The Beebo Brinker Omnibus

by Ann Bannon

  “Beth!”

  “Like a damn silly little child—”

  “Beth—”

  “You make it impossible for me to handle this any other way, Laura. I thought we could handle the thing like adults, but apparently we aren’t quite capable of that.”

  “But Beth, didn’t you understand what I meant—what I—”

  “Yes, I understand. I understand that you’re at least aware that I’m not the only one who’s made mistakes. I suppose I’m to be grateful for it.” The ache inside her was so awful that she went to extremes for the littlest relief; she hardly knew what she said, or cared. “What do you want me to do, Laura? Never speak to Emmy again? Never speak to Charlie? Lock myself in a damn garret with you somewhere and rot? Is that what you want?”

  Laura looked at her, shaking her head, frightened.

  “Well, there’s a world around us, Laura,” Beth went on as if Laura had said no, “and we’re damn near grown up, however young we may act, and we’ve damn well got to go out and live in it. And crying over each other and clinging to each other and denying the rest of the world exists is sure as hell not the way to do it. That’s a child’s way, Laura. And if you haven’t grown up enough by now to see it, then—then, damn it, I don’t know. I can’t help. I can only mess it up for you. If you’re still a child, then go home. Go on back home to your mother and father where you’ll be happy. Let them worry about you, let them take care of you. I can’t; everything I do is wrong. Well, go back to your happy home and let your parents figure it out.”

  Laura put her head down on her arms, resting on the back of the desk chair, and never said a word. Beth wanted to see her temper, not her surrender. She wanted a fight and she persecuted Laura still further. She walked to Laura’s chair and said, “The world is half men, Laura. The world is one-half men. Does that make sense? Well, does it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I like men, Laura. Now, that’s honest. And I like Charlie. That’s honest too. Does it hurt enough for you? Honesty? Does it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like Charlie and I’m going to see Charlie, when I feel like it. Is that honest enough for you?”

  “Yes.”

  Beth went to the closet and got her coat. “You can’t love a girl all your life, Laura. You can’t be in love with a girl all your life. Sooner or later you have to grow up.” She pulled the coat on and suddenly she couldn’t look at Laura for knowing how horribly she had hurt her. It began to overwhelm Beth and she had to get out before it strangled her.

  “Tell Mary Lou I had to go out, will you?” she said brusquely.

  Laura lifted her head. “Where are you going?” she said. Her delicate face was discolored by the eruption of pain and on her underarms, where Beth couldn’t see, her nails raised red welts, trying to call attention from the great pain with a lesser. “Where are you going, Beth?” she whispered.

  “Out,” said Beth.

  “When will you be back?”

  “Tonight. Closing.” She paused at the door and looked at Laura. And she knew she’d never forget what she saw. Then she went out.

  Downstairs in the hall she phoned Charlie. “This is Beth,” she said. “Where’s your final?”

  “Math building.”

  “When will you be out?”

  “About four, maybe sooner.”

  “I’ll be at Maxie’s.”

  “Honey, are you all right?”

  “Yes. I’m all right.”

  “You sure?” He felt the tension and was doubtful.

  “Yes. Charlie, I have to go.”

  “Okay, Maxie’s.” He hung up worried.

  Beth went out and walked. She walked over to the campus, and across it to Campus Town, and down the block to Maxie’s, half wild with pain and doubt and anger.

  Girls didn’t usually go into Maxie’s alone, but Beth walked in without looking to right or left, stopped at the bar to get some beer—they didn’t serve anything stronger—and found a dark booth in a back corner. There was only a small crowd and no one paid her much attention. She looked too grim for company.

  She sat back there alone until almost four o’clock, with many trips to the bar for more beer. When Charlie found her she was slumped in the booth with her head back and her eyes closed. He slid in beside her and shook her gently.

