Chapter V: Part 5

Beth shook her head and when she found her voice she said, “No, life is funny. I can’t write to Charlie either. There’s a friend in Pasadena who’s doing for me what I’m doing for you. Writing to tell me all the news.” They gazed at each other a little guiltily and still with amusement. “Are we a pair of cowards, Mr. Landon?” she said. “Or are we braver than everybody else?”

“Cowards, of course,” he said. “We aren’t really brave at all. But we do have a certain strength. You set out to find yourself, and that takes strength. I found myself long ago and had the strength to live with what I found—not a pleasant task.” He grinned at her and suddenly she liked him. She liked him very much and in that instant she saw Laura in his face, his smile, again.

They were a pair of conspirators. If Beth found Laura and won her love again, she would be an ally for Merrill Landon. Through Beth he might come close once again to the daughter he adored; once again before time caught up with him and closed his life. For he was in his late fifties now and he had lived too hard. He was tired. He wanted a few years with her, and the idea had struck him when he interviewed Beth that this might be a last way to achieve the goal. He couldn’t approach Laura himself. She would turn and run before he could speak, and she had a right to. But Beth might speak for him. She liked him. He could see it in her face.

They parted with an understanding—friends.

Chapter Eleven

Beth withdrew her money from the bank. There was nearly four thousand dollars. That was plenty. She felt extravagantly rich with the money her parents had left her lined up neatly in traveler’s checks in her wallet. She took the precaution of getting the funds before she broke the news to Uncle John. Not that he could have stopped her; the money was hers, free and clear. But he could have slowed things down, and she wanted to be able to go now, at once.

“I’ve been thinking,” she told him the next day, “that I’d like to take a trip.”

“A trip?”

“Yes. To forget. To think about something else. I want to see some new places, Uncle John. I want to roam a little. I think it’ll do me good.”

He appeared unconvinced. He was a cautious man by nature and a provincial. If you could stay at home with your own comfortable bed and the food you liked, why go anywhere? His days of patient silence weighted his spirits down, too, and he suddenly asked his niece, with straightforward concern, “Beth, what about your children? How can you go traveling and just leave them?”

“They’re all right,” she said, looking away.

“How do you know? How long do you intend to be away from them? Is that good for children? Damn it, you haven’t explained any of this to me yet. I don’t like it.”

“Uncle John, quit worrying!” she cried irritably. “The kids are with their father. They’re better off with him, you must understand that.”

“Why don’t you take them away from him? You’re their _mother_, for God’s sake. If you’re going to divorce Charlie you’d better start doing something about it instead of running around the country. Are you going to go through life married to a man who’s unworthy of you, who won’t let you keep your own children?”

“That has nothing to do with it. I told you it was all my fault!” she cried.

“What did you do, then? Just _what_, exactly, did you do? What’s the _matter_ with you, Beth? I have a right to know. I’m feeding you and sheltering you—I’m supporting you. Your husband should be doing this.”

“You mean if I don’t tell you everything you don’t want me here?” she demanded, stunned.

“I mean you owe me an explanation!” he said, and she saw that his slow temper was finally roused. His balding head reddened. “Are you in love with some other man?”

“No!”

“Did you disgrace yourself? Or Charlie?”

“No!”

“Do you want your children, do you love your children?”

“Yes!” She was furious. Her voice broke.

“Then why in God’s name don’t you get them? It’s unnatural! How is it that Charlie can keep them from you?”

“I gave them up!” she shouted. “I gave them up in exchange for my freedom. There! Make sense out of that if you can!”

She ran upstairs to her room and began to pack.

* * * * *

She made a one-way reservation to New York City and then she sat down and wrote a letter to Nina Spicer, the writer whose books about Lesbian life in New York had attracted her. She had almost forgotten Nina until her talk with Merrill Landon. Now, suddenly, the writer appeared to her as a possible starting place in her search. Nina knew New York; you could tell that from the books she wrote. She knew the Village, and she knew gay life both in and out of the Village. There was no reason to suppose she knew Laura, but perhaps she knew _of_ her, knew where she could be found.

Beth had been candid, in a way, with Nina. She pretended she was gay, even when she wasn’t sure of it herself. She painted a picture of herself as beautiful, lost, misunderstood, yearning for a passionate romance with any compatible female. When she wrote the words she believed them true and her belief carried conviction, for Nina answered her with a certain condescending kindness and sympathy.

So Nina Spicer had a passel of half-facts from which to form an opinion of Beth. And Beth knew even less of Nina—only what she could guess from the books: a half-dozen violent, lively, coarse stories, loaded with deaths and beatings and perversities. They had some of the interest of good newspaper reporting, with a sort of gusto in the gory details and a lot of tormented screwballs for characters. Occasionally the love scenes were moving; more often, blunt case histories, skillfully dissected.

Beth pictured her as a casual hard-headed girl, fast to take up an affair, fast to drop it; hard to know and only partly worth the effort. But she was grateful, terribly grateful, to Nina for her letters. She wished there were some way to know her without having to meet her, for she sensed a bridgeless difference between herself and Nina that might make enemies of them. But she needed help now and Nina was the only person she knew who could give it to her.

