“I am. With you.”
Pat began to smile. “Why the hell didn’t you say so?” he exclaimed. “You never said so.”
“I was waiting for Beebo to go first. Misery loves company.”
“Come on, you nut, you know I’m crazy about you,” Pat said, smiling at him. He leaned over. “Stick out your tongue,” he said. Jack obeyed. “It’s black. You’re lying, you don’t love me at all.”
Jack began to laugh. Suddenly they forgot Beebo. It was the wonderful selfishness of love that swept them out of her world into their own; the selfishness that friends can only envy and forgive.
Beebo stood up after a while and wandered into the bedroom, wanting to give them some privacy and herself some relief from their pleasure. She lay down on the bed and saw Venus on the ceiling; shut her eyes and saw Paula and felt the tears start again. She stuffed her face into the pillow, beating it and crying Paula’s name. But when the fit passed, it was still Venus for whom her limbs ached and body burned; Venus whose face flamed in her brain and made her heart race.
Before she slept she thought of Jack and Pat, facing up to their love at last, and knew she had to move out. Yesterday she could have gone to Paula, even if it was premature. Today, there was again no place to go.
Beebo drove the truck to work with a thundering headache. She felt cut off from home and help; cut out—halfway at least—from Jack’s life. Venus wanted her to come back but only, Beebo was sure, to entertain herself. Paula wanted her, but to smother her with a love she couldn’t honestly accept, much as she respected and even wanted it.
At the shop she handed Venus’s autograph to Pete Pasquini. “Something for your memory book,” she said darkly.
He looked at it disinterestedly. “So how come you’re so cheerful this morning? Didn’t she throw nothing at you last night? She got a good right hand, that one.”
“She said to tell you she’s sorry,” Beebo said, refusing to look at him while she worked.
“Yeah? I think you’re the one was sorry. You didn’t do so good, hm?”
Beebo lifted a heavy can of peeled tomatoes, almost persuaded to heave it, when Marie’s voice broke in. “Beebo—a visitor. A young lady.”
Beebo put the can down, and a hand to her head. Paula. Holy God! I can’t face her. But she had to. She walked slowly to the front of the store, aware that Pete was trailing her at a discreet distance.
A tall dark-haired girl wheeled around and took off a pair of showy sunglasses. “Hello, Beebo,” she said. It was Mona.
Beebo could find nothing to say. Even “hello” was too much of a courtesy.
“I want some groceries. Over there on the counter—I’ve got most of them. I’m taking them to Paula. She didn’t feel much like going out today…for some reason.”
The thought of Paula, defenseless against Mona, was enough to crowd Beebo’s reluctance to see her little redhead right out of her mind. “I’ll take them over. I was going to see her at lunchtime anyway,” she said.
“I’m sure it’ll come as a surprise to Paula,” Mona observed, smiling at a display of spinach noodles.
Pete heard it and laughed his oily mirth to the canned fruits in the next aisle. Beebo wanted to strangle him. She shoved Mona’s five-dollar bill back at her and put the food for Paula on a shelf behind the counter. Mona had that high color on her face brought up by the excitement of willful malevolence. “I hear you and Pete are getting to be regular cronies,” she said in a syrupy voice. “Isn’t he a ray of sunshine, though?”
“You ought to know. He’s your sunshine, not mine,” Beebo said briefly.
“Pretty noble of you to pay for the groceries,” Mona said, sliding the bill back into her purse. “On your salary.” She gave Beebo a provocative stare that reminded them both of the night they met at the Colophon. A warm feeling arose in Beebo that was strictly physical and angered her.
Mona slunk down Pete’s aisle and Beebo heard them murmuring together. From the back of the shop she could see Pete making animated gestures as he told Mona something. Marie came out of the kitchen a minute to glance at them. “Ain’t that a pretty sight?” she said in a caustic whisper to Beebo. “The ‘Happiness Kids,’ Jack calls ’em. They was made for each other, them two.”
Beebo had to grin at the spunky little Frenchwoman.
Pete didn’t let Mona leave till he heard the motor of Beebo’s truck starting in the delivery yard. Beebo was backing out when he caught her. He put his head in the cab, forcing her to stop.
“Well?” she said impatiently.
“Bogardus just calls in,” he said. “For tonight—lasagna. You can deliver; I want no more in the face.” He waited for her reply, but she was gazing through the windshield, seeing nothing but that face, that face. So fair. So unfair! Pete slapped her knee and made her start. “You alive?” he said.
“I hear you.”
Pete squeezed her knee—the kind of grip known as a horse bite. It hurts and it tickles at the same time. Beebo wrenched her leg away and the truck lurched backward. Pete leaped agilely out of the way, laughing at her disgusted curse.
She drove off fuming, wondering what it was about him that made her think, when they met, that he never laughed. She would damn well quit, whether she had another job or not. But then she saw herself, jobless and homeless at one stroke. Everything had seemed so right and easy just a few weeks ago. Everything now seemed bewilderingly bleak.
She spent an hour with Paula at lunchtime, trying to explain by fits and starts how she had made friends with Toby, talked to Venus about him, and got home late, too tired to call.
“I’m sorry,” Beebo said, her voice
