Beebo Brinker

By Ann Bannon

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Title: Beebo Brinker

Author: Ann Bannon


        
Release date: July 9, 2026 [eBook #79057]

Language: English

Original publication: Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1962

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79057

Credits: Adam Buchbinder, Jens Sadowski, the San Francisco History Center and James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San Francisco Public Library, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEEBO BRINKER ***


                               First Love

   “Beebo,” Paula said, whispering so that Beebo had to bend her
   head to hear her. “I’d like you to stay. Make yourself welcome.
   Please.”

   Beebo was afraid to believe her ears. It seemed incredible that
   this exquisite stranger should reach out for her from the middle
   of nowhere. “Paula,” she said, “I think we’re both just lonely. I
   think it would be best if I go. You don’t want to wake up
   tomorrow and hate yourself.” She was still hedging about the
   ultimate test with a girl.

   “I was lonely. I will be again if you go.”

   “Maybe you’d be better off lonely than sorry.”

   “Beebo, do I have to beg you?” Paula pleaded, her voice coming up
   stronger with emotion.

   Beebo reached for her in one instinctive motion. “No, Paula, you
   don’t have to beg me to do anything. Just ask me.”

   And Beebo Brinker, who had never done more than dream before,
   slipped her arms around Paula and pulled her closer ... closer,
   until their lips were touching....


   Other Original Gold Medal Books by Ann Bannon:

      ODD GIRL OUT
      I AM A WOMAN
      WOMEN IN THE SHADOWS
      JOURNEY TO A WOMAN
      THE MARRIAGE

   The Gold Medal seal on this book means it is not a reprint. To
   select an original book, look for the Gold Medal seal.




                                 Beebo
                                Brinker


                             by Ann Bannon

                      An Original Gold Medal Novel


                            GOLD MEDAL BOOKS
           Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut
            Member of American Book Publishers Council, Inc.


   Copyright © 1962 Fawcett Publications, Inc. / First printing July
   1962. / All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
   this book or portions thereof. / All characters in this book are
   fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely
   coincidental. / Printed in the United States of America.




                                 Beebo
                                Brinker


Jack Mann had seen enough in his life to swear off surprise forever. He
had seen the ports of the Pacific from the deck of a Navy hospital ship
during World War II. He had helped patch the endless cut and bloodied
bodies, torn every which way, some irreparably. He had seen the sensuous
Melanesian girls, the bronzed bare-chested surfers on Hawaiian beaches,
the sly stinking misery of the caves of Iwo Jima.

A medical corpsman gets an eyeful—and a noseful—of human wretchedness
during a war. When it was over, Jack left the service with a vow to lead
a quiet uncomplicated life, and never to hurt anybody by so much as a
pinprick. It shot the bottom out of his plans to enter medical school,
but he let them go without undue regret. He’d be well along in his
thirties by the time he finished, and it didn’t seem worth it any more.

So he completed the course he started before the war: engineering. And
after he got his degree he took a job in the New York office of a big
Chicago construction firm as head of drafting.

During those war years, when Jack was holding heaving sailors over the
head and labeling countless blood samples, he had fallen in love. It was
a lousy affair, unhappy and violent. But peculiarly good now and then.
Good enough to sell him on Love for a long time.

He organized his life around it. He earned his money to pamper whatever
passion came his way. That was the only real value his bank account held
for him; that, and helping stray people out of trouble, the way others
help stray cats.

But by the time Jack reached his thirties, there had been too many who
took advantage of his generosity to swindle him; his confidence to
cuckold him; his affection to torment him. He turned cynic. There was
hope in him still, but he buttoned it down under his skepticism.

He wanted to stabilize his life, settle down with one person and live
out a long rewarding love. But Jack Mann could only love other men:
boys, to be exact. Volatile, charming, will-o-the-wisp boys, who looked
him up Friday, loved him Saturday, and left him Sunday. They couldn’t
even spell “stabilize.”

His emotional differentness had given Jack a good eye for people, a
knack for sizing them up fast. He usually knew what to expect from a boy
after talking to him twenty or thirty minutes, and he had learned not to
give in to the type who brought certain suffering—the type who couldn’t
spell.

But Jack had also learned that he couldn’t live his life only for love.
The less romantic he got about it, the clearer his view of life became.
It didn’t make him happy, this cynicism. But it protected him from too
much hurt, and gave him a sort of sour wit and wisdom.

Jack Mann was thirty-three years old, short in height, tall in
mentality. He was slight but tough: big-shouldered for his size and
deep-chested. His far-sighted eyes watched the world through a pair of
magnifying lenses, set in tortoise shell frames.

They were seeing sharply these days, for Jack was between lovers: bored
and restless, but also healthy, wealthy, and on the wagon. When the new
love came along—and it would—he would stay up most nights, blow his
bankroll, and hit the bottle. It was nuts, but it happened every time.
It seemed to preserve his lost illusions for a while, till the new
“love” vanished and joined the countless old ones in his memory.

Jack lived in Greenwich Village, near the bottom of Manhattan. It was
filled with aspiring young artists. Filled, too, with ambitious
businessmen with wives and families, who played hob with the local
bohemia. A rash of raids was in progress on the homosexual bar hangouts
at the moment, with cops rousting respectable beards-and-sandals off
their favorite park benches; hustling old dykes, who were Village
fixtures for eons, off the streets so they wouldn’t offend the
deodorized young middle-class wives.

Jack was pondering the problem one May evening as he came up the subway
steps at 14th Street. At six o’clock the air was still violet-light. It
was a good time for ambling through the winding streets he had come to
know so well.

He tacked neatly in and out through the spring mixture of tourists and
natives: young girls with new jobs and timid eyes; older girls with no
jobs and knowing eyes; quiet sensitive boys having intimate beers
together in small boites. Shops, clubs, shoebox theaters. It always
delighted him to see them, people and buildings both, blooming with the
weather.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Jack stopped to buy some knockwurst and sauerkraut in a German
delicatessen, eating them at the counter with an ale.

When he left, feeling sage and prosperous, he saw a handsome girl
passing the shop, carrying a wicker suitcase in one hand. Her strong
face and bewildered eyes contradicted each other. Jack followed a few
feet behind her, intrigued. He had done this many a time, sometimes
meeting the appealing person behind the face, sometimes losing the face
forever in the swirling crowds.

The girl he was tailing appeared to be in her late teens, big-tall, with
dark curly hair and blue eyes: Irish coloring, but not an Irish face.
She walked with long firm strides, yet clearly did not know where she
was. In her pocket was a yellow “Guide to Greenwich Village” with
creased pages. Twice she stopped to consult it, comparing what she read
to the unfamiliar milieu surrounding her.

A sitting duck for fast operators, Jack thought. But something wary in
the way she held herself and eyed the crowd told him she knew that much
herself. She was trying to defend herself against them by suspecting
every passerby of ulterior motives.

At the first street corner she nearly collided with a small crop-haired
butch, who said, “Hi, friend,” to her. The big girl stared for a moment,
surprised and uncertain, afraid to answer. She moved on, crossing the
street and detouring widely around a Beat with a fierce beard who sat
guarding his gouaches, watching her pass with a curious who-are-you?
look.

Jack was amused at the girl’s odd air of authority, the set of her chin,
the strong rhythm of her walking. And yet, despite her efforts to look
self-assured, she was clearly no native New Yorker. Her face, when he
glimpsed it, was a map of confusion.

Rather abruptly, as if suddenly tired, she stopped, and Jack waited
discreetly behind her, leaning against a railing and lighting a
cigarette, watching her with a casual air.

She searched with travel-grimy hands for a cigarette in her pocket, but
found only tobacco crumbs. Wearily she let herself sag against a shop
window, evidently convinced it was silly to keep marching in the same
direction, just because she had started out in it. Better to rest, to
think a minute. Her gaze fell on Jack, who was studying her with a
little smile. She looked square at him, and then her eyes dropped. He
sensed something of her reaction: he was a strange man; she was a girl,
forlorn and alone in a city she didn’t know. And probably too damn poor
to squander money on cigarettes.

Jack strolled over to her, pulling a pack from his pocket and extending
it with one cigarette bounced forward for her to take. She looked up,
startled. She was four inches taller than Jack. There was a small pause
and then she shook her head and looked away, afraid of him.

“You’d take it if I were somebody’s grandmother,” he kidded her. “Don’t
hold it against me that I’m a man.”

She gave him a tentative smile.

“Come on, take it,” he urged.

She accepted one cigarette, but still he held the pack toward her. “Take
’em all. I have plenty. You look like you could use these.”

She obviously wanted to, but she said shyly in a round low voice,
“Thanks, but I can’t pay you.”

Jack chuckled. “You’re a nice girl from a nice family,” he said. “Know
how I know? Oh, it’s not because you want to pay for the pack.” She
looked at him with guarded interest. “It’s because you’re afraid of me.
No, it’s true. That’s the mark of a nice girl, sad to say. Men scare
her. I can hear your mother telling you, ‘Dear, never take presents from
a strange man.’ Right?”

She smiled at him. “Close enough,” she said softly, and inhaled some
smoke with a look of relief.

“Well, consider this a loan,” he said, gesturing toward the cigarettes,
and then he tucked them in her pocket next to the “Guide.” She jumped at
the touch of his hand. He felt it but did not say anything. “You’re
pretty new, aren’t you?” he said.

“I’m pretty used, if you want to know,” she said ruefully.

Jack laughed. “How old? Seventeen?”

“Do I look _that_ young?” she asked, dismayed. There was intelligence in
her regular features, but a pleasant country innocence, too. And she was
uncommonly handsome with her black wavy hair and restless blue eyes.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“Do you?” she countered, instantly defensive.

He held out his hand affably and said, “I’m Jack Mann. Does that make
you feel any better?”

She took his hand, cautiously at first, then gave it a firm shake.
“Should it?” she said.

“Only if you live down here,” he answered. “Everybody knows I’m
harmless.”

She seemed reassured. “I’m going to live here. I’m looking for a place
now.” She paused as if embarrassed. “I do have a name: Beebo Brinker.”

He blinked. “Beebo?” he said.

“It used to be Betty Jean. But I couldn’t say it right when I was
little.”

They smoked a moment in silence and then Beebo said, “I guess I’d better
get going. I have to spend the night somewhere.” And she turned a sudden
pink, realizing the inference Jack might draw from her remark.
“Everybody” might know Jack down here, but Beebo wasn’t everybody. For
all she knew he was harmless as a shark. The mere fact that he had a
name wasn’t all _that_ reassuring.

“Looks to me like you need some food first,” he said lightly. “There’s
always a sack somewhere.”

“I don’t have much money.”

“Better to spend it on food,” he said. “Anyway, what the hell, I’ll
treat you. There’s some good Wiener schnitzel about a block back.” He
tried to take her wicker case to carry it for her, but she pulled away,
offended as if his offer were a comment on her ability to take care of
herself.

Jack stopped and laughed a little. “Look, my little friend,” he said
kindly. “When I first hit New York I was as pea-green as you are.
Somebody did this for me and let me save my few bucks for a room and job
hunting. This is my way of paying him back. Ten years from now, you’ll
do the same thing for the next guy. Fair?”

It was hard for her to resist. She was almost shaky hungry; she was worn
out; she was lost. And Jack looked as kind as he was. It was a part of
his success in salvaging people: they liked his face. It was homely, but
in the good-humored amiable way that made him seem like an old friend in
a matter of minutes.

Finally Beebo smiled at him. “Fair,” she said. “But I’ll pay you back,
Jack. I will.”

They walked back to the German delicatessen, Beebo with a firm grip on
her suitcase.

She finished her meal in ten minutes. Jack ordered another for her, over
her protests, kidding her about her appetite.

“Jesus,” he said. “When did you eat last?”

“Fort Worth.”

“_Indiana?_” Jack stared.

“Yes. I ate three sandwiches in the rest room, on the train. That was
yesterday.” Beebo drained her milk glass and put it on the table. The
pneumatic little blonde waitress brought the second plateful. Jack,
watching Beebo who was watching the waitress, saw her wide blue eyes
glide up and down the plump pink-uniformed body with curious interest.
Beebo pulled back, holding her breath as the waitress leaned over her to
set a basket of bread on the table, and there was a look of fear on her
face.

Jack thought to himself, she’s afraid of her. Afraid of that bouncy
little bitch. Afraid of ... women?

When she had finished eating, Beebo glanced up at him. For all her
physical sturdiness and arresting face, she was not a forward or a
confident girl.

“You eat like a farm hand,” he chuckled.

“I should. I was raised in farm country,” she said, looking away from
him. Her shyness beguiled him. “Thank you for the food.”

“My pleasure.” He observed her through a scrim of cigarette smoke. “If I
weren’t afraid of scaring hell out of you, I’d ask you over to my place
for a drink,” he said. She blanched. “I mean, a drink of milk,” he said.

“I don’t drink,” she told him apologetically, as if teetotaling were
something hick-town and unsophisticated.

“Not even milk?”

“Not with strange men.”

“Am I really that strange?” he grinned, laughing at her again.

“Am I really that funny?” she demanded.

“No.” He reached over the table top unexpectedly and pressed her hand.
She tried to jerk it away but he held it tight, surprising her with his
strength. “You’re a lovely girl,” he said. It wasn’t suggestive or even
romantic. He didn’t mean it to be. “You’re a sweet young kid and you’re
lost and tired and frightened. You need one thing right now, Beebo, and
the rest will take care of itself.”

“What’s that?” She retrieved her hand and tucked it behind her.

“A friend.”

She gazed at him, sizing him up, and then began to move from the booth.

“I’m no wolf,” Jack said, sliding after her. “Can’t you tell? I just
like to help lost girls. I collect them.” And when she turned back with
a frown of disbelief, he shrugged. “Everybody’s got to have a hobby.”

He bought some Dutch beer and sausage, paid the cashier, and walked with
Beebo out the front door. On the pavement she stopped, swinging her
wicker case around in front of her like a piece of fragile armor. Jack
saw the defensive glint in her eyes.

“Okay, little lost friend,” he said. “You’re under no obligation to me.
If this bothers you, the hell with it. Find yourself a hotel room, a
park bench. I don’t care. Well ... I care, but I don’t want to scare you
any more.”

Beebo hesitated a moment, then held out her hand and shook his. “Thanks
anyway, Jack. I’ll find you some day and pay you back,” she said. She
looked as much afraid to leave him as to stay with him.

“So long, Beebo,” he said, dropping her hand. She walked away from him
backwards a few steps so she could keep an eye on him; turned around and
then turned back.

Jack smiled at her. “I’m afraid I’m just about your safest bet,” he said
kindly. “If you knew how safe, you’d come along without a qualm.”

And when he smiled she had to answer him. “All right,” she said, still
clutching her wicker bag in both hands. “But just so you’ll know: my
father taught me how to fight.”

“Beebo, my dear,” he said as they began to walk toward his apartment,
“you could probably throw me twenty feet through the air if you had to
but you won’t have to. I have no designs on you. Honest to God. I don’t
even have a bunch of etchings to show you in my pad. Nothing but good
talk and cold beer. And a bed.”

Beebo stopped in her tracks.

“Well, the bed is good and cold too,” he said. “God, you’re a scary
one.”

“Did you go home to bed with the first stranger you met in New York?”
she demanded.

“Sure,” he said. “Doesn’t everybody?”

She laughed at last, a full country sound that must have carried across
the hay fields, and followed him again. He walked, hands in pockets,
letting her curb her long stride to keep from getting ahead of him. But
when he tried to take her arm at a corner, she shied away, determined to
rely only on herself.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Jack unlocked the door of his small apartment, holding it with his foot
while Beebo went in. The corridor outside was littered with buckets,
planks, and ladders. “They’re redecorating the hall,” he explained. “We
like to put on a good front in this rattrap.”

He headed for the kitchen with the bag of sausage and the beer, set them
on the counter, and sprang himself a can of cold brew. “What do you
want, Beebo? One of these?” He lifted the can. When she hesitated, he
said, “You don’t really want that milk, do you?”

“Have you got something—weak?”

“Well, I’ve got something colorful,” he said. “I don’t know how weak it
is.” He went down on his haunches in front of a small liquor chest and
foraged in it for a minute. “Somebody gave me this stuff for Christmas
and I’ve been trying to give it away ever since. Here we are.”

He took out an ornate bottle, broke the seal and pulled the cork, and
got down a liqueur glass. When he up-ended the bottle, a rich green
liquid came out, moving at about the speed of cod-liver oil and looking
like some dollar-an-ounce shampoo for Park Avenue lovelies. The pungent
fumes of peppermint penetrated every crack in the wall.

“What is it?” Beebo said, intimidated by the looks of it.

“Peppermint schnapps,” Jack said. “God. It’s even worse than I thought.
Want to chicken out?”

“I grew up in a town full of German farmers,” she said. “I should take
to schnapps like a kid to candy.”

Jack handed over the glass. “Okay, it’s your stomach. Just don’t get
tanked on the stuff.”

“I just want a taste. You make me feel babyish about the milk.”

He picked up his beer and the schnapps bottle, and she followed him into
the living room. “You can drink all the milk you want, honey,” he said,
settling into a leather arm chair, “before the sun goes over the
yardarm. After that, we switch to spirits.”

He turned on a phonograph nearby and turned the sound low. Beebo sat
down a few feet from him on the floor, pulling her skirt primly over her
knees. She seemed awkward in it, like a girl reared in jeans or
jodhpurs. Jack studied her while she took a sip of the schnapps, and
returned her smile when she looked up at him. “Good,” she said. “Like
the sundaes we used to get after the Saturday afternoon movie.”

She was a strangely winning girl. Despite her size, her pink cheeks and
firm-muscled limbs, she seemed to need caring for. At one moment she
seemed wise and sad beyond her years, like a girl who has been forced to
grow up in a hothouse hurry. At the next, she was a picture of rural
naïveté that moved Jack; made him like her and want to help her.

She wore a sporty jacket, the kind with a gold thread emblem on the
breast pocket; a man’s white shirt, open at the throat, tieless and gray
with travel dust; a straight tan cotton skirt that hugged her small
hips; white socks and tennis shoes. Her short hair had been combed
without the manufactured curls and varnished waves that marked so many
teen-agers. It was neat, but the natural curl was slowly fighting free
of the imposed order.

Her eyes were an off-blue, and that was where the sadness showed. They
darted around the room, moving constantly, searching the shadows, trying
to assure her, visually at least, that there was nothing to fear.

“What are you doing here in New York, Beebo?” Jack asked her.

She looked into her glass and emptied it before she answered him.
“Looking for a job,” she said. “Me and everybody else, I guess.”

“What kind of job?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Could I have a little more of that
stuff?” He handed the bottle down to her. “It’s not half as bad as it
looks.”

“Did you have a job back home?” he asked.

“No. I—I just finished high school.”

“In the middle of May?” His brow puckered. “When I was in school they
used to keep us there till June, at least.”

“Well, I—you see—it’s farm country,” she stammered. “They let kids out
early for spring planting.”

“Jesus, honey, they gave that up in the last century.”

“Not the little towns,” she said, suddenly on guard.

Jack looked at his shoes, unwilling to distress her. “Your dad’s a
farmer, then?” he said.

“No, a vet.” She was proud of it. “An animal doctor.”

“Oh. What was he planting in the middle of May—chickens?”

Beebo clamped her jaws together. He could see the muscles knot under her
skin. “If they let the farmer’s kids out early, they have to let the
vet’s kids out, too,” she said, trying to be calm. “Everyone at the same
time.”

“Okay, don’t get mad,” he said and offered her a cigarette. She took it
after a pause that verged on a sulk, but insisted on lighting it for
herself. It evidently bothered her to let him perform the small
masculine courtesies for her, as if they were an encroachment on her
independence.

“So what did they teach you in high school? Typing? Shorthand?” Jack
said. “What can you _do_?”

Beebo blew smoke through her nose and finally gave him a woeful smile.
“I can castrate a hog,” she said. “I can deliver a calf. I can jump a
horse and I can run like hell.” She made a small sardonic laugh deep in
her throat. “God knows they need me in New York City.”

Jack patted her shoulder. “You’ll go straight to the top, honey,” he
said. “But not here. Out west somewhere.”

“It has to be here, even if I have to dig ditches,” she said, and the
wry amusement had left her. “I’m not going home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Wisconsin. A little farming town west of Milwaukee. Juniper Hill.”

“Lots of cheese, beer, and German burghers?” he said.

“Lots of mean-minded puritans,” she said bitterly. “Lots of hard hearts
and empty heads. For me ... lots of heartache and not much more.”

“Why?” he said gently.

She looked away, pouring some more schnapps for herself. Jack was glad
she had a small glass.

“Why did you ditch Juniper Hill, Beebo?” he persisted.

“I—just got into some trouble and ran away. Old story.”

“And your parents disowned you?”

“No. I only have my father—my mother died years ago. My father wanted me
to stay. But I’d had it.”

Jack saw her chin tremble and he got up and brought her a box of
tissues. “Hell, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m too nosy. I thought it might
help to talk it out a little.”

“It might,” she conceded, “but not now.” She sat rigidly, trying to
check her emotion. Jack admired her dignity. After a moment she added,
“My father—is a damn good man. He loves me and he tries to understand
me. He’s the only one who does.”

“You mean the only one in Juniper Hill,” Jack said. “I’m doing my
damnedest to understand you too, Beebo.”

She relented a little from her stiff reserve and said, “I don’t know why
you should, but—thanks.”

“There must be other people in your life who tried to help, honey,” he
said. “Friends, sisters, brothers—”

“One brother,” she said acidly. “Everything I ever did was inside-out,
ass-backwards, and dead wrong as far as Jim was concerned. I humiliated
him and he hated me for it. Oh, I was no dreamboat. I know that. I
deserved a wallop now and then. But not when I was down.”

“That’s the way things go between brothers and sisters,” Jack said.
“They’re supposed to fight.”

“You don’t understand the _reason_.”

“Explain it to me, then.” Jack saw the tremor in her hand when she
ditched her cigarette. He let her finish another glassful of schnapps,
hoping it might relax her. Then he said, “Tell me the real reason why
you left Juniper Hill.”

She answered at last in a dull voice, as if it didn’t matter any more
who knew the truth. “I was kicked out of school.”

Jack studied her, perplexed. He would have been gently amused if she
hadn’t seemed so stricken by it all. “Well, honey, it only happens to
the best and the worst,” he said. “The worst get canned for being too
stupid and the best for being too smart. They damn near kicked me out
once.... I was one of the best.” He grinned.

“Best, worst, or—or different,” Beebo said. “I was different. I mean, I
just didn’t fit in. I wasn’t like the rest. They didn’t want me around.
I guess they felt threatened, as if I were a nudist or a vegetarian, or
something. People don’t like you to be different. It scares them. They
think maybe some of it will rub off on them, and they can’t imagine
anything worse.”

“Than becoming a vegetarian?” he said and downed the rest of his beer to
drown a chuckle. He set the glass on the floor by the leg of his chair.
“Are you a vegetarian, Beebo?” She shook her head. “A nudist?”

“I’m just trying to make you understand,” she said, almost pleading, and
there was a real beacon of fear shining through her troubled eyes.

Jack reached out his hand and held it toward her until she gave him one
of hers. “Are you afraid to tell me, Beebo?” he said. “Are you ashamed
of something? Something you did? Something you _are_?”

She reclaimed her hand and pulled a piece of tissue from her bag, trying
to keep her back straight, her head high. But she folded suddenly around
a sob, bending over to hold herself, comfort herself. Jack took her
shoulders in his firm hands and said, “Whatever it is, you’ll lick it,
honey. I’ll help you if you’ll let me. I’m an old hand at this sort of
thing. I’ve been saving people from themselves for years. Sort of a
sidewalk Dorothy Dix. I don’t know why, exactly. It just makes me feel
good. I like to see somebody I like, learn to like himself. You’re a
big, clean, healthy girl, Beebo. You’re handsome as hell. You’re bright
and sensitive. I like you, and I’m pretty particular.”

She murmured inarticulately into her hands, trying to thank him, but he
shushed her.

“Why don’t you like yourself?” he asked.

After a moment she stopped crying and wiped her face. She threw Jack a
quick cautious look, wondering how much of her story she could risk with
him. Perversely enough, his very kindness and patience scared her off.
She was afraid that the truth would sicken him, alienate him from her.
And at this forlorn low point in her life, she needed his friendship
more than a bed or a cigarette or even food.

Jack caught something of the conflict going on within her. “Tell me what
you can,” he said.

“My dad is a veterinarian,” she began in her low voice. “Everybody in
Juniper Hill loved him. Till he started—drinking too much. But that
wasn’t for a long time. In the beginning we were all very happy. Even
after my mother died, we got along. My brother Jim and I were friends
back in grade school.

“Dad taught us about animals. There wasn’t a job he couldn’t trust me
with when it came to caring for a sick animal. And the past few years
when he’s been—well, drunk so much of the time—I’ve done a lot of the
surgery, too. I’m twice the vet my brother’ll ever be. Jim never did
like it much. He went along because he was ashamed of his squeamishness.
But whenever things got bloody or tough, he ducked out.

“But I got along fine with Dad. The one thing I always wanted was to
live a good life for his sake. Be a credit to him. Be something
wonderful. Be—a doctor. He was so proud of that. He understood, he
helped me all he could.” She drained her glass again. “Some doctor I’ll
be now,” she said. “A witch doctor, maybe.” She filled the glass and
Jack said anxiously, “Whoa, easy there. You’re a milk drinker,
remember?”

She ignored him. “At least I won’t be around to see Dad’s face when he
realizes I’ll never make it to medical school,” Beebo said, the corners
of her mouth turned down. “I hated to leave him, but I had to do it.
It’s one thing to stick it out in a place where they don’t like you.
It’s another to let yourself be destroyed.”

“So you think you’ve solved your problems by coming to the big city?”
Jack asked her.

“Not all of them!” she retorted. “I’ll have to get work, I’ll have to
find a place to live and all that. But I’ve solved the worst one, Jack.”

“Maybe you brought some of them with you,” he said. “You didn’t run as
far away from Juniper Hill as you think. People are still people, no
matter what the town. And Beebo is still Beebo. Do you think New Yorkers
are wiser and better than the people in Juniper Hill, honey? Hell no.
They’re probably worse. The only difference is that here, you have a
chance to be anonymous. Back home everybody knew who you were.”

Beebo threw him a sudden smile. “I don’t think there’s a single Jack
Mann in all of Juniper Hill,” she said. “It was worth the trip to meet
you.”

“Well, I’d like to think I’m that fascinating,” he said. “But you didn’t
come to New York City to find Jack Mann, after all. You came to find
Beebo Brinker. Yourself. Or are you one of those rare lucky ones who
knows all there is to know about themselves by the time they’re
seventeen?”

“Eighteen,” she corrected. “No, I’m not one of the lucky ones. Just one
of the rare ones.” Inexplicably, it struck both of them funny and they
laughed at each other. Beebo felt herself loose and pliable under the
influence of the liqueur. It was exhilarating, a floating release that
shrouded the pain and confusion of her flight from home and arrival in
this cold new place. She was glad for Jack’s company, for his warmth and
humor. “You must be good for me,” she told him. “Either you or the
schnapps.”

“You’re going pretty heavy on that stuff, friend,” he warned her nodding
at the glass. “There’s more in it than peppermint, you know.”

“But it tastes so good going down,” she said, surprised to find herself
still laughing.

“Well, it doesn’t taste so good when it comes back up.”

“I haven’t had that much,” she said and poured herself some more. Jack
rolled his eyes to heaven and made her laugh again.

“You know I could take advantage of you in your condition,” he said,
thinking it might sober her up a little. But his fundamental compassion
and intelligence had put her at ease, led her to trust him. She was
actually enjoying herself a little now, trying to forget whatever it was
that drove her into this new life, and Jack hadn’t the heart to stir up
her fears again. He wondered if she had left a scandal or a tragedy
behind her in Juniper Hill.

“I was going to be a doctor once myself,” he said.

She looked at him with a sort of cockeyed interest. “What happened?”

“Would have taken too long. I wanted to get that degree and get out. And
I wanted love. But you can’t make love to anybody after a long day over
a hot cadaver. You’re too pooped and the sight of human flesh gives you
goose pimples instead of pleasant shivers. Besides, I spent four years
in the Navy in the Second World War, and I’d had it with blood and
suffering.”

Beebo drank the schnapps in her glass. “That’s as good a reason as any
for quitting, I guess,” she said.

“You could still finish up high school and go on to college,” he said,
trying not to sound pushy.

“No. I’ve lost it, Jack. That ambition, that will to do well. I left it
behind when I left my father. I just don’t give a double damn about
medicine, for the first time in my life.”

“Because a bunch of small-minded provincials asked you to leave their
little high school? You make it sound like you were just squirming to be
asked.”

“You’re saying I didn’t have the guts to fight them,” she said, speaking
without resentment. “It isn’t that, Jack. I did fight them, with all
I’ve got. I’m tired of it, that’s all. You can’t fight everybody all the
time and still have room in your life to study and think and learn.”

“Was it that bad, Beebo?”

“_I_ was that bad—to the people in Juniper Hill.”

Jack shook his head in bewilderment and laughed a little. “You don’t
happen to carry the bubonic plague, do you?” he said.

She knew how curious she had made him about herself, and she hadn’t the
courage to expose the truth to him yet. So she merely said, “That’s over
now. My life is going to be different.”

“Different, but not necessarily better,” he said. “I wish to hell you’d
come clean with me, honey. I can’t help you this way. I don’t know what
you’re running away from.”

“I’m not running away from, I’m running _to_,” she said. “To this city,
this chance for a new start.”

“And a new Beebo?” he asked. “Do you think being in a new place will
make you better and braver somehow?”

“I’m not chicken, Jack,” she said firmly. “I left for Dad’s sake as much
as my own.”

“I didn’t say you were, honey,” he told her gently. “I don’t think a
chicken would have come so far to face so much all alone. I think you’re
a decent, intelligent girl. I think you’re a good-looking girl, too,
just for the record. That much is plain as the schnapps on your face.”

Beebo frowned at him, self-conscious and surprised. “You’re the first
man who ever called me ‘good-looking,’” she said. “No, the second. My
father always thought....” Her voice went very soft. “You know, it kills
me to go off and—and abandon him like this.” She got up from the floor
and walked a little unsteadily to the front window.

“Why don’t you write to him?” Jack suggested. “If he was so good to
you—if you were so close—he deserves to know where you are.”

“That was the whole point of leaving,” she said, shaking her head. “To
keep it secret. To relieve him.”

“Of what?”

“Of myself. I was a burden to him. He did too much for me. He tried to
be father and mother both. He indulged me when he should have been
stern. He never could bear to punish me.”

She stood looking out his front window in silence, crying quietly. Her
face was still, with the only movement the rhythmic swell and spill of
tears from her eyes.

“My father,” she said, “is no angel. Much as I love him, I know _that_
much.” Jack sensed a whole raft of sad secrets behind that brief phrase.

He stood up, crushed his cigarette, and looked at her for a moment. She
stood with her legs apart and well-defined by her narrow cotton skirt.
Her hair was tousled and damp with sweat, and there was a shine in her
wet eyes reflected from the lamplight that intensified the blue. She had
left her schnapps glass on the floor and her empty hands hung limp
against her thighs. She lifted them now and then to brush away tears.
Her head inclined slightly, like that of a youngster who has grown too
tall too fast and doesn’t want to tower over her classmates.

Her face, sensitive and striped with tears, was in many ways the face of
a boy. Her stance was boyish and her low voice too was like a boy’s,
balanced on the brink of maturity. And there it would stay all her life,
never to plumb the true depth of a man’s.

She became aware of Jack’s eyes on her and turned to pick up her glass,
but bumped against a corner of a table and nearly fell. Jack reached her
in two big steps and pulled her straight again while she put both hands
to her temples. “I feel as if I’m dreaming,” she murmured. “Am I?” She
looked quizzically at him.

“You’re not, but I am,” he said, taking her elbow and steering her
toward the bedroom. “I’m a dream walking. I’m dreaming and you’re in my
dream. When I wake up, you’ll cease to exist.”

“That would solve everything, wouldn’t it?” she said, leaning on him
more than she realized. She tried to stop him in the center of the room
to get her liqueur, but he kept pushing till she gave up.

“Come on, let Uncle Jack bed you down,” he said. He took one of her arms
across his shoulder, the better to balance them both, pulled her into
the bedroom, and unloaded her on his double bed. Beebo spread-eagled
herself into all four corners with a sigh, and it wasn’t till Jack had
all her clothes off but the underwear that she came to and tried to
protest. Jack removed her socks with a yank.

“Why, you lousy man,” she said, staring at him. But when he smelled the
socks, she laughed.

“God, what an exciting creature you are,” he grimaced, surveying her
muscular angles with all the ardor of an old hen.

“So I’m not your type,” she said, getting to her feet. “I can still take
off my own underwear.” She tried it, lost her balance and sat down
summarily on the bed.

Jack tossed her a nightshirt from his dresser. It was scarlet and orange
cotton flannel. “I like flashy sleepers,” he explained.

She put it on while he washed in the bathroom. But when he returned he
found her leaning on the dresser, dizzily close to losing the schnapps.

Jack guided her into the bathroom and got her to the washbowl before it
came up.

“I had no idea there was so much in the bottle,” Jack said when she had
gotten the last of it out. At last she straightened up to look in the
mirror. “By God, Beebo, you were the same color as the schnapps for a
minute there.”

He made her rinse her mouth and then dragged her back to bed, where he
washed her unconscious face and hands. He sat and gazed at her before he
turned out the light, speculating about her. Asleep, she looked younger,
adolescent: still a child, with a child’s purity; soon an adult with
adult desires. Did she know already what those desires would be? And was
that why she fled from Juniper Hill? The knowledge that her desires and
her adult self would shock the town, shock her father, shock even
herself?

Jack thought so. He thought she knew what it was that troubled her so
deeply, even though she might not know the name for it. It wasn’t just
being “different” that she hated. It was the kind of differentness. Jack
wanted to comfort her, to explain that she wasn’t alone in the world,
that other people were different in the same way she was. But he
couldn’t speak of it to her until she admitted it first to him.

He smoothed the hair off her forehead, admiring her features and her
flawless skin without the least taint of physicality. He felt sorry for
her, and scoffed at himself for wishing she were the boy she so
resembled at that moment. Then he lay down beside her and went to sleep.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo slept for fourteen hours. She wakened with a glaring square of
sunshine astride her face. When she rolled over to escape it, she felt a
new sensation: the beginning beat of the long rhythm of a hangover—her
first.

The thought of the peppermint liqueur nauseated her for a few moments.
She looked around the room to forget it and clear her head, and found a
note pinned to the pillow next to hers. It gave her a start to realize
Jack had spent the night in bed with her. And then it made her laugh and
the laugh sent aching echoes through her head.

The note said, “I’m at work. Home around 5:30. Plenty of feed in refrig.
You don’t want it but you NEED it. White pills in medicine chest for
head. Take two and LIVE. You’re a devil in bed. Jack.”

She smiled, and lifted herself with gingerly care from the bed. It was
two-thirty in the afternoon.

                   *       *       *       *       *

When Jack came home with a brown bag full of groceries, she was smoking
quietly and reading the paper in his kitchen.

“How are you?” he said, smiling.

“Fine.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Well, I’m clean, and you can believe _that_. I took a bath.”

“On you it looks good,” he said, putting food away.

Beebo shook her head a little. “I was just thinking ... you’re about the
only friend I have, Jack. I’ve been kicking myself all day for not
thanking you. I mean, you listened to me for hours. You’ve been damn
nice about my problems.”

“That’s my style,” he said, but he was flattered. “Besides, us
frustrated doctors have to stick together. It’s nice to come home to a
welcoming committee that thinks I’m the greatest guy in the world.”

“You must have a lot of friends down here,” she said, curious about him.
Beebo had done all the talking since they met. But who was Jack Mann,
the guy who did all the listening? Just a goodhearted young man in a
strange town who gave her a drink and a bed, and was about to give her
some dinner.

“Oh, plenty of friends,” he said, lighting the oven.

“You made me feel safe and—and _human_ last night, Jack. If that doesn’t
sound too silly.”

“Did you think you weren’t?” He put the ready-cooked food in the stove
to warm.

“I’m grateful. I wanted you to know.”

“Marry me and prove it,” he said.

She looked at him with her mouth open, astonished. “You’re kidding!” she
said.

“Nope. I always wanted a dozen kids.”

Beebo began to laugh. “I’d make a lousy mother, I’m afraid,” she said.

“You’d make a dandy mother, honey. Nice girls always like kids.”

“Is that why you want to get married? Just to have kids?”

“When I was in the Navy, I was always the sucker who put on the whiskers
and passed out the popsicles on Christmas Day in the Islands. Hot? Mamma
mia! I nearly passed out myself. Melted almost as fast as the goo I was
giving away. But I loved those kids.”

“Then why aren’t you married? Why don’t you have some kids of your own?”
she prodded. It seemed peculiar to her that so affable a man, especially
one who liked children, should be single.

“Beebo, my ravishing love, why don’t _you_ get married and have some
kids?” he countered, disconcerting her.

“A woman has to do the having,” she said. “All a man has to do is get
her pregnant.”

“_All_,” Jack repeated, rolling his eyes.

“Besides, I don’t want to get married,” she added, her eyes veiled and
troubled.

“Hell, everybody gets married,” Jack said, watching her closely. Maybe
she would open up a bit now and talk about what really mattered.

“Everybody but _you_,” she said.

He hunched his shoulders and grinned. “Touché,” he said. Then he opened
the oven door to squint at the bubbling ravioli, and drew it out with a
potholder, spooning it onto their plates.

They sat down at the table and Jack told her, “This is the greatest
Italian food you’ll ever eat. Pasquini on Thompson Street makes it up.”
He glanced up and found Beebo studying him. “What’s the matter? Don’t
like pasta?”

“Jack, have you ever been in love?” she said.

Jack smiled and swallowed a forkful of food before he answered. She was
asking him, as circuitously as possible, to tell her about life. She
didn’t want him to guess it, but that was what she wanted.

“I fall in love twice a year,” he said. “Once in the fall and once in
the spring. In the fall the kids come back to school, a few blocks from
here. There are plenty of newcomers waiting to be loved the wrong way in
September. They call me Wrong Way Mann.” He glanced up at her, but
instead of taking the hint, she was puzzled by it.

“I didn’t know there was a wrong way,” she said earnestly.

“In love, as in everything else,” he said. “I just—well, let’s say I
have a talent for goofing things up.” He wondered if he ought to be
frank with her about himself. It might relieve her, might make it
possible for her to talk about herself then. But, looking at her face
again, he decided against it. The whole subject scared her still. She
wanted to learn and yet she feared that what she learned might be ugly,
or more frightening than her ignorance.

He would have to go slowly with her, teach her gently what she was, and
teach her not to hate the word for it: Lesbian. Such a soft word,
mellifluous on the tongue; such a stab in the heart to someone very
young, unsure and afraid.

“And in the spring?” she was asking. “You fall in love then, too?”

“That’s just the weather, I guess. I fall in love with everybody in the
spring. The butcher, the baker, the candlestickmaker.” He smiled at her
face. She was amused and startled by the male catalog, and afraid to let
her amusement show. Jack took her off the hook. “Good, hm?” He nodded at
the food.

Beebo took a bite without answering. “What’s it like to live down here?
I mean—” She cleared her throat. “In the Village?”

“Just one mad passionate fling after another,” he said. “Try the
cheese.” He passed it to her.

“With the butcher and the baker?” she said humorously and made him
laugh.

At last he said, “Well honey, it’s like everyplace else. You eat three
squares a day, you sleep eight hours a night, you work and earn money
and obey the laws ... well, _most_ of the laws. The only difference
between here and Juniper Hill is, we stay open all night.”

She laughed. And suddenly she said, “You know, this _is_ good,” and
began to eat with an appetite.

“So’s the salad.” He pushed the bowl toward her. “Now you tell me
something, Little Girl Lost,” he said. “Were _you_ ever in love?”

She looked down at her plate, uncomfortably self-conscious.

“Oh, come on,” he teased. “I’m not going to blackmail you.”

“Not real love,” she said. “Puppy love, I guess.”

“That kind can hurt as much as the other,” Jack said, and Beebo was
grateful for his perception. “But it ought to be fun now and then, too.”

“Maybe it ought to be, but it never was,” she said. “I guess I’m like
you, Jack. I goof everything up.”

He pointed his fork at her plate. “You’ve stopped eating again,” he
said. “I want you to taste your future employer’s cooking.”

“My what?” she exclaimed.

“Pasquini needs a delivery boy. Can you drive?”

“I can drive, but can I be a boy?” she said with such a rueful face that
he laughed aloud.

“You can wear slacks,” he said. “That’s the best I could do. The rest is
up to you.”

His laughter embarrassed her, as if perhaps she had gone too far with
her remark, and she said as seriously as possible, “I learned to drive
on a truck with six forward gears.”

“This is a panel truck.”

“Duck soup. God, I hope he’ll take me, Jack. I have exactly ten bucks
between me and the poorhouse. I didn’t know what I was going to do with
myself.”

“Well, you haven’t got the job yet, honey. But I told Pasquini you had
lots of experience and you’d do him the favor of dropping by in the
morning.”

“Some favor!” she grinned. “Me, who couldn’t find Times Square if my
life depended on it, making deliveries in this tangled-up part of town.”

“You’ll catch on.”

“What are the Pasquinis like?” she said.

“You’ll like Marie. She’s Pete’s wife. Does all the cooking. It’s her
business, really. It was just a spaghetti joint when Pete’s dad ran it.
After he died Pete took over and damn near went bankrupt. Then he
married Marie. She cooks _and_ keeps the books—like nobody can. She used
to be a pretty girl, too, till she had too many kids and too much
pizza.”

“What about Pete?”

“I don’t know what to tell you about that guy. I’ve known him slightly
for the past ten years, but no one knows him very well. As far as
Marie’s concerned, he’s her number one delivery boy. As a husband and a
father, he’s her idea of a bust.”

“You mean he cheats?”

“He’s out every night of the week with weird girls on his arm. As if he
were proud of it. He picks out the oddballs—you know, the ones who
haven’t cut their hair since they were four years old, and wear
dead-white make-up and cotton lisle stockings.”

“Lousy taste,” Beebo said, but when Jack smiled she looked away. She
wasn’t going to give him the chance to ask what her own taste might be.

Jack paused, sensing her reticence, and then he went on, “Pete used to
run a gang when he was in his teens. He was our local color.”

“You mean he’s a juvenile delinquent?” Beebo asked naively. “Are you
sending me to work for a crook?”

“He’s an _ex_-j.d.,” Jack chuckled. “He went on to better things the day
they broke his zip gun.”

“My God! Is he a criminal, Jack?”

“No, honey, don’t panic. He’s just a kook. He’s more of a loner now. It
comes naturally to him to skulk around. But as far as I can tell, he
only skulks after dark. And after Beat broads. He hasn’t been arrested
since he was nineteen, and that’s been ten years.”

“He sounds like the ideal employer,” Beebo cracked.

“You could do worse; you with ten bucks in your pocket,” Jack reminded
her. “Besides, he’s lived here all his life. He may be odd but you get
used to him.”

“Just how ‘odd’ is he?”

“Honey, you’ve _got_ to be a little odd down here, or you lose your
membership card,” he said. “Besides, I’m not asking you to cut your
veins and mingle blood with him. Just pass out the pizzas and take his
money once a week.”

Beebo shook her head and laughed. “Well, if you say so,” she said. “I
guess I’m safe as long as I don’t wear cotton lisle stockings.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

She got the job. Pete Pasquini had more deliveries than he could handle
alone. Marie’s sauces, salads, preserves, and pastas were making a name
and making a pile. The orders were going up so fast that it would take a
second driver to deliver them all.

Beebo, dressed in a clean white shirt, sweater, and tan slacks, faced
Pete at eight in the morning. She was somewhat intimidated by the looks
of him and by Jack’s thumb sketch of the night before. He was a
dour-faced young Italian-American with blue jowls and a down-turned
mouth. If he ever smiled—Beebo doubted it—he would have been almost
handsome, for his teeth were straight and white, and he had a peculiarly
sensual mouth beneath his plum-dark eyes. He looked mean and sexy—a
combination that instantly threw Beebo high on her guard.

“You’re Beebo?” he said, looking up at her with an order pad and pencil
poised in his hands.

“Yes,” she said. “Jack Mann sent me. I—he—said you needed a driver.”

He smirked a little. Probably his smile for the day, she thought.
“You’re as tall as I am,” he observed, as if pleased about it; pleased
at least to make her self-conscious about it.

“Would you like to see me drive? I’m a good driver,” she said
resentfully.

“How come you’re so tall, Beebo? Girls ain’t supposed to be so tall.” He
put the paper and pencil down and turned to look her over, leaning
jauntily on a linoleum-covered counter as he did so.

Beebo folded her arms over her chest in a gesture that told him to slow
down, back off; a very unfeminine gesture that ordinarily offended a
man’s ideals. “I can drive. You want a driver,” she said curtly. “Let’s
talk business.” She had learned long ago to stand her ground when
someone taunted her. Otherwise the taunting grew intolerable.

To her amazement, she made Pete Pasquini laugh. It was not a
reassuring sound. “You’re a feisty one, ain’t you?” he grinned.
“You—are—a—_feisty_—one.” He separated each word with slow relish,
enjoying her discomfiture. For though she stood tall and bold in front
of him, her hot face betrayed her embarrassment. She gave him a
withering look and then turned and strode toward the door till she heard
his voice behind her, accompanied by his footsteps.

“No offense, Beebo,” he said. “I’m gonna be your boss. I wanta be your
friend, too. I don’t want people workin’ for me don’t like me. Shake
hands?”

She turned around slowly, unconvinced. Maybe he really thought he was
ingratiating himself with her. But she didn’t like his method much. It
was the thought of her nearly empty wallet that finally prompted her to
offer him her hand. He took it with a rather light loose grasp,
surprising Beebo who was used to the hearty grip of the farmers in her
home county. But when he lifted her hand up and said, “Hey, that’s big,
too!” she snatched it away as if he had burned her.

“Okay, okay, all you got to do is drive, you don’t have to shake hands
with me all day,” he said, amused by her reaction. “I can see it ain’t
your favorite game.”

It seemed peculiar enough to Beebo that they shake hands at all. They
were not officially employer and employee yet, and even if they were,
they were still man and girl. It made her feel creepy. She assumed that
Pete had to get his wife’s approval before he could hire her. Marie was
supposed to run the business.

“Well, come on, I’ll show you where things is,” Pete said.

“You mean it’s settled?” She hesitated. “I’m hired?”

“Why not?” He turned back to look at her.

“Well, I thought your wife? I mean—?” She stopped, not wishing to anger
him. His face had turned very dark.

“My wife _what_?” he said. “You never mind my wife. If I say you’re
hired, you’re hired. I don’t want no back talk about the wife. You dig?”

She nodded, startled by the force of his spite. She made a mental note
not to press that sore spot again. He apparently needed and wanted the
money Marie’s succulent concoctions brought in, but he hated
surrendering control of the shop to her. Yet it was the price of their
success. She knew what she was doing, in the kitchen and in the
accounts, and he was afraid to interfere.

Beebo stood frowning at the sawdust floor.

“What’s the matter, kid? Something bugging you?” Pete asked.

She glanced up at him. It was strange that he should hire her on the
spot without the slightest idea if she could drive worth a damn. “Do you
want me to start deliveries this morning?” she said.

“I’ll take you around, show you the route,” he said. “First we got to
make up the orders.”

He walked toward the back of the store with Beebo behind him. “Mr.
Pasquini, there’s just one thing,” she said.

“It’s Pete. Yeah, what thing?” He handed her a large cardboard carton to
pack a grocery order in.

“How much will it pay?” Beebo asked, standing there with the box,
unwilling to start working till she knew what she was worth.

“Fifty a week to start,” he said, without looking up. He lifted some
bottled olive oil down from a nearby shelf. “Things work out good, I’ll
raise you. You want it, don’t you?” He looked at her then.

There was a barely noticeable pause before she answered, “I want it.”
But she spoke with a sliver of misgiving stuck in the back of her mind.

Pete accompanied her on the delivery route that morning and again in the
afternoon, watching her handle the truck, showing her where the
customers lived. She had spent the night before with Jack studying a map
of New York City and Greenwich Village, but what had seemed fairly
logical on paper bogged down in colorful confusion when she took to the
streets.

Pete swung an arm up on the seat behind her, his knees jutting toward
her legs, and now and then when she missed a direction he would grab the
wheel and start the turn for her. She disliked his closeness extremely,
and throughout the day she was aware of his eyes on her face and body.
It almost made her feel as if she had a figure, for the first time in
her life, and the idea shocked her.

Beebo had broad shoulders and hardly a hint of a bosom. No man had ever
looked at her appreciatively before, not even Jack Mann, who obviously
liked her and enjoyed her company. She was not sure whether Pete admired
her or was merely interested because she was so different from other
girls.

He can’t possibly like me, she thought. Not the way men like women. The
notion was so preposterous that it made her smile and reassured her.
Till Pete noticed the smile and said, “What’s so funny, kid?” He looked
too eager to know and she brushed it off. He let it go, but watched her
more attentively, making her squirm a little.

