roblin,” Megan had told her. “A public relations outfit, and a good one. He comes on completely straight up there, lives a masquerade five days a week from nine to five. When he’s done with work he wants to unwind. He doesn’t mince and he doesn’t wear lipstick, but he likes to go to a place where he doesn’t have to pretend to be something he’s not.”

The walks and the talks filled her in, let her see more of the Village as a whole and the little subculture of which she was becoming a part. But they did not spend all their time walking. For hours on end they were at Megan’s apartment — no, their apartment, for she lived there now. Mornings, she would awake before Megan and go into the kitchen to cook breakfast. Cooking had been that part of her marriage she had most enjoyed. She had a knack for it, could follow recipes or invent her own. But cooking for Tom had been a joyless pastime; he approached all food as if he were an automobile and the food were gasoline, mere fuel for his engine. There had been no cooking facilities in her Grove Street room, and with only herself to cook for, she had not missed them.

Now she was in her element. She cooked for Megan, a girl who was able to appreciate good food. And a girl who loved her, and whom she loved. This made a difference. Saturday morning she made omelets with crisp bacon on the side and a pot of strong fresh coffee. Saturday night, late, she tossed a salad together and they killed a bottle of chilled wine with it. Sunday she baked a cake.

“So domestic,” Megan said. “I ought to marry you, kitten.”

“We’d shock some poor judge.”

“Uh-huh.”

The best part was neither the walks nor the cooking. Even the lovemaking, deeply exciting, profoundly satisfying, was not the most important aspect of that weekend. They went to each other often that weekend, found new ways of giving and taking pleasure from one another, made the world go away and leave them alone in time and space. But even more important were the lazy silent times, the quiet and peaceful times when all that really mattered was the fact that they were together.

Lying in bed in the afterglow of love, sharing a cigarette, talking not at all. Sitting in the living room with a record on the hi-fi and a bottle of wine open on the table before them. Or sitting with eyes locked together, eyes proposing and eyes accepting in the preliminary overtures to yet another trip to the bedroom and to center of the physical universe.

She had not known it could be so fine. Not merely the sexual part, which was something very special, but the whole idyllic notion of being loved and in love. It had not been like this before, and she doubted that it could ever have been like this with any other person, man or woman. Only with Megan, only with the two of them together.

So happy.

Sunday night Megan said, “There’s a party tonight. But let’s not go to it.”

“What kind of party?”

“Some girls I know.”

“A gay party?”

“Of course. We’re a congenial lot, you know. None of us can stand being alone very well. Parties every weekend, more often than that if you really like to stay in the swim. I could take you and show you off if you like. Let everyone see what a lovely lover I have. You don’t want to go, do you?”

“No. Not tonight.”

But later she said, “These parties, Megan. What do you do at them?”

“Sit around. Drink. Chat cattily, talk about who is going with whom, and who just jilted whom, and other pertinent gossip. Speculate on the sex lives of political figures and Hollywood stars. Clever little bitchy chitchat like that. What did you think?”

“I just wondered.”

“No orgies, if that’s what you meant.”

“Why, I—”

“I’m kidding. Just parties. Some people usually drink too much, and some girl goes on a crying jag, and a couple may break up or two singles may decide to go home together and share a closet.”

So much talk about couples breaking up and new couples forming. She wondered at one point how many lovers Megan had had before her, how many girls like her had shared Megan’s bed and Megan’s love. She told herself it was silly to think about it, sillier still to be jealous. She couldn’t be jealous of a past love, or an affair that was part of a lover’s history. That was before she knew Megan. It was over and done with, it no longer existed.

Yet it hurt to think about those former loves. They paraded through Rhoda’s mind, a long column of girlish silhouettes, each one a symbol of love that had been designed to last forever and that had flamed briefly and died. Megan didn’t talk about them. Once, though, she alluded to the last girl she had lived with, the one for whom she had bought the green red-veined heart. “It won’t last,” she had said, “She’s a flighty thing. It won’t last a month.”

Could love end that quickly? And if those affairs could be so ephemeral, how long could she and Megan stay together?

Forever, she told herself. And she pushed the problem from her mind. This was easily done; she was in no mood for problems.

Monday, on her lunch hour, she stopped at a small jewelry shop, around the corner from Heaven’s Door. She spent a full half hour looking at everything in the shop until she settled on a small gold circle pin an inch across. On the back, she had the jeweler engrave Forever. And, on the lower rim, your rhoda.

She went straight home after work. Megan was waiting for her. She gave Megan the pin, and the blonde girl looked at it and kissed her and laughed and handed her a small, gift-wrapped package. Inside was a silver cigarette lighter, small and chic, with Rhoda Moore engraved on its side in Spenserian script.

Thursday night the phone rang. Megan answered and talked for several minutes. Her face was slightly drawn when she hung up. “I don’t feel like staying home tonight,” she announced. “There’s a good movie at the Waverly. A double feature, two old Humphrey Bogart movies. Let’s go.”

Megan relaxed in the movie. They held hands through the show. It seemed very odd, at first, holding hands with Megan in the theater. There were other people all around them, and at first she felt tremendously self-conscious, as though everyone could see them and what they were to each other. But that was ridiculous. The theater was dark, and no one was watching them the first place. She gave Megan’s hand a squeeze and relaxed and watched the movie.

Afterward she was ready to go home. She was tired, she had work the next morning. Megan wanted to stop for a drink.

“We’ll see some people. You don’t have any friends, kitten.”

“I have you.”

“You should know more people.”

“Why?”

“You should. A little company wouldn’t hurt. Bobby called me this evening, wanted to come over.”

“Who’s he?”

A smile. “She. Roberta Kardaman, Bobby for short. Just a friend — she said she heard I was going with someone and she wanted to drop over and be introduced. I told her we were going out.”

“Oh?”

“She said she’d be at Leonetti’s tonight. That’s the place on Barrow Street, the cellar bar. I think I pointed it out to you.”

“Yes.”

“I told her we would drop by. It’s not far, it’s almost on the way home. Do you mind?”

“No.”

“Bobby was never anything to me, if that’s what you’re hesitant about. Not my type. Believe me, it’s very brave of me to let you meet her.”

“Why?”

“She’ll probably make a play for you.” Megan smiled. “She used to go with a girl named Rae. They broke up, oh, months ago, and Bobby’s been alone since then. And pretty miserable most of the time. I didn’t want her to come over because I thought she might make eyes at you or make some sort of approach.”

She was hurt. “You know I wouldn’t—”

“It’s not that. I thought you might be uncomfortable. But I like Bobby and I don’t want to dodge her. If I see her tonight at Leonetti’s, there’ll be other people around and I don’t think she’ll do anything gauche. She may undress you with her eyes. Do you think you can stand it?”

“I hope so.”

“You love. How did I ever find you?” Then, her tone more serious, “We won’t stay long. It’ll do you good. This is a new world, gay society, and with the lousy marriage you had and the months of hibernation, you have to learn how to handle yourself in a social pattern like this. I don’t mean which fork to use, not that. But there’s a whole ritual, a whole pattern of social relationships and friendships and everything else. It wouldn’t be fair to you if I kept you to myself all the time.”

“I wouldn’t mind that, Megan.”

Leonetti’s was in the middle of a darkened residential block, occupying the cellar of a dingy brownstone. The bar itself was dimly lit, with dark corners and small tables set far apart. The bartender was the only man in the place. He was a tall Italian, bald, with a round face and implausibly innocent eyes. Four or five girls sat at the bar. Half a dozen couples occupied the tables.

Heads turned their way when they entered the room. Rhoda stiffened inside, tremendously self-conscious. The wraps were off now. Here, with Megan at her side, everyone in the bar knew at once that she was gay, that she and Megan were lovers. People might speculate in the Village streets, but here there was no room for doubt. If she and Megan had not been gay, they would not have come here.

She wanted to turn and run. But Megan took her hand and led her easily across the room, passing tables where girls sat drinking. Some of the drinkers continued to look at her. Others lost interest and went back to their drinks or their conversations. She took a breath a leaned slightly against Megan. They found a table far at the rear and sat down opposite one another.

“Bobby’s not here yet,” Megan said. “Well? How you do you like the place?”

“It’s all right.”

“I shouldn’t have brought you. You aren’t ready, are you?”

“I—”

“Promenading down the center aisle while all the butches stare at us. Like a slave auction. What are you drinking?”

“You order.”

The waitress was a slender dark-skinned girl who knew Megan by name. Megan ordered scotch sours for both of them. The waitress nodded and left. Rhoda took a cigarette, gave Megan one, lit them both with the little silver lighter Megan had given her. She blew out a cloud of smoke and let her eyes scan the room. No one was staring at them now. The girls at the other tables seemed more natural. Just other girls, she told herself. Like her. Like Megan. Others who lived in the same special world. They ought to inspire sympathy, not fear.

“I’m all right now,” she told Megan.

The waitress returned with their drinks. Megan paid. They raised glasses and toasted silently. The sour was just right, not too sweet. She drank half of it in a single swallow and set her glass down on the black table top.

Megan said, “The first time I came here I was with a girl named Susan. That was so many years ago. The police closed Leonetti’s since then, and then the bar reopened under a different policy, it wasn’t a gay place at all. And then, about a year ago, we started coming here again. Funny how things come full circle. They had jazz here for awhile, live music and uptown tourists and all. Now it’s a gay club again, just like before.” She worked on her drink “There was a time when I came here seven nights a week. I started to turn into an alcoholic. And a tramp, too. I went home with a different girl every night. God, that was a long time ago.”

“What happened?”

“Susan. We broke up. She moved out on me, and up to that time it had always been the other way around, I had always done the leaving. The first time is hell. I tried to kill myself but I didn’t have the nerve.”

“You poor girl—”

“You live through those things.” Megan turned away. “It’s hell, though. And it always happens, you know. I’m in a lovely mood, aren’t I? Bobby’s phone call did it, I still haven’t shaken the mood. But nothing ever lasts, not in this world. Straight people get married and live unhappily ever after. But they have a chance of staying together. A fair chance. Gay girls never manage. There’s no divorce because there’s no marriage. You just — leave each other.”

“We’ll last.”

“For awhile.”

“Forever, Megan.”

“Oh, sure.” She forced a smile. “What a bitchy mood I’m in. I’m sorry, it’s rotten of me.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“And the hell of it is that tomorrow I’ll deny all of this. I’ll swear that we’ll stay together until hell freezes. And I’ll believe it, too. I know right now it isn’t true, that those things never happen. I know two girls who’ve been together for three years, and that seems like forever in our circle, and you know, I’ll bet they break up before the year is out. They won’t make it. They’ve been hovering on the edge of a break for months now and it’s coming and everybody knows it’s coming, and they’re the ones we always point to when we want to prove that forever is possible, that two girls can grow old together. I wish I could just stop talking now. I’m running off at the mouth and depressing the hell out of both of us. Tell me to shut up, will you?”

“Maybe you’d better. Somebody’s coming this way.”

Two girls came toward their table. One was a very short girl with pale blonde hair and fragile features. Her lips were bloodless and her skin looked as though a touch would bruise it. The woman with her was older, about thirty-five with short dark hair and a heavy frame. Not exactly butchy, Rhoda thought, but more along the lines of the obvious lesbian than any of the others. Megan introduced them as Alice and Grace. They took the two empty chairs.

Grace was the older of the two. “We can only sit for minute,” she said. “Allie’s been sniffling all week. You know her constitution. Every time she turns around she catches another cold. Autumn is a bad time for her, autumn and spring. The changing weather.”

Alice smiled bravely. “I’m all right. I’ll sleep late tomorrow. I was anxious to meet you, Rhoda. You’re very attractive, you know. Megan has good taste.”

She was embarrassed, and covered it by a lighting a cigarette. Grace lit a cigarette of her own. She smoked like a man, Rhoda noticed, holding the cigarette at the base of the V between her second and third fingers near to the palm. Now she said, “I’d be jealous, Rhoda, but Allie doesn’t go for pretty girls. She needs somebody like me.”

“Of course I do.”

“Someone to take care of her.” Grace blew out smoke. “Gawd, what a day. I’ve been running around until I can’t see straight. You two coming to Jan’s place tomorrow? No, today’s what? Thursday? Jan’s thing is on Saturday, not tomorrow. Coming?”

“We haven’t been invited.”

“Oh, you’re invited. You’ll come won’t you?”

“I suppose so,” Megan said.

A few minutes later Grace got to her feet and said that Alice really had to have her rest, especially in this weather. Alice smiled weakly and followed her out of the bar.

“Those two,” Megan said. “Alice always has a cold, or a weak ankle, or dizzy spells. A fragile flower, a dainty little china doll. Grace spoils her silly. Pays all the bills, waits on her hand and foot, never gets to lay a hand on her for a week before or after her period. But that’s the way they both want it. Alice needs someone to take care of her and Grace needs somebody to take care of, so they both get what they want out of it. People usually do, I guess.”

“What?”

“Get what they want.”

“I got what I wanted.”

Megan took her hand. They were halfway through a second round of drinks when Bobby Kardaman came. Rhoda saw her in the doorway, standing at the foot of the stairs and scanning the dark room carefully. Megan waved to the girl, and she cut quickly across the room, not stopping to talk to anyone. A few of the girls called to her. Bobby Kardaman ignored them.

She sighed, sank into a chair, “I’m sorry, I got tied up. Did I keep you long?”

“We’re on our second round,” Megan said. She handled the introductions. Bobby smiled, offered her hand. Rhoda shook it. Bobby’s eyes held hers for a moment, then stopped to study her. Rhoda felt herself coloring. She reached for her drink and sipped it.

Bobby said, “Megan, you’re a lucky girl. A lucky lucky girl.” She sighed again. “I amn’t. Aren’t? I aren’t? No, I am not. That’s the right way. I am not lucky.”

Bobby Kardaman was drunk. Not reeling, not staggering, but tight enough to be slightly glassy-eyed, tight enough to slur the corners of her words. She was a striking girl, Rhoda saw. Chestnut hair, high cheekbones, a full mouth, deep blue eyes, a full-blown body. She patted at her hair with one hand now and looked around for the waitress. “Where is that bitch?” she said. “I need a drink in the worst way. Jesus, what a night. Meg, honey, I’m coming unglued. I really am.”

“Bad?”

“Oh, the worst. Really. You know how you see who you want to? How when you’re gay the whole world looks gay? Oh, Jesus, listen to this. I saw a girl on Macdougal, a corn-fed thing fresh from the farm, you know, and some idiot bell rang and I thought, well, this one has to be gay. Can you imagine? She didn’t look it, she didn’t act it, nothing, but old Kardaman got an idea in her fat head and that was that. If I wanted her to be gay, then she was gay.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I was a little bit stoned.”

“Like now?”

“Not quite, because that was a whole two bars ago. A little less stoned. But I went right up to that Iowa cornball and propped her. Right there on the street. Come with me, I cooed, and I’ll make love to you and we’ll have a ball. Oh, very bad, the worst. The kid cracked, she was scared out of at least three uneventful years of her life. I thought she was going to scream for the law. I left hurriedly. Meg, I have to find somebody. Meg, this is bad.”

“Easy, girl.”

“Oh, sure.” She forced a half-hearted grin. “I must be making a lovely impression on you, Rhoda. Can I call you Rho? Like the Greek letter? Listen, Megan’s friends aren’t all horrid like me. I’m not even this bad all the time. Look, Rho, why don’t you ditch Meg? We’ll get married. I’ll put on a suit and a tie and we’ll run off to Maryland to get married. We’ll make babies, even. Good enough, Rho?”

Bobby blew hot and cold. She would swim in self-pity, then turn bright and begin to joke, telling most of the jokes on herself. The banter she aimed at Rhoda was double-edged, as though she meant it but had no intention of pressing her point. They didn’t stay with her long. When they finished their drinks they stood up and walked out into the night. Bobby stayed behind. “I’ll find something,” she said. “Something for the night, something I’ll hate in the morning. The perfect accompaniment for a hangover. Night, ladies.”

Outside, they walked the length of the block in warm silence. Megan took her arm.

“She likes you,” she said.

“Bobby?”

“Uh-huh. She’d like to take you away from me.”

“No chance of that.”

“I almost got mad at her. But you can’t take her seriously. And she’s having a tough time.”

“I felt sorry for her.”

“Is that all?”

She looked at Megan. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Slightly.”

“Don’t be. What does she do?”

“Bobby? Nothing. She’s a remittance man. Or remittance woman. A rich family in a Detroit suburb that doesn’t want a lesbian daughter around to embarrass them. She lived in Cuernavaca for awhile on money from home, then came back to the city. She gets a check every month, just enough to live on. A lot of families are like that. You’re our daughter and we’ll take care of you, but stay away from our door, you dyke. True parental love.”

“You sound bitter.”

“I am.” Megan’s arm around her waist. “I’m going to need you tonight, kitten. Very badly. Be good to me.”

Chapter Six

Saturday noon, cold and rainy, Eighth Street clogged with wet and hurrying tourists. “Runch time,” Mr. Yamatari said pleasantly, if inaccurately, and she slipped into her trenchcoat and belted it snugly around her and ducked out into the street. She stood there for a moment, then turned quickly and headed for a lunch counter halfway down the block toward Sixth Avenue.

Someone was calling her name. She looked around uncertainly but couldn’t see anyone.

“Rhoda Haskell—”

And then he had reached her. He stood in front of her and held her arm in one hand. “My God, Rhoda,” he said. “How long has it been? Months. I didn’t even know you were still in town.”

He was Ed Vance and he was a bright young man in some public relations office, she didn’t know which. A friend of Tom’s, a person she had known fairly well during the two years of marriage. A bachelor, bright and good-looking in an Ivy League way. A ladies’ man according to popular report.

