Part 7

“I just want a stay of execution,” Laura said with a wry smile. “If we have to yell at each other, let’s save it till after dinner. Please, darling. The box won’t walk away.” And Beebo, in spite of the obviousness of it, in spite of her own better sense and Laura’s flagrant flattery, weakened.

“Are they that bad?” she asked. “The goddam letters from Beth the Beautiful?”

“They’re just love letters. They’re old and stale and the affair is old and stale. It’s over and done with.”

“Like our affair?” And Beebo said it so simply, without the histrionics and the swearing and the noisy misery she usually showered on Laura, that Laura was touched. She put her forehead down on Beebo’s shoulder and whispered, “I don’t know, Beebo. You scare me so sometimes I swear I’ll move out of here and run like hell and never come back. Sometimes I really think you mean to kill me.”

“Sometimes I really do,” Beebo said and her voice was rough. “If I did, I’d kill myself right afterwards, darling.”

“A lot of good that would do me!” Laura exploded. But she softened when Beebo’s face went dark. “You don’t mean that, Beebo. You’d never really do it ... would you?”

“I don’t know,” Beebo said, staring at her. “I’ve come close to it, baby. I’ve come close....”

“If you really love me, you couldn’t.”

“I really love you. But there are times when I don’t think I could stop myself.” Her eyes filled suddenly with tears and she looked away, at the wall. “Things that would hurt too much.”

“Like what?”

“Like finding out you were cheating on me.”

Laura shut her eyes and felt the sweat break out on her face. _But I haven’t really cheated with Tris_, she told herself. _We never went all the way. I don’t think we ever will._ “Don’t be silly,” she told Beebo. “Who is there for me to cheat on you with? _Nobody._”

“Jack.”

“Jack?” Laura straightened up, astonished. “He’s a man!”

“Sure he’s a man. I know what he is.”

Laura took Beebo’s face in her hands and said, “I promise you I have never cheated with Jack or anybody else. I _swear_, Beebo. You think I have but I haven’t. You just make it up.”

“Do I just make it up that I love you more than you love me?”

Laura hung her head. “Let’s shout about it after dinner,” she said.

“Okay.” Unexpectedly Beebo surrendered and Laura escaped to the kitchen with an audible sigh of relief.

They ate in near-silence, Laura concentrating on her plate and Beebo concentrating on Laura. They were almost finished with the gloomy little meal when there came a ring of the doorbell and Laura, without knowing why, felt a sudden start of fear.

“Who’s that?” Beebo demanded.

“I don’t know.” Laura didn’t even want to look at her. “Probably Jack. Or your darling Lili.”

“Oh, Christ, I couldn’t stand to see either of them right now. Lili would love to hear us quarrel.”

“Let’s disappoint her, then,” Laura said and they smiled a little at each other. Laura was surprised at the strength of her relief. But when Beebo got up to ring the buzzer that opened the door below, the strange fear returned.

Far away downstairs she heard the front door open. Laura sat in uneasy silence in the kitchen, listening to the steps coming up the stairs out in the hall. She could picture Beebo leaning against the door jamb, waiting for the knock. More than once she had begged Beebo to be cautious opening that door. She had nightmares about the hoodlums that raped Beebo coming back to try it again—and getting Laura too this time. But Beebo shrugged it off.

“They won’t be back,” she had said.

“How do _you_ know?”

“I know,” was the cryptic answer, and that was all Laura could get out of her.

Laura found herself staring into her milk glass and whispering a prayer: _Let it be Jack. Please, dear God. I need him._

The knock came. Beebo opened the door. There was a moment of silence and then the sound of a sweet feminine voice using a very dainty English. It was Tris!

Laura froze in a panic. For one frightened second she thought of climbing down the fire escape. And then she put her glass down with trembling hands and poised herself, tense with the near-hysterical force piling up inside her.

Suddenly Beebo said, “Well, I’ll be goddamned. Hey, Laura! It’s our little Indian buddy. From Peck and Peck. Come on in, sweetheart.”

“Thank you,” Tris said.

Laura held her breath. Beebo’s friendliness would last just as long as it took her to start wondering what Tris was doing there and how she found the place. Laura could have slapped Tris. She hardly dared go in the living room and face them both.

Beebo called her. “Get in here, baby. Make like a hostess, for God’s sake. How’d you find us?” she said, her voice lowering as she turned to Tris.

“I ran into Laura at the Hobby Shop,” Tris said. “I was looking for a gift.”

