was now. So much of life was devoted to the simple pursuit of comfort. She had never realized this before. And it was this hunger for comfort which had sent her to Bobbie. Not a craving for excitement, not some furious dark passion, but the basic desire to be where she could most comfortable. Bobbie was with her now, and the two of them might get a little drunk together, and they would be drawn closer and closer, until ultimately their lovemaking would climax the evening, symbolizing and emphasizing the bond that was growing up between them.
“You’re a funny girl, Rho.”
“Am I?”
“Uh-huh. A lot of the time you seem a hell of a lot younger than you are. Like a lost lamb, like a schoolgirl. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“That’s what I would have guessed, I suppose, but part of the time you seem about seventeen.”
“I was seventeen until a few weeks ago.”
“I know what you mean. Yes, that’s what I thought. You were just a girl all that time, weren’t you? And spent two years pretending you were a woman, only it didn’t take. And then became a woman overnight.”
“Yes.”
“And they say we get this way by being led astray at an early age. The horny hands of a lady gym teacher, or an inquisitive tongue in a boarding school dorm room, every little thing that can warp us and ruin us before we have a chance to blossom out as child-producing man-loving automatons. What crap that is. My mother sits in too large a house in Grosse Pointe and tries to forget she ever knew me. She can’t forget all the time, because once a month she has to send me my check. A combination of conscience money and insurance; insurance because as long as the checks come regularly she knows I won’t darken her upper middle class doorway, and conscience money because she sits there scratching her head and wondering what she did wrong. Because she’s damned sure she must have done something wrong. Her darling daughter is a lesbian, and Mumsie is dead certain something like that couldn’t happen by chance. She couldn’t believe I might be born this way. And she can’t imagine that I’m a person underneath it all. Like some people when they look at a Negro. All they see is black skin, they don’t see a person. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“All my mother sees is a dyke. She broke down one time and cried and told me that she couldn’t look at me without imagining me in bed with another girl. What the hell sense does that make? I can look at her without visualizing her in bed with my father. For heaven’s sake, Rho, we’re all human beings.” She stopped for a minute. Then, “That woman was terrified when I wrote her and told her I couldn’t stand it in Mexico any more. I wanted to tell her the truth, that everybody in Cuernavaca was hopelessly depraved, but that wouldn’t have registered. She thinks I’m hopelessly depraved, so she would have thought I belonged there. But I got a letter from her and I saw she was scared. She thought I was coming back home to Detroit. She wrote that it would be awkward, inconvenient-oh, she found a lot of polite adjectives. I didn’t write her again until I was here in the city. I wrote her then and said I had a long lease on an apartment and that I would be staying in New York for a long time. I never mentioned her letter. Sometimes I hate her.”
For a long time neither of them said anything. Then Bobbie finished her drink and put her glass down. The Siamese paraded slowly but confidently across the room, and seated himself sedately upon the floor in front of Bobbie. His eyes were steel blue.
“My man Claude,” she said. “I spoil him rotten, Rho. He’s an aristocrat, you know. Something of a gourmet. No cat food for this fellow, not at all. Do you know what he ate tonight? An entire tin of smoked oysters at eighty- nine cents a tin, purchased especially for him at the Caviarteria on Eighth Street. That’s near where you work-do you know the place?”
“I’ve seen it. It’s across the street from Heaven’s Door.”
“That’s the sort of food Claude eats. Spoiled rotten.”
“How old is he?”
“A year and a half. He’s sexually mature, incidentally. I never had him castrated. Do you think I should?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t like it,” Bobbie said. “If I were a cat, I mean. They don’t say castrated, you know. It sounds too vicious. They say altered. The last time I took him to the vet’s, it was for a distemper shot, and the vet asked me if I wanted Claude altered. I said that he was fine the way he is. But he leads such a monastic life. Do you think maybe he’s gay?”
“Can cats be gay?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. I suppose I should find out. If environment’s a factor, then this one is queer as Dick’s hatband, I’ll say that.”
They went on talking about the cat, offering up insane ideas for Claude’s sexual gratification. Bobbie said that maybe his expensive tastes in food were a form of compensation, and Rhoda suggested that Bobbie bought smoked oysters for him because she felt guilty about forcing the cat to lead a loveless life. Somewhere along the way Bobbie got the scotch bottle, brought it back with her, and filled their glasses again.
Bobbie said, “You have so many questions and so few answers. It’s murder, isn’t it?”
“How will I learn the answers?”
“By living them.”
“And you learn that way?”
“Maybe you never learn, Rho. Maybe you just come to forget the questions. Oh, this is lovely, isn’t it? I’m dark and mysterious and poetically cryptic. In a minute I’ll turn out the lights and set candles glowing and read the poems of Sister Sappho. Remember that? Jan Pomeroy’s crazy, but she only manages to exaggerate a happy little madness that burns in every last one of us. We all make a religion out of homosexuality. Or a mythology, at least. We ask questions and search our souls for answers, and try to find some special grain of meaning in our lives. The hell with it. Why should there be meaning? Straight people don’t have to find meaning in their sex lives. Just because we operate differently why do we have to analyze everything until it turns blue? Doesn’t work, kiddo.”
The room was very still. Then Bobbie said, “Kiss me, Rho.”
They were in each other’s arms, drawn close, transported in an instant from philosophy to the beginnings of passion. Claude padded silently across the room toward the fireplace. Rhoda’s eyes were closed. She felt Bobbie’s lips at her throat, Bobbie’s hand tracing the contour of breast.
The phone rang.
It seared her at first, splitting the sweet silence of room like a sword tearing a silk cloth. Bobbie said, “Damn it,” and moved to answer the phone. Rhoda sat up, blinked.
Bobbie said, “Hello…yes, but…what? Oh, Jesus. Did anything…can’t you get in there? Can’t you get her to open up?”
It was about Megan, she thought crazily. Something had happened to Megan. And it was her fault “I’ll be right over,” Bobbie was saying “Talk to her, do anything. Promise her anything she wants to hear. Oh, Christ, I hope we get through this one.”
She hung up, spun to face Rhoda. She said, “ That was Lucia Perry. You met her at Jan’s party. I don’t know if you remember her.”
An image came to mind, a short dark girl with laughing eyes.
“She lives with Peg Brandt. Peg just locked herself in the bathroom and she’s threatening to kill herself. Lucia is hysterical.”
“What-”
“We’ve got to get over there,” Bobbie said. “Lu says she’s talking about cutting her wrists. There are razor blades in the medicine cabinet. We’ve got to get over there.”
“Oh, God-”
“What’s it like outside? Do I need a jacket? I shouldn’t go dressed like this. Oh, Jesus, what does it matter? Come on, Rho. Hurry.”
CHAPTER TEN
