Outside it was muggy and hot, with an overcast sky. “Rain,” Beebo said.
“In an hour. It can’t miss.”
They walked over to Sixth Avenue and hailed a taxi, and all the while
Beth was looking around her, behind and on all sides for the little man
she was so sure was the detective. Now, when she was aware of him, when
she knew who he was and what he was up to, she couldn’t find him
anywhere. And yet she was convinced that his eyes were on her, peering
around some shadowy corner.
“Do you see him?” said Beebo, noticing her nervousness.
“No. I’ll tell you if I do.”
At the Beaton she checked at the desk for a note from Merrill Landon. Or
her family, she thought suddenly, with rancor. There was no reason why
they couldn’t write to her now if they wanted to. They certainly knew
where she was.
But there was nothing, nothing but the curious stares of the clerk and
the elevator boy. Beth didn’t know if they were for her or Beebo, or
both. For Beebo cut rather a startling figure, even in her own milieu in
the Village. Uptown, where everybody looked or tried to look perfectly
conventional and ordinary, she was painfully obvious. Beth guessed that
she didn’t often come uptown, if only to spare herself embarrassment.
There wasn’t much Beebo could do about her looks, and rather than hide
them she had finally surrendered to nature and even exaggerated them. It
was a question which would have made her stand out the more—trying to
hide her looks or playing them up. At least playing them up didn’t
expose her to the condescending pity that hiding them would have.
Beebo went with Beth up to her room. “It’s a miracle I still have the
key,” Beth said, opening her purse. “And a little money. I thought
people were supposed to rob you in the big city.”
“They are,” Beebo said as Beth pushed the door open. “Keep trying, they
will.”
Beth hesitated a moment before going in, feeling her heart give a tight
squeeze and half expecting Charlie’s handsome disillusioned face to rise
up from the chair or the bed and stare at the two women with a look of
evil suspicions confirmed. But the room was empty.
“Will you come in?” Beth asked, turning to Beebo, but Beebo shook her
head.
“You rest, baby,” she said. “You don’t need me. You’re beat. It shows
all over you. I’ll call you later, maybe tonight.”
“Thanks,” Beth said, “for coming home with me. I was so afraid he’d be
here.”
“I don’t know what I could have done if he was,” Beebo grinned. “Except
get the hell out and let the sparks fly. He probably will show up, by
the way, if your detective is worth his pay.”
“I know. But I’m glad it’s not now,” Beth said. “I couldn’t face
anything just now.”
“Okay, baby, get some sleep,” Beebo said and turned to go.
“You will call, won’t you?” Beth called after her, and immediately
wished she had kept her mouth shut. It made her sound so eager.
“Yes, I’ll call.” Beebo smiled, and then Beth shut the door after her,
leaning on it until she heard the elevator stop, open, and start up
again, carrying Beebo down with it.
For the first time since she had met Beebo, it caused her real pain to
leave her. Beebo seemed like a protection to her, a gentle strength and
a certainty to lean on. Was it only because Beebo was good to her?
Patient with her? Was it because she knew so much about the strange and
special world of Lesbianism and was willing to share her knowledge
without making it painful for Beth? Or was it something compelling,
something ineffably attractive in Beebo herself?
_I’m just grateful to her, that’s all_, Beth tried to tell herself. _She
saved me from a lot of extra suffering. She’s been good and generous.
But then, why is it—why—?_ Why did she tremble when Beebo touched her?
It was not the quake of fear but rather the lovely shivering of
pleasure. Beebo stirred her physically.
At first Beebo had appealed to Beth’s mind, her need for help and
understanding. And then, subtly and softly, like an enveloping cloud,
the appeal had broadened and deepened, assumed an erotic glow.
Now, at last, thinking of her and afraid to think of her, wanting her
and afraid to want her, Beth found herself absorbed in this unique,
rather frightening, rather wonderful human being.
Coming back to reality, Beth turned and pulled down the bed, taking off
her shoes and dress and tossing them carelessly into the chair beside
the bed. Then she opened both windows part way, letting in a breeze and
a few drops of rain. She lay down, half falling because it felt so good
to let go, and she lay with her eyes open for a little while, fixed on
the ceiling but seeing Beebo. She did not try to puzzle out the glow she
felt. Instead she simply relaxed and let herself be drawn to this odd
human being who was like no one else she had ever seen or known.
