Warm and Willing

by Lawrence Block

  Damn it!

  At a quarter to seven, the phone rang. She nearly tripped rushing to it. It was Megan.

  “Honey, I’m sorry as hell. I’ve been working like a maniac, I should have been home hours ago. This was the first chance I had to call.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Way the hell up in the East Sixties. A job, complete decoration of an entire apartment, and she wants antiques-”

  “She?”

  “An old battle-ax living it up on insurance money. One Letitia Warren. Antiques! The hardest part of this job will be finding a chair older than she is. I’m going to have about two weeks of hard work and a hell of a lot of money to show for it, kitten. Listen, I’m in a phone booth. I was all set to hop in a cab but I wanted to call you first. Everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Party tonight. Can you throw some dinner together? I didn’t even have lunch, I’ve been going full steam since this morning. This Warren woman. You’d have to see her to believe her. Honey, I would have called you earlier-”

  “Oh, it’s all right.”

  “-only I didn’t have the chance, I really didn’t. You’re not mad at me?”

  “Of course not.”

  And she wasn’t, couldn’t be. And couldn’t imagine how she had been jealous, how just moments ago she had been pacing and trembling hysterically. There was no reason for jealousy. Everything was as good as it had ever been.

  “I’ll have dinner ready,” she said. “Hurry home, love.”

  After Megan had hung up she stood for a moment holding the dead phone in her hand. She felt enormously relieved. And yet the mere knowledge that she been so irrationally jealous worried her a little. She never realized that she had that sort of capacity for jealousy. It was a new discovery for her.

  Maybe, she thought, it was an index of love. Perhaps only those so deeply in love could be so blindly jealous.

  She went into the kitchen and busied herself with dinner. Megan was working again, she thought. And that was good. She would throw herself into the job and get all wrapped up in her work. It wasn’t good for Megan to have too much time on her hands. Her jobs, she knew, were the type that made for a disjointed sort of life; she might go a month without doing any work all, then might land two decorating jobs at once and work fifteen hours a day for three weeks straight. But work would be good for her.

  How very jealous she had been…

  “Jan loves to play hostess,” someone was saying to her. “Her parties are never to be missed. Everything has a slightly phony smell to it, and in another twenty minutes or so Jan is going to turn the lights down low and recite a poem by Sappho, but she does know how to throw people together. And how to supply liquor.”

  It was Bobbie talking to her, a more sober Bobbie than she had met two nights ago at Leonetti’s. And she looked prettier now; before she had been simply striking, but now her beauty seemed to blend into itself. The chestnut hair was done up in a beehive that made Bobby look even taller than she was. Her dress, a silk shift in black and white, somehow emphasized the curves of her body more than if she were wearing something and clinging. Her lipstick was a deep, dark red.

  “I must have made a lovely impression the other night,” Bobby went on. “Boy, was I stoned! You should have seen me the morning after. I woke up and was afraid I would die, and then after a few minutes I was afraid I wouldn’t die. I didn’t, but I might as well have. Tonight, however, I am sober.”

  “And happier,” Rhoda said.

  “Uh-huh. Where did Meg go?”

  “For more drinks, I think.”

  “She’s a love, Meg is. Oh, lord. Look over there.”

  She looked. Jan Pomeroy, their hostess, was setting a pair of candles on a massive Victorian pedestal. Jan was a dark girl with Semitic features and large gold hoop earrings. She wore a great deal of eye makeup.

  “The candle routine,” Bobby explained. “God above, first time I came to one of these parties and saw her fussing with those things I thought we were going to have an orgy. Candles! She lights them and recites poems. I’ve never seen anyone make quite so monumental a production out of homosexuality. She gets almost religious about it.”

  “Does it last long?”

  “Homosexuality?” Bobby grinned. “It lasts forever, my sweet.”

  “I mean-”

  “I know what you mean, goofy. Here’s Meg. Meg, you didn’t bring me a drink.”

