a tide of renewed passion. She caressed Laura’s hair and back with her
hands and thought, _If it can be this good it’s not over_.
* * * * *
Laura had left work meaning to go straight home. But as before she
hadn’t gone far when she knew she was headed for Tris’s little studio.
Tris opened the door herself. She had evidently been practicing for she
was dressed in tights and breathing hard. Her black hair was smoothed
over her head, caught in back with a clasp and braided. The braid, heavy
and shining, hung halfway down her back and swung like a whip when she
whirled.
Tris paused for a moment when she saw Laura on her threshold and for an
awful second Laura thought she might turn her away. But Tris smiled
suddenly and said, “Laura. How nice. Please come in.”
“I just dropped by to say hello,” Laura apologized.
“That is not all, I hope?” Tris said, looking at her.
Laura felt an odd little twist of excitement. “Well ... I shouldn’t
stay. I don’t want to interrupt your work.”
“Of course you do. That’s why you came,” Tris said, spinning
reflectively in place, her weight shifting delicately to pull her around
and around.
Laura didn’t know if she was being scolded or teased, if she should
leave or stay. Tris stopped twirling and said, “I’m glad you came. I
didn’t want to work any more anyway.”
Laura hesitated, wondering whether to believe her. But when Tris walked
across the room to her and kissed her cheek she melted suddenly with
pleasure. She stood quietly and let herself be kissed, afraid to return
the compliment. She was very unsure of herself with Tris. Even the
gentlest gesture seemed to irritate the dancer sometimes. Laura could
only let her take the lead.
Tris turned away abruptly, her mood shifting. “Well, now you are here,”
she said in her careful English. “What would you like to do?” It was a
sort of challenge.
“I—I’d like to see you dance, Tris. Would you dance for me?”
“No.” She was pouting. “You are my excuse for not dancing any more
today, Laura.”
“Maybe we could just talk for a little while, then.”
“We could ... but we won’t.”
Laura was at a loss for words. She stammered a little and finally she
blurted, “I think you’d rather have me go home.”
“I think Beebo would like you home more than I would. She doesn’t let
you out very often, does she?”
Laura colored. “She’s not my jailkeeper,” she said.
“I don’t like this—this interference you force me to make in your love
affair, Laura,” Tris said and surprised her guest. “I don’t know your
Beebo, but I have nothing against her. Still, I do not imagine she will
like _me_ very well if she finds out you are my guest now and then.”
“What do you care whether Beebo likes you or not?” Laura demanded,
startled.
Tris broke into a charming smile then, as if to placate her visitor. “I
want everybody to like me,” she said. “I suppose it is a compulsion left
from my childhood.” And, as if she had made a guilty admission, she
turned away abruptly saying, “Let’s go into the kitchen. If I stand in
here I will feel obliged to dance.”
Laura followed her and sat down self-consciously. Tris fixed a plate of
cookies and gave her a glass of milk. She smiled.
“I am hard to know, Laura. I am not very gracious. But I like your
company.” Her smile was as warm and luscious as ripe fruit in the sun.
They finished the food over small talk about men. Laura was lost,
silent. She just nodded agreement and listened with dismay. _She’s
trying to tell me she doesn’t like girls_, she thought. _But it’s a
lie!_
Tris rinsed the plates, watching herself all the while in one mirror or
another. It was as if she felt herself on exhibition all the time, as if
all those mirrors were scattered around to remind her of her own beauty.
Tris dried her hands and turned to face Laura. There was an awkward
pause and Laura realized suddenly that she was supposed to get up and
leave. They had had their small talk. She had been served food. That was
all she could reasonably expect from her hostess, especially since she
was an uninvited guest. She felt her heart contract a little in
disappointment, and she thought with a flash of yearning of the
intimacies of her last visit.
But she was too proud to overstay her welcome, especially after the way
Tris had shown her the door last time. So she got up and said, “Thanks
Tris. I have to go.”
“Oh?” It was merely polite.
“Beebo’s expecting me.”
“I see.” No protest. Tris followed her toward the front door. “Ask me
over to your apartment sometime, Laura. You would make a much nicer
hostess than I. Besides, I should like to see how your big roommate
looks in pants. She does wear pants?”
“Yes, she does.” Laura turned to look at her curiously. “But she’s a
jealous hellion.”
Tris leaned on the wall by the door, crossing her feet at the ankles.
“Does she know you have been here to visit me?” Her smile was sly,
interested.
“No. I don’t think she even remembers you,” Laura said shortly.
“Ah! Flattering. Do you think it’s wise to make a secret of our
friendship, Laura?”
“It’s either that or get my neck broken,” Laura said.
