They had lunch the next day, though Beth felt gray with the hangover.
And somehow, over the salad and crackers, she found she couldn’t speak
of Laura. It was like trying to swallow a pill that was too big for her
throat. She made the usual try at it, but it reached the back of her
mouth and suddenly scared her, and she choked a little and finally gave
up.
But several nights later, things changed. Nina unexpectedly asked her to
come to her apartment for dinner. Beth had been hoping to see where she
lived, how she lived, even what she ate. Nina was her link to the gay
world, and though she couldn’t quite like her she still was deeply
interested in her, in the things Nina could teach her. She accepted the
invitation gratefully, and was astonished, when she got there, to see
that Nina had cooked the dinner—or was in process of cooking it—herself.
Nina fixed her a drink and Beth stood in the tiny living room looking at
the books that banked one whole wall from floor to ceiling. It made her
feel more comfortable with Nina to see that she read or, at least, had
books around. Beth liked to read and when she found others who did she
ordinarily cottoned to them. It helped her get over her suspicions with
Nina, the shadowy feeling of being _had_, of being taken for a ride,
that she couldn’t quite pin down.
They ate in a corner of the bedroom, a room that was even smaller than
the living room and literally gorged, like an overfed animal, with a
bed, a desk, and three typewriters, to say nothing of the card table
from which they ate.
“Apartments up here are damn cracker boxes,” Nina said. “If you want a
good address, you pay for it.” She was in the East Seventies, just off
Fifth Avenue, in a staid old building that was eminently respectable. It
was like her to look down on the Village, part of her philosophy to get
out of it, or, at least, to _live_ out of it. She could never stay away
full time.
The dinner was good, to Beth’s surprise. Nina had put candles on the
table and turned out the lights, and Beth began to feel, in spite of the
shivers of warning that flashed through her when Nina smiled her
knowledgeable little smile, a curious intimacy. After all, they had
written many letters to each other. Nina had been kind, in her
off-the-cuff way. Nina was being good to her now, taking time off from
the book she was working on, showing her around.
_Maybe I’m taking the teasing too hard_, Beth thought, as she ate.
“Lord, I’m stuffed,” she said, when Nina offered her more. They smiled
at each other and there was a small pause. Nina’s was a different kind
of smile. There was almost warmth in it; at least, there was an absence
of the mocking twist that bothered Beth so.
Perhaps out of uncertainty, or stubbornness born of unaccustomed
shyness, Beth refused to drop her eyes first. And Nina, her bluff
called, had to keep her own eyes on Beth. And somehow—as though the two
pairs of eyes, one sparkling green, the other misty violet, were
magnetized—they leaned toward each other. Beth reached out without
consciously directing her hand and cupped it gently behind Nina’s neck,
pressing the warm brown hair beneath it and pulling Nina closer still.
In utter silence, in the calm light of candles, over the steak plates,
in the night of the city, they kissed each other. And leaned away again
slightly to gaze at each other. Beth was inanely surprised to see that
Nina’s lipstick was smeared. And Nina smiled, the good smile, and they
kissed again. And then she suddenly rose, as if it occurred to her she
was risking a true affection for Beth by playing with her, and began to
clear the plates as if nothing had happened.
Beth picked up a stack of plates and followed her into the cramped
kitchen. She put the slippery crockery on the little table and her arms
around Nina, and a voice inside her urged, _Tell her. Tell her it’s
Laura you’re looking for. Tell her now, before she gets bored and you
lose her._
_But I can’t_, Beth thought. _She’d burst out laughing at me if I asked
her now. It would ruin the mood, it would make her sarcastic again. And
I’d hate myself for asking._
Nina slipped away from her and brought in the rest of the plates, and
they did the dishes together, speaking softly of small irrelevancies,
enjoying each other’s physical presence.
And still Beth hesitated, with that name on the tip of her tongue and
some ineffable misgiving freezing it there.
Nina showed her an album full of snapshots she had collected, and
startled her by pointing to a nice-looking crew-cut boy and saying
off-handedly, “That was my husband.”
“Your husband? You never said you were married.”
“I’m not. I was. Besides, why should I tell you?” And for an instant
Beth felt the wall of sarcasm rising.