  “Beth…darling,” he said.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him as if she had never seen him before. And then she smiled.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. He pulled her to her feet and helped her into her coat. She swayed a little, saying nothing and letting him steady her and lead her out into the cold air. He took her to his car and guided her in. “How long have you been there?” he said.

  She put her head back on the seat. “Since two.” She smiled a little at the ceiling of the car.

  “Did you have any lunch?”

  “Um-hm.”

  “What time?”

  “Noon.”

  He started the car. “You need some black coffee, darling.”

  “No, Charlie.” She turned her head on the seat and reached for the back of his neck. She stroked it with her long fingers and said, “No, Charlie. Come get drunk with me.”

  He looked at her with a curious smile. “What’s the matter, Beth?”

  “1 won’t tell you unless you get drunk with me.”

  “I don’t want to get drunk.”

  “Yes you do, Charlie. Charlie, please, darling…yes, you do.”

  “What’s got into you!”

  She smiled. “Beer,” she said. “I’m sick of beer. Can’t we go somewhere and drink Martinis?”

  Charlie laughed. “Oh, you’re a funny girl.” He caressed her hair with his hand.

  “I know. You’ll never find another like me, Charlie. Humor me, get drunk with me.” She tickled his ears. “Please….”

  He turned away, smiling a little out the windshield. “If I get you a Martini, will you tell me what the hell’s the matter?”

  “Um-hm.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  He paused a moment, and then he drove her downtown. There was a hotel two blocks from the railway station with a small bar in it and he took her there with some misgivings and a firm intention to drag her out after one drink. She behaved very well. She didn’t stumble or mumble and she wasn’t loud. They sat quietly at a dark table and she teased him and they talked about nothing and pretty soon Beth wanted another drink.

  “You said you’d tell me what the trouble was if I bought you one Martini,” he said.

  “Yes, I know. Well, 1 find I’ll need two.” She smiled charmingly at him.

  “That’s just what you don’t need, darling. You’re already loaded on beer. How much beer did you have?”

  “Not very much.”

  “You were asleep when I came.”

  “I was not. I was thinking.”

  “Anyway, you promised you’d tell me after one Martini.”

  “Did I? I can’t remember. It’s a funny thing about me, Charlie. I never keep my promises. Never believe me when I promise you something.”

  “What’s the trouble, Beth?”

  “One more drink,” she pleaded. He looked at her askance and she gave him a little-girl smile and said, “I’ll be good. Honest.” She felt a driving, desperate, relentless need to forget.

  “I think you need some black coffee and some food.”

  “After this drink.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Charlie….” Her voice was tender and soft. “Please.”

  With a sigh he signaled the waiter. “Two more,” he said, and she smiled. He put his arm around her and said, “Now talk to me, Beth. Talk to me.”

  She cocked her head a little to one side and said with sleepy suggestiveness, “Charlie, let’s go to bed. I want to go to bed with you, Charlie.”

  He smiled quizzically at her. “Later, honey.”

  “
I want you to make love to me.” She put her head back against him and looked up at him so that their lips were very near and Laura was very far away. “I want it. I want to be so close to you that I can’t get any closer. I want you to hold me so tight that I can never get away…so it won’t be my fault if I never go back. Can you hold me that tight, darling?”

  Charlie felt his heart speed up and he tried to fight the feeling. “I’m worried about you, Beth. I’m worried,” he said. He pushed an errant curl behind her ear and kissed her cheek and said, “Tell me why you want to get drunk.”

  She pulled away from him and lifted her glass and drank half the Martini. “I just want to get drunk. I like to get drunk. I haven’t been drunk for years. Anything wrong with that? Besides, I can’t think of anybody I’d rather get drunk with than you.”

  “That’s the truth?”

  “Um-hm.”

  “And nothing but the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Beth?” His voice implied that he knew better.

  She turned and looked him full in the face and said, “Charlie, I wouldn’t lie to you,” and shook her head to augment her honesty, and then she picked up her glass and finished her drink.

