“Hi, doll.” He turned around. “We’re drowning our sorrows.” He gestured at Laura with his glass.
“So I see. Mind if I drown a few with you?”
“We’d be delighted.”
Beebo nodded at the bartender, who nodded back and fixed her a whisky and water. Beebo was on good terms with the bartenders in all the gay bars. They knew what she drank and they served her without being told. Beebo leaned on the counter between Jack and Laura.
“Where’ve you been, doll?” Jack asked, waving a hand at her dress. “Masquerade ball?”
“Party,” she said laconically, hoisting her newly arrived glass.
“Gay?”
“Straight.”
“How dull. What’s the matter with you, Beebo? You’re no fun anymore. You wear skirts and go to straight parties. Jesus.”
Beebo grinned at him. “I have one dress, lover. I get it out once a year and wear it. In honor of my father. He likes dames.”
“Yeah, but he’s not around to appreciate it.”
“Well, you are, Jackson. Give me a kiss.” And she took his chin in her hand and extracted one from his reluctant mouth.
“God!” he said, and made a face. Beebo laughed. And Laura sat and watched them and wondered what they were all doing there and why they laughed at themselves when they were all aching inside from unspeakable hurts. She felt vaguely jealous to think of Beebo at a party with people she didn’t know and had never seen. Beebo surrounded by women. Laura looked at her until Beebo returned the stare without talking, only looking at Laura until Laura had to lower her eyes. “What’s eating you, Bo-peep?” Beebo said, running a finger around the edge of her glass.
“Are pants really that important?” Laura said. She said it sarcastically because she was afraid of her tears.
Beebo laughed a little. “I don’t know. How important is that important?”
“Why don’t you get a decent job?”
“Oh,” said Beebo as she understood. She finished a second drink. “I’ve got one, baby. I’m a lift jockey. Very elevating work.”
“Not funny,” Laura said. “You work all day at a lousy job like that, and then you drink all night.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Yes. Not very much, of course. You’re not worth it. But it seems awful. All for a pair of pants.”
Beebo laughed. “Reform me, baby.”
“I don’t have time.”
“What do you have time for?”
“Work.”
“And Marcie?”
“And Marcie.” Laura didn’t know why she said it. She knew how badly it would hurt. But she was high, the go-to-hell feeling was still with her from the morning. It was either hurt or be hurt; sarcasm or tears. She looked up slowly at Beebo. At her blue eyes and her lips turned down, with an unaccustomed trace of lipstick on them. Laura wanted to hurt her. She couldn’t stop herself. She turned on her stool to face her. “You’re ridiculous,” she said. “You’re a little girl trying to be a little boy. And you run an elevator for the privilege. Grow up, Beebo. You’ll never be a little boy. Or a big boy. You just haven’t got what it takes. Not all the elevators in the world can make a boy of you. You can wear pants till you’re blue in the face and it won’t change what’s underneath.”
Beebo just stared at her, her face suddenly pale and frowning, in silence. Then she turned, leaving her cigarette still lighted in a tray on the bar, and left them without saying a word to either.
Laura and Jack sat in silence for a while after she had gone,watching her cigarette burn itself out. Finally Jack said, “If Terry had done that to me, Laura, I’d have strangled him.”
Laura put her head down on the bar and cried.
The weekend was a stalemate for Laura and Marcie. Laura was so deeply involved in her conflicts that it was impossible to talk about them. In two weeks Jean would be back. In a day her father would be gone. Burr would start hounding Marcie, and Laura still didn’t know why Marcie had let him think they were lovers. And Beebo…Beebo…that hurt the worst, somehow. It was so needless, so brutal. The kind of thing Merrill Landon had done to her when he was in a temper. Just to blow off steam, to dissipate the mood. Only he went even farther. He would shout and call her names, slap her, call down the wrath of his dead wife and son on her head.
Marcie couldn’t get through to Laura, hard as she tried. She, too, began to get moody. She launched into long self-reproaching speeches which tortured Laura until she begged her to stop.
On Monday Laura went to the bank before she went to the office and withdrew one hundred and ninety-two dollars. She was going to leave herself twenty, just in case, but she left herself five instead. She had a little at home. She could get along until the end of the week. The rent wasn’t due and there was food in the house.
Jack came by at five and picked it up. “Come out for dinner with me,” he said. “I seem to have come into a little money.”
“No, thanks.”
“My treat,” he said, directing his sarcasm at himself and waggling her dollars at her.
Laura smiled faintly. “Take it,” she said. “I can’t talk to anybody tonight.”
“How’s Marcie?”
“Brooding. I get on her nerves, I guess.”
“That’s only fair. She’s made a mess of yours. How’s Burr?”
“He called her. They talked for a few minutes. He asked her to see him.”
“Will she?”
“No.”
“Not yet, hm?”
“Never,” Laura said sharply. “She’s fed up with him.”
“Well, if not Burr, somebody else.” Laura covered her face with her hands suddenly and Jack looked at her sympathetically. “Just won’t believe me, will you, Mother? You love Marcie so sooner or later Marcie will have to give in and love you.”
“No!” she said, looking up. “I know it’s not that simple. It’s just that I’m convinced I have a chance. I live with her, I know her, and she was
