Front matter (continued 2)

“Hell of a place to go looking for Mona,” he said. “I don’t know though, pal. It has to come sooner or later. It’s time you learned a thing or two. You’re naive, but you’re no fool. Go on—but go slow.”

* * *

Mona was not at the Colophon that night, nor for many nights afterward. In a way, Beebo was relieved. She wanted to meet her, but she wanted time to meet other people too, to see other places, and cruise around the Village without any pressure on her to prove things to herself. Or to a worldly girl like Mona Petry. Beebo was still a stranger in a strange town, unsure, and grateful for a chance to learn unobserved.

She would sit and gaze for hours at the girls in the bars or passing in the streets. She wanted to talk to them, see what they were like. She was often drawn to one enough to daydream about her, but she never mentioned it to Jack. Still, she was eagerly curious about the Lesbian mores and social codes. The gay girls seemed so smooth and easy with each other; talking about shared experiences in a special slang, like members of an exclusive sorority.

Beebo, watching them as the days and weeks passed, became slowly aware how much she envied them. She wanted to join the in-group. And she would watch them longingly and wonder if their talk was ever about her. It was.

A few of Jack’s friends, who had met her in his company, would come up and talk with her, and knowing for certain that they were Lesbians gave Beebo a vibrant pleasure, whether or not the girls themselves were exciting. Looking at one she would think, She knows how it feels to want what I want. I could make her happy. I know it. Even the word “Lesbian,” that had offended her before, began to sound wonderful in her ears.

She shocked herself with such candid thoughts, but that was only at first. Little by little, it began to seem beautiful to her that two women could come together with passion and intelligence and make a life with and for each other; make a marriage. She dreamed of lovely, sophisticated women at her feet, aware even as she dreamed that she hadn’t yet the savoir faire to win such a woman. But she was afire with ambition to acquire it.

She would walk into a bar, order a beer, and sit alone and silent through an evening. In her solitude, she seemed mysterious to the laughing chattering people around her. They began to point her out when she came in.

At first, ignorance and inexperience kept Beebo aloof. But she quickly understood that her refusal to be sociable made her the target of a lot of smiling speculation. When she got over being afraid of the situation, it amused her. The fact that she attracted girls, even ones she knew she would never pursue, was almost supernaturally strange and exciting to her. She submitted to their teasing questions with an enigmatic smile until she realized that one or two had worked themselves up to infatuation pitch over her.

There followed a period of elation when she walked into Julian’s or the Cellar and saw the eyes she knew had waited all night to look into hers turn and flash in her direction. She always passed them by and went to a seat at the bar. But each time she came closer to stopping and answering a smile or asking someone to join her in a beer. And still, she couldn’t find Mona.

The only wrong note in the tune was a boy, slight and fine-featured, who watched her and seemed to have persuaded himself that he loved her. He fell for her with an awkward crush that embarrassed them both. Often, at the end of an evening when he was pretty high, he would approach her and timidly offer to buy her a drink.

Beebo kept turning him down, kindly but firmly. He always flinched when she said no, and she pitied him. He had a gentle appealing face, fair in the way of extreme youth. She guessed he must be a couple of years younger than she, and wondered how he could buy drinks in a bar.

“I’m sorry, I’m just leaving,” she would tell him.

And he would watch her go, wistfully. He looked tired and malnourished, and she wondered once if it would offend him to be offered a free sandwich. She never quite got up the nerve to find out.

* * *

At home, Jack did not press her. But her silence regarding her activities at night worried him and put a strain between them. She knew that Jack was waiting for her to talk about it, and she wanted to be honest with him more than ever. He had been patient, humorously tolerant with her. And she knew that he was a man of the world. He had made it clear that he enjoyed the friendship of many delightful gay women, that he approved of them and that he thought she might enjoy their company.

But he had not said, “Oh, come on, Beebo. You’re gay. Admit it. We both know it.” He had, however, come closer than she knew to saying it. And it was hard for Jack himself to realize that his hints and jokes were couched in a language still foreign to her in many ways. Often they went over her head or were taken at face value; saved and worried over, but never fathomed.

So she found herself hung up on a dilemma: she was sure of his friendship as long as she was an observer of the gay scene, not a sister-in-the-bonds. But what would he say if she told him she had a desperate crush on Mona Petry with the long black hair? Or that she got dizzy with the joy of being in a crowd of gay girls; near enough to touch, to overhear, to look and look and look until they whirled through her dreams at night.

Would he say, You can play with the matches but don’t get burned? Would he pity her? Turn on his wit? Would he—could he—take it with the easy calm he showed in other circumstances?

She thought he could. She felt closer to him now that she had spent nearly two months under his roof. She knew his heart was big, and she had seen him in a Lesbian bar talking with his friends there. He was not being condescending. He valued them.

Perhaps more than anything, she was persuaded by the need to talk it out; the need for help and comfort. And that was Jack’s forte.

* * *

Beebo and Jack were watching a TV show one evening when he asked her, during the commercial, why she wasn’t going out that night. “Don’t tell me you gave up on Mona,” he teased.

Instead of answering, she told him about the boy who was in love with her. “His name is Pat,” she said. “The bartender told me. He looks hungry, as if he needs to be cared for.” She laughed. “I was never much for maternal instincts—but he seems to bring them out.”

“I’d like to meet him. He might bring mine out, too,” Jack said.

“Why don’t you come with me Friday? He’s always at Julian’s.”

Jack looked away. “I’ve been trying to give you a free rein,” he said. “You don’t want me along. I’ll find him myself.”

“I do want you along,” she said. “I like your company.”

“More than the girls’?” he grinned.

She felt herself tense all over. There had been so many chances lately to talk to him, and she had run away from them all. Now, she felt a surge of defiance, a will to have it out. He had a right to know at least as much about her as she knew about herself. He had earned it through his generosity and affection.

“I read a book once,” she said clumsily. “Under my covers at night—when I was fifteen. It was about two girls who loved each other. One of them committed suicide. It hit me so hard I wanted to die, too. That’s about as close as I’ve come to reality in my life, Jack. Until now.”

He leaned over and switched off the television. The room was so quiet they could hear themselves breathing.

“I was kicked out of school,” she went on hesitantly, “because I looked so much like a boy, they thought I must be acting like one. Chasing girls. Molesting them. Everything I ever did to a girl, or wanted to do or dreamed of doing, happened in my imagination. The trouble was, everybody else in Juniper Hill had an imagination, too. And they had me doing all these things for real.” She shut her eyes and tried to force her heart to slow down, just by thinking about it.

“And you never did?” he said. “You never tried? There must have been girls, Beebo—”

“There were, but all I had to do was talk to one and her name was mud. I wouldn’t do that to anybody I cared for.”

Jack stared at her, wondering what geyser of emotion must be waiting to erupt from someone so intense, so yearning, and so rigidly denied all her life.

“My father tried to teach me not to hate myself because I looked like hell in gingham frills,” she said. “But when you see people turn away and laugh behind their hands.... It makes you wonder what you really are.” She looked at him anxiously, and then she said it. “I’ve never touched a girl I liked. Never made a pass or spoken a word of love to a single living girl. Does that make me normal, Jack?... And yet I know I could, and I think now I will, and God knows I want to desperately. Does that make me gay?” She spoke rapidly, stopping abruptly as if her voice had gone dead in her throat at the word “gay.”

“Well, first,” he said kindly, “you’re Beebo Brinker, human being. If you are gay, that’s second. Some girls like you are gay, some aren’t. Your body is boyish, but there’s nothing wrong with it.” His voice was reassuring.

“Nothing, except there’s a boy inside it,” she said. “And he has to live without all the masculine trimmings other boys take for granted. Jack, long before I knew anything about sex, I knew I wanted to be tall and strong and wear pants and ride horses and have a career ... and never marry a man or learn to cook or raise babies. Never.”

“That’s still no proof you’re gay,” he said, going slowly, letting her convince herself.

“I’m not even built like a girl. Girls are knock-elbowed and big-hipped. They can’t throw or run or—look at my arm, Jack. I was the best pitcher on the team whenever they let me play.” She rolled her sleeve back and showed him a well-muscled arm, browned and veined and straight as a boy’s.

“I see,” he murmured.

“It was the parents who gave me the worst of it,” she said. “The kids weren’t too bad till I got to high school. But you know what happens then. You get hairy and you get pimples and you have to start using a deodorant.”

Jack laughed silently behind his cigarette.

“And the boys get big and hot and anxious, like a stallion servicing a mare.”

Jack swallowed, feeling himself move. “And the girls?”

“The girls,” she sighed, “get round and soft and snippy.”

“And instead of round and soft, you got hot and anxious?”

“All of a sudden, I was Poison Ivy Brinker,” she confirmed. “Nobody wanted whatever it was I had. My brother Jim said I wasn’t a boy and I wasn’t a girl, and I had damn well better be one or the other or he’d hound me out of school himself.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to be like the rest. But not to please that horse’s ass.” Her farmer’s profanity tickled him. “I did it for Dad. He thought I was adjusting pretty well, and that was his consolation. I never told him how bad it was.”

“So now you want to find Mona Petry,” Jack said, after a small pause, “and ask her if you’re gay.”

“Not ask her. Just get to know her and see if it could happen. She makes me wonder so ... Jack, what makes a feminine girl like that gay? Why does she love other girls, when she’s just as womanly and perfumed as the girl who goes for men? I used to think that all homosexual girls were three-quarters boy.” She hung her head. “Like me, I guess. And that they were all doomed to love feminine girls who could never love them back. It seems like a miracle that a girl like Mona could love a—” she stopped, embarrassed.