“No reason,” she said. “What happened?”
Nina shrugged. “What happened with you and Charlie? It didn’t work. We
divorced years ago.”
“Did you love him?”
“Hell, no. He was just a nice kid. We had fun.”
“And no children.”
“And no children. You were a fool to have children, Beth.”
“I love them,” she said humbly.
“Ha!” Nina cried. “Then what are you doing here? Why aren’t you with
them?” After a suggestive pause she prompted, “Was the old long lost
love _that_ tempting?”
In the midst of such sharp and painful needling Beth couldn’t speak
Laura’s name. She couldn’t bear to have it laughed at and she clammed up
for a while. When she could control her voice a little she tried to
explain.
“I left my kids because I treated them badly. I was unjust, I was
unreasonable, I hurt them over and over. Even if there had never been
any ‘long lost love,’ I think I would have left them. The more I hurt
them the worse I hurt myself until I thought we would all go crazy.”
Nina saw what a whirlpool of guilt and resentment she had stirred up,
and, interested, she stirred it a little more. “So your solution was to
dump the kids in the river and run to New York in search of a girl you
haven’t seen in nine years? Not very sensible, was it?”
“Not very!” Beth conceded. “Not much fun, either,” she added sharply.
Nina dropped her smile at once. “I’m not laughing,” she said with a
solemn face. But of course she was, inside, in the dark and silence of
her private self. “My first husband and I had it worked out a little
better than that, that’s all. You should have used your head.”
“Your _first_ husband?” Beth snapped. “Where in hell is your second?”
“Oh I mean my _ex_-husband. My _former_ husband,” Nina corrected
herself.
“Well, say so, then.” Beth had caught her lying. She had never married.
It simply pleased her ego to say she had, to make Beth feel that no
experience Beth had ever had was unique or different from any Nina had
had. Nina had to be one up on you, or at least on a level with you, or
she couldn’t enjoy herself. Ordinarily she lied to this end with great
skill, gracefully and casually. It gave Beth her first peace of mind
with Nina to catch her in a blatant fib, to see that startled look
flicker over her face.
Nina had the good sense to take it lightly. She passed over it, coming
to the couch where Beth sat and settling beside her. She cocked one foot
against the coffee table and said slowly, “Would you like to spend the
night?” The conflict of desires on Beth’s face tickled her, restored her
self-assurance.
“I don’t think so,” Beth said.
“Why not? Afraid of me?”
“Not of you.” _Damn her! She would make a test of it, a challenge. How
can I turn her down now?_ But Beth wasn’t absolutely sure she _wanted_
to turn her down.
“Afraid of what, then?”
“You don’t really want me to stay.”
“Why do you think I asked you?” Nina had made her mind up. Beth was
moody, she was pretty, she was new. Nina smiled at the swell of her
breasts beneath the simple suit she wore and wondered how they looked
undraped.
“Stay,” she said. And when Beth didn’t answer she added, “I have a
nightie you can borrow. Go take a shower and I’ll get you a towel. Go
on!” She shooed her as she might have a wayward child or a chicken, and
Beth got up and obeyed her. It exhausted her to try to make a decision.
It was easier to let Nina make it for her.
She showered and dried herself, gazing at herself critically in the
mirror of the medicine chest, wondering just how big a fool she was to
stay, to walk into whatever trap Nina might be laying for her. The small
consolation was that you could only walk into Nina’s kind of trap once.
Nina had a way of stripping your innocence off with both hands. It hurt,
but Beth was learning. She sensed that the lessons Nina taught her would
bolster her when she faced the gay world alone.
“Finished?” Nina called outside the bathroom door. “Here’s some
pajamas.”
Beth opened the door a few inches and grabbed them and saw Nina grin at
her modesty. She slipped the blue cotton pants on and found they were
too short. The jacket was too tight through the bust and she laughed
silently at the picture she made in the mirror.
Nina was waiting for her, curled up on the foot end of the sofa-bed she
had pulled out from the love seat in the living room.
“You can sleep in here,” she said. “There’s plenty of room.” There was
in fact room for two, but Nina had her own bed in the other room and
Beth was relieved to know they would sleep apart.
