Chapter VI: Part 6

Nina, for once, was not laughing. She was spread beneath Beth like a carpet of warm silk. She moved with her, she murmured to her, she was as absorbed as Beth was in the fantastic luxury of sexual pleasure. When she tried to pull away a little Beth caught her from behind and kissed her bare neck and shoulders, her fingers pressed around Nina’s lovely breasts and their legs entangled. Nina was surprised at the strength she felt in Beth’s arms, and let herself be pushed back down on the bed with a sigh of ecstasy.

Nina showed Beth things that night that Beth never dreamed existed. “I’m going to do things to you you never even heard of,” she whispered, and she did. With her mouth, her fingers, the warm tickle of her breath, she called up feelings in Beth that had never been there before. She made Beth aware of parts of her body, her own familiar comfortable body that she thought she knew so well, that Beth had never discovered for herself. A thousand sensual subtleties were revealed to Beth in Nina’s arms: all the tricks and caprices of a lovely body, all the scented shapes, the astonishing joy of uncontrollable physical reactions, the enormous force of a woman’s ecstasy flowing unfocused through her whole body, claiming her absolutely and reverberating in her for hours after the act of love.

Beth kissed Nina with a hungry mouth, amazed at her own appetite, at how much it took to satisfy her. She would settle against Nina, holding her in her arms and thinking _now_ sleep would come. And she would half doze off for a while and then shift her weight a little and the mere feel of Nina’s hair brushing her face, or a length of perfumed leg, would jolt her desire to the surface.

“Nina,” she murmured wildly once in the night, “am I exhausting you?”

“No,” Nina whispered. “You surprise me but you don’t exhaust me.”

And once Beth tried to recall if it had been this way with Laura, if it had been this good, or if it could be. There wasn’t any reason for anything to be so beautiful. After what she had done, after what she had been through, Beth could hardly believe this was happening to her at all. It seemed as if all her days were fated to be gray and worried, all her nights empty and tragic. And now suddenly she was incredibly happy. There was no time to wonder whether the happiness was purely physical. She didn’t stop to think about her ambivalent feelings for Nina, about how Nina might look in the daylight, with irony in her air again and sarcasm on her lips. There was no daylight, no night, no time, nothing but that moment on the bed with Nina in her arms. Beth was unable to think ahead or to care what happened.

Nina’s voice came softly out of the dawn to her. “You’re gay, Beth,” she said positively.

“I know.” It came as a wild wonderful relief, just to know for sure after years of tormented wondering.

Nina stroked her cheek with one finger. “What was her name?” she asked.

After a long pause Beth answered her. “Laura.”

Nina smiled. “Good,” she said. “I don’t know any Lauras.”

Beth felt a small stab of dismay. And then she wondered if Nina could conceivably be jealous now, unwilling to share Beth, unwilling to reveal anything she might happen to know. Beth considered Nina’s curious incapacity for friendship. Nina might be able to come close to her as a lover but never as a friend. She might even learn to love Beth for a little while, but she could never like her and it would never last.

“You know what you’d be if you let yourself go?” Nina said playfully into her ear. “You’d be a butch. You’d cut your hair off real short and live in the Village. Oh, yes, you would. Don’t smile. And I’ll bet that’s exactly what you will do, too. You won’t be interested in me very long. Not after you find out how many beautiful women will be interested in _you_.”

Beth squirmed uncomfortably at the idea. “I don’t want a lot of beautiful women, Nina,” she mumbled.

“What do you want?” Nina asked, and when Beth hesitated, silent for over a minute, she teased, “Me?” And then, with spite in her voice, “No. Laura. _Laura_ she wants, after all I did for her last night.”

“I don’t know,” Beth said. “I really don’t know ... now.”

“_Now?_ You mean now that I’ve corrupted you?” Nina laughed quietly. “I’m glad I mixed you up a little. I hope you don’t find your Laura. Not for a while anyway.”

Chapter Thirteen

When Beth left Nina’s apartment two days later, she found a letter waiting for her in the post office box she had rented. She half expected Nina to ask her to move in before she left. But it would have inconvenienced Nina too much, with the lack of space and the long hours she had to spend at her typewriter. She didn’t want to be bothered and Beth understood, even though she was sorry not to have been asked. Nina should have known Beth would refuse, out of consideration for her. But Beth never got the chance.

The letter was from Cleve, and Beth tore it open in the elevator on the way up to her room at the Beaton. She got as far as, “Dear Beth, How do you like New York? Charlie and the kids are as ever. Not very happy but getting along. The kids like Mrs. Donahue pretty well now that they’re used to her. Charlie works like a dog—too damn hard if you ask me. Puts all of us to shame and gives me a guilt complex.”

Beth asked herself if he might not be drinking still more and neglecting his job down at the office. Of course, he was still half boss; Charlie was the other half. But she knew Charlie would be hard on him if the alcohol became more important than Ayers-Purvis Toys.

She stepped out of the elevator and went to her room, fumbling with the key in her purse and pushing the door open with her shoulder. The morning sun was coming in her windows and she sat down on the bed to finish reading the letter.

