“Megan says-”
“She knows better. We’ll be together some day, you and I, I feel it, Rho. Don’t you?”
“Stop it!”
“I’m not even touching you, Rho.” A smile, fading quickly. “I’m sorry if I’m getting to you. Don’t blame me. And don’t blame yourself for feeling it. We can’t help it, neither of us.”
She never remembered getting back to the apartment. She did not know afterward whether they had taken a cab or walked. The last hour of the party was a blur in her mind, the last few minutes blacked out completely along with the trip back to the apartment on Cornelia Street. It was frightening, losing a whole little piece of your life that way. You were left with guilt over what might have happened, what you might have done. And with a blank blind spot where a memory ought to have been.
Then they were home, in the apartment, and she was standing awkwardly while Megan sat on the couch with her shoulders slumped. Megan was crying and she stood there stupidly and wondered what she had done and what she ought to do.
“I’m losing you, Rhoda. Oh, God help me, I’m losing you.”
Megan’s eyes, tear-stained, looking up at her, “What’s happening to us?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t want me any more, Rhoda.”
“That’s not true-”
“You danced all night with Bobbie. She’s trying to steal you away and you’ll let yourself be stolen.”
“I looked for you-”
“You didn’t look very hard, Rhoda.”
Madness, she thought. Just hours ago she had been home waiting for Megan, and then she had been the jealous one, blindly, bitterly, irrationally jealous. The roles were reversed now. But why did it have to be like this? They loved each other. Why couldn’t they relax in the security of one another’s love? Why couldn’t they coast along smoothly, happy with what they had, instead of shifting from bitter to sweet?
Bitter and sweet. You had to take them both together, she thought dully. But you should be able to blend them, to soften each with the other She said, “I love you, Megan.”
“Do you?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Then-”
“I don’t know, I was drunk, I was mixed up and Bobbie was nice to me. That was all. We danced and we talked a little. I don’t feel anything for her, Megan. Believe me.”
“I want to.”
She sat on the couch with Megan, put her arm around the blonde girl. Megan was avoiding her eyes. She leaned over to kiss Megan’s throat, Megan stiffened momentarily, then relaxed.
“Coffee?”
“I don’t want any.”
“Can I do anything for you, darling?”
“Just love me.”
“Forever, Megan.”
And now it was as it had been with that girl on the dance floor-she had to do the leading. Her hand moved upward over Megan’s back, touched the nape of her neck. Megan locked into her eyes, and Megan’s face held an expression she had seen there before. Wide eyes, an unsure upper lip. Little Girl Lost.
She drew Megan close, kissed her. Megan whimpered. She kissed her again, tenderly, then more intensely as passion born in desperation came into its own. Megan was in her arms, soft and blonde and warm, and she planted a field of kisses on Megan’s face, kissed the residue of tears from her eyes, kissed her mouth and throat, held her very close, discovered the luxury of Megan’s body under her hands.
Her hands sought, found. Megan sat with her and said her name in a small voice while she worked snaps and buttons to open Megan’s clothing. Her hands found Megan’s breasts and held them, hurried up Megan’s thighs to secret flesh.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand…
Bodies brushing together as they walked neatly nude over deep carpet to the bedroom. A light turned off, a light turned on. A sheet drawn down, a bedspring sigh of acceptance.
…eternity in an hour…
There was a moment which would stay with her forever, snatched out of time as if by a camera’s instantaneous eye. Megan lying upon the bed on her back, hand resting upon the rise of a thigh, the other arm stretched out across the bed. Breasts pointed proudly upward. Legs a little apart, one foot some inches over the edge of the bed. Blonde hair wild upon a pillow. Eyes closed, mouth just open.
Light from the hall played across Megan’s body. The whole scene could have been packaged and framed, a virtuoso performance by an airbrush painter. Shadows, curves, subtle flesh tones.
Then Megan said, “Why do we hurt each other.” The words made a question but were not spoken that way; there was no question mark in Megan’s voice. The six words hung in space.
Until Rhoda found her, joined her, pressed flesh to flesh, seeking sweet mystery with a hungry mouth, finding heaven that was partly pain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Monday, Megan picked her up after work and hurried her off to dinner. “I’ve only got an hour,” she said. “I have an appointment with a Third Avenue dealer at six-thirty and then I have to look at some draperies on East Sixty-Eighth Street. A swank little shop run by two very chic guys. Gay guys, of course.”
“Sometimes I think everybody is gay.”
“Everybody is, kitten.”
They had chicken and rice at the Picador on West Tenth. Their waiter was an olive-skinned Mexican who hovered over them constantly and flirted with them passionately. They ate in a hurry. Megan kept up a running stream of chatter about her work-the pieces she had seen, her plans for the apartment, what fee she could expect, on and on and on. Rhoda tried to stay interested but it was impossible. She didn’t have the background for it, couldn’t visualize what Megan described, couldn’t appreciate any of the detail. It was Megan’s work and she was glad Megan was able to throw herself into it so feverishly, but her own interest was limited.
Then they were outside. “I’d better jump in a cab,” Megan was saying. “Can I drop you off?”
“I’ll walk.”
“It wouldn’t be out of the way-”
But it was a nice night and she walked. She drifted over to Washington Square first but the park was too crowded with tight knots of people forming and re-forming. She could feel an undercurrent of tension in the air. There had been trouble in the park lately, friction between the Village element and the local Italians, friction between neighborhood whites and Harlem Negroes off the A-train. She cut across the park, stopped to watch two men play chess, drank from the drinking fountain, then drifted across town to the apartment on Cornelia.
The apartment was lonely. She waited for Megan to come home, and Megan didn’t get back until a quarter to eleven. She had been running around all night, she told Rhoda, and she was so exhausted that all she wanted to do was get some sleep.
Tuesday was more of the same. That night she didn’t even see Megan at dinner. She didn’t want to cook just for herself, so she had a hamburger around the corner from the apartment and spent the evening trying to get interested in a scholarly hardbound work on female homosexuality. Megan had a fairly extensive library on the subject. The book kept boring her and she didn’t get very far with it. At nine-thirty Megan called and said not to wait up for her, that she would be late. They did not talk long. Afterward, she took a shower and crawled into bed and felt lost in the big bed, lost and alone. At one point she thought that she was going to cry. She felt tears welling up behind her eyes and waited for them to come spilling out, but they didn’t. She lay in bed and finally fell asleep.