Her limbs began to feel warm and soft, and gradually, in spite of
herself, her eyes closed. They fluttered open once or twice but shut
again almost immediately. Her thoughts reached that state of confusion
and haphazardness that resembles dreams, and she was very near to sleep
when the door opened.
Which door? Beth never afterward was sure. The closet door and the door
to the hall were the only two in the room, and she could not recall
whether she had locked the hall door after Beebo or not.
It seemed to her, later, when she tried to reconstruct it all in her
mind, that it must have been the closet door, that Beth and Beebo had
surprised Vega when they first entered the room and she had taken refuge
in the closet, like a spy in a bad thriller, and waited until everything
was quiet again.
Beth opened her eyes at the small sound of the door squeaking and looked
about a little, unalarmed. There was still a breeze in the room from the
two half-open windows. It could have moved the door. But it hadn’t. She
realized, with a sudden horrified shudder of fear, that she was not
alone. And when she raised herself up partway on the bed she saw Vega
standing at the foot of it.
“Just stay there, don’t get up,” Vega said, and her words, the look of
her, her tragic eyes, terrified Beth. “Who was that other one? The one
that was just here with you?” Vega said.
“Beebo?” Beth said. “Do you know her?” she added inanely, her fear
distorting her sense.
“No.” Vega smiled sadly.
“Vega, what are you doing here? How did you find me?” Beth stammered.
“How long have you been here?”
“Since yesterday. The whole family knows where you are now, Beth. I only
wish I’d known sooner.” There was a flat controlled quality about her,
as if she was hanging on tightly to herself, her feelings, that was new
and ominous in Vega.
Beth made a move to get up, but Vega motioned her back on the bed with a
swift movement of her hand, and Beth saw then for the first time that
she held a gun. It was small and black, shiny and almost dainty for the
deadly thing it was. It gleamed softly with reflected light in Vega’s
hand and for a long time Beth stared at it incredulously. The knowledge
that she was in mortal danger gave her a grip on herself, a sort of
eerie calm that floated on top of her panic.
“Vega, you aren’t going to use that thing,” she said, her voice low and
coaxing. “Whatever I did to you, it wasn’t that bad. I don’t deserve
it.”
“It didn’t seem that bad to you because you weren’t the one who was
hurt,” Vega said.
“It was a lot of things that hurt you, not just me,” Beth urged.
“You were all that mattered.”
She was so beautiful, so pale, so alarmingly thin, thinner even than
Beth had remembered her. Beth felt a start of compassion for her, but
the weapon in Vega’s hand restrained her.
“Vega, can’t we talk?” she pleaded. “Can’t we talk about it? Don’t do
something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”
“I wish somebody had been there to tell you the same thing before you
left me,” she said.
“I—I’m desperately sorry, Vega,” Beth murmured. “I was a coward. I’m
ashamed of it. God knows I’ve suffered too. I’ve thought of you so
often, I—”
“I know, I saw your letter to Cleve. You must have asked about me at
least once.”
“I was afraid it would upset him to ask more.”
“You just didn’t care.”
“I cared, Vega,” she said urgently. “I loved you once.”
“Is that what you call it?” Vega said and her eyes widened and her hand
began to tremble. “Is that what you call the hell you put me through,
never knowing if I’d see you or hear from you from one day to the next?
Dying of love for you and need of you, and having to beg to see you? You
loathed me, Beth, you were just looking for a way to get rid of me.” Her
voice rose steadily through her words, though she tried to stop it.
“No, Vega. That’s not why I ran away. That had nothing to do with it.”
“Don’t lie to me, Beth!” Vega cried, and Beth could almost feel, like a
tightening wire, her nerves stretching and the electric feeling of
hysteria in the air. She mustn’t let Vega get hysterical.
“Vega, whatever happened, it was all a mistake. It was all my fault,
too, I should never have done the things I did, but I did them anyway. I
did what I felt compelled to do. I wasn’t happy hurting you. I never
wanted to see you suffer.”