“Could love a girl like you,” he finished for her. “Take it on faith, honey. She doesn’t have to look like a Ram tackle to know that her happiness lies with other women. The girls you see around town aren’t all boyish, are they?”

“They’re not all gay, either.”

He ground out his cigarette. “Tell me why they ran you out of Juniper Hill. The whole story. Was it really just a nasty rumor about you and the Jones girl?”

Beebo lay down, stretched out on the sofa, and answered without looking at him. “They’d been hoping for an excuse for years,” she said. “It was in April, last spring. I went to the livestock exhibition in Chicago with Dad and Jim. I was in the stalls with them most of the time, handling some of the steers from our county. Sweaty and gritty, and not thinking about much but the job. And then one night—I’ll never know why—I took it into my head to wear Jim’s good clothes.

“I knew it was dangerous, but suddenly it was also irresistible. Maybe I just wanted to get away with it. Maybe it was the feel of a man’s clothes on my back, or a simple case of jealousy. Anyway, I played sick at dinnertime, and stayed in the hotel till they left.

“Jack, it was as though I had a fever. The minute I was alone I put Jim’s things on. I slung Dad’s German camera over my shoulder and took his Farm Journal press pass. On the way over, I stopped for a real man’s haircut. The barber never said a word. Just took my money and stared.

“I looked older than Jim. I felt wonderful.” She stopped, her chin trembling. “A blonde usher showed me to the press section. She was small and pretty and she asked me if I was from the ‘working press.’ I said yes because it sounded important. She gave me a seat in the front row with a typewriter. It was screwed down to a stand. God, imagine!” She almost laughed.

“I really blitzed them,” she said, remembering the good part with a throb of regret. “Everybody else was writing on their machines to beat hell, but I didn’t even put a piece of paper in mine. After a while I took out the camera and made some pictures. The girl came back and said I could work in the arena if I wanted to, and I did. It was hotter than hades but I wouldn’t have taken that tweed jacket off for a fortune.

“I guess I took pictures for almost three hours ... just wandered around, kidding the girls on horseback and keeping clear of the Wisconsin people.” She hesitated and Jack said, “What happened then?”

“I got sick,” she whispered. “My stomach. I thought it was bad food. Or that damn heat. Awful stomach cramps. In half an hour I was so miserable I could hardly stand up and I was scared to death I might faint. If I’d had any sense I’d have gone back to my seat and rested. But not Beebo. I didn’t want to waste my moment of glory. It would go away—it had to.

“Well, I was right about one thing—I fainted, right there in the arena. The next I knew, I was strangling on smelling salts and trying to sit up on a cot in the Red Cross station. The doctor asked how I felt and I said it was indigestion. He wanted to have a look.

“I was terrified. I tried to laugh it off. I said I was tired, I said it was the heat, I said it was something I ate. But that bastard had to look. He thought it might be appendicitis. There was nothing I could do but cover my face and curse, and cry,” she said harshly. Jack handed her a newly-lighted cigarette, and she took it, still talking.

“The doctor saw the tears, and that was the tip-off. He opened my shirt so fast the buttons flew. And when he saw my chest, he opened the pants without a word. Just big bugeyes.” She gave Jack a look of sad disgust. “I had the curse,” she muttered. “First time.”

After a moment she went on, “I never meant to hurt anybody or cause a scene. But I hurt my father too much. He suffered over it. I had to wait till my hair grew out before I could go back to school, but I could have saved myself the bother. They let me know as soon as I got back I wasn’t wanted. Before Chicago, they thought I was just a queer kid. But afterwards, I was really queer. There’s a big difference.”

Jack listened, bound to her by the story with an empathy born of his own emotional aberration.

“The principal of the high school said he hoped he could count on me to understand his position. His position. I wanted to ask him if he understood mine.” There was hopeless bitterness in her voice.

“They never do,” Jack said quietly. “Still, that’s not the only high school in the world. You could finish up somewhere else and go on to pre-med, Beebo.”

“You didn’t,” she reminded him. “You got fed up and quit. But me—I’ve been expelled. I’m not wanted anywhere.”

“Do you think a job as a truck driver is worth sacking a medical career for?”

“What did you sack yours for?” He was making her defensive.

“My story’s all over,” he said. “But there’s still time for you. Beebo, do you know what you’re trying to do? Get even with the world. You’re so mad at it, and everybody in it for the bum deal you got, you’re going to deny it a good doctor some day.”

“I’d be a rotten doctor, Jack. I’d be scared. I’d be running and hiding every day of my life.”

“Hell, plenty of doctors are gay. They manage.” He was surprised at the importance it was assuming in his own mind. He really cared about it. It depressed him to think of what she might be and what she was in a fair way now of becoming. “You’re thinking that if people are going to reject you, by God you’re going to reject them first. If they make it hard for you to be a doctor, you’ll make damn sure they never get that doctor. You’ve been keeping score and now you’re avenging yourself on the world because most of the people in it are straight. You keep it up and you’ll turn into a joyless old dyke without a shred of love in her heart for anyone.”

Beebo sat up and frowned at him, surprised but not riled. “Are you telling me to go to hell because I—I think I’m gay?” she asked.

“I’m telling you to go to college,” he said seriously.

“Jack, you goofed your chance for an M.D. for reasons a lot flimsier than mine. What are you trying to do? Push me into school so you can make peace with your conscience? You’re the one who wants to give that good doctor to humanity. If it can’t be yourself, better it should be Beebo than nobody. And Jack Mann will have made a gift to his fellow men. Jack, the Great Humanitarian. And you won’t even have to crack a book.” She spoke wryly, but without rancor.

Jack was stunned into silence by her flash of insight.

“I hit it, didn’t I?” she said. “Jack, you don’t know what you’re asking me to do: wear a skirt for the rest of my life. Forget about love till my heart dries up. Go back and face the father I destroyed and the brother who hates me ... well, I can’t. I’m no martyr. I’m not brave enough to try to be a doctor now, just because you tried and failed. And feel bad about it.”

He took her hands and rubbed them. “You hit it dead on, little pal, but only part of it,” he said. “Sure, I’d like to see you with a medical degree and know I’d had something to do with it. But forget me. Be selfish about it. A degree would protect you, not expose you to more trouble. Knowledge, success, the respect of other doctors—that would be your defense against the world.”

“There’s no protection against myself. My feelings. I didn’t tell you about the girls back home, Jack, walking down country lanes after school with their arms around the boys, kissing and laughing. The girls I couldn’t touch or talk to or even smile at. The girls I’d grown up with, suddenly filling out their sweaters and their nylons, smooth and sweet with scented hair and pink mouths. I didn’t tell you how I ached for them.”

He got up and crossed the room, looking out his front windows. “I don’t want you to end up an old bull dyke in faded denims, letting some blowsy little fem take care of you,” he said acidly. “You’re not a bum.”

“I don’t want that, either. But Jack, I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering!” She went to his side, speaking urgently, wanting him to root for her, not against her. “They call this life gay,” she said softly, following his gaze out the windows. “I need a little gaiety.”

“They call it gay out of a perverted sense of humor,” he said.

Across the street two young women were walking slowly in the mild evening air, arms around each other’s waists. “There,” Beebo said, nodding at them. “That’s what I want. I’ve wanted it ever since I knew girls did such things.”

“You mean Mona?” he said.

Beebo shoved her hands into her pockets, self-conscious as always when that name came up. “You have to start somewhere,” she said.

“You have quite a thing about her, don’t you?” he said.

Beebo’s cheeks flushed and she looked at the floor. “I never dared to admit that I wanted a girl before, Jack. Maybe I picked the wrong time. Or the wrong audience.”

“Pal, you just picked the wrong girl.”

“I don’t want you to pity me. That’s why I held out so long. I need you, Jack. You’re the first friend—the first brother—I ever had.”

Jack was touched and embarrassed. “I feel no pity for you, Beebo,” he said. “You don’t need pity. I feel friendship and ... anxiety. If you’ve made up your mind to stay here, I’ll do anything to help you, teach you, take you around. But, honey—not Mona. She doesn’t believe in anything but kicks. She’ll charm the pants off you and then leave you standing naked in front of your enemies.”

“Are you trying to say you disapprove of Mona, but not of the fact that I’m—I must be—gay?” she said.

“Why would I disapprove of that?” he said and then he laughed. “I swear to God, Beebo, you can be thicker than bean soup. I’ve done everything but sing it for you in C sharp.”

“I know you’ve tried to be tolerant and all, introducing me to your friends. I thought it was because you suspected about me and you wanted to be a good sport.”

“I’m trying to explain about me, not you,” he said, throwing out his hands and still chuckling.

Beebo smiled back, mystified. “Let me in on the joke, will you?”

“The joke’s on me this time,” he said.

She studied him a moment, her smile yielding to perplexity. And then she said, “Oh!” suddenly and lifted a hand to her face. She went back to the sofa and sat down with her head in her hands.

“Well, you don’t need to feel badly about it, pal,” he said, joining her. “I don’t. There are even days when I feel sorry for the straight people.”

“Jesus, I should have seen it,” she murmured.

“No, you shouldn’t. I’m a genius at hiding it.”

“Jack, I’m sure a fool. I’ve been up to my eyes in my own troubles.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe you wouldn’t figure it out. It’s hard to realize the kind of life you’ve been leading up to now. How little you’ve been allowed to see or understand.”

She looked up at him. “Thanks for being patient,” she said. “I mean it. Jack, how long have you been gay? How did you find out about yourself?”

“I didn’t. I was told. In the Navy, by a hairy little gob who kept climbing into my bunk at night and telling me fairy stories. When he got a rise out of me, he made the diagnosis. I told him to go to hell, but the next night, I was climbing into his bunk.”

