The following evening Laura got home rather early after seeing a show
with Sarah. She rode home on the subway with a dirty gray little man,
repulsively anxious to be friendly. He kept saying, “I see you’re not
married. You must be very careful in the big city.” And laughed
nervously. Laura turned away. “You mustn’t ignore me, I’m only trying to
help,” he whined. He babbled at her about young lambs in a den of wolves
until she got off. He got off with her, still talking.
Laura wasn’t afraid—just mad. She turned suddenly on the little gray man
at the subway entrance and said, “Leave me alone or I’ll call the
police.”
He smiled apologetically and began to mumble. Laura’s eyes narrowed and
she turned away contemptuously, walking with a sure swift gait that soon
discouraged him. Something proud and cold in her unmanned him. At last
he stopped following and stood gaping after her. She never looked back.
Laura arrived home, her cheeks warm with the quick walk and with the
victory over the little man. _God, if I could do that to my father!_ she
thought wistfully. She walked up the flight of stairs from the twelfth
floor to the penthouse and swung open the front door. The living room
was lighted and so was the kitchen. The bedroom door was open, the room
showing a cool blue beyond the loud yellow kitchen. Laura walked in,
swinging her purse, thinking of the ugly little man and proud of the way
she had trounced him.
She stopped short with a gasp at the sight of Burr and Marcie naked
together in Marcie’s bed. “I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, and backed out,
closing the door behind her. She collapsed on a kitchen chair and cried
in furious disgust for half a minute. Then she stood up and went to the
refrigerator, pretending to want a glass of milk just for an excuse to
move, to ignore the hot silence in the next room.
For a while no sounds issued from the bedroom. Laura poured the milk
busily and carried it into the living room. She was just putting a
record on when the bedroom door opened and Marcie slipped out in her
bathrobe. Laura had put her milk down. Just the sight of it was enough
to make her feel green. She turned to Marcie.
“Hi,” she said, too brightly. “Sorry I had to go and break in.”
Marcie burst out laughing. “That’s okay. Damn him, I _told_ him to go
home. I knew you’d get home early. I just had a feeling.” She went up to
Laura, still laughing, and Laura turned petulantly away. Marcie didn’t
notice. “We took your advice, Laura,” she said. “We haven’t said a word
to each other tonight. Well—I said when he came in—‘All right, we’re not
going to argue. Don’t open your mouth. Not one word.’ And he didn’t. He
didn’t even say hello!” And her musical laughter tickled Laura
insufferably.
Burr came out of the bedroom, looking rather sheepish, rather sleepy,
very satisfied. He smiled at Laura, who had to force herself to wear a
pleasant face. He was buttoning his shirt, carrying his coat over his
arm, and all he said was, “Thanks, Laura.” He grinned, thumbing at
Marcie. “We’re not speaking. I hear it was your idea.” He swatted
Laura’s behind. “Good girl,” he said. He kissed Marcie once more, hard,
drew on his coat, and backed out the door, still smiling.
Marcie whirled around and around in the middle of the living room,
hugging herself and laughing hilariously. “If it could always be like
that,” she said. “I’d marry him again tomorrow.”
Laura brushed past her without a word, into the kitchen, where she
poured the milk carefully back into the bottle, closed the refrigerator
door, went into the bedroom, and got ready for bed.
Marcie followed her, laughing and talking until Laura got into bed and
turned out the light. She wouldn’t even look at Marcie’s rumpled bed.
But it haunted her, and she didn’t fall asleep until long after Marcie
had stopped whispering.
* * * * *
Jack Mann was small, physically tough, and very intelligent. He was a
sort of cocktail-hour cynic, disillusioned enough with things to be
cuttingly funny. If you like that kind of wit. Some people don’t. The
attitude carried over into his everyday life, but he saved his best wit
especially for the after work hours, when the first fine careless flush
of alcohol gave it impetus. Unfortunately he usually gave himself too
much impetus and went staggering home to his bachelor apartment under
the arm of a grumbling friend. He was a draftsman in the office where
Burr worked as an apprentice architect and he called his work “highly
skilled labor.” He didn’t like it. But he did like the pay.
“Why do you do it, then?” Burr asked him once.
“It’s the only thing I know. But I’d much rather dig ditches.”
“Well, hell, go dig ditches then. Nobody’s stopping you.”
Jack could turn his wit on himself as well as on others. “I can’t,” he
told Burr. “I’m so used to sitting on my can all day I’d be lucky to get
one lousy ditch dug. And then they’d probably have to bury me in it. End
of a beautiful career.”
