by Joan Ellis
Eve lay across the bed for hours, knowing Phyl wouldn't be able to come back before evening— knowing Doug would never come back. With Doug she could have made it across the line again, she told herself over and over again—beating her fists in frustration. She wasn't a true Lesbian—Doug had taught her that. She could go out and live in that normal world. And she would have—if Phyl hadn't left that door carelessly ajar.
Like a marionette in the hands of a nervous operator, she navigated about the apartment. She'd take nothing with her. Everything here reminded her of the old life with Joe, or the new one with Phyl—but both were old now. She buttoned the front of her dress, adjusted the belt, slid into shoes, and reached for her purse. Without another look, she hurried from the apartment and locked the door. She bent toward the floor and slid the key beneath the door. She wouldn't be using it again.
Eve wandered through the streets about Washington Square, in and out of the same blocks, fighting to clear her head, to tell herself what to do. She realized suddenly that her legs ached with tiredness, her feet hurt. She headed for the Square, anticipating the relief of sitting down. She'd have to start thinking for herself now—Phyl wouldn't be around to do that for her.
Even in Washington Square a girl sitting alone for hours staring numbly into space becomes an object of curiosity, as Eve gradually realized. She hurried to another section of the park, another bench, until it was twilight already. She'd have to find herself a room, Eve reminded herself, and with the first sense of reality she opened her purse and looked into her wallet. Two dollars and change! Where would that take her, to a Bowery flophouse? Did they have flophouses for women?
With an odd feeling of retracing her steps, Eve moved, as though manipulated on strings, towards the old brownstone building that housed Ronaldo’s. She stood before the door for a moment, gripped by anguish. This was where it had all started between Phyl and herself. She reached for the door and determinedly pushed it open. She still had the price of a glass of wine.
Eve felt the weight of the woman's eyes on her, and she compelled herself to meet that gaze. Why not, she demanded of herself, this was a gay bar, wasn't it? Where else did she belong? What other talents did she have? There were girls who prostituted themselves for men—and girls who did it for women. Why not, she taunted herself bitterly. She'd finally made it, to the bottom of the gutter.
Eve's full, tremulous mouth moved into a fixed smile as she met the eyes of the graying, stoutish woman across the room. The woman was coming toward her now, and Eve noticed the expensive tailored suit she wore, and the large diamonds on one hand.
"I do know you, don't I, my dear?" The woman sat eagerly in the vacant seat opposite, and Eve could feel the rush of excitement behind that lined, carefully made-up face. A woman who had come from uptown somewhere to find herself a girl.
"For a moment I thought so, but—" Eve smiled in apology.
"I'm Dana Wood," the woman said, in a voice that was almost that of a man. "I don't get down here very often." She was inspecting Eve with the eye of a connoisseur.
"I don't come here often myself," Eve reassured her softly. "It's only the second time."
"You had a fight with your friend," Dana Wood said, almost smugly. "Probably serves her right, your coming here." The meaning behind her words was clear. "I'd never let something as sweet and charming as you become angry with me. I cherish my love." Under the table her knee brushed against Eve's, and Eve fought a rush of sickness.
"Could we go somewhere else?" Eve asked, suddenly nervous.
"A lovely idea," Dana purred, satisfaction oozing from her.
They took a cab to Dana's apartment on Riverside Drive. It was a fine old building, and the living room had a sweeping expanse that told Eve that Dana Wood—whoever she was—had a healthy bank account.
"Turn on the TV if you're in the mood for that, Evie," Dana murmured eagerly, prodding Eve onto the sofa. "I want to get out of this hot suit." She moved over to flick on the air-conditioner, though it was hardly warm enough, then pulled the draperies tightly together before disappearing into another room off the foyer.
Eve sat huddled on the sofa, all at once asking herself what she was doing here. But it was a place to sleep, she told herself harshly—better than whatever her two dollars might buy her tonight. And where would she go tomorrow night? From the look on Dana's face as she helped her into the cab, the heated touch of that fat thigh against hers, Eve guessed Dana would be interested in making this a prolonged stay.
"Do you like perfume?" Dana's voice called out with the huskiness of anticipation.
