Chapter III: Part 3

Her clothes were torn—what few she still had on. Her shirt was in shreds and the jacket appeared to be ripped down the back, though she was lying on most of it and Laura couldn’t be sure. She had nothing on from the waist down and there were several ugly bruises on her body. Laura felt nausea well in her. Beebo’s face was not so badly hurt. There was a cut over one eye that was beginning to swell but that seemed to be all. Laura clapped her hands over her mouth and stood weaving by the bed, afraid to leave and afraid to stay, feeling the sandwiches she had just shared with Tris like a load of poison in her stomach. Until Beebo opened her eyes and looked at her.

“Laura!” she said, with such passionate relief that Laura went to her instantly and threw her arms around her and wept.

She could feel Beebo’s tears on her face and she hugged her tight in a frenzy of sympathy and sorrow and whispered over and over, “Beebo, darling. Beebo, darling.”

It was a long time before either of them made sense; a long time before either could speak. Laura finally raised herself on one elbow so she could see Beebo better.

“What’s the matter with me?” she said softly. “I should be taking care of you. Crying isn’t going to do you any good.” She started to get up but Beebo caught her, and Laura was heartened to feel the strength in her arms.

“Stay with me, baby,” she said, almost fiercely.

“Let me clean you up, Beebo. Let me make you comfortable. Please, sweetheart.”

“Laura, I don’t need anything but you. Just let me feel you lying beside me and I’ll get over it somehow. I won’t lose my mind. If you’ll just stay with me. Please.”

There were tears in her voice and rather than make her more miserable, Laura obeyed. She put her arms around Beebo and cuddled against her in a way she had almost forgotten.

“Beebo, can you talk about it, darling? Can you tell me what happened?”

“Not now. Not yet.”

“I think you ought to see a doctor. You’ve got some awful-looking bruises.”

“You’re my doctor.”

“Beebo, I’m scared. I don’t even know what happened to you. I want to call a doctor,” she said urgently.

“I don’t _need_ a doctor,” Beebo declared.

“Please tell me what happened,” Laura pleaded. She lay at the edge of the bed, her face away from the floor and the grisly spectacle of the little dog she had never liked very well and now felt such a horrified pity for.

“It’s an old story,” Beebo said, her voice tired and bitter, but curiously resigned. “I don’t know why it didn’t happen to me years sooner. Nearly every butch I know gets it one way or another. Sooner or later they catch up with you.”

“Who catches up with you?”

“The goddam sonofabitch toughs who think it’s smart to pick fights with Lesbians. They ask you who the hell do you think you are, going around in pants all the time. They say if you’re going to wear pants and act like a man you can damn well fight like a man. And they jump you for laughs.... God.”

Her hand went up to her face which was contorted with remembered pain and fury. After a silence of several minutes while she composed herself a little she resumed briefly, “So they jumped me. They followed me home, hollering all the way. I hollered back. I—I was pretty tight and it was pretty noisy. I should have been more careful. I shouldn’t have brought them here, but I knew you wouldn’t be home so soon.... I didn’t work today, baby.” She said it guiltily, and Laura knew it meant she had spent the day at Julian’s or the Cellar or one of the other homosexual bars. But she didn’t condemn her or shout, “You’ll lose your job!” as she would have another time. She only listened in silence.

“So anyway,” Beebo said, after an awkward pause, “I came home early. About four-thirty, I guess. They just followed me in. Oh, I got in the apartment all right and slammed the door and locked it. But one of them came up the fire escape and he let the others in. Gave me this.” She pointed to the cut under her eye, and Laura kissed it. “I thought I’d gotten rid of them, baby, but those bastards followed me right up here and tried to prove what men they are.” She spat the words out as if they had a bad taste and then she stopped, looking at Laura to see how she was taking it. And Laura, lying next to her and holding her tight, was overwhelmed with helpless anger and pity and even a sort of love for Beebo.

Beebo felt Laura clinging to her and the flow of sympathy warmed and encouraged her. Finally she said, softly, as if the whole thing had been her fault and she was ashamed of it, “I’m not a virgin any more, Laura. Don’t ever let a man touch you.” She said it vehemently, her fingers digging into the submissive girl at her side and her hurt face turned to Laura’s. Laura let out a little sob and pulled closer to her.

“Beebo, darling,” she said in a broken voice, “I can’t stand to think of it. I can’t stand to think of how it must have hurt. I know I’m a coward, I can’t help it.” And then, in her anxiety to heal the bitter misery of it, she blurted, “I love you, Beebo.”

Beebo pulled her very close and lifted her face and kissed it delicately, almost reverently, for a very long time. At last she whispered, her lips against Laura’s lips, “I adore you, Laura. You’re my life. Stay with me, stay with me, don’t ever leave me. I can stand this, I can stand anything, if you’re with me. Swear you’ll stay with me, darling.”

Laura’s voice stuck in her throat. She couldn’t refuse. And yet she knew full well she would be swearing to a lie. It made her hide her face in painful indecision for a moment.

“Swear,” Beebo demanded imperiously. “Swear, Laura!”

“I swear,” Laura sobbed. She felt Beebo relax then with a sigh, running her hands through Laura’s hair.

