Whisper Their Love

by Valerie Taylor

  Somebody handed her another drink. Her throat was still hot from the first one, but it looked too silly to walk around with a full glass in her hand so she sipped at it as she went from spot to spot, finding that the burn was less if she took it slowly. After a little while she thought about setting the tumblers behind one of the long hand-blocked curtains, on a sill. There was a wad of chewed gum on the one she chose; she put a glass on each side of it, like a composition in balance.

  The lights looked brighter and clearer than they had at first. A fat man rolled up with a platter of Technicolor appetizers, beaming at her. First thing she knew she was sitting on the floor like half a dozen of the others, legs doubled under her, wondering if she'd be too stiff to get up again when the time came. She smiled up at Tarzan, who came over to sit beside her. Nature Boy.

  One thing about these people, whether they shared Edith's ideas about the way they were persecuted or not, it didn't show. They didn't seem to have any reticences among themselves. She had thought some of the girls at school were blabbermouths, but they were strong silent types compared with this roomful of party-goers. She looked around for Edith but she and Anitra were both out of sight. A month or so ago that would have been anguish. Now there were a lot of other people around, all talking, and tantalizing scraps floated her way; then Tarzan started telling her about himself and she forgot Edith altogether.

  He was a psychologist, he said; a practicing psychologist, which wasn't as good as an analyst so he had an inferiority complex about it. She wondered why, if he admired analysts so much, he didn't have one go to work on him and find out why he was a homosexual. Maybe he knew too much about it or maybe he liked being the way he was. His name was Kenneth Tregillus—call him Kenny—but she went on thinking of him as Tarzan.

  "You look like Tarzan," she told him, and he nodded and said, "Thanks. Any other time that would brighten up my whole day, but I'm low right now."

  She asked why, trying to sound like a Dale Carnegie friend. The boy he'd been sharing an apartment with had gone off and got married, he said, he was really ambisexual, and a debutante type with a Vassar accent had hooked him. "Trouble is, I don't like fairy types. I don't mean you, old man," he apologized to the tall balding man with a touch of rouge on his cheekbones, who sat on his other side eating canapés and listening.

  The rouged man smiled uneasily. "That's okay, Ken. You're a little too rugged anyhow."

  "But why talk about him," Tarzan went on gloomily? "There are more interesting people around. Take Arline and Linda."

  He indicated two thin girls who sat with their arms around each other drinking something lurid-red out of the same glass.

  Joyce was more interested in the drink. "A Bloody Mary, tomato juice and vodka. Sickening, isn't it?" He explained that Linda had been married to Arline's brother for a couple of years and had a baby by him before she realized it was Arline she'd been attracted to all the time. Now the two girls lived together on Linda's alimony, which the baby's father paid to keep them from talking. He had married again, a nice little woman who took care of the child and never had a thought in her head. "Those two gals are nuts about each other," Tarzan said. "Either of them would break your neck if you looked at the other one. They're always fighting because somebody's made a pass, or they think somebody has. It's dangerous to say hello to them.”

  Joyce didn't see herself being tempted. The two looked like sisters, bony and tired, with blonde-brown cheaply curled hair and long noses. Distaste stirred in her.

  A group of three came in, two women almost middle-aged and a plump pink man who took their coats and handbags and stood in the middle of the floor smiling viciously while they rushed around greeting friends. They all lived together, Tarzan said. "He's more or less married to the short one. The girls share a bedroom and old Donno flops on the davenport." He sighed. "I don't know what he gets out of it; they won't even cook his meals. He's a nice fella too, I could go for him. I don't think he has any. love life at all, though. Either his glands are inactive or he's been repressed—mother fixation, maybe."

  Talk eddied around them, almost as visible as the smoke that hung in clouds and swirls on the air. Styles and decorating—Ted Somebody did the display windows for the city's most exclusive store, the one whose ads Joyce often read in the newspapers. Who went to the symphony last night? "I did," the fat Don said, "and I'm telling you the soprano sounded like a bitch in heat. Yowling to be let out of the cellar," he added, offering Joyce the sandwich he had just taken. He'd already had a bite out of it so she laid it gently on the nearest table. Fritzi came around, offering more drinks, and Joyce took one. This one made her feel a little funny and she told Tarzan so.

