“What was he like?”
“A nice guy. He really is. I know I sound—Tris would say—hypocritical. But I liked him. I understood right away, the minute I saw him, an awful lot of things about Tris.”
“How?”
Laura paused, gazing seriously at Jack. At last she explained, “He’s a Negro. And so is she. Only he’s much darker than Tris. Very handsome, but he’d never pass as an Indian. And right away he humiliated her, without meaning to.” She smiled sadly. “She’s from New York, Jack. She was born right here and her name is Patsy Robinson. She’s only seventeen but they’ve been married two years. She makes him keep out of sight because she thinks he’d be a drag on her career. That’s why she tells everybody she’s Indian, too—because she wants to get ahead and she thinks it makes it easier.”
Jack shook his head. “I feel for her,” he said.
“And I weep for her,” Laura said. “You should have seen her, Jack. She was wild when Milo talked about her fake Indian past. I think it made him pretty damn mad. That, and all the flirting, and having to live apart. And her gay and him straight! Lord, what a mess. He’s in love with her; she’s his wife. And she denies him, and hides him.”
Laura stopped talking then for a little while, sipping the burgundy and staring at her feet. “I took the bus back,” she said at last. “She screamed at me to leave. Milo apologized for her. That poor guy.”
“Do you still think you love her?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “She fascinates me. I feel sick about it, about the way things happened. If I thought I could stand it I’d go back to her. But I know I couldn’t. What is love, anyway, Jack?”
“If you have to ask you never get to know,” he quoted. “More?” He reached for her glass and she relinquished it with an unsteady hand. She felt completely lost, completely frustrated.
“What’s Beebo doing?” she asked.
He picked up the bottle and poured some more wine into her glass. “All kinds of things,” he said. “She got fired, of course. Hadn’t showed up for weeks.”
“Of course,” Laura repeated, bowing her head.
“She’s shacking up with Lili at the moment.”
“Ohhh,” Laura groaned, and it made her feel dismal to think of it. She felt a spasm of possessiveness for Beebo. “Lili is a terrible influence on her,” she said irritably.
“So are you.” He handed her her drink. “The worst.”
“Not that bad.”
“Life with you,” he reminded her, “damn near killed the girl.”
“And me,” Laura replied. “Did she leave the apartment?”
“No, she gets over there from time to time.”
“I wonder how she pays the rent.”
“It isn’t due yet,” he said. “Besides, I imagine Lili can help out.”
Laura shut her eyes suddenly, overwhelmed with a maddening tenderness for Beebo. “I hate her!” she said emphatically to Jack. And he, with his uncanny ear for emotion, didn’t like the emphasis.
After a slight pause he said, “I got her a dog. Another dachshund pup.”
“That was nice of you,” she said to him in the tone mothers use when someone has done a kindly favor for their children.
“Beebo didn’t think so. She didn’t know whether to kiss it or throw it at me,” he said. “She finally kissed it. But the poor thing died two days later…yesterday, it was.”
“It died?”
“Yes.” He looked at her sharply. “I think she…shall we say—put it to sleep?”
“Oh, Jack!” she breathed, shocked. “Why? Did it remind her of Nix?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t cheer her up, that’s for damn sure.” Laura sat there for a while, letting him fill her glass a couple of times and listening to the FM radio and trying not to feel sorry for Beebo. “She doesn’t really need me anymore, Jack,” she told him.
“I do,” he said, and she smiled.
“You didn’t fall off the wagon,” she said. “I’m so glad. I was afraid you might.”
“I never get drunk over the women in my life,” he said sardonically. “Only over the boys. And there are no more boys in my life. Now or ever.”
Laura swirled the royal purple liquid in her long-stemmed glass and whispered into it, “Do you think I could make you happy, Jack?”
“Are you proposing, Mother?”
She swallowed and looked up at him with butterflies in her stomach. “Yes,” she said.
He sat quite still and smiled slowly at her. And then he got up and came to her and kissed her cheeks, one after the other, holding her head tenderly in his hands.
“I accept,” he said.
The day was hot and muggy, one of those insufferably humid August days in New York. Laura and Jack waited together outside the office of Judge Sterling Webster with half a dozen other sweating, hand-clasping couples.
Jack wasted no time when Laura said yes. As fast as arrangements could be made, they were made. Laura stayed with him in the Village apartment a few days while they hunted for another apartment, cooking for him and getting the feel of living with him. During the days, when he was out, she went uptown. This was Jack’s idea. He had no intention of making his bride a sitting duck for Beebo. It was only for four days, anyway, and much to Laura’s surprise, Beebo made no attempt to reach her.
They had found the apartment on the east side two days after Laura got back from the disillusioning sojourn with Tris. It was too expensive, but it was newly renovated, lustrous with new paint, elegant with a new elevator, and bursting with chic tenants.
“We can’t afford it,” was Laura’s first comment, to which Jack replied, smiling, “You’re