“Charlie has some big idea for a new toy,” Cleve went on. “He wants to call it ‘The Scootch.’ It’s a sort of spring, a great big thing you can crawl inside or sit on top of and bounce. It travels when you bounce on it, or you can roll down hills in it. Sounds kind of goofy probably, but the neighborhood kids go for it in a big way. So do your kids. Skipper says it’s better than a kite any day. Charlie is hoping it’ll take up where the Hula Hoop left off. If it does we’d make a fortune. He’s been working on it night and day, trying to get the right materials and colors, and working up a marketing scheme for it. I haven’t seen all the plans yet. Jean and I have been away on a vacation, and I haven’t been feeling so red hot lately. But don’t worry about me. You have enough on your mind.”

It was kind and restrained, with hardly a trace of reproach. Beth lowered the letter to her lap for a minute, not quite finished with it, and stared out the window at the shaded side of the building across the street. “Not feeling so red hot.” _Drunk, maybe?_ She hoped not. She liked Cleve too well, she owed him too much, to wish him any ill. But the thought of his mother, ravaged by liquor, and his sister, who devoted her life to it, frightened her.

“You ask about my family,” he went on in reference to one of her notes. “Mother is about as ever. Gramp still feeds his cats and vents his temper on the delivery boys or the plumber or whoever gets in the way. Vega is at Camarillo. We all thought it would be for the best—”

Camarillo! _Camarillo!_ All the sense was suddenly shocked out of Beth. Camarillo—the state mental institution. “Oh, God!” she cried aloud, too stunned to read any further for a minute, unaware that she spoke aloud. “Oh, good God! _Vega!_”

“We all thought it would be for the best since the studio folded two weeks after you left. Do you remember P.K.? The girl she said she hated so much? Well, P.K. managed to spread some pretty ugly rumors about her, and that, on top of the shaky state of her finances, did the trick. The students she had left, and there was really a surprising number—they all liked her a lot—had to leave. Their parents heard about it and disapproved, and that was it.

“The doctors say she has an excellent mind and she is very reasonable most of the time, and they hope she can come home in another few months. The oddest part of it is, she copies Mother all the time. I mean, all Mother’s sicknesses. She acts as if she’s crippled, has to run to the bathroom every five minutes, even says she’s blind and can’t see a thing. The doctor says it’s almost as if she wanted old age to catch up with her and incapacitate her to punish herself for her feelings. Or maybe to stop her from _having_ any feelings. Another angle occurred to me. If she is Mother, how can she be anything Mother _disapproves_ of? Like gay? I don’t know—make any sense?

“Don’t worry too much about this, Beth. It’s been in the wind for many years now. I’m surprised myself it didn’t come sooner. She’ll be okay. The important thing for you is to get yourself straightened out and come home. Charlie needs you. He used to be a nice guy but now there’s no living with him.

“Best to you, Cleve.”

_Vega at Camarillo!_ Of all the things in the letter none affected her any more than that. Vega had had to bear the loss of her lover and the loss of the girls she adored and her business, her only means of support, within two weeks of each other. Beth bowed her head and cried, without bothering to cover her face or wipe away the tears. Vega had had to face the scorn of a teen-age torturer in the person of P.K. all alone. It must have been godawful, terrible even for Cleve, who had to hear it all from her hysterical lips, who had to try to comfort her and care for her.

P.K....

“Oh, Vega,” Beth said. “Vega, I’m so sorry. Forgive me. I wish you could hear me, I wish I could undo what I did to you. Please Vega, get well.”

Just telling it to the walls was better than keeping it all inside and getting sick on it. Even at that there was a sick feeling in her stomach and it didn’t go away for a long while.

* * * * *

For three days she stayed in her hotel room. Not the lure of seeing Nina or even the search for Laura Landon that had propelled her this far could stir her. She simply lay on her bed and tried to disentangle her thoughts. Now and then she had some food sent up.

She told herself that nothing that had happened was her _fault_, exactly. It was fate, it was an accident, it was foul luck. But one single person couldn’t have caused it all. The Purvises were wrong to drink so much, Charlie was wrong to be so bad-tempered, Uncle John was wrong to be so inquisitive. Laura was wrong to have walked out of her life nine years ago. Everybody was wrong but Beth, who was only an innocent girl trying to find herself. She had to see it that way or get sick on herself.

* * * * *

She had been in New York for over a week but she hadn’t found Laura. There was Nina—an unexpected discovery—but Nina wasn’t what she came for. It was time, and overtime, to find Laura.

Beth thought about these things as she rode up Fifth Avenue in a bus. She was on her way to Nina’s apartment just off Fifth, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sitting wedged between two ample women with their arms full of bundles, and silently cursing the humid warmth of the late July day.

It was early afternoon. Nina would still be sleeping but Beth wouldn’t disturb her. Being away from her for several days had generated a number of feelings in Beth, all of them at odds. She had to get back and try herself against Nina again. She had to know for sure what she already suspected: that her desire for Nina was mostly a desire for physical love, a desire that required only a pretty body and a certain skill in using it.

Still, and most important, she wanted to find Laura. She had only been down to the Village once, but she would make Nina take her again. Tonight. If Nina didn’t know any Lauras there must be plenty of people down there who did. It was a Saturday night this time and things would surely be busy. Maybe Laura herself.... But it both frightened and excited her too much to think about it, to visualize that actual meeting that would come, had to come, some day, when she and Laura would be face to face again, when they would search for the right words, the right gestures, to show their love. It would all be so clumsy at first and then so beautiful, and Beth ached to have it happen. Soon.

