by Robin Talley
Though she’d been determined to forget all about Marie when she came up here. Hadn’t she?
“Hazel and Ed, meet Flo and Janet.” Claire waved to indicate the girls at her table, and everyone shook hands. Janet was surprised Hazel and Ed didn’t already know Flo. She’d assumed Claire and Flo had been together forever. “Join us, won’t you?”
Janet moved over to make room. Ed pulled out the chair beside her for Hazel, moving with a showy swagger to her hips. Ed was wearing jeans, Janet noticed. She’d never seen a girl wear jeans to a restaurant. She wouldn’t have thought it was allowed.
Claire and Flo went over to the jukebox, and Hazel studied Janet while Ed went to the bar for more drinks. “Are you visiting New York?”
Janet dropped her gaze. She must look so naive. “Miss Wood sent me a bus ticket,” she mumbled, though she hadn’t planned to reveal that detail to anyone else. “I mean, Claire did.”
“How interesting.” Hazel lit a cigarette, holding out the packet. Janet shook her head, and Hazel tucked it back into her purse. “How did you meet Claire?”
“I read her book.” Janet smiled, flushing once more. Somehow, she noticed, her martini glass had nearly grown empty again. “I loved it, so I wrote her a letter, and she wrote me back. She encouraged me to try writing a book, too, but it was harder than I expected.”
“Oh really?” Hazel raised her eyebrows. “I’m a fan of Claire’s writing myself. I’ve tried to get her to write for us, but she feels locked in at Bannon. Oh, I should’ve mentioned, I edit paperbacks for Grier Publishers.”
“Are you serious?” Did everyone in New York work in publishing? “Do you ever work on—those sorts of books?”
“Lesbian books, you mean?” Hazel puffed on her cigarette, amusement twinkling in her eyes. “Some. What’s your book about?”
“Yes, tell us.” Claire slid back into her seat across the table with Flo at her heels. Janet hadn’t realized they’d been listening. “I want to hear all about it.”
“I—ah.” Janet didn’t know what to say. Her book was gone forever. She’d come here to start a new life, with no looking back.
“Here we go, girls.” Ed and Frankie returned to the table, carrying five drinks between them. Claire and Flo smiled up at them, and Hazel planted a soft kiss on Ed’s cheek.
Janet looked away as a fresh martini was placed in front of her, the old glass whisked away again.
It hurt more than she’d ever imagined to be surrounded by couples. If she closed her eyes, perhaps she could almost believe Marie was here with her.
“Take a sip and tell us about your book, Janet,” Claire boomed from across the table. “It’s always easier to talk with a drink in you.”
Janet already had three drinks in her. Plus, she was suddenly very aware that she needed to use the ladies’ room. The one where she wasn’t to get up to any funny business. “I’m not sure I can.”
“Of course you can! She can, can’t she?” Claire turned to the others at the table, who held up their drinks and began to talk all at once.
“Tell us! Tell us, you’ve got to tell us!”
With so many voices clamoring to hear about her writing, and the martinis churning through her, Janet didn’t see the harm. She lifted her drink, took a sip, and began to tell the story of Paula and Elaine.
At first she meant to give no more than a sentence or two of description, but as the others leaned in to listen, it also seemed important to describe each of the girls and their backgrounds. She told the others how Paula and Elaine met, how they fell in love, and the obstacles they faced. Soon, Claire and Hazel and the others were asking questions, and Janet was describing in even more detail how her characters looked, where they’d lived before coming to New York, where they worked, and—this in response to a question from Flo, who, Janet noticed, kept stealing sips from the other side of Janet’s martini glass—how they made love. Before long, everyone at the table was howling with laughter, Janet included.
When she’d told all she could think to tell, she admitted, “But I’m still not sure about it, honestly. There are some things in it that won’t work. I’ve learned so much just in the time since I started writing it, and there’s so much I still don’t know.”
