The apartment was out of the Village, uptown on Twenty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue. It was in a huge sprawling building with a half dozen different entrances. Bobbie paid the cabbie and they spilled out onto the sidewalk and rushed into the building. The elevator was self-service and they had to wait for it to get down to the ground floor. It took its time, then made its way very slowly up to the sixth floor where the two girls lived. It was maddening. They stood in the car with no way to hurry its progress until it finally reached the sixth floor and the ancient doors opened.
On the way over, Bobbie had told her more about the two girls. “Peg has done this before,” she said. “It’s nothing new. Once she took too many sleeping pills and another time she was up on the window sill and threatening to jump. Not out on a ledge like in the movies but just on the sill. We talked her out of it that time. She doesn’t really want to kill herself. She just wants to come close.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Peg and Lu have been together for almost three years now. That’s a fairly long time. You met Lu. Do you remember Peg?”
“No.”
“She’s about five years older than Lu. And very scared of losing her. That won’t happen, because Lucia is the kind of girl who wants to have her cake and eat it. She wants the security Peg gives her and she also wants a little hit-and-run sex. So she cheats. Peg knows she cheats and she tries not to notice it. Sometimes people can manage to see what they want to see. But every once in a while Lu is too blatant about it and Peg can’t help finding out, and it hurts her.”
“And she tries to-”
“Sometimes. Three times now that I know of. Probably a few more than that.” Bobbie sighed. “One of these days she’ll probably manage it, and without trying to. By accident. Play with suicide long enough and it gets to you, I suppose. I hope we get there on time.”
And later, in the elevator, Bobbie said the same thing. “I hope we’re not too late. I hope she didn’t go off the deep end this time.”
Lucia Perry was waiting in the doorway of her apartment. Her face was fishbelly white and she was wringing her hands nervously. She said, “Bobbie, I had to call you. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Is she still-”
“Yes. She won’t come out. She won’t answer me. I don’t know if anything happened or not. I tied to kick the door in but nothing happens, I can’t move it. I-”
Bobbie hurried past her into the room. She seemed to know her way around the apartment and went straight to the bathroom door. “Peg,” she called. “Peggy, for Christ’s sake, Peggy, what are you doing in there?”
A voice, low, muffled. “Go away.”
“Open the door, Peg.” Bobbie’s voice was calmer now, commanding. “Open the door and let me in.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Just turn the bolt and open the door. That’s all there is to it, Peg.”
“Do you know what she did?” The voice was firmer now.
“What?”
“She had a girl up here. I don’t even know her name, some two-bit tramp she picked up around Times Square. Here in my apartment. They were in our bed, the two of them, and I walked in on them, God help me, and I saw them-”
Rhoda looked at Lucia Perry. They girl’s eyes were filled with tears. She looked as though she was going to faint. “I’ll get you a drink,” she told the girl. “You need one.”
“I don’t-”
“Where’s the liquor?” She didn’t wait for an answer but went to the living room and found an opened bottle of blended whiskey. She poured a stiff shot into an orange juice glass and made Lucia drink it. The girl had trouble getting it down but it seemed to help.
And Bobbie was still talking to Peg, her voice steady, reasonable. “You don’t want to hurt yourself, Peg,” she said. “You don’t want to do anything bad. Jesus, just open the door, Peg.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m going to kill myself, Bobbie. Oh, that little bitch! Why do I let her do this to me, Bobbie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do I love her?”
“Open the door, Peg.” There was silence. “Peg, open the door.”
In a whisper, Lucia said, “There are three of us. Maybe together we could break it down.”
“The building’s forty years old,” Bobbie whispered back. “They used real doors then. This one is solid oak. We couldn’t budge it.”
“Then-”
“Let me talk to her.” Louder, she said, “Peg, please. Don’t hurt yourself. She’s not worth it.”
“But I love her, Bobbie-” It was a whine, pathetic.
“Peg.”
Silence again. Then, softly, “I cut myself, Bobbie.”
“Ohmigosh!”
“I’m bleeding. I’m afraid, I’m afraid.”
Lucia was saying that it was all her fault, that if anything happened to Peg she would kill herself, too. And that she deserved it. “What could I do without her? God, I couldn’t live without her!”
The door opened. Peg Brandt, tall and heavy-bodied, took a faltering step toward the doorway. She had slashed both her wrists and dark venal blood flowed from each wound. Her face was pale as death, her mouth slack, her eyes vacant.
Lucia screamed.
Bobbie said, “Get Lu out of the way, knock her out cold if you have to. I’ll take care of Peg. I know what to do, just get Lu out of my way for a few minutes.”
Rhoda herded the girl into a bedroom, made her sit down, got more of the blended whiskey into her. Lucia talked non-stop, babbling about what a horrible thing she had done, proclaiming her love for Peg, swearing that she would never look at another girl again, that it had been a crazy thing, a kid’s trick, a whim, and that it would never ever happen again if only Peg came through, if only everything worked out all right. Rhoda didn’t have to say much. She stayed with the girl and held her hand and tried with incomplete success to calm her down.
Then Bobbie called that it was all right, that they could come in again. They went to the living room. Peg was stretched out on the couch, her feet propped up on a pair of pillows. Her face was still very pale. Both wrists were heavily bandaged with gauze and adhesive tape.
“It was a little close,” Bobbie said. “She got the veins but missed the arteries, which is good because it’s harder to stop arterial bleeding. It spurts and comes faster. She had four trial marks on the wrist. She must have tried four times before she got up the nerve to do the job, and then she just switched the blade and cut the other wrist on the first try. She was bleeding for a while before she opened the door, but I don’t think she lost too much blood. I got it stopped pretty quickly. She’s weak, though. Aren’t you, Peg?”
“I’m all right.”
“You goddamned fool. You’re just lucky everybody loves you.”
“Loves me?”
“Yes. All of us. And Lucia more than anybody. She hurts you because she can’t help it, but that doesn’t change anything. She loves you, Peg, and she was hysterical before. She still is.”
“I didn’t mean to scare her.”
“You didn’t mean to kill yourself, either. You just wanted to come close.”
“I-”
“Take it easy, rest.” Bobbie turned around. She looked exhausted. She said, “Get some orange juice from kitchen. That’s what they give you after you donate blood. To build you up again. Make sure she eats a lot of meat and drinks a lot of liquids for the next few days. Keep her away from liquor as much as you can. She’ll be all right but she’s going to be weak. She has to take it easy. Tomorrow’s Saturday. That’s good-she doesn’t have to work. Keep her home and keep her in bed. And for God’s sake, be good to her. She loves you, Lu. You ought to know
