“Do girls ever get over their crushes on you?” Venus said.
“Every day,” Beebo protested. “Venus…would you ever lock me out…if people knew?”
Venus rolled away from her, sitting halfway up. Her face was dark. “I’d have to,” she said. “For Toby, if for no other reason. And even without him, there’s my career. It’s my life, my anchor. I can’t afford to jeopardize it, especially now that I’m thirty-eight.” She glanced at Beebo. “Is that unforgivably selfish of me? Don’t answer. It is, of course. I want you, and all the rest, too. And that means you’re the one who’d have to sacrifice. It’s just that…for some people a job is a job. For me, it’s self-respect. Acting is about the only thing I’ve done in my life I’m not ashamed of. Is it too much to ask, Beebo—secrecy?”
“Is it possible?” Beebo said.
Venus nodded. “There are ways. I’ve had to learn them.”
“With the other girls,” Beebo said resentfully.
Venus stroked her shoulder. “You don’t have to be jealous,” she said. “I do.”
“I’m jealous of all your husbands. All your lovers, male and female. Every slob who ever saw you in a movie.”
Venus chuckled, letting her tripping voice twist her body back and forth on the blue silk, and Beebo suddenly forgot everything in her life that had preceded this moment. She lunged across the bed and caught Venus by the wrist, whirling her around just as Venus got to her feet.
For an instant they stayed as they were, breathless: Beebo stretched out the length of the bed, looking at Venus with her blue eyes shining like a cat’s. Venus could feel the avalanche of passionate force trapped inside Beebo, ready to burst free at the flip of a finger. Already it was near exploding.
Venus stood there pulling against Beebo; warm, even hot to the point of perspiring. The light sweat excited Beebo far more than the perfume Venus usually wore. Her body was a soft pearly peach and between her breasts Beebo could see the quivering lift and fall of her sternum.
Beebo gave a swift tug on Venus’s arm and brought her tumbling down on the bed, laughing. That laugh sprang the switch in Beebo. She stopped it with her mouth pressed on Venus’s. And at last Venus submitted, all the twisting and teasing melting out of her. She let herself be kissed all over.
Beebo looked at her, stripped of the tinseled make-believe and the wisecracks; her lips parted and her eyes shut and her fine dark hair spilling pins over the pillow, coming down almost deliberately to work its witchery. Beebo kissed handfuls of it.
She fell asleep a long time later, still murmuring to Venus, still holding her possessively close, still wondering what she had done—or would have to do—to deserve it.
They were shaken out of sleep by the shrill ringing of the blue phone by Venus’s bed. Venus answered sleepily, pulling the receiver onto the pillow by her ear where she lay across Beebo’s chest.
But she came awake fast.
It was Leo Bogardus, calling from Hollywood. Beebo opened her eyes and watched while Venus flushed with wrath and suddenly burst into furious tears, threatening to hitchhike for Reno if she had to.
When she had slammed the phone down she told Beebo angrily that Leo had signed her to a television special series called Million Dollar Baby.
“I’m the Baby, but I’ll never see the million bucks,” she cried. “God, I hate TV! You get overexposed, underpaid, and worked to death. And all the lousy profit goes to the lousy sponsors.”
Beebo stroked her and tried to calm her. After a while Venus sat still, her head in her hands. “Will you really go to Reno?” Beebo asked.
“No,” she sighed. “He won’t give me a divorce. I’ve tried everything…. I’ll go to Hollywood. I have no choice, Beebo. That’s where they’re going to film this little horror.”
“Well, you were going anyway, for Toby.”
“But not this soon! God damn that Leo! Well, at least I asked Toby first. I tried to do it—right.”
“How soon is this soon?” Beebo asked disconsolately.
“Tonight, if I can get reservations.”
Beebo sat up in a mood of defiance. “Venus, you can’t—”
“I have to, darling. Leo has ways of forcing me. Besides, I knew he’d been talking about this for months. But I didn’t think it would come so soon.” She glanced at Beebo and suddenly turned halfway around to kiss her mouth, startling Beebo.
“Is that goodbye?” Beebo said, so coldly that Venus smiled at her.
“I told you I had a business proposition for you, you wicked child,” she said. “And it’s a damn good thing, or I could never explain to Toby why you spent the night. I’m going in right now and mess up the guest room. Bring your clothes.”
Beebo pulled some of them on en route to the guest room. “What proposition?” she demanded, full of new hopes.
“Would you like to work for me?” Venus said, turning down the covers of the extra bed. She had thrown her negligee around herself.
“As what?” Beebo said. “Your companion?”
“No. Toby’s. He says you know horses. Maybe you could work in the stables.” She spiraled the sheets around on the bed and dumped a pillow on the floor. “That should do it…. Well, don’t stand there, darling, go home and pack,” she said, glancing up at her astonished guest. “I want you back here before six tonight. There’s a flight at eight I can usually get seats on. What’s the matter, don’t you want to go?”
“I—yes—I do,” Beebo stammered.
“Well, go, darling. Go, go, go!” Venus said, clapping her hands under Beebo’s nose and laughing. “And don’t talk about it!” she hissed at Beebo’s retreating back. “To anybody!”
Beebo drove downtown in a fog of confusion. After the first shock of flattered pleasure died away, she found herself preoccupied with Paula; so concerned, so anxious, that there were tears in
