Chapter Eight

The green line at the bottom of the swimming pool grew fat and then thin with the even ripples of the blue water. The room, long and wide, was lined to the ceiling with tile, and the voices of the girls assembled there rang as though they were all shouting at one another from across the water and from the balcony stairs. Mitch stood with the others along the edge of the pool, the pungent smell of chlorine in her nostrils, a washed-out gray tank suit clinging to her body, freshly wet from the sprinkler through which she had passed at the entrance to the locker room.

Miss Jennings, the instructor, separated from the rest by the fact that she alone wore a gay plaid swimming suit and carried a whistle on a string around her neck and wore no cap, called the role.

“Abbott,” she began, “Barry, Craig, Caroway, Feitzer, Jamison, Lathrop, Maurer, Mitchell....”

Mitch turned sharply. Robin was here, then. She scanned the faces of those around her, strangely alike with the white caps pulled down to their ears and across their foreheads, leaving no clues as to the color of their hair. Robin was standing at the head of the pool near the diving board. She waved and smiled, but it was against the rules to move about when roll was being taken.

Standing beside Mitch, Marybell Van Casey said, “I didn’t know Robin Maurer could swim.”

“All in, now!”

The water was too warm and it tasted bad. Mitch dove down to the wobbly green line and brought up the round black rubber puck as she came to the top, letting it sink again as she caught her breath and trod water while she listened to the instructions for the relay with the Australian crawl. Then the backstroke, the flutter kick, the side stroke, and the whistle.

“All out!”

They all stood dripping at the sides, pulling their caps up from their ears so they could hear better, punching the sides of their heads to let the water out.

“As it stands, the following stay: Caroway, Lathrop, Maurer, Mitchell, Marin, Orhoski, Rogers, Van Casey, and Walker. Next week, we’ll narrow down to six, with the others doubling. Play period for those who want to stay.” She blew a shrill period with her whistle, and climbed up on the white ladder chair.

“Wonderful,” Casey said, slipping as she reached Mitch. “Two Tri Eps made it. Best ever. We’ll be there next week, too.”

It had been easy. Mitch smiled back at Casey. Over her shoulder she saw Robin leaving, going toward the lockers. “I’m not going to stay,” Mitch said. “I’m pooped. See you at the house.”

She caught up with Robin at the showers.

“Well, stranger!” Robin said. “Say, you’re good. I saw that crawl.”

“Robin, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it Saturday. Thanks again for asking.”

“Forget it,” Robin said, pulling her suit off and working the knobs of the shower. “I know what you have to go through over in Greek Town. Social calendar like the Astors.”

Mitch said, “No, I went out alone. With an independent.” She wished that Robin would put a towel around her. It was hard to talk with her and keep looking above her head or directly at her eyes or across the room. Not down at her naked body.

“Gee, honey. You’re brave.” She tested the running water. “Just right,” she said. “Wait after you get dressed. We’ll catch a Coke.”

The bathing suit fell to the floor in a tightly curled knot, and the towel felt good. There was a slight feeling of elation over Miss Jennings’ announcement that she was not eliminated yet. It would be easy to make the team, Mitch thought, and that would help at the house. She would know some of the others better, like Casey and Marsha and Jane Bell. The thought made her feel clean, not like the thought of Leda and those things. But where was Leda? She had spent yesterday with Jake, from early morning to closing hours, and Jan was gone. It was because of the way she had cried Saturday, and Leda was proud. Mitch knew that Leda had done it purposely, to hurt her.

“I’m going with Jake for the day,” she had said Sunday morning, early, after breakfast and the phone call she had made. “See you around.”

“Hey, Mitch, you dressed?”

“In a minute.”

“I’ll be drying my hair.”

Mitch zipped the side of her skirt and pulled the sweater over her damp head. With the towel around her shoulders, she combed and parted her hair and took the lipstick to the mirror. I love Leda, she thought. I love Leda. I hurt her. I’ll always hurt her because I am that way. I’m what she said I was. Leda loves both but I love one. In the mirror, the wetness of her hair gave it a bobbed look, and the reflection was like that of a young boy. Mitch moved her hands up and pushed her hair back from her ears and studied the effect. Her face looked fresh from the swim, her eyes bright, the straight hair darker, and slicked back mannishly.

“Hey,” Casey said, standing behind her in her swim suit, “you look like Sonny Tufts with lipstick.”

