“I was,” Jack said. “Till last night”
“No kidding. God. Amazing. Since when?”
“Since we got married last August. A little before.”
“Laura, how’d you do it?” He grinned at her.
“I didn’t have to,” she said. “The day you walked out of his life all the good things walked in.”
“Including you?” Terry asked.
“Including me,” she shot back.
“Oh.” He smiled ruefully. “I wasn’t that bad, was I?” he asked Jack. He seemed to think it was comfortably funny, like everything else connected with Jack. “Did I drive you to drink, honey?” he said.
“Only on the bad days,” Jack said. “Unfortunately, there weren’t any good days.”
Terry laughed and stuck another nut in Jack’s mouth.
“That’s all,” Jack told him, wincing. “The damn pecans sound like depth charges when I chew.” He stroked his head carefully.
There was a silence while Terry ate, Laura stared at him nervously, and Jack concentrated on his pains. Laura wanted to make Terry uncomfortable, self-conscious. But it was nearly a lost cause.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked suddenly, unaware that he was supposed to notice the silence.
She told him.
“Great,” he said. More silence. Laura was determined to embarrass him, and Jack was too ill to care about conversation. Slowly, Terry began to realize something was amiss. Rather than take the hint he tried to lighten the atmosphere with chatter.
“How do you like the married life, old man?” he asked.
“He liked it fine the day before yesterday,” Laura said crisply. Jack groaned. Terry understood.
He sat up and leaned toward his hostess. “Laura, honey, I don’t want to mess things up for you,” he said. “I just love Jack, too, that’s all. You know that. You always knew it, even before you got married.”
“I know you nearly killed him,” she said quietly.
“No fair exaggerating.”
“No fair, hell. It’s true!” she exclaimed.
“It’s not either!” he said with good-humored indignation, as if they were playing parlor games. “Is it, Jack?”
But Jack, his eyes on Laura now, kept silent.
“Well,” Terry admitted, “I was pretty bitchy sometimes. But so was he. And no matter what, we loved each other. Even at the end, when he kicked me out.”
“If he hadn’t kicked you out that night he might have killed himself with liquor.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Laura threw her hands up, exasperated. “What more do you want from Jack, Terry?” she said. “What do you want from me?”
Terry grinned. “Equal time,” he said, nodding at the bedroom.
Jack laughed weakly and Laura got up and stamped her foot. “Terry, Jack loves you. I know that and I’ll have to live with it. But that love is destructive, and I’m asking you now to get out of our lives forever and never come back to hurt us again.” She said it with quiet intensity.
“Before dinner?” he asked.
“Oh, God!” Laura spluttered at the ceiling.
Terry lighted a cigarette for Jack, who had fumbled one from the box on the cocktail table, and told Laura, “I can’t go away forever. Any more than you could desert Beebo forever. I love him. I’m stuck with him.”
“I’ve left Beebo,” she said.
“You’ll go back,” he told her serenely. “It was that kind of affair.”
Laura held on to her self control as her last and dearest possession. She didn’t dare to lose it. “Take me seriously, Terry,” she begged, almost in a whisper. “Please let us live together in peace.”
Terry shrugged. He didn’t like to get serious. “What are you going to do the rest of your lives?” he asked them. “Live like a couple of old maids in your fancy little apartment? Pretend you’re both straight? What a kick!” He said it sarcastically but without malice. “A kick like that won’t last long, you know.”
“It’s not a kick. It’s something we both need and want,” Laura said earnestly.
“Nuts,” Terry said amiably. “What you both need and want is a few parties. Get out and camp. Do you good.”
“Sure,” Laura said sharply. “So you make love to Jack and he goes out and drinks a fifth of whiskey, after eight months on the wagon. Was that what you had in mind?”
Terry made a little grimace of perplexity. “That was pretty silly,” he told Jack. “Now she won’t let me see you at all.”
“He needs me more than he needs you, Terry,” Laura said.
“Yeah? But he wants me more.” He grinned at her. “You’ve got to admit that counts for something,” he told her. “I can give him something you can’t give him.” He looked so smug, so sure of himself, that Laura, with her heart in her throat, decided to pull her rabbit out of the hat. If it didn’t work, she would have to give up.
“And I can give him something you can’t give him,” she said, her voice low and tense. “A child.”
There was a long stunned silence. Jack and Terry both stared at her—Jack with a slight smile of amazement and Terry with open-mouthed dismay.
“A child!” Terry blurted finally. “Don’t tell me! I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“It’s true,” Laura spat at him. “And I’m not going to have any empty-headed, pretty-faced queers hanging around my baby! Not even you, Terry Fleming.”
Terry turned to gape at Jack, his mouth still ajar. “She’s kidding!” he exclaimed. “Isn’t she?”
Jack paused slightly and then shook his head, and the strange little smile on his face widened. It was brilliant, he thought. Cruel, to himself even more than to Terry, because it wasn’t true. But clever.
Terry stood up, bewildered, and walked around the living room. Laura watched him, her face flushed, sweating with expectation. Finally Terry turned to look at them. Jack, raising himself on one elbow, watched him.
“Do you still want me to have dinner with you?” he asked wryly, and Laura saw hesitation in his look and felt a first small hope.
She didn’t know what to say. But she was thinking, I’ve made Jack a man in his eyes now. He’s thinking Jack can do what he could