Beebo gave a faint little laugh. “I never thought anything so rotten ugly could have a good side,” she murmured. “But if it’s brought us back together, I’m glad it happened. It was worth it.”

Laura was shocked. Beebo sounded a little unbalanced. “You can’t be grateful for anything that horrible, Beebo,” she protested. “You _can’t_, not if you’re in your right mind.”

“You can if you’re as much in love as I am!” Beebo said, looking at her. Laura was shamed into silence.

After a little while, Laura raised herself on an elbow. “Beebo, I’m going to call a doctor.”

“You’re going to do no such goddam silly thing.”

Laura lost her patience. “Now you listen to me, you stubborn idiot!” she exclaimed. “You’ve been badly hurt. It’s just madness not to have medical help, Beebo. You know that as well as I do. Don’t argue with me!” She cut Beebo off as she was about to protest. “Besides,” Laura went on, “you might want to prosecute them. How could you prove anything without medical evidence?”

“_Prosecute?_” Beebo stared at her and then she gave a short, sharp laugh. “Are you kidding? Who’s going to mourn for the lost virtue of a Lesbian? What lawyer is going to make a case for a poor queer gone wrong? Everybody will think I got what I deserved.”

Laura stared at her, disbelieving. “Beebo,” she said finally, as if she were explaining a simple fact to a slow beginner, “you don’t go into court and say, ‘I am a Lesbian.’ You don’t go to a lawyer and say it. You don’t say it to _anybody_, you nut! You say, ‘I’m a poor innocent girl and I was criminally assaulted and hurt and raped and I have medical proof of it and I can identify the man who did it!’”

Beebo turned on her side and laughed, and her laughter made Laura want to weep. “Not man, Bo-peep,” she said when she got her breath. “_Men._ Bastards, every last one. There were four of them.”

Laura moaned, an involuntary sound of revulsion.

“No thanks, baby,” Beebo said, her voice suddenly tired. “I’ve got enough trouble in the world without advertising that I’m gay. I always knew this would happen and I always knew what I’d do about it ... just exactly nothing. Because there’s nothing I _can_ do. It’s part of the crazy life I live. A sort of occupational hazard, you might say.”

Laura pleaded with her. “I just want to be sure they didn’t do you some awful harm you don’t know about, darling!” she said. “I’m no doctor, I can’t give you anything but bandaids and sponge baths and love.”

“That’s all in the world I want, baby,” Beebo smiled. “I’ll get well in no time.”

But Laura was too genuinely frightened to let it go at that. “What if they come back?” she asked. “Then they’d get us both.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” Beebo said and her face became hard. “Because I’d kill any man who laid a hand on you. Any man. I don’t care how. I wouldn’t ask any questions. I’d do it with whatever was handy—a knife or my own hands.” Laura started, staring at her. “No man will ever touch you, Laura, and live. I swear.”

Laura went pale, wondering how Beebo would react to a marriage between herself and Jack; wondering how much violence she was capable of. “All right, Beebo,” she said. “Will you—just tell me one thing? Why won’t you see a doctor?”

Beebo turned away from her then, petulant as a child. “I haven’t seen a doctor in twenty years, Bo-peep,” she said.

“Why?”

Beebo sighed. “Because they might find out I’m a woman,” she said quietly.

Laura covered her face with her hands and cried in silence. It was futile. Beebo _was_ a woman, no matter how many pairs of pants hung in her closet, no matter how she swaggered or swore. And while she could fool some people into thinking she was a boy, there were a lot more she couldn’t fool, and to them she looked foolish and rather pathetic. But Beebo was too sick to argue with. Laura was afraid of the way she talked, of the harsh way she laughed.

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” she said.

“We won’t talk about it at all,” Beebo said, facing the wall, her back to Laura. “Where were you tonight, Laura?”

Laura swallowed convulsively before she could answer. “I was at the movies,” she said.

She waited for Beebo to question her further, but there was no questioning.

“I guess I’d better wash,” Beebo said. She rolled over and looked at Laura. “Do you really love me, baby?” she asked, and her eyes were deep and clouded.

“Yes,” said Laura with a sad little smile, afraid to say anything else.

Beebo gazed at her for a while, returning the smile. “Thank God,” she whispered, her hand caressing Laura’s shoulder. And then she said, “Where’s Nix?” She started to get out of bed but Laura stopped her.

“They hurt him, Beebo,” she stammered.

“Hurt him? How?”

“They—darling, I don’t know how to tell you—please, Beebo!” she cried in sudden fear as Beebo pushed past her. She stopped at the edge of the bed, staring with huge eyes at her little pet.

“I didn’t realize—it was so bad,” Beebo blurted inanely.

“He’s dead,” Laura whispered.

“Oh. Oh, that was too much. Too much....” Beebo stared at him, her face almost stupid with sorrow. She didn’t scream as Laura had, or turn away sick. She just gaped at him for a while with Laura clinging to her and murmuring, “It’s all right, darling, it’s all right,” because she didn’t know what else to say.

Beebo got off the bed and went to him, kneeling beside the ruined little body, and picked him up in her arms.

Beebo looked at Laura with the blood running all over her and there was grief on her face. “He was just a dog,” she moaned. “Such a little dog. There was nothing queer about _him_!... And he could talk, too.” She almost shouted it and Laura waited, trembling, for her to move.