“Like what?” Ed swigged her beer.
“Well, I’d never even been in this kind of a place until tonight.” Janet cast a hand around to indicate the dark, smoky bar. “I wasn’t expecting there to be a man stationed at the front door, for one thing.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about Louie.” Claire laughed. “I told you, he’s harmless.”
“He only spoke to you because you’re new,” Flo added. “If someone shows up at a gay bar who nobody’s seen before, they could be getting ready for a bust.”
Janet sat back in her seat, alarmed. Was that what Louie had meant, asking if she was a “copper”?
As the others turned back to their conversation, Ed leaned in toward Janet with kind eyes. “The trouble is, these places can be wary about anything, or anybody, who’s different. A girl nobody’s seen before, a girl who doesn’t know the rules—well, she could be a plant working for the FBI. Do you see what we mean?”
The FBI. Even in Greenwich Village, they worried about the FBI.
Perhaps it was for the best that Marie wasn’t here after all.
“I understand.” Janet stood. “Where’s the ladies’ room?”
“Straight back there.” Hazel pointed, and as she followed her gaze, Janet realized just how unsteady she felt. “Don’t worry, a few more nights at the Sheldon and you’ll be able to hold your liquor.”
Janet laughed and made her way slowly to the sign marked Ladies. The stench of far too many cigarettes and not nearly enough bleach hit her before she’d even opened the door.
This place was nothing like the Soda Shoppe, with its rules and scripts and perfect order. Still, she felt a keen affection for the Sheldon Lounge. Janet had never been anywhere like it, but it already felt like home. Perhaps even more so than the little Georgetown house where she’d spent all her life.
The girls here had accepted her as one of their own. She felt like one of them, too, even though they were so different from her. Hazel and Ed’s impossible sophistication. Claire’s warmth. Flo’s quiet thoughtfulness. Even Frankie’s casual regard.
None of them had to hide who they were. Not here.
This was Janet’s life now. This was her future—the one she’d chosen for herself.
Perhaps Paula and Elaine’s own path needn’t be so bleak as Janet had first imagined. Perhaps, despite the publisher’s instructions, there was a way to show the “dangers” of lesbianism while still allowing her characters to survive. Maybe she could even allow them some modicum of happiness.
Yet how could they ever have true happiness when they couldn’t have each other?
Janet stared into the bathroom mirror, lost in her imaginings.
Then she spotted a black mark in the corner of the frame, a long-ago burn from a long-ago cigarette. And she remembered the burned scraps of paper, blowing in the breeze.
Paula and Elaine were gone. Janet had given up writing, forever. She’d been foolish to talk about her story to the women in the bar. She had to push it far from her mind.
When she came back out again, having washed her hands three times but with that gruesome bathroom scent still lingering in her nostrils, Janet settled into her seat and interrupted the conversation Ed and Claire had been having—something about a friend of theirs who’d moved to California to chase a girl—to announce, “I have a question.”
Everyone stopped talking at once and turned toward her. Janet ignored the hints of laughter on their faces and took a sip of the fresh martini Ed had placed in front of her.
“Do any of you know a girl named Kimberly Paul?” Janet asked. “Does she come here, too?”
For a moment, no one answered her. Then Hazel snickered, and Claire and Flo broke into flat-out laughter. Ed glanced back and forth between them, seeming not to get the joke.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, kid,” Claire said when her laughter had started to subside, “but there’s no such girl as Kimberly Paul.”
“There must be. I read her book.” Janet frowned. Had the martinis caused her to say the wrong name? “She wrote A Deviant Woman, didn’t she?”
“That’s one of Kimberly’s, all right.” Flo dunked her cigarette in the ashtray and lit another. “Except Kimberly Paul is a made-up name. Just like Dolores Wood.” She laughed.
“No, it’s not like mine. Not at all.” Claire signaled to Frankie for more drinks, frowning. “I write every single book that says Dolores Wood on the cover. Even the ones I want to take back.”