Across from her on the bus sat a small heavy man suffering so visibly from the heat that Beth almost smiled to herself. He looked enough worse than the rest to make Beth almost feel cooler. He was balding, with shadows of weariness under his eyes and a hopelessly rumpled seersucker suit, and he reminded her sharply of one of the “Johns” she had seen with Nina the night they had met and gone bar hopping in the Village.

_Forlorn and hot and friendless_, she thought. _He’s probably on his way home to a wife he can’t stand. He’s probably mired in a life that bores the hell out of him. But he hasn’t the guts to get out of it._

She pitied him, for it seemed to her then that escaping from a life you didn’t like was a matter of courage. She had that courage and she was trying to be proud of it. She didn’t dare to wonder if she had the _right_ to leave her life and everyone in it. Or if the dumpy little man across the aisle had that right. She only saw his dissatisfaction and she scorned him for enduring it. Everything that touched her now she saw in terms of her own problem.

The rest of her thoughts were of Nina as she approached her apartment. They had had three days together, three strange long days and nights when Nina didn’t write anything on her new book or call anyone or even go anywhere. They had simply lain around, not bothering to make up the beds or dress themselves. They had made love and talked and when they got hungry Nina ordered sandwiches from a nearby delicatessen and that was what they lived on.

Nina had made her keep her voice down for fear her neighbors would hear them. “I don’t know what they’d think,” she said. “I can’t afford to have them thinking _anything_. I had enough trouble finding this apartment and I don’t want any nosey cops coming around answering complaints. It’s not the same as the Village. You can do things there you wouldn’t try uptown.”

Beth had stared at her. “I’m not making any noise,” she said.

“Well, don’t.”

Beth thought back on this, bemused. Nina had dodged any commitments to her. She was lavish with compliments, telling Beth how pretty she was, how delectable her body was, how Charlie probably didn’t appreciate her. But she never had a word to say about how much she really liked Beth, how often she wanted to see her, what her presence meant to her. Beth was in the dark. All she knew was that Nina thought she was pretty and had handled her life like a fool.

* * * * *

Beth wasn’t prepared for what she found when she walked into Nina’s apartment ten minutes after her bus ride and found Nina in bed with a girl of eighteen. The girl was still asleep but she woke up hard when Nina sat up in bed and said, “Who the hell told _you_ to come over? At _this_ hour?” Her eyes were narrow with anger and Beth recoiled, shocked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll leave.”

But before she could turn around and get the door closed behind her Nina said, “No. You’re here now. So stay.”

Beth looked at her doubtfully and at the sleepy-eyed and rather scared girl beside her. “I don’t think that’s the best idea,” she said, but Nina’s anger had passed as quickly as it had come. Suddenly she saw the possibilities of the situation: Beth’s embarrassment, the charming consternation of Franny, the girl in bed with her, and herself, Nina, mistress of their feelings. What a scene! It was worth playing out.

“Make yourself some coffee,” she told Beth. “We were just getting up.”

And Beth could tell by the sudden change in Nina’s voice, by the look on her face, that she was playing with her two guests.

“I didn’t expect this, Nina,” she said frostily. “I have no claim on you, I realize, but I didn’t expect _this_.”

“Oh, come off it, Madame Queen. What _did_ you expect?” Nina asked, smiling at Beth’s white-faced annoyance. “I don’t wear a chastity belt, you know.”

Franny, the teen-ager, got up abruptly, sitting down again in humiliation as she remembered her nakedness, and then covering herself with a blanket and going into the bathroom. Beth collapsed in an armchair and preserved a chilly silence while Nina dressed herself, smiling all the while, wondering whose temper would blow first.

Franny came out of the bathroom a few minutes later with her clothes on. She walked over to Beth and spoke, facing her. “I didn’t know I was muscling in on anything,” she said. “This just happened, almost by accident. We weren’t even going to sleep together. I feel as bad about it as you do, believe me.” And she gave Nina a dirty glance but it only made Nina laugh.

“Thanks,” Beth told her softly, surprised at the dignity the girl had mustered. “But never mind. I didn’t come for that, anyway.”

“For what, then?” Nina said cheerfully, going into the kitchen.

“I want to go back to the Village tonight, Nina. I want to see the places we missed last time.”

“There are quite a few,” Nina said ironically. “Couple of dozen, at least.”

“That doesn’t matter. I want to see them all.”

“Laura, hm? Got Laura on the brain,” Nina said. She was fixing some frozen orange juice.

“Yes,” Beth said simply.

“Well,” Nina grinned. “I didn’t make such a big impression on you after all. Did I?”

“Let’s forget it,” Beth said. The whole episode made her feel mildly nauseated. The sight of Nina no longer aroused desire in her—just regret and a powerful longing for Laura. She wasn’t sure exactly what caused it—the other girl in Nina’s bed, the fact that Nina held Beth’s regard so cheaply, or Nina’s selfish and peculiar pleasure in running people.

“I have to find Laura,” Beth said in a flat, positive voice. “Will you help me?”

“Sure,” Nina said airily. “We’ll do the town tonight. Franny, want to come along?”

Beth expected a pointed “No” from the girl, but she said, “Yes, I’ll come,” instead. Beth looked up to find that Franny was gazing at her, not Nina. Nina saw it too, and was not so amused. For what reason Beth never clearly fathomed, Nina dressed as nearly like Beth as her wardrobe would permit—same color dress, same style of shoes, similar white bag. Was it to show Beth that Nina could wear the same things and look better in them? Was it because she thought Franny was admiring Beth’s clothes? Beth stared at her curiously but Nina gave no hints away.