“Are you living here now? In the city?”

“Yes.”

“When was the divorce? About half a year ago, wasn’t it?”

“Just about. It was an annulment.”

“Well. Jesus, it’s pouring, isn’t it? C’mon, we’ll get a bite to eat. Across the street all right?”

There was a steakhouse across the street. She had never been there. She said, “I don’t have much time.”

“You’ve got to eat. And the service is fast. Come on, Rhoda.”

“Well, I was supposed to meet somebody—”

“Let ’em wait. Auld lang syne and all that. I’ll buy you a good lunch and you can tell old Ed all your troubles.”

They dodged cars, ducked across Eighth Street and hurried into the restaurant. The headwaiter led them to a small table off to the side.

Vance ordered a dry martini and asked her what she was drinking. She hadn’t planned on drinking anything but she wound up ordering a scotch sour.

“Rhoda Haskell,” he said.

“Rhoda Moore now. Again.”

“Uh-huh. What have you been doing? Taking it easy?”

“Working,” she said.

“Not around here?”

She told him where she was working and where she lived.

“Alone?”

“With a friend. A girl.”

“Dating anyone special?”

“No.”

“I guess you and Tom had a rough time of it, didn’t you?” He shook his head. “Well, it happens. I think the major reason I haven’t married is the spectacular examples all my friends set for me. Ray and Judy got divorced, you know. Or maybe you didn’t know. She took a jet to Reno and came back single. I was out drinking with Ray just a week ago. The poor son of a gun needed a shoulder to cry on. Still loves her, he told me. And she hooked him good. Alimony plus child support, with the whole thing leaving him about sixty a week to live on. If he makes more money the alimony goes up along with his income. He can’t come out ahead. And they were one couple I thought would last.”

And, over coffee: “Have you been dating much, Rhoda?”

“No.”

“Nothing serious? No big romance?”

A very big romance, she thought. But she told him that she wasn’t going with anyone.”

“Are you busy tonight?”

A long wind-up, then a fast-breaking curve. “Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid I am, Ed.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“I’m afraid I’m tied up.”

He looked at her, his eyes locking with hers. She reached for a cigarette. He gave her a light and she dragged nervously on the cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke.

“I’d like to see more of you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re a very attractive woman, Rhoda. And because I enjoy your company.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You don’t want to see me, do you?” He sighed. “You and Tom had a rough time. That happens. And you’re taking it hard. Well, that happens too. But you can’t let yourself go, Rhoda. You can’t crawl in a hole and pull the hole in after you. You’re a young woman. How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Pretty young to retire from the human race.”

“I’m not—”

“Have you been seeing any men at all?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Do you know what you’re doing to your life? Do you know how lonely you’re going be?”

Her face was burning. If she stayed at the table another minute something very bad was going to happen, she could feel it. She would either blurt out the truth to him or she would throw a big scene and tell him what he could do with his penetrating comments. Her head was spinning. She pushed her chair back and headed for the ladies’ room.

Sanctuary, she thought. She washed her hands, put on fresh lipstick, then sat for a moment on a straight-backed chair. Sanctuary. At least he couldn’t follow her in here. No man could. Here was one place on earth where she could be safe from men. Here, and in Megan’s arms.

When she returned to the table he was all apologies, very suave and smooth. “I’m damned sorry,” he said earnestly. “I must have sounded like Dear Abby after a bad night. I didn’t mean to hammer at you like that.”

“It’s all right.”

“I’d like to see you, Rhoda. That’s all.”

She didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help realizing that she was not interested, she thought. It was pretty obvious wasn’t it?

“I have to go now,” she said finally. “I have to be back at the shop.”

“Can I call you, Rhoda?”

“I think it would be better if you didn’t.”

“Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

“Maybe,” she said. He couldn’t reach her, she knew. The phone was listed in Megan’s name, so he couldn’t find out her number. She got to her feet, “Thank you for lunch,” she said.

“I enjoyed it.”

“So did I.”

“I’ll walk you back to your shop.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I can manage.”

It was still raining, steadily, persistently. She darted across the street. He didn’t follow her. She got back to the shop, hung her trench coat on a peg in the back. Then she went into the front of the store and walked up and down the aisles, dusting things.

The apartment was empty when she returned to it. She walked though the rooms calling Megan’s name but Megan was not there. She went into the living room, turned on the radio. A rock and roll station shouted at her. She dialed in classical music, stretched out on the couch. Megan was out and she didn’t know where.

She closed her eyes, kicked off her shoes, tucked a throw pillow under her head. They were supposed to go to a party that night, she remembered. Megan had said something about getting to the party around nine. It was close to six now. Plenty of time, and Megan would be back soon. She let her mind drift with the music, let herself get lost in it. They were playing chamber music, something familiar, a string quartet that sounded like Mozart. She ought to listen to more good music, she told herself. Start buying records, start spending a couple of hours every day listening to music, really listening to it. Like this.

When the quartet ended she swung her legs over the side of the couch, rubbed at her eyes, looked at her watch. It was a quarter after six now and Megan was still not home.

Jealousy came in a wave. Megan had gone out, Megan had met someone else. Megan was with some other girl now, some cheap and easy thing with a repertoire of cheap and dirty bedroom tricks. Megan didn’t love her. If Megan loved her she would have been home, she would have called, she would have left a note. Something. Megan didn’t love her. Megan was only using her, playing with her while she played around with other girls on the side.

Or Megan had actually fallen in love with some other girl. That could have happened. It happened all the time. Megan might have gone out for a walk, and she might have met another girl and it could all have happened that quickly. Love. It had happened speedily enough between her and Megan, and if something could start that quickly it could end just as quickly, and Megan would bring this other girl into their apartment and she — Rhoda — would be out on the street again, lonely again and—

That was crazy, she knew. It was mad. But she couldn’t shake the jealousy, the worry, the monumental anxiety. It was eating her alive, and the fact that it was illogical didn’t seem to change things much. She paced back and forth, wandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, closed it, poured herself a glass of water, sipped it, poured the water out in the sink. She lit a cigarette and took two puffs on it and stubbed it out angrily.

Damn it!

At a quarter to seven, the phone rang. She nearly tripped rushing to it. It was Megan.

“Honey, I’m sorry as hell. I’ve been working like a maniac, I should have been home hours ago. This was the first chance I had to call.”

“Where are you?”

“Way the hell up in the East Sixties. A job, complete decoration of an entire apartment, and she wants antiques—”

“She?”

“An old battle-ax living it up on insurance money. One Letitia Warren. Antiques! The hardest part of this job will be finding a chair older than she is. I’m going to have about two weeks of hard work and a hell of a lot of money to show for it, kitten. Listen, I’m in a phone booth. I was all set to hop in a cab but I wanted to call you first. Everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Party tonight. Can you throw some dinner together? I didn’t even have lunch, I’ve been going full steam since this morning. This Warren woman. You’d have to see her to believe her. Honey, I would have called you earlier—”

“Oh, it’s all right.”

“—only I didn’t have the chance, I really didn’t. You’re not mad at me?”

“Of course not.”

And she wasn’t, couldn’t be. And couldn’t imagine how she had been jealous, how just moments ago she had been pacing and trembling hysterically. There was no reason for jealousy. Everything was as good as it had ever been.

“I’ll have dinner ready,” she said. “Hurry home, love.”

After Megan had hung up she stood for a moment holding the dead phone in her hand. She felt enormously relieved. And yet the mere knowledge that she been so irrationally jealous worried her a little. She never realized that she had that sort of capacity for jealousy. It was a new discovery for her.

Maybe, she thought, it was an index of love. Perhaps only those so deeply in love could be so blindly jealous.

She went into the kitchen and busied herself with dinner. Megan was working again, she thought. And that was good. She would throw herself into the job and get all wrapped up in her work. It wasn’t good for Megan to have too much time on her hands. Her jobs, she knew, were the type that made for a disjointed sort of life; she might go a month without doing any work all, then might land two decorating jobs at once and work fifteen hours a day for three weeks straight. But work would be good for her.

How very jealous she had been...

“Jan loves to play hostess,” someone was saying to her. “Her parties are never to be missed. Everything has a slightly phony smell to it, and in another twenty minutes or so Jan is going to turn the lights down low and recite a poem by Sappho, but she does know how to throw people together. And how to supply liquor.”

It was Bobbie talking to her, a more sober Bobbie than she had met two nights ago at Leonetti’s. And she looked prettier now; before she had been simply striking, but now her beauty seemed to blend into itself. The chestnut hair was done up in a beehive that made Bobby look even taller than she was. Her dress, a silk shift in black and white, somehow emphasized the curves of her body more than if she were wearing something and clinging. Her lipstick was a deep, dark red.

“I must have made a lovely impression the other night,” Bobby went on. “Boy, was I stoned! You should have seen me the morning after. I woke up and was afraid I would die, and then after a few minutes I was afraid I wouldn’t die. I didn’t, but I might as well have. Tonight, however, I am sober.”

“And happier,” Rhoda said.

“Uh-huh. Where did Meg go?”

“For more drinks, I think.”

“She’s a love, Meg is. Oh, lord. Look over there.”

She looked. Jan Pomeroy, their hostess, was setting a pair of candles on a massive Victorian pedestal. Jan was a dark girl with Semitic features and large gold hoop earrings. She wore a great deal of eye makeup.

“The candle routine,” Bobby explained. “God above, first time I came to one of these parties and saw her fussing with those things I thought we were going to have an orgy. Candles! She lights them and recites poems. I’ve never seen anyone make quite so monumental a production out of homosexuality. She gets almost religious about it.”

“Does it last long?”

“Homosexuality?” Bobby grinned. “It lasts forever, my sweet.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean, goofy. Here’s Meg. Meg, you didn’t bring me a drink.”

Megan sat next to Rhoda, “You don’t need one,” she said. “Jan’s playing with her phallic symbols again. Did you notice?”

“We were talking about them. And about Jan. Homosexuality As A Religious Phenomenon. I might write a paper on that sweet theme.”

“For The Ladder?”

“For the john. Poems to be read in the can. I think there was a book like that, come to think. Some phony nonsense. Dykery As The Highest Expression Of The Inner Self. Sound good?”

“It might to Jan.” Megan sipped her drink. “Jan’s right,” she said. “There are worse poses.”

“Name one.”

“I Am A Lost Lesbian And A Thing To Be Pitied. How’s that?”

“It’ll do,” Bobby said. “Except that we all use it now and then. Even you and I, sweet.”

“That’s what’s so tragic about it.”

Jan Pomeroy was walking around the room turning off lamps. Her eyes, Rhoda noticed, were slightly glazed. And she almost fell over at one point. “I think she’s drunk,” she said.

“Brilliantly put, Rho. Jan’s always stoned at her own sets. Drinking develops her appearance of intense sincerity. The funny thing is that she used to be ordinary enough. She never got over that thing she had with the actress.”

“Actress?”

“Moira Maine. Whose name, before Hollywood played with it, was something far less euphonious. I think was—”

“Moira Maine?”

“Uh-huh, I think it was—”

“But she isn’t gay!”

Megan and Bobby both laughed. “Oh, Rho honey, the hell she isn’t. You didn’t know?”

“But she’s married—”

“To one of the screamingest queens in Hollywood, sweets. Too many people were whispering about both of them, so they’re married. I’ve a hunch they never consummated that marriage, and that it wasn’t exactly made in heaven. Meg, you should have brought me another drink.”

“Get it yourself.”

I don’t really need it. Miss Maine was in hot water for awhile. You must have heard something, Rho.”

She shook her head.

“A big blackmail thing, the way I heard it. Some West Coast call girl slept with La Maine and let a friend of hers take pictures, and first they held her up and then they sold the pictures to one of the scandal mags. It got hushed up, I guess, but that’s the way it was.”

Bobby stood up. “I see an old friend,” she explained. “Catch you people after the Sapphic odes are over and done with.”

Rhoda sipped her drink. Megan was beside her, telling her a story that she couldn’t quite keep up with. Across the room, a blonde with dark roots had her arm around a much younger girl. The younger girl giggled and the blonde leaned over and kissed her. The younger girl put her arms around the blonde and the two got lost in the embrace.

Rhoda looked away from them. “I don’t like that,” she said.

“Bleached hair?”

“That either.”

Megan gave her hand a squeeze. “I don’t like it myself,” she said. “They might as well make love in Macy’s window. Some girls are funny that way. Exhibitionistic. Just because they’re among other gay girls they think they can do anything without offending good taste. I don’t mind dancing at a gay party. There will be dancing later, you know. Will you dance with me, kitten?”

“And with no one else.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll dance with whoever asks you, pet. It’s just part of the ritual, and quite sexless. But petting in public that way, that I don’t go for.” Megan shrugged. “The really militant homosexuals are all excited about campaigning for equal rights. I think some of them would like to picket lunch counters in Atlanta that don’t employ gays. But you’d think they’d realize that the same obligations as far as taste is concerned as straight people have. Sex is such a preoccupation with all of us. It’s silly, I suppose.”

The room was dark now. On the mahogany pedestal, the two candles burned. Jan Pomeroy stood behind the pedestal, her face framed by the yellow glow of the candles. There was a slender volume open on the pedestal in front of her.

The room quieted down. The dark-roots blonde and the younger girl were still kissing on the divan across way. Someone said something short to them. They separated.

“I’d like to read some poetry,” Jan Pomeroy said. “I hope you all enjoy this.”

“Little chance of that,” Megan whispered. Rhoda felt a laugh forming and smothered it. She squeezed Megan’s hand in the darkness.

“The first poem was written by Sappho on the Isle of Lesbos,” Jan announced. Her voice had taken on a theatrical tone. “Lesbos had been renamed since then. Mytilene is its present name. And Sappho’s little colony has long since been dispersed. There are some of us who dream of returning to that little island in the Aegean, of forming a society where we can be alone with people like ourselves. Some day, perhaps that dream can be realized completely and perfectly.”

“Picture it,” Megan whispered. “All of us frolicking nude in the sun, with nary a man around. I wonder if she really believes all this.”

“It sounds that way.”

Jan stared their way and they stopped whispering. She took a deep breath, leaned over so that the two candles stood on either side of her face. Her eyes, circled with heavy make-up, looked hollower and deeper than ever in the candle light.”

She read;

Oh Chryseis

The budding beauty of your Cretan soul

Echoes from hill to hill.

Come to me.

Night is a barren notion

Fitting the heart

For love in shaded places.

Teach me of torment

In Sweet hysteria,

O Chryseis!

There was a scattering of embarrassed applause. A candle flickered briefly but did not go out. Jan Pomeroy closed her hollow eyes momentarily, lowered her head reverently. The applause died out. Jan straightened up, opened her eyes, turned a page of the book. “Thank you,” she said. “This next work is also Sappho’s. It is a somewhat longer poem, an ode to one of the young girls Sappho loved so deeply. It—”

Megan groaned.

Chapter Seven

After the little performance with Sapphic odes and candlelight, Jan Pomeroy did what she always did at her parties. She got thoroughly drunk, cried without interruption for ten full minutes, and then abruptly passed out. Two girls carried her into her bedroom and wedged her fully clothed between the bedsheets, stopping only to remove her shoes. She slept soundly. Her eye make-up looked wildly unreal on her sleeping face.

With the hostess out of the way, the party moved into gear. The mahogany pedestal was wrestled out of the way, the candles blown out and put aside, some lights left off, others switched on again. An angular girl stacked records on the hi-fi — dance music, some vocal sides, Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day. One or two couples drifted off homeward. Others talked intensely in little groups. A girl cried in a corner, another locked herself in the bathroom and refused to open the door. Others danced.

The dancing seemed odd at first to Rhoda. They had danced before, once or twice at the apartment, moving together slowly with the dancing serving as a prelude to the act of love. But dancing had never before been a social phenomenon. There was something disarming about it, as though the roomful of dancing girls burlesqued heterosexual dancing, as though all the dancing couples were less intent upon enjoying themselves than in proving something to the world.

The feeling died as she caught the mood of the evening. Megan held her lightly in her arms, taking the man’s part and leading her slowly and smoothly around the floor. She closed eyes, relaxing in Megan’s embrace. She had never danced much as a girl, had hardly ever gone dancing with Tom Haskell. Once, maybe twice before they were married. Afterward, never.

She danced two dances with Megan. Then the blonde girl stepped away from her. “We have to mingle,” she said. She moved aside and a young redhead with very blue eyes introduced herself to Rhoda as Sara. The music started and their bodies moved together.

But something was wrong. She didn’t understand at first, and then Sara looked up at her and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t lead. Could you lead, Rhoda?”

It felt very strange. Her feet were not entirely sure of what they were supposed to be doing, but she did the best she could, taking the redheaded girl in her arms, holding her rather stiffly, and leading her around the makeshift dance floor. The mechanics of taking the man’s part were foreign to her, and she realized suddenly that she and Megan had always taken it for granted that Megan would lead and that she would follow.

“I’m not doing very well at this,” she told Sara.

“Oh, this is fine.”

The dancing itself was asexual enough. She held the girl almost at arm’s length, as if close contact would be either dangerous or unpleasant. And yet, somewhere, there was a vague stirring, a faint sexual call to arms. She thought at one point that it came from acting the male role in the dance, as though it were a part she wanted to play. She was glad when the record ended and Sara went off to find another partner.

Megan found her and they went off to have a drink together. They finished their drinks and started to dance, but then another girl cut in halfway through a number and began dancing with Megan, and Rhoda went for another drink and came from the kitchen as the record was ending. Bobbie Kardaman took her arm and whirled her out onto the dance floor.

Bobbie led. She had rather thought that would happen.