Mitch jumped and stepped away from the mirror. She stuttered and felt heat rise to her head. “I w-was w-w-orrying ab-bout what to d-do with my hair.”

“Well, don’t get so upset. Why don’t you dry it first?”

“Y-yes,” Mitch said, hurrying away toward the dryers.

Casey flung the towel over her shoulder and moved down past the white curtains to an empty booth. She thought, She’s an odd one.

* * *

Robin twisted the straw in her Coke glass. “I suppose you’re trying to make the better of the bitter,” she said, “but you don’t sound very happy.”

“Most of it’s my own fault,” Mitch answered. “It’s because of the way I am.”

“Look, Mitch! You’re a healthy, normal American girl, by Jupiter, and that bunch is from hunger. You don’t know. Over at the dorm, everything’s easy, the way it should be. Some people fit like gloves into that sorority routine, and others—well, they’re better off elsewhere. Take a tip from me, sweetie, come on over to the dorm. We have lots of extra beds.”

The minute hand on the wall clock moved forward with a perceptible jerk. “French class,” Mitch said, fumbling in her coat for a dime to lay on the table. “I’ll have to run. I don’t know, Robin. Maybe I just won’t fit in anyplace. You don’t know me.”

Robin gathered her books up and pushed two nickels across the table. “I know you. There’s nothing wrong with you that a good taste of independent life won’t cure. See you next week—and think it over. Gad, I sound like a recruiting station.”

* * *

Even if Charlie hadn’t acted that way in French class, Mitch would have gone there anyway, eventually. He merely added to the reasons. It was happening all the time, everyplace. In the gym earlier, the way she had felt when Robin was naked, and in front of the mirror with her hair like that. Ever since she had heard the word. It was like picking up a book and reading the things the main character did and said and his description and thinking vaguely, at first, Why, I’m that way a little. Then more, until the realization comes like a giant boulder down the hill and crashes into you, pulverizing you with the knowledge that this is you, this character. “Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.” It says here.

Charlie sat in the back by the window. She could feel his eyes. The short walk between the gym and Jacob Hall had taken the curl from her hair and left it the way it was before she had rolled it on pins and sat with the hot air blowing it dry under the big machine. It was straight. Why couldn’t he do it? What was it she had read? Exactly? “A strong congenital trend ... risk to associate with a girl who has these traits....” What? Did he know about her? He had brought that thing in his wallet and he had wanted to. Was there something on her body that showed it? She squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, and listened to the slow, calculated conjugation of the verb avoir.

Her name was called. “Levez-vous! Allez au tableau noir et conjugez le verbe être.”

The chalk dropped from her hand in the middle. She turned to pick it up and saw him look away from her and out the window. He knew.

At the end, he didn’t wait. Mitch walked toward the library alone. There was a huge arch above the door, and inside the halls were quiet except for the slight tap of the shoes on the marble floors as the boy behind her walked down toward the Science Reading Room. At the head of the stairs, Mitch turned right and walked to the silent room where the tables were in rows, and the people at the tables sat hushed before their work. She picked the volume out easily from the shelf and chose a chair at a back table where no one sat.

“The female homosexual, the Lesbian, often preys on girls who are not true homosexuals. Such girls may enjoy men, and be capable of normal heterosexual life if they do not become involved with a genuine Lesbian type, whose technique is often more skillful than that of many of her young men suitors.”

Men come first with me.

Maybe it was natural.

“A normal man finds sex with this type of woman extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

I can’t.

No, I just can’t!

“Many times, under the proper circumstances, a female homosexual may learn to control, if not eliminate, her active homosexual tendencies once she is removed from an environment where the temptation is great. In the case of....”

Take a tip from me, sweetie, come on over to the dorm.

“But, on the other hand, a change in environment may only lead to new conquests, a fresh hunting ground.”

Mitch closed the book and put it back on the shelf. A dog wandered listlessly into the large room. He barked, wagging his shabby white tail, looking around at everyone. Laughter rocked the silence, and the dog increased his barking, running excitedly from table to table. The librarian in the room, a thin woman with pursed lips, hurried feverishly toward the fleeing animal.

“Here,” she whispered ridiculously. “Here, here.”

Mitch sat down again at the back table. She watched the woman take the dog by the collar and lead him with his back feet skidding across the floors and out the door. Again the hush fell back save for a few lingering giggles. Mitch tore a large sheet of paper from her notebook and wrote, stopping now and then to stare gloomily at the books that circled the wall. From a good distance down the hall, she could hear the dog barking in another room.

