by Ann Bannon
“No. I just—I hate it when you act like a spoiled brat, Beebo.”
“I never act like a spoiled brat.” Her voice was little more than a whisper now.
They sank to the floor where they were and made love then.
And even after Laura had finally fallen asleep, in her arms, Beebo felt a tide of renewed passion. She caressed Laura’s hair and back with her hands and thought, If it can be this good it’s not over.
Laura had left work meaning to go straight home. But as before she hadn’t gone far when she knew she was headed for Tris’s little studio.
Tris opened the door herself. She had evidently been practicing for she was dressed in tights and breathing hard. Her black hair was smoothed over her head, caught in back with a clasp and braided. The braid, heavy and shining, hung halfway down her back and swung like a whip when she whirled.
Tris paused for a moment when she saw Laura on her threshold and for an awful second Laura thought she might turn her away. But Tris smiled suddenly and said, “Laura. How nice. Please come in.”
“I just dropped by to say hello,” Laura apologized.
“That is not all, I hope?” Tris said, looking at her.
Laura felt an odd little twist of excitement. “Well…I shouldn’t stay. I don’t want to interrupt your work.”
“Of course you do. That’s why you came,” Tris said, spinning reflectively in place, her weight shifting delicately to pull her around and around.
Laura didn’t know if she was being scolded or teased, if she should leave or stay. Tris stopped twirling and said, “I’m glad you came. I didn’t want to work any more anyway.”
Laura hesitated, wondering whether to believe her. But when Tris walked across the room to her and kissed her cheek she melted suddenly with pleasure. She stood quietly and let herself be kissed, afraid to return the compliment. She was very unsure of herself with Tris. Even the gentlest gesture seemed to irritate the dancer sometimes. Laura could only let her take the lead.
Tris turned away abruptly, her mood shifting. “Well, now you are here,” she said in her careful English. “What would you like to do?” It was a sort of challenge.
“I—I’d like to see you dance, Tris. Would you dance for me?”
“No.” She was pouting. “You are my excuse for not dancing any more today, Laura.”
“Maybe we could just talk for a little while, then.”
“We could…but we won’t.”
Laura was at a loss for words. She stammered a little and finally she blurted, “I think you’d rather have me go home.”
“I think Beebo would like you home more than I would. She doesn’t let you out very often, does she?”
Laura colored. “She’s not my jailkeeper,” she said.
“I don’t like this—this interference you force me to make in your love affair, Laura,” Tris said and surprised her guest. “I don’t know your Beebo, but I have nothing against her. Still, I do not imagine she will like me very well if she finds out you are my guest now and then.”
“What do you care whether Beebo likes you or not?” Laura demanded, startled.
Tris broke into a charming smile then, as if to placate her visitor. “I want everybody to like me,” she said. “I suppose it is a compulsion left from my childhood.” And, as if she had made a guilty admission, she turned away abruptly saying, “Let’s go into the kitchen. If I stand in here I will feel obliged to dance.”
Laura followed her and sat down self-consciously. Tris fixed a plate of cookies and gave her a glass of milk. She smiled.
“I am hard to know, Laura. I am not very gracious. But I like your company.” Her smile was as warm and luscious as ripe fruit in the sun.
They finished the food over small talk about men. Laura was lost, silent. She just nodded agreement and listened with dismay. She’s trying to tell me she doesn’t like girls, she thought. But it’s a lie!
Tris rinsed the plates, watching herself all the while in one mirror or another. It was as if she felt herself on exhibition all the time, as if all those mirrors were scattered around to remind her of her own beauty.
Tris dried her hands and turned to face Laura. There was an awkward pause and Laura realized suddenly that she was supposed to get up and leave. They had had their small talk. She had been served food. That was all she could reasonably expect from her hostess, especially since she was an uninvited guest. She felt her heart contract a little in disappointment, and she thought with a flash of yearning of the intimacies of her last visit.