They danced through two records that way before Megan cut in again. And, dancing with Bobbie, she felt something that went beyond the simple pleasure of dancing with another girl. Bobbie’s right hand was halfway around her waist, Bobbie’s cheek close to hers, Bobbie’s breasts pressing now and then against her own breasts. At first she told herself it was accidental, convinced herself that such sudden contact was inevitable in a room so full of people.

It was more than that and she couldn’t avoid realizing as much. There was purpose in the way Bobbie held her, design in the contact of leg with leg, of breast with breast. Bobbie wanted her.

And she couldn’t help feeling her own response.

She tried to push the feeling aside, tried to tell herself that it was crazy or wrong or both. She loved Megan and Megan loved her, and yet Bobbie was making some sort of play for her and she didn’t have the good sense to get away from the girl, couldn’t help responding to the sweet stimulus of Bobbie’s embrace. Nothing would happen, she told herself angrily. The record would end finally, and she would be with Megan again, and she and Megan would go home together and Bobbie would find some other girl and everything would work out, there would be no more of this foolishness.

The record ended. She got away from Bobbie and scanned the room looking for Megan. Megan had just asked a flat-chested mousy girl to dance. Rhoda bit her lip and hurried off to the kitchen for another drink.

Once, between dances, she was in the kitchen when two girls in their thirties stumbled in and embraced. She was embarrassed, but she couldn’t leave the room because they blocked the door. She tried not to look at them, tried not to hear them. They kissed, and one of the women ran a hand over the other’s body.

And one said, “Oh, darling, you can’t go home. You can’t, you have to stay with me.”

“God—”

“You love me. You know you love me.”

“I think Harold suspects. I’m so afraid—”

“Tell him. And leave him, darling.”

“But he’s my husband. And I love him, I do, but—”

“He doesn’t know you. He’s not right for you, darling.”

“I never should have let you love me. I should have stayed away from you.”

“But you do love me—”

And they were lost in a kiss again. Rhoda tried not to watch them but she couldn’t help herself. The married woman was breathing heavily, eyes closed, breasts heaving. The other woman kissed her all over her face and reached for her breasts with an urgent hand. She worked on the married woman with technique born of long experience, and Rhoda could see resistance and fear melting away as passion grew up to conquer all.

Married, she thought. Married to a man and in love with the man, but crazy in love with a gay girl as well.

When the embrace stopped, when they came up for air, the married woman noticed Rhoda for the first time. She blushed deeply. Her girl friend didn’t seem to care. She slipped an arm around the married woman’s waist, her fingertips just inches below the rise of her breasts, and led her off toward the bedrooms.

Rhoda drained her drink. She was glad, suddenly, that she had found her way into the shadows in the proper order, that she had ended her marriage before she had found Megan. It could have happened the other way around, and that seemed to be a very special sort of hell.

Bobbie was holding her hand. She stood swaying slightly and looked up into Bobbie’s eyes.

“Megan is so lucky,” Bobbie said.

“Why?”

“To have you.”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Yes. Don’t you know that I can’t stop it?”

A stretch of silence. “I love Megan.”

“I know you do.”

“Oh, damn it—”

“It won’t last forever. Nothing ever does, you know.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Why not? It’s the truth, Rho. Megan is your first and you always think the first will last forever. Later on you try and fool yourself, but sooner or later you realize how transient every little affair is. You two won’t last forever.”

“Megan says—”

“She knows better. We’ll be together some day, you and I, I feel it, Rho. Don’t you?”

“Stop it!”

“I’m not even touching you, Rho.” A smile, fading quickly. “I’m sorry if I’m getting to you. Don’t blame me. And don’t blame yourself for feeling it. We can’t help it, neither of us.”

She never remembered getting back to the apartment. She did not know afterward whether they had taken a cab or walked. The last hour of the party was a blur in her mind, the last few minutes blacked out completely along with the trip back to the apartment on Cornelia Street. It was frightening, losing a whole little piece of your life that way. You were left with guilt over what might have happened, what you might have done. And with a blank blind spot where a memory ought to have been.

Then they were home, in the apartment, and she was standing awkwardly while Megan sat on the couch with her shoulders slumped. Megan was crying and she stood there stupidly and wondered what she had done and what she ought to do.

“I’m losing you, Rhoda. Oh, God help me, I’m losing you.”

Megan’s eyes, tear-stained, looking up at her, “What’s happening to us?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t want me any more, Rhoda.”

“That’s not true—”

“You danced all night with Bobbie. She’s trying to steal you away and you’ll let yourself be stolen.”

“I looked for you—”

“You didn’t look very hard, Rhoda.”

Madness, she thought. Just hours ago she had been home waiting for Megan, and then she had been the jealous one, blindly, bitterly, irrationally jealous. The roles were reversed now. But why did it have to be like this? They loved each other. Why couldn’t they relax in the security of one another’s love? Why couldn’t they coast along smoothly, happy with what they had, instead of shifting from bitter to sweet?

Bitter and sweet. You had to take them both together, she thought dully. But you should be able to blend them, to soften each with the other—

She said, “I love you, Megan.”

“Do you?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Then—”

“I don’t know, I was drunk, I was mixed up and Bobbie was nice to me. That was all. We danced and we talked a little. I don’t feel anything for her, Megan. Believe me.”

“I want to.”

She sat on the couch with Megan, put her arm around the blonde girl. Megan was avoiding her eyes. She leaned over to kiss Megan’s throat, Megan stiffened momentarily, then relaxed.

“Coffee?”

“I don’t want any.”

“Can I do anything for you, darling?”

“Just love me.”

“Forever, Megan.”

And now it was as it had been with that girl on the dance floor — she had to do the leading. Her hand moved upward over Megan’s back, touched the nape of her neck. Megan locked into her eyes, and Megan’s face held an expression she had seen there before. Wide eyes, an unsure upper lip. Little Girl Lost.

She drew Megan close, kissed her. Megan whimpered. She kissed her again, tenderly, then more intensely as passion born in desperation came into its own. Megan was in her arms, soft and blonde and warm, and she planted a field of kisses on Megan’s face, kissed the residue of tears from her eyes, kissed her mouth and throat, held her very close, discovered the luxury of Megan’s body under her hands.

Her hands sought, found. Megan sat with her and said her name in a small voice while she worked snaps and buttons to open Megan’s clothing. Her hands found Megan’s breasts and held them, hurried up Megan’s thighs to secret flesh.

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand...

Bodies brushing together as they walked neatly nude over deep carpet to the bedroom. A light turned off, a light turned on. A sheet drawn down, a bedspring sigh of acceptance.

...eternity in an hour...

There was a moment which would stay with her forever, snatched out of time as if by a camera’s instantaneous eye. Megan lying upon the bed on her back, hand resting upon the rise of a thigh, the other arm stretched out across the bed. Breasts pointed proudly upward. Legs a little apart, one foot some inches over the edge of the bed. Blonde hair wild upon a pillow. Eyes closed, mouth just open.

Light from the hall played across Megan’s body. The whole scene could have been packaged and framed, a virtuoso performance by an airbrush painter. Shadows, curves, subtle flesh tones.

Then Megan said, “Why do we hurt each other.” The words made a question but were not spoken that way; there was no question mark in Megan’s voice. The six words hung in space.

Until Rhoda found her, joined her, pressed flesh to flesh, seeking sweet mystery with a hungry mouth, finding heaven that was partly pain.

Chapter Eight

Monday, Megan picked her up after work and hurried her off to dinner. “I’ve only got an hour,” she said. “I have an appointment with a Third Avenue dealer at six-thirty and then I have to look at some draperies on East Sixty-Eighth Street. A swank little shop run by two very chic guys. Gay guys, of course.”

“Sometimes I think everybody is gay.”

“Everybody is, kitten.”

They had chicken and rice at the Picador on West Tenth. Their waiter was an olive-skinned Mexican who hovered over them constantly and flirted with them passionately. They ate in a hurry. Megan kept up a running stream of chatter about her work — the pieces she had seen, her plans for the apartment, what fee she could expect, on and on and on. Rhoda tried to stay interested but it was impossible. She didn’t have the background for it, couldn’t visualize what Megan described, couldn’t appreciate any of the detail. It was Megan’s work and she was glad Megan was able to throw herself into it so feverishly, but her own interest was limited.

Then they were outside. “I’d better jump in a cab,” Megan was saying. “Can I drop you off?”

“I’ll walk.”

“It wouldn’t be out of the way—”

But it was a nice night and she walked. She drifted over to Washington Square first but the park was too crowded with tight knots of people forming and re-forming. She could feel an undercurrent of tension in the air. There had been trouble in the park lately, friction between the Village element and the local Italians, friction between neighborhood whites and Harlem Negroes off the A-train. She cut across the park, stopped to watch two men play chess, drank from the drinking fountain, then drifted across town to the apartment on Cornelia.

The apartment was lonely. She waited for Megan to come home, and Megan didn’t get back until a quarter to eleven. She had been running around all night, she told Rhoda, and she was so exhausted that all she wanted to do was get some sleep.

Tuesday was more of the same. That night she didn’t even see Megan at dinner. She didn’t want to cook just for herself, so she had a hamburger around the corner from the apartment and spent the evening trying to get interested in a scholarly hardbound work on female homosexuality. Megan had a fairly extensive library on the subject. The book kept boring her and she didn’t get very far with it. At nine-thirty Megan called and said not to wait up for her, that she would be late. They did not talk long. Afterward, she took a shower and crawled into bed and felt lost in the big bed, lost and alone. At one point she thought that she was going to cry. She felt tears welling up behind her eyes and waited for them to come spilling out, but they didn’t. She lay in bed and finally fell asleep.

She dreamed for the first time in weeks. Not the usual dream, the dream of being chased. This was a gentler dream and one which did not wake her, although she remembered it quite clearly in the morning.

In the dream, she was standing upon the peak of a small hill with rolling lawn stretching out in all directions as far as she could see. The sun was high in the sky, the grass flawlessly green. She was dressed in a formal gown and had a rose in her hair. And then, slowly but surely her clothes began to melt away, stitch by stitch and layer by layer. The gown went, and then her slip and her shoes, and her bra and panties and stocking until she stood nude on the top of the hill. And then flesh began to melt away in the same fashion, slowly dreamily, and then her bones, until she had gradually vanished and only the rose from her hair remained, floating a few feet in space above the crest of the hill.

It was not a frightening dream. The melting process had nothing fearsome in it. It was quite gentle. But when she thought about the dream the next day it bothered her. She wondered what it meant and decided it might best not to think about it. She never mentioned it to Megan.

“You’re a hard girl to get hold of,” someone said. She spun around and looked up at the man who had spoken. It was Ed Vance.

“I tried calling you,” he said. “Your number’s not listed. Then I tried to reach you at work but I didn’t remember the name of the shop, just where it was.” He grinned. “So I decided to take a long lunch hour and make another pilgrimage to the Village. Come have lunch with me and my labors will be rewarded.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? When’s your lunch hour?”

“In a few minutes. But—”

“Then what’s the problem?”

The problem was that she did not want to see him. He was pushy and she felt threatened when he was with him. As far as he was concerned, she was a manless woman who would be a relatively easy mark. And Tom had probably said something about her, something to the effect that she was frigid, a piece of ice. A man like him would take that as a challenge, anxious to prove himself as a man by melting the ice with her.

“I’m meeting someone for lunch.”

“Someone?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone I know?”

“I don’t think so.”

He looked at her. She turned away, avoiding his eyes. The store was empty now. If a customer had come in she would have had an excuse to slip away from Ed and make herself look busy, but customers only came when she didn’t want them around.

“So you’re meeting someone,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Well that’s what happens when a guy doesn’t call. I figured you might be free for lunch. And here it’s the other way around. You’re tied up for lunch, and if I had a dinner open and asked for that you probably would have been able to go, but I went and asked you for lunch. That’s the way it goes.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You don’t have a dinner date, though. Do you?”

“Well no, but—”

“Good.” A quick, predatory flash of smile. “I’ll pick you up here at five-thirty. Don’t forget, Rhoda.”

He was gone before she could think of anything to say.

There was one way to get him out of her hair for good, she thought. All she had to do was tell him the truth. He might have visions of himself bringing a heretofore frigid girl to Nirvana, but once she told him she was a lesbian he would stay away from her.

But how? Just blurt it out? She couldn’t quite see herself doing that. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of what she was but the idea of putting it into words for him didn’t set right. There had to be a way. But she couldn’t see it, not yet.

She could she have dinner with him. At four-thirty she told Mr. Yamatari that she had a splitting headache and couldn’t see straight, an excuse which was not entirely false. He told her to take the rest of the day off. She hurried straight home.

Let him come looking for her at five-thirty. Let him find out he had been stood up. Let him take the hint for once and leave her alone.

Her head was splitting when she got back to the apartment. She took three aspirins and stretched out on the couch.

That night she went to a gay bar alone for the first time. She waited until nine for Megan to come home, then gave up sitting around the apartment and walked over to Leonetti’s. She joined four girls at a table and drank three scotch sours with them. They were all girls she had met at Jan Pomeroy’s party the Saturday before, and they were in couples, so that none of them had more than a friendly interest in Rhoda. She relaxed with them and talked with them, and it was better than sitting home alone waiting endless hours for Megan.

No one at Leonetti’s made a pass at her. A few of the girl’s at the bar gave her long-drink looks that let her know they were interested, but when she didn’t gaze back they let it go. There was no heavy cruising. A little after ten she went back to the apartment. Megan was there.

“You had me worried,” Megan said. “I’ve been waiting for you for close to an hour. Where were you?”

“Leonetti’s.”

“With who?”

“Why? Are you jealous?”

“Yes.”

“I was alone,” she said. “I missed you. I couldn’t stand it, all alone. I sat with some of the girls. That’s all.”

“Oh, baby—”

They made good love for the first time in too long. This time Megan was not too tired, and this time Rhoda felt a need that was a living force within her. A new sort of lovemaking, with a degree of desperation in it that she had not noticed before. Afterward, she was more depleted than satisfied. She slipped out of bed and went into the other room.

She drank a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette. She sat naked in an armchair, the coffee cup on the table beside her, the cigarette smoldering in an ashtray balanced precariously on the arm of the chair. She smoked, drank coffee. She wondered what was wrong.

By the time she dragged herself to bed, she was tired enough so that sleep came quickly. She kissed Megan’s face before settling on her pillow. Megan did not stir. She closed her own eyes and let the world fade away.

Thursday was bad. She overslept and wound up rushing to work without breakfast, without even a cup of coffee, and she was still half an hour late. Mr. Yamatari didn’t mention it, just asked if her headache was better. He told her that a man had come looking for her — Ed Vance of course — and had been disappointed that she was not there. She had almost forgotten about the broken dinner date, and only hoped Ed wouldn’t come around again.

The morning was hectic, the afternoon slow and uncomfortably warm in the shop. By four she had a genuine headache, a splitting headache, but she couldn’t use that excuse again even if it was true this time. As soon as she got home she took three aspirins and lay down to rest.

That night she would have enjoyed being alone. And that night was the night when Megan discovered that she didn’t have to work late. Megan breezed in a few minutes after six, loud and happy, and Rhoda had to match the blonde girl’s mood. It was a strain.

“Let’s live a little tonight,” Megan said. “Maybe even catch a show. What’s the matter with you, kitten?”

“Headache.”

“Well, take some aspirin.”

“I did.”

“Poor kitten. Want me to stroke your head?” Megan didn’t wait for an answer. She sat on the edge of the couch and rubbed Rhoda’s forehead. Megan’s touch was light and her fingers were cool, but Rhoda did not feel like being touched, not at all. But she didn’t want to say so.

“I’ve been working like a dog this week. There’s so much to do and everybody’s in such a hurry. It’s crazy, working in spurts like this. I’ve missed you.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I’d like to cut loose a little tonight. Dinner for a start, and then maybe we can both get a little bit stoned. Unless your head—”

“I’m all right.”

“Are you sure? We can stay in if you’d rather. If you’ve got a headache and if the aspirin isn’t doing anything for you—”

Megan’s concern for her rankled as much as Megan’s hand on her forehead. She forced herself to sit up. “I’m all right,” she said.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, of course not. It’s just—”

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. She fumbled for a cigarette, let Megan light it for her. She drew on it and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Where do you want to go?”

“For dinner? I thought something substantial. Let’s get a couple of steaks at O’Henry’s.”

“It’s expensive, isn’t it?”

“My treat.”

They got an outside table at O’Henry’s, one of a half dozen scattered just outside the entrance to give the place a sidewalk café feeling. They had two rounds of cocktails, then a pair of rare sirloins with baked potatoes. The food was good and the service was fast.

But something missed. The drinks didn’t get rid of her headache but only made it worse. The food was delicious but she couldn’t enjoy it, could only think that she was not going to digest it, that the steak and potato would sit like lead on her stomach. And she couldn’t avoid feeling guilty over her failure to relax and enjoy what was a very good meal. This was a big production on Megan’s part, an expensive dinner that constituted some sort of combined peace offering and celebration, and everything would have been better if she could have let herself go.

But she couldn’t, not the way she was, not tied in knots like this. And the conversation that should have sparkled was flat and lifeless. They were having trouble talking to each other, and that had never happened to them before.

Once, she started talking about Ed Vance. “I think he’ll leave me alone now,” she said. “I really hope so. He’s beginning to get on my nerves.

“Then why not get rid of him once and for all?”

“That’s hard, with a man like him. But I don’t think he’ll be back.”

“You should have been firmer with him, kitten. I don’t like the idea of a man trying to push into your life.”

Legitimate concern, she told herself. But why couldn’t she help feeling that Megan was trying to run her life, that Megan was making something out of nothing? Why did everything Megan said get under her skin?