* * *

It was a gray afternoon, and the sun was hidden behind a sheet of dull sky, with the wind kicking the leaves along the curb in front of the Tri Epsilon house, where they stood talking.

“I’ll pick you up after the meeting,” he said. “We could squeeze in a few beers at Rick’s.”

“Not tonight, Jake-O. I’m tired. Think I’ll catch up on sleep. Those Monday-night chapter orgies wear me down.”

She was thinking that Mitch would be waiting in the room. Before dinner she would tell Mitch that she was going out with Jake when the chapter meeting let out, and then she would surprise her. She’d say, “Do you think I could go out with him when I knew you were up here? I can’t kid myself any longer, Mitch.” Maybe that would erase the nervous undercurrent of tension between them since Jan had gone. It would be more dramatic that way, surprising her like that.

“O.K., I’ll give you a ring.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and leaned over to kiss her quickly. Jake was funny the way he sang aloud in the streets. He walked away singing, “Oh, here by the fire we defy the frost and storm,” and Leda heard him as she walked up the steps and came into the front room of the house. The thought came that if Jake were gone forever, it would be strange, but if the choice were to be made, it would be Jake who would go. Not Mitch. Was she upstairs? She teased her own curiosity, prolonging it, sweetening it by tarrying in the hall downstairs.

To the left of the dining room there was a small alcove, with square boxes and names printed evenly above each one. In her box there was an envelope with her name scrawled on the outside, and no postage or address. Girls were coming down the stairs, milling around in the halls, waiting for the dinner gong. They were reading the papers, playing cards, singing at the piano, and talking together in close, separate groups. Leda took the envelope to the scarlet chair in the corner near the entrance to Mother Nessy’s suite. She ripped the seal open and held the thin notebook paper in her hand.

Dear Leda,

This letter is for you alone. Please tear it up when you are through.

More than anything else I want you to understand what I’m going to say here, and why I’m saying it. I want to leave the sorority and become an independent. Maybe it’ll be the best thing for me, and maybe it’ll be just another defeat, but I have to do it. Leda, darling, you know that I love you. You know it, even though I haven’t shown it the past few days. I’ve been worried and afraid, and now I know for sure what’s wrong with me. I suppose I should go to a doctor, but I don’t have the nerve, and I’m going to try to help myself as best I can.

Lesbian is an ugly word and I hate it. But that’s what I am, Leda, and my feelings toward you are homosexual. I had no business to ask you to stop seeing Jake, to try to turn you into what I am, but please believe me, I didn’t know myself what I was doing. I guess I’m young and stupid and naïve about life, and I know that you warned me about the direction my life was taking when you told me to get to know men. I tried, Leda. But it was awful. Even Charlie knows what I am now. I think that if I go to an independent house, away from you, the only person I love, I’ll be able to forget some of the temptation. If I stay in the sorority, I’ll only make you unhappy and hurt you. I love you too much to do that.

Please announce that I am leaving during the chapter meeting tonight. Don’t tell them why, please, because I want to straighten myself out and I don’t want people to know. Tell them that I thank them for all they’ve done, but that I’d rather live somewhere else because I don’t fit in here.

I know how you’ll feel about me after reading this. I’ll try to stay out of your way. Tonight I am going to eat dinner downtown, and then during chapter meeting I’ll pack most of my things and move to the hotel until I get a room at the dorm. Robin Maurer is going to help me.

There’s nothing else to say but good-by, I’m sorry, and I do love you, Leda.

Mitch

The dinner gong sounded out the first seven notes of “Yankee Doodle.” Mother Nesselbush stood in the doorway of her suite. She looked down at Leda, who was sitting there holding the paper the note was written on, not moving. It was customary for one of the girls to lead her in to dinner. Marsha usually handled the task because she was president, but Marsha was hurrying to finish the last-minute preparations in the Chapter Room for the meeting. Mother Nesselbush cleared her throat, but to no avail. Leda sat still and pale and Nessy bent down.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“Yes.”

“That was the dinner bell, you know.”

Leda said, “Yes.”

“Would you like to escort me to my table?”

Leda looked up at her, a thin veil of tears in her eyes, so thin that Mother Nessy did not notice. She could sense the waiting around her, the girls waiting to go into the dining room, Nessy waiting, the houseboys who served the food waiting for her. Standing slowly, she crooked her arm and felt Nessy’s hand close on it as they moved across the floor into the brightly lighted hall, past the six oak tables to the long front table and the center seats.