  "Sick?"

  "No, only the floor sort of goes up and down."

  He said, "You've had enough." He took the glass out of her hand and drank the rest of it.

  Arline took her face out of Linda's shoulder and wavered over to sit down beside Joyce. "You're cute," she said owlishly, "who do you belong to?" Tarzan gave Joyce a reminding poke in the ribs. "Cause look," Arline said, "you could come home with us and stay all night. We'd love to have you."

  "Oh, I couldn't," Joyce said quickly.

  Linda trailed over, smiling coldly. "You're making a fool of yourself as usual," she said to Arline. "I will not have it. I'll go home."

  Tarzan patted her thin behind. "Sit down," he said hospitably. She sat cross-legged beside him, put her head on his bare shoulder and went to sleep.

  Somebody had brought a violin, somebody a cello. A little night music, Joyce thought drowsily. There were small scraping and tuning noises. Joyce leaned against Tarzan's unoccupied side. He didn't seem to mind being a prop for two women, and it was rather like leaning against a tree, only with hair and skin instead of bark. All that liquor was beginning to do something funny to her sight and hearing. Everything looked a little fuzzy and sounds were intermittent, with gaps in between that she couldn't account for. The room and people were unreal, like those dream sequences in the movies where they dance among the drifting clouds and broken pillars. Don't think I would like this bunch much even if they were real people, she thought, shutting her eyes to rest them. Pretty soon she would wake up back in the dorm—ought to be studying for a Spanish test or something.

  Somebody was breathing on her. She took her face away from Tarzan's fuzzy neck, where it seemed to have landed, and looked into Anitra's Egyptian eyes. She had forgotten all about Anitra. "Having fun?"

  "I'm drinking too much," Joyce said. "Where's Edith?"

  "Around." Anitra lowered herself to the floor with one fluid motion, like a dancer. That made four of them sitting in a row, like birds on a fence. "You look like a bal—ballet dancer," Joyce said with some difficulty.

  Anitra smiled. "I've done that too." She leaned against Joyce's back. Her breasts were soft and firm at the same time—no bra, and she must be forty, Joyce marveled, aware of the warmth under the silk blouse. "You're a cunning little thing," Anitra said in a low voice. "How did Edith ever find you? She's always kept her work and her social life apart before. A model of discretion, Edith is."

  "You know how those things happen." It didn't seem to mean anything but it sounded like an answer.

  "She's a wonderful person. A little cold though, don't you think?"

  "She hasn't been cold to me," Joyce said truthfully. The excitement, the husky whispers, the seeking and knowing hand. Maybe it was the drowsiness brought on by alcohol that made all those things seem so far away, like something read about but never experienced. The pressure of Anitra's body made her restless. She remembered for no special reason the cold night air and John Carstairs Jones's sober face. The room felt stuffy. "I ought to get up," she said.

  "Look, the party's getting dull. Some of us are going to sneak out for a little while and go pub-crawling." But she's not English, Joyce thought, that's fake. "Like to come along?"

  "Well, I don't know."

  Edith materialized beside them. Through Joyce's
alcoholic haze she looked quite a lot like Arline, the same tiny lines at the corners of the eyes and the same strained look around the mouth, but her pupils glittered instead of blurring.

  "Oh, there you are, darling," Anitra said. "I was looking for you. Look, darling, do you want to go downtown for a while? Slumming, some of the gay places?"

  Edith took both of Joyce's hands in hers, stooping to pull her upright. "How about it, Joy?"

  "Of course she wants to come along," Anitra coaxed. "Don't you, doll?"

  "Me too," Tarzan said. "Remember I'm an orphan."" He dislodged the sleeping Arline, who wobbled a little and then sat up, blinking. He scrambled to his feet like a good-natured bear.

  "I'll go if you go," Joyce said to him. She felt fond of him, as if he were an old family friend.

