Pulp

by Robin Talley

  “Not to mention that plain old immorality is enough to get you fired from a government job,” Carol added. “Always has been.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Janet felt ready to explode.

  “Welcome to Washington, honey.” Mitch tilted her head in sympathy.

  “As soon as they think they’ve got you, they bring you in.” Carol turned back to Marie as she spoke. “They ask their questions, they humiliate you and then they fire you. A black mark goes on your file so no one will ever hire you again—in the government or out of it. They’ve mostly gone after men so far, but they’ve gotten plenty of girls, too. No one is safe. Your pretty dresses won’t be enough to protect you then, honey.”

  Marie let go of her hand. Janet turned to her, trembling, trying to understand, but Marie’s watery eyes were fixed on Carol’s.

  “How do you know all this?” Marie asked her.

  “Everyone knows.” Carol didn’t break her gaze. “It happened to the man who used to work next to me on the line. Gerald. One day we were making jokes while we slung the hash browns, and the next he was gone. As though he’d disappeared into nothing. Everybody knew what happened, though. Word always gets around.”

  Marie turned to face the window. Janet wondered if she was thinking of climbing out of it.

  “The only reason you haven’t heard about this yet, Marie, is because you’re brand-new.” Carol’s words were clipped. “That’s why we invited you here—so we could come to an agreement. My pay isn’t much, and I imagine yours isn’t, either, but Mitch and I need my salary to pay our mortgage. I suppose you’ll be wanting to put yours toward an apartment one day.” She glanced over at Janet. “We both need to keep our jobs. So if they call me in, I promise I won’t say one word to them about you and your friend here, not even if they ask me directly. I’ll tell them whatever you’d like me to tell them. And I want you to promise the same about me.”

  “Of course.” Marie swallowed.

  “Good. If they ask, you say you’ve heard I’ve got a fellow named Tom who’s away with the Navy. That’s what I’ve told the girls who work the line with me. Now, what do you want me to say if they ask about you?”

  “Tell them I have a boyfriend named Harold Smith. He goes to Dartmouth, in Hanover. New Hampshire.”

  Janet turned to Marie, surprised at how quickly she’d produced this story. Across from them, Carol nodded. “All right. Harold in New Hampshire. Make sure you tell the girls you sit with at lunch about old Harold, too, because you’d better believe they’ll compare our stories.”

  “I don’t understand...” Marie hadn’t taken her eyes off Carol once. “Would they really call me in? Or you? Why would they ever think I had anything to do with—with—”

  Carol and Mitch both fell quiet. But Janet couldn’t stop thinking about the other day.

  They’d fought in the middle of the sidewalk, in front of the whole world. While Janet held that incriminating novel right in her hands.

  Surely there hadn’t been anyone watching them, but—what if there had? What if someone had gone in to question the cashier who’d sold Janet that book?

  And—and that night, outside Meaker’s. They’d kissed. Right there on the street.

  Janet hadn’t thought anyone was close enough to see them, but how could she be sure?

  She’d acted without considering the consequences. She’d been a fool, and she’d put Marie in grave danger.

  “The good news is, you’ve probably already passed your clearance.” Carol’s tone had grown smooth, as though she was trying to be comforting. “That means they haven’t found anything on you yet, but you’ve got to be careful. No more going out and about acting precisely as you please. It only takes one witness to start the process.”

  “I didn’t—I don’t have my security clearance yet.” Marie stumbled over the words. “I still can’t handle the classified documents. They said it might still be another week or two.”

  “Oh.” Carol’s lips pursed.

  After another long, quiet moment, Mitch leaned forward again. “We aren’t telling you any of this to scare you girls.”

  “Yes, we are.” Carol’s voice was still smooth and even. “They should be scared.”

  A tear rolled down Marie’s cheek.

  Janet put her arm around her shoulders. Marie began to sob, quietly, demurely, against Janet’s white dress.

