Chapter VI: Part 6

“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.