"I love it," Eve said, turning about to face her.
Dana posed in the doorway, like a caricature of sex. She was barefoot—her fat, uncorseted bulk faintly shadowed by a sheer white peignoir that reached almost to her heavy ankles. The ugly, middle-aged body panted with excitement as she moved toward Eve, a bottle of perfume held aloft in one pudgy hand.
"Let me anoint you. This is a wonderful perfume— I bought it when I was in Paris last summer." Dana was trying to impress her, Eve guessed.
"It must have been wonderful to visit Europe," Eve said with an assumed touch of awe.
"It was, my dear. Marvelous. Maybe some day I can take you there." Dana touched the back of Eve's ears with the perfume stopper, trailed it along her throat. "I can't do a very thorough job this way, can I?" She set the perfume down about the table, and her hands moved eagerly to remove everything that kept Eve from her.
Eve lay back, her eyes half-closed, steeling herself against those faintly perspiring hands, the exploring fingers, the damp excited mouth. This was like being a call girl, she told herself—it wasn't like being a Lesbian now. Dana was doing everything—she did nothing. It wasn't like being a Lesbian at all. She clenched her teeth as the heavy, flabby body came down to hers, remembering this might have been Doug with her now if fate hadn't played them a nasty turn. For Phyl, to be a Lesbian was the only way—but she was different, she knew that now. Only now was too late...
* * *
Phyl sat in the semi-darkened apartment, staring out across the roofs, her mind painfully accepting the fact that Eve was gone. Her clothes were here—they still hung in the closet and lay folded neatly in the chest of drawers. But it was two in the morning and Eve's light musical voice was absent. Where had she gone, without her clothes—undoubtedly with little cash? A dozen terrifying possibilities hurtled through Phyl's brain.
She paced the room, chain-smoking, trying to think logically. Where could Eve be? Without clothes or money, how far could she go? For a sickening moment she allowed herself to think morbidly of dark turgid water, of a slab in the morgue—but Eve wasn't the kind to commit suicide. It was not Eve's pattern. Could she have gone to Doug? Could she bring herself to face him again, after this morning?
It would be useless to consider trying to talk to Doug now, Phyl decided. If she dared to awaken him at this hour, he'd hardly be in a mood to talk to her. But tomorrow, she swore softly, she'd be at his doorstep by breakfast time. What more could he do to her than he'd already done?
She dropped herself onto the sofa and kicked off her shoes. She'd stay here tonight, in case Eve called—in case Eve decided to come back home...
* * *
Doug stood there in the door of his apartment, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, trying to clear his mind as he stared at Phyl.
"What do you want of me?" he asked with impassioned anger. "We've said enough already."
"I can't talk out here," Phyl reminded, her face coloring.
"Come in then," he said coldly, standing aside for her to enter. He didn't want an embarrassing scene in the doorway, she thought cynically.
"Is Eve here with you?"
Doug laughed harshly. "Are you kidding? What kind of a stunt are you two cooking up now?" He'd been terribly hurt, Phyl realized with a start—up to this point she hadn't once thought of what this might have meant to him. But his face was tired and his eyes told her it had been
an agonizing night of tossing and turning before he'd fallen into troubled slumber.
"She wasn't at the apartment last night," Phyl said quietly. "I couldn't keep from worrying—" her voice trailed off. What did Doug think—that she'd come here to drag Eve away bodily? She just had to know where Eve was, that she was all right.
"Would she have the nerve to come here?" Doug swung away, as though finding it distasteful to look at her face, Phyl thought sickly.
"I had to know," Phyl said with a humility that brought Doug back to her. "I know how you feel about us, Doug—but you can't know what it's like."
"I don't want to know," he interrupted brutally. "I don't want to hear about your sick minds and sick bodies!"
"You're a doctor, you're supposed to have compassion!" Anger suddenly rose up to suffocate her. "Do you think I like being what I am?" Her eyes demanded that his stay with her. "Do you think I like being here, cringing before you this way?"
"You've found out what you were after," he said with an air of weariness. "Will you please go?"