“You left in time to miss most of it,” Vega told her acidly. “Maybe you
know about that part. I was in Camarillo for a while. Did Cleve tell
you?”
“Yes, he told me,” Beth said, humble before this catalog of torments.
“Did he also tell you that he knows everything about us?”
“No!” Beth cried, chagrin plain in her open mouth and startled eyes.
“I told him,” Vega said with quiet desperation. “I was out of my mind. I
couldn’t help it, but I think I would have anyway. It couldn’t hurt me
any more and I had to hurt you somehow. It festered in me like a cancer,
Beth. It’s been eating me alive all this time.” The feverish flush in
her thin cheeks bore out her words.
Beth tried to sit up again but Vega threatened her with a swift movement
of the gun and Beth stayed where she was, propped on one elbow. “Vega,”
she pleaded, beginning to lose faith in her powers of persuasion. “I
know it’s been bad, I know it’s been terrible for you. Do you think
that’s the only reason I ran away? Didn’t Cleve tell you anything? I
told him to explain about Charlie, and the rest of it. Do you think it
was easy for me to leave my children?”
“I don’t know. I only know I’m the one who suffered most from your
going. Aside from that I don’t think anything any more. And I know just
one other thing, Beth, I want to see you suffer. I want to see you
scared and shaking and miserable the way I’ve been ever since you left.”
She sat down in a chair facing the bed, as though she meant to stay a
while.
“Will you—have a drink?” Beth asked. _God, if I could just get her
drunk!_ she thought.
“Cleve’s been doing all the family drinking lately,” Vega said. “I dried
out in the hospital.” Her voice was so cold, her attitude so rare and
strange in one given to hysterics, that Beth shivered involuntarily.
“Cigarette?” Beth said. If only she could get things on a talking basis,
instead of this sharp bitter exchange that cut and frightened her; if
only Vega would break down and cry and wail and let herself be
comforted.
“I don’t feel like it,” Vega said, waving the pack away. Her voice, her
eyes, left no doubt that she spoke the truth.
They stayed like that for a little while, neither one speaking or
moving. Beth found Vega’s desperate eyes, the only part of her that
seemed alive, more than she could bear, and she looked away.
“How long are you going to stay there like that?” she said at last.
“As long as I need to,” Vega said cryptically.
“Vega, I know what I did was crazy. I know you’ve been miserable.”
“My life was wrecked, Beth.”
“I—I know—”
“You have no idea.”
“I only meant—”
“Nothing you can say means anything.”
And Beth, for the first time, thought that her life might end that very
day in the face of that very gun, sitting idle and quiet in the hands of
a madwoman. For it was clear that Vega blamed her whole life on Beth.
All the sorrows and errors and accidents somehow had been Beth’s fault
and Vega, feeling as she did, could kill her with a clear conscience. It
made Beth’s flesh creep.
Death. She had never thought about it much before, except to wonder how
it felt, _if_ it felt, and to think it could never happen to her. It was
as unreal as old age, as a hydrogen war, as blindness, as any tragedy
that had never happened to her. How could you face death when you knew
nothing about it? How could you die all unprepared like this, terrified
and ugly and foolish in your underwear? Didn’t she have a right to
dignity, a right to respect and to a decent end with some warning?
Didn’t she have a right to a long life before that happened, a life that
would end slowly and gradually and gracefully—not in one sickening crack
of doom?
When would Vega pull the trigger? Beth began to watch the gun as if it
were an animal with a life of its own, a third presence in the room. She
couldn’t drag her eyes from it. She looked at the sleek short barrel and
the small black hole at the end, wondering when it would erupt in
flashing death.
_Maybe the bullet will miss me_, she thought, feeling the pounding of
her constricted heart. _Maybe she’ll just wound me. And I’ll leap at her
and grab the thing before she realizes what’s happened. No, maybe it
would be better to pretend I’m dead, just fall back and lie on the bed
as if I’m stone dead. But what if she comes over and looks at me and
sees it’s just a flesh wound? Or what if she empties the damned gun into
me?_ She almost whimpered aloud with terror. Her fear was a thing alive,
a separate living creature in that haunted room, and Vega could feel it.
But her face was stony and dreadful.
