And Emily got the giggles again. She took a piece of Kleenex and began to rub at the lipstick, which resisted her efforts and sat firm on her face. After a minute she gave up and stared at herself in dismay. Beth pulled open a dresser drawer and handed her a jar of cold cream.
“Not that you deserve it,” she said. Emmy clung to her and laughed. “Come on,” Beth said in a businesslike voice. She smeared cream over Emmy’s face, rubbing it in carefully. “Every time she goes out with Bud, this is what happens,” Beth told Laura. “She says it’s good for his morale.”
“Oh, Beth, I do not!” Emily said. “I said it was good for his music.”
“God, I’ll say it is. When you finish with him, Em, he can play in the key of Q.”
Laura didn’t like to see girls drunk. She sat on the studio couch and said hesitantly, “Well, it must be sort of exotic to date a musician.”
“Exotic-exschmotic,” said Emily. “He comes with the same basic equipment as any other man.” Beth laughed, but Laura saw nothing to laugh at. “Only he’s the deluxe model,” Emmy added. She pulled her clothes off vigorously.
“Here, here!” exclaimed Beth. “You have to wear that again. God, Emmy, you act like you wear ’em once and throw ’em away!” And she rescued Emily’s skirt and blouse from the floor. She pulled a towel from the rack on the closet door and draped it over Emily’s shoulders, stuck her toothbrush in her hand, and propelled her firmly toward the door.
“Shape up or ship out, gal,” she said. “You’re just too damn sexy.”
Emily pulled herself up regally in her underwear and said, “I’m beautiful, I’m beloved, and I have a secret.”
“Well, hot damn!” said Beth, and she laughed.
Emily minced into the hall and turned back to announce, “And you’re all jealous.” And she left to wash up.
“How ’bout that!” said Beth in mock awe.
Laura looked uneasily around the room. She thought Emily had acted disgracefully and it embarrassed her to even think of it. Beth was silent for a moment and then stared at Laura thoughtfully. “Laur, honey,” she said, “you free tomorrow night?” When Laura said yes, Beth gave her a friendly smack on the rear. “Be my date,” she said. “For the movies.”
From then on, they went to the movies regularly and Laura saw the old Garbo films, French imports, and Swedish nature films, only to be with Beth. She often turned down parties to be able to go, a practice Beth would have stopped had she known of it. But Laura kept it carefully from her. She liked everything about the movie trips too well: sitting next to Beth in the dark theater, hearing her breathe and shift and laugh or whisper to her. The first time they’d gone to the movies together, Beth had reached over and helped her out of her coat. When Laura tried to do the same for her, Beth stopped her. Tve got it, thanks,” she said. And after that they followed the same ritual, without ever referring to it.
Then the night came when Cyrano de Bergerac was playing at the local theater. Laura and Beth had hardly been seated before Laura, saturated with the sentiment, found the tears starting down her cheeks. She could never keep them back from an affecting story. Beth saw the quiet little tears and smiled at them. It was then she reached into Laura’s lap and found her hand and took it in her own and pressed it. The shock stopped all the tears as the warmth of Beth’s hand began to spread all through Laura, strange, sweet, and inebriating. It was ten minutes before Laura dared to look at Beth. She was gazing serenely at the screen.
They never mentioned it but after that their hands always found each other in the dark of the theater.
Five
It was Saturday, the day of the Varieties Show, the day Laura was to see Charlie for the second time. It was also the day that Beth’s Uncle John chose to pay his niece a visit. He had made a habit every year of getting down to see Beth for at least one weekend. He liked the Varieties and he liked the football game and he liked to have dinner at the sorority house with Beth. The girls made a fuss over him, and he would sit beaming at the head table, flattering the house mother and flirting with her charges.
Laura was anxious to meet him, to see if he looked and acted anything like Beth. Emily told her he was a very impressive individual; he had been a colonel in the last war and he had a false leg.
Uncle John arrived just before dinnertime and Laura watched with mixed emotions as he folded Beth in a hug. He was a big man with a red, jovial face and he shook Laura’s hand heartily and said, “Well, well, you’re Beth’s new roommate! How d’you do?”
“Fine, thank you,” she murmured, overcome with shyness, but Uncle John didn’t notice. He was following Beth into the living room and greeting the girls he remembered from the year before.
Laura turned to Emily and said accusingly, “He doesn’t look anything like Beth,” as if it were Emily’s fault.
“Oh, heavens no,” said Emily. “He’s not her blood relation. His wife is. She and Beth’s mother were sisters.”
“Oh,” said Laura, and had trouble concealing the disappointment she felt. “Does she look like Beth?”
“Nope. Beth looks like her father. He died a long time ago. She has a picture of him around somewhere. It’s funny. You’d think she actually knew him if you ever heard her talk about him. She was two, I think, when he died.”
After dinner they went into the living room and sat on the floor in the circle of girls talking to Beth’s uncle. He was enthroned on the couch with a