  After a long, quiet moment, Janet felt a hand on her arm. When she looked up, Mitch was standing over them.

  “This is still a harsh world we live in, but you’re lucky you’ve already found each other.” Mitch’s smile was small, but it was genuine. “This isn’t the end of your lives, girls. It’s only the beginning. I hope you’ll be very happy, as we’ve been.”

  It was strange, after hearing so much about everything Carol and Mitch had endured, to think about them being happy. Yet it seemed that was exactly what they were.

  “Thank you so much, ma’am.” Janet stood, letting Marie lean on her as she climbed to her feet. Her sobs had slackened. Janet tried to think of what polite words her mother might say in such a moment. “We ought to leave you to your evening.”

  Carol’s calm, perfect manners reappeared instantly. Her etiquette was much more polished than Janet’s. “It was lovely to meet you, Miss Jones. I’m so glad the two of you were able to come by.”

  Mitch ordered them a taxi, and as she and Marie said goodbye and went outside to wait, Janet knew something between them had changed that evening. Something that would never change back again.

  The two of them stood on the porch, staring silently into the sunset. Janet ached to hold Marie’s hand again, but she dismissed the thought before it had time to take root.

  She’d made so many mistakes already. She had to do whatever she could to set things right. She could never again touch Marie where others might see.

  The taxi pulled to the curb. Janet opened the door, then stepped back so Marie could slide across the seat.

  Wait. Could the driver tell what they were to each other by the fact that Janet had opened the door? Was that the sort of thing men did for their girls? Janet couldn’t remember. Did taxi drivers make reports to the government in any case? She supposed anyone might if the price was right.

  Janet understood perfectly why Carol and Mitch had hesitated to welcome her. Her father never worked for Senator McCarthy, not directly, but they’d been friendly enough. They’d met at cocktail parties, and Dad had praised the senator around the dinner table many a night.

  Was Janet’s father aware the government was keeping lists of people like Carol and Marie? Did he approve of it?

  He must. Everyone approved of rooting out potential threats to the country, Republicans and Democrats alike. That was why he was working so hard on the In God We Trust bill—to stop subversive elements from gaining power.

  Now Janet was one of those subversive elements.

  Her parents—if they knew...

  What would they do? That Senator Hunt, the one whose son was caught with a man—surely nothing like that could ever happen in her family...

  Janet couldn’t bear to think about it.

  Marie gave her address to the driver, her even tone concealing any nerves she may have felt. Janet was astonished at Marie’s gift for pretending.

  She looked beautiful, even with unshed tears lingering in her eyes. The color in her cheeks made her look young and fresh, and her dark brown hair framed her glasses in perfect loose curls. Her lipstick was uneven, with bare patches that had rubbed off when she’d bitten her lower lip, but somehow it only enhanced her loveliness.

  Janet was still studying her when the taxi turned, far too quickly, onto Marie’s street.

  “Thank you, sir.” Marie pulled a crisp dollar bill from her handbag and passed it across the seat without waiting for her change. She barely looked at Janet when
she said, “Come in for a moment, please.”

  “Sorry?” Janet had thought to have the driver take her to her own house next, but when Marie gave her a tiny wave toward the front door, Janet didn’t hesitate to follow.

  Marie’s hands shook as she turned the key in the lock. The narrow row house was dark and quiet, but Marie’s eyes darted up the stairs and toward the windows, as though someone might be lurking in the shadows.

  “Get the dining room windows,” Marie said quietly. “I’ll do the living room.”

  They moved swiftly, pulling each shade and drawing each curtain, until the first floor was even darker than it had been before. They met in the kitchen, where half a casserole sat on the counter under a towel. A note beside it on cream-colored stationery read, “M—for dinner.”

  Marie didn’t look at the note or the casserole. She only looked at Janet.

