“Jesus, I should have seen it,” she murmured.
“No, you shouldn’t. I’m a genius at hiding it.”
“Jack, I’m sure a fool. I’ve been up to my eyes in my own troubles.”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe you wouldn’t figure it out. It’s hard to realize the kind of life you’ve been leading up to now. How little you’ve been allowed to see or understand.”
She looked up at him. “Thanks for being patient,” she said. “I mean it. Jack, how long have you been gay? How did you find out about yourself?”
“I didn’t. I was told. In the Navy, by a hairy little gob who kept climbing into my bunk at night and telling me fairy stories. When he got a rise out of me, he made the diagnosis. I told him to go to hell, but the next night, I was climbing into his bunk.”
It made her smile. “Can you forgive me?” she said.
“Nothing to forgive. And I’ll let you back into my good graces on one condition. Do you think your friend Pat will be in bloom tonight?”
“Probably,” she said, seeing him through her new understanding as through a rainbow curtain. He was a new shape, a new color, a new man. She was vastly relieved, and just a little awed. And ashamed of her bean-soup intuition.
“Let’s go look at him,” Jack said.
The night was hot and damp, with a low black sky that had looked menacing in the daylight, but was soft and close as dark came down, floating over the neon merriment below.
Beebo was quiet as they walked, preoccupied with a new attitude toward Jack and an almost unbearable sense of anticipation. Pat was usually at Julian’s. When they arrived, the bar was crowded but there was standing room at one end. They squeezed in and ordered drinks, and Beebo began to pick out the faces that searched for her.
“Is he here?” Jack asked, glancing around.
She discovered him right away. “Over there in the blue shirt,” she said, nodding.
“They all have blue shirts,” Jack said, squinting through the smoke.
“The blond one.”
There was a pause and Jack’s face puckered thoughtfully. “He looks pretty young,” he said in a bemused voice.
“You mean, you like his face?” Beebo smiled at him.
“It’s a face,” he said noncommittally, and when she laughed he shrugged and added, “Okay. A nice face. Beebo, I think you’re playing cupid.”
“I wouldn’t know how,” she said. “Besides, you told me you only fell in love in the fall or the spring. This is midsummer.” But she wondered suddenly what would happen if he broke his rule. It made her heart drop. Jack’s apartment was small, with just one bed. Even if he didn’t ask her to leave, how welcome would she be if he invited a third party to share it with them? She’d have to bow out, out of simple consideration. But where could she go? She had avoided making any friends, and the Pasquinis with their five kids were out of the question. She would have preferred a park bench anyway to a room with Pete Pasquini in it.
Beebo and Jack were both caught unaware by the sudden quiet interruption. There he was, Beebo’s boy, standing behind and between them. He had come over in the moment it took them to discuss him and now they looked at him in surprise.
He paled a little and started to back away, but Jack put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t panic. We’re harmless when we’re drinking,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Pat Kynaston,” said the boy, staring into his beer. He supposed Beebo had Jack with her this time to show him she was taken, and he was crushed.
“Pat? That’s a girl’s name,” Beebo kidded.
Pat swallowed some beer and moved the sawdust under his shoes.
“Have a drink, honey,” Jack said, and Beebo felt a stir of strange interest in the endearment. And yet Pat seemed more like a child than a man, and it was easy to call him fond names. In spite of his light beard he had a child’s face, full of a child’s hardy trust. He smiled at Jack, reassured.
“He looks as green as you did last May,” Jack told Beebo. “How long have you been here, Pat?”
“Oh, since seven-thirty, I guess.”
“No, I mean in New York?” Jack grinned.
“Oh. January.” Pat’s eyes remained on Beebo while he answered Jack. But when she returned the look, he glanced down to her belt. “I left school then,” he said.
“Sounds like the story of my life,” said Beebo. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Jack cleared his throat and Beebo’s mouth dropped open. “With that face?” Jack protested. “You mean your father is twenty-seven.”
Pat laughed a little and shook his head.
“Besides, what is a twenty-seven-year-old child doing in school? You should be through.”
“I was working on a doctorate in entomology.”
“Bugs? You don’t look like a bug collector,” Jack said with a grimace, and they laughed while the drinks came up. Jack pulled Pat between himself and Beebo and teased him for a while, making him blush and answer questions. But when it came out that Pat was working as a garbage-collector for the New York City Department of Sanitation, Jack stopped laughing.
“God! A frail kid like you? You shouldn’t do work like that,” he declared.
“It was all I could get. Nobody wants an entomologist manqué,” Pat said. “I guess that’s why I’m skinny. I look at those rotting scraps all day and when I get home the stuff in my icebox looks just as bad.”
Jack tapped Beebo on the shoulder. “Do we have any of Marie’s chicken tetrazini in the refrigerator?”
“Plenty.”
“Let’s go.” Jack threw a couple of bills on the counter and took Pat by the elbow. Beebo took the other and they walked him out of Julian’s and down the street.
Beebo had been elated to learn that Jack, too, was gay. But now she felt