Chapter Fourteen

In Nina’s phrase, they did the town that night. Beth drank very little at first, but as the evening wore on the little mounted up and she realized, some time shortly after midnight, how tight she was. She was quite fascinated, as she had been before, with the people she saw. Many of them knew Nina and came over to talk to her. There was one pretty, rather boyish girl at the bar whom Nina had never seen before who caught her eye, and Nina kept calling her “Farley,” after a movie star she resembled, until Beth in embarrassment asked her to quit.

The rest of the time Nina needled Franny. Beth was glad it wasn’t herself that night. She thought she couldn’t have taken it. She would have lost her temper in one big spectacular blast and that would have been the end. She would have had to walk out on Nina and maybe on her chances of finding Laura.

For Nina asked everyone, all her friends, if they knew any Lauras. And some of them did, but none of them knew Laura Landon.

“It’s going to be all over the Village that there’s a great search on,” Nina said. “Maybe that’ll help you.”

“Thanks, Nina.”

Toward two A.M. Nina succeeded in getting Franny on a crying jag and Beth told her indignantly to stop torturing the girl. But Nina laughed and said, into Franny’s face, “She’s enjoying it.” Whereupon Franny got up and ran into the ladies’ room and didn’t return for a half hour.

Beth had nothing to say to Nina. She was afraid any words between them would be angry and she kept quiet, answering Nina in monosyllables. Nina saw it and was both amused and annoyed. When she got drunk she liked a fight. She felt mean. At the very least she wanted to embarrass somebody.

“You don’t really think I give a damn if you find that girl, do you?” she asked Beth.

“I don’t care what you think.”

“You know something? I don’t believe there is any such person as Laura Landon.”

Beth shrugged, determined not to get nasty.

“I think you’re just leading me on. You just want a free tour of the Village,” Nina said. And when Beth still maintained silence she went on, “You think you’re something, don’t you, Beth? Just because Franny has been eying you all evening.”

“Has she?” Beth was surprised. She hadn’t noticed it.

“Don’t play innocent with me,” Nina said, and Beth wondered if she was jealous. Perhaps Nina had dressed herself like Beth in at least a partial effort to snag Franny’s eye.

But when Franny got back she slipped a little penciled note into Beth’s hand under the table. Later Beth got a chance to read it. There was a telephone number and a plea for a call scrawled in pencil on lined paper. Beth smiled slowly across the table at Franny, largely for Nina’s benefit.

And just then she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, the entrance of a woman whose face and manner captured her interest entirely. She was big, nearly six feet tall, wearing slacks and a man-cut jacket. She was a little over her best weight but strikingly handsome with the black-and-white hair—still mostly black—curling closely around her head, and light eyes. She walked with a slight swagger, her hands thrust into the pockets of her pants, and Beth wasn’t the only one who turned to look at her as she made her way up to the bar.

The bartender apparently knew her and fixed her something to drink in response to a nod she gave him. She stood alone at one end of the bar, seemingly preoccupied, although now and then she smiled at someone near her who spoke to her.

Beth watched her, captivated by her manner and the world-weariness in her face, for five or ten minutes. Finally she leaned over to ask Nina who she was.

Nina gave a quick glance at the bar, reluctant to turn her attention from Franny, and said, “Oh, God! Beebo Brinker. You don’t want to talk to her.”

“Why not?” Beth demanded.

“You won’t get anything straight from her. I mean that both ways.”

“Do you know her, Nina?”

“Hell, yes. Lousy bitch.”

“Why lousy?” Beth asked.

“Oh, it’s a long story. Leave her alone, Beth, she’s no good.”

“She might know Laura,” Beth said.

“If she does, Laura’ll never be the same. They never are when Beebo gets through with them.”

“What does she do to them?” Beth said.

“I don’t know, Beth. Don’t bother me about it.”

“I want to meet her,” Beth said stubbornly.

“Okay, damn it!” Nina flared suddenly. “Go meet her, I don’t care a damn what you do. She knows everybody in the Village. If Laura Landon is living here she’ll know.”

“Nina,” Beth protested, “you brought me down here to help me find Laura.” She stared at her bewildered. “Now you don’t want me to find her. Is that it?”

“Go on, Beth. Go talk to her. It’s about as bright as most of the things you do. But for God’s sake don’t bring her over here. I can’t stand her.”

Beth looked at her a moment longer, and then at Franny, who was afraid to talk to her. She turned on her heel and walked away from them.

Beebo had found a bar stool and was sitting down by the time Beth reached her. Beth stood a little behind her, nervous and hesitant for a moment, and then she touched her sleeve. Beebo glanced up and to one side, seeing a girl there but not looking at her.

“Hello,” Beebo said. Her face was nearly expressionless.

“Beebo Brinker?” Beth said.

“The same.” She didn’t seem to care who Beth was.

“Beebo, I’m looking for a friend of mine. It’s urgent that I find her. Someone told me you knew everybody down here.” Beth knew she sounded breathy and frightened but her voice, her manner, were out of her control. “I was wondering if you could tell me where she is.”

“Try me.” Beebo lighted a cigarette and Beth watched, mesmerized. Her gestures were perfectly masculine right down to the snap of the match, almost more masculine than a man’s, carefully learned, carefully studied, tellingly imitated.

“Well....” Beth leaned against the bar on one elbow, facing Beebo’s profile. Beebo still had not really seen her face. She smoked, or drank from her whiskey and water, and gazed into the mirror behind the bar.

