The Beebo Brinker Omnibus

by Ann Bannon

  “What’s the matter, honey? Don’t you want breakfast?”

  Beth looked up to find her leaning in the open bathroom door, smiling suggestively. She was still undressed and laughing at Beth’s confusion.

  Beth gave her one last look, wild and accusing, and then went out.

  “Come and see me again sometime,” the girl called after her and her voice rang down the narrow hall. “When you can stay a little while.”

  Beth found her way out of the labyrinthine apartment house and down a couple of very crooked streets full of homogeneous brown houses. She burst upon Seventh Avenue abruptly, without recognizing it, and found a restaurant.

  It was small and not overly clean, in keeping with the nightmare atmosphere she was in, but it had food for sale, cooked. She ordered breakfast, but after letting her enumerate the items and tell him how she wanted her eggs, the waiter said, “What’s the matter, sister, can’t you tell time? It’s three in the afternoon. We got no eggs after ten, in the morning.”

  She gave him a baleful look and settled for pastrami on rye. As an afterthought she ordered a beer. Unexpectedly it went down well and she ordered another.

  When she left there seemed to be nothing to do but wander again, lost and looking, through the Village streets. The hotel depressed her unutterably; she couldn’t go to Laura, she wouldn’t go to Nina. And somehow, without exactly understanding where it started or how, she wound up in a bar again, drinking too much, talking too much, forgetting names and faces.

  Late in the evening she found Franny’s telephone number in her pocket—Franny, the girl Nina had in bed with her one morning, and who had been taken with Beth. On an impulse Beth called her.

  It was almost worse to wake up in bed the next day and know who she was sleeping with than it had been to wake up with a stranger. At least that other way it had been impersonal. But now, feeling sick and full of hate for herself, she had to get up and talk to Franny, apologize, make an effort to explain. It only alarmed her when Franny responded with all the exaggerated understanding and sympathy of a crush aborning. Beth wanted to grab her hands and say, “No, don’t fall for me, Franny, don’t even like me. I’ll hurt you. I hurt anybody, everybody, who gets in my way, anybody who tries to stop me from going—” From going where? She didn’t know.

  She spent a couple of days with Franny and she kept on drinking and crying and trying to explain all the things she couldn’t understand about herself. And Franny, a good-natured girl with a shock of innocent blonde hair and a smile reminiscent of Jean Purvis’s, listened in passionate silence, her eyes riveted on Beth. Her heroine worship upset Beth, who didn’t want it and couldn’t return it and so responded to it with a twinge of guilt. She asked Franny about Nina but Franny only shrugged and stuck her tongue out, giving Beth to understand that that affair was dead.

  Beth finally escaped, leaving during the day when Franny was at work. She couldn’t face her hotel room. Her clothes were getting raggedy and quite plainly dirty, and still she couldn’t return. Not yet. Tomorrow, maybe. Tomorrow she would go back, set her affairs in order, clean herself up, contact her family and confess what they already knew in a pitiful effort to salvage her self-respect. She would collect her small courage and get it over with.

  Tomorrow, that is. Not today.

  She went drinking again. Somewhere along the way she saw Nina. They were both quite drunk at the time and it was a curiously friendly meeting, though brief. Nina sat down, putting an arm around Beth’s waist, and said, “Guess who’s gay?” And she began to call out names like a drill sergeant, names of movie stars, names of Broadway luminaries, names of writers, names of generals, names of celebrated female social workers and adventurers and courtesans.

  “All gay,” she said, pausing for breath, while Beth listened in a sort of mesmerized silence, wondering what possessed Nina to rattle these names off in her face, both interested and ashamed of her interest.

  “If they’re all gay, what’re you worried about?” Nina said. Beth said nothing and Nina went on, “Did I ever tell you you listen beautifully? You make a beautiful listener, Beth. That’s what you ought to do. Just go out and listen. To hell with sex. Forget about it. Just sit around and listen, honey, you do it so well. It’s a shame you’re such an independent bitch.” She kissed her, lightly and briefly, and Beth remembered with a drunken ache why she had been so fascinated with the girl in the first place.

