voice. “Mom says it came from his side of the family. So I haven’t much
to thank him for. Do you know what that is—epilepsy?” He had said the
word so many times there was no longer any drama in it for him.
“Your Mom told me,” Beebo said. “Does it ... make things rough for you?
Like at school, with the other kids?”
“Not too bad,” he said. But she looked at his face and thought
differently. It had made him shy and apologetic about himself, and
consequently, fiercely defensive. At any time, he might become a major
source of inconvenience or even panic to his schoolmates, though the
seizures hit him infrequently in their presence. Still, it was those
times he remembered better than any others.
“Leo is good about it,” Toby said. “He’s a pretty good guy. I’d rather
have him around than Mrs. Sack, even.”
“What’s Leo like?” Beebo said, suddenly afire to know.
“He stands up to Mom, if that’s what you mean. She hates him, naturally,
but she respects him. Leo gave her her name. He knew her before anybody
else in Hollywood. He was her agent, and he got her started.”
“What’s her real name?”
“Jean Jacoby.”
“That’s pretty ... why won’t Leo divorce her?”
“He really loves her, I guess. Boy, what a glutton for punishment,” Toby
marveled.
“If she hates him, why did she marry him?”
“Oh, she talked herself into a crush on all her husbands,” Toby said,
and Beebo wondered who had explained it all to him with such authority
... Leo? Mrs. Sack? “They were all rich and good looking and married to
somebody else till she came along. I think it was sort of a challenge.”
Beebo absorbed this in silence, disapproving and yet oddly amused. “What
does Leo do?” She pictured him as a sort of legitimatized gigolo for his
stunning wife.
“He’s a director now. He directs all her films. That’s why people think
she’s an actress. He can get a performance out of her nobody else can.
She hates to admit it, but she loves her reviews. If they ever did get
divorced, she’d have to let him keep on directing.” His words made Leo
Bogardus seem like more of a man than Beebo would have liked. She
lighted a cigarette.
“Hey, can I have one too?” Toby said, with the light of friendly
collusion in his eyes. “It’s okay, I’ve smoked before.”
She handed him her pack. “I’m contributing to the delinquency of a
minor, you know,” she grinned. “It’s your fault, buddy. You’d better
kick the habit before they haul me in.”
He did not inhale the smoke, but he was very pleased with himself, and
with Beebo. He held the cigarette in a self-conscious imitation of a
man’s gesture, taking a cautious mouthful occasionally and blowing it
out with dreamy satisfaction.
“Do you get along with Leo, Toby?” Beebo asked.
“He’s been real decent to me. He does things with me, even when they’re
things I don’t want to do. It’s nice of him ... you know? And sometimes
I end up liking the things I didn’t think I would. It’s funny ... he
tries to make them interesting. I guess you could say I like him.”
Beebo grinned at him, impressed by his adolescent acuity; and aware,
despite his wary phrasing, that Leo was quite an influence in his life.
“You’re pretty grown up for your age, aren’t you?” she said seriously,
and made him smile at the flattery.
But his answer startled her. “I had to grow up,” he said, “with men
climbing in and out of Mom’s bed while I played on the floor with my
blocks.”
“God! Was it that bad?” Beebo said.
“They all thought I’d be the best adjusted kid for miles around,” he
said with psychological detachment into a cloud of very grown-up smoke.
“I don’t know why all that stuff should embarrass me now that I’m nearly
fifteen. I used to sit there and watch the whole show when I was
little.” His face lengthened. “It never got to me then.”
Beebo saw the resentment on his face flash and alternate with confusion,
even love, for Venus. She wondered how much Venus was trying to show her
love for him these days, and if it was making Toby all the more
suspicious of her.
“Toby,” Beebo said. “Do you know that Venus is kind of afraid of you?”
He turned his face away.
“She wants you to know she loves you, but she’s afraid you’ll think
she’s kidding after all these years.”
“She’s right.”