* * * * *

Beth escaped at mid-afternoon the next day, taking a bus from the Conrad Hilton on Michigan Boulevard to the airport. It was that simple. No one even saw her leave the house.

There was no crushing despair, no gnawing panic and indecision this time. This time she was on the last leg of the journey, the all-consuming quest to find Beth Cullison Ayers and make a human being out of her. Laura was at the other end.

But Laura was not in the Manhattan directory when Beth checked it at the airport.

_What if she died? What if she got sick and died, or left the country, or went to jail? What if she can’t stand the sight of me?_ But she banished such painful musings as fast as they came up. She couldn’t really believe in them or there would be more point in jumping out of the plane than riding it to New York.

* * * * *

She went directly to the Beaton Hotel on First Avenue near the U.N. Building. She remembered the name from the time she and Uncle John and Aunt Elsa had stayed there when she was a youngster of ten. It had seemed like the marvelous castle in the fairy tales to her then, and the name remained in her memory.

They gave her a room on the fourth floor. She took the least expensive one they had, the kind where you share the bathroom with two or three other rooms. Perhaps it was an unnecessary economy, but she had Merrill Landon’s sardonic warnings about money ringing in her ears and she wasn’t going to be caught spending hers foolishly.

She unpacked a few things and hung them in the closet, and all the while her heart was high and going a little faster than it should have. She was in New York. Laura was in New York. Things would work out, they had to.

And what if they did? What if Laura could be found, and fast? And what if she fell into Beth’s arms as though the nine years between them didn’t exist, their lives apart didn’t exist? Then what?

_Then_, Beth thought, almost timidly, _divorce. I’ll have to divorce Charlie. I’ll never get the children back. My children. My babies. My own flesh. But I’ll have Laura again._ Was it worth it? It had to be.

Quickly she went to the phone book, the Manhattan directory, and looked for Laura Landon. Maybe the one in Chicago was wrong. After following her shaking finger down several columns she got the answer she secretly expected; the answer the phone book at the Chicago airport had already given her: no listing. She sighed and lighted a cigarette. It was not going to be a cinch, this strange mission of hers. She checked the book again for Nina Spicer’s name.

Nina was there. With relief and some trepidation she dialed the number. It was ten-thirty in the morning, but the voice that answered was obviously newly roused from sleep. It was a low pleasant feminine voice, almost sultry. Beth liked it. It made her curious to meet the owner, curious to see what she looked like.

“Nina Spicer, please,” she said.

“This is Nina.”

“This is Beth Ayers, Nina. Do you remember me?”

“How could I forget? The girl with all the problems.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“Sure.” Her breezy lack of courtesy threw Beth for a moment.

“Did you get my note?” she asked.

“I did.”

“Could we meet for lunch?” _Damn, I sound like a question box_, Beth thought. But Nina was playing things her way. Beth had to go along.

“Let’s make it dinner. I’m tied up at noon,” Nina said.

“Okay. You’ll have to name the place. New York is all new to me.”

“Where are you?”

“The Beaton.”

“Good enough. They have a decent bar on the top floor. I’ll pick you up in the lobby about four-thirty. We can go on from there.”

“Fine.” Beth was both repelled and attracted by the girl on the phone. The voice was lovely, but the attitude was hardly warm and welcoming. Curious, amused, a little supercilious, somewhat intimidating.

Beth hung up. She wasn’t afraid of Nina, just on her guard. And she was so eager to meet her, to ask her about Laura, that the day dragged unbearably. She was too excited to rest. She ended up writing letters, one to Merrill Landon, one to Cleve.

“Did you have much trouble with Vega?” she asked Cleve reluctantly. “Tell me everything’s okay. It would mean so much. I’ll send you a box number in a day or two. Don’t know how long I’ll be in New York.”

When there was nothing left to write and no one to write to, she walked. She saw the United Nations buildings and she poked around the shops. A tailor across the street from the Beaton sewed a button on for her and told her about his international clientele.

She was in her room by four, in case Nina should come early, but Nina was late. It was a quarter to five when she called Beth’s room, and Beth, almost beside herself with impatience, went down to the lobby to meet her. She looked for a light blue linen suit, which was Nina’s description of herself, and found her standing by a square pillar near the desk.

Beth walked straight to her and took her hand, pleased to see that her directness threw Nina offstride slightly. Nina expected to have that effect herself, mainly by fixing people with a go-to-hell stare. But Beth was not interested in Nina for Nina’s sake and it made her less susceptible to Nina’s notions of who was running the show.

They went directly up to the bar, speaking softly, feeling their ways with one another. They ordered Martinis.

“How long will you be in New York?” Nina asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“A lot of things. You, maybe.”

Nina smiled at her Martini glass. She was not a pretty girl, though her eyes were green and well shaped, and she wore her brown hair long in a soft bob. Her nose was too sharp and prominent and her mouth too small and irregular to be pretty, but she had a nice figure. Unusually nice, Beth had noticed on the way up in the elevator.

“What have I got to do with how long you stay in New York?” Nina asked, sizing her up silently. “You don’t even know me.” She spoke suggestively, with the hint of a smile on her face, as if she had only to keep leading a little and Beth would soon take a pratfall.

“I’m looking for someone,” Beth said. “I thought you might be able to help me find her.”

“Oh. Romance?”

