Jealous And The Free, The

by March Hastings

  With whom?... Where?... When?... Dozens of questions chased each other through Michele's thoughts.

  She forced herself to cut them off sharply when she reached the grocery. She dug out two dollars worth of change for soap, cigarettes and a can of Medaglio d'Oro coffee. Leda loved Italian coffee almost as much as she loved dancing.

  And that, simply enough, Michele realized, would be the answer to all her troubles. Instead of fighting Leda, she would do everything possible to help the girl's career. And everything possible to please her.

  No more jealousy.

  No questions.

  No distrust.

  With this decision, Michele felt the tension in her chest beginning to relax. And silently, she promised Leda that for the next eighty years of their life together, they were going to have a ball.

  Even before she reached the last flight of stairs, Michele heard the table radio blaring Beethoven. It was a good sign. Leda only listened to classical music when she was concentrating on something else.

  And that something else, Michele decided happily, could only be her latest love affair.

  The realization gave her a feeling of self-importance. Leda must have been thinking about her often during the past few months. Certainly her response last night proved that. It was strange to feel herself part of Leda's thoughts, inside that head always so busy with rent budgets, practice schedules, tryouts.

  Michele's thoughts had always seemed to her so sluggish by contrast. An occasional letter home to her mother, a short story attempted only to be abandoned half way through. Somewhere along the way she had reined in her mind like the blunt nose of an old dray horse. Her routine had become the blind circle of one restaurant or another. Big tips, small tips, white uniform, black uniform, rubber soled shoes, ripple soled shoes. A pretty boring companion for someone like Leda, who was all sparkle and light. But she knew she could change. She knew it.

  If Leda would only be patient with her.

  Michele opened the door, unhooked Boris's leash and proceeded with her bundle of groceries to the wooden table in the kitchen. The room was too small for the vibrating orchestration. Everything seemed to be shaking.

  Except Leda, who reclined lazily in the tub. Wavelets lapped across her belly and up over the soft, pink breasts. One leg was extended, propped on its heel on the tub's edge. Her eyes were closed. Michele took the soap out, unwrapped it and went to the girl. Letting the soap sink away, she cupped the soft breasts in her hands and brought her face down, unmindful of the water against her chin.

  When she lifted her gaze, the smile had returned to Leda's face but her eyes were still closed. Michele slid her hands downward through the water, found the bar of soap and brought it up along Leda's thighs. Leda's hands caught hers and held them still. She kissed the closed eyelids.

  Leda blinked up at her. Neither of them spoke, surrounded by the music, smiling confidently at each other, engrossed in the sensation that pulsed louder than the symphony.

  Michele helped Leda out of the tub and with the towel patted the outlines of the girl's body. She had never dared to stare at her before. In fact, she had deliberately avoided doing so all this time. But now Michele permitted herself to examine all the curves and hollows which she had touched last night. Impetuously she put her lips to the small of Leda's back, inhaling the soapy odor still fragrant and warm.

  "We can't," Leda said.

  Michele felt Leda's fingertips, stroking her temple. "I know," she muttered obediently. "You'll be late."

  "I'll meet you when you're through today. We'll go out. You know, like you said?"

  "That'll be late tonight. What'll you be doing in the meantime?"

  Leda turned and took the towel from her. She wrapped it around Michele's head and kissed her nose. "Rob a bank. Kill a cop. Anything you'd like."

  The mocking tone stabbed Michele. "I can't help it," she said. "I'm not so accustomed to this thing yet."

  She saw the edges of Leda's mouth tighten for a moment. "Let's hope you never are."

  Michele twisted away and started to make the eggs and coffee. She knew that Leda was being patient and loving with her. More patient than she could have hoped.

  "Do you think I'll ever start acting like a human being again?" she asked. "I feel like such a jerk. It must be a terrible bore to you."

  But when she turned slightly for Leda's answer, Michele discovered that she was alone.

  So this is how it's going to be, Michele thought. Me ranting stupidly and her sneaking away from the sound of my voice.

  Michele put down the pot holder and went to see how Leda had managed to escape.

  She found the girl sitting astride the partition with the phone cupped to her mouth. Because of the music, Michele could not hear the words, nor could she see them forming on the girl's lips.

  The pungent odor of coffee began wafting into the room. Michele smelled it but her feet refused to move her back toward the responsibilities of breakfast. She stood in the July sunlight as though she were frozen inside a cube of ice. Only the jabbing of her heart kept her aware of her own identity.

  Leda put down the receiver, slid from the partition and landed lightly on the bare floor. "That was Margaret," she said before Michele could ask. "She wanted to know if I had an extra pair of sandals."

  "You mean she called?"

  Leda shook her head and spread the bangs with a quick ruffle of her fingers. "Why, yes. Didn't you hear it ring?"

  Michele felt a crazy grin beginning to spread across her face. It felt as though her nose and eyebrows were going to take off for outer space.

  In two strides, she crossed the room and lifted Leda into her arms.

  "Put me down," Leda squealed. "I've got to make that class."