“Find one?” Beebo settled down on the couch, appraising Tris’s slim smooth body with a cool and practiced eye. Laura saw the glance as she stood in the kitchen doorway. She disliked the way Tris let herself be admired.

“Hello, Laura,” Tris said, almost shyly.

“Hello, Tris.” Laura wanted Beebo to stop looking at that warm brown body, lightly sheathed in silk. Her eyes snapped angrily at Tris, and Tris saw it. “Sit down,” Laura said.

“So ...,” Beebo mused, her eyes half-closed and calculating. “You discovered Laura in the Hobby Shop and got chummy, hm?”

“She told me where you live,” Tris said, turning to her with an ingratiating smile. “It’s not far from me. She said to come over sometime, so here I am. Perhaps I come at a bad time?” She looked from one to the other.

“Any time is a bad time in this little love nest,” Beebo said. She thumbed at Laura. “We hate each other,” she explained. “We only live together so we can fight.”

“Oh.” Tris looked uncomfortable.

Beebo grinned at the two girls, pleased to have embarrassed them both, her mind simmering with suspicions. Laura, stony-faced, refused to say anything to Tris to put her at ease. She was furious with her for coming in the first place.

“What’s your name, honey?” Beebo said to Tris. “I’ve forgotten.”

“Tris Robischon.”

“Didn’t you say you were Indian or something?”

“Yes.”

Beebo laughed and shook her head. “Yeah ...,” she said. “Indian.”

Tris began to squirm under her gaze. She was no longer so pleased to be looked at as she had been when she entered. Beebo stared so hard, in fact, that Tris finally said coldly, “Perhaps you object to dark skins.”

“So what if I do?” Beebo said casually, grinning.

Tris gasped. “Some people,” she said sharply, “think all non-whites are inferior. Perhaps you are one of those?”

“Now what gives you a dumb idea like that?” Beebo said. “Do I look unfriendly?”

“You stare at me as if I were not welcome.”

“I stare at you as if you were a damn pretty girl. Which you are. You’re also too sensitive, but you’re welcome. I like that color.” She waved at Tris’s shapely legs, crossed at the knees and poised on high-heeled shoes. “On you it looks good.” And she grinned. There was an awkward pause and Laura saw, with great irritation, that Tris was simply returning Beebo’s gaze now, bashfully but rather eagerly.

“Have some coffee, Tris?” Laura said.

“Yes, please.” Tris looked at her swiftly, as if she knew Laura didn’t like her interest in Beebo.

“What do you do with yourself all day, Tris?” Beebo said. Laura was afraid of the way her voice sounded now.

“I dance.”

“Where?”

“My studio. I teach.”

“That all?”

“I—I have done professional work.”

They talked for a few minutes until Laura brought the coffee in. She gave Tris a cup and placed one in front of Beebo. But Beebo reached out and collared her with one long arm and pulled her down on the couch beside her.

“Let go!” Laura snapped, but Beebo only held her harder.

“So you ... just ran into Laura in the Hobby Shop,” Beebo said to Tris. “Fancy that.” She smiled a dangerous smile.

“Yes. It’s not so surprising. I mean I—I live so close by.”

Laura felt her fear rising in her throat and sweat bursting from her and she was desperately impatient to get rid of Tris.

“You know something, little Indian girl?” Beebo said.

“What?”

“I don’t believe you.”

The atmosphere became tense and ominous. “I apologize for her, Tris,” Laura said with a show of casualness. “She doesn’t believe anything.”

“Now tell me, Tris,” Beebo said, ignoring her, “how did you and Laura really meet?”

Tris looked squarely at her and said, “You know how. I have told the truth.” She lied very gracefully. Laura wondered how many lies she had been fed herself. “But I see I am not welcome here,” Tris went on. She stood up and replaced her coffee cup carefully in the saucer on the table. “Thank you for the coffee,” she said regally and headed for the front door.

Beebo sprang up from the couch suddenly and Laura, frightened, followed her with almost the same movement. Beebo caught Tris at the door and turned her around and without even a pause for breath kissed her harshly on the mouth. It was a long and physically painful kiss, and Laura’s furious exclamations did nothing to help. She pounded ineffectually on Beebo’s back. “Beebo, stop it!” she cried.

But Beebo stopped in her own good time, and that was not until she had bruised Tris’s mouth enough to make her cry. She cried softly, without a sound, her eyes shut and her head back against the door, still lifted toward Beebo.