A plate of buns went from hand to hand, each girl taking one and passing the plate mechanically, reaching for it with the left, offering it with the right, as they had been taught when they were pledges. The bowl of thick, dried mashed potatoes came next, and the long dish of wizened pork chops, the bowl of dull green canned peas, and the individual dishes of cole slaw. When Leda tasted the food, she felt an emetic surging throughout her body and she laid her fork down. Around her there was a churning gobble of voices that seemed to slice through her brain like a meat cleaver. Mother Nessy stared after her when she went from the room.

“She said she was sick,” she told Kitten, “and I knew it when I saw her before dinner. Poor thing. There’s a flu epidemic going around, and I’m willing to bet my life she’s got the flu.”

The car was gone from the driveway. Leda put on the sweater she was carrying and ran down the graveled drive. In her hand she clutched her felt purse, and at the corner she caught a taxi.

At the Blue Ribbon there was a crowd of students waiting at the rail with trays, sitting in the booths with books piled high beside their plates, pushing and standing near the juke box with nickels and dimes, the pin-ball machines ringing up scores in her ears as she looked for Mitch.

The Den was quieter, and the waitresses were lingering lazily around the front of the room near the bar, where a few boys munched liverwurst sandwiches and drank draught beer. The bartender dropped a glass and cursed enthusiastically. Leda pushed the revolving door and felt the cold autumn wind.

Mac’s, Donaldson’s, the Alley, French’s, Miss Swanson’s, all of them alive with hungry students swarming in and out, the smell of hamburger predominant in each café, the sizzling crack of French fries cooking in grease on hot open grills.

“Ham on rye.”

“One over easy.”

“Hey, Mary, catch the dog.”

“Well, hell, you’re almost an hour late!”

Leda stood finally on the curb in front of Miss Swanson’s. She fumbled in her pocket for a nickel and ran into the drugstore on the corner. She made a mistake dialing the number, and she held the hook down until the nickel came back and then tried again. When the voice answered, there was a long wait, the far-off sound of voices shouting down the halls, and then the answer, quick and flip. “Robin’s out to dinner. Call back later.”

Her heart was pounding, and she could feel the perspiration soaking her body. If Mitch was eating with Robin, she might have it arranged already. Where was she eating? With the car, she could be anywhere, but it was unlike her to drive far at night. The clock read seven-thirty. In half an hour the chapter would meet and Mitch would go back to the house for her bags. Leda shivered in the night air and wished she had found Mitch before she had a chance to see Robin and carry her plan through. Now Leda would have to tell Marsha she was sick, that she had gone for medicine because she was sick and she could not attend the meeting. She would be in the room waiting for Mitch when she came.

A car swerved away from her as she stepped off the sidewalk into the street. The cab driver grunted, and skirted the curb narrowly as he drove fast.

“Hurry!” he said. “You girls always gotta be someplace fast. That’s all I hear is ‘Hurry, driver!’ Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

* * *

“Marsha’s in the Chapter Room,” Kitten said. “Thought you were sick.”

Leda said, “I am.” She found the door to the room locked, and she knocked three times fast and once slow.

“Who goes?” she recognized Jane Bell’s voice.

“Pledged in blood,” Leda said. “Promised in the heart.”

“Enter.”

The bolt was slipped off and Jane Bell stepped back. She was wearing a silky white gown with a deep red scarf on her hair, drawing her hair back behind her ears. There was a sharp odor of burning incense in the dark room, lighted only by five single candles on a small table covered with the same silky white material. Marsha knelt at the table, arranging a red velvet-covered book with a black marker on the open page. When Leda walked in the room, panting, her face damp and hot, Jane stared at her.

“My gosh,” she said, “you look feverish.”

“That’s what I came about. I can’t attend the meeting tonight. I feel lousy.”

Marsha looked up from the book at Leda. There was an angelic look to her face by candlelight, a look that she was fully aware of, cultivated and practiced. When she conducted the weekly chapter meetings, this look lent an air of piety to the conduct of the service. With the members of the chapter standing in a solemn semi-circle before her, she felt that there was something spiritual about her leadership, celestial and sacrosanct.

“We’re having a formal meeting tonight,” she told Leda, as if to persuade her sickness to end.

“I see you are. I’m sorry. I just feel lousy.”

“You look feverish,” Jane Bell remarked again.

