Chapter III: Part 3

“I mean face the fact there are two things she can’t live with—whiskey and women. Put them out of her life. Get back to normal.” He sounded bitter.

“But Cleve, _you’re_ normal, and _you_ drink.”

“Not like she does,” he said quickly, untruthfully. “I can go to sleep at night without a bottle by my bed.” There was pride in his tone.

“Is it that bad?” Beth said. _Oh, Vega!_ It made her want to nurse her, comfort her.

“She’s sick,” he said. “I don’t mean the TB, I mean up here,” and he tapped his head at the temple. “You can’t provoke her, you can’t cross her. She comes unglued. You haven’t seen that side of her yet. You keep after her, you will.”

“You’ve accused her of some pretty ugly things this afternoon, Cleve,” she said quietly.

“I’m not accusing her of anything. I’m trying to show you what she’s like. What she’s capable of. I’m telling you not to let yourself get mixed up with a woman like that.”

“You don’t think I can handle myself, do you?” she said.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But Vega can’t handle herself, that’s certain. She leaves it up to me.” He laughed, looking at his drink, but the laugh was mirthless. “Maybe it’s from being so spoiled all her life, from being a favorite child and a worshipped wife who kept two husbands out of her bedroom for years.”

Beth wondered, looking at him, his face dark and brooding, why he had really asked her there. Was he just trying to forewarn her of her potentially unhappy situation? Or was he threatening her? Beth eyed him suspiciously.

“You’re warned now, Beth, and that’s all I can do,” he said. “Except, thank you for listening. And—ask you not to mention it to anyone.”

“Are you afraid Charlie’d think you’re as daffy as I think you are?” she said.

He laughed again, a short sad noise. “I’m afraid Charlie knew that years ago,” he said. He leaned across the table and took her hands. “Beth, why in hell do you suppose I went to all this trouble for you? Exposed myself and my shameful family to you? Because I want to get laughed at, because I want to hear you say how buggy I am?”

“I don’t know why you’re doing it, Cleve. I really don’t.”

“You don’t need to freeze up,” he told her, his voice softening. “I just don’t want to see you hurt, Beth. Jesus, I know _you’re_ normal. Don’t get the idea I brought you down here to make you feel uncomfortable. You’re as wholesome as cherry pie, you’re no neurotic self-blinded Lessie. You’re sweet and healthy. I guess I just like you that way. I guess I just don’t want to see Vega _change_ you.” But Beth had the uncanny feeling that what he _really_ wanted was to keep them apart, keep her away from Vega. Why?

“She won’t change me, Cleve. I am what I am. It’s too late for her to make me over, even if she tried.”

“Thanks,” he said, as if she had promised him she would never see his sister again. And then he let her go.

* * * * *

Vega’s lips met hers a half hour later and this time Beth felt none of the resentment she had the first time, no desire to scold her and run. Instead, it was Vega who was irritable, rushed and nervous. She was preparing for a fashion show that night at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel, and there were clothes and girls all over the studio.

Beth knew, without being told, that there was no time for her today, and it aroused a keen hunger in her for Vega’s company. She watched the lovely woman glide smoothly about, her excitement showing only in her eyes, and Beth experienced an unwelcome qualm of jealousy for the second time that day. The girls, the young models, were so lithe and fresh. She found herself imagining their sweet young bodies full of tender untried places, and a sort of fever came over her.

It came as a shock when Vega asked her to leave. She pulled Beth aside and said in a warm whisper, “Darling, really, I’m up to my ears in this. I forgot all about it Tuesday. I just forgot everything Tuesday, all I could think of was you.” And Beth wanted suddenly, urgently, in a sweat of fear and delight, to put her arms around Vega and kiss her indecently until her desire was satisfied.

“I hate to ask you,” Vega said, “but—well, let’s put it off till next week. I’ve got so much to do. Beth, don’t look so disappointed!” She smiled like an angel of the devil and Beth said, almost humbly, “Don’t kick me out, Vega. Can’t I help? I’ll do anything.”

“No, you don’t know a damn thing about it. I’ve got to do it myself. Now go, darling. Be a good girl and go.” And she gave Beth a kiss on the cheek. Beth nearly suffocated for one lovely moment with the urge to pull Vega back into the shadows and tell her how beautiful she was, how unfairly beautiful.

But Vega left her and Beth was soon completely alone in the swirl of frenetic activity. Girls in tulle, girls in tights, girls in skin-fitted sheathes—all so young, all so feather-headed with excitement. Beth watched them a moment, enjoying the practiced movements, the bursts of nervous giggling, the fascinated preening at mirrors. Until she was jostled once too often and felt her solitude in the inconvenience she caused.

Shortly afterward she left. But she spent the whole evening in a misty fantasy of Vega that even Charlie could not penetrate with his grumblings about Cleve.

“I think he was out somewhere swilling booze this afternoon,” he said. “He came in about five and he was loaded. If it happens again I’m going to raise the roof.”

“Why does he do it?” Beth asked vaguely. “He’s happy with Jean, isn’t he?”

“I guess so. At least she never complains. He could shove a knife in her ribs and all she’d do is hand him that same old smile. But that isn’t it. Something is bugging the guy. Always has been, since I first knew him, like he’d committed murder and gotten away with it, and then discovered he couldn’t live with his conscience. It almost seems sometimes like he’s trying to tell you about it. But he just ends up telling you to be careful.”