"Doug," she forced herself to go on. "If you talk about—about what you know, you'll kill me professionally. I'm a competent doctor, Doug—I can be useful. Don't take that away from me."
"So there can be more stories circulating around the hospital about the fine upstanding Dr. Talbert and her patients?" he retaliated.
"That wasn't of my making," Phyl said with rising desperation. "You told me once what a back-breaking deal it was for you to get through medical school. What do you think it was for a woman? Doug, my whole future lies in your hands!"
His face was white with anger as he reached for the door and swung it open.
"Who are you concerned about? Eve—or your precious career? That's why you really came here, Dr. Talbert! To protect your own rotten hide!"
Phyl walked slowly through the door, hating herself and hating the world. Eve was gone—and at any moment her career might be gone. She would be alone in a cold, condemning world that never learned compassion—except in the polite accepted molds. She'd go on about her job now, waiting for the sky to fall upon her head.
CHAPTER 18
Phyl dragged herself through the day, her mind returning obsessively to Eve. Where had Eve slept last night? Did she have money enough for a room? Did she have money for food? She'd checked with studied carefulness to see if Eve had come to work. When the office said they'd heard nothing from her, she'd manufactured some excuse about illness back home—probably Eve had dashed off without a thought for anything else. But then she hadn't honestly expected Eve to come in to the hospital—it had been a weak, despairing hope.
Phyl left the office and drove downtown. She would wait at the apartment, on the rare chance that Eve might show up. She walked up that long trek to the top floor, as though it were up the steps to the guillotine. Her breath coming in painful gasps, she unlocked the door and walked inside. Her foot kicked something on the floor, and she bent to retrieve it. Eve's key, she recognized with a stab of anguish. She hadn't noticed it when she'd come in last night. She moved slowly to the bed and sat down, her mind in turmoil. She'd close up this place—no need to keep this dark reminder of a lost dream. She'd call up the man who'd sublet and tell him he could move in tomorrow. She'd leave the furniture, everything.
With a compulsive need to be active, she moved about the apartment, packing Eve's things into the large, awkward valise she'd dragged up those stairs with such hopes. An open envelope fell to the floor, spilling out a batch of snapshots. With a sense of looking at someone who has died, Phyl inspected the sweet, wide-eyed face that stared back at her from the snapshots. Eve as a child, Eve in high school, Eve as she was now in a snapshot cut in half, leaving only a feminine arm that probably belonged to Marian, Phyl guessed.
She continued to gaze at the last photograph, an idea slowly coming into focus. She hurried into the bathroom, to throw on the disguise of lipstick, eyebrow pencil, a brush of powder. Her office suit with the pearls looked right, she decided, her pulse pounding with excitement. She stuffed the snapshot into her purse and hurried out of the apartment.
She tried the door to Ronaldo’s, hoping they were open. The door gave to her touch, and Phyl noticed stray customers about the tables. Her face tightened with her efforts not to remember the last time she had been here. She walked resolutely over to the bar and ordered a drink. The bartender eyed her curiously. He wasn't the regular one, she thought with satisfaction, not that the other would be likely to recognize her this way.
"My name is Dr. Talbert," she began briskly. “I’m a psychiatrist. A young patient of mine has slipped away from her family—they have reason to believe she's living down here in the Village." She reached into her purse to produce the snapshot. "If she comes in here, I'd be most grateful for a call." Phyl handed over the photograph and her card. "Twenty dollars grateful," she added. "There's an answering service picking up calls twenty-four hours a day—they always know where to reach me."
"Is she dangerous?" the bartender asked nervously.
"No, nothing like that," Phyl hurried to relieve his mind. "But she has off-beat ideas. You understand." Phyl smiled confidentially. "And she's only eighteen—she could cause you trouble here." Her eyes met his frankly.
"I'll keep a sharp eye out," he agreed, and grinned. "Twenty bucks' worth."
That was done, Phyl sighed. What other avenue was there for her? It would be useless to hire a private detective; she had no leads. She'd have to sit this out—if it took days or weeks or years. She'd never have a night's rest until she knew Eve was all right
The days piled up into weeks and Phyl moved into the new apartment, with its empty bedroom haunting her at every turn. Once again she found herself walking in and out of the Village streets, sitting in coffee shops and cars and restaurants. Nowhere was there any sign of Eve—no one to ask about Eve. They'd lived such tight narrow lives in their short time together.