  It was the only encounter she recalled over a period of several days. The next time she woke up she was sick. Really rotten from top to bottom and too trembly to make it out of bed. She didn’t know where she was and she didn’t care. There was a period, after her first wakening, of four or five hours when she slept again, fitfully and in spite of rhythmic pains in her head.

  At the second wakening she got her bearings. She was in a small, gently worn but comfortable bedroom on a familiar bed. Lifting her unwieldy head cautiously, she looked around. And then she sat up and surprise eased her throbbing pain for a moment. She was in Beebo’s apartment.

  Very slowly, gingerly, she lifted the covers and got up, stumbled into the bathroom which opened directly off the bedroom, and took a shower. She stood in it for fifteen minutes, just letting the water rain on her, warm and soothing. At first she thought she would never feel clean again. At least not inside. But the shower relaxed her, cleared her head a little.

  She was startled to hear the bathroom door open and Beebo step in. Beth looked at her from around the shower curtain, inexplicably frightened of her. Just a little, but still frightened.

  “You aren’t drowning are you?” Beebo said with a smile. “You’ve been in there a while.”

  “No.” Beth turned the water off and then stood uncertainly behind the frail shelter of the curtain while Beebo faced her, arms folded over her chest, smiling

  “Towel?” she said at last, handing one over leisurely.

  “Thanks.” Beth grabbed it and dried herself behind the curtain. “Where did you—find me?” she asked diffidently.

  “I doubt if you’ve ever heard of the place,” Beebo said. “And you probably wouldn’t recognize it again if they threw it at you.”

  “Just the same, I’d like to know,” she said.

  “It’s called The Gorgon’s Head,” Beebo said.

  “God.” Beth made a face, stepping carefully out of the tub. One foot slid a little and Beebo caught her, steadying her, and helped her out the rest of the way. The towel had come loose and Beebo handed it back to her before Beth even realized that a long sweet curve of flesh was open to view. She snatched the towel gratefully from Beebo with a sudden shyness, and irritation and pleasure were scrambled up inside her, momentarily aggravating her headache.

  “Here,” Beebo said, opening the medicine chest over the washbowl. She took a couple of pills resembling aspirin from an unmarked plastic drugstore container and handed them to Beth, along with a glass of water.

  “What are they?” Beth said, looking at them as if they were capsules of arsenic.

  “What the hell do you care? You couldn’t feel any worse, could you?” Beebo grinned.

  Beth took them, and Beebo said when she saw them disappear, “They’re hangover pills. Aspirin, codeine, caffeine, and God knows what else. Should bring you back to life.” She stepped out of the way when Beth moved toward the bathroom door, letting her find the way back into the bedroom.

  “Beebo, I—would you mind telling me where my clothes are?” Beth faltered.

  “I was just ironing them. Everything but the undies, and they don’t show,” Beebo said. She pulled Beth’s things from a drawer in her dresser. “Never iron what doesn’t show,” she said, holding them out. “Life’s too damn short.”

  Beth took them, gazing at her. “You mean you cleaned them up? You washed them all out? All my clothes?”

  “Didn’t take much figuring to see they were dirty,” Beebo said. “How long do you ordinarily wear a thing before you wash it?” She was smiling, a warm, even an
d compelling smile of amusement that both pleased and disconcerted Beth.

  “I—I haven’t been back to my room for a few days,” Beth admitted, ashamed and exasperated to feel her face color.

  “I would have guessed as much,” Beebo said, sitting down on her bed and crossing her long legs at the ankles. “Only, I didn’t have to guess. You told me.”

  “I told you? When? Last night when I was drunk?”

  “Last night and the night before that. I didn’t realize how far gone you were, baby, or I’d have rescued you sooner. My friendly enemy, Nina Spicer, called me finally. Said she’d have taken you home with her but she already had company, and she thought somebody’d better get you out of sight before the cops got interested.”

  Beth, struggling to get into her brassiere without exposing any of herself to those sharp and interested eyes of Beebo’s, said mournfully, “The cops already know.”