It was a relief to climb down from the truck that afternoon—and a blow
to feel the heavy clap of a masculine hand on her shoulder. “You did
real good, Beebo,” Pete said, and the hand lay there until she spun away
from him and walked inside to meet his wife.

Marie Pasquini was twenty-six, the overweight and overworked mother of
five little Pasquinis. She did most of the cooking while Pete’s mother
tended her kids, and the two women fell into several pan-rattling
arguments per day. Beebo could hear the soprano squeals of young
children upstairs in the apartment above the store, and a periodic
disciplinary squawk from Grandma Pasquini.

Marie greeted Beebo with a big smile, revealing the shadow of the pretty
face concealed beneath the fat.

“Your accent is French, isn’t it?” Beebo said.

“You got it,” Marie beamed. “Smart girl.” She moved about the kitchen
while they got acquainted, eating, working, and talking incessantly.
Pete slouched against the kitchen door chewing a wooden matchstick and
watching Beebo.

Marie worked hard and she ate hard and she was going all to hips. But
she was friendly and cheerful, and Beebo liked her.

“That’s a good boy, that Jack,” Marie said. “He comes in here two, three
times a week, buys my food. Tells his friends, ‘Eat Pasquini’s stuff,’
and by God, they eat.”

“He gave me some last night,” Beebo said. “It’s good.”

“You bet.” Marie stirred her sauce and glanced at Beebo. “You live with
him now?”

“Well—temporarily,” Beebo said, taken aback both by the question and by
Pete’s silent laughter.

“About time he got a girl,” Marie said briskly. “Even one in pants.” And
she glanced humorously at Beebo’s tan chinos.

Beebo colored up. “Well, it’s not quite like that,” she protested.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” Marie said, holding up two spattered hands. “A boy
and a girl ... well...!” and she gave a Gallic chuckle.

“What you want to do, embarrass the kid?” Pete demanded suddenly with
mock anger. “She don’t sleep with no lousy fag.”

“Shut that big mouth, Pete,” Marie said sharply, without bothering to
look at him. “She don’t want to hear dirty talk, neither.”

Beebo was burning to ask what a fag was, but she didn’t dare. She could
hear in her imagination the cackling it would provoke from Pete.

Marie stirred in silence for a moment. “I never saw a boy put up with so
much,” she said finally. “He got people in and out, in and out, every
damn day, eating him out of house and home.” Beebo squirmed guiltily.
“His only trouble, he got too big a heart. Don’t never take advantage of
him like the others, Beebo.”

“What others?”

“You don’t know?” Marie looked at her, puzzled.

“Well, I’ve only known Jack a little while. I mean—”

“Oh.” Marie nodded sagely. “Well, he got too many fair-weather friends.
Know they can have whatever he got they want. So they take. And he lets
them. Can’t stand to see people go without. He’s a good boy. Too good.”

“He ain’t all _that_ good, Marie,” Pete drawled, grinning at Beebo. “You
just like him because he comes in here and gives you that swishy talk
about what a good-looking dame you are. All that proves is, he got bad
eyes. Now, Beebo here might have trouble with him, you never know. If I
was her, I wouldn’t climb in his bed.”

“Pete, you got a mind even dirtier than your mouth,” Marie said. “Get
out of my kitchen, I don’t want the food dirtied up too. Out, _salaud_!”

Beebo was amused by her accent, comically mismated with the
ungrammatical English she had learned from Pete.

Marie threw a potlid at her husband. “See?” Pete shrugged at Beebo,
catching the lid. “I try to say a few words and what do I get? Pots and
pans. And she wonders why I go out at night.”

“Out!” Marie stamped her foot and he left them, disappearing bizarrely
like a wraith into the gloom of the darkened store. After nearly a full
minute had elapsed Beebo became aware with a silent start that the
fingers of his left hand were curled around the door frame: five
orphaned earthworms searching for the dirt.

Beebo stared at them with something very near loathing. She wondered if
she was supposed to see them, and if he thought they would please her
for some obscure reason. Or was he hiding, thinking the fingers out of
sight? No, he knew damn well she could see them, and would. They were
his gesture of invitation, unheard and unseen by his wife.

Beebo began to sweat with alarm and revulsion. She chatted determinedly
with Marie for almost fifteen minutes before those five pale fingers
retreated from their post. Maybe it was supposed to be a gag, Beebo told
herself. She didn’t want to mention it to Marie. It would make her look
a fool, perhaps even hysterical if the whole thing was only a joke.

That’s what it is, Beebo told herself firmly. That’s what it has to be.
She stood up and thanked Marie, accepting a bag of hot fresh-cooked
chicken to take home for dinner, and walked through the front of the
shop. She held herself together tightly, and if she had seen the least
movement, heard the least whisper, she would have lashed out in abrupt
terror. She had the uncanny feeling that Pete was somewhere waiting with
those loathsome hands. But she couldn’t see him, she didn’t hear him,
and she reached the door and the outside with a gasp of relief.

The relief was so deep that it turned into a laugh, soothing her and
making her a little ashamed of herself. Away from Pete she could scold
herself for her aversion to him. Maybe it wasn’t fair. He was just a
guy, not a ghost, not a snake. He was spooky, but Marie seemed as
healthy and normal as her good foods.

Beebo was disturbed by the strangeness of Pete’s manner, but she could
never believe that any man would truly desire her, no matter how creepy
he was. Not even a nut like Pete Pasquini. For his own reasons he was
making a study of her, but beyond that he would never go. She began to
feel safe and comfortable again as she rounded the corner to Jack’s
street. She felt unassailable in the fortress of her flat-chested,
muscular young body. It was not the stuff that male dreams are made of.

                   *       *       *       *       *

As Jack explained to her later, it was himself and others like him who
had talked the Pasquinis’ shop into a financial success. Rather
abruptly, Pete and Marie found themselves making money, and Pete, after
an adolescence full of alley wars and hock-shop heists, found himself
taking a belated interest in the dough: not the flour kind, the folding
kind.

He had married Marie overseas when he was in the service and brought her
back to his inheritance: the foundering grocery shop his father had left
him. Undismayed, Marie set out to bear his kids and learn his mother’s
recipes. By a combination of luck, sense, and skill, Marie pulled them
out of the dumps.

It was still nominally Pete’s business, yet he did little more than run
his wife’s errands and pocket all the money Marie would let him have. He
always demanded more, but he respected her French thrift. The money she
refused to give him went back into the business and made it possible for
him to insist on more gradually as time went on.

This arrangement galled Pete but he preferred it to poverty. Still, he
had to get even with her. So he did it by openly sniffing up skirts
around Greenwich Village. He would even flaunt a girl at Marie now and
then and she, stung, would call him half a man who played with other
girls because he didn’t have what it took to keep one good woman
satisfied. Or else she ignored him entirely, which enraged him.

It was not a quiet cozy family. Pete did not know or like his children
very well. He got on famously with his mother, but his mother and his
wife were lifelong enemies. Beebo began to learn about them as she
worked near them in the shop.

Pete watched Beebo move around during the first week, making her feel
clumsy as a young colt; getting in her way deliberately (she was sure)
to make her dodge around him; turning up in out-of-the-way corners where
she didn’t expect to see him. Her antipathy to him was lively, but
fortunately she didn’t see much of him. Filling orders took less time
than delivering them and she was out of the shop most of the day. In the
truck she was disposed to be pleased with her job. She liked to drive.
She liked to talk to people, and the customers were friendly. She even
liked the chore of carrying the heavy cartons up and down all day. It
pleased her to feel strong, equal to the task.

A week ago all her hopes had been crashing around her. She had retreated
in disgrace from a cruel predicament. Then she found Jack Mann, a
friend; a job, and some self-respect, one right after the other. She was
grateful, full of the resilient optimism of youth.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Without any specific words on the subject, Beebo and Jack came to an
understanding that she would live with him for a while, till she could
afford a place for herself. “You’ll be better off with a roommate,” Jack
advised her casually. “I’ll have to introduce you to some of my
upper-class female friends.”

“Sure,” she grinned. “‘Pamela, this is my lower-class female friend,
Beebo Brinker.’ And she’ll say, ‘Dahling, you’re absolutely crashing,
but I can’t possibly share my apartment with those pants.’” She made
Jack laugh at her. “Besides, Jackson,” Beebo added rather shyly, “I’ve
already got a roommate. He only has one fault—he won’t let me pay my
half of the rent.”

“I like to pay bills,” Jack said. “Gives me a sense of power.”

“Marie says you’ve got too big a heart,” Beebo told him. “And she’s
right.”

“Marie’s a good girl,” he said. “How are you getting along with Peter
the Wolf?”

“Fine, as long as he’s out of my sight.”

Jack grinned. “You can handle him, honey. Just keep a can of corn beef
in your pocket. If he tries to lift your wallet, clobber him.”

“It’s not my wallet I’m worried about,” she said. “There’s nothing in
it, anyway. It’s just that he’s always under my feet when he should be
on the other side of the store.”

“I suspect it’s for Marie’s benefit,” Jack said. “Every female who comes
into the store gets the once-over from Pete—provided Marie is looking.
And most of the time, she is. She likes to keep score, I guess.”

“There was a girl today,” Beebo said. “She came in the shop about noon,
when Marie was fixing lunch. I waited on her.” Her face became intent,
as she summoned the girl’s image in her mind’s eye.

“What about her?” Jack said curiously.

But Beebo, coming to herself at the sound of his voice, said, “Oh,
nothing. But she was more Pete’s type ... _any_ man’s type.”

“What was she like?”

“She had long black hair,” Beebo said, as if it were very special.
“People don’t let their hair grow like that any more. It was lovely. She
let it hang free down her back. And her face....” She was gone again,
seeing it in her imagination.

“She must have been a looker,” Jack said, frustrated by the reticence
between himself and Beebo. He knew what hundreds of questions she needed
to ask, what a wealth of help she would be wanting soon. But she didn’t
dare start asking and because she didn’t, Jack dared not force the
answers on her yet.

“She was absolutely gorgeous,” Beebo said with a certain wonderment and
innocence that touched him. “I never saw such a girl in my life before.”
There was a small silence. Beebo’s words hung in the air like a neon
sign and reduced her abruptly to confusion. To cover up, she said, “She
wasn’t a very nice girl, though. Not by your standards.”

“My standards?”

“She’s not afraid of boys,” Beebo grinned. “At least, she wasn’t afraid
of Pete. But I think they knew each other from somewhere. He called her
... Mona.” She spoke the name self-consciously. “It sounds
old-fashioned, doesn’t it?”

“I wonder if it’s Mona Petry,” Jack said. “She has black hair, but I
didn’t think it was that long. Still, I haven’t seen her for a while.”

“Who’s Mona Petry?” Beebo asked, her eyes intent on Jack.

“Old flame of Pete’s,” Jack said. “She used to come into the store a lot
three or four years ago. She and Pete got quite a charge out of putting
poor Marie on. Mona isn’t the charitable type. She likes to land a man
who belongs to some other woman—more to spite the other woman than
because she wants the man. As soon as she won Pete, she dumped him like
a sack of meal. For some reason, Pete never fought back. Makes me think
she really meant something to him. God knows, none of the other broads
do.”

“Is she one of those man-hungry girls that can’t get enough?” Beebo
said. “I forget what they’re called, but there’s a name for it.”

“The name is nymphomaniac,” Jack said. “But Mona doesn’t love men. She
just plays around with them. They’re good ego builders.” He lighted a
cigarette, seeing without seeming to, the concentration on Beebo’s face.
The question was there on her tongue, in her mind, but she couldn’t get
it out. _If Mona doesn’t love men_, she was thinking ... _then who_?

“There’s another word for Mona,” Jack said. Beebo tensed up. “Bitch.” He
threw her a grin and made her laugh with nervous relief. “Actually, Mona
loves girls,” Jack went on, speaking in a smooth casual flow, a
conversational tone that bespoke no shock, no disapproval, nothing but
ordinary interest. He deliberately looked at the front page of the
evening paper as he spoke.

Beebo answered huskily, “What do you mean? What girls?”

“Lesbians,” he said. “Want to freshen this up for me, pal?” He handed
her his highball glass. She took it with astonishment still plain on her
face. When she returned from the kitchen with the new drink, she asked
him, “Aren’t they sort of—_immoral_? I heard the word once before. I
thought you weren’t supposed to say it.”

At that, Jack looked up. “Lesbian? You mean you thought it was a dirty
word?” he exclaimed, and laughed in spite of himself. Beebo was
momentarily offended until he cleared his throat and said, “Forgive me,
honey, but that’s the bloodiest nonsense I’ve heard in a long time.
Whoever in the hell told you it was dirty?”

“Doesn’t it mean loose women?” Beebo asked.

He shook his head. “It means _gay_ women,” he said. “It means homosexual
women. It means women, Beebo, who love other women. The way heterosexual
women love men.”

His words put a focus on Beebo’s fascination. She stared at him from the
sofa with her lips parted and her eyes fixed steadily on his. “You said
Mona was a bitch,” she said finally, softly. “And then you said she was
a Lesbian. Doesn’t that make her cheap? Q.E.D.?”

“Some of the staunchest Puritan ladies I know are double-dyed bitches,”
Jack said briskly. “And just because Mona is a bad apple doesn’t mean
all the gay girls in the world are full of worms. Mona would be bitchy
anyway, gay _or_ straight.”

“What’s ‘straight’?”

“Heterosexual,” Jack said.

“Where did you learn all those words?” Beebo said, bewildered.

“I’m a native. I speak the lingo,” he said, but instead of catching his
implication, she thought he meant only that he lived in Greenwich
Village so long he had picked it up, like everyone else.

“Does it ever happen that a nice girl is a Lesbian?” she asked him
shyly.

“All the time,” he said, opening up the paper and gazing through the
ball scores.

“Did you ever meet any?”

“I’ve met most of them,” he chuckled. “They’re just as friendly and
pleasant as other girls. Why not?”

“But can’t you tell by looking at them that they’re—” She rubbed a hand
over her mouth as if to warn herself not to speak the word, and then
said it anyway: “—Lesbian?”

“You mean, do they all wear army boots and Levis?” Jack said with a
smile. “Does Mona Petry look like a buck private?”

Beebo shook her head. “That’s why it’s so hard to believe she’s what you
say she is.”

“Gay? Why hell, she’s slept with more girls than she has men. And let me
tell you, that’s damn near enough girls to elect a lady president.”

Beebo laughed with him, and yet she felt a strange obsession with the
whole idea. She half resented Jack’s merriment on the subject, although
she was relieved that he displayed no contempt for Lesbians as a group.
Only for Mona Petry. She was surprised to find herself wanting to defend
Mona, whom she knew so little. And yet she trusted Jack’s judgment.
Still, what a pity to think a girl that pretty was that hard.

Jack sipped his drink and picked up his cigarette, still with his eyes
on the paper. “There are some nice little gay bars around the
neighborhood,” he said. “We’ll have to take some of them in. Maybe this
weekend, hm?” He didn’t look at her. His cigarette waggled between his
lips as he talked.

“Is it all right to go there?” Beebo asked. “Don’t the police make raids
on those places?”

“Now and then!” he conceded. “Of course, if you’d rather not....”

“Oh, I’d like to go,” she said, so quickly that he smiled into the
newsprint. “But aren’t they just for men—the gay bars?”

“Men, girls, and everything in between,” he assured her.

“Do you ever go there, Jack?”

Again he was tempted to be honest with her, and still again he
restrained himself. “I go when the mood is on me,” he said. Beebo became
silent at once, as if she suspected she was trying to learn too much too
fast. But she spent the remaining weekdays waiting impatiently for a
tour of the bars with Jack.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Jack took her to three or four of his favorite places, and to one
strictly Lesbian bar where they admitted only the faces they recognized,
through a window in the door. Beebo followed him around quietly,
watching, listening, almost breathing in the atmosphere. She said
little, and most of what she did say was interrogatory.

Jack answered her calmly while he sipped one beer after another. He
would order one for her and let her work at it, but he usually ended up
finishing it himself. In every bar he was kept busy greeting people,
trading jokes, laughing. Beebo trailed along in his wake, smiling and
shaking hands with the strangers who were Jack’s friends, and promptly
forgetting their names.

But not their faces. Toward the end of the evening she began to feel
that she had seen more faces in one night than she had seen in a
lifetime in Juniper Hill. And these faces seemed different to her: rare
and beautiful, sharers of a special knowledge. They had bright eyes and
young smiles, no matter how old they were.

“They make a big thing of keeping young down here,” Jack told her. “The
men are worse than the girls. Nobody loves an old queen.”

It was almost one in the morning when they left the last co-ed bar and
Jack asked if she was game for one more. “This one is just for
Lesbians,” he said.

She nodded, and a few minutes later they were being admitted to a
basement bar saturated with pink light, paneled with mirrors, and filled
with girls. More girls, more sizes, types, and ages, than Beebo had ever
seen collected together in one place. The place was called the Colophon
and it was decorated with the emblems of various famous publishing
houses.

Jack fought his way through the crush at the bar, absorbing a lot of
pointed merriment directed at his masculinity.

“Sour grapes,” he cried good-naturedly and inspired a chorus of laughter
and catcalls. Beebo, pushing in behind him, became aware suddenly that
she was the object of mass curiosity. She could look over the heads of
most of the girls and her height made her visible from all directions.

Abashed, she closed in on Jack, who was hollering an order to the
bartender. “Maybe we ought to go. I—I mean—” She didn’t know how to
explain herself to him. He was looking at her with a startled frown.
“They don’t seem to like having a man in here,” she said lamely.

Jack began to laugh. “You want me to go, honey? Okay. Just give me two
bits to see a movie.”

She gasped. “That’s not what I meant!” she objected. “I don’t want to be
in here alone!”

“Why not?” He reached between two girls at the bar to grab his beer.
“You’ll make out. I might cramp your style.”

“Jack, damn it, if you go, _I_ go.”

“Okay, pal, I won’t ditch you,” he said, glimpsing her anxious face.
“Relax. We’ll have one more and then cut out.”

She had had quite a bit of beer already, even with Jack finishing them
for her. But she couldn’t stand there with all those eyes on her and do
nothing. Better to drink a beer than gape back at the gapers. She poured
some into her glass and drank it. And then drained the glass and poured
some more.

Jack took her elbow. “I see some friends over there,” he said, guiding
her toward a table near the back. There were introductions all around,
but to Beebo, things seemed different. The other bars had been all male
or mixed. In this one, Jack Mann and the two bartenders, and a small
scattering of “Johns,” were the only men in a big room solidly packed
with women. It excited Beebo intensely—all that femininity. She was
silent, studying the girls at the table while Jack talked with them.
When she shook hands with them, a new feeling gripped her. For the first
time in her life she was proud of her size, proud of her strength, even
proud of her oddly boyish face. She could see interest, even admiration
on the faces of many of the girls. She was not used to that kind of
reaction in people, and it exhilarated her. But she didn’t talk much,
only answering direct questions when she had to; smiling at them when
they smiled at her; looking away in confusion when one or another tried
to stare her down.

They had been there half an hour when somebody came over from another
table and asked her to dance. Beebo turned around, her stomach in a
knot. “Are they dancing?” she asked.

“Sure,” said the girl. “By the jukebox.”

Beebo had heard music without looking to see where it came from. She got
up from the table and went to the back room, realizing as she stood up
how much beer she had drunk. At the back of the crowd surrounding the
dance floor, there was room to stand and watch.

The music was rhythmic and popular. The floor was jammed with a mass of
couples ... a mass of girls, dancing, arms locked around each other,
bodies pressed close and warm. Their cheeks were touching. Quick light
kisses were exchanged. And they were all girls, every one of them: young
and lovely and infatuated with each other. They touched one another with
gentle caresses, they kissed, they smiled and laughed and whispered
while they turned and moved together.

There was no shame, no shock, no self-consciousness about it at all.
They were enjoying themselves. They were having fun in the most natural
way imaginable. They were all in love, or so it seemed. They were—what
did Jack call it?—gay.

Beebo watched them for less than a minute, all told; but a minute that
was transfixed like a living picture in her mind for the rest of her
life. She was startled by it, afraid of it. And yet so passionately
moved that she caught her breath and held it till her heart began to
pound in protest. Her fists closed hard with the nails biting into her
palms and she was obsessed momentarily by the desire to grab the girl
nearest her and kiss her.

At that point she murmured, “Oh, God!” and turned to flee. She felt the
way she had in childhood dreams when she was being chased by some vague
terrible menace, and she had to move slowly and tortuously, with great
effort, as through a wall of water, while the monster gained on her from
behind.

She caught Jack’s shoulders in her big hands and squeezed them hard.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” she said urgently.

He looked at her as if she had lost her senses. “I just ordered another
round,” he said.

“Jack, please!” She pulled him to his feet.

“Jesus, can’t you wait a little while, honey?” he said, and triggered an
outburst of merriment at the table. But she meant it, and he was not too
high to see her panic. He picked his jacket off the back of his chair,
apologizing to his friends. “When she wants it, she wants it now,” he
grinned, shrugging.

“Who are you kidding?” they laughed.

Beebo was already pushing her way to the exit and Jack had a battle to
catch her. He found her waiting for him outside by the door.

“Hey,” he said, and put a friendly hand on her shoulder as they started
to walk toward his apartment. “What happened?”

“I don’t want to go back there, Jack,” she blurted.

“What’s the matter with it? Too much fun?”

“It was awful,” she said, not even knowing why she said it.

“You liked the other places.”

She wouldn’t answer, only striding along so fast in her haste to leave
the Colophon behind that Jack had to run to keep up.

“Was it the dancing?” he said.

She whirled to answer him, her face flushed with emotion. “I suppose
you’ve seen it so many times you think nothing of it,” she cried. “Well,
it’s—it’s _wrong_!”

“Who the hell do you think you are to call it wrong?” Jack demanded.
“Those are damn nice girls. If they want to dance with each other, let
them dance. You don’t have to watch.”

Beebo listened, her anger fading, to be replaced by a fearful desire.

“Did it make you feel ... that way, Beebo?” he said gently.

“It made me feel....” She turned away, unable to face him. “Funny
inside. As if it was wrong. Or too right. I don’t know.”

“It’s not wrong, pal,” he said, speaking to her back. “You’ve been
brought up to think so. Most of us have. But who are they hurting?
Nobody. They’re just making each other happy. And you want their heads
to roll because it makes you feel funny.”

She covered her face with her hands and rubbed her eyes roughly. Through
her fingers she said, “I don’t want to hurt them. I just don’t want to
stand there and watch them.”

“Well, why didn’t you dance?” he said. “Hell, I don’t like being a
wallflower, either.”

“Jack, I can’t dance like that,” she said in a hushed voice.

“Why can’t you?” She refused to answer, so he answered for her. “You
can. You just won’t. But you know something, my little friend? One of
these days, you will.”

“You’re no prophet, Jack. Don’t predict _my_ future.” She started
walking again.

He followed her, throwing up his hands. “Okay, okay. It shook you. But
not because it was vulgar and indecent. Because it was beautiful and
exciting. Besides, you envied those kids on the dance floor. Didn’t
you?”

Her confession never came. They walked in silence the rest of the way to
Jack’s apartment. He closed and locked the front door and turned on the
living room light, tossing his jacket into a chair.

“Beebo,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “You’ve been living with me
almost a month now—”

“If you want me to move, I’ll move.” She was surly and defensive.

“I want you to stay. When you move, it’ll be because you want to,” he
said. “Besides, that’s not what I want to talk about. In the past month,
you have never once told me the most important thing about yourself,
Beebo.”

She felt a flash of fear, piercing as sudden light in darkness. “I don’t
know what you mean,” she said.

Jack gave her the freshly lighted cigarette and she hid gratefully
behind a smoke screen. “You know,” he said. “But I’m not going to insist
on it. I think you want to talk to me, but you’re afraid. I’m trying
every way I know to show you that it won’t offend me, Beebo. You think
about that. You think about the people who are my friends—people I enjoy
and respect—and then you ask yourself what you have to fear.”

There was a long pause. At last she said, “It isn’t that easy, Jack. I
should know what I am. But I don’t know myself at all. Especially here
in this new place. Back in Juniper Hill, I could only see what other
people saw, and I was afraid and ashamed. But here, I look all
different. I even feel different.” She looked at her hands. “Don’t push
me, Jackson.” And she rushed past him suddenly, to cry in the privacy of
the bathroom; to wonder why the girls she had seen that night had moved
her so dramatically.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She did not fall asleep until very late. And when she did, she dreamed
of sweet, supple, smiling-faced girls, dancing sensuously in each
other’s arms; glancing at her with wide curious eyes; beckoning to her.
She saw herself glide slowly, almost reluctantly, over the floor with a
girl whose long black hair hung halfway down her back; a girl with an
old-fashioned name: Mona. Beebo touched the hair, the long dipping curve
of the back till her hands rested on Mona’s hips.

The next thing she knew, Jack was shaking her awake. “Wake up! Jesus!”
he said, grinning at her in the early light. “You’re beating hell out of
the mattress.”

Her eyes flew wide open and she stared at him, stuttering.

“Funny thing about dreams,” he said softly. “They let you be yourself in
the dark. When you can be yourself in the morning, too, you’ll be
cured.”

“Cured of what?” she said in a disgruntled whisper.

Jack chuckled. “Dreams,” he said. “You won’t need ’em.”

Beebo was relieved when he went back to sleep. There was no escaping now
what she was. The dancing lovers in the Colophon had impressed it
indelibly on her. And yet Jack wanted her to confirm it in so many
words, and the idea terrified her. It would be like accepting a label
for the rest of her life—a label she didn’t even understand yet.

And there was no one to tell her that the time would come when the label
wouldn’t frighten her; when she would be happy simply to be what she
was.

                   *       *       *       *       *

They went a while longer without discussing it. Jack was on the verge of
confronting Beebo a dozen times with his own homosexuality. But she
would catch the look in his eye and warn him with tacit signs to keep
still. He began to wonder if she understood about him at all. He had
tried to make it obvious the night they went barhopping. He wanted to
say to her, “Okay, I’m gay. But that doesn’t make me less human, less
moral, less _normal_ than other men. You’ve got the same bug, Beebo;
only with you, it’s girls. Look at me: I’m proof you can live with it.
You don’t need to hate yourself or the people you’re attracted to.”

But if she saw it she kept it to herself. _She’s too wrapped up in
discovering herself to discover me too_, he thought. He tried to kid
her. “You think it’s all right for the other girls but not for Beebo,”
he said, but she wouldn’t give him a smile. He felt stumped in front of
her stubborn silence; aching to help her, afraid of scaring her into an
emotional crack-up.

She was very tense. And then one evening, about a week after her night
out with Jack, over dinner she said, “Mona was in the shop again. I
talked to her.”

Jack looked up in surprise. “What about?”

“I asked if she was Mona Petry. She is.” She seemed afraid to elaborate.

“Is that all?” he smiled.

“You were right about her—she’s gay.” She looked up to catch the smile.

“Did she say so?” he asked.

“No, Pete said so after she left. He said he used to date her but he
dropped her when he found out.”

“Well, he’s got it backwards, but never mind. The point is, Mona’s a
slippery little bitch. She’s good to look at but she isn’t any fun.
She’s out to screw the whole damn world. If I were you—”

“Jackson, I don’t give a damn what you think of Mona Petry,” Beebo said.

“Then why bring her up?”

She colored, and put down a few more bites of the dinner they were
eating. Finally, slowly, with her face still pink, she said, “Do you
think it would be all right if I went out tonight? I mean—alone?”

“If you eat all your spinach.”

“I am asking you,” she said hotly, “because I value your judgment. Not
because I’m an addlepated child.”

“All right,” he said, smiling into his napkin. “Where do you want to
go?”

She looked at her plate. “The Colophon,” she said, making him strain to
hear it.

“Why? Want to drop a bomb on the dance floor?”

She sighed. “Pete says Mona hangs out there.”

“In that case, I don’t think it’s safe,” he said flatly. “But it should
be educational.”

She said, “Jack, I’m scared. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared of
anything in my life.”

“It’s no disgrace to be scared, Beebo. Only to act like it.”

“I feel as if that damn silly bar—the people in it—are a sort of
challenge,” she said, fumbling to express it justly. “As if I have to go
back or I’ll never know....” She shook her head with a self-conscious
smile. “That’s a hell of a place to go looking for yourself.”

“Hell of a place to go looking for Mona,” he said. “I don’t know though,
pal. It has to come sooner or later. It’s time you learned a thing or
two. You’re naive, but you’re no fool. Go on—but go slow.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Mona was not at the Colophon that night, nor for many nights afterward.
In a way, Beebo was relieved. She wanted to meet her, but she wanted
time to meet other people too, to see other places, and cruise around
the Village without any pressure on her to prove things to herself. Or
to a worldly girl like Mona Petry. Beebo was still a stranger in a
strange town, unsure, and grateful for a chance to learn unobserved.

She would sit and gaze for hours at the girls in the bars or passing in
the streets. She wanted to talk to them, see what they were like. She
was often drawn to one enough to daydream about her, but she never
mentioned it to Jack. Still, she was eagerly curious about the Lesbian
mores and social codes. The gay girls seemed so smooth and easy with
each other; talking about shared experiences in a special slang, like
members of an exclusive sorority.

Beebo, watching them as the days and weeks passed, became slowly aware
how much she envied them. She wanted to join the in-group. And she would
watch them longingly and wonder if their talk was ever about her. It
was.

A few of Jack’s friends, who had met her in his company, would come up
and talk with her, and knowing for certain that they were Lesbians gave
Beebo a vibrant pleasure, whether or not the girls themselves were
exciting. Looking at one she would think, _She knows how it feels to
want what I want. I could make her happy. I know it._ Even the word
“Lesbian,” that had offended her before, began to sound wonderful in her
ears.

She shocked herself with such candid thoughts, but that was only at
first. Little by little, it began to seem beautiful to her that two
women could come together with passion and intelligence and make a life
with and for each other; make a marriage. She dreamed of lovely,
sophisticated women at her feet, aware even as she dreamed that she
hadn’t yet the _savoir faire_ to win such a woman. But she was afire
with ambition to acquire it.

She would walk into a bar, order a beer, and sit alone and silent
through an evening. In her solitude, she seemed mysterious to the
laughing chattering people around her. They began to point her out when
she came in.

At first, ignorance and inexperience kept Beebo aloof. But she quickly
understood that her refusal to be sociable made her the target of a lot
of smiling speculation. When she got over being afraid of the situation,
it amused her. The fact that she attracted girls, even ones she knew she
would never pursue, was almost supernaturally strange and exciting to
her. She submitted to their teasing questions with an enigmatic smile
until she realized that one or two had worked themselves up to
infatuation pitch over her.

There followed a period of elation when she walked into Julian’s or the
Cellar and saw the eyes she knew had waited all night to look into hers
turn and flash in her direction. She always passed them by and went to a
seat at the bar. But each time she came closer to stopping and answering
a smile or asking someone to join her in a beer. And still, she couldn’t
find Mona.

The only wrong note in the tune was a boy, slight and fine-featured, who
watched her and seemed to have persuaded himself that he loved her. He
fell for her with an awkward crush that embarrassed them both. Often, at
the end of an evening when he was pretty high, he would approach her and
timidly offer to buy her a drink.

Beebo kept turning him down, kindly but firmly. He always flinched when
she said no, and she pitied him. He had a gentle appealing face, fair in
the way of extreme youth. She guessed he must be a couple of years
younger than she, and wondered how he could buy drinks in a bar.

“I’m sorry, I’m just leaving,” she would tell him.

And he would watch her go, wistfully. He looked tired and malnourished,
and she wondered once if it would offend him to be offered a free
sandwich. She never quite got up the nerve to find out.

                   *       *       *       *       *

At home, Jack did not press her. But her silence regarding her
activities at night worried him and put a strain between them. She knew
that Jack was waiting for her to talk about it, and she wanted to be
honest with him more than ever. He had been patient, humorously tolerant
with her. And she knew that he was a man of the world. He had made it
clear that he enjoyed the friendship of many delightful gay women, that
he approved of them and that he thought she might enjoy their company.

But he had not said, “Oh, come on, Beebo. You’re gay. Admit it. We both
know it.” He had, however, come closer than she knew to saying it. And
it was hard for Jack himself to realize that his hints and jokes were
couched in a language still foreign to her in many ways. Often they went
over her head or were taken at face value; saved and worried over, but
never fathomed.

So she found herself hung up on a dilemma: she was sure of his
friendship as long as she was an observer of the gay scene, not a
sister-in-the-bonds. But what would he say if she told him she had a
desperate crush on Mona Petry with the long black hair? Or that she got
dizzy with the joy of being in a crowd of gay girls; near enough to
touch, to overhear, to look and look and look until they whirled through
her dreams at night.

Would he say, _You can play with the matches but don’t get burned?_
Would he pity her? Turn on his wit? Would he—could he—take it with the
easy calm he showed in other circumstances?

She thought he could. She felt closer to him now that she had spent
nearly two months under his roof. She knew his heart was big, and she
had seen him in a Lesbian bar talking with his friends there. He was not
being condescending. He valued them.

Perhaps more than anything, she was persuaded by the need to talk it
out; the need for help and comfort. And that was Jack’s forte.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo and Jack were watching a TV show one evening when he asked her,
during the commercial, why she wasn’t going out that night. “Don’t tell
me you gave up on Mona,” he teased.

Instead of answering, she told him about the boy who was in love with
her. “His name is Pat,” she said. “The bartender told me. He looks
hungry, as if he needs to be cared for.” She laughed. “I was never much
for maternal instincts—but he seems to bring them out.”

“I’d like to meet him. He might bring mine out, too,” Jack said.

“Why don’t you come with me Friday? He’s always at Julian’s.”

Jack looked away. “I’ve been trying to give you a free rein,” he said.
“You don’t want me along. I’ll find him myself.”

“I do want you along,” she said. “I like your company.”

“More than the girls’?” he grinned.

She felt herself tense all over. There had been so many chances lately
to talk to him, and she had run away from them all. Now, she felt a
surge of defiance, a will to have it out. He had a right to know at
least as much about her as she knew about herself. He had earned it
through his generosity and affection.

“I read a book once,” she said clumsily. “Under my covers at night—when
I was fifteen. It was about two girls who loved each other. One of them
committed suicide. It hit me so hard I wanted to die, too. That’s about
as close as I’ve come to reality in my life, Jack. Until now.”

He leaned over and switched off the television. The room was so quiet
they could hear themselves breathing.

“I was kicked out of school,” she went on hesitantly, “because I looked
so much like a boy, they thought I must be acting like one. Chasing
girls. Molesting them. Everything I ever did to a girl, or wanted to do
or dreamed of doing, happened in my imagination. The trouble was,
everybody else in Juniper Hill had an imagination, too. And they had me
doing all these things for real.” She shut her eyes and tried to force
her heart to slow down, just by thinking about it.

“And you never did?” he said. “You never tried? There must have been
girls, Beebo—”

“There were, but all I had to do was talk to one and her name was mud. I
wouldn’t do that to anybody I cared for.”

Jack stared at her, wondering what geyser of emotion must be waiting to
erupt from someone so intense, so yearning, and so rigidly denied all
her life.

“My father tried to teach me not to hate myself because I looked like
hell in gingham frills,” she said. “But when you see people turn away
and laugh behind their hands.... It makes you wonder what you really
are.” She looked at him anxiously, and then she said it. “I’ve never
touched a girl I liked. Never made a pass or spoken a word of love to a
single living girl. Does that make me normal, Jack?... And yet I know I
could, and I think now I will, and God knows I want to desperately. Does
that make me gay?” She spoke rapidly, stopping abruptly as if her voice
had gone dead in her throat at the word “gay.”

“Well, first,” he said kindly, “you’re Beebo Brinker, human being. If
you _are_ gay, that’s second. Some girls like you are gay, some aren’t.
Your body is boyish, but there’s nothing _wrong_ with it.” His voice was
reassuring.

“Nothing, except there’s a boy inside it,” she said. “And he has to live
without all the masculine trimmings other boys take for granted. Jack,
long before I knew anything about sex, I knew I wanted to be tall and
strong and wear pants and ride horses and have a career ... and never
marry a man or learn to cook or raise babies. Never.”

“That’s still no proof you’re gay,” he said, going slowly, letting her
convince herself.

“I’m not even built like a girl. Girls are knock-elbowed and big-hipped.
They can’t throw or run or—look at my arm, Jack. I was the best pitcher
on the team whenever they let me play.” She rolled her sleeve back and
showed him a well-muscled arm, browned and veined and straight as a
boy’s.

“I see,” he murmured.

“It was the parents who gave me the worst of it,” she said. “The kids
weren’t too bad till I got to high school. But you know what happens
then. You get hairy and you get pimples and you have to start using a
deodorant.”

Jack laughed silently behind his cigarette.

“And the boys get big and hot and anxious, like a stallion servicing a
mare.”

Jack swallowed, feeling himself move. “And the girls?”

“The girls,” she sighed, “get round and soft and snippy.”

“And instead of round and soft, you got hot and anxious?”

“All of a sudden, I was Poison Ivy Brinker,” she confirmed. “Nobody
wanted whatever it was I had. My brother Jim said I wasn’t a boy and I
wasn’t a girl, and I had damn well better be one or the other or he’d
hound me out of school himself.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to be like the rest. But not to please _that_ horse’s ass.” Her
farmer’s profanity tickled him. “I did it for Dad. He thought I was
adjusting pretty well, and that was his consolation. I never told him
how bad it was.”

“So now you want to find Mona Petry,” Jack said, after a small pause,
“and ask her if you’re gay.”

“Not _ask_ her. Just get to know her and see if it could happen. She
makes me wonder so ... Jack, what makes a feminine girl like that gay?
Why does she love other girls, when she’s just as womanly and perfumed
as the girl who goes for men? I used to think that all homosexual girls
were three-quarters boy.” She hung her head. “Like me, I guess. And that
they were all doomed to love feminine girls who could never love them
back. It seems like a miracle that a girl like Mona could love a—” she
stopped, embarrassed.

“Could love a girl like you,” he finished for her. “Take it on faith,
honey. She doesn’t have to look like a Ram tackle to know that her
happiness lies with other women. The girls you see around town aren’t
all boyish, are they?”

“They’re not all gay, either.”

He ground out his cigarette. “Tell me why they ran you out of Juniper
Hill. The whole story. Was it really just a nasty rumor about you and
the Jones girl?”

Beebo lay down, stretched out on the sofa, and answered without looking
at him. “They’d been hoping for an excuse for years,” she said. “It was
in April, last spring. I went to the livestock exhibition in Chicago
with Dad and Jim. I was in the stalls with them most of the time,
handling some of the steers from our county. Sweaty and gritty, and not
thinking about much but the job. And then one night—I’ll never know
why—I took it into my head to wear Jim’s good clothes.

“I knew it was dangerous, but suddenly it was also irresistible. Maybe I
just wanted to get away with it. Maybe it was the feel of a man’s
clothes on my back, or a simple case of jealousy. Anyway, I played sick
at dinnertime, and stayed in the hotel till they left.

“Jack, it was as though I had a fever. The minute I was alone I put
Jim’s things on. I slung Dad’s German camera over my shoulder and took
his Farm Journal press pass. On the way over, I stopped for a real man’s
haircut. The barber never said a word. Just took my money and stared.

“I looked older than Jim. I felt wonderful.” She stopped, her chin
trembling. “A blonde usher showed me to the press section. She was small
and pretty and she asked me if I was from the ‘working press.’ I said
yes because it sounded important. She gave me a seat in the front row
with a typewriter. It was screwed down to a stand. God, imagine!” She
almost laughed.

“I really blitzed them,” she said, remembering the good part with a
throb of regret. “Everybody else was writing on their machines to beat
hell, but I didn’t even put a piece of paper in mine. After a while I
took out the camera and made some pictures. The girl came back and said
I could work in the arena if I wanted to, and I did. It was hotter than
hades but I wouldn’t have taken that tweed jacket off for a fortune.

“I guess I took pictures for almost three hours ... just wandered
around, kidding the girls on horseback and keeping clear of the
Wisconsin people.” She hesitated and Jack said, “What happened then?”

“I got sick,” she whispered. “My stomach. I thought it was bad food. Or
that damn heat. Awful stomach cramps. In half an hour I was so miserable
I could hardly stand up and I was scared to death I might faint. If I’d
had any sense I’d have gone back to my seat and rested. But not Beebo. I
didn’t want to waste my moment of glory. It would go away—it _had_ to.

“Well, I was right about one thing—I fainted, right there in the arena.
The next I knew, I was strangling on smelling salts and trying to sit up
on a cot in the Red Cross station. The doctor asked how I felt and I
said it was indigestion. He wanted to have a look.

“I was terrified. I tried to laugh it off. I said I was tired, I said it
was the heat, I said it was something I ate. But that bastard had to
look. He thought it might be appendicitis. There was nothing I could do
but cover my face and curse, and cry,” she said harshly. Jack handed her
a newly-lighted cigarette, and she took it, still talking.

“The doctor saw the tears, and that was the tip-off. He opened my shirt
so fast the buttons flew. And when he saw my chest, he opened the pants
without a word. Just big bugeyes.” She gave Jack a look of sad disgust.
“I had the curse,” she muttered. “First time.”

After a moment she went on, “I never meant to hurt anybody or cause a
scene. But I hurt my father too much. He suffered over it. I had to wait
till my hair grew out before I could go back to school, but I could have
saved myself the bother. They let me know as soon as I got back I wasn’t
wanted. Before Chicago, they thought I was just a queer kid. But
afterwards, I was really queer. There’s a big difference.”

Jack listened, bound to her by the story with an empathy born of his own
emotional aberration.

“The principal of the high school said he hoped he could count on me to
understand his position. _His_ position. I wanted to ask him if he
understood _mine_.” There was hopeless bitterness in her voice.

“They never do,” Jack said quietly. “Still, that’s not the only high
school in the world. You could finish up somewhere else and go on to
pre-med, Beebo.”

“You didn’t,” she reminded him. “You got fed up and quit. But me—I’ve
been expelled. I’m not wanted anywhere.”

“Do you think a job as a truck driver is worth sacking a medical career
for?”

“What did you sack yours for?” He was making her defensive.

“My story’s all over,” he said. “But there’s still time for you. Beebo,
do you know what you’re trying to do? Get _even_ with the world. You’re
so mad at it, and everybody in it for the bum deal you got, you’re going
to deny it a good doctor some day.”

“I’d be a rotten doctor, Jack. I’d be scared. I’d be running and hiding
every day of my life.”

“Hell, plenty of doctors are gay. They manage.” He was surprised at the
importance it was assuming in his own mind. He really cared about it. It
depressed him to think of what she might be and what she was in a fair
way now of becoming. “You’re thinking that if people are going to reject
you, by God you’re going to reject them first. If they make it hard for
you to be a doctor, you’ll make damn sure they never _get_ that doctor.
You’ve been keeping score and now you’re avenging yourself on the world
because most of the people in it are straight. You keep it up and you’ll
turn into a joyless old dyke without a shred of love in her heart for
anyone.”

Beebo sat up and frowned at him, surprised but not riled. “Are you
telling me to go to hell because I—I think I’m gay?” she asked.

“I’m telling you to go to college,” he said seriously.

“Jack, you goofed your chance for an M.D. for reasons a lot flimsier
than mine. What are you trying to do? Push me into school so you can
make peace with your conscience? You’re the one who wants to give that
good doctor to humanity. If it can’t be yourself, better it should be
Beebo than nobody. And Jack Mann will have made a gift to his fellow
men. Jack, the Great Humanitarian. And you won’t even have to crack a
book.” She spoke wryly, but without rancor.

Jack was stunned into silence by her flash of insight.

“I hit it, didn’t I?” she said. “Jack, you don’t know what you’re asking
me to do: wear a skirt for the rest of my life. Forget about love till
my heart dries up. Go back and face the father I destroyed and the
brother who hates me ... well, I can’t. I’m no martyr. I’m not brave
enough to try to be a doctor now, just because you tried and failed. And
feel bad about it.”

He took her hands and rubbed them. “You hit it dead on, little pal, but
only part of it,” he said. “Sure, I’d like to see you with a medical
degree and know I’d had something to do with it. But forget me. Be
selfish about it. A degree would protect you, not expose you to more
trouble. Knowledge, success, the respect of other doctors—that would be
your defense against the world.”

“There’s no protection against myself. My feelings. I didn’t tell you
about the girls back home, Jack, walking down country lanes after school
with their arms around the boys, kissing and laughing. The girls I
couldn’t touch or talk to or even smile at. The girls I’d grown up with,
suddenly filling out their sweaters and their nylons, smooth and sweet
with scented hair and pink mouths. I didn’t tell you how I ached for
them.”

He got up and crossed the room, looking out his front windows. “I don’t
want you to end up an old bull dyke in faded denims, letting some blowsy
little fem take care of you,” he said acidly. “You’re not a bum.”

“I don’t want that, either. But Jack, I can’t spend the rest of my life
wondering!” She went to his side, speaking urgently, wanting him to root
for her, not against her. “They call this life gay,” she said softly,
following his gaze out the windows. “I need a little gaiety.”

“They call it gay out of a perverted sense of humor,” he said.

Across the street two young women were walking slowly in the mild
evening air, arms around each other’s waists. “There,” Beebo said,
nodding at them. “That’s what I want. I’ve wanted it ever since I knew
girls did such things.”

“You mean Mona?” he said.

Beebo shoved her hands into her pockets, self-conscious as always when
that name came up. “You have to start somewhere,” she said.

“You have quite a thing about her, don’t you?” he said.

Beebo’s cheeks flushed and she looked at the floor. “I never dared to
admit that I wanted a girl before, Jack. Maybe I picked the wrong time.
Or the wrong audience.”

“Pal, you just picked the wrong girl.”

“I don’t want you to pity me. That’s why I held out so long. I need you,
Jack. You’re the first friend—the first brother—I ever had.”

Jack was touched and embarrassed. “I feel no pity for you, Beebo,” he
said. “You don’t need pity. I feel friendship and ... anxiety. If you’ve
made up your mind to stay here, I’ll do anything to help you, teach you,
take you around. But, honey—not Mona. She doesn’t believe in anything
but kicks. She’ll charm the pants off you and then leave you standing
naked in front of your enemies.”

“Are you trying to say you disapprove of Mona, but not of the fact that
I’m—I _must_ be—gay?” she said.

“Why would I disapprove of that?” he said and then he laughed. “I swear
to God, Beebo, you can be thicker than bean soup. I’ve done everything
but sing it for you in C sharp.”

“I know you’ve tried to be tolerant and all, introducing me to your
friends. I thought it was because you suspected about me and you wanted
to be a good sport.”

“I’m trying to explain about _me_, not you,” he said, throwing out his
hands and still chuckling.

Beebo smiled back, mystified. “Let me in on the joke, will you?”

“The joke’s on me this time,” he said.

She studied him a moment, her smile yielding to perplexity. And then she
said, “Oh!” suddenly and lifted a hand to her face. She went back to the
sofa and sat down with her head in her hands.

“Well, you don’t need to feel badly about it, pal,” he said, joining
her. “I don’t. There are even days when I feel sorry for the straight
people.”

“Jesus, I should have seen it,” she murmured.

“No, you shouldn’t. I’m a genius at hiding it.”

“Jack, I’m sure a fool. I’ve been up to my eyes in my own troubles.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe you wouldn’t figure it out. It’s
hard to realize the kind of life you’ve been leading up to now. How
little you’ve been allowed to see or understand.”

She looked up at him. “Thanks for being patient,” she said. “I mean it.
Jack, how long have you been gay? How did you find out about yourself?”

“I didn’t. I was told. In the Navy, by a hairy little gob who kept
climbing into my bunk at night and telling me fairy stories. When he got
a rise out of me, he made the diagnosis. I told him to go to hell, but
the next night, I was climbing into _his_ bunk.”

It made her smile. “Can you forgive me?” she said.

“Nothing to forgive. And I’ll let you back into my good graces on one
condition. Do you think your friend Pat will be in bloom tonight?”

“Probably,” she said, seeing him through her new understanding as
through a rainbow curtain. He was a new shape, a new color, a new man.
She was vastly relieved, and just a little awed. And ashamed of her
bean-soup intuition.

“Let’s go look at him,” Jack said.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The night was hot and damp, with a low black sky that had looked
menacing in the daylight, but was soft and close as dark came down,
floating over the neon merriment below.

Beebo was quiet as they walked, preoccupied with a new attitude toward
Jack and an almost unbearable sense of anticipation. Pat was usually at
Julian’s. When they arrived, the bar was crowded but there was standing
room at one end. They squeezed in and ordered drinks, and Beebo began to
pick out the faces that searched for her.

“Is he here?” Jack asked, glancing around.

She discovered him right away. “Over there in the blue shirt,” she said,
nodding.

“They all have blue shirts,” Jack said, squinting through the smoke.

“The blond one.”

There was a pause and Jack’s face puckered thoughtfully. “He looks
pretty young,” he said in a bemused voice.

“You mean, you like his face?” Beebo smiled at him.