“I hope you feel better.” Marsha smiled. “Did you know that Mrs. Gates, our Kansas City vice-counsel, gave us three new robes? Jane has one on.”

Jane twirled and the robe floated on her gracefully. Inwardly Leda thought, Jesus! Oh, silly Jesus! but she pacified them by touching the material and exclaiming, then apologizing again. She backed out of the room just as the electric buzzer gave the signal for the members to line up in the hall and prepare to enter in single file.

The halls were still, the pledges confined to their rooms for study hour. Leda found the room dark. Mitch had not come yet. She struck a match and lit a cigarette, and in the blackness she went to the window and watched the street. Ten dragging minutes later the convertible pulled up in front of the house, and Mitch slammed the front door and hurried up the walk. Leda lay down on the bed, watching the cigarette smoke curl to the ceiling, and waited.

After the light went on in the room, Mitch felt a flood of surprise in her stomach as she saw Leda. She shut the door and set Robin’s large empty suitcase on the floor. Leda sat up and looked at her.

“You’re going to pack now?” she said.

“Yes. I thought you’d be in chapter meeting.” She tried not to look at Leda, but she could feel the girl’s eyes piercing her, stopping her attempts to avoid those eyes, and she went to the bureau and began removing socks and handkerchiefs and scarves.

Leda let her click the suitcase open, and watched her while she placed the things inside it. She could feel the sharp edges of the letter against her chest there near her bra where she had put it before dinner. With her left hand she reached down and fished the letter out and stuck it under her pillow.

“I decided,” Leda said finally, “that the least I could do was to say good-by to you.”

Mitch felt choked up and agonized with desire. She scooped out an armful of slips and panties and pajamas, and thrust them in there with the other clothes. Her lips formed the word “Thanks,” and she meant to say it, but there was no sound. On the floor of the closet there were fluffy swirls of dust near her tennis shoes, and she brushed them away with her hand. She tossed the shoes onto the bed, and took the chair from the desk over to the closet to reach the boxes at the top.

Leda said, “Want any help?”

“No. Thanks, though. I can do it myself.”

“You’ve got an idea,” Leda said, “that you can do everything yourself. I don’t know where you got that idea.”

“Sometimes it’s up to yourself,” Mitch said.

“You’ve got a lot of ideas, I bet. I bet you’ve got thousands of good ideas.”

The box slipped from Mitch’s hand and fell to the floor, spilling out two round hats, one black, one brown, both alike—round and plain.

“Someday you’ll find out that most of the ideas don’t work. None of them work.”

Mitch stopped tying the strings on the top of the box and looked up at Leda. “What are you trying to say?” she asked. “What are you trying to tell me? You never say anything right out. You always talk around and make it hard.”

“I’m trying to say, don’t go. Going isn’t the answer.”

The tears came in her eyes, and Mitch looked away at the shoe bag on the closet floor. She thought of Robin, her friend, of the swimming team, of other years and anything to keep them from being the same, but this made it worse and the sob started low in her throat. Then Leda bent and caught her shoulder and held her, kneeling on the rug, listening to the stifled crying.

“Mitch,” she said, “don’t go. Don’t leave me, please.”

“But you know what I am. I told you what I am in the letter.”

“I don’t care. Mitch, I don’t care.”

“I can’t stay with you. I won’t feel right, I—”

Leda put her hand on the girl’s face and felt the tears. She turned her face and put her lips on the salty moistness. “Come on over to the bed,” she said. “Get up, Mitch, and come on over to the bed.”

Mitch lay down with her face buried in the pillow, and Leda sat on the edge, her hands stroking Mitch’s hair.

“Can you hear me, Mitch? Listen, it doesn’t help to run away. You don’t think it helps, do you? It doesn’t help.”

“No,” Mitch sobbed. “I can’t stay here. I can’t bear to see you every day and know what I’m doing to you.”

“What are you doing to me? What in hell are you doing to me?”

“I’m a Lesbian,” Mitch answered. “That’s how I feel about you, too. I’m not like you—with Jake and everything.”

“Oh, God, Mitch! All right, listen. I love you, you crazy kid. I don’t have to label my love, do I? Do I have to say that it’s Lesbian love? O.K., then that’s what it is. It’s Lesbian love, pure and simple. Ye gods, I’ve known about myself for years. I didn’t run away. I didn’t walk out and run away. You gave me plenty of reason to. You were the first one to come along and blow up my little plan for hiding the way I am. You think you’re doing something to me! Oh, Mitch! If anyone’s doing it, I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I love you.”