It made her smile. “Can you forgive me?” she said.

“Nothing to forgive. And I’ll let you back into my good graces on one condition. Do you think your friend Pat will be in bloom tonight?”

“Probably,” she said, seeing him through her new understanding as through a rainbow curtain. He was a new shape, a new color, a new man. She was vastly relieved, and just a little awed. And ashamed of her bean-soup intuition.

“Let’s go look at him,” Jack said.

* * *

The night was hot and damp, with a low black sky that had looked menacing in the daylight, but was soft and close as dark came down, floating over the neon merriment below.

Beebo was quiet as they walked, preoccupied with a new attitude toward Jack and an almost unbearable sense of anticipation. Pat was usually at Julian’s. When they arrived, the bar was crowded but there was standing room at one end. They squeezed in and ordered drinks, and Beebo began to pick out the faces that searched for her.

“Is he here?” Jack asked, glancing around.

She discovered him right away. “Over there in the blue shirt,” she said, nodding.

“They all have blue shirts,” Jack said, squinting through the smoke.

“The blond one.”

There was a pause and Jack’s face puckered thoughtfully. “He looks pretty young,” he said in a bemused voice.

“You mean, you like his face?” Beebo smiled at him.

“It’s a face,” he said noncommittally, and when she laughed he shrugged and added, “Okay. A nice face. Beebo, I think you’re playing cupid.”

“I wouldn’t know how,” she said. “Besides, you told me you only fell in love in the fall or the spring. This is midsummer.” But she wondered suddenly what would happen if he broke his rule. It made her heart drop. Jack’s apartment was small, with just one bed. Even if he didn’t ask her to leave, how welcome would she be if he invited a third party to share it with them? She’d have to bow out, out of simple consideration. But where could she go? She had avoided making any friends, and the Pasquinis with their five kids were out of the question. She would have preferred a park bench anyway to a room with Pete Pasquini in it.

Beebo and Jack were both caught unaware by the sudden quiet interruption. There he was, Beebo’s boy, standing behind and between them. He had come over in the moment it took them to discuss him and now they looked at him in surprise.

He paled a little and started to back away, but Jack put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t panic. We’re harmless when we’re drinking,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Pat Kynaston,” said the boy, staring into his beer. He supposed Beebo had Jack with her this time to show him she was taken, and he was crushed.

“Pat? That’s a girl’s name,” Beebo kidded.

Pat swallowed some beer and moved the sawdust under his shoes.

“Have a drink, honey,” Jack said, and Beebo felt a stir of strange interest in the endearment. And yet Pat seemed more like a child than a man, and it was easy to call him fond names. In spite of his light beard he had a child’s face, full of a child’s hardy trust. He smiled at Jack, reassured.

“He looks as green as you did last May,” Jack told Beebo. “How long have you been here, Pat?”

“Oh, since seven-thirty, I guess.”

“No, I mean in New York?” Jack grinned.

“Oh. January.” Pat’s eyes remained on Beebo while he answered Jack. But when she returned the look, he glanced down to her belt. “I left school then,” he said.

“Sounds like the story of my life,” said Beebo. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

Jack cleared his throat and Beebo’s mouth dropped open. “With that face?” Jack protested. “You mean your father is twenty-seven.”

Pat laughed a little and shook his head.

“Besides, what is a twenty-seven-year-old child doing in school? You should be through.”

“I was working on a doctorate in entomology.”

“Bugs? You don’t look like a bug collector,” Jack said with a grimace, and they laughed while the drinks came up. Jack pulled Pat between himself and Beebo and teased him for a while, making him blush and answer questions. But when it came out that Pat was working as a garbage-collector for the New York City Department of Sanitation, Jack stopped laughing.

“God! A frail kid like you? You shouldn’t do work like that,” he declared.

“It was all I could get. Nobody wants an entomologist manqué,” Pat said. “I guess that’s why I’m skinny. I look at those rotting scraps all day and when I get home the stuff in my icebox looks just as bad.”

Jack tapped Beebo on the shoulder. “Do we have any of Marie’s chicken tetrazini in the refrigerator?”

“Plenty.”

“Let’s go.” Jack threw a couple of bills on the counter and took Pat by the elbow. Beebo took the other and they walked him out of Julian’s and down the street.

* * *

Beebo had been elated to learn that Jack, too, was gay. But now she felt the first twinge of misgiving. Jack was the older brother she never really had; one she could learn from, look up to, even love. It was a valuable feeling, new to her. For as fiercely as she resented Jim, she had always harbored a secret regret that they could not have been friends.

They walked toward Jack’s place with Pat clinging in bewildered pleasure to Beebo, the object of what had seemed so long a futile attraction. But Beebo was lost in herself, wondering if she could make it yet in the city on her own. She was strong and handsome, and she walked, gestured, even swore with a boyish gusto that made her seem more experienced than she was. But she was still untutored in the ways of metropolitan gay life and that fact undermined her self-confidence.

* * *

They put Pat, who was high enough to be sleepy, on Jack’s sofa and looked at him. He dozed a little, his fair face averted, and the two roommates were struck with the beauty of his features. Beebo was unnerved to find herself suddenly wanting a girl with blast-furnace intensity.

“I’ll heat the bird,” she offered to Jack, “if you’ll mind the patient.”

“You’re on,” he said.

But she was sorry to have to leave them alone together. Jack was entirely too taken with the boy. Beebo moved pensively around the kitchen, preparing the food with unaccustomed hands.

Jack brought Pat to the table when she called them. Pat looked so slender and peaked that she felt a good doctor’s desire to stuff him full of nourishment.

He leaned against the door frame, gazing at Beebo. “Who are you, anyway?” he asked, drunk enough to be brave.

“Sit down, Hungry,” Beebo said, smiling at him.

Abashed, but unappeased, he obeyed.

“You know what’s wrong with you, Pat? Malnutrition,” she said. “If you had any food under your belt, you wouldn’t give two bits for me.” He turned a baffled face to her. “Why hell, the damn bugs eat better than you do,” she told him. “They get all the garbage that ruins your appetite.”

She tried to feed him but he turned away. “I can’t,” he said. The excitement of coming home with this girl he had admired so fervently for a couple of months was too much; that, and all the beer he had drunk ... and a new gentle feeling stirring in him for Jack Mann.

“Sure you can,” Beebo said, and began to feed him as if he were a sick lamb, while Jack cut the chicken bits for her. When Pat tried to protest she popped a mess of spicy meat between his teeth and shushed him, wishing all the while that she were ministering to a lovely girl instead of a lost boy.

Beebo stole a look at Jack, afraid of what she might see. But he was regarding Pat with compassion, the same he had shown to her when he found her ... and just a trace of desire, tightly controlled. Jack had kindly instincts. It was one of the things Beebo admired most in him. He took care of people because it made him happy. No one was to blame if, when the person was a beautiful young boy, it made him very happy indeed.

Beebo got the chicken down Pat and made him drink his milk, which he did out of pure infatuation for her. And then Jack filled the silence with one word: “Bedtime.”

But Pat seemed to be in a sort of trance, brought on by fatigue, fascination, and a full stomach. “Are you conscious?” Jack asked him with a smile.

“I was just thinking,” Pat murmured, blinking at Beebo. “Maybe I’m straight.”

They laughed at him, till he got indignant and tried to explain that even Beebo’s marginal femininity didn’t discourage him.

“You need some sleep, buddy,” Jack told him, and took him off to the sofa. “And no damn trash cans for you in the morning.”

“What if I lose my job?” Pat said.

“That would be the best thing that could happen to you.”

“I’ll starve,” Pat whispered.

“Not while I’m around,” Jack said. Pat smiled at him sleepily, and then shut his eyes and turned on his side.

* * *

Beebo climbed into Jack’s bed feeling like an impostor. But she was embarrassed to make an issue of it; more than that, afraid. If she offered to take the sofa herself, Jack might grab the chance to have Pat beside him all night.

Beebo felt no physical attraction to Pat; only sympathetic interest. But his puppy love had scorched her a little; just enough to keep her moving and twisting on the warm sheets for an hour, obsessed with the growing need for a girl. A girl to curl in her lap and kiss her and talk away her fears.

Pat’s loneliness shocked her. She saw herself mirrored in his predicament. Who was more alone than a lost and defenseless soul, hungry for something it couldn’t find? Couldn’t even define? It was enough to warp the heart, deform the soul.

It was enough to get her out of bed at midnight that night, make her dress in silence and leave the apartment, undetected by Jack or Pat.

* * *

She was almost as surprised to find herself on the street as Jack would have been to see her there. And yet the cool night air washed gratefully over her face and cleared her thoughts. She wandered aimlessly a while, as if trying to ignore the one place she wanted to visit: the Colophon.

But her feet took her there anyway, and she found herself ringing the bell. The owner opened the peek-through in the door and nodded to her. She felt a momentary country-girl shame at being recognized in such a place. But she was glad enough to gain entrance. The glow inside was the color of fluorescent Merthiolate. It seemed almost antiseptic to Beebo, who had painted the undersides of countless cows and sows with disinfectants the same shade prior to a delivery.

She took a seat at the bar. “Scotch and water,” she said.

While the barman got it, she gazed idly into the mirror behind him, picking out the interesting girls surrounding her. She felt uncomfortable here in the pants she usually wore to work; in her hair that had just been cut and was too short again.

Do they think I’m funny? she wondered. Or—exciting? She drank in silence, and ordered another, thinking that the solitude and uncertainty she felt now were worse than those she felt with Jack. For a minute, almost anything seemed better than having to leave Jack, with only fifty bucks a week to spend, no friends, and no place to live.