“He was so sweet, Laura,” she said with tears coursing down her face. “You never liked him much, but he was such a good dog.”

“I loved him, Beebo, he was a part of your life,” Laura protested anxiously.

But Beebo ignored it. It was half a lie, spoken in affection, but still a lie. “I could always talk to him and it seemed as if he understood,” Beebo said. “I know you thought I was crazy. But there were times when I had to talk to somebody and there wasn’t anybody. Only Nix. I had him for seven years ... since he was six weeks old.” And she clutched him to her and wept and Laura looked at her, all bloodied and heartbroken, and thought, _She feels worse about the dog than about herself_.

“Now that he’s gone ... at least we’ll have one less thing to fight about.” Beebo looked very pale and odd. “Won’t we, baby?” she said.

“I—I guess so,” Laura said. _She’s cracked!_ she thought. She went into the living room then, leaving Beebo alone for a few minutes, and called Jack. He was alone.

“Jack, I don’t know how to tell you. I—they raped Beebo.” Her voice was low and shaky.

Jack wasn’t sure whether she was kidding or not. He wasn’t even sure he heard her right. “Lucky bitch,” he said. “I wish they’d rape me instead. I’m never in the right place at the right time.”

“I’m serious, Jack.”

And when he heard the catch in her throat he believed her. “_Who_ raped her, sweetheart?” he said, and the levity was dead gone from him.

“She doesn’t know. Some hoods. God knows who they were.”

“Did you call a doctor?”

“She won’t let me!” Laura’s voice rose with indignation. “Of all the nonsense I ever heard in my life! She’s afraid the doctor will find out she’s a female. I think we’re all going crazy—” But she felt Beebo’s hand then taking the phone from her, and she surrendered it without arguing and went to the couch and collapsed.

“Jack?” Beebo said. “I’m all right. It looks worse than it really is. I’ll live.” The front of her was sticky with Nix’s blood.

“You talk like it happens all the time,” Jack said with scolding sympathy. “Like getting you teeth drilled, or something.”

Beebo smiled wryly. “How is it you always know just what to say to a girl, Jackson? Make her feel real swell?”

“How is it that you’re such a goddam prude you won’t let a doctor examine you? The doctor doesn’t give a damn what sex you are.”

“They killed Nix.” She threw it at him unexpectedly, silencing him about the doctor. And she described him with such detail that Laura didn’t want to listen. She got up and went into the bedroom to escape the conversation.

Beebo joined Laura on the bed ten minutes later, wearing her men’s cotton pajamas. Laura was too tired and weak to move. Beebo undressed her where she lay on the bed and dragged her under the covers naked.

“I don’t know what to do with Nix,” she said. “I’ll have to figure something out in the morning.”

They lay in each other’s arms, absorbed in their own thoughts. Laura’s mind was a potpourri of vivid impressions. She would never forget the bloody little dog, nor the fragrant skin of the Indian dancer, nor Beebo’s misery, nor those sinfully sweet kisses she stole from Tris....

“Jack’s coming over tomorrow,” Beebo said in her ear.

“Good.”

“Why ‘good’?”

“He’ll help us. He’ll make you see a doctor and he’ll do something about Nix. I don’t know, I just feel better with him around.”

“If I didn’t know for goddam sure how gay you are, baby, I’d hate that guy.”

Laura had to laugh. “Beebo, if you get jealous of Jack I’ll send you to a head shrinker.”

“Okay, okay, I know it’s nuts. But you talk about him all the time.”

“I’m very fond of Jack. You know that. He brought us together, darling.” And she said it so gently that Beebo clasped her tighter and was reassured.

Laura slept, finally. But Beebo could not. She spent the night with her arms around Laura, taking her only comfort in Laura’s nearness and the sudden apparent return of her affection.

* * * * *

Jack came at eight-thirty. It was a Saturday morning and he had the day to spend. With his usual detachment he wrapped Nix up while Beebo was dressing. He carted him down the stairs in a garbage pail and left him for the morning pickup in a trash bin, well hidden in a shroud of papers. When Beebo came into the kitchen a few minutes later he just said, “He’s gone. Don’t ask me about it, Beebo. It’s all over.” He found it almost as hard to talk about as she did.

“Damn you, Jack,” Beebo said feebly. But she was glad he had done it for her. She felt lousy. All the excitement and anger that had sustained her the night before were gone, leaving a lassitude and nausea that swept over her in waves. Laura made her go back to bed and fed her breakfast from a tray.

“Don’t leave me, baby,” Beebo begged and Laura promised to stay near by. But as soon as Beebo had swallowed a little food and kept it down, she fell asleep, and Jack pulled Laura to her feet and dragged her, whispering protests, into the kitchen.

“How can I talk to you in there?” he demanded and fixed them both some coffee.

Laura drank in silence, listening to his rambling talk with one ear, gratefully. She thought of Tris and wondered whether to confess to Jack about the dancer or keep it a secret. She knew he wouldn’t like it.

“Beebo acted kind of crazy last night,” Laura said. “I think she felt worse about Nix than about herself.”

