Chapter III: Part 3

“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.

* * * * *