Tris laughed a little, as if the idea of such hard play amused her.
“Laura ... would you like to stay a little longer?” she said. Her voice
made it sound very inviting.
“I can’t.” Laura was upset by all the talk of Beebo.
“As long as you leave by eight it would be all right,” Tris said. “I
have a date at eight.”
“With a man?”
“Certainly with a man. I have no secrets, Laura. I do not like to cheat,
like you. You cheat with your Beebo by seeing me. But still—” she
hunched her shoulders and smiled—“I like you. You like me. Perhaps it is
worth the risk. You are the one who will get your neck broken, not me. I
have no right to deny you your pain.”
Laura frowned at her. It was an odd thing to say. Tris put her hands on
Laura’s arms and they stood that way, silent, for a moment.
At last Tris said, “Dance with me.”
“I don’t know how,” Laura said shyly.
“I am a teacher. I teach you. Come on.”
“I’m so clumsy, Tris.”
But Tris pulled her to the middle of the studio and put a record on. She
stood for a minute in front of Laura as if trying to make up her mind
where to grasp her, how to start. Laura felt impossibly awkward. But
Tris made up her mind quickly and slipped her arms around Laura’s neck.
Laura was two inches taller than she and Tris was obliged to look up at
her when she spoke.
“We will just do it like the teen-agers!” she said. “There is nothing to
it really. Stand in one place and shift your weight from one foot to the
other, with the beat. That’s it. You’ve got it. That’s a good
beginning.”
Laura couldn’t help laughing. “Even _I_ can do that much,” she said.
“Ah. Then there is hope. Next year at this time you will do the _tour
jeté_.”
Laura had her arms around Tris at the waist and they swayed gently to
the music, and suddenly all her suspicion and embarrassment faded. She
became conscious of the tantalizing jasmine that emanated from Tris—from
her throat and her hair and her breasts, barely covered by the bandeau.
The black braid moved softly against Laura’s bare arms in back and Tris
put her cheek against Laura’s, tilting her face up. Her lips were near
Laura’s ear and she whispered, “You know, Laura, I must tell you
something. You are a homosexual. Yes?”
Laura swallowed. “Yes,” she said.
“You should know then ... I am not. Not like you. I like the company of
girls, yes. My dance pupils. Friends. But I love men. I love them. Do
you understand?”
“No.” Laura shut her eyes and pulled Tris a little tighter.
“Well, then, I will explain. Men excite me. All men, I mean. The idea of
men.... It is hard to say. But I would rather be with a man than with a
woman. But now and then I meet a woman who interests me. And sometimes
the interest goes beyond just talk. You see?”
“No.”
“Sometimes I want to kiss her. Or be close to her. But that is all. Now
do you see?”
“No.”
Tris gave an impatient little sigh. “I am telling you I am not queer
like you!” she said sharply and Laura winced with sudden pain. Tris felt
it and she amended quickly, “That is an unkind word. You people call it
gay. All right. _I_ am not gay. I like you, I like to talk to you and
watch you move and sometimes I am moved myself to kiss you or be close
to you, like this. Our bodies like this, all up and down. You see? But I
don’t like to go any farther. Not with a girl. You are only the third
girl I have felt this for. It will not happen again for a long time.
Perhaps I will marry soon, and then it will never happen again.”
“Marry! Who? An Indian?”
“No!” she exclaimed almost contemptuously. “Another. He is _white_.”
“You’re full of contradictions, Tris,” Laura said, looking down at her
in bewilderment. “You said you were gay and you married a gay boy.”
“Oh, yes. I did, didn’t I?” She looked trapped. “Well, I thought I was
then. But I know now—positively—I am not.”
“But you said—”
“Such wonderful blond hair you have, Laura. I would give anything for
such hair. Why do you always wear it wound up like that?” And she began
to slip pins out of the bun, letting them drop to the polished floor,
until the coil of gold came loose and Tris gave a delighted, “Ah!”
Laura felt the thrill go through her hard. She forgot her protests about
Tris’s sex drive and pulled the dancer very close to kiss her full on
the mouth. Tris yielded. With one accord they stopped dancing and just
clung and kissed, swaying slightly. It lasted for long minutes—just
kisses, soft and exploratory, but careful. Laura wondered vaguely,
through the fog of lovely sensations, what miserable devil prompted this
delectable girl to deny her Lesbian impulses. For Laura could tell that
Tris enjoyed this love play as much as she. She encouraged it, even when
Laura tried to stop, and pulled her back for more.
By eight o’clock they were lying on the big red silk couch in the
bedroom, murmuring inanities to each other, discovering one another’s
bodies and emotions through twin shields of clothes and caution.