  Their voices blended in laughter. "You make all the classes you want, honey," Michele said. "Just you come home again and make me."

  CHAPTER 3

  Aggressive.

  She would have to learn to be aggressive. That's what Leda wanted her to be. The slang term for it, she knew, was butch. Some called it deisel dyke. And if that's what Leda wanted from her, then that's what she would be.

  With Leda at school, Michele found herself beginning to unwind. She had no way of knowing, of course, how she measured up to the other women in Leda's life. But of one thing she was certain: she was damn well going to make the girl forget about every one of them.

  What did she have to work with? Michele sighed as she glanced down from her five foot nine inches of slumped posture to the splotches of paint on the instep of her right foot. She knew she had nice straight legs, anyway. The men in her past had let her know it. But what good were legs if you wore pants most of the time? Michele took her hands out of the pockets and let her fingers wander along her hips, feeling to see if she were beginning to bulge yet in the rear. The solid curve of muscle there reassured her. And she knew, without feeling them, the flat belly and long waistline. As for the breasts, she could walk around all day without a brassiere. It didn't hurt her the way some women complained it did.

  Nothing sagged yet, thank heaven. No wrinkles, no dimples of fat that didn't belong. The whole business would be just a question of attitude. Self-confidence was the other term for it. If Leda could only look at her with the same eyes of adoration that Boris did...

  Michele smiled at the absurdity of this wishfulness. Nor would she really desire canine loyalty from the girl. The challenge of Leda was a challenge against which she could grow. Improve her appearance, her manner, her interests. Increase the tempo of her very being.

  From shelves and pockets Michele gathered together the loose change from the tips which comprised most of her income. Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents. Enough to buy herself a new pair of slacks, loafers and a decent shirt. Something with a little color. There was nothing so drab as a drab dyke. She had seen them skulking around the Village, looking as though they worked at being repulsive. She didn't want to become like that. Leda wouldn't want that either.


  What might Leda want?

  She had black hair and green eyes from her Irish father, whose namesake she had become. Why not take on some of the devilment and liveliness that had been his personality?

  Strange, thinking about her father again.

  Michele lit a cigarette. The match flame trembled. She was not accustomed to thinking about Michael Daly. She did not remember him too well. Purposely. The things that she had to remember were not exactly complimentary to her mother, whom he had neglected to marry.

  Squinting around the flume of smoke rising thickly in the airless room, she meandered through her memories. What was it that kept her mother by his side on the endless journey from one race track to another, year after year? By the age of five, Michele herself had seen through the glinting charm to the circle of narrow selfishness underneath. Why had her mother not known it, too?

  But he had known how not to worry. How to make a decision and then forget it. Perhaps it had been this ability to trust himself, to believe in himself persistently that had attracted others to him, convincing them to believe in him, too.

  And, if she never did anything else for the girl she loved, Michele knew she owed it to Leda to be strong in the same way that her father had been strong. For in the uncertain profession that was Leda's life all day, the girl would cherish this steadfastness.

  Michele rolled the change she had accumulated into the paper coin containers that she had gotten from the bank. She felt a buoyant assurance that this realization about herself was the first step on the road of progress.

  By three o'clock Michele had decided to quit her job and get one that paid better. She had enough experience to wait tables in a high class place. Anything would be better than counter service. It was surprising how much she had let herself slip in the past few years. As though a great burden had been dragging her slowly down.

  And now that the burden no longer existed, she could bounce right back up again.

  She shoved the rolls of coins into her jeans, refilled Boris's water dish and started out for the clothing stores on Eighth Street.

  * * *

  Michele's new attitude toward life spurred her on. Within an hour, she had made all the necessary purchases. She dropped the bundle of her old clothes into a trash basket. Along with it, she said goodbye to the niggling fears which had tugged at her all morning. Leda loved her. Leda would continue to love her.

  How could the girl help it? she asked herself, gazing at the full-length reflection strolling beside her in a plate glass window. The white shirt looked light and crisp, the striped slacks jauntily outlined her buttocks and thighs, the thonged sandals emphasized the strong bone structure of instep and arch. She had calculated this appearance to flaunt her breasts and long, resilient muscles. Every inch of her walked as she walked, all of her body alive and happy to be seen. She knew she didn't at all resemble the female truck drivers clomping sullenly beneath the merciless eye of the sun. She might have turned into one of those if Leda had not come along in time.

  But Leda had come along. And Leda had kissed her. And touched her. And loved her. Leda had showed her how to be proud of this body that she carried now erectly.

  And she would be butch for Leda. Not by hiding herself behind a mask of pseudo-masculinity, but by being a woman unashamed of her sex and strong.

  She knew that Leda would be out of class at five-thirty for her supper break. The vision of surprising her and taking her to a cozy little restaurant loomed large and pleasantly in Michele's imagination. She hastened along Sixth Avenue and turned east on Waverly Place, intent on catching the Fifth Avenue bus that would take her uptown to Leda. Money still jingled in her pocket. She could think of no better way to spend it than on making her girl happy. Her girl.