  Megan sat next to Rhoda, “You don’t need one,” she said. “Jan’s playing with her phallic symbols again. Did you notice?”

  “We were talking about them. And about Jan. Homosexuality As A Religious Phenomenon. I might write a paper on that sweet theme.”

  “For The Ladder?”

  “For the john. Poems to be read in the can. I think there was a book like that, come to think. Some phony nonsense. Dykery As The Highest Expression Of The Inner Self. Sound good?”

  “It might to Jan.” Megan sipped her drink. “Jan’s right,” she said. “There are worse poses.”

  “Name one.”

  “I Am A Lost Lesbian And A Thing To Be Pitied. How’s that?”

  “It’ll do,” Bobby said. “Except that we all use it now and then. Even you and I, sweet.”

  “That’s what’s so tragic about it.”

  Jan Pomeroy was walking around the room turning off lamps. Her eyes, Rhoda noticed, were slightly glazed. And she almost fell over at one point. “I think she’s drunk,” she said.

  “Brilliantly put, Rho. Jan’s always stoned at her own sets. Drinking develops her appearance of intense sincerity. The funny thing is that she used to be ordinary enough. She never got over that thing she had with the actress.”

  “Actress?”

  “Moira Maine. Whose name, before Hollywood played with it, was something far less euphonious. I think was-”

  “Moira Maine?”

  “Uh-huh, I think it was-”

  “But she isn’t gay!”

  Megan and Bobby both laughed. “Oh, Rho honey, the hell she isn’t. You didn’t know?”

  “But she’s married-”

  “To one of the screamingest queens in Hollywood, sweets. Too many people were whispering about both of them, so they’re married. I’ve a hunch they never consummated that marriage, and that it wasn’t exactly made in heaven. Meg, you should have brought me another drink.”

  “Get it yourself.”

  I don’t really need it. Miss Maine was in hot water for awhile. You must have heard something, Rho.”

  She shook her head.

  “A big blackmail thing, the way I heard it. Some West Coast call girl slept with La Maine and let a friend of hers take pictures, and first they held her up and then they sold the pictures to one of the scandal mags. It got hushed up, I guess, but that’s the way it was.”

  Bobby stood up. “I see an old friend,” she explained. “Catch you people after the Sapphic odes are over and done with.”

  Rhoda sipped her drink. Megan was beside her, telling her a story that she couldn’t quite keep up with. Across the room, a blonde with dark roots had her arm around a much younger girl. The younger girl giggled and the blonde leaned over and kissed her. The younger girl put her arms around the blonde and the two got lost in the embrace.

  Rhoda looked away from them. “I don’t like that,” she said.

  “Bleached hair?”

  “That either.”

  Megan gave her hand a squeeze. “I don’t like it myself,” she said. “They might as well make love in Macy’s window. Some girls are funny that way. Exhibitionistic. Just because they’re among other gay girls they think they can do anything without offending good taste. I don’t mind dancing at a gay party. There will be dancing later, you know. Will you dance with me, kitten?”

  “And with no one else.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll dance with whoever asks you, pet. It’s just part of the ritual, and quite sexless. But petting in public that way,
that I don’t go for.” Megan shrugged. “The really militant homosexuals are all excited about campaigning for equal rights. I think some of them would like to picket lunch counters in Atlanta that don’t employ gays. But you’d think they’d realize that the same obligations as far as taste is concerned as straight people have. Sex is such a preoccupation with all of us. It’s silly, I suppose.”

  The room was dark now. On the mahogany pedestal, the two candles burned. Jan Pomeroy stood behind the pedestal, her face framed by the yellow glow of the candles. There was a slender volume open on the pedestal in front of her.

  The room quieted down. The dark-roots blonde and the younger girl were still kissing on the divan across way. Someone said something short to them. They separated.

  “I’d like to read some poetry,” Jan Pomeroy said. “ I hope you all enjoy this.”