Hazel laughed. “You’re not still on about A Love So Strange, are you?”
“What?” Janet blinked, hoping she’d misunderstood. “Surely you don’t want to take that book back? A Love So Strange is marvelous. It changed my whole life!”
Hazel’s laughter turned into a kind smile.
“You’re lovely.” Claire’s frown faded away. “Thank you. It isn’t that I want to take the whole book back, but I’d rewrite it if I could. That ending, for one.” She pursed her lips. “Nathan made me tack that on. I’d rewrite it to be in third person, too, if I could. It was a huge mistake, writing it in first. I’d been reading another book that was in first, and it got in my head, and I was on a tight deadline, so there it was.” She sighed.
Janet’s head spun. Was that the only reason she’d written Paula and Elaine’s story in first person, too? Because Claire had used it for her book? And all because some other author had done the same thing?
“No writer is ever completely happy with their book,” Hazel chimed in, taking a swig of her drink. “That’s what editors are for. We tell you when to stop changing your words so they can start making us all some money.”
Claire held out her drink, laughing, and she and Hazel clinked glasses before turning back to Janet.
“The Paul books, though,” Claire explained, “those are written by a whole set of different guys. Whoever wants Nathan’s check the most that month.”
“Guys?” Janet didn’t understand. “But the books are—that is, the one I read was about girls.”
“Oh, they’re about girls, sure, but that doesn’t mean the writers know the first thing about girls themselves.” Claire scoffed.
“So that’s why the book was so bad,” Janet marveled. The others laughed.
“Stay away from the Paul books, that’s the best advice I can give you.” Claire gave Janet a somber look. “Come meet me for lunch tomorrow and I’ll bring you some good ones. I’ve got plenty. You read The Price of Salt yet? Or Spring Fire?”
As Janet shook her head, it dawned on her that she still didn’t know where she was staying tonight. It was all well and good to make plans for lunch, but she didn’t especially want to camp out on a park bench between now and then, and it was probably too late to check in to a hotel.
The group ordered another round of drinks, and another after that. Frankie sat down with them to join in the conversation when things were slow at the bar. Janet had finally asked her to stop bringing martinis, and she sipped water while she listened to the others.
They talked about friends they all knew, in New York and other cities. Friends who’d gotten together, and friends who’d broken up. Friends who’d left to start over in other places—and a few who’d gone off to marry men, leaving their pasts behind.
“Do girls really do that?” Janet whispered to Ed. “I’d hoped that was only in books.”
“It happens more often than you’d guess.” It was Claire who answered. Janet must not have spoken as quietly as she’d thought.
“How do they stand being married, though? If they know how they really are.” Janet wasn’t sure if it was the drinks or the idea of marriage that had her so flustered. She was trying not to think about Marie, but it wasn’t working. Her efforts on that front had been failing her all night long.
“They want to be normal.” Claire shrugged as Hazel nodded sagely. “Let’s face it, the world doesn’t like us very much. There’s nothing we can do about that, but at least we have each other.”
Marie’s voice echoed in her mind. I don’t want to be different, Janet.
Ed held up her drink to toast, and the whole table joined in, stretching forward with their mostly empty glasses.
Flo was the only one who didn’t smile. Janet didn’t feel much like smiling, either.
Could the world truly despise every single one of them, forever? Would they always be hiding in tiny, shadowy bars, constantly on the alert for anyone who might find them out? Or hiding from the truth altogether, the way Marie wanted so desperately to do?
“Hey, kid,” Flo said in a low voice as the others moved on, discussing more friends Janet had never heard of. “You got a place to stay for the night?”
“I... No.” Janet’s embarrassment flared again.
“Well, my apartment’s nothing special, but the couch is yours if you want it. I’m working the early shift at the diner in the morning. If you want, you can come with me there and get some breakfast.”
Janet’s relief nearly took physical form. “That’s so kind of you to offer. Thank you.”