“It’s a face,” he said noncommittally, and when she laughed he shrugged
and added, “Okay. A nice face. Beebo, I think you’re playing cupid.”

“I wouldn’t know how,” she said. “Besides, you told me you only fell in
love in the fall or the spring. This is midsummer.” But she wondered
suddenly what would happen if he broke his rule. It made her heart drop.
Jack’s apartment was small, with just one bed. Even if he didn’t ask her
to leave, how welcome would she be if he invited a third party to share
it with them? She’d have to bow out, out of simple consideration. But
where could she go? She had avoided making any friends, and the
Pasquinis with their five kids were out of the question. She would have
preferred a park bench anyway to a room with Pete Pasquini in it.

Beebo and Jack were both caught unaware by the sudden quiet
interruption. There he was, Beebo’s boy, standing behind and between
them. He had come over in the moment it took them to discuss him and now
they looked at him in surprise.

He paled a little and started to back away, but Jack put a hand on his
shoulder. “Don’t panic. We’re harmless when we’re drinking,” he said.
“What’s your name?”

“Pat Kynaston,” said the boy, staring into his beer. He supposed Beebo
had Jack with her this time to show him she was taken, and he was
crushed.

“Pat? That’s a girl’s name,” Beebo kidded.

Pat swallowed some beer and moved the sawdust under his shoes.

“Have a drink, honey,” Jack said, and Beebo felt a stir of strange
interest in the endearment. And yet Pat seemed more like a child than a
man, and it was easy to call him fond names. In spite of his light beard
he had a child’s face, full of a child’s hardy trust. He smiled at Jack,
reassured.

“He looks as green as you did last May,” Jack told Beebo. “How long have
you been here, Pat?”

“Oh, since seven-thirty, I guess.”

“No, I mean in New York?” Jack grinned.

“Oh. January.” Pat’s eyes remained on Beebo while he answered Jack. But
when she returned the look, he glanced down to her belt. “I left school
then,” he said.

“Sounds like the story of my life,” said Beebo. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

Jack cleared his throat and Beebo’s mouth dropped open. “With that
face?” Jack protested. “You mean your _father_ is twenty-seven.”

Pat laughed a little and shook his head.

“Besides, what is a twenty-seven-year-old child doing in school? You
should be through.”

“I was working on a doctorate in entomology.”

“Bugs? You don’t look like a bug collector,” Jack said with a grimace,
and they laughed while the drinks came up. Jack pulled Pat between
himself and Beebo and teased him for a while, making him blush and
answer questions. But when it came out that Pat was working as a
garbage-collector for the New York City Department of Sanitation, Jack
stopped laughing.

“God! A frail kid like you? You shouldn’t do work like that,” he
declared.

“It was all I could get. Nobody wants an entomologist _manqué_,” Pat
said. “I guess that’s why I’m skinny. I look at those rotting scraps all
day and when I get home the stuff in my icebox looks just as bad.”

Jack tapped Beebo on the shoulder. “Do we have any of Marie’s chicken
tetrazini in the refrigerator?”

“Plenty.”

“Let’s go.” Jack threw a couple of bills on the counter and took Pat by
the elbow. Beebo took the other and they walked him out of Julian’s and
down the street.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo had been elated to learn that Jack, too, was gay. But now she felt
the first twinge of misgiving. Jack was the older brother she never
really had; one she could learn from, look up to, even love. It was a
valuable feeling, new to her. For as fiercely as she resented Jim, she
had always harbored a secret regret that they could not have been
friends.

They walked toward Jack’s place with Pat clinging in bewildered pleasure
to Beebo, the object of what had seemed so long a futile attraction. But
Beebo was lost in herself, wondering if she could make it yet in the
city on her own. She was strong and handsome, and she walked, gestured,
even swore with a boyish gusto that made her seem more experienced than
she was. But she was still untutored in the ways of metropolitan gay
life and that fact undermined her self-confidence.

                   *       *       *       *       *

They put Pat, who was high enough to be sleepy, on Jack’s sofa and
looked at him. He dozed a little, his fair face averted, and the two
roommates were struck with the beauty of his features. Beebo was
unnerved to find herself suddenly wanting a girl with blast-furnace
intensity.

“I’ll heat the bird,” she offered to Jack, “if you’ll mind the patient.”

“You’re on,” he said.

But she was sorry to have to leave them alone together. Jack was
entirely too taken with the boy. Beebo moved pensively around the
kitchen, preparing the food with unaccustomed hands.

Jack brought Pat to the table when she called them. Pat looked so
slender and peaked that she felt a good doctor’s desire to stuff him
full of nourishment.

He leaned against the door frame, gazing at Beebo. “Who are you,
anyway?” he asked, drunk enough to be brave.

“Sit down, Hungry,” Beebo said, smiling at him.

Abashed, but unappeased, he obeyed.

“You know what’s wrong with you, Pat? Malnutrition,” she said. “If you
had any food under your belt, you wouldn’t give two bits for me.” He
turned a baffled face to her. “Why hell, the damn bugs eat better than
you do,” she told him. “They get all the garbage that ruins your
appetite.”

She tried to feed him but he turned away. “I can’t,” he said. The
excitement of coming home with this girl he had admired so fervently for
a couple of months was too much; that, and all the beer he had drunk ...
and a new gentle feeling stirring in him for Jack Mann.

“Sure you can,” Beebo said, and began to feed him as if he were a sick
lamb, while Jack cut the chicken bits for her. When Pat tried to protest
she popped a mess of spicy meat between his teeth and shushed him,
wishing all the while that she were ministering to a lovely girl instead
of a lost boy.

Beebo stole a look at Jack, afraid of what she might see. But he was
regarding Pat with compassion, the same he had shown to her when he
found her ... and just a trace of desire, tightly controlled. Jack had
kindly instincts. It was one of the things Beebo admired most in him. He
took care of people because it made him happy. No one was to blame if,
when the person was a beautiful young boy, it made him very happy
indeed.

Beebo got the chicken down Pat and made him drink his milk, which he did
out of pure infatuation for her. And then Jack filled the silence with
one word: “Bedtime.”

But Pat seemed to be in a sort of trance, brought on by fatigue,
fascination, and a full stomach. “Are you conscious?” Jack asked him
with a smile.

“I was just thinking,” Pat murmured, blinking at Beebo. “Maybe I’m
straight.”

They laughed at him, till he got indignant and tried to explain that
even Beebo’s marginal femininity didn’t discourage him.

“You need some sleep, buddy,” Jack told him, and took him off to the
sofa. “And no damn trash cans for you in the morning.”

“What if I lose my job?” Pat said.

“That would be the best thing that could happen to you.”

“I’ll starve,” Pat whispered.

“Not while I’m around,” Jack said. Pat smiled at him sleepily, and then
shut his eyes and turned on his side.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo climbed into Jack’s bed feeling like an impostor. But she was
embarrassed to make an issue of it; more than that, afraid. If she
offered to take the sofa herself, Jack might grab the chance to have Pat
beside him all night.

Beebo felt no physical attraction to Pat; only sympathetic interest. But
his puppy love had scorched her a little; just enough to keep her moving
and twisting on the warm sheets for an hour, obsessed with the growing
need for a girl. A girl to curl in her lap and kiss her and talk away
her fears.

Pat’s loneliness shocked her. She saw herself mirrored in his
predicament. Who was more alone than a lost and defenseless soul, hungry
for something it couldn’t find? Couldn’t even define? It was enough to
warp the heart, deform the soul.

It was enough to get her out of bed at midnight that night, make her
dress in silence and leave the apartment, undetected by Jack or Pat.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She was almost as surprised to find herself on the street as Jack would
have been to see her there. And yet the cool night air washed gratefully
over her face and cleared her thoughts. She wandered aimlessly a while,
as if trying to ignore the one place she wanted to visit: the Colophon.

But her feet took her there anyway, and she found herself ringing the
bell. The owner opened the peek-through in the door and nodded to her.
She felt a momentary country-girl shame at being recognized in such a
place. But she was glad enough to gain entrance. The glow inside was the
color of fluorescent Merthiolate. It seemed almost antiseptic to Beebo,
who had painted the undersides of countless cows and sows with
disinfectants the same shade prior to a delivery.

She took a seat at the bar. “Scotch and water,” she said.

While the barman got it, she gazed idly into the mirror behind him,
picking out the interesting girls surrounding her. She felt
uncomfortable here in the pants she usually wore to work; in her hair
that had just been cut and was too short again.

_Do they think I’m funny?_ she wondered. _Or—exciting?_ She drank in
silence, and ordered another, thinking that the solitude and uncertainty
she felt now were worse than those she felt with Jack. For a minute,
almost anything seemed better than having to leave Jack, with only fifty
bucks a week to spend, no friends, and no place to live.

The bartender brought her another drink while she searched for the last
cigarette in her pack. It was empty. The girl sitting next to her
immediately offered her one, but Beebo declined. It was partly her
shyness, partly the knowledge that it was better to be hard-to-get in
the Colophon.

“Do you have cigarettes?” she asked the bartender.

“Machine by the wall,” he said.

She got up and sauntered over, ignoring the outrage on the face of the
girl at the bar. The machine swallowed her coins and spit out a pack of
filter-tips. Beebo noticed the jukebox, looked at her change, and fed it
a quarter, good for three dances. She liked to watch the girls move
around the floor together, now that the initial revolt had worn off.

But when she regained her seat, she found most of the patrons paying
attention to her, not the tunes. She looked back at them, surprised and
wary. The cigarettes in her hand were an excuse to look away for a
minute and she did, lighting one while the general conversation died
away like a weak breeze. She lowered her match slowly and glanced up
again, her skin prickling. What in hell were they trying to do? Scare
her out? Show her they didn’t like her? Had she been too aloof with
them, too remote and hard to know?

She had started the music, and it was an invitation to dance. They were
waiting for her to show them. It wasn’t hostility she saw on their faces
so much as, “Show us, if you’re so damn big and smart. We’ve been
waiting for a chance to trap you. This is it.”

She had to do something to humanize herself. There was an air of
self-confidence and sensual promise about Beebo that she couldn’t help.
And when she felt neither confident nor sensual, she looked all the more
as if she did: tall and strong and coolly sure of herself. She had
turned the drawback of being young and ignorant into a deliberate
defense.

It didn’t matter to the sophisticated girls judging her now that she was
a country girl fresh from the hayfields of Wisconsin, or that she had
never made love to a woman before in her life. They didn’t know that and
wouldn’t have believed it anyway.

Beebo recognized quickly that she had to start acting the way she
looked. She had established a mood of expectation about herself, and now
it was time to come across. The music played on. It was Beebo’s turn.

The match she held was burning near her finger, and because she had to
do something about _it_ and all the eyes on her, she turned to the girl
beside her and held out the match.

“Blow,” she said simply, and the girl, with a smile, blew.

Beebo returned the smile. “Well,” she said in her low voice, that
somehow carried even into the back room and the dance floor, “I’m damned
if I’m going to waste a good quarter.” She got up and walked across the
room toward the prettiest girl she could see, sitting at a table with
her lover and two other couples. It was exactly the way she would have
reacted to student-baiting at Juniper Hill High. The worse it got, the
taller she walked. Her heart was beating so hard she wanted to squeeze
it still. But she knew no one could hear it through her chest.

She stopped in front of the pretty girl and looked at her for a second
in incredulous silence. Then she said quietly, “Will you dance with me,
Mona?”

Mona Petry smiled at her. Nobody else in Greenwich Village would have
flouted the social code that way: walked between two lovers and taken
one away for a dance. Mona took a leisurely drag on her cigarette,
letting her pleasure show in a faint smile. Then she stood up and said,
“Yes. I will, Beebo.” Her lover threw Beebo a keen, hard look and then
relapsed into a sullen stare.

Beebo and Mona walked to the floor single file, and Mona turned when she
got clear of the tables, lifting her arms to be held. The movement was
so easy and natural that it excited Beebo and made her bold—she who knew
nothing about dancing. But she was not lacking in grace or rhythm. She
took Mona in a rather prim embrace at first, and began to move her over
the floor as the music directed.

Mona disturbed her by putting her head back and smiling up at her. At
last she said, “How did you know my name?”

“Pete Pasquini told me,” Beebo said. “How did you know mine?”

“Same answer,” Mona laughed. “He gets around, doesn’t he?”

“So they say,” Beebo said.

“You mean you don’t know from personal experience?”

“Me?” Beebo stared at her. “Should I?”

Mona chuckled. “No, you shouldn’t,” she said.

“Did I—take you away from something over there?” Beebo said.

“From some_body_,” Mona corrected her. “But it’s all right. She’s deadly
dull. I’ve been waiting for you to come over.”

Beebo felt her face get warm. “I didn’t even see you until I stood up,”
she said.

“I saw you,” Mona murmured. They danced a moment more, and Beebo pulled
her closer, wondering if Mona could feel her heart, now bongoing under
her ribs, or guess at the racing triumph in her veins.

“Did you ask Pete about me?” Mona prodded.

“A little,” Beebo admitted. And was surprised to find that the admission
felt good. “Yes,” she whispered.

“What did he say?”

“He said you were a wonderful girl.”

“Did you believe him?”

Beebo hesitated and finally said, huskily, “Yes.”

“You’re a good dancer, Beebo,” Mona said, knowing, like an expert, just
how far to go before she switched gears.

“I dance like a donkey,” Beebo grinned, strong enough in her victory to
laugh at herself.

“No, you’re a natural,” Mona insisted. “A natural dancer, I mean.”

“I don’t care what you mean, just keep dancing,” Beebo said.

Mona put her head down against Beebo’s shoulder and laughed, and Beebo
felt the same elation as a man when he has impressed a desirable girl
and she lets him know it with her flattery. Mona—so elusive, so pretty,
so dominant in Beebo’s dreams lately. Beebo was holding her tighter than
she meant to, but when she tried to loosen her embrace, Mona put both
arms about her neck and pulled her back again.

For the first time, Beebo had the nerve to look straight at her. It was
a long hungry look that took in everything: the long dark square-cut
hair and bangs; the big hazel eyes; the fine figure, slim and
exaggeratedly tall in high heels. But it was still necessary for her to
look up at Beebo.

“It’s nice you’re so tall,” Mona told her.

“Who’s the girl you’re with?” Beebo said. “I think she wants to drown
me.”

“No doubt. Her name’s Todd.”

“Is she a friend?”

“She was, till you asked for this dance,” Mona smiled.

Beebo didn’t want to make trouble. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Are you?” Mona was forward as only a world-weary girl with nothing to
learn—or lose—could be. And yet she seemed too young for such
ennui—still in her twenties. “Are you sorry about Todd?” she pressed
Beebo.

“I’m not sorry I’m dancing with you, if that’s what you mean,” Beebo
said.

“That’s what I mean,” Mona smiled. “Would you like to dance without an
audience, Beebo?”

Beebo frowned at her. “You mean ditch your friends?”

Mona could see that Beebo was offended by such a suggestion of
two-timing; and Mona was interested enough in this big, beautiful,
strange girl, not to want her offended. “They aren’t true friends,” Mona
said plaintively, “that you can count on, anyway. It’s all over between
Todd and me, too. We just came here to bury the corpse tonight. This is
where we met five months ago.”

“Five months? That’s not very long to be in love with somebody,” Beebo
said.

“I wasn’t,” Mona said.

“Was she?” It seemed indescribably sad to Beebo that one partner be in
love and the other feel nothing. She wanted everyone to be happy on this
night full of sequin-lights and clouds of music: even Todd.

“I never meant much to Todd,” Mona said. “Talk about ditching, Beebo.
I’m the one who’s getting ditched.”

“You?” Beebo held her tightly, glad for the excuse. “How could anyone
ever do that to you?”

Mona swayed against her, smiling with her eyes shut, and Beebo was too
immersed in her to notice the look on Todd’s face.

“She likes to torment her lovers,” Mona whispered. “She uses them, as if
they were things. When she gets tired of them, she puts them in a drawer
and pulls them out to show off, like trophies. That’s all she
does—collect broken hearts.”

“She sounds like a female dog,” Beebo commented. And yet the little
speech recalled disturbingly some of Jack’s remarks about Mona; as if
Mona were amusing herself by describing her own faults to Beebo and
pretending they were Todd’s.

The music ended and they stood on the floor a moment, arms still clasped
about each other. “Wait at the bar,” Mona whispered into Beebo’s ear.
“I’ll get my coat.” Beebo glanced doubtfully at the table, but Mona
said, “It’ll be better if I tell her alone. Go on.”

Beebo released her reluctantly, went to her seat and sipped at her drink
till Mona came up. She let Mona lead the way, feeling a sudden wild
exhilaration as she followed, lighting a cigarette, holding the door for
Mona, taking the street side when they reached the sidewalk.

“Was Todd angry?” she asked.

“No one wants to look the fool,” Mona said lightly, with a smile.

“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t like to get you up the creek, Mona,” Beebo said.
“I didn’t want trouble.”

“I make my own trouble, Beebo. I thrive on it. The way I see it—” she
paused to give Beebo her arm, and Beebo took it smoothly with a sense of
power and burgeoning desire, “—life is flat and dreary without trouble.”
Mona dodged a puddle, then continued. “Good trouble. Exciting trouble.
You can’t just walk across the Flats forever, doing what’s expected of
you. Excitement. That’s everything to me.” Mona stopped in her tracks to
look at Beebo with bright sly eyes. “Being good isn’t exciting. Right?”

“I’m no philosopher,” Beebo said.

“I’ll prove it to you. You’re a good person, aren’t you? You felt bad
about Todd. You’ve been good all your life. But are you happy?”

“I am right now. Are you telling me to be bad?” Beebo said, laughing.

“Would making love to me be bad?” Mona asked her, so directly that Beebo
wondered if she were being made fun of. There was no respect in Mona for
the innate privacy and mystery of every human soul. She saw them all as
part of the Flats—unless they could make beautiful trouble with her.
Then, she was interested. Then, she saw an individual.

“Making love to you,” Beebo said slowly, “would have to be good.”

“I’ll make it better than good.” Mona reached up for Beebo’s shoulders,
pulling her back into the dusk of a doorway. They stood there a moment,
Beebo in a fever of need and fear, till Mona’s hand slid up behind her
head, cupped it downward, and brought their lips together.

Beebo came to life with a swift jerking movement. Mona’s kiss had been
light and brief, until Beebo caught her again in a violent embrace and
imprisoned her mouth. She forgot everything for a few minutes, holding
Mona there in her arms and kissing her lips, pressing her back against
the doorway and feeling the whole length of her body against Beebo’s
own.

It wasn’t till she became aware that Mona was protesting that she let
her go. She stood in front of Mona, still trembling and weak-kneed, her
breath coming fast and her head spinning, and she felt oddly apologetic.
Mona had started it, but Beebo had carried it too far. “I’m sorry,” she
panted.

“Stop saying you’re sorry all the time,” Mona told her in a sulky voice.
And, with a briskness that all but shattered the mood, she turned and
started walking off, her heels snapping against the asphalt. Beebo
stared after her, shocked. Was this the end of it?

But Mona turned back after a quarter of a block and called her. “You
aren’t going to spend the night there, are you?” she said crisply.

Beebo hurried after her, and they walked for two more blocks without
exchanging a word. Beebo could only suppose she had done something
wrong. Yet she didn’t know what, or how to make amends.

Mona stopped at a brownstone house with six front steps. “I live here,”
she said.

Beebo glanced up at it. “Shall I leave?” she said.

“Do you want to?”

“Don’t answer my questions with more questions!” Beebo said, a tide of
anger releasing her tongue. “Damn it, Mona, I don’t like evasions.”

“All right. Don’t go,” Mona said, and smiled at the outburst. She went
up the steps with Beebo coming uneasily behind her, opened the door, and
went to the first-floor apartment in the back. At her door she pulled
out her key and waited. Beebo was looking around at the hall, old and
modest, but cleanly kept. The apartments in a place like this could be
astonishingly chic. She had seen some belonging to Jack’s friends.

Mona let her take it in till Beebo became aware of the silence and
turned to her quizzically.

“Approve?” Mona said.

Beebo nodded, and Mona, as if that were the signal, turned the key in
the lock. She walked over the threshold, switched on a light, and
abruptly backed out again, preventing Beebo from entering.

“What’s wrong?” Beebo said, surprised.

“There’s someone in there,” Mona said.

Without thinking, Beebo made a lunge for the door. She had thrown
prowlers out of her father’s house before. A situation like this scared
her far less than being in that room alone with Mona—much as she wanted
it.

But Mona caught her arm. “It’s a friend of mine!” she hissed. “Beebo,
please!” Beebo stopped, irritated, waiting for an explanation. “It’s a
girl. I told her Todd and I were breaking up,” Mona shrugged. “I guess
she came over to cheer me up. We’ve been friends a long time. Oh, it’s
nothing romantic, Beebo.”

“Well, send her home,” Beebo said. It was one thing to be afraid of
Mona; but another entirely to forfeit the whole night in honor of a hen
party.

“I can’t.” Mona looked up at her in pretty distress. “She’s my one real
friend and I owe her a lot. She’s had some bad times in her own life
lately. Beebo, look—here’s my phone number. Call me in an hour. Maybe we
can still make it.” She took a scratch pad from her purse and scribbled
on it.

Beebo took it, feeling rebuffed and insulted. But Mona stood on tiptoes
and kissed her lips again. And when Beebo refused to embrace her, Mona
took her wrists and pulled them around her and gave Beebo a luxurious
kiss. “Forgive me,” she said. “It would be tough if she knew I’d brought
someone home—it really would.” She slipped out of Beebo’s arms and put a
hand on the doorknob. “Be sure to call me,” she said. And then she
disappeared inside her apartment.

Beebo stood in the hall a while, leaning on the dingy plaster and trying
to make sense out of Mona. There was no sound from the apartment.
Perhaps Mona and the girl had gone into a bedroom to talk. The idea made
Beebo angry and jealous. She went slowly down the front hall. There was
a pay phone by the entrance. Beebo went outside and sat on the front
stoop for about forty-five minutes, and then went in to call.

She had lifted the telephone receiver and was about to drop in a dime,
when she heard a bang from the end of the hall, as if someone had
dropped something heavy. It seemed to come from Mona’s door, and Beebo
rushed toward it. But at the threshold, she froze.

Mona’s voice, muffled as if through the walls of several rooms, but
discernible, penetrated the wood. “And you! You sneak in here like a rat
with the plague! God damn, how many times do I have to say it? _Call_
first. Are you deaf or just stupid?”

Beebo’s mouth opened as she strained to hear the answer. It came after a
slight pause: “Rats don’t scare you, doll. You already got the plague.”

Beebo whirled away from the door as if she had been burned, and stood
with her knuckles pressed angrily against her temples.

The voice belonged to a man.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was several days before anything happened. Beebo went back to work as
usual. There were no calls, no notes, no effort on Mona’s part to get in
touch with her and explain. Or apologize.

Beebo worked dully, but gratefully. Keeping busy was a balm to her
nerves. She took pleasure in driving, taking corners faster and making
deliveries in better time as she learned the routes. During the morning
she took out groceries. In the afternoon, it was fresh-cooked, hot
Italian food in insulated cartons.

Mona and her male visitor were on Beebo’s mind so constantly that she
didn’t even take time to worry about Jack, or the possibility he might
fall in love with Pat. She saw them every evening, but said little and
saw less.

She was full of a boiling bad temper; half-persuaded to go out on the
town with as many girls as she could find, sure that Mona would hear
about it; and half-toying with the idea of dating a man out of sheer
spite. It would be nice irony—almost worth the embarrassment and social
discomfort.

She was mad enough at Mona, in fact, to be nice to Pete. After all, Mona
had stood him up too, long ago. He was still under her feet, and
although he had never made any indecent proposals, he managed to always
look as if he were just about to. Beebo was comforted to see that he
gave the same look, and likely the same impression, to every woman in
range of his sight, except his wife.

One day at noon, she went deliberately to the table in the kitchen where
he was eating and pulled up a chair, while Marie served them. Pete
looked at her with his somber eyes and stopped munching for a minute.
She ordinarily managed her schedule so she could eat before or after he
did. Marie noticed the change, as she noticed everything, but whatever
she thought, she kept her own counsel.

“How is it with Jack and Pat?” Marie said conversationally.

Beebo straightened around. “How did you know about that?” she said,
surprised.

“They was in earlier. Pat says he knows about bugs. Maybe he can stomp
out my roaches.... He is a nice boy? I never did trust blonds.”

Beebo felt threatened, as if Marie had just announced the end of Beebo’s
life with Jack. “Sure. Very nice,” she said, and swallowed her stew. She
was conscious of Pete’s piercing gaze on her face.

“So?” Marie said, nodding. “He got a friendly style.”

Beebo recounted mentally her evenings in the past week. Since Jack and
Pat had met they had been together every night. Pat was in the apartment
all day—no matter what hour Beebo dropped in during her deliveries. What
about his job? And Jack? Jack Mann was a charming and persuasive man,
and the fact that his face was plain did not alter the fact that his
strong body was clean and pleasing, nor that his wits were quick and
could make you learn and laugh.

“What’s the matter, Beebo? You don’t like rabbit?”

She started at Pete’s voice and pulled away. His face was too close. But
she was glad for the diversion. He aimed a big spoon at her stew. “Maybe
you like a cheese sandwich?”

“No, this is fine,” she said, forcing a social smile ... and then
wishing it were possible to retract it. Pete was examining her
curiously.

She ate with concentration for several moments, still seeing Pat and
Jack in her mind’s eye. Pat liked Jack already. He was afraid of the
city, and he abominated his job. If he didn’t get back to it fast, he
wouldn’t have it any more, and she knew he didn’t give a damn—as long as
somebody fed and loved him. He was like a pet: a big lovable goddamn
poodle. She knew his liking for Jack would grow to fondness, if not
love. She could see it coming, especially at night when Jack let him
talk his heart out. Nobody listened or comforted more intelligently than
Jack.

_And when they fall in love—then where do I go? Shack up with Mona and
her stable of strange men?_ she wondered. Jack’s remarks about Mona’s
past were haunting her days and ruining her nights.

“Beebo,” said a quiet male voice into her ear. “You want the afternoon
off?”

It was an indecent proposal, all right. His voice made it one.

“No thanks,” she said frostily.

“You look bad.”

“I’m all right,” she snapped.

“You could’ve fooled me,” he said. And when she didn’t answer, he went
on, unwilling to let the conversation die, “The way you was acting, I
thought you was sick.”

“Maybe I am,” she said sardonically. “I’ve got the plague.”

“The plague?” He stopped eating, his teeth poised around a bite, and
grinned. “Plague, like the rats bring?”

“Yeah.” Beebo frowned at him.

“I got a friend with an obsession about rats,” he said. “You seen her in
here once or twice. Mona. You know?” Beebo nodded, her eyes fixed on
him. It was the longest she had looked at him squarely. “She tells every
man she knows—and that’s plenty—he’s a rat. I asked her why once. Want
to know what she said?” He paused, building suspense, while Beebo held
her breath. “She says they’re all hairy ... filthy ... and stupid. And
they’ll sleep with anything ain’t already dead. You agree?” He grinned
at her.

Beebo turned away. “I don’t know any _men_,” she said pointedly.

Pete threw his hands out. “Is that nice to say?” he demanded. “Jack, I
can understand. All he got of man is his name. Your father, who knows?
Another fag?” Beebo got halfway out of her seat, but he protested
elaborately at once. When she simmered down, he added confidentially,
“But _me_.... Even Marie will admit that much, when she’s feeling
honest.”

“Marie’s in a position to have an opinion,” Beebo said acidly. “But I
don’t think that’s _it_.”

Pete folded his arms on the table and leaned on them, unoffended. “You
want to be in that position too, Beebo?”

“Not for a million bucks,” she said, and drank down her milk in a
gesture of scorn.

“I know a lot of good positions,” he said cozily, laughing at her.

Beebo had enough sense not to get visibly angry; not to make a scene. It
wasn’t worth it and it would only tickle Pete. If it did no more than
embarrass the two women, he would be satisfied.

She put her glass down. “What do you do with all your women, Pete?” she
asked him, making no effort to keep her voice from Marie. “Line them up
in half-hour shifts? It beats me how one mighty male can keep so many
women happy.”

She picked up her plate and took it to the sink.

Marie tossed her a grin. “You tell him, Beebo,” she said. “To hear him
talk, he’s sold out till next March.”

“I’m selling nothing, bitch,” Pete told her sharply. “What I got, I give
away.”

“Listen to Robin Hood,” Beebo cracked, and walked out of the kitchen
toward the truck with a load of Marie’s packaged foods. Pete followed
her. Marie turned and took a step toward them, thought better of it, and
returned to brood over the stove. Beebo could handle him. She didn’t
need any help.

In the parking area, Pete took some of the load from Beebo and helped
her put it in the truck. “You think I brag a lot, Beebo?” he said.

“I think you’re a creep,” she said.

He waited a moment, chagrined but not about to show it. “That mean you
don’t like me?” he said finally.

“Let’s drop it, Pete.”

“You _do_ like me?” he pestered her.

“What do you want, a friendship ring?” she demanded.

Pete shrugged, staring at the low clouds; taking out a toothpick to
spear the food specks stuck in his white teeth. “Just an opinion,” he
said.

“I told you. That’s Marie’s department. Now, if you’ll get out of my
way, I have some deliveries to make.”

He turned to her. “Everybody got an opinion, Beebo. You worked for me
over two months now. So say it. Say the truth.”

Beebo swallowed her aggravation. This was a game of wits, and the first
man to blow off, lost. She put on the same casual cloak Pete was
wearing. “You’re my boss. You keep clear of me, I keep clear of you, and
we get along.”

“You make a big thing of keeping clear,” he said. “I smell bad, or
something?”

“I wouldn’t know. I never get that close,” Beebo said.

Something in his eyes made her swing up into the driver’s seat with
unusual speed. She started the motor, but he came around the truck and
pulled her door open.

“You want to know where Mona hangs out?” he said.

Beebo set her jaw. “Not from you,” she said tautly.

Pete grinned. “Why not? My information is as good as the next guy’s.”

It made Beebo wildly impatient. She gripped the steering wheel in hard
hands. “You through now, Pete?” she said, gunning the motor.

But he stood there, angled into the truck doorway so that she couldn’t
move without bending some of his bones the wrong way.

“It’s okay, Beebo, don’t get sore,” he said, and put a hand on her knee.
She picked it up and dropped it like a knot of worms, and he laughed.
“You know why I do that?” he asked. “’Cause you put on such a good show.
It really bugs you, don’t it? When I touch you.”

“You get the hell out of my truck or I’ll roll you flat!”

He chuckled again. “Okay,” he said. “I just got one piece of news for
you, butch. Listen: 121 McDonald Street—Paula Ash. Tonight. For those as
wants to locate Mona.” He pulled away from the truck, and Beebo backed
out in a rumble of dust and gravel.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was nearly midnight before Beebo could bring herself to the McDonald
Street address. She had debated it tempestuously throughout the evening,
but without confiding in Jack. She could have gone to Mona’s apartment
instead, or called her and demanded an explanation. But something told
her Pete Pasquini had an interesting motive for sending her here. She
might get hurt; but she might also learn the truth, whatever that was,
about Mona. So she took the chance.

She was in a don’t-give-a-damn mood, expecting to find Mona with a man
in the apartment, rented under an assumed name; or Mona making love to
Paula Ash, whoever the hell she was; or even—best joke of all—Mona
waiting for her alone, while Pete peeked through the keyhole.

She stood at 121 McDonald Street in a light drizzle, partially sheltered
by an inset doorway, her hands shoved into the sleeves of her
windbreaker, and tried to make up her mind to call the jest.

At last the chill drove her into the foyer to look at mailboxes. There
was a Paula Ash, all right. Apartment 103. Beebo took a deep breath and
pushed the buzzer.

The answer came after so long a wait that Beebo was just leaving in
disgust, and had to turn back quickly to open the inner door. She had
scarcely entered the hall when a door opened ahead and a girl looked
out.

“Yes?” she said. She appeared very sleepy, as if she had been in bed for
many hours already, even though it was not quite midnight.

“May I come in?” Beebo said. She walked down the hall looking Miss Ash
over candidly. If Mona were going to stand her up, and Pete play jokes
on her, the least she could do was fall into the pit with as much
bravado as possible—and perhaps, a pretty girl in her arms.

“I don’t know,” the girl said doubtfully, opening her eyes very wide as
if the stretch would keep the lids up a few minutes more. “Who are you?”

“I’m Beebo.” Beebo looked at her, standing about three feet away in the
door, wondering if her name would register. The living room behind Paula
looked inviting after the gray rain outside.

“Beebo Who?” The girl was beginning to wake up, staring at her visitor.

Beebo smiled. “Didn’t Mona tell you?”

The girl gasped and rubbed her eyes open earnestly. “Mona!” she said,
her voice husky. “Did Mona send you here?”

“Not exactly,” Beebo said. “But I was made to think I’d find her here.”
The girl was so distressed that Beebo began to think Paula was the
victim of whatever joke was afoot, and not herself. She was moved to
apologize. “I’m sorry, Miss Ash,” she said. “There must have been a
mistake. I came expecting some sort of practical joke. I guess nobody
let either one of us in on it.”

“Will you come in, please,” Paula Ash said unexpectedly. She was shy and
looked at Beebo’s shoulder when she spoke.

“Thank you,” Beebo said, walking past her into the living room. “It’s
pretty cold outside.” She took off her jacket and handed it to Paula,
who hung it in her front closet.

“Will you have coffee?” Paula said.

“Thanks, that sounds good.” Beebo watched her curiously while the girl
busied herself in a small doorless kitchen. She had a delicately pretty
face, different from Mona’s slick good looks and more appealing to
Beebo.

Paula ran an uneasy hand through her hair and bit her underlip as she
stood by her stove, waiting for the water to boil. “Would you tell me,”
she asked timidly, “just what Mona told you?”

“I haven’t seen Mona for a week,” Beebo said. “A mutual acquaintance
told me she’d be here tonight.”

“Well, your mutual acquaintance has a queer sense of humor,” Paula said.
“Mona and I were never good friends. And lately we’ve been pretty good
enemies.”

“So that was it,” Beebo said. “That’s a hell of a note. I’m sorry, Miss
Ash, I—”

“Paula, please. Oh, it wasn’t your fault,” Paula said. “Mona has done
crazier things than meeting her new lovers in my living room. I’ve known
her almost five years.” She came back with two cups of hot coffee. She
still seemed half-conscious, and when she stumbled a bit, Beebo got up
and rescued the coffee.

Paula made a hissing sound of pain, pulling air between her teeth and
looking at her left thumb.

“Did you scald it? Here. Under the cold water, quick.” Beebo left the
steaming cups on an end table and took Paula by the arm to the sink. She
turned on the tap full force and held Paula’s burn under the healing
stream. Paula tried to pull away after a few seconds but Beebo held her
securely. “Give it a good minute,” she said.

And as they stood there, Beebo studied Paula at close range. She was a
lovely looking girl, even though she seemed non compos at the moment.
“Are you sick, Paula?” Beebo asked kindly.

“No, no. Really. I’m just terribly tired. And then I took some sleeping
pills. Probably too many. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“If you’re so tired, why do you take sleeping pills?” Beebo asked.

Paula’s dainty face contracted around a private pain. “The doctor gave
them to me. It’s harder to sleep when you’re too tired than when you’re
just tired.” She weaved a little, and Beebo put an arm around her.

“Are you supposed to take so many they send you into a coma?”

“No. But one pill doesn’t work. Three or four don’t work any more. I
just keep swallowing them till I drop off.”

“That’s dangerous,” Beebo said. “One of these days you’ll drop too damn
far.” She turned the water off and reached for a paper towel, blotting
the injured hand gently. Suddenly, to her dismay, Paula pulled her hands
away and hid her face in them to cry. Beebo watched, frustrated with the
wish to touch and comfort her.

Paula’s sobs were short and hard, and she pulled herself together with a
stout effort of will. All Beebo could see for a moment was the top of
her head, covered with marvelous rich red hair. And, when she looked up,
a trail of pale freckles across her cheeks and nose. Beebo handed her a
tissue from her shirt pocket, and Paula blew her nose and wiped her
eyes.

She was a fragile, very feminine and small girl, wearing a pair of
outsized, plaid-print men’s pajamas.

Beebo took a bit of sleeve between her fingers with a smile. “You always
wear these?” she asked.

“Only lately. They aren’t mine. A former roommate left them behind when
she moved.”

“Oh,” Beebo said. “I didn’t think they were your type.”

“They’re not. They’re hers. And she’s gone, and this is all I have left
of her.” Paula shook out her smoldering curls and cleared her throat.
“I’m better now. Shall we have the coffee?” she said. It was obvious
that she had humiliated herself with the unplanned personal admissions,
and Beebo did her the courtesy of dropping the subject and joining her
in the living room.

They drank the coffee in preoccupied silence a while. Beebo lighted a
cigarette and offered it to Paula, who refused. Finally she said
lightly, hoping to cheer Paula up, “Seems to me those pajamas are the
answer to your insomnia.”

“What? How?” Paula looked at her as if suddenly remembering her presence
in a room where Paula had thought herself alone with a ghost.

“Switch to nighties—your own—and get some rest,” Beebo said. “If I had
to wear a plaid like that, I’d have nightmares all night.”

Paula smiled wanly. “I know,” she said. “They’re silly. I just needed
somebody else to say it, I guess. It’s hard to break away from a person
you’ve been close to. You hang on to the stupidest things.”

“Well, her old sleep gear won’t bring her any closer,” Beebo said. She
pulled a sleeve out full length. “Did she play basketball?” Beebo said,
and they both laughed.

“She wasn’t a shorty,” Paula admitted. Her laughter made her wonderfully
pretty. She stopped it suddenly to say, “That’s the first time I’ve
laughed in a month.” She gazed at Beebo with grateful astonishment.

“Looks like I got here just in time,” Beebo said, not realizing till
after she spoke what a hoary come-on that was. Paula’s pink blush
clarified things for her.

“I suppose you want to be getting home,” Paula said shyly, rising from
her chair. She was struck for the first time with Beebo’s size.
Stretched across the sofa, with her long legs thrusting out from under
the cocktail table, Beebo looked too big for a nine-by-twelve living
room.

To her surprise, Beebo found she didn’t want to be getting home at all;
not even to run interference between Jack and Pat. And thinking of Pat
brought a flash of recognition to her mind. “You remind me of a friend,”
she told Paula, sitting up to scrutinize her. “A boy named Pat. A
lovable thing. Shy and just a little childish. In the nice way, I mean.”

“I remind you of a _boy_?” Paula stared.

“More of a child than a boy.”

Paula didn’t know quite how to take it. “In the nice way?”

“Yes. Trusting, affectionate. Still curious about people and life. It’s
a very—endearing quality.”

“And you think _I’m_ like that?” Paula asked.

“You obviously don’t,” Beebo chuckled.

“I’ve been told I’m nasty and spoiled and selfish ... childish in the
bad way.”

“Who told you that? Your friend with the plaid pajamas?”

“Yes.”

“If you were that way with her, she must have done something to deserve
it. You look like a natural-born angel to me,” Beebo said, surprising
them both with her frankness.

“That’s a very nice thing for a stranger to say,” Paula said. “Thank
you.”

“My pleasure,” Beebo said, blanketing her sudden confusion with an
offhand nod.

There was a pensive pause while Beebo tried to remember the books she
had read about Lesbian love. It wasn’t always a question of sweeping
girls off their feet and carrying them away to bed, as Mona had made it
seem at first. How did you approach a sensitive, well-bred girl like
this one? Mow her down with kisses? Certainly not.

Beebo began to wonder how to make herself welcome for the night. It
seemed far better than going back to Jack’s and stewing again until dawn
about her future. She would be leaving Jack and Pat alone together all
night for the first time, and yet it seemed less painful now than it had
before. It would suffice Beebo if she and Paula did nothing but sit and
talk all night.

“I suppose somebody’s waiting for you?” Paula said.

“Nobody.”

Paula frowned at her. “Your roommate?” she asked.

“My roommate is having an affair with a man,” Beebo said and shocked
Paula, until Beebo smiled at her and made her think she was kidding.

“Well ... Mona?” she asked.

“Mona could be on the moon for all I know. I thought I’d find her here.”

“And now you’re disappointed,” Paula said diffidently.

“Not at all. I’m relieved.”

Paula drained her coffee cup and put it down with a nervous clink. “It
must be—awkward—if your roommate is really in love with somebody else,”
she said, in a voice so soft it was its own apology for speaking.

“It is,” Beebo said. “I hate to go home. I’m too long to sleep on the
damn sofa.”

“I’m afraid you’re too long for mine, too,” Paula said. There was a
pause. “But I could sleep on it and you could take my bed, if you will.”

It was such a completely disarming—almost quaint—invitation, that Beebo
smiled at her, prickling with temptation. Paula’s bashfulness was enough
to make Beebo self-assured.

“At least you’re not too long for the pajamas,” Paula said.

“I can’t put you out like that,” Beebo said.

Paula was flustered. She looked at her hands. “I don’t mind,” she said.
“It’s long and I’m short. We’re used to each other.”

“You and the sofa?” Beebo said, and stood up. She went to the closet and
found her jacket. You can’t take somebody’s bed away just because you
told a lie about sleeping on your own sofa. She pulled the jacket on and
zipped it.

“You’re a sweet girl, Paula,” she said, not looking at her. “Miss Plaid
Pajamas must be nuts. Find somebody who deserves you, and she’ll never
make you sleep alone on the sofa.”

She started for the door but Paula, recovering suddenly, jumped up and
put a restraining hand on her arm. Beebo turned around, a shiver of
sharp excitement radiating through her. She was not—she was _never_—as
sure of herself as she seemed.

“Beebo,” Paula said, whispering so that Beebo had to bend her head to
hear her. “I’d like you to stay. Make yourself welcome. Please.”

Beebo was afraid to believe her ears. It had seemed almost easy, in
retrospect, to storm the Colophon. She was not unaware that Mona was
something of a catch, and when she went over the events of that night,
she was satisfied at the way she had acted. Nobody, not Mona herself,
knew how inexperienced and uncertain Beebo was, and nothing she had done
gave her away. Unless it was her exuberance when Mona kissed her.

But now it seemed incredible that this exquisite stranger should reach
out for her from the middle of nowhere. “Paula,” she said, “I think
we’re both just lonely. I think it would be best if I go. You don’t want
to wake up tomorrow and hate yourself.” She was still hedging about the
ultimate test with a girl.

“I _was_ lonely. I will be again if you go.”

“Maybe you’d be better off lonely than sorry.”

“Beebo, do I have to beg you?” Paula pleaded, her voice coming up
stronger with her emotion.

Beebo reached for her in one instinctive motion, suddenly very warm
inside her jacket. “No, Paula, you don’t have to beg me to do anything.
Just ask me.”

“I did. And you didn’t want to stay.”

“I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t understand.”

“I thought it was Mona. She can make herself so—so tempting.”

“I can’t even remember what she looks like.”

“Aren’t you in love with her?”

Beebo’s hands, with a will of their own, closed around Paula’s warm slim
arms. “I met her last week for the first time. You can’t be in love with
someone you just met.”

“You can’t?” Paula demurred cautiously, looking down at her big pajamas.

“I never was,” Beebo said, feeling sweat break out on her forehead. She
pulled gently on Paula and was almost dismayed when Paula moved docilely
toward her. Beebo became feverishly aware that the plaid pajamas did not
conceal all of Paula Ash. The sweeping curve of her breasts held the
cotton top out far enough to brush Beebo’s chest with a feather touch.
Beebo felt it through the layers of her clothes with a tremor so hard
and real it tumbled eighteen years of daydreams out of her head.

She held Paula at arm’s length a moment, looking at this lovely little
redheaded princess with a mixture of misgivings and want too powerful to
pretend away. Paula took her hands and held them with quivering
strength, returning Beebo’s gaze. Beebo saw her own doubts reflected in
Paula’s eyes. But she saw desire there, too; desire so big that it had
to be brave: it hadn’t any place to hide.

Paula kissed Beebo’s hands with a quick press of her mouth that
electrified Beebo. She stood there while Paula kissed them over and over
again and a passionate frenzy mounted in them both. Paula’s lips, at
first so chaste, almost reverent, warmed against Beebo’s palms ... and
then her kitten-tongue slipped between Beebo’s fingers and over the
backs of her broad hands until those hands trembled perceptibly and
Paula stopped, clutching them to her face.

Beebo reclaimed them, but only to caress Paula’s face, bringing it close
to her and seeing it with amazement.

“I never guessed I’d feel love for the first time through my hands,” she
murmured. “Paula, Paula, I would have done this all wrong if you hadn’t
had the guts to start it for me. I would have manhandled you, I—”

Paula stilled her with a finger over Beebo’s mouth. “Don’t talk now,”
she said.

And Beebo, who had never done more than dream before, slipped her arms
around Paula and pulled her tight. It was a marvel the way their bodies
fitted together; the way Paula’s head tipped back naturally at so
beckoning an angle, and rested on Beebo’s arm; the way her eyes closed
and her lips parted and her hair scattered like garnet petals around her
flower-face.

Beebo kissed her mouth and kissed her mouth again, holding her against
the wall with the pressure of her body. Paula submitted with a sort of
wistful abandonment. Everywhere Beebo touched this sweet girl, she found
thrilling surprises. And Paula, coming to life beneath Beebo’s searching
hands, found them with her.

It was no news to Beebo that she was tall and strong and male-inclined.
But her voluptuous reaction to Paula shocked her speechless. Paula began
to undress her and Beebo felt herself half-fainting backwards on the
sofa into a whirlpool of sensual delight. The merest touch, the merest
flutter of a finger, and Beebo went under, hearing her own moans like
the whistle of a distant wind. Paula had only to undo a belt buckle or
pull off a shoe, and Beebo responded with a beautiful helpless fury of
desire.

It was no longer a question of proceeding with caution, of “learning
how.” The whole night passed like an ecstatic dream, punctuated with a
few dead-asleep time-outs, when they were both too exhausted to move,
even to make themselves comfortable.

Beebo had only a vague idea of what she was doing, beyond the
overwhelming fact that she was making ardent love to Paula. She seemed
to have no mind at all, nor need of one. She was aware only that Paula
was beautiful, she was gay, she was warmly loving, and she was there in
Beebo’s arms: fragrant and soft and auburn-topped as a bouquet of tiger
lilies.

Beebo couldn’t let her go. And when fatigue forced her to stop she would
pull Paula close and stroke her, her heavy breath stirring Paula’s
glowing hair, and think about all the girls she had wanted and been
denied. She was making up, this night, for every last one of them.

Paula whispered, “Do you still believe you can’t love someone you just
met?”

“I don’t know what I believe any more.”

And Paula said, “I love you, Beebo. Do you believe that?”

Beebo lifted Paula’s fine face and covered it with kisses while Paula
kept repeating, “I love you, I love you,” until the words—the unadorned
words—brought Beebo crashing to a climax, rolling over on Paula,
embracing her with those long strong legs.

She felt Paula sobbing in the early dawn and raised up on an elbow to
look at her. “Darling, did I hurt you?” she asked anxiously, not
stopping to think that she had never called a girl “darling” before,
either.

“No,” Paula said. “It’s just—I’ve been so unhappy, so confused. I
thought the world had ended a month ago, and tonight it’s just
beginning. It’s brand new. I’m so happy it scares me.”

Beebo held her tenderly and brushed the tears off her cheeks. Paula put
her head in the crook of Beebo’s arm and gazed at her. “You must have
been born making love, Beebo.”

“How do you know?” Beebo had no intention of setting the record straight
just then.

“I don’t, really. It’s just that I never reacted to anybody the way I
have to you. I never did this with anybody before.”

“Never made love?” Beebo said, surprised almost into laughter. _The
blind leading the blind_, she thought.

“No, I’ve made love before,” Paula said thoughtfully. “With men, too.
It’s just that I never.... You’ll think I’m making this up, but it’s the
truth. I never—oh, God help me, I’m frigid. I mean, I was, till
tonight.”

Beebo lay there in the dark, holding her, torn between the wish to
accept it and the suspicion that she was fibbing.

“You don’t believe me,” Paula said resignedly. “I shouldn’t have told
you. It’s enough that it happened.”

Beebo petted her, smoothing her hair and letting her hands glide over
Paula’s silky body. “Okay, you never came before,” she said. “Now I’ll
tell you a fish story. I never made love before.”

Paula laughed good-naturedly. “All right, we’re even,” she said. “That’s
a real whopper. Mine was the truth.”

Beebo laughed with her, and it didn’t matter any more whether she had
been lied to or not. It was the truth in spirit, and only Paula knew if
it was the truth in fact. Her attraction to Beebo was so real that it
took shape in the night, surrounding her like the aura of her perfume.
Beebo kissed her while she was still laughing. “You have such a mouth,
Paula. Such a mouth....”

“Does it please you?”

“You please me. All of you,” Beebo said, and she meant it. Paula was
wholly feminine, soft and submissive. She was finely constructed,
looking somehow as breakable, as valuable—and as durable—as Limoges
china. Beebo wanted to protect her, accomplish things for her.