Beth looked up at this, remembering her afternoon with Cleve. “Be careful of what?” she said.

Charlie shrugged. “Who knows? He never gets it said.”

Chapter Seven

Beth and Charlie both jumped when the phone rang at one-thirty in the morning. Charlie grumbled, “I’ll get it,” but Beth had a sudden premonition and said, “Oh, never mind. I’ll go.”

Willingly he turned over, muttering, “Probably a wrong number. Some drunk, or something.”

It was Vega and she sounded hysterical. “Beth! Oh, darling, thank God you’re there.”

“Where else would I be at this hour of the morning?” she said, keeping her voice low so Charlie wouldn’t hear the conversation. She was both thrilled and alarmed to hear that cautious smooth voice, charged now with desperation.

“Beth, you’ve got to help me. I’m in a ghastly predicament. I’m just frantic.”

“Where are you?” Beth asked.

“At the Knickerbocker.”

“The hotel?” Beth was relieved; the trouble couldn’t be too serious.

“Yes. It got so late. Some of the girls wanted to stay, so I said it was okay. Oh, I called their mothers and everything. You have to be so damn careful with them, with all these repulsive conventioneers around. It’s like trying to smuggle a hoard of diamonds through a convention of international jewel thieves. And if anything happens to any one of my angels—holy God, it’d ruin me! I’d be run out of town on a rail.” She stopped talking suddenly, as if to catch her breath, as if the tension in her had drained her resources.

“Vega, tell me what happened!” Beth demanded, worried.

“Well, I—we—” For a moment Beth feared Vega would burst into tears. Her honeyed voice broke and Beth grasped the phone in sweating hands, imagining the worst.

“Vega, did some bastard try to—” she began but Vega interrupted.

“No, nothing like that, I just—Beth, darling, would you mind driving over here?”

In the astonished silence Charlie called out, “Beth, for the love of God. Who is it?”

“It’s Vega. And shut up, you’ll wake up the kids,” she hissed at him.

“Vega!” he spluttered. “What does _she_ want?”

“I don’t know. Please shut up.”

“Well, tell her to go cram it, and come to bed.”

“Beth, I need you. Will you come down?” Vega asked, her voice rough and soft and tantalizingly near to Beth. Beth stood in the dark, feeling her heart skip and a queer concentrated pleasure flash through her body. _Beg me, Vega, beg me_, she thought. _Work for me. I want you so._ “It’ll take an hour,” she hedged.

“Not at this time of night. Oh, darling, I’m so miserable. Please come to me. I haven’t got a single cigarette and those s.o.b.s at the desk won’t send any up. I haven’t even got enough whiskey for a lousy nightcap. You _will_ come, won’t you? And bring me some groceries?”

And Beth understood then why she was calling. Cleve had already warned her: Vega couldn’t sleep without a bottle by the bed. There was a moment of acute disappointment when she wanted to throw the phone down and smash it. And then it came to her suddenly that Vega could have called somebody else, even Cleve. But she chose her instead.

“I’ll come,” Beth said weakly. “I’ll come, Vega.”

“Bless you, Beth, you’re wonderful. I swear, nobody else is crazy like I am but you. I _knew_ you’d do it. Darling, you make me feel so much less lonesome.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” Beth said, and hung up.

* * * * *

Beth tried to find her clothes in the dark without waking Charlie. But he was listening for her. Suddenly he switched on the reading light over the bed. For a second or two they were both blinded: Beth on one foot in the closet, pulling on a stocking, and Charlie leaning on his elbow against the pillow. When he opened his eyes and saw her he got out of bed and went to her without a word. Beth felt him come toward her and she was afraid of him; really afraid. He was a big man with a hard body and a strong streak of jealousy in him. His love for her was still alive but it was uncomfortable and a little the worse for wear and disappointments over the years. He was in no mood to deal gently with her.

She felt his angry hands close on her arms and jerk her forward so that her face snapped up to his. “Now what’s all this about?” he said.

“I’m going downtown,” she said.

“To Vega’s?”

Beth looked away. “Let go of me, Charlie.”

“_Answer_ me, Beth!” He had no intention of letting go until she confessed what she was up to. And maybe not then.

“Vega’s downtown, at the Knickerbocker. She wants some cigarettes and things, and I told her—”

“Cigarettes!” he flared. “And _things_! What things?” When she refused, panting with indignation, to tell him, he said disgustedly, “And booze I suppose. And you’re going all the way into Hollywood in the middle of the night to take them to her. Good God, Beth, I didn’t know it had gone _this_ far.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean!” she cried. “I haven’t done anything wrong! You have no right to hint that I have.” She was furious with the strength of her fear; the fear that always rose in her like a red wall at the suggestion of abnormality and shut off her judgment and good sense. Her voice stirred the children, asleep in the next room.

“You haven’t done anything wrong _yet_,” he amended. “But you go down there tonight and you will.” He was so cold, so bitter, so chagrined that she quailed at the sight of him. The moment his hands dropped from her arms, as if she were too wretched for him even to touch, she turned and fled from him, snatching up a coat from the hall closet. The liquor and cigarettes were ready in a paper bag on the hall table and she grabbed them on the way out.