“No,” Beth lied, speaking briefly and annoyed at Nina’s tone of voice.

“You’re not at all horsey, are you?” Nina said, changing the subject suddenly and grinning.

“_Horsey?_” Beth stared at her. “Should I be?”

“Frankly, yes. I got the impression from your letters.”

“It’s not the impression I meant to give.” Beth didn’t like Nina’s expression. It was too cocksure, too well acquainted with all the ins-and-outs of gay life in New York City that Beth yearned to know herself. She felt suddenly reluctant to bring Laura’s name up. Maybe later in the evening, if Nina got more congenial.

“So you’re leaving your husband, hm?” Nina said. It was part of her technique with people to startle them, embarrass them, leave them stammering.

“I didn’t say that,” Beth protested.

“You don’t need to. Your letters said enough. He isn’t here in New York, is he?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean I’m leaving him.”

“From the things you wrote me, I’d say you could hardly wait to ditch him.”

“I haven’t written you for a while,” Beth said in a chilly voice. “Things change.” Beth was being played with, to see if she would snap or take it in stoic silence. She was aware of this, aware that no matter how she reacted Nina wouldn’t care—just as long as there was some reaction. Nina didn’t give a damn for anything else. It was seeing people squirm, seeing them enmeshed in their own poor little problems that amused her. Beth was a good case history. And she was new and different to Nina. She would help to pass the time. She might even show up, slightly distorted, in Nina’s next novel.

Beth made up her mind to ignore it. Nothing mattered but finding Laura, and if Nina could help, Nina would have to be catered to.

They had another Martini and then Nina took her out to dinner. It was a little place down in the Village, but expensive; the tourist trade had discovered it. But the food was excellent. Beth ate gladly. The lack of rest and the Martinis made a bad combination, and she felt a little slap happy.

“I want to learn my way around down here,” Beth said. “I want to get to know the Village.” Just being in it gave her a tingle of hope, of excitement. The Village. The end of the rainbow. How she had wondered about this place! And Laura had lived here; Laura knew it, too. Perhaps better than Nina.

“Sure,” Nina said. “Sure you would. Just like the rest of the tourists.”

“I have a special reason.”

“What’s her name?”

Beth finished the drink beside her, distinctly nettled. “She may not even be here,” she said tightly. “I lost track of her years ago. The last I heard she was in New York.”

Nina put her head back and laughed and Beth knew, with tongue-tied resentment, that she was being laughed at again.

“So you gave up your husband and kids to come on a wild goose chase after your long lost love,” Nina said. “How romantic! That’s why you wanted to meet me, I suppose. So I could lead you to her.”

She laughed again and Beth thought with disappointment that she could never like this peculiar girl. It was apparently not possible for Nina to be friendly. You made her acquaintance and then you either knuckled under to her or else you had to drop her. One way or the other she got a good show, and that was all she wanted out of life, besides a few affairs. She didn’t need friends and she didn’t especially want them. Lovers, yes. Friends, no. Lovers kept boredom out. Friends let it in. At least, that was the way Beth sized her up.

Somehow the mere idea of exposing Laura’s name to the malicious laughter of this worldly girl who faced her over the dinner table disheartened Beth. She couldn’t do it; not just then. She looked at the writer, feeling sure that Nina would tolerate her good humoredly as long as Beth was still “new,” still good for laughs. And Nina looked back at her, always with her mocking little smile, so different from Jean Purvis’s endless good-hearted grin.

Physically Nina and Beth pleased each other. Nina took in her visitor’s long strong limbs, well shaped and smooth, and her intense violet eyes. She was ever so slightly, even fashionably, boyish. And Nina laughed softly to herself at the idea of filling Beth full of moonshine and bull and letting her find her way out of the mess.

After dinner Nina took Beth around to some Lesbian bars. It was the first time in her life that Beth had ever been in such places. They recalled scenes from Nina’s novels to her and she asked ingenuous questions, unaware of the fact that her voice carried too far, far enough to make one or two other customers smile.

“Not much noise tonight,” Nina said, after shushing her. “Monday night,” she explained. “Always dead.”

Beth was thinking, _What if Laura’s here somewhere? At least she’s been here before. Did she meet people here? Fall in love?_

They took in three places. The first was another tourist trap. There was a long dark bar in front and a dining room with sketchy floor shows in the back. No show on Monday nights. But the waitresses were interesting. Beth found herself staring at them in fascination, as they lounged against the walls waiting for the sparse crowd to fill out. She even wondered if they drank orange juice in the morning like everybody else. It shocked her to realize how far out of her depth she was, how far removed from her collegiate sophistication. She wondered how obvious it was to Nina, but a glance at her revealed only the supercilious little smile.

Nina watched her closely and her scrutiny made Beth nervous. _She wants me to put my foot in my mouth_, Beth thought, and it made her stammer a little. But it didn’t stop her from asking questions.

Beth was surprised to see so many men sitting at the bar. “Who are they?” she asked. “Johns?” She remembered the word from one of Nina’s novels and she asked her question in a firm clear voice that made Nina duck and laugh.

“Quiet, for God’s sake, they’ll think we’re cops,” she said. “Or a couple of gaping hayseeds.”

“Well, are they?” Beth said. “Do they hang around gay girls all the time?” But she lowered her voice.

