Chapter Two

      THE BEDROOM DOOR opened and Beebo surprised Laura sitting on the closet floor fingering her shoes and dreaming. The party was two days past, the hangovers were still with them, but love was seven days behind them. Beebo didn’t know how much longer she could take it. She had tried, since Jack’s advice about relaxing, to keep her distance from Laura. It had not worked miracles, but it had helped.

      However, Laura resented the love she could no longer return. Perhaps it was anger at her own failing, her own empty heart. Laura felt a sort of shame when Beebo embraced her. She blamed herself secretly for her fading affection. Beebo’s love had been the strongest and Beebo’s words, when she spoke of it, the truest. And yet Laura had said those same words and felt those same passions and believed, as Beebo had believed, that it would last.

      She could not be sure where she had gone wrong or when that lovely flush of desire had begun to wane in her. She only knew one day that she did not want Beebo to touch her. When Beebo had protested, Laura had lost her temper and they had had their first terrible fight. Not a spat or an argument or a disagreement, as before. A fight—a physical struggle as well as a verbal one. An ugly and humiliating thing from which they could not rise and make love and reassure each other. That had been almost a year ago. Others had followed it and the breach became serious, and still they clung to each other.

      Only now Laura’s need was weakening and it was Beebo who held them together almost by herself. It was Beebo who gave in when a quarrel loomed, who took the lead to make peace afterwards, to try to soothe and spoil Laura. Beebo had the terrible fear that one of these days the quarrel would be too vicious and Laura would leave her. Or that she would go beyond the point of rational suffering and kill Laura.

      Once or twice she had dreamed of this, and when she had wakened in sweat and panic she had gone to the living room and turned the light on and spent the time until dawn staring at it, repeating the jingles of popular tunes in her mind as a sort of desperate gesture at sanity.

      Now Beebo stood looking down at Laura and at Nix, who was chewing on a pair of slippers, and she felt a wrenching in her heart. It just wasn’t possible for her to ignore Laura any longer. She had kept hands off since the party and her talk with Jack. There had been no begging, no shouting, no furious tears. Now she felt she deserved tenderness and she knelt down and took Laura’s chin in her hand and kissed her mouth.

      “I love you,” she said almost shyly.

      And Laura, who wanted only to leave her, not to hurt her, lowered her eyes and looked away. She could not say it anymore. I love you, Beebo. It wasn’t true. And Beebo knew it and the knowledge almost killed her, and yet she didn’t insist. “Laura,” she said humbly. “Kiss me.”

      And Laura did. And in a little wave of compassion she said into Beebo’s ear, “I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

      Beebo took it the wrong way, the way that hurt her least. She took it to mean that Laura was apologizing and wanted her love again. But Laura meant only that Beebo had been dear to her once and that it was awful to see her so unhappy. “It’s my fault,” she said. “Only—”

      “Only nothing,” Beebo said quickly. “Don’t say it. Say sweet things to me.”

      “Oh, Beebo, I can’t. Don’t ask me. I’ve forgotten the sweet things.” Suddenly she felt like crying. She had never meant to wound Beebo. She had had the best intentions of loving her faithfully for the rest of her life. And yet now every pretty face she saw on the streets caught her eye, every new set of eyes or curving lips at the lunch counter.

      Laura was afraid and ashamed. She had always protested hotly when somebody accused Lesbians of promiscuity. And yet here she was refuting her own argument, at least in her thoughts and desires. It was still true that in the whole time they had lived together, she had never betrayed Beebo with another woman.

      Knowing how Beebo felt only made Laura’s conscience worse. It made her resentful and gentle by fits. Either way it was nerve-wracking and left her exhausted.

      Suddenly Beebo picked her up and put her on the bed. She sat down beside her and slipped her arms around her and began to kiss her with a yearning that gradually brought little darts of desire to Laura. She didn’t want it until it happened. And then, inexplicably, she did. It was good, very good. And she heard Beebo whisper, “Oh, if it could always be like this. Laura, Laura, love me. Love me!”

      Laura turned her head away and shut her eyes and tried not to hear the words. Gradually the world faded out of her consciousness and there was only the ritual rhythm, the wonderful press of Beebo’s body against hers. It hadn’t been like this for Laura for months, and she was both grateful and annoyed.

      Beebo made wonderful love. She knew how, she did it naturally, as other people eat or walk. Her hands flowed over Laura like fine silk in the wind, her lips bit and teased and murmured, all with a knowing touch that amounted to witchery. In the early days of their love Laura had not been able to resist her, and Beebo had loved her lavishly.

      Often Laura had felt an ache for those days, when everything was sure and safe and certain in the fortress of passion. She had taken passion for love itself, and she had been secure in Beebo’s warm arms. Now it seemed that Beebo had been just a harbor where she could rest and renew herself at a time when her life was most shattered and unhappy. She didn’t need the safe harbor now. She was grateful, but she needed to move on. It was time to face life again and fight again and feel alive again. For Beebo the time of searching was over. It ended when she met Laura.

      She had a small ten-watt bulb in a little bedstand lamp that shed a peachy glow around them, and she always had it on when they went to bed. Laura had loved it at first, when just the sight of Beebo’s big firm body and marvelous limbs would set her trembling. But later, when she was afraid her slackening interest would show in her face, she asked Beebo to turn it out. It had been one more in a series of harsh arguments, for Beebo had known what prompted her request.

      Now they lay beside one another, their hearts slipping back into a normal rhythm, their bodies limp and relaxed. Laura wanted only to sleep; she dreaded long intimate talks with Beebo. But Beebo wanted reassurance. She wanted Laura’s soft voice in her ears.

      “Talk to me, Bo-peep,” Beebo said.

      “Too sleepy,” Laura murmured, yawning.

      “What did you do today?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Shall I tell you what I did?”

      “No.”

      “I got a new shirt at Davis’s,” Beebo said, ignoring her. “Blue with little checks. And guess who rode in my elevator today?”

      Laura didn’t answer.

      “Ed Sullivan,” Beebo said. “He had to see one of the ad agency people on the eighth floor.” Still no response. “Looks just like he does on TV,” Beebo said.

      Laura rolled over on her side and pulled the covers up over her