Another time Megan mentioned her job. “I’m really throwing myself into this,” she said. “Knocking myself out.”

“You must enjoy it.”

“I suppose I do. But it’s hard being away from you so much.”

“Oh, is it?”

“Honey, did I do something wrong? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s the matter.”

But something was and she knew it. Something was very wrong between them, so wrong that they couldn’t talk like normal human beings without one of them getting on the other’s nerves. She felt wrong about it but that did not seem to change things.

After dinner they sat on a bench in Sheridan Square. The air was heavy, thick with the exhaust of trucks and cabs, rolling south on Seventh Avenue. They smoked cigarettes, and Rhoda thought that not long ago she had not smoked in public, on the street. There were a lot of things she did now that she had not done in the past.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“A show? Something like that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Want to drop in on some of the girls?”

“Maybe.”

“I think we ought to,” Megan said. “A little company might do us both some good. We’re just getting on each other’s nerves, kitten, and that’s no good for either of us.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Rhoda? Should I call some of the girls?”

“All right.”

“Anyone special you want me to try?”

“You could call Bobbie.”

“Why?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why, no reason, Megan. I just thought that she was a friend of ours.”

“You’ve got a thing for her, don’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Oh, damn it, you do. Do you have to be so awful to me, Rhoda? Do you have to—”

They sat in silence, and she thought that it was all falling apart at the seams now, that Megan was jealous, that she was irritable, that the two of them were not going to last forever or anywhere close to it. She took a last drag on her cigarette and dropped it to the pavement, covered it with her foot and ground it out.

Megan said, “I’ll call her.”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll call her. Wait for me.”

Megan made the call from an outdoor booth across the street. Rhoda sat waiting for her. She tool another cigarette and lit it with the small lighter Megan had given her; the one with her name on it in precise script. She held the lighter in the palm of her hand and thought about their exchange of gifts. An exchange of presents, she knew now, was a ritual in the formation of a lesbian relationship. All the gay girls did it, giving each other tiny engraved gifts along with vows of foreverness. Once she had seen Megan’s collection of the jewelry she had been given over the years. A pin with two circles interlocked, a bracelet inscribed Never Leave Me — H.R., a half dozen rings, each engraved on the inside — Megan and Sue, Megan and Rita, Megan and Charlotte... all those trophies of loves that would never die, but that had died after all.

When Megan came back toward her she dropped the lighter in her purse. Megan told her that Bobbie wasn’t at her apartment, but that she had called Grace and Alice. “You remember them, Rhoda. They were at Leonetti’s the first time I took you there.”

“They were at Jan’s party, too.”

“Yes, I guess they were. They want us to drop over. Grace wanted to know if we were dressed. She sits around in slacks and a tailored blouse when she’s at home, but I told her we were wearing dresses so she’ll change into something more feminine.”

“She doesn’t have to.”

“She’ll feel uncomfortable otherwise. You don’t mind do you? Grace and Alice are an old pair, but they’re pretty good company.”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

It wasn’t a bad evening. Grace had a quart of J & B scotch and nothing to mix it with, and the four of them sat around drinking the liquor straight over ice cubes. They talked about Allie’s cold, which seemed to be chronic, and about the place where Grace was working, and Megan’s decorating job. They talked, too, about people. “A heavy date this weekend,” Grace said. “Allie and I are doing the town. Dinner at L’Aiglon, tickets to Pearly Wine, and then a nightcap or three at the Living Room. Have you ever been there, Rhoda? Everybody sits on these little couches for two, and the lights are low, and they have some sexy cabaret singer, and everyone does a little genteel necking.”

“You must be crazy,” Megan said.

“Why?”

“Because that’s not a gay place. You’ll look great there, Grace. No matter how low the lights are—”

“Oh Megan,” Allie said. She laughed. “We’re going with a couple of gay boys. Billie Rudin and Ray Crane. You know them, don’t you?”

The three of them had to explain it to Rhoda. When you wanted a real evening on the town, and when you didn’t want people staring at you and knowing you were gay, then you doubled with a couple of gay men. That way you came on just like straight people and no one knew the difference.

“Of course it doesn’t work if you’re butchy, or if the boys you go with are screaming queens,” Grace explained. “But if everybody dresses straight, no one guesses a thing. It’s handy, too. Two girls alone can’t go to dinner easily enough, or even to a show. But you go to a nightclub or to any of the better straight bars without getting either a pass tossed at you or a load of funny looks.”

And she realized how very much there was to learn. The demimonde had special survival mechanisms, special ways to get along in an unsympathetic world. How much she was learning, she thought. And how little she had known before.

Just half an hour before they left Grace and Alice’s apartment, Bobbie Kardaman dropped by for a drink. She couldn’t stay long, she said. She was in a hurry, but she had passed by the building and wanted to stop to say hello.

One glance set the pace. Bobbie came into the room and saw her, and looked long and hard at her, and their eyes locked and something happened to Rhoda. She couldn’t deny it, couldn’t avoid recognizing what it was. She broke the glance as quickly as she could but that didn’t change anything.

Oh, God—

“I’ve been settling down,” Bobbie said. “I spend of most of my time just sitting around my apartment, usually with a glass in my hand. But not always. I met a girl this weekend after the party and I thought everything was going to start swinging again, but after a night I knew this was strictly a short-time affair, and she left this morning and I couldn’t be happier. She was fine in bed — I’m being vulgar, aren’t I, Meg?”

“A little.”

“I’m the vulgar sort. Dirty old Bobbie. She was fine in the hay, kids, but that doesn’t have much to do with things. It truly doesn’t. She was so very boring, one of the pretentiously intellectual types, the kind that likes to discuss Sartre between sets. She tried to come on strong like the dyke in No Exit. We parted company, thank heaven.” She sighed. “So if anybody ever wants to come looking for little Bobbie, you know where she can be found. Home, and alone.”

And then a brief but significant glance at Rhoda—

She was very nice to Megan on the way home. They had kept rubbing one another the wrong way earlier in the evening, but now everything seemed to have smoothed out. They walked arm in arm, and they talked easily, and there was only one thing wrong.

Rhoda knew that she was acting.

Acting, playing a part, fitting herself into a role. Because she was being very nice to Megan now, and she would continue to be very nice to Megan, and she felt very close to Megan, closer now, oddly enough, than she had felt when love was stronger between them.

They hurried upstairs to Megan’s apartment, a little lightheaded from the scotch, and they had coffee together in the kitchen. She did not say anything to Megan about Bobbie having been home that night after all, did not let on that she knew Megan had lied about calling her. And Megan did not mention Bobbie, either.

But afterward, in bed, waiting for sleep to come, she let herself think all the thoughts that might better have been left unthought. And she knew just what was going to happen, knew it with a quiet certainty.

In the morning, she would go to work. And at five-thirty, after work, she would go somewhere for a quick dinner which she would eat without tasting. Then, after a quick drink or two at Leonetti’s for courage, she would go where she could not help going.

To Bobbie’s apartment.

Chapter Nine

It went as she had known it would and she moved through the day as if in a dream. Her mind somehow failed to involve itself in what she did, and she waited on customers in Heaven’s Door without seeing their faces, showing them ashtrays and saki sets, taking their money and wrapping their packages, and making pleasant conversation with the enthusiasm of a well-designed robot programmed for retail sales work. She thought of Bobbie, and of herself, and she thought how little control she had over what she did. She was a puppet dancing from bloody strings, tripping here and there with no direction of her own.

It was early when she got to Leonetti’s. The bar was deserted, with just one couple huddled close in the back and one butchy girl drinking straight shots at the bar. She took a stool at the far end of the bar from the mannish girl, and ordered J & B on the rocks, drank the drink quickly and took a refill. She had never done much drinking before — hardly any in college, very little during the years as Tom Haskell’s wife. But she was learning. She worked more slowly on her second drink, letting the liquor seep into her body and settle her down. A couple of quick ones for courage, she thought. Lord, how she had changed.

She left the bar. Bobble’s apartment was a few blocks uptown on Horatio Street. She had never been there before but she remembered the address and had no trouble finding the building. A brownstone, well preserved. Over one of the doorbells, a small card with Roberta Kardaman in Gothic script. Roberta — she had never thought of the girl as Roberta. Just as Bobbie.

She did not ring the bell. She climbed stairs, found the door to Bobbie’s apartment. The same card in a slot under a peephole — Roberta Kardaman. A bell at the side of the door. She reached out for it, stopped, lit a cigarette, returned the lighter to her purse.

She thought of Megan. The blonde girl might be home now — she had not even called to make sure. Megan could be at their apartment, waiting for her, wondering where she was, worrying about her. She dragged nervously on the cigarette and coughed. She could still do it, she told herself. Turn around, hurry home, find Megan or wait for Megan, and push Bobbie out of her mind. She could do it.

Oh, God—

Her forefinger found the bell, stabbed it. She heard chimes sound within the apartment. There was silence and for a moment she thought that Bobbie was not home. Then she heard footsteps approaching the door and she held her arms rigid at her sides and waited.

“I hoped you would come.”

“I had to.”

“Last night.”

“Yes.”

“You’re scared, aren’t you, Rho?”

“Not of you.”

“Of yourself then. Of what happens.”

“Yes.”

“Stay there, I’ll make drinks. Scotch?”

“All right.”

She waited on the couch while Bobbie made drinks. The couch was an old Victorian affair with arms, a floral pattern that blended with the cozily chaotic decor of the apartment. An oriental rug, going threadbare here and there. A Modigliani reproduction housed in a garish gold frame. A sagging armchair, a pair of rock maple captain’s chairs, a Duncan Phyfe drumhead table. A confusion of bad pieces which somehow went together well, all of them managing to reflect the person that was Bobbie.

On the arm of the couch Bobbie’s cat sat staring at her. A Siamese, a study in poise and gentility. Bobbie had spoken of the cat before. His name was Claude — “Because he clawed me,” Bobbie had explained — and he was the only male allowed in the apartment. Rhoda reached out a hand toward the cat, then withdrew it. She tried to remember whether or not you were supposed to pet cats.

“Don’t,” Bobbie said. She crossed the room with the drinks. “He hates affection, Rho. He’s a miserable bastard. Did you want water in this? I made it on the rocks.”

“That’s fine.”

She took her drink, sipped it. Bobbie was sitting in the chair at her right now. She turned on the couch and crossed her legs at the knee and looked at Bobbie. Bobbie was wearing slacks and a gold blouse, and her chestnut hair was drawn back in a chignon. She always seemed to be wearing her hair differently, Rhoda thought. And it always looked lovely. Now she seemed cool and detached, very commanding.

Bobbie said, “What happens now, Rho?”

“I don’t know.”

“We want each other. That much is fairly obvious. I’ve wanted you all along, and I suppose you’ve known that all along. Megan could see it coming. She hasn’t liked me much since you and I met. She knew this would happen.”

“She knew before I did.”

“When was that?”

“I guess the party.”

”That’s what I thought.”

Bobbie stood up, stretched, pulling her shoulders sharply back to draw her breasts into bold relief against the material of the gold blouse. Her body was bent slightly backward at the waist, and her hips thrust out provocatively. Rhoda’s eyes were glued to the girl’s body. The black slacks were very tight, like a second skin, and Rhoda looked at the tops of Bobbie’s thighs and felt a yearning come up in the back of throat, strong and undeniable. She could not look away.

Why? Just a girl’s body, composed of the same elements as her own, arranged in similar if not identical proportion. A body no better or worse than her own and no better or worse than Megan’s. Why such a hunger, such a wave of need?

“Rho.” The voice low in pitch now, husky. “Rho, I do not just want a sweet and simple roll in the hay.”

“No.”

“If I have you it has to be for a long time. Forget forever, I don’t know what forever means. Nothing is forever. But no one-night stands and no week-long marriage. I don’t want that.”

“Neither do I.”

And she thought, Don’t talk, don’t talk to me. Touch me, hold me, kiss me, say wonderful things to me. Just that.

“Megan was your first.”

“Yes.”

“Gay girls change partners more when they just start out. They suddenly see what they are and they find out what a beautiful world sex makes, and they want to take the whole gay world to bed with them. They fall in and out of love at the drop of a bra. When they get older, when they’ve broken a couple of hearts and had their own broken a few times, they start settling down. The novelty is dead and the sex is less important. The big need is love. And having a person you can count on, and one you can be with. When you get older the breaks come further apart and hurt more, and the love while you have it is a deeper, calmer thing. If you are going to be gone in the morning, little girl, then I do not want you here tonight.”

“I—”

“No matter how beautiful you are. And you are, you know. No matter how much I want you. And I do. Oh, too much.”

“I want it to last, Bobbie.”

“Of course you do. Now. And you wanted it to last with Meg, didn’t you?”

“But—”

Bobbie tossed off her drink. “I’m kidding both of us,” she said. “Right now it doesn’t matter whether you’ll be gone in a day or a week or a hundred years. I need you too damned much. I talk a good game but the talk breaks down when you pull the words apart. I couldn’t let you out of here if I wanted to and I don’t want to anyway. I love you, Rho.”

There was a lump in her throat, one that would not be swallowed away. There were tears in the corners of her eyes. Her hands trembled chaotically and her mouth was dusty dry. She stood to her feet and swayed there, lost and rocky, and Bobbie stepped toward her and she fell into the girl’s strong arms. Her head whirled and she could not breathe.

Oh, Megan, she thought, I can’t help this. Megan, I’m sorry, but I can’t help this. Forgive me—

She stood still and let herself be kissed. Bobbie’s lips found hers and Bobbie’s hands gripped her shoulders. Eyes closed, body limp, she let herself be kissed and touched, let herself be lowered down onto the couch. Bobbie stretched out beside her and held her close. They lay that way, bodies touching. They did not move.

“I love you,” she said.

“Oh, Rho.”

“It will be good, won’t it?”

“I don’t want to hurt anybody and I don’t want anybody to hurt me. I just want everything to be wonderful. Will we be wonderful?”

“How can we miss?”

A kiss, soft and gentle. When she opened her eyes, she saw Bobbie’s face inches from her own and she kissed Bobbie again and felt her head swim.

“How will we tell Megan?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t help worrying about it. Everything is complicated, isn’t it? I used to live all by myself and nothing was ever complicated, and I was so lonely I died inside every day until I was almost entirely dead, and now I am breathlessly alive and everything is a Chinese puzzle. What can I say to her? Do you want me to move in here with you?”

“Yes, if you can stand it.”

“Oh, I want to. What do I do? Just move everything from there into here? And what do I say to her? Megan, I don’t love you any more. I don’t want to hurt her. Some other girl had just hurt her when she met me, I don’t want to pile this on top of the other. Bobbie, help me.”

Silence. Then, “She already knows, Rho.”

“About us? How?”

“Not that we’re together yet, maybe. But that we will be, in a week if not now.”

“She loves me.”

“Yes. And she has been there before, Rho, and she’ll make that scene again. She knew last night. I saw her face, once when she looked at you with sad eyes and another time when she looked at me. She could have cheerfully throttled me last night. She knows.”

“Then how—”

“Don’t worry. You’ll manage.”

“I don’t know what I’ll say.”

“You’ll find the words.” Bobby took a breath. “I don’t know about you, but I need a drink.”

“Well, while you’re up—”

Bobbie went off to fill their glasses. Rhoda sat up slowly, blinked, reached for a cigarette. The cat had withdrawn while they embraced; he was seated on the floor now in front of a fake fireplace. He seemed to be studying her again. Little Claude, she thought. He lived there while the girls came and went. How many had he seen?

She looked at her watch. Megan might be home now, she thought. What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t call her. Nor could she let her sit home waiting and worrying. But maybe that would be better, maybe if Megan just came to the realization slowly—

So complicated. So awfully complicated.

Bobbie brought her a fresh drink and she took it gratefully. “I might become a drunk,” she said softly. “I think I am developing a taste for it.”

“You’re in good company.”

“I’m in marvelous company. Sit next to me, Bobbie.”

Bobbie was beside her now. Rhoda sipped the scotch and closed her eyes and thought how comfortable she was now. So much of life was devoted to the simple pursuit of comfort. She had never realized this before. And it was this hunger for comfort which had sent her to Bobbie. Not a craving for excitement, not some furious dark passion, but the basic desire to be where she could most comfortable. Bobbie was with her now, and the two of them might get a little drunk together, and they would be drawn closer and closer, until ultimately their lovemaking would climax the evening, symbolizing and emphasizing the bond that was growing up between them.

“You’re a funny girl, Rho.”

“Am I?”

“Uh-huh. A lot of the time you seem a hell of a lot younger than you are. Like a lost lamb, like a schoolgirl. How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“That’s what I would have guessed, I suppose, but part of the time you seem about seventeen.”

“I was seventeen until a few weeks ago.”

“I know what you mean. Yes, that’s what I thought. You were just a girl all that time, weren’t you? And spent two years pretending you were a woman, only it didn’t take. And then became a woman overnight.”

“Yes.”