In the bedroom Polly woke up and began to cry. Beth heard her when she started the car, and she wondered at every panicky second why Charlie didn’t stop her, why he didn’t run after her and shake her till her bones came loose, or strangle her. She could feel his fury like a tangible thing wafting to her through the mild night air. Backing out the driveway with dangerous haste she felt that if she had not been fighting mad herself, desperate and determined, his anger would have swallowed her up and subdued her.

She drove down the Pasadena freeway and into Hollywood, her mind stewing. _If Charlie hadn’t made such a fuss there wouldn’t be any trouble. I’ll be home in the morning, the kids don’t ever need to know the difference. And if he could only realize—oh, God, make him realize—how happy I can be if I just have somebody to love. To have fun with. Somebody like Vega. Why doesn’t he understand how good I can be to him? How patient with the kids? If he could only share me, just a little bit, just once in a while, with ... with a woman._

She was amazed to find herself reasoning like this: Beth, who hadn’t given a conscious thought to other women for nine years; Beth, who thought she was solidly normal for so long, who even married a man on that conviction; Beth, who had turned Laura Landon out of her life one day many years ago with such reassuring feelings of superiority and normalcy. That Beth, that very same girl, was tearing through the night on a fool’s errand at the whim of a beautiful spoiled woman who probably didn’t give a damn what her personal feelings were.

Vega: Beth saw her in her mind suddenly, whole and clear, every detail of her, as she had seen Laura in her dream some weeks before. Strangely, life was worth living for a woman like that. Problems could be solved, boredom could be faced, chores could be accomplished, if Vega could only love her. With love, with passion, with romance in her life again, Beth’s children would be more bearable. She could love them again because love was being reawakened in her and there would be plenty to go around. Why couldn’t Charlie see it that way, see what joy and peace his family would know if Beth were only satisfied?

She felt a flare-up of stinging resentment at his apparent selfishness. He’d understand one of these days; he’d _have_ to. Beth was so eager for Vega’s company, so full of pleasure and trembling anticipation, that nothing could have stopped her then, not even the thought of Charlie’s wrath.

She pulled off the freeway and into the stop-and-go traffic on Hollywood Boulevard. The great avenue was a strip of brilliants pasted on the black night. It might have been past two in the morning but it was Friday night, too, and the big brassy street was humming. Lights twinkled and flashed, announcing a hundred shows, a thousand succulent and sinful beauties, a million laughs. Posh shops displayed their slick wares in a weird radiance unknown to the daytime hours.

And the people swarmed down the walks and across the street looking urgently for fun, dressed in their courting clothes or their tourist sport shirts. They smiled at every light, every open door, every burst of commercial good humor. Beth watched them when she had to stop for lights, and they did not strike her as pathetic or lost or bored. They were having fun, they were all dressed up, and they were doing Hollywood right. She even found herself envying them.

* * * * *

The night clerk buzzed Vega’s room for her, giving Beth a narrow-eyed examination all the while. “She says come up,” he said, leaning toward her on the counter.

“Thanks.” Beth turned away, but he called her back.

“Miss,” he said and smiled at her sparkling eyes. “She’s been giving us a rough time tonight. We’re not supposed to take stuff up after midnight. And those girls with her are pretty noisy. I wonder if you’d tell her to tone it down a little. Would you mind?” He glanced at the paper bag full of whiskey under her arm.

“She’ll tone it down,” Beth said. “You won’t hear a damn thing, I guarantee.”

“Thanks,” he said, and watched her fanny as she walked away toward the elevator.

She was full of a reckless elation, a taut and wonderful excitement that she didn’t dare to analyze. She rode up in the elevator and all she thought about was Vega: the sight of her, the scent of her, the smile. Not what she would do once they were alone in that room together; not what she would say. Just a mental vision of that fine-featured face, that elegant body, too thin, almost too well kept, too pale. _But oh, deliver me! So beautiful!_ Beth thought.

She knocked lightly on Vega’s door. The hall was rather noisy, with half-suppressed laughter and an occasional squeal floating from the adjacent rooms. Beth had just time to hope that none of the girls was sharing Vega’s room when the door opened and Vega herself nearly fell into Beth’s arms.

“Oh, you’re here!” she cried. “Thank God! Did you bring it?” Beth could feel the tremor running through Vega and watched her with fascination as she seized the package of whiskey.

Beth stood just inside the door, her coat and gloves still on, content to be in Vega’s presence, content to smell her perfume and feel the air she stirred when she moved. Vega was swathed in a full peignoir of several varicolored layers that floated and swirled around her. It gave the illusion that she was rounder and softer than she was.

Vega busied herself with the bottle, opening it with a finger nail file and pouring herself a drink in the bathroom glass. Beth realized slowly that they were completely alone. The girls had banded together in the other rooms, and the fact that she and Vega were there by themselves, locked in a hotel room at nearly three in the morning, exulted her. She felt wonderfully strong and strange, gazing at Vega, who had softened and relaxed with the warmth of the whiskey and was settling herself on the bed.

Vega smiled up at Beth and said, “Come and sit with me and tell me how evil I am.” Her smile was both sad and inviting, and suddenly the curious strength Beth had felt washed out of her and her knees began to tremble. She was afraid to move, afraid any move she made would be the wrong one.

Vega frowned slightly at her, perplexed. “Beth, darling, you can’t just stand there in your coat for the rest of the night. Take it off and come here.”

