“I’m not proud of it, but I want to be truthful with you. You’re a sweetheart, Beebo. And very young, and maybe not too experienced. Tell me why you’ve made Toby come up alone with the food all these weeks. Did you think I’d throw spaghetti at you?”
Beebo took a swallow of her drink. “I don’t want to crawl, Venus. I don’t want to be hurt,” she said harshly, defending herself with painful honesty in lieu of a worldly white lie.
“Nobody does,” Venus said. “Were you expecting to be?”
“Isn’t that what you want?” Beebo said, looking deep into her ice cubes. “To play games?”
Venus touched a finger to Beebo’s cheek. “You’re not crawling,” she said. “You’re being difficult. That’s new for me.”
“Is playing around with girls new for you, too?” Beebo asked, afraid to know the answer.
“Depends on how you mean it,” Venus said. “You don’t trust me, do you?” She smiled.
Beebo caught Venus’s hand as it caressed her cheek and kissed it warmly. And remembered with sudden sadness the way Paula had done that to her when they met. She put Venus’s hand down gingerly on the sofa.
Venus let her sit and stew for a minute and then slipped across the cushion toward her. Their faces were very near and Venus put her rejected hand on Beebo’s leg. “I’m trying to give myself to you and you won’t have me,” she said. “Now who’s crawling?” She let her other hand, cool and questing, touch Beebo’s neck and slip over her shoulder, drawing fire with it.
“You’re putting me on,” Beebo said, determinedly suspicious as only the young and uncertain can be. She took a deep breath. “But I don’t care,” she cried suddenly. “I don’t care. I’ll have you any way I can.” She put her head down and kissed Venus’s throat, putting her arms around her and grasping her firmly. Venus leaned against her, warm and willow-supple.
“You want to know how it feels, don’t you?” Beebo said, trying to hurt her feelings, so sure Venus would hurt Beebo first if she could. “You want to know what it’s like for a girl to hold you instead of a man. Any time you get bored, let me know.” She bent to kiss her again but Venus stopped her. She was dismayed, and Beebo was ashamed to see it.
“You really do hate me, don’t you?” Venus said.
Beebo closed her eyes for a minute. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She felt Venus moving in her arms. “I thought you were bored and frigid. Taking me like a prescription, or something. The way you talked—”
“The way I talked about men, not women. Beebo, do you know something? I was scared to death you’d take one look at this face of mine, panic, and run out.” Her hands slid around Beebo’s back and into her short dark hair.
Beebo’s face turned hot while those hands trailed softly through her hair and over her eyes. “You’re superb, Beebo,” Venus said. “I think I’m the one who’s afraid. I wouldn’t be if I knew you better. And myself.”
“You know more than I know,” Beebo said. “Is this all a joke, Venus?”
Venus hushed her by pulling her down and kissing her mouth, and her tenderness was no pleasantry. Beebo kissed back: Venus’s face, her ears, her pale throat, till Venus made her stop, shaking her curls to be let loose, and laughing.
“Who the hell am I,” Beebo exclaimed, “that you should kiss me like this?”
Venus caught her breath. “You talk to me as if I were a woman,” she said at last, gratefully. “Not a goddess, or a bitch. It hurts a little, but it feels good to hurt like that. Like when you’re awfully young and you have a beautiful dreamy pain to cry over.”
Beebo rubbed her head back and forth in the cradle of Venus’s shoulder. “Did you cry over your dreams like other girls, Venus?”
“I cried, but not like other girls. I never did anything like other girls. I never even looked like them.”
“Would you rather be plain?” Beebo asked.
Venus looked away and found the dignity to be honest. “No,” she said. “It’s a funny thing about women and me. Half the time I want to make them weep with despair over my beauty. And the other half I ache to be friends with them. Accepted. All the things I wasn’t when I was growing up. My whole world is men. They’re the only friends I have, and they aren’t really friends at all. Not with a woman like me. The women close to me are either fat and old, like Mrs. Sack, or homely and heartless, like Miss Pinch.”
“The cook? Is that her name?” Beebo gave in to laughter that relieved her tenseness a little.
“I know, it’s too good to be true,” Venus said. “Leo started calling her that, and it caught on. I fire her regularly but she comes back like a bad dream. She’s devoted to Leo.”
Beebo put her head down so she could talk without exposing her emotions to Venus’s eyes. “Do you miss having a woman in your life?” she asked.
“Yes. The right kind. Somebody cultured and intelligent and well-educated. Somebody to teach me things. I’m so damned stupid.”
Beebo gave a short wry laugh. “Venus? I think there’s something you should know.”
“What?”
“I didn’t finish high school.”
Venus laughed, a charming sound, full of pleasure. “I thought you meant, did I want a secretary, or something,” she said.
“I’ll bet you did.” Beebo sat up and lowered herself to the floor, where she leaned back on the sofa, locking her fingers around her knees. She felt Venus’s hand come down to play with her ear.
“Did I say something wrong, darling?” Venus said.
“Not a thing. Just that for a girl who likes girls, you did a damn queer thing marrying six men,” Beebo said.
Venus answered pensively. “I kept thinking one of the six