The bartender brought her another drink while she searched for the last cigarette in her pack. It was empty. The girl sitting next to her immediately offered her one, but Beebo declined. It was partly her shyness, partly the knowledge that it was better to be hard-to-get in the Colophon.

“Do you have cigarettes?” she asked the bartender.

“Machine by the wall,” he said.

She got up and sauntered over, ignoring the outrage on the face of the girl at the bar. The machine swallowed her coins and spit out a pack of filter-tips. Beebo noticed the jukebox, looked at her change, and fed it a quarter, good for three dances. She liked to watch the girls move around the floor together, now that the initial revolt had worn off.

But when she regained her seat, she found most of the patrons paying attention to her, not the tunes. She looked back at them, surprised and wary. The cigarettes in her hand were an excuse to look away for a minute and she did, lighting one while the general conversation died away like a weak breeze. She lowered her match slowly and glanced up again, her skin prickling. What in hell were they trying to do? Scare her out? Show her they didn’t like her? Had she been too aloof with them, too remote and hard to know?

She had started the music, and it was an invitation to dance. They were waiting for her to show them. It wasn’t hostility she saw on their faces so much as, “Show us, if you’re so damn big and smart. We’ve been waiting for a chance to trap you. This is it.”

She had to do something to humanize herself. There was an air of self-confidence and sensual promise about Beebo that she couldn’t help. And when she felt neither confident nor sensual, she looked all the more as if she did: tall and strong and coolly sure of herself. She had turned the drawback of being young and ignorant into a deliberate defense.

It didn’t matter to the sophisticated girls judging her now that she was a country girl fresh from the hayfields of Wisconsin, or that she had never made love to a woman before in her life. They didn’t know that and wouldn’t have believed it anyway.

Beebo recognized quickly that she had to start acting the way she looked. She had established a mood of expectation about herself, and now it was time to come across. The music played on. It was Beebo’s turn.

The match she held was burning near her finger, and because she had to do something about it and all the eyes on her, she turned to the girl beside her and held out the match.

“Blow,” she said simply, and the girl, with a smile, blew.

Beebo returned the smile. “Well,” she said in her low voice, that somehow carried even into the back room and the dance floor, “I’m damned if I’m going to waste a good quarter.” She got up and walked across the room toward the prettiest girl she could see, sitting at a table with her lover and two other couples. It was exactly the way she would have reacted to student-baiting at Juniper Hill High. The worse it got, the taller she walked. Her heart was beating so hard she wanted to squeeze it still. But she knew no one could hear it through her chest.

She stopped in front of the pretty girl and looked at her for a second in incredulous silence. Then she said quietly, “Will you dance with me, Mona?”

Mona Petry smiled at her. Nobody else in Greenwich Village would have flouted the social code that way: walked between two lovers and taken one away for a dance. Mona took a leisurely drag on her cigarette, letting her pleasure show in a faint smile. Then she stood up and said, “Yes. I will, Beebo.” Her lover threw Beebo a keen, hard look and then relapsed into a sullen stare.

Beebo and Mona walked to the floor single file, and Mona turned when she got clear of the tables, lifting her arms to be held. The movement was so easy and natural that it excited Beebo and made her bold—she who knew nothing about dancing. But she was not lacking in grace or rhythm. She took Mona in a rather prim embrace at first, and began to move her over the floor as the music directed.

Mona disturbed her by putting her head back and smiling up at her. At last she said, “How did you know my name?”

“Pete Pasquini told me,” Beebo said. “How did you know mine?”

“Same answer,” Mona laughed. “He gets around, doesn’t he?”

“So they say,” Beebo said.

“You mean you don’t know from personal experience?”

“Me?” Beebo stared at her. “Should I?”

Mona chuckled. “No, you shouldn’t,” she said.

“Did I—take you away from something over there?” Beebo said.

“From somebody,” Mona corrected her. “But it’s all right. She’s deadly dull. I’ve been waiting for you to come over.”

Beebo felt her face get warm. “I didn’t even see you until I stood up,” she said.

“I saw you,” Mona murmured. They danced a moment more, and Beebo pulled her closer, wondering if Mona could feel her heart, now bongoing under her ribs, or guess at the racing triumph in her veins.

“Did you ask Pete about me?” Mona prodded.

“A little,” Beebo admitted. And was surprised to find that the admission felt good. “Yes,” she whispered.

“What did he say?”

“He said you were a wonderful girl.”

“Did you believe him?”

Beebo hesitated and finally said, huskily, “Yes.”

“You’re a good dancer, Beebo,” Mona said, knowing, like an expert, just how far to go before she switched gears.

“I dance like a donkey,” Beebo grinned, strong enough in her victory to laugh at herself.

“No, you’re a natural,” Mona insisted. “A natural dancer, I mean.”

“I don’t care what you mean, just keep dancing,” Beebo said.

Mona put her head down against Beebo’s shoulder and laughed, and Beebo felt the same elation as a man when he has impressed a desirable girl and she lets him know it with her flattery. Mona—so elusive, so pretty, so dominant in Beebo’s dreams lately. Beebo was holding her tighter than she meant to, but when she tried to loosen her embrace, Mona put both arms about her neck and pulled her back again.

For the first time, Beebo had the nerve to look straight at her. It was a long hungry look that took in everything: the long dark square-cut hair and bangs; the big hazel eyes; the fine figure, slim and exaggeratedly tall in high heels. But it was still necessary for her to look up at Beebo.

“It’s nice you’re so tall,” Mona told her.

“Who’s the girl you’re with?” Beebo said. “I think she wants to drown me.”

“No doubt. Her name’s Todd.”

“Is she a friend?”

“She was, till you asked for this dance,” Mona smiled.

Beebo didn’t want to make trouble. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Are you?” Mona was forward as only a world-weary girl with nothing to learn—or lose—could be. And yet she seemed too young for such ennui—still in her twenties. “Are you sorry about Todd?” she pressed Beebo.

“I’m not sorry I’m dancing with you, if that’s what you mean,” Beebo said.

“That’s what I mean,” Mona smiled. “Would you like to dance without an audience, Beebo?”

Beebo frowned at her. “You mean ditch your friends?”

Mona could see that Beebo was offended by such a suggestion of two-timing; and Mona was interested enough in this big, beautiful, strange girl, not to want her offended. “They aren’t true friends,” Mona said plaintively, “that you can count on, anyway. It’s all over between Todd and me, too. We just came here to bury the corpse tonight. This is where we met five months ago.”

“Five months? That’s not very long to be in love with somebody,” Beebo said.

“I wasn’t,” Mona said.

“Was she?” It seemed indescribably sad to Beebo that one partner be in love and the other feel nothing. She wanted everyone to be happy on this night full of sequin-lights and clouds of music: even Todd.

“I never meant much to Todd,” Mona said. “Talk about ditching, Beebo. I’m the one who’s getting ditched.”

“You?” Beebo held her tightly, glad for the excuse. “How could anyone ever do that to you?”

Mona swayed against her, smiling with her eyes shut, and Beebo was too immersed in her to notice the look on Todd’s face.

“She likes to torment her lovers,” Mona whispered. “She uses them, as if they were things. When she gets tired of them, she puts them in a drawer and pulls them out to show off, like trophies. That’s all she does—collect broken hearts.”

“She sounds like a female dog,” Beebo commented. And yet the little speech recalled disturbingly some of Jack’s remarks about Mona; as if Mona were amusing herself by describing her own faults to Beebo and pretending they were Todd’s.

The music ended and they stood on the floor a moment, arms still clasped about each other. “Wait at the bar,” Mona whispered into Beebo’s ear. “I’ll get my coat.” Beebo glanced doubtfully at the table, but Mona said, “It’ll be better if I tell her alone. Go on.”

Beebo released her reluctantly, went to her seat and sipped at her drink till Mona came up. She let Mona lead the way, feeling a sudden wild exhilaration as she followed, lighting a cigarette, holding the door for Mona, taking the street side when they reached the sidewalk.

“Was Todd angry?” she asked.

“No one wants to look the fool,” Mona said lightly, with a smile.

“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t like to get you up the creek, Mona,” Beebo said. “I didn’t want trouble.”

“I make my own trouble, Beebo. I thrive on it. The way I see it—” she paused to give Beebo her arm, and Beebo took it smoothly with a sense of power and burgeoning desire, “—life is flat and dreary without trouble.” Mona dodged a puddle, then continued. “Good trouble. Exciting trouble. You can’t just walk across the Flats forever, doing what’s expected of you. Excitement. That’s everything to me.” Mona stopped in her tracks to look at Beebo with bright sly eyes. “Being good isn’t exciting. Right?”

“I’m no philosopher,” Beebo said.

“I’ll prove it to you. You’re a good person, aren’t you? You felt bad about Todd. You’ve been good all your life. But are you happy?”

“I am right now. Are you telling me to be bad?” Beebo said, laughing.

“Would making love to me be bad?” Mona asked her, so directly that Beebo wondered if she were being made fun of. There was no respect in Mona for the innate privacy and mystery of every human soul. She saw them all as part of the Flats—unless they could make beautiful trouble with her. Then, she was interested. Then, she saw an individual.

“Making love to you,” Beebo said slowly, “would have to be good.”

“I’ll make it better than good.” Mona reached up for Beebo’s shoulders, pulling her back into the dusk of a doorway. They stood there a moment, Beebo in a fever of need and fear, till Mona’s hand slid up behind her head, cupped it downward, and brought their lips together.

Beebo came to life with a swift jerking movement. Mona’s kiss had been light and brief, until Beebo caught her again in a violent embrace and imprisoned her mouth. She forgot everything for a few minutes, holding Mona there in her arms and kissing her lips, pressing her back against the doorway and feeling the whole length of her body against Beebo’s own.

