Nix, I wouldn’t have to do it. You know that, don’t you? Sure you do.
You’re the only one who does. Everybody else thinks I’m just turning
into an old souse. But it’s not true. It’s because of Laura, you know
that as well as I do. She makes me so miserable. She has my life in her
hands, Nix.” She laughed a little. “You know, that’s kind of
frightening. I wish I knew if she was on my side or not.”
There was a moment when she thought she would cry and she dumped Nix off
her lap and quickly poured herself one more shot. It went down easier
than number one, but she washed the shot glass out as before and put it
and the bottle back on the shelf as if to tell herself: _That’s all,
that’s enough._
Beebo turned and smiled at Nix. “Now look at me,” she said. “I’m more
sober than when I’m really sober. My hands have quit shaking. And I’m
not going to quarrel with her when she gets up. I’m going to say
something nice. Come here, dog. Help me think of something....
“I’d sell my soul to be an honest-to-god male. I could marry Laura! I
could marry her. Give her my name. Give her kids ... oh, wouldn’t that
be lovely? So lovely....” Jack’s desire for a child didn’t seem
grotesque to her at all any more.
“But Nix,” she went on, and her face fell, “she wouldn’t have me. My
baby is gay, like me. She wants a woman. Would God she wanted me. But a
woman, all the same. She’d never take a man for a mate.”
She felt the vile tears sneaking up on her again and shook her head
hard. “She couldn’t take that, Nix. It’d be even worse than—than living
with me.” And she gave a hard laugh.
Beebo heard the bedroom door open and she dropped Nix and went to the
icebox. Within moments Laura entered the kitchen.
“’Morning,” she said.
“Good morning, Madam Queen. What’ll it be?”
“Soft boiled egg, please. Have to hurry, I’ll be late to work.” She had
a job in a tourist trap over on Greenwich Avenue, where they sold
sandals and earrings and trinkets.
Beebo busied herself with the eggs and Laura poured orange juice and
opened the paper. She buried herself in it, moving just a little to let
Beebo put her plate down in front of her. Beebo sat down opposite her
and ate in silence for a minute, eating very little. She lighted a
cigarette after a few minutes and sipped cautiously at her hot coffee.
“Laura?” she said.
“Hm?”
“Even in the morning, with your hair up and your nose in the paper and
your eyes looking everywhere but at me ... I love you, Laura.” She said
it slowly, composing it as she went and smiling a little at the effect.
The liquor had loosened her up.
“What?” said Laura, her eyes following a story and her ears deaf.
“I have a surprise for you, Bo-peep,” Beebo tried again.
“Oh. Says here it’s going up to ninety today.... A surprise?” She
lowered the paper a bit to look at Beebo.
“Um-hm. I didn’t get you an anniversary present. I thought we might get
you a new dress tonight. Stores are open.”
Laura was embarrassed. It still upset her to have to accept gifts from
Beebo. She felt as if each one was a bid for her love, a sort of
investment Beebo was making in Laura’s good will. It made her resent the
gifts and resist them. And still Beebo came home with things she
couldn’t afford and forced them on Laura and made her almost frantic
between the need to be grateful, the pity she felt, and the exasperation
that was the result of it all.
“I don’t need a dress, honey,” Laura said.
“I want you to have one.”
“God, Beebo, if I bought all the clothes you want me to have we wouldn’t
have money to eat on. We’d be broke. We’d be in hock for everything we
own.”
“Please, baby. All I want to do is buy you an anniversary present.”
“Beebo, I—” What could she say? _I don’t want the damn dress?_
“I know,” Beebo said abruptly. “I embarrass you. You don’t like to be
seen in the nice stores with me. I look so damn queer. Don’t argue,
Bo-peep, I know it,” she said, waving Laura’s protests to silence. “I’ll
wear a skirt tonight. Okay? I look pretty good in a skirt.”