  “You haven’t told anyone, have you?” Marie spoke quickly, as though afraid to let the words linger. “You haven’t said anything to—to your friends at work or your grandmother or—”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “Your book.” Marie fumbled in her purse and pulled out a cigarette packet. “The one you’ve been writing. Have you shown it to anyone?”

  An image floated in Janet’s mind. The postman dropping her carefully wrapped manuscript into his bag.

  “I...” Janet could lie to everyone else, but not to Marie. “I don’t—that is, I wouldn’t—”

  “Let’s...” Marie trailed off and held a finger to her lips. “Let’s not talk anymore.”

  She motioned for Janet to follow her up the stairs.

  On the second floor they again moved about the house in silence, making sure no light peeked in through a single door or window. When they were finished they met in Marie’s room. It looked so grown-up compared to Janet’s, with its simple furniture and pressed white linens. No pink bedspread, no photos taped around the mirror, no schoolbooks stacked on the desk. Even the darkened windows lent an air of maturity to the place. Only the edge of Marie’s old pink frilled bathrobe, just visible behind the open closet door, gave any indication that she had ever been the same girl who made up silly cheers with Janet on the football field.

  Marie reached into her dressing table for a match. Her hands were shaking violently.

  “I’m so sorry.” Janet felt shaky, too. “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have to worry about any of this. I never should have—I mean, it isn’t fair that—I still don’t even understand what all of this means, but, Marie, I’m so sorry. I should’ve thought about the future instead of—”

  Then Marie kissed her, and she was the only future Janet needed.

  They kissed, and kissed, and it was enough. They kissed again, and it was everything.

  It was just as it had been in the street outside Meaker’s—both of them rushed and eager, their bodies restless and uncertain even as their lips moved hungrily. Though it was different, too, here in this dark room with the curtains drawn. It was all so much more than it had been before.

  Janet was conscious of all that. Yet somehow she was conscious of nothing at all, too, as they began to move toward Marie’s bed.

  Janet was fairly certain it was she who stumbled first, but it might have been Marie. In either case, the result was the same. The girls found themselves lying on their sides on the thin gray carpet, Marie’s glasses tossed off somewhere, forgotten. Lips and tongues tangled while eager hands roamed. Janet’s breath came in short sudden bursts, her heart pounding faster than Janet had ever realized a heart could pound.

  Emboldened, or perhaps delirious, Janet reached for Marie’s waist and pressed her back into the carpet, rolling onto her. Marie responded with a low sound in the back of her throat. Janet, terrified of her own actions but powerless to stop them, slid her palm over the thin fabric of Marie’s dress and up, up, along the curve of her breast.

  Marie didn’t make a sound. Janet withdrew her hand and rolled onto her side, apologies spilling to her lips.

  She didn’t have a chance to speak them aloud, because all at once Marie was on her. Soon Janet lost track of whose hands were where, of who was giggling and who was groaning. She forgot to worry about whether she sounded foolish as she let out the strange sounds that matched the wave of feelings inside her. Feelings that only grew as Janet and Marie moved together.

  Some time later, as the two of them lay atop the pale rug, watching the headlights from the street peer through the curtains and pass across the ceiling, Janet wrapped her arm around Marie’s waist and nuzzled against her neck. She was surprised to notice that her dress was half-unbuttoned. In the books she’d read, and in Janet’s own writing, too, the undoing of buttons was always a moment of heightened awareness. Life, it seemed, was more slipshod than fiction.

  “Your lipstick is smudged.” Marie passed her a tissue.

  Janet took it silently and patted at her lips. “Thank you.”

  “Do I look all right?”

  Janet sat up and stared down at her. “You look beautiful. And I love you.”

  It wasn’t what she’d meant to say at all. The words had simply slipped out. Just as they had when Elaine had said them.

  And like Elaine, Janet was glad for it. Especially when she saw the flush rise in Marie’s cheeks.

  “I love you, too,” Marie said, her voice soft but clear as water.

