be telling Pat about her sexual frustrations, also.
Pat went on looking at Karen with the same remote appraising eye until she appeared to have satisfied herself about the girl. When she spoke again it was with an abrupt change of mood. 'You know, Karen, sometimes I think I must become a hermit.'
'A hermit!' Karen couldn't repress a smile. Her thoughts of Al again dissolved in an instant. She tried instead to picture this lovely young girl munching unripe berries in a cave. 'Why?'
'Well,' Pat answered dreamily, 'it would be easier. Sometimes relating to people is an enormous task. How do we know if this affinity of ours will last or not?' Pat grinned. 'We start this business of becoming acquainted – starting up a personal relationship, right?'
Karen thought Pat looked amazingly like a beautiful boy when she grinned in that way. 'Right.' She grinned back.
'So-o-o, you begin by comparing likes and dislikes. Maybe you find you like the same kind of ice cream or have a mutual cousin or some such nonsense. Next you get into personal values and maybe religious and political affiliations.' Pat's grin broadened even more. 'Then, if you can still stand each other, you eventually become friends – until your kids beat hell out of each other one day and bust the whole damn carefully formulated relationship.'
Karen laughed. She was rapidly becoming charmed with this girl.
Then Pat stopped smiling. She leaned across the table until Karen thought crazily that Pat was going to swoop down on her like a graceful woodpecker. Her eyes were very soft. 'I feel know you so well. I've known you for a hundred years! Yet, I've got to tell you what I am, bit by ragged bit of me, until you know me, too. And then you'll probably decide that I'm not the sort of character you'd want to know. Outside of a far-out coffeehouse, that is. Until tonight rd just about given up believing in immediate communication between people.' Her smile, which reappeared in miniature in Karen's coffee cup, faded again.
'Why wouldn't I want to have anything to do with you, in or out of a coffeehouse?' Karen asked, honestly surprised.
'I see by your uniform…' Pat swept her eyes quickly over Karen's simple cotton shift. Its brown shades brought out her eyes, but Karen knew she looked almost hickish compared to the interesting and creative attire most of the girls present wore. Even Pat, in her battered black jeans and matching sweat shirt, looked more vibrant and sophisticated. 'You belong to a world I either left as a very young child, or one of which I never was a part.' Pat resumed her explanation after a second penetrating look at Karen. 'You're a product of a society in which someone like myself would be put way down. I live different, I look different, and I think different. Like I said, if I were to go that route to make us friends, tell you about myself honestly, you would run away and probably never look back!'
Karen felt rather hurt and insulted. She had been lumped into a category and judged, without a chance to defend herself. She felt like telling Pat that she would run and not look back anyway, without knowing these deep, dark secrets at which Pat hinted. But Karen knew it was just a pretense on her part. She didn't want to leave Pat. With this girl, Karen felt as if she had found a spark she had lost years before. Pat's erratic moods were a challenge. She found herself wishing that Al was less dull, could have just a drop of this girl's intensity. 'That isn't very fair, is it? You really have no idea what I think about anything,' Karen objected, trying to retain a trace of her former outrage.
Pat studied Karen's pretty face speculatively. When she spoke again her voice was bolder and more challenging. 'Baby, if I told you about my life you would be shocked out of your head.'
The girl made it sound like a dare! Karen began to feel breathlessly exhilarated. 'Try me,' she countered.
Pat grinned quickly, then composed her features so that they maintained a somber expression. 'You're not gay, are you, Karen?'
'Gay?' Karen wondered if Pat was about to switch over to still another subject.
'You don't even know what the word means, do you, baby? You are a sheltered lamb, aren't you, honey?' Pat laughed softly.
Karen didn't like being laughed at. She was about to reply when she remembered a novel she had once read. 'Homosexual?' she asked in surprise. 'Who, me?'
This time Pat's laugh was very loud. It pierced the boisterous noises, making Karen aware of the others in the room for the first time in many minutes. 'Yes, you!'
'Of course not!' Karen found her face coloring. She hoped Pat wouldn't notice.
'How do you know? Have you ever tried it?' Pat cut out the bantering tone she had been using. She watched Karen steadily.
'No! Naturally not.' Karen became aware of a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
Pat nodded her head slowly. She brought a finger to her mouth and chewed reflectively on the nail. 'Naturally…' she repeated finally. 'You used that word because you don't believe that love between two women could ever be natural, right?'
Karen frowned in confusion. 'I didn't say that, Pat.' She wished Pat would change the subject. She was beginning to get nervous. 'There's all kinds of love between women. Mother-daughter… Between close friends…'
Pat shook her head patiently. 'How about the physical, emotional, and intellectual love of two women for each other? The kind of love that women usually waste on men… Don't you believe such a feeling can exist?'
'Of course. I know about that. Only…' Karen thought of the rough-looking women she had seen in the beer- bars by the ocean. For the most part they appeared degenerate. The thought of a beautiful and meaningful love between them was remote to Karen. Then Karen thought of her own marriage. What had happened to the love between her and Al? It had been wonderful at one time – and now it was just as remote.
'Only you don't really believe it's possible,' Pat finished. She tapped a cigarette out of her pack. Instead of lighting it, Pat rolled the white cylinder between her fingers. She looked very lonely and vulnerable in this pose. She sighed deliberately, thinking without guilt that she would have made a great actress. 'That's what I mean. Didn't you ever have a crush on a girl when you were younger?'
'But that's not the same thing!'
Pat leaned back in her chair. She lit the mutilated cigarette before she spoke. 'Isn't it?' She released the smoke slowly, watching the gray swirl rise until it was swallowed up in the misty air. 'Love is love. Age is unimportant. Can you remember how you felt with this girl?'
Karen felt a tingling begin at the base of her spine. This girl made half-forgotten events float to the top of her mind. Karen found herself remembering the time during her early teens when she and Lennie had evolved a world of their own. She thought back to the moments of agony when an unkind word would cause a fight between them, and the longer periods of ecstasy when the two girls would be in perfect unison. 'Well, we were very close friends.' Karen bit her lip nervously. She suddenly remembered one warm spring night when she was fifteen. She was spending the night with Lennie… Their whispered chattering had centered on boys, their ominous strangeness. Karen couldn't recall which girl had turned the conversation to kissing.
'Was it so terrible?' Pat asked softly.
Karen pretended to study a large painting on the wall over Pat's head. She tried to trace this confusing conversation back to its beginning. Pat had a way of making her mind spin dizzily. There had been that crazy talk about not wanting to know Pat if… 'Are… are you…' Karen recalled the word, '… gay, Pat?' Karen kept her eyes on the painting. She felt her pale skin begin to burn. A furious pounding started up in her chest.
Pat watched the glowing tip of her shrinking cigarette die out in the ashtray. When she looked up her eyes were coated with a thin layer of tears. They caught and clung to Karen's. 'The only happiness I've ever know was in a woman's arms.'
Karen didn't know what to say. She felt embarrassed and uncomfortable. She thought again of the obviously homosexual women she had seen. Karen could not imagine Pat fitting into the unnatural world of effeminate men and crude-looking women any better than she.
A pretty girl with long black hair got up and walked to the small stage. She shuffled some papers in her hands and then waved to Pat. Pat waved back. 'That's Paula!' Pat leaned over the table. 'She's a poet. She's written some fabulous poetry! Listen to her!' Pat turned her chair slightly toward the stage, then twisted back to Karen for a second. 'She's gay, too.'