Laura was shaken. “Tris—Tris—” she said, trying to get near her, but Beebo shouldered her out of the way.

“That’s for being such a good friend of Laura’s,” Beebo said. “And that’s all you get, too, my little Indian. Now get the hell out and don’t come back.”

“Beebo, please!” Laura felt her own angry tears start up, and it was unbearable to have Tris turn and leave so quickly, so quietly, without giving her a gesture of comfort or apology. “Tris, I’m so sorry!” she called after her, but it sounded trite and insincere.

Beebo shut the door and stood for a moment with her back to Laura. Laura, shaking, moved away from her.

“Where did you meet her?” Beebo asked, still not looking at her. “Tell the truth, Laura.”

“At work.”

Beebo whirled around. “How long are you going to lie to me!” she said.

“This is the last time!” Laura exploded, throwing her caution out with her patience. “I’m leaving you, Beebo. I’ve _had_ it. You make me sick. You’re ruining my life. I’m so damn scared and so damn miserable that nothing is any fun, nothing helps. Life isn’t worth living, not like this!”

“Where did you meet her?” Beebo said, with single-minded jealous fury.

“I went to her apartment!” Laura blazed at her. “I went back for her card and I went to her apartment.”

“And made love to her.”

“No!” She shouted it angrily at first, but then she repeated it, frightened, “No, Beebo! I swear!”

But Beebo came across the room in one sudden leap of rage and threw her down hard on the floor, her big hands on Laura’s slim shoulders, holding her cruelly and banging her head down again and again until Laura screamed with pain and terror. And then Beebo dropped her and slapped her and all the time she kept repeating like a mad woman, “You made love to her, love to her. Where’s that key? The _key_, damn it!”

“I’ll give it to you,” Laura sobbed at last. “Oh, God, Beebo, don’t kill me! I’ll give it to you.”

Beebo let her up then, or rather, dragged her to her feet. Laura stood beside her, swaying and dizzy, her eyes blurred by tears and her head aching. She went into the bedroom, shoving Beebo’s hands away from her with sharp gestures of hatred, her teeth clenched. And she opened her purse and pulled out her wallet and gave Beebo the key.

Beebo snatched it from her and picked up the box like a miser going after a cache of gold. And Laura, seeing her chance, grabbed the purse and a sweater that hung on the back of a chair and backed silently out of the bedroom. She fled, on feet made feather-light with fear, to the front door. She ran down the stairs with all the speed her fear could muster and ran all the way—two blocks—to Seventh Avenue.

After a few frantic moments of scanning the street and looking back over her shoulder she hailed a cab and climbed in, crying audibly. “Drive uptown,” she told the man. “Just drive uptown for a few minutes.”

“Okay,” he said, giving her a quick, cynical onceover.

Laura looked up and saw Beebo rush into Fourth Street as the cab turned around and headed north, and she sank down in the back seat, her hands over her face. She let him drive her almost to Times Square before she could control her sobs and give him Jack’s address.

_What if Beebo’s already there?_ she wondered suddenly. _Oh, God!_ She would be, of course. But Jack would save her somehow. Better to be with him, even if it meant facing Beebo again.

6

Laura was right. Beebo went straight to Jack’s apartment. She stormed in and beat noisily on his door until he opened it.

“Christ in the foothills!” he exclaimed, pulling on the door and looking into her wild furious face. She entered and slammed it behind her.

“She’ll be over here in a few minutes,” Beebo said wildly, waving the diary at him. “I haven’t read much of this but I’ve read enough to know what a bitch she is. And you—you—” For once in her life Beebo was at a loss for words. “You lousy crawling scum sonofabitch, you’ve been egging her on! You’ve been putting ideas into her head—about leaving me.”

She ranted hysterically at him, and Jack, although Laura had never described her diary to him, began to get the idea in a hurry.

“Where is she now?” he said quietly when he could get a word in edgewise.

“I don’t know, but she’ll be here before long. Whenever we have a quarrel she drags her can over here as fast as she can move. You’re her father confessor, her lover by proxy. She tells you everything. She only lives with me.” She spat it at him enviously. “I’m her lover for good and real but I’m not good enough to know what she thinks or what she does. She saves that for you. I’ll kill her! By God, I will.”

“Scram, Beebo,” Jack said. His low voice was in sharp contrast to her own, loud and hard with wrath.

“What’s the matter, isn’t my company good enough for you?” She turned on him suddenly. He would have to take her threats till Laura got there; she couldn’t hold them back.