“Well, her name is Laura,” Beth said, once again with the frightening feeling of exposing her love to laughter.

Beebo’s eyes narrowed and in the mirror she looked at Beth for the first time.

“Do you know a Laura, by any chance?” Beth said.

After a long tense pause Beebo said, “Laura? What’s her last name?”

“Landon.”

Slowly, very slowly, like someone moving in a dream, Beebo turned around and looked her full in the face. Her lips parted slightly and she studied Beth so closely that Beth involuntarily drew away a little, clinging to the edge of the bar for support. She felt suddenly weak, although Beebo’s gaze was not unkind and Beth liked her face. It even seemed to resemble Beth’s own in some ways, though Beth’s was softer and smaller and feminine. Beebo, still in her early forties, looked like a college boy—gray-haired to some extent, but still collegiate.

“Beth,” Beebo said, very softly, and it sounded like thunder in Beth’s ears. “You’re Beth. _Beth!_ Goddamn! I never thought we’d come face to face, you and I.”

For a long bewildered moment Beth simply stared at her. “You know me?” she murmured at last. There was no other sound for her in all that noisy bar but Beebo’s voice.

“Know you?” Beebo grinned. “Honey, I know you better than you know yourself. I’ve spent the best years of my life hating you. You were the only real rival I ever had with Laura.”

Beth’s eyes grew huge with astonishment for a moment and suddenly full of tears. She turned her head away, one hand over her eyes, and Beebo explained gently to her.

“I met Laura when she first came to New York,” she said. “I thought I brought her out. I mean, I thought I was the first woman she had ever loved. Until she called me ‘Beth’ in bed one night. That was how I met you. Beth Cullison.” Beth looked at her again, unable now to look away.

“That is your name, isn’t it?” Beebo said.

“It was. It’s Ayers now.”

“Married?” Beebo said.

Beth nodded and Beebo gave her a little grin. “It figures,” she said. “Laura used to tell me about how wonderful you were, how kind you were to her when she was so young and scared and didn’t know what she was. She never talked about you except with love. God, how I used to hate the sound of your name. Have you ever had a rival that didn’t exist, Beth? Have you ever been jealous of a shadow, a snapshot? I could tear up the snapshots but there were always more. She had dozens of copies lying around. She showed them to everybody. When I gave her hell for it she said I should be glad we looked alike. And you know something? We do. I didn’t use to think so from the pictures she had of you, but seeing you now.... Of course, you’re pretty. And you’re a woman.” She turned away and drank the rest of her drink.

“Have something with me?” she said.

“Thanks. Scotch and water,” Beth said, still too shocked to think sensibly. Beebo ordered it for her.

“So now you’ve come back to find Laura,” Beebo mused. “Why?”

“Do you know where she is?” Beth said eagerly, her heart floating over the things Beebo had told her. “Is she still living with you?”

Beebo laughed a small private laugh. “No,” she said. “Not for the past seven years. We broke up long ago.” And something she left unsaid made Beth feel that, though they had broken up, Beebo still felt love for Laura. “She was an extraordinary girl,” Beebo said. “I loved her very much.” And then she stopped abruptly and Beth knew she would speak of that part of it no more.

“What happened to her?” Beth said. “Is she all right? Where is she?”

“She’s in New York,” Beebo said.

Beth gave a sigh of relief. “Where?” she said urgently. It was almost a groan of impatience.

Beebo swiveled in her seat again to look at her. “Why do you want to find her so badly, Beth? Who’s Ayers? Doesn’t he have anything to say about this?”

“I—I left him,” Beth said. “It’s all over.”

“Do you think it’s such a good idea to take up with a woman just because you left off with a man?” Beebo said.

“I’m gay,” Beth said quickly. “It was never right with Charlie.”

“Any kids?” Beebo said. Her skeptical eyes went deep and made Beth feel suddenly guilty.

But she answered with a brazen show of assurance, “No.”

Beebo took a drag on her cigarette, watching Beth through narrowed eyes. “That’s good,” she said at last. “You’d be in bad trouble otherwise.”

Beth had a momentary spell of sinking, of sickness, that made her shut her eyes and wipe her forehead with one sharp nervous gesture. The faces of Skipper and Polly were very clear before her during that moment.

“Something wrong?” Beebo said quietly.

“I—I guess I’ve had too much to drink,” Beth said.

“Where are you staying?” Beebo said.

“The Beaton.”

“Are you here alone?”

“No, I came in with Nina Spicer. Do you know her?” She looked up at Beebo then to see if her reaction to Nina was as harsh as Nina’s to her. But Beebo only grinned and said, “Sure I know her. Everybody knows her.”

Beth liked Beebo’s face even better, now that it was becoming more familiar to her. She felt secure with Beebo, as if Beebo were a friend. It wasn’t logical. Beebo had frankly admitted an unreasonable hatred of her of some years’ standing—something Nina had never felt. And yet there was nothing fishy, nothing odd and egotistical about Beebo.

“How did you meet Nina?” Beebo said.

“I wrote to her, after I read some of her books. When I left Charlie I came here to find Laura and I thought Nina might help me. She knows the Village.”

“Well, she can teach you a few things. But they won’t have much to do with true love and happy endings,” Beebo said. “Still, I guess that’s something to know. There isn’t much true love in the world. Did she give you a few scars?”