“Will you come and see me again?” Tris asked.
“Are you inviting me?”
“Of course.”
“When would it be convenient?” She said it in clipped English, like the
English Tris spoke, to tease her.
“It is never convenient. But come anyway.”
Laura laughed. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“No date tomorrow?”
“Yes. Every night.”
“Save a night for me, Tris.”
Tris gazed at her for a moment before she answered, “No.”
“Why not?”
“We do too much in these few short hours. What would we do with a whole
night? I do not like to think.”
“I think of it all the time. I can’t think of anything else.”
“Ah, that is a very bad sign. I am sorry to hear you say that. You must
not fall in love with me, Laura.”
“I’ll try to remember,” she said sarcastically.
“I am serious,” Tris said.
Laura didn’t answer her. She lay on her back and looked up at the small
skylight directly over the bed. It was a square of violet—the last shade
of fading day.
“I do not want you to fall in love with me, Laura,” Tris persisted.
“I hear you,” Laura said quietly.
“Well, why don’t you answer?”
“I don’t know how to answer, Tris,” she said, turning to look at her in
the semi-gloom of the bedroom.
“What are your feelings for me?”
“Do you want a blue print?” Laura said, hurt. “I can’t spell them out
for you. I don’t understand them myself.” But she understood them all
too well. She had felt these pangs before for other girls—only two or
three, including Beebo, but enough to make them familiar and unwelcome.
But still exciting and irresistible.
Tris lay beside her, quiet for a while, and finally she said, “Do you
know why I was not very glad to see you at first today?”
“No.” Laura reached across the bed to put a hand on Tris’s breasts, to
feel what she could not see in the gathering darkness.
“I was afraid,” Tris whispered. “Of my own feelings. I do not like to
become involved with women. It has always been unpleasant for me.”
“Do you still want me to come back and see you?”
“Yes.” She paused and Laura sensed a smile. “As long as I ask you to
come back, Laura, you will know you are safe with me.”
“Safe?”
“I will put it another way. If a day comes when I do _not_ want to see
you, it will be because I am in love with you. And that will be the end.
From that day on we will never meet again, until I am cured.”
Laura had to smile. Who could take such a charming speech seriously?
“All right,” she murmured and embraced the lovely dancer.
“Now you must go,” Tris told her. “My date will be here soon. He is
always prompt.”
Laura got up without protest. But it was sweet to take the time to wind
up her hair and know she was welcome. “Did you kick me out for the same
boy last time?” she asked.
Tris had turned a light on and they watched each other in the mirror
before which Laura was combing her hair.
“No. Another.”
“I hate him,” Laura said with a little smile. “And the rest of them.”
Tris gazed at her coolly. “How very foolish,” she said. And made Laura
laugh.
They parted with a chaste kiss, and for the first time since they had
met Laura felt as if she had a slim chance with this odd and
irresistible girl who was still so much a stranger to her. She went home
to her angry Beebo, her body tense with need. And later, when Beebo
demanded her body, Laura surrendered promptly and helplessly.
* * * * *
Beebo, since the night of her attack, had become unbearably suspicious.
Everything Laura did, everywhere she went, had to be reported in detail.
She called Tris once or twice from work and Tris had bawled her out for
not showing up. Laura was more pleased than sorry when Tris sounded
jealous—while she bridled angrily at Beebo’s jealousy, she was thrilled
with Tris’s.
Laura had strong doubts about Beebo’s illness now. She could have gone
to work weeks ago. The bruises were nearly invisible; only a pale yellow
shadow stained the spot where the worst had been. Beebo was using it as
an excuse to sit around another week and take it easy and drink and
bitch over the phone to Lili about her problems.
“I always hated that damn elevator,” she declared with her feet up on
the coffee table in the living room and a drink in her hand.
“You make me sick!” Laura told her. “You’re _well_. Get up and go to
work.”
Beebo looked at her watch. “At six-thirty in the evening?” she said, and
laughed.
“I’m not going to support us both, Beebo,” Laura said. “And I’m sick and
tired of playing nursemaid.”
To her diary Laura confided, _I am in love. I’m sure of it. The more I’m
with Beebo the more I want Tris. Oh, God, how much I want her!_
* * * * *
Laura was desperate after two more weeks of Beebo. Beebo drove her
frantic when they were cooped up together in the small apartment, as
they were every night. And Beebo was wild for the love Laura denied her.
The attack she had endured seemed to have touched off a burning core of
violence in her that never went out.