It was true that Laura was ashamed to go anywhere out of Greenwich
Village with her.... Beebo, nearly six feet of her, with her hair
cropped short and her strange clothes and her gruff voice. And when she
flirted with the clerks! Laura had been afraid more than once that they
would call the police and drag Beebo off to jail. But it had never
happened. Still, there was always a first time. And if she had a couple
of drinks before they went, Laura wasn’t at all sure she could handle
her.
“Why don’t you let me find something for myself?” Laura asked, pleading.
“I know you hate to put a skirt on. You don’t have to come. I’ll pick
out something pretty.” But she knew, and so did Beebo, that unless Beebo
went along Laura would buy nothing. She would come home and say, “They
just didn’t have a thing.” And Beebo would have to face the fact that
Laura resented her little tributes.
So she said, “No, I don’t trust your taste. Besides, I like to see you
try on all the different things.”
* * * * *
So it was that Laura met her at Lord and Taylor’s on Fifth Avenue after
work. It had to be a really good store and Beebo had to pay more than
they could afford, or she wasn’t satisfied. Laura anticipated it with
dread, but at least it was better than another awful quarrel. If Beebo
would just be quiet. If she would just keep her eyes—and her hands—off
the cute little clerks in the dress departments. Laura always tried to
find a stolid middle-aged clerk, but the shops seemed to abound in sleek
young ones.
Still, Beebo, subdued perhaps by her plain black dress and by Laura’s
nervous concern, kept quiet. Laura noticed a little whiskey on her
breath when they met outside the store, but nothing in her behavior
betrayed it.
“Do I stink?” she had asked, and when Laura wrinkled her nose Beebo took
a mint out and sucked on it. “I won’t disgrace you,” she said. She was
making a real effort.
They zigzagged around the Avenue, finding nothing that both looked right
and could be had for less than a fortune. At Peck and Peck, near nine
o’clock, Laura said, “Beebo, I’ve had it. This is positively the last
place. I don’t want you to dress me like a damn princess. I’d much
rather have one of those big enamel-ware pots—”
“Oh, goddamn the pots! Don’t talk to me of pots!” Beebo exclaimed and
Laura answered, “All right, all right, all right!” in a quick irritated
whisper.
She went up to the first girl she saw, determined to waste as little
time as possible. “Excuse me,” she said. “Could you show me something in
a twelve?”
The girl turned around and looked at her out of jade green eyes. Laura
stared at her. She was black-haired and her skin was the color of three
parts cream and one part coffee. In such a setting her green eyes were
amazing. There was a tiny red dot between them on her brow, Indian
fashion, but she was dressed in Occidental clothes. She gazed at Laura
with exquisite contempt.
“Something in a twelve?” she repeated, and her voice had a careful,
educated sort of pronunciation. Laura was enchanted with her, pleased
just to look at her marvelous smooth face. Her skin was incredibly pure
and her color luminous.
“Yes, please,” Laura said.
With a light monosyllable, unintelligible to Laura, the girl shrugged at
a row of dresses. “Help yourself,” she said in clipped English. “I
cannot help you.”
Laura was surprised at her effrontery. “Well, I—I would like a little
help, if you don’t mind,” she said pointedly.
“Not from me. Go look at the dresses. If you see one you like, buy it.”
Laura stared at her, her dander up. “You just don’t care if I buy a
dress or not, do you?” she prodded. The girl, who had begun to turn
away, looked back at her in annoyance.
“Can you think of one good reason why I should?” she asked.
“You’re a clerk and I’m a customer,” Laura shot back.
“Thank you for the compliment,” she said icily. “But I am no clerk. And
if I were, I wouldn’t wait on you.”
It was so royal, so precise, that Laura blushed crimson. “Oh,” she said
in confusion. “Please forgive me. I—I just saw you standing there and
I—”
“And you took it for granted that I must be a clerk? How flattering.”
She stared at Laura for a minute and then she smiled slightly and turned
away.