It wasn’t till she became aware that Mona was protesting that she let her go. She stood in front of Mona, still trembling and weak-kneed, her breath coming fast and her head spinning, and she felt oddly apologetic. Mona had started it, but Beebo had carried it too far. “I’m sorry,” she panted.

“Stop saying you’re sorry all the time,” Mona told her in a sulky voice. And, with a briskness that all but shattered the mood, she turned and started walking off, her heels snapping against the asphalt. Beebo stared after her, shocked. Was this the end of it?

But Mona turned back after a quarter of a block and called her. “You aren’t going to spend the night there, are you?” she said crisply.

Beebo hurried after her, and they walked for two more blocks without exchanging a word. Beebo could only suppose she had done something wrong. Yet she didn’t know what, or how to make amends.

Mona stopped at a brownstone house with six front steps. “I live here,” she said.

Beebo glanced up at it. “Shall I leave?” she said.

“Do you want to?”

“Don’t answer my questions with more questions!” Beebo said, a tide of anger releasing her tongue. “Damn it, Mona, I don’t like evasions.”

“All right. Don’t go,” Mona said, and smiled at the outburst. She went up the steps with Beebo coming uneasily behind her, opened the door, and went to the first-floor apartment in the back. At her door she pulled out her key and waited. Beebo was looking around at the hall, old and modest, but cleanly kept. The apartments in a place like this could be astonishingly chic. She had seen some belonging to Jack’s friends.

Mona let her take it in till Beebo became aware of the silence and turned to her quizzically.

“Approve?” Mona said.

Beebo nodded, and Mona, as if that were the signal, turned the key in the lock. She walked over the threshold, switched on a light, and abruptly backed out again, preventing Beebo from entering.

“What’s wrong?” Beebo said, surprised.

“There’s someone in there,” Mona said.

Without thinking, Beebo made a lunge for the door. She had thrown prowlers out of her father’s house before. A situation like this scared her far less than being in that room alone with Mona—much as she wanted it.

But Mona caught her arm. “It’s a friend of mine!” she hissed. “Beebo, please!” Beebo stopped, irritated, waiting for an explanation. “It’s a girl. I told her Todd and I were breaking up,” Mona shrugged. “I guess she came over to cheer me up. We’ve been friends a long time. Oh, it’s nothing romantic, Beebo.”

“Well, send her home,” Beebo said. It was one thing to be afraid of Mona; but another entirely to forfeit the whole night in honor of a hen party.

“I can’t.” Mona looked up at her in pretty distress. “She’s my one real friend and I owe her a lot. She’s had some bad times in her own life lately. Beebo, look—here’s my phone number. Call me in an hour. Maybe we can still make it.” She took a scratch pad from her purse and scribbled on it.

Beebo took it, feeling rebuffed and insulted. But Mona stood on tiptoes and kissed her lips again. And when Beebo refused to embrace her, Mona took her wrists and pulled them around her and gave Beebo a luxurious kiss. “Forgive me,” she said. “It would be tough if she knew I’d brought someone home—it really would.” She slipped out of Beebo’s arms and put a hand on the doorknob. “Be sure to call me,” she said. And then she disappeared inside her apartment.

Beebo stood in the hall a while, leaning on the dingy plaster and trying to make sense out of Mona. There was no sound from the apartment. Perhaps Mona and the girl had gone into a bedroom to talk. The idea made Beebo angry and jealous. She went slowly down the front hall. There was a pay phone by the entrance. Beebo went outside and sat on the front stoop for about forty-five minutes, and then went in to call.

She had lifted the telephone receiver and was about to drop in a dime, when she heard a bang from the end of the hall, as if someone had dropped something heavy. It seemed to come from Mona’s door, and Beebo rushed toward it. But at the threshold, she froze.

Mona’s voice, muffled as if through the walls of several rooms, but discernible, penetrated the wood. “And you! You sneak in here like a rat with the plague! God damn, how many times do I have to say it? Call first. Are you deaf or just stupid?”

Beebo’s mouth opened as she strained to hear the answer. It came after a slight pause: “Rats don’t scare you, doll. You already got the plague.”

Beebo whirled away from the door as if she had been burned, and stood with her knuckles pressed angrily against her temples.

The voice belonged to a man.

* * *

It was several days before anything happened. Beebo went back to work as usual. There were no calls, no notes, no effort on Mona’s part to get in touch with her and explain. Or apologize.

Beebo worked dully, but gratefully. Keeping busy was a balm to her nerves. She took pleasure in driving, taking corners faster and making deliveries in better time as she learned the routes. During the morning she took out groceries. In the afternoon, it was fresh-cooked, hot Italian food in insulated cartons.

Mona and her male visitor were on Beebo’s mind so constantly that she didn’t even take time to worry about Jack, or the possibility he might fall in love with Pat. She saw them every evening, but said little and saw less.

She was full of a boiling bad temper; half-persuaded to go out on the town with as many girls as she could find, sure that Mona would hear about it; and half-toying with the idea of dating a man out of sheer spite. It would be nice irony—almost worth the embarrassment and social discomfort.

She was mad enough at Mona, in fact, to be nice to Pete. After all, Mona had stood him up too, long ago. He was still under her feet, and although he had never made any indecent proposals, he managed to always look as if he were just about to. Beebo was comforted to see that he gave the same look, and likely the same impression, to every woman in range of his sight, except his wife.

One day at noon, she went deliberately to the table in the kitchen where he was eating and pulled up a chair, while Marie served them. Pete looked at her with his somber eyes and stopped munching for a minute. She ordinarily managed her schedule so she could eat before or after he did. Marie noticed the change, as she noticed everything, but whatever she thought, she kept her own counsel.

“How is it with Jack and Pat?” Marie said conversationally.

Beebo straightened around. “How did you know about that?” she said, surprised.

“They was in earlier. Pat says he knows about bugs. Maybe he can stomp out my roaches.... He is a nice boy? I never did trust blonds.”

Beebo felt threatened, as if Marie had just announced the end of Beebo’s life with Jack. “Sure. Very nice,” she said, and swallowed her stew. She was conscious of Pete’s piercing gaze on her face.

“So?” Marie said, nodding. “He got a friendly style.”

Beebo recounted mentally her evenings in the past week. Since Jack and Pat had met they had been together every night. Pat was in the apartment all day—no matter what hour Beebo dropped in during her deliveries. What about his job? And Jack? Jack Mann was a charming and persuasive man, and the fact that his face was plain did not alter the fact that his strong body was clean and pleasing, nor that his wits were quick and could make you learn and laugh.

“What’s the matter, Beebo? You don’t like rabbit?”

She started at Pete’s voice and pulled away. His face was too close. But she was glad for the diversion. He aimed a big spoon at her stew. “Maybe you like a cheese sandwich?”

“No, this is fine,” she said, forcing a social smile ... and then wishing it were possible to retract it. Pete was examining her curiously.

She ate with concentration for several moments, still seeing Pat and Jack in her mind’s eye. Pat liked Jack already. He was afraid of the city, and he abominated his job. If he didn’t get back to it fast, he wouldn’t have it any more, and she knew he didn’t give a damn—as long as somebody fed and loved him. He was like a pet: a big lovable goddamn poodle. She knew his liking for Jack would grow to fondness, if not love. She could see it coming, especially at night when Jack let him talk his heart out. Nobody listened or comforted more intelligently than Jack.

And when they fall in love—then where do I go? Shack up with Mona and her stable of strange men? she wondered. Jack’s remarks about Mona’s past were haunting her days and ruining her nights.

“Beebo,” said a quiet male voice into her ear. “You want the afternoon off?”

It was an indecent proposal, all right. His voice made it one.

“No thanks,” she said frostily.

“You look bad.”

“I’m all right,” she snapped.

“You could’ve fooled me,” he said. And when she didn’t answer, he went on, unwilling to let the conversation die, “The way you was acting, I thought you was sick.”

“Maybe I am,” she said sardonically. “I’ve got the plague.”

“The plague?” He stopped eating, his teeth poised around a bite, and grinned. “Plague, like the rats bring?”

“Yeah.” Beebo frowned at him.

“I got a friend with an obsession about rats,” he said. “You seen her in here once or twice. Mona. You know?” Beebo nodded, her eyes fixed on him. It was the longest she had looked at him squarely. “She tells every man she knows—and that’s plenty—he’s a rat. I asked her why once. Want to know what she said?” He paused, building suspense, while Beebo held her breath. “She says they’re all hairy ... filthy ... and stupid. And they’ll sleep with anything ain’t already dead. You agree?” He grinned at her.

Beebo turned away. “I don’t know any men,” she said pointedly.

Pete threw his hands out. “Is that nice to say?” he demanded. “Jack, I can understand. All he got of man is his name. Your father, who knows? Another fag?” Beebo got halfway out of her seat, but he protested elaborately at once. When she simmered down, he added confidentially, “But me.... Even Marie will admit that much, when she’s feeling honest.”

“Marie’s in a position to have an opinion,” Beebo said acidly. “But I don’t think that’s it.”

Pete folded his arms on the table and leaned on them, unoffended. “You want to be in that position too, Beebo?”

“Not for a million bucks,” she said, and drank down her milk in a gesture of scorn.

“I know a lot of good positions,” he said cozily, laughing at her.

Beebo had enough sense not to get visibly angry; not to make a scene. It wasn’t worth it and it would only tickle Pete. If it did no more than embarrass the two women, he would be satisfied.

She put her glass down. “What do you do with all your women, Pete?” she asked him, making no effort to keep her voice from Marie. “Line them up in half-hour shifts? It beats me how one mighty male can keep so many women happy.”