Burr smiled and shook his head. But he liked him; they got along. Jack
went out with Burr and Marcie before and after they got married. And
after they got divorced. He was the trouble-shooter until he got too
drunk, which was often.
When he arrived with Burr on Friday night Laura was irked to find that
she was taller than he was. She had made up her mind that she wasn’t
going to enjoy the evening—just live through it. She’d have to spend the
time mediating for Marcie and Burr and trying to entertain a man she
didn’t know or care about. So she was put out to discover that she did
like Jack, after all. It ruined her fine gloomy mood.
Marcie introduced them and Jack looked up at her quizzically. “What’s
the matter, Landon?” he said. “You standing in a hole?”
Laura laughed and took her shoes off. It brought her down an inch.
“Better?” she said.
“Better for me. Very bad for your stockings.” He grinned. “Have you read
Freud?”
“No.”
“Well, thank God. I won’t have to talk about my nightmares.”
“Do you have nightmares?”
“You _have_ read Freud!”
“No, I swear. You said—”
“Okay, I confess. I have nightmares. And you remind me of my mother.”
“Do you have a mother?” said Burr. “Didn’t you just happen?”
“That’s what I keep asking my analyst. Do I have to have a mother?”
“Jack, are you seeing an analyst?” Marcie was fascinated with the idea.
“Imagine being able to tell somebody _everything_. Like a sacred duty.
Burr, don’t you think I should be analyzed?”
“What will you use for a neurosis?” Jack asked.
“Do I need one?”
“How about Burr?”
“I’m taken,” Burr said. “Besides, you talk like a nitwit, honey. You
don’t go to an analyst like you go to the hairdresser.”
Marcie’s eyes flashed. “Thanks for the compliment,” she said. “I’m not
as dumb as I look.”
“Come on, Mother.” Jack took Laura’s arm and steered her out the door.
“I see a storm coming up.”
But it was dissipated when Marcie grabbed her coat and hurried after
them.
* * * * *
After the play they walked down Fourth Street in the Village, meandering
rather aimlessly, looking into shop windows. Laura was lost. She had
never been in the Village before. She had been afraid to come down here;
afraid she would see someone, and do something, and suddenly find
herself caught in the strange world she had renounced. It seemed so
safe, so remote from temptation to choose an uptown apartment. And yet
here she was with her nerves in knots, her emotions tangled around a
roommate again.
Laura pondered these things, walking slowly beside Jack in the light
from the shop windows. She was unaware of where she walked or who passed
by. It startled her when Jack said, “What are you thinking about,
Mother?”
“Nothing.” A shade of irritation crossed her face.
“Ah,” he said. “I interrupted something.”
“No.” She turned to look at him, uncomfortable. He made her feel as if
he was reading her thoughts.
“Don’t lie to me. You’re daydreaming.”
“I am not! I’m just thinking.”
He shrugged. “Same thing.”
She found him very irritating then. “You don’t say,” she said, and
looked away from him.
“You hate me,” he said with a little smile.
“Now and then.”
“I messed up your daydream,” he said. “I’m rarely this offensive. Only
when I’m sober. The rest of the time, I’m charming. Someday I suppose
you’ll daydream about me.”
Laura stared at him and he laughed.
“At least, you’ll tell me about your daydreams.”
“Never.”
“People do. I have a nice face. Ugly, but nice. People think, ‘Jesus,
that guy has a nice face. I ought to tell him my daydreams.’ They do,
too.” He smiled. “What’s the matter, Mother, you look skeptical.”
“What makes you think you have a nice face?”
“Don’t I?” He looked genuinely alarmed.
“It wouldn’t appeal to just anyone.”
“Ah, smart girl. You’re right, as usual. A boy’s best friend is his
mother. Only the _discriminating_ ones, my girl, think it’s a nice face.
Only the sensitive, the talented, the intelligent. Now tell me—isn’t it
a nice face?”
“It’s a face,” said Laura. “Everybody has one.”
He laughed. “You’re goofy,” he said. “You need help. My analyst is very
reasonable. He’ll stick you for all you’ve got, but he’s very
reasonable.”
Burr, who was walking ahead of them with Marcie, turned around to
demand, “Somebody tell me where I’m going.”
“Turn right at the next corner,” said Jack. “You’re doing fine, boy.
Don’t lose your nerve.”
“I just want to know where the hell I’m going.”
“That’s a bad sign. Very bad.”
“Cut it out, Jack,” said Marcie. “Where are we going?”
