Her face was burning. If she stayed at the table another minute something very bad was going to happen, she could feel it. She would either blurt out the truth to him or she would throw a big scene and tell him what he could do with his penetrating comments. Her head was spinning. She pushed her chair back and headed for the ladies’ room.
Sanctuary, she thought. She washed her hands, put on fresh lipstick, then sat for a moment on a straight- backed chair. Sanctuary. At least he couldn’t follow her in here. No man could. Here was one place on earth where she could be safe from men. Here, and in Megan’s arms.
When she returned to the table he was all apologies, very suave and smooth. “I’m damned sorry,” he said earnestly. “I must have sounded like Dear Abby after a bad night. I didn’t mean to hammer at you like that.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’d like to see you, Rhoda. That’s all.”
She didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help realizing that she was not interested, she thought. It was pretty obvious wasn’t it?
“I have to go now,” she said finally. “I have to be back at the shop.”
“Can I call you, Rhoda?”
“I think it would be better if you didn’t.”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“Maybe,” she said. He couldn’t reach her, she knew. The phone was listed in Megan’s name, so he couldn’t find out her number. She got to her feet, “Thank you for lunch,” she said.
“I enjoyed it.”
“So did I.”
“I’ll walk you back to your shop.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I can manage.”
It was still raining, steadily, persistently. She darted across the street. He didn’t follow her. She got back to the shop, hung her trench coat on a peg in the back. Then she went into the front of the store and walked up and down the aisles, dusting things.
The apartment was empty when she returned to it. She walked though the rooms calling Megan’s name but Megan was not there. She went into the living room, turned on the radio. A rock and roll station shouted at her. She dialed in classical music, stretched out on the couch. Megan was out and she didn’t know where.
She closed her eyes, kicked off her shoes, tucked a throw pillow under her head. They were supposed to go to a party that night, she remembered. Megan had said something about getting to the party around nine. It was close to six now. Plenty of time, and Megan would be back soon. She let her mind drift with the music, let herself get lost in it. They were playing chamber music, something familiar, a string quartet that sounded like Mozart. She ought to listen to more good music, she told herself. Start buying records, start spending a couple of hours every day listening to music, really listening to it. Like this.
When the quartet ended she swung her legs over the side of the couch, rubbed at her eyes, looked at her watch. It was a quarter after six now and Megan was still not home.
Jealousy came in a wave. Megan had gone out, Megan had met someone else. Megan was with some other girl now, some cheap and easy thing with a repertoire of cheap and dirty bedroom tricks. Megan didn’t love her. If Megan loved her she would have been home, she would have called, she would have left a note. Something. Megan didn’t love her. Megan was only using her, playing with her while she played around with other girls on the side.
Or Megan had actually fallen in love with some other girl. That could have happened. It happened all the time. Megan might have gone out for a walk, and she might have met another girl and it could all have happened that quickly. Love. It had happened speedily enough between her and Megan, and if something could start that quickly it could end just as quickly, and Megan would bring this other girl into their apartment and she-Rhoda-would be out on the street again, lonely again and That was crazy, she knew. It was mad. But she couldn’t shake the jealousy, the worry, the monumental anxiety. It was eating her alive, and the fact that it was illogical didn’t seem to change things much. She paced back and forth, wandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, closed it, poured herself a glass of water, sipped it, poured the water out in the sink. She lit a cigarette and took two puffs on it and stubbed it out angrily.
Damn it!
At a quarter to seven, the phone rang. She nearly tripped rushing to it. It was Megan.
“Honey, I’m sorry as hell. I’ve been working like a maniac, I should have been home hours ago. This was the first chance I had to call.”
“Where are you?”
“Way the hell up in the East Sixties. A job, complete decoration of an entire apartment, and she wants antiques-”
“She?”
“An old battle-ax living it up on insurance money. One Letitia Warren. Antiques! The hardest part of this job will be finding a chair older than she is. I’m going to have about two weeks of hard work and a hell of a lot of money to show for it, kitten. Listen, I’m in a phone booth. I was all set to hop in a cab but I wanted to call you first. Everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Party tonight. Can you throw some dinner together? I didn’t even have lunch, I’ve been going full steam since this morning. This Warren woman. You’d have to see her to believe her. Honey, I would have called you earlier-”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
“-only I didn’t have the chance, I really didn’t. You’re not mad at me?”
“Of course not.”
And she wasn’t, couldn’t be. And couldn’t imagine how she had been jealous, how just moments ago she had been pacing and trembling hysterically. There was no reason for jealousy. Everything was as good as it had ever been.
“I’ll have dinner ready,” she said. “Hurry home, love.”
After Megan had hung up she stood for a moment holding the dead phone in her hand. She felt enormously relieved. And yet the mere knowledge that she been so irrationally jealous worried her a little. She never realized that she had that sort of capacity for jealousy. It was a new discovery for her.
Maybe, she thought, it was an index of love. Perhaps only those so deeply in love could be so blindly jealous.
She went into the kitchen and busied herself with dinner. Megan was working again, she thought. And that was good. She would throw herself into the job and get all wrapped up in her work. It wasn’t good for Megan to have too much time on her hands. Her jobs, she knew, were the type that made for a disjointed sort of life; she might go a month without doing any work all, then might land two decorating jobs at once and work fifteen hours a day for three weeks straight. But work would be good for her.
How very jealous she had been…
“Jan loves to play hostess,” someone was saying to her. “Her parties are never to be missed. Everything has a slightly phony smell to it, and in another twenty minutes or so Jan is going to turn the lights down low and recite a poem by Sappho, but she does know how to throw people together. And how to supply liquor.”
It was Bobbie talking to her, a more sober Bobbie than she had met two nights ago at Leonetti’s. And she looked prettier now; before she had been simply striking, but now her beauty seemed to blend into itself. The chestnut hair was done up in a beehive that made Bobby look even taller than she was. Her dress, a silk shift in black and white, somehow emphasized the curves of her body more than if she were wearing something and clinging. Her lipstick was a deep, dark red.
“I must have made a lovely impression the other night,” Bobby went on. “Boy, was I stoned! You should have seen me the morning after. I woke up and was afraid I would die, and then after a few minutes I was afraid I wouldn’t die. I didn’t, but I might as well have. Tonight, however, I am sober.”
“And happier,” Rhoda said.
“Uh-huh. Where did Meg go?”
“For more drinks, I think.”
