Beebo and Venus stared at him.
“You won’t have your face or your fortune or your home, or me to fight your battles, or Toby to love and respect you at last. You won’t have Toby at all, for that matter. Do this, Venus, and you’ve lost him forever. No state board in its right mind would give custody of a child to an infamous Lesbian who’d surround him with scandal and expose him to homosexual obscenities—even if the child himself wanted to be with her, which he damn well would not.
“And what do you trade Toby for? A big, overgrown, penniless butch with no job and no prospects for one, who’ll dump you the minute that face and body begin to sag.”
“You bastard!” Beebo shot at him, appalled.
“Shut up, Beebo,” he said coolly. “Do you have a job?”
“No, but—”
“Do you deny you’re gay?”
“No, but—”
“Do you deny Venus would lose everything if she went with you? Do you love her so much you can’t wait to destroy her?”
“Leo, for the love of God—”
“For the love of my wife I say these hard things!” he shouted at Beebo. “You were warned. You have no business standing there now with a slack jaw. What will you do, take a cold-water flat in Greenwich Village and live on love till you get hungry and cold? Do you think Venus Bogardus can go anywhere in the world right now with the papers headlining her lewd romance with another woman? ‘Venus Bogardus, queen of hearts, has found a queen of her own.’” He was quoting, unknown to the two women, the morning’s gossip columns.
Venus, thinking he had made it up, turned all her famous fury on him. “Get out of this house, you stinking dog!” she cried. “I never want to see you or hear your filth again!”
“I’ll be over at Sam’s when you’re ready to call me,” Leo said, referring to the friend who took him in whenever Venus turned him out.
“I’ll never call you!” she screamed at his retreating back. It was always her parting shot. Later in the day she would pick up the phone and tell him that even though he was a sonofabitch, she guessed he’d better come home. Miss Pinch had just squeezed a batch of fresh orange juice.
At the door Leo picked up a stack of newspaper columns, torn from the morning papers, and held them out to Venus. “These will pass the time while Beebo is packing,” he said, but Venus refused to glance at them. Beebo, in the grip of a spiraling alarm, took them instead.
Leo looked at her. “I’m sorry I had to hurt you,” he said. “If you weren’t so young you might have handled things better. I got hurt too, Beebo. The most I can hope for now is to save Venus and Toby. It’ll take all my ingenuity—and maybe all my money. And I have to start at once. Just like you have to get gone.”
She didn’t answer him, but she felt moved, realizing slowly that he needed her pity as much as she needed his. She could never forgive him for calling her a freak, and yet it had been a valuable lesson in the prevailing attitude toward mannish women.
Jack had been sympathetic and patient with her. Pat, himself quite feminine, had responded to her much the way that the Lesbians who liked her did. Even the people back in Juniper Hill had been pretty used to her most of her life. They watched her grow up and while they laughed unkindly and sometimes lied about her, still they had never said to her face the things Leo Bogardus had said. Beebo damned well had to stand up and fight back, or lose her self-respect forever.
Her gaze fell on the pile of columns in her hand, as Leo left them alone. Venus tried to throw them all in the wastebasket, till she saw the spreading shock on Beebo’s face. She read over Beebo’s shoulder, holding her breath:
“Venus Bogardus, ruler of the heart of men the world over, is ruled herself, it seems: by a WOMAN! Is this true, or just vicious gossip? Readers of my column know I never use any but the most carefully validated tips from reliable sources. This one has been double-checked and we can say positively: the handsome youngster sharing the Bogardus manse as companion to Venus’s son is really the apple of the movie star’s eye. Is Venus Bogardus really one of those unfortunate misfits, a LESBIAN? Leo, do you know about this? Does your stepson know it? Our hearts are with you in this difficult situation.
“Readers who doubt me may ask themselves if I would dare to print such an accusation under the threat of legal action from Miss Bogardus, if it were false. No! I would never, etc., etc….”
Beebo shuffled through the others quickly. It was the top story in all the trades and made full columns in the big L.A. dailies. She looked at Venus and saw such a pallor on her face that she was afraid Venus would drop where she stood. Beebo helped her to her satin-draped bed, where Venus deflated in a heap.
Beebo stood beside her, her hands crammed into her pockets, afraid to touch her. At last she asked, “Does this mean I have to go right now? Alone?” She knew it did; she had known all along it was coming. Yet here they were, and the time was upon them, and it was abysmally hard to do. Strangely, she found herself picturing Paula again. It comforted her. Not that she had any illusions about a warm welcome from Paula. But even the thought