“A little bar I know. Very gay. I go there alone when I want to be
depressed.”
It sounded sinister, not gay, to Laura. “What’s it called?” she said.
“The Cellar. Don’t worry, it’s a legitimate joint.” He laughed at her
long face.
Marcie laughed too, and Laura’s heart jumped at the sweetness of the
sound. It made her hate the back of Burr, moving with big masculine
easiness ahead of her in a tweed topcoat, his bristling crew cut
shining.
A few minutes later Jack led them down a few steps to a pair of doors
which he pushed in, letting Laura and Marcie pass.
Laura heard Burr say, behind her, in an undertone, “It _is_ gay,” and he
laughed. “You bastard.” She was mystified. It looked pretty average and
ordinary. They headed for a table with four chairs, one of the few
available, and Laura looked around.
The Cellar was quite dark, with the only lights placed over the bar and
glowing a faint pinky orange. There were candles on the tables, and
people crowded together from one end of the room to the other. Everybody
seemed reasonably cheerful, but it didn’t look any gayer than any other
bar she had been in. She looked curiously at Burr, but he was helping
Marcie out of her coat.
“No table service,” Jack said. “What does everybody want?”
They gave him their orders and Laura tried to catch his eye, hoping for
more information about the place. She was curious now. There were
checkered table cloths, fish nets on the wall, a lot of people—all
rather young—at the tables and bar. The juke box was going and somebody
was trying to pick up a few bucks doing pencil portraits, but no one
seemed very interested. The customers looked like students. There were
girls in cotton pants, young men in sweaters and open-collared shirts.
“They all look like students,” she said to Burr.
He grinned. “I never thought of it that way,” he said. “I guess they do,
all right.”
She stared at him. And then she looked around the room again, and
suddenly she saw a girl with her arm around another girl at a table not
far away. Her heart jumped. A pair of boys at the bar were whispering
urgently to each other.
_Gay_, Laura thought to herself. _Is that what they call it? Gay?_ She
was acutely uncomfortable now. It was as if she were a child of
civilization, reared among the savages, who suddenly found herself among
the civilized. She recognized them as her own. And yet she had adopted
the habits of another race and she was embarrassed and lost with her own
kind.
They looked at her—her own kind—from the bar and from the tables, and
didn’t recognize her. And Laura looked around at them and thought, _I’m
one of you. Help me._ But if anyone had approached her she would have
turned away.
Jack came back with the drinks and sat down, passing them around. He
drank a shot of whisky and said to Laura, “Well? How do you like
tonight’s collection?”
“Tonight’s collection of what?” Laura said.
“Of nuts.” He looked around The Cellar. “Doesn’t anyone tell you
anything, Mother? Burr, what’s the matter with you? She’s a tourist.
Make with the old travelogue, boy.”
Burr laughed. “I thought you didn’t get it, Laura.” He smiled. “They’re
all queer.”
Laura’s face went scarlet, but the candlelight hid it. She felt an awful
tide of anger and fear come up in her at that word. She felt trapped,
almost frantic, and she vented it on Jack. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she
said. Her voice trembled with indignation.
“Take it easy, Mother,” he said.
“Tonight’s collection!” she mimicked bitterly. “You talk about them as
if they were a bunch of animals.”
“They are,” he said quietly. “So are we.”
“We’re human beings,” she said. “We have no right to sit here and laugh
at them for something they can’t help.”
“Can’t help, hell,” Burr said, leaning over the table toward her. “All
those gals need is a real man. That’d put them on the right track in a
hurry.”
Laura could have belted him. She wanted to shout, “How do you know, you
big ape?” But she said instead, “You’re not irresistible, Burr.”
“I don’t mean that!” he said, frowning at her. “Christ! I only mean a
man who knows the first thing about women could lay any one of these
dames—even a butch—and make her like it.”
“What’s the first thing about women?” Jack asked, smiling, but they
ignored him.
“If men revolt her and somebody tried to—to lay her—he’d only make her
sick. No matter how much he knew about women,” Laura said sharply.
“Any girl who doesn’t like men is either a virgin or else some bastard
scared the hell out of her. She needs gentling.”
“You talk about us as if we were horses!” Laura flared.
“Us?” Burr stared at her.
“Us—us women.” Laura’s face was burning.
Burr watched her as he talked. “Some girls get a bastard the first
time,” he said. “It’s too bad. They end up in joints like this swapping
horror stories with the other ones.”