“Hey, I was a new kid in New York once. We all were.”
Janet smiled.
“I think there may be an apartment coming free soon in my building, in fact.” Flo drained her glass. “Could you manage fifty a month for rent?”
“Fifty?” Janet tried to think of how the nickels and dimes the Soda Shoppe customers left on their trays might add up. Fifty dollars, every single month. Tips in New York must be higher than they were in Washington.
“Yeah, it’s steep. Especially when you don’t have a job yet. Did you really leave your parents’ house this morning and come straight to the Sheldon?”
Janet cracked a smile. “It seems I did.”
Flo laughed. “I can ask around tomorrow, see if anybody knows about a job.”
“That would be wonderful. Thank you.”
Flo turned back to join in the others’ conversation, and Janet did her best to absorb every word. She could sit here for hours, for years, and still never learn everything there was to know about this life. There were so many difficulties—keeping things quiet at work, turning down men who thought the absence of a wedding ring meant you must be hunting for a husband, lying to your family.
Not to mention the constant worries about police raids. Frankie mentioned those a number of times, always with a glance toward Louie. All night long, he hadn’t moved from his post. He still sat gazing out the front door, his hand draped over a tall glass of light brown liquid at his side.
Through it all, Janet couldn’t stop thinking about Marie.
If she could only see this, it would change everything. She’d see that their choices were bigger than a life full of lying. She’d see that there were other girls like them. Girls who’d been through the same things they had, but who were still themselves. She’d see that there were people who understood.
Janet had to show her.
As soon as the idea entered her mind, it took root and flowered fast. Janet needed to bring Marie here, to the Sheldon Lounge.
It was so simple, now that she’d thought of it. She had the return bus ticket Claire had given her. She could use it to go back to Washington, where she’d find Marie and say whatever it took to make her understand. Then together, they would come back to New York. They could drive up in Marie’s hand-me-down Buick—it should be out of the shop by now. Perhaps they could sell it once they’d made it to New York. That would give them enough money to live on until they both found jobs. Marie should be
able to find something easily with her high marks from secretarial school, and once they were settled they could share an apartment. Surely the two of them could manage fifty a month together.
Janet flushed, imagining a shared life with Marie. She’d see her all day long. All night, too.
Nothing they’d left behind would matter anymore. They’d be on their own, but they’d be together. It would be just like in the books.
Janet stood so abruptly she pushed the table toward Claire and Flo across the way. Claire laughed and pushed it back, but Flo eyed Janet. “How many of those martinis have you had, kid?”
“I’m not sure. Do you know if there’s a phone out front?”
“Yeah, there’s one right by Louie’s chair.” Ed pointed. “You calling long-distance? Need any quarters?”
“I think I have enough.” Janet patted her skirt pocket absently and walked on unsteady legs toward the pay phone.
Louie glanced at her but didn’t say anything as Janet perched on the narrow seat and pulled the booth door closed behind her. The numbers on the grease-caked dial swam before her eyes. She pushed change through the slot, taking a guess as to how much a call from New York to Washington would cost, and dialed, her thoughts a dizzy swarm.
In a moment, she’d be speaking to Marie. She’d tell her... Janet didn’t know exactly what she wanted to say just now. She simply wanted to hear her voice.
And she wanted to tell her she still loved her. That she wasn’t ready to give up on all they meant to each other, no matter what the world threw at them.
But the voice who picked up wasn’t Marie’s. It wasn’t Mrs. Eastwood’s, either.
“Hello?” It was Janet’s mother.
“Hello? Mom?” Janet was so confused, she didn’t realize until it was too late that she should’ve simply hung up.
She must’ve dialed her own number by accident. How many martinis did she have?
“Janet? Is that you? What time is it? No, never mind that.” Mom didn’t sound like herself at all. In fact, she sounded almost frantic. “You need to come home. We’ve been so worried.”