  “Little chance of that,” Megan whispered. Rhoda felt a laugh forming and smothered it. She squeezed Megan’s hand in the darkness.

  “The first poem was written by Sappho on the Isle of Lesbos,” Jan announced. Her voice had taken on a theatrical tone. “Lesbos had been renamed since then. Mytilene is its present name. And Sappho’s little colony has long since been dispersed. There are some of us who dream of returning to that little island in the Aegean, of forming a society where we can be alone with people like ourselves. Some day, perhaps that dream can be realized completely and perfectly.”

  “Picture it,” Megan whispered. “All of us frolicking nude in the sun, with nary a man around. I wonder if she really believes all this.”

  “It sounds that way.”

  Jan stared their way and they stopped whispering. She took a deep breath, leaned over so that the two candles stood on either side of her face. Her eyes, circled with heavy make-up, looked hollower and deeper than ever in the candle light.”

  She read;

  Oh Chryseis

  The budding beauty of your Cretan soul

  Echoes from hill to hill.

  Come to me.

  Night is a barren notion

  Fitting the heart

  For love in shaded places.

  Teach me of torment

  In Sweet hysteria,

  O Chryseis!

  There was a scattering of embarrassed applause. A candle flickered briefly but did not go out. Jan Pomeroy closed her hollow eyes momentarily, lowered her head reverently. The applause died out. Jan straightened up, opened her eyes, turned a page of the book. “Thank you,” she said. “This next work is also Sappho’s. It is a somewhat longer poem, an ode to one of the young girls Sappho loved so deeply. It-”

  Megan groaned.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After the little performance with Sapphic odes and candlelight, Jan Pomeroy did what she always did at her parties. She got thoroughly drunk, cried without interruption for ten full minutes, and then abruptly passed out. Two girls carried her into her bedroom and wedged her fully clothed between the bedsheets, stopping only to remove her shoes. She slept soundly. Her eye make-up looked wildly unreal on her sleeping face.

  With the hostess out of the way, the party moved into gear. The mahogany pedestal was wrestled out of the way, the candles blown out and put aside, some lights left off, others switched on again. An angular girl stacked records on the hi-fi-dance music, some vocal sides, Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day. One or two couples drifted off homeward. Others talked intensely in little groups. A girl cried in a corner, another locked herself in the bathroom and refused to open the door. Others danced.

  The dancing seemed odd at first to Rhoda. They had danced before, once or twice at the apartment, moving together slowly with the dancing serving as a prelude to the act of love. But dancing had never before been a social phenomenon. There was something disarming about it, as though the roomful of dancing girls burlesqued heterosexual dancing, as though all the dancing couples were less intent upon enjoying themselves than in proving something to the world.

  The feeling died as she caught the mood of the evening. Megan held her lightly in her arms, taking the man’s part and leading her slowly and smoothly around the floor. She closed eyes, relaxing in Megan’s embrace. She had never danced much as a girl, had hardly ever gone dancing with Tom Haskell. Once, maybe twice before they were married. Afterward, never.

  She danced two dances with Megan. Then the blonde girl stepped away from her. “We have to mingle,” she said. She moved aside and a young redhead with very blue eyes introduced herself to Rhoda as Sara. The music started and their bodies moved together.

  But something was wrong. She didn’t understand at first, and then Sara looked up at her and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t lead. Could you lead, Rhoda?”

  It felt very strange. Her feet were not entirely sure of what they were supposed to be doing, but she did the best she could, taking the redheaded girl in her arms, holding her rather stiffly, and leading her around the makeshift dance floor. The mechanics of taking the man’s part were foreign to her, and she realized suddenly that she and Megan had always taken it for granted that Megan would lead and that she would follow.

  “I’m not doing very well at this,” she told Sara.

  “Oh, this is fine.”