She sat down on a pillow as far from Nina as the length of the bed would
permit, and Nina fixed them both a nightcap. They drank in silence for a
moment, and then Beth spoke. Maybe it was the liquor that prompted her,
or the informality of the pajamas that were too small and looked silly,
or just the need to know. At any rate, she spoke of the things closest
to her then.
“How do you know if you’re gay, Nina?” she asked.
“Simple. You go to a fortune teller,” Nina said.
“Is that how you found out about yourself?”
“No.” And Nina’s face became more serious. “No, I did it the hard way.”
“What’s the hard way?”
“I got hurt.”
“Well, I’ve been hurt before,” Beth said. “A thousand times, a thousand
different ways. It didn’t teach me a thing.”
“You weren’t a good student, then.”
“I don’t mean with women, Nina.”
“I thought you were in New York trying to find some woman.”
“I am. But she never _hurt_ me. I hurt her, but she never did a thing to
me.”
“Well, there must have been others.”
There had been Vega, of course. But Beth couldn’t talk about her, and
there seemed no reason to confess that sordid little chapter to Nina,
who would only have laughed at it anyway.
“No,” Beth said. “No others.” She finished her drink quickly and Nina
reached to refill it, but Beth held back.
“You mean that once nine years ago you had a fling with some girl,” Nina
said, letting her hand drop, “and now you wonder if you’re _gay_?” She
spoke with exaggerated incredulity and the curl in her small mouth was
not kind. But it was amused.
“I loved her very much,” Beth said. “I just happened to meet my husband
at the same time. I’ve been wondering all these years if I made the
right choice. Lately, with things so bad at home, I thought seeing her
again would help me make up my mind. Help me understand myself.”
“What makes you think she’ll be so eager to see _you_? Or help you out?
What makes you think she cares a damn about you after nine years?
Especially if you hurt her the last time around?”
“I have no idea how she’ll react,” Beth said. She resented the probing
mockery Nina subjected her to, but if it was the price of knowledge she
was ready to pay it. “I only know she was a very gentle, affectionate
girl and when we parted there were no hard feelings.”
“Oh, swell,” Nina said. “She’s had nine years to sit and stew over it,
remember. She’s known other women by now, if she has any sense. She can
evaluate what you did to her. She couldn’t before when it first
happened. Or weren’t you her first?”
“Yes. I was.” Beth glanced up at her. It was true. Laura had experience
to measure Beth with now, but Beth had nothing but memories with which
to judge Laura. Memories and one abortive sad little romance with a sick
woman that only made Laura look the lovelier in her imaginings.
“She may look good to _you_,” Nina pointed out, “but you may look like
hell to her. What if you barge in on a new romance? What if you finally
find her and the poor girl is madly in love with somebody new? How glad
do you think she’ll be to see you? You could louse up her whole life,
throw a monkey wrench into her romance. What’s she supposed to do, laugh
it off for old time’s sake? Welcome you with open arms and let the other
girl go jump?”
In a burst of irritation and arrogance Beth leaned across the bed, her
hands planted deep in the mattress just inches from Nina and the rest of
her weight on her knees. “You know something?” Beth said. “I don’t give
a damn. I don’t care what I do to her life, as long as she lets me back
in it. I want her so badly I can see her in every female I meet. I can
smell her the way she used to be after her shower at night when she was
covered with scented powder and her hair was still damp. God, God, I can
even taste her!”
And Nina twisted her mouth into a laugh. When Beth started to protest
she put a hand up and exclaimed, “No, I believe you. You’re in love.”
Beth came down to a more reasonable sitting position. “Does that make me
gay?” she asked seriously.
“For the time being.” Nina sized her up. “Why do you worry about it,
Beth? Why are you so anxious for a label? What do you care what category
you fall into? Just be yourself.”
“I don’t know myself.”
“Then just be however you feel like being and pretty soon the pattern
will emerge.”
“I’ve been doing that for thirty years,” Beth said. “There is no
pattern, there’s only chaos.”