  When they kissed again, Janet felt like water too. Liquid. Malleable. She would take any form, she would do whatever was necessary, to keep feeling this way forever.

  They kissed again, and again, and Janet would have kept kissing until the sun came up had Marie not broken away to check the time. Janet had to be safely gone when Mr. and Mrs. Eastwood returned from the club.

  Janet agreed that it was a very sensible point. Still, as she stumbled the few blocks home, she didn’t feel particularly interested in doing sensible things.

  She wanted to be back in Marie’s room. She wanted them to fall asleep in each other’s arms. To wake up together in the morning and lie in bed together, staring at the ceiling, with no worries or fears. She wanted to kiss Marie’s sleepy face awake, borrow her pink frilled bathrobe and wander lazily downstairs to make them a pot of coffee.

  There was a time when Janet would’ve felt ashamed at such thoughts, but that night, no shame appeared. Indeed, as she walked on under the streetlamps, Janet’s body felt alive in a way it never had before. Every inch of her skin was pleasantly aflame.

  Janet knew she should be thinking about the future. Planning ways to be more careful, in light of all that Carol and Mitch had said. That night, though, Janet could not force herself to consider any future beyond the next time she’d hold Marie in her arms.

  Nothing would ever be the same for Janet after this. And that was exactly how she wanted it.

  11

  Wednesday, October 4, 2017

  “No.” Paula took Elaine’s face in her hands. Her touch was gentle but firm. “No. I love you, Elaine. If this is really what you want—if you never want to see me again, if you think it’s too dangerous for us to be together—then I’ll accept that, but I don’t think that’s the case. The Elaine I know, the one I love—that girl isn’t afraid of anything.”

  Abby squinted down at her phone screen, but it didn’t help. She still couldn’t focus.

  She was in the hall outside Ms. Sloane’s classroom, trying to reread the last scene of Women of the Twilight Realm, but her eyes still kept drifting off the screen.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about the real Marian Love. Janet Jones. She’d written a happy ending for her characters, but she hadn’t gotten one herself. She’d made a desperate attempt for one—she’d tried to run away with the woman she loved—but the trying alone had been enough to kill her.

  “Did you already glue your sign, Abby?” Savannah called from the other end of the hal
l, waving a poster over her head.

  Abby glanced up, blinking through dazed eyes. Shit. “Um, not yet.”

  The school day had ended ten minutes ago, and the hall had mostly emptied out except for Abby and her friends. The others were clustered around one of the hall outlets with a hot-glue gun, sticking handles onto the posters they’d made the afternoon before. They were leaving soon for an immigration protest outside the State Department, and they’d had to make new signs since the immigration posters they’d made back in January had been used so many times they were falling apart. Abby had meant to get her sign from the art room and come back down with everyone else, but she’d gotten distracted, again. She could hardly keep track of anything lately.

  “I’ve got to get mine from upstairs,” Abby called. “Save me some glue.”

  “There’s a dirty joke to be made with that, except I can’t think of it,” Ben called back. “So pretend I said something really funny about glue.”

  “Ew,” Vanessa said, but they were laughing. “Can I not, actually?”

  Linh stayed quiet, which wasn’t like her. Abby avoided meeting her eyes. Things had been weird between them since that awkward moment in the senior lounge. As eager as Linh had seemed to talk about their almost-kiss at first, neither of them had brought it up in the two days since, which was more than fine with Abby.

  “Oh, hello there.” Ms. Sloane poked her head through her classroom door. “I thought I heard you out here, Abby. Could we talk for a few minutes?”

  “I have to go soon.” Abby caught Linh watching them and tried to pretend she didn’t notice. “We’re going to the immigration rally at Foggy Bottom.”

  “That’s great.” Ms. Sloane smiled. “I’ll be joining you there shortly myself. This will only take a few minutes—there’s something we should discuss.”

  It didn’t seem to be up for debate. Abby grabbed her backpack, signaled to her friends to wait and followed Ms. Sloane inside.