“Um-hm,” Nina said, her eyes wrinkled at the corners.

In the next place there were only women, except for the man behind the bar, and he apparently enjoyed the confidence of the girls he served. There was only a handful of young women there when Beth and Nina arrived, and Beth looked them over quickly, always with Laura’s lovely face in her mind. But Laura wasn’t there.

Nina seemed to know everybody. She was getting more gregarious as she had more drinks. Not loud at all, just bold; bold in the way she looked at people, in the things she said.

“So you want to go back to your husband,” she needled Beth.

“I didn’t say that, either.”

“You don’t say much, do you?” Nina laughed. “What’d you get married for in the first place if you’re gay?” she said. “Think it would cure you?”

“I didn’t know I was gay,” Beth said.

“You seemed to in your letters.”

“They were easier to write that way.”

Nina laughed at her and called one of the waitresses over. “This is Billie,” she said to Beth, and the girl sat down and talked with them. She was extremely pretty; very small and dainty-looking, but with cropped hair and a decidedly aggressive swing in her walk. She spoke softly, however, almost timidly, and left the bulk of the conversation to Beth and Nina.

“Beth is looking for her long lost love,” Nina said, pleased to see the consternation her announcement created in Beth. “What’s her name again?” She glanced at Beth.

“Maybe she comes in here,” Billie said helpfully. “I know them all.”

“I doubt it,” Beth said.

“Come on, her name,” Nina demanded.

“She’s not here,” Beth said, feeling cornered and stubborn. She hated the phrase “long lost love,” so lightly, even sarcastically, spoken.

“So maybe she comes in other times,” said Billie, innocently unaware that Beth and Nina were sparring with each other.

“Bring us another drink, will you, Billie?” Nina said, still staring Beth down. As soon as the girl had left their table she leaned over and said confidentially to Beth, as if making it up to her a little, “Do you like her?”

“I don’t know her,” Beth said warily.

“She likes you,” Nina said. “She’s been cruising you like mad since we came in.”

“Cruising me?”

“Looking you over, sizing you up.”

Beth didn’t believe her. Nina only wanted a rise out of her.

“She wants to be a boy,” Nina said. “She boards with a family on Bleecker Street. She thinks _they_ think she’s a boy. She always wears pants.”

“She had on a skirt tonight.”

“That’s because she has to wear one in here. City ordinance. No women in bars in pants. But she won’t wear the skirt to work. She carries it in a paper bag and changes in the john.”

“She’s crazy if she thinks she can pass for a boy,” Beth said seriously. “She can’t be over five-feet-three. And she’s so pretty. Her features are very feminine.”

And again Nina laughed at her. And again Beth realized she was being made a fool of. Was any of it true? Was Billie so blind as to think she could transform herself into a boy with a pair of pants? Or was Nina showing her at least part of the truth, a sad, even pitiful, intensely interesting little corner of life, cut from the Village pattern?

At the last bar there were other men, but they never seemed to join the girls at the tables. They rather intrigued Beth, who wondered why they spent all their free time sitting quietly on bar stools watching the flirtations, the loves, the dancing and socializing of these women they could never touch. Some of them seemed to know the girls and were greeted affectionately with a nickname or a slap on the back. But they never presumed to follow a girl or to talk before they were spoken to. It was their solitary pleasure simply to watch, and now and then to be permitted a few words, a little sharing of this odd way of life.

Beth observed one who seemed particularly pathetic. He was overweight by quite a bit, balding, and with blue pockets under his eyes, and he looked not only sad but outright bored—something none of the others did. She wondered why he bothered to come by at all if it depressed him so. His face stuck in her mind later, and she pitied him. This third and last place they were in had a larger clientele than the others, probably because it was eleven o’clock by the time they got there.

Beth was absorbed by it. She wanted to wander all night around the Village, look into all the windows and share all the secrets. Behind some curtain, in some doorway or shop window, she might find Laura.

But when she stood up suddenly to go to the ladies’ room she realized with a start that she was drunk. Quite drunk. Nina had been telling her to quit for some time.

“You don’t want to be hung over tomorrow,” she said.

But it was so condescending, so solicitous for the “country cousin,” that Beth had defiantly ordered another. And another. She knew now, gripping the table with both hands, that Nina was right, aggravating though her attitude was. Beth should have stopped early in the evening.

Nina appraised her skillfully. “You’re going to feel like hell in the morning,” she said. “Too bad. I was going to take you out for lunch, too. One of my favorite places.”

“I’ll make it,” Beth said. She _would_ feel rotten, all right—that was a cinch. But she’d go. She had to learn her way around here somehow, and doing it with Nina, however embarrassing or even upsetting, seemed safer than going it alone.

They drove home in a taxi, and Beth was disconcerted to find that the warmth and closeness of Nina’s body in the rear seat pleased her. Nina said nothing and that made it easier to enjoy her. When she opened her mouth it threw Beth on her guard automatically and destroyed the sensual pleasure.

