“It’s not my wallet I’m worried about,” she said. “There’s nothing in it, anyway. It’s just that he’s always under my feet when he should be on the other side of the store.”
“I suspect it’s for Marie’s benefit,” Jack said. “Every female who comes into the store gets the once-over from Pete—provided Marie is looking. And most of the time, she is. She likes to keep score, I guess.”
“There was a girl today,” Beebo said. “She came in the shop about noon, when Marie was fixing lunch. I waited on her.” Her face became intent as she summoned the girl’s image in her mind’s eye.
“What about her?” Jack said curiously.
But Beebo, coming to herself at the sound of his voice, said, “Oh, nothing. But she was more Pete’s type…any man’s type.”
“What was she like?”
“She had long black hair,” Beebo said, as if it were very special. “People don’t let their hair grow like that any more. It was lovely. She let it hang free down her back. And her face…” She was gone again, seeing it in her imagination.
“She must have been a looker,” Jack said, frustrated by the reticence between himself and Beebo. He knew what hundreds of questions she needed to ask, what a wealth of help she would be wanting soon. But she didn’t dare start asking and because she didn’t, Jack dared not force the answers on her yet.
“She was absolutely gorgeous,” Beebo said with a certain wonderment and innocence that touched him. “I never saw such a girl in my life before.” There was a small silence. Beebo’s words hung in the air like a neon sign and reduced her abruptly to confusion. To cover up, she said, “She wasn’t a very nice girl, though. Not by your standards.”
“My standards?”
“She’s not afraid of boys,” Beebo grinned. “At least, she wasn’t afraid of Pete. But I think they knew each other from somewhere. He called her…Mona.” She spoke the name self-consciously. “It sounds old-fashioned, doesn’t it?”
“I wonder if it’s Mona Petry,” Jack said. “She has black hair, but I didn’t think it was that long. Still, I haven’t seen her for a while.”
“Who’s Mona Petry?” Beebo asked, her eyes intent on Jack.
“Old flame of Pete’s,” Jack said. “She used to come into the store a lot three or four years ago. She and Pete got quite a charge out of putting poor Marie on. Mona isn’t the charitable type. She likes to land a man who belongs to some other woman—more to spite the other woman than because she wants the man. As soon as she won Pete, she dumped him like a sack of meal. For some reason, Pete never fought back. Makes me think she really meant something to him. God knows, none of the other broads do.”
“Is she one of those man-hungry girls that can’t get enough?” Beebo said. “I forget what they’re called, but there’s a name for it.”
“The name is nymphomaniac,” Jack said. “But Mona doesn’t love men. She just plays around with them. They’re good ego builders.” He lighted a cigarette, seeing, without seeming to, the concentration on Beebo’s face. The question was there on her tongue, in her mind, but she couldn’t get it out. If Mona doesn’t love men, she was thinking…then who?
“There’s another word for Mona,” Jack said. Beebo tensed up. “Bitch.” He threw her a grin and made her laugh with nervous relief. “Actually, Mona loves girls,” Jack went on, speaking in a smooth casual flow, a conversational tone that bespoke no shock, no disapproval, nothing but ordinary interest. He deliberately looked at the front page of the evening paper as he spoke.
Beebo answered huskily, “What do you mean? What girls?”
“Lesbians,” he said. “Want to freshen this up for me, pal?” He handed her his highball glass. She took it with astonishment still plain on her face. When she returned from the kitchen with the new drink, she asked him, “Aren’t they sort of—immoral? I heard the word once before. I thought you weren’t supposed to say it.”
At that, Jack looked up. “Lesbian? You mean you thought it was a dirty word?” he exclaimed, and laughed in spite of himself. Beebo was momentarily offended until he cleared his throat and said, “Forgive me, honey, but that’s the bloodiest nonsense I’ve heard in a long time. Whoever in the hell told you it was dirty?”
“Doesn’t it mean loose women?” Beebo asked.
He shook his head. “It means gay women,” he said. “It means homosexual women. It means women, Beebo, who love other women. The way heterosexual women love men.”
His words put a focus on Beebo’s fascination. She stared at him from the sofa with her lips parted and her eyes fixed steadily on his. “You said Mona was a bitch,” she said finally, softly. “And then you said she was a Lesbian. Doesn’t that make her cheap? Q.E.D.?”
“Some of the staunchest Puritan ladies I know are double-dyed bitches,” Jack said briskly. “And just because Mona is a bad apple doesn’t mean all the gay girls in the world are full of worms. Mona would be bitchy anyway, gay or straight.”
“What’s ‘straight’?”
“Heterosexual,” Jack said.
“Where did you learn all those words?” Beebo said, bewildered.
“I’m a native. I speak the lingo,” he said, but instead of catching his implication, she thought he meant only that he had lived in Greenwich Village so long he had picked it up, like everyone else.
“Does it ever happen that a nice girl is a Lesbian?” she asked him shyly.
“All the time,” he said, opening up the paper and gazing through the ball scores.
“Did you ever meet any?”
“I’ve met most of them,” he chuckled. “They’re just as friendly and pleasant as other girls. Why not?”
“But can’t you tell by looking at them that they’re—” She rubbed a hand over her mouth as if to warn herself not to speak the word, and then said it anyway: “—Lesbian?”
“You mean, do they all wear army boots and Levis?” Jack said with a smile. “Does Mona Petry look