“And they say we get this way by being led astray at an early age. The horny hands of a lady gym teacher, or an inquisitive tongue in a boarding school dorm room, every little thing that can warp us and ruin us before we have a chance to blossom out as child-producing man-loving automatons. What crap that is. My mother sits in too large a house in Grosse Pointe and tries to forget she ever knew me. She can’t forget all the time, because once a month she has to send me my check. A combination of conscience money and insurance; insurance because as long as the checks come regularly she knows I won’t darken her upper middle class doorway, and conscience money because she sits there scratching her head and wondering what she did wrong. Because she’s damned sure she must have done something wrong. Her darling daughter is a lesbian, and Mumsie is dead certain something like that couldn’t happen by chance. She couldn’t believe I might be born this way. And she can’t imagine that I’m a person underneath it all. Like some people when they look at a Negro. All they see is black skin, they don’t see a person. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“All my mother sees is a dyke. She broke down one time and cried and told me that she couldn’t look at me without imagining me in bed with another girl. What the hell sense does that make? I can look at her without visualizing her in bed with my father. For heaven’s sake, Rho, we’re all human beings.” She stopped for a minute. Then, “That woman was terrified when I wrote her and told her I couldn’t stand it in Mexico any more. I wanted to tell her the truth, that everybody in Cuernavaca was hopelessly depraved, but that wouldn’t have registered. She thinks I’m hopelessly depraved, so she would have thought I belonged there. But I got a letter from her and I saw she was scared. She thought I was coming back home to Detroit. She wrote that it would be awkward, inconvenient — oh, she found a lot of polite adjectives. I didn’t write her again until I was here in the city. I wrote her then and said I had a long lease on an apartment and that I would be staying in New York for a long time. I never mentioned her letter. Sometimes I hate her.”

For a long time neither of them said anything. Then Bobbie finished her drink and put her glass down. The Siamese paraded slowly but confidently across the room, and seated himself sedately upon the floor in front of Bobbie. His eyes were steel blue.

“My man Claude,” she said. “I spoil him rotten, Rho. He’s an aristocrat, you know. Something of a gourmet. No cat food for this fellow, not at all. Do you know what he ate tonight? An entire tin of smoked oysters at eighty-nine cents a tin, purchased especially for him at the Caviarteria on Eighth Street. That’s near where you work — do you know the place?”

“I’ve seen it. It’s across the street from Heaven’s Door.”

“That’s the sort of food Claude eats. Spoiled rotten.”

“How old is he?”

“A year and a half. He’s sexually mature, incidentally. I never had him castrated. Do you think I should?”

“I don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t like it,” Bobbie said. “If I were a cat, I mean. They don’t say castrated, you know. It sounds too vicious. They say altered. The last time I took him to the vet’s, it was for a distemper shot, and the vet asked me if I wanted Claude altered. I said that he was fine the way he is. But he leads such a monastic life. Do you think maybe he’s gay?”

“Can cats be gay?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. I suppose I should find out. If environment’s a factor, then this one is queer as Dick’s hatband, I’ll say that.”

They went on talking about the cat, offering up insane ideas for Claude’s sexual gratification. Bobbie said that maybe his expensive tastes in food were a form of compensation, and Rhoda suggested that Bobbie bought smoked oysters for him because she felt guilty about forcing the cat to lead a loveless life. Somewhere along the way Bobbie got the scotch bottle, brought it back with her, and filled their glasses again.

Bobbie said, “You have so many questions and so few answers. It’s murder, isn’t it?”

“How will I learn the answers?”

“By living them.”

“And you learn that way?”

“Maybe you never learn, Rho. Maybe you just come to forget the questions. Oh, this is lovely, isn’t it? I’m dark and mysterious and poetically cryptic. In a minute I’ll turn out the lights and set candles glowing and read the poems of Sister Sappho. Remember that? Jan Pomeroy’s crazy, but she only manages to exaggerate a happy little madness that burns in every last one of us. We all make a religion out of homosexuality. Or a mythology, at least. We ask questions and search our souls for answers, and try to find some special grain of meaning in our lives. The hell with it. Why should there be meaning? Straight people don’t have to find meaning in their sex lives. Just because we operate differently why do we have to analyze everything until it turns blue? Doesn’t work, kiddo.”

The room was very still. Then Bobbie said, “Kiss me, Rho.”

They were in each other’s arms, drawn close, transported in an instant from philosophy to the beginnings of passion. Claude padded silently across the room toward the fireplace. Rhoda’s eyes were closed. She felt Bobbie’s lips at her throat, Bobbie’s hand tracing the contour of breast.

The phone rang.

It seared her at first, splitting the sweet silence of room like a sword tearing a silk cloth. Bobbie said, “Damn it,” and moved to answer the phone. Rhoda sat up, blinked.

Bobbie said, “Hello... yes, but... what? Oh, Jesus. Did anything... can’t you get in there? Can’t you get her to open up?”

It was about Megan, she thought crazily. Something had happened to Megan. And it was her fault—

“I’ll be right over,” Bobbie was saying “Talk to her, do anything. Promise her anything she wants to hear. Oh, Christ, I hope we get through this one.”

She hung up, spun to face Rhoda. She said, “That was Lucia Perry. You met her at Jan’s party. I don’t know if you remember her.”

An image came to mind, a short dark girl with laughing eyes.

“She lives with Peg Brandt. Peg just locked herself in the bathroom and she’s threatening to kill herself. Lucia is hysterical.”

“What—”

“We’ve got to get over there,” Bobbie said. “Lu says she’s talking about cutting her wrists. There are razor blades in the medicine cabinet. We’ve got to get over there.”

“Oh, God—”

“What’s it like outside? Do I need a jacket? I shouldn’t go dressed like this. Oh, Jesus, what does it matter? Come on, Rho. Hurry.”

Chapter Ten

The apartment was out of the Village, uptown on Twenty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue. It was in a huge sprawling building with a half dozen different entrances. Bobbie paid the cabbie and they spilled out onto the sidewalk and rushed into the building. The elevator was self-service and they had to wait for it to get down to the ground floor. It took its time, then made its way very slowly up to the sixth floor where the two girls lived. It was maddening. They stood in the car with no way to hurry its progress until it finally reached the sixth floor and the ancient doors opened.

On the way over, Bobbie had told her more about the two girls. “Peg has done this before,” she said. “It’s nothing new. Once she took too many sleeping pills and another time she was up on the window sill and threatening to jump. Not out on a ledge like in the movies but just on the sill. We talked her out of it that time. She doesn’t really want to kill herself. She just wants to come close.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Peg and Lu have been together for almost three years now. That’s a fairly long time. You met Lu. Do you remember Peg?”

“No.”

“She’s about five years older than Lu. And very scared of losing her. That won’t happen, because Lucia is the kind of girl who wants to have her cake and eat it. She wants the security Peg gives her and she also wants a little hit-and-run sex. So she cheats. Peg knows she cheats and she tries not to notice it. Sometimes people can manage to see what they want to see. But every once in a while Lu is too blatant about it and Peg can’t help finding out, and it hurts her.”

“And she tries to—”

“Sometimes. Three times now that I know of. Probably a few more than that.” Bobbie sighed. “One of these days she’ll probably manage it, and without trying to. By accident. Play with suicide long enough and it gets to you, I suppose. I hope we get there on time.”

And later, in the elevator, Bobbie said the same thing. “I hope we’re not too late. I hope she didn’t go off the deep end this time.”

Lucia Perry was waiting in the doorway of her apartment. Her face was fishbelly white and she was wringing her hands nervously. She said, “Bobbie, I had to call you. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Is she still—”

“Yes. She won’t come out. She won’t answer me. I don’t know if anything happened or not. I tied to kick the door in but nothing happens, I can’t move it. I—”

Bobbie hurried past her into the room. She seemed to know her way around the apartment and went straight to the bathroom door. “Peg,” she called. “Peggy, for Christ’s sake, Peggy, what are you doing in there?”

A voice, low, muffled. “Go away.”

“Open the door, Peg.” Bobbie’s voice was calmer now, commanding. “Open the door and let me in.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Just turn the bolt and open the door. That’s all there is to it, Peg.”

“Do you know what she did?” The voice was firmer now.

“What?”

“She had a girl up here. I don’t even know her name, some two-bit tramp she picked up around Times Square. Here in my apartment. They were in our bed, the two of them, and I walked in on them, God help me, and I saw them—”

Rhoda looked at Lucia Perry. They girl’s eyes were filled with tears. She looked as though she was going to faint. “I’ll get you a drink,” she told the girl. “You need one.”

“I don’t—”

“Where’s the liquor?” She didn’t wait for an answer but went to the living room and found an opened bottle of blended whiskey. She poured a stiff shot into an orange juice glass and made Lucia drink it. The girl had trouble getting it down but it seemed to help.

And Bobbie was still talking to Peg, her voice steady, reasonable. “You don’t want to hurt yourself, Peg,” she said. “You don’t want to do anything bad. Jesus, just open the door, Peg.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going to kill myself, Bobbie. Oh, that little bitch! Why do I let her do this to me, Bobbie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why do I love her?”

“Open the door, Peg.” There was silence. “Peg, open the door.”

In a whisper, Lucia said, “There are three of us. Maybe together we could break it down.”

“The building’s forty years old,” Bobbie whispered back. “They used real doors then. This one is solid oak. We couldn’t budge it.”

“Then—”

“Let me talk to her.” Louder, she said, “Peg, please. Don’t hurt yourself. She’s not worth it.”

“But I love her, Bobbie—” It was a whine, pathetic.

“Peg.”

Silence again. Then, softly, “I cut myself, Bobbie.”

“Ohmigosh!”

“I’m bleeding. I’m afraid, I’m afraid.”

Lucia was saying that it was all her fault, that if anything happened to Peg she would kill herself, too. And that she deserved it. “What could I do without her? God, I couldn’t live without her!”

The door opened. Peg Brandt, tall and heavy-bodied, took a faltering step toward the doorway. She had slashed both her wrists and dark venal blood flowed from each wound. Her face was pale as death, her mouth slack, her eyes vacant.

Lucia screamed.

Bobbie said, “Get Lu out of the way, knock her out cold if you have to. I’ll take care of Peg. I know what to do, just get Lu out of my way for a few minutes.”

Rhoda herded the girl into a bedroom, made her sit down, got more of the blended whiskey into her. Lucia talked non-stop, babbling about what a horrible thing she had done, proclaiming her love for Peg, swearing that she would never look at another girl again, that it had been a crazy thing, a kid’s trick, a whim, and that it would never ever happen again if only Peg came through, if only everything worked out all right. Rhoda didn’t have to say much. She stayed with the girl and held her hand and tried with incomplete success to calm her down.

Then Bobbie called that it was all right, that they could come in again. They went to the living room. Peg was stretched out on the couch, her feet propped up on a pair of pillows. Her face was still very pale. Both wrists were heavily bandaged with gauze and adhesive tape.

“It was a little close,” Bobbie said. “She got the veins but missed the arteries, which is good because it’s harder to stop arterial bleeding. It spurts and comes faster. She had four trial marks on the wrist. She must have tried four times before she got up the nerve to do the job, and then she just switched the blade and cut the other wrist on the first try. She was bleeding for a while before she opened the door, but I don’t think she lost too much blood. I got it stopped pretty quickly. She’s weak, though. Aren’t you, Peg?”

“I’m all right.”

“You goddamned fool. You’re just lucky everybody loves you.”

“Loves me?”

“Yes. All of us. And Lucia more than anybody. She hurts you because she can’t help it, but that doesn’t change anything. She loves you, Peg, and she was hysterical before. She still is.”

“I didn’t mean to scare her.”

“You didn’t mean to kill yourself, either. You just wanted to come close.”

“I—”

“Take it easy, rest.” Bobbie turned around. She looked exhausted. She said, “Get some orange juice from kitchen. That’s what they give you after you donate blood. To build you up again. Make sure she eats a lot of meat and drinks a lot of liquids for the next few days. Keep her away from liquor as much as you can. She’ll be all right but she’s going to be weak. She has to take it easy. Tomorrow’s Saturday. That’s good — she doesn’t have to work. Keep her home and keep her in bed. And for God’s sake, be good to her. She loves you, Lu. You ought to know that.”

“And I love her, Bobbie.”

“Yes,” she said heavily. “I guess you do.”

The coffee was strong and black and sugarless. Bobbie served it in heavy china mugs that were at least twice the size of an ordinary coffee cup. They drank it in the kitchen, sitting in captain’s chairs at a heavy round oak table, its surface worn with years of use. The kitchen itself was spotless. “I buy old furniture and let it crumble under me,” Bobbie had said, “but I run a clean ship. I may be crude but I’m neat, as the whore said to the sailor. And Claude doesn’t like dirt. It bothers him.”

Claude was in the other room now, sleeping in front of the fireplace. Rhoda sipped the hot coffee and put the mug down on the table. She felt strangely calm now. Peggy and Lucia were far away and their problems were no longer hers. Megan, too, was far away. She was not worried about Megan any longer. Megan would live through losing her.

Bobbie said, “I knew a girl who killed herself. Once.”

She didn’t say anything. The sentence jumped in at her, tore her from her restful mood.

“In Cuernavaca. That was one of the reasons I came back, one of the things that made it impossible for me to stomach Mexico any more. She wasn’t exactly a lesbian. She was bisexual and would sleep with anything if she got in the mood. Her parents were very rich. Old money, a proper Bostonian family, all that.” Bobbie’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “She was the most depraved person I’ve ever met, in the real sense of the word.”

“Tell me about her.”

“I don’t know what to tell. She was thrill-crazy, I guess that’s it. Her parents should have sent her to a psychiatrist instead of to Mexico. She told incredible stories, but most of them may have been lies I don’t think she knew the difference.”

“Did you ever—”

“Oh, of course. Everybody was hysterically promiscuous down there, and she was working her way through everyone who could speak English, and an occasional Mexican for laughs, and she got to me after a while. I never liked her much but I found her... well, fascinating, in a pitiable sort of a way. We weren’t together long. Then a month later she killed herself. She was only twenty-two years old. She was messy about it, awful about it; it was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a party, everybody drinking. In the middle of everything she took a gun from her purse, a revolver, and she shouted something about this being the biggest kick of all, and she stuck the gun in her mouth—”

Her heart was pounding. “Don’t say it.”

There was a time while neither of them said anything. Rhoda finished her coffee, lit a cigarette. In her mind’s eye she could see that girl, faceless but very real to her, playing her little desperate scene in the middle of a party, picking just the right dramatic moment for announcement and, before anyone could do anything, the act itself.

“Rho—”

Bobbie’s eyes were wide, deep. They caught hers and held them.

“Rho, now.”

The bedroom was almost stark in its simplicity. A Hollywood bed, a maple dresser, a worn rug on the floor. Two chairs, a night table. Walls that needed painting. Bobbie turned on a small lamp on the night table, and killed the overhead light. “I used to be afraid of the dark,” she said. “Can you believe it?”

“But you’re not now.”

“No. But I want to see you.”

They lay down on the bed with their clothes on and kissed. Bobbie was the aggressor, which was as she had known it would be. Bobbie ran her hand over Rhoda’s face, let her hand trail downward to cup a breast gently through the layers of clothing.

This should be a tense moment, she thought. And yet it wasn’t. It took her a moment to realize why this was so. She was taking a new lover, moving from Megan and moving to Bobbie, and yet now, in Bobbie’s arms, she did not feel that any break was being made. But the reason was quickly obvious. She had already become as intimate with Bobbie as she had ever been with anyone. She had committed herself in every way but physically, had developed an emotional rapport with Bobbie that had been tempered by Peg Brandt’s attempt at suicide. What they did now, what pleasure they gave one another in bed, called for no basic change in their relationship. She was not betraying Megan now; she had already betrayed her by what she said and by what she felt. This was no new betrayal. This was only frosting on the cake.

She lay quite still while Bobbie undressed her, removing her clothing piece by piece. The air in the bedroom was cool on her naked flesh. She sighed when Bobbie held her bare breasts, moaned softly when Bobbie ran a hand over her slender legs.

Oh—

Then she was alone upon the bed. Bobbie had drawn away from her. Rhoda turned her head, opened her eyes. Bobbie was undressing by the side of the bed. She unbuttoned the gold blouse, shrugged it from her shoulders. Her hands reached behind her back to unfasten the bra and remove it. Next her hair — she let it down, and the rich chestnut mane spilled over her shoulders and hung to the sides of her breasts.

She looked like a goddess, Rhoda thought. Bared to the waist, fullbodied and magnificent, wide-eyed and beautiful. And her face showed nothing — neither happiness nor sorrow, neither excitement nor boredom. Nothing at all.

Bobbie took off the rest of her clothes. The tight black slacks, the panties, the shoes. And then she turned to look directly down upon Rhoda, bathed in half-light by the nightstand lamp, and her expression went from blank seriousness to embryonic passion. “My Rho,” she said, “I love you so very damned much.”

“Oh—”

“How soft you are, how soft and warm. And how lovely. I could look at you and touch you forever.”

She had known it would be this way, with Bobbie leading while she followed, with Bobbie bestowing and Rhoda receiving, submitting. She lay still, eyes half-lidded at first, then completely shut. She lay still and quiet, and Bobbie did magical things to her.

Bobbie nuzzled her breasts, caressed them with trembling fingers. Rhoda’s breasts seemed to swell from the touch. Bobbie kissed her there, and Bobbie’s clever tongue coursing over her soft breast-flesh was an agony of yearning aching passion. Bobbie tongued Rhoda’s nipples into stiff longing, caught up each erect nipple in between her scarlet lips and sucked on them like an infant, and yet not like an infant at all. Rhoda’s flesh quivered. The muscles in her legs and feet were tied in knots, all bound up and tense. She wanted to shout, to shriek.

“Oh, God. Oh, yes, there. There—”

All her flesh sang. Bobbie’s hands, Bobbie’s lips, everywhere, doing everything. Everything, everywhere, all.

Fancies: She was a violin and Bobbie was playing songs on her body, wild melodies that twisted and soared. Bobbie was coaxing music from her and she was trembling in Bobbie’s hands. Fancies: She was ice aflame, burning with blue fire. Fancies: There was no time, there was no space, there was no world, there was merely this.

Till human voices wake us and we drown.

In the morning she called Mr. Yamatari and said she was sick and could not come in. Then she called Megan and managed, somehow, to get though the conversation. At first Megan cursed her and called her a vicious little tramp, and then Megan cried and begged her to come back, and finally Megan swore eternal love and said she could not live without her. But Rhoda did the only thing she could do, telling Megan over and that she was going to live with Bobbie and that there was nothing else she could do.