  Charlie watched it go apprehensively. “Why not?” he said. “Why wouldn’t you lie to me?”

  “Why, Charlie,” she said, laughing a little. “Because you’re the most beautiful man in the world. You know that, darling? You’re beautiful.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He grinned sardonically at his drink. “You told me once. But you can lie to anybody, Beth. Doesn’t matter what they look like.”

  “Nobody ever told me that,” she said. “Think of all the lies I could’ve told! I’ve been lying to the wrong people, Charlie. Maybe I should tell them the truth and see how they like it. Maybe they’d start telling lies themselves. It’s awful to be the only one. It’s lonesome.”

  He frowned seriously at her.

  “One more drink,” she said.

  “No.”

  She picked up his glass and drank almost all the drink before he could stop her. “My God, you’re a queer one,” he said, laughing.

  She put her head back and laughed with him. It seemed unbearably funny. “Oh!” she said, trying to catch her breath. “You called it, Charlie. You’re so right. You have no idea—” and she laughed again. When she was calmer she leaned against him and turned her luscious eyes to his face and said, “Charlie, darling?”

  “What?” he said, smiling at her.

  “Can I excite you? Just looking at you, I mean?”

  His mouth dropped a little and then his smile widened and he turned and fingered the stem of his glass. “Don’t be foolish, honey.”

  “Charlie, look at me.” He looked. “I’ll bet I could.”

  “Not here, Beth. Not now.”

  “Oh, yes. Here and now.”

  “I think it’s high time we leave,” he said, making a move to get up, but she gripped his thigh and he stopped cold. “Beth, my God!” he said in a low voice. “Are you out of your head? Damn it, stop.”

  She didn’t answer and she didn’t obey. “Charlie,” she said, smiling with her lips parted. “We can’t go now. We can’t go now, you’ll make a spectacle of yourself.”

  “Beth—” He stared at her, astonished.

  “Waiter!” she said, taking advantage of his confusion. The man saw her two raised fingers and nodded. And now when Beth started to pull her hand away, Charlie caught it and pulled it back. She felt his breath come fast and her own excitement began to mount. She leaned against him and said voluptuously, “We’re going to have a nice slow drink. It’ll calm your nerves.”

  “Beth, for God’s sake,” he said. “Oh, Jesus, Beth, you’re crazy. You’re absolutely crazy.”

  “I know. I’m crazy. That’s my excuse. That’s my excuse, Charlie. I need an excuse. I’m a girl in need of an excuse. You’d be surprised how I need—”

  “I hear you,” he said, smiling a little. “I need one myself right about now.”

  “What’s it like, Charlie?”

  “What’s what like?” he said cautiously.

  “What’s it like to feel the way you do right now?”

  “God, Beth,” he said softly, and she felt a tremor run through him. “Stop talking, darling.” He pushed her away.

  The waiter brought their drinks.

  “Beth, let’s go,” he whispered. “Let’s go, honey.”

  “No,” she said. “You haven’t had your nice drink. Drink your Martini, darling, like a good boy.”

  “I don’t want the damn drink. Damn the drinks. Let’s go.”

  “No,” she said and smiled at him. “You don’t have to drink yours, but I’m going to drink mine.” She drank half of it and leaned toward him. “How do you feel now, Charlie?”

  “Beth, you damn little witch,” he said.

  “Tell me,” she begged. “I want to know.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but I’m going to tear this God damn table apart if we don’t get out of here right now.”

  She patted his arm. “Drink your drink, dear. Maybe the table will go away.”

  “Beth,” he pleaded. He trembled again and pulled her hard against him.

  “Charlie, what will the neighbors think? I mean, we have to think of our reputations. I mean, my God, here we are in public, and everything.” She felt giddily funny. Everything was funny. Charlie started to take her drink away from her, but she snatched it back and finished it, and some spilled on her blouse. “Charlie, darling, look what I’ve done. Wipe it off.” She smiled at him like a malevolent siren. “Wipe it off, darling,” she whispered.