Laura was too interested in her just to let her fade away like that. She
started after her with no idea of what to say, feeling idiotic and yet
fascinated with the girl. She touched her sleeve and that lovely beige
face swiveled toward her, this time plainly irritated. But before either
of them could speak Beebo came toward them. She had a couple of dresses
over one arm and she sauntered up with typical long strides, a cigarette
drooping from one corner of her mouth. Laura saw her coming with a
sinking feeling.
“I found these, Laura. Try them on,” she said, looking at the Indian
girl. There was a small awkward silence. “Well?” Beebo said suddenly,
smiling at the strange girl. “Friend of yours, Bo-peep?”
Laura could have slapped her. She hated that pet name. It was bad enough
in private, but in public it was intolerable.
“No, I—I mistook her for a clerk,” Laura said. Her cheeks were still
glowing and the girl looked from her to Beebo and back as if they were
both dangerous. Laura’s hand fell from her arm and she stepped
backwards, still watching them, as if she half-feared they would follow
her.
“Don’t mind her,” Beebo told her, thumbing at Laura. “She thinks her
best friends are clerks. She’s just being friendly.” Laura heard the
edge in her voice and became uneasy.
But the Indian girl, if she was an Indian girl, unexpectedly relented a
little and smiled. “It’s all right,” she said. She looked at Laura. “I’m
not a clerk,” she said. “I’m a dancer.”
“Oh!” Suddenly an unwelcome little thrill flew through Laura. She
couldn’t have explained it logically. The girl was very demure and
distant. But she was also very lovely, and Laura had a brief vision of
all that creamy tan skin unveiled and undulating to the rhythm of
muffled gongs and bells and wailing reeds.
She must have looked incredulous for the girl said suddenly, “I can
prove it.”
“Oh, no! No, that’s all right,” Laura protested, but the girl handed her
a little card with a name printed on it, and Laura took it eagerly. “I
did not mean I would demonstrate,” the girl said carefully.
Beebo laughed. “Go ahead,” she said. “We’re dance lovers. I don’t think
Laura’d mind a bit, would you, baby?” She was mad at Laura for flirting
and Laura knew it.
The little card read, _Tris Robischon_ and underneath, _Dance Studio_
and an address in the Village. “I just didn’t want you to think I was
lying,” the girl said, somewhat haughtily. And before Laura or Beebo
could answer her she turned and left them standing, staring after her.
Beebo turned to frown at Laura. “You made a hit, it seems,” she said
acidly. “Let’s see her card.” She snatched it from Laura’s reluctant
fingers.
“Take it. I don’t want it!” Laura said angrily, for she did want it very
much. She turned away sharply, giving her attention to a row of dresses,
but she knew Beebo wouldn’t let her off the hook so easily. There would
be more nastiness and soon.
“You got her name out of her, at least. Pretty smooth.” Beebo’s voice
was hard and hurt. “Tris Robischon. Doesn’t sound very Indian to me.”
“How would you know, swami?” Laura snapped. “If you throw a jealous
scene in here I’ll leave you tonight and I’ll never come back, I’m
warning you!” she added in a furious hiss, and Beebo glared at her. But
she didn’t answer.
Finally Laura dragged some dresses off the rack and turned to her. “I’ll
try these,” she said. Beebo followed her to the dressing room and
watched her change into one and then another in angry silence.
At last Laura burst out, “I didn’t ask her for the damn card. I don’t
know _why_ she gave it to me.”
“It’s obvious. You’re irresistible.”
Laura took two handfuls of Beebo’s hair and shook her head till Beebo
stopped her roughly and forced her to her knees. Fury paralyzed them
both for a moment and they stared at each other helplessly, trembling.
Laura wanted that card. She wanted it enough to soften suddenly and play
games for it. “Beebo, be gentle with me,” she pleaded, her tense body
relaxing. “Don’t hurt me,” she whispered. “I don’t know who the girl is
and I don’t care.”