“You’ll want your clothes.”

“I—”

“Give me an hour to get out of here. Then come over and help yourself. I still love you, Rhoda. And you love me.”

She said nothing.

“And always will. Because you never forget the first, darling. The first one everybody always remembers. Oh, kitten, we were so good for each other. What happened to us?”

“I don’t know.”

“People never do, do they? But this is the way a first affair should end, with you the one to break it up. Otherwise it hurts too much, kitten. Oh, come back to me. Oh, Rhoda—”

Silence. Then Megan said, “I’m sorry. Give me an hour, I’ll be out of here. Goodbye, Rhoda.”

The connection was broken. She put the phone down, reached for a cigarette, lit it. Her eyes were fixed on the small silver lighter, her name engraved so neatly upon one side. And she thought of a small gold circle pin. On the back, Forever. Below that, Your Rhoda.

Chapter Eleven

Outside, snow was falling. It wasn’t sticking to the pavement yet, but she had heard a weather report earlier which had said that it would turn colder after midnight and that there would be two to four inches of snow by morning. The announcer had said something about having a white Christmas after all. But there was no way to tell, she thought. Christmas was two weeks off, and this was the first real snowfall of the season. There had been flurries now and then, but nothing more than that. There might or might not be snow for Christmas, and she didn’t particularly care one way the other.

She was sitting alone at the bar in Leonetti’s, nursing a drink, watching a cigarette burn itself out in the ashtray. The place was crowded. Most of the tables were taken, and over a dozen other girls crowded around her at the bar. She knew most of them but didn’t feel like talking, not to them or to anyone else.

She sipped her drink. It was mostly melted ice now, flat and tasteless. She looked up. The bartender was down at the other end of the bar, busy with a complicated cocktail. She stubbed out her cigarette and drained her drink. She glanced at the window again, at the falling snow outside. Bobbie would be coming soon. Bobbie would join her, and they would take a table and have few drinks together, and maybe drop over to somebody’s apartment for more drinks and some food and conversation, and then home, and then to bed.

All at once she stopped thinking and closed her eyes and listened. Leonetti’s was jammed, and she had been sitting at the bar with her thoughts turned inward and her ears turned off, the crowd noise shut out. Now she let the voices come to her, let herself be immersed in the glut of sound.

So many girls all talking at once. And, with the rush of their voices, with the strained urgency that crept into their hectic conversation, she was overwhelmed by a feeling that the whole scene was slightly pathetic, pathetic and even laughable. A bar filled with girls, a whole mob of lesbians who had nothing better to do than waste their time in a bar with others like themselves. And the bar was filled with them simply because it catered to them. The drinks were overpriced, the decor unappealing, the service nothing remarkable. But the gay girls flocked to it because they were welcome there. That alone assured the bar’s success.

Gay. She almost laughed — it was as though she were catching the deeper meaning of that merry word for the first time. So elaborately gay, so determined to maintain the appearances of joyous exhilaration. Heavy drinking, raucous laughter, wild jokes, never a dull moment. Unless you stopped to catch your breath and realized, startled, that all of the moments were slightly dull.

The bartender came and filled her glass and took her money. She did not sip this one so very slowly but knocked off half of it in one quick swallow. Gay? If they were all so gay, what were they doing at Leonetti’s? If they were all so profoundly happy, why did they fight so much? If life was such a bed of roses, why did they slash their wrists?

Gay.

She and Bobbie were gay, all right. And in love. But they were also screaming at each other half the time and sulking the rest of the time. She didn’t know why it worked out that way but it did. They still loved each other, more than ever, and it looked as though they would last — for a long time, if not forever.

But the fights were hell. Jealousy started some but not all of them, and both of them were equally capable provoking jealousy and of being moved by it. The jealousy fights, though, were at least a confirmation of love. The other fights were madness. One would want to go a party, one would want to stay home — and in minutes one would be yelling and the other crying. Or she would complain that Bobbie never did the dishes, or Bobbie would complain about Rhoda borrowing a dress without asking, or Rhoda would say something about the omnipresent Siamese cat. Anything could start things going. Any spark was dangerous when you lived in an oil refinery. Two weeks ago, she remembered, Ed Vance had come to see her again, if only to prove that his skin was as thick as his heart. “You stood me up awhile ago,” he told her, grinning. “I thought I’d give you another chance. How about it, Rhoda?”

She brushed him off quickly and brutally, telling him in very definite terms that she was not interested in seeing him, that she would never be interested in seeing him, and that she would greatly appreciate it if he would make a point of avoiding her in the future. Not even a man like Ed Vance could misinterpret her this time. He stepped back as though he had been slapped, and she caught anger and fury in his eyes. Then he forced a smile. “You’ll never know what you’re missing,” he managed, and then he got out of there.

And when she told Bobbie, the tall girl exploded in her face. She had thought they would laugh about it, about the fool Vance was making of himself, but Bobbie didn’t laugh.

“You must have led him on,” she said.

“Are you crazy?”

“You’re just trying to hurt me. Making love to me and flirting with a man at the same time. Men don’t make passes at a girl unless they think they have a chance. They leave me alone.”

“Well, maybe—”

“Maybe I’m not as attractive as you are? Is that what you were going to say?”

“I just—”

It had been one hell of a battle. But the next day when she came home from work, Bobbie gave her a small white gold wedding band, plain and simple. “You wear this, darling,” she said. “Let the men think you’re married and they won’t make passes at you. I’m sorry, Rho. I was a bitch last night and I’m sorry—”

Fighting and making up, crying and wiping tears away, hurting each other, loving each other. Gay? Oh, very gay. Sure.

She fingered the plain gold band on her ring finger. A lot of the girls wore them, she knew. Sometimes girls exchanged them as a sort of symbolic marriage; more often they merely wore them as she wore hers, as a convenient way to ward off predatory males. Her own wedding ring, the one Tom had given her, would have done as well. But the day the annulment came through, she took it off and dropped it down a sewer grating.

She finished her drink. Bobbie would be coming soon, she thought. She wished the girl would hurry. There were girls all around her, a whole mob of girls just like her and just like Bobbie, and she still felt so thoroughly alone that she wanted to cry.

They wound up the night at John’s on Bleecker. She and Bobbie, Lucia Perry and Peg Brandt, Grace and Allie, Megan and Jan Pomeroy. The young Italian waiter winked happily at them and pulled two tables together and they sat together eating pizza with mushrooms and anchovies and drinking cold beer. The blackness of Rho’s mood had left when Bobbie arrived at Leonetti’s.

She had slowed down on the drinking then, and now she just felt relaxed and happy. It was the first time she had been with Megan since they separated. She had run into her now and then, with the first meeting between them awkward and the second one forced and uneasy, but now they were able to relax at the same table. But it still felt strange to her, Meg was a girl she had loved, a girl she lived with, a girl she had finally left. And now they were what? Friends. Just that.

She knew how it had been with Megan after the break-up. The blonde girl finished her decorating job, pulling it through on sheer willpower. She hurled herself in her work, got home late at night and drank herself into a stupor, then got up the next morning and went back to work. Once the job was out of the way, Megan stayed blind drunk for six days. Two weeks and three days after she stopped her heavy drinking, she went to bed with Jan Pomeroy.

Each of the girls kept her own apartment. Neither of them even expected their affair to last for any great length of time. “We’re enjoying ourselves,” Jan had told Bobbie once. “We’ve known each other for ages and I’ve always liked and admired Megan. But we’re not making any marriage. When we stop being good for each other, or as soon as either of us finds someone else, that’s it. No tears.”

It was an unlikely combination, Rhoda thought. Jan was as religiously homosexual as ever, and Megan had always thought of the hollow-eyed girl and her romantic notions as something of a joke. But they seemed to be good for each other. And she was glad Megan had found somebody to take her place.

Now Megan was talking about a job she was thinking of taking. “This woman wants her living room redone,” she said. “She wants a very plush effect, like an apartment for one of those Doris Day movies. I know just how to give her what she wants.”

“Aren’t you going to do it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, because it’s not my kind of thing I mean, I would have to put together a room that I wouldn’t be able to walk into without getting slightly dizzy.”

“But if she’s happy—”

“Megan’s the great artist,” Peg Brandt said. “Chockful of artistic integrity. Something I can’t afford to have, incidentally. We folks up at McClellan Products Gazette just do what we have to do. No long words in the crossword puzzle, no bosomy girls in the cartoons, and no expression of opinion that isn’t the precise opinion of one Harvey McClellan. I envy you, Megan.”

Lucia hurried to bolster Peg. “Now stop it,” she said. “You’re in a different field, that’s all. You don’t want to be artistic in your job, Peggy, because it’s something else. It’s being professional that’s important, in doing the job the way it ought to be done. And everybody knows you’re tops.”

There was a momentary lull. Rhoda drank beer straight from the bottle and put the bottle down on the table top. “I wish I could do something,” she said.

She must have said it more plaintively than she meant it. Everyone was looking at her.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I just don’t do anything. Megan is a decorator, Peg is an editor, Lu models—”

“And Bobbie drinks.”

There was laughter. “I’m serious,” she went on. “What do I do? Oh, Bobbie doesn’t work, I know, but she’s interested in a whole load of things. She reads like mad, she writes poetry—”

“Bad poetry,” Bobbie put in.

“And what do I do?” She shrugged. “Nothing. I go to work and stand there like an idiot selling ugly things to tasteless people, and I come home and relax, and then I go to work again. Anybody could do what I do. I have a college diploma, but I could work as well for Mr. Yamatari with a fourth grade education.”

“Not everyone works at something interesting,” Bobbie said. “I don’t. The only job I could get would be something like yours, and I don’t need the money, so I don’t work at all. And an awful lot of girls have jobs that don’t do anything but bring them income.”

“But I’m not involved in anything—”

“Oh?” Grace winked broadly at her. “And here we all thought you were involved with Bobbie.”

“You know what I mean.” She took a cigarette, lit blew out smoke. “I wish I were caught up in something, all excited about something. It wouldn’t have be terribly artistic or anything.”

“Maybe you could open a shop,” someone suggested.

“A shop? What kind?”

“Anything. Antiques, clothes, jewelry. Some little shop that reflects your inner self.”

“That’s a beautiful straight line,” she said. “I won’t bother with a punch line. But it takes a fortune to open a place, doesn’t it? And I don’t know the first thing about business.”

“What to know?” Jan Pomeroy was talking. “You buy things and sell them, and you try to sell them for more than they cost you. That’s all you have to know about business.”

“But—”

“Don’t you see? You and Bobbie could be partners. Working together, all united in this exciting venture.”

They didn’t stay on the subject for very long. Jan and Megan started talking about holiday plans and the table shifted over to that subject. Jan was having a Christmas party and there were half a dozen New Year’s parties already in the planning stage, and the holiday season looked promising. Not everyone would be in town, of course. Alice had to go home to visit her parents in Baltimore, and Grace was trying to decide whether or not she should go with her. Alice’s parents had told her it was all right to bring a friend but Grace was sure they would suspect something. “And yet I don’t want to be away from Allie that long,” she said. “She needs somebody to take care of her, and it would be a hard time for her to be alone.”

Rhoda only half followed the conversation. She was thinking about that idea someone had tossed out, of having a shop of her own. It seemed exciting and she let her mind toss it around.

The conversation caught her up again and she let go of the thread of thought. Maybe sometime she could think more about it, she told herself. But not now. She was too busy living the good gay life.

Terry Langer didn’t look gay.

That was the first thing she thought when she met him, and her next thought was that nothing could be stupider. By now she should have realized that you didn’t have to look gay to be gay. She didn’t look gay, and Bobbie didn’t look gay, and neither did the majority of the girls she knew. But she did not know many male homosexuals, so she still thought of them in terms of the convenient stereotypes.

Terry didn’t fit the image. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a deep voice and a strong chin and a rugged profile. He had none of the mannerisms of the effeminate male, and yet he was a thoroughgoing homosexual. That was why she was with him now.

The whole thing had been arranged just a few hours before. Bobbie got a frantic phone call late in the afternoon, talked quickly, then turned to Rhoda. “It’s Bernie Jaeckel,” she said. “You remember him, don’t you? He’s a gay boy, I think you met him at that big blast at Rita’s.”

She remembered him vaguely. “So?”

“He’s with a boy named Terry Langer now. And Terry got a letter, this morning, that his parents are coming to town. The surprise visit bit, Rho. They want us to front for them. Double up with the boys tonight. Terry’s folks don’t know he’s gay and he doesn’t want them to suspect anything. And you know, two fellows sharing apartment.”

It was funny, she thought. Before she met Megan, before she got herself caught up in the shadow world of homosexuality, she never would have thought twice about two men sharing an apartment. It was cheaper that way, it was less lonely. But once you were on the inside you began looking at things in a different light. If two men lived together, and if their apartment was in Brooklyn Heights or the Village or around Broadway and Seventy-second, and if they didn’t go out much with girls, you began to suspect that they were homosexual.

“Is it okay, Rho?”

She said it was and Bobbie settled the arrangements. The Langers were due around four in the afternoon. At two-thirty, she and Bobbie cabbed over to the boys’ apartment on West 69th Street. For a little over an hour the four of them sat around a bridge table drinking coffee and talking about people they knew, about plans for New Year’s Eve, and, finally, about the best way to handle Mr. and Mrs. Langer. Now and then Bernie Jaeckel would dart around the apartment destroying evidence — picking up a stray male physique magazine and tucking it out of sight, deliberately shoving furniture out of place or overturning an ashtray to disrupt the apartment’s almost feminine neatness.

“We ought to change the furniture,” he said at one point. “If we really wanted to do this in style, we would move out all the furniture and re-do the pad in Early Heterosexual. You know, blonde Danish modern from Grand Rapids. Metallic pole lamps. Long wrap-around sectional couches.”

“Ughhh,” Terry said.

Bobbie suggested hanging a bra in the bathroom. “But we have to walk a thin line,” Terry said. “I have to seem straight, but we don’t want to give them the idea that Rhoda and I are living in sin.”

“Would they mind?”

“My parents would. I’m an only child, you know. I think the moment of my conception was the only time my parents made love.”

“You don’t even want a few stockings tossed over the shower curtain?”

Terry chuckled. “Nothing,” he said. “Just so they see that I have a girl friend. That’s all it should take.”

“Don’t they suspect—”

“They have no idea,” he said.

The Langers arrived a few minutes early. Mr. Langer was short and heavy set, with a prominent nose and a bulldog chin and a perpetual cigar in his mouth. Rhoda had a mental image of Berne and Terry spending the next two weeks trying to air cigar smoke out of the draperies. She could picture them running around frantically and spraying everything with Chanel. Mrs. Langer was a small and slender woman who did not talk much. Terry kissed her on the cheek and shook hands firmly with his father.

After introductions, Terry said, “You should have let me know you were coming. We already had plans with the girls for tonight.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Langer said.

“We’ll get out of your way,” Mr. Langer offered. “We can take in a show tonight and see you tomorrow, Terry.”

But Terry explained things. Bernie and Roberta — he didn’t call her Bobbie — would be having dinner with another couple. But he and Rhoda could beg out and have dinner with Terry’s parents. Then the four of them could spend a few hours together until nine or ten, at which time Terry and Rhoda would have to join a party some friends of theirs were having.

“At least we’ll have some time together,” he said. “And you’ll get a chance to know Rhoda. She’s been wanting to meet you.”

The Langers were delighted — they did enjoy meeting Terry’s friends, Mrs. Langer explained. And Terry’s plan was satisfactory all around. It gave Bernie a chance to get out from under in a hurry, hustling Bobbie off to a phony dinner date. And, with the mock party serving as an out around nine or ten, it kept the evening from dragging on too long.

Things went smoothly enough. Bernie brought out a bottle of bourbon and the six of them sat nursing drinks until five-thirty. Then Bernie and Bobbie made their excuses and got out of there. Terry called a good East Side restaurant and reserved a table for four. The Langers went back to their hotel to dress for dinner, and Terry poured Rhoda a fresh drink and collapsed into a chair.

“It’s such a trial,” he said. “Just dropping in to surprise me! You would think they’d know better.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“Well, you’re a sweetheart,” he told her. “They’ll have a good time in New York now, and they won’t suspect anything. And they’ll go home sure that I’m living the ideal bachelor life, and starting to get a little bit serious about you. They’ll ask about in their letters, of course. I’ll let our mythical romance bubble along for a few months and then write a sad letter saying that you went and married someone else. Then I’ll pretend to nurse a broken heart for awhile before it’s time to find some other girl to front for me.”

There was a brittle quality to his voice, that special sort of forced cheerfulness one heard so often at gay bars and gay parties. She studied him. He was about thirty, she knew, a moderately successful furniture designer. Bernie was a commercial photographer. She thought of the special lie the boys lived and wondered how long they could carry it off.

“Any time I can return the favor—”

“What?” She hadn’t been listening.

“Any time your parents or relatives make the Grand Tour I’ll be glad to return the favor. That’s all.”

“Oh,” she said, “No, my parents are dead.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It happened a long time ago,” she said. There was an awkward pause. “So don’t worry about returning the favor. I’ll settle for another drink.”

Dinner was a relaxed affair at a very good and very expensive French restaurant on East Sixty-second Street. They had cocktails first, wine with the meals, and cordials with their coffee. The food was excellent and the service crisply professional, and the Langers turned out to be surprisingly good company. She had been afraid that the conversation would be stilted and awkward, but it worked out better than she had expected.

“I couldn’t stand living in New York,” Mr. Langer said. “I’d put on twenty pounds a year with food like this.”