Occasionally she came face to face with Doug, though both made a point of dodging it whenever possible. They exchanged curt, self-conscious greetings before other hospital personnel—and each time Phyl died a little more, wondering when he'd be filled up to his teeth and talk his head off about Dr. Phyl Talbert and her ugly secret life. There was a drawn tightness about him that told Phyl he hadn't forgotten. She had abandoned the idea of an early vacation—she had come up with some weak excuse when Bill brought the subject up again. She moved about in a vacuum, fearful of each newly approaching day.
* * *
Eve lay across the bed, still in her night clothes though it was five in the afternoon. Dana had filled the closet with these stupid sheer black nighties and negligees. Like something out of a Grade D movie, she thought—with the dullness that was part of being awake these days. Dana was good to her, Eve told herself—she took her to restaurants and to the theater and to movie premieres. Dana introduced her as her "little protégée”—although they never discussed what it was Eve was supposed to do. Dana was a talent agent. Which covered a wide area, Eve thought mirthlessly.
The phone rang and Eve reached for it.
"Baby, I'll be very late tonight," Dana crooned. "Take yourself to a movie, and we'll make up for it later." Her voice was heavy with promise.
"All right, Dana," Eve said softly, and listened to a brief recital of the woman's day at the office.
Eve put the phone down and walked out of the bedroom into the living room. How much more of this could she take? It made her physically sick, each time Dana made love to her. She shut her eyes now, trying to blot out the vision of that sagging, unsightly body panting amorously for hers. And Dana was never satisfied. Night after night, Eve thought with loathing.
She would get out of there now, at least for a while, Eve thought. In the weeks she'd been with Dana she had not once stirred from the house alone. She would go downtown, she decided with a breath of bitter relief. She'd go to Ronaldo’s again, like a homing pigeon. She refused to allow herself to think about coming back her
e later.
Eve walked into Ronaldo’s in the one dress she owned that Dana Wood hadn't bought for her. Phyl had bought it, she thought with a twinge of reminiscence. If only Doug had never come along, she might have been able to build a life with Phyl. Before that, everything had seemed right. She'd had Phyl, and that had been enough—but now it wasn't enough, so she'd prostituted herself—and that wasn't enough.
The bartender stared sharply, to make sure he wasn't making a mistake, and then he trundled off to a pay phone.
* * *
Phyl parked the red Triumph dangerously close to a fire hydrant, but she wouldn't care about a parking ticket tonight. The bartender had no way of holding Eve—would she still be there? The question ran perilously through Phyl's mind, over and over again as she hurried the few yards from the car to Ronaldo’s. She opened the door, walked inside, and suddenly the room was overpoweringly warm. Eve sat at a table, alone, her eyes fastened on a glass of wine.
Phyl walked swiftly to the table, sat down. "I've come to take you home, darling."
Eve started violently. "No!" Phyl sat opposite, but Eve's vision was of that morning, with Phyl and herself on the bed and Doug standing above them.
"Darling, this is absurd," Phyl said gently. She refused to let herself believe what Eve's presence here told her. "Let's go home together—uptown."
"Phyl, I can't." She stared at her drink, her cheeks two spots of flame.
"Eve, come with me," Phyl ordered quietly, "because if you don't I won't hesitate to make a scene." Eve would hate that, she knew.
"It won't make any difference," Eve whispered. "I won't stay there, Phyl."
"Come along," Phyl said briskly, her hand at Eve's elbow. Eve was here in a gay bar—why would she seek somebody else in preference to herself, Phyl asked silently. And at the same time she conned herself into believing that the girl had been too proud to call. But that would all be over now—it would be Eve and Phyl, the way it had been before.
Eve sat off on the far side of the front seat as they drove uptown. Phyl spoke softly about casual incidents, at intervals. Her body ached to hold Eve, to love away the painful memories. She didn't want to know about these intervening weeks—not yet, anyway.