Beebo stared at her suspiciously till Laura reminded her, “We came to
get a dress, remember? Let’s not spoil it. Please, Beebo.”
Beebo released her and sat staring at the floor. Laura tried on dresses
for her, but Beebo wouldn’t look at them. No tender words, no coaxing,
no teasing that would have been so welcome any other time worked with
her tonight. When Beebo got jealous she was a bitch—irrational,
unreasonable, unkind.
“I’m going to take this one,” Laura said finally, a little desperate.
“Whether you like it or not.”
Beebo looked up slowly. “I like it,” she said flatly, but she would have
said, “I hate it,” in the same voice.
Laura went over to her and took her face in both hands, stooped down,
and kissed her petulant mouth. “Beebo,” she murmured. “You love me. Act
like it.” It was so foolishly selfish, so unexpected, and so almost
affectionate that it was funny, and Beebo smiled wryly at her. She took
Laura’s shoulders and pulled her down for another kiss just as a clerk—a
genuine clerk—stuck her face in and said, “Need any help in here?”
“No thanks!” Laura blurted, looking up in alarm. Beebo put her head back
and laughed and the clerk stared, pop-eyed. Then she shut the door and
sped away. Beebo stood up and swept Laura into her arms and kissed her
over and over, all over her face and shoulders and ears and throat until
Laura had to beg her to stop. “Let’s get out of here before that clerk
makes trouble!” she implored.
When they left the dressing room Laura noticed that Beebo had put Tris
Robischon’s card in the sand pail for cigarettes. It stuck out like a
little white flag. Laura risked her purse—with $15.87, all they had for
the next week—to get the card back. She left the purse on the chair as
she followed Beebo out. And so it was that she was able to make an
excuse to go back and retrieve them both, purse and card, while Beebo
paid for the dress.
3
_It’s an awful thing about Jack_, Laura wrote in her diary, sitting on
the floor by the closet door. _Such a nice guy, so bright and so—this
will sound corny—so _fine_. But ever since Terry left him he’s been a
little crazy. I was really afraid of how much he was drinking until
tonight when we had a beer at Julian’s. Or rather, I had a beer. Jack’s
on the wagon. Maybe that will straighten him out. _If_ he can stick with
it. If he’d been straight I think he would have done something wonderful
with his life. But is it fair to blame the failures on homosexuality? Is
it, really? I’m selling junk here in the Village because Beebo wants me
near her. She runs an elevator so she can wear pants all day. And Jack’s
a draughtsman so he can be in an office full of virile engineers. What’s
the matter with us? We don’t _have_ to spend our lives doing it. So why
do we?_
She had asked Jack the same question at Julian’s little bar just off
Seventh Avenue, earlier that evening. “Why do we do it, Jack? Throw our
lives away?” she said.
“We like to,” he shrugged. “We all have martyr complexes.”
“We give away the best part of ourselves—our youth and our health are
all just given away. Free.”
“What sort of profit did you expect to make on them?” he said. “You want
to get paid for being young and healthy?”
Laura glared at him. “That’s not what I mean—”
“If you’re not giving, you’re not living, doll,” he said. “I quote the
sob columns. Give yourself away, what the hell. What’s youth for? And
health? And beauty, and the rest of it. Keep it and it turns putrid like
everything else. Give it away and at least somebody enjoys it.”
“Jack, you know damn well I mean _wasting_ it. Wasting it all day long
on costume jewelry or a push-button elevator or a slide rule. God, when
I think of what you—”
“Don’t think of all the fine things I could have done with my life,
Mother,” he pleaded. “You give me the shudders. I’m not happy, but I’d
be worse off trying to live straight. I like men. My office is full of
them.”
“You hate your work.”
“I never have to think about it. Purely mechanical. I just sit there and
flip that little slip stick and I say, ‘Evens, Johnson is straight.
Odds, he’s queer.’ If Johnson is queer on Tuesday—according to the slide
rule—I make it a point to give him a kind word.”