  “Know what?” Beebo exclaimed, suddenly concerned. “The bastards,” she added under her breath.

  “There’s been one following me for days. Weeks, I mean. God, months, for all I know.” She lost her towel suddenly and pulled the panties up the rest of the way with a movement that betrayed her self-consciousness.

  “Do you mean a cop or a lousy detective?” Beebo said. “There’s a difference.”

  “Is there? Which is best? Or worst?” Beth said, standing on the towel and wiggling into her brassiere.

  Beebo watched her, but not critically, not suggestively. “Depends,” she said laconically. “Have you done anything wicked lately?”

  Beth pulled her slip over her head before answering, as if the extra covering might increase her dignity a little. Then she sat down at the foot of the bed, turned half away from Beebo, wondering what to tell her, whether to tell her anything. It would feel so good, it would help so much, the way it had helped to spill some of it to Nina before. But how far, how much, could she trust this strange man-nish woman who had taken her in and out of harm’s way?

  “Afraid to tell me?” Beebo said. “You don’t have to. But if it’s bad, maybe I can help. I’ve been in every conceivable scrape in my time, baby. I know the ropes.”

  Beth lowered her head. “I—I ran away,” she said, her voice only slightly above a whisper.

  “That’s nothing new.”

  “From my husband. I’m not divorced, Beebo. I just ducked out.”

  “Well, I never had a husband, thank God, but I’ve done some running away.”

  Beth turned her face to Beebo’s and searched her for hidden laughter, for the sort of veiled scorn Nina showed her, for the hint of future betrayal. But Beebo’s face was frank and open and Beth found, being so near her again, so close to that face, that she liked it inordinately. There was wisdom in it and the trace of pain lived through and learned from, and a very special personal beauty that almost no one else would have called by that gentle name.

  “I ran away and left Charlie. And my children,” she said. “I have two, a boy and a girl. I abandoned them, Beebo. There was no excuse for it, no warning, no preparation for the kids. They just woke up the next morning and I was gone. I had no right to do it. I had no right to have children. Oh, God…” She stopped a minute to steady her voice. “If I’d only known years ago, if I’d only realized….”

  They simply gazed at each other for a moment and then, as naturally as a mother and child coming together, they embraced. Beebo took Beth in her arms and comforted her and let her cry. She never asked her if she loved her children. She knew.

  “I failed them,” Beth sobbed. “They were so young, just five and six, and they needed me so. But I was beastly to them; I hurt them. It was worse being there with them—worse for them, I mean.”

  “Worse for you, too, baby,” Beebo told her gently. “Don’t lie to yourself.”

  “And now Charlie, or Uncle John, or somebody, has a goddamn detective following me around New York. He must know everything, he must have seen everything.”

  “Well, he can’t see this,” Beebo reassured her, and Beth felt Beebo’s lips against her forehead. It sent a curious thrill through her that pierced even her melancholy and made her cling the tighter. “How do you know he’s found you yet?” Beebo said.

  “Because I know who he is. I didn’t realize it; I just thought he was somebody from the Village at first, but I’ve seen him uptown too and I swear it’s the same guy. A dumpy little guy with bags under his eyes and a wrinkled suit. He looks tired all the time. And he’s bald. I’m sure he’s the one. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, he’s all over the damn place, everywhere I go. He’s probably downstairs right now, picking his nails and waiting for me to leave.”

  “I’ll break his head,” Beebo murmured.

  “And now Charlie’s in Chicago and he’ll probably come to New York and give me hell. And my family will disown me. Charlie at least had some idea of why I left him. He knew about Laura. We were all in school together nine years ago. I was in love with both of them at the same time. But Uncle John! And Aunt Elsa! They’ll never speak to me again.” Her voice cracked under the load of emotion it carried.

  “And the kids?”

  “Oh, the kids,” she wept. “They’d be better off if they’d never been born. I guess Charlie will keep it from them, if it only doesn’t get out back there and ruin their lives.”

