Beebo touched Venus’s long hair gently. “A few minutes ago you were telling Leo he’d have to kick you out, too, if he wanted me to go.” It wasn’t kind to remind Venus, and yet it was a relief in a way.
“Oh, darling, I’m such a coward,” Venus said brokenly. “I can’t bear it. Where in hell did they find out? Miss Pinch would never tell. The others don’t like me, but they wouldn’t do anything to ruin Leo. Besides, I was never around during the day and at night we were so careful. How in hell—?”
Beebo knew perfectly well how it got out. She touched the telegram in her pocket fearfully, and Venus saw her face change and guessed. “Your friends in New York?” she asked.
Beebo pulled out the wire. Jack had written: “Hope this catches you before the sky falls, pal. If not, chin up. We love you. I found out too late from Pat that Mona wired the Hollywood press. Come home and ride out the storm. This is a time for friends to help you, not lovers. Jack.”
Beebo folded it with the meticulous care you give to the oddments of life that happen to be in your hands when pain strikes; each fold careful, straight, and neat—as tidy as her life was not. There is an obscure comfort in smoothing a small piece of paper to its ultimate neatness. It seems a symbol of order and reason that must somehow rescue you from the chaos of suffering. It eases the misery that wants to pour out of your eyes and wail from your throat.
“My friends in New York,” Beebo said huskily, “are still my friends. My enemies in New York did this to me. Venus, Venus…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve been trying to tell you, but I didn’t know how. I thought we could part lovers and come together again, still lovers, some day.”
Venus reached up for her, both of them admitting tacitly that it could never have lasted; neither willing to say the words outright.
But Beebo rejected her arms. “I have to confess something terrible to you,” she said. “I—I brought on Toby’s attack. I was telling him I thought I would have to leave here, so you wouldn’t be hurt by the papers. He got more and more upset and strange…he tried to answer me…and then suddenly he shot up and fell over.”
Venus looked away. “It might have happened anyway,” she said. “We know so little…. I’m going to lose him, Beebo. He’ll never get over this.”
“You’re wrong. You’ve got to be! You can’t lose all you worked for with him in one stroke like that,” Beebo said.
“Maybe Leo can help me,” Venus said, the dimmest spark of hope in her eye. “He always seems to put me back together. Maybe he can do it for Toby.”
Beebo could see that she was floundering at the prospect of losing the props that had supported her for so long: Leo, Toby, her money, mass love.
“One thing you have I’ll never have, darling,” Venus told her quietly. “Courage. I’ll bet you didn’t know how much till now. Maybe you’ve got it because without it you’d have been destroyed long ago. Well…I hate to admit it, but Leo is my courage. I can’t run away with you, even though my heart breaks to let you go.” She stopped talking for a minute till her voice steadied a little. “I thought you’d given Toby to me at last, but I’m afraid you’ve lost him for me forever.”
“I hope to God he has better sense than that,” Beebo said, kneeling by the bed with her face near Venus’s. “I hope he loves both of us more than that, and I think he does. He’s brighter and steadier than you are, Venus. Besides, he’s lived all his life with a condition that makes him different from ordinary people. Maybe that will help him understand me a little now.”
Venus stopped crying and embraced Beebo. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “All I want to say to you is, thank you. For the time I had with Toby, for the love you gave me.”
For a moment Beebo wanted to stay so badly she was ready to sacrifice her life again—but only for a moment. It was easy to get carried away when you had your arms full of Venus.
“I love you, Beebo,” Venus said seriously. “Some day you’ll know how it feels when you’re my age, and the girl you’ll adore forever is yours. And you know it’s going to end before long and you’ll have to go on living somehow.”
Beebo caressed her shoulders without looking at her face. “You’ll never say you love me again, will you?” she murmured. “Will you say it to another girl?”
Venus’s arms tightened around her. “Will you?” she countered.
“You’ll say it to men as long as you live, won’t you?” Suddenly it seemed unbearable to Beebo; bad enough to know that other girls would follow her, even if Venus never loved any of them. But intolerable that she would keep on climbing into bed with men, too. Her hands hardened on Venus’s shoulders. “God, how I wish I could make you choose!” she said. “Be gay or be straight. Don’t be both. The only other girl I know who’s both is contemptible.”
Venus answered quietly. “Beebo, you knew what you were early in life. Some of us don’t find out till after we’ve committed ourselves to a man and children. You’re one hundred percent gay. You never doubt it. You breathe such easy contempt for me. But darling, believe me, you’re the lucky one. You knew yourself in time to save yourself from housewifery and husbands—things the rest of us have to live with.
“But I didn’t know till it was too late. It wasn’t just all the men I’ve known that confused me. It was the