Laura hated the way he talked. She couldn’t take it. “What if the
bastard is her father?” she said. “And he scares the hell out of her
when she’s five years old? And twenty years later some ass who thinks
he’s a great lover comes along and throws her down and humiliates and
horrifies her?”
Jack remarked, with amusement, and probably more enlightenment than the
others, “Jesus, we have a moralist in our midst.” He looked at her as if
she were a new species of fish.
“Damn it, Laura, that’s the point,” Burr said. “He _wouldn’t_ humiliate
her. I don’t mean some God-damn truck driver with nothing but a quick
lay on his mind. I mean a considerate decent sort of guy—a sort of Good
Samaritan—” He grinned and Marcie said, “God!” and rolled her eyes to
the ceiling.
“—who really wants to help the girl,” Burr finished.
“Why don’t you try it?” Jack said.
Marcie’s face darkened. “Yes, darling, why don’t you prove your little
theory? I’m sure we’d all be fascinated.”
“Now damn it, don’t you go yammering at me. I’m talking to Laura.”
“Excuse _me_!” Marcie said.
Laura leaned toward her. “I didn’t mean to start anything,” she said.
“Nobody ever does,” Jack remarked to himself.
“He said he could lay any girl and make her like it,” Marcie said.
“I said,” Burr said, turning to her and intoning sarcastically, “That
any guy with any—”
“We know what you said, boy,” Jack interrupted. “Let’s keep it purely
theoretical. Nobody has to prove anything. Burr loves Marcie and Marcie
loves Burr. Jack loves whisky and whisky hates Jack. Laura loves
animals. Everybody happy?”
Thinking over what she had said while Jack talked, Laura began to feel
sick. She wished she had been perceptive enough to see where she was
when they first came into The Cellar. But she took things at face value.
They had entered a little bar and they were going to have a nightcap.
Okay. What was so sinister about that? Why did it have to turn out to be
a damn gay bar? And why did she have to react like an angry virgin when
she found out?
They stayed long enough to get pretty high. They were stared at by the
regular customers, but Laura was afraid to stare back. When she did,
once or twice, she couldn’t catch anyone’s eye. She was ashamed of
herself for trying to, but she couldn’t help it.
There was a girl at the bar, standing at one end, in black pants and a
white shirt open at the collar. Her hair was short and dark and there
once again was that troubling resemblance to Beth. There were some other
people with her and they were all talking, but the short-haired girl
seemed somehow apart from them. Now and then she would turn and smile at
one of them and say a word or two. Then she turned her gaze back to the
bar or into her drink, or just stared into the mirror behind the bar
without seeing anything.
Laura glanced at her now and then. She had an interesting face. It made
Laura want to talk to her. _It must be the drinks_, she thought, and
refused another.
“I see by the look in your eye,” Jack said, “that you’ve had enough of
this place. It’s nearly midnight. Are you going to turn into a pumpkin?”
“God, I hope not,” said Laura.
“It’s _after_ midnight,” said Marcie. “Let’s go. After all, poor Burr
had to get up at six this morning to get to work. He’s probably
exhausted. Maybe we should leave him here and let him organize a night
school for the ladies.”
“Wouldn’t be any takers in here,” Jack observed, looking around. “They
aren’t ladies, they’re lessies.”
“Do you have to talk about them as if they were exhibits in a zoo?”
Laura exclaimed.
“God, now _we’re_ quarreling,” said Jack, laughing. But they weren’t
really, for it takes two to make a quarrel and he was feeling powerfully
good-natured with all that booze in him. “Leave us not forget our
dignity,” he told Laura. He enunciated with meticulous care, not to let
the liquor trip his tongue.
Marcie laughed at him, and pulled Laura aside as they got up. “Let’s
go,” she said, and Laura walked with her to the ladies’ room. It was a
glaring change from the softly lighted Cellar. They were nearly blinded
with a big bare bulb which hung by a frayed wire far down into the room
and watched all the proceedings with an unblinking eye.
“You go first,” Laura said to Marcie. There were few things less
appealing to her than a public rest room—especially a one-horse job like
this with its staring light, cracked mirror and mounds of used paper
towels on the cement floor. She wet her comb slightly in the tap and ran
it through her hair. The door opened and the girl with the short dark
hair and black pants came in. She lounged indolently against the wall,
studying Laura. Laura recognized her from the bar, but ignored her
royally. Marcie was talking to her through the john door.
“How do you like Jack?” she said.
“A lot,” Laura said, for the benefit of the girl in the black pants. Her
voice was warm enough to surprise Marcie.