She kept touching her admiringly. “You’re so tiny,” she said. “I’m going
to feed you lasagna and put some meat on your bones.”

“Will you buy me a new wardrobe when I get too fat for my old one?”

“I’ll buy you anything. Mink coats. Meals at the Ritz. New York City,”
Beebo said.

“All of it?”

“Just the good parts.”

Paula clutched at her suddenly, first laughing, then trembling. “Beebo,
don’t leave me,” she said. “I do love you.” She seemed dumbfounded. “It
frightens me, it makes me believe all over again in my childhood dreams.
Did you ever feel like that?”

“Only on the bad days. My childhood wasn’t that pretty,” Beebo said.

“When are the bad days?”

“Never any more. Not with Paula around.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

They got up at noon the next day, and it was some time before Beebo
could think rationally about her job. She should call Marie, she should
call Jack and tell him where she was. But it was impossible to get out
of the bed while Paula was in it. And every time Paula sat up, Beebo
pulled her down.

“Let me make breakfast,” Paula smiled, and after wrestling a moment,
pulled free and scampered halfway across the bedroom, pulling a sheet
after her. She stood with her dazzling naked back, delicately sugared
with freckles, to Beebo, who admired it in infatuated silence.

Paula ruffled through her closet looking for a negligee until Beebo
said, “Paula, are you in love with me or that sheet?”

“I don’t want you to see me,” Paula confessed. “You said I was too
thin.”

“I said ‘tiny.’ And beautiful. Honey, I felt you all over; I know you
with my hands. Would it be so awful if I know you with my eyes, too?”
When Paula hesitated, Beebo threw the covers off and stood by the bed.

Paula studied her in silence. “You’re wonderful,” she breathed at last.

“I’m homely,” Beebo answered. “But I’m not ashamed of it.”

“You are many things, Beebo, but homely isn’t one of them,” Paula
declared. She faced Beebo sheet-first, like a highborn Roman girl in her
wedding chiton. “How many girls have admired you like this?”

“Never a one,” Beebo said. She crossed the room toward Paula and saw her
flinch. “Are you afraid of me?” she said, surprised.

“A little.”

“No, Paula.” Beebo reached her, touching her with gentle hands. “I’d
never hurt you. Don’t you know that?”

“Not with your hands, maybe,” Paula said, bending her graceful neck to
kiss one. “But I’m so in love ... it would take so little. And scores of
other girls must want you, Beebo. It would hurt me awfully if you ever
wanted _them_.”

“What girls?” Beebo scoffed.

“Well, for a starter—Mona.”

“Paula, I kissed Mona twice. She stood me up twice. That’s the end of
that,” Beebo said flatly. Abruptly, she pulled Paula’s sheet off and
gazed delightedly on the fresh fair curves beneath. And before Paula had
time to blush, Beebo picked her up, grateful at last for the uncomely
strength in her arms, and placed her on the bed.

“Beebo,” Paula whispered, her arms locked tightly around Beebo’s neck.
“How old are you?”

Beebo couldn’t blurt idiotically, “Eighteen.” Instead she asked, “How
old do I look?”

“Like a college kid,” Paula sighed. “Which makes me older than you. I’m
twenty-five, Beebo.”

“An ancient ruin.” Beebo kissed her nonchalantly, but she was secretly
surprised. Nonetheless it pleased her to have won an older girl.

They made love again, lazily now. There was no wild rush, no fear on
Beebo’s part that it would hurt and disillusion her. They rolled in
caresses like millionaires in blue chips ... ran their fingers over each
other, and kissed and tickled and laughed and blew in each other’s ears.

And all the while Paula kept repeating, with the transparent affection
that is the crown of femininity, “I love you, Beebo. I love you so
much.”

Beebo couldn’t answer. She couldn’t have been happier, or hotter, or
more rapturously charmed with the girl. She could hardly believe she had
found one so lovely, so generous, so responsive, so single.

But there was a lot of roaming restless curiosity in Beebo, and while
she was willing and eager to make love to and romanticize Paula, she was
not willing to fall in love with her.

It wasn’t Paula’s fault, though Paula, with a woman’s quick awareness of
emotions, sensed the situation. It was just that Beebo wasn’t ready for
it. Paula had come too early in Beebo’s life. And that fact alone made
Paula realize how young Beebo must be.

Beebo had caught Paula in a vulnerable state, on the rebound from an
unhappy love affair with the girl in the plaid pajamas. But it was the
culmination of a lot of bad affairs with both sexes that had left Paula
drained and skeptical; hopeless about her future and unable to cope with
her present. She had nearly taken the whole bottle of sleeping pills the
night before, instead of the four that knocked her out.

Beebo was too good to be true, too young to know herself, too masculine
to be faithful. But how strong she was, how sensual and sure; in some
ways, wise beyond her years with that hard-won maturity Jack had
perceived months before.

Paula tried to tell herself, as she lay in Beebo’s embrace, that she had
nothing more than a hot crush that would end as suddenly as it began,
and make her laugh to think she had called it love. She wanted very much
to believe it, because it would have spared her the pain of losing Beebo
Brinker to another girl—a pain she was in no condition to take safely
then.

                   *       *       *       *       *

They ate together in Paula’s kitchen, and Paula obligingly sat on
Beebo’s lap and let Beebo feed her. They were enchanted with each other.
It was the kind of day everybody ought to have once in a while; if you
knew it was coming, you could bear the boredom and solitude in the
interim.

Paula told Beebo about her young years in Washington, D.C., and the
shock that accompanied her suspicions that she was a Lesbian. Because it
was Paula speaking, and because Beebo had never talked heart-to-heart
with another Lesbian, the story seemed remarkable. She held Paula on her
knees, answering with sympathy and affection, troubled and touched by it
... and stirred by the warmth of Paula’s close, firm bottom.

                   *       *       *       *       *

They were startled when the phone cut in on them late in the afternoon.

Paula answered it over Beebo’s protests. “Hello?” she said, and as she
listened her eyes went to Beebo in surprise. Finally she held out the
receiver. “It’s for you,” she said. “Jack Mann.”

Beebo stood up, concerned. “How did he know I was here?”

“You’re his roommate, he says. Roommates ought to keep track of each
other,” Paula said, teasing but with just a trace of chill in her voice.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were straight, Beebo?”

Beebo took the phone with a comical grimace. “You would have guessed,
anyway,” she said. “Hey—do you know Jack?”

“Everybody knows Jack,” said Paula.

Into the receiver Beebo said, “Jackson?”

“I hear you’ve been out stupefying the female population of Greenwich
Village,” Jack said. “You must have something. Paula’s usually a deep
freeze.”

“How did you know I was here?” Beebo said.

“My spies are everywhere. And a damn good thing, too. I would have given
you up for dead. Listen, pal, I just got an s.o.s. from Marie. There’s a
very large customer on Park Avenue who wants a very large pizza right
now. Marie is whipping it up and Beebo will whip it over to said
customer.”

“Park Avenue is Pete’s territory,” Beebo said. “He won’t like it.”

“He’s out somewhere, as usual. Marie can’t find him and besides, she’s
afraid to look.”

“You want me to leave now?” Disappointment growled in her voice.

“I know Paula, honey; she’s a good girl. If she likes you enough to
sleep with you, she likes you enough to wait for you.”

“You mean you knew this beautiful girl all along and didn’t tell me
about her?” Beebo said, grinning at Paula.

“Well, hell, you waited two months to tell me you _wanted_ one. Come on,
Marie’s in a hurry. Show her what you’re made of.”

“I’m made of sugar and spice, like the rest of the girls,” Beebo said
sourly. “It doesn’t mix with cheese and anchovies.”

“Get your ass over there, Beebo,” Jack said. “This order goes to Venus
Bogardus.”

The name rang in Beebo’s head. “The actress?” she said, frowning. “She’s
not one of our customers.”

“She is now.”

“But Jack, my God. Venus Bogardus!”

“The original. The girl with the bosom that just won’t stop. Can you
take it?”

“It’s worth it just for a look,” Beebo grinned. “Okay, call Marie and
tell her I’m coming. And Jack—I know I should have called you. I’m
sorry.”

Beebo hung up and walked to Paula, expecting to embrace her and explain.
But Paula was quite pale. “What’s all this about Pete and Marie? Do you
mean the Pasquinis?”

“Yes. I work for them. Marie wants me to deliver a pizza to—”

“—to Venus Bogardus. I heard. Beebo, why didn’t you tell me about Pete?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Beebo said, mystified. “Honey, are you mad at
me? Why?”

“Pete and Mona are thick as thieves. What Mona does, Pete does; what
Mona thinks, Pete thinks—unless they’re quarreling. If they don’t like
you, they’d as soon exterminate you. They wouldn’t cut you down if you
were hanging.”

Beebo laughed a little at this explosion. “I know you don’t like Mona,
honey. But Pete’s just a twerp. He’s the one who sent me over here last
night. I’ll admit it wasn’t exactly ethical—”

“Then Mona knows you’re here. How charming,” Paula said sourly.

“So what’s Mona, the Wicked Witch?” Paula scowled and Beebo said, “Okay,
Pete’s a slob; and my opinion of Mona is slipping fast. But I can’t be
mad at anybody who sent me to you, Paula, no matter what their motives
were.”

“Now they’ll do everything to take you away from me,” Paula said,
looking fearfully at Beebo.

“There’s no way they could do that, sweetheart,” Beebo said, pulling
Paula down beside her on the bed. “Paula, I’ll be back in an hour. I
won’t do anything but deliver the pizza.”

Paula clung to her. “Promise,” she said. “And if Milady Bogardus walks
into the room, you have to shut your eyes and run.”

“At the same time?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to break my neck?” Beebo laughed.

“Better your neck than my heart,” Paula whispered.

At the door Beebo took Paula’s hands and kissed them the way Paula had
first kissed hers. “I never liked Venus Bogardus,” she said. “I read
somewhere that her curves are built into her clothes. She’s about as
sexy as a hatrack under the finery—and a cool forty-eight years old.”

“Come back,” Paula said seriously. “That’s all I ask.”

They parted and Beebo left the building with a soaring pride and
satisfaction that seemed to lift her clear of the pavement.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Marie Pasquini was waiting in the shop when Beebo arrived. She had just
argued with her mother-in-law and it made her visage long and dark.

“Thank God, a happy face,” she said when she saw Beebo.

“Maybe we ought to find Pete, Marie,” Beebo said. “He considers Park his
street.”

“_His_ street!” Marie spat. “It’s too good for him. An alley full of
donkey-do is too good for him.”

“Too bad for you there ain’t no such alleys handy,” said Pete’s voice
from the front of the shop, approaching the kitchen. “You’d be right at
home in one. Like the one where I found you in Bordeaux.” He appeared in
the kitchen doorway, making Beebo wonder how long he had been lurking
there. Unaccountably, he gave her a case of gooseflesh.

“Here he comes,” said Marie to Beebo. “Captain Marvel. Okay, Captain,
here’s an order. You want to deliver?”

“That depends on Beebo,” Pete said, meandering unsteadily toward her.
“Where were you today, butch? I had to make all the deliveries myself.”
His grin made her want to hit him.

“I was indisposed,” she said.

“Indisposed,” he mimicked in a fussy voice. “Well, ain’t that a shame. I
understand Paula Ash was indisposed today, too.” His breath smelled of
zinfandel.

Beebo stared at him with cold-eyed loathing and then stalked toward the
back door.

“Wait a minute!” Pete called.

“Not for you,” Beebo said.

“Beebo!” It was Marie’s voice this time. “He’s full of dry red. He can’t
drive. Please, I don’t want to lose Venus Bogardus. Nor the truck,
neither,” she added, with a significant glance at Pete.

At the sound of that famous name, Pete burst into winy laughter. “Go on,
Beebo, go on. Maybe she’ll fall for you, too,” he said. “How you gonna
keep two of ’em happy at the same time? You want a few lessons?”

Beebo took the wrapped pizza from Marie and stormed out of the kitchen.
She could hear the opening blast of a real wingding behind her.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo drove through a light rain that was quickly slicking down the city
streets. It was Midwestern weather. Her father’s face crossed her mind,
obscuring some of her revulsion against Pete. _I wonder where Dad thinks
I am now?_ she mused despondently.

She punished herself by picturing her father: a tall solid man, with the
lines of worry and weather on his face, delivering a foal to its
snorting, laboring mother; stooping with the burdens of alcohol and
anxiety over his strange young daughter.

Beebo felt a surge of guilty love for him as she neared the address
Marie had given her. She almost drove past. It was a big chilly building
that looked loftily down on the summer sprinkle.

Beebo went up on the service elevator, her head full of whirling images:
Paula, of the glorious red hair and sweet mouth. The big kindly father
whose love had made her strong and himself weak. The people who had
lately come to matter in her life in the city.

She knocked on the back door, becoming aware as she did so of strident
voices within: a woman’s, bright and soprano with anger; a boy’s
breaking with resentment; another woman, refereeing timidly for the
first two.

“All right, all right, answer the goddamn door!” cried the soprano.

“Mother, do you have to swear like a whore?” the boy cried. “In front of
delivery boys?”

“What do you care what I do with delivery boys, darling?”

Beebo recognized the celebrated voice, just as the door opened. “Are you
the pizza?” asked a gray dumpling of a woman.

“No, but I have one with me,” Beebo grinned. Her voice stilled the
argument momentarily. “Five bucks,” Beebo told the Dumpling, who wore a
white uniform like a nurse, or nanny. Beebo waited for the money,
suddenly full of springy laughter that might go off any second like a
string of firecrackers.

“Five bucks?” said Venus Bogardus. “I haven’t got a damn dime.”

With a thrill of recognition, Beebo suddenly saw her. She was wearing a
scarlet, silk-jersey dress. When she moved, she proved there was nothing
beneath it. The hatrack story lay down and died. But Beebo was still so
full of Paula that the sight of Venus Bogardus was little more than an
entertainment.

Toby, the boy, turned his pockets inside-out. “I gave you all my money
yesterday,” he said, glum and embarrassed. To Beebo he said, “I’m
sorry,” with the pathetic air of a child who is struggling to assume the
responsibilities of dissipated parents. He was a good-looking boy; in
his early teens, Beebo guessed, and finding life with a movie-star
mother a stormy combination of high excitement and humiliation. He was
not the type to take it lightly.

“Toby, don’t you have something in your piggy bank, dear?” Venus
persisted, aware of Beebo now.

“You threw my piggy bank down the incinerator shaft,” he mumbled.

“I did?” She blinked at him with incredible blue eyes, encircled by long
black lashes.

“A year ago,” Toby said wearily.

“God, that was careless. Was there anything in it?” Venus said.

“Two-fifty in pennies. I was saving up for a catcher’s mitt.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be enough anyway. For the pizza, I mean.”

“Excuse me—why don’t you charge it?” Beebo said. She was somewhat
abashed to have walked in on a Love Queen in the midst of a common
little argument.

“Do you think they’d let me?” Venus said, turning to Beebo at last, her
voice melting off her tongue like buckwheat honey. Toby slammed out of
the kitchen in utter disgust.

“I think so,” Beebo said, smiling.

Venus came to take the pizza from her, opening the container for a
taste. “Somebody said it was ‘peerless pasta.’ Is it _that_ bad?”

“It’s good.”

Venus put it on the breakfast table and tore off a bite. “You’re right,”
she said. “Want some?”

“No thanks,” Beebo said, staring at her. Perhaps now was the time to
back out and run, as Paula suggested.

“Don’t be shy,” Venus said. “Toby, come back and eat, dear,” she called
through the kitchen door. “We have a guest.” Toby shuffled in while
Venus explained to Beebo, still hesitating at the back door, “No cook
tonight. She just quit for the hundredth time. Bring some plates, Mrs.
Sack. I’ll get the milk for these growing children.”

“Miss Bogardus, I can’t possibly stay; I—” Beebo said, but Venus
interrupted her, as if she hadn’t heard her, with a stream of cordial
inanities.

Toby’s face colored. “Mother, will you listen?” he said in an angry
hiss. “She doesn’t _want_ to stay.”

“I know, darling. Now shut up and sit down, all of you.”

They did. It seemed to be the thing to do. But Beebo had a tingling
feeling that the whole building would fold under her as soon as she
touched down on the seat.

Venus opened the refrigerator and a loud smell came out. “God, look at
the mess!” she cried. “I’ll bet that bitch hasn’t cleaned it for weeks.”

“If you’d come home long enough to look at it once in a while, she would
have,” Toby said.

“Darling, I look at it every day, when I put the champagne in to cool.”

She joined them, passing the milk around, and badgered Beebo to eat more
than Beebo wanted. Toby couldn’t stand it.

“Leave her alone, Mother!” he said, rising from his seat.

“Don’t behave like a nervous girl, Toby,” Venus reproved him breezily.

“I’m not a girl,” he said in real anguish.

“Of course not, dear. Boys wear pants and girls wear skirts. That’s how
I’ve always known you were a boy.”

Beebo became abruptly conscious of her chino slacks and found it hard to
keep eating naturally.

“I’m sorry,” Toby said again to Beebo. “My mother’s a little cracked. It
comes from getting her own way all the time.”

“God, how dreadful to be fourteen,” Venus said, gazing at her son
pityingly. “I don’t know how I lived through it myself.” She ate for a
minute quietly while Beebo plotted an escape. “I’ll have to tell Leo
about this; it’s really marvelous,” Venus said, cutting another bite.

“Leo’s her husband,” Toby said, making a face.

“You’d think they loathed each other,” Venus said, glancing at Beebo.
“Actually, Toby gets along better with Leo than with any of the others.”

“It’s a good thing _I_ get along with him, because _you_ sure don’t,”
Toby flared, to the accompaniment of horrified shushings from Mrs. Sack.

“One more crack like that and you can leave the table,” Venus said
sharply. “God! What do you do with children that age?”

“I don’t know. What do they do with you?” Beebo said.

Toby turned to her with an amazed grin.

“And how old are _you_, darling?” Venus asked Beebo, her eyes shining
through their black fringe like hard chips of sapphire.

“Fourteen,” Beebo said, and evoked a chuckle of relief from Toby. Beebo
smiled at him, and suddenly they were in league; two friendly
conspirators subverting Venus’s authority.

“I’d have said twelve, to judge from your table manners,” Venus cooed.

And unruffled, she continued eating, giving Beebo a chance to study her
surreptitiously. Her face had been called the most perfect in the world
when she was a starlet twenty years before. And still she was very
lovely, even without make-up on her face. The lines about her eyes and
mouth were faint and fine. You had to look for them, and somehow they
made her beauty the more poignant, emphasizing as they did the
perishability of human loveliness. She was probably in her late
thirties, Beebo guessed.

“Tell me, darling,” Venus said unexpectedly, startling Beebo. “Do you
live in town somewhere with your mommy and daddy? I mean, surely a
fourteen-year-old child isn’t out delivering pizzas for a living.”

“I live in town,” Beebo said. “My father lives back in Wisconsin.”

“How primitive,” Venus said, with a smile that told Beebo she was aware
of her own oversophisticated nonsense. She made it rather charming.
“Just one father?” she said. “Toby has six.”

“That must be a record,” Beebo said quietly, trying to focus on her
food.

“It’s Mother’s record, not mine,” Toby said. “As far as I’m concerned,
you can throw all six in the East River. All but Leo, anyway.”

“Darling!” his mother cried, more amused this time than angry, perhaps
because she shared his view. “After all the lovely presents they’ve
given you, too.”

Beebo watched her curiously. Venus was not dense or callow. But her
glamour and her fortune obviously hadn’t spared her the problems of
raising a pubescent boy. Most mothers approached their kids with a
mixture of love, common-sense, and frazzled tempers. Venus approached
hers with all the gorgeous razzle-dazzle, passion, and impatience that
made obedient slaves of the older men in her life.

Toby, at fourteen, was supposed to react with the fascination of an
adult male three times his age for a beautiful and tempestuous woman.

_If he ever does, Venus will get the shock of her life_, Beebo thought
with amusement.

Instead, of course, Toby lashed out at her in frightened confusion. He
loved her very much, but he was afraid and overawed, and bitter about
the life she made him lead.

He wanted a mother comfortably middle-aged and unpretentious, like other
people’s mothers. Instead, he had what other people thought they wanted:
a glittering courtesan who couldn’t kiss him at night for fear of
smudging her mouth, who took him on vacation trips with her lovers while
her husband—and Toby’s friend, Leo—stayed behind in Hollywood.

Beebo sensed much of this in the pointed wordplay between mother and
son. Their mutual love stood aside, forlorn and unexpressed, while they
took out their grievances against one another.

Beebo stood up to leave as soon as she decently could.

“Heavens, you’re not going!” Venus protested.

“I have a heavy date,” Beebo smiled. “Thanks very much, Miss Bogardus.”

“You’re welcome. Who’s the lucky boy?”

Beebo frowned uncomprehendingly at first, till she realized Venus meant
her date. “Oh,” she said, humiliated to know she was blushing. “Just an
old friend.”

“Bring him around.”

Beebo began to stammer excuses and Toby came to her rescue. “Let her go,
Mom,” he said, ashamed of Venus, as usual. He liked Beebo for taking his
side; for making him laugh and getting one up on his mother. And it
galled him to see Venus tease her. He was not too young to see how
uncomfortable Beebo was. When Venus turned to him with a dangerous
smile, he said, “I just wish you’d act like a mother now and then.”

“Why, I act like a mother twenty-four hours a day,” she said innocently.
“I _am_ a mother. There sits the proof, eating his pizza like an
absolute boor.” She turned elegantly to Beebo, who had just noticed her
dainty bare feet under the table. “All right, darling, go. But do come
again some time,” Venus said.

Beebo smiled her thanks and got as far as the door before Venus called
her again. Her voice, even though Beebo half expected it, sent a wave of
shivers down her back.

“I forgot to ask,” Venus said. “What’s your name? I mean, so we’ll know
when we order peerless pasta again.”

Toby had had it. Venus was practically flirting with Beebo. He clambered
over Mrs. Sack and started out of the kitchen. Venus turned in her seat
and said, “Damn it, Toby, you come back here!” Her eyes sparkled.

“What for?” he said blackly.

“To finish your dinner.”

“I’ve lost my appetite, Mother.” He glanced at Beebo and added, “I
apologize for my mother. I hope you don’t have a rotten impression of
us.”

“Not at all,” Beebo said, moved by his distress, his anxious efforts to
protect her opinion of them. She wondered if he had any friends at all
up here in his gilded cage. A Manhattan apartment isn’t the ideal place
to raise a spirited boy.

Mrs. Sack rose to her feet clucking, but Venus waved her down. “Oh, the
hell with him, Mrs. Sack,” she said. “He’ll be right back.... He’s a
lovely boy,” she told Beebo. “He’ll outgrow this rebellious stuff in
another year or so.” She spoke confidently but Beebo knew it was a
cover-up for deep concern. “Now—what did you say your name was?”

Beebo answered in a low voice, “Beebo Brinker.”

“You’re kidding,” said Venus.

“No.” Beebo smiled.

“Lord, that’s even worse than mine. Did your press agent dream it up? Or
don’t you delivery boys—excuse me, girls—have press agents?”

“I have dozens, but they’re all starving,” Beebo said.

“Mercy, we’ll have to find you a job,” Venus said. “Are you literate, by
any chance?”

“No, I’m perfectly normal,” Beebo said. She had learned not to get mad
at the wild assortment of jibes people tossed at her. It was better to
catch and toss back than to fall and lie as if dead; make a sideshow of
your strangeness.

Venus put her head back and laughed, and Beebo felt suddenly very warm
and nervous, looking at her. From across the room her face looked
flawless. “Poor Beebo,” Venus said, enjoying the name. “Came all the way
up here in the rain to bring me a pizza, and I didn’t even pay her for
it.”

“You fed me part of it,” Beebo said.

“Well, I’ll order spaghetti next time. When the sun is shining and I
have a few nickels in my jeans,” Venus promised. “I suppose you’re in a
mighty rush to get home to your heavy date?”

“If you don’t mind,” Beebo said politely.

“Of course I mind, but go anyway. I’ll see you on spaghetti day,” Venus
smiled, and Beebo slipped out the back door with her spine still
prickling.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo wondered, all the way downtown in the truck, what sort of kicks
Venus got out of inviting a strange delivery girl in for an unpaid-for
dinner. _She had a bad day and I amused her_, Beebo thought. _The cook
cut out, Toby bugged her, and all six husbands are out of town._

She approached Pasquini’s wishing she could leave the truck somewhere
else for the night, just to avoid seeing Pete. But he was out of sight,
if not off the premises, and she parked and left without incident.

Under a streetlight she looked at her watch. She had been away three
hours instead of one and she was anxious about the trusting girl she had
left behind. She ran most of the way to Paula’s place.

It surprised her when Paula left her waiting in the entry almost four
minutes before she buzzed to open the door.

No one was in the living room when Beebo came in. She called, feeling
her heart quicken with alarm.

“Paula, where are you? Are you all right?”

“In here.” Paula’s voice was faint and Beebo rushed into the bathroom to
find her, standing quiet and sad in front of the mirror. A bottle full
of pills, with the cap off, rested on the bowl. Paula had an empty glass
in her hand.

Beebo looked at her face in the mirror and then saw the bottle.

“Sleeping pills?” she said, picking it up. Her eyes went dark and she
grabbed Paula by the shoulders. “You didn’t!” she said. “Good God,
Paula!”

“No, I didn’t,” Paula murmured. “The bottle’s still full.”

Beebo emptied it into the toilet and flushed the pills away. She turned
to Paula, trying to comfort her, but Paula averted her face and broke
into tears. She flung her arms around Beebo. “Where have you _been_?
You’ve been gone for hours,” she wept.

“She wanted me to eat the damn pizza with them,” Beebo said clumsily.
“Come on, honey, lie down on the bed.” She pulled a protesting and
white-faced Paula toward the bedroom. “What’s the matter?” Beebo said as
Paula’s resistance stiffened.

“I think she’s afraid of a scene,” came a cool, unexpected voice. Beebo
whirled and saw Mona Petry sitting on Paula’s bed, smoking calmly. “But
she needn’t worry. Will you please tell her I don’t plan to stay more
than a minute? I tried to tell her myself, but we don’t seem to speak
the same language.”

Beebo looked back at Paula, who had covered her mouth and cheeks with
tight-pressed hands while tears spilled out of her eyes. Beebo stood
between the two jealous girls; one frightened and hurt, the other
pleased to have her so. It was up to Beebo to restore peace.

Beebo walked into the bedroom, leaving Paula in the hall behind her.
“All right, Mona, I’m sorry,” she said briefly. “If you’re angry about
it, remember you’re the one who stood me up.” Her voice was sharper than
she intended. She wanted to get it over with.

“I didn’t stand you up at all, Beebo,” Mona said. “I told you to call in
one hour. If you had, we could have spent the night together. Instead,
you walked out and disappeared.”

“I called too soon,” Beebo said, recalling the man’s voice through
Mona’s door.

“Not on the phone,” Mona said, and through her disdain, Beebo could see
the flash of real anger. “Do you mean you eavesdropped?”

“I didn’t have to, Mona. I went in to use the phone in the front hall,
and you were throwing things and arguing with some guy. So I left. I
just figured you had a taste for men that night.”

“Did you really?” Mona said acidulously. “After the way I acted with
you? Knowing that any man in my apartment must be an uninvited guest?”

“An uninvited guest doesn’t get in with his own key,” Beebo shot back.
“I didn’t like the idea of sharing you with a man, Mona.”

“I fought with the man,” Mona said, standing up. “I wouldn’t have fought
with you, ever. Now, it can’t be helped.” She crushed her cigarette on
the floor under her shoe as a gesture of contempt for Paula’s tidy
bedroom, and smiled. “Or did you think we could all be buddies? We
three?”

Beebo colored up with anger. “Three’s a crowd, Mona. You make such a
thing of it. Why didn’t you call _me_? I waited for days. I wanted you
to call.”

“Wanted. Past tense,” Mona said, looking at Paula. “Besides, Beebo, I
was wronged, not you. The least you could have done was let me explain.
Now you don’t give a damn. Well, just know that I don’t either. I
wouldn’t dream of taking you away from Paula. She needs somebody to
count the sleeping pills for her.” She hooked her sweater on her index
finger, and swung it over her shoulder with an air of satisfaction.
Paula was distracted and Beebo was exasperated with her. This was
Trouble and it exhilarated her.

“Is that what you came here to say?” Beebo demanded.

“That’s most of it,” Mona said. “It’s only fair to warn you, though ...
I may drop some more bricks before I’m through. You turn such a nice
color when you’re burned, Beebo.” She sauntered deliberately through the
hall, past Paula, who shrank from her, and to the front door, where she
turned for one last shot.

Beebo had followed her and stood in the middle of the living room with
her arms folded over her chest, the way she faced Pete when he crowded
her.

Mona looked her over and then blew a poisonous kiss toward Paula. “I
hope you two will be happy,” she said. “It’s obviously one of those
marriages made in hell.” She pulled the door shut very slowly till Beebo
reached over and gave it a hard shove to.

Mona thumped against it on the outside, laughing at the show of temper.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo turned to Paula, mystified. “What in hell was all that about?” she
said.

Paula was leaning against the wall, still pale and quite exhausted.
“You’ve heard of jealousy,” she said tiredly.

“She had something more than that on her mind,” Beebo said. “She looked
like she wanted blood. You can be jealous without being plain mean.”

“Mona can’t. That’s how she makes her life interesting. It’s funny. You
think of a _man_ being sadistic, coldhearted, capable of evil just for
kicks. But when a woman’s that way, it shocks you. Mona just—enjoys it,
I guess.”

“Enjoys tormenting people?” Beebo said. She had known people like that
back in Juniper Hill, but it was hard to believe about someone you had
so recently admired.

Paula nodded. “I think she came here tonight because she’s mad at Pete
and she can’t find him to give him hell. Pete sent you over to bug Mona,
and it worked. And you and I went right along with his game and fell for
each other. Mona likes to think she’s a femme fatale, and I guess to
Pete, she is. She jilted him once and he never got over it. She’s always
telling me I’m a ‘goddamn milkmaid’ and nobody wants a milkmaid these
days. She must have really wanted you, Beebo, or she wouldn’t have been
so hurt to lose you.”

“Pete told me he dumped Mona when he found out she was a Lesbian,” Beebo
frowned.

“He’s lying, as usual. He only falls for gay girls,” Paula said. She had
gone to Beebo’s side and put her arms around her for consolation. Beebo,
reviewing Pete’s behavior toward her in a new light, felt faintly
nauseated. “And I thought he was just trying to get my goat,” she said,
returning Paula’s embrace.

“Darling,” Paula said, and Beebo thought how much warmer and truer the
word was when Paula spoke it than when it bloomed on Venus’s perfect
lips like a gaudy rose.

“Beebo, I want to explain—about myself—” Paula said haltingly.

“You don’t have to, I understand.”

“No, you don’t. I didn’t myself. Beebo, I’ve always been such a steady,
sensible girl. Even when I discovered I was gay. I didn’t go all to
pieces like so many kids. It shook me up, yes, but I did the reasonable
thing. I went out and learned all I could about it. I’d never had
special prejudices against other people’s problems, and I hadn’t any
against my own.

“I tried to accept the fact, and after a while I got used to it. But all
the time I was waiting for somebody wonderful to come along; for a
beautiful love affair to make it all right. We’d live quietly together,
we’d cherish each other, and life would be rosy.

“I didn’t think it would be simple, but I thought it would be
satisfying—and permanent. That’s the kind of girl I am, Beebo.

“I found other girls while I was waiting so trustingly for this perfect
love,” she said, speaking with the disillusioned realism of hindsight.
“And they taught me a lot. I thought this was necessary. You have to
know the different kinds of love before you can recognize the kind you
need. I met Mona during this period. She’s mean as an old crow, but
she’s sharp and I learned a lot from her.

“And then the girl in the plaid pajamas came along. It wasn’t beautiful,
Beebo. Nothing I had learned before prepared me for what I went through.

“I lost my self-respect ... my ideals. My efforts to please her rubbed
her the wrong way. I did everything I thought would draw us close, even
when it seemed like madness. I moved to the Village, I went with her
fast crowd, I quit my job. I drank too much and played too hard, for
fear if I didn’t she’d think I was square. I did things that were
downright degrading.”

Beebo embraced her tightly. “Honey, you’re the sweetest girl I ever
knew,” she said. “I won’t believe anything bad about you.” She guided
her back to the bedroom.

“What I want you to know is,” Paula whispered, lying down on the bed,
“that I’m not a kook. I don’t usually fly off the handle emotionally. I
never did it before my affair with the girl in the pajamas. I live an
orderly life, I work hard, I care about people. Only, Beebo, you just
couldn’t have happened. You walked in here asking for Mona last
night—was it only last night!—and I realized that all I’d suffered
before was the dark before the dawn. Maybe it was a sort of price I had
to pay for being gay. I paid it, and Heaven dropped you in my lap. I
want to deserve you, Beebo.”

Beebo was nonplused. She kissed Paula’s white throat, holding her and
frowning into the dim light where Paula couldn’t see her face. It was
disturbing to have such a strong emotion centered on her. She desired
Paula passionately. Every endearment Beebo had spoken to her, she had
spoken truthfully, but without once repeating, “I love you.”

Paula had brought her out; something Paula herself couldn’t believe. And
no matter what other women might figure in Beebo’s life, Paula would
always be dear to her for that alone.

But Beebo was afraid of hurting her. There was more than a humble excuse
in Paula’s explanations; there was also that weapon of amorous women, a
plea for sympathy. It was a hint to Beebo: _Don’t hurt me like the girl
in the plaid pajamas did, or you’ll destroy me._ Beebo caught it and
fretted over it in silence.

Paula began to worry that she had said too much. She raised up on one
elbow, pressed her mouth against Beebo’s cheek, and said, “I want you to
know I’m as surprised as you are by this love-at-first-sight thing. I
thought it was all rot till I met you. Darling, I’m well aware it didn’t
hit you as hard as it did me. I promise I won’t be a nuisance. I’ll love
you very quietly like a good sensible girl. I won’t shriek and weep in
public, or chase you, or take pills. I’ll just love you. So much and so
well you’ll have to love me back ... someday. You will, won’t you?”

Beebo felt suddenly cornered and couldn’t answer. But when she finally
glanced at Paula, Paula had found the courage to smile at her, to tuck
her dismay out of sight. It gave Beebo an odd sort of pride in her, as
if a child of hers had performed bravely in the face of a hard
disappointment. It made Paula still sweeter and more attractive.

“Doesn’t everybody love you, little Paula?”

“Almost everybody ... except Miss Plaid Pajamas and Beebo Brinker.”
Paula gave her a wry grin that let Beebo relax. “But they don’t count.
All the intelligent, rich, beautiful people are insanely in love with
me.”

Beebo laughed and pulled her down on the bed. “Not hard to see why,” she
said. “You’re adorable.” She was still full of wonderment and
fascination over the new role she was playing with Paula: lover, friend,
protector. It felt so good, it fit so well, it rather astounded her. It
was like picking up a violin for the first time and finding you could
play a lilting tune with no practice at all.

Beebo’s good humor rescued Paula from the dumps. She began to feel
affectionate again. For Beebo, it was a delirious pleasure to act out on
a real girl in a real bed all the intense love play that had filled her
solitude. She fell asleep very late, very tired, with Paula in her arms.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo got up early the next morning. She was in no hurry to face Pete
Pasquini, knowing what she now knew about him, but she didn’t want to
lose her job till she could scout down another. She was not in a
financial position to get hard-nosed with him yet, and besides she was
confident that she could handle whatever he could dish out. They were
nearly of a size, and he had never shown himself more than a brash
nuisance. And anyway, a man who could fall in love with the likes of
Mona Petry was not likely to find himself erotically interested in Beebo
Brinker.

Paula was pensive throughout breakfast and when Beebo demanded to know
why, she admitted, “It’s Mona.”

Beebo laughed, but Paula was serious. “She’s one of those people with
nothing to do. She has to make trouble to keep from going mad with the
‘Flats’—that’s what she calls it. She doesn’t work—her men give her
enough money to live on. She doesn’t do a thing but amuse herself. If
you know her at all, you have to be a lover or a hater. There’s no
middle ground with her.”

“Shall I hire a bodyguard?” Beebo kidded.

“She’ll try to punish you somehow. She’s been stood up by you and
tricked by Pete. She’s not the kind who can tolerate being made a fool
of. Pete doesn’t count, he’s only a man, and she can twist him around
her finger if she’s in the mood. But _you_....”

“What can Mona do to me?” Beebo said, still smiling.

“Mona is very inventive. She’ll think of something,” Paula said.

“Do you mean she’d hurt _you_?” Beebo’s smile faded.

“Oh, I doubt it,” Paula said. “It wouldn’t be half as much fun as making
an effigy of Beebo and sticking pins in it. If she does, you’ll squirm,
too. For heaven’s sake, darling, don’t do anything she could blackmail
you for.”

Beebo laughed and reassured her. Mona’s jealousy seemed more silly to
her than dangerous.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo didn’t see Pete Pasquini at work all day, and Marie had no idea
where he was. “Out making babies with the _filles_,” she said with
offhand contempt.

Beebo had no wish to confront him and she finished out the day’s work in
relief. But when she got home that night, there was a new surprise for
her.

Jack let her in, taking the bags of groceries from her. “Haven’t seen
you for two nights,” he said. “Paula must have attractions I can’t
match.”

“Oh, you’re not bad,” Beebo smiled. “For a man.”

He started stowing things in the refrigerator, and Beebo became aware of
Pat, who had followed them into the kitchen. “Good news,” Jack said.
“Celebration tonight.” He pulled a bottle of sparkling burgundy from the
shelf.

Beebo glanced from one to the other. “Did you boys finally tie the
knot?” she said, trying to make it sound light.

“Nothing formal yet,” Jack grinned. “I believe in long engagements. No,
little pal, we are festive tonight because Pat is no longer with the
Sanitary Department.”

“It was too unsanitary,” Pat chuckled.

“I thought you were taking your vacation,” Beebo said. Suddenly, her
precarious place in this still-new city was menaced. The time to move
out was coming fast.

“Vacation, hell. He quit,” Jack said. “I asked him to.”

“How come?”

“I don’t want my betrothed to work,” Jack said, pouring the champagne.
It exploded into tiny fountains of fizz, and they each took a glass.

Jack lifted his. “Long life and health,” he said, and added
significantly, “and love all around.”

They drank. Beebo nodded to Pat. “All I can say, Pat, is what they said
to me when I left Juniper Hill: good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“Beebo, you should have been a poet,” Jack said.

She finished her drink and stood up. “I guess you two want to celebrate
by yourselves,” she said.

“Not at all. Have dinner with us,” Jack said.

“I think Paula’s waiting for me,” Beebo said. After an awkward pause she
added, “She asked me to move in with her.”

“She doesn’t waste time, does she?” said Jack. “Do you want to?”

“I don’t know. It would give her the right to expect me to be faithful.
I can’t imagine a lovelier girl. But I hardly know her. And there are so
damn many girls in the world.”

“Which reminds me. How was La Bogardus?”

“If you mean the bosom, it’s authentic.”

Jack laughed. “You must have been a big hit, if you got that far.”

“No. I just have good eyes. And she’s allergic to underwear, which makes
it pretty obvious.” She sat down heavily for a moment on a kitchen chair
across the table from Pat.

“You look tired, honey,” Jack said concernedly.

“I haven’t had much sleep the last two nights,” she said and let them
chortle at her, smiling a little.

“She’s a doll, that Paula,” Jack said. “If I were you, I’d keep a close
eye on her.” He waited a moment. “You don’t have to go as far as moving
in with her, though. Not if you’re not ready.”

Beebo looked up at him and reached out to squeeze his arm. “You’re too
damn good to me, Jack,” she said. “I know it’s getting crowded here.”

“Nobody’s complaining!” Jack said. “Besides, if you move out, Pat will
probably go, too. You’re still my biggest asset.”

Pat smiled and Beebo laughed, but there was just enough truth in it to
make them all a little uncomfortable.

“If only you could get your elbow in your ear,” Pat said to her
wistfully, making Jack hilarious. But despite the bantering tone, Pat
had found a serious new interest in himself. He was staring and
wondering at the many handsome, mannish, and somewhat authoritative
girls around Greenwich Village. His crush on Beebo had the effect of
opening his eyes to a new and quite fascinating possibility. But so far
it was nothing to threaten his affection for Jack, and he said nothing.

Beebo lighted a cigarette, watching as Jack refilled her wine glass. “If
I ask a hard question, will you boys tell me the truth?” she said at
last. They nodded at her curiously in silent assent.

“When you want me to move out, will you, for God’s sake, please say so?
I feel bad enough about mooching from Jack as it is.”

“Forget it,” Jack said. “Stay as long as you want to, pal.”

She sipped the drink. “It’s not that I don’t want Paula,” she said. “I
just don’t want her enough to cut loose from all the rest of the women
in the world yet. And I’m not earning enough to live alone.”

“You should have met her five years from now,” Jack said sagely. “You
would have been ready then.”

“Maybe we can make it together after a few months,” Beebo said. She was
musing guiltily about somebody else; someone who had nothing to do with
Paula, and yet who affected Beebo’s decision not to go live with the
pretty little redhead. Beebo had been eager to stay with Paula, eager to
be asked, throughout the first night and day of their acquaintance. It
would have solved so many problems, economic and emotional.

Then she got away from Paula for a few hours. She met a woman of
provocative beauty who stuck in her imagination, almost without her
realizing it at first, and who roused her desire for variety: Venus.
When she got back to Paula, she was made to see that Paula was urgently
in love with her, and it scared her. She was flattered but afraid of the
responsibility. And not at all sure she could return the love in full
measure.

So she dodged the decision temporarily by volunteering to take Jack’s
sofa and leave the bed to the men. And for a while it worked out. Beebo
spent most of her evenings with Paula—and sometimes the entire night—and
Paula wisely refrained from pushing her any more on moving in.

There was a complete—and, Paula thought, ominous—silence from Mona. And
another odd development was the disappearance of Pete Pasquini. For
almost two weeks, nobody saw him. Marie kept saying she hoped to God he
had deserted her at last. She was massively uninterested in finding him.

When he finally made a startling appearance, he touched off a howling
family feud, with Marie vowing to drown him in spaghetti sauce and his
mother promising to throw Marie in after him. The children lined up on
the narrow stairs leading up from the kitchen and shrieked approval of
the melee.

Beebo walked in on it at eight-thirty in the morning and brought a
sudden stillness to the room. She stood there uncertainly with all eyes
on her and finally said, “Don’t let me stop you.” Pete smiled at her.

Marie came to life, striding toward Beebo to plead her case with
feminine ardor. “We find out this morning. He gets back last night,
without telling nobody,” she said, waving a steaming red spoon at her
husband. The coating of sauce underlined her threats to drown him.

“We’re all asleep, it’s late. The phone rings twice and stops. We go
back to sleep—they must’ve hung up. What we don’t know,” she hollered in
a rising voice, “this piece of dung is in the shop and _he_ answers it.
Why is he in the shop in the middle of the night? It’s dark, no
customers, nothing to do. Nothing but tin cans and dry pasta. Is he
making love to the tomato paste? Who knows what a crazy dago goes for?”

Pete laughed, and all the while his brilliant black eyes were fixed on
Beebo, who refused to meet them, concentrating instead on Marie’s
theatrics.

“So who’s on the phone? _Bogardus_,” Marie said.

Beebo gasped.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Marie said, hands on her hips, spoon dripping
bloody sauce. “She wants spaghetti this time. It’s the middle of the
night—never mind. She got a taste for spaghetti. ‘Send me that one with
the funny name,’ she says. And she don’t mean Pasquini.” She threw Pete
a look of ferocious scorn. “So Hot Pants here, he says sure, he bring it
right up, the stupid sonofabitch. No spaghetti, never mind, he makes up
a leftover pizza.” She rolled her eyes to Heaven for vengeance.

“What happened?” Beebo said, her mind suddenly full of the star’s vivid
face and sensual body.

“So I make the delivery,” Pete said languidly, seating himself on a
table amid the crunchy bread crumbs. “Bogardus opens the door herself
and says, ‘Where’s Beebo?’ Well, I’m surprised, I don’t realize how
popular you are with these actress types.” He grinned and picked his
teeth with neat nonchalance, while Beebo began to sweat nervously.

“So I tell her, you’re sick, you can’t make it, but it’s okay, I got her
spaghetti. She says, ‘Thank you, darling—’” He rolled the endearment
interminably off his tongue, always smiling directly at Beebo. “—and
opens it. I’m waiting for her to hand me some money, minding my own
business—”

“For the first time in two weeks!” Marie interpolated. “Where was your
hands all this time, Pete?”

“In my pockets,” he replied coolly. “She wasn’t in a mood for no man
last night.”

Beebo’s whole face flushed a high red. She wanted to turn and rush out
of the place, but the thought of his raucous laughter alone prevented
her.

“So instead of the money,” he went on leisurely, “she hands me back the
pizza. In the face.”

“I begin to respect this woman,” Marie commented.

Pete continued, “She says, ‘What do you mean spaghetti? This ain’t
spaghetti. And _you_ ain’t no Beebo Brinker, neither.’ How do you like
that, butch? You can write your own ticket with that one. Only you
better make it a round trip. I understand you got a good reason for
visiting back on McDonald Street these days.”

“She got a good reason to spit in your face, you damn wop!” Marie
declared, siding with Beebo.

Pete ignored her. “That Paula, she’s a looker, hm? I wouldn’t mind
cracking that little nut myself,” he said to Beebo, folding his arms and
enjoying her alarm.

“I’ll crack yours one of these days,” Beebo said in a sudden fury.
“Don’t talk about Paula, you dirty her name.”

“Don’t mind him, Beebo,” Marie said, sensing trouble. “It ain’t just
Paula, anyway. It ain’t enough he runs after skirts all the time. He
wants the girls who want other girls. Figure _that_ one out. After all
his big talk about fags.”

“Fags go for other fags. I go for girls,” Pete said, but Marie had
finally rattled him. Any challenge to his manhood threw him into a
panic. It was clear he drew a fine distinction between his own sexual
preferences—“normal”—and everybody else’s.

“You go for Lesbians,” Marie said, silencing him with a wave of her gory
spoon. She did him further insult by describing his desires to Beebo, as
if Pete were not even in the room. “He’s three-fourths fag and the rest
sadist,” she said. “That’s why he don’t chase real women. He has to hurt
a girl—a girl who don’t _want_ it—before he can get it up.” She glared
at him like a cannibal.

Pete looked back with cold wrath. “I got five kids on those stairs says
you’re a liar,” he said. “Or are you saying _you_ ain’t a real woman?”

“Don’t fake with me, Pasquini. I know what you pretend in bed,” Marie
shouted. “You married me to prove you was a man, and once we left the
church, you figure you proved it. Well, it ain’t that simple.”

Pete walked toward her and Marie paled and stiffened, ready for a blow.
But he passed her and went to Beebo, who could only stand her ground
like Marie and hope he’d go on by. But he stopped, putting a hand on her
shoulder, and pulled her aside.

“Don’t listen to her, she’s cracked,” he said softly. “I told Bogardus
you’d be up with the spaghetti this afternoon. Does that make me your
friend?”

“After your cracks about Paula?” she said, shaking his hand off roughly.

“I told you where to find Paula, too,” he reminded her, and his eyes
glittered. “I always say nice things about that one. She’s a nice girl.”

Beebo looked at him with revulsion. “You sent me there to even some
secret score of yours with Mona. Don’t act noble about it.”

He chuckled. “Still, I sent you, butch. And you went. You tell me if
you’re sorry. You tell me if I ever done one thing you want to complain
about.”

“We’d be here all day,” Beebo snapped. She turned to start working on
the morning’s orders, but he followed her into the store, leaving Marie
and the others to understand he was through fighting. Beebo heard Marie
say wearily to Mrs. Pasquini, “So how come your son looks so good in
Bordeaux and so lousy in New York? Okay, don’t yell, go see about the
kids.”

Pete and Beebo worked in silence but whenever she glanced at him he
seemed to have glanced at her first and was waiting for her eyes with a
smile. He got his orders packed ahead of her and loped out the back door
at a jaunty pace. Beebo watched his retreating back with relief. Before
he drove away he leaned in and called to her.

“Don’t forget—Bogardus wants her pasta at five-thirty,” he said. She
straightened up and glowered at him till he laughed and withdrew.

Beebo finished the orders quickly, her mind teeming with ideas for
another job. Anything would be preferable to Pete’s endless leering. It
was one thing for him to chase pretty Lesbians like Mona. But that he
might desire Beebo—big and rangy, almost more boy than girl—seemed as
utterly perverse and unnatural to her as that she might desire him.

She was surprised when the front bell rang and Pat Kynaston walked in.
She was just ready to leave.

“What are you doing here!” she exclaimed.

“I brought Marie some goodies for her cockroaches,” he said, shaking a
colored cylinder full of powder. “The Last Supper. Going to make some
deliveries?”

Beebo nodded.

“Take me along,” he said pleasantly. “I haven’t anything to do, and the
heat in that apartment is godawful.”