Beth left her with a queer feeling of dislike and desire that disturbed her sleep, tired as she was. She couldn’t fathom Nina and the only thing she thought it was safe to count on was that Nina was playing the game only for herself. She had no special favors to grant Beth Ayers, and when Beth ceased to interest her, that would be the end. Kaput. End of guided tour through the Village, and end of information, such as it was. Beth thought fuzzily that she had better ask Nina about Laura, whether Nina laughed at the idea or not, before Nina got it into her head to drop her. For, strangely, on this first night of their acquaintance, she felt the break coming. It was inevitable with a girl like Nina. Things never last, things aren’t meant to last. That would be her way of seeing it. So why not break it off as soon as it bores you? And Nina’s philosophy, Beth was soon to learn on her own, was typical of many a weary Greenwich Villager. It was not the attitude that comes with sophistication, but the attitude of boredom and disappointment.

Chapter Twelve

They had lunch the next day, though Beth felt gray with the hangover. And somehow, over the salad and crackers, she found she couldn’t speak of Laura. It was like trying to swallow a pill that was too big for her throat. She made the usual try at it, but it reached the back of her mouth and suddenly scared her, and she choked a little and finally gave up.

But several nights later, things changed. Nina unexpectedly asked her to come to her apartment for dinner. Beth had been hoping to see where she lived, how she lived, even what she ate. Nina was her link to the gay world, and though she couldn’t quite like her she still was deeply interested in her, in the things Nina could teach her. She accepted the invitation gratefully, and was astonished, when she got there, to see that Nina had cooked the dinner—or was in process of cooking it—herself.

Nina fixed her a drink and Beth stood in the tiny living room looking at the books that banked one whole wall from floor to ceiling. It made her feel more comfortable with Nina to see that she read or, at least, had books around. Beth liked to read and when she found others who did she ordinarily cottoned to them. It helped her get over her suspicions with Nina, the shadowy feeling of being _had_, of being taken for a ride, that she couldn’t quite pin down.

They ate in a corner of the bedroom, a room that was even smaller than the living room and literally gorged, like an overfed animal, with a bed, a desk, and three typewriters, to say nothing of the card table from which they ate.

“Apartments up here are damn cracker boxes,” Nina said. “If you want a good address, you pay for it.” She was in the East Seventies, just off Fifth Avenue, in a staid old building that was eminently respectable. It was like her to look down on the Village, part of her philosophy to get out of it, or, at least, to _live_ out of it. She could never stay away full time.

The dinner was good, to Beth’s surprise. Nina had put candles on the table and turned out the lights, and Beth began to feel, in spite of the shivers of warning that flashed through her when Nina smiled her knowledgeable little smile, a curious intimacy. After all, they had written many letters to each other. Nina had been kind, in her off-the-cuff way. Nina was being good to her now, taking time off from the book she was working on, showing her around.

_Maybe I’m taking the teasing too hard_, Beth thought, as she ate.

“Lord, I’m stuffed,” she said, when Nina offered her more. They smiled at each other and there was a small pause. Nina’s was a different kind of smile. There was almost warmth in it; at least, there was an absence of the mocking twist that bothered Beth so.

Perhaps out of uncertainty, or stubbornness born of unaccustomed shyness, Beth refused to drop her eyes first. And Nina, her bluff called, had to keep her own eyes on Beth. And somehow—as though the two pairs of eyes, one sparkling green, the other misty violet, were magnetized—they leaned toward each other. Beth reached out without consciously directing her hand and cupped it gently behind Nina’s neck, pressing the warm brown hair beneath it and pulling Nina closer still.

In utter silence, in the calm light of candles, over the steak plates, in the night of the city, they kissed each other. And leaned away again slightly to gaze at each other. Beth was inanely surprised to see that Nina’s lipstick was smeared. And Nina smiled, the good smile, and they kissed again. And then she suddenly rose, as if it occurred to her she was risking a true affection for Beth by playing with her, and began to clear the plates as if nothing had happened.

Beth picked up a stack of plates and followed her into the cramped kitchen. She put the slippery crockery on the little table and her arms around Nina, and a voice inside her urged, _Tell her. Tell her it’s Laura you’re looking for. Tell her now, before she gets bored and you lose her._

_But I can’t_, Beth thought. _She’d burst out laughing at me if I asked her now. It would ruin the mood, it would make her sarcastic again. And I’d hate myself for asking._

Nina slipped away from her and brought in the rest of the plates, and they did the dishes together, speaking softly of small irrelevancies, enjoying each other’s physical presence.

And still Beth hesitated, with that name on the tip of her tongue and some ineffable misgiving freezing it there.

Nina showed her an album full of snapshots she had collected, and startled her by pointing to a nice-looking crew-cut boy and saying off-handedly, “That was my husband.”

“Your husband? You never said you were married.”

“I’m not. I was. Besides, why should I tell you?” And for an instant Beth felt the wall of sarcasm rising.

“No reason,” she said. “What happened?”

Nina shrugged. “What happened with you and Charlie? It didn’t work. We divorced years ago.”

“Did you love him?”

“Hell, no. He was just a nice kid. We had fun.”

“And no children.”

“And no children. You were a fool to have children, Beth.”

“I love them,” she said humbly.

“Ha!” Nina cried. “Then what are you doing here? Why aren’t you with them?” After a suggestive pause she prompted, “Was the old long lost love _that_ tempting?”

In the midst of such sharp and painful needling Beth couldn’t speak Laura’s name. She couldn’t bear to have it laughed at and she clammed up for a while. When she could control her voice a little she tried to explain.