It was such a frank proposition that Beth wondered suddenly how Vega could be gay, as Cleve said, and not know it. It just couldn’t be. She wanted to rush to her, grasp her hands and sink to her knees and say, “Vega, Cleve has been lying to me. He says you don’t know yourself, he says—”

“What do you mean?” said Vega, and Beth realized, with a little gasp of horror and surprise, that the words had virtually spoken themselves, so intensely was she involved in her thoughts. Her face went a hot deep pink and she moved at last, slipping out of her coat, wordlessly embarrassed.

“What did Cleve say to you, Beth?” Vega was strung up tight again, leaning forward to catch each word.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Beth murmured. “I—I just had a drink with him this afternoon. He told me a lot of guff. I think he was just tight.” She went anxiously toward the bed and suddenly Vega burst into a beautiful smile and laughed in her cautious, lovely way.

“He told you how charming you are and how wicked and depraved I am, no doubt. He thinks it’s his mission in life to warn decent people away from his nefarious sister.” Her laughter brought a breath of relief to Beth, who smiled gratefully at her. It gave her the courage to come and sit beside her, and when Vega offered her the glass and poured her a drink, she took it as a sign that there were no hard feelings. She didn’t want the liquor, just Vega’s esteem, Vega’s warmth and favor. But liquor was one way Vega had of showing her approval and it had to be accepted.

“He’s been telling people for years how rare I am,” Vega went on. “How immoral. How faithless and frigid. I ... was married, you know,” she added abruptly, her eyes bright on Beth.

“I know.”

“Oh, so he told you that too.” And she laughed again, putting her head back a little. Her hair was loose, not wound into the graceful roll she usually wore, and it fell, two feet of it, in silky luxury down her back. Beth had an almost uncontrollable urge to touch it, and she was relieved when Vega straightened up and resumed her story. “I was married twice, Beth. They were nice enough guys. That wasn’t the trouble.”

“What _was_ the trouble?” Beth said and felt her throat constrict with excitement. It was such a perfect opening for a confession.

Vega turned her bottomless brown eyes on Beth and touched her knee gently, letting her hand rest there. “You blurted out a minute ago—to your own embarrassment, obviously—that Cleve thinks I don’t know myself.”

“Vega, I’m so sorry, it was thoughtless, I just—”

“No darling, I don’t want you to explain.” Her hand tightened on Beth’s warm knee. “I just want you to tell me what Cleve thinks it is I don’t know about myself. Tell me, Beth.”

Beth opened her mouth to speak and found no voice. How could she possibly say such a thing? _He thinks you’re a Lesbian, and you don’t know it._ It could be torment for a sensitive person to have something that shocking, that personal, thrown at her from the blue.

“I can’t say it, Vega,” she admitted, and Vega read her pale face accurately.

“Well, then, I know what it is,” she said. “And he’s telling you what he honestly believes.” Her face became pensive suddenly and she gazed downward at the whiskey in the glass tumbler. “I have never let him understand me very well. I have good reasons for it. He _thinks_ he does, of course. It’s rather painful sometimes, he thinks I’m so dense.”

Beth felt herself in a state of tremulous anticipation. She didn’t want to talk, only to touch, only to feel. And yet talking like this might bring her closer to Vega, help her understand her.

“If I tell you, Beth,” Vega said slowly, “that I have never been attracted to men ... I hope it won’t give you wrong ideas.” She glanced up to see how her remark was taken, but Beth said only, “Wrong ideas?” She sat holding her hands together tightly to keep from reaching out for Vega.

Vega smiled at her suddenly and said, “Relax.” The squeeze she gave Beth’s knee tickled her and they both laughed. “You didn’t come here to get a lecture on me, anyway,” Vega added. “You deserve some reward for your effort. Here, have another.” She offered Beth the glass and Beth tried to turn it down. But she saw a quick shy retreat in Vega’s eyes, as if Vega feared Beth were disapproving, and she took the glass anyway and drank.

“Was Charlie mad at you for coming?” Vega asked.

“Yes,” Beth said simply. Her head was getting light.

“I’m sorry,” Vega said. Her voice was tender and grateful.

“You know, I had an odd thought on the way over here tonight,” Beth said, to change the subject.

“Tell me.” Vega leaned back into the pillows and gazed up at her, the whiskey glass resting on her stomach. She held it lightly, almost casually, as if she could easily give it up, as if she could go to bed without a drink, without a bottle on the table beside her.

“I’d like to get lost with you in Hollywood. I mean—” Beth laughed, flustered. “See the sights, like the tourists.”

“You don’t go wandering in Hollywood at night without a man unless you want to get picked up, darling. Is that what you mean?”

“No, I just want to share it with you. You’re fun to be with. I guess—to be frank—that’s why I came tonight.” She took the proffered glass again, avoiding Vega’s penetrating smile bashfully, and when she returned it she felt quite dizzy. She leaned toward Vega slightly, steadying herself with both hands pressed into the bed in front of her. She found herself tilted close to Vega.

“Feel okay?” Vega asked. “You look way out. No need to keep up with me, you know. I’m more or less immune to the stuff. Ask Cleve.”

“I feel fine. Wonderful,” Beth said, raising her eyes to Vega’s. She felt reckless, even. Their closeness was like a challenge, a dare that brought her pulse up high and visible in her throat and made her work for her breath. “Vega, you—you are the loveliest woman,” she whispered.

Slowly Vega placed her glass on the floor and then her hands went up to Beth’s shoulders, more to subdue her than encourage her.