She relented after a moment’s indecision, and gave him a smile. “Okay,
bring those boxes and follow me,” she said. “You can take my mind off
things.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Late in the afternoon they arrived at Venus Bogardus’s apartment on Park
Avenue. Beebo parked in the service entrance, letting her hands drop
between her knees with a sigh. Pat lighted her cigarette and they sat
and smoked a minute.

“Kind of a stuck-up looking dump, isn’t it?” she said, squinting up at
the glistening windows, stacked with parallel nicety clear to the
clouds. “Well, let’s go do it.”

She got the hot spaghetti and on a sudden inspiration, included a jar of
kosher dills intended for a different customer.

“Who are we going to see this time?” Pat yawned on the way up.

“Probably another maid,” Beebo said.

“Whose?”

“Venus Bogardus’s.”

Pat straightened up and stared at her.

                   *       *       *       *       *

But it was Toby, Venus’s problem child, who let them in. “Hi, Beebo,” he
said, pleased to see her.

“Hi, buddy. Where’s your mama?” She was sorry at once she had asked.
There was a cook by the stove this time—apparently the one who ditched
Venus periodically, but always came back. She was thin and sticky with
butter, and she looked inhospitable.

“I hear Venus threw some food around last night,” Beebo smiled at Toby.
“I brought her a peace offering. Sweets to the sweet,” and she handed
Toby the pickles. “This is a friend of mine, Toby—Pat Kynaston.” They
shook hands and a silence ensued. All Beebo had to do now was wait for
her money and leave. But she heard herself asking again, “Is Venus
here?”

“Come on in. I’ll go see,” Toby said unwillingly.

He left the kitchen briefly and returned, his hands jammed nervously in
his pockets. “She’s in her room,” he reported. “In a goddamn peignoir.
She only wants to see you, Beebo. I told her about Pat and she said she
didn’t want any peace offerings. She wouldn’t even listen about the
pickles.”

“Oh, God,” Pat whispered to Beebo. “I suppose I go to the cook as a
consolation prize.”

Toby walked over to them. “I have a good collection of records,” he said
diffidently. “And guns. That’s one thing all those fathers are good for.
I didn’t go for the guns at first, but I’ve gotten kind of interested.
If you’d like to see them ... I mean, I think Mom is busy for a few
minutes.”

Beebo was touched by his loneliness, his eagerness for company. She had
the feeling that he was choosy about his friends, and living a life
where he could hardly meet any anyway. It made her seem quite important
to him.

He grinned at her. “You’re still on my side, aren’t you?” he said.

“All the way,” she laughed. “I just want to apologize to your mother for
our delivery boy. I guess he got fresh.”

“No,” Toby said, his face lengthening. “She did.”

The cook absorbed all this with silent disapproval. She was the type who
disapproved of everything—even food.

“I wish you wouldn’t see my mother,” Toby confessed unexpectedly.

Beebo’s mouth dropped open a little. “I thought somebody ought to ask
her pardon for last night,” she said, embarrassed. “The Pasquinis don’t
want to lose her.”

“They don’t need her,” he said, looking at the floor.

“Hmp,” said the cook to the spinach during the shocked pause that
followed.

“That’s no way to talk about your mother, Toby,” Beebo said.

“You heard how she talks about me,” he countered. “What am I supposed to
do? Pretend I’m deaf?”

Beebo listened, full of compassion, but afraid of the big-eared cook.
Toby spoke as if she were no more than another kitchen appliance, like
her stove.

But he saw Beebo’s glance, and pushed the kitchen door wide. “Come on in
my room,” he said. “We can talk there.”

Beebo put the spaghetti on the counter and followed him, with Pat behind
her. The apartment was richly decorated and unkempt.

In his room, Toby sat on the bed, and Beebo and Pat found places on
chairs. He had his guns in two glass cases hung on the wall, and the
rest of the room was a jumble of phonograph records, books, and school
mementos.

Toby wanted to talk frankly to Beebo, and yet they were more strangers
than friends. But he needed to talk, to melt the strangeness away and
find the friend. At last he began, rather abruptly, “I just don’t want
my mother to turn you against me. I mean, you’re a good kid and I want
you to know me the way I am. Then you won’t think I’m such a dumb baby
when she starts talking about what a ‘lovely child’ I am, but she can
hardly wait till I outgrow it.”

Beebo heard this awkward speech with an ache of recognition. How it hurt
to be so young, so at the mercy of your elders, and, often, lessers. So
full of rainbows and music and romantic love ... yet always cracking
your head against the walls of reality.

“I know she says some silly things, Toby,” she said seriously. “But you
love her anyway, don’t you?”

“I guess so. But I’ve seen her with so many guys it just about makes me
sick,” he said tiredly. “Until this year. Now, she says they all bore
her and she’s sworn off men forever. I hope she means it. It’s been
three months since she had a date. She’s terrible to men. They make such
fools of themselves for her. I don’t know what she does to them, honest.
And I’m not stupid!” he added quickly. “I mean, I know what she
does—_technically_.” It was a toss-up whether his contempt was greater
for his mother or her men.

Pat cleared his throat to camouflage a smile. Toby was conversant with
sophisticated sex beyond his years; yet it was difficult and
embarrassing for him to talk with friends his own age. Venus could take
the blame for it, and Beebo felt a swell of righteous anger at her.

“You know what I think?” Toby said thoughtfully. “I think she’s bored
with me, too. Well, after all, I’m a male.” He said it with pride and
resentment, as if it were a fact not always respected in his family.
“She needs somebody new to hurt and tease. If you make yourself
available, I’ll bet she picks on you. It’s no fun, either.”

“Me?” Beebo said incredulously.

“You see her today and _you’ll_ find out,” he warned.

Beebo, conditioned by Venus’s flirting and by the mood of her night with
Paula, said incautiously, “You mean—she’s interested in me? I mean....”
Her voice trailed off, giving her meaning away, and Toby’s cheeks turned
crimson. She realized she had shocked him, but he thought it was his
fault for making the wrong implication.

“Not _that_ way,” he explained hastily. “She’s not _sick_.”

“Oh,” Beebo said. “Excuse me.”

Pat frowned at her, and she looked at her knees.

“She wants somebody around to admire her and say yes to her,” Toby said.
“Somebody whose feelings she can hurt. You have to be tough as Leo to
get along with her. Leo doesn’t have any feelings ... at least, they
never show.”

“Leo—her husband?”

“Yes. He’s the only man in her life who won’t get down on his knees to
her. But I think he’s the only one who really loves her, too. The others
love the glamour, but Leo knows her through and through, and he loves
her.” He shook his head as if it were incomprehensible.

“You love her too, Toby,” Beebo said.

He hunched his shoulders. “She’s my mother. What can you do?” he said
with heartbreaking, youthful cynicism. “Even if the old bag did raise
me.”

“Who’s the old bag?”

“Mrs. Sack. She’s my—well, you might say, my nurse ... she’s been around
so long, she’s part of the family, even if I am too old for her now.”
The blush on his face deepened, but he needed terribly to share his
burdens, and he felt safe with Beebo. She was a girl, so she couldn’t
fall in love with his mother. And she had spirit and humor, which she
had used to defend him. Besides, his solitude weighed desperately on
him.

“Mrs. Sack was there when Mom brought me home from the hospital, and
she’s done everything for me since then. Mom just sat around and blew
kisses at me between lovers.”

“She must have done more than that or you’d hate her,” Beebo said.

“I do hate her!” he flared. “Leo hates her, too. That doesn’t mean we
don’t love her, but she makes it awful hard.” In a knowing voice he
added, “There are two things in this world my mother really loves, and
one of them is not _men_.” Pat and Beebo stared at him. “She loves
herself and money. Mostly herself. She’ll tell you that if you ask her.
She’ll tell the whole damn world. That’s how full of shit she is.”

“Toby,” Beebo said gently. “Maybe you just see all the bad things now.
Maybe when you grow up and get away from her, you’ll see her good side.”

“If she _has_ one,” he said. “She calls me ‘darling’ all the time, and
five minutes later she’s calling a complete stranger ‘darling.’ I mean
about as much to her as the stranger.”

“I think it’s just a habit with her,” Beebo guessed. “Like some people
calling everybody ‘honey.’”

“And secretly hating them all,” Toby said. “I wish just once in my life
she’d call me Toby—when she wasn’t mad at me, I mean. That _is_ my name.
She gave it to me.”

Beebo wanted to pat him on the back, wanted to smile and say, “She
will—I guarantee it.” He was a perceptive boy and very appealing. But
she had nothing to comfort him with. “Well, if it’s any consolation,
_I’ll_ call you Toby,” she grinned, and was pleased to see him answer
her smile.

There was a difficult silence until Pat said, getting to his feet,
“That’s quite a bunch of guns. Who gave you the Japanese bayonet?”

Toby followed him to the case and began an animated conversation. Beebo
sat pensively listening. Evidently it never occurred to Toby that Beebo
could be sexually attracted to his mother. All his precocious knowledge
of sex was confined strictly to his mother’s—admittedly
free-wheeling—activities. And while Venus had done many things with many
people, she had not, to Toby’s knowledge, done everything.

Beebo was surprised to feel so concerned about the boy. She was better
acquainted with him now. His descriptions of his mother’s character were
so youthfully lopsided they revealed more about him than they did about
her. But it seemed certain that one thing he said was true: he did
honestly both hate and love her very much.

The three of them were startled when Toby’s bedroom door swung open and
Venus stood in the hallway. “Well, darling, why didn’t you send my
visitor to me?” she demanded of her son.

Toby turned around, his chin jutting forward, ready for a tilt with her.
But she merely inclined graciously all around, her smile flitting over
Pat as though he were just another gun and settling on Beebo.

“Come in and talk with me,” she told Beebo. “I had a dreadful experience
last night and it’s all your fault.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Bogardus,” Beebo said, standing up and feeling like a
bumpkin dripping hayseeds in front of her.

“Don’t go, Beebo, it’s a trap,” Toby said sardonically.

“Darling, what a lyrical sentiment,” Venus fired at him. “Come on,
Beebo.” She turned and sailed down the hall, and Beebo felt angrily like
a toy dog, expected to jump when Venus snapped her fingers.

Pat went to her and whispered, “If you feel yourself getting friendly,
scream for help.”

“Big help you’d be,” Beebo said.

“Well, at least I won’t be tempted to sin,” he said. “I don’t go for
peignoirs.”

“I hope you don’t go for guns, either,” she warned him in a whisper. And
aloud, she said to Toby, “Don’t worry, I won’t turn traitor.”

Then, with a sense of exasperation, shame and excitement, she followed
Venus to her room.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was a real boudoir; a luxurious old-fashioned bower, a glamorous
retreat where a coveted woman makes herself irresistible in perfumed
privacy; receives the gifts of rich and handsome men, and strikes them
helpless with adoration. At least, that was the general idea.

The rug was white, the walls pale blue, and the dressing table wore six
silk chiffon petticoats.

“Well, darling?” Venus said. “Do you like my little nest?”

Beebo began to laugh in spite of herself. “If you’ll forgive me, Miss
Bogardus,” she said. “It’s one great big gorgeous cliché.”

“Of course it is,” Venus smiled. “I planned it that way to offend
Leo.... You know, you sound like you’ve made it in more boudoirs than
Errol Flynn.”

“Oh, no,” Beebo said, taken aback. “I’ve just read more bad novels. The
sirens always have a boudoir like this.”

Venus turned around and studied her with amusement in the oval mirror
above her dressing table. “Come over here and tell me why they sent that
ghastly man over with the pizza, when I asked for you with spaghetti.”

Beebo stood her ground, suddenly aware that there was nothing under the
“goddamn peignoir” but naked Venus. “That ghastly man owns the place,”
she said. “He sent himself.”

You couldn’t look at Venus Bogardus without admiring her form. Even in
her late thirties, it was fine: the kind men hope and dream all women
will have, especially their wives. She was small-waisted, full-breasted,
with a firmly swelling hipline and long shapely legs; the whole package
wrapped up in mathematically right proportions that hadn’t changed since
Venus was a bouncing daisy of sixteen.

Venus scratched something on a piece of paper and swept across the room
with it in a cloud of cologne and blue silk. “Here you are, darling,”
she said. It was her autograph. “Take this to your boss and tell him I
hope he gets the sauce out of his ears.”

“He’ll be overcome, I’m sure,” Beebo said, tucking it in her shirt
pocket.

Venus stood a few feet from her, watching her and making up her mind to
open a difficult subject. “You know, poor Toby is absolutely terrified
we’re going to like each other,” she said restrainedly. “He’s quite
ashamed of me.”

Beebo was far more embarrassed by Venus’s admissions than by Toby’s.
Toby was still a child you could pity and help. But who could pity
someone with the blinding assets of his mother? Who had enough crust to
offer her any help?

“Miss Bogardus, I’m sorry about the pizza thing. I—” She hesitated,
wanting only to duck out and avoid facing the new feelings taking shape
inside her.

“I only threw it at him because he wasn’t you,” Venus said, and Beebo
allowed herself one quick startled look at That Face. She felt
perspiration under her arms and knew her face was damp, too.

“Sit down, darling, you look feverish,” Venus said. And when Beebo
stuttered something about going home, Venus laughed. “Why Beebo, I think
I’ve got you going,” she said. “I’ll bet I’m not the first girl who ever
did that to you.” It was said in a light friendly tone intended to
tease, but it made Beebo so intensely uncomfortable that she began to
tremble. It became acutely clear to her that she desired that remote and
laughing goddess very much; so much she suddenly lost her voice.

“You were full of beans the last time you were here,” Venus said. “Don’t
be a square now. Tell me all the nice things you know about me. I
promise not to take any of them seriously.”

Beebo got her voice out finally by blasting on it like an auto horn. “I
only know what everybody knows,” she blurted.

“The gossip columns?” Venus said. “You can’t be so naive that you
believe that crap, darling. I’ll bet Toby’s been talking to you. Telling
you stories about his wicked mama.” From the look on Beebo’s face, she
concluded he had.

Beebo didn’t want to insult her. “Why should he?” she said, wishing all
the while that she could open a window somewhere for fresh air.

“Oh, he thinks I’m dreadful. And of course I am. But I’m kind of sorry
he realizes it already.”

Beebo saw a real regret shadow her face, and all at once it seemed
possible—almost—to feel sorry for her.

“If you don’t want him to know it, you’ll have to put blinkers on him,”
Beebo said quietly. “I was fourteen a few years ago. You don’t miss
seeing much at that age.”

“When he was born,” Venus said, “I was much too young and ambitious to
give a damn about him. Now, when he matters, I find I’ve done everything
wrong ... everything I’ve bothered to do for him, that is. I haven’t
bothered to do very much.”

“You don’t need to tell me these things, Miss Bogardus,” Beebo said,
amazed to hear Venus speak such damaging truths about herself, to see
the steel surface of her go-to-hell gaiety buckle and crack.

“He likes you,” Venus said, somewhat self-conscious now. She lighted a
cigarette and shrugged. “He’s such a baby. I love him awfully, but he
makes me so damn mad.”

“He’s a nice kid, Miss Bogardus,” Beebo said. “Maybe if you could see
his side now and then.... It’s so easy to ruin a kid that age.”

“I’m a nice kid, too, darling,” Venus flashed, and Beebo realized from
her anger that she had spoken too bluntly. “And I’ll do whatever I damn
please with Toby. That includes ruining him if I feel like it.” She sat
down suddenly on a satin-topped stool, tired. “I—I ruined him anyway,
and I never felt like it at all,” she said, as if too weary to repress
the truth.

“I don’t want to bore you, Beebo. But I do want to know what he’s been
saying about me. I know he’s been talking to you the last half hour.”
She looked across the room at Beebo. “Please,” she said. Her voice was
rough with fatigue.

Beebo shifted her weight and her legs felt almost boneless. “Well,” she
said uneasily. “I don’t suppose it’s anything he hasn’t already said to
you.” Venus looked directly at her, and Beebo wondered if it might not
impress her more to hear these things from somebody other than Toby. “He
loves you very much, Miss Bogardus,” she said. “But I don’t think he
likes you.”

Venus merely nodded. “That’s no news,” she said. “He’s like all the
other men I know.” She looked disgusted.

“He said you didn’t like men,” Beebo said.

“I beg your pardon!” Venus exclaimed. “I absolutely _adore_ men. All but
Leo, anyway.” She stood up and walked briskly back and forth for a
moment, as if she intended to hear no more—at least not till her
feathers settled.

“Tell me about yourself, Beebo,” she said, and again Beebo was miffed by
the offhand order.

“I’d bore you to tears,” she said. “You don’t want to hear about my
daddy’s cows and chickens down on the farm.”

“I think I do,” Venus said sincerely. “I never had a daddy. Or a
chicken.” Beebo began to protest about leaving again and Venus waved at
her impatiently. “All right, all right, but before you go, tell me the
rest about Toby.”

Beebo didn’t know what to make of her. Hadn’t she heard it all from him
herself? Venus glanced at her. “He’s been chattering about you since you
brought that pizza over,” she explained. “He _likes_ you. That means
he’ll talk to you. He only shouts at me.... Sit down, Beebo.”

Beebo obeyed her out of growing curiosity. It seemed clear to her now
that she had inadvertently become a line of communication between mother
and son; that perhaps Toby did say things to Beebo he refused to mention
to Venus—or at least, said them more candidly.

“There isn’t much to tell,” Beebo said, trying to squirm out of it.
Venus looked very worried. “He just seems lonesome. I think it was a
relief to him to spout off at me.” She smiled.

Venus sighed. “He’s a bewildering little devil,” she said, “but I guess
he’s the only human being I’ve ever loved. Or ever will love. I loathed
him when I was carrying him. I thought he’d ruin my waist. I scarcely
looked at him till he was nine or ten. Mrs. Sack brought him up. He
grumbles about her, but there are times when I’d give anything if he’d
grumble about me the same way ... times when I actually hate that
woman!” Beebo watched her blow her nose on a tissue on the dressing
table and realized with a twinge that she was crying.

“He calls her ‘the old bag,’” Beebo said kindly.

“And I’m ‘the old bitch,’” Venus said. Her voice was unsteady. “I should
never have let him slip away from me. But he scared me, to tell the
truth. Not just that he was a baby, and I resented him and didn’t know
where to begin caring for him. But he ... he had convulsions and things.
Terrifying things that absolutely paralyzed me. And Mrs. Sack was so
efficient and reassuring. Oh, hell, it’s no excuse. But it seemed like
one then.”

“Convulsions?” Beebo repeated, surprised.

“Yes. He has epilepsy. The _grand mal_ kind. Big stuff.” There was a
shocked silence and Venus added sharply, “Well, it’s not a oneway pass
to the bughouse.”

“No, no, I know,” Beebo replied. “I—I’m just so sorry.”

“Well, I’m sorry, too,” Venus said, and she had control of herself now.
The tears had stopped. “Most of the time he’s perfectly normal—whatever
_that_ is for boys of fourteen. But every so often, when he’s especially
tired or nervous, he gets these ... seizures. He gets rigid as a post.”
She faced Beebo. “Have you ever seen it?” she said.

Beebo shook her head. “But I’ve heard about such things. It’s like a
muscle spasm, isn’t it?”

Venus’s eyes drifted away, seeing it in her mind. “He shoots up from a
chair like a jack-in-the-box, and falls straight and stiff as a pole.
His saliva foams. We have to be careful that he doesn’t swallow his
tongue.” She took a breath. “It’s frightening to see your own child like
that.... Well, then he goes to sleep, a stone-dead sleep, and when he
wakes up he usually can’t even remember it. He just wants to be quiet
for a while, by himself. Read books and stare out the window, sometimes
for a couple of days.”

“What do you do for it?” Beebo said. “Is there anything?”

“There are treatments,” Venus said. “Shock therapy, chemotherapy. He
hates it but it helps. He hates to talk to me about it. Mrs. Sack always
rescued him while I ran screaming from the room. He thinks it makes him
repulsive to me. I’ve tried and tried to explain—I’m just a coward!—but
he’s so jittery about it now, I don’t dare bring it up.”

Beebo sat looking at her linked fingers, young enough to wonder why the
fair and fortunate of this world are afflicted with sorrows as humbling
and frustrating as those of the poor. Venus, whom men feared and
worshipped, women feared and disliked, and children simply feared;
Venus, herself afraid.

“Toby said some hard things about you, Miss Bogardus,” she said at last,
“but he also said he loved you, and you don’t get that kind of mush out
of fourteen-year-old boys unless they mean it.”

“I wish he’d say it to me!” Venus cried. “I love him so terribly, but
all I do is drive him nuts. I can’t talk to him and he clams up with
me.” She came and put a perfumed hand on Beebo’s shoulder. “He hasn’t
made a new friend in years,” she said. Her hand was tight and warm and
busy, twisting Beebo’s cotton shirt. “I haven’t made much sense, I’m
afraid,” she said. “I’m trying to be honest and I’m not used to it.” She
gave a clumsy little laugh. “He seems so impressed with you. That was
half the reason I wanted you to come back. I thought if you could draw
him out somehow.... Did he say anything else?”

Beebo was worried about that expensive and beautiful hand on her
shoulder. About that “half the reason I wanted you back”—what was the
other half? About Toby’s opinion of his mother’s beaux?

Venus guessed the last part. “My admirers?” she said. “I know he can’t
stand them. Neither can I.”

“He thinks you’re too fond of....” Beebo stopped and cleared her throat.

“Don’t get scared off all of a sudden,” Venus pleaded. “I couldn’t take
it. I’m too fond of _what_?”

“Money. And yourself.”

“He’s wrong,” Venus said, frowning. “I know it looks that way. And I do
like money. But myself I hate. I hate, hate, hate!” Her voice broke and
her hand held tight to Beebo’s shoulder, steadying her. “Money and my
career. That’s all I have in the world. That’s why I hang on so hard to
them both.”

“You have Toby,” Beebo ventured, wishing she dared to look up at Venus’s
face, knowing it was kinder not to.

“Toby isn’t mine,” Venus whispered bitterly. “He just lives here. He
won’t let himself be loved. I gave birth to him, but Mrs. Sack is his
mother.” She was weeping again.

Beebo reached up and touched her hand, her eyes still down. The whole
mess was so sad and ugly; sadder still for having been preventable.
Beebo was moved and hurt by Venus’s words because she was moved by Toby:
his loneliness, his hopeful trust in her, and now the revelation of his
illness.

“You’ve reached him, Beebo,” Venus said. “He wants to be friends with
you. You could help me.” She came around the divan and sat down next to
Beebo. The swift drum-bump of her heart was visible under the gauzy blue
silk and it made Beebo want to touch her there; hold her and say
something wise and therapeutic. But she hadn’t the wisdom to manage her
own life yet, let alone someone else’s.

“I don’t know much about love, Miss Bogardus,” she said shyly. “I just
know if you love somebody, he can’t stop you. All you have to do is keep
loving him till he believes in it, I guess.”

“That’s not enough, or he’d be happy,” Venus said.

“Maybe if you did things with him,” Beebo said. “My dad used to spend a
lot of time with me. We walked, we talked things over, we played chess.”

“I don’t know the black from the white,” Venus said miserably.

“Toby’s pretty big on guns right now.”

“I don’t even know which end the bullet’s supposed to come out,” Venus
said. But after a pause full of self-examination she added, “But I guess
I could learn ... guns. God.”

“It might make all the difference,” Beebo said.

“Will you come back and see him?” Venus said. “That would help.”

“Sure,” Beebo said, but she looked away. Venus had touched her arm
again. “He could drive around with me while I make the deliveries
tomorrow. Would he like that?”

“He’d probably die of joy. Anything with a motor in it sends him into
rhapsodies.”

Beebo stood up, her own heart beating so fast now that she felt near
suffocating. “It’s getting late,” she said. Venus followed her to the
door.

“He might resent it if I start sticking my nose into his guns all of a
sudden,” she mused.

“Not if you’re really interested,” Beebo said. “He won’t hold it against
you, Venus ... beautiful Venus.” It was an unpremeditated explosion of
admiration. Beebo clamped her mouth shut suddenly, mortified.

But Venus was restored by the slip to good humor. She laughed, and this
time it was a pretty sound, a charming answer to a compliment.

“Maybe Toby will turn out all right,” Venus said. “You’re bound to be a
good influence.”

Beebo smiled in embarrassment. “He’ll probably disgrace you by turning
into a model citizen,” she said.

“I hope he does.” Venus walked the rest of the short distance between
them and put her hands on Beebo’s shoulders. She looked very solemn and
a bit surprised at herself. “Thanks,” she said.

“For nothing.” Beebo shook her head. She had a wild impulse to pull
Venus’s hands off and run.

“Beebo,” Venus said thoughtfully. “Do you want to kiss me?”

In the electrified pause that followed, Beebo heard Toby’s voice echoing
in her ears: “Not _that_ way. She’s not _sick_.” It pounded through her
like a pulse and she knew the answer was obvious to Venus. She reached
down and touched Venus’s waist. “Yes,” she murmured. Venus seemed
reassured, almost pleased. She was on home ground again. She lifted her
face and gave Beebo her lovely mouth.

It was an astonishing kiss, long and warm. And after it, they stood with
their arms around each other a while, faces averted. Beebo didn’t
realize how hard her embrace was until Venus began to giggle. “Darling,
you’re crushing me,” she said. Beebo released her and backed off
hastily, mumbling apologies.

“Here,” Venus said, handing her a hanky. “Take the lipstick off, or Toby
will think I’ve perverted you and come after me with one of those damn
guns.” She watched Beebo dab at her chin ineffectually, and then did it
for her. Beebo stood still and let her work, watching her face intently.
It was classically beautiful still, though lacking the pearly perfection
of a twenty-year-old’s. But the bone structure beneath was superb. Beebo
admired her ardently. “Think of all the poor girls who have to go homely
in the world to make one Venus Bogardus,” she said.

Venus smiled. “I don’t think it works that way, darling,” she said.
“Besides, a face is a temporary thing. After a while you find it doesn’t
work the same old spell any more.” She spoke soberly. “Then you have to
depend on what’s behind it ... if anything. Know who told me that?”

Beebo shook her head.

“Leo. My louse of a spouse,” Venus said, blinking. “He told me that when
I was seventeen, and I didn’t believe him. I do now.” She stepped back
and transformed the mood with a smile. “There, you look completely
innocent.”

“Thank you,” Beebo said.

“What for? The mop-up? Or the kiss?”

Beebo swallowed. “Both,” she said.

“Do you have to go, Beebo? Really?” Venus swirled away a few steps,
making Beebo want to dash after her. But she stood resolutely with her
hand on the door, still too unnerved to know how to behave. “Another
heavy date?” Venus asked.

“You might say,” Beebo said.

“Tell me the truth,” Venus said, looking at Beebo over her shoulder.
“Was it an ‘old friend’ last time? Or was it a girl?”

Beebo looked up at her slowly, her hand so hot and damp it slipped on
the knob. “A girl,” she said finally.

Venus took this shattering intelligence with serenity. “I thought so,”
she said. “I warn you, darling, I’m going to order spaghetti all week.
You’d better teach her to play solitaire.”

Beebo bridled at the teasing certainty of Venus’s attitude. “Then
Pasquini will have to make the deliveries,” she said flatly.

“All I can do is invite you,” Venus said. “I can’t make you come.”

The double meaning was not lost on Beebo. “I don’t think it would be the
best approach to Toby if you and I got involved,” she said edgily. She
was seeing more than Toby, however; she was seeing Paula. Gentle,
sympathetic, pretty Paula, so in love with her. Paula for whom she felt
such affection and desire. Paula, who told her to run from Milady
Bogardus. She wanted to be safe in Paula’s arms, not here in this
silk-lined trap where so many lovers were so neatly netted.

Beebo was deeply suspicious of Venus, anyway. What could such a woman
want but transient amusement? Was she gay at all, or just bored and
curious?

“Toby is the only human being I’ll ever love.” Venus said it. It would
be madness for Beebo to fall in love with her, knowing that. But she had
already learned from Paula that falling in love is not a deliberate act
at all. Sometimes the only way to fight it is to do as Paula said: run.

“I wish you’d stay a while,” Venus said.

Beebo gazed steadily at her, and then she opened the door and strode
out.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The boys looked up from the living room TV, Toby catching Beebo with
worried eyes and wondering what humiliations Venus had invented for her.
But the sight of his beautiful mother swishing after Beebo with her face
screwed into a scowl consoled him and his heart rose. He wanted Beebo to
teach him nonchalance; teach him to laugh and take Venus less seriously,
before Venus scared her off.

“Are you going already?” Toby said.

“How would you like to drive the route with me tomorrow, Toby?” Beebo
asked with a smile.

Toby threw his mother an uncertain glance, but she said, “Go on,
darling. Learn something about the mysterious pasta business.”

Toby grinned at her. He hadn’t smiled at her in so long that Venus
merely gazed at him with her mouth open, unable to answer until he had
turned back to Beebo.

“I’ll pick you up after lunch,” Beebo said. “Come on, Pat.”

“Just a moment,” Venus said. She caught Pat and put her arms around him,
boarding him like an empress her barge, and kissed him soundly on the
mouth. “There, darling,” she said alluringly. “Don’t wash your mouth for
days. Everybody will die of envy.”

Pat touched his lips and said a startled, “Thank you.”

“Mother, that’s repulsive,” Tony muttered.

“Just wait a year, dear, and it will all come crystal clear,” Venus told
him.

Beebo took Pat by the arm and propelled him into the kitchen. She was
dismayed at the effort of will it took to leave Venus behind.

“What a spectacular female,” Pat said, scrambling through the door with
her. “If I weren’t already in love with you, I’d fall for her.”

“And Jack would be best man,” Beebo quipped.

“You know, something tells me I _could_ fall for a girl,” he said,
hoping Beebo would pay attention.

But she only said, “Well, fall outside, will you?” She was afraid if she
didn’t get out fast, inertia would set in. The back door latch eluded
her skittery fingers.

“Turn it all the way right,” said a crisp female voice.

They saw the cook, still stirring her witch’s brew.

“Thanks,” Beebo said, and they got out at last with a grateful gasp. Pat
began to laugh, until he saw Beebo put her head in her hands while they
waited for an elevator.

“What’s the matter, honey?” he said. “Was Venus bitchy? I’ll go back and
throw something at her.”

“After the bussing you got?” Beebo said.

“How about you?” Pat asked softly. And when she didn’t answer, he put
his arms around her, enjoying the contact, standing with her till the
elevator arrived.

The wicked witch peered at them through the glass in the kitchen door.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo was gloomy all the way home, answering Pat laconically.

“I didn’t even leave a note,” Pat lamented. “Jack will snatch me
bald-headed.”

“Never. He’s too fond of those blond curls.”

“Not so fond he won’t clobber me when we get home. It’s late.”

“You’ve got Jack and I’ve got Paula,” Beebo said, and they brooded about
it.

Beebo parked in front of Jack’s apartment. Pat looked up at his windows.
“The lights are blazing,” he reported. “And so is Jack, you can bet on
it.”

“I never saw him mad before,” Beebo said, looking at him quizzically.
Pat’s apprehension seemed silly to her.

“He’s not in love with you, my friend,” Pat said, and made her wonder at
the distortions—some good, some bad—that love could work in the lover.

“He probably called Marie. She’ll tell him you’re with me,” she said.

“That’ll only make him frantic. He thinks we’re a couple of lambs in the
lion’s den.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Beebo said. She had never felt so exhilarated and
confused and afraid and eager for God-knew-what in her life.

They hesitated with a common reluctance before the apartment door. “You
go first,” Pat said. “You’re the bravest. If he throws anything, so help
me, I’m going to run for it.”

Beebo chuckled at him, and then turned the cold brass handle. She opened
the door with a quick swing that revealed only the empty living room.
They walked in. “Jack?” they said together, and a pile of newspapers on
the sofa rolled over and sat up. Jack was very drunk.

“Hello, you two beautiful dolls,” he said. They looked at one another.
“Paula was here,” he told Beebo. “We got loaded together. If you don’t
want her, I’m going to marry her.”

Beebo picked up Jack’s empty glass and the bottle on the coffee table
and poured herself a shot. She gave the Scotch to Pat. “Have some. Jack
won’t mind, will you, _darling_?” She imitated the famous Bogardus
inflection.

“Why should I?” he said, eyes on Pat. “Did you run into Venus while you
were lunching at 21?”

“We went up to her apartment. She threw a pizza at Pasquini last night.”

“I heard all about it. Marie was celebrating when I dropped in. Well, it
must have been a jolly reunion.” He saw the smudge on Pat’s lips. “Looks
like the goddess and the gay boy are starting a new trend. You’re solid
lipstick from the nose down.”

Pat reproached Beebo instantly. “My God, why didn’t you tell me?” he
demanded.

“I wasn’t looking at you. I’m sorry.”

“Where’s yours?” Jack said, turning to her. “Or wasn’t this ladies’
day?”

“I wiped it off,” Beebo said touchingly, and Jack didn’t know whether to
believe her or not.

“Something for everyone,” he said. “She must be a Democrat. And what was
Patrick doing while you and Venus occupied the loveseat? Taking notes?”

“Watching TV,” Pat said casually. “With Toby. Her son.”

“I hope he was friendly,” Jack said.

“Very,” Pat replied, irritated by Jack’s jealousy.

“I’ll bet. Especially if you curled up in his lap.”

“He’s a nice little kid, Jackson,” Beebo said, surprised at him. Jack
was usually so patient and gentle and funny. “He’s just fourteen, very
mixed-up and very straight.” Jack’s spite amused her a bit and made her
sorry for him. She had never seen him hurt before. He was comical, but
the pain showed too and roused her affection for him.

“He’s a baby, and I don’t go for babies,” Pat said. “It’s illicit.”

“Oh, let’s be licit, by all means,” Jack said. “I can see the both of
you, sitting there watching Captain Kangaroo together. Just a pair of
Babes in Boyland.”

“Honest to God, Mann, you just bug the hell out of me!” Pat exploded in
sudden wrath.

“With pleasure. Till you scream for mercy,” Jack snapped.

“Jack, it was your idea that Pat give up his job,” Beebo said. “I took
him with me today for fun. It’s better than having him cruise the
streets all day. Admit it.”

After a pause, Jack said, “Okay. You’re a pair of worms ... but I’m a
dirty bird. I’m sorry. Call Paula, she’s frantic.”

Beebo hesitated so long that Jack looked at her and added, “In case
you’ve forgotten, the phone’s in the kitchen.”

“I know where it is.... I can’t call her. I don’t know what to say,”
Beebo said, and took down another shot like cough medicine.

Jack noticed her unsteady hands and brooding eyes. “Say, ‘Hello, Paula.
It’s me, Beebo. I’m home,’” he suggested. While his attention was on
Beebo, Pat went over and sat down quietly beside him on the couch. He
took care not to touch him.

Beebo folded dejectedly onto the floor. “I’m just not sure how I feel,
all of a sudden,” she said, letting her forehead drop into her hand.

“You didn’t fall for Toby, did you?” Jack said, ignoring the tentative
hand Pat put on his knee. “This seems to be the night to go straight.”

“Don’t make lousy jokes, Jack.”

“All right, pal. What happened with Venus? Did she really kiss you? Was
it that great?” True to form, he pushed his own chagrin aside a while to
worry about her.

“She hates everybody but Toby. She can’t even like herself, and Toby’s
the only human being she’ll ever love. How can such a lovely woman be so
messed up?” Beebo mourned.

“I see she’s messed you up a bit, too. Beebo, was it you who was
cheating tonight, and not Pat? Are you falling for Venus? Because if
you’re not, you’d go call Paula and laugh this off with her. You
wouldn’t care who Venus loved or why.”

“I don’t know. Don’t ask me,” Beebo said, crushed almost to despair by
the shame of it—of being a pushover for a professional temptress, and
too mesmerized by her even to phone Paula, whose love for her had become
a torment to them both.

Pat leaned against Jack cautiously and said, “Toby has seven yo-yos. We
watched the Lone Ranger.”

“Okay,” Jack said, smiling into space. “Hey, Beebo. Hey!”

She had rolled over suddenly on her stomach to cry, her face in the
scratchy rug. She shook her head to show she heard him but couldn’t
stop.

Pat clucked softly at her. “She couldn’t have cared less about that
woman till she checked out the boudoir. They were in there an hour.
Beebo came out transformed.”

Beebo wept into the stiff wool pile. “I thought I wanted to apologize.
But I really wanted.... Oh, God help me, I’m wild for her. She’s
fabulous.”

Jack lighted a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke over Beebo’s back.
“Well, that’s two nuts in the family: you and me. We fall in love with
the wrong ones as if it were in the by-laws.”

Pat turned to stare at him. “Who’s in love?” he said.

“I am. With you.”

Pat began to smile. “Why the hell didn’t you _say_ so?” he exclaimed.
“You never said so.”

“I was waiting for Beebo to go first. Misery loves company.”

“Come on, you nut, you know I’m crazy about you,” Pat said, smiling at
him. He leaned over. “Stick out your tongue,” he said. Jack obeyed.
“It’s black. You’re lying, you don’t love me at all.”

Jack began to laugh. Suddenly they forgot Beebo. It was the wonderful
selfishness of love that swept them out of her world into their own; the
selfishness that friends can only envy and forgive.

Beebo stood up after a while and wandered into the bedroom, wanting to
give them some privacy and herself some relief from their pleasure. She
lay down on the bed and saw Venus on the ceiling; shut her eyes and saw
Paula and felt the tears start again. She stuffed her face into the
pillow, beating it and crying Paula’s name. But when the fit passed, it
was still Venus for whom her limbs ached and body burned; Venus whose
face flamed in her brain and made her heart race.

Before she slept she thought of Jack and Pat, facing up to their love at
last, and knew she had to move out. Yesterday she could have gone to
Paula, even if it was premature. Today, there was again no place to go.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo drove the truck to work with a thundering headache. She felt cut
off from home and help; cut out—halfway at least—from Jack’s life. Venus
wanted her to come back but only, Beebo was sure, to entertain herself.
Paula wanted her, but to smother her with a love she couldn’t honestly
accept, much as she respected and even wanted it.

At the shop she handed Venus’s autograph to Pete Pasquini. “Something
for your memory book,” she said darkly.

He looked at it disinterestedly. “So how come you’re so cheerful this
morning? Didn’t she throw nothing at you last night? She got a good
right hand, that one.”

“She said to tell you she’s sorry,” Beebo said, refusing to look at him
while she worked.

“Yeah? I think you’re the one who’s sorry. You didn’t do so good, hm?”

Beebo lifted a heavy can of peeled tomatoes, almost persuaded to heave
it, when Marie’s voice broke in. “Beebo—a visitor. A young lady.”

Beebo put the can down, and a hand to her head. _Paula. Holy God! I
can’t face her._ But she had to. She walked slowly to the front of the
store, aware that Pete was trailing her at a discreet distance.

A tall dark-haired girl wheeled around and took off a pair of showy
sunglasses. “Hello, Beebo,” she said. It was Mona.

Beebo could find nothing to say. Even “hello” was too much of a
courtesy.

“I want some groceries. Over there on the counter—I’ve got most of them.
I’m taking them to Paula. She didn’t feel much like going out today ...
for some reason.”

The thought of Paula, defenseless against Mona, was enough to crowd
Beebo’s reluctance to see her little redhead right out of her mind.
“I’ll take them over. I was going to see her at lunchtime anyway,” she
said.

“I’m sure it’ll come as a surprise to Paula,” Mona observed, smiling at
a display of spinach noodles.

Pete heard it and laughed his oily mirth to the canned fruits in the
next aisle. Beebo wanted to strangle him. She shoved Mona’s five-dollar
bill back at her and put the food for Paula on a shelf behind the
counter. Mona had that high color on her face brought up by the
excitement of willful malevolence. “I hear you and Pete are getting to
be regular cronies,” she said in a syrupy voice. “Isn’t he a ray of
sunshine, though?”

“You ought to know. He’s your sunshine, not mine,” Beebo said briefly.

“Pretty noble of you to pay for the groceries,” Mona said, sliding the
bill back into her purse. “On your salary.” She gave Beebo a provocative
stare that reminded them both of the night they met at the Colophon. A
warm feeling arose in Beebo that was strictly physical and angered her.

Mona slunk down Pete’s aisle and Beebo heard them murmuring together.
From the back of the shop she could see Pete making animated gestures as
he told Mona something. Marie came out of the kitchen a minute to glance
at them. “Ain’t that a pretty sight?” she said in a caustic whisper to
Beebo. “The ‘Happiness Kids’ Jack calls ’em. They was made for each
other, them two.”

Beebo had to grin at the spunky little Frenchwoman.

Pete didn’t let Mona leave till he heard the motor of Beebo’s truck
starting in the delivery yard. Beebo was backing out when he caught her.
He put his head in the cab, forcing her to stop.

“Well?” she said impatiently.

“Bogardus just calls in,” he said. “For tonight—lasagna. You can
deliver; I want no more in the face.” He waited for her reply, but she
was gazing through the windshield, seeing nothing but that face, that
face. So fair. So unfair! Pete slapped her knee and made her start. “You
alive?” he said.

“I hear you.”

Pete squeezed her knee—the kind of grip known as a horse bite. It hurts
and it tickles at the same time. Beebo wrenched her leg away and the
truck lurched backward. Pete leaped agilely out of the way, laughing at
her disgusted curse.

She drove off fuming, wondering what it was about him that made her
think, when they met, that he never laughed. She would damn well quit,
whether she had another job or not. But then she saw herself, jobless
and homeless at one stroke. Everything had seemed so right and easy just
a few weeks ago. Everything now seemed bewilderingly bleak.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She spent an hour with Paula at lunchtime, trying to explain by fits and
starts how she had made friends with Toby, talked to Venus about him,
and got home late, too tired to call.

“I’m sorry,” Beebo said, her voice soft with embarrassment. “That was
plain selfishness. Please eat, honey; I brought you all this good food.”

“Because Mona Petry told you I was staying at home today.” Paula put a
bite in her mouth as if it were a ball of cotton. There was little more
said, and the silences between words became unbearable. They did not
make love, they didn’t laugh. Beebo’s lapse of the previous night hung
between them like a fog. She was almost too inhibited when it was time
to go to kiss Paula. At last she leaned over and gave her a shy peck on
the cheek. Paula accepted it with solemn dignity, but would not return
it.

“May I see you tonight?” Beebo said.

“If you think you can put up with my mood.”

“I’m afraid the mood is my fault. Let me come over, please, Paula.”

Paula gave her a faint smile. “I won’t be very nice to you,” she said.

It was the first of many quiet cool nights, when Paula’s intense desire
for Beebo, and Beebo’s unadmitted desire for Venus, kept them restrained
and doubtful with each other.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo picked Toby up the next day and spent the afternoon with him. He
turned into a handy helper, carrying orders with her and keeping her
busy with his talk. He was interested, as a child five years younger
might have been, in the panorama of the city, especially the areas that
were new to him. Though he lived there much of the time, he saw very
little of New York.

He would fire a broadside of questions at Beebo and leave her wallowing
in his wake, searching for answers, while he hurried on to set up the
next bunch. Fortunately, it seemed more important to him to be able to
ask than to get answers. Beebo didn’t want to disappoint him with her
ignorance.

They became quite good friends in the following few weeks, and to
Beebo’s surprise, they accomplished it without any sideline coaching
from Venus. Venus, in fact, stayed out of sight, though she kept on
ordering from Marie Pasquini. And Beebo, knowing as Toby did not, that
Venus was sacrificing her pleasure for his sake, was grateful to her.

Beebo dreaded facing her, even though it seemed inevitable sooner or
later. And when it happened, Beebo foresaw her relationship with Paula
going down the drain; her friendship with Toby smashed; and her
self-respect, already slipping, destroyed completely.

It was something to be spared the encounter for a while. Everything in
Beebo’s life felt very temporary and precarious to her. But at least she
had a breathing space, a time to test her feelings before they were
exposed to others.

Alone, she was miserable with the problems of where to live, who to live
with, how to control her urgent new emotions. But with Toby, she forgot
a little and studied his troubles instead. They kidded each other and
they laughed a lot. And they talked. At first it was mostly about
guns—Toby’s forte; or horses—Beebo’s. Boy talk. Getting-to-know-you
talk. The necessary preliminaries to a heart-to-heart. And it did Beebo
as much good as it did Toby.

When they first met, Toby had blurted some awkward and ugly things to
Beebo about his life with Venus. He seized upon her empathy for him and
used it brashly because for all he knew he would see her once and never
again. And it might be years before somebody else came along who seemed
able to understand it. It had to be someone Toby instinctively liked and
respected or it wouldn’t ease his troubled young heart to bare it. So
Beebo was special and he had grabbed her and said too much too fast.

So he back-pedaled into gun-talk, horse-talk, horseplay, and finally
friendship, now that he could approach it more slowly. A little at a
time, he unbent with her. He told her about the girls he knew in
Bel-Air, California, where they lived when Venus was working in a film.

“I love it out there,” he said. “We have five horses. Leo rides with me.
You’d love it. Say, maybe you could come out and take care of them for
us. You know all about it from your dad. It’s too bad other girls are so
square. You know, I took one riding once, and she was scared to death.”

“You just got the wrong one,” Beebo said. “Lots of girls like to ride.”

“Not the ones I know,” he said. “Or if they like to ride, they don’t
like me.”

“You haven’t looked around enough.”

“It’s embarrassing,” Toby said. “The dumb ones can’t talk to you about
anything. And if you find a decent one, you can’t talk to _her_. It’s
awful.” He smiled ruefully while Beebo laughed at him, and then added,
“Why can a guy talk to other guys but not to girls?”

“You talk to me,” she said.

“You’re different,” Toby said, with no inkling that he might have
scraped a sore spot. He meant it as a compliment and she took it that
way. “I don’t think I’ll ever love a girl, Beebo. You can’t trust them.”

“You think they’re all like your mother,” Beebo told him.

“They are.”

“No more than all men are the same.”

“According to my mother, all men are dirty dogs. That includes me.
Sometimes I think the reason she named me Toby was because it makes me
sound like an alley cat. Toby the Cat, and Leo the Lion. What a zoo she
lives with. I wonder why she didn’t name me Fido. She treats me like a
hound most of the time.”

“Hey, buddy,” Beebo said. “Maybe she’s mixed up but she’s still your
mother. You know what we talked about that day when I was there? How
much she loves you. She cried because you don’t believe her.”

Toby pressed his lips together, unwilling to concede a single virtue to
Venus. “My name isn’t Bogardus,” he said finally. “It’s Henderson.”

“Your mother loves you, Toby Henderson.”

“My father lives in Chicago. Were you ever there? He runs a dairy
processing plant in Gary, Indiana. I’ve never met him and I never want
to.”

Beebo was shocked. After a moment she said, “Well, maybe you can’t love
somebody you don’t know, even if he is your father. But aren’t you
curious?”

“Oh, he’s probably a dirty dog like the rest of us. At least if I never
meet him, I can pretend he’s something better.”

Beebo felt a stinging sympathy for him. “My father means a lot to me,”
she said.

“How come you don’t live with him, then? You said he lived in Wisconsin.
Did you run away, Beebo? You’re awful young to be on your own here. How
come?”

He had scored a bull’s eye. She wondered how many years of lonely
introspection it had cost Toby to become that perceptive; that quick to
see the truth beneath the social tricks.

“I had some tough problems, Toby,” she said. She was suddenly so grave
that he retreated from the subject, afraid of hurting her. Beebo was
thinking what it would do to him to know that she was a Lesbian; how
desperately he would worry about her and his mother.

“I’m not the dope Mom thinks I am,” he declared. “You can talk to me.”

“No, you’re no dope, but I am, for running away. And I’ll tell you
something, buddy. Fathers are something special. Even yours.”

“Sure. He and Mom got together and manufactured me. Something special. A
gorilla could have done the job better, Mom says. Or a test tube.
Sometimes I think that’d be okay—a test tube. Then I’d never even have
to know his name.”

Beebo felt a little like crying. But it would ruin her prestige with
him. She swallowed and said, “He must write to you. Send you birthday
presents, and things.”

“The only present he ever gave me was epilepsy,” Toby said in a flinty
voice. “Mom says it came from his side of the family. So I haven’t much
to thank him for. Do you know what that is—epilepsy?” He had said the
word so many times there was no longer any drama in it for him.

“Your Mom told me,” Beebo said. “Does it ... make things rough for you?
Like at school, with the other kids?”

“Not too bad,” he said. But she looked at his face and thought
differently. It had made him shy and apologetic about himself, and
consequently, fiercely defensive. At any time, he might become a major
source of inconvenience or even panic to his schoolmates, though the
seizures hit him infrequently in their presence. Still, it was those
times he remembered better than any others.

“Leo is good about it,” Toby said. “He’s a pretty good guy. I’d rather
have him around than Mrs. Sack, even.”

“What’s Leo like?” Beebo said, suddenly afire to know.

“He stands up to Mom, if that’s what you mean. She hates him, naturally,
but she respects him. Leo gave her her name. He knew her before anybody
else in Hollywood. He was her agent, and he got her started.”

“What’s her real name?”

“Jean Jacoby.”

“That’s pretty ... why won’t Leo divorce her?”

“He really loves her, I guess. Boy, what a glutton for punishment,” Toby
marveled.