“No doubt she did. But pretty soon she’ll feel her own aches and pains. Maybe I can find her another hound somewhere. I just hope to God she doesn’t use this thing to make a prisoner of you, Mother.”

“A prisoner?”

“She was getting pretty desperate about you, you know. I think that has a lot to do with all the drinking.”

Laura realized then that he didn’t put a shot of booze in his coffee. “You’re still on the wagon!” she said.

He swirled his coffee reflectively. “I remember,” he said, “when Terry was giving me the works a few months back. I nearly drank myself to extinction. Beebo’s not above trying it herself.”

“Oh, God, that was awful!” Laura said, remembering Terry.

Terry had been enough to drive a strong man mad. If he had been nasty about it Jack could have stood it better. He could have preserved his self-respect and he might have had the strength to kick Terry out sooner than he did. But Terry was nice. He was delightful and cooperative. He was unfaithful, he was taking every cent Jack made as Jack made it, and he was hardly ever home.

But Jack was in love with him; angrily in love with the wrong person, sticking to a doomed attachment as if every new shock and every unexpected pain only strengthened his need for the boy.

Jack knew it was hopeless. He knew it was draining his strength and making a coward of him. In his mind the whole sad farce of the thing was perfectly clear. But he acted on his emotions in spite of himself, and as long as Terry loved him he couldn’t let him go.

Curiously enough, Terry did love him. Jack was home base to him; Jack was security. Jack paid the bills and bolstered him when he was low, and no matter how rough and rotten the rest of the world might get, good old Jack was always there, always the same.

But the end had to come. There was never enough money, there was never enough understanding, there was never enough of the right kind of love. It took just one sharp explosion of acid resentment one night, when Jack caught Terry cheating after two years of bitter suspicions, to blow them apart. It was almost too painful to think about afterwards.

It was over now, of course. Terry was gone. But the ache for him and the loneliness, even the desire to be tormented remained.

“You never heard from Terry, did you?” Laura asked.

“No. He took his things and left and I haven’t heard from him since. Makes me think he must have left New York.”

“Do you still want him?” She asked it not to hurt him but because she knew he had to say it now and then or die of it.

“Of course I want him,” he said briefly. “Drink your coffee. Your patient is howling for attention.”

5

_Three weeks_, Laura wrote in her diary, sitting in the living room while Beebo slept. _Three weeks of this, and if it goes on much longer I’ll end up hating her. I felt so sorry for her at first. It was such a cruel thing and it hurt her terribly. But she’s well now—I know she is. She’s lying around getting fat and drinking like a fish and not working. If she doesn’t get back to work soon I’ll lose my mind. And she’ll lose her job for sure. They’ve been calling all week._

Laura hadn’t minded being a nurse at first. She tended Beebo gently and made her rest and, being unsure herself and hounded by her patient to forget it, she never did call a doctor. But Beebo seemed to come out of it fast. Physically the scars healed quickly. At the end of a week she was up and around. She hadn’t had a drink since the day it happened, and she talked about going back to work the next Monday.

But then Laura came home late one evening and she found Beebo drunk.

“Where the hell have you been?” Beebo shouted at her when Laura came in and found her in the kitchen. “I’m sick and miserable, I’ve just been through hell, and you can’t even come home from work to make my dinner for me.”

Confronted with such a bombardment of nonsense, Laura wouldn’t even answer her. She undressed and took a shower, but Beebo followed her into the bathroom and went right on yelling. Laura had pulled the shower curtain but Beebo opened it and watched her bathe.

“Laura,” she said, “where were you?” No answer. “Tell me. _Tell_ me, damn it!” It was an order.

“Ask me like a civilized human being, then,” Laura said, turning around to rinse her soapy back.

“I’ll ask you any way I goddam please. I have a right to know.”

Laura turned the water off and eyed her coldly. “I had dinner with Jack,” she said. “He dropped in after work.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Call him.” She stepped out of her bath, cool and dripping and haughty as a princess, and Beebo burned for her.

“I don’t believe a word he says. He always lies for you. No matter what I ask him he’s always got an answer. I used to like the guy, but Jesus, it’s gotten so I can’t trust him any more. He’s always on your side.”

Laura wrapped herself in a towel and began to rub herself, but Beebo suddenly put her whiskey down and clasped her in a bear hug.

“Laura, darling, I felt so rotten today. And I looked forward so much to having you home. It’s so quiet and lonesome around here all day without Nix. I nearly go mad. Baby, I know I’ve taken up a lot of your time, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t _ask_ those bastards to rape me.”

Laura relaxed slightly in the embrace, since she couldn’t squirm out of it. “You felt better today, not worse, Beebo. You told me so this morning.”

“That was this morning. I got worse this afternoon,” she said petulantly.

“You got worse at exactly five-thirty when I was fifteen minutes late.”

“Where _were_ you?”

“With Jack. Beebo, you’ve been drinking. You promised me you wouldn’t.”

“If you’d been home I wouldn’t have to!” Beebo released her abruptly, picked up the whiskey glass with a swoop of her hand, and defiantly finished what was in it.

Laura cinched the towel around herself and approached Beebo. “Do you know what you’re saying, you nut?” she said. “You big fool? Beebo, answer me!” But Beebo turned her back and watched Laura with glittering eyes in the mirror on the medicine chest.