She picked up her plate and took it to the sink.

Marie tossed her a grin. “You tell him, Beebo,” she said. “To hear him talk, he’s sold out till next March.”

“I’m selling nothing, bitch,” Pete told her sharply. “What I got, I give away.”

“Listen to Robin Hood,” Beebo cracked, and walked out of the kitchen toward the truck with a load of Marie’s packaged foods. Pete followed her. Marie turned and took a step toward them, thought better of it, and returned to brood over the stove. Beebo could handle him. She didn’t need any help.

In the parking area, Pete took some of the load from Beebo and helped her put it in the truck. “You think I brag a lot, Beebo?” he said.

“I think you’re a creep,” she said.

He waited a moment, chagrined but not about to show it. “That mean you don’t like me?” he said finally.

“Let’s drop it, Pete.”

“You do like me?” he pestered her.

“What do you want, a friendship ring?” she demanded.

Pete shrugged, staring at the low clouds; taking out a toothpick to spear the food specks stuck in his white teeth. “Just an opinion,” he said.

“I told you. That’s Marie’s department. Now, if you’ll get out of my way, I have some deliveries to make.”

He turned to her. “Everybody got an opinion, Beebo. You worked for me over two months now. So say it. Say the truth.”

Beebo swallowed her aggravation. This was a game of wits, and the first man to blow off, lost. She put on the same casual cloak Pete was wearing. “You’re my boss. You keep clear of me, I keep clear of you, and we get along.”

“You make a big thing of keeping clear,” he said. “I smell bad, or something?”

“I wouldn’t know. I never get that close,” Beebo said.

Something in his eyes made her swing up into the driver’s seat with unusual speed. She started the motor, but he came around the truck and pulled her door open.

“You want to know where Mona hangs out?” he said.

Beebo set her jaw. “Not from you,” she said tautly.

Pete grinned. “Why not? My information is as good as the next guy’s.”

It made Beebo wildly impatient. She gripped the steering wheel in hard hands. “You through now, Pete?” she said, gunning the motor.

But he stood there, angled into the truck doorway so that she couldn’t move without bending some of his bones the wrong way.

“It’s okay, Beebo, don’t get sore,” he said, and put a hand on her knee. She picked it up and dropped it like a knot of worms, and he laughed. “You know why I do that?” he asked. “’Cause you put on such a good show. It really bugs you, don’t it? When I touch you.”

“You get the hell out of my truck or I’ll roll you flat!”

He chuckled again. “Okay,” he said. “I just got one piece of news for you, butch. Listen: 121 McDonald Street—Paula Ash. Tonight. For those as wants to locate Mona.” He pulled away from the truck, and Beebo backed out in a rumble of dust and gravel.

* * *

It was nearly midnight before Beebo could bring herself to the McDonald Street address. She had debated it tempestuously throughout the evening, but without confiding in Jack. She could have gone to Mona’s apartment instead, or called her and demanded an explanation. But something told her Pete Pasquini had an interesting motive for sending her here. She might get hurt; but she might also learn the truth, whatever that was, about Mona. So she took the chance.

She was in a don’t-give-a-damn mood, expecting to find Mona with a man in the apartment, rented under an assumed name; or Mona making love to Paula Ash, whoever the hell she was; or even—best joke of all—Mona waiting for her alone, while Pete peeked through the keyhole.

She stood at 121 McDonald Street in a light drizzle, partially sheltered by an inset doorway, her hands shoved into the sleeves of her windbreaker, and tried to make up her mind to call the jest.

At last the chill drove her into the foyer to look at mailboxes. There was a Paula Ash, all right. Apartment 103. Beebo took a deep breath and pushed the buzzer.

The answer came after so long a wait that Beebo was just leaving in disgust, and had to turn back quickly to open the inner door. She had scarcely entered the hall when a door opened ahead and a girl looked out.

“Yes?” she said. She appeared very sleepy, as if she had been in bed for many hours already, even though it was not quite midnight.

“May I come in?” Beebo said. She walked down the hall looking Miss Ash over candidly. If Mona were going to stand her up, and Pete play jokes on her, the least she could do was fall into the pit with as much bravado as possible—and perhaps, a pretty girl in her arms.

“I don’t know,” the girl said doubtfully, opening her eyes very wide as if the stretch would keep the lids up a few minutes more. “Who are you?”

“I’m Beebo.” Beebo looked at her, standing about three feet away in the door, wondering if her name would register. The living room behind Paula looked inviting after the gray rain outside.

“Beebo Who?” The girl was beginning to wake up, staring at her visitor.

Beebo smiled. “Didn’t Mona tell you?”

The girl gasped and rubbed her eyes open earnestly. “Mona!” she said, her voice husky. “Did Mona send you here?”

“Not exactly,” Beebo said. “But I was made to think I’d find her here.” The girl was so distressed that Beebo began to think Paula was the victim of whatever joke was afoot, and not herself. She was moved to apologize. “I’m sorry, Miss Ash,” she said. “There must have been a mistake. I came expecting some sort of practical joke. I guess nobody let either one of us in on it.”

“Will you come in, please,” Paula Ash said unexpectedly. She was shy and looked at Beebo’s shoulder when she spoke.

“Thank you,” Beebo said, walking past her into the living room. “It’s pretty cold outside.” She took off her jacket and handed it to Paula, who hung it in her front closet.

“Will you have coffee?” Paula said.

“Thanks, that sounds good.” Beebo watched her curiously while the girl busied herself in a small doorless kitchen. She had a delicately pretty face, different from Mona’s slick good looks and more appealing to Beebo.

Paula ran an uneasy hand through her hair and bit her underlip as she stood by her stove, waiting for the water to boil. “Would you tell me,” she asked timidly, “just what Mona told you?”

“I haven’t seen Mona for a week,” Beebo said. “A mutual acquaintance told me she’d be here tonight.”

“Well, your mutual acquaintance has a queer sense of humor,” Paula said. “Mona and I were never good friends. And lately we’ve been pretty good enemies.”

“So that was it,” Beebo said. “That’s a hell of a note. I’m sorry, Miss Ash, I—”

“Paula, please. Oh, it wasn’t your fault,” Paula said. “Mona has done crazier things than meeting her new lovers in my living room. I’ve known her almost five years.” She came back with two cups of hot coffee. She still seemed half-conscious, and when she stumbled a bit, Beebo got up and rescued the coffee.

Paula made a hissing sound of pain, pulling air between her teeth and looking at her left thumb.

“Did you scald it? Here. Under the cold water, quick.” Beebo left the steaming cups on an end table and took Paula by the arm to the sink. She turned on the tap full force and held Paula’s burn under the healing stream. Paula tried to pull away after a few seconds but Beebo held her securely. “Give it a good minute,” she said.

And as they stood there, Beebo studied Paula at close range. She was a lovely looking girl, even though she seemed non compos at the moment. “Are you sick, Paula?” Beebo asked kindly.

“No, no. Really. I’m just terribly tired. And then I took some sleeping pills. Probably too many. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“If you’re so tired, why do you take sleeping pills?” Beebo asked.

Paula’s dainty face contracted around a private pain. “The doctor gave them to me. It’s harder to sleep when you’re too tired than when you’re just tired.” She weaved a little, and Beebo put an arm around her.

“Are you supposed to take so many they send you into a coma?”

“No. But one pill doesn’t work. Three or four don’t work any more. I just keep swallowing them till I drop off.”

“That’s dangerous,” Beebo said. “One of these days you’ll drop too damn far.” She turned the water off and reached for a paper towel, blotting the injured hand gently. Suddenly, to her dismay, Paula pulled her hands away and hid her face in them to cry. Beebo watched, frustrated with the wish to touch and comfort her.

Paula’s sobs were short and hard, and she pulled herself together with a stout effort of will. All Beebo could see for a moment was the top of her head, covered with marvelous rich red hair. And, when she looked up, a trail of pale freckles across her cheeks and nose. Beebo handed her a tissue from her shirt pocket, and Paula blew her nose and wiped her eyes.

She was a fragile, very feminine and small girl, wearing a pair of outsized, plaid-print men’s pajamas.

Beebo took a bit of sleeve between her fingers with a smile. “You always wear these?” she asked.

“Only lately. They aren’t mine. A former roommate left them behind when she moved.”

“Oh,” Beebo said. “I didn’t think they were your type.”

“They’re not. They’re hers. And she’s gone, and this is all I have left of her.” Paula shook out her smoldering curls and cleared her throat. “I’m better now. Shall we have the coffee?” she said. It was obvious that she had humiliated herself with the unplanned personal admissions, and Beebo did her the courtesy of dropping the subject and joining her in the living room.

They drank the coffee in preoccupied silence a while. Beebo lighted a cigarette and offered it to Paula, who refused. Finally she said lightly, hoping to cheer Paula up, “Seems to me those pajamas are the answer to your insomnia.”

“What? How?” Paula looked at her as if suddenly remembering her presence in a room where Paula had thought herself alone with a ghost.

“Switch to nighties—your own—and get some rest,” Beebo said. “If I had to wear a plaid like that, I’d have nightmares all night.”

Paula smiled wanly. “I know,” she said. “They’re silly. I just needed somebody else to say it, I guess. It’s hard to break away from a person you’ve been close to. You hang on to the stupidest things.”

“Well, her old sleep gear won’t bring her any closer,” Beebo said. She pulled a sleeve out full length. “Did she play basketball?” Beebo said, and they both laughed.

“She wasn’t a shorty,” Paula admitted. Her laughter made her wonderfully pretty. She stopped it suddenly to say, “That’s the first time I’ve laughed in a month.” She gazed at Beebo with grateful astonishment.