When Beebo found the small steel strongbox on the closet floor with
Laura’s diary inside, she pounded it with a stone to get it open but the
lock didn’t break. When Laura got home from work and found the battered
box on the coffee table in the living room she went pale with alarm, and
Beebo, who was lying in wait for her reaction, exclaimed, “Damn it, I
knew it. You sure as hell look guilty, Laura. What’s in it?” She kicked
the box.
“Nothing.” Laura walked across the room but her legs felt weak.
“Open it, then.”
“No.”
“Where’s the key?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s your box, goddam it. You know where the key is! Why did you hide
it from me? What are you ashamed of?”
“I’m under no obligation to show you everything I own!” Laura said
frostily. “I’ll hide what I please.”
“You tell me what’s in it,” Beebo threatened, “or I’ll choke you. I
swear I’ll choke you, you bitch.” She slammed Laura against the wall
with one hand to her throat.
Laura gasped in panic. There was only one thing to do with Beebo in
these moods and that was go along with her, stall, anything but resist
her. That was too painful and Laura even feared that one of these days,
with Beebo as crazy as she was, it might be fatal.
“All right,” Laura said through a tight throat. “Let me go.”
She rummaged for the key for ten minutes, knowing all the while that it
was in the wallet in her purse.
“Don’t tell me you can’t find it,” Beebo said, watching her through
narrowed eyes.
“I almost never use the thing,” Laura said as calmly as she could.
“You find it,” Beebo said. And something in the tone of her voice made
Laura very frightened. _I’m getting out of here_, she thought to herself
suddenly. _If I can just get out of this somehow I’ll leave her tonight
and I won’t come back. I’ll go to Jack’s._
She turned and faced Beebo, desperate. “Beebo, it’s just some personal
papers. It’s nothing you’d be interested in.”
“It’s exactly what I’d be interested in. I’d be even more interested in
why you went white as a sheet when you saw I had it. Explain _that_ to
me, Bo-peep.”
Laura pressed her teeth together in a small grimace of exasperation.
“It’s my birth certificate and my baptism certificate and two insurance
policies and some old love letters,” she said.
“Love letters from who?” Beebo demanded.
“Beth.”
Beebo put her head back and laughed. “Oh!” she said. “Beth! Good old
Beth. Your college flame. I’m getting so I _know_ that goddam girl.”
“She was a lot more—” Laura began, her cheeks hot. She couldn’t bear to
hear Beth laughed at, to hear that perfect love ridiculed.
“I know what she was,” Beebo said acidly. “She was beautiful. She was
bright. She was a queen on the campus and a devil in bed. She was a
success. She even liked men, the traitorous bitch. She was so gorgeous
and so intelligent and so everything that she could do whatever she damn
well pleased—even dump you like a sack of bricks. She loved you so much
she got you kicked out of school and got married. To a _man_.” Beebo
grinned at her, waiting for Laura to explode. But Laura only glared, too
proud to spoil that memory with an ugly spat.
“Queen Beth was everything Beebo is not,” Beebo said. “You’ll never
learn, will you? Love isn’t pure roses and romance, Laura. You can’t
live with a girl, however much you love her, and still faint with joy
every time she looks your way. It’s a shame you never lived with Beth
like you have with me. You’d find out fast enough she is a human being,
not a goddess.... Now, show me the letters.”
“Why do you want to read a bunch of miserable old letters?” Laura said,
angry that she had to beg. “That’s all over, Beebo. It can’t do anything
but hurt you.”
“I’m used to that, Laura. Anybody who lives with you has to be.”
“You lie!” Laura flared suddenly. They gazed at each other in electric
silence for a minute. Then Laura said quietly, in a move to restore her
safety, “Let me fill your glass.” She came to take it from her but Beebo
held it away. “What are you trying to do, baby, get me drunk? Let’s see
the letters.”
Laura sat down on the bed beside her. Maybe she could sweet-talk her out
of the box. “Beebo,” she said. “There’s nothing in there you could
possibly want to see or be interested in. Will you believe me?”
Beebo looked at her coldly and didn’t move. “The letters,” she said and
held out a hand.
Laura sighed. “After dinner,” she begged. “Let’s at least eat in peace.”
And before Beebo could answer she leaned over and kissed her lips. “I
love you, Beebo,” she said, very softly and hopefully. And there were
still times when she wondered if she might not speak the truth. But this
wasn’t one of them. She spoke out of the need to save her skin.
Beebo swallowed the last of the drink. “Yeah,” she said. “The letters.”
Laura kissed her again. Beebo submitted to it without returning the
kiss. “You’re not very subtle, Bo-peep,” she said.
“I just want a stay of execution,” Laura said with a wry smile. “If we
have to yell at each other, let’s save it till after dinner. Please,
darling. The box won’t walk away.” And Beebo, in spite of the
obviousness of it, in spite of her own better sense and Laura’s flagrant
flattery, weakened.