“You’re saying that you can’t stay sober without me, Beebo. Do you realize that?”

“I can’t stay sober if you don’t love me, Laura.”

“Oh, damn you, Beebo!” Laura almost wept with frustration. “You’re only saying that to make me feel guilty. To put the blame on _me_ instead of on yourself where it belongs! I didn’t give you your first drink, God knows. I don’t ply you with liquor. You’ve fixed it with your conscience so no matter when you get drunk it’s my fault. No matter how much you drink, you’re only drinking because Laura is such a bitch. Well, I won’t buy it! It’s a damn plot to make a prisoner of me!”

“A prisoner! Now where did little Bo-peep get that fancy idea?” Beebo’s eyes were narrow and sharp in spite of the whiskey. Her anger brought clarity with it. “That sounds like the kind of propaganda Jack would spout.”

“No—” Laura began, but Beebo silenced her with a menacing wave of her hand. Laura found herself trapped against the bathroom door.

Beebo put a hand up on the door on either side of Laura and looked down at her. “Now, suppose you just tell me what Jack said,” she said.

“What makes you think Jack said it? I can think for myself and you know it. And I _am_ a prisoner here!”

“You can’t think for yourself when Jack’s around. That bastard is the Pied Piper of Greenwich Village. He opens his yap and all the little fairies listen pop-eyed to whatever he has to say. Including you.”

Laura looked at her and found herself caught by Beebo’s spell again. Beebo was born to lose her temper. She looked wonderful when she did. It exasperated Laura to feel a bare animal desire for her at times like this.

“Jack said it. Come on. Jack said it, didn’t he?” Beebo insisted.

“All right!” Laura almost screamed. “Jack said it!”

She looked up at Beebo with embarrassed desire and to make her shame complete, Beebo saw it. And she knew she was in command again, even if only for an hour or so. Beebo was learning to live for those hours. The rest of the time nothing much mattered.

Beebo shifted support of her leaning body from her arms to Laura, lifted up Laura’s angry helpless face and kissed it. “Why aren’t you like this all the time?” she asked. And Laura startled her when she echoed, “Why aren’t _you_ like this all the time?”

“Like what, baby? Drunk?”

“No ...,” Laura hesitated. She didn’t quite understand what she meant herself.

“Mad?” Beebo asked.

“I don’t know.”

Beebo laughed. “If it’ll help I’ll get mad and stay mad, Bo-peep. I’ll get drunk and stay drunk. Would you like that?” She interspersed her words with kisses.

“No. I just—I hate it when you act like a spoiled brat, Beebo.”

“I never act like a spoiled brat.” Her voice was little more than a whisper now.

They sank to the floor where they were and made love then.

And even after Laura had finally fallen asleep, in her arms, Beebo felt a tide of renewed passion. She caressed Laura’s hair and back with her hands and thought, _If it can be this good it’s not over_.

* * * * *

Laura had left work meaning to go straight home. But as before she hadn’t gone far when she knew she was headed for Tris’s little studio.

Tris opened the door herself. She had evidently been practicing for she was dressed in tights and breathing hard. Her black hair was smoothed over her head, caught in back with a clasp and braided. The braid, heavy and shining, hung halfway down her back and swung like a whip when she whirled.

Tris paused for a moment when she saw Laura on her threshold and for an awful second Laura thought she might turn her away. But Tris smiled suddenly and said, “Laura. How nice. Please come in.”

“I just dropped by to say hello,” Laura apologized.

“That is not all, I hope?” Tris said, looking at her.

Laura felt an odd little twist of excitement. “Well ... I shouldn’t stay. I don’t want to interrupt your work.”

“Of course you do. That’s why you came,” Tris said, spinning reflectively in place, her weight shifting delicately to pull her around and around.

Laura didn’t know if she was being scolded or teased, if she should leave or stay. Tris stopped twirling and said, “I’m glad you came. I didn’t want to work any more anyway.”

Laura hesitated, wondering whether to believe her. But when Tris walked across the room to her and kissed her cheek she melted suddenly with pleasure. She stood quietly and let herself be kissed, afraid to return the compliment. She was very unsure of herself with Tris. Even the gentlest gesture seemed to irritate the dancer sometimes. Laura could only let her take the lead.

Tris turned away abruptly, her mood shifting. “Well, now you are here,” she said in her careful English. “What would you like to do?” It was a sort of challenge.

“I—I’d like to see you dance, Tris. Would you dance for me?”

“No.” She was pouting. “You are my excuse for not dancing any more today, Laura.”

“Maybe we could just talk for a little while, then.”

“We could ... but we won’t.”

Laura was at a loss for words. She stammered a little and finally she blurted, “I think you’d rather have me go home.”

“I think Beebo would like you home more than I would. She doesn’t let you out very often, does she?”

Laura colored. “She’s not my jailkeeper,” she said.

“I don’t like this—this interference you force me to make in your love affair, Laura,” Tris said and surprised her guest. “I don’t know your Beebo, but I have nothing against her. Still, I do not imagine she will like _me_ very well if she finds out you are my guest now and then.”

“What do you care whether Beebo likes you or not?” Laura demanded, startled.

