Paula ran an uneasy hand through her hair and bit her underlip as she stood by her stove, waiting for the water to boil. “Would you tell me,” she asked timidly, “just what Mona told you?”
“I haven’t seen Mona for a week,” Beebo said. “A mutual acquaintance told me she’d be here tonight.”
“Well, your mutual acquaintance has a queer sense of humor,” Paula said. “Mona and I were never good friends. And lately we’ve been pretty good enemies.”
“So that was it,” Beebo said. “That’s a hell of a note. I’m sorry, Miss Ash, I—”
“Paula, please. Oh, it wasn’t your fault,” Paula said. “Mona has done crazier things than meeting her new lovers in my living room. I’ve known her almost five years.” She came back with two cups of hot coffee. She still seemed half-conscious, and when she stumbled a bit, Beebo got up and rescued the coffee.
Paula made a hissing sound of pain, pulling air between her teeth and looking at her left thumb.
“Did you scald it? Here. Under the cold water, quick.” Beebo left the steaming cups on an end table and took Paula by the arm to the sink. She turned on the tap full force and held Paula’s burn under the healing stream. Paula tried to pull away after a few seconds but Beebo held her securely. “Give it a good minute,” she said.
And as they stood there, Beebo studied Paula at close range. She was a lovely-looking girl, even though she seemed non compos at the moment. “Are you sick, Paula?” Beebo asked kindly.
“No, no. Really. I’m just terribly tired. And then I took some sleeping pills. Probably too many. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“If you’re so tired, why do you take sleeping pills?” Beebo asked.
Paula’s dainty face contracted around a private pain. “The doctor gave them to me. It’s harder to sleep when you’re too tired than when you’re just tired.” She weaved a little, and Beebo put an arm around her.
“Are you supposed to take so many they send you into a coma?”
“No. But one pill doesn’t work. Three or four don’t work any more. I just keep swallowing them till I drop off.”
“That’s dangerous,” Beebo said. “One of these days you’ll drop too damn far.” She turned the water off and reached for a paper towel, blotting the injured hand gently. Suddenly, to her dismay, Paula pulled her hands away and hid her face in them to cry. Beebo watched, frustrated with the wish to touch and comfort her.
Paula’s sobs were short and hard, and she pulled herself together with a stout effort of will. All Beebo could see for a moment was the top of her head, covered with marvelous rich red hair. And, when she looked up, a trail of pale freckles across her cheeks and nose. Beebo handed her a tissue from her shirt pocket, and Paula blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
She was a fragile, very feminine and small girl, wearing a pair of outsized, plaid-print men’s pajamas.
Beebo took a bit of sleeve between her fingers with a smile. “You always wear these?” she asked.
“Only lately. They aren’t mine. A former roommate left them behind when she moved.”
“Oh,” Beebo said. “I didn’t think they were your type.”
“They’re not. They’re hers. And she’s gone, and this is all I have left of her.” Paula shook out her smoldering curls and cleared her throat. “I’m better now. Shall we have the coffee?” she said. It was obvious that she had humiliated herself with the unplanned personal admissions, and Beebo did her the courtesy of dropping the subject and joining her in the living room.
They drank the coffee in preoccupied silence a while. Beebo lighted a cigarette and offered it to Paula, who refused. Finally she said lightly, hoping to cheer Paula up, “Seems to me those pajamas are the answer to your insomnia.”
“What? How?” Paula looked at her as if suddenly remembering her presence in a room where Paula had thought herself alone with a ghost.
“Switch to nighties—your own—and get some rest,” Beebo said. “If I had to wear a plaid like that, I’d have nightmares all night.”
Paula smiled wanly. “I know,” she said. “They’re silly. I just needed somebody else to say it, I guess. It’s hard to break away from a person you’ve been close to. You hang on to the stupidest things.”
“Well, her old sleep gear won’t bring her any closer,” Beebo said. She pulled a sleeve out full length. “Did she play basketball?” Beebo said, and they both laughed.
“She wasn’t a shorty,” Paula admitted. Her laughter made her wonderfully pretty. She stopped it suddenly to say, “That’s the first time I’ve laughed in a month.” She gazed at Beebo with grateful astonishment.
“Looks like I got here just in time,” Beebo said, not realizing till after she spoke what a hoary come-on that was. Paula’s pink blush clarified things for her.
“I suppose you want to be getting home,” Paula said shyly, rising from her chair. She was struck for the first time with Beebo’s size. Stretched across the sofa, with her long legs thrusting out from under the cocktail table, Beebo looked too big for a nine-by-twelve living room.
To her surprise, Beebo found she didn’t want to be getting home at all; not even to run interference between Jack and Pat. And thinking of Pat brought a flash of recognition to her mind. “You remind me of a friend,” she told Paula, sitting up to scrutinize her. “A boy named Pat. A lovable thing. Shy and just a little childish. In the nice way, I mean.”
“I remind you of a boy?” Paula stared.
“More of a child than a boy.”
Paula didn’t know quite how to take it. “In the nice way?”
“Yes. Trusting, affectionate. Still curious about people and life. It’s a very—endearing quality.”
“And you think I’m like that?” Paula asked.
“You obviously don’t,” Beebo chuckled.
“I’ve been told I’m nasty and spoiled and selfish…childish in the bad way.”
“Who told you