But she was too proud to overstay her welcome, especially after the way Tris had shown her the door last time. So she got up and said, “Thanks Tris. I have to go.”
“Oh?” It was merely polite.
“Beebo’s expecting me.”
“I see.” No protest. Tris followed her toward the front door. “Ask me over to your apartment sometime, Laura. You would make a much nicer hostess than I. Besides, I should like to see how your big roommate looks in pants. She does wear pants?”
“Yes, she does.” Laura turned to look at her curiously. “But she’s a jealous hellion.”
Tris leaned on the wall by the door, crossing her feet at the ankles.
“Does she know you have been here to visit me?” Her smile was sly, interested.
“No. I don’t think she even remembers you,” Laura said shortly.
“Ah! Flattering. Do you think it’s wise to make a secret of our friendship, Laura?”
“It’s either that or get my neck broken,” Laura said.
Tris laughed a little, as if the idea of such hard play amused her. “Laura…would you like to stay a little longer?” she said. Her voice made it sound very inviting.
“I can’t.” Laura was upset by all the talk of Beebo.
“As long as you leave by eight it would be all right,” Tris said. “I have a date at eight.”
“With a man?”
“Certainly with a man. I have no secrets, Laura. I do not like to cheat, like you. You cheat with your Beebo by seeing me. But still—” she hunched her shoulders and smiled—“I like you. You like me. Perhaps it is worth the risk. You are the one who will get your neck broken, not me. I have no right to deny you your pain.”
Laura frowned at her. It was an odd thing to say. Tris put her hands on Laura’s arms and they stood that way, silent, for a moment.
At last Tris said, “Dance with me.”
“I don’t know how,” Laura said shyly.
“I am a teacher. I teach you. Come on.”
“I’m so clumsy, Tris.”
But Tris pulled her to the middle of the studio and put a record on. She stood for a minute in front of Laura as if trying to make up her mind where to grasp her, how to start. Laura felt impossibly awkward. But Tris made up her mind quickly and slipped her arms around Laura’s neck. Laura was two inches taller than she and Tris was obliged to look up at her when she spoke.
“We will just do it like the teenagers!” she said. “There is nothing to it really. Stand in one place and shift your weight from one foot to the other, with the beat. That’s it. You’ve got it. That’s a good beginning.”
Laura couldn’t help laughing. “Even I can do that much,” she said.
“Ah. Then there is hope. Next year at this time you will do the tour jeté.”
Laura had her arms around Tris at the waist and they swayed gently to the music, and suddenly all her suspicion and embarrassment faded. She became conscious of the tantalizing jasmine that emanated from Tris—from her throat and her hair and her breasts, barely covered by the bandeau. The black braid moved softly against Laura’s bare arms in back and Tris put her cheek against Laura’s, tilting her face up. Her lips were near Laura’s ear and she whispered, “You know, Laura, I must tell you something. You are a homosexual. Yes?”
Laura swallowed. “Yes,” she said.
“You should know then…I am not. Not like you. I like the company of girls, yes. My dance pupils. Friends. Bu
t I love men. I love them. Do you understand?”
“No.” Laura shut her eyes and pulled Tris a little tighter. “Well, then, I will explain. Men excite me. All men, I mean. The idea of men…It is hard to say. But I would rather be with a man than with a woman. But now and then I meet a woman who interests me. And sometimes the interest goes beyond just talk. You see?”
“No.”
“Sometimes I want to kiss her. Or be close to her. But that is all. Now do you see?”
“No.”
Tris gave an impatient little sigh. “I am telling you I am not queer like you!” she said sharply and Laura winced with sudden pain. Tris felt it and she amended quickly, “That is an unkind word. You people call it gay. All right. I am not gay. I like you, I like to talk to you and watch you move and sometimes I am moved myself to kiss you or be close to you, like this. Our bodies like this, all up and down. You see? But I don’t like to go any farther. Not with a girl. You are only the third girl I have felt this for. It will not happen again for a long time. Perhaps I will marry soon, and then it will never happen again.”
