“Don’t forget—Bogardus wants her pasta at five-thirty,” he said. She straightened up and glowered at him till he laughed and withdrew.
Beebo finished the orders quickly, her mind teeming with ideas for another job. Anything would be preferable to Pete’s endless leering. It was one thing for him to chase pretty Lesbians like Mona. But that he might desire Beebo—big and rangy, almost more boy than girl—seemed as utterly perverse and unnatural to her as that she might desire him.
She was surprised when the front bell rang and Pat Kynaston walked in. She was just ready to leave.
“What are you doing here!” she exclaimed.
“I brought Marie some goodies for her cockroaches,” he said, shaking a colored cylinder full of powder. “The Last Supper. Going to make some deliveries?”
Beebo nodded.
“Take me along,” he said pleasantly. “I haven’t anything to do, and the heat in that apartment is godawful.”
She relented after a moment’s indecision, and gave him a smile. “Okay, bring those boxes and follow me,” she said. “You can take my mind off things.”
Late in the afternoon they arrived at Venus Bogardus’s apartment on Park Avenue. Beebo parked in the service entrance, letting her hands drop between her knees with a sigh. Pat lighted her cigarette and they sat and smoked a minute.
“Kind of a stuck-up looking dump, isn’t it?” she said, squinting up at the glistening windows, stacked with parallel nicety clear to the clouds. “Well, let’s go do it.”
She got the hot spaghetti and, on a sudden inspiration, included a jar of kosher dills intended for a different customer.
“Who are we going to see this time?” Pat yawned on the way up.
“Probably another maid,” Beebo said.
“Whose?”
“Venus Bogardus’s.”
Pat straightened up and stared at her.
But it was Toby, Venus’s problem child, who let them in. “Hi, Beebo,” he said, pleased to see her.
“Hi, buddy. Where’s your mama?” She was sorry at once she had asked. There was a cook by the stove this time, apparently the one who ditched Venus periodically, but always came back. She was thin and sticky with butter, and she looked inhospitable.
“I hear Venus threw some food around last night,” Beebo smiled at Toby. “I brought her a peace offering. Sweets to the sweet,” and she handed Toby the pickles. “This is a friend of mine, Toby—Pat Kynaston.” They shook hands and a silence ensued. All Beebo had to do now was wait for her money and leave. But she heard herself asking again, “Is Venus here?”
“Come on in. I’ll go see,” Toby said unwillingly.
He left the kitchen briefly and returned, his hands jammed nervously in his pockets. “She’s in her room,” he reported. “In a goddamn peignoir. She only wants to see you, Beebo. I told her about Pat and she said she didn’t want any peace offerings. She wouldn’t even listen about the pickles.”
“Oh, God,” Pat whispered to Beebo. “I suppose I go to the cook as a consolation prize.”
Toby walked over to them. “I have a good collection of records,” he said diffidently. “And guns. That’s one thing all those fathers are good for. I didn’t go for the guns at first, but I’ve gotten kind of interested. If you’d like to see them…I mean, I think Mom is busy for a few minutes.”
Beebo was touched by his loneliness, his eagerness for company. She had the feeling that he was choosy about his friends, and living a life where he could hardly meet any anyway. It made her seem quite important to him.
He grinned at her. “You’re still on my side, aren’t you?” he said.
“All the way,” she laughed. “I just want to apologize to your mother for our delivery boy. I guess he got fresh.”
“No,” Toby said, his face lengthening. “She did.”
The cook absorbed all this with silent disapproval. She was the type who disapproved of everything—even food.
“I wish you wouldn’t see my mother,” Toby confessed unexpectedly.
Beebo’s mouth dropped open a little. “I thought somebody ought to ask her pardon for last night,” she said, embarrassed. “The Pasquinis don’t want to lose her.”
“They don’t need her,” he said, looking at the floor.
“Hmp,” said the cook to the spinach during the shocked pause that followed.
“That’s no way to talk about your mother, Toby,” Beebo said.
“You heard how she talks about me,” he countered. “What am I supposed to do? Pretend I’m deaf?”
Beebo listened, full of compassion, but afraid of the big-eared cook. Toby spoke as if she were no more than another kitchen appliance, like her stove.
But he saw Beebo’s glance, and pushed the kitchen door wide. “Come on in my room,” he said. “We can talk there.”
Beebo put the spaghetti on the counter and followed him, with Pat behind her. The apartment was richly decorated and unkempt.
In his room, Toby sat on the bed, and Beebo and Pat found places on chairs. He had his guns in two glass cases hung on the wall, and the rest of the room was a jumble of phonograph records, books, and school mementos.
Toby wanted to talk frankly to Beebo, and yet they were more strangers than friends. But he needed to talk, to melt the strangeness away and find the friend. At last he began, rather abruptly, “I just don’t want my mother to turn you against me. I mean, you’re a good kid and I want you to know me the way I am. Then you won’t think I’m such a dumb baby when she starts talking about what a ‘lovely child’ I am, but she can hardly wait till I outgrow it.”
Beebo heard this awkward speech with an ache of recognition. How it hurt to be so young, so at the mercy of your elders, and, often, lessers. So full of rainbows and music and romantic love…yet always cracking your head against the walls of reality.
“I know she says some silly things, Toby,” she said seriously. “But you love