“Johnson is straight and you know it. Every man in your office is
straight. Why do you torture yourself?”
“No torture, Mother. When the whole world is black, pretend it’s rosy.
Somewhere, in some little corner. If everybody’s straight, pretend
somebody’s gay.”
“That’s a short cut to the bug house.”
“I wouldn’t mind the bug house. If they’d let me keep my slip stick.” He
laughed to himself and leaned over the bar to order. “One whiskey and
water,” he said.
“How about you, Mann?” Julian asked.
“Nothing.”
“Are you on the wagon?” Laura was stunned. When he nodded she said,
“Just a beer for me. I’m drinking too much anyway.” Then she smiled.
“You’ll never last, Jack. You know what you need?”
“Do I know? Are you serious?” He grinned at her, but it was a pained
smile.
“You need a real man,” Laura said softly. “Not a bunch of daydreams at
the office. That’s enough to drive anybody nuts. You worry me, Jack.”
“Good.” He smiled and squeezed her arm. “Now I’ll tell you what I really
need.” He looked at her through his sharp eyes set in that plain face
Laura had come to love and find attractive. “I don’t need a man, Laura,”
he said. “I’m too damn old to run after pretty boys any more. I look
like a middle-aged fool, which is exactly what I am. When Terry left me,
I was through.”
“Do you still love him? Even after what he did?”
“I won’t talk about him,” he said simply. “I can’t. But he was the last
one. The end. I want a woman now. I want you, Laura.” He turned away
abruptly, embarrassed, but his hand remained on her arm.
Laura was touched. “Jack,” she said very gently. “I’m a Lesbian. Even if
you renounce men, I can’t renounce women. I won’t even try.”
“There was a time when you were willing to try.”
“That was a million years ago. I wasn’t the same Laura I am now. I said
that before I even met Beebo—when another girl was giving me hell, and I
was new to the game and to New York and so afraid of everything.”
“So now you know the ropes and you’re absolutely sure you’d rather give
your life away to the goddam tourists and a woman you don’t love than
come and live with a man you do love.”
“Jack, darling, I love you, but I don’t love you with my body. I love
you with my heart and soul but I could never let you make love to me.”
“I could never do it, either,” he said quietly. “You’re no gayer than I
am, Laura. If we married it would never be a physical union, you know
that.” Somewhere far back in his mind the sweet shadow of that little
dream child hovered, but he suppressed it, lighting a cigarette quickly.
His fingers shook.
“If it wasn’t a physical union, what would it be?” Laura asked. “Just
small talk and community property and family-plan fares?”
He smiled. “Sounds a little empty, doesn’t it?”
“Jack,” Laura said, speaking with care so as not to hurt him, “you’re
forty-five and life looks a little different to you now. I’m only
twenty-three and I can’t give up my body so casually. I could never make
you promises I couldn’t keep.”
“I wouldn’t ask that promise of you, Laura,” he said.
“You mean I could bring girls home? To our home, yours and mine? Any
girls, any time? And it would be all right?”
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “If you fell in love with somebody,
I’d be understanding. I’d welcome her to the house, and I’d get the hell
out when you wanted a little privacy. I’d keep strict hands off and just
one shoulder for you to cry on. As long as you really loved her and it
wasn’t cheap or loud or dirty, I’d respect it.”
He knocked the ashes off the tip of his cigarette thoughtfully. “...
only,” he said, “you’d be my wife. And you’d come home at night and tuck
me in and you’d be there in the morning to see me off.” He sounded so
peculiarly gentle and yearning that she was convinced that he meant it.
But she was not ready to give in.
Laura smiled at him. “What would there be in all this for you, Jack?”
she said. “Just getting tucked in at night? Is that enough
compensation?”
“Nobody ever tucked me in before.” He said it with a grin but she sensed
that it was true.
“And breakfast in the morning?”