“Looks like I got here just in time,” Beebo said, not realizing till after she spoke what a hoary come-on that was. Paula’s pink blush clarified things for her.

“I suppose you want to be getting home,” Paula said shyly, rising from her chair. She was struck for the first time with Beebo’s size. Stretched across the sofa, with her long legs thrusting out from under the cocktail table, Beebo looked too big for a nine-by-twelve living room.

To her surprise, Beebo found she didn’t want to be getting home at all; not even to run interference between Jack and Pat. And thinking of Pat brought a flash of recognition to her mind. “You remind me of a friend,” she told Paula, sitting up to scrutinize her. “A boy named Pat. A lovable thing. Shy and just a little childish. In the nice way, I mean.”

“I remind you of a boy?” Paula stared.

“More of a child than a boy.”

Paula didn’t know quite how to take it. “In the nice way?”

“Yes. Trusting, affectionate. Still curious about people and life. It’s a very—endearing quality.”

“And you think I’m like that?” Paula asked.

“You obviously don’t,” Beebo chuckled.

“I’ve been told I’m nasty and spoiled and selfish ... childish in the bad way.”

“Who told you that? Your friend with the plaid pajamas?”

“Yes.”

“If you were that way with her, she must have done something to deserve it. You look like a natural-born angel to me,” Beebo said, surprising them both with her frankness.

“That’s a very nice thing for a stranger to say,” Paula said. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Beebo said, blanketing her sudden confusion with an offhand nod.

There was a pensive pause while Beebo tried to remember the books she had read about Lesbian love. It wasn’t always a question of sweeping girls off their feet and carrying them away to bed, as Mona had made it seem at first. How did you approach a sensitive, well-bred girl like this one? Mow her down with kisses? Certainly not.

Beebo began to wonder how to make herself welcome for the night. It seemed far better than going back to Jack’s and stewing again until dawn about her future. She would be leaving Jack and Pat alone together all night for the first time, and yet it seemed less painful now than it had before. It would suffice Beebo if she and Paula did nothing but sit and talk all night.

“I suppose somebody’s waiting for you?” Paula said.

“Nobody.”

Paula frowned at her. “Your roommate?” she asked.

“My roommate is having an affair with a man,” Beebo said and shocked Paula, until Beebo smiled at her and made her think she was kidding.

“Well ... Mona?” she asked.

“Mona could be on the moon for all I know. I thought I’d find her here.”

“And now you’re disappointed,” Paula said diffidently.

“Not at all. I’m relieved.”

Paula drained her coffee cup and put it down with a nervous clink. “It must be—awkward—if your roommate is really in love with somebody else,” she said, in a voice so soft it was its own apology for speaking.

“It is,” Beebo said. “I hate to go home. I’m too long to sleep on the damn sofa.”

“I’m afraid you’re too long for mine, too,” Paula said. There was a pause. “But I could sleep on it and you could take my bed, if you will.”

It was such a completely disarming—almost quaint—invitation, that Beebo smiled at her, prickling with temptation. Paula’s bashfulness was enough to make Beebo self-assured.

“At least you’re not too long for the pajamas,” Paula said.

“I can’t put you out like that,” Beebo said.

Paula was flustered. She looked at her hands. “I don’t mind,” she said. “It’s long and I’m short. We’re used to each other.”

“You and the sofa?” Beebo said, and stood up. She went to the closet and found her jacket. You can’t take somebody’s bed away just because you told a lie about sleeping on your own sofa. She pulled the jacket on and zipped it.

“You’re a sweet girl, Paula,” she said, not looking at her. “Miss Plaid Pajamas must be nuts. Find somebody who deserves you, and she’ll never make you sleep alone on the sofa.”

She started for the door but Paula, recovering suddenly, jumped up and put a restraining hand on her arm. Beebo turned around, a shiver of sharp excitement radiating through her. She was not—she was never—as sure of herself as she seemed.

“Beebo,” Paula said, whispering so that Beebo had to bend her head to hear her. “I’d like you to stay. Make yourself welcome. Please.”

Beebo was afraid to believe her ears. It had seemed almost easy, in retrospect, to storm the Colophon. She was not unaware that Mona was something of a catch, and when she went over the events of that night, she was satisfied at the way she had acted. Nobody, not Mona herself, knew how inexperienced and uncertain Beebo was, and nothing she had done gave her away. Unless it was her exuberance when Mona kissed her.

But now it seemed incredible that this exquisite stranger should reach out for her from the middle of nowhere. “Paula,” she said, “I think we’re both just lonely. I think it would be best if I go. You don’t want to wake up tomorrow and hate yourself.” She was still hedging about the ultimate test with a girl.

“I was lonely. I will be again if you go.”

“Maybe you’d be better off lonely than sorry.”

“Beebo, do I have to beg you?” Paula pleaded, her voice coming up stronger with her emotion.

Beebo reached for her in one instinctive motion, suddenly very warm inside her jacket. “No, Paula, you don’t have to beg me to do anything. Just ask me.”

“I did. And you didn’t want to stay.”

“I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t understand.”

“I thought it was Mona. She can make herself so—so tempting.”

“I can’t even remember what she looks like.”

“Aren’t you in love with her?”

Beebo’s hands, with a will of their own, closed around Paula’s warm slim arms. “I met her last week for the first time. You can’t be in love with someone you just met.”

“You can’t?” Paula demurred cautiously, looking down at her big pajamas.

“I never was,” Beebo said, feeling sweat break out on her forehead. She pulled gently on Paula and was almost dismayed when Paula moved docilely toward her. Beebo became feverishly aware that the plaid pajamas did not conceal all of Paula Ash. The sweeping curve of her breasts held the cotton top out far enough to brush Beebo’s chest with a feather touch. Beebo felt it through the layers of her clothes with a tremor so hard and real it tumbled eighteen years of daydreams out of her head.

She held Paula at arm’s length a moment, looking at this lovely little redheaded princess with a mixture of misgivings and want too powerful to pretend away. Paula took her hands and held them with quivering strength, returning Beebo’s gaze. Beebo saw her own doubts reflected in Paula’s eyes. But she saw desire there, too; desire so big that it had to be brave: it hadn’t any place to hide.

Paula kissed Beebo’s hands with a quick press of her mouth that electrified Beebo. She stood there while Paula kissed them over and over again and a passionate frenzy mounted in them both. Paula’s lips, at first so chaste, almost reverent, warmed against Beebo’s palms ... and then her kitten-tongue slipped between Beebo’s fingers and over the backs of her broad hands until those hands trembled perceptibly and Paula stopped, clutching them to her face.

Beebo reclaimed them, but only to caress Paula’s face, bringing it close to her and seeing it with amazement.

“I never guessed I’d feel love for the first time through my hands,” she murmured. “Paula, Paula, I would have done this all wrong if you hadn’t had the guts to start it for me. I would have manhandled you, I—”

Paula stilled her with a finger over Beebo’s mouth. “Don’t talk now,” she said.

And Beebo, who had never done more than dream before, slipped her arms around Paula and pulled her tight. It was a marvel the way their bodies fitted together; the way Paula’s head tipped back naturally at so beckoning an angle, and rested on Beebo’s arm; the way her eyes closed and her lips parted and her hair scattered like garnet petals around her flower-face.

Beebo kissed her mouth and kissed her mouth again, holding her against the wall with the pressure of her body. Paula submitted with a sort of wistful abandonment. Everywhere Beebo touched this sweet girl, she found thrilling surprises. And Paula, coming to life beneath Beebo’s searching hands, found them with her.

It was no news to Beebo that she was tall and strong and male-inclined. But her voluptuous reaction to Paula shocked her speechless. Paula began to undress her and Beebo felt herself half-fainting backwards on the sofa into a whirlpool of sensual delight. The merest touch, the merest flutter of a finger, and Beebo went under, hearing her own moans like the whistle of a distant wind. Paula had only to undo a belt buckle or pull off a shoe, and Beebo responded with a beautiful helpless fury of desire.

It was no longer a question of proceeding with caution, of “learning how.” The whole night passed like an ecstatic dream, punctuated with a few dead-asleep time-outs, when they were both too exhausted to move, even to make themselves comfortable.

Beebo had only a vague idea of what she was doing, beyond the overwhelming fact that she was making ardent love to Paula. She seemed to have no mind at all, nor need of one. She was aware only that Paula was beautiful, she was gay, she was warmly loving, and she was there in Beebo’s arms: fragrant and soft and auburn-topped as a bouquet of tiger lilies.

Beebo couldn’t let her go. And when fatigue forced her to stop she would pull Paula close and stroke her, her heavy breath stirring Paula’s glowing hair, and think about all the girls she had wanted and been denied. She was making up, this night, for every last one of them.

Paula whispered, “Do you still believe you can’t love someone you just met?”

“I don’t know what I believe any more.”

And Paula said, “I love you, Beebo. Do you believe that?”

Beebo lifted Paula’s fine face and covered it with kisses while Paula kept repeating, “I love you, I love you,” until the words—the unadorned words—brought Beebo crashing to a climax, rolling over on Paula, embracing her with those long strong legs.

She felt Paula sobbing in the early dawn and raised up on an elbow to look at her. “Darling, did I hurt you?” she asked anxiously, not stopping to think that she had never called a girl “darling” before, either.

“No,” Paula said. “It’s just—I’ve been so unhappy, so confused. I thought the world had ended a month ago, and tonight it’s just beginning. It’s brand new. I’m so happy it scares me.”

Beebo held her tenderly and brushed the tears off her cheeks. Paula put her head in the crook of Beebo’s arm and gazed at her. “You must have been born making love, Beebo.”

