“Only on the bad days. My childhood wasn’t that pretty,” Beebo said.
“When are the bad days?”
“Never any more. Not with Paula around.”
They got up at noon the next day, and it was some time before Beebo could think rationally about her job. She should call Marie, she should call Jack and tell him where she was. But it was impossible to get out of the bed while Paula was in it. And every time Paula sat up, Beebo pulled her down.
“Let me make breakfast,” Paula smiled, and after wrestling a moment, pulled free and scampered halfway across the bedroom, pulling a sheet after her. She stood with her dazzling naked back, delicately sugared with freckles, to Beebo, who admired it in infatuated silence.
Paula ruffled through her closet looking for a negligee until Beebo said, “Paula, are you in love with me or that sheet?”
“I don’t want you to see me,” Paula confessed. “You said I was too thin.”
“I said ‘tiny.’ And beautiful. Honey, I felt you all over; I know you with my hands. Would it be so awful if I know you with my eyes, too?” When Paula hesitated, Beebo threw the covers off and stood by the bed.
Paula studied her in silence. “You’re wonderful,” she breathed at last.
“I’m homely,” Beebo answered. “But I’m not ashamed of it.”
“You are many things, Beebo, but homely isn’t one of them,” Paula declared. She faced Beebo sheet-first, like a highborn Roman girl in her wedding chiton. “How many girls have admired you like this?”
“Never a one,” Beebo said. She crossed the room toward Paula and saw her flinch. “Are you afraid of me?” she said, surprised.
“A little.”
“No, Paula.” Beebo reached her, touching her with gentle hands. “I’d never hurt you. Don’t you know that?”
“Not with your hands, maybe,” Paula said, bending her graceful neck to kiss one. “But I’m so in love…it would take so little. And scores of other girls must want you, Beebo. It would hurt me awfully if you ever wanted them.”
“What girls?” Beebo scoffed.
“Well, for a starter—Mona.”
“Paula, I kissed Mona twice. She stood me up twice. That’s the end of that,” Beebo said flatly. Abruptly, she pulled Paula’s sheet off and gazed delightedly on the fresh fair curves beneath. And before Paula had time to blush, Beebo picked her up, grateful at last for the uncomely strength in her arms, and placed her on the bed.
“Beebo,” Paula whispered, her arms locked tightly around Beebo’s neck. “How old are you?”
Beebo couldn’t blurt idiotically, “Eighteen.” Instead she asked, “How old do I look?”
“Like a college kid,” Paula sighed. “Which makes me older than you. I’m twenty-five, Beebo.”
“An ancient ruin.” Beebo kissed her nonchalantly, but she was secretly surprised. Nonetheless it pleased her to have won an older girl.
They made love again, lazily now. There was no wild rush, no fear on Beebo’s part that it would hurt and disillusion her. They rolled in caresses like millionaires in blue chips…ran their fingers over each other, and kissed and tickled and laughed and blew in each other’s ears.
And all the while Paula kept repeating, with the transparent affection that is the crown of femininity, “I love you, Beebo. I love you so much.”
Beebo couldn’t answer. She couldn’t have been happier, or hotter, or more rapturously charmed with the girl. She could hardly believe she had found one so lovely, so generous, so responsive, so single.
But there was a lot of roaming restless curiosity in Beebo, and while she was willing and eager to make love to and romanticize Paula, she was not willing to fall in love with her.
It wasn’t Paula’s fault, though Paula, with a woman’s quick awareness of emotions, sensed the situation. It was just that Beebo wasn’t ready for it. Paula had come too early in Beebo’s life. And that fact alone made Paula realize how young Beebo must be.
Beebo had caught Paula in a vulnerable state, on the rebound from an unhappy love affair with the girl in the plaid pajamas. But it was the culmination of a lot of bad affairs with both sexes that had left Paula drained and skeptical; hopeless about her future and unable to cope with her present. She had nearly taken the whole bottle of sleeping pills the night before, instead of the four that knocked her out.
Beebo was too good to be true, too young to know herself, too masculine to be faithful. But how strong she was, how sensual and sure; in some ways, wise beyond her years with that hard-won maturity Jack had perceived months before.
Paula tried to tell herself, as she lay in Beebo’s embrace, that she had nothing more than a hot crush that would end as suddenly as it began, and make her laugh to think she had called it love. She wanted very much to believe it, because it would have spared her the pain of losing Beebo Brinker to another girl—a pain she was in no condition to take safely then.
They ate together in Paula’s kitchen, and Paula obligingly sat on Beebo’s lap and let Beebo feed her. They were enchanted with each other. It was the kind of day everybody ought to have once in a while; if you knew it was coming, you could bear the boredom and solitude in the interim.
Paula told Beebo about her young years in Washington, D.C., and the shock that accompanied her suspicions that she was a Lesbian. Because it was Paula speaking, and because Beebo had never talked heart-to-heart with another Lesbian, the story seemed remarkable. She held Paula on her knees, answering with sympathy and affection, troubled and touched by it…and stirred by the warmth of Paula’s close, firm bottom.
They were startled when the phone cut in on them late in the afternoon.
Paula answered it over Beebo’s
