Warm and Willing

by Lawrence Block

  “Well, while you’re up-”

  Bobbie went off to fill their glasses. Rhoda sat up slowly, blinked, reached for a cigarette. The cat had withdrawn while they embraced; he was seated on the floor now in front of a fake fireplace. He seemed to be studying her again. Little Claude, she thought. He lived there while the girls came and went. How many had he seen?

  She looked at her watch. Megan might be home now, she thought. What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t call her. Nor could she let her sit home waiting and worrying. But maybe that would be better, maybe if Megan just came to the realization slowly So complicated. So awfully complicated.

  Bobbie brought her a fresh drink and she took it gratefully. “I might become a drunk,” she said softly. “I think I am developing a taste for it.”

  “You’re in good company.”

  “I’m in marvelous company. Sit next to me, Bobbie.”

  Bobbie was beside her now. Rhoda sipped the scotch and closed her eyes and thought how comfortable she was now. So much of life was devoted to the simple pursuit of comfort. She had never realized this before. And it was this hunger for comfort which had sent her to Bobbie. Not a craving for excitement, not some furious dark passion, but the basic desire to be where she could most comfortable. Bobbie was with her now, and the two of them might get a little drunk together, and they would be drawn closer and closer, until ultimately their lovemaking would climax the evening, symbolizing and emphasizing the bond that was growing up between them.

  “You’re a funny girl, Rho.”

  “Am I?”

  “Uh-huh. A lot of the time you seem a hell of a lot younger than you are. Like a lost lamb, like a schoolgirl. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “That’s what I would have guessed, I suppose, but part of the time you seem about seventeen.”

  “I was seventeen until a few weeks ago.”

  “I know what you mean. Yes, that’s what I thought. You were just a girl all that time, weren’t you? And spent two years pretending you were a woman, only it didn’t take. And then became a woman overnight.”

  “Yes.”

  “And they say we get this way by being led astray at an early age. The horny hands of a lady gym teacher, or an inquisitive tongue in a boarding school dorm room, every little thing that can warp us and ruin us before we have a chance to blossom out as child-producing man-loving automatons. What crap that is. My mother sits in too large a house in Grosse Pointe and tries to forget she ever knew me. She can’t forget all the time, because once a month she has to send me my check. A combination of conscience money and insurance; insurance because as long as the checks come regularly she knows I won’t darken her upper middle class doorway, and conscience money because she sits there scratching her head and wondering what she did wrong. Because she’s damned sure she must have done something wrong. Her darling daughter is a lesbian, and Mumsie is dead certain something like that couldn’t happen by chance. She couldn’t believe I might be born this way. And she can’t imagine that I’m a person underneath it all. Like some people when they look at a Negro. All they see is black skin, they don’t see a person. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “All my mother sees is a dyke. She broke down one time and cried and told me that she couldn’t look at me without imagining me in bed with another girl. What the hell sense does that make? I can look at her without visualizing her in bed with my father. For heaven’s sake, Rho, we’re all human beings.” She stopped for a minute. Then, “That woman was terrified when I wrote her and told her I couldn’t stand it in Mexico any more. I wanted to tell her the truth, that everybody in Cuernavaca was hopelessly depraved, but that wouldn’t have registered. She thinks I’m hopelessly depraved, so she would have thought I belonged there. But I got a letter from her and I saw she was scared. She thought I was coming back home to Detroit. She wrote that it would be awkward, inconvenient-oh, she found a lot of polite adjectives. I didn’t write her again until I was here in the city. I wrote her then and said I had a long lease on an apartment and that I would be staying in New York for a long time. I never mentioned her letter. Sometimes I hate her.”

  For a long time neither of them said anything. Then Bobbie finished her drink and put her glass down. The Siamese paraded slowly but confidently across the room, and seated himself sedately upon the floor in front of Bobbie. His eyes were steel blue.

