Women In The Shadow. Ann Bannon
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unwelcome little thrill flew through Laura. She couldn’t have explained it logically. The girl was very demure and distant. But she was also very lovely, and Laura had a brief vision of all that creamy tan skin unveiled and undulating to the rhythm of muffled gongs and bells and wailing reeds.
She must have looked incredulous for the girl said suddenly, “I can prove it.”
“Oh, no! No, that’s all right,” Laura protested, but the girl handed her a little card with a name printed on it, and Laura took it eagerly. “I did not mean I would demonstrate,” the girl said carefully.
Beebo laughed. “Go ahead,” she said. “We’re dance lovers. I don’t think Laura’d mind a bit, would you, baby?” She was mad at Laura for flirting and Laura knew it.
The little card read, Tris Robischon and underneath, Dance Studio and an address in the Village. “I just didn’t want you to think I was lying,” the girl said, somewhat haughtily. And before Laura or Beebo could answer her she turned and left them standing, staring after her.
Beebo turned to frown at Laura. “You made a hit, it seems,” she said acidly. “Let’s see her card.” She snatched it from Laura’s reluctant fingers.
“Take it. I don’t want it!” Laura said angrily, for she did want it very much. She turned away sharply, giving her attention to a row of dresses, but she knew Beebo wouldn’t let her off the hook so easily. There would be more nastiness and soon.
“You got her name out of her, at least. Pretty smooth.” Beebo’s voice was hard and hurt. “Tris Robischon. Doesn’t sound very Indian to me.”
“How would you know, swami?” Laura snapped. “If you throw a jealous scene in here I’ll leave you tonight and I’ll never come back, I’m warning you!” she added in a furious hiss, and Beebo glared at her. But she didn’t answer.
Finally Laura dragged some dresses off the rack and turned to her. “I’ll try these,” she said. Beebo followed her to the dressing room and watched her change into one and then another in angry silence.
At last Laura burst out, “I didn’t ask her for the damn card. I don’t know why she gave it to me.”
“It’s obvious. You’re irresistible.”
Laura took two handfuls of Beebo’s hair and shook her head till Beebo stopped her roughly and forced her to her knees. Fury paralyzed them both for a moment and they stared at each other helplessly, trembling.
Laura wanted that card. She wanted it enough to soften suddenly and play games for it. “Beebo, be gentle with me,” she pleaded, her tense body relaxing. “Don’t hurt me,” she whispered. “I don’t know who the girl is and I don’t care.”
Beebo stared at her suspiciously till Laura reminded her, “We came to get a dress, remember? Let’s not spoil it. Please, Beebo.”
Beebo released her and sat staring at the floor. Laura tried on dresses for her, but Beebo wouldn’t look at them. No tender words, no coaxing, no teasing that would have been so welcome any other time worked with her tonight. When Beebo got jealous she was a bitch—irrational, unreasonable, unkind.
“I’m going to take this one,” Laura said finally, a little desperate. “Whether you like it or not.”
Beebo looked up slowly. “I like it,” she said flatly, but she would have said, “I hate it,” in the same voice.
Laura went over to her and took her face in both hands, stooped down, and kissed her petulant mouth. “Beebo,” she murmured. “You love me. Act like it.” It was so foolishly selfish, so unexpected, and so almost affectionate that it was funny, and Beebo smiled wryly at her. She took Laura’s shoulders and pulled her down for another kiss just as a clerk—a genuine clerk—stuck her face in and said, “Need any help in here?”
“No thanks!” Laura blurted, looking up in alarm. Beebo put her head back and laughed and the clerk stared, pop-eyed. Then she shut the door and sped away. Beebo stood up and swept Laura into her arms and kissed her over and over, all over her face and shoulders and ears and throat until Laura had to beg her to stop. “Let’s get out of here before that clerk makes trouble!” she implored.
When they left the dressing room Laura noticed that Beebo had put Tris Robischon’s card in the sand pail for cigarettes. It stuck out like a little white flag. Laura risked her purse—with $15.87, all they had for the next week—to get the card back. She left the purse on the chair as she followed Beebo out. And so it was that she was able to make an excuse to go back and retrieve them both, purse and card, while Beebo paid for the dress.
IT’S AN AWFUL THING ABOUT JACK, Laura wrote in her diary, sitting on the floor by the closet door. Such a nice guy, so bright and so—this will sound corny—so fine. But ever since Terry left him he’s been a little crazy. I was really afraid of how much he was drinking until tonight when we had a beer at Julian’s. Or rather, I had a beer. Jack’s on the wagon. Maybe that will straighten him out. If he can stick with it. If he’d been straight I think he would have done something wonderful with his life. But is it fair to blame the failures on homosexuality? Is it, really? I’m selling junk here in the Village because Beebo wants me near her. She runs an elevator so she can wear pants all day. And Jack’s a draughtsman so he can be in an office full of virile engineers. What’s the matter with us? We don’t have to spend our lives doing it. So why do we?
She had asked Jack the same question at Julian’s little bar just off Seventh Avenue, earlier that evening. “Why do we do it, Jack? Throw our lives away?” she said.
“We like to,” he shrugged. “We all have martyr complexes.”
“We give away the best part of ourselves—our youth and our health are all just given away. Free.”
“What sort of profit did you expect to make on them?” he said. “You want to get paid for being young and healthy?”
Laura glared at him. “That’s not what I mean—”
“If you’re not giving, you’re not living, doll,” he said. “I quote the sob columns. Give yourself away, what the hell. What’s youth for? And health? And beauty, and the rest of it. Keep it and it turns putrid like everything else. Give it away and at least somebody enjoys it.”
“Jack, you know damn well I mean wasting it. Wasting it all day long on costume jewelry or a push-button elevator or a slide rule. God, when I think of what you—”
“Don’t think of all the fine things I could have done with my life, Mother,” he pleaded. “You give me the shudders. I’m not happy, but I’d be worse off trying to live straight. I like men. My office is full of them.”
“You hate your work.”
“I never have to think about it. Purely mechanical. I just sit there and flip that little slip stick and I say, ‘Evens, Johnson is straight. Odds, he’s queer. If Johnson is queer on Tuesday—according to the slide rule—I make it a point to give him a kind word.”
“Johnson is straight and you know it. Every man in your office is straight Why do you torture yourself?”
“No torture, Mother. When the whole world is black, pretend it’s rosy. Somewhere, in some little corner. If everybody’s straight, pretend somebody’s gay.”
“That’s a short cut to the bug house.”
“I wouldn’t mind the bug house. If they’d let me keep my slip stick.” He laughed to himself and leaned over the bar to order. “One whiskey and water,” he said.
“How about you, Mann?” Julian asked.
“Nothing.”