  Groggy as she was, two things were becoming clearer to her by the minute. One was that Edith had been drinking, which seemed out of character. The other was that Edith was jealous. She had brought Joyce here to be awed and impressed by Fritzi and Anitra, these free, charming people, and to admire Edith more because she knew them. Anitra wasn't supposed to be patting her and looking deep into her eyes. To complicate things further, Edith liked Anitra and probably wasn't getting anywhere with her. It was a touchy spot to be in.

  She wanted to go home. She thought with deep alcoholic sadness that she had no home. No place on earth. She was sober enough to know that if she asked to leave, Edith would be coldly displeased. She blinked, seeing the two women still waiting for an answer. "If you want to."

  "Wait right here. I'll get your coat."

  There was no doubt about it, Edith wobbled a little when she walked.

  The fat man came by with his tray and thrust it at her. "Caviar," he said, pointing. "Lines your stomach." She took one and bit into it. It tasted like BB shot in cold salty glue. Another illusion shot all to hell, she mused sadly. She laid what was left on top of the piano and turned an ashtray over it, mixing ashes with the caviar.

  Now she was wedged into a car between Edith and Anitra, one pressed against her on each side. The white line down the middle of the road zigged and zagged. "Whoever's drinking driving," she said. "No, not what I mean." She giggled. She dropped her head on Edith's shoulder and shut her eyes because the wavery line made her feel giddy. Anitra's thin fingers closed around her knee, then pushed her skirt back a little. She smiled anxiously from one to the other. "Like you both," she mumbled, and went to sleep again.

  Chapter 17

  The place, Club Marie, was a letdown. It looked like a dozen cheap joints she'd walked past, quickening her step and turning her face away from the smell of stale beer, the bursts of laughter, the seamy-faced little old man who always seemed to be sitting on the doorstep. Only this one was brightly lighted. There were thin fluorescent tubes in the ceiling, parallel rows of them picking out glitters on the bottles and showing up the spills and dirt on the bartender's apron and the gummy places on the tables. There were bars of colored light across the top and bottom of the juke box, too, and little red bulbs in the wall beside each table.

  Not the kind of place for a respectable girl at one in the morning. Likely she wasn't a respectable girl any more.

  This place worked a change in Anitra's guests, somehow. In her house they had looked arty and exotic, if a little strained and tense. Here they looked wilted and second-hand, maybe because of the lighting. Only Tarzan was improved. He was still clothed only in skin and fuzz from the waist up, in spite of the chill night, and he looked unreasonably wholesome. She herself, reflected in the mirror that ran along two walls, was a nice little schoolgirl whose hair needed combing. There was Anitra, who had walked out on her own party and certainly had too much make-up on; Edith, refined but a little unsteady; Arline, and two young men she hadn't noticed at the house. She never did find out whether they too had deserted the party or been picked up. They were both a little hollow-chested and pasty, and they sat together and held hands. Still, they didn't have any of the obvious marks of a queer, no hip-wiggle or visible make-up.

  Besides Anitra's group, there were three young sailors at the bar, snickering and making audible comments about the newcomers. Out killing time, probably. But the others—Everyone needed a bath, or maybe it was the lavender-tinted lighting that turned all skins to dull clay and set shadows under the eyes and around the nostrils. At the next table sat a meager little man who might have been a bookkeeper or a bookie, the kind of man—except for some look of decay in his face—who takes his paycheck home unopened. He sat with his arm loosely around the shoulder of a young woman who, from her angular shape, was almost surely a man. High heels and pleated ruffles. Joyce poked Edith and made the least possible gesture, raising her eyebrows. Edith frowned. "Transvestite." It didn't mean anything, she had never heard the word before. "Man in a woman's clothes, or otherwise."

  "Oh," Joyce said. She wondered if Anitra was, too, in a more expensive way. Probably not, though. Lots of women wore pants, which made it confusing.

  At the table next to this scrambled couple sat two girls about whom there was no doubt. One was thin and flat, with a jutting jaw. The other had heavy hips and a sagging bust. Both had ducktail haircuts like some of the girls at school, but with no softening front waves or little tendril curls. Both wore regular men's overall jeans with fly fronts, heavy pullover sweaters, and one gold ring in the right ear. The heavy one winked at Joyce, who felt embarrassed but smiled back politely. The other followed her friend's look, and shrugged.