“Beth?” she said, and the name itself was a question. “I never thought _you_ of all people....”

In one quick painful second, Beth saw that she was caught; her fascination, her desire were clear and hot in her eyes and mouth. Vega could see them. There was nothing for it but to declare herself or retreat and run, spouting half-baked excuses that would fool neither of them. Back to Charlie she would go, back to the kids, back to Sierra Bella, humiliated and disappointed beyond her capacity to bear it. She could not give up so easily; she had come too far, risked too much.

“Vega, let me, you must let me,” she said, trying to lean closer to her, but Vega’s thin arms restrained her. Beth was afraid of hurting her and she paused.

“You know how I feel about this,” Vega said, and there was something sharp, almost fearful, in her voice. Her eyes were quite wide. Beth felt her own strength and Vega’s weakness and she forced Vega’s arms down suddenly.

“You ... of all people, you,” Vega moaned. “No, Beth. _Please!_”

“Vega, forgive me,” Beth said wildly. “I love you, I can’t help it!” And she bent her head in one swift hungry movement and kissed Vega’s exquisite mouth.

For the space of a heart beat there was no response, only a chill, a palpable terror. And then suddenly Vega returned her kiss, and Beth, murmuring insanities, kissed her face and her mouth all over, holding her tightly and panting with the sheer forgotten glory of it: the marvelous sweetness and suppleness of a woman’s body, the instinctive understanding that surpasses words, the indescribable tenderness two women in love with each other can create.

She became aware only slowly that Vega was desperate for breath. The weight of Beth’s body was too much for her, and Beth rolled off suddenly, exclaiming, “Vega, darling, did I hurt you? Are you all right?”

Vega swept to her feet and nearly fell back again. Beth leaped up after her and caught her from behind, putting her arms around Vega and rocking her gently, her lips against Vega’s throat.

“Come sit down,” she said, and when she had Vega safely into a chair, she knelt and put her head down in Vega’s lap, her arms around that tiny waist and her lips moving still against Vega’s warm body, exploring, caressing, reverencing.

Until Vega pushed her head back and said, as if her breath had only then come back to her, “Stop it! Will you _stop_ it?” with such anguish that Beth pulled away in alarm.

“Oh, I hurt you,” she said, dismayed.

Vega got to her feet. “No, don’t help me,” she ordered. “Don’t touch me.”

“But Vega—”

“Shut up!” Vega turned a tormented face to her. She walked to a window and pulled it up, gasping up the air. “I told you not to get any wrong ideas,” she said finally, when some measure of calm had returned to her. She gazed stonily at the street eight stories below, her face almost a mask now.

“I didn’t know that was so awfully _wrong_,” Beth said, rising and coming toward her.

Vega looked up at her and her expression changed again, the fear showing quite plainly in the quiver of her muscles. “Beth, stop, hear me,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t _know_ what I am. It’s just that I can’t stand _being_ what I am. If you do this, if you insist, you’ll destroy me.”

“All I want to do is love you, Vega,” Beth said, and felt tears of frustration and passion struggling for supremacy in her. “Can love destroy a person?”

“The wrong kind can!” Vega said.

“But this _isn’t_ wrong.”

“You only say that because you want it, because you’re too weak to deny yourself,” Vega cried.

“I’ve done without it for more than nine years.”

“I’ve done without it for more than _twenty_ years!” Vega said. But something in the parting of her lips, in the warmth of the kiss she had returned, gave Beth courage. Perhaps Vega feared her mother, perhaps she couldn’t help knuckling under to her mother’s ideas. But her body, her secret heart, seemed to beg for that proscribed love.

“I don’t believe you,” Beth said. “Your own beauty would trap you in a score of affairs.”

“I’m not that beautiful,” Vega said candidly. “I might have been once but I’m not any more.”

“I never saw anyone lovelier,” Beth said. “I never saw anyone I wanted so much.” The thought of Laura flashed before her eyes and reminded her that she was lying. But that had been so long ago, this was so here and now. “Vega,” she said in a voice husky with pleading, with need. “Please come to me. Please, don’t let me stand here alone in this strange room speaking love to a stranger. Let me know you, darling. Let me be close to you. Don’t shut me out. Vega, do you know how long I’ve waited, turned this out of my mind and lived like a robot? No, _worse_—a robot can’t suffer. I did it because there was no one I could love.”

“You did it because Lesbian love is wrong and you knew that,” Vega said, and Beth could hear the echo of her mother’s voice speaking, the way she had heard it in Cleve’s speech. “And it’s still wrong, Beth. More for you than for me. _You_ have a husband. And children.”

“That’s why I need it so!” Beth cried in a storm of misery. She was ready to explode with the feeling inside her, a whirlwind of contradictions and desires.

“Yes. You need _it_, not me,” Vega said bitterly.

Beth couldn’t stand it any longer. She rushed toward Vega, but Vega very swiftly and unexpectedly opened her diaphanous dressing gown, holding it wide away from herself so that Beth should see every detail of her white body.

Beth stopped abruptly, within a foot of her goal, and stared. She made a small inarticulate sound, and Vega searched her face with horrible anxiety. “If you can make love to that,” she whispered, “then I’ll believe you love me. I’ll accept it.”