“If she hates him, why did she marry him?”

“Oh, she talked herself into a crush on all her husbands,” Toby said,
and Beebo wondered who had explained it all to him with such authority
... Leo? Mrs. Sack? “They were all rich and good looking and married to
somebody else till she came along. I think it was sort of a challenge.”

Beebo absorbed this in silence, disapproving and yet oddly amused. “What
does Leo do?” She pictured him as a sort of legitimatized gigolo for his
stunning wife.

“He’s a director now. He directs all her films. That’s why people think
she’s an actress. He can get a performance out of her nobody else can.
She hates to admit it, but she loves her reviews. If they ever did get
divorced, she’d have to let him keep on directing.” His words made Leo
Bogardus seem like more of a man than Beebo would have liked. She
lighted a cigarette.

“Hey, can I have one too?” Toby said, with the light of friendly
collusion in his eyes. “It’s okay, I’ve smoked before.”

She handed him her pack. “I’m contributing to the delinquency of a
minor, you know,” she grinned. “It’s your fault, buddy. You’d better
kick the habit before they haul me in.”

He did not inhale the smoke, but he was very pleased with himself, and
with Beebo. He held the cigarette in a self-conscious imitation of a
man’s gesture, taking a cautious mouthful occasionally and blowing it
out with dreamy satisfaction.

“Do you get along with Leo, Toby?” Beebo asked.

“He’s been real decent to me. He does things with me, even when they’re
things I don’t want to do. It’s nice of him ... you know? And sometimes
I end up liking the things I didn’t think I would. It’s funny ... he
tries to make them interesting. I guess you could say I like him.”

Beebo grinned at him, impressed by his adolescent acuity; and aware,
despite his wary phrasing, that Leo was quite an influence in his life.
“You’re pretty grown up for your age, aren’t you?” she said seriously,
and made him smile at the flattery.

But his answer startled her. “I had to grow up,” he said, “with men
climbing in and out of Mom’s bed while I played on the floor with my
blocks.”

“God! Was it that bad?” Beebo said.

“They all thought I’d be the best adjusted kid for miles around,” he
said with psychological detachment into a cloud of very grown-up smoke.
“I don’t know why all that stuff should embarrass me now that I’m nearly
fifteen. I used to sit there and watch the whole show when I was
little.” His face lengthened. “It never got to me then.”

Beebo saw the resentment on his face flash and alternate with confusion,
even love, for Venus. She wondered how much Venus was trying to show her
love for him these days, and if it was making Toby all the more
suspicious of her.

“Toby,” Beebo said. “Do you know that Venus is kind of afraid of you?”

He turned his face away.

“She wants you to know she loves you, but she’s afraid you’ll think
she’s kidding after all these years.”

“She’s right.”

“Maybe now that she’s trying to say it, you could listen,” Beebo
suggested casually.

Toby gave a deep sigh. “I guess that’s what she’s been doing all week,”
he said. “She keeps saying she has something to say but she never says
anything.” He returned Beebo’s gaze, his blue eyes, so like his
mother’s, pained and puzzled. “I don’t care how she says it, if only she
means it. I was lousy to her because whenever I try to tell her
something, she’s lousy to me. I wanted to get back at her.”

“You’ve only got one mother, Toby. You’ve got to make the best of her. I
wouldn’t care so much what my mother was like, if I’d only known her.
She died when I was young.”

Toby pondered this a while, and then said, “If you ever run away again,
I’ll go with you.” It was not an offer, it was a request—a plea.

“You’re welcome aboard,” she smiled.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Venus was waiting for them outside the elevator door in the service
entrance, one early evening in the first week of September. Strangely,
Beebo wasn’t surprised. It had been coming for weeks, and now she had to
face it.

Toby grimaced at his mother, and Beebo handed her the carton of
home-cooked food. “Here’s your dinner,” she said. “Mrs. Pasquini
appreciates all the orders.”

“You might as well keep it, she never eats it,” Toby revealed. “She just
orders it to keep you coming over.”

“Sh!” Venus exclaimed at him. She was wearing a bright-blue knit dress,
into which her famous frame was smoothly slipped; a glowing target for
the eyes.

“Toby says you’re a good driver,” Venus said. “Now I suppose he’ll
pester Leo to teach him when we get home.”

“You know I can’t drive, Mom,” he said wearily. “They don’t give
licences to epileptics.”

“Well, we’ll talk to the governor, darling,” she said.

“Besides, what do you mean ‘home’? California?” He looked at her
suddenly, brightening. “I thought we were going to be here all winter.”

Beebo felt almost dizzy at the thought of losing Venus before she had
won her. It was too much to bear. Everything went wrong in bunches.
“Home?” she repeated, frowning at Venus.

“Well, you both look as if I had dropped a bomb,” Venus declared. “I
just thought, with Toby’s friends in California, and all those miserable
horses and sunshine and ocean ... I guess I can put up with the smog.”

“Mom, that’s great,” he said, surprise all over his face. “Are you doing
a new picture?”

“No, darling. I’m turning over a new leaf,” she said.

They looked at each other and Beebo sensed an awkward rapport between
them. After a decent pause she said, “Well—have a good trip, you two. I
guess I won’t be seeing you again, Toby.”

He turned to her in consternation, and Venus said, “Don’t be silly,
darling. I have some lovely martinis all ready upstairs and a perfectly
irresistible business proposition for you.”

“Business?” Beebo said.

Toby made a face. “Monkey business,” he said. “Can you walk on your
hands, Beebo?”

“Hush, darling,” Venus said, pulling them both into the elevator. “Not
until she’s had her martini.”

Toby had a distant look on his face on the way up. “I’ll have to write
to everybody,” he said. “So they’ll know I’m coming.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo let herself be led into the living room, full of sharp doubts that
made her jumpy. Venus watched Toby go with a smile. “He’ll be busy for
hours,” she told Beebo. “He rewrites all his letters two or three times.
You’d think he was going to publish them someday.”

Beebo sat down on a long white sofa and accepted a martini with an
unsteady hand. The trembling had started already, and it seemed
impossible to talk or act like a normal human being.

But Venus, who was more of a sorceress than a goddess, talked softly to
her for half an hour, letting the drinks and her own silvery charm relax
her guest. Even then, Beebo looked so gloomy that Venus began to chuckle
at her. She refilled their glasses and asked her, “Do you hate yourself
for coming up tonight?”

“Not as much as I hate you for asking me,” Beebo said.

“Be fair now, darling,” Venus chided. “I’m not responsible for your
weakness, am I?”

“You know damn well you are,” Beebo said. And in the pause that followed
she felt that if she didn’t escape now, she never would. “I’m sorry,
it’s not your fault,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “I guess
you were born with—all that.” She couldn’t look at “all that” while she
spoke of it.

“No, I had to grow it, darling. Took me 15 years, and it was a hell of a
wait.”

Beebo moved to the edge of the sofa when Venus joined her. “Were you a
poor proud orphan till some movie scout discovered you?”

“Oh, God no!” Venus laughed. “My family was solid apple pie. The trouble
was, I was always so damn beautiful I never had a chance to be normal.”
She spoke dispassionately, as if she were analyzing a friend. It wasn’t
snobbish. “I was supposed to be fast and loose because I looked it. At
first the attention spoiled me. I was cocky. A candy-box valentine brat
with corkscrew curls—my mother’s pride and joy. Until I drove her
frantic, and my friends out of my life. Nobody could stand me.
_Honestly._ You laugh, but I cried when it happened. I couldn’t
understand why I was alone all of a sudden.

“I got shy and scared. Went my own way and told the world to go to hell.
After a while, when my figure caught up with my face, I made some new
friends: boys. It was so easy to give in. So hard to be anything but
what people thought you were,” she said, and Beebo responded with a
startled swell of sympathy. “Well, in a phrase, they made me what I am
today: a conniving bitch.” Venus spoke defiantly ... and regretfully.

“I’m not proud of it, but I want to be truthful with you. You’re a
sweetheart, Beebo. And very young, and maybe not too experienced. Tell
me why you’ve made Toby come up alone with the food all these weeks. Did
you think I’d throw spaghetti at you?”

Beebo took a swallow of her drink. “I don’t want to crawl, Venus. I
don’t want to be hurt,” she said harshly, defending herself with painful
honesty in lieu of a worldly white lie.

“Nobody does,” Venus said. “Were you expecting to be?”

“Isn’t that what you want?” Beebo said, looking deep into her ice cubes.
“To play games?”

Venus touched a finger to Beebo’s cheek. “You’re not crawling,” she
said. “You’re being difficult. That’s new for me.”

“Is playing around with girls new for you, too?” Beebo asked, afraid to
know the answer.

“Depends on how you mean it,” Venus said. “You don’t trust me, do you?”
She smiled.

Beebo caught Venus’s hand as it caressed her cheek and kissed it warmly.
And remembered with sudden sadness the way Paula had done that to her
when they met. She put Venus’s hand down gingerly on the sofa.

Venus let her sit and stew for a minute and then slipped across the
cushion toward her. Their faces were very near and Venus put her
rejected hand on Beebo’s leg. “I’m trying to give myself to you and you
won’t have me,” she said. “Now who’s crawling?” She let her other hand,
cool and questing, touch Beebo’s neck and slip over her shoulder,
drawing fire with it.

“You’re putting me on,” Beebo said, determinedly suspicious as only the
young and uncertain can be. She took a deep breath. “But I don’t care,”
she cried suddenly. “I don’t care. I’ll have you any way I can.” She put
her head down and kissed Venus’s throat, putting her arms around her and
grasping her firmly. Venus leaned against her, warm and willow-supple.

“You want to know how it feels, don’t you?” Beebo said, trying to hurt
her feelings, so sure Venus would hurt Beebo first if she could. “You
want to know what it’s like for a girl to hold you instead of a man. Any
time you get bored, let me know.” She bent to kiss her again but Venus
stopped her. She was dismayed, and Beebo was ashamed to see it.

“You really _do_ hate me, don’t you?” Venus said.

Beebo closed her eyes for a minute. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She felt
Venus moving in her arms. “I thought you were bored and frigid. Taking
me like a prescription, or something. The way you talked—”

“The way I talked about _men_, not women. Beebo, do you know something?
I was scared to death you’d take one look at this face of mine, panic,
and run out.” Her hands slid around Beebo’s back and into her short dark
hair.

Beebo’s face turned hot while those hands trailed softly through her
hair and over her eyes. “You’re superb, Beebo,” Venus said. “I think I’m
the one who’s afraid. I wouldn’t be if I knew you better. And myself.”

“You know more than I know,” Beebo said. “Is this all a joke, Venus?”

Venus hushed her by pulling her down and kissing her mouth, and her
tenderness was no pleasantry. Beebo kissed back: Venus’s face, her ears,
her pale throat, till Venus made her stop, shaking her curls to be let
loose, and laughing.

“Who the hell am I,” Beebo exclaimed, “that you should kiss me like
this?”

Venus caught her breath. “You talk to me as if I were a woman,” she said
at last, gratefully. “Not a goddess, or a bitch. It hurts a little, but
it feels good to hurt like that. Like when you’re awfully young and you
have a beautiful dreamy pain to cry over.”

Beebo rubbed her head back and forth in the cradle of Venus’s shoulder.
“Did you cry over your dreams like other girls, Venus?”

“I cried, but not like other girls. I never did anything like other
girls. I never even looked like them.”

“Would you rather be plain?” Beebo asked.

Venus looked away and found the dignity to be honest. “No,” she said.
“It’s a funny thing about women and me. Half the time I want to make
them weep with despair over my beauty. And the other half I ache to be
friends with them. Accepted. All the things I wasn’t when I was growing
up. My whole world is men. They’re the only friends I have, and they
aren’t really friends at all. Not with a woman like me. The women close
to me are either fat and old, like Mrs. Sack, or homely and heartless,
like Miss Pinch.”

“The cook? Is that her name?” Beebo gave in to laughter that relieved
her tenseness a little.

“I know, it’s too good to be true,” Venus said. “Leo started calling her
that, and it caught on. I fire her regularly but she comes back like a
bad dream. She’s devoted to Leo.”

Beebo put her head down so she could talk without exposing her emotions
to Venus’s eyes. “Do you miss having a woman in your life?” she asked.

“Yes. The right kind. Somebody cultured and intelligent and
well-educated. Somebody to teach me things. I’m so damned stupid.”

Beebo gave a short wry laugh. “Venus? I think there’s something you
should know.”

“What?”

“I didn’t finish high school.”

Venus laughed, a charming sound, full of pleasure. “I thought you meant,
did I want a secretary, or something,” she said.

“I’ll bet you did.” Beebo sat up and lowered herself to the floor, where
she leaned back on the sofa, locking her fingers around her knees. She
felt Venus’s hand come down to play with her ear.

“Did I say something wrong, darling?” Venus said.

“Not a thing. Just that for a girl who likes girls, you did a damn queer
thing marrying six men,” Beebo said.

Venus answered pensively. “I kept thinking one of the six would set me
straight somehow,” she said.

Beebo felt those lovely hands in her hair, and she looked over at the
kitchen door. It was about thirty feet away ... thirty miles, it seemed.

“You’ve got such soft hair, Beebo,” Venus said, and she leaned down and
kissed the crown of Beebo’s head, and then lifted her face and kissed
everything upside-down from her perch on the couch. “You kiss me so
gently,” she said. “I never knew a lover so gentle before. There isn’t a
man alive who could come near you.” And she kissed Beebo again till
Beebo reached up from the floor and caught Venus’s breasts in her hands,
returning the kiss with a young warmth that struck sparks in Venus.
Beebo held her hard and groaned, “Don’t, don’t, you don’t know what it’s
doing to me. Oh, God ... oh, please....”

“Do you still think I don’t know?” Venus said. “Don’t you understand by
now I’m not doing this for kicks? Or to hurt you? Or God knows what
other medieval torments you imagined? I think you’re amazing. Exciting.
Adorable. Did you think I’d never tried it before with a woman? I’ve
tried everything, darling. Everything but corpses, anyway.”

“Oh, Venus, Venus—”

“Hush, I’ll explain. You see, it was always so rotten with men. It was
as good as it ever got with a girl. But never this good.” Her directness
threw Beebo emotionally offstride. “I kept thinking it should be. If men
were so bad there had to be something else worth living for. So I kept
looking. But I have to be so damn careful. Whatever I do is news.”

Beebo looked at her and saw tears on her cheeks. “My daydreams were
always better than my life,” Venus whispered, “and when you reach that
point, you’re in trouble. All the money in the world can’t make those
dreams real.” She brushed lightly at the tears, embarrassed by them.

“I was wild when that dreadful Pasquini came up here,” she said. “I’d
been looking forward to seeing you all day. After he left, I began to
think maybe his coming was a sign that I should give you up while I
still could. An affair between us would seem like the world’s worst
cliché: the jaded vamp seducing the innocent girl for the sake of a few
cheap kicks.” She sat silent a moment and then she smiled at Beebo.

“Do you know what Miss Pinch said after you left? She came marching in
and announced that you were a dyke and Pat was a queen.”

“Miss _Pinch_ said that?” Beebo said, and laughed at the incongruity of
it.

“Well, she put it a little differently. She said, ‘The dark young
gentleman was a female and the blond young gentleman was a lady, if you
know what I mean, ma’am.’”

They laughed together and Beebo felt suddenly close to Venus; her fear
had vanished. “The only thing I worry about is, Miss Pinch might tell
Leo,” Venus said. “It makes him simply wild when I take up with a girl.”

“Do you take them up often?” Beebo asked, looking down.

Venus shook her head without answering. It was a wordless admission of
her loneliness and frustration; as great, in its way, as Toby’s. Beebo
got up on her knees and encircled Venus’s waist. “Venus, darling,” she
said softly, hesitantly. “I love you so much. I can’t understand this
thing. I thought you were—all glittery and cold. I thought we’d finally
climb into bed, and you’d kill me with your laughter. And then to have
you like this! God, I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s so crazy. Venus,
Venus, I adore you.” She began to kiss her again and Venus let herself
be pulled off the sofa and into Beebo’s arms, giving in a bit at a time,
so that Beebo was trembling and wild-eyed one moment, and overwhelming
Venus the next.

She had just enough sense to pick Venus up moments later and carry her
to the bedroom, through the overstated boudoir, and out of the sight of
Toby and the women. She laid Venus down on the blue silk coverlet of her
bed, leaning over her with her fists planted in the mattress.

“This is where I do my dreaming,” Venus told her. “I take off my clothes
and lie down here and tell myself beautiful crazy stories. I’ve been
doing it for years.”

“Who do you dream about?” Beebo asked.

“Who do you think?” Venus smiled. “God, you’re so tall for a girl. So
tanned and strong. Like a boy.”

“I hate to think of you all alone on that blue silk, wanting me,” Beebo
said. “And me out delivering salami.”

“And talking to Toby,” Venus said.

“That means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

“Everything,” Venus admitted. “I can’t tell you how much. I can talk to
him now without screaming at him. I owe that to you, Beebo.”

Instead of accepting the compliment gracefully, Beebo stared moodily out
the window. “Are you keeping me around so you won’t lose Toby again? I
don’t want to find myself pounding on your locked door the day you learn
you can talk to him without me.”

“What does it take to make you trust a girl, Beebo?” Venus teased.

“I guess I never will trust you—quite,” Beebo said truthfully. “You’re
too good to be true.”

Venus pulled her head down on the pillow and asked seriously, “How many
people know you have a crush on me? Don’t fib, darling. I have a special
reason for wanting to know.”

Beebo gritted her teeth together a moment before she answered. “My
roommate. His name is Jack Mann. He’s gay, too. He’s the best friend I
ever had and I trust him more than I trust myself.”

“Who else? Pasquini?”

“No,” Beebo said, lying forcefully with the sudden knowledge that Venus
was trying to decide how dangerous their affair could be. The safer it
seemed to her, the better the chances she would keep Beebo with her ...
perhaps even take her to the West Coast.

“How about this girl who’s in love with you?” Venus said.

“She’s not in love with me. It’s a crush,” Beebo said, ashamed of the
betrayal but unable to help herself. “She’ll get over it.”

“Do girls ever get over their crushes on you?” Venus said.

“Every day,” Beebo protested. “Venus ... would you ever lock me out ...
if people knew?”

Venus rolled away from her, sitting halfway up. Her face was dark. “I’d
have to,” she said. “For Toby, if for no other reason. And even without
him, there’s my career. It’s my life, my anchor. I can’t afford to
jeopardize it, especially now that I’m thirty-eight.” She glanced at
Beebo. “Is that unforgivably selfish of me? Don’t answer. It is, of
course. I want you, and all the rest, too. And that means you’re the one
who’d have to sacrifice. It’s just that ... for some people a job is a
job. For me, it’s self-respect. Acting is about the only thing I’ve done
in my life I’m not ashamed of. Is it too much to ask, Beebo—secrecy?”

“Is it possible?” Beebo said.

Venus nodded. “There are ways. I’ve had to learn them.”

“With the other girls,” Beebo said resentfully.

Venus stroked her shoulder. “You don’t have to be jealous,” she said. “I
do.”

“I’m jealous of all your husbands. All your lovers, male and female.
Every slob who ever saw you in a movie.”

Venus chuckled, letting her tripping voice twist her body back and forth
on the blue silk, and Beebo suddenly forgot everything in her life that
had preceded this moment. She lunged across the bed and caught Venus by
the wrist, whirling her around just as Venus got to her feet.

For an instant they stayed as they were, breathless: Beebo stretched out
the length of the bed, looking at Venus with her blue eyes shining like
a cat’s. Venus could feel the avalanche of passionate force trapped
inside Beebo, ready to burst free at the flip of a finger. Already it
was near exploding.

Venus stood there pulling against Beebo; warm, even hot to the point of
perspiring. The light sweat excited Beebo far more than the perfume
Venus usually wore. Her body was a soft pearly peach and between her
breasts Beebo could see the quivering lift and fall of her sternum.

Beebo gave a swift tug on Venus’s arm and brought her tumbling down on
the bed, laughing. That laugh sprang the switch in Beebo. She stopped it
with her mouth pressed on Venus’s. And at last Venus submitted, all the
twisting and teasing melting out of her. She let herself be kissed all
over.

Beebo looked at her, stripped of the tinseled make-believe and the
wisecracks; her lips parted and her eyes shut and her fine dark hair
spilling pins over the pillow, coming down almost deliberately to work
its witchery. Beebo kissed handfuls of it.

She fell asleep a long time later, still murmuring to Venus, still
holding her possessively close, still wondering what she had done—or
would have to do—to deserve it.

                   *       *       *       *       *

They were shaken out of sleep by the shrill ringing of the blue phone by
Venus’s bed. Venus answered sleepily, pulling the receiver onto the
pillow by her ear where she lay across Beebo’s chest.

But she came awake fast.

It was Leo Bogardus, calling from Hollywood. Beebo opened her eyes and
watched while Venus flushed with wrath and suddenly burst into furious
tears, threatening to hitchhike for Reno if she had to.

When she had slammed the phone down she told Beebo angrily that Leo had
signed her to a television special series called, “Million Dollar Baby.”

“I’m the Baby, but I’ll never see the million bucks,” she cried. “God, I
hate TV! You get overexposed, underpaid, and worked to death. And all
the lousy profit goes to the lousy sponsors.”

Beebo stroked her and tried to calm her. After a while Venus sat still,
her head in her hands. “Will you really go to Reno?” Beebo asked.

“No,” she sighed. “He won’t give me a divorce. I’ve tried everything....
I’ll go to Hollywood. I have no choice, Beebo. That’s where they’re
going to film this little horror.”

“Well, you were going anyway, for Toby.”

“But not _this_ soon! God damn that Leo! Well, at least I asked Toby
first. I tried to do it right.”

“How soon is _this_ soon?” Beebo asked disconsolately.

“Tonight, if I can get reservations.”

Beebo sat up in a mood of defiance. “Venus, you can’t—”

“I have to, darling. Leo has ways of forcing me. Besides, I knew he’d
been talking about this for months. But I didn’t think it would come so
soon.” She glanced at Beebo and suddenly turned halfway around to kiss
her mouth, startling Beebo.

“Is that goodby?” Beebo said, so coldly that Venus smiled at her.

“I told you I had a business proposition for you, you wicked child,” she
said. “And it’s a damn good thing, or I could never explain to Toby why
you spent the night. I’m going in right now and mess up the guest room.
Bring your clothes.”

Beebo pulled some of them on en route to the guest room. “What
proposition?” she demanded, full of new hopes.

“Would you like to work for me?” Venus said, turning down the covers of
the extra bed. She had thrown her negligee around herself.

“As what?” Beebo said. “Your companion?”

“No. Toby’s. He says you know horses. Maybe you could work in the
stables.” She spiraled the sheets around on the bed and dumped a pillow
on the floor. “That should do it.... Well, don’t stand there, darling,
go home and pack,” she said, glancing up at her astonished guest. “I
want you back here before six tonight. There’s a flight at eight I can
usually get seats on. What’s the matter, don’t you want to go?”

“I—yes—I do,” Beebo stammered.

“Well, go, darling. Go, go, go!” Venus said, clapping her hands under
Beebo’s nose and laughing. “And don’t talk about it!” she hissed at
Beebo’s retreating back. “To _anybody_!”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo drove downtown in a fog of confusion. After the first shock of
flattered pleasure died away, she found herself preoccupied with Paula;
so concerned, so anxious, that there were tears in her eyes she had to
keep squeezing away, just to see the traffic ahead of her.

She would stop at Paula’s apartment before she left. She had to. It was
one thing to hurt somebody, but to do it like a snake, striking and
slipping away before the victim knows what hit her—or who, or how—was
beyond Beebo. She would tell Paula the truth herself, however much it
cost them both in sorrow and resentment.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo returned the Pasquinis’ truck, hoping to escape unnoticed. But
Pete was lying in wait for her.

“So, you brought it back!” he said, grinning at her like a slick little
fox. “We thought maybe you was taking a vacation in it.”

“It’s your truck,” she said, getting down. “I don’t want the damn
thing.” She turned to look at him. “I—uh ... I’m quitting, Pete. I got
another job.”

“No kidding.” He picked his teeth without disturbing the leer on his
face. “Walking the dog for some swell lady?”

“I’ve had it with dogs,” Beebo shot back. “I’ve been working for one all
summer.”

Pete left the pick in his teeth in order to fold his arms over his chest
in imitation of Beebo when she was insulted. “So, Beebo,” he said
softly. “You don’t like it here with us no more?”

“You tell Marie I’m sorry,” Beebo said. “I like her fine.”

“Sure you do, sweetheart. She wears a skirt,” he said, rocking back and
forth on his heels, needling her skillfully.

Beebo felt her temper expanding in her like hot air. It would have
relieved her hugely to have punched him where it would hurt the worst.
But that was no way to solve any problems—especially not with this
covert, twisted young man who was trying to provoke the punch out of her
on purpose.

“Marie is a friend of mine,” Beebo said stiffly.

“Meaning I ain’t? Ain’t I been friendly to you, Beebo?” he said,
sauntering toward her. “Well, I can fix that up right now.” And with one
abrupt movement he reached her side and threw her hard against the door
of the truck, pulling her left arm up high in the back in a wrenchingly
painful hammer lock. Beebo gave a gasp of shock and tried to break free.
But for all her size and strength, she was still a girl, and no match
for an angry, jealous man who had been wanting her and wanting to hurt
her since he first saw her.

He forced his mouth on hers and when she struggled he bit her. She tried
to knee him, and he pulled her arm up so hard they both thought for a
moment he had broken it. Beebo went white with the pain, and leaned
weakly against the door. Pete kissed her again, taking his time and not
trying to unhinge her arm any more. The rough scratch of his whiskers,
and smell of his winy breath, the push of his hard hips, almost made her
faint.

“Now why do you make me hurt you, Beebo? Why do you do that?” he said in
a tense whisper, as if it were all her fault. “I don’t want to hurt you.
I want to be friends.” He kissed her again. “Don’t that prove it?”

Beebo knew she was crying with pain and fury and sickness. “Let me go,”
she said hoarsely. She would have screamed if she had had any strength,
but her heart was pounding and she was clammy pale, very near to
toppling over.

Pete released her suddenly, caught her as she stumbled, and seated her
on the running board. He shoved her head down between her knees till the
blood flow revived her. “You don’t got to put on a show,” he said
irritably. “I know you don’t want it from a man. I know you’re gay, for
chrissakes. That’s one thing I can spot a mile off. I like gay girls,
Beebo, in case you ain’t noticed. I’m on your side. Jesus God, you’d
think I hated you, or something.”

She looked at him sideways, when she thought she was strong enough to
stomach him. “Get out of my sight, you rotten little creep,” she said.
“Go find Mona. She plays both sides of the street.”

“Ah, Mona’s a drag,” he said. “She’s got this big thing about putting
you down on account of Paula. And you standing her up that night. I’m
sorry about that, Beebo, it was kind of my fault. It was me at her place
that night.”

“Oh, God,” Beebo said, and let her head drop into her hands again. “I
should have known.”

“Well, how am I supposed to know she’s bringing somebody home? I know
this girl for years. I drop in on her when I feel like it.”

“If you’re so goddamn big with Mona, you call on _her_ when you feel
like it, not me. Don’t you come tomcatting around to me, Pasquini.” She
stood up, weaving slightly, and put a hand on the fender to steady
herself.

He stood beside her, and she saw that her angry disgust with him was
beginning to annoy him. He wanted a fight—that was part of the build-up
for him. But he wanted an eventual surrender, on his terms. Beebo showed
no signs of yielding and her revulsion for him was plain enough to anger
him.

“Maybe Mona was right,” he said, his voice getting thin and mean. “Maybe
you need a lesson before you learn what’s good for you.”

“I don’t need any from you,” Beebo spat at him. “I’m getting out of here
right now, and you’ll never see me again.”

“I’ll catch up with you one of these days,” he said. “No matter where
you go.”

“The hell you will. You’re not going to chase me all the way to
California just to kick my can,” Beebo said hotly. But when Pete began
to smile, she rethought her words in sudden panic.

“California?” Pete grinned. “Well, that’d almost be worth the trip. I
think I’d like it out there. Maybe get another autograph from Venus.
Huh, butch? You could work it for me.”

Beebo looked at him, her face a mask but her heart dismayed. “You
believe it if you want to,” she said. “If you think I’d work anything
for you, you’re more of a fool than a creep.”

She turned and ran out of the delivery yard while he watched her. He
didn’t like to let her go. But at least she was leaving a trail behind
her; one that shouldn’t be hard to follow. Pete smiled.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo and Pat drank a few parting shots while Beebo packed her
strap-fastened wicker bag and waited for Jack to get home. She was ready
to go and a little tight when he rolled in at five.

“Having a party?” he asked.

“A goodby party. I’m getting off your back, Jackson,” Beebo said. “I’m
going to Hollywood.”

“They were bound to call you sooner or later,” Jack said. “Anyone can
see you’ve got talent.”

Beebo looked at the floor. “I’m going with Venus,” she said, humiliated
by it. “I didn’t know what else to do, Jack,” she added vehemently. “I
couldn’t live with Paula. I couldn’t live with you, not if I wanted to
keep your friendship. I had to quit the Pasquini job—Pete’s been helling
after me since I started. And besides—besides....” She stopped, throwing
her arms out and letting them drop against her sides.

“And besides, Venus asked you to go?” Jack said. Beebo nodded. Jack made
no comment, but she knew he thought it was asinine of her. “Did you ever
write to tell your father where you are?”

“I thought about it, but I didn’t know what to say.”

“Have you told Paula?”

“Not yet. I was waiting till you got home.”

“Paula’s more important.”

“Jack, damn it, Paula doesn’t own me!” she cried, angry because she knew
he was right. “My father doesn’t own me. I don’t have to tell them every
move I make, just because they—”

“They love you,” he finished for her. “Listen to me, little pal. You
came to this town to grow up and find yourself. You can do that without
breaking hearts. And so help me, Beebo, the first one you’re going to
break is your own.”

Beebo sat down on the bed. “Jack, I didn’t ask Paula Ash to love me,”
she said. “I never said I loved _her_.”

“Well, that makes it all swell.”

“She’s a sweet, fine girl. I wouldn’t hurt her for anything. But what
can I do?”

“Shall I give her that message?” Jack asked.

“I’ll tell her myself!” Beebo said, stung. But she wished, with all the
force of shame and indecision, that she didn’t have to.

Jack lighted a cigarette thoughtfully. “I’ve gotten to know her a lot
better the last few weeks. She was over last night, when you didn’t show
again. There’s a new girl in her life, Beebo.” He tossed his match in an
ash tray, scrutinizing Beebo’s startled face. “Miss Plaid Pajamas. You
know her?”

Beebo was shaken. “I know about her,” she said. “Oh, Paula....” She
recalled the sleeping pills, the tears. Paula’s red hair, her scent, her
green eyes luminous with love. She pressed a hand over her mouth, half
to control a sob, half in recollection of Paula’s first gesture of love.

“Regrets?” Jack said gently.

Beebo took a deep breath. “It’s Venus I love,” she said softly, but it
was strangely hard to say.

“Well, that’s that,” Jack said. “Off you go to follow your star.”

“I can’t help myself,” Beebo said, and that, at least, was true. “I’d
rather cut off my arm than hurt Paula, believe me.”

Jack smiled and lifted a hand to show he would not sermonize. “I wish
you well, pal. I wish you love,” he said. “I only wish—”

The phone rang. They all looked at each other. Finally Pat answered it,
while Jack and Beebo watched him. “It’s for you, Beebo,” Pat said,
holding out the receiver. She took it, looking apprehensively at him,
and he mouthed the word, “Paula.”

She shut her eyes. “Hello?” she said.

“Hello, Beebo.”

“Paula, I was just coming over. I—I wanted to tell you....” Her voice
trailed off.

“I know. I called to wish you Godspeed.”

“You what?” Beebo wheeled around to look at the two men.

“Pete called me,” Paula said. “He likes to play town crier.”

“God damn him!” Beebo exploded. “Paula, I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell
you myself, at least. I—what did he say?”

“He said you were going to California with Venus Bogardus,” Paula said
simply.

“Is that all?”

“It doesn’t matter about the rest, Beebo. Pete always exaggerates. I
just wanted to tell you, it’s all right. I think you should go. It’ll be
a great experience.” Her voice faltered ever so slightly, and Beebo
wanted desperately to hold her, to be able to say, “No, I’ll stay with
you,” and somehow still be able to go with Venus. She felt as if she
were being physically ripped in half.

“I’m not being melodramatic, honest!” Paula said and she managed a small
laugh. “I’m a hopeless optimist. I think you’ll be back. Or I couldn’t
be such a good sport. Mona says ‘good sport’ is just another word for
‘sucker’. She’s wrong, isn’t she? Beebo?”

“Yes, Paula. She’s wrong, honey.” Beebo felt her own voice break and
Paula said quickly, “Don’t come over, there’s no need. It’s much easier
on the phone. Write to me now and then.”

“Paula? Is that girl in the plaid pajamas pestering you again?” Beebo
said anxiously. “Jack said—”

“Jack is my knight in shining armor. If things get bad, he’ll come
rescue me. He has before.” There was a pause. Beebo glanced gratefully
at Jack and then she heard Paula saying, “Goodby, Beebo. Good luck. No,
_bad_ luck, and come home soon. I love you, you know. You worm.”

“I know.” Beebo swallowed. “Goodby, Paula.” She let the receiver drop
into its cradle and stood with her head against the wall for a minute.

“You look like you’re set for a real pleasure cruise,” Jack said, noting
her wan face and full eyes.

Beebo picked up her bag in a brusque motion and strode to the door. But
she couldn’t turn the handle. “Thanks for everything, Jack,” she said,
full of fears at cutting loose from her only friend in the new world.

“Come back when Venus shows you out,” he said kindly. “Our bunk is your
bunk,” and he put an arm over Pat’s shoulder.

“She won’t show me out,” Beebo said with what pride she still had.
“Jackson, take care of that Paula for me.” She caught his shoulders in a
hard grip. “I don’t know if I can stand to do this to her.”

“You’re doing it,” Jack commented.

Beebo looked at her bag, then grabbed it and ran down the hall and front
steps without daring to look back.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Jack shut the door softly and gazed at Pat. “You’re tanked,” he said
indulgently. His thoughts were elsewhere.

“You didn’t tell her about Pete and Mona,” Pat said. “Why?”

“She’s going three thousand miles from here. Let’s hope she doesn’t need
to worry about those two twerps any more.”

“I’ve heard some of their sickening stories about Beebo around the bars
lately,” Pat brooded.

“Well, don’t give Pete and Mona all the credit,” Jack said shrewdly.
“Not that they ever say anything nice about anybody. But it helps to
have someone else feeding them information.... Somebody whose initials
are Pat Kynaston.” It was as sharp a reproof as Jack had given him.

“I only say _good_ things about Beebo!” Pat protested, instantly
wounded. “I adore that girl!”

“I know. Good things. That’s all they need. Somebody in the Cellar heard
you carrying on Tuesday afternoon: Beebo’s father, her home town, even
that thing at the livestock exhibition. You want Pete to hear that, Pat?
Think what he could do with it, if he wanted to.”

Pat sank dismally to the living room floor. “Lord, I didn’t realize. I
thought I was telling them how great she is. I thought Pete and Mona
were inventing their stuff.”

“They are, but not all of it. The nearer the truth they can get, the
louder they’ll shout it—screwed around just enough to make Beebo look
like the type of witch decent citizens should spend their Sundays
burning.”

Pat’s chin trembled. “I could strike myself dumb,” he said bitterly.

Jack sat down and put an arm around him. “Just watch it, lover. She’s
put herself in a spot to be crucified, if Pete has anything against her
... and Mona already has, or thinks she has. All that girl needs is a
whim, anyway.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

The Bogardus home was located in a lush and secluded area of Mandeville
Canyon Road in Bel-Air. It was huge, elegant, well-staffed and
maintained. The grounds were a glowing sweep of hand-tailored grass,
tropical palms exploding against the sky like green rockets, swimming
pools—two—and the noisy brilliance of equatorial blooms.

Toby showed Beebo around. They walked over the lawns in bare feet, and
Beebo marveled at it. It dazzled her eyes enough to take her mind off
her sore heart a while. “Every time you push a button, somebody runs up
with a martini,” she said. “It’s fantastic, Toby.”

“I wish it weren’t,” Toby said. “I wish I had an ordinary house to live
in.”

“Poor little rich boy,” she grinned. “Wants an ordinary mama and papa,
too, no doubt. Maybe when you’re older you’ll be glad you’re different.”

“How would you know? You didn’t have to grow up this way.”

“No, but I had to grow up,” Beebo said. “I would have traded my problems
for yours any day.”

“That’s what Leo says. His family didn’t have a dime,” Toby told her as
they picked their way over the manufactured rustic rocks circling one of
the pools.

“Where is that guy, anyway?” Beebo said. Leo worried her, like a family
ghost: much was made of him, yet he was rarely seen.

“He’s in S.F.,” Toby said. “The servants expect him back the end of the
week. He’s talking to a sponsor for Mom’s show.”

“What’s he like? How do you talk to him?” Beebo said.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry. He likes kids. Besides, he’s been talking
about getting somebody to help with the horses for years.” Beebo felt a
sudden wave of relief. She had not brought up the reason for her
presence here, and it seemed odd to her that Toby hadn’t either—till she
realized how Venus had explained it to him. “Besides,” Toby added,
“it’ll be nice to have you around. You can help me with my homework. You
ought to be good with the biology. For once, Mom didn’t get a square for
me.”

Beebo wondered how many other young people had preceded her in this
household; how many synthetic friendships with young tutors, horsemen,
and valets Venus had tried to promote for Toby, hoping he would turn
into the easy-mannered socialite she somehow pictured him when he was
grown.

At least it was reassuring to have a job, something legitimate to do to
explain her membership on the family staff.

Toby sat down at the pool’s edge and put his legs in the cool water. He
was well-developed for his age, though still only five-feet-six. Beebo
looked at his young male body, so carelessly normal, and she envied him
painfully.

“Leo’s jealous, but he’s tolerant, too,” Toby said. “I mean, he’s put up
with so damn many men tailing Mom, he knows how to outsmart or outlast
all of them. He doesn’t like it much, but he knows she needs them. At
least, that’s what _she_ says. I don’t know why a woman can’t be happy
with one man ... especially if he’s a good one.”

“Some women can,” Beebo said. But she was thinking that a man of Leo’s
knowledge and well-founded suspicions would doubtless take one look at
Beebo and know good and damn well what his beautiful wife was up to.
There was nothing to do but wait till he got home for the showdown.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She confronted Venus with her misgivings about Leo. “He won’t hurt you,
darling,” Venus said. “Don’t offend him and don’t defy him. He’s nervous
as hell with a girl around the house.”

“If he puts up with your men, why not with your women?” Beebo said
gloomily.

“I never cared much for the other girls,” Venus said circuitously. “Only
for you.”

“Well, that ought to ingratiate me with Leo for good,” Beebo said.

“Leo’s afraid for my career. I guess that’s the only thing we agree on.
My ‘normal’ affairs have scandalized enough people as it is. A gay
love—if it got out—would finish me, Beebo.” She looked at her
apologetically. “It’s hard for me to fight Leo. He—sort of—owns me.
Economically, I mean, like he owns this house.”

“Do you really hate him, Venus?”

Venus picked at a nonexistent thread on her skirt. “I guess he’s a
kindly man at heart. I think I’ve ruined his temperament.” She put her
arms around Beebo as they lounged on her private sun porch. “Beebo, are
you sorry you’re gay? Are you bitter about it?”

“Yes,” Beebo said, and Venus frowned. “All day long, when you go off to
the studio, I’m sorry as hell. At night, I get down on my knees and give
thanks.”

“There must have been bad times before I came along.”

Beebo surfaced from a kiss on Venus’s golden shoulder. “When I was
younger, I used to look out my bedroom window on summer nights,” she
said, “and the brightest star in the sky was Venus. I wanted to reach
out and take it in my hand. Put it in a box and make it mine forever.”

Venus chuckled. “I’m not in a box yet, thank God. And I’m a lot handier
than that dreadful planet.”

Beebo settled closer to her and said with comfortable intimacy, “I want
to share so many things with you, Venus. I want to see you sparkling at
parties ... take you shopping ... watch you at rehearsals....”

“You can’t,” Venus said, putting a finger on Beebo’s nose. Beebo brushed
it off, protesting. “There won’t be time, for one thing,” Venus
explained. “Not while we’re filming. And besides, Leo won’t let you.
You’re too young, you’re too noticeable, and you’re too—well, female.
I’ll have all I can do to keep him from putting _you_ in a box.”

“Well, of all the goddamn nonsense!” Beebo said, clouding up. “I just
want to drive you places and wait. Watch you from a distance. I’m
willing to be a servant, Venus, but not a dog on a leash.”

“Darling, use your head. What if we were seen together, and it was
common knowledge you lived here and went everywhere with me and—oh,
Beebo, don’t look so crushed. I don’t like it either.”

“You don’t want me around where you have to look at me all the time,”
Beebo sulked.

“Darling, I can’t look at you enough!” Venus said, half-amused and
half-concerned at the outburst. “You’re the handsomest thing I ever
saw.”

“Is that what I am? A thing?” Beebo said, swinging her legs to the
ground. She was surprised at herself for being pettish. But the moment
she questioned herself about it, her thoughts flew to Paula. _Paula
would never talk to me this way._

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Venus said.

“You don’t want your _things_ following you around in public.”

“Beebo!” Venus cried, hurt. “I love you!” Her words made Beebo turn back
and take Venus in her arms.

“I’m sorry,” she said, realizing all at once that Venus was crying.

“I adore you,” Venus wept. “I feel so free with you. Able to do the
things that used to terrify me. Able to _think_ about them without
shame. I never let go like this with anybody in my life, Beebo.” She
clung to her. “Darling, don’t shout at me for the things we can’t have.
Be glad with me for the things we _can_. I’m trying to look at the world
more charitably, Beebo—for you and for Toby. You try to look at me that
way. Don’t just love me, understand me. I need it so.” She wiped her
tears on Beebo’s shirt and glanced up at her.

“You know something silly? I want to dress up for you. I want to sit and
hear you talk. I don’t care whether I say a word. I want to be a real
actress, not an obedient puppet. I even want to mother my son. When you
tell me to do a thing, I fret for the chance to try.”

Beebo stared at her, amazed at this oddly touching admission. “I even
got a bunch of pamphlets from the Department of Agriculture,” Venus
said, “on how to raise chickens and wean calves.”

Beebo succumbed to laughter. “All you had to do was ask me,” she said.

“I’ll show them to you,” Venus offered, trying to get up, but Beebo
pulled her down again, her fit of pique soothed away.

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said. “Besides, I’ve got you half
undressed. What would the servants say?”

“They’d say Venus is in love,” Venus answered, letting Beebo hold her.
“And they’d be right.”

Beebo made love to her with a new tenderness. And yet, again, when they
fell asleep, she dreamed restlessly of Paula Ash.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Venus began to spend all the daylight hours, and some of the night, with
the production staff of _Million Dollar Baby_. Leo returned from San
Francisco, but Beebo would not have known it if Toby hadn’t pointed it
out.

They had been all day riding Leo’s horses in the boulder meadow
surrounding the Bogardus estate, and when they got in, Toby announced,
“Leo’s back.”

“How do you know?” Beebo asked, suddenly on her guard.

“Orange-juice glass,” Toby said, pointing to a brandy snifter with an
orange puddle at the bottom, sitting on an end table. “That’s all Leo
ever drinks. He says we’ve got orange trees in the yard and the juice is
free. He likes things that are free. Besides, he’s always on a health
kick. Right now it’s citric acid. When he’s home there’s always a mess
of sticky glasses around.”

“He’s not going to like seeing _me_ around,” Beebo said glumly.

“Why not?” Toby looked at her curiously. “The stables are cleaned up for
the first time in a year. And Mom is getting so nice to be around....
Gee, Beebo, he’ll probably hang a medal on you.”

Beebo understood from his answer how little aware he was of his mother’s
relationship with her. He had grown to trust Beebo, as well as like her,
and as far as he knew, she was there only to help out with the horses
during the day and look over his homework at night. The fact that she
had been able to encourage Venus and Toby to try to know and respect
each other at last was the frosting on the cake.

But after he went to bed, Beebo would go to Venus’s room. They were
lovers at night, but during the day, if Venus was home, she had to be as
breezy and casual with Beebo as she was with everybody else.

As for Leo, Beebo didn’t meet him for nearly a week. He got up at six
A.M. and left the house by seven, before Beebo was stirring. He looked
in on her with Venus once. Beebo was awakened early by the click of the
bedroom door shutting behind him. But when she asked Venus about it,
Venus only said, “I told him you were a farm kid. He likes that. It
makes you a sort of walking health exhibit.”

“Does he like the fact that I’m a girl?”

“Not a bit,” Venus said with a grin, refusing to spoil the moment by
elaborating.

Beebo dodged around squads of empty orange-juice glasses for several
days with the eerie feeling that the ghost who emptied them would come
cackling out of the rafters at her before long.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The night they finally met, Beebo had been living under Leo’s roof for
over two weeks, using his hospitality without ever having seen or spoken
to him.

She was sitting in the huge recreation room with Venus and Toby,
watching TV and listening to Venus tell about the casting problems,
wardrobe, scripts she had read.

Beebo commented quietly, “It takes up your whole life, doesn’t it?”

Venus looked at her anxiously. “You’re lonesome during the day, aren’t
you, darling?” She threw a guarded glance at Toby, but he spoke without
taking his eyes off the TV screen: “What do you mean, lonesome, Mom?
She’s busy all day. Besides, I get home from school at four, and I’m
better company than you are.”

Venus smiled and reached out to hug him. She startled herself as much as
Toby, but he endured the embrace with less embarrassment than he would
have felt the month before in New York.

“When is that PTA thing at school?” Venus said. “I want to go with you,
Toby.” _Toby._ His name. The first time in memory she had called him
that when she wasn’t in a rage. Beebo saw the smile in his eyes.

“You can go if you promise not to call anybody ‘darling’ or wear a knit
dress,” he said.

Venus gasped and Beebo laughed at him, looking behind his back at Venus.
“All right, darling, I promise,” Venus said wryly. “If _you_ promise not
to ditch me this year, and tell lies to your friends about how I do the
dishes every night, like all the other mothers.”

Toby smiled without looking at her, and it was a bargain. Beebo felt her
own satisfaction at this bashful honesty between mother and son. And
then Venus surprised her by saying, “Beebo, I’m going to get you a car.
It isn’t fair to make you shovel manure all day.”

“What would I do with a car?” Beebo said, mystified at the sudden
generosity.

“You could ferry Toby around. Pick up the groceries for Miss Pinch.
Maybe we’ll get something to eat that isn’t poisonous for a change.”

“Miss Pinch doesn’t use poison,” said a gravelly voice. “Just too much
paprika. It’s her Hungarian heritage.”

Beebo turned around with a start to see, at long last, Leo Bogardus
coming down the wide steps to join them.

“Well, darling, you should know,” Venus said. “You and Miss Pinch have
such a beautiful thing together.”

Leo strode across the room, a solid, rather squarely built man; gray
hair and gray suit; neat and natty and silver-eyed behind his black
French-framed glasses. He was about Beebo’s height and attractive
without being handsome.

Beebo stood up to greet him, somewhat subdued. “Mr. Bogardus? I’m
Beebo,” she said and held out her hand.

Leo put a just-drained orange-juice glass on a table. “I know,” he said.
“I hope you’ll be comfortable with us, for as long as you stay, Beebo.”
He shook her hand briefly.

Beebo wasn’t sure if he meant to be sarcastic or not. She let her hand
drop awkwardly and sat down again as Bogardus settled in a chair, trying
to size him up. His face was clean-lined and his manner decisive. She
imagined him quick to anger, stubborn, and hard to handle when he was
mad.

“You’re picking them younger every year, Venus,” Leo said five minutes
later, without once having looked at Beebo in the meantime.

Venus grimaced a warning at him over Toby’s head to shut up. Leo nodded
wearily.

“I don’t pick them, darling; they pick me,” she said in a pointed
whisper.

To Beebo’s discomfiture, Leo gazed straight at her then and laughed with
a honk of mirth. Moments later he got up and left as abruptly as he
came, and Beebo spoke not another word to him for several more days. She
had just begun to hope she wouldn’t have to at all. It would have suited
her, not because she disliked him—she didn’t. Considering her position
in his house, he was more than decent. But he scared her. He was no
ghost, but he was still the unknown quantity.

Fortunately, the next few times they saw each other there was only time
for small talk, and no more.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Venus got her the car before the end of the week—a silver sport
coupé—and Beebo and Toby cruised around Hollywood and the coastal
communities when he got home from school in the afternoons.

Toby kept on talking, confiding in her, and she began to see how much he
respected and liked Leo; how strongly he sided with his step-father in
any argument between Leo and Venus; what a source of strength Leo was to
him. Here was no dirty dog like the rest of the boys. Here was a man to
admire and emulate, and Toby did. Leo was good for him, and Beebo was
glad they had each other.