Mitch brought her head up from the pillow and turned over on her side. “But you said it,” she said. “You said you couldn’t love a Lesbian. You said—”

“I said so damn much, didn’t I? You’ve got to understand, Mitch. I don’t like what I am. If Jan ever knew, I’d take a razor and slash my wrists. I couldn’t live with people knowing, and pointing and saying, ‘Queer’ at me. No one knows but you, and I guess I never would have told you if you hadn’t started to leave. Do you think it’s easy to admit it? It was different when I could say it wasn’t this way, that I was bisexual and all that rot. Bisexual—that’s sort of like succotash, isn’t it? Only this succotash hasn’t got any corn in it. It’s straight beans!”

“What about Jake?” Mitch blew her nose and sat up. “What about all the time you spend with Jake?”

“Maybe I’m trying to prove something to myself. Part of me is trying to say that I’m not what I am. That’s the part of me that everyone knows—the alluring Leda, the queen, Jan’s daughter, an apple never falls far from the tree. Out with Jake every damn day to keep myself away from what I really am. Want to know what sex with him is like? It’s like dry bread, that’s what it’s like. Like dry bread!”

Leda got up from the bed and reached for her cigarettes on the desk. She felt relieved, cleansed, as though her mind had been emptied and she was free. She walked over to the suitcase on Mitch’s bed and picked up the clothing, taking it in her arms to the drawer. “You want this all put back, don’t you?” she said to Mitch. “You won’t leave me?”

“No,” Mitch said. “I’m going. Robin arranged everything, and—oh, Leda!” They stood in the center of the room holding one another, their lips fastened hard, their arms strong around each other. Leda’s hand reached for the buttons on Mitch’s blouse.

“Just stand still,” she said. “Just let me take everything off and look at you. I want to look at you.”

The skirt fell to the floor, and the blouse. Mitch stepped out of her shoes and stood before Leda.

“I want to love you,” Leda said.

Her hands stroked Mitch’s body gently. She leaned over to kiss her lips and her forehead and the closed eyelids. She said her name and held her, feeling the fast beat in her pulse and knowing that she had almost lost her.

The blood beat furiously in Mitch’s throat and she could feel a mounting strength in her legs and arms. With the arrogance of a master, Mitch’s nails dug into Leda’s flesh as she began to pull the sweater and the thin blouse from her shoulders. She let her teeth sink into Leda’s neck.

“No, faster!” Leda cried. “Faster, Mitch!”

Leda’s gasp was one of pleasure and desire and it moved Mitch to more violence, pinning Leda’s wrists behind her back and jerking at her skirt.

Neither of them heard the door open.

They turned in time to see Kitten and Casey framed in the doorway, eyes big, mouths dropped, and they fell apart from one another when the door was slammed, and the sound of feet running down the hall was as loud and fast as the beating of their hearts in that room.

It was a long time before they talked. Mitch lay dumb with horror, never forgetting the look on their faces as they had found her that way with Leda, unclothed and wild like a fierce animal. Sitting with her head hung, her hands pressing at her eyes, Leda was the first one to speak after the minutes passed as they would in a slow nightmare when nothing is real.

She stood up and picked the blouse off the floor. “Look,” she said. “I’ll go and talk to Marsha. That’s where they ran to. I’ll go and straighten it out.”

“How?”

Leda reached in the closet for a fresh blouse, and straightened her skirt so that the zipper was pulled and on the side. She ran a comb through her long hair, and her hands were trembling.

“I’ll explain it somehow. Marsha’s gullible, and I’ll explain it. I have to go now, or they’ll have a chance to talk and spread the story.”

Mitch said, “I’ll go too, Leda, I’ll go too. What’ll we say?”

“No!” Leda put her hands over her face and shook her head. “I’m sorry I yelled. We’ve got to handle this just right. You stay here. It’s better for me to go alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Look, get into bed. I’ll turn the light out and you stay here. If anyone else comes by, pretend you’re asleep.”

She waited while Mitch pulled her pajamas from the suitcase on her bed and threw the suitcase down on the floor, before she stepped into the pants and the coat. After she got in bed, Leda snapped the light out and went back by her own bed before she opened the door to go.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry at all. And stay here!”

In her hand, as she walked toward Marsha’s suite, Leda clutched Mitch’s letter, wrinkled and folded on the long sheet of notebook paper. Her eyes were set and determined, and there was a tight line about her lips.