She was a complex of scars that twisted every which way over her chest, like yards of pink ribbon in snarls. She had no breasts, and the operation to remove her lung had left a bad welt that Beth returned to once or twice with a prickle of revulsion. Even Vega’s dainty little abdomen had its share. And the bones, the poor sharp bones without the ordinary smooth envelope of tender flesh that most girls take for granted and even rail against when there’s too much. Vega’s bones were all pitifully plain and frankly outlined.

Beth put her trembling hands over her mouth, to stifle her horror, and let the tears flood from her eyes. She shut them tight for a moment, but when she opened them Vega was halfway out of the open window.

With a little scream Beth lunged at her and caught her, pulling her to safety over the most violent protests of which Vega was capable. Beth held her, struggling and swearing hysterically, in her arms for some time, thinking all the while of Cleve and his unhappy eyes and his talk of Vega and their mother. She stroked Vega’s hair and let her own unhappy tears fall.

After a while sheer exhaustion forced Vega into silence. Beth felt her drooping and she bent down and put an arm under Vega’s legs and another around her shoulders and lifted her up. She was surprised at how slight the burden was. Beth was a big girl and she was strong, and she had always been proud of these unfeminine qualities in herself.

There was plenty of whiskey left, and Beth, after laying Vega down tenderly on the bed, poured her a drink. Neither of them had spoken a word.

Vega gulped the drink and then handed it back; she turned her face away and put one hand over it. Beth let her weep undisturbed for a while. At length Vega murmured in a broken voice, “You don’t need to tell me how you feel now. I saw it in your face.”

“Vega, you damn fool,” Beth said gently. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you spring it on me that way? I could have taken it, if you’d only let me know. If you’d only prepared me a little for it.”

“No,” Vega said, reaching for a tissue from her pocket and wiping her eyes. “No, what you mean is, you could have controlled the look on your face. You could have made up a kind little speech and said it right away, before your silence spoke for you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Beth protested.

“Don’t you see, Beth,” she said, turning to look at her and forcing herself to face those eyes that had seen her saddest and ugliest secret, “if I had told you beforehand you would never have confessed your love to me at all. You would never have tried to know me or touch me. That counts for something, believe me. That’s one thing to be grateful for, even if it can’t last. But aside from that it wouldn’t have made much difference. You might have hidden your disgust a little better, that’s all. No matter which way I did it, the ending would have been the same.”

Beth lighted a cigarette. “This has happened before, hasn’t it?” she said quietly.

“Yes,” Vega sighed. “Now you know why I’ve been waiting twenty years. It wasn’t pure virtue.” She gave an acrid little laugh. “You thought my mother was ugly, didn’t you?” she said. “I’ll bet you didn’t know how ugly a woman could be until now.”

“Vega, please,” Beth said, exasperated with her and with herself. She was in a state of tremulous nervousness, keyed up to a fever one moment with aching desire, and almost nauseated with shock the next. Somehow, in the space of a few short weeks, this lovely woman she had known well enough for a period of years had appeared to her as a lover. Suddenly Vega, who had been only Cleve Purvis’s sister since Beth came to California, was all the promise of love, of womanhood to her. Vega became Beth’s own passion resurrected in the flesh.

And now, with brutal suddenness, she had seen her mutilated body, repellent and pitiable, and she could not find her desire any more. It had dissipated.

_But surely I loved her_, Beth told herself miserably. _When you love, you love more than a body. You love a mind and heart, too, or your emotion is a cheap fake._ She knew this was true. She knew that if her “love” had been real it would somehow have survived, even in platonic form. But all she wanted now was to get out, to leave, to breathe the open air, to be free of her cruelly misshapen dream.

The very sight of Vega, the small sounds she made, drove Beth’s disappointment through her like a knife. She was ashamed of her selfishness but quite impotent with it. She had wanted a whole woman, warm and yielding. She had dreamed that her hands would touch the smooth perfumed flesh of a body that knew how to love. It had been a vital part of her desire and now she had little more than a face to hang her dreams on. Vega’s face, covered with tears.

“You’d better go,” Vega told her suddenly, and Beth wanted nothing more than to obey. But shame and pity held her to the spot beside Vega on the bed.

After a moment Vega turned and gazed at her. “Surely you can’t stay, after what you’ve seen?” she said in a leaden voice.

“Vega,” Beth said painfully. “I said—I said I loved you. I’ve grown very fond of you over the last few weeks. I don’t know how or why it happened. I only know that I can hardly bear to hurt you, to see you lying there in despair.” It was meant as solace, to ease Beth’s parting. Nothing more. But Vega in her desperation took it for more. She turned to gaze at Beth and there was a new look on her face. The eyes were less empty, the mouth less tragic.

“You mean you’ll stay?” she whispered almost inaudibly.

Once said, the words trapped Beth. For a moment she couldn’t answer and her mind flew frantically from lie to lie, but there were no excuses, none that wouldn’t hurt Vega mortally. She had seen Vega’s ugliness and she had been sickened. Her passion had flickered and gone out, and now she was tired and ashamed and she wanted to be gone.

“Of course I’ll stay,” she said softly, hopelessly, to Vega. It was her conscience, her compassion, that spoke for her. If the incredulous pleasure, the stammering gratitude she produced in Vega could have reawakened the needs of Beth’s body, Beth would have fallen on her with delight. Instead she lay wordlessly beside her, taking Vega into her arms and murmuring kindnesses to her.