“Marry! Who? An Indian?”
“No!” she exclaimed almost contemptuously. “Another. He is white.”
“You’re full of contradictions, Tris,” Laura said, looking down at her in bewilderment. “You said you were gay and you married a gay boy.”
“Oh, yes. I did, didn’t I?” She looked trapped. “Well, I thought I was then. But I know now—positively—I am not.”
“But you said—”
“Such wonderful blond hair you have, Laura. I would give anything for such hair. Why do you always wear it wound up like that?” And she began to slip pins out of the bun, letting them drop to the polished floor, until the coil of gold came loose and Tris gave a delighted, “Ah!”
Laura felt the thrill go through her hard. She forgot her protests about Tris’s sex drive and pulled the dancer very close to kiss her full on the mouth. Tris yielded. With one accord they stopped dancing and just clung and kissed, swaying slightly. It lasted for long minutes—just kisses, soft and exploratory, but careful. Laura wondered vaguely, through the fog of lovely sensations, what miserable devil prompted this delectable girl to deny her Lesbian impulses. For Laura could tell that Tris enjoyed this love play as much as she. She encouraged it, even when Laura tried to stop, and pulled her back for more.
By eight o’clock they were lying on the big red silk couch in the bedroom, murmuring inanities to each other, discovering one another’s bodies and emotions through twin shields of clothes and caution.
“Will you come and see me again?” Tris asked.
“Are you inviting me?”
“Of course.”
“When would it be convenient?” She said it in clipped English, like the English Tris spoke, to tease her.
“It is never convenient. But come anyway.”
Laura laughed. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“No date tomorrow?”
“Yes. Every night.”
“Save a night for me, Tris.”
Tris gazed at her for a moment before she answered, “No.”
“Why not?”
“We do too much in these few short hours. What would we do with a whole night? I do not like to think.”
“I think of it all the time. I can’t think of anything else.”
“Ah, that is a very bad sign. I am sorry to hear you say that. You must not fall in love with me, Laura.”
“I’ll try to remember,” she said sarcastically.
“I am serious,” Tris said.
Laura didn’t answer her. She lay on her back and looked up at the small skylight directly over the bed. It was a square of violet—the last shade of fading day.
“I do not want you to fall in love with me, Laura,” Tris persisted.
“I hear you,” Laura said quietly.
“Well, why don’t you answer?”
“I don’t know how to answer, Tris,” she said, turning to look at her in the semi-gloom of the bedroom.
“What are your feelings for me?”
“Do you want a blueprint?” Laura said, hurt. “I can’t spell them out for you. I don’t understand them myself.” But she understood them all too well. She had felt these pangs before for other girls—only two or three, including Beebo, but enough to make them familiar and unwelcome. But still exciting and irresistible.
Tris lay beside her, quiet for a while, and finally she said, “Do you know why I was not very glad to see you at first today?”
“No.” Laura reached across the bed to put a hand on Tris’s breasts, to feel what she could not see in the gathering darkness.
“I was afraid,” Tris whispered. “Of my own feelings. I do not like to become involved with women. It has always been unpleasant for me.”
“Do you still want me to come back and see you?”
“Yes.” She paused and Laura sensed a smile. “As long as I ask you to come back, Laura, you will know you are safe with me.”
“Safe?”
“I will put it another way. If a day comes when I do not want to see you, it will be because I am in love with you. And that will be the end. From that day on we will never meet again, until I am cured.”
Laura had to smile. Who could take such a charming speech seriously? “All right,” she murmured and embraced the lovely dancer.
“Now you must go,” Tris told her. “My date will be here soon. He is always prompt.”
Laura got up without protest. But it was sweet to take the time to wind up her hair and know she was welcome. “Did you kick me out for the same boy last time?” she asked.