Tris broke into a charming smile then, as if to placate her visitor. “I want everybody to like me,” she said. “I suppose it is a compulsion left from my childhood.” And, as if she had made a guilty admission, she turned away abruptly saying, “Let’s go into the kitchen. If I stand in here I will feel obliged to dance.”

Laura followed her and sat down self-consciously. Tris fixed a plate of cookies and gave her a glass of milk. She smiled.

“I am hard to know, Laura. I am not very gracious. But I like your company.” Her smile was as warm and luscious as ripe fruit in the sun.

They finished the food over small talk about men. Laura was lost, silent. She just nodded agreement and listened with dismay. _She’s trying to tell me she doesn’t like girls_, she thought. _But it’s a lie!_

Tris rinsed the plates, watching herself all the while in one mirror or another. It was as if she felt herself on exhibition all the time, as if all those mirrors were scattered around to remind her of her own beauty.

Tris dried her hands and turned to face Laura. There was an awkward pause and Laura realized suddenly that she was supposed to get up and leave. They had had their small talk. She had been served food. That was all she could reasonably expect from her hostess, especially since she was an uninvited guest. She felt her heart contract a little in disappointment, and she thought with a flash of yearning of the intimacies of her last visit.

But she was too proud to overstay her welcome, especially after the way Tris had shown her the door last time. So she got up and said, “Thanks Tris. I have to go.”

“Oh?” It was merely polite.

“Beebo’s expecting me.”

“I see.” No protest. Tris followed her toward the front door. “Ask me over to your apartment sometime, Laura. You would make a much nicer hostess than I. Besides, I should like to see how your big roommate looks in pants. She does wear pants?”

“Yes, she does.” Laura turned to look at her curiously. “But she’s a jealous hellion.”

Tris leaned on the wall by the door, crossing her feet at the ankles.

“Does she know you have been here to visit me?” Her smile was sly, interested.

“No. I don’t think she even remembers you,” Laura said shortly.

“Ah! Flattering. Do you think it’s wise to make a secret of our friendship, Laura?”

“It’s either that or get my neck broken,” Laura said.

Tris laughed a little, as if the idea of such hard play amused her. “Laura ... would you like to stay a little longer?” she said. Her voice made it sound very inviting.

“I can’t.” Laura was upset by all the talk of Beebo.

“As long as you leave by eight it would be all right,” Tris said. “I have a date at eight.”

“With a man?”

“Certainly with a man. I have no secrets, Laura. I do not like to cheat, like you. You cheat with your Beebo by seeing me. But still—” she hunched her shoulders and smiled—“I like you. You like me. Perhaps it is worth the risk. You are the one who will get your neck broken, not me. I have no right to deny you your pain.”

Laura frowned at her. It was an odd thing to say. Tris put her hands on Laura’s arms and they stood that way, silent, for a moment.

At last Tris said, “Dance with me.”

“I don’t know how,” Laura said shyly.

“I am a teacher. I teach you. Come on.”

“I’m so clumsy, Tris.”

But Tris pulled her to the middle of the studio and put a record on. She stood for a minute in front of Laura as if trying to make up her mind where to grasp her, how to start. Laura felt impossibly awkward. But Tris made up her mind quickly and slipped her arms around Laura’s neck. Laura was two inches taller than she and Tris was obliged to look up at her when she spoke.

“We will just do it like the teen-agers!” she said. “There is nothing to it really. Stand in one place and shift your weight from one foot to the other, with the beat. That’s it. You’ve got it. That’s a good beginning.”

Laura couldn’t help laughing. “Even _I_ can do that much,” she said.

“Ah. Then there is hope. Next year at this time you will do the _tour jeté_.”

Laura had her arms around Tris at the waist and they swayed gently to the music, and suddenly all her suspicion and embarrassment faded. She became conscious of the tantalizing jasmine that emanated from Tris—from her throat and her hair and her breasts, barely covered by the bandeau. The black braid moved softly against Laura’s bare arms in back and Tris put her cheek against Laura’s, tilting her face up. Her lips were near Laura’s ear and she whispered, “You know, Laura, I must tell you something. You are a homosexual. Yes?”

Laura swallowed. “Yes,” she said.

“You should know then ... I am not. Not like you. I like the company of girls, yes. My dance pupils. Friends. But I love men. I love them. Do you understand?”

“No.” Laura shut her eyes and pulled Tris a little tighter.

“Well, then, I will explain. Men excite me. All men, I mean. The idea of men.... It is hard to say. But I would rather be with a man than with a woman. But now and then I meet a woman who interests me. And sometimes the interest goes beyond just talk. You see?”

“No.”

“Sometimes I want to kiss her. Or be close to her. But that is all. Now do you see?”

“No.”

Tris gave an impatient little sigh. “I am telling you I am not queer like you!” she said sharply and Laura winced with sudden pain. Tris felt it and she amended quickly, “That is an unkind word. You people call it gay. All right. _I_ am not gay. I like you, I like to talk to you and watch you move and sometimes I am moved myself to kiss you or be close to you, like this. Our bodies like this, all up and down. You see? But I don’t like to go any farther. Not with a girl. You are only the third girl I have felt this for. It will not happen again for a long time. Perhaps I will marry soon, and then it will never happen again.”