“How do you know?” Beebo had no intention of setting the record straight just then.

“I don’t, really. It’s just that I never reacted to anybody the way I have to you. I never did this with anybody before.”

“Never made love?” Beebo said, surprised almost into laughter. The blind leading the blind, she thought.

“No, I’ve made love before,” Paula said thoughtfully. “With men, too. It’s just that I never.... You’ll think I’m making this up, but it’s the truth. I never—oh, God help me, I’m frigid. I mean, I was, till tonight.”

Beebo lay there in the dark, holding her, torn between the wish to accept it and the suspicion that she was fibbing.

“You don’t believe me,” Paula said resignedly. “I shouldn’t have told you. It’s enough that it happened.”

Beebo petted her, smoothing her hair and letting her hands glide over Paula’s silky body. “Okay, you never came before,” she said. “Now I’ll tell you a fish story. I never made love before.”

Paula laughed good-naturedly. “All right, we’re even,” she said. “That’s a real whopper. Mine was the truth.”

Beebo laughed with her, and it didn’t matter any more whether she had been lied to or not. It was the truth in spirit, and only Paula knew if it was the truth in fact. Her attraction to Beebo was so real that it took shape in the night, surrounding her like the aura of her perfume. Beebo kissed her while she was still laughing. “You have such a mouth, Paula. Such a mouth....”

“Does it please you?”

“You please me. All of you,” Beebo said, and she meant it. Paula was wholly feminine, soft and submissive. She was finely constructed, looking somehow as breakable, as valuable—and as durable—as Limoges china. Beebo wanted to protect her, accomplish things for her.

She kept touching her admiringly. “You’re so tiny,” she said. “I’m going to feed you lasagna and put some meat on your bones.”

“Will you buy me a new wardrobe when I get too fat for my old one?”

“I’ll buy you anything. Mink coats. Meals at the Ritz. New York City,” Beebo said.

“All of it?”

“Just the good parts.”

Paula clutched at her suddenly, first laughing, then trembling. “Beebo, don’t leave me,” she said. “I do love you.” She seemed dumbfounded. “It frightens me, it makes me believe all over again in my childhood dreams. Did you ever feel like that?”

“Only on the bad days. My childhood wasn’t that pretty,” Beebo said.

“When are the bad days?”

“Never any more. Not with Paula around.”

* * *

They got up at noon the next day, and it was some time before Beebo could think rationally about her job. She should call Marie, she should call Jack and tell him where she was. But it was impossible to get out of the bed while Paula was in it. And every time Paula sat up, Beebo pulled her down.

“Let me make breakfast,” Paula smiled, and after wrestling a moment, pulled free and scampered halfway across the bedroom, pulling a sheet after her. She stood with her dazzling naked back, delicately sugared with freckles, to Beebo, who admired it in infatuated silence.

Paula ruffled through her closet looking for a negligee until Beebo said, “Paula, are you in love with me or that sheet?”

“I don’t want you to see me,” Paula confessed. “You said I was too thin.”

“I said ‘tiny.’ And beautiful. Honey, I felt you all over; I know you with my hands. Would it be so awful if I know you with my eyes, too?” When Paula hesitated, Beebo threw the covers off and stood by the bed.

Paula studied her in silence. “You’re wonderful,” she breathed at last.

“I’m homely,” Beebo answered. “But I’m not ashamed of it.”

“You are many things, Beebo, but homely isn’t one of them,” Paula declared. She faced Beebo sheet-first, like a highborn Roman girl in her wedding chiton. “How many girls have admired you like this?”

“Never a one,” Beebo said. She crossed the room toward Paula and saw her flinch. “Are you afraid of me?” she said, surprised.

“A little.”

“No, Paula.” Beebo reached her, touching her with gentle hands. “I’d never hurt you. Don’t you know that?”

“Not with your hands, maybe,” Paula said, bending her graceful neck to kiss one. “But I’m so in love ... it would take so little. And scores of other girls must want you, Beebo. It would hurt me awfully if you ever wanted them.”

“What girls?” Beebo scoffed.

“Well, for a starter—Mona.”

“Paula, I kissed Mona twice. She stood me up twice. That’s the end of that,” Beebo said flatly. Abruptly, she pulled Paula’s sheet off and gazed delightedly on the fresh fair curves beneath. And before Paula had time to blush, Beebo picked her up, grateful at last for the uncomely strength in her arms, and placed her on the bed.

“Beebo,” Paula whispered, her arms locked tightly around Beebo’s neck. “How old are you?”

Beebo couldn’t blurt idiotically, “Eighteen.” Instead she asked, “How old do I look?”

“Like a college kid,” Paula sighed. “Which makes me older than you. I’m twenty-five, Beebo.”

“An ancient ruin.” Beebo kissed her nonchalantly, but she was secretly surprised. Nonetheless it pleased her to have won an older girl.

They made love again, lazily now. There was no wild rush, no fear on Beebo’s part that it would hurt and disillusion her. They rolled in caresses like millionaires in blue chips ... ran their fingers over each other, and kissed and tickled and laughed and blew in each other’s ears.

And all the while Paula kept repeating, with the transparent affection that is the crown of femininity, “I love you, Beebo. I love you so much.”

Beebo couldn’t answer. She couldn’t have been happier, or hotter, or more rapturously charmed with the girl. She could hardly believe she had found one so lovely, so generous, so responsive, so single.

But there was a lot of roaming restless curiosity in Beebo, and while she was willing and eager to make love to and romanticize Paula, she was not willing to fall in love with her.

It wasn’t Paula’s fault, though Paula, with a woman’s quick awareness of emotions, sensed the situation. It was just that Beebo wasn’t ready for it. Paula had come too early in Beebo’s life. And that fact alone made Paula realize how young Beebo must be.

Beebo had caught Paula in a vulnerable state, on the rebound from an unhappy love affair with the girl in the plaid pajamas. But it was the culmination of a lot of bad affairs with both sexes that had left Paula drained and skeptical; hopeless about her future and unable to cope with her present. She had nearly taken the whole bottle of sleeping pills the night before, instead of the four that knocked her out.

Beebo was too good to be true, too young to know herself, too masculine to be faithful. But how strong she was, how sensual and sure; in some ways, wise beyond her years with that hard-won maturity Jack had perceived months before.

Paula tried to tell herself, as she lay in Beebo’s embrace, that she had nothing more than a hot crush that would end as suddenly as it began, and make her laugh to think she had called it love. She wanted very much to believe it, because it would have spared her the pain of losing Beebo Brinker to another girl—a pain she was in no condition to take safely then.

* * *

They ate together in Paula’s kitchen, and Paula obligingly sat on Beebo’s lap and let Beebo feed her. They were enchanted with each other. It was the kind of day everybody ought to have once in a while; if you knew it was coming, you could bear the boredom and solitude in the interim.

Paula told Beebo about her young years in Washington, D.C., and the shock that accompanied her suspicions that she was a Lesbian. Because it was Paula speaking, and because Beebo had never talked heart-to-heart with another Lesbian, the story seemed remarkable. She held Paula on her knees, answering with sympathy and affection, troubled and touched by it ... and stirred by the warmth of Paula’s close, firm bottom.

* * *

They were startled when the phone cut in on them late in the afternoon.

Paula answered it over Beebo’s protests. “Hello?” she said, and as she listened her eyes went to Beebo in surprise. Finally she held out the receiver. “It’s for you,” she said. “Jack Mann.”

Beebo stood up, concerned. “How did he know I was here?”

“You’re his roommate, he says. Roommates ought to keep track of each other,” Paula said, teasing but with just a trace of chill in her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me you were straight, Beebo?”

Beebo took the phone with a comical grimace. “You would have guessed, anyway,” she said. “Hey—do you know Jack?”

“Everybody knows Jack,” said Paula.

Into the receiver Beebo said, “Jackson?”

“I hear you’ve been out stupefying the female population of Greenwich Village,” Jack said. “You must have something. Paula’s usually a deep freeze.”

“How did you know I was here?” Beebo said.

“My spies are everywhere. And a damn good thing, too. I would have given you up for dead. Listen, pal, I just got an s.o.s. from Marie. There’s a very large customer on Park Avenue who wants a very large pizza right now. Marie is whipping it up and Beebo will whip it over to said customer.”

“Park Avenue is Pete’s territory,” Beebo said. “He won’t like it.”

“He’s out somewhere, as usual. Marie can’t find him and besides, she’s afraid to look.”

“You want me to leave now?” Disappointment growled in her voice.

“I know Paula, honey; she’s a good girl. If she likes you enough to sleep with you, she likes you enough to wait for you.”

“You mean you knew this beautiful girl all along and didn’t tell me about her?” Beebo said, grinning at Paula.

“Well, hell, you waited two months to tell me you wanted one. Come on, Marie’s in a hurry. Show her what you’re made of.”

“I’m made of sugar and spice, like the rest of the girls,” Beebo said sourly. “It doesn’t mix with cheese and anchovies.”

“Get your ass over there, Beebo,” Jack said. “This order goes to Venus Bogardus.”

The name rang in Beebo’s head. “The actress?” she said, frowning. “She’s not one of our customers.”

“She is now.”

“But Jack, my God. Venus Bogardus!”

“The original. The girl with the bosom that just won’t stop. Can you take it?”

“It’s worth it just for a look,” Beebo grinned. “Okay, call Marie and tell her I’m coming. And Jack—I know I should have called you. I’m sorry.”

Beebo hung up and walked to Paula, expecting to embrace her and explain. But Paula was quite pale. “What’s all this about Pete and Marie? Do you mean the Pasquinis?”