“I came so far to find you, Laura,” Beth murmured. “I thought it was terribly important to revive your love for me; I thought that that by itself could save me. I wanted you to think of me the way you did when we were roommates in school.” She gave a small self-deprecating laugh. “You know, I wonder if it isn’t true after all.”
“If what isn’t true?”
Beth walked slowly to the breakfast table and sat down opposite Laura, fingering her coffee cup cautiously. “I wonder if I didn’t need to find you in order to define myself. It’s wiped away a lot of my delusions about myself—just knowing what your delusions about me used to be. It’s taught me a lot, too. More what I am not, and can’t be, than what I am. But even so, that helps.”
“You’ve been through a lot of hell to find what you were looking for, Beth,” Laura said. “If I helped in any way, I’m glad.”
“So am I.” Beth smiled at her warmly and finally took a sip of fragrant coffee. She felt much better, though she couldn’t have said why. She should have been thoroughly ashamed of her deceptions. But she felt more hopeful than shamed, closer to happiness than despair.
“I want to thank you for the crystal candlesticks,” Laura told her. “I keep forgetting. They’re lovely.”
“I got them the same day I saw Charlie’s Scootch in the toy window. Lord, I was so afraid to come and see you. So excited. It seems like a million years ago already, and it’s been only a week or two.”
Laura studied her over the rim of her cup. Her eyes were smiling. “Do you still think you’re in love with me, Beth?” she asked.
Beth shook her head, feeling a little sheepish. “I’ve been in love with my daydreams. My past. My hopes. Everything but reality. I never knew you, Laura, until now. I guess I never was in love with you—the real you. I was in love with what I thought you were.”
“With what you thought I could do for you,” Laura grinned. “And I tried so hard to live up to it, years ago. I tried so hard to be what you thought I was, for fear of losing you. God, I loved you, Beth.”
They gazed at each other quietly for a moment.
“Loved? Past tense? It’s all over, then?” Beth said, almost wistfully. You aren’t loved like that very often in one lifetime, she thought. It was a wrench, even now, to see it end.
“All over but the good part,” Laura said. “The part about being friends. Only the pain and the romance are missing, and we’ve both had too much of them. Feels good, doesn’t it? To have somebody who knows everything about you, and still be able to love them. To get rid of the damned misunderstandings.”
“Yes,” Beth murmured. “It feels good.” Impulsively she reached across the table and grasped Laura’s hands. “I don’t need you now, Laura. I’m not desperate anymore. I can make it on my own. And I have you to thank for opening my eyes.”
“I wasn’t very nice about it,” Laura said.
“You couldn’t afford to be. I wouldn’t have seen the truth if you’d been nice about it. You did it right.” And in a spasm of gratitude she pulled Laura’s hands up to her lips and covered them with kisses. “Thanks,” she whispered. “Thanks, Laura darling.”
The phone rang and startled them both into a laughing fit. Laura got up and answered it from a small table around the corner in the dining room. “Yes,” she said. “Hi. No, she’s here. That’s what I said.” And she swung around to smile at Beth who returned the look, mystified. “Do you want to talk?” She held the phone out, chuckling.
Beth was seized with alarm. She half-rose from her chair. “It’s not Charlie, is it? Does he know where you are?”
Laura shook her head. “It’s Beebo.”
Surprised and pleased, Beth took the receiver from Laura and answered. A sudden fluttery feeling grabbed at her stomach and she felt curiously like a teenager talking to her prom date.
“How are you?” Beebo said. “It’s all over, I see by the papers. I would have called you or come down to see you, but I was afraid there was already too much going on. They would have done a double-take if I’d showed up. Might have kept you over a day just to explain me.”
Beth laughed with her. “Thanks, Beebo,” she said. “I don’t know why I called you from jail. I just thought you’d understand.” She knew very well why she’d called Beebo, and she was trying too hard to keep their talk casual, the way she had when she’d fallen in love once or twice before in her life. She recognized the symptom with a shock.
“I’m flattered,” Beebo said and she wasn’t kidding. “Well, what’s next? Where do you go from here? Back to Charlie?”
“No. We talked it all out when he came to get me. I’m going to stay in New York a while, I guess. Maybe I can find a job.”
Laura took the phone back and asked Beebo over. Beth felt a sweet shiver of anticipation at the idea of seeing her once more. All at once it was important that her hair be combed right, her lipstick smooth.
Chapter Twenty-three
WHEN SHE CAME SHE HAD COFFEE WITH THEM—THEY WERE ON their third cups—and she listened quietly while Beth explained what she had been through with Vega—and what Vega had been through with her, for she didn’t spare herself or her faults.
She felt a slow, lovely enchantment going through her at the sight of Beebo; just the sight of her tired, handsome face pleased her oddly in a new and special way. She could not even fib to herself that it was simple gratitude