“A few, I guess.” Beth smiled a little. “Nothing I won’t recover from.”

“Good. You’re lucky. Now tell me one more thing. Since you won’t tell me why you want to find her, are you sure you do want to find Laura?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” She spoke ardently and made Beebo smile again, but such a different smile from Nina’s! Warm and friendly and concerned, somehow.

“What do you think it will accomplish?” Beebo said.

“I still love her. I want her back.”

Beebo finished the drink she had before her and then she said gently, “Beth ... Laura is married.”

There was a moment of deafening silence between them and then suddenly it seemed to Beth as if the whole bistro was coming apart at the seams. She staggered a little and Beebo got up quickly from her stool and steered Beth expertly onto it.

“You’re okay, baby,” she said when Beth had recovered a little. “Don’t tell me it never occurred to you. Don’t tell me you never thought of it. Damn, you got married. It happens, you know. Here, drink this.” And she forced half a glass of scotch and water down Beth’s throat.

After a moment, when she could talk, Beth whispered, “I thought of everything. Everything but that. I thought she might have gone to Europe or somewhere. I thought she might be in love with somebody else. I thought she might have disappeared. I even thought she might be dead. But, God help me, God help me, I never thought she would be married. Married! I hate him!” She whispered the words with near-despair, too stunned even to cry.

Beebo half lifted and half pulled her off her stool. “Come on, sweetheart,” she said in her hoarse low voice. “You’re coming home with me. I’ll tell you about it. Believe me, I felt just the way you feel now when I found out. But that was seven years ago, after she left me. I didn’t think I could stand it but I did.” She spoke with a sweetness that amazed Beth in one so gruff and strange, and Beth clutched at her words for courage. She never thought to argue with Beebo about going home with her. She never even tried to stop and tell Nina where she was going.

But Nina saw her go out with Beebo’s arm around her and Nina said softly to herself, “Damn!” She knew that was the end of her influence on Beth, and Beth had held promise for more pleasure. It was for that reason that she had tried to discourage Beth from meeting Beebo. Nina liked to control her visitor, and she loved to make love to her. It piqued her vanity to see Beth so easily slip out from under her only to go to someone she disliked and feared. With alcoholic malice she watched the two of them leave.

Someone else watched them go: a small rotund man, balding, with bags beneath his eyes and an air of fatigue and boredom that seemed never to leave him. When the door of the bar swung shut behind Beth and Beebo, the small heavy man got up and walked slowly toward it and followed them into the night.

Chapter Fifteen

Beth stayed with Beebo that night and they sat up and talked through most of it. Beebo told her about the two years she and Laura had lived together, what a paradise it had been at first, what a red hell it had become when Laura had fallen out of love.

“She was looking for a substitute for you when I met her,” Beebo admitted. “When I turned out to be myself, not you, she was disillusioned. She held it against me, in a way. And in another way, after a while, I think she learned to love me for myself. But it was never good enough. I was so much older; I’d done my running around and I wanted to settle down. Laura was It as far as I was concerned. The end of the trail. I was through looking over the field, through chasing after new affairs.

“But for Laura it came too soon. She was too young. She hadn’t seen more than a little corner of life and I wasn’t enough for her. She needed variety, she needed to know other women, and that was more than I could bear. And at the same time, she needed security. Somebody had to take care of her, watch over her, provide for her. All of that. I wanted to desperately, but I didn’t qualify. I was a woman and I was a disappointing lover to boot. She needed a man, one who understood that she was gay and would always be gay, and not interfere with that part of her life.”

“Where did she meet him—her husband?” Beth asked. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor in Beebo’s living room, drinking the coffee Beebo had fixed for her, while Beebo sat on the couch above her with her legs split casually over the long coffee table. She was still drinking whiskey and water.

“She met him on a blind date,” Beebo said. “And a few weeks later he introduced me to Laura. He lived down here at the time.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jack. Jack Mann.”

Beth memorized it. “But you and Laura lived together for a couple of years before she married Jack?”

“Yeah. They loved each other all along, though. They got very close. The worse things were between me and Laura, the closer they were between Laura and Jack. She always ran to him when anything went wrong.”

“Was she _in_ love with him?”

“No. And he isn’t in love with her. Maybe that’s why they’re so happy. No romance, no jealousy. No matter what passionate affairs they may be having on the outside, their marriage is sacred to them. And it works. It works a hell of a lot better than a lot of straight marriages I know.”

“Do you mean Jack’s gay too?”

“Yes, honey. He’s gay.” Beebo looked down at her, and smiled. “He had ‘Beth’ problems when he married her, too. She was still thinking about you even then. Used to drive him nuts. I remember he finally gave her a lecture about it. Said you’d never see her again, you were gone out of her life and probably married, and Laura had better grow up and realize it.”

“Did she?” Beth asked shyly.

“I’m inclined to think she did,” Beebo said. “As a matter of fact, I can’t help wondering what good it’ll do to open a closed chapter, Beth. If it’s no good for Laura it can’t be much good for you.”

Beth hung her head, watching her cigarette burn and feeling the smoke sting her eyes, without moving the thing or blowing at it.

“Maybe no good at all,” she admitted. “But I have to know. I’ve come so far and I’ve had to face so much. I can’t run out now when I’m so close to finding her. I wonder how she thinks of me now.”