“Well, maybe that comes from living with a man. Maybe you were never
meant to settle down. I know some perfectly nice girls, all straight,
who can’t live with men. They can’t live without them, either, of
course. It’s a matter of balancing their lives between the men who are
important to them, and the other things. It doesn’t necessarily mean
you’re gay. It doesn’t necessarily mean you should go live with a woman
and make love to her, just because you’ve made a flop of your first
marriage. So maybe you got the wrong guy. Try somebody else.”
“It isn’t that easy. If you’d ever been married you’d know that.”
“I have been married. I told you,” Nina said quickly.
And Beth, seeing that she meant to stick by her fib, said, “Oh, sorry. I
forgot.” She hoped Nina liked the sarcasm in her voice. Nina was used
enough to dishing it out. But Beth was glad for her words. They put a
new light on things, made her see them from an angle that had been
closed to her when there had been just her own ramblings in the dark to
guide her.
“If Charlie was a mistake, I’ll be paying for it all my life,” Beth
said.
“Don’t be silly. What did you pay him for this trip?”
“A lot of misery, Nina. A lot of soul searching and misery.”
“You’ll get that out of life anyway, Beth. You have no corner on misery.
That’s everybody’s business. That’s the growing-up process, you might
say.” It sounded familiar to Beth. She wondered if she might have read
it somewhere in one of Nina’s books. “Your long lost love can probably
teach you a few things about misery. Anybody who’s gay knows that
subject backwards and forwards.”
Beth reached over to a small end table to squash out her cigarette. When
she sat up Nina unfastened the central, cornerstone, button on the tight
pajama tops. It was accomplished with one quick movement that caught
Beth off guard and the straining button yielded gratefully before she
had time to catch Nina’s hand and stop her. At once, the whole thing
came unbuttoned, the jacket top falling open over her bare chest.
Rather than protest or lose her temper or button the thing up again, or
even use the gesture as an excuse for making a pass, Beth just sat there
as if nothing had happened. Her expression, her attitude, were a dare to
Nina. She gazed into space, apparently preoccupied, and Nina, who was
fishing for a hard reaction, was nonplussed. Beth could sense it without
looking at her. She continued to sit, inwardly amused and relieved to
see Nina’s consternation. Beth’s full high breasts were disturbingly
visible and Nina could neither move away nor mention them until Beth did
something without making herself look idiotic. So Nina sat still beside
Beth, both exasperated and interested. The gambit forced an unaccustomed
respect for Beth on her. Perhaps Beth was something more than a
passionate hayseed trying to scare up an old crush. Perhaps she was good
for something besides laughs.
At last Beth leaned back into the pillows, settling down with a sigh,
her arms and legs flung out and the unbuttoned jacket flung carelessly
out on either side of her. She shut her eyes and said, “Forgive me,
Nina. I’m beat.”
“Sure,” Nina said. Released by the words, she got up and took the
glasses and full ashtrays into the kitchen. Beth listened to her moving
about, smiling to herself. She felt better about Nina now, less at her
mercy.
“I’ll be in the next room,” Nina said. “If you have any bad dreams, that
is.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember,” Beth said. She heard Nina take a few steps and
stop, and make a few odd noises with her tongue and then with an
ashtray, as if to attract Beth’s attention, make her open her eyes. But
Beth kept them shut, ignoring her. “Did you like the dinner?” Nina said.
Beth had. She had said so several times. So it was plain that Nina was
looking for an invitation, a more intimate talk, a caress, maybe even a
night in bed with Beth. And Beth was both surprised and flattered. But
she had no idea of yielding her small lead then. Let Nina squirm. It was
her turn.
“Yes, thanks,” she said noncommittally. “It was delicious.”
And seeing that she would get no further without stating her intentions
in plain English, Nina gave up with a smile, put out the last light, and
climbed into her own bed.
* * * * *
It was black early morning when Beth was slightly roused by a movement
of the bedclothes. She continued to breathe slowly and softly as if she
were still asleep, letting Nina slip under the blankets and lie beside
her. Nina didn’t touch her and didn’t move for fully ten minutes, for
fear of waking Beth.