  A chill shivered along the nape of her neck. There were few things that she had ever really wanted for herself. Her desire for Leda had burst full grown upon her consciousness. It pervaded every thought, every breath, every motive she could have for success, for life itself.

  The bus was empty when she climbed aboard. Michele deposited her three nickels and sat down in the seat nearest the back door. At Fourteenth Street the rush hour crowds would begin to pile in. She didn't want to have to push her way through them. Her first memories of New York centered around the time she had tried to get off a late afternoon train. The surreptitious hands that had felt into all the private places of her body, the seeming accidents of pressure against her were vague thoughts that had guarded her ever since from making the same mistake twice. And she would have taken a cab this time except that she wanted to save enough money for any whim Leda might have. Or almost any whim.

  Until she found herself a new job, they would both have to be frugal.

  The bus jounced along and Michele sat up very straight, not wanting to wrinkle her new outfit. She tilted her head into the warm breeze. A wisp of hair lifted and fell across her forehead. She gazed above the heads of crowds waiting on corners, at the growing masses of people hurrying to and from train stations. A sense of promise seemed to hover around herself alone. An aura protecting her from futility, from the dullness of resignation that she sensed dragging at the shoulders of those she saw around her.

  She still had a half hour when the bus pulled up to the Fifty Ninth Street stop. The bus had flown, it seemed, on the wing of her own eagerness. She crossed to the plaza and sat down on the concrete edge of the fountain. Better to remain still, she decided, than to stroll around and work up a perspiration. The heat of midday seemed to emanate from the crowds and from the street. Perhaps tonight she and Leda would go for a ride out to Coney Island. Sit on the boardwalk and listen to the white crests breaking in the night.

  "Mind if I sit down?"

  The man who spoke to her was already spreading a newspaper beside her. His cream colored linen suit looked hand starched and ironed.

  Michele shrugged her shoulders. She moved slightly to give him more room, hardly noticing that he had a choice of places almost anywhere around the circle.

  He crossed his legs and tipped up the pointed end of one brown and white shoe.

  "This sure is a hot city."

  The deep voice had a flat accent which reminded her of Wisconsin. She had spent a year at the University in Madison. The thought of the beautiful green campus rolled into her vision, making a pleasant contrast with the steaming city streets.

  "It'll be getting hotter," she said, sighing wistfully.

  "Well, I guess if we're all hot together..." His smile showed artificially even teeth turned bluish from too much nicotine.

  "Doesn't help at all."

  "Could, though." His glance dropped to the rounded flesh accentuated by her tight pants.

  Michele licked her lips and stood up quickly. "Take it easy now."

  His words, seemingly innocent, followed her as she rushed into the crowds. Recollections of other men slid up into her consciousness. Her first experiment in the garage with a neighborhood plumber... the odor of grease stained overalls... grease smeared fingers reaching down into her panties... Michele swallowed hard to drive the memory down again. She found herself standing in the doorway of a toy store. Her back felt drenched with cold perspiration. "Excuse me, please."

  Michele pressed herself against the metal wall so that the woman could get by. The glitter of a crystal necklace caught her eye. A passing scent of verbana rose soothingly from the bare shoulders. And then the woman was gone.

  Still, the moment's respite of femininity had been enough to relax Michele. She straightened her shoulders against the wall and let her thoughts flow back to Leda.

  Somehow, she got through the remaining twenty minutes.

  As she stood across the street from Leda's school building, Michele watched the upstairs windows for signs of the class to end. She glimpsed an arm or a leg extended to the bar and occasionally a girl circled into view. Then the lights dimmed and she shifted her focus to the doorway. Already she felt a smile of anticipation creeping toward her lips. Unc
onsciously she tightened the belt of her slacks a notch. Her breathing had become shallow and a little rapid. She felt ready to sprint across the street. Leap over the cars if necessary.

  Michele knew it would take Leda a few minutes to change into street clothes. But Leda always moved rapidly. She watched the others hurrying out. None of them seemed to have the movement, the projection of self-confidence that marked Leda. It was a mere formality of time before the arrival of success for her girl. Comparison with these other girls emphasized this in her mind and she kept it purposely ready to tell Leda.

  Then she saw her, strolling along the lobby, head tilted downward as she listened to the rush of words from the tiny girl beside her.

  Michele felt her throat tighten. Her glance narrowed and sharpened involuntarily. She felt compelled to examine Leda's companion without knowing just exactly what it was she wished to discover.

  But, as though because of telepathy, Leda glanced toward her and waved a hand in eager greeting.

  Michele watched her say a quick goodbye to the girl and come running across the street. "Hi," Leda said.

  Her cheeks were flushed beneath their tan. The roots of her blonde hair was darker at the temples and sleek from the water she had used to comb it back into a neat pony tail. Dark pencil outlined her eyes and gave them a large calmness. Her wide forehead and short nose gave off a newly scrubbed shine. She seemed all softness as she leaned toward Michele and brushed her hand ever so slightly against Michele's thigh.