“Are they that bad?” she asked. “The goddam letters from Beth the
Beautiful?”
“They’re just love letters. They’re old and stale and the affair is old
and stale. It’s over and done with.”
“Like our affair?” And Beebo said it so simply, without the histrionics
and the swearing and the noisy misery she usually showered on Laura,
that Laura was touched. She put her forehead down on Beebo’s shoulder
and whispered, “I don’t know, Beebo. You scare me so sometimes I swear
I’ll move out of here and run like hell and never come back. Sometimes I
really think you mean to kill me.”
“Sometimes I really do,” Beebo said and her voice was rough. “If I did,
I’d kill myself right afterwards, darling.”
“A lot of good that would do me!” Laura exploded. But she softened when
Beebo’s face went dark. “You don’t mean that, Beebo. You’d never really
do it ... would you?”
“I don’t know,” Beebo said, staring at her. “I’ve come close to it,
baby. I’ve come close....”
“If you really love me, you couldn’t.”
“I really love you. But there are times when I don’t think I could stop
myself.” Her eyes filled suddenly with tears and she looked away, at the
wall. “Things that would hurt too much.”
“Like what?”
“Like finding out you were cheating on me.”
Laura shut her eyes and felt the sweat break out on her face. _But I
haven’t really cheated with Tris_, she told herself. _We never went all
the way. I don’t think we ever will._ “Don’t be silly,” she told Beebo.
“Who is there for me to cheat on you with? _Nobody._”
“Jack.”
“Jack?” Laura straightened up, astonished. “He’s a man!”
“Sure he’s a man. I know what he is.”
Laura took Beebo’s face in her hands and said, “I promise you I have
never cheated with Jack or anybody else. I _swear_, Beebo. You think I
have but I haven’t. You just make it up.”
“Do I just make it up that I love you more than you love me?”
Laura hung her head. “Let’s shout about it after dinner,” she said.
“Okay.” Unexpectedly Beebo surrendered and Laura escaped to the kitchen
with an audible sigh of relief.
They ate in near-silence, Laura concentrating on her plate and Beebo
concentrating on Laura. They were almost finished with the gloomy little
meal when there came a ring of the doorbell and Laura, without knowing
why, felt a sudden start of fear.
“Who’s that?” Beebo demanded.
“I don’t know.” Laura didn’t even want to look at her. “Probably Jack.
Or your darling Lili.”
“Oh, Christ, I couldn’t stand to see either of them right now. Lili
would love to hear us quarrel.”
“Let’s disappoint her, then,” Laura said and they smiled a little at
each other. Laura was surprised at the strength of her relief. But when
Beebo got up to ring the buzzer that opened the door below, the strange
fear returned.
Far away downstairs she heard the front door open. Laura sat in uneasy
silence in the kitchen, listening to the steps coming up the stairs out
in the hall. She could picture Beebo leaning against the door jamb,
waiting for the knock. More than once she had begged Beebo to be
cautious opening that door. She had nightmares about the hoodlums that
raped Beebo coming back to try it again—and getting Laura too this time.
But Beebo shrugged it off.
“They won’t be back,” she had said.
“How do _you_ know?”
“I know,” was the cryptic answer, and that was all Laura could get out
of her.
Laura found herself staring into her milk glass and whispering a prayer:
_Let it be Jack. Please, dear God. I need him._
The knock came. Beebo opened the door. There was a moment of silence and
then the sound of a sweet feminine voice using a very dainty English. It
was Tris!
Laura froze in a panic. For one frightened second she thought of
climbing down the fire escape. And then she put her glass down with
trembling hands and poised herself, tense with the near-hysterical force
piling up inside her.
Suddenly Beebo said, “Well, I’ll be goddamned. Hey, Laura! It’s our
little Indian buddy. From Peck and Peck. Come on in, sweetheart.”
“Thank you,” Tris said.
Laura held her breath. Beebo’s friendliness would last just as long as
it took her to start wondering what Tris was doing there and how she
found the place. Laura could have slapped Tris. She hardly dared go in
the living room and face them both.
Beebo called her. “Get in here, baby. Make like a hostess, for God’s
sake. How’d you find us?” she said, her voice lowering as she turned to
Tris.
“I ran into Laura at the Hobby Shop,” Tris said. “I was looking for a
gift.”
“Find one?” Beebo settled down on the couch, appraising Tris’s slim
smooth body with a cool and practiced eye. Laura saw the glance as she
stood in the kitchen doorway. She disliked the way Tris let herself be
admired.
“Hello, Laura,” Tris said, almost shyly.