“Probably pretty much the same way, _when_ she thinks of you. Romanticized. You symbolized everything good, everything wise and beautiful for her. You were an ideal love that, just by accident, wasn’t so ideal after all. If you ever hurt her or crossed her up, you were forgiven. As far as Jack and I could see you never did any wrong.”

Beth smiled ironically at her.

“I think she realizes now that you weren’t perfect, if only because you were human. She’s not in love with you any more, but she still idealizes you to some extent. That’s the way I see it, at least.”

“Is she still so beautiful?” Beth asked softly.

“Yes.” Beebo was watching her carefully, deeply interested in this pretty young woman who had caused her such exasperation and heartache years before. “Some people don’t think she _is_ beautiful, you know.”

“Some people are blind. She’s lovely—I mean, unless she’s changed?”

“No, not so much. Not to look at. But in other ways she’s changed a lot. Remember, when you knew her before, you were the sophisticated one. You were the one with experience and you taught Laura. Now it’s the other way around. Laura’s the woman of the world and you’re the provincial housewife. Do you want to start all over with her on that basis? Can you?”

It was an acute observation. Beth had never thought of her relationship with Laura. “Well, I—I’m not _that_ provincial,” she said in stammering defense of herself. “I’ve been married, I have a couple of children. That counts for some experience, doesn’t it?”

“Laura’s married too. Laura has a daughter six years old. And why the hell did you lie to me about having children?”

Beth flushed crimson, overcome by the revelation of Laura’s maternity as much as her own lie. After a moment’s confusion she said, “Beebo, I—forgive me. I didn’t know you, I didn’t know whether to trust you. I—” and she had to cry. It was the first time since she had met Beebo that evening that her feelings unwound enough for her to let the tears come. The storm was brief and hard but it cleared the air. “I love them terribly, but I can’t live with them,” she confessed brokenly when she could talk. “I left them with Charlie, my husband.”

“You ran away?” Beebo frowned at her.

“Sort of. He knew I was going; I didn’t try to hide it. But he doesn’t know where I am now. He thinks I’m with my aunt and uncle in Chicago.”

“And where do they think you are?”

“God knows. I blew up at my uncle and when I left, I sneaked off like a thief in the night.” Beebo tossed her a white linen handkerchief and Beth blew her nose gratefully.

“That’s too bad, honey,” Beebo said gently. “You’re in a hell of a situation. Me, I told off all my relatives twenty-five years ago, and left before I had any obligations. They all predicted I’d go straight to hell. But when I look back on it, I’m not sorry, strange to say. Some of it’s been hell, all right. But some of it’s been ... wonderful. Just wonderful. Makes the rest of it worth the pain. Like the first year with Laura.”

Beth gazed up at her and caught a faraway smile on her face. “You must be lonely, Beebo,” she said. “Living alone like this. Or aren’t you alone?”

“I live alone,” Beebo said. “But I have a lot of company. A lot of drinking buddies.”

“That still makes you pretty lonely, doesn’t it?” Beth knew that loneliness, and she sympathized eagerly.

“Yes, honey, it does. I had a couple of dogs, once. Dachshunds. They helped for a while. But they died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Actually, they were—killed.”

“How awful.” And Beth sensed a whole story, a whole miniature tragedy behind the words. But she dared not press Beebo for it.

“What’s Laura’s little girl’s name?” Beth asked.

Beebo came back from her reverie and smiled at her, pouring herself another inch of whiskey from the bottle by her feet. “Elizabeth,” she said. “What else?”

“For me?” Beth said.

Beebo nodded. “They call her Betsy, though. Jack put his foot down on Beth.”

And oddly it struck them both funny and they laughed together, and Beth found herself reaching for Beebo’s hand. Just to grasp, just to hold for an instant in gratitude. “God, I’m so glad I found you,” she said. “I was so depressed. It all seemed so hopeless.”

“I can imagine,” Beebo said with a humorous edge in her voice, “if Nina Spicer was showing you around town.”

“Is she like that with everybody?”

“She tries to be. Too bad. She’s a shrewd girl and she’s made quite a success of this writing bit. But she has to analyze everybody. She learns enough about human nature to use people but not enough to help them. It’s not in her nature to give a damn what happens to them after they cease to amuse her. She just likes to pull the strings and see them hop. That’s not saying she can’t teach you a few things, Beth. But she can crack your ego at the same time and it’s not worth the aches and pains involved.”

“Are most gay people like that?” Beth asked.

“No. But a lot of them are. Too many. That’s the most valuable lesson Nina can teach you, honey. It doesn’t last long in the gay world and when it’s over it keeps on hurting for a long time. You’re on your own. You watch out for yourself. You haven’t any of the safeguards or the consolations or the help that straight people have. There’s nobody you can run crying to when you’re the loser.”

“Nina taught me something else. I’m gay,” Beth said.

“Oh, hell,” Beebo said and laughed good-naturedly. “You learn that yourself, nobody teaches you.”

“She said if I cut off my hair and went to live in the Village I’d be a butch.”

“Good God, you’re no butch!” Beebo exclaimed. “She’s filling you full of bull just to amuse herself.”

“I thought so,” Beth sighed. “But I’m so damned ignorant. I’m not sure of anything. I thought maybe Laura could help me understand myself. Show me what I am.”

“Nobody’s going to draw you any diagrams, sweetheart,” Beebo said.

“I’ve been wondering about it for all these years. Wondering if I did the right thing in marrying Charlie and leaving Laura.”

“Why did you marry him?”

“I loved him.”

“Do you still?”