“Marry! Who? An Indian?”

“No!” she exclaimed almost contemptuously. “Another. He is _white_.”

“You’re full of contradictions, Tris,” Laura said, looking down at her in bewilderment. “You said you were gay and you married a gay boy.”

“Oh, yes. I did, didn’t I?” She looked trapped. “Well, I thought I was then. But I know now—positively—I am not.”

“But you said—”

“Such wonderful blond hair you have, Laura. I would give anything for such hair. Why do you always wear it wound up like that?” And she began to slip pins out of the bun, letting them drop to the polished floor, until the coil of gold came loose and Tris gave a delighted, “Ah!”

Laura felt the thrill go through her hard. She forgot her protests about Tris’s sex drive and pulled the dancer very close to kiss her full on the mouth. Tris yielded. With one accord they stopped dancing and just clung and kissed, swaying slightly. It lasted for long minutes—just kisses, soft and exploratory, but careful. Laura wondered vaguely, through the fog of lovely sensations, what miserable devil prompted this delectable girl to deny her Lesbian impulses. For Laura could tell that Tris enjoyed this love play as much as she. She encouraged it, even when Laura tried to stop, and pulled her back for more.

By eight o’clock they were lying on the big red silk couch in the bedroom, murmuring inanities to each other, discovering one another’s bodies and emotions through twin shields of clothes and caution.

“Will you come and see me again?” Tris asked.

“Are you inviting me?”

“Of course.”

“When would it be convenient?” She said it in clipped English, like the English Tris spoke, to tease her.

“It is never convenient. But come anyway.”

Laura laughed. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“No date tomorrow?”

“Yes. Every night.”

“Save a night for me, Tris.”

Tris gazed at her for a moment before she answered, “No.”

“Why not?”

“We do too much in these few short hours. What would we do with a whole night? I do not like to think.”

“I think of it all the time. I can’t think of anything else.”

“Ah, that is a very bad sign. I am sorry to hear you say that. You must not fall in love with me, Laura.”

“I’ll try to remember,” she said sarcastically.

“I am serious,” Tris said.

Laura didn’t answer her. She lay on her back and looked up at the small skylight directly over the bed. It was a square of violet—the last shade of fading day.

“I do not want you to fall in love with me, Laura,” Tris persisted.

“I hear you,” Laura said quietly.

“Well, why don’t you answer?”

“I don’t know how to answer, Tris,” she said, turning to look at her in the semi-gloom of the bedroom.

“What are your feelings for me?”

“Do you want a blue print?” Laura said, hurt. “I can’t spell them out for you. I don’t understand them myself.” But she understood them all too well. She had felt these pangs before for other girls—only two or three, including Beebo, but enough to make them familiar and unwelcome. But still exciting and irresistible.

Tris lay beside her, quiet for a while, and finally she said, “Do you know why I was not very glad to see you at first today?”

“No.” Laura reached across the bed to put a hand on Tris’s breasts, to feel what she could not see in the gathering darkness.

“I was afraid,” Tris whispered. “Of my own feelings. I do not like to become involved with women. It has always been unpleasant for me.”

“Do you still want me to come back and see you?”

“Yes.” She paused and Laura sensed a smile. “As long as I ask you to come back, Laura, you will know you are safe with me.”

“Safe?”

“I will put it another way. If a day comes when I do _not_ want to see you, it will be because I am in love with you. And that will be the end. From that day on we will never meet again, until I am cured.”

Laura had to smile. Who could take such a charming speech seriously? “All right,” she murmured and embraced the lovely dancer.

“Now you must go,” Tris told her. “My date will be here soon. He is always prompt.”

Laura got up without protest. But it was sweet to take the time to wind up her hair and know she was welcome. “Did you kick me out for the same boy last time?” she asked.

Tris had turned a light on and they watched each other in the mirror before which Laura was combing her hair.

“No. Another.”

“I hate him,” Laura said with a little smile. “And the rest of them.”

Tris gazed at her coolly. “How very foolish,” she said. And made Laura laugh.

They parted with a chaste kiss, and for the first time since they had met Laura felt as if she had a slim chance with this odd and irresistible girl who was still so much a stranger to her. She went home to her angry Beebo, her body tense with need. And later, when Beebo demanded her body, Laura surrendered promptly and helplessly.

* * * * *

Beebo, since the night of her attack, had become unbearably suspicious. Everything Laura did, everywhere she went, had to be reported in detail. She called Tris once or twice from work and Tris had bawled her out for not showing up. Laura was more pleased than sorry when Tris sounded jealous—while she bridled angrily at Beebo’s jealousy, she was thrilled with Tris’s.

Laura had strong doubts about Beebo’s illness now. She could have gone to work weeks ago. The bruises were nearly invisible; only a pale yellow shadow stained the spot where the worst had been. Beebo was using it as an excuse to sit around another week and take it easy and drink and bitch over the phone to Lili about her problems.

“I always hated that damn elevator,” she declared with her feet up on the coffee table in the living room and a drink in her hand.

“You make me sick!” Laura told her. “You’re _well_. Get up and go to work.”

Beebo looked at her watch. “At six-thirty in the evening?” she said, and laughed.