“I left my kids because I treated them badly. I was unjust, I was unreasonable, I hurt them over and over. Even if there had never been any ‘long lost love,’ I think I would have left them. The more I hurt them the worse I hurt myself until I thought we would all go crazy.”

Nina saw what a whirlpool of guilt and resentment she had stirred up, and, interested, she stirred it a little more. “So your solution was to dump the kids in the river and run to New York in search of a girl you haven’t seen in nine years? Not very sensible, was it?”

“Not very!” Beth conceded. “Not much fun, either,” she added sharply.

Nina dropped her smile at once. “I’m not laughing,” she said with a solemn face. But of course she was, inside, in the dark and silence of her private self. “My first husband and I had it worked out a little better than that, that’s all. You should have used your head.”

“Your _first_ husband?” Beth snapped. “Where in hell is your second?”

“Oh I mean my _ex_-husband. My _former_ husband,” Nina corrected herself.

“Well, say so, then.” Beth had caught her lying. She had never married. It simply pleased her ego to say she had, to make Beth feel that no experience Beth had ever had was unique or different from any Nina had had. Nina had to be one up on you, or at least on a level with you, or she couldn’t enjoy herself. Ordinarily she lied to this end with great skill, gracefully and casually. It gave Beth her first peace of mind with Nina to catch her in a blatant fib, to see that startled look flicker over her face.

Nina had the good sense to take it lightly. She passed over it, coming to the couch where Beth sat and settling beside her. She cocked one foot against the coffee table and said slowly, “Would you like to spend the night?” The conflict of desires on Beth’s face tickled her, restored her self-assurance.

“I don’t think so,” Beth said.

“Why not? Afraid of me?”

“Not of you.” _Damn her! She would make a test of it, a challenge. How can I turn her down now?_ But Beth wasn’t absolutely sure she _wanted_ to turn her down.

“Afraid of what, then?”

“You don’t really want me to stay.”

“Why do you think I asked you?” Nina had made her mind up. Beth was moody, she was pretty, she was new. Nina smiled at the swell of her breasts beneath the simple suit she wore and wondered how they looked undraped.

“Stay,” she said. And when Beth didn’t answer she added, “I have a nightie you can borrow. Go take a shower and I’ll get you a towel. Go on!” She shooed her as she might have a wayward child or a chicken, and Beth got up and obeyed her. It exhausted her to try to make a decision. It was easier to let Nina make it for her.

She showered and dried herself, gazing at herself critically in the mirror of the medicine chest, wondering just how big a fool she was to stay, to walk into whatever trap Nina might be laying for her. The small consolation was that you could only walk into Nina’s kind of trap once. Nina had a way of stripping your innocence off with both hands. It hurt, but Beth was learning. She sensed that the lessons Nina taught her would bolster her when she faced the gay world alone.

“Finished?” Nina called outside the bathroom door. “Here’s some pajamas.”

Beth opened the door a few inches and grabbed them and saw Nina grin at her modesty. She slipped the blue cotton pants on and found they were too short. The jacket was too tight through the bust and she laughed silently at the picture she made in the mirror.

Nina was waiting for her, curled up on the foot end of the sofa-bed she had pulled out from the love seat in the living room.

“You can sleep in here,” she said. “There’s plenty of room.” There was in fact room for two, but Nina had her own bed in the other room and Beth was relieved to know they would sleep apart.

She sat down on a pillow as far from Nina as the length of the bed would permit, and Nina fixed them both a nightcap. They drank in silence for a moment, and then Beth spoke. Maybe it was the liquor that prompted her, or the informality of the pajamas that were too small and looked silly, or just the need to know. At any rate, she spoke of the things closest to her then.

“How do you know if you’re gay, Nina?” she asked.

“Simple. You go to a fortune teller,” Nina said.

“Is that how you found out about yourself?”

“No.” And Nina’s face became more serious. “No, I did it the hard way.”

“What’s the hard way?”

“I got hurt.”

“Well, I’ve been hurt before,” Beth said. “A thousand times, a thousand different ways. It didn’t teach me a thing.”

“You weren’t a good student, then.”

“I don’t mean with women, Nina.”

“I thought you were in New York trying to find some woman.”

“I am. But she never _hurt_ me. I hurt her, but she never did a thing to me.”

“Well, there must have been others.”

There had been Vega, of course. But Beth couldn’t talk about her, and there seemed no reason to confess that sordid little chapter to Nina, who would only have laughed at it anyway.

“No,” Beth said. “No others.” She finished her drink quickly and Nina reached to refill it, but Beth held back.

“You mean that once nine years ago you had a fling with some girl,” Nina said, letting her hand drop, “and now you wonder if you’re _gay_?” She spoke with exaggerated incredulity and the curl in her small mouth was not kind. But it was amused.

“I loved her very much,” Beth said. “I just happened to meet my husband at the same time. I’ve been wondering all these years if I made the right choice. Lately, with things so bad at home, I thought seeing her again would help me make up my mind. Help me understand myself.”

“What makes you think she’ll be so eager to see _you_? Or help you out? What makes you think she cares a damn about you after nine years? Especially if you hurt her the last time around?”