  “My man Claude,” she said. “I spoil him rotten, Rho. He’s an aristocrat, you know. Something of a gourmet. No cat food for this fellow, not at all. Do you know what he ate tonight? An entire tin of smoked oysters at eighty-nine cents a tin, purchased especially for him at the Caviarteria on Eighth Street. That’s near where you work-do you know the place?”

  “I’ve seen it. It’s across the street from Heaven’s Door.”

  “That’s the sort of food Claude eats. Spoiled rotten.”

  “How old is he?”

  “A year and a half. He’s sexually mature, incidentally. I never had him castrated. Do you think I should?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I wouldn’t like it,” Bobbie said. “If I were a cat, I mean. They don’t say castrated, you know. It sounds too vicious. They say altered. The last time I took him to the vet’s, it was for a distemper shot, and the vet asked me if I wanted Claude altered. I said that he was fine the way he is. But he leads such a monastic life. Do you think maybe he’s gay?”

  “Can cats be gay?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know. I suppose I should find out. If environment’s a factor, then this one is queer as Dick’s hatband, I’ll say that.”

  They went on talking about the cat, offering up insane ideas for Claude’s sexual gratification. Bobbie said that maybe his expensive tastes in food were a form of compensation, and Rhoda suggested that Bobbie bought smoked oysters for him because she felt guilty about forcing the cat to lead a loveless life. Somewhere along the way Bobbie got the scotch bottle, brought it back with her, and filled their glasses again.

  Bobbie said, “You have so many questions and so few answers. It’s murder, isn’t it?”

  “How will I learn the answers?”

  “By living them.”

  “And you learn that way?”

  “Maybe you never learn, Rho. Maybe you just come to forget the questions. Oh, this is lovely, isn’t it? I’m dark and mysterious and poetically cryptic. In a minute I’ll turn out the lights and set candles glowing and read the poems of Sister Sappho. Remember that? Jan Pomeroy’s crazy, but she only manages to exaggerate a happy little madness that burns in every last one of us. We all make a religion out of homosexuality. Or a mythology, at least. We ask questions and search our souls for answers, and try to find some special grain of meaning in our lives. The hell with it. Why should there be meaning? Straight people don’t have to find meaning in their sex lives. Just because we operate differently why do we have to analyze everything until it turns blue? Doesn’t work, kiddo.”

  The room was very still. Then Bobbie said, “Kiss me, Rho.”

  They were in each other’s arms, drawn close, transported in an instant from philosophy to the beginnings of passion. Claude padded silently across the room toward the fireplace. Rhoda’s eyes were closed. She felt Bobbie’s lips at her throat, Bobbie’s hand tracing the contour of breast.

  The phone rang.

  It seared her at first, splitting the sweet silence of room like a sword tearing a silk cloth. Bobbie said, “Damn it,” and moved to answer the phone. Rhoda sat up, blinked.

  Bobbie said, “Hello…yes, but…what? Oh, Jesus. Did anything…can’t you get in there? Can’t you get her to open up?”

  It was about Megan, she thought crazily. Something had happened to Megan. And it was her fault “I’ll be right over,” Bobbie was saying “Talk to her, do anything. Promise her anything she wants to hear. Oh, Christ, I hope we get through this one.”

  She hung up, spun to face Rhoda. She said, “ That was Lu
cia Perry. You met her at Jan’s party. I don’t know if you remember her.”

  An image came to mind, a short dark girl with laughing eyes.

  “She lives with Peg Brandt. Peg just locked herself in the bathroom and she’s threatening to kill herself. Lucia is hysterical.”

  “What-”

  “We’ve got to get over there,” Bobbie said. “Lu says she’s talking about cutting her wrists. There are razor blades in the medicine cabinet. We’ve got to get over there.”

  “Oh, God-”

  “What’s it like outside? Do I need a jacket? I shouldn’t go dressed like this. Oh, Jesus, what does it matter? Come on, Rho. Hurry.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The apartment was out of the Village, uptown on Twenty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue. It was in a huge sprawling building with a half dozen different entrances. Bobbie paid the cabbie and they spilled out onto the sidewalk and rushed into the building. The elevator was self-service and they had to wait for it to get down to the ground floor. It took its time, then made its way very slowly up to the sixth floor where the two girls lived. It was maddening. They stood in the car with no way to hurry its progress until it finally reached the sixth floor and the ancient doors opened.