“I’m not going to support us both, Beebo,” Laura said. “And I’m sick and tired of playing nursemaid.”

To her diary Laura confided, _I am in love. I’m sure of it. The more I’m with Beebo the more I want Tris. Oh, God, how much I want her!_

* * * * *

Laura was desperate after two more weeks of Beebo. Beebo drove her frantic when they were cooped up together in the small apartment, as they were every night. And Beebo was wild for the love Laura denied her. The attack she had endured seemed to have touched off a burning core of violence in her that never went out.

When Beebo found the small steel strongbox on the closet floor with Laura’s diary inside, she pounded it with a stone to get it open but the lock didn’t break. When Laura got home from work and found the battered box on the coffee table in the living room she went pale with alarm, and Beebo, who was lying in wait for her reaction, exclaimed, “Damn it, I knew it. You sure as hell look guilty, Laura. What’s in it?” She kicked the box.

“Nothing.” Laura walked across the room but her legs felt weak.

“Open it, then.”

“No.”

“Where’s the key?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s your box, goddam it. You know where the key is! Why did you hide it from me? What are you ashamed of?”

“I’m under no obligation to show you everything I own!” Laura said frostily. “I’ll hide what I please.”

“You tell me what’s in it,” Beebo threatened, “or I’ll choke you. I swear I’ll choke you, you bitch.” She slammed Laura against the wall with one hand to her throat.

Laura gasped in panic. There was only one thing to do with Beebo in these moods and that was go along with her, stall, anything but resist her. That was too painful and Laura even feared that one of these days, with Beebo as crazy as she was, it might be fatal.

“All right,” Laura said through a tight throat. “Let me go.”

She rummaged for the key for ten minutes, knowing all the while that it was in the wallet in her purse.

“Don’t tell me you can’t find it,” Beebo said, watching her through narrowed eyes.

“I almost never use the thing,” Laura said as calmly as she could.

“You find it,” Beebo said. And something in the tone of her voice made Laura very frightened. _I’m getting out of here_, she thought to herself suddenly. _If I can just get out of this somehow I’ll leave her tonight and I won’t come back. I’ll go to Jack’s._

She turned and faced Beebo, desperate. “Beebo, it’s just some personal papers. It’s nothing you’d be interested in.”

“It’s exactly what I’d be interested in. I’d be even more interested in why you went white as a sheet when you saw I had it. Explain _that_ to me, Bo-peep.”

Laura pressed her teeth together in a small grimace of exasperation. “It’s my birth certificate and my baptism certificate and two insurance policies and some old love letters,” she said.

“Love letters from who?” Beebo demanded.

“Beth.”

Beebo put her head back and laughed. “Oh!” she said. “Beth! Good old Beth. Your college flame. I’m getting so I _know_ that goddam girl.”

“She was a lot more—” Laura began, her cheeks hot. She couldn’t bear to hear Beth laughed at, to hear that perfect love ridiculed.

“I know what she was,” Beebo said acidly. “She was beautiful. She was bright. She was a queen on the campus and a devil in bed. She was a success. She even liked men, the traitorous bitch. She was so gorgeous and so intelligent and so everything that she could do whatever she damn well pleased—even dump you like a sack of bricks. She loved you so much she got you kicked out of school and got married. To a _man_.” Beebo grinned at her, waiting for Laura to explode. But Laura only glared, too proud to spoil that memory with an ugly spat.

“Queen Beth was everything Beebo is not,” Beebo said. “You’ll never learn, will you? Love isn’t pure roses and romance, Laura. You can’t live with a girl, however much you love her, and still faint with joy every time she looks your way. It’s a shame you never lived with Beth like you have with me. You’d find out fast enough she is a human being, not a goddess.... Now, show me the letters.”

“Why do you want to read a bunch of miserable old letters?” Laura said, angry that she had to beg. “That’s all over, Beebo. It can’t do anything but hurt you.”

“I’m used to that, Laura. Anybody who lives with you has to be.”

“You lie!” Laura flared suddenly. They gazed at each other in electric silence for a minute. Then Laura said quietly, in a move to restore her safety, “Let me fill your glass.” She came to take it from her but Beebo held it away. “What are you trying to do, baby, get me drunk? Let’s see the letters.”

Laura sat down on the bed beside her. Maybe she could sweet-talk her out of the box. “Beebo,” she said. “There’s nothing in there you could possibly want to see or be interested in. Will you believe me?”

Beebo looked at her coldly and didn’t move. “The letters,” she said and held out a hand.

Laura sighed. “After dinner,” she begged. “Let’s at least eat in peace.” And before Beebo could answer she leaned over and kissed her lips. “I love you, Beebo,” she said, very softly and hopefully. And there were still times when she wondered if she might not speak the truth. But this wasn’t one of them. She spoke out of the need to save her skin.

Beebo swallowed the last of the drink. “Yeah,” she said. “The letters.”

Laura kissed her again. Beebo submitted to it without returning the kiss. “You’re not very subtle, Bo-peep,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Like what?”

“Like finding out you were cheating on me.”

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

“Jack.”

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

“Sure he’s a man. I know what he is.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Who’s that?” Beebo demanded.

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

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