“I knew you were better than the rest,” Vega said, and her voice broke with emotion. “Beth, darling Beth, I knew it somehow. I had a feeling about you. Maybe because I wanted you so much. I did, you know. I do. Oh, Beth.”

And Beth, as she kissed her, wondered with sad irony why Vega couldn’t have said that to her before when she wanted so much to hear it, why she couldn’t have played the game gently and broken the secret mercifully. Perhaps she hoped she could catch someone like Beth someday who had too much pride and pity to treat her like an outcast. Perhaps she hoped her pathetic condition would finally snare somebody the way it had Beth. She had waited a long lonely time for this, and she clung to Beth as if to let go for even an instant was to lose her forever.

Beth made love to her. It was restrained, partly because she saw with awful clarity in her mind’s eye every part of Vega that her hands touched, and partly because Vega herself had not the breath or strength to throw herself into her feelings. Beth clung tight to her composure, swallowing her tears of frustration and giving Vega all she could muster of tenderness and patience. Vega could not be satisfied unless Beth appeared to be so, for otherwise it would be too clear that Beth was doing this for her out of charity. So there was the fatiguing necessity of pretending to enjoy it, pretending to feel the thrill that was nothing but a gruesome parody of the happiness she had anticipated.

Vega lay in her arms throughout the rest of the night and she slept like a guiltless child. Beth, beside her in the dark and afraid to move and disturb her, did not sleep at all. She stared into the night and cursed the unkind fate that had promised so much and delivered so little. All the dormant fires of her younger days had sprung to life and they burned in her still, tempting her, torturing her, until she knew she would have to find release somewhere or die of it. She even went so far as to imagine the young girls in the next few rooms and to wonder if it were possible to see them, to make friends.

_At five-thirty in the morning?_ she said it to herself, and smiled wryly at the dawn.

* * * * *

Beth drove home in the morning, dropping Vega off first and seeing her go with a sigh of relief. She was ashamed of her feeling of resentment and to cover it up in her conscience she berated Vega. _Jesus, I wanted to make love to a woman, not a carved-up scarecrow!_ she cried to herself, and her own hard words dismayed her. Her attitude toward Vega was fast becoming one of bitter disappointment. She had been betrayed and she was near to loathing the object of her betrayal, so great had been her hopes and her needs.

At home in her empty house she put her head down and cried. They were tears of fury, tears of frustration, but not tears of despair. Not now. Her temper was too high and the blaze in her too hot.

For an hour or more she stamped around the house, picking up objects aimlessly and smacking them down again, kicking chairs and doors, and thinking. She walked out into the yard and pulled up a few flowers just because it felt good to ruin something. And then she went back into the house and threw herself down on her bed and slept.

She dreamed of Laura.

Just Laura, sitting on the studio couch in the sorority room they had shared, gazing at her. But though she didn’t move, though she didn’t speak, she was vibrantly alive this time. Beth could smell the remembered heady scent of her hair, and when she approached her and held out her hand she could feel Laura’s breath upon it. She spoke to her, just her name. And Laura smiled, ever so faintly, over the gulf of years and the famous “well of loneliness.”

Chapter Eight

Beth went through a period of nearly two months, as spring edged into summer, of emotional upheaval and torment that were all the harder to bear for being secret. There was no one to talk to, no one to explain to, no one to confide in. Charlie would never understand. His reaction would surely be one of anger and contempt for her. Her exclusive behavior, her moods, had already come close to damning her in his eyes. And _Vega_.

_Oh, God!_ Beth thought with acute irritation. Vega was rapidly becoming a stone around her neck. She pestered her on the phone two or three times a day. She begged Beth to spend more time with her, and Beth, who was speedily growing sick and sorry about the whole affair, tried every machination to get out of it. But then came threats. Vega would sob over the phone, and her lovely voice, tangled in the gasps for air that plagued her when she was excited, would moan, “You love me. You _said_ so. If you love me come to me, Beth. My God, I’m out of my mind I want you so much.”

And Beth found herself yearning for the days when she and Vega were hardly more than acquaintances; even the days when she wanted Vega and couldn’t have her were better than these when an unhappy and jealous Vega tried to force herself on her.

“I have to take Skipper to a birthday party,” she would say. Or, “I can’t, Vega, I’m bowling this morning.”

“Oh, hell!” Vega spat. “You gave that up weeks ago. Jean told me. She said you just called up and quit and she thinks you don’t like her any more. She called me to cry on my shoulder.” Her voice was hard with jealous suspicions and Beth was obliged to concoct ridiculous fibs for her. Anything to keep her at arms’ length.

But she couldn’t keep her there always. There were meetings, awful exhausting affairs. Beth approached them with a dread that included an element of physical revulsion she found it hard to hide. Vega, who was sharp-eyed in spite of her infatuation, could see that Beth’s response to her was only slight and that her thoughts were always with something or someone else. But she had fallen for Beth and there was no backing out. It was almost a fanatical attachment. Their relations became more and more trying, more strained, with Vega weeping pathetic angry tears and Beth snapping at her with wild impatience. They had really trapped each other and there seemed to be no way out.

Vega’s most desperate fear was that one day Beth would simply refuse to see her at all. “I’d _kill_ you if you did that to me,” she told Beth once, thinking that by mentioning it before it had a chance to happen she might miraculously stave it off.

But Beth offered her no consolation, not even an answer. She knew quite well that soon it would come to a parting; that she had only delayed the break out of shame, cowardice, and a desire to lessen the pain for Vega.

