necking.”
“You must be crazy,” Megan said.
“Why?”
“Because that’s not a gay place. You’ll look great there, Grace. No matter how low the lights are-”
“Oh Megan,” Allie said. She laughed. “We’re going with a couple of gay boys. Billie Rudin and Ray Crane. You know them, don’t you?”
The three of them had to explain it to Rhoda. When you wanted a real evening on the town, and when you didn’t want people staring at you and knowing you were gay, then you doubled with a couple of gay men. That way you came on just like straight people and no one knew the difference.
“Of course it doesn’t work if you’re butchy, or if the boys you go with are screaming queens,” Grace explained. “But if everybody dresses straight, no one guesses a thing. It’s handy, too. Two girls alone can’t go to dinner easily enough, or even to a show. But you go to a nightclub or to any of the better straight bars without getting either a pass tossed at you or a load of funny looks.”
And she realized how very much there was to learn. The demimonde had special survival mechanisms, special ways to get along in an unsympathetic world. How much she was learning, she thought. And how little she had known before.
Just half an hour before they left Grace and Alice’s apartment, Bobbie Kardaman dropped by for a drink. She couldn’t stay long, she said. She was in a hurry, but she had passed by the building and wanted to stop to say hello.
One glance set the pace. Bobbie came into the room and saw her, and looked long and hard at her, and their eyes locked and something happened to Rhoda. She couldn’t deny it, couldn’t avoid recognizing what it was. She broke the glance as quickly as she could but that didn’t change anything.
Oh, God “I’ve been settling down,” Bobbie said. “I spend of most of my time just sitting around my apartment, usually with a glass in my hand. But not always. I met a girl this weekend after the party and I thought everything was going to start swinging again, but after a night I knew this was strictly a short-time affair, and she left this morning and I couldn’t be happier. She was fine in bed-I’m being vulgar, aren’t I, Meg?”
“A little.”
“I’m the vulgar sort. Dirty old Bobbie. She was fine in the hay, kids, but that doesn’t have much to do with things. It truly doesn’t. She was so very boring, one of the pretentiously intellectual types, the kind that likes to discuss Sartre between sets. She tried to come on strong like the dyke in No Exit. We parted company, thank heaven.” She sighed. “So if anybody ever wants to come looking for little Bobbie, you know where she can be found. Home, and alone.”
And then a brief but significant glance at Rhoda She was very nice to Megan on the way home. They had kept rubbing one another the wrong way earlier in the evening, but now everything seemed to have smoothed out. They walked arm in arm, and they talked easily, and there was only one thing wrong.
Rhoda knew that she was acting.
Acting, playing a part, fitting herself into a role. Because she was being very nice to Megan now, and she would continue to be very nice to Megan, and she felt very close to Megan, closer now, oddly enough, than she had felt when love was stronger between them.
They hurried upstairs to Megan’s apartment, a little lightheaded from the scotch, and they had coffee together in the kitchen. She did not say anything to Megan about Bobbie having been home that night after all, did not let on that she knew Megan had lied about calling her. And Megan did not mention Bobbie, either.
But afterward, in bed, waiting for sleep to come, she let herself think all the thoughts that might better have been left unthought. And she knew just what was going to happen, knew it with a quiet certainty.
In the morning, she would go to work. And at five-thirty, after work, she would go somewhere for a quick dinner which she would eat without tasting. Then, after a quick drink or two at Leonetti’s for courage, she would go where she could not help going.
To Bobbie’s apartment.
CHAPTER NINE
It went as she had known it would and she moved through the day as if in a dream. Her mind somehow failed to involve itself in what she did, and she waited on customers in Heaven’s Door without seeing their faces, showing them ashtrays and saki sets, taking their money and wrapping their packages, and making pleasant conversation with the enthusiasm of a well-designed robot programmed for retail sales work. She thought of Bobbie, and of herself, and she thought how little control she had over what she did. She was a puppet dancing from bloody strings, tripping here and there with no direction of her own.
It was early when she got to Leonetti’s. The bar was deserted, with just one couple huddled close in the back and one butchy girl drinking straight shots at the bar. She took a stool at the far end of the bar from the mannish girl, and ordered J amp; B on the rocks, drank the drink quickly and took a refill. She had never done much drinking before-hardly any in college, very little during the years as Tom Haskell’s wife. But she was learning. She worked more slowly on her second drink, letting the liquor seep into her body and settle her down. A couple of quick ones for courage, she thought. Lord, how she had changed.
She left the bar. Bobble’s apartment was a few blocks uptown on Horatio Street. She had never been there before but she remembered the address and had no trouble finding the building. A brownstone, well preserved. Over one of the doorbells, a small card with Roberta Kardaman in Gothic script. Roberta-she had never thought of the girl as Roberta. Just as Bobbie.
She did not ring the bell. She climbed stairs, found the door to Bobbie’s apartment. The same card in a slot under a peephole- Roberta Kardaman. A bell at the side of the door. She reached out for it, stopped, lit a cigarette, returned the lighter to her purse.
She thought of Megan. The blonde girl might be home now-she had not even called to make sure. Megan could be at their apartment, waiting for her, wondering where she was, worrying about her. She dragged nervously on the cigarette and coughed. She could still do it, she told herself. Turn around, hurry home, find Megan or wait for Megan, and push Bobbie out of her mind. She could do it.
Oh, God Her forefinger found the bell, stabbed it. She heard chimes sound within the apartment. There was silence and for a moment she thought that Bobbie was not home. Then she heard footsteps approaching the door and she held her arms rigid at her sides and waited.
“I hoped you would come.”
“I had to.”
“Last night.”
“Yes.”
“You’re scared, aren’t you, Rho?”
“Not of you.”
“Of yourself then. Of what happens.”
“Yes.”
“Stay there, I’ll make drinks. Scotch?”
“All right.”
She waited on the couch while Bobbie made drinks. The couch was an old Victorian affair with arms, a floral pattern that blended with the cozily chaotic decor of the apartment. An oriental rug, going threadbare here and there. A Modigliani reproduction housed in a garish gold frame. A sagging armchair, a pair of rock maple captain’s chairs, a Duncan Phyfe drumhead table. A confusion of bad pieces which somehow went together well, all of them managing to reflect the person that was Bobbie.
On the arm of the couch Bobbie’s cat sat staring at her. A Siamese, a study in poise and gentility. Bobbie had spoken of the cat before. His name was Claude-“Because he clawed me,” Bobbie had explained-and he was the only male allowed in the apartment. Rhoda reached out a hand toward the cat, then withdrew it. She tried to remember whether or not you were supposed to pet cats.
“Don’t,” Bobbie said. She crossed the room with the drinks. “He hates affection, Rho. He’s a miserable
