For a while she was tortured to see Beebo chatting with other women; young pretty girls, like the two high-schoolers Laura had met with her one night.
Beebo was tired. She had two drinks and then she meant to go home. But she was detained by a boy who ran an antique shop a block from her apartment, who was a friend. They talked about nothing in particular, just glad to talk with somebody for a while. Beebo was slightly surprised when Dutton came up and handed her one of his sheets of drawing paper. Beebo took it with a wry little grin. “I knew you’d get around to me sooner or later, Dutton,” she said. “I’m part of the decor in this joint. Let’s see.” She studied the caricature. “I hate to admit it, but it’s good. Does my chin stick out like that?”
Dutton grinned. “Take it from me,” he said.
Beebo eyed him. “You don’t think you’re going to get a buck out of me for this, do you?” she said, waving it under his nose.
“I’ve got my buck, friend,” Dutton said, holding a folded bill up between his thumb and index finger. He smiled and pushed the sketch back at her. “It’s yours,” he said. “Keep it.”
Beebo studied him a moment, frowning, and then she looked up and down the bar.
“If you don’t like it,” Laura said softly in her ear, “just tear it up. I can’t complain.”
Beebo turned on the bar stool to find Laura standing close behind her. They gazed at each other in silence for a moment. Then Beebo tore the sketch once across the long way and once the short, still watching Laura. And dropped the pieces on the floor. Laura looked at her, trembling. Beebo turned back to the bar and finished her drink in one swallow. Then she said to the boy beside her, “See you, Daisy.” And she got up and left the bar.
For a moment, Laura thought she would die where she stood. And then she followed Beebo, walking twenty feet behind her, her heart working hard and making her gasp a little. Beebo walked out into the night, and Laura followed her, coming just a little closer, until she was about five feet behind her. Beebo walked on, slowly, without glancing back, without hurrying her pace. They walked for two full blocks like this, and across the street into a third.
And then Beebo stopped. Startled and scared, Laura stopped where she was, on the curb, with the street light illuminating her silver blonde hair and leaving her face in the shadow.
Slowly Beebo turned around. She looked at Laura. She dropped the cigarette in her hand and crushed it under her heel. For some moments they just stood there and gazed at each other. A man walked by, and then a couple. Then the street was empty.
Finally Laura said, in a whisper that carried dearly to Beebo’s heart, “I love you, Beebo. Darling, I love you.”
Beebo walked over to her, still moving very slowly, until they stood together in the pool of light just inches from each other. The dawn of a smile showed on her face.
“Little bitch,” she said softly. “Laura…Laura…” She leaned down then, tipping Laura’s face up to hers. “I can’t hate you anymore,” she said. “I’ve given up. There’s nothing left but love.” And she kissed her. Their arms went around each other suddenly, hard, and they stood there in the lamplight, kissing.
Then they turned and walked into the night toward Cordelia Street.
Women in the Shadows
Women in the Shadows
Ann Bannon
Copyright © 1959, 2002 by Ann Bannon. Afterword copyright © 2002 by Ann Bannon.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc.,
P.O. Box 14684, San Francisco, California 94114.
Printed in the United States.
Cover design: Scott Idleman
Text design: Frank Wiedemann
Logo art: Juana Alicia
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Chapter One
JUNE 8: God help me. God help me to stand it. Today was our second anniversary. If I have to go on living with her I’ll go crazy. But if I leave her—? I’m afraid to think what will happen. Sometimes she’s not rational. But what can I do? Where can I turn?
That damn party was awful. Anniversaries are supposed to be happy affairs, but this one was more like a wake. Everybody got drunk and sang songs, but there was always that corpse there in the middle of the room…the corpse of that romance. Jack got terribly drunk, as usual. There’s another one. If he doesn’t crack up it won’t be because he hasn’t tried. What’s wrong with us all, anyway? What’s the use of living when things are like this all the time?
Laura shut her diary with a sudden furtive gesture, her pen still poised, and strained her ears at a sound. She thought she heard the front door open. It would be Beebo coming back. But it was only the dachshund, Nix, scratching himself on a stool in the kitchen. Laura sighed in relief and turned back to the diary. She ordinarily kept it locked in a little steel strongbox on the closet floor, and she wrote in it only when she was alone, in the evenings before Beebo got home from work.
Beebo had never read it—or seen it, in fact. It was Laura’s own, Laura’s aches and pains verbalized, Laura’s heart dissected and wept over, in washable blue ink. If Beebo ever saw it she would