Beebo felt conspicuous, even though they rarely stopped the car or got
out. She was afraid somebody would recognize Toby, and she hated to be
stared at, with her short hair and slacks and casual cotton shirts.
Skirts looked wrong on her and men’s pants looked fake.

She looked the best in riding wear: a formal tight-waisted jacket and
white stock, hard velvet cap, smooth leather boots, jodhpurs. The kind
of clothes she used to wear at shows around Juniper Hill, when she won
ribbons for jumping other people’s horses. She had a lithe elegance that
the riding clothes dramatized.

But you can’t walk into Schwab’s drugstore in formal riding clothes. At
least not if you have orders to make yourself invisible. Beebo began to
feel hemmed in. The only safe place in the county of Los Angeles was the
Bogardus estate, and even there she worried about guests and servants.

Miss Pinch disapproved sniffily of her, but she’d probably hold her
tongue for Leo’s sake. Mrs. Sack was as plump and amiable as a currant
bun, and about as perceptive. The others were a shadowy and obsequious
crew whom Beebo rarely saw, yet she distrusted them all.

                   *       *       *       *       *

In the evenings, when she was alone, Beebo started writing to Paula and
Jack. They were short letters at first, though the ones to Jack were
longer and franker. To Paula, she described the flash of October across
the southern California landscape; the whipped-cream weather, the purple
hills, the flowers.

To Jack she said, “Venus is wonderful. She’s working so hard I hardly
ever see her, though. But she says she’d spend every minute with me if
she could. Nobody else exists but me. It’s funny—that looks so made-up
on paper. But she really said it, and I believe her.

“I almost never see Leo, either. When I run into him, I ask about his
diet and he asks me about the horses. I think he’s a good man—good for
Toby—but I’d hate like hell to have him mad at me.

“I guess the one thing I don’t like about it here is being alone so
much. Even Toby’s gone till late in the day. What a nice kid he is,
underneath the shell. He wants to be somebody in his own right, and I’ll
bet he makes it.

“How is that doll you room with? Please write and tell me _everything_
about Paula. Best—Beebo.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

There was no trouble between Leo and Beebo until the day she and Toby
picked Venus up at the studio in Television City. They knew she was
coming home early to prepare for a party, and they talked one another
into it like a pair of school boys ditching class for a day to have a
ball. It seemed quite innocuous, and yet rather worldly and exciting
when they discussed it, tooling around in the silver car.

But when they actually arrived in that principality of a parking lot,
they were rather abashed.

“What if she doesn’t see us?” Toby said.

“That’d probably be all for the best,” Beebo said.

But Venus saw them plain and clear when she emerged from the building,
surrounded by aides and admirers. She walked briskly to the car,
surprising the crowd which began to straggle after her, opened the door,
and pulled Toby out by his collar.

“Darling,” she said smoothly, “I want you to meet Mr. Wilkins and Mr.
Klein. Boys, will you introduce him around for me?” She smiled at one of
the men who quickly obliged her.

Venus thrust her head into the car. “Beebo, what the hell!” she hissed.

“I’m sorry—we thought it would be fun,” Beebo faltered.

“You thought—” Venus shut her eyes a minute and swallowed her temper.
“Oh, balls. I’m not going to get mad at you. I can’t, I’m too much in
love with you. But oh! you fool, _Leo_ can. I hope to God he doesn’t
hear about it.” She withdrew, collared Toby again, and popped him into
the front seat, sitting down beside him to wave and smile at the group
of people so charmingly that no one but herself was likely to be noticed
as they pulled away.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The sponsors for _Million Dollar Baby_ were openhanded, despite long
rehearsal hours and high rents and salaries, because they figured that
with Venus in the show, it had to be a smash. So Leo, anxious to live up
to their expectations, worked her unremittingly day and night throughout
October.

Venus not only had to act, she had to dance and sing. The big number for
the second show, then in production, was “I’m Putting My All On You.”

“I never sang before in my life!” Venus yelled at Leo.

“Marilyn Monroe can do it,” he said softly, infuriating her.

“Leo, _I can’t sing_!” she cried, trying to explain fundamentals to him
as if he were retarded.

“Well, don’t,” Beebo said, surprising both of them. She was watching the
scene in the Bogardus rec room. Leo threw her an irritated look, and
Beebo explained quickly, “_Talk_ the song. Whisper and wiggle like
Marlene Dietrich. Venus, Leo’s right. You have to live up to the title.
_Million Dollar Baby._ God, you ought to be able to do anything for that
price, including grand opera.”

Leo laughed, a clattering jangle of a sound, while Venus salved her
wounds in prim silence, peeved at Beebo for backing up her husband.

“Now, you see?” Leo told her, waving at Beebo. “That’s it. Beebo can see
it. Why can’t you? I tell you the same damn thing and you squawk at me
like a fishwife. Okay, I’m not young and handsome, but I’m smart. That’s
how you got where we are today. You do this right, and you’ll get more
than that million.”

Beebo watched him with interest as he directed Venus. He was
electrically alive, cunning in the way he teased and bullied and loved
the song out of her. Beebo could almost feel the tune, the words, Venus
herself, coming to life. Leo was a good seat-of-the-pants psychologist.

After several run-throughs he turned to Beebo. “You’re helping,” he said
laconically. “She sings better for you than for me. I show her what to
do. You make her feel it.” He scratched his head, then let his
shirt-sleeved arms drop. “That’s okay, as long as she doesn’t lose it at
the studio,” he decided. “Maybe we’ll let you watch some other scenes at
home, Beebo.”

Beebo grinned. It was a relief to participate at last in the paramount
sphere of Venus’s life.

“It helps to have her in love again,” Leo observed candidly. “Makes her
much more responsive.”

“Don’t talk about me as if I were a machine,” Venus flashed at him. “And
don’t laugh at me. I know how silly you think it is. I _know_ Beebo’s
too young.”

Leo sat down on a leather-topped bar stool. “You’re happy, Beebo?” he
asked.

Beebo nodded, wondering where he was going.

“It’s rough, isn’t it? Venus isn’t home much these days. And you have
nothing to do but goof around in that car.”

“I get along,” Beebo said cautiously. “Are you against the car, Leo?”

“No, just the taxi service.” There was a deadly pause, and Leo’s face
folded into a heavy frown. Beebo was lost for a moment, till Venus
sighed and lighted a cigarette with angry movements. “Who squealed?” she
said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Leo said crisply. “I don’t like the idea of you two
ladies consorting in public.”

“Leo, don’t pull that solemn face on me,” Venus said. “She and Toby came
together. They picked me up at work. Nobody saw her face—”

“Nobody had to,” Leo said, taking a drag on his cigarette.

“Look, Leo, let’s not fight over it,” Beebo said. “Be reasonable. Things
are working out all right. I’m discreet and I swear I’ll never—”

“I know, you’ll never do anything to hurt darling Venus,” Leo said
acidly. His eyes narrowed, and he began to pace the room. When either of
the women tried to speak he silenced them with a gesture.

Finally Venus said, “That poor kid never goes anywhere. She deserves—”

“She deserves to torpedo your career, just to alleviate her ennui?”

“Well, damn it, Leo, if you turn her out, I’m going with her. I happen
to be in love with Beebo and I don’t give a damn what you think of it.”

“Venus, go upstairs,” Leo said. He lighted a cigar—a concession to his
mental distress. When Venus objected he said, “Will you please go?” as
if she were a naughty child. He was almost fatherly with her. “I can’t
talk to Beebo with such a distraction as you around.” He made her hope
he and Beebo would understand each other. She left slowly, telling Beebo
not to believe a word Leo said.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Leo stopped his pacing and sat down to face Beebo. “There’s too much at
stake, Beebo,” he said at once. “I can’t tolerate even small slip-ups.
Venus is silly, but that’s no excuse for you. You’re a sensible kid.”

“But Leo, such a little thing—”

“Nothing is little, Beebo,” he said. “Let’s be frank with each other. It
worries me enough that you’re so young. At least her other lovers were
nearer her own age. But to have you a girl....” He puffed rapidly on the
cigar. “I won’t disguise the fact that I find you rather ... well,
unsympathetic. I think most normal men would. Partly from masculine
resentment, I guess. A natural revulsion for women who parade as poor
imitations of men, but—”

“You liked me well enough when you got home and found Venus acting like
a lovable human being,” Beebo interrupted him heatedly. “I’m the same
person now as then. I just happened to pick her up in a parking lot and
drive her home.”

“The guy who told me about it,” Leo said thoughtfully, “said Venus was
picked up by a good-looking boy. A friend of Toby’s he supposed. Of
course, you were hard to see inside the car. But Venus had told him,
when she saw you pull up, that you were one of the servants. So he was a
little surprised to see her jump in the front seat with you ... and you
didn’t have a uniform on, either. He was giving me the old
elbow-in-the-ribs treatment.” He blew cigar smoke at the ceiling without
looking at her.

Beebo cleared her throat. “It was so innocent,” she said.

“Nothing is innocent,” Leo said flatly. “Especially a classy young butch
on the make.”

“Damn it, Leo!” she said. “I’m clean, I’m healthy, I’ve worked hard all
my life. And so help me God, I’m not ashamed of being what I can’t
_help_ being. That’s the road to madness.” Her cheeks were crimson.

“Well said, Beebo,” he acknowledged calmly. “You’re right—but so am I.
You might as well face up to the world’s opinion. I speak for the
ordinary prejudiced guy, too busy to learn tolerance, too uninformed to
give a damn. We are in the majority. I admire your guts but not your
person. As for the intolerance, it’s mostly emotional and illogical. I
can’t help it and neither can most men. I apologize. I warn you that
it’s there. I add: it’s beside the point.

“What I think of you is less important than what the people in Venus’s
world think. I don’t care what you say, somebody in this world besides
the Bogardus family knows you’re living here and laying my wife. It’s no
secret from the servants, you know.”

Beebo caught her breath and Leo looked at her piercingly. “I’ve heard
them laughing about it,” he said. “And our servants bat the breeze with
the other stars’ servants. They know more guff about us—what we eat,
when we pee, who our lovers are—than all the gossip columnists rolled
into one and stashed behind the keyhole. All I can say is, I pay them
and most of them like me. Not Venus, not you. But _me_. I hope they
respect my privacy, but I know human nature. Sooner or later they’ll
blab.”

Beebo rubbed a hand over her eyes, angry and frightened. “Well, if it’s
so bad, why the hell did Venus bring me out here? She must have known
how it would be.”

“Venus isn’t very big for denying herself what she wants,” Leo said.
“Besides, there’s a lot to be said in your favor. Venus is more stable.
She means it when she says she loves you. I believe that, Beebo, and I
hope you do. Her love is a unique gift, and I tell you honestly that I
envy you it. It has transformed her.”

Beebo was flattered and surprised to hear this coming from Leo. She felt
suddenly sorry for him. He seemed gray all over, from his damp shirt to
his strained face.

“I struggled for years to win her love ... my God, just to win her
attention. I finally decided there was no love in her, not even for poor
Toby. You proved me wrong, and in a way I’m grateful to you. Venus will
never be an easy woman to live with, but she’s improved measurably with
you, and I think some of it will last long after you’ve left us.”

“Left you?” Beebo opened her mouth to protest but was bull-dozed by his
rush of words.

“Her tantrums now are kid stuff compared to the blasts we used to get.
Now, I get a sort of half-assed cooperation. Toby gets some affection.
The servants get some peace. And that’s a lot when you’re starting from
zero.”

Beebo was taken aback by it.

“I thank you for that, Beebo. I thank you for being discreet most of the
time, when it’s boring and humiliating. But I have to look at the other
side of the coin. Venus has survived some potentially filthy scandals
because she has the smartest director and press agent in the world: me.
But it took all I’ve got and more to keep them out of the papers.
Sometimes the only way was to jump in front of her and take the crap
meant for Venus on my own kisser, just to keep her clean. I’d do it
again if I had to, but I don’t want to do it for you. If it gets out
she’s sleeping with a girl, we’re dead. All of us.

“Venus makes a touching speech about walking out of here with you if
anything goes wrong, but she won’t, Beebo. Don’t kid yourself. Don’t get
hurt worse than you have to be when the end comes.”

Beebo was too mad at him and too proud to admit any such thing. “The end
won’t come, Leo,” she flared. “She’s in love with me and that makes her
a different woman from the one you’ve always known. You can’t make
predictions about her.”

“I can predict anything about that woman, Beebo,” he said in a sad voice
that mourned the passing of mystery in his love. “I wish there were
something left in her for me to worship. You forget that there was a
great love in her life before Beebo Brinker came along and that love
will last to the end, long after Beebo falls by the wayside. That’s
self-love. She loves herself more than she loves you.”

“You’re unjust, Leo. She’s told me—”

“Sure—that she only loves the money, the career. Why, Beebo? Because
they glorify the _woman_. The woman she loves—herself.”

Beebo stared at him, silenced.

“You flatter her, you kid her, you make a good try at understanding her,
despite your blind spots. And you’re also nuts about her, which she
finds very ingratiating. Plus the fact of your femininity ... something
I will never understand. You know, she’s tried this Lesbian stuff
before.”

“She said you objected pretty violently.”

“Hell, yes. It’s much more dangerous than a normal affair. I’m no
blue-stocking. I’m for falling in love and making it work, as long as it
doesn’t hurt other people. It has nothing to do with my emotional
prejudices. Intellectually, I’m damned fair. The only two people Venus
hurts are me and Toby. I give her hell about Toby; I try to protect him.
But letting Venus hurt me is the abiding condition of my life. The rock
on which our marriage is built.”

Beebo listened, rooted with fascination, shock, pity, distaste. He was
making an accomplice of her by revealing the secrets of his life with
Venus; putting her in a spot where she would be virtually obligated to
help him, if only to save all their skins.

“But when I see disaster coming,” Leo went on, “that will crush our son,
destroy her career, ruin all our lives—I have to act. Beebo, you’re
eighteen. You’re among the adults. I lay this on the line to you. I’d
ask you to leave of your own free will, if I thought you had any left.
But you’re too infatuated for that. All I’ll say now is, stay out of
sight, watch the servants, and do as I say.”

“Look, Leo, I know you’re bending over backwards for me,” Beebo said. “I
appreciate it. Since I’ve been here you’ve been just a face to me, but a
kind enough face. Now I see you’re not just an operator—you’re an
intelligent and honest man. And it’s too bad Venus won’t admit it. I
think she could have loved you if she had.

“But if you’re working up to telling me that no matter how good a kid I
am, I’m going to have to pack up one of these days and blow, I’m sorry.
I can’t go.” _Unless_, she thought, _I go for Paula. I’ll never go
because I’m pushed._

“No,” he said. “I’ll tell you precisely what the situation is. I should
have talked to you about this before. You should know where I stand. It
must never—under any circumstances—get out that you’re queer, much less
involved with Venus.” He spoke without self-consciousness, his voice
coming sharp and sure. Beebo wondered if his long experience with
“artistic” types had made him a little wiser than other men.

“I found Venus when she was about your age: just plain Jeanie Jacoby
from Fostoria, Ohio,” Leo said. “She wrote me a letter saying she was
beautiful, available, and hated her family, and would I please make her
a star. She enclosed a snapshot. And she added that she was writing me
because I was the biggest agent in Hollywood. It was pure guff, but her
picture got me.

“Later I found out she wrote the same letter to twenty other guys. But I
was the one who fell for it and sent her a ticket for L.A. I figured if
only half of what I saw in the pic was for real, I could still sell her
and make a fortune. Well, she came. I saw. She conquered. I named her
Venus for the obvious reason, and Bogardus because I guessed I’d never
have the chance to give her my own name any other way. I never thought
we’d marry.

“I loved her the day we met, for all the wrong reasons, and I love her
still. My reasons haven’t improved any.

“I was just an agent, but I went out and worked my ass off and got her
going. I launched her. She would have sunk after a couple of the flops
she made if they hadn’t let me direct her finally. I made an actress out
of her and saved her career.

“When her star rose, so did mine. Her success was the only thing we
loved together and cried over and cherished—together. I watched her run
through five lousy marriages in ten years. And when she was weary and
demoralized, I stepped in like Sir Galahad, thinking I could make her
happy. I was delirious when she said yes, and I think even Venus was
pleased. Till the honeymoon was over.

“I suppose she’s told you what it was like. Things have been more
peaceful with you around. But we’ve driven each other to mayhem in years
past. She thinks she wants her freedom. But she’d come back to me,
Beebo, even if she got it. She needs me as much as I need her. (Don’t
tell her that, she won’t believe it.) I’ll never divorce her. I love her
enough to prefer the torment of living with her to the torment of living
without her.”

He stopped a moment, fixing Beebo with his silver eyes to impress his
next words on her. “That is one hell of a terrible lot of love, Beebo,”
he said slowly. “I doubt if you could top it. There’s one thing Venus
and I agree on: I made her and I’m keeping her on top. If she didn’t
care about that, she wouldn’t care about me, either.

“Listen, Beebo. I don’t want her ever to love you more than herself. And
if I see it coming, I’ll fight you. I’ll bring out every drop of
self-love and self-pity and money-lust in her system—and she’s got more
of it than she has blood. Because if she drops her career, she’ll drop
me with it.” He paused and they looked at each other.

“That’s it, Beebo,” Leo said at last. “I’m sorry if it sounds egotistic
to you. You just mind me, and maybe we’ll make it for a while. I don’t
know what you can do about Toby. He doesn’t get the picture about you
and his mother yet, but he will. He’s a bright kid. But don’t go out of
your way to tell him. It’s going to stagger him. I’ll try to explain
when he catches on.

“If anything comes up, deny it. I give you this chance because of what
you’ve done for Venus. Don’t make me regret it.”

“I don’t know whether to thank you or kick you in the slats,” Beebo said
sourly. “You make it sound like a great life.”

“Did anyone tell you to expect something else?” Leo said. “You’ve been
living it the last two months. You should be used to it.”

“Used to it but not fond of it,” she said.

“But fond of Venus ... enough to put up with it? Because if you aren’t,
say so. I’ve been honest enough with you to hurt myself, Beebo. You be
that honest with me.”

Beebo’s gaze fell. “I’ll put up with it,” she said, but her voice was
rough with resentment.

“I’m sorry, Beebo,” Leo said, and though his masculine aversion to her
was as real as he declared, he was still capable of a restrained
sympathy for her. “The world wasn’t made for dykes, you know.”

“No,” she flashed. “It was made for movie queens and their tyrannical
husbands.”

Leo hunched his shoulders, unoffended. “The world was made for normal
people,” he said. “The abnormal in this world have a tough go. If they
keep their abnormality secret, they’re damnably lonely. If they
broadcast it, they’re damnably hurt. You were born with that, and you’ll
have to live with it, the way I have to live with Venus’s faults.”

Beebo was impressed with his sensitivity. But she answered moodily, “I
don’t feel so damned abnormal, thanks. I feel as normal as you do. I eat
three meals a day, I pay my bills, I respect the other guy.”

“Well, I can tell you, society doesn’t give a hoot in hell how normal
you _feel_, Beebo. You _look_ queer, and that’s enough. People are
waiting around to throw some crap your way.”

“What about the queers who look normal?” Beebo demanded.

“They have a chance,” he said. “They can hide. You can’t. And when the
stuff hits the fan, I don’t want Venus anywhere near you. You can have
it all to yourself.”

“You’re a pretty goddamn infuriating individual, Leo,” Beebo said.

“Sure,” he agreed, getting up and stamping the cigar butt into the tile
floor. “An honest man always is. I’ve said some harsh things to you, but
they were true. And I’ve permitted you to stay on—conditionally. You
know the conditions, my friend, and if you feel like ignoring them,
you’d better feel like saying goodby, too. You dig?”

“I dig,” Beebo said, glowering at him from the sofa.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She wrote to Jack that night, sitting in one of the unused spare rooms,
where she was shunted when Venus was out. She recounted a little of what
Leo had said.

“God, Jack, it makes you want to go out and convert the whole damn world
to homosexuality,” she told him. “Just so you can walk down the street
with your head up.

“Maybe I grew up too fast, maybe that’s my trouble. I feel so lost out
here ... hung up between two worlds; half-kid and half-adult, half-boy
and half-girl. And sometimes it seems like I get the dirty side of both.
Leo’s whole life is one long compromise ... maybe that’s what he was
trying to tell me about mine.

“I wanted Venus and I got her, but I’m not sure having her is worth the
shame and secrecy of it. I’m strong and tall as a boy, but I’m not free
as a man. I wanted to be gentle and loving with women, but I can’t be
feminine.

“Venus tries to make it better for me. She argues with Leo to let me out
more. She gives me things all the time—money, clothes, anything—and it
makes me realize how much she thinks about me when she’s working. She’s
even been going to Toby’s PTA meetings.

“And damn it, Jack, I know she loves me. She proves it to me whenever
she’s home. But that’s the catch—that whenever. It gets later every day,
and she’s so tired. She never says no, but I feel like a dog.

“You know something? I wish all this had happened to me ten years from
now. You said that about Paula, but you were wrong. Paula was just what
I needed. I miss that girl, Jack. I sit here on these long empty days
and dream about her. My letters to her are awful, I don’t know what to
say. Say I love her for me, will you?

“No—better not. Because I don’t know how I can leave Venus, and I’m
still not sure I want to. God, what a mess!”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Leo confronted her one morning two days later and said, “Lay off Venus a
little, Beebo. She has circles under her eyes.”

Beebo, still half-asleep by herself in Venus’s bed, mumbled at him and
sat up.

“Her eyes don’t photograph well. She looks her age and that’s no good,”
Leo said. “She gets home at midnight, pooped, and you light into her for
another couple of hours. She’s too crazy about you to say no, but she
has to get up at six-thirty next day, while you lie around till noon.”

Beebo rubbed her eyes. “Leo, I don’t force her to make love to me,” she
said, trying to clear her head. “She _wants_ to.”

“Well, she can’t. Not till next Tuesday. That’s the première showing and
we’re all under a hell of a strain till then.”

“My God,” Beebo whispered, almost to herself. “I have to give that up,
too? Leo, what else is there?” She turned to him, scowling.

“After Tuesday night, whether we sink or swim, the whole cast and crew
get a week off, and you can make up for lost time,” he said, gazing at
her long form with curiosity; wondering how it could appeal to anybody,
yet respecting his wife’s intense admiration. “I’m sorry, Beebo. It’s
either continence, or I take her to a hotel. You choose.”

“I have so little of her, Leo. You’re asking me to do without even the
little I have.” She put her head down on her knees.

“Just for a few days.”

She lay down on the bed, turning her back to him, and Leo watched her a
moment before he shut the door.

                   *       *       *       *       *

In the half week before _Million Dollar Baby_ bowed, a oneliner appeared
in a trade gossip column. It said, “Who’s been picking Venus Bogardus up
at TV City in a silver sport coupé these days?”

Leo spotted it, underlined it in red, and left it on Venus’s dresser,
where Beebo picked it up the next morning and read it with round-eyed
shock.

The next day, another columnist asked, “What’s this about Venus Bogardus
taking a personal interest in her son’s friends? Especially one near and
dear to the family?” Leo underlined that one, too. Beebo read it while
she was sitting alone in the spare room again. She was sleeping there
till Tuesday night.

Leo made no comments in the margins. He didn’t have to. Beebo was scared
enough at the unembellished print. She hadn’t seen Venus for a couple of
days. Venus was too busy and after the hints in the papers, she and Leo
removed to a hotel. Beebo was afraid for Venus, afraid for their love
affair, and afraid for herself. If only Jack were there to help her. If
only it had been possible to tell all to her father long ago and run to
him now.

Toby saw how blue she was later in the day and tried to cheer her up.
“Hey, don’t look so gloomy,” he said. “What’s got you down?”

Beebo looked at him. “Toby,” she said, almost hoping he wouldn’t hear.
“Did you read the newspapers today?”

Toby’s face reddened and she wished immediately that she hadn’t brought
it up. “I don’t read them,” he said. “I heard about it at school.
Everybody wants to know which friend of mine they’re talking about. But
they all think it’s a boy, naturally. I—I mean....” He paused,
flustered, unwilling to hurt her. “There was a thing like this once
before, Beebo, and it just wasn’t true. Leo proved it. He’ll get Mom out
of this, he always does. There’s always some jerk waiting around to
throw a scandal at the movie stars.” He sneaked a look at her to see if
he was helping any.

“_I_ know it’s not true, Beebo, so don’t worry,” he said putting his
hand on her arm. “You know I don’t believe that junk. You kid around,
but you wouldn’t do anything like that.”

Beebo looked away from him. “I wouldn’t hurt your mother—” she began.

“I know,” he said, with surprising warmth and sympathy. “She’ll be okay,
don’t worry. The thing that scares me is ... well, I don’t want you to
leave us, Beebo. You’ve done so much for us. Besides, who’d help me with
my biology? Honest—these gossipers—they’ll say anything about anybody.”

Beebo was touched by his anxiety. “I’m not going anywhere, Buddy,” she
said. But she meant, _Not right now. Tomorrow, I may have no choice._
And Toby realized it.

Beebo was a thin line away from despair. All the charmingly confessed
selfishness, that had seemed adorable in Venus at first, had become
Beebo’s prison.

And having nothing else to do, Beebo studied Venus’s faults as never
before. The self-love, the endless clichés. Venus might laugh at them,
but she couldn’t abandon them. People said there was only one great
glamour queen left in Hollywood: Venus Bogardus. And Venus thought they
meant her trimmings—her velvet-paved boudoirs and flashy conceits; not
her Self.

Beebo loved her with excited fascination still. And Venus loved Beebo as
well and truly as she knew how. More, certainly, than anyone but Toby.
And yet ... was that enough?

Beebo stood looking out the window of her room at twilight, taking in
the grounds of the estate and the evening star. Venus. So high and
bright and beautiful. And as far out of reach at that moment as ever it
was when she was growing up back in Juniper Hill.

That night, when she tried to write to Jack again, she spoiled her page
twice with tears and gave it up. She was trying not to admit that Venus
had no room in her life for a gay lover; that theirs was a time-bomb
romance, set to explode in their faces. The papers had lighted the fuse.
And Beebo, looking at that perfect point of light in the black sky, knew
in her heart that her days with Venus were numbered.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The morning of that crucial Tuesday, a nationally syndicated columnist
who wielded huge power in Hollywood, said she was checking a New York
source for verification of a shocking news item about one of the town’s
greatest stars ... a woman, currently headlining a TV series.

Two other columnists pretended special information on the same subject,
but all refused to reveal their information or describe the scandal till
it was authenticated.

Venus was on trial that night. One columnist had snickered, “If Leo
doesn’t mind, I don’t know why I should. After all, he’s been through
this a dozen times.”

Even at that they had let her off pretty easily. But the atmosphere
around her crackled. Fortunately, advance notices on _Baby_ were good.
They had had a good schedule and an extravagant budget. And Leo, with
bench-coaching from Beebo, had wheedled a radiant performance out of his
wife.

Venus and Leo watched the broadcast on monitors at Television City with
the whole _Baby_ company, and went on afterwards to a baroque party on
the famous Restaurant Row of LaCienega Boulevard. They hit most of the
eateries, picking up celebrities en route, and capping the bash at the
home of a popular singer who had guest-starred on the opener.

The party was noisy and crazy, and Venus, a show-stopper in silver
sequins, took Hollywood under her thumb, with the subtly effective aid
of her husband. She had her arms around every man present at least once,
as graceful and captivating as any lovely woman aware of her success.
When she was twitted about the dark secrets mentioned in the papers, she
laughed and told everyone she was screwing her cat, and the whole
subject was swept away in the laughter that followed. Only Leo remained
grave, smiling slightly and talking, but inwardly seething.

And Venus, if the truth were known, was even more disturbed than he.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo saw the show in the Bogardus rec room with Toby. The house was
eerily quiet. All the servants had been given the night off, except
Venus’s correspondence secretary, a fussily officious young man; and
Mrs. Sack, who never went anywhere anyway.

The show had hardly started before the phone began to ring: telegrams,
roses at the front gate, long distance rhapsodies. The secretary took
the calls, but Beebo and Toby picked up the red wall-phone and listened
in to some.

At the station break, the secretary put his head in and said, “Beebo?
Telegram for you.” He handed her the yellow envelope.

Beebo felt the bottom of her stomach sink southward. She was sure it
couldn’t be good news. Not when she had left so much angry confusion
behind in New York.

The wire was from Jack: “Get home, pal. N.Y. safer than L.A. Couple of
people want your scalp. Jack.”

_What does he want me to do, go back and give it to them?_ she wondered,
taking her worry out on Jack.

“Was it bad news?” Toby said, looking at her face. Beebo pursed her lips
and nodded.

“A friend in New York. He says my enemies want me dead.”

Toby paled, started to ask about it, and suddenly turned back to the TV
screen as if afraid to know the truth.

When the show was over, Toby and Beebo went for a walk on the lawn,
meandering side by side and speaking little. Beebo was full of the
shadow-image of Venus on the screen; glittering, gorgeous, inaccessible.
Finally Toby stopped in a garden path, standing stiff-legged and staring
back at the lighted windows of the empty living room. “Beebo,” he said.
“You’re not going to leave, are you?” It was not just Beebo he feared to
lose. It was his mother as well.

Beebo’s hands curled into fists. “I don’t know,” she said, so softly it
was hard to hear her. She knew she was going to have to, that she was
way beyond herself here. And yet not even the discouragements of
boredom, shame, and abstinence had completely crushed her. She kept
thinking of how it might have been.

“I feel so bad about it all,” Toby said. “They have no right to say
those things about you. It makes me sick. Stay with us, Beebo. Leo will
take care of you.”

His faith in Leo moved her. She wished she could risk the truth with
him, without destroying him. She wished he could know somehow what she
was, and that the knowledge would not make him loathe her.

Beebo stood beside him, silent in the night, letting him rant against
the cruel accusations in the papers with youthful outrage, protesting
his trust and affection, and she felt a terrible sob coming up in her
throat.

Leo had forbidden her to tell him she was his mother’s lover. But it was
the meanest sort of cowardice to let him stand there and thank her, and
beg her to stay on, when all the while she was betraying his gratitude.

“Nobody in this world ever did so much for Mom and me,” he was saying.
“Honest, Beebo. If you go now, it would ruin everything. I don’t see—”

“Toby, stop it! Please! Oh, God,” Beebo cried. The sob broke and her
voice went hoarse. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” She covered her face
with her hands for a few agonized moments. Toby stared at her as if she
had taken leave of her senses, very much distressed at her sudden
explosion. He tried clumsily to calm her.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked apologetically.

“It’s no use, Toby,” Beebo cried, so brokenhearted that he was stunned.
“I have to go.”

“Go where?”

“New York.”

“You said there were people back there who want to hurt you,” he
objected, turning white again. “Beebo, if that’s true, you _can’t_ go. I
won’t let you.”

“Anything would be better than here,” she said, looking at him in
torment. “They’ll flay me alive out here—if not tomorrow, then the next
day. Oh, Toby, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” The sobs silenced her for a
minute. “Please believe me. I wouldn’t do this to you for the world,
only—”

Toby turned and walked away.

She pursued him, calling anxiously, “Toby! Toby, wait!” She caught up as
he was letting himself down gingerly on a stone bench, moving for all
the world like an old man with bursitis. Beebo joined him, reaching out
to touch him, then pulling back when he turned away.

“I don’t understand,” she heard him murmur. “I told you—Leo—don’t you
believe me? He can help—if it were true, but it’s not—”

He frightened her. The words were so breathless and disjointed, the
voice so small and hurt. He was rocking back and forth, as if shaken
with sobs, but there was not the slightest sound audible now from his
throat. “Toby? Are you all right?” Beebo said.

He moved around, again with that strange parody of crippled age, and
seemed about to answer her, when all of a sudden he startled her by
springing straight into the air with a weird howl. In the elapsed time
of less than a second, Beebo realized he hadn’t sprung at all; he had
been thrown upright by the abruptly powerful tensing of his entire
muscular system. He was having an epileptic seizure.

And before she could move to help, he had fallen forward, rigid as a
cigar store Indian. He struck his head on a decorative rock across the
path when he hit the ground. Beebo cried out, horrified, and then dashed
to his side, lifting him carefully off the gravel and onto the soft
grass.

Her years of experience with sick animals and illness steadied her a
little. She knew he mustn’t swallow his tongue but it was too late to
put anything between his teeth. His jaws were locked shut. She rolled
him gently on his side, thinking that he could breathe better and would
be less likely to choke on his own saliva, which came foaming out of his
clenched jaws. He was quivering like a vibrator machine and groaning
uncontrollably while the white suds oozed from his mouth. It was a
ghostly wail that made Beebo shiver. And yet she knew that a
seizure—even one as alarming to see as this one—shouldn’t be a cause for
panic. Aside from his contortions, it was the blow on his head that
worried her, but she couldn’t get a look at it.

Toby’s feet were pointed downward, tight and hard as a toe dancer’s, and
his arms were glued to his sides. Beebo was relieved when finally she
felt him go limp. But it was then that she saw his forehead and gasped.
There was a gash in it, deep and ragged. She began to tremble with
alarm. Now that Toby was relaxed, the wound opened like a fountain. Such
quantities of blood flowed over his face and onto Beebo and the ground
beneath them that she felt almost sick.

She tried to pick him up, but her legs failed her momentarily and she
collapsed beside him, sweating frantically.

“This won’t help him, idiot!” she berated herself. “Get up!” She tried
again and made it, desperate to get him in the house and clean the
wound. She wanted help, anybody, a doctor—Mrs. Sack. “Mrs. Sack!” she
shouted suddenly, but there was no sound from the house. Mrs. Sack’s
room was on the other side on the top floor and she would never hear
Beebo calling from the lawn below.

Beebo lifted Toby and carried him into the house. She put him down on a
satin-upholstered sofa, watching with pity and fear as the red blood
soaked into the pink silk. She pressed her bare hand down hard on the
wound and the flow abated slightly. Nearby was one of the house intercom
phones, and Beebo reached it with her free hand.

“Mrs. Sack,” she said breathlessly. “I’m in the living room with Toby.
He had an attack and hit his head. Call the doctor and then get down
here—fast!”

Mrs. Sack rushed into the living room moments later, armed with rolls of
gauze and tape and disinfectants. She stopped at the sight of Toby, so
limp and colorless, except for the scarlet stains on his face and the
sofa.

“I’ve been waiting for something like this all my life,” she said
grimly. Beebo was astonished to see how firm and fearless she was; not
at all the comfortable muffin she seemed when all was well with her boy.
“We’ve had some bad falls before, but not like this.”

“Is the doctor coming?” Beebo asked.

“Yes, in ten minutes.” She knelt by Toby, washing the wound while Beebo
watched.

“Shall I call Venus?” Beebo said.

“No,” said Mrs. Sack emphatically. “She’s worse than nothing in a
crisis. She goes all to pieces. It doesn’t help Toby and it certainly
doesn’t help the doctor.”

Beebo thought, _I should be grateful she’s here—she knows just what to
do_. And yet she was distressed to think that Venus should be playing
goddess at a party while her son lay hurt and bleeding—and no one was
making a move to tell her.

“She has to be told, Mrs. Sack,” Beebo said.

“Go and tell her, if you must,” Mrs. Sack said. “She can meet us at the
hospital. At least over there they can give her a sedative.”

Beebo stood uncertainly by the phone, trying to picture herself walking
in on the fancy party in her bloody slacks; infinitely preferring to
call.

Mrs. Sack looked around. “Beebo, this boy is more my child than hers—she
says so herself,” she said unexpectedly. “All his life he’s come to me
when he was hurt, and I’m the one who knows how to care for him. Not
her. It’s my job. My life.” She was as proud and strong in her words as
a soldier bristling with defense.

To Beebo, staring at her, it became clear that Venus didn’t just give
Toby up. Toby was deftly taken from her by this plump, kindhearted woman
who never had a child of her own, but was obviously made to mother one.
She believed Toby was truly her child because Venus had forfeited her
right to him, even the right to be there to comfort him and patch his
wounds.

“Mrs. Bogardus could have had him when he was born,” Mrs. Sack went on,
ministering to Toby. “But she practically threw him at me. And I was
overjoyed to have a little son to raise and love. She can’t walk in here
like a queen and demand him back, just because he cuts himself and
scares her.”

Beebo went over and patted Mrs. Sack’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said
gently. “Nobody’s criticizing you, Mrs. Sack. But Venus is his mother,
no matter how much you’ve done for him or how much you love him.”

“If you call that woman,” Mrs. Sack said, turning around and standing up
to italicize her words, “_I will not be responsible_ for the condition
of this boy. Beebo, you’re a nice youngster and you’re his friend. It’ll
be bad enough for Venus to see him at the hospital, but if she comes
racing in here shrieking bloody murder, she’s likely to make Toby
believe it. Do you want a sick boy or a dead one on your conscience?”

Beebo ran a distraught hand through her hair. “But Mrs. Sack, I _can’t_
go get her.”

“Nonsense. Just change your clothes and drive over. It should take you
about half an hour, and by that time the doctor will be with us and Toby
will be at the hospital.”

“But the papers ...” Beebo muttered.

“I don’t read the papers, Beebo, but I’m quite sure they’ll forgive you
for getting the mother of a sick boy from a party.” She had turned back
to Toby. “It’s an emergency and there’s no one else to go.”

“What about Rod—her secretary?”

“He doesn’t drive. And besides, he overdramatizes everything. He’d
really fix Mrs. Bogardus.” Mrs. Sack didn’t seem to care whether Beebo
ever got there. But Beebo knew Venus had to be told at once. Venus
herself had admitted to hysterical behavior in the face of Toby’s
attacks. Perhaps the only way then was to pick her up and drive her to
the hospital, as Mrs. Sack suggested.

Beebo put on some clean clothes in her room, and as she ran down the
stairs again, headed for her car, she heard the newly-arrived doctor
saying on the phone, “Yes, a concussion. Get an ambulance over here.” He
looked up and saw Beebo.

“Are you Miss Brinker? Get his mother, will you? Tell her not to worry—I
don’t want two patients on my hands tonight. Better not say much about
the wound. Just tell her it’s a bump. We’re hospitalizing him till the
risk of hemorrhage is passed.”

“Yes, sir,” Beebo said, and ran out to the garage.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She left her car directly in front of the main entrance to the house
where the party was, and went in.

“Excuse me, this is a private party—” said a doorman, but Beebo, with
that peculiar air of authority that came to rescue her from various
crises, interrupted him calmly.

“Where’s Miss Bogardus?” she said, scanning the living room. “It’s an
emergency.”

The butler, who read the gossip columns like everyone else, gazed at her
with new interest. “I believe she’s occupied,” he said with a venal
smile. Beebo gave him a twenty-dollar bill, too worried even to begrudge
it.

“You’ll find her in the back gardens. Out the French doors,” he said,
gesturing toward them.

Beebo strode through the champagne-stained living room. Many a famous
face glanced at her, and a columnist whispered to his scribe to take
notes.

She slipped through the heavy shadows bordering the spotlighted garden.
Venus was at the farthest corner. Beebo simply looked for the heaviest
concentration of men. In the center, slim and straight in her
coruscating sequins, stood Venus Bogardus: a silver exclamation point in
the purple dark.

Too much shivaree had followed Beebo out of the house for Venus to be
unaware of it. Leo alerted her at almost the exact moment her eyes fell
on her lover. There was a half-second of undressed fury visible in her
eyes, flashing brighter than her dazzling gown. And then she pulled her
pride across her face like a veil.

Beebo walked toward her, her mission making her impossibly sure of
herself. The two women eyed each other as Beebo approached down an aisle
of staring men, like an infernal bridegroom passing through an honor
guard of devils. Luckily, neither Beebo nor Venus were people to
collapse in the face of public shock.

Silence fell, except from Leo who said clearly, “I’ll tell you just
once, Beebo. _Leave._ You’re fired, and I never want to see you again.”
He spoke softly but in the hushed garden his voice carried to the
audience of Hollywood topnotchers.

“Fired? I never worked for you, Leo,” Beebo said.

“Venus, tell her to go,” Leo ordered his wife.

But Venus, watching Beebo, loved her enough to feel instinctively that
Beebo would not come to humiliate her in public without a drastic
reason. With her characteristic public calm, so different from the
histrionics she indulged in private, she walked boldly to Beebo and
said, “All right, what is it?”

Beebo hadn’t even time to take a breath before she heard Leo say, “By
God, you get that kid out of here or I will.”

Venus ignored him, walking toward the house with Beebo coming close in
her wake. But this was once that Leo would not let himself be flouted in
front of his friends. He had to bring Venus to heel as a matter of
pride, and not only because he considered her action self-destructive.
It seemed as if Venus were making a donkey of him before God and the
world as payment for the years of tolerance and love and patience he had
spent on her. It was too much for him. He caught up with her, spun her
around, and brushed Beebo aside.

“Tell her to get out of our lives, or I’ll take her apart,” he said. He
so rarely threatened Venus that he scared her. But Beebo faced him.
“Leo, why in hell do you think I’m here? I came—”

He didn’t let her finish. “You cocky little bitch, you want it all,
don’t you? Even her ruination! After all I told you.”

“Let me explain!” Beebo said, alarmed now like Venus. But Leo reached
out with icy rage and slapped her face. A red storm swirled up suddenly
in Beebo, and she lit into him so hard that for several amazed seconds,
he let himself be punched. But when he got his bearings he was after her
with all the tornado fury of a cuckolded husband. Every man who had ever
shared a bed with Venus Bogardus got a souvenir sock that night—and
every girl. Only it was Beebo who took the blows.

She fought well enough, but Leo came on with a wild single-minded lust
for vengeance that had her back in the grass before long, heaving for
breath, cut and bruised. She would never surrender, and Leo, possessed
by years of bitter grievances and pent-up vengeance, was in no mood to
be merciful.

Beebo, sinking beneath his punishment, became aware at last that the
blows had ceased. She heard Leo give a cry and opened her eyes to see
Venus, shoe in hand, glaring at him. She turned to Beebo and her face
softened. “Can you get up?” she asked. “I’ll take you home.”

Leo put a hand to the back of his head where the sharp heel had cut his
scalp. He brought his fingers away, wet and red, and turned to look at
his wife. But Venus, taking advantage of his brief confusion, had pulled
Beebo to her feet and rushed her through the house toward the car.

The crowd surging after them deterred Leo’s chase just enough to prevent
him from catching them as they drove away. An uneasy silence settled on
the party as the silver coupé sped off. Nobody knew what to say to Leo.
But he left almost at once, making brusque apologies to his host.

“Well,” said the smug voice of a Hollywood observer, who wrote for one
of the trades, “I guess it’s true, after all. I wasn’t going to print
it.”

“Print what? What?” the crowd chorused eagerly.

“The tip I got from New York last week.”

“I got it, too,” a woman reporter piped up. “I thought it was sour
grapes, but I have my people checking it.”

The guests began to rumble for enlightenment, but the first gossipist
said, “Read it in the morning paper, friends.” And he left with several
other members of the movie press, all chattering as they walked down the
drive.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo slumped in the front seat, her head against the window, mute with
pain for several moments.

“We’ll take you home and clean up those cuts, darling,” Venus said,
wincing at the sight of them when she stopped for a light.

Beebo shook her head. “Dr. Pitman has Toby at the hospital,” she said.
“That’s what I came about.”

“_What?_” Venus was so shaken she almost lost control of the car. Beebo
had to grab the wheel from her. “It’s okay, honey, he’s going to be all
right,” she said quickly. “He had a seizure, that’s all.”

“God, I knew it was something awful the minute I saw your face,” Venus
cried as the car moved erratically down the street. “And that
sonofabitch husband of mine had to pound you to pieces—”

“Don’t blame Leo,” Beebo said, her voice soft and drained. “I don’t. It
wasn’t me he was hitting so much as all the people who came before me.”

Venus was crying and Beebo tried to make her stop the car. “Toby’s had
dozens of seizures in his life, but they didn’t put him in the hospital.
What aren’t you telling me?” Venus said.

“He fell,” Beebo said. “We were walking in the garden after the show. He
had a seizure and fell, and his head struck a rock. He has a cut on the
forehead, but—”

“Oh, dear God!” Venus gasped, and Beebo said, “Stop the car. Damn it,
Venus!”

“But we have to get to the hospital—”

“In one piece,” Beebo said. “I’ll drive.”

“You’re in no shape—” Venus began, but Beebo broke in, “I’m in better
shape than you are.” She made Venus slide over on the front seat while
Beebo walked painfully around the car. Her wounds were the sharp residue
of Leo’s wrath—but her head was clear. She started the motor, and told
Venus firmly, “Toby’s going to live, and so am I.”

Venus looked down at her sparkling knees, trying to control her weeping.

“Look, honey, if you have any ideas about running to Toby with tears
streaming down your face, and carrying on as if the end were near, so
help me, I’m going to join Mrs. Sack’s team. She said that’s exactly
what you’d do.”

“She’s wrong,” Venus said. It was just enough to prick her conscience
into action, and she wiped her eyes while they were still flowing.

Neither of them said anything more about Toby or the coming storm with
Leo and the papers till they reached the hospital. Venus insisted that
Beebo accompany her inside, and Beebo acceded to keep her from getting
frantic.

Toby had a concussion all right. They were making a spinal tap to
determine the extent of pressure, if any, on the brain, and to relieve
it surgically if necessary. It was urgent to do this as promptly as
possible, to avoid brain damage.

“The blow was pretty hard,” Dr. Pitman told them while a nurse dressed
Beebo’s wounds in Toby’s room, at Venus’s request. No one dared to
question Beebo about them. Venus said imperiously, “She’s hurt. Can you
help her?” But her eyes were wild and her thoughts all with Toby.

“Fortunately,” the doctor went on, while Venus bent over her son, peaked
and scarcely conscious on the hospital bed, “the skull is thick and
tough in the front, with heavier bone than in the back. A blow to the
back, of the same force as the one Toby sustained, might have done
serious damage. As it is, I’m as concerned about the blood loss as the
concussion. We’re preparing a transfusion. He’ll feel a good deal
stronger after that than he does now.”

Dr. Pitman looked curiously at Venus. “I must say, Miss Bogardus, you’re
taking this better than I expected.”

“Mama?” Toby whispered, and Venus clutched one of his hands in both of
hers.

“Yes, Toby,” she said.

“Am I going to be all right?” He looked at her. “I feel so punk.”

“Yes, darling, you are,” she said.

He shut his eyes, reassured, and Venus turned away to cover a sob. The
doctor gave her an “I-should-have-known” look and helped her to the
door.

“You’re very tired,” he said. “Do you still have some of those yellow
pills I gave you at home? All right, I want you to take one and try to
rest. You can do Toby more good in the morning, when both of you are
feeling better.”

Venus tried to object, but Pitman pulled Beebo aside and said hastily,
“I’ve been treating her for years. I know how she can be. If she doesn’t
sleep tonight, we’ll see real fireworks, and that will set Toby back if
she gets at him.”

Beebo looked at the boy, resting now as the nurses prepared his arm for
the blood transfusion, his head neatly bandaged. “Is he really going to
be okay, doctor?” she said. “You convince me, and I’ll convince Venus.”

“I think so,” Dr. Pitman said, but his concern was still plain on his
face. “To be honest, there is always some risk with any head
injury—especially with an epilepsy patient. He needs absolute peace and
quiet and as little movement as possible, until the danger of internal
hemorrhage is past ... but he’s young and sturdy, and we’ll have a
twenty-four-hour watch on him. I do believe, Miss Brinker, that his
mother will only be in our way tonight. We’ll call immediately if
there’s any change for the worse, but I don’t anticipate one now.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo took Venus out of the hospital in stages, letting her fold up and
rest on chairs in the hall on their way, till she had her in the car and
could drive her home.

Venus was forced to expend her frustrated maternal impulses on her hurt
lover instead of her hurt child. She investigated and re-dressed all of
Beebo’s bruises, making small noises of reproof and pity.

“Thanks for braving that party, darling,” Venus told her. “I’d have died
of self-contempt if you hadn’t let me know.”

“Toby would have been all right.”

“Maybe. But I wouldn’t. It would have killed me to let Mrs. Sack do it
all again. Especially now when Toby and I are getting so close.”

“Where do you suppose Leo is?” Beebo said, touching a cut with careful
fingers.

“I’ll be damned if I know. Or care,” Venus said harshly. “I thought for
sure he’d be here, waiting to skin both of us alive. He’ll be around
sooner or later, you can bet on that.” She sighed, leaving Beebo to turn
on the radio by her bed. “I wish they had let me stay with Toby,” she
said. “I’m ashamed that they couldn’t.”

“You can see him first thing in the morning,” Beebo comforted her.

Venus unzipped her sequins and dropped them in a starry heap on a chair.
Fifteen-hundred dollars’ worth of dress and she treated it like a
dishcloth. There was nothing underneath it but her shoes, which she
kicked off.

Beebo put a hand gently on Venus’s neck, massaging it a little. “Maybe
this is a poor time to bring it up,” she said softly. “But we have to
talk, Venus. I—I love you, but I can’t stand living this way, honey. I
realized something in front of those people at the party: I was on
trial. My life, my love for you, my self. I can never love you openly,
like a human being. They don’t give me credit for being human.”