“Maybe now that she’s trying to say it, you could listen,” Beebo
suggested casually.
Toby gave a deep sigh. “I guess that’s what she’s been doing all week,”
he said. “She keeps saying she has something to say but she never says
anything.” He returned Beebo’s gaze, his blue eyes, so like his
mother’s, pained and puzzled. “I don’t care how she says it, if only she
means it. I was lousy to her because whenever I try to tell her
something, she’s lousy to me. I wanted to get back at her.”
“You’ve only got one mother, Toby. You’ve got to make the best of her. I
wouldn’t care so much what my mother was like, if I’d only known her.
She died when I was young.”
Toby pondered this a while, and then said, “If you ever run away again,
I’ll go with you.” It was not an offer, it was a request—a plea.
“You’re welcome aboard,” she smiled.
* * * * *
Venus was waiting for them outside the elevator door in the service
entrance, one early evening in the first week of September. Strangely,
Beebo wasn’t surprised. It had been coming for weeks, and now she had to
face it.
Toby grimaced at his mother, and Beebo handed her the carton of
home-cooked food. “Here’s your dinner,” she said. “Mrs. Pasquini
appreciates all the orders.”
“You might as well keep it, she never eats it,” Toby revealed. “She just
orders it to keep you coming over.”
“Sh!” Venus exclaimed at him. She was wearing a bright-blue knit dress,
into which her famous frame was smoothly slipped; a glowing target for
the eyes.
“Toby says you’re a good driver,” Venus said. “Now I suppose he’ll
pester Leo to teach him when we get home.”
“You know I can’t drive, Mom,” he said wearily. “They don’t give
licences to epileptics.”
“Well, we’ll talk to the governor, darling,” she said.
“Besides, what do you mean ‘home’? California?” He looked at her
suddenly, brightening. “I thought we were going to be here all winter.”
Beebo felt almost dizzy at the thought of losing Venus before she had
won her. It was too much to bear. Everything went wrong in bunches.
“Home?” she repeated, frowning at Venus.
“Well, you both look as if I had dropped a bomb,” Venus declared. “I
just thought, with Toby’s friends in California, and all those miserable
horses and sunshine and ocean ... I guess I can put up with the smog.”
“Mom, that’s great,” he said, surprise all over his face. “Are you doing
a new picture?”
“No, darling. I’m turning over a new leaf,” she said.
They looked at each other and Beebo sensed an awkward rapport between
them. After a decent pause she said, “Well—have a good trip, you two. I
guess I won’t be seeing you again, Toby.”
He turned to her in consternation, and Venus said, “Don’t be silly,
darling. I have some lovely martinis all ready upstairs and a perfectly
irresistible business proposition for you.”
“Business?” Beebo said.
Toby made a face. “Monkey business,” he said. “Can you walk on your
hands, Beebo?”
“Hush, darling,” Venus said, pulling them both into the elevator. “Not
until she’s had her martini.”
Toby had a distant look on his face on the way up. “I’ll have to write
to everybody,” he said. “So they’ll know I’m coming.”
* * * * *
Beebo let herself be led into the living room, full of sharp doubts that
made her jumpy. Venus watched Toby go with a smile. “He’ll be busy for
hours,” she told Beebo. “He rewrites all his letters two or three times.
You’d think he was going to publish them someday.”
Beebo sat down on a long white sofa and accepted a martini with an
unsteady hand. The trembling had started already, and it seemed
impossible to talk or act like a normal human being.
But Venus, who was more of a sorceress than a goddess, talked softly to
her for half an hour, letting the drinks and her own silvery charm relax
her guest. Even then, Beebo looked so gloomy that Venus began to chuckle
at her. She refilled their glasses and asked her, “Do you hate yourself
for coming up tonight?”
“Not as much as I hate you for asking me,” Beebo said.
“Be fair now, darling,” Venus chided. “I’m not responsible for your
weakness, am I?”