They played cat and mouse for a while. Beth was at first dismayed to
feel Nina’s presence. Not so much because she didn’t desire her as
because she didn’t _want_ to desire her. She didn’t want to feel an
attraction for this odd girl who was teaching her some valuable facts in
such a humiliating manner. And yet she did. She couldn’t imagine living
with Nina or sharing the things that mattered with her. But she could
imagine, vividly, making love to her. She could see in her mind’s eye
the well-shaped legs and trim torso, the long brown bob and green eyes,
the small passionless mouth that nevertheless felt so strangely soft and
sweet when they kissed over the steak plates.
It was a lovely body that lay next to her, not like the poor tortured
thing that was Vega, with her heart all twisted inside by the
mutilations on the outside. After a while Beth knew she wanted to touch
Nina; she knew she would have to pretty soon if Nina didn’t make the
move first. She wanted extremely to control herself, to withstand the
temptation, to prove the stronger, and this desire gave her a few
moments more of resistance. She wondered if Nina meant to sleep beside
her all night, without making a single gesture toward her. Maybe she
wanted merely to wake up in the morning with Beth beside her and enjoy
Beth’s surprise. She wondered if it was just another trap to make Beth
look silly.
Beth held her breath for a second and then her breathing came faster
with the speed of excitement and even fear. Nina heard it, lying so near
her in the bed, and she tensed, knowing there was nothing more she
needed to do. But Beth startled her by reaching over her and snapping on
the small pink lamp on the end table, flooding the room with a soft rosy
radiance that made them both visible to each other. Beth couldn’t have
explained the action; it seemed better somehow than simply grabbing Nina
like an animal after bait. Maybe it was just another effort to resist,
to do anything but touch Nina.
Nina rolled over on her back and stared at Beth, her eyes opening wider
slowly as they became accustomed to the light. “What the hell did you do
that for?” she asked. But she wasn’t angry.
“What the hell are _you_ doing in my bed?” Beth said.
Nina smiled. “I had a bad dream,” she said. And Beth had to smile too.
Nina looked boldly at her. “You’re still unbuttoned,” she said. In the
sudden intimacy it was possible to speak of it.
“I like it that way. Your pajamas are too small for me.”
Nina reached up slowly and put her hands on Beth’s warm breasts. “You
can never know for sure if you’re gay, Beth,” she said softly, “unless
you can respond to more than one woman. You’ll never know if you save
yourself all for the long lost love. How do you even know you’ll find
her? Maybe she’s gone for good and you’ll go home to Charlie and never
know what you left him to find out.”
There was a pause. In a way it was true, and in another way it was a
satin-covered, thorn-lined invitation to infidelity. Beth wondered if
she would be unfaithful to Charlie by making love to a woman. It had
never seemed so to her with Vega, probably because making love to Vega
was a depressing chore. But Nina made her feel suddenly that she was a
faithless woman. Nina made her feel that the things she was doing were
both silly and wicked, and wonderful. At the same time, she made her
believe they were natural and inevitable.
Beth looked down at her, with her soft brown hair scattered on the
pillow. Her eyes were very green in the rosy light and her skin was very
fair. Beth caught her hands, pulling them gently away from her breasts
and kissing the palms. And then Nina took them back to slip out of her
own pajamas. Beth watched her in silence, letting things happen as if
she had no will to stop them; she didn’t even try.
Nina wriggled out of the bottoms and threw them on the floor, at the
same time pushing the covers off her body with a couple of long quick
thrusts of her legs. Suddenly, almost unexpectedly, for Beth was not
well prepared for anything that happened that night, Nina was lying
beautifully naked beneath her, her fine legs crossed at the ankles, her
sharp restless eyes searching Beth’s.
Beth looked away and said in a low voice, “Do you want a yokel like me
to make love to you? I don’t know what I’m doing, Nina. I’ll disappoint
you.”
“You couldn’t, honey. Try it.”
“You mean, in the mood you’re in, _nobody_ could disappoint you.” Beth
gave a sad little laugh. “It just happens I’m the one who’s with you.”
“In the mood I’m in, nobody could touch me but you.” Beth felt the
smooth tingling drift of a hand over her back under the loosened
pajamas. She bore it for a moment in silence and then, with a little
groan, she struggled out of the tops, nearly tearing them in her hurry.