“I’m glad,” she said. “I thought once or twice you were mad at him.”
Laura’s cheeks went red again. God, how she hated that! And there was
nothing she could do about it. She pulled the comb hard through her
hair, afraid to look into the mirror. She knew she would meet the eyes
of the girl in the black pants. “He’s very intelligent,” she said to
Marcie.
“He’s funny,” Marcie said, coming out of the john. She nearly walked
into the strange girl and said, “Oh! Excuse me.”
“My pleasure,” the girl murmured with a grin.
Laura felt suddenly jealous. It was maddening. She didn’t know who she
was jealous of. She wanted the other girl to notice _her_, not Marcie.
And she wanted Marcie to notice her, too. She stood a moment in
confusion and then she said to the girl in the black pants, “Go ahead.”
And nodded at the john. She said it to make her look up, which she did,
slowly, and smiled. She looked shockingly boyish. Laura stared slightly.
“Thanks,” said the girl.
She shut the door behind her and Marcie laughed silently, covering her
mouth with her hand. But Laura turned away, excitement tight in her
throat. “Let’s go,” she said impatiently, dragging Marcie away from the
mirror. She was afraid the strange girl would come out and talk to them.
She was anxious to get out of The Cellar, out of the Village. She felt a
pressing sense of danger.
Marcie turned to her as they went back to the table, and said, “I’ll bet
Burr couldn’t have gotten anywhere with _that_ one!” And she laughed.
“She’d throw a hammer lock on him and tell him to pick on somebody his
own size.”
Laura smiled faintly at her.
“Did you see how she stared at you?” Marcie said.
“Did she stare at me?”
“Yes, but she stared at me too. That’s the awful thing about Lesbians,
they have no discrimination.”
Laura suddenly wanted to scream at her. It was so wrong, so false; so
agonizing to have your lips sealed when you wanted to shout the truth.
They left the smoky Cellar and walked a few blocks, talking. Jack took a
weaving course, and Laura had to steer him with one arm.
“Let’s take a taxi,” Marcie said.
“It’s only two blocks to the subway,” Burr reminded her.
“Can’t you ever spend a little extra on me?” she exclaimed. “Don’t you
think I’m good enough to ride in a taxi? Don’t you think I’m worth
another buck once in a while? You did when we got married.”
“Yeah, and I went broke. Subway’s cheap.”
“Well, I’m not!”
“Here, here,” said Jack. He took a quarter from his pocket and held it
up to Marcie’s face.
“Heads,” she said.
He flipped while Laura thought to herself what child’s play it all was.
Jack seemed unsophisticated now and Marcie and Burr had lost the beauty
and excitement they seemed to generate together, even in the midst of
their quarrels, perhaps because of them. _We all look tired and silly_,
Laura thought, _and I wish we were anywhere but the middle of Greenwich
Village flipping over a taxi ride_.
“Heads!” said Marcie. She poked Burr in the stomach.
“No show next week,” he said.
“You don’t think I care, do you?”
“Never mind, children, this is my treat,” said Jack. He smiled foxily.
“I’m no fool with money,” he said. “I grow it in my window box. I give
it all to Mother, here, and she invests it for me. Don’t you, Mother?”
“Don’t be an ass,” said Laura, but she laughed at him.
“She loves me,” Jack explained to Burr and Marcie. Suddenly he left them
all to dash into the middle of the street, waving his arms wildly at a
pair of headlights that were bearing down on him. They screeched to a
halt with an irate taxi driver behind them. Marcie gave a little scream
and the driver leaned out and said, “You damn fool!”
“You’d better get that punk home and give him some black coffee, lady,”
he told Laura as they started uptown. “If you don’t mind a little
advice.”
“He’s going to hate himself tomorrow,” Marcie said.
“He’s damn lucky he’s gonna be _around_ tomorrow,” said the cabbie. They
all talked about him as if he were deaf. And in fact, he was, for he had
fallen asleep almost as soon as he got into the cab.
“Does he do this all the time?” Laura asked Burr.
“He’s a great guy, Laura,” Burr said, as if trying to bolster Jack in
Laura’s eyes. “He just flies off the handle now and then. I guess he’s
got problems.”
At the apartment Laura got out first. Burr said, “I’ll wake him up,
Laura,” but she protested. “Just let him sleep,” she said. “I’d hate to
interrupt his dreams.”
“I heard that,” said a ragged voice from the shadows inside the car.
“You’re a doll, Mother. Sleep well.”
“Goodnight,” Laura said, smiling.