“But you do anyway, Dad.”

“Wise guy.” Mr. Langer grinned. “Just watch your own self in a couple of years. But you’re in good shape, Terry. Do you work out at a gym?”

“Sometimes.”

“I used to, years ago. It’s a good habit to stay in.”

They wound up drinking coffee again at Terry’s apartment. Around eight-thirty, Mr. Langer led Terry into the kitchen. “Private men’s talk,” he explained — and Rhoda sat alone on the couch. Mrs. Langer smiled oddly, then crossed the room and sat next to her. Here it comes, Rhoda thought. How serious is it between you two? And isn’t Terry a fine young man? But Mrs. Langer said, “It’s sweet of you to do this for him, Rhoda.”

She stared.

“Terry doesn’t know that I know. And Fred doesn’t know anything about it, and I’m glad, because it would hurt him horribly. His son, you see. But I know about Terry.”

“I—”

“I’ve known for years.” The woman lowered her eyes. “I’ve wanted to talk to him now and then. It’s hard not to want to. He’s my son and I love him, of course. But he wouldn’t want me to know. It would bother him, and so I’ve never let him find out.” She nibbled her lower lip. “Of course I’d love to believe that you and Terry are lovers — but I’m afraid I know better. He’s with that boy Bernie, of course. Thank you for being such a good friend to Terry.”

She did not know what to say.

“And I suppose you—”

“Yes.”

“You and Roberta?”

She felt her face reddening. “Yes.”

“It’s very strange,” Mrs. Langer said. “I think my generation is a very awkward one. If we understood a little more, or even a little less, things might be simpler. We seem to know and understand just enough to be utterly confused. The awkward age, which is what we used to say about teen-agers. You won’t tell Terry about this, will you?”

“No.”

“I hope you won’t. I suppose I shouldn’t have said anything at all, but I felt that I wanted to. You’re a very sweet girl. If only—”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The Langers did not stay long after that. When they left Terry offered to see her home.

“I can manage,” she said.

“Really, I don’t mind.”

“I can get home alone. But thanks.”

She called Bobbie, told her she was on her way. Then she went downstairs and walked to Broadway and took the subway home.

Chapter Twelve

New Year’s Eve.

The touch-off party was at their apartment, just a handful of couples dropping by for a first drink or three to start the evening rolling. Peg and Lucia, Grace and Allie, Jan and Megan, Roz Merrimac and some nameless fragile blonde. There was a big party set for an apartment two gay boys were sharing over on Barrow Street, and they were just fitting in an opening get-together before they headed over there.

Rhoda played hostess. She mixed drinks while Bobbie sat in a corner and sulked. There was a lot of talk, a lot of laughter. Allie had just gotten back from Baltimore and she was giving a play-by-play of her reunion with her parents. They were very upset over the fact that she had not managed to get married yet, and were at the same time quite concerned that she was ruining her health in New York. Her mother thought she was leading an immoral life. “You mustn’t let men go too far with you,” she had told the girl. “If you lead them on too far, they’ll never marry you. But you can’t be cold, either, then they won’t be interested,” Allie imitated her mother’s voice. She had a talent for mimicry and everyone laughed.

Rhoda didn’t laugh. Neither did Bobbie. Rhoda went on being the perfect hostess. Bobbie went on sulking, hitting the scotch bottle a little heavy, and keeping to herself. Rhoda made a drink of her own and drained it quickly.

It was going to be one hell of a night, she thought. One perfect hell of an evening.

The day itself had been gruesome enough. They had stayed in the apartment, watching the Christmas tree — a skimpy two-dollar affair — lose its needles and turn slowly brown around the edges. The first flare of temper came before noon, some petty argument that she could hardly remember now. And the rest of the day followed along in predictable fashion.

“Are Jan and Megan coming?”

“It’s important to you, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you still love her.”

“The hell I do. I don’t—”

“You always loved her, damn you. You just took a flyer with me to hurt her. You don’t care who you hurt, Rho, do you?”

Or, “Bobbie, this is your party too, isn’t it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were the one who thought of it. You invited everybody.”

“So? Don’t you want them to come?”

“Yes, but—”

“You don’t like my friends.”

“I like them fine. But you just sit there all day while I’m supposed to get the place looking decent.”

“It’s about time you did something, Rho.”

“Oh, really? So you can sit around like a queen on your fat—”

“Fat!”

Each time they made up and each time they started in again flying at each other’s throat. Each argument got a little worse than the one before it. Once, when Bobbie absolutely infuriated her, she had her hand back ready to slap the girl across the face. She managed to stop the blow before it started, but she couldn’t avoid realizing what she bad almost done. The thought made her shake. She had come perilously close to hitting Bobbie.

And now the party was in full swing. This was an evening that should have been the ultimate in relaxation, in furious happiness. It was New Year’s Eve, the best excuse in the world for getting wildly drunk and staying up until dawn and having a perfectly wonderful time. But they were spoiling it for each other. Neither of them could relax, not the way things were between them.

She moved to join Bobbie. “Let’s put a lid on it for the time being,” she said. “Let’s have a good time tonight.”

“I’m willing if you are.”

“I didn’t mean the things I said, Bobbie.”

“I know it. Rhoda, I’m sorry—”

“I love you, Bobbie.”

“Right. And that’s what counts, isn’t it?”

She held Bobbie’s arm when the five couples walked in a body to the Barrow Street party. There was snow on the ground and more snow falling. Across the street, a batch of college kids were having a snowball fight. One of their shots was way off and came cascading down on the ten girls. Jan Pomeroy squealed and pressed her face against Megan’s coat. Roz Merrimac and her girl friend tossed a few snowballs back at the college kids. Everybody was laughing.

The party was in full swing when they got to it. The crowd was composed mostly of gay boys with a sprinkling of heterosexual couples who stalked around looking alternately daring and embarrassed. When the ten girls walked in, everybody looked their way. Bernie and Terry were there, and Bernie yelled out, “Here comes the Ladies’ Auxiliary!” Somebody took Rhoda’s coat, someone else pressed a drink into her hand. A girl she had never seen came over and greeted her like a long lost sister and wished her a Happy New Year. Rhoda drank her drink.

There was a momentary flash of jealousy when she saw Bobbie staring after a girl with long red hair. But there was no time to be jealous or moody or bitter. The party moved at too fast a pace. Things kept happening and people kept handing her drinks. A very thin boy with rouged cheeks stood on a chair and did a Bette Davis imitation. Terry Langer kissed her cheek and told her that his parents had gone home, finally. “They never suspected a thing,” he said. “You were wonderful. If only you were a boy, I’d marry you.”

A very fat man sat on the floor playing a guitar. There were jazz records going on a hi-fi in the corner. Two boys in their late teens came out of a bedroom smiling oddly. One of the straight males tried to ward off a pass by a camping gay boy without coming on too square. A husband tried to stop his wife from flirting with Peg. The fat guitarist stood up and began singing.

At five minutes to twelve someone shut off the hi-fi and turned on the television set. They watched the mob scene at Times Square. Rhoda slipped through the throng, found Bobbie. Someone was talking about the Times Square scene — “In the morning the police always come by with a wagon and clean up the debris. They always find underwear, piles of it. Bras and pants everything else. People do it standing up in the crowd with total strangers, they do everything. I almost went one year—”

At the stroke of twelve somebody turned off the lights. Everybody was shouting and screaming. She kissed Bobbie, a long, hard kiss with her arms tossed around Bobbie’s neck and their bodies pressed tightly together. They held the kiss a long time, and then the party was erupting around them, and everybody was kissing everybody. She kissed girls and gay boys, shouted Happy New Year at everyone, drank scotch straight from a bottle. A married man grabbed her and kissed her and tried to get his tongue in her mouth. His hand moved over the front of her dress. She pushed him away and got away from him. When she saw him later he was trying to get Megan to go in the back room with him.

She found Bobbie again and kissed her again. Her head was swimming and she was so much in love she thought her heart would break. It would work out between them, she thought. It had been a hell of a day but it was going to be all right now, everything was going to be all right. They were in love and that was all that mattered, Fights were just part of the way they were, and they could get over the fights and rise above them and learn to control them and just go on loving each other.

Fifteen minutes later she found Bobbie in a corner with a married woman, holding her wrist and whispering into her ear. She let out a yell and went for Bobbie, ready to strangle her. It took three boys to pull the two of them apart.

She was sitting on the edge of the bathtub and Peg Brandt was sitting beside her, stroking her forehead. She had just been very sick and her head was still rocky.

She said, “I hate her. She doesn’t love me. I hate her.”

“Easy, Rhoda.”

“Did you see what that bitch was doing? Did you see her?”

“She didn’t mean anything.”

“Didn’t mean—”

“She was a little drunk, that’s all. She’s very sorry now, Rhoda. Really she is. I know Bobbie, I’ve known her for years and she’s crazy about you. You know that.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Maybe she was just trying to make you jealous. My God, Rhoda, look at the merry-go-round Lu keeps me on. It’s the same kind of thing. Except she doesn’t just flirt, she has affairs. But she loves me inside, and I love her and we stay together.”

“Peg—”

“Bobbie loves you. And you love her, don’t you?”

“Oh, of course I do! But—”

“Just take it easy now. Bobbie wants to see you, she wants to apologize. Will you see her now?”

“Give me a minute. Oh, I must look like hell.”

“You look all right.”

“I’m a mess. And I feel rotten, I really do. I hate to get sick like this. I made one hellish scene out there, didn’t I?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“They had to pull me away from her. Peg, did I hurt her?”

“No.”

“But I must have scratched her.”

“Bobbie’s all right. She just wants to make up with you.”

“Peg, why do we do things like this to each other? Why?”

“God knows.”

She waited in the bathroom. Peg left, closed the door. She fixed her makeup, freshened her face, washed her mouth out. Her head was throbbing. She found a bottle of aspirin and took two tablets. She went to the door, opened it.

Bobbie was there. She said, “Rho, I’m sorry. I was drunk I didn’t know what I was doing. Forgive me.”

They kissed. In the living room, the fat man was playing his guitar again and the hi-fi was competing with him. They went into the kitchen to get fresh drinks.

After they left the Barrow Street apartment they stopped at the Pam Pam on Seventh Avenue for food and coffee. Roz and her girl had wandered off to another party and Grace and Allie had gone home early. The six of them sat at a table in back. They were all pretty drunk. They had ham and eggs and drank a lot of black coffee. Megan knew a party uptown that she wanted go to, a crowd she knew from her work. Jan said she was sick of gay boys and wanted to go to an all-girl party. “The boys get on my nerves,” she complained.

Lucia Perry knew where there was a party. The six of them piled into a Checker cab and rode across town to a tenement on Saint Mark’s Place. It was the right address but the party had ended. The hostess, who’d changed her name from Claudia to Claude, was there with another girl. They had one round of drinks and left. Claude told them something was doing at a loft on First Avenue and they went there.

On the way, she said, “Every time I had to say her name I thought I was talking to our cat.”

“Claude the cat. I was thinking the same thing.”

There was a party. Rhoda knew some of the girls there, had run across them at other parties, and at Leonetti’s. She did a lot of drinking and didn’t remember very much of what was happening. She looked at her watch once and noticed that it was a quarter after two. The next time she looked it was twenty minutes to four and they were leaving the party.

Stretches of blackness—

And clarity: They were walking down a narrow street. A taxi sped past them, took a corner on two wheels. Down the block, couples were spilling out of a bar that was closing. Bobbie had an arm around her waist and she felt herself spilling over with love.

“I’m drunk,” she said.

“Rho—”

She thought she was going to be sick again, but managed to get control of herself and the feeling passed. She whirled around and kissed Bobbie on the mouth. She started to sway and Bobbie caught hold of her and drew her in and kissed her again, and Bobbie’s tongue was in her mouth and she held the girl tight against her and let the world go away and kissed her hard and gasped for breath. They were necking on the street like shameless tramps but she didn’t care, didn’t care, and it was too much trouble to stagger off into a doorway because she didn’t care who saw them, didn’t care, but she just wanted to be held and kissed, just wanted everything to be soft and rosy and good and sweet and—

“I’ll be damned!”

She broke away, swayed, stared. A man in front of her, his arm around the waist of a giggling blonde, was glaring and pointing at her. Bobbie had drawn away. She looked at the man and watched his face swim in and out of focus. The face was familiar but she couldn’t place it.

“Sweet little Rhoda,” he said. “Little Miss Hard-to-Get. Jesus, I should have guessed it, I should have figured it out. Jesus, the little frigid one turns out to be a dyke.”

And then she saw his face again, and this time she recognized him. Ed Vance. She drew back as if slapped and he came after her, not to reach for her but to jeer at her.

“You little dyke. You had me going, you know that? I figured you for a hunk of ice that old Tom never knew how to warm up right. Figured it wouldn’t be too hard to straighten things out. A few dinners, a few nights on the town to get you primed. And then I’d show you what it’s like to be a woman. Jesus, I don’t know how I missed it. Living with another girl — sure, sleeping with another girl is more like it.”

Get away, she thought. Go away, leave me alone. Go away from me.

“Tom know about you?”

She shook her head.

“He’ll get a kick out of this, he said. He threw back his head and laughed hysterically. The blonde detached herself from Ed and was looking oddly from one to the other. He turned to her, “Get this,” he said. “I was trying to make time with this dyke. I never even guessed. You imagine?”

The blonde didn’t say anything. Ed laughed again. Rhoda’s knees felt shaky and she couldn’t stand. Then Bobbie was taking her arm, hurrying past the man and the girl and on down the street.

She heard him calling after her. “Hey girls,” he yelled. “I mean fellas. Hey, fellas!” He laughed again, and she could hear the blonde laughing with him. “Hey fellas,” he called again. “Don’t do anything dirty.”

She didn’t remember the walk home. She had a hazy memory of his laughter, harsh and strident, following her down the street. Then there was a large blank space, and then she was in their apartment with Bobbie. She was being sick again, her stomach turning itself painfully inside out, and Bobbie was holding her and telling her that everything would be all right.

Bobbie made her take off all her clothes and get under the shower. The water pounded down upon her flesh and she stood under the spray like a statue in a rainstorm, barely feeling the water, aware of next to nothing. She was in the shower for a long time. Then she got out and Bobbie dried her with a yellow towel and led her into the bedroom. When she lay down her stomach started to bother her again and her head reeled crazily and she sat up. Bobbie lit a cigarette and gave it to her. She took a drag and closed her eyes and dropped the cigarette onto the bed. Bobbie picked it up quickly and gave it back to her.

“Oh, I’m sick,” she said.

“Easy, easy.”

“That was Ed,” she said, “Ed Vance. He was a friend of—”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“You told me on the way home.”

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. Bobbie, I don’t feel good.”

“Do you want to throw up some more?”

“No. I drank too much. Why did I drink so much?”

“Everybody drank too much.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s New Year’s.”

She drew on the cigarette. She couldn’t stand to close her eyes because every time she did the moment on the street came burning back into her brain, the expression on his face, the words he used. She blew out a cloud of smoke and sat up straight in bed. Bobbie put a pillow against the headboard behind her and she propped herself up against it. She looked down at herself and saw that she was naked. She put her hands on her body and touched herself and looked at Bobbie.

“I’m ugly,” she said.

“Don’t be silly.”

“I am ugly inside and out. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Bobbie, what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. You’re a little drunk, that’s all, and you’ll feel better in the morning.”

“In the morning?”

“Well, maybe not. You’ll have a hangover, I guess, but it shouldn’t be too bad. You didn’t keep anything down.”

“I’m ashamed of myself.”

“Don’t be. Oh, Rho—”

“Did you hear what he said? Right in the middle of the street, and the way he was yelling they could have heard him in Vermont.”

“Forget him.”

“He’ll tell everybody about me. About us.”

“So?”

“But nobody knows.” That was the truth, she realized. Only other gay people knew the truth about her. The friends she had known before, Tom’s friends, didn’t know a thing. And now they would all know. Ed Vance would tell everybody.

“They’d find out sooner or later.”

“I suppose so, but—”

“Are you ashamed, Rho?”

“I—” She narrowed he eyes, searched Bobbie’s face. “Ashamed?”

“Of me. And of yourself.”

“Oh, no. Of course not.”

“Then what do you care who knows? What difference does it make?”

“They wouldn’t understand.”

“So?” Bobbie held her hand. “They don’t matter, Rho. Can’t you see that? The people who matter are people who understand. People like us, people in the same boat. When you’re gay your friends are your family. They’re the only ones who understand, the only ones who can really care about you. You can forget this Vance person, and the other people you knew, and your rotten husband. They don’t count.”

“I... know that.”

“So what’s the trouble?”

“Nothing.”

Bobbie got to her feet. “I’ll make some coffee,” she said. “We can both use some. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Don’t go away—”

“I’ll just put up some instant. I won’t be a minute.”

She wanted to say that a minute was too long. But she stayed where she was and didn’t say anything and Bobbie went into the kitchen to boil water. She took a last drag from her cigarette and put it out, then crawled under the bedsheet. She didn’t feel sick now, at least not as much as before. But her head ached and she felt terrible inside. She didn’t know what it was that was bothering her. Bobbie was right — it didn’t make any sense to be so upset about Ed Vance, didn’t make any difference how many people knew the truth about her lesbianism. She was what she was, and you didn’t get any place worrying about that sort of thing. She was a lesbian, and she was not alone, and the opinion of straight people shouldn’t matter to her in the least.

Then what was it?

The whole evening, she decided. The whole rotten evening, and the fighting and making up and fighting again, and the crazy jealousy, and the way she and Bobbie struck sparks every time they brushed up against each other. And the parties, the crazy parties, with everybody trying to crowd all the joy and pleasure on earth into one hellishly artificial evening. And too much to drink, and too much laughter and too many tears, and then that scene with Ed as a capper.