She turned on Nina, leaning over her and bending nearer until her weight
rested partly on her, and then she kissed her and a flash of pleasure,
as sharp and dreadful as a sword, impaled her. She had wanted to tell
Nina, “Don’t laugh at me. Don’t make me feel clumsier than I am. I think
I could kill you for that.” But there had been no time and now there was
no need.
Nina, for once, was not laughing. She was spread beneath Beth like a
carpet of warm silk. She moved with her, she murmured to her, she was as
absorbed as Beth was in the fantastic luxury of sexual pleasure. When
she tried to pull away a little Beth caught her from behind and kissed
her bare neck and shoulders, her fingers pressed around Nina’s lovely
breasts and their legs entangled. Nina was surprised at the strength she
felt in Beth’s arms, and let herself be pushed back down on the bed with
a sigh of ecstasy.
Nina showed Beth things that night that Beth never dreamed existed. “I’m
going to do things to you you never even heard of,” she whispered, and
she did. With her mouth, her fingers, the warm tickle of her breath, she
called up feelings in Beth that had never been there before. She made
Beth aware of parts of her body, her own familiar comfortable body that
she thought she knew so well, that Beth had never discovered for
herself. A thousand sensual subtleties were revealed to Beth in Nina’s
arms: all the tricks and caprices of a lovely body, all the scented
shapes, the astonishing joy of uncontrollable physical reactions, the
enormous force of a woman’s ecstasy flowing unfocused through her whole
body, claiming her absolutely and reverberating in her for hours after
the act of love.
Beth kissed Nina with a hungry mouth, amazed at her own appetite, at how
much it took to satisfy her. She would settle against Nina, holding her
in her arms and thinking _now_ sleep would come. And she would half doze
off for a while and then shift her weight a little and the mere feel of
Nina’s hair brushing her face, or a length of perfumed leg, would jolt
her desire to the surface.
“Nina,” she murmured wildly once in the night, “am I exhausting you?”
“No,” Nina whispered. “You surprise me but you don’t exhaust me.”
And once Beth tried to recall if it had been this way with Laura, if it
had been this good, or if it could be. There wasn’t any reason for
anything to be so beautiful. After what she had done, after what she had
been through, Beth could hardly believe this was happening to her at
all. It seemed as if all her days were fated to be gray and worried, all
her nights empty and tragic. And now suddenly she was incredibly happy.
There was no time to wonder whether the happiness was purely physical.
She didn’t stop to think about her ambivalent feelings for Nina, about
how Nina might look in the daylight, with irony in her air again and
sarcasm on her lips. There was no daylight, no night, no time, nothing
but that moment on the bed with Nina in her arms. Beth was unable to
think ahead or to care what happened.
Nina’s voice came softly out of the dawn to her. “You’re gay, Beth,” she
said positively.
“I know.” It came as a wild wonderful relief, just to know for sure
after years of tormented wondering.
Nina stroked her cheek with one finger. “What was her name?” she asked.
After a long pause Beth answered her. “Laura.”
Nina smiled. “Good,” she said. “I don’t know any Lauras.”
Beth felt a small stab of dismay. And then she wondered if Nina could
conceivably be jealous now, unwilling to share Beth, unwilling to reveal
anything she might happen to know. Beth considered Nina’s curious
incapacity for friendship. Nina might be able to come close to her as a
lover but never as a friend. She might even learn to love Beth for a
little while, but she could never like her and it would never last.
“You know what you’d be if you let yourself go?” Nina said playfully
into her ear. “You’d be a butch. You’d cut your hair off real short and
live in the Village. Oh, yes, you would. Don’t smile. And I’ll bet
that’s exactly what you will do, too. You won’t be interested in me very
long. Not after you find out how many beautiful women will be interested
in _you_.”
Beth squirmed uncomfortably at the idea. “I don’t want a lot of
beautiful women, Nina,” she mumbled.
“What do you want?” Nina asked, and when Beth hesitated, silent for over
a minute, she teased, “Me?” And then, with spite in her voice, “No.
Laura. _Laura_ she wants, after all I did for her last night.”
“I don’t know,” Beth said. “I really don’t know ... now.”
“_Now?_ You mean now that I’ve corrupted you?” Nina laughed quietly.
“I’m glad I mixed you up a little. I hope you don’t find your Laura. Not
for a while anyway.”