  On the way over, Bobbie had told her more about the two girls. “Peg has done this before,” she said. “It’s nothing new. Once she took too many sleeping pills and another time she was up on the window sill and threatening to jump. Not out on a ledge like in the movies but just on the sill. We talked her out of it that time. She doesn’t really want to kill herself. She just wants to come close.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Peg and Lu have been together for almost three years now. That’s a fairly long time. You met Lu. Do you remember Peg?”

  “No.”

  “She’s about five years older than Lu. And very scared of losing her. That won’t happen, because Lucia is the kind of girl who wants to have her cake and eat it. She wants the security Peg gives her and she also wants a little hit-and-run sex. So she cheats. Peg knows she cheats and she tries not to notice it. Sometimes people can manage to see what they want to see. But every once in a while Lu is too blatant about it and Peg can’t help finding out, and it hurts her.”

  “And she tries to-”

  “Sometimes. Three times now that I know of. Probably a few more than that.” Bobbie sighed. “One of these days she’ll probably manage it, and without trying to. By accident. Play with suicide long enough and it gets to you, I suppose. I hope we get there on time.”

  And later, in the elevator, Bobbie said the same thing. “I hope we’re not too late. I hope she didn’t go off the deep end this time.”

  Lucia Perry was waiting in the doorway of her apartment. Her face was fishbelly white and she was wringing her hands nervously. She said, “Bobbie, I had to call you. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Is she still-”

  “Yes. She won’t come out. She won’t answer me. I don’t know if anything happened or not. I tied to kick the door in but nothing happens, I can’t move it. I-”

  Bobbie hurried past her into the room. She seemed to know her way around the apartment and went straight to the bathroom door. “Peg,” she called. “Peggy, for Christ’s sake, Peggy, what are you doing in there?”

  A voice, low, muffled. “Go away.”

  “Open the door, Peg.” Bobbie’s voice was calmer now, commanding. “Open the door and let me in.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Just turn the bolt and open the door. That’s all there is to it, Peg.”

  “Do you know what she did?” The voice was firmer now.

  “What?”

  “She had a girl up here. I don’t even know her name, some two-bit tramp she picked up around Times Square. Here in my apartment. They were in our bed, the two of them, and I walked in on them, God help me, and I saw them-”

  Rhoda looked at Lucia Perry. They girl’s eyes were filled with tears. She looked as though she was going to faint. “I’ll get you a drink,” she told the girl. “You need one.”

  “I don’t-”

  “Where’s the liquor?” She didn’t wait for an answer but went to the living room and found an opened bottle of blended whiskey. She poured a stiff shot into an orange juice glass and made Lucia drink it. The girl had trouble getting it down but it seemed to help.

  And Bobbie was still talking to Peg, her voice steady, reasonable. “You don’t want to hurt yourself, Peg,” she said. “You don’t want to do anything bad. Jesus, just open the door, Peg.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m going to kill myself, Bobbie. Oh, that little bitch! Why do I let her do this to me, Bobbie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why do I love her?”

  “Open the door, Peg.” There was silence. “Peg, open the door.”

  In a whisper, Lucia said, “There are three of us. Maybe together we could break it down.”

  “The building’s forty years old,” Bobbie whispered back. “They used real doors then. This one is solid oak. We couldn’t budge it.”

  “Then-”

  “Let me talk to her.” Louder, she said, “Peg, please. Don’t hurt yourself. She’s not worth it.”

  “But I love her, Bobbie-” It was a whine, pathetic.

  “Peg.”

  Silence again. Then, softly, “I cut myself, Bobbie.”

  “Ohmigosh!”

  “I’m bleeding. I’m afraid, I’m afraid.”

  Lucia was saying that it was all her fault, that if anything happened to Peg she would kill herself, too. And that she deserved it. “What could I do without her? God, I couldn’t live without her!”