“Beebo!” Venus said, looking at her with a shocked face. “Don’t say such
ugly things. You’re talking about the girl I adore.”

Beebo looked away. “I’m not the kind of person I want to be, Venus. Not
the kind I want you to love. I’d rather die than hurt you, but I feel as
if I’m dying, anyway ... of shame and ... well, doubt about us. I want
to love you somehow without it torturing us both. And I can’t.”

“I know,” Venus said, and Beebo sensed their mutual hopelessness. She
embraced her and Venus began to cry. “When I saw him beating you
tonight, I could have killed him,” she said, her voice rusty with tears.
“It took all the meanness out of me. I just wanted to console you.
Beebo, whatever happens to us, always believe that I loved you—I _love_
you.”

“I promise,” Beebo said, but the past tense gave her a premonition of
what was coming. “What do you mean, whatever happens?”

“I mean, the papers, and the rest of it. I have to deny everything,
Beebo. I have to pretend you’re nothing to me. Oh, darling, understand
why!” It was a declaration of love that struck Beebo’s heart.

“I understand,” Beebo said, and thought she did. But she didn’t get
quite all of it. For Venus was saying goodby to her. Beebo didn’t know
that this loveliest night they would spend together would be the last.
She had thought all along that when the end came, she would pick her own
time and day to go; not that the whole thing would be out of her
control.

Venus said nothing, did nothing, to spoil the night. She was silent
about Toby, even though her heart contracted at the thought of him, and
she ached to be beside him. She spoke only words of love to Beebo.

Beebo, surprised at Venus’s ardor, gave in at first to humor her, and
finally found herself forgetting even the bruises and cuts on her body.

The night was mild and the stars were sprinkled thick as spilled
soapflakes across the sky. Venus pushed aside the sliding door to her
patio, and they danced out there a while on a rug of cool grass, moving
with the music and the air and the three o’clock mocking bird, arch-deep
in the tickling soft grass.

Beebo felt as if she could have held and loved her fabulous lady
forever. When she leaned down to kiss Venus’s face, her cheek was wet.

“Oh, it’s nothing, darling,” Venus assured her. “I’m just a sentimental
idiot. Say you love me and I’ll recover.”

“I love you,” Beebo said. “I love you, Venus.” And to her surprise, her
mind was with Paula Ash for a moment. It staggered her a little. Venus
stopped dancing and looked up at her in the moonlight. “Do you? Really?”
she asked. It wasn’t just a woman’s endless need to be told over and
over. It was the knowledge that she wouldn’t hear it again after this
night had passed.

Venus loved her enough to hope that when she sent her away in the
morning—for she would have to—Beebo’s wounds would heal and she would be
able to think back on their love without the regret that rots so many
sweet memories.

“Beebo, promise me one last thing, darling, and then I’ll shut up.”

Beebo squeezed her, turning her tenderly to the rhythm of a waltz. “I’ll
promise you that moon on a platter if you want it.”

“Promise me you’ll remember this night as long as you live. Everything
about it. The stars inches over our heads, and the music, and the grass,
and....” The famous voice broke and she cried again.

Beebo picked her up and sat with her on a bamboo garden chair. “Darling,
what’s the matter?” she demanded.

“Oh, Toby and—the damn gossipists. I don’t know. It’ll never be the same
for us, Beebo.”

Beebo, full of apprehensions, had no comfort to offer her now, except to
hold her tight. Then Venus slipped from her arms to the feathery grass
and Beebo followed her down, and there were no more questions or tears
or promises. Nothing but beautiful oblivion till the trespassing sun
announced the morning.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo awoke, a head-to-toe bouquet of blue bruises from the jolting Leo
had given her. But it hardly bothered her. Venus had loved her so warmly
all night that she was half-ready to hope they could work out some sort
of compromise; half-ready to give in to more months of demoralizing
secrecy, if it could be like that every night.

Venus called the hospital the moment she awakened, and they reassured
her that Toby was no worse; in fact, seemed better.

She hung up, looking as blue as before her call. “Now we have to face
Leo,” she said.

“He won’t eat you alive, honey,” Beebo said.

Venus paled suddenly. “Look!” she said, pointing at her dresser. Beebo
saw the telltale glass, still coated with orange juice. “He’s already
been in looking for trouble.” Venus stole a glance at Beebo, so young
and handsome, so vulnerable to the worst ostracism society could offer;
and her heart swelled. _I can’t hurt her_, she thought in anguish.

_I’ve had twenty years of adulation and I’ve got more money than I’ll
ever use._ She began to wonder if she had the guts to go with Beebo
after all. _What the hell, I’ve never loved anybody like this before. Am
I afraid to stick to the one person who knows how to make me happy?_

It gave her the courage to try, at least, to defend Beebo against her
formidable and stubborn husband.

While she was preoccupied with these thoughts the bedroom door opened.
Beebo was just pulling her shoes on, sitting on the edge of the bed in
her clothes of the night before. She stiffened, expecting Leo, but it
was the corresponding secretary again. “Another telegram,” he said to
her. “For you.”

“Thanks, Rod.” Beebo got up to take it and was about to open it when she
heard him say, “Good morning, Mr. Bogardus,” and there was Leo. He
dismissed Rod with a wave of his hand and Beebo stepped aside wordlessly
to let him enter the bedroom. He had a lighted cigar—a bad sign—and
another glass of orange juice in his hand. Beebo thrust the telegram in
her pocket and followed him in, shutting the door.

“All right,” Leo said. “We’re adults, and we aren’t going to scream at
each other. Let me talk first if you please. Beebo, are you all right?”

His board-meeting tone, typical though it was of him, offended her more
than an explosion of fury would have. “Relax, Leo, you won’t have to pay
any more doctor bills,” she said. She was pleased to see that she had
given him a shiner.

“I’ve been to the hospital. I was there all night. I can understand your
concern at the party, Beebo. But let me remind you that this house is
full of telephones, anyone of which would have got a call through to
Venus.”

“Leo, Mrs. Sack told me Venus would—”

“But you preferred to repay my kindness to you by shaming me in public.”

“The doctor said it, too: Venus would get hysterical if she heard over
the phone that Toby was hurt and had to be hospitalized.”

“You know it’s true, Leo,” Venus said softly.

“I didn’t go there to shame you, Leo,” Beebo said. “It’s bad enough
being holed up in this fort like a prisoner of war, but not so bad I’d
do that to you. I just want you to believe one thing: I was really
scared about Toby, and I never thought of anything but getting you and
Venus to him as fast as I could.”

Leo finished his glass of juice while she talked. “I believe you,” he
said. “I also believe you could have sent somebody else and spared us
what we’re about to go through—all of us. I’ve been tolerant about
Venus’s lovers in the past because they were vital to her existence. But
none of them ever treated me like a sucker.”

“Beebo has always treated you respectfully, Leo,” Venus interrupted
heatedly. “It isn’t you she’s rebelling against; it’s the way we’ve made
her live.”

“What other way is there? Did she think she’d be your escort at parties?
Meet all your friends? I think I’ve had to put up with a hell of a lot
more than Beebo has. All the worry of this queer situation has been on
my shoulders. Christ, I never could understand why a woman would want
anything to do with another woman that way, anyway. And if she did, why
love a woman who does everything possible to make herself look like a
boy? Why not love a real woman? Or a real man? If you want a lover in
pants, Venus, I’m available. I have been for years, and I still love
you, though God alone knows why.

“If you want to love a female, don’t run after a mistake of Nature like
Beebo Brinker.”

“Leo, that’s brutal!” Venus cried. “Beebo can’t help how she was born.
Good God, do you think any human being would deliberately choose to live
with a problem like this? Leo, there are homosexuals in this world—I’m
one myself—emotional strays of one kind or another, who at least have
the comfort and privacy of an inconspicuous body to live in. The shelter
of a normal sex on one side of the fence or the other.”

“Are you trying to stir my pity for her?” Leo said.

“I don’t want your lousy pity!” Beebo said.

“I’m trying to make you see how it feels,” Venus said urgently. “Leo,
what if you’d been raised as a boy and learned to be a man, and had to
do it all inside a female body? What if you had all your masculine
feelings incarcerated under a pair of breasts? What would you do with
yourself? How could you live? Who would be your lover?”

Leo nodded, answering slowly. “That’s what I’m saying: it’s not an easy
life, nor a desirable one, no matter where Beebo lives it. And I know
she didn’t pick it out. But whether you two like it or not, she is a
freak. And I am sorry for her. Now, Venus—do you want me to sit by and
watch that kid wreck the career I’ve spent twenty years of my life to
build? Yours, my dear—all yours!”

“I don’t want it!” Venus shouted stridently, wanting to hurt and
frighten Leo.

But Beebo was recalling Leo’s words: “If you ever mean more to her than
her career, I’ll lose her. I won’t let that happen. I’ll fight you—I’m
warning you, Beebo.” When she thought of leaving Venus, she meant to
leave a path open behind her for an occasional meeting, a
correspondence, a night together now and then when Venus was in New
York. But Leo was about to sabotage even that small hope. She looked at
him and caught her own thoughts in his eyes.

“That shellacking I gave you was only the opening round, Beebo. Unless
you’re ready and willing right now to walk out of here and never come
back. Never call, never write, never speak to Venus or see her again.
_Never._”

“Leo, I love this girl!” Venus said. “If you insist on kicking her out
of my home, you can kick me out with her.” It was not what she had
thought she would say when the time came. She felt a sort of amazed
pride in her foolish bravery.

Beebo, too, was overcome with gratitude; yet wondering at the same time
what recriminations Venus would vent on her as the weeks and months went
by, if they did leave together. Where would they go, with Venus as
notorious as she was? The thought of running away with her—of being tied
to her for life—alarmed Beebo in spite of herself.

Leo walked to his wife and spoke straight in her face. “Fine,” he said.
“Go with her, Venus. Never mind losing your money, your name ... and
your son. Not to mention me. The things that have sustained you all
these years. Ditch them all.

“What for? For your bargain, here: Beebo. She’ll love and protect you
better than I can, no doubt. You’re thirty-eight years old and you won’t
have that face of yours so damn much longer. If you quit now, it’ll go
to hell in a hurry. By the time Beebo’s twenty-eight, you’ll be nudging
fifty. Probably a grandmother with a face full of charming crow’s feet.
Every night you and Beebo will sit by the TV and watch old Bogardus
movies on the late late show.”

Beebo and Venus stared at him.

“You won’t have your face or your fortune or your home, or me to fight
your battles, or Toby to love and respect you at last. You won’t have
Toby at all, for that matter. Do this, Venus, and you’ve lost him
forever. No state board in its right mind would give custody of a child
to an infamous Lesbian who’d surround him with scandal and expose him to
homosexual obscenities—even if the child himself wanted to be with her,
which he damn well would not.

“And what do you trade Toby for? A big, overgrown, penniless butch with
no job and no prospects for one, who’ll dump you the minute that face
and body begin to sag.”

“You bastard!” Beebo shot at him, appalled.

“Shut up, Beebo,” he said coolly. “Do you have a job?”

“No, but—”

“Do you deny you’re gay?”

“No, but—”

“Do you deny Venus would lose everything if she went with you? Do you
love her so much you can’t wait to destroy her?”

“Leo, for the love of God—”

“For the love of my wife I say these hard things!” he shouted at Beebo.
“You were warned. You have no business standing there now with a slack
jaw. What will you do, take a cold-water flat in Greenwich Village and
live on love till you get hungry and cold? Do you think Venus Bogardus
can go anywhere in the world right now with the papers headlining her
lewd romance with another woman? ‘Venus Bogardus, queen of hearts, has
found a queen of her own.’” He was quoting, unknown to the two women,
the morning’s gossip columns.

Venus, thinking he had made it up, turned all her famous fury on him.
“Get out of this house, you stinking dog!” she cried. “I never want to
see you or hear your filth again!”

“I’ll be over at Sam’s when you’re ready to call me,” Leo said,
referring to the friend who took him in whenever Venus turned him out.

“I’ll never call you!” she screamed at his retreating back. It was
always her parting shot. Later in the day she would pick up the phone
and tell him that even though he was a sonofabitch, she guessed he’d
better come home. Miss Pinch had just squeezed a batch of fresh orange
juice.

At the door Leo picked up a stack of newspaper columns, torn from the
morning papers, and held them out to Venus. “These will pass the time
while Beebo is packing,” he said, but Venus refused to glance at them.
Beebo, in the grip of a spiraling alarm, took them instead.

Leo looked at her. “I’m sorry I had to hurt you,” he said. “If you
weren’t so young you might have handled things better. I got hurt too,
Beebo. The most I can hope for now is to save Venus and Toby. It’ll take
all my ingenuity—and maybe all my money. And I have to start at once.
Just like you have to get gone.”

She didn’t answer him, but she felt moved, realizing slowly that he
needed her pity as much as she needed his. She could never forgive him
for calling her a freak, and yet it had been a valuable lesson in the
prevailing attitude toward mannish women.

Jack had been sympathetic and patient with her. Pat, himself quite
feminine, had responded to her much the way that the Lesbians who liked
her did. Even the people back in Juniper Hill had been pretty used to
her most of her life. They watched her grow up and while they laughed
unkindly and sometimes lied about her, still they had never said to her
face the things Leo Bogardus had said. Beebo damned well had to stand up
and fight back, or lose her self-respect forever.

Her gaze fell on the pile of columns in her hand, as Leo left them
alone. Venus tried to throw them all in the wastebasket, till she saw
the spreading shock on Beebo’s face. She read over Beebo’s shoulder,
holding her breath:

“Venus Bogardus, ruler of the hearts of men the world over, is ruled
herself it seems: by a WOMAN! Is this true, or just vicious gossip?
Readers of my column know I never use any but the most carefully
validated tips from reliable sources. This one has been double-checked
and we can say positively: the handsome youngster sharing the Bogardus
manse as companion to Venus’s son, is really the apple of the movie
star’s eye. Is Venus Bogardus really one of those unfortunate misfits, a
LESBIAN? Leo, do you know about this? Does your stepson know it? Our
hearts are with you in this difficult situation.

“Readers who doubt me may ask themselves if I would dare to print such
an accusation under the threat of legal action from Miss Bogardus, if it
were false. No! I would never, etc., etc....”

Beebo shuffled through the others quickly. It was the top story in all
the trades and made full columns in the big L.A. dailies. She looked at
Venus and saw such a pallor on her face that she was afraid Venus would
drop where she stood. Beebo helped her to her satin-draped bed where
Venus deflated in a heap.

Beebo stood beside her, her hands crammed into her pockets, afraid to
touch her. At last she asked, “Does this mean I have to go right now?
Alone?” She knew it did; she had known all along it was coming. Yet here
they were, and the time was upon them, and it was abysmally hard to do.
Strangely, she found herself picturing Paula again. It comforted her.
Not that she had any illusions about a warm welcome from Paula. But even
the thought of a fight with the little redhead was better than the
thought of not seeing her at all.

Beebo touched Venus’s long hair gently. “A few minutes ago you were
telling Leo he’d have to kick you out, too, if he wanted me to go.” It
wasn’t kind to remind Venus, and yet it was a relief in a way.

“Oh, darling, I’m such a coward,” Venus said brokenly. “I can’t bear it.
Where in hell did they find out? Miss Pinch would never tell. The others
don’t like me, but they wouldn’t do anything to ruin Leo. Besides, I was
never around during the day and at night we were so careful. How in
hell—?”

Beebo knew perfectly well how it got out. She touched the telegram in
her pocket fearfully, and Venus saw her face change and guessed. “Your
friends in New York?” she asked.

Beebo pulled out the wire. Jack had written: “Hope this catches you
before the sky falls, pal. If not, chin up. We love you. I found out too
late from Pat that Mona wired the Hollywood press. Come home and ride
out the storm. This is a time for friends to help you, not lovers.
Jack.”

Beebo folded it with the meticulous care you give to the oddments of
life that happen to be in your hands when pain strikes; each fold
careful, straight, and neat—as tidy as her life was not. There is an
obscure comfort in smoothing a small piece of paper to its ultimate
neatness. It seems a symbol of order and reason that must somehow rescue
you from the chaos of suffering. It eases the misery that wants to pour
out of your eyes and wail from your throat.

“My friends in New York,” Beebo said huskily, “are still my friends. My
enemies in New York did this to me. Venus, Venus....” She shook her
head. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve been trying to tell you, but I
didn’t know how. I thought we could part lovers and come together again,
still lovers, some day.”

Venus reached up for her, both of them admitting tacitly that it could
never have lasted; neither willing to say the words outright.

But Beebo rejected her arms. “I have to confess something terrible to
you,” she said. “I—I brought on Toby’s attack. I was telling him I
thought I would have to leave here, so you wouldn’t be hurt by the
papers. He got more and more upset and strange ... he tried to answer me
... and then suddenly he shot up and fell over.”

Venus looked away. “It might have happened anyway,” she said. “We know
so little.... I’m going to lose him, Beebo. He’ll never get over this.”

“You’re wrong. You’ve got to be! You can’t lose all you worked for with
him in one stroke like that,” Beebo said.

“Maybe Leo can help me,” Venus said, the dimmest spark of hope in her
eye. “He always seems to put me back together. Maybe he can do it for
Toby.”

Beebo could see that she was floundering at the prospect of losing the
props that had supported her for so long: Leo, Toby, her money, mass
love.

“One thing you have I’ll never have, darling,” Venus told her quietly.
“Courage. I’ll bet you didn’t know how much till now. Maybe you’ve got
it because without it you’d have been destroyed long ago. Well ... I
hate to admit it, but Leo is my courage. I can’t run away with you, even
though my heart breaks to let you go.” She stopped talking for a minute
till her voice steadied a little. “I thought you’d given Toby to me at
last, but I’m afraid you’ve lost him for me forever.”

“I hope to God he has better sense than that,” Beebo said, kneeling by
the bed with her face near Venus’s. “I hope he loves both of us more
than that, and I think he does. He’s brighter and steadier than you are,
Venus. Besides, he’s lived all his life with a condition that makes him
different from ordinary people. Maybe that will help him understand me a
little now.”

Venus stopped crying and embraced Beebo. “Forgive me,” she whispered.
“All I want to say to you is, thank you. For the time I had with Toby,
for the love you gave me.”

For a moment Beebo wanted to stay so badly she was ready to sacrifice
her life again—but only for a moment. It was easy to get carried away
when you had your arms full of Venus.

“I love you, Beebo,” Venus said seriously. “Some day you’ll know how it
feels when you’re my age, and the girl you’ll adore forever is yours.
And you know it’s going to end before long and you’ll have to go on
living somehow.”

Beebo caressed her shoulders without looking at her face. “You’ll never
say you love me again, will you?” she murmured. “Will you say it to
another girl?”

Venus’s arms tightened around her. “Will you?” she countered.

“You’ll say it to men as long as you live, won’t you?” Suddenly it
seemed unbearable to Beebo; bad enough to know that other girls would
follow her, even if Venus never loved any of them. But intolerable that
she would keep on climbing into bed with men, too. Her hands hardened on
Venus’s shoulders. “God, how I wish I could make you choose!” she said.
“Be gay or be straight. Don’t be both. The only other girl I know who’s
both is contemptible.”

Venus answered quietly. “Beebo, you knew what you were early in life.
Some of us don’t find out till after we’ve committed ourselves to a man
and children. You’re one hundred per cent gay. You never doubt it. You
breathe such easy contempt for me. But darling, believe me, you’re the
lucky one. You knew yourself in time to save yourself from housewifery
and husbands—things the rest of us have to live with.

“But I didn’t know till it was too late. It wasn’t just all the men I’ve
known that confused me. It was the way I was raised, too, and the girls
I knew. It was having a man and a child and a career in my life to
defend before I knew I wanted anything else. It was a paralyzing fear of
the truth. I didn’t have a body like yours that threw the truth at me
whether I wanted to see it or not. I could pretend. I pretended with men
and men and more men.

“And the more clearly I realized I was gay, the more terrified I was to
admit it to myself, and the more I had to lose. Do you have to loathe me
for it, Beebo? Am I sort of second-class Lesbian, is my love a
second-class love, because I live with a man and I’ve borne a child?”

Beebo shut her eyes. “I’m your lover, not your judge,” she said, pulling
Venus’s head down on her shoulder. “All I know is, I hate it—sharing
you. If it were another girl, I could fight back on my own ground. But
Leo confronts me with marriage and motherhood and morality and ... God,
what can I say? Tell all of society to go to hell?” She kissed Venus
disconsolately. “If you’d known what you were when you were young, would
you really have given up all this for the life of a Lesbian? The kind of
life I’ll lead?”

“If I’d known I could be as happy with a girl as I’ve been with you,
Beebo ... and I didn’t have my son or a name to worry about ... I could
have given up anything to be with you.”

Beebo couldn’t hate her, in spite of the distressing knowledge that she
had been used. Venus was no Mona Petry. Venus proved her love and did
her utmost to go beyond her limitations for the sake of that love. But
she had lived too long in the world of safety and social acceptance that
is the normal woman’s—a world Beebo would never know—to leave it now.
She was imprisoned in the only security she knew, just as Beebo was
imprisoned in her body and her strong emotional needs.

“You despise me a little for hiding behind my husband and child,” Venus
said, seeing it in Beebo’s face. “What do you want me to do with them,
darling? I love Toby and I need Leo. I can’t wish them out of existence.
They existed for me long before you did.”

“Venus, I don’t know what’s right or wrong,” Beebo said. “I only know I
love you and it’s made me miserable. God spare either of us another
affair like this one.” She caught Venus in an impassioned embrace,
holding her hard enough to hurt her and crying soundlessly against her
cheek.

Then she released her, walking swiftly to the door. Venus gave a small
scream and rushed after her. “Oh, not like this! Wait, stay with me a
while. There’s no need to go just yet. I need you more than I ever did.
Beebo!”

“Don’t make it hurt any worse, Venus,” she said. “Let’s not cut it off
an inch at a time.” Beebo was the strongest and it was up to her to make
the break physical and final.

“Say it one last time, then,” Venus pleaded wildly. “I’ll never see you
again! Beebo, darling—say it!”

“I love you,” Beebo said huskily. “Goodby, lover.” She reached out and
put her hands on Venus’s shoulders to draw her near; kissed her ardently
on the lips and then chastely on the brow.

Venus gazed at her, afraid to believe it for a minute, and then dropped
her face into her hands with a sob. Beebo left her, running down the
curving stairs to the front door. If she were to move at all, it had to
be at top speed.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was raining in New York when Beebo landed at Idlewild, a standard,
sharp November rain: liquid ice tumbling out of a dirty sky. She reached
Jack’s familiar door early in the evening and rang his bell. The answer
was immediate, as reassuring as a personal word.

She dashed up the stairs and saw him leaning in the open doorway,
waiting for her. Neither of them said a word. Beebo went up and hugged
him against her damp jacket. He fit neatly under her chin, letting
himself be squashed in the name of friendship.

“Come in, pal,” he said.

“I should have wired you. I left in such a damn hurry,” she said.
“Jack—you aren’t even surprised to see me!”

“I read the garbage in this morning’s paper,” he said. “I didn’t think
Venus would keep you around long after that. But I have to admit I
wasn’t prepared for her phone call.”

Beebo’s mouth fell open. “Venus called _you_?” she said.

“About four hours ago. Said you were flying back. She remembered my name
and had her secretary try every Jack, John, and J. Mann in the Manhattan
directory,” he chuckled. “She sounded very sweet and sad. I was
impressed with her—I really was. She said to tell you she loves you.”

Beebo leaned forward on the sofa. “Poor Venus,” she said, too tired even
to feel surprise at her compassion. “She’s so afraid I won’t believe
her. You know something, Jackson? She does love me. That’s the craziest
part of it. She just isn’t strong enough to snap her fingers at the
world. And God knows she had more at stake than I had—mostly a son she’s
just beginning to know and love. I have no business condemning her. But
oh my God, it hurts so much. She was so lovely.”

Jack sat down beside her. “I know the feeling,” he said. “I guess it’s
the one pain on earth you can always remember perfectly, down to the
last mean twinge.”

Beebo smiled a bit, putting her head back on the sofa and accepting
gratefully a lighted cigarette from Jack.

“How about a peppermint schnapps?” he said. “Or would you prefer Scotch
and water?”

“That’s more like it.”

“It’ll warm you up a bit. What a rotten day for a homecoming.” The rain
pelted the roof and windows with an endless muted rattle. He handed her
the drink, making one for himself.

“Thanks, Jack,” she said. “You know, it was sunny in California.
Eighty-two degrees and not a cloud in the sky.”

“I was stationed there a while during World War II. I remember that
weather.”

The small talk comforted Beebo and the drink relaxed her. They had
another, and it wasn’t till Beebo had been there several hours and told
Jack all the highlights of her life with Venus, that she became aware at
last of a void in the room. She sat up. “Where’s Pat?” she said.

Jack glanced down into his drink. “Pat left,” he said simply.

“Left?” Beebo looked at him incredulously. “Jack, he couldn’t just
leave, he was so fond of you!” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“So am I. But it’s winter, after all. Spring will bring somebody new. It
always does.”

Beebo’s heart turned over for him. “But you ... really loved him. Oh,
Jackson,” she sighed. “And you let me deluge you with my problems.”

“Yours are worse than mine, pal,” Jack said kindly. “And newer. Pat left
me about four weeks after you did. First of October.”

Beebo shook her head, still half-disbelieving. “Why?” she said.

“He found somebody else,” Jack said, and when Beebo exclaimed in
protest, he added, “A woman.” Beebo stared at him. “I guess you put that
bug in his ear,” Jack said wryly. “He began to brood about being gay. He
thought if he could be so attracted to you, maybe it would work with
another aggressive girl. And he was a bit lost when you left, anyway.
Then he met Sandra and got quite a crush on her. She took him on. It all
happened in a few weeks’ time. They’re living upstate, running an
antique shop. She’s teaching him the business. And I guess he’s
exterminating her termites. Now and then he comes down to see me. We get
along fine.”

“And I thought he was so happy here,” Beebo mourned.

“I think you meant more to him than we realized. He moped around after
you left and wanted to follow you to L.A. I talked him out of it, but it
seemed to relieve him to talk about you. Frankly, he talked too much. I
warned him, and he really tried to stop, but he’d have a drink or two
and open up. And he always got around to you. It was complimentary—what
he said—but there was too much of it. Mona or Pete managed to get most
of the dope.

“And when Pat realized he was hurting you, he began to blame himself for
all your troubles. He felt guilty about living with me—‘off me’—when he
couldn’t give me his whole love. He’s a damn nice kid, Beebo. It’s best
for him that he look around a bit more.”

“What’s best for you, Jackson?” Beebo asked fondly.

“Somebody new, I guess.”

“I hope you don’t have to wait till the spring.”

“I’d rather. It’ll give me time to get over Pat. Besides, I’d rather
fall in love in the sunshine than the rain.”

He fixed another round while Beebo mused, “I hope Venus’s son gets
through this all right. It’s tough enough on Leo and Venus ... but Toby.
I was his best friend. He thought if I ever left he’d lose his mother
again.”

“He didn’t lose her,” Jack said. “Venus said Leo explained things to him
at the hospital. It shook him up pretty badly, but he came out of it on
Venus’s side. That Bogardus must be a wise man. Venus said he didn’t say
one bitter word about you. Anyway, Toby ended up wanting to comfort her.
She said it saved her life. She couldn’t have stood to lose you both in
one day.

“Toby doesn’t know what to think about you, and maybe he never will.”

“That will draw him closer to Venus, at least,” Beebo said. “I don’t
like to think he’d ever hate me. But there’s some comfort in knowing I
brought him and his mother together. It’s a funny thing ... all of a
sudden she seems as remote and inaccessible as—as the California
sunshine. The end of the rainbow. Jack, I hate to give up the pot of
gold.”

She bent her head and shut her eyes a moment. When she looked up she
asked, “How’s Pasquini doing?”

“Got a new driver—a boy,” Jack shrugged. “Marie can still cook. I don’t
know about Pete. He’s a scared little man. I guess that’s what makes him
so vindictive. He feels brave hurting somebody who can’t hurt back.”

“He and Mona sent the scoop to Hollywood, didn’t they?”

“They did. They called me about it later. They were that sure of
themselves.” He studied her face. “Venus told me about the boxing match
with Leo. He must have given you those bruises.”

“It’s all right,” Beebo said, touching her face. “I gave him some, too.”

Jack lighted a cigarette. “There’s one more thing, honey,” he said.
“Your brother.” He spoke carefully in an effort to keep from alarming
her.

“Jim?” Beebo said, grimacing. “God, I suppose he read about all this,
too. Did he tell Dad?”

“No,” Jack said. “Somebody sent your father the news, but he never saw
it. I suppose it was Mona.”

“Damn it, why does that girl enjoy persecuting me? All I ever did was
get my wires crossed on a date with her once. I can’t understand—”

“You will,” Jack promised her. “Beebo, listen to me. Your father ...
never knew.”

She looked at him, suddenly white-faced, and whispered, “Oh, Jesus. Oh,
God. Jack? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I guess I shouldn’t have told you tonight,” Jack said. “Coming on top
of the rest, maybe it’s too much.”

“No,” she said, breaking down and crying a little. “Do you know, Jack,
I’m almost glad. I’m sick that I wasn’t with him at the end—if I’d known
it was so close I’d have come back. But that poor unhappy man went
through too much over me as it was. I think—I hope—that he knew why I
left him. Maybe he seized the chance to lay his burdens down.

“Oh, I don’t mean he’d kill himself. But he kept himself alive through
sheer will power, to help me out of my scrapes. After I left, he was
free to surrender. For all he ever knew, I ended up the doctor he hoped
I’d be.” She shook her head. “Such a good man. So kind, so humanly
frail. I loved him, Jack.”

“I got quite a biography of him from Jim,” Jack said. “His drinking, his
poverty, his tantrums. Jim’s bitter as hell.”

“I was the cause of most of it,” Beebo said. “What happened to Jim?”

“He sent me a letter from the University of Wisconsin. He said your
father didn’t have any money, but you could have any of his belongings
you wanted. If he doesn’t hear from you before the end of this month
he’s going to sell what he can and throw out the rest.”

“Is that all?”

“He said he was sorry for you but he never wants to lay eyes on you
again.”

She laughed sourly. “I’ll bet,” she said. “That’s the nicest he’s ever
put it, too. I never loved him, Jack, but he’s all the family I have,
and he’s no family at all. It’s too bad ... but he’s right. We’re poison
together. I guess I’ll let him sell Dad’s things. I have his picture and
my memories. They’re worth more to me than some worn-out furniture.”

She fell into bed soon after, lying in the familiar warmth and watching
Jack move around the room. She envied the fullness and strength of his
arms and chest.

When the lights were out she asked him softly, “Jack? How’s Paula Ash?”

“Pretty lonesome.”

“Do you see her at all?”

“All the time. We shore each other up.”

“What do you do together?”

“Talk about Pat and Beebo.”

Beebo smiled faintly in the dark. “Is that all? Does she hate me?”

“No, little pal.”

“Does she ... love me?”

“You’ll have to ask Paula that one.”

“Jack, is she living with anybody?”

“She was. The girl with the Plaid Pajamas moved in for a while.”

Beebo felt an odd melancholy that had nothing to do with her father or
Venus. “Have you met her? Plaid Pajamas?”

“Yes.”

“Who is she?”

“Nobody you’d go for. Didn’t Paula tell you about her?”

“Not much.”

“Well, you’ll meet her one of these days,” he said.

That was all she could get out of him.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beebo spent the next week resting and living quietly out of sight. She
had no plans for wild revenge against Pete and Mona; only the wish to
forget, to learn to live with herself again.

Venus was often in her thoughts and would be for a long time. But more
and more, as the hurt faded, she found herself preoccupied with Paula.
Paula, so real and so faithful; so unlike the fairy-tale princess,
Venus, who had vanished inevitably into Never-Never Land. Beebo had
crashed back to earth, and she wanted a real girl in her arms.

The cackling in the papers about the Bogardus-Brinker affair made life
awkward for her for a while, with reporters trying to scout her down and
people whispering about her wherever she went. But the talk was slowly
yielding at the other end of the country to Venus’s surprising dignity.
She appeared in public at Leo’s side emphasizing the duration of their
life together. Both of them swore that their marriage had never been
stronger, and in a way, it was true. They needed each other extremely
then.

The official story was that Beebo was a young woman who had taken a job
on the household staff and subsequently became a close friend of Toby’s.
Nobody was aware that she was harboring a feverish crush on Venus. When
the situation blew up in their faces, Venus and Leo were as startled and
shocked as the rest of the movie colony. They expressed their sympathy
for their unfortunate young friend and hoped she could find a happier
life somewhere else.

“No one who knows me will believe that there was anything between this
poor girl and myself except a friendly relationship based on her
closeness to my son,” Venus was quoted. And Beebo, reading the
statement, could picture Leo writing and rewriting it at the desk in his
library, with a cigar fuming in his mouth and a glass of orange juice
nearby.

Somehow, Leo brought it off—partly by expending huge sums on public
relations and partly by exploiting Toby’s illness: he hinted broadly
that unless the furor died down, the boy’s health was in danger of
permanent damage.

Beebo shed a few tears over it in private. But it was, after all, as
merciful towards her as Leo and Venus dared to make it. Her picture was
kept out of the papers. She still had some anonymity in this biggest of
all big cities.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It had been two weeks since she returned to New York; weeks spent
resting and job-hunting. Beebo was tense throughout the day, for that
night the second segment of _Million Dollar Baby_ was scheduled for
showing. It was the one in which Venus sang, “I’m Putting My All On
You”—the song Leo and Beebo had coaxed out of her that night in the
recreation room.

Beebo tried all day to forget about it. But when she came home again
that night without a job, Jack had to cheer her up with a cold martini.
“When are you going to call Paula?” he said casually.

“Paula who?” she said with a little smile.

Jack pinched her amiably in the arm. “She wants to see you. This would
be a dandy night not to watch television.”

“How do you know Paula wants to see me?”

“Well, if she hadn’t called to say so, I’d still know. I’m telepathic.”

“You’re psychopathic. What am I supposed to do, go over there and beat
the daylights out of Miss Plaid Pajamas? You said they were living
together.”

“_Were_—past tense. I don’t know what the situation is now, with you
home. Anyway, pal, what’s the matter with you? Afraid of a little fight?
Or isn’t Paula worth it?”

“What are you promoting it for, Jackson? Taking bets?”

“If the Pajamas are still hanging around, you can take her with one hand
behind your back. Leo must have taught you _something_.”

“And after I kayo her, then what do I do?”

“You claim the fair damsel, stupe,” Jack said. “Jesus, you’re thick
sometimes, Beebo.” He chuckled at her.

Beebo sobered slightly. “Jack, I’m not so sure. I mean, I hurt Paula. I
was damned unfair and unfeeling with her.”

“Really? _Unfeeling?_”

“I ditched her for what must seem like the cheapest kind of affair, when
Paula needed me and Venus only wanted me.”

“You’re ashamed of yourself. Is that why you’re stalling? Beebo, don’t
you know a girl in love is always ready to forgive her lover?”

“Provided the lover’s in love with her,” Beebo said.

“Well, aren’t you? Not one letter did I get from California that you
didn’t fret and worry over Paula Ash.”

Beebo looked at him. “I’ve been thinking about just two people for the
past two weeks: Venus and Paula. And every day, it’s more Paula and less
Venus. And yet I think if Venus were to call and say, ‘Come back, I
can’t stand it without you’—I’d go.”

“No, you wouldn’t, pal. You’ve learned too much.” Jack nodded at the
phone. “Besides, she’ll never call. Venus Bogardus isn’t real any more.
She’s the doll millions of us will watch and covet tonight on TV. And
you’re just one of the millions now.”

Beebo felt momentarily swamped with frustration. Gradually she became
aware of Jack’s voice saying, “Paula doesn’t belong to the public or a
bank or a one-track husband. She doesn’t have any of those things. Paula
can get up when the show is over and turn the set off, and come back to
your side, ready for love. Venus will be gone forever with a turn of the
knob.”

Beebo lighted a cigarette to cover her emotion. “Maybe I should call
Paula. The least I can do is apologize. But I don’t want to see her till
I’m sure—”

“Sure of what?” Jack said. “Loving her? Beebo, you can wait a lifetime
trying to be sure of love. You didn’t wait to be sure of Venus. I didn’t
wait to be sure of Pat.”

“And look how those affairs turned out,” she said.

“If we had waited, we wouldn’t have known any happiness at all with
them. I still love Pat. We’re friends and I think we always will be.
Venus loves you, Beebo, and the things you gave her are the most
precious in her life. Because of her, you’re growing up a little, at
last. Would you rather it had never happened, just because it hurt?”

She glanced at him, puzzled. “No. But I don’t want to hurt Paula any
more. She doesn’t deserve anything but my love, and I don’t know if I
can give her that yet.”

“Well, she can give you hers. And right now, that makes her the strong
one. You need love and it’s her joy to give it. Maybe the gift will
transform the recipient. That’s what happened to Venus.”

“God, if I could make myself love her, I would,” Beebo said, but Jack
laughed at her.

“Hell, honey, that’s _her_ job,” he said. “Be honest with her and she’ll
take it from there. If she’s willing to risk a love affair with you now,
knowing all she knows, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Beebo doused her cigarette. “Can you eat all that hamburger by
yourself?” she said, pointing at it.

“Without the slightest strain.” He smiled at her.

“Okay,” she said, answering the smile reluctantly. “I’m going calling.
But if I come back here tonight with two black eyes and a broken heart,
by God, Mann, you’re going to pay for it.”

“I can’t wait,” he said.

Beebo threw a plastic saucer at him, which he fielded deftly, and left
with his laughter in her ears.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She walked through the night air, crisp and cold enough to crack if you
just knew how to grasp it, all the way to McDonald Street. It was easy
enough to find Paula’s building. Not so easy to go in and ring her bell.

Beebo looked at the small black button for several minutes before she
pressed it. When the answer sounded at once, she wondered if Jack had
called to forewarn Paula. She opened the door and walked down the hall
with the feeling of reliving in life what she had once dreamed an eon
ago.

Paula’s door was open as it had been the night they met. A slice of
light lay across the hall. Beebo felt her heart beating higher in her
chest. Soon Paula would appear in a pair of plaid pajamas that weren’t
hers, and say sleepily, “Yes?”

But she didn’t. Beebo stopped at her door and waited. She could feel
Paula’s presence somewhere just inside the room. Finally she glanced in,
blinking at the light. Paula was leaning against the far wall, facing
the door. Her hair had grown quite long in the few months since they had
seen each other, and it washed over her pink silk shoulders in an auburn
tide.

Her eyes were enormous and there was a flush of love and fear in her
cheeks. She wasn’t just pretty. She was so lovely that Beebo’s breath
caught in her throat. Everything Paula felt and feared and hoped for
shone on her face.

Beebo stood in the doorway, her hands characteristically shoved into her
pockets, her bright blue eyes fixed on this gentle girl who, incredibly,
learned to love her in three days and loved her still after three
months.

“Paula,” Beebo said. “Are you still my Paula?”

“Still yours,” she answered.

“I don’t see any plaid pajamas around,” Beebo said, but it was no
wonder: she didn’t see anything around that room but Paula Ash.

“She left,” Paula said. “The day you came home. I told her to leave. Oh,
Beebo.” Paula shut her eyes, and when she opened them, Beebo was
standing beside her, hesitating, absorbing the mystery of their
attraction.

“Paula, I feel as if I’m seeing you for the first time,” Beebo said. “I
swear I do.”

“I’m no match for the goddess,” Paula said, smiling without any malice.
She was prompted by an innocent little-girl need to be admired and
loved, so transparent that it charmed Beebo completely.

“The goddess was no match for you.” Strangely, all at once, it was true.
“Jack was right—you’re the real woman.” She closed the small space
between them, taking Paula’s shoulders in her big hands and kissing her
suddenly on the mouth. Paula put her arms around her, so hard Beebo
could feel her quivering.

“Paula—darling—I want to know just one thing,” Beebo said. “Where are
your damn sleeping pills?”

“I gave them to Jack the day you left,” Paula said. “Kiss me again,
Beebo.” Beebo obeyed her gladly, over and over, rediscovering with her
all the things they had learned to need and love in each other months
before.

When Paula took Beebo’s hands and turned them palms up to kiss, Beebo
groaned with the delight she couldn’t hold back. “Paula,” she said, “oh,
Paula. I came here like the self-centered idiot I am, thinking I could
pay you off for what you’ve been through with a few silly kisses. Honey,
I’m the one who wants them. I’m the one who needs them. I just didn’t
have the sense to see it.”

She was full of crazy joy that was part nostalgia, part relief, and
mostly desire. The touch, the fragrance, the feel of this marvelous girl
were beyond anything Beebo had remembered.

Beebo picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, bending over her
on the bed, her hands supporting her weight on either side of Paula’s
face. “Oh, that hair, that mouth. Paula, I came so close to loving you
before. And then ... Jesus, she dazzled me. Honey, I was helpless with
her.”

“Don’t explain, Beebo. I got through it somehow, and it’s over. Jack
practically adopted me. We talked all night every night for a week after
you left. He told me you’d be back, and he was so sure of it that I
believed him. I knew you weren’t in love with me, but I knew you wanted
me. And because of Jack, I never despaired. I wasn’t even afraid of Mona
any more. She thought I was nuts, but—”

“Mona! Has she been after you, too?” Beebo flared. “Hasn’t she hurt me
enough? Does she have to take it out on you?”

“You stood her up for me, remember?”

“How could I forget?” Beebo leaned over to kiss her. “Unbutton me,
Paula,” she whispered.

Paula complied with a tremor. “Mona thought she owned me,” she said
softly. “She shucked me off months before, but I wasn’t supposed to love
anybody new for the rest of my life.”

“Paula ...” Beebo seized her hands and looked at her searchingly. “Are
you trying to tell me—oh my God!—was _Mona_ the girl in the plaid
pajamas?”

Paula nodded, still opening buttons until Beebo’s shirt slipped off.
“She came back this fall when you left. She wanted information about you
at first, but then she decided to live with me again. I let her do it. I
supposed I was looking for a way to hurt you both. Make you jealous, and
get even with Mona for the pain she gave me. She was astounded when I
told her to get lost two weeks ago. She’s still waiting for you to snub
me, and then she’ll come back to say, ‘I told you so.’”

“That’s one thing she’ll never say,” Beebo said emphatically. “She won’t
have the chance. How could you fall for a girl like that, darling? You
so sweet all the way through, and Mona so sour?”

“It’s you I love, Beebo. Let’s not talk about Mona.”

Beebo kicked her slacks off, lying down beside Paula. “Did you know Mona
was going to send that smear to the gossipists?” she asked.

“Yes,” Paula confessed and shocked Beebo. “I’ll be truthful. This is the
hardest thing I have to tell you, Beebo. I knew, and maybe I could have
stopped her, I’m not sure. But I didn’t even try. I knew it would
separate you and Venus. It would have come sooner or later, but I wanted
you so awfully and this was the fastest way to do it. I couldn’t have
done it to you myself. But when I found out what Mona and Pete were up
to, I didn’t have the guts to stop them.”

There was a long silence. “Beebo, I forgive you everything. Can you
forgive me this?” Paula’s voice, slight and sweet as herself, hung close
to tears. This was the test.

Beebo turned Paula’s face up to hers finally and kissed it. “You have
far more to forgive than I do,” she said. “If you can, so can I.”

Once again they held each other, immersed in the swell of love. Paula
lay beneath Beebo, letting her work a while; letting the ardor slowly
take fire inside her, until the urge to respond became irresistible.

Then, suddenly, her head went back in a beautiful arch, into a pool of
auburn hair. Her body heaved against Beebo’s, and one of her legs
slipped between her lover’s. Her hands began to wander through Beebo’s
close-cropped curls, over her broad back and trim hips, caressing her
everywhere. Beebo answered her with gratitude, amazement, and the first
warm thrill of real love. Not an infatuation that knocks the breath out
of you and dislocates your life for a while. But the slow sure kind,
strong and reassuring, that holds together. Honesty, trust, respect, all
were growing between them.

When they had slept a little, Beebo raised herself up on one elbow to
light a cigarette and talk. “You know something, Paula,” she said. “I
tried to tell you this our first night together, and you wouldn’t
believe it. But it’s true, and it has a lot to do with the way I feel
about you now.”

“What, darling?” Her look of love, so womanly and so complete, moved
Beebo warmly.

“You brought me out, Paula. You were the first. I spent my life back
home saying no to everything but my daydreams. There wasn’t a soul I
could have touched without the whole town finding out. It would have
killed my father. That’s one of the reasons I had to leave. Paula, you
precious girl. God, how lucky I was that it was you.”

“It might have been Venus,” Paula said.

“If it had, I’d have botched it. She would have laughed at me.”

“Her show is on,” Paula said, looking at the clock-radio by the bed.
“Want to watch it?”

“No thanks.”

“I think you should. Come on, I’ll watch it with you.” Paula got up
smiling and pulled her halfway out of bed.

“Paula, honey, I don’t give a damn—”

“No fibs!” Paula cautioned, throwing her pink silk wrapper around
herself. “Come with me, Beebo.” She stood at the bedroom door, waiting,
and Beebo couldn’t turn her down. She stood up, but not without
misgivings.

The show had already started and the commercial was in progress. Beebo
took Paula in her arms and together they settled back on the sofa.

“If you had refused to look, I would really have been scared,” Paula
admitted. “I would have thought you were still tied to Venus
emotionally—too much to bear to see her, even on the screen.” She
twisted around in Beebo’s arms to look at her face and kissed her
swiftly a dozen times till Beebo was suddenly embracing her tightly and
murmuring her name eagerly.

Paula was trembling with the immensity of her feeling, full of whirling
thoughts hard to word. “I know you don’t love me yet the way I love you,
Beebo,” she said at last. “But God, I hope you will. It’s kept me
going—that hope—all this time. You felt so right to me.”

Beebo stroked her hair and gazed at her, unaware that Venus, in black
satin, was singing, “I’m Putting My All On You.”

“You’ve only seen the rough side of gay love,” Paula told her. “People
can be so cruelly selfish. Even the people who try to be good to you,
and I guess Venus tried.

“Darling, Lesbian love doesn’t have to be brief or heartbreaking, just
because it’s a love between two women. I want to teach you that. I want
to live with you and do things for you and even let you do things for
me.

“Oh, Beebo, don’t you see it? Women have a special knack for loving.
Even Venus, in her way, found that knack. There’s a tenderness, an
instinctive sympathy, between two women when their love is right ...
it’s very rare in any kind of love. But it comes near perfection between
women.

“You haven’t known that tenderness yet. You’ve only known a hectic
affair with a fantastically difficult actress. I want to give you a
home. I want you to come back to me every night and know you’ll be loved
and cared for and spoiled. Beebo, darling, I want you to spoil me a
little, too.”

“Paula, it’ll be a pleasure,” Beebo smiled.

Paula relaxed in her lap and Beebo put her hand back on the cushions.
They watched the end of the song as the camera closed in on the face of
Venus Bogardus. She was talking the words the way Beebo had suggested,
her head tilted to one side and her eyes full, glittering with a
give-away brilliance of real tears.

At the end, she let her head drop so that her gleaming hair swung around
her face and hid her eyes. The tune—just a gimmicky little love song to
begin with—had become a torch. And for just one moment, Venus was living
flesh for Beebo again.

Beebo moved Paula off her lap and got up, going to the TV and turning it
off. “It’s not that I’m still close to her, Paula,” she said, coming
back to the sofa. “It’s just that that was goodby. From her to me.”

They looked at each other. “Did you really love her, Beebo?” Paula
whispered.

Beebo sat down and took both of Paula’s hands in hers and kissed them in
a gesture that had become special to them both. And then she pulled
Paula down on the couch in her arms and kissed her neck until she
squirmed and laughed. “I won’t know for sure what love is till I’ve
spoiled you for a while, sweetheart,” Beebo grinned.


                                THE END
                   of an Original Gold Medal Novel by
                               Ann Barron




                          Transcriber’s Notes


The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
and punctuation errors as well as variations in hyphenation were
silently amended. All other changes are shown here (before/after):

   [p. 25]:
   ... ravioli, and drew it out with a potholder, spooning in onto ...
   ... ravioli, and drew it out with a potholder, spooning it onto ...

   [p. 34]:
   ... that run his wife’s errands and pocket all the money Marie ...
   ... than run his wife’s errands and pocket all the money Marie ...

   [p. 49]:
   ... told me. He looks hungry, as if he needed to be cared for.” ...
   ... told me. He looks hungry, as if he needs to be cared for.” ...

   [p. 50]:
   ... must be waiting to erupt someone so intense, so yearning, ...
   ... must be waiting to erupt from someone so intense, so
       yearning, ...

   [p. 80]:
   ... the cotton tops out far enough to brush Beebo’s chest with ...
   ... the cotton top out far enough to brush Beebo’s chest with ...

   [p. 151]:
   ... “Oh, you don’t have to worry. He likes kids. Beside,
       he’s ...
   ... “Oh, you don’t have to worry. He likes kids. Besides,
       he’s ...




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