It wasn’t till she became aware that Mona was protesting that she let her go. She stood in front of Mona, still trembling and weak-kneed, her breath coming fast and her head spinning, and she felt oddly apologetic. Mona had started it, but Beebo had carried it too far. “I’m sorry,” she panted.
“Stop saying you’re sorry all the time,” Mona told her in a sulky voice. And, with a briskness that all but shattered the mood, she turned and started walking off, her heels snapping against the asphalt. Beebo stared after her, shocked. Was this the end of it?
But Mona turned back after a quarter of a block and called her. “You aren’t going to spend the night there, are you?” she said crisply.
Beebo hurried after her, and they walked for two more blocks without exchanging a word. Beebo could only suppose she had done something wrong. Yet she didn’t know what, or how to make amends.
Mona stopped at a brownstone house with six front steps. “I live here,” she said.
Beebo glanced up at it. “Shall I leave?” she said.
“Do you want to?”
“Don’t answer my questions with more questions!” Beebo said, a tide of anger releasing her tongue. “Damn it, Mona, I don’t like evasions.”
“All right. Don’t go,” Mona said, and smiled at the outburst. She went up the steps with Beebo coming uneasily behind her, opened the door, and went to the first-floor apartment in the back. At her door she pulled out her key and waited. Beebo was looking around at the hall, old and modest, but cleanly kept. The apartments in a place like this could be astonishingly chic. She had seen some belonging to Jack’s friends.
Mona let her take it in till Beebo became aware of the silence and turned to her quizzically.
“Approve?” Mona said.
Beebo nodded, and Mona, as if that were the signal, turned the key in the lock. She walked over the threshold, switched on a light, and abruptly backed out again, preventing Beebo from entering.
“What’s wrong?” Beebo said, surprised.
“There’s someone in there,” Mona said.
Without thinking, Beebo made a lunge for the door. She had thrown prowlers out of her father’s house before. A situation like this scared her far less than being in that room alone with Mona—much as she wanted it.
But Mona caught her arm. “It’s a friend of mine!” she hissed. “Beebo, please!” Beebo stopped, irritated, waiting for an explanation. “It’s a girl. I told her Todd and I were breaking up,” Mona shrugged. “I guess she came over to cheer me up. We’ve been friends a long time. Oh, it’s nothing romantic, Beebo.”
“Well, send her home,” Beebo said. It was one thing to be afraid of Mona, but another entirely to forfeit the whole night in honor of a hen party.
“I can’t.” Mona looked up at her in pretty distress. “She’s my one real friend and I owe her a lot. She’s had some bad times in her own life lately. Beebo, look—here’s my phone number. Call me in an hour. Maybe we can still make it.” She took a scratch pad from her purse and scribbled on it.
Beebo took it, feeling rebuffed and insulted. But Mona stood on tiptoes and kissed her lips again. And when Beebo refused to embrace her, Mona took her wrists and pulled them around her and gave Beebo a luxurious kiss. “Forgive me,” she said. “It would be tough if she knew I’d brought someone home—it really would.” She slipped out of Beebo’s arms and put a hand on the doorknob. “Be sure to call me,” she said. And then she disappeared inside her apartment.
Beebo stood in the hall a while, leaning on the dingy plaster and trying to make sense out of Mona. There was no sound from the apartment. Perhaps Mona and the girl had gone into a bedroom to talk. The idea made Beebo angry and jealous. She went slowly down the front hall. There was a pay phone by the entrance. Beebo went outside and sat on the front stoop for about forty-five minutes, and then went in to call.
She had lifted the telephone receiver and was about to drop in a dime, when she heard a bang from the end of the hall, as if someone had dropped something heavy. It seemed to come from Mona’s door, and Beebo rushed toward it. But at the threshold, she froze.
Mona’s voice, muffled as if through the walls of several rooms, but discernible, penetrated the wood. “And you! You sneak in here like a rat with the plague! God damn, how many times do I have to say it? Call first. Are you deaf or just stupid?”
Beebo’s mouth opened as she strained to hear the answer. It came after a slight pause: “Rats don’t scare you, doll. You already got the plague.”
Beebo whirled away from the door as if she had been burned, and stood with her knuckles pressed angrily against her temples.
The voice belonged to a man.
It was several days before anything happened. Beebo went back to work as usual. There were no calls, no notes, no effort on Mona’s part to get in touch with her and explain. Or apologize.
Beebo worked dully, but gratefully. Keeping busy was a balm to her nerves. She took pleasure in driving, taking corners faster and making deliveries in better time as she learned the routes. During the morning she took out groceries. In the afternoon, it was fresh-cooked, hot Italian food in insulated cartons.
Mona and her male visitor were on Beebo’s mind so constantly that she didn’t even take time to worry about Jack, or the possibility that he might fall in love with Pat. She saw them every evening, but said little and saw less.
She was full of a boiling bad temper: half-persuaded to go out on the town with as many girls as she could find, sure that Mona would hear about it; and half-toying with the