  The door opened. Peg Brandt, tall and heavy-bodied, took a faltering step toward the doorway. She had slashed both her wrists and dark venal blood flowed from each wound. Her face was pale as death, her mouth slack, her eyes vacant.

  Lucia screamed.

  Bobbie said, “Get Lu out of the way, knock her out cold if you have to. I’ll take care of Peg. I know what to do, just get Lu out of my way for a few minutes.”

  Rhoda herded the girl into a bedroom, made her sit down, got more of the blended whiskey into her. Lucia talked non-stop, babbling about what a horrible thing she had done, proclaiming her love for Peg, swearing that she would never look at another girl again, that it had been a crazy thing, a kid’s trick, a whim, and that it would never ever happen again if only Peg came through, if only everything worked out all right. Rhoda didn’t have to say much. She stayed with the girl and held her hand and tried with incomplete success to calm her down.

  Then Bobbie called that it was all right, that they could come in again. They went to the living room. Peg was stretched out on the couch, her feet propped up on a pair of pillows. Her face was still very pale. Both wrists were heavily bandaged with gauze and adhesive tape.

  “It was a little close,” Bobbie said. “She got the veins but missed the arteries, which is good because it’s harder to stop arterial bleeding. It spurts and comes faster. She had four trial marks on the wrist. She must have tried four times before she got up the nerve to do the job, and then she just switched the blade and cut the other wrist on the first try. She was bleeding for a while before she opened the door, but I don’t think she lost too much blood. I got it stopped pretty quickly. She’s weak, though. Aren’t you, Peg?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You goddamned fool. You’re just lucky everybody loves you.”

  “Loves me?”

  “Yes. All of us. And Lucia more than anybody. She hurts you because she can’t help it, but that doesn’t change anything. She loves you, Peg, and she was hysterical before. She still is.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare her.”

  “You didn’t mean to kill yourself, either. You just wanted to come close.”

  “I-”

  “Take it easy, rest.” Bobbie turned around. She look
ed exhausted. She said, “Get some orange juice from kitchen. That’s what they give you after you donate blood. To build you up again. Make sure she eats a lot of meat and drinks a lot of liquids for the next few days. Keep her away from liquor as much as you can. She’ll be all right but she’s going to be weak. She has to take it easy. Tomorrow’s Saturday. That’s good-she doesn’t have to work. Keep her home and keep her in bed. And for God’s sake, be good to her. She loves you, Lu. You ought to know that.”

  “And I love her, Bobbie.”

  “Yes,” she said heavily. “I guess you do.”

  The coffee was strong and black and sugarless. Bobbie served it in heavy china mugs that were at least twice the size of an ordinary coffee cup. They drank it in the kitchen, sitting in captain’s chairs at a heavy round oak table, its surface worn with years of use. The kitchen itself was spotless. “I buy old furniture and let it crumble under me,” Bobbie had said, “but I run a clean ship. I may be crude but I’m neat, as the whore said to the sailor. And Claude doesn’t like dirt. It bothers him.”

  Claude was in the other room now, sleeping in front of the fireplace. Rhoda sipped the hot coffee and put the mug down on the table. She felt strangely calm now. Peggy and Lucia were far away and their problems were no longer hers. Megan, too, was far away. She was not worried about Megan any longer. Megan would live through losing her.

  Bobbie said, “I knew a girl who killed herself. Once.”

  She didn’t say anything. The sentence jumped in at her, tore her from her restful mood.

  “In Cuernavaca. That was one of the reasons I came back, one of the things that made it impossible for me to stomach Mexico any more. She wasn’t exactly a lesbian. She was bisexual and would sleep with anything if she got in the mood. Her parents were very rich. Old money, a proper Bostonian family, all that.” Bobbie’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “She was the most depraved person I’ve ever met, in the real sense of the word.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “I don’t know what to tell. She was thrill-crazy, I guess that’s it. Her parents should have sent her to a psychiatrist instead of to Mexico. She told incredible stories, but most of them may have been lies I don’t think she knew the difference.”