  The waitress arrived, in flannel slacks. "Honey, what'll you have?"

  "Beer, I guess." She hated beer but she was afraid to drink anything stronger after those highballs at The Bluff. The salty taste of the caviar was still in her mouth. The others were looking at her, waiting. "Beer," she said more loudly.

  Arline patted her head. "You're smart, honey. I wish to God I could drink beer; these mixed drinks give me the awfullest headache."

  "Where's Linda?"

  "Sleepin' on Fritzi's bed, I reckon. She passed right out." Arline looked dejected. "Oh, well, more'n likely she needs the sleep. We never did get to bed at all last night. We were havin' a real good fight and I was scared she'd poke me in the ribs with a knife if I shut my little ol' eyes."

  "Drunk and disorderly again?" Tarzan rumbled.

  "Oh, she thought I was two-timin' her with some ol' married girl lives down the hall a ways. Silly baby, she knows I wouldn't look at nobody but her." She patted Joyce's knee. "Honey, anybody ever tell you you're right cute?"

  A haggard, pretty girl in a cheap fur stole stood in the doorway, swaying a little on high, turned-over heels. The thin customer in jeans let out a yell of welcome and rushed over to hug her. "Honey baby! C'mon, let's go home!"

  "I want a drink first," the fur-stole girl said. She sat down at the bar and crossed her thin legs, wrapping the fur around her throat with an elegant gesture. She leaned on one elbow and took a compact out of her imitation alligator bag. "Same as always, Herbie. I'm pooped."

  "Big night?"

  "So-so. You know how it is."

  The heavy-set girl wandered around and stood by Anitra, who had gathered all her party's checks into a pile with a fine hospitable gesture. "You mind if I sit down with you folks for a while? My friend's late tonight."

  "Not at all. What'll you have?"

  "Just a beer, thanks."

  Tarzan took his sandaled foot off the rounds of the empty chair and shoved it at her. "Your friend work nights too? Like that one?"

  "Not that way. I'm cracked about germs." She scowled. She had a heavy face which, without make-up or curls, looked sullen but wholesome. "She's a waitress in an all-night cafe," she said defensively. "It may not pay much, but what she makes is her own and there's no pimp hangin' around the kitchen door when she gets done."

  "True," Tarzan said politely.

  "I forgot to tell you, my name's Bobbie."

  "Do you work nights too?"

  Bobbie looked up from her stein. A wisp
of foam clung to her nose; she wiped it away with the back of her hand. "Not if I can help it, days or nights neither. Sometimes I clerk in a bookstore when they need somebody extra, like say Christmas. The boss knows me and he's a good guy. It ain't that I'm afraid of work, I was raised on a farm, only it's hard to find a job where they let you dress like you want to."

  "Don't you ever wear regular clothes?" Edith asked. She smoothed her skirt with a slender hand. Joyce could imagine her thinking: After all, I'm not masculine. I'm different.

  "Hell, no. What would I do that for?"

  She was willing to talk about herself, as if they had all known each other a long time. Joyce forgot her giddy headache and listened with interest. She was nineteen, Bobbie said, and had lived on a farm in southeastern Missouri until her folks died, a couple of years ago. "I always liked to work in the fields, and fool around with animals and stuff. Pa always said I was the best hired man he had." She had never had a date when she was in school, never thought about boys much—she could pitch a ball farther than any boy she ever knew and lift a bale of hay as easy. "Boys never asked me to date, anyhow; guess they wanted somebody who could act cute and flirty."

  An aunt here had got her a job as checker in a grocery store, and that was where she met Karla. Pretty soon they were sharing a room, and Bobbie found out about this other kind of love. It made more sense than smirking at fellows. "She meant an awful lot to me. More than a fellow ever could, I'll tell you that. She liked me the way I was, too." But Karla developed a cold that hung on, and when the store nurse sent her to get her chest X-rayed they found an advanced case of TB. She was in a sanitarium now, and Bobbie took a long bus ride to go and see her every once in a while. Francie didn't like it so much, she said, but she figured it was the least she could do. The poor kid had to lay there all day long and worry about herself, and if Francie was jealous, okay. She could get out any time she felt like.