“You know damn well you are,” Beebo said. And in the pause that followed
she felt that if she didn’t escape now, she never would. “I’m sorry,
it’s not your fault,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “I guess
you were born with—all that.” She couldn’t look at “all that” while she
spoke of it.
“No, I had to grow it, darling. Took me 15 years, and it was a hell of a
wait.”
Beebo moved to the edge of the sofa when Venus joined her. “Were you a
poor proud orphan till some movie scout discovered you?”
“Oh, God no!” Venus laughed. “My family was solid apple pie. The trouble
was, I was always so damn beautiful I never had a chance to be normal.”
She spoke dispassionately, as if she were analyzing a friend. It wasn’t
snobbish. “I was supposed to be fast and loose because I looked it. At
first the attention spoiled me. I was cocky. A candy-box valentine brat
with corkscrew curls—my mother’s pride and joy. Until I drove her
frantic, and my friends out of my life. Nobody could stand me.
_Honestly._ You laugh, but I cried when it happened. I couldn’t
understand why I was alone all of a sudden.
“I got shy and scared. Went my own way and told the world to go to hell.
After a while, when my figure caught up with my face, I made some new
friends: boys. It was so easy to give in. So hard to be anything but
what people thought you were,” she said, and Beebo responded with a
startled swell of sympathy. “Well, in a phrase, they made me what I am
today: a conniving bitch.” Venus spoke defiantly ... and regretfully.
“I’m not proud of it, but I want to be truthful with you. You’re a
sweetheart, Beebo. And very young, and maybe not too experienced. Tell
me why you’ve made Toby come up alone with the food all these weeks. Did
you think I’d throw spaghetti at you?”
Beebo took a swallow of her drink. “I don’t want to crawl, Venus. I
don’t want to be hurt,” she said harshly, defending herself with painful
honesty in lieu of a worldly white lie.
“Nobody does,” Venus said. “Were you expecting to be?”
“Isn’t that what you want?” Beebo said, looking deep into her ice cubes.
“To play games?”
Venus touched a finger to Beebo’s cheek. “You’re not crawling,” she
said. “You’re being difficult. That’s new for me.”
“Is playing around with girls new for you, too?” Beebo asked, afraid to
know the answer.
“Depends on how you mean it,” Venus said. “You don’t trust me, do you?”
She smiled.
Beebo caught Venus’s hand as it caressed her cheek and kissed it warmly.
And remembered with sudden sadness the way Paula had done that to her
when they met. She put Venus’s hand down gingerly on the sofa.
Venus let her sit and stew for a minute and then slipped across the
cushion toward her. Their faces were very near and Venus put her
rejected hand on Beebo’s leg. “I’m trying to give myself to you and you
won’t have me,” she said. “Now who’s crawling?” She let her other hand,
cool and questing, touch Beebo’s neck and slip over her shoulder,
drawing fire with it.
“You’re putting me on,” Beebo said, determinedly suspicious as only the
young and uncertain can be. She took a deep breath. “But I don’t care,”
she cried suddenly. “I don’t care. I’ll have you any way I can.” She put
her head down and kissed Venus’s throat, putting her arms around her and
grasping her firmly. Venus leaned against her, warm and willow-supple.
“You want to know how it feels, don’t you?” Beebo said, trying to hurt
her feelings, so sure Venus would hurt Beebo first if she could. “You
want to know what it’s like for a girl to hold you instead of a man. Any
time you get bored, let me know.” She bent to kiss her again but Venus
stopped her. She was dismayed, and Beebo was ashamed to see it.
“You really _do_ hate me, don’t you?” Venus said.
Beebo closed her eyes for a minute. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She felt
Venus moving in her arms. “I thought you were bored and frigid. Taking
me like a prescription, or something. The way you talked—”
“The way I talked about _men_, not women. Beebo, do you know something?
I was scared to death you’d take one look at this face of mine, panic,
and run out.” Her hands slid around Beebo’s back and into her short dark
hair.
Beebo’s face turned hot while those hands trailed softly through her
hair and over her eyes. “You’re superb, Beebo,” Venus said. “I think I’m
the one who’s afraid. I wouldn’t be if I knew you better. And myself.”
“You know more than I know,” Beebo said. “Is this all a joke, Venus?”
Venus hushed her by pulling her down and kissing her mouth, and her
tenderness was no pleasantry. Beebo kissed back: Venus’s face, her ears,
her pale throat, till Venus made her stop, shaking her curls to be let
loose, and laughing.
“Who the hell am I,” Beebo exclaimed, “that you should kiss me like
this?”
Venus caught her breath. “You talk to me as if I were a woman,” she said
at last, gratefully. “Not a goddess, or a bitch. It hurts a little, but
it feels good to hurt like that. Like when you’re awfully young and you
have a beautiful dreamy pain to cry over.”
Beebo rubbed her head back and forth in the cradle of Venus’s shoulder.
“Did you cry over your dreams like other girls, Venus?”
“I cried, but not like other girls. I never did anything like other
girls. I never even looked like them.”
“Would you rather be plain?” Beebo asked.
Venus looked away and found the dignity to be honest. “No,” she said.
“It’s a funny thing about women and me. Half the time I want to make
them weep with despair over my beauty. And the other half I ache to be
friends with them. Accepted. All the things I wasn’t when I was growing
up. My whole world is men. They’re the only friends I have, and they
aren’t really friends at all. Not with a woman like me. The women close
to me are either fat and old, like Mrs. Sack, or homely and heartless,
like Miss Pinch.”
“The cook? Is that her name?” Beebo gave in to laughter that relieved
her tenseness a little.
“I know, it’s too good to be true,” Venus said. “Leo started calling her
that, and it caught on. I fire her regularly but she comes back like a
bad dream. She’s devoted to Leo.”
Beebo put her head down so she could talk without exposing her emotions
to Venus’s eyes. “Do you miss having a woman in your life?” she asked.
“Yes. The right kind. Somebody cultured and intelligent and
well-educated. Somebody to teach me things. I’m so damned stupid.”
Beebo gave a short wry laugh. “Venus? I think there’s something you
should know.”
“What?”
“I didn’t finish high school.”
Venus laughed, a charming sound, full of pleasure. “I thought you meant,
did I want a secretary, or something,” she said.
“I’ll bet you did.” Beebo sat up and lowered herself to the floor, where
she leaned back on the sofa, locking her fingers around her knees. She
felt Venus’s hand come down to play with her ear.
“Did I say something wrong, darling?” Venus said.
“Not a thing. Just that for a girl who likes girls, you did a damn queer
thing marrying six men,” Beebo said.
Venus answered pensively. “I kept thinking one of the six would set me
straight somehow,” she said.
Beebo felt those lovely hands in her hair, and she looked over at the
kitchen door. It was about thirty feet away ... thirty miles, it seemed.
“You’ve got such soft hair, Beebo,” Venus said, and she leaned down and
kissed the crown of Beebo’s head, and then lifted her face and kissed
everything upside-down from her perch on the couch. “You kiss me so
gently,” she said. “I never knew a lover so gentle before. There isn’t a
man alive who could come near you.” And she kissed Beebo again till
Beebo reached up from the floor and caught Venus’s breasts in her hands,
returning the kiss with a young warmth that struck sparks in Venus.
Beebo held her hard and groaned, “Don’t, don’t, you don’t know what it’s
doing to me. Oh, God ... oh, please....”
“Do you still think I don’t know?” Venus said. “Don’t you understand by
now I’m not doing this for kicks? Or to hurt you? Or God knows what
other medieval torments you imagined? I think you’re amazing. Exciting.
Adorable. Did you think I’d never tried it before with a woman? I’ve
tried everything, darling. Everything but corpses, anyway.”
“Oh, Venus, Venus—”
“Hush, I’ll explain. You see, it was always so rotten with men. It was
as good as it ever got with a girl. But never this good.” Her directness
threw Beebo emotionally offstride. “I kept thinking it should be. If men
were so bad there had to be something else worth living for. So I kept
looking. But I have to be so damn careful. Whatever I do is news.”
Beebo looked at her and saw tears on her cheeks. “My daydreams were
always better than my life,” Venus whispered, “and when you reach that
point, you’re in trouble. All the money in the world can’t make those
dreams real.” She brushed lightly at the tears, embarrassed by them.
“I was wild when that dreadful Pasquini came up here,” she said. “I’d
been looking forward to seeing you all day. After he left, I began to
think maybe his coming was a sign that I should give you up while I
still could. An affair between us would seem like the world’s worst
cliché: the jaded vamp seducing the innocent girl for the sake of a few
cheap kicks.” She sat silent a moment and then she smiled at Beebo.
“Do you know what Miss Pinch said after you left? She came marching in
and announced that you were a dyke and Pat was a queen.”
“Miss _Pinch_ said that?” Beebo said, and laughed at the incongruity of
it.
“Well, she put it a little differently. She said, ‘The dark young
gentleman was a female and the blond young gentleman was a lady, if you
know what I mean, ma’am.’”
They laughed together and Beebo felt suddenly close to Venus; her fear
had vanished. “The only thing I worry about is, Miss Pinch might tell
Leo,” Venus said. “It makes him simply wild when I take up with a girl.”
“Do you take them up often?” Beebo asked, looking down.
Venus shook her head without answering. It was a wordless admission of
her loneliness and frustration; as great, in its way, as Toby’s. Beebo
got up on her knees and encircled Venus’s waist. “Venus, darling,” she
said softly, hesitantly. “I love you so much. I can’t understand this
thing. I thought you were—all glittery and cold. I thought we’d finally
climb into bed, and you’d kill me with your laughter. And then to have
you like this! God, I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s so crazy. Venus,
Venus, I adore you.” She began to kiss her again and Venus let herself
be pulled off the sofa and into Beebo’s arms, giving in a bit at a time,
so that Beebo was trembling and wild-eyed one moment, and overwhelming
Venus the next.
She had just enough sense to pick Venus up moments later and carry her
to the bedroom, through the overstated boudoir, and out of the sight of
Toby and the women. She laid Venus down on the blue silk coverlet of her
bed, leaning over her with her fists planted in the mattress.
“This is where I do my dreaming,” Venus told her. “I take off my clothes
and lie down here and tell myself beautiful crazy stories. I’ve been
doing it for years.”
“Who do you dream about?” Beebo asked.
“Who do you think?” Venus smiled. “God, you’re so tall for a girl. So
tanned and strong. Like a boy.”
“I hate to think of you all alone on that blue silk, wanting me,” Beebo
said. “And me out delivering salami.”
“And talking to Toby,” Venus said.
“That means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”
“Everything,” Venus admitted. “I can’t tell you how much. I can talk to
him now without screaming at him. I owe that to you, Beebo.”
Instead of accepting the compliment gracefully, Beebo stared moodily out
the window. “Are you keeping me around so you won’t lose Toby again? I
don’t want to find myself pounding on your locked door the day you learn
you can talk to him without me.”
“What does it take to make you trust a girl, Beebo?” Venus teased.
“I guess I never will trust you—quite,” Beebo said truthfully. “You’re
too good to be true.”
Venus pulled her head down on the pillow and asked seriously, “How many
people know you have a crush on me? Don’t fib, darling. I have a special
reason for wanting to know.”
Beebo gritted her teeth together a moment before she answered. “My
roommate. His name is Jack Mann. He’s gay, too. He’s the best friend I
ever had and I trust him more than I trust myself.”
“Who else? Pasquini?”
“No,” Beebo said, lying forcefully with the sudden knowledge that Venus
was trying to decide how dangerous their affair could be. The safer it
seemed to her, the better the chances she would keep Beebo with her ...
perhaps even take her to the West Coast.
“How about this girl who’s in love with you?” Venus said.
“She’s not in love with me. It’s a crush,” Beebo said, ashamed of the
betrayal but unable to help herself. “She’ll get over it.”
“Do girls ever get over their crushes on you?” Venus said.
“Every day,” Beebo protested. “Venus ... would you ever lock me out ...
if people knew?”
Venus rolled away from her, sitting halfway up. Her face was dark. “I’d
have to,” she said. “For Toby, if for no other reason. And even without
him, there’s my career. It’s my life, my anchor. I can’t afford to
jeopardize it, especially now that I’m thirty-eight.” She glanced at
Beebo. “Is that unforgivably selfish of me? Don’t answer. It is, of
course. I want you, and all the rest, too. And that means you’re the one
who’d have to sacrifice. It’s just that ... for some people a job is a
job. For me, it’s self-respect. Acting is about the only thing I’ve done
in my life I’m not ashamed of. Is it too much to ask, Beebo—secrecy?”
“Is it possible?” Beebo said.
Venus nodded. “There are ways. I’ve had to learn them.”
“With the other girls,” Beebo said resentfully.
Venus stroked her shoulder. “You don’t have to be jealous,” she said. “I
do.”
“I’m jealous of all your husbands. All your lovers, male and female.
Every slob who ever saw you in a movie.”
Venus chuckled, letting her tripping voice twist her body back and forth
on the blue silk, and Beebo suddenly forgot everything in her life that
had preceded this moment. She lunged across the bed and caught Venus by
the wrist, whirling her around just as Venus got to her feet.
For an instant they stayed as they were, breathless: Beebo stretched out
the length of the bed, looking at Venus with her blue eyes shining like
a cat’s. Venus could feel the avalanche of passionate force trapped
inside Beebo, ready to burst free at the flip of a finger. Already it
was near exploding.
Venus stood there pulling against Beebo; warm, even hot to the point of
perspiring. The light sweat excited Beebo far more than the perfume
Venus usually wore. Her body was a soft pearly peach and between her
breasts Beebo could see the quivering lift and fall of her sternum.
Beebo gave a swift tug on Venus’s arm and brought her tumbling down on
the bed, laughing. That laugh sprang the switch in Beebo. She stopped it
with her mouth pressed on Venus’s. And at last Venus submitted, all the
twisting and teasing melting out of her. She let herself be kissed all
over.
Beebo looked at her, stripped of the tinseled make-believe and the
wisecracks; her lips parted and her eyes shut and her fine dark hair
spilling pins over the pillow, coming down almost deliberately to work
its witchery. Beebo kissed handfuls of it.
She fell asleep a long time later, still murmuring to Venus, still
holding her possessively close, still wondering what she had done—or
would have to do—to deserve it.
* * * * *
They were shaken out of sleep by the shrill ringing of the blue phone by
Venus’s bed. Venus answered sleepily, pulling the receiver onto the
pillow by her ear where she lay across Beebo’s chest.
But she came awake fast.
It was Leo Bogardus, calling from Hollywood. Beebo opened her eyes and
watched while Venus flushed with wrath and suddenly burst into furious
tears, threatening to hitchhike for Reno if she had to.
When she had slammed the phone down she told Beebo angrily that Leo had
signed her to a television special series called, “Million Dollar Baby.”
“I’m the Baby, but I’ll never see the million bucks,” she cried. “God, I
hate TV! You get overexposed, underpaid, and worked to death. And all
the lousy profit goes to the lousy sponsors.”
Beebo stroked her and tried to calm her. After a while Venus sat still,
her head in her hands. “Will you really go to Reno?” Beebo asked.
“No,” she sighed. “He won’t give me a divorce. I’ve tried everything....
I’ll go to Hollywood. I have no choice, Beebo. That’s where they’re
going to film this little horror.”
“Well, you were going anyway, for Toby.”