Vega would often call her when Charlie was at home and Beth would be forced to talk quietly to her, to agree to her plans, just to avoid a revealing argument in front of Charlie. Beth upbraided her royally for it when they met.

“Good God, Vega, I can’t let Charlie know what’s going on,” Beth shouted at her. “That is, if he doesn’t know already. Do you want me to stop seeing you altogether? He’d insist, you know.”

“Beth, if you’d call me once in a while instead of forcing me to call _you_. Just _once_ in a while. If you’d act like you cared—”

“Vega, don’t throw a lot of sentimental pap at me.”

“Is that what you call it?” Vega sprang to her feet, her face white. “Is that what you call my love for you? This affair was all your idea, Beth, in case you’ve forgotten. _You_ insisted. _I_ surrendered. And now you’re obligated to me. I swear to God you are!” She would have gone on but lack of breath stopped her and she paused, panting, a hand to her throat.

“I’m not going to stand around and be hollered at,” Beth said, picking up her coat with an angry sweep of her arm. “You’re turning into a shrew, Vega.”

“Beth, don’t go! Please!” The last word was almost a sob and Beth didn’t dare to turn around and see her face. She would have succumbed to her own sympathy and weakness again and hated herself for it afterward.

“Beth, I’m warning you here and now, if you leave me I’ll tell Charlie all about this. I’ll tell him everything.”

Beth paused, her back to Vega, and her heart skipped a beat. She kept her voice under control when she answered. “He won’t believe you.”

“You know damn well he will. You said yourself he already suspects monkey business. Well, it won’t take much to convince him.”

“Try it,” Beth said, still bluffing, still afraid to face her.

“You’re goddamn right I’ll try it,” Vega said, with all the meager force she could muster.

Beth turned around slowly, reluctantly. “Vega,” she said. “You’re a viper. I can’t think of anything else to call you. You’re nothing but a lousy snake. You make me sorry I ever laid eyes on you.”

“You’ve laid more than eyes on me, Beth, and don’t forget it,” Vega said, trembling with the fatigue of her feelings. “You owe me something.”

“You owe _me_ something, too, Vega,” Beth said. Her voice was soft but furious. “You waited twenty years for somebody, remember? For some poor idiot like me to take pity on you—”

“Stop!” Vega cried, visibly hurt and beginning to reel slightly. Beth was forced to care for her, to help her to a chair and bring her a shot of whiskey. “Beth, don’t say it,” she begged. “Once those things are said there’s no unsaying them. They hang there in the air and poison things. They destroy even the little white lies you tell yourself when things look blackest.”

And Beth was touched by her misery in spite of herself. “You mean,” she said quietly, “they make you face the truth.”

“Hurt like that goes beyond the truth,” Vega said. “When you’re trying to hurt somebody else you kill them with truth like that. I couldn’t bear it if you left me, Beth. I can’t believe you will. I was so lonely before. It’s not much better now, but it’s better. When you’re in a good humor I almost faint with love for you. I want to lie in your arms and die of joy. I wish we could live somewhere together, just the two of us.”

And Beth, for whom the whole situation had taken such a sickening turn, was caught between pity and disgust. “I—I don’t mean to leave you, Vega,” she said at last, hoping that her phraseology would leave her an out. “But don’t call Charlie. Things are bad enough as it is. Please, leave him out of it.”

She hated to say it, for it gave Vega a powerful ace to play, but she spoke the truth when she admitted that things were already bad enough at home.

There had been a sort of armed truce declared between Charlie and herself. They had very little to say to each other, but for the children’s sake they put on a show of life-as-usual. Beth reached a point where she hated to leave the house, as if her love affair—if the word “love” belongs there—had changed her physically and might give her away to her neighbors. She did the marketing and took the children out, but that was all.

Housework seemed an interminable chore to her. She had never liked it, any more than she liked cooking. But she had always done what was necessary. Now even that oppressed her to such an extent that she would often let things go until the last moment, sometimes failing to make up the beds until just before Charlie got home, and letting days, weeks, go by without dusting or vacuuming. The worse the house got the harder it was for her to do anything about it. She wanted to shut her eyes and forget it.

And all the time, every day, at every hour and in every imaginable posture, she dreamed of Laura. She dreamed of the romance, unfettered with family obligation or dishwashing, free of all the daily drudgery she so despised, free of a husband who was jealous and narrow-minded, free of children who were noisy and nerve-wracking.

Beth yearned for Laura. She was almost possessed with her. It was as if, out of the blue, she had fallen in love with her all over again; and, in a way, she had. She was in love with her own lost freedom, her own smooth young face, her college sophistication, her exotic love for a strange and fascinating girl. All the things that were once but were no more, all the things Beth had been and was no longer. These she loved. And Laura personified them.

To while away the hours, she read. On her shopping trips she picked up books—every book she could find on the subject of homosexuality and Lesbianism. She read them with passionate interest, and found a release in them she had not expected. Most of them were novels with tragic endings. Some were even dull, at least for those whose ruling interest in life had nothing to do with their own sex. Some of them depressed her, but all of them interested her and she gained a feeling of companionship with some of the writers which alleviated her solitude a little. She wrote letters to a few, the ones who impressed her most, who seemed to understand best what it was like to be gay and to be alone and starved for love; for less than love, even—for sympathetic companionship.