“I don’t know. Yes, in a way. I hate him too, though. There were times when I think I could have killed him.”

“How do you know it won’t be like that with Laura?” Beebo asked. “How do you know you weren’t cut out to be a loner? Bisexual, maybe. Or the kind who can only love from a distance, no matter which sex, no matter how much passion?”

And Beth had to turn away from Beebo’s brilliant, absorbing eyes, too troubled by her ideas to face her squarely. To change Beebo’s train of thought she asked, “Why doesn’t Nina like you?”

“I jilted her once. A few years ago. And I don’t read her books. And, I suppose, she didn’t want me to waltz off with you tonight. Sort of lets the air out of her balloon.”

Beth smiled silently into her near-empty coffee cup. “Beebo,” she said. “Will you tell me where Jack and Laura live?”

“Made up your mind?” Beebo said.

“Yes.”

“You’re going to see her?”

“Yes.”

“In spite of all the pitfalls?”

“I’d walk through hell to see her,” Beth whispered.

Unexpectedly Beebo reached over, putting a hand on each of Beth’s shoulders and pulling her back so that she leaned against the couch between Beebo’s knees. The hands were strong and firm as a boy’s, disconcerting in the warm grip. Beth could feel Beebo looking down on the top of her head and she wished she could see her face.

“Okay, honey,” she heard Beebo say. “I’ll call them and tell them you’re coming.”

“Oh, God, no!” Beth cried. “No, Beebo. Please. I don’t want her to know in advance. I want to surprise her. If she knows she’ll change things, she’ll clean the house, she’ll fix a big dinner, she’ll have something fixed to say to me that won’t be genuine. It just won’t be the same. Please, let me surprise her.”

“She won’t thank me for that,” Beebo quipped. “But if that’s the way you want it.”

“That’s the way.”

“Okay, okay,” Beebo sighed. “They’re up at 528 North Lexington. Eighth floor. His name is J.F. Mann. And Beth—just for the record—she’s interested in somebody right now. I don’t know how seriously.”

“Okay. It’s okay. That’s something I expected,” Beth said. She turned her head to Beebo’s leg and kissed it fervently, impulsively. “Thank you,” she said, and experienced a strange, unexpected flash of pleasure at her own boldness, at Beebo’s nearness and warmth.

She stayed the rest of the night, sleeping in spite of her excitement. Beebo gave her the bed and slept on the couch in the living room. She had gone out by the time Beth got up the next morning, but there was a note for her to help herself to some breakfast and to keep in touch with Beebo. Beth scribbled down her room number and phone at the Beaton on Beebo’s telephone pad and drank some orange juice. Her mouth was dry with excitement and she found it hard to eat, but she made herself take something. At the same time she riffled through the pages of Beebo’s telephone directory. And there it was. There it had been all along, but without Beebo’s help she wouldn’t have found it. “J.F. Mann,” and the address. Beth tore another sheet of paper off the phone pad and made a note of the number, slipping it into her purse.

Before she left she cleaned up her dishes and the ones Beebo had left, including the coffee cup and the whiskey glass from the night before. She made the bed, thinking as she did it that Laura must have slept in this bed too, once. After that she straightened up the living room. It wasn’t the same as keeping house for Charlie. She actually enjoyed the tasks, enjoyed the feeling that Beebo would come home to a clean house and a tidy kitchen, and it would be due to Beth’s care.

She took a long look at the rooms before she closed the front door after herself, and she had the feeling that sooner or later, some day, she would be back. She hoped so. She liked Beebo, she had learned from her, and it hadn’t been the sharp, painful sort of lesson Nina Spicer taught. But just as effective. Perhaps more so.

Chapter Sixteen

Beth walked over to Seventh Avenue to get a taxi. She walked with a light, swinging step, feeling a small new joy in her heart that almost amounted to hope for a happy ending to it all—the mess and bewilderment and misery of the past few months.

As she walked she noticed a short balding man ahead of her with a noticeable aura of ennui about him, standing baggy-eyed and uninterested before a window full of leather-work. He looked familiar, though she was sure she didn’t know anybody in the city outside of Nina and Beebo.

_Still.... Maybe I saw him at one of the bars_, she thought, vaguely disturbed by his face yet unable to recall it. She walked briskly past him as if she had not noticed him at all. _He probably lives down here. He probably goes bar hopping at night. I’ve seen him in a bar, that’s all._ But it piqued her not to remember where.

She had the taxi driver let her off at Fifth Avenue and 38th Street, near the public library. She wanted to buy something, some little house gift for Jack and Laura that would make her appearance less awkward, give them all something to say. For half an hour she wandered from store to store, north and south, trying to find the appropriate thing, ignoring Merrill Landon’s strictures about budgeting her money. It had to be something really nice or it just wouldn’t do.

She stopped to look into the toy window at F.A.O. Schwartz, thinking suddenly of Polly and Skipper and wondering if she could send them something without upsetting them. In the middle of the window, prominently displayed, was a big, gaudy, orange giant spring, with an elaborate bow attached to the top like a gift wrapping. A big sign leaned against the bottom: “THE SCOOTCH—bounce on it, roll in it, dive through it. The new sensation!”

After a moment she went in and asked one of the clerks about it.

“Yes, it’s quite unusual, isn’t it?” he beamed. “We can’t keep them in stock. The kids adore them. Just like those hoops a couple of years ago. I’d be willing to bet the Scootch will outsell them.”