“It’s just that I don’t like prospective murderers,” Jack said. “They make me nervous.”

“You bastard! You holier-than-thou bastard! You think you’re so damn superior because you’re still on the wagon. You _are_ on the wagon, I can tell. You look so goddam sober it’s repulsive. Repulsive!”

“That’s the word for it, all right,” Jack agreed. His compliant attitude only goaded her further.

“You hate me because Laura only comes to see you when she feels bad. She _lives_ with me. But she doesn’t give a damn about you until she feels bad. Then she comes running to good old Jack!”

“Beebo,” he said and did not raise his voice. “When I lost Terry I did a hell of a lot of drinking and hollering. I came and drank your whiskey and told you my troubles and you listened to me. And it helped. Now you’re welcome to my whiskey—there’s still a little in the kitchen—and you’re welcome to cry on my shoulder. But you’re not going to murder anybody, here or anywhere else.”

“Only Laura,” Beebo said, and her voice was low now, too.

“Nobody,” Jack said. “Now scram, or I’ll throw you out.”

Beebo grabbed the lapels of his sport jacket. “She cheated on me, Jack. You gave her the idea so don’t try to squirm out of it.”

“Cheated on you with who?”

“An Indian!” Her eyes were so big and her face so contorted that Jack came very near laughter.

“What tribe?” he asked carefully.

“Not an _American_ Indian, you owl-eyed idiot! An _Indian_ Indian. A dancer! Jesus!” And she lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “A _dancer_!”

“Classical or belly?”

“Oh, shut up! You think it’s funny!” She gave him a hard shove, but Jack didn’t shove easily. He just stood his ground and surprised her. “It doesn’t matter who she is, anyway,” she said and ran a distraught hand through her close-cropped dark hair that waved and rolled around her head and used to delight Laura. “What matters is, they’ve been sleeping together and that cheeky little bitch—”

“Which one?”

“Jack, goddam you, quit interrupting me!” She paused to glare at him and then said, “Tris. The dancer. She had the nerve to come over to the apartment. Tried to tell me they met at the Hobby Shop. Oh, God!” And she gave a despairing laugh.

“Maybe they did.” He offered it unobtrusively.

“Who’re you kidding?” Beebo snapped. “Laura _admitted_ she went to the girl’s apartment.”

“After you pounded it out of her.”

Beebo held the diary out to him. “Read this, Jack. It’s all in here,” she said.

“Does it say they slept together?”

“Damn right!”

“Did you read it?”

“No, but it’s in here,” she said positively, in the grip of the spiraling violence that possessed her. “Jack Mann, college graduate, engineer, former gay boy, former whiskey drinker, former human being. Current know-it-all and champion bastard of Greenwich Village. _Read_ it!”

He shook his head without even glancing at it.

“Are you too proper? Too moral? Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly developed a conscience! After all these years,” she said.

He shrugged. “Why read it? You’ve told me what’s in it.”

“Maybe you’d like to know what she says about me.” He saw her face color up again and a shivering clearly visible in her hands and he said, “No.” But Beebo opened the diary, leafing through it for the worst slander she could find.

Jack took the book from her hands so suddenly that she let it slip before she knew what he was up to, and then he socked her when she reached for it, catching her on the chin. She reeled backwards and sank to the floor. Jack leaned down and picked her up, hoisting her over his shoulder. He carried her that way, head dangling in back and feet in front, down the hall and out the door to the apartment building.

There he set her dizzily on her feet. She hardly knew where she was and let him hold her up. He found a taxi for her on the corner of Fourth and Seventh Avenue and told the driver, “She’s drunk. It’s only a couple of blocks, but I can’t take her home,” and handed him five dollars. “Take her upstairs,” he said, giving him the address. “Apartment 2B.”

He was headed up the steps to his apartment again when he heard Laura’s voice calling him, and he turned around to see her running up the sidewalk, hair awry and face like chalk.

“Laura!” he exclaimed and caught her. She began to sob the moment she felt his arms around her, as if she had only been waiting to feel him for the tears to start.

“Is she here?” she asked, and he could feel her quivering.

“She left,” he said. “I just put her in a cab. Your timing is faultless, Mother.”

Laura looked at him out of big amazed eyes. “She’s gone? How did you do it?” she asked. “What happened?”

“Come on inside,” he said. He led her down the hall and in his kitchen at last, with the front door locked and no Beebo anywhere around and a comforting drink to brace her, she heaved a long sigh of relief.