“I have no idea how she’ll react,” Beth said. She resented the probing mockery Nina subjected her to, but if it was the price of knowledge she was ready to pay it. “I only know she was a very gentle, affectionate girl and when we parted there were no hard feelings.”

“Oh, swell,” Nina said. “She’s had nine years to sit and stew over it, remember. She’s known other women by now, if she has any sense. She can evaluate what you did to her. She couldn’t before when it first happened. Or weren’t you her first?”

“Yes. I was.” Beth glanced up at her. It was true. Laura had experience to measure Beth with now, but Beth had nothing but memories with which to judge Laura. Memories and one abortive sad little romance with a sick woman that only made Laura look the lovelier in her imaginings.

“She may look good to _you_,” Nina pointed out, “but you may look like hell to her. What if you barge in on a new romance? What if you finally find her and the poor girl is madly in love with somebody new? How glad do you think she’ll be to see you? You could louse up her whole life, throw a monkey wrench into her romance. What’s she supposed to do, laugh it off for old time’s sake? Welcome you with open arms and let the other girl go jump?”

In a burst of irritation and arrogance Beth leaned across the bed, her hands planted deep in the mattress just inches from Nina and the rest of her weight on her knees. “You know something?” Beth said. “I don’t give a damn. I don’t care what I do to her life, as long as she lets me back in it. I want her so badly I can see her in every female I meet. I can smell her the way she used to be after her shower at night when she was covered with scented powder and her hair was still damp. God, God, I can even taste her!”

And Nina twisted her mouth into a laugh. When Beth started to protest she put a hand up and exclaimed, “No, I believe you. You’re in love.”

Beth came down to a more reasonable sitting position. “Does that make me gay?” she asked seriously.

“For the time being.” Nina sized her up. “Why do you worry about it, Beth? Why are you so anxious for a label? What do you care what category you fall into? Just be yourself.”

“I don’t know myself.”

“Then just be however you feel like being and pretty soon the pattern will emerge.”

“I’ve been doing that for thirty years,” Beth said. “There is no pattern, there’s only chaos.”

“Well, maybe that comes from living with a man. Maybe you were never meant to settle down. I know some perfectly nice girls, all straight, who can’t live with men. They can’t live without them, either, of course. It’s a matter of balancing their lives between the men who are important to them, and the other things. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gay. It doesn’t necessarily mean you should go live with a woman and make love to her, just because you’ve made a flop of your first marriage. So maybe you got the wrong guy. Try somebody else.”

“It isn’t that easy. If you’d ever been married you’d know that.”

“I have been married. I told you,” Nina said quickly.

And Beth, seeing that she meant to stick by her fib, said, “Oh, sorry. I forgot.” She hoped Nina liked the sarcasm in her voice. Nina was used enough to dishing it out. But Beth was glad for her words. They put a new light on things, made her see them from an angle that had been closed to her when there had been just her own ramblings in the dark to guide her.

“If Charlie was a mistake, I’ll be paying for it all my life,” Beth said.

“Don’t be silly. What did you pay him for this trip?”

“A lot of misery, Nina. A lot of soul searching and misery.”

“You’ll get that out of life anyway, Beth. You have no corner on misery. That’s everybody’s business. That’s the growing-up process, you might say.” It sounded familiar to Beth. She wondered if she might have read it somewhere in one of Nina’s books. “Your long lost love can probably teach you a few things about misery. Anybody who’s gay knows that subject backwards and forwards.”

Beth reached over to a small end table to squash out her cigarette. When she sat up Nina unfastened the central, cornerstone, button on the tight pajama tops. It was accomplished with one quick movement that caught Beth off guard and the straining button yielded gratefully before she had time to catch Nina’s hand and stop her. At once, the whole thing came unbuttoned, the jacket top falling open over her bare chest.

Rather than protest or lose her temper or button the thing up again, or even use the gesture as an excuse for making a pass, Beth just sat there as if nothing had happened. Her expression, her attitude, were a dare to Nina. She gazed into space, apparently preoccupied, and Nina, who was fishing for a hard reaction, was nonplussed. Beth could sense it without looking at her. She continued to sit, inwardly amused and relieved to see Nina’s consternation. Beth’s full high breasts were disturbingly visible and Nina could neither move away nor mention them until Beth did something without making herself look idiotic. So Nina sat still beside Beth, both exasperated and interested. The gambit forced an unaccustomed respect for Beth on her. Perhaps Beth was something more than a passionate hayseed trying to scare up an old crush. Perhaps she was good for something besides laughs.

At last Beth leaned back into the pillows, settling down with a sigh, her arms and legs flung out and the unbuttoned jacket flung carelessly out on either side of her. She shut her eyes and said, “Forgive me, Nina. I’m beat.”

“Sure,” Nina said. Released by the words, she got up and took the glasses and full ashtrays into the kitchen. Beth listened to her moving about, smiling to herself. She felt better about Nina now, less at her mercy.

“I’ll be in the next room,” Nina said. “If you have any bad dreams, that is.”

“Thanks. I’ll remember,” Beth said. She heard Nina take a few steps and stop, and make a few odd noises with her tongue and then with an ashtray, as if to attract Beth’s attention, make her open her eyes. But Beth kept them shut, ignoring her. “Did you like the dinner?” Nina said.