“Wonderful! You don’t know what a difference it would make.”
“That’s nothing, Jack, compared to what you’d be giving me.”
“You’d be my wife, Laura, my honest-to-God lawful legal wife. You’d give
me a home. You don’t know what that would mean to me. I’ve been living
in rented rooms since I was out of diapers. You’d give me a place to
rest in and be proud of, and a purpose in life. What the hell good am I
to myself? What use is an aging fag with a letch for hopelessly bored,
hopelessly handsome boys? Christ, I give myself the creeps. I give the
boys the creeps. And you know something? They’re beginning to give _me_
the creeps. I’m so low I can’t go any place but up. If you’ll say yes.”
“What if I did? What about Beebo?” Laura said softly, as if the name
might suddenly conjure up her lover, jealous and vengeful.
“It would solve everything,” he said positively. “She could still see
you, but you wouldn’t be her property any more. It’s bad for her to have
the idea she owns you, but that’s the way she treats you. If you were my
wife she’d have to respect the situation. It would be a kind way to
break with her,” he added slyly. He was feeling too selfish to waste
sympathy on Beebo now.
Laura thought it over. There was no one she respected more than Jack,
and her love for him, born of gratitude and affection, was real. But it
was not the love of a normal woman for a normal man she felt for him,
and the idea of marrying him frightened her.
“Do you think, if we married, we could keep our love for each other
intact, Jack?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Even if I were having an affair?” She was thinking at that moment of
Tris Robischon, the lovely, lithe Indian girl.
“Yes. I told you ‘yes.’”
Laura finished her beer in silence, gazing into the mirror over the bar
and pondering. She knew she would say no. But she didn’t quite know how.
“I can’t, Jack,” she said at last, in a small voice.
“Not now, maybe?” He wouldn’t give up.
“Never.”
“Never say never, Mother. Say ‘not now’ or something.”
She did, obediently. But she added, “We’d quarrel and we’d end up
destroying our love for each other.”
“We’d quarrel, hell yes. I wouldn’t feel properly married if we didn’t.”
“And there’s always the chance that _you’d_ fall in love. And regret
that you married me.”
He turned to her with a little smile and shook his head. “Never,” he
said. “And this once it’s the right word.” He took her hands. “Say yes.”
“No.”
“Say maybe.”
“No.”
“Say you’ll think about it, Laura. Say it, honey.”
And out of love and reluctance to hurt him, she whispered, “I’ll think
about it.”
* * * * *
Laura was walking up Greenwich Avenue, searching for number 251. She had
a small white card in her hand to which she referred occasionally,
although she had memorized the address. It was a hot day, late in the
afternoon, and she had just come from work, wilted and worn and bored.
The idea of going home right away depressed her and she had decided to
walk a little.
She hadn’t gone two blocks before she was daydreaming of Tris Robischon
and suddenly shivering with the thought of seeing her again.
Beebo wouldn’t be home until nine o’clock that evening, and Tris’s
studio address was only a short distance from the shop where Laura
worked. All at once she was walking fast.
She found the address with no trouble at all. In fact it was almost too
easy and before she knew it she was standing in the first floor hallway
of the modest building reading the names on the mail boxes. TRIS
ROBISCHON. There it was. Third floor, Apartment C. Laura climbed the
stairs.
_What will I say to her!_ she asked herself. _How in God’s name will I
explain this visit? Ask her for a dance lesson? Me?_ She had to smile at
herself. Her long slim legs would never yield to the fluid grace and
discipline of dancing.
Laura stood uncertainly before the door of Apartment C, a little afraid
to knock. She could hear the sounds of music inside—rather sharp,
tormented music. Laura glanced at the card once again. It had been
almost three weeks since the Indian girl had given it to her. Perhaps
she wouldn’t even remember Laura. It might be embarrassing for them
both. But then Laura envisioned that remarkable face, and she didn’t
care how embarrassed she had to be to see it once again. She knocked.