“Now,” said Jack, making himself some coffee. “Who is Tris?”

Laura clasped her glass in both hands and looked into the whiskey for an answer. “She’s a dancer—”

“I know that part. I mean, are you sleeping with her?”

“No!” Laura flashed.

“Do you want to?”

And after a pause she whispered honestly, “Yes.”

“So Beebo’s not imagining things.”

“She doesn’t have to,” Laura cried bitterly. “She’s got my diary.”

“I saw it.”

“Did you read it?”

“No, but Beebo did.”

“What did she say?” Laura’s throat had gone dry all of a sudden at the idea of Beebo perusing those private pages, and she took a sip of her whiskey.

“She wants to solve the whole thing by murdering you.”

“I think she would, too,” Laura said, unsurprised. “Oh, Jack, help me. I’m scared to death.”

“All right.” He came over, pulling his chair, and sat down beside her. “Marry me.”

Laura covered her face with her hands and gave a little moan. “Is that all you can think of? Is that all you can say?” she said, and she sounded a little desperate. “I’m in love with Tris, and Beebo wants to _murder_ me and you want to _marry_ me. What good will that do? I might as well be dead as married!” And she said it so emphatically that Jack was stung.

But he never let personal hurts show.

“Mother, you’re in a mess,” he said. “Nobody has a perfect solution for you. And you have none at all for yourself. So listen to one from an old friend who loves you and don’t stomp on it out of sheer spite.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, sipping the drink again. She let the tears flow unchecked, without really crying. Her face was motionless, but still the tears rolled down her cheeks, as if they had business of their own unrelated to her emotion.

“Tell me something,” Jack said gently, putting an arm over the back of her chair and leaning close to her. And as always with him, she didn’t mind. She liked his nearness and the fact that he was male and strong and full of affection for her. Perhaps it was because she knew he would never demand of her what a normal man would; because she felt so safe with him and so able to trust him. “Tell me why you went to live with Beebo two years ago,” he said.

“I thought I loved her.”

“Why did you think you loved her?” he asked.

“Because she—well, she was so—I don’t know, Jack. She excited me.”

He lighted a cigarette with a sigh. “And that’s love,” he said. “Excitement. As long as you’re excited you’re in love. When it turns flat you’re not in love. Lord, what a way to live.”

Laura was taken aback by the selfishness she betrayed. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. It had never seemed so cheap to her before.

“Are you in love with Tris?” he asked.

“I—I—” She was afraid to answer now.

“Sure you are,” he said. “Just like Beebo. Fascinating girl. More excitement. Beebo’s worn out now, let’s try Tris. And when we wear Tris out, let’s find another—”

“Stop it!” Laura begged.

“Where’s your life going, Laura?” he asked her. “What have you done with it so far? Does it matter a damn, really? To anybody but you ... and me?”

“And Beebo.”

“Beebo’s more worried about where her next drink is coming from than she is about you.” He knew it wasn’t true. He knew if it ever came to a choice, Beebo loved Laura desperately enough to give up drinking. But Jack was fighting for Laura now.

Laura began to cry now, her face concealed behind her hands. “Please, Jack,” she whispered, but he knew what he was doing. He had to make her see it his way so clearly, feel the hurt so hard, that she would turn away from the whole discouraging mess of homosexual life and come to live with him far from it all.

“Look at me, Laura,” he said and lifted her face. “We can’t think straight because we always think gay,” he said. “We don’t know anything about a love that lasts or a life that means something. We spend all our time on our knees singing hosannas to the queers. Trying to make ourselves look good. Trying to forget we aren’t wholesome and healthy like other people.”

“Some of the other people aren’t so damn wholesome either,” Laura said.

Jack put his arms around her suddenly and pulled her tight against him and said, “Let’s get out of it, Laura. Let’s run like hell while we have a chance. We could get away, just the two of us. But we can’t do it alone; we need each other. We could move uptown and get a nice apartment and you wouldn’t have to work. We could get married, honey.”

“But—”

“Please, Laura, please,” he begged her. “Maybe we could even ... adopt a child. Would you like that? Would you?” He sounded a little breathless and he leaned back to see her face.

Laura was startled. “I don’t know anything about kids. They scare me to death.”

“You’d get over it in a hurry,” he said. “You’re female. You have instinct on your side.”

“Do _you_ like kids?”

“I love them.”

“_I_ don’t. You’re more female than I am,” she said.