  He looked at the drops of liquor melting slowly into her cotton blouse and swallowed hard.

  “You’re sweating, Charlie,” she said.

  “Beth, we’ve got to go—”

  “Oh, no!” she said. “Charlie, you can’t.”

  “Can’t, be damned. I have to.”

  “Your drink. You can’t leave your drink.”

  He picked it up and drank it all down, and set the glass hard against the table top. “All right, let’s go.” He got up holding his coat and pulled her after him. He put an arm around her to steady her, and guided her out of the bar.

  They walked toward the car.

  “Charlie, you’re wonderful when you’re drunk,” she said. “You’re wonderful when you’re excited. I want to kiss you, darling.”

  He propelled her sternly toward the car and when they reached it he sighed with relief.

  “Can we go back to the apartment?” she whispered when they pulled away from the curb.

  “No. Mitch is there. We’ll go out to the motel on Forty-five. Out near the air base.”

  “Anywhere,” she said. She put her head down in his lap.

  “Charlie, how long will it be? How far do we have to go, darling?”

  “Beth, don’t ask me questions. I’ve got all I can do to drive.”

  He reached down with one hand and tore her blouse open. Beth chuckled at him and heard the buttons chink on the floor. At stoplights he pulled her up and kissed her violently, nearly crushing her. The tires screamed when he rounded a corner and he drove a wild eighteen miles to the motel.

  He pulled Beth out of the car and into the room so fast that he had her laughing again, dizzy and wild and hot, like carousel music. He almost tore her clothes off her. He didn’t even turn the light on. She fell back on the bed laughing, teasing him, pestering him, refusing to help with her clothes.

  “Oh, Beth,” he said, and his voice was rough. “Beth, God, I need you. God, I wish I understood you! Oh, darling….” His groan thrilled her. She surrendered passionately to him and for a while she forgot her pain. For a while there wasn’t any pain, there was only a heady purifying madness. She let her mind empty as her body was fulfilled.

  For a long time they lay in each other’s arms, half asleep, murmuring to each other, absorbed with each other.

  “Feel bet
ter, darling?” he said. “Or do you want to go out and get drunk again?” He laughed against her shoulder.

  “No. Don’t have to…. This’ll last forever. Oh, Charlie, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I just don’t know.”

  “I thought I caused all your troubles.”

  “Oh, let’s not talk about troubles. Please….”

  “Can’t you tell me about it, honey?”

  “Not now. Later. Please, later.”

  He lay still for a minute and then he said, with his lips moving softly against her skin, “What am I going to do with you, Beth? You worry me, darling. I don’t know how I’m going to leave you. I guess this is the first vacation I haven’t looked forward to since I started college. I’m—almost afraid to leave you, Beth. I wish to hell I knew what was the matter.”

  “Nothing’s the matter. Nothing. Not now.” She cuddled against him.

  He stroked her hair. “I wish I could believe that, honey.”

  After a while they got up. It was almost nine o’clock. They were slow and sleepy getting into their clothes and often they had to stop and hold each other. Every time they separated, Beth felt the pain a little more. It was coming back, little by ominous little.

  “We’ll stop on the way back and get something to eat,” he said. “You must be starving.”

  Beth felt herself, as if that might clarify the matter, and said, “I don’t know.”

  They stopped at a drive-in on the outskirts of town and got a couple of hamburgers and some coffee.

  “Well,” he said, “did you get Laura straightened out?”

  “Straightened out?”

  “Wasn’t she giving you a hard time? Emmy said something—I don’t know.”

  “Oh, she’s just temperamental. She’s just—I don’t know. Let’s not talk about Laura.”

  He was silent for a minute, eating his sandwich, and then he said, “Why didn’t she want you to go out with me?”

  “Oh—she had a crush on you. That’s all.” The bread and meat stuck suddenly as her throat went dry with alarm.