Beth lay back on the bed at last. _If she wants to shoot me dead she’ll
have to stand up to do it now_, she thought. _At least that’ll give me
some warning._ And almost in the next instant she wondered if she wanted
any warning. If it had to be, wouldn’t it be better to die abruptly and
without the agony of seeing it come and being helpless to stop it?
The day ended little by little to the tune of rain and wind and the room
grew dark. Small drops pattered in at the windows. Beth reached over
with utmost caution and turned the light on beside the bed, and
immediately cursed herself for it. It only made her a better target. But
Vega would have done it herself anyway, sooner or later, and maybe the
mere fact of having to move would have stirred her to fire.
Beth watched her, her mad, despairing eyes, and the horror of it was
almost unbearable. “Vega, do something,” she cried, and her own voice
shocked her into stillness again. “It couldn’t have been that bad,” she
cried again, later, supplicating, unwittingly using the same words to
Vega that Charlie had used to her.
“If you scream I’ll do it now,” Vega said, and with a sick gasp Beth
clamped her mouth shut.
They sat in tortured silence for a while longer. Beth looked at her
watch. It was past ten. Her stomach stirred and she knew it was empty,
but there was no desire for food in her. She thought with urgent envy of
the careless, casual people below her in the streets, eating in the
bright, cheerful restaurants, seeing the movies and shows, crossing the
streets and chatting with each other. And life, so mundane and full of
anxieties, seemed achingly beautiful to her. It didn’t matter who she
was, it didn’t matter where she belonged. It only mattered to keep on
living, to keep life strong and safe and have a second chance at it.
“Vega,” she tried again in a raspy voice at close to midnight, “you’ll
never get away with it. You know that, don’t you?”
“What makes you think I care?” Vega said. “Do you think I could possibly
give a damn any more what happens to me?”
“But your mother. And Gramp. And Cleve and Jean!” Beth said, hoping with
the force of panic to hit a sensitive chord.
“I spit on them all,” Vega said. “Do you wonder why I’m not screaming,
Beth?” she added in her voice that was calm with the serenity of
madness. “I’ve done all my screaming, that’s why. I did it all at Cleve
and Mother. And the doctors, the first few weeks I was in the hospital.
There isn’t any left in me. Gramp is dead, Beth. And Mother is dying,
just like all those neglected cats. Cleve doesn’t count, he never
amounted to anything. I have only you now. I have your whole future in
my hand, here. And it’s going to pay for my whole past.” She shook the
gun back and forth. “I have your life and your death, I have infinite
power over you, and nothing, not tears or begging or hypocritical love
or fancy excuses, is going to save you. Nothing.”
“Then do it now!” Beth cried in a cracking voice. “Do it now!” But every
inch of her was tense with prayers for mercy.
“When I’m ready,” Vega said. “When I’m good and ready.”
And so they sat on in the small pool of light in the little hotel room
with the instrument of death a wall between them and an everlasting tie.
Beth thought of Gramp, Vega’s grandfather, small and dry, coming into
the overheated house with his arms full of cats. He was only a vague
image in her mind, yet she mourned him with a sort of stricken sympathy.
She wondered if Vega was trying to drive her mad, too, and she felt so
near to abandoned shrieking, so near to violent shudders and agonized
pleas for help, that she thought her heart and bones would crack from
the pressure. If that was what Vega was after, it wouldn’t be long
before she had it.
And still they sat on and on and on. And Beth thought of her children.
Perhaps now, at long last, they’d be happy. She couldn’t shame them any
more. No rotten little detective was going to follow her around New York
or any other town, taking notes on the girls she met and the food she
ate and the money she spent, and then sell his pitiful information to
her rich uncle.
And Charlie. Would he care? How would it strike him? Would he mourn her?
In her deepest heart she knew he would, and that made her more
frightened, more miserable.
The phone rang with a shattering clamor that drew a small scream of
suppressed hysteria from Beth. She looked at Vega with wide eyes, and
Vega said, “Answer it.”
It was Beebo. “I meant to call earlier,” she said. “I know it’s late.”
Beth looked at her watch. It was past two. “I got stuck at a party,
baby, you know how it is. Am I forgiven?”