  Beebo held her and comforted her for a long time, her arms warm and strong and profoundly welcome to Beth. She didn’t laugh like Nina, she didn’t shriek hysterically like Vega, she didn’t analyze, with devastating truth and painful love, like Laura. She said nothing, she judged nothing. But, oh, how good she felt, how sure and how reassuring.

  “Beebo,” Beth whispered after a while, the urge for catharsis still in her. “Did you ever fall for a woman, a very lovely desirable woman, and then discover that she wasn’t at all what she’d made you think she was? Maybe she was sick, or deformed, or something. Something awful that shocked you badly and sort of—knocked the passion out of you. And you tried to go on like before until the whole thing made you sick and she got desperately jealous and finally you just ran away, without even saying goodbye, just to get rid of her?”

  “Sounds like the story of my life,” Beebo said.

  “Really?” Beth twisted in her arms, half sitting up to look at her. “Just like that?”

  “Not just like that. But I’ve done some rotten things, baby. I’ve treated some girls like dirt. I could have been great friends with them, but I couldn’t be a lover. You can choose your friends but not your lovers. They just happen to you.”

  “Did Laura just happen to you?” Beth asked.

  Beebo smiled privately at the past. She released Beth and got up to light a cigarette, offering one to Beth from the pack. Beth took it. “I guess she did,” Beebo said, lighting them both. “She was so different from the others—to me, at least—that it’s hard to think of it happening the way any other affair happens. But I guess it did.”

  “Beebo, do you think Laura was right about me?” Beth asked anxiously. “Do you think I’m just running away, looking for romance and all that?”

  “I don’t know, baby. I don’t know you that well.”

  “Laura says I only want what I can’t have. Once I’ve got it I don’t want it. And Charlie thinks so, too.”

  Beebo grinned and scratched an ear. “They should get a license and set up practice,” she said. “Laura always did like to figure people out. Not maliciously, though, not for fun, like Nina. Just interested in people.”

  “Is she right? Am I just chasing rainbows because they can’t be had?”

  “I don’t know, Beth. I’d guess you just want to belong somewhere. Most of us do. When you find out where you belong the pieces seem to fall into place by themselves. The puzzle works itself out.”

  There was silence for a few minutes while they smoked and thought and Beth felt a sort of calm, a near peace, that came close to being what she had sought so long and unsuccessfully. She didn’t want to move, to
change things or spoil the mood.

  But Beebo said, “You’d better get back. I called the hotel, they were on the verge of closing you out. You’ve been gone six days.”

  “Six days!” Beth whispered, appalled. “Six?”

  “That’s what they told me,” Beebo said. “Have you ever done that before?”

  Beth shook her head. She dressed, putting on her freshly ironed clothes and eating some breakfast with Beebo. “What’ll I do if that miserable detective is out there?” she said when she was ready to leave.

  “What can you do?” Beebo said. “It’s too late now. Just get a cab and go back to the hotel. And don’t flirt with any women.”

  Beth gave her a hesitant smile. “Okay,” she said. And still she stood in the door as though reluctant to leave, even a little bit scared.

  “What’s the matter?” Beebo said, running a finger softly over Beth’s cheek. “Got you down, sweetheart?”

  “I don’t know,” Beth said.

  “There isn’t anybody waiting for you, is there? I mean, besides the detective?”

  “No. Unless—unless Charlie has gotten here already. Or my uncle.”

  “Do you want me to go back with you?” Beebo asked.

  Beth considered. What would it be like to walk into her room with Beebo and find Charlie there? He would decide at once that this was her new lover, that Beebo was what she had traveled across the continent to find, and no amount of talking would argue him out of it. But did it matter anymore? For she felt sure now that no matter what he said to her she couldn’t go back to him. She had burned that bridge behind her. Even if he wanted her she had gone too far. She had deserted her children, and when a woman has done that there is no atoning, no going back, no starting over. It’s final.

  “Would you, Beebo? You don’t need to stay, just drive over with me. I’d feel better.”

  “What if he’s there?” Beebo said.

  “I’ve made my choice,” Beth said.

  “Okay, baby.” Beebo picked up another pack of cigarettes from a table by her sofa and followed Beth out the door, pulling it to and locking it behind her.