Pete laughed, and all the while his brilliant black eyes were fixed on Beebo, who refused to meet them, concentrating instead on Marie’s theatrics.
“So who’s on the phone? Bogardus,” Marie said.
Beebo gasped.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Marie said, hands on her hips, spoon dripping bloody sauce. “She wants spaghetti this time. It’s the middle of the night—never mind. She got a taste for spaghetti. ‘Send me that one with the funny name,’ she says. And she don’t mean Pasquini.” She threw Pete a look of ferocious scorn. “So Hot Pants here, he says sure, he bring it right up, the stupid sonofabitch. No spaghetti, never mind, he makes up a leftover pizza.” She rolled her eyes to Heaven for vengeance.
“What happened?” Beebo said, her mind suddenly full of the star’s vivid face and sensual body.
“So I make the delivery,” Pete said languidly, seating himself on a table amid the crunchy bread crumbs. “Bogardus opens the door herself and says, ‘Where’s Beebo?’ Well, I’m surprised, I don’t realize how popular you are with these actress types.” He grinned and picked his teeth with neat nonchalance, while Beebo began to sweat nervously.
“So I tell her, you’re sick, you can’t make it, but it’s okay, I got her spaghetti. She says, ‘Thank you, darling—’” He rolled the endearment interminably off his tongue, always smiling directly at Beebo. “—and opens it. I’m waiting for her to hand me some money, minding my own business—”
“For the first time in two weeks!” Marie interpolated. “Where was your hands all this time, Pete?”
“In my pockets,” he replied coolly. “She wasn’t in a mood for no man last night.”
Beebo’s whole face flushed a high red. She wanted to turn and rush out of the place, but the thought of his raucous laughter alone prevented her.
“So instead of the money,” he went on leisurely, “she hands me back the pizza. In the face.”
“I begin to respect this woman,” Marie commented.
Pete continued, “She says, ‘What do you mean spaghetti? This ain’t spaghetti. And you ain’t no Beebo Brinker, neither.’ How do you like that, butch? You can write your own ticket with that one. Only you better make it a round trip. I understand you got a good reason for visiting back on McDonald Street these days.”
“She got a good reason to spit in your face, you damn wop!” Marie declared, siding with Beebo.
Pete ignored her. “That Paula, she’s a looker, hm? I wouldn’t mind cracking that little nut myself,” he said to Beebo, folding his arms and enjoying her alarm.
“I’ll crack yours one of these days,” Beebo said in a sudden fury. “Don’t talk about Paula, you dirty her name.”
“Don’t mind him, Beebo,” Marie said, sensing trouble. “It ain’t just Paula, anyway. It ain’t enough he runs after skirts all the time. He wants the girls who want other girls. Figure that one out. After all his big talk about fags.”
“Fags go for other fags. I go for girls,” Pete said, but Marie had finally rattled him. Any challenge to his manhood threw him into a panic. It was clear he drew a fine distinction between his own sexual preferences—“normal”—and everybody else’s.
“You go for Lesbians,” Marie said, silencing him with a wave of her gory spoon. She did him further insult by describing his desires to Beebo, as if Pete were not even in the room. “He’s three-fourths fag and the rest sadist,” she said. “That’s why he don’t chase real women. He has to hurt a girl—a girl who don’t want it—before he can get it up.” She glared at him like a cannibal.
Pete looked back with cold wrath. “I got five kids on those stairs says you’re a liar,” he said. “Or are you saying you ain’t a real woman?”
“Don’t fake with me, Pasquini. I know what you pretend in bed,” Marie shouted. “You married me to prove you was a man, and once we left the church, you figure you proved it. Well, it ain’t that simple.”
Pete walked toward her and Marie paled and stiffened, ready for a blow. But he passed her and went to Beebo, who could only stand her ground like Marie and hope he’d go on by. But he stopped, putting a hand on her shoulder, and pulled her aside.
“Don’t listen to her, she’s cracked,” he said softly. “I told Bogardus you’d be up with the spaghetti this afternoon. Does that make me your friend?”
“After your cracks about Paula?” she said, shaking his hand off roughly.
“I told you where to find Paula, too,” he reminded her, and his eyes glittered. “I always say nice things about that one. She’s a nice girl.”
Beebo looked at him with revulsion. “You sent me there to even some secret score of yours with Mona. Don’t act noble about it.”
He chuckled. “Still, I sent you, butch. And you went. You tell me if you’re sorry. You tell me if I ever done one thing you want to complain about.”
“We’d be here all day,” Beebo snapped. She turned to start working on the morning’s orders, but he followed her into the store, leaving Marie and the others to understand he was through fighting. Beebo heard Marie say wearily to Mrs. Pasquini, “So how come your son looks so good in Bordeaux and so lousy in New York? Okay, don’t yell, go see about the kids.”
Pete and Beebo worked in silence but whenever she glanced at him he seemed to have glanced at her first and was waiting for her eyes with a smile. He got his orders packed ahead of her and loped out the back door at