“Of course,” Beth said. _God, what can I say, how can I warn her?_ She
looked slyly at Vega, but the look on Vega’s face told her the gun would
speak instantly if Beth spoke too much.
“Well, that was easy,” Beebo laughed. How warm her voice was! Close and
relaxed. Beth yearned for her. “I expected to get a lecture. Or hurt
feelings at the very least. How about coming down for dinner tomorrow?
We could take in a movie or something.”
“Tomorrow? I don’t think I’ll be able to,” Beth said, putting all her
hope into the _double entendre_, but if it was innocent enough to get
past Vega it was obviously too vague to alarm Beebo.
“Okay, the day after,” Beebo said, unperturbed.
“I don’t think I’m going to be around,” Beth said and Vega sat up in her
seat and aimed the gun at her and Beth nearly fainted with fear. She
would have laughed at their histrionics if she had seen them in a movie,
but this was actually happening and just the terror of it nearly
squeezed the life out of her.
“You’re not going out of town, are you?” Beebo said.
“No.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“You are mad at me,” Beebo said.
“No! No, I swear!” Beth protested with such vehemence that Vega motioned
her to hang up and she did, abruptly, without so much as a goodbye. She
hoped her strangeness on the phone, if nothing else, would alert Beebo
somehow. If only Beebo didn’t suppose she’d been drinking and was acting
silly. And she experienced a flash of truly passionate yearning for
Beebo, her physical presence, the strength and safety of her arms.
The hours went past with ponderous slowness and Beth tried to value
them, to treasure each moment that she was still alive. And yet each
moment struck such fear into her that she found herself crawling with
it.
Every ten or fifteen minutes she would say Vega’s name, or ask her to
leave, or offer her a cigarette. It didn’t matter that her words were
useless. It mattered that she was still able to speak and understand
herself. Every leaden moment made life dearer to her. Her thoughts
skipped sporadically from Laura to Nina to Beebo, to the others she had
met in the swift passage through the enormous city. They ranged over her
college days, over the exotic greenery of California and the face
Charlie showed her when she left him, standing alone at the end of the
drive. And the Scootch, and Skipper with a skinned knee. And her aunt
and uncle. And Vega, Vega herself, chic and smooth and so desirable when
Beth first knew her. And in between the fragmented pictures of her past,
the people she knew, came moments when her heart froze and her mouth
went desert dry.
She was still lying on the bed in a bath of sweat and anguish when she
heard Vega rise at last. The first tired light of dawn was showing in
the windows. The rain had stopped. Beth noted this with surprise, for
she had not heard it steal off. She stiffened all over, seeing Vega
approach her.
Vega turned off the bedside lamp that had shown them to each other
throughout the dark hours and they appeared to each other then as
silvery shadows.
“No, Vega, no, Vega, no-no-no-no-no,” Beth said in a sort of singsong,
nearly hypnotized with fear.
“I want to know how you’ll take it.”
“You’ll wake everyone up. They’ll catch you.”
“I want it that way.”
They gazed at each other. Communication was no longer possible between
them and Beth finally shut her eyes, unable to look at the gun any
longer. She wept, “I want to live. That’s all I want in the world. Just
give me that and I can work out the rest.”
“I wonder,” Vega said. “I’d like to see you try.”
After what seemed an age to her warped sense of time, Beth reopened her
eyes. Vega stood stock still where she was, at the side of the bed. The
light from the windows was brightening around her.
“Have you suffered tonight, Beth?” she asked.
“Horribly.” Beth choked a little trying to answer.
“Will you ever regret what you did?”
“I do, I _have_, since the day it was done.”
“Did you ever love me, I wonder?” But she held up her hand to Beth and
said, “Don’t answer, I don’t want any more lies from you.”
There was another dreadful silence and now the minutes were flying, the
sun was coming up with awful haste, and Beth’s heart was in her throat.
Vega lifted the gun, and the power of speech failed Beth. Nothing was
real but the thunder of her pulse in her ears and the stout hard barrel
two feet from her.
Vega lifted the gun higher. “I do this for you, Beth,” she said. “All
for you.”
Then she shot herself, very suddenly and awkwardly, in the right temple,
grimacing like a child expecting a tanning. Her features collapsed and
her body relaxed onto the floor before Beth’s eyes.