  The dancing itself was asexual enough. She held the girl almost at arm’s length, as if close contact would be either dangerous or unpleasant. And yet, somewhere, there was a vague stirring, a faint sexual call to arms. She thought at one point that it came from acting the male role in the dance, as though it were a part she wanted to play. She was glad when the record ended and Sara went off to find another partner.

  Megan found her and they went off to have a drink together. They finished their drinks and started to dance, but then another girl cut in halfway through a number and began dancing with Megan, and Rhoda went for another drink and came from the kitchen as the record was ending. Bobbie Kardaman took her arm and whirled her out onto the dance floor.

  Bobbie led. She had rather thought that would happen.

  They danced through two records that way before Megan cut in again. And, dancing with Bobbie, she felt something that went beyond the simple pleasure of dancing with another girl. Bobbie’s right hand was halfway around her waist, Bobbie’s cheek close to hers, Bobbie’s breasts pressing now and then against her own breasts. At first she told herself it was accidental, convinced herself that such sudden contact was inevitable in a room so full of people.

  It was more than that and she couldn’t avoid realizing as much. There was purpose in the way Bobbie held her, design in the contact of leg with leg, of breast with breast. Bobbie wanted her.

  And she couldn’t help feeling her own response.

  She tried to push the feeling aside, tried to tell herself that it was crazy or wrong or both. She loved Megan and Megan loved her, and yet Bobbie was making some sort of play for her and she didn’t have the good sense to get away from the girl, couldn’t help responding to the sweet stimulus of Bobbie’s embrace. Nothing would happen, she told herself angrily. The record would end finally, and she would be with Megan again, and she and Megan would go home together and Bobbie would find some other girl and everything would work out, there would be no more of this foolishness.

  The record ended. She got away from Bobbie and scanned the room looking for Megan. Megan had just asked a flat-chested mousy girl to dance. Rhoda bit her lip and hurried off to the kitchen for another drink.

  Once, between dances, she was in the kitchen when two girls in their thirties stumbled in and embraced. She was embarrassed, but she couldn’t leave the room because they blocked the door. She tried not to look at them, tried not to hear them. They kissed, and one of the women ran a hand over the other’s body.

  And one said, “Oh, darling, you can’t go home. You can’t, you have to stay with me.”

  “God-”

  “You love me. You know you love me.”

  “I think Harold suspects. I’m so afraid-”

  “Tell him. And leave him, darling
.”

  “But he’s my husband. And I love him, I do, but-”

  “He doesn’t know you. He’s not right for you, darling.”

  “I never should have let you love me. I should have stayed away from you.”

  “But you do love me-”

  And they were lost in a kiss again. Rhoda tried not to watch them but she couldn’t help herself. The married woman was breathing heavily, eyes closed, breasts heaving. The other woman kissed her all over her face and reached for her breasts with an urgent hand. She worked on the married woman with technique born of long experience, and Rhoda could see resistance and fear melting away as passion grew up to conquer all.

  Married, she thought. Married to a man and in love with the man, but crazy in love with a gay girl as well.

  When the embrace stopped, when they came up for air, the married woman noticed Rhoda for the first time. She blushed deeply. Her girl friend didn’t seem to care. She slipped an arm around the married woman’s waist, her fingertips just inches below the rise of her breasts, and led her off toward the bedrooms.

  Rhoda drained her drink. She was glad, suddenly, that she had found her way into the shadows in the proper order, that she had ended her marriage before she had found Megan. It could have happened the other way around, and that seemed to be a very special sort of hell.

  Bobbie was holding her hand. She stood swaying slightly and looked up into Bobbie’s eyes.

  “Megan is so lucky,” Bobbie said.

  “Why?”

  “To have you.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Yes. Don’t you know that I can’t stop it?”

  A stretch of silence. “I love Megan.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Oh, damn it-”

  “It won’t last forever. Nothing ever does, you know.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “Why not? It’s the truth, Rho. Megan is your first and you always think the first will last forever. Later on you try and fool yourself, but sooner or later you realize how transient every little affair is. You two won’t last forever.”