Bobbie came back with the coffee. She accepted a cup and sat up straight again to drink it. It was too hot and she set it down to cool.

“I’m all right now,” she said.

“Good.”

“And I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For ruining your evening. For ruining everything. Oh, darling, why did we have to fight so much? Why?”

“Rho—”

“I’m sorry for it. I hate to fight with you, Bobbie.”

“Oh, Rho, I’m sorry too.”

“No more fights. A New Year’s Resolution, all right? We won’t fight any more.”

“I—”

“We’ll start the New Year right and we won’t fight. And... oh Bobbie, what’s the matter? Darling, you’re crying!”

“I... can’t help it.”

“Did I say something? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I just—”

“Rho, I love you!”

“Oh, Bobbie—”

“We won’t fight, you’re right, we won’t fight any more. I love you so much, Rho. We won’t fight, we’ll just love each other and build something good out of this.”

“Yes.” Her heart pounding wildly, her eyes misty with embryonic tears. “Don’t talk, darling. Just come to me.”

“My clothes—”

“Take them off.”

She hadn’t expected to make love. But love came quick and warm and very tender, clearing her head and taking the unbearable weight away. She buried herself in Bobbie’s love and let the sweetness of it bathe her and cleanse her, then lay close to Bobbie and floated in the afterglow of love until sleep reached for her.

Chapter Thirteen

The year was two weeks old. It was a Wednesday, cold but clear, the sidewalks gray with day-old snow toned by the dirt of the city. The day’s work dragged on forever, and she was exhausted by the time she left Heaven’s Door. She wanted a drink in a bad way, but decided to wait for it until she got home. Bobbie had a shaker of martinis ready. They sat together and drank quietly. When Bobbie talked to her she answered in monosyllables. Bobbie finished her drink, went into the kitchen to open a tin of clams for Claude. She came back and sank into a chair.

“Bad day, Rho?”

“Not too bad.”

“Party tonight. At Megan’s place.”

“Do we have to dress?”

“No. Just slacks and sweaters.”

“I suppose we’ll go.”

“You don’t sound happy about it, kiddo. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Just a mood.”

“Nothing I did, is it?”

“No. Just... nothing.”

“Want to kick the cat? Get that mad out of your system?”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Because we could just as easily stay home.”

“We’ll go,” she said.

They went. The walk through the cold air was briskly refreshing. They stopped at Leonetti’s for a quick drink, then went on to Megan’s apartment on Cornelia Street. Rhoda felt very strange walking into the apartment. She hadn’t been there since she cleared out her clothes and moved in with Bobbie. She had been in company with Megan often enough after that, so that there was no awkwardness between them any more, but they had not been together at Megan’s apartment and she was surprised how jarring it was. Every stick of furniture held memories, every room brought back a shattering memory of the way they had loved one another.

“I may get a little bit stoned,” she told Bobbie.

“Do you good.”

“Uh-huh.”

She got hold of a drink right away, finished it quickly, poured more scotch over the ice cubes and drank again. Go ahead, she told herself fiercely. Let yourself go. Loosen up, relax.

And the liquor worked. She joined a little group in one corner — Jan Pomeroy was telling a joke about a butch and a queen trying to figure out which rest room to use. Someone told a limerick about the queer from Khartoum and Rhoda laughed, although she had heard it dozens of times. The party picked up momentum and moved at a good pace. She kept drinking, keeping a good even high without going over the line.

Everything would be all right. The shop was nonsense, adolescent nonsense, and she could live without such dreams. She was what she was — there was no changing that. No reason to inquire into it too closely. She was what she was and she would lead the kind of life that was right for her. It might not be a perfect life but very few lives were ever perfect. The world itself was an imperfect world. She would make the best of it. That was all she or anyone else could do.

Then Megan was talking to her. “I’m glad you and Bobbie could come tonight, Rhoda.”

“It’s a swell party.”

“Like the song, what a swell party this is. You haven’t been here since—”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I was thinking about that. Jan and I are very happy together, did you know that? I never thought it would last.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“Maybe the secret is not living together. I don’t know. How are things with you and Bobbie?”

“Fine. They were a little rocky for awhile, but we’ve weathered that storm. We’re good for each other.”

“I’m glad, Rhoda.”

She got herself a fresh drink. The usual crowd was there, with a sprinkling of less familiar faces. She sipped her drink and looked over at the door. Lucia Perry was there, with Roz Merrimac. Lu was telling everyone that Peg hadn’t felt well but that she decided to come over for a few minutes anyway. Someone said something that Rhoda didn’t catch. A few minutes later she saw Roz and Lucia dancing cheek to cheek, their feet barely moving.

She looked for Bobbie. “Somebody ought to take Lu and spank her,” Bobbie said.

“I thought—”

“Uh-huh. Peg’s probably sitting home crying her eyes out. Roz broke off with Helen Rainey less than a week ago, and Lu’s back to her old tricks. I guess nothing ever changes.”

“I guess not. But in public.”

“That’s the whole thing.” Bobbie sighed. “If she wants to sleep around, that’s her business. And Peg’s probably used to it by now, so she can train herself to look the other way. But Lu has to rub her nose in it. It’s typical. I don’t know how Peg stands it.”

She remembered the night — the phone call, the cab ride, the moment of stark horror when Peg came from the locked bathroom with blood gushing from her wrists. She shivered and drank her drink.

They were outside, Bobbie started to flag a cab but Rhoda stopped her. “I’m a little rocky,” she said. “Let’s walk it.”

They walked. She remembered another walk two weeks ago, when they had bumped into Ed Vance. New Year’s — and a hell of a way to start the New Year. She hadn’t seen him since then, and she wondered who he had told about her and what they had said. But what difference did it make? It was her life, and she no longer cared who knew about it.

Home, in bed, she turned expectantly to Bobbie. She felt Bobbie’s lips on her lips, Bobbie’s breasts just touching her own breasts. Then Bobbie was smiling softly in the darkness, whispering, “Not tonight, sweets. We’re both too tired to do much. Get some sleep.”

That night, for the first time in ages, the dream came back to her. The old dream, the one that had always ruined her sleep in the past. In it she ran once more, ran alone down that endless hallway with some dark unknown chasing her and gaining on her. Walls of ivory white, unbroken by windows or doors. An endless ribbon of black floor beneath her feet The hallway getting progressively narrower, and the pursuer getting closer and closer, and the feeling, at last, of something colder than death reaching out for her, almost but not quite touching her—

When the telephone rang, her mind incorporated the sound into the dream, weaving it into the fabric of her nightmare so that she thought there was shrill screaming behind her. Then the dream broke off and she was struggling to sit up in bed, and the phone was ringing and Bobbie, by her side, was groping for it. Bobbie took hold of the receiver and Rhoda shook off the dying echoes of the dream and lit the bedside lamp. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was twenty minutes of five.

Bobbie said, “Oh, God. Omigod.”

“What—”

“Are you sure? Listen, are you sure?”

She went to Bobbie, took the girl’s arm. Bobbie shook her off. Bobbie was talking on the phone but Rhoda couldn’t hear her. She didn’t know what was happening. She looked for a cigarette but the pack on the bedside table was empty. She crushed it, hurried into the kitchen. There was one pack left in the carton. She tore it open, shook two cigarettes out of the pack, lit them. She went back to the bedroom and gave one of the cigarettes to Bobbie. The Siamese cat sat erect upon a chair at the side of the bed, his eyes glinting brightly. Bobbie took the cigarette and looked oddly at it, then took a deep drag.

“What—”

“That was Lucia,” Bobbie said.

“Oh, no.”

Bobbie swallowed. Then she took a deep breath and when she spoke her voice was firm, strong. “Peg did it this time,” she said. “Pills again, a whole bottle. After the party Lu and Roz went back to Roz’s apartment and Lucia just got home. If she had gone straight home from the party she might have found her in time, but she didn’t, and that’s all, she was too late. Peggy’s dead.”

“Oh, Jesus—”

“Yeah.” Bobbie closed her eyes. The room was very still. Claude held his pose on the chair like a statue. “I can’t believe it, I knew it would happen sooner or later. But I still can’t believe it. All the times she tried to kill herself and this time she managed it, finally.”

Bobbie looked at her now. Her face was a mask of sorrow but her eyes were quite dry. “Everything’s so rotten,” she said. “So goddamned rotten, everything.”

Chapter Fourteen

She hadn’t realized it would be that easy. In the morning, when she left the apartment and went to work, she took off the plain gold wedding band Bobbie had given her and slipped it into her purse. In the early afternoon a man came into the store to buy a present for his sister, a birthday present. She smiled warmly at him, and when she showed him some possible gifts she let her fingers brush his hand. She felt his eyes on her face, her body. After the sale was concluded, he lingered in the shop, talking to her. She handled the conversation easily. It wasn’t long before he asked her name and told her his. Wasn’t long before he asked her to have dinner with him that evening.

“I’d like that,” she said.

“Where can I pick you up? At your apartment?”

“Fine.” She gave him the address. He wrote it down in a small black book and returned the book to his breast pocket. He smiled at her and said he would see her then. She smiled back at him.

So very simple, she thought. All you had to do was make it obvious that you were interested and available. The men did the rest. There was nothing to it, nothing at all.

When he was gone, she opened her purse and replaced the plain gold wedding band upon her finger.

Bobbie was out of town. Peg Brandt was a Chicago girl and her body had been shipped home to her family for burial. Bobbie and Lucia and a few of the other girls who had known Peg very well had gone to Chicago for the funeral. At first Rhoda had wanted to go. Bobbie talked her out of it.

“You don’t have to go,” she said. “You didn’t know her that long or that well. And it would probably be best to keep the New York contingent to a minimum. Peg’s folks know about her, but they might feel that it would be in bad taste for a whole army of lesbians to show up for the funeral.”

She felt badly about it at first. She had liked Peg, and she felt wrong missing the funeral. But what Bobbie said made sense.

The funeral was that afternoon. Bobbie would be staying overnight, returning on a morning plane. Rhoda had the evening to herself.

She would be spending it with a man.

It was an odd decision, one she did not fully understand even now. When the idea first came to her that she ought to do this, there had been an element of compulsion in the notion, as though it was something which had to be undertaken for its own sake with no rhyme or reason involved. The impulse had sprung up as soon as she realized that the opportunity itself was there, as soon as she realized that Bobbie would be gone for an evening. She had thought, automatically and spontaneously, that she could use that time to be with a man.

And, after the shock of her own thought had worn off, the reasons came to her. She had to try, had to see what would happen. Because she saw herself going on and on and on this way, living with Bobbie until, inevitably, she broke with Bobbie, living with another girl and another girl and a whole endless parade of other gay girls. And working for Mr. Yamatari forever, or quitting her job and taking another meaningless job after that, and another, always aching for important work but never finding it, and never really looking too very hard for it. And growing old, and killing herself like Peg Brandt, or being killed slowly by time itself. And burial somewhere, with six gays for pallbearers and a covey of lesbians to mourn her.

No...

Not all of this emptiness, all of this agony, merely because she liked to sleep with girls and did not like to sleep with men. She had been a frightened little girl when she was married to Tom Haskell. She was older now, ready to sustain more, ready to settle for less. Marriage with a man meant a home and children and a place, if not in the bright sun, at least out of the shadows. There might be no bells ringing when her husband made love to her, but you could live a life without hearing the ringing of bells. She could learn, if not to like it, at least to endure it and to give a halfway decent performance of passion.

And so she had let herself be picked up by a customer. He would take her to dinner, and then she would let herself be led to his apartment, and there she would be slept with. This was just experimental. If it worked at all, if it were only merely bearable, then she would be able to make her choice. She could go somewhere — to another city, probably. And she could meet a man who would make her a good husband, and she could get him to marry her, and she could live — well, decently ever after. And even happily.

But tonight — she shrugged, lit a cigarette. Tonight was just a test, of course, and that meant it would probably be a little crude and cheap. More than a little. She didn’t know this man, had never learned his last name, and had already forgotten his first name. He didn’t especially seem like her type, if she had a type, and she didn’t feel anything resembling a flush of rapport with him. But he didn’t have to sweep her off her feet, he only had to make love to her, that was all, and if she could live through it without wanting to throw up — which had never been the case with Tom, sad to say — then she might be able to make the move.

If she still wanted to.

There had to be a better way to live. The thrill of sexual pleasure was wonderful, certainly, but you couldn’t build a life around it. The warmth of Bobbie’s love was great and good, but you couldn’t make a life out of it, either. And the only life she had was one in which day followed day, endlessly and patternlessly and pointlessly, with nothing mattering very damned much.

At five-thirty she hurried home. She showered, made up expertly, dressed in a black sheath that showed off her figure to maximum advantage. Femme up, she told herself. This was no time to look butchy.

He was on time. “You’ll have to excuse the apartment,” she said. “It’s a mess.”

“It looks comfortable. You live here alone?”

“With a girl friend.” Which, she thought, was putting it mildly. “She’s out now.” She didn’t want to tell him that Bobbie was out of town or he might want to come back to her apartment afterward. She wanted to go to his place instead.

“I’d offer you a drink,” she lied, “but there’s nothing around. Shall we go?”

They walked over to Fourteenth Street to catch a cab. On the way, she wondered if anyone might see them together, any of the people who knew her and Bobbie, and she realized suddenly that she didn’t have to worry about Bobbie hearing anything. If her friends saw her with a girl, they might guess that she was cheating on Bobbie. But if they saw her now, with this man, they would automatically assume that he was a gay boy himself.

Dinner was quietly pleasant. He took her to an expensive East Side restaurant, ordered wine with dinner, and talked easily to her about very little. He was in advertising, he said. He was married and separated from his wife, who lived with their two children somewhere in Connecticut. He lived in the East Eighties now, near the river. His wife would probably divorce him within the year, but all of that hadn’t been quite worked out yet.

All at once she found herself talking about her own marriage. She had not counted on this, had meant to keep everything as impersonal as possible. But she let the words come, let him hear everything about her own pointless marriage.

“You had it rough,” he said.

“You live through these things.”

“Uh-huh.” He leaned across the table to light her cigarette. “We’re not kids,” he said. “Are we?”

“No.”

“I’d like to take you to my apartment. I think you’d like to come. Would you?”

“Yes.”

And she thought that this was just as she had hoped it would be. No love and no pretense of love, no feeling of being pursued, no fear of violation. In the cab on the way to his apartment, he put an arm around her and she forced herself to relax in his embrace. She tried not to think about what it would be like, the actual physical fact of it. She tried to put that out of her mind.

In his apartment — three rooms, hypermodern, the typical bachelor’s dream — he put on records and poured drinks. They sat together in front of an elaborate fake fireplace. He put his arm once more around her, and he said her name, softly, and she knew enough to turn to him and be kissed. She closed her eyes when he kissed her and surrendered herself to him. Little by little, she told herself. Little by little and bit by bit, and then the bedroom, and the act itself, and that’s all.

No—

If she had not liked him, if she had not felt comfortable with him, she might have been able to go through with it. But it required too much acting and too much pretense, and it was all false and she couldn’t do it. He kissed her again and again and she tried to force herself to fake a response, but this couldn’t be, she could not pretend to feel something which she did not feel. It was phony and she couldn’t do it.

She drew away from him, got to her feet. “Listen to me,” she said. “Listen to me, I have to say this.”

“Go on.”

“I didn’t tell you everything. I’m not normal, I’m a lesbian.” The words just came, awkward, fumbling. She couldn’t direct them. “I’m a lesbian, the girl I live with is my lover. She’s out of town now. I thought that — that I could use you, that I could try and — I thought — I don’t know what I thought, it’s crazy. But it isn’t working. I don’t work this way, I can’t feel anything, I—”

He seemed stunned at first. But later she remembered going out on the terrace with him and standing with her back against the brick of the building, looking up at the thin sliver of moon.

She said, “I want to be fair. If you want, I’ll go through with it.”

“It’s not what I want, Rhoda.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.” He smiled briefly. “If you, well, give it a try...”

“Nothing will happen.”

“It might.”

She could not imagine a more dispassionate discussion of the sex act. They were deciding whether or not to go to bed together, and they both seemed to be utterly cold and unmoved.

“I’d like to make love to you, Rhoda. Maybe—”

He left the sentence unfinished. She hesitated, then closed her eyes and nodded. He took her hand and led her back inside and lay down with her on the couch, She felt his hands on her body, felt him remove clothing, felt him touch her breasts and kiss her face and run his hands gently, gently, over her hips and thighs.

She kept waiting.

And then he said, “Forget it, Rhoda. Maybe you’d better go home.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be.”

“But I am,” she said. And, from the doorway, leaving him there, “I am really sorry. I mean that.”

She did mean it, she was sorry. But she was what she was, she could not help it, and the date with this man had been a bad idea from the beginning. A stupid idea, senseless as whittling crazily at a square peg in order to jam it cruelly into a round hole. She was a lesbian. It did not matter how she had gotten that way, and it did not matter whether or not she was particularly pleased with herself. She was a lesbian. To try to be anything else was madness.

The cab seemed to take forever. But at last it stopped in front of her building, and at last she was paying the driver, leaving the cab. She went to the apartment, unlocked the door, stepped inside.

In the morning, Bobbie would return. They would love each other — for a day or a week or a month or a year. There would be fights, and there would be deep spells of unhappiness, and sooner or later there would be a break and they would go off in search of other loves.

She made herself a drink, opened a can of oysters for the cat. It would not be heaven, she thought, but there was plenty of time for heaven after death. It would not be hell either. It would be her life, and all she could do was live it.

Content

Jill Emerson
Warm and Willing

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen