Beth withdrew her money from the bank. There was nearly four thousand
dollars. That was plenty. She felt extravagantly rich with the money her
parents had left her lined up neatly in traveler’s checks in her wallet.
She took the precaution of getting the funds before she broke the news
to Uncle John. Not that he could have stopped her; the money was hers,
free and clear. But he could have slowed things down, and she wanted to
be able to go now, at once.
“I’ve been thinking,” she told him the next day, “that I’d like to take
a trip.”
“A trip?”
“Yes. To forget. To think about something else. I want to see some new
places, Uncle John. I want to roam a little. I think it’ll do me good.”
He appeared unconvinced. He was a cautious man by nature and a
provincial. If you could stay at home with your own comfortable bed and
the food you liked, why go anywhere? His days of patient silence
weighted his spirits down, too, and he suddenly asked his niece, with
straightforward concern, “Beth, what about your children? How can you go
traveling and just leave them?”
“They’re all right,” she said, looking away.
“How do you know? How long do you intend to be away from them? Is that
good for children? Damn it, you haven’t explained any of this to me yet.
I don’t like it.”
“Uncle John, quit worrying!” she cried irritably. “The kids are with
their father. They’re better off with him, you must understand that.”
“Why don’t you take them away from him? You’re their _mother_, for God’s
sake. If you’re going to divorce Charlie you’d better start doing
something about it instead of running around the country. Are you going
to go through life married to a man who’s unworthy of you, who won’t let
you keep your own children?”
“That has nothing to do with it. I told you it was all my fault!” she
cried.
“What did you do, then? Just _what_, exactly, did you do? What’s the
_matter_ with you, Beth? I have a right to know. I’m feeding you and
sheltering you—I’m supporting you. Your husband should be doing this.”
“You mean if I don’t tell you everything you don’t want me here?” she
demanded, stunned.
“I mean you owe me an explanation!” he said, and she saw that his slow
temper was finally roused. His balding head reddened. “Are you in love
with some other man?”
“No!”
“Did you disgrace yourself? Or Charlie?”
“No!”
“Do you want your children, do you love your children?”
“Yes!” She was furious. Her voice broke.
“Then why in God’s name don’t you get them? It’s unnatural! How is it
that Charlie can keep them from you?”
“I gave them up!” she shouted. “I gave them up in exchange for my
freedom. There! Make sense out of that if you can!”
She ran upstairs to her room and began to pack.
* * * * *
She made a one-way reservation to New York City and then she sat down
and wrote a letter to Nina Spicer, the writer whose books about Lesbian
life in New York had attracted her. She had almost forgotten Nina until
her talk with Merrill Landon. Now, suddenly, the writer appeared to her
as a possible starting place in her search. Nina knew New York; you
could tell that from the books she wrote. She knew the Village, and she
knew gay life both in and out of the Village. There was no reason to
suppose she knew Laura, but perhaps she knew _of_ her, knew where she
could be found.
Beth had been candid, in a way, with Nina. She pretended she was gay,
even when she wasn’t sure of it herself. She painted a picture of
herself as beautiful, lost, misunderstood, yearning for a passionate
romance with any compatible female. When she wrote the words she
believed them true and her belief carried conviction, for Nina answered
her with a certain condescending kindness and sympathy.
So Nina Spicer had a passel of half-facts from which to form an opinion
of Beth. And Beth knew even less of Nina—only what she could guess from
the books: a half-dozen violent, lively, coarse stories, loaded with
deaths and beatings and perversities. They had some of the interest of
good newspaper reporting, with a sort of gusto in the gory details and a
lot of tormented screwballs for characters. Occasionally the love scenes
were moving; more often, blunt case histories, skillfully dissected.
Beth pictured her as a casual hard-headed girl, fast to take up an
affair, fast to drop it; hard to know and only partly worth the effort.
But she was grateful, terribly grateful, to Nina for her letters. She
wished there were some way to know her without having to meet her, for
she sensed a bridgeless difference between herself and Nina that might
make enemies of them. But she needed help now and Nina was the only
person she knew who could give it to her.
* * * * *
Beth escaped at mid-afternoon the next day, taking a bus from the Conrad
Hilton on Michigan Boulevard to the airport. It was that simple. No one
even saw her leave the house.
There was no crushing despair, no gnawing panic and indecision this
time. This time she was on the last leg of the journey, the
all-consuming quest to find Beth Cullison Ayers and make a human being
out of her. Laura was at the other end.
But Laura was not in the Manhattan directory when Beth checked it at the
airport.
_What if she died? What if she got sick and died, or left the country,
or went to jail? What if she can’t stand the sight of me?_ But she
banished such painful musings as fast as they came up. She couldn’t
really believe in them or there would be more point in jumping out of
the plane than riding it to New York.
* * * * *
She went directly to the Beaton Hotel on First Avenue near the U.N.
Building. She remembered the name from the time she and Uncle John and
Aunt Elsa had stayed there when she was a youngster of ten. It had
seemed like the marvelous castle in the fairy tales to her then, and the
name remained in her memory.
They gave her a room on the fourth floor. She took the least expensive
one they had, the kind where you share the bathroom with two or three
other rooms. Perhaps it was an unnecessary economy, but she had Merrill
Landon’s sardonic warnings about money ringing in her ears and she
wasn’t going to be caught spending hers foolishly.
She unpacked a few things and hung them in the closet, and all the while
her heart was high and going a little faster than it should have. She
was in New York. Laura was in New York. Things would work out, they had
to.
And what if they did? What if Laura could be found, and fast? And what
if she fell into Beth’s arms as though the nine years between them
didn’t exist, their lives apart didn’t exist? Then what?
_Then_, Beth thought, almost timidly, _divorce. I’ll have to divorce
Charlie. I’ll never get the children back. My children. My babies. My
own flesh. But I’ll have Laura again._ Was it worth it? It had to be.
Quickly she went to the phone book, the Manhattan directory, and looked
for Laura Landon. Maybe the one in Chicago was wrong. After following
her shaking finger down several columns she got the answer she secretly
expected; the answer the phone book at the Chicago airport had already
given her: no listing. She sighed and lighted a cigarette. It was not
going to be a cinch, this strange mission of hers. She checked the book
again for Nina Spicer’s name.
Nina was there. With relief and some trepidation she dialed the number.
It was ten-thirty in the morning, but the voice that answered was
obviously newly roused from sleep. It was a low pleasant feminine voice,
almost sultry. Beth liked it. It made her curious to meet the owner,
curious to see what she looked like.
“Nina Spicer, please,” she said.
“This is Nina.”
“This is Beth Ayers, Nina. Do you remember me?”
“How could I forget? The girl with all the problems.”
“I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“Sure.” Her breezy lack of courtesy threw Beth for a moment.
“Did you get my note?” she asked.
“I did.”
“Could we meet for lunch?” _Damn, I sound like a question box_, Beth
thought. But Nina was playing things her way. Beth had to go along.
“Let’s make it dinner. I’m tied up at noon,” Nina said.
“Okay. You’ll have to name the place. New York is all new to me.”
“Where are you?”
“The Beaton.”
“Good enough. They have a decent bar on the top floor. I’ll pick you up
in the lobby about four-thirty. We can go on from there.”
“Fine.” Beth was both repelled and attracted by the girl on the phone.
The voice was lovely, but the attitude was hardly warm and welcoming.
Curious, amused, a little supercilious, somewhat intimidating.
Beth hung up. She wasn’t afraid of Nina, just on her guard. And she was
so eager to meet her, to ask her about Laura, that the day dragged
unbearably. She was too excited to rest. She ended up writing letters,
one to Merrill Landon, one to Cleve.
“Did you have much trouble with Vega?” she asked Cleve reluctantly.
“Tell me everything’s okay. It would mean so much. I’ll send you a box
number in a day or two. Don’t know how long I’ll be in New York.”
When there was nothing left to write and no one to write to, she walked.
She saw the United Nations buildings and she poked around the shops. A
tailor across the street from the Beaton sewed a button on for her and
told her about his international clientele.
She was in her room by four, in case Nina should come early, but Nina
was late. It was a quarter to five when she called Beth’s room, and
Beth, almost beside herself with impatience, went down to the lobby to
meet her. She looked for a light blue linen suit, which was Nina’s
description of herself, and found her standing by a square pillar near
the desk.
Beth walked straight to her and took her hand, pleased to see that her
directness threw Nina offstride slightly. Nina expected to have that
effect herself, mainly by fixing people with a go-to-hell stare. But
Beth was not interested in Nina for Nina’s sake and it made her less
susceptible to Nina’s notions of who was running the show.
They went directly up to the bar, speaking softly, feeling their ways
with one another. They ordered Martinis.
“How long will you be in New York?” Nina asked.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“A lot of things. You, maybe.”
Nina smiled at her Martini glass. She was not a pretty girl, though her
eyes were green and well shaped, and she wore her brown hair long in a
soft bob. Her nose was too sharp and prominent and her mouth too small
and irregular to be pretty, but she had a nice figure. Unusually nice,
Beth had noticed on the way up in the elevator.
“What have I got to do with how long you stay in New York?” Nina asked,
sizing her up silently. “You don’t even know me.” She spoke
suggestively, with the hint of a smile on her face, as if she had only
to keep leading a little and Beth would soon take a pratfall.
“I’m looking for someone,” Beth said. “I thought you might be able to
help me find her.”
“Oh. Romance?”
“No,” Beth lied, speaking briefly and annoyed at Nina’s tone of voice.
“You’re not at all horsey, are you?” Nina said, changing the subject
suddenly and grinning.
“_Horsey?_” Beth stared at her. “Should I be?”
“Frankly, yes. I got the impression from your letters.”
“It’s not the impression I meant to give.” Beth didn’t like Nina’s
expression. It was too cocksure, too well acquainted with all the
ins-and-outs of gay life in New York City that Beth yearned to know
herself. She felt suddenly reluctant to bring Laura’s name up. Maybe
later in the evening, if Nina got more congenial.
“So you’re leaving your husband, hm?” Nina said. It was part of her
technique with people to startle them, embarrass them, leave them
stammering.
“I didn’t say that,” Beth protested.
“You don’t need to. Your letters said enough. He isn’t here in New York,
is he?”
“No. But that doesn’t mean I’m leaving him.”
“From the things you wrote me, I’d say you could hardly wait to ditch
him.”
“I haven’t written you for a while,” Beth said in a chilly voice.
“Things change.” Beth was being played with, to see if she would snap or
take it in stoic silence. She was aware of this, aware that no matter
how she reacted Nina wouldn’t care—just as long as there was some
reaction. Nina didn’t give a damn for anything else. It was seeing
people squirm, seeing them enmeshed in their own poor little problems
that amused her. Beth was a good case history. And she was new and
different to Nina. She would help to pass the time. She might even show
up, slightly distorted, in Nina’s next novel.
Beth made up her mind to ignore it. Nothing mattered but finding Laura,
and if Nina could help, Nina would have to be catered to.
They had another Martini and then Nina took her out to dinner. It was a
little place down in the Village, but expensive; the tourist trade had
discovered it. But the food was excellent. Beth ate gladly. The lack of
rest and the Martinis made a bad combination, and she felt a little slap
happy.
“I want to learn my way around down here,” Beth said. “I want to get to
know the Village.” Just being in it gave her a tingle of hope, of
excitement. The Village. The end of the rainbow. How she had wondered
about this place! And Laura had lived here; Laura knew it, too. Perhaps
better than Nina.
“Sure,” Nina said. “Sure you would. Just like the rest of the tourists.”
“I have a special reason.”
“What’s her name?”
Beth finished the drink beside her, distinctly nettled. “She may not
even be here,” she said tightly. “I lost track of her years ago. The
last I heard she was in New York.”
Nina put her head back and laughed and Beth knew, with tongue-tied
resentment, that she was being laughed at again.
“So you gave up your husband and kids to come on a wild goose chase
after your long lost love,” Nina said. “How romantic! That’s why you
wanted to meet me, I suppose. So I could lead you to her.”
She laughed again and Beth thought with disappointment that she could
never like this peculiar girl. It was apparently not possible for Nina
to be friendly. You made her acquaintance and then you either knuckled
under to her or else you had to drop her. One way or the other she got a
good show, and that was all she wanted out of life, besides a few
affairs. She didn’t need friends and she didn’t especially want them.
Lovers, yes. Friends, no. Lovers kept boredom out. Friends let it in. At
least, that was the way Beth sized her up.
Somehow the mere idea of exposing Laura’s name to the malicious laughter
of this worldly girl who faced her over the dinner table disheartened
Beth. She couldn’t do it; not just then. She looked at the writer,
feeling sure that Nina would tolerate her good humoredly as long as Beth
was still “new,” still good for laughs. And Nina looked back at her,
always with her mocking little smile, so different from Jean Purvis’s
endless good-hearted grin.
Physically Nina and Beth pleased each other. Nina took in her visitor’s
long strong limbs, well shaped and smooth, and her intense violet eyes.
She was ever so slightly, even fashionably, boyish. And Nina laughed
softly to herself at the idea of filling Beth full of moonshine and bull
and letting her find her way out of the mess.
After dinner Nina took Beth around to some Lesbian bars. It was the
first time in her life that Beth had ever been in such places. They
recalled scenes from Nina’s novels to her and she asked ingenuous
questions, unaware of the fact that her voice carried too far, far
enough to make one or two other customers smile.
“Not much noise tonight,” Nina said, after shushing her. “Monday night,”
she explained. “Always dead.”
Beth was thinking, _What if Laura’s here somewhere? At least she’s been
here before. Did she meet people here? Fall in love?_
They took in three places. The first was another tourist trap. There was
a long dark bar in front and a dining room with sketchy floor shows in
the back. No show on Monday nights. But the waitresses were interesting.
Beth found herself staring at them in fascination, as they lounged
against the walls waiting for the sparse crowd to fill out. She even
wondered if they drank orange juice in the morning like everybody else.
It shocked her to realize how far out of her depth she was, how far
removed from her collegiate sophistication. She wondered how obvious it
was to Nina, but a glance at her revealed only the supercilious little
smile.
Nina watched her closely and her scrutiny made Beth nervous. _She wants
me to put my foot in my mouth_, Beth thought, and it made her stammer a
little. But it didn’t stop her from asking questions.
Beth was surprised to see so many men sitting at the bar. “Who are
they?” she asked. “Johns?” She remembered the word from one of Nina’s
novels and she asked her question in a firm clear voice that made Nina
duck and laugh.
“Quiet, for God’s sake, they’ll think we’re cops,” she said. “Or a
couple of gaping hayseeds.”
“Well, are they?” Beth said. “Do they hang around gay girls all the
time?” But she lowered her voice.
“Um-hm,” Nina said, her eyes wrinkled at the corners.
In the next place there were only women, except for the man behind the
bar, and he apparently enjoyed the confidence of the girls he served.
There was only a handful of young women there when Beth and Nina
arrived, and Beth looked them over quickly, always with Laura’s lovely
face in her mind. But Laura wasn’t there.
Nina seemed to know everybody. She was getting more gregarious as she
had more drinks. Not loud at all, just bold; bold in the way she looked
at people, in the things she said.
“So you want to go back to your husband,” she needled Beth.
“I didn’t say that, either.”
“You don’t say much, do you?” Nina laughed. “What’d you get married for
in the first place if you’re gay?” she said. “Think it would cure you?”
“I didn’t know I was gay,” Beth said.
“You seemed to in your letters.”
“They were easier to write that way.”
Nina laughed at her and called one of the waitresses over. “This is
Billie,” she said to Beth, and the girl sat down and talked with them.
She was extremely pretty; very small and dainty-looking, but with
cropped hair and a decidedly aggressive swing in her walk. She spoke
softly, however, almost timidly, and left the bulk of the conversation
to Beth and Nina.
“Beth is looking for her long lost love,” Nina said, pleased to see the
consternation her announcement created in Beth. “What’s her name again?”
She glanced at Beth.
“Maybe she comes in here,” Billie said helpfully. “I know them all.”
“I doubt it,” Beth said.
“Come on, her name,” Nina demanded.
“She’s not here,” Beth said, feeling cornered and stubborn. She hated
the phrase “long lost love,” so lightly, even sarcastically, spoken.
“So maybe she comes in other times,” said Billie, innocently unaware
that Beth and Nina were sparring with each other.
“Bring us another drink, will you, Billie?” Nina said, still staring
Beth down. As soon as the girl had left their table she leaned over and
said confidentially to Beth, as if making it up to her a little, “Do you
like her?”
“I don’t know her,” Beth said warily.
“She likes you,” Nina said. “She’s been cruising you like mad since we
came in.”
“Cruising me?”
“Looking you over, sizing you up.”
Beth didn’t believe her. Nina only wanted a rise out of her.
“She wants to be a boy,” Nina said. “She boards with a family on
Bleecker Street. She thinks _they_ think she’s a boy. She always wears
pants.”
“She had on a skirt tonight.”
“That’s because she has to wear one in here. City ordinance. No women in
bars in pants. But she won’t wear the skirt to work. She carries it in a
paper bag and changes in the john.”
“She’s crazy if she thinks she can pass for a boy,” Beth said seriously.
“She can’t be over five-feet-three. And she’s so pretty. Her features
are very feminine.”
And again Nina laughed at her. And again Beth realized she was being
made a fool of. Was any of it true? Was Billie so blind as to think she
could transform herself into a boy with a pair of pants? Or was Nina
showing her at least part of the truth, a sad, even pitiful, intensely
interesting little corner of life, cut from the Village pattern?
At the last bar there were other men, but they never seemed to join the
girls at the tables. They rather intrigued Beth, who wondered why they
spent all their free time sitting quietly on bar stools watching the
flirtations, the loves, the dancing and socializing of these women they
could never touch. Some of them seemed to know the girls and were
greeted affectionately with a nickname or a slap on the back. But they
never presumed to follow a girl or to talk before they were spoken to.
It was their solitary pleasure simply to watch, and now and then to be
permitted a few words, a little sharing of this odd way of life.
Beth observed one who seemed particularly pathetic. He was overweight by
quite a bit, balding, and with blue pockets under his eyes, and he
looked not only sad but outright bored—something none of the others did.
She wondered why he bothered to come by at all if it depressed him so.
His face stuck in her mind later, and she pitied him. This third and
last place they were in had a larger clientele than the others, probably
because it was eleven o’clock by the time they got there.
Beth was absorbed by it. She wanted to wander all night around the
Village, look into all the windows and share all the secrets. Behind
some curtain, in some doorway or shop window, she might find Laura.
But when she stood up suddenly to go to the ladies’ room she realized
with a start that she was drunk. Quite drunk. Nina had been telling her
to quit for some time.
“You don’t want to be hung over tomorrow,” she said.
But it was so condescending, so solicitous for the “country cousin,”
that Beth had defiantly ordered another. And another. She knew now,
gripping the table with both hands, that Nina was right, aggravating
though her attitude was. Beth should have stopped early in the evening.
Nina appraised her skillfully. “You’re going to feel like hell in the
morning,” she said. “Too bad. I was going to take you out for lunch,
too. One of my favorite places.”
“I’ll make it,” Beth said. She _would_ feel rotten, all right—that was a
cinch. But she’d go. She had to learn her way around here somehow, and
doing it with Nina, however embarrassing or even upsetting, seemed safer
than going it alone.
They drove home in a taxi, and Beth was disconcerted to find that the
warmth and closeness of Nina’s body in the rear seat pleased her. Nina
said nothing and that made it easier to enjoy her. When she opened her
mouth it threw Beth on her guard automatically and destroyed the sensual
pleasure.
Beth left her with a queer feeling of dislike and desire that disturbed
her sleep, tired as she was. She couldn’t fathom Nina and the only thing
she thought it was safe to count on was that Nina was playing the game
only for herself. She had no special favors to grant Beth Ayers, and
when Beth ceased to interest her, that would be the end. Kaput. End of
guided tour through the Village, and end of information, such as it was.
Beth thought fuzzily that she had better ask Nina about Laura, whether
Nina laughed at the idea or not, before Nina got it into her head to
drop her. For, strangely, on this first night of their acquaintance, she
felt the break coming. It was inevitable with a girl like Nina. Things
never last, things aren’t meant to last. That would be her way of seeing
it. So why not break it off as soon as it bores you? And Nina’s
philosophy, Beth was soon to learn on her own, was typical of many a
weary Greenwich Villager. It was not the attitude that comes with
sophistication, but the attitude of boredom and disappointment.