Beth had. She had said so several times. So it was plain that Nina was looking for an invitation, a more intimate talk, a caress, maybe even a night in bed with Beth. And Beth was both surprised and flattered. But she had no idea of yielding her small lead then. Let Nina squirm. It was her turn.

“Yes, thanks,” she said noncommittally. “It was delicious.”

And seeing that she would get no further without stating her intentions in plain English, Nina gave up with a smile, put out the last light, and climbed into her own bed.

* * * * *

It was black early morning when Beth was slightly roused by a movement of the bedclothes. She continued to breathe slowly and softly as if she were still asleep, letting Nina slip under the blankets and lie beside her. Nina didn’t touch her and didn’t move for fully ten minutes, for fear of waking Beth.

They played cat and mouse for a while. Beth was at first dismayed to feel Nina’s presence. Not so much because she didn’t desire her as because she didn’t _want_ to desire her. She didn’t want to feel an attraction for this odd girl who was teaching her some valuable facts in such a humiliating manner. And yet she did. She couldn’t imagine living with Nina or sharing the things that mattered with her. But she could imagine, vividly, making love to her. She could see in her mind’s eye the well-shaped legs and trim torso, the long brown bob and green eyes, the small passionless mouth that nevertheless felt so strangely soft and sweet when they kissed over the steak plates.

It was a lovely body that lay next to her, not like the poor tortured thing that was Vega, with her heart all twisted inside by the mutilations on the outside. After a while Beth knew she wanted to touch Nina; she knew she would have to pretty soon if Nina didn’t make the move first. She wanted extremely to control herself, to withstand the temptation, to prove the stronger, and this desire gave her a few moments more of resistance. She wondered if Nina meant to sleep beside her all night, without making a single gesture toward her. Maybe she wanted merely to wake up in the morning with Beth beside her and enjoy Beth’s surprise. She wondered if it was just another trap to make Beth look silly.

Beth held her breath for a second and then her breathing came faster with the speed of excitement and even fear. Nina heard it, lying so near her in the bed, and she tensed, knowing there was nothing more she needed to do. But Beth startled her by reaching over her and snapping on the small pink lamp on the end table, flooding the room with a soft rosy radiance that made them both visible to each other. Beth couldn’t have explained the action; it seemed better somehow than simply grabbing Nina like an animal after bait. Maybe it was just another effort to resist, to do anything but touch Nina.

Nina rolled over on her back and stared at Beth, her eyes opening wider slowly as they became accustomed to the light. “What the hell did you do that for?” she asked. But she wasn’t angry.

“What the hell are _you_ doing in my bed?” Beth said.

Nina smiled. “I had a bad dream,” she said. And Beth had to smile too. Nina looked boldly at her. “You’re still unbuttoned,” she said. In the sudden intimacy it was possible to speak of it.

“I like it that way. Your pajamas are too small for me.”

Nina reached up slowly and put her hands on Beth’s warm breasts. “You can never know for sure if you’re gay, Beth,” she said softly, “unless you can respond to more than one woman. You’ll never know if you save yourself all for the long lost love. How do you even know you’ll find her? Maybe she’s gone for good and you’ll go home to Charlie and never know what you left him to find out.”

There was a pause. In a way it was true, and in another way it was a satin-covered, thorn-lined invitation to infidelity. Beth wondered if she would be unfaithful to Charlie by making love to a woman. It had never seemed so to her with Vega, probably because making love to Vega was a depressing chore. But Nina made her feel suddenly that she was a faithless woman. Nina made her feel that the things she was doing were both silly and wicked, and wonderful. At the same time, she made her believe they were natural and inevitable.

Beth looked down at her, with her soft brown hair scattered on the pillow. Her eyes were very green in the rosy light and her skin was very fair. Beth caught her hands, pulling them gently away from her breasts and kissing the palms. And then Nina took them back to slip out of her own pajamas. Beth watched her in silence, letting things happen as if she had no will to stop them; she didn’t even try.

Nina wriggled out of the bottoms and threw them on the floor, at the same time pushing the covers off her body with a couple of long quick thrusts of her legs. Suddenly, almost unexpectedly, for Beth was not well prepared for anything that happened that night, Nina was lying beautifully naked beneath her, her fine legs crossed at the ankles, her sharp restless eyes searching Beth’s.

Beth looked away and said in a low voice, “Do you want a yokel like me to make love to you? I don’t know what I’m doing, Nina. I’ll disappoint you.”

“You couldn’t, honey. Try it.”

“You mean, in the mood you’re in, _nobody_ could disappoint you.” Beth gave a sad little laugh. “It just happens I’m the one who’s with you.”

“In the mood I’m in, nobody could touch me but you.” Beth felt the smooth tingling drift of a hand over her back under the loosened pajamas. She bore it for a moment in silence and then, with a little groan, she struggled out of the tops, nearly tearing them in her hurry. She turned on Nina, leaning over her and bending nearer until her weight rested partly on her, and then she kissed her and a flash of pleasure, as sharp and dreadful as a sword, impaled her. She had wanted to tell Nina, “Don’t laugh at me. Don’t make me feel clumsier than I am. I think I could kill you for that.” But there had been no time and now there was no need.