Tris had turned a light on and they watched each other in the mirror before which Laura was combing her hair.
“No. Another.”
“I hate him,” Laura said with a little smile. “And the rest of them.”
Tris gazed at her coolly. “How very foolish,” she said. And made Laura laugh.
They parted with a chaste kiss, and for the first time since they had met Laura felt as if she had a slim chance with this odd and irresistible girl who was still so much a stranger to her. She went home to her angry Beebo, her body tense with need. And later, when Beebo demanded her body, Laura surrendered promptly and helplessly.
Beebo, since the night of her attack, had become unbearably suspicious. Everything Laura did, everywhere she went, had to be reported in detail. She called Tris once or twice from work and Tris had bawled her out for not showing up. Laura was more pleased than sorry when Tris sounded jealous—while she bridled angrily at Beebo’s jealousy, she was thrilled with Tris’s.
Laura had strong doubts about Beebo’s illness now. She could have gone to work weeks ago. The bruises were nearly invisible; only a pale yellow shadow stained the spot where the worst had been. Beebo was using it as an excuse to sit around another week and take it easy and drink and bitch over the phone to Lili about her problems.
“I always hated that damn elevator,” she declared with her feet up on the coffee table in the living room and a drink in her hand.
“You make me sick!” Laura told her. “You’re well. Get up and go to work.”
Beebo looked at her watch. “At six-thirty in the evening?” she said, and laughed.
“I’m not going to support us both, Beebo,” Laura said. “And I’m sick and tired of playing nursemaid.”
To her diary Laura confided, I am in love. I’m sure of it. The more I’m with Beebo the more I want Tris. Oh, God, how much I want her!
Laura was desperate after two more weeks of Beebo. Beebo drove her frantic when they were cooped up together in the small apartment, as they were every night. And Beebo was wild for the love Laura denied her. The attack she had endured seemed to have touched off a burning core of violence in her that never went out.
When Beebo found the small steel strongbox on the closet floor with Laura’s diary inside, she pounded it with a stone to get it open but the lock didn’t break. Wh
en Laura got home from work and found the battered box on the coffee table in the living room she went pale with alarm, and Beebo, who was lying in wait for her reaction, exclaimed, “Damn it, I knew it. You sure as hell look guilty, Laura. What’s in it?” She kicked the box.
“Nothing.” Laura walked across the room but her legs felt weak.
“Open it, then.”
“No.”
“Where’s the key?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s your box, goddamn it. You know where the key is! Why did you hide it from me? What are you ashamed of?”
“I’m under no obligation to show you everything I own!” Laura said frostily. “I’ll hide what I please.”
“You tell me what’s in it,” Beebo threatened, “or I’ll choke you. I swear I’ll choke you, you bitch.” She slammed Laura against the wall with one hand to her throat.
Laura gasped in panic. There was only one thing to do with Beebo in these moods and that was go along with her, stall, anything but resist her. That was too painful and Laura even feared that one of these days, with Beebo as crazy as she was, it might be fatal.
“All right,” Laura said through a tight throat. “Let me go.” She rummaged for the key for ten minutes, knowing all the while that it was in the wallet in her purse.
“Don’t tell me you can’t find it,” Beebo said, watching her through narrowed eyes.
“I almost never use the thing,” Laura said as calmly as she could.
“You find it,” Beebo said. And something in the tone of her voice made Laura very frightened. I’m getting out of here, she thought to herself suddenly. If I can just get out of this somehow I’ll leave her tonight and I won’t come back. I’ll go to Jack’s.
She turned and faced Beebo, desperate. “Beebo, it’s just some personal papers. It’s nothing you’d be interested in.”
“It’s exactly what I’d be interested in. I’d be even more interested in why you went white as a sheet when you saw I had it. Explain that to me, Bo-peep.”
Laura pressed her teeth together in a small grimace of exasperation. “It’s my birth certificate and my baptism certificate and two insurance policies and some old love letters,” she said.