by Ann Bannon
It was Beebo. “I meant to call earlier,” she said. “I know it’s late.” Beth looked at her watch. It was past two. “I got stuck at a party, baby, you know how it is. Am I forgiven?”
“Of course,” Beth said. God, what can I say, how can I warn her? She looked slyly at Vega, but the look on Vega’s face told her the gun would speak instantly if Beth spoke too much.
“Well, that was easy,” Beebo laughed. How warm her voice was! Close and relaxed. Beth yearned for her. “I expected to get a lecture. Or hurt feelings at the very least. How about coming down for dinner tomorrow? We could take in a movie or something.”
“Tomorrow? I don’t think I’ll be able to,” Beth said, putting all her hope into the double entendre, but if it was innocent enough to get past Vega it was obviously too vague to alarm Beebo.
“Okay, the day after,” Beebo said, unperturbed.
“I don’t think I’m going to be around,” Beth said and Vega sat up in her seat and aimed the gun at her and Beth nearly fainted with fear. She would have laughed at their histrionics if she had seen them in a movie, but this was actually happening and just the terror of it nearly squeezed the life out of her.
“You’re not going out of town, are you?” Beebo said.
“No.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“You are mad at me,” Beebo said.
“No! No, I swear!” Beth protested with such vehemence that Vega motioned her to hang up and she did, abruptly, without so much as a goodbye. She hoped her strangeness on the phone, if nothing else, would alert Beebo somehow. If only Beebo didn’t suppose she’d been drinking and was acting silly. And she experienced a flash of truly passionate yearning for Beebo, her physical presence, the strength and safety of her arms.
The hours went past with ponderous slowness and Beth tried to value them, to treasure each moment that she was still alive. And yet each moment struck such fear into her that she found herself crawling with it.
Every ten or fifteen minutes she would say Vega’s name, or ask her to leave, or offer her a cigarette. It didn’t matter that her words were useless. It mattered that she was still able to speak and understand herself. Every leaden moment made life dearer to her. Her thoughts skipped sporadically from Laura to Nina to Beebo, to the others she had met in the swift passage through the enormous city. They ranged over her college days, over the exotic greenery of California and the face Charlie showed her when she left him, standing alone at the end of the drive. And the Scootch, and Skipper with a skinned knee. And her aunt and uncle. And Vega. Vega herself, chic and smooth and so desirable when Beth first knew her. And in between the fragmented pictures of her past, the people she knew, came moments when her heart froze and her mouth went desert dry.
She was still lying on the bed in a bath of sweat and anguish when she heard Vega rise at last. The first tired light of dawn was showing in the windows. The rain had stopped. Beth noted this with surprise, for she had not heard it steal off. She stiffened all over, seeing Vega approach her.
Vega turned off the bedside lamp that had shown them to each other throughout the dark hours and they appeared to each other then as silvery shadows.
“No, Vega, no, Vega, no-no-no-no-no,” Beth said in a sort of singsong, nearly hypnotized with fear.
“I want to know how you’ll take it.”
“You’ll wake everyone up. They’ll catch you.”
“I want it that way.”
They gazed at each other. Communication was no longer possible between them and Beth finally shut her eyes, unable to look at the gun any longer. She wept, “I want to live. That’s all I want in the world. Just give me that and I can work out the rest.”
“I wonder,” Vega said. “I’d like to see you try.”
After what seemed an age to her warped sense of time, Beth reopened her eyes. Vega stood stock still where she was, at the side of the bed. The light from the windows was brightening around her.
“Have you suffered tonight, Beth?” she asked.
“Horribly.” Beth choked a little trying to answer.
“Will you ever regret what you did?”
“I do, I have, since the day it was done.”
“Did you ever love me, I wonder?” But she held up her hand to Beth and said, “Don’t answer, I don’t want any more lies from you.”
There was another dreadful silence and now the minutes were flying, the sun was coming up with awful haste, and Beth’s heart was in her throat.
Vega lifted the gun, and the power of speech failed Beth. Nothing was real but the thunder of her pulse in her ears and the stout hard barrel two feet from her.
Vega lifted the gun higher. “I do this for you, Beth,” she said. “All for you.”
Then she shot herself, very suddenly and awkwardly, in the right temple, grimacing like a child expecting a tanning. Her features collapsed and her body relaxed onto the floor before Beth’s eyes.
Chapter Twenty
IN THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWED BETH LAY WHERE SHE WAS, nailed to the bed. She had neither the courage nor the physical strength nor the desire to sit up and look at Vega. What happened afterward remained forever in her memory as a weird and warped nightmare.
Moments later an elevator boy and two maids rushed into the room, with a couple of guests following them, and found the two women—one dead, the other in a state of near-shock. At first glimpse they took Beth for dead too, and one of the maids gave a little scream when she stirred.
“This one’s alive!” she cried.
They helped her to sit up and besieged her with questions, and though she heard them and understood them she was unable to answer coherently. She began to giggle morbidly when one of the guests referred to Vega as “the poor stiff” and her awful uncontrollable choking laughter struck them all aghast. It changed, as suddenly as it had started, into sobs. Someone forced her back down on the bed and put a cold cloth on her head and she heard a coarse hearty female voice somewhere in the room remark, “Don’t know why we’re taking such fine care of her. She probably did it!”
Very shortly the room was crowded and everyone in the crowd was firing questions at Beth, who had not even the small comfort of her clothes in which to face them. No one touched the body. It was grotesquely dead.
There was much murmurous comment about the arrival of the police, mingled with pleas from hotel officials for clearing the room. Beth struggled to her feet, climbing off the bed on the side opposite that where Vega lay. She collected her clothes from the chair where she had thrown them the night before and went into the bathroom. They made way for her as if none of them wanted to touch her, though they continued to ask her, “Why’d you do it, sister?” “Hey, you did it, didn’t you?” “Look at her face. You can tell she did it.”
In the bathroom she was momentarily alone, and desperately sick for the first few minutes. She wept sobs that were torn from the depths of her. She mourned Vega. Vega had anticipated her curses, her fury, her despair, everything but her pity. And yet pity was all Beth had to give, all she could feel.
When she emerged, washed and dressed, the police were there. Methodically and quickly they emptied the room. Notes were made on the disposition of the body and it was photographed from several sides. The gun had been tenderly separated from Vega’s index finger which had curled around the trigger guard, and rested in a handkerchief on the bed table.
Beth looked high and haughty into the face of the Law. She was not able to look down at the floor. They led her to a chair—the one where Vega had sat all night—and asked her what happened. She was quaking with exhaustion but not with fear. It seemed she had felt all the fear she would ever feel for the rest of her life in the night just past. She answered them with the confidence of truth. She only hesitated once, and that was when a Lieutenant Scopa, who was doing most of the questioning, asked her why Vega would want to kill her.
“Well—she—she was a mental patient. She had gotten it into her head that I hurt her, that I hated
her. She thought I was responsible for all her troubles, and she wanted revenge. That’s all I can tell you.”
They held her for two days and she sat in a bare orderly cell with another, fortunately taciturn, woman, and cried most of the time, except when they were interrogating her. Then she made it a point of pride to maintain her composure. She was prepared to have them disbelieve her, finally. At first she thought they would let her go at once, just because she was truthful as far as she went with her story. When they continued to hold her she began to realize that they doubted her. They didn’t understand, they wouldn’t accept her words. The thing looked odd to them. She expected to be told outright that she shot Vega in the head and then wiped the gun clean and put it in the hand of the corpse. They had even intimated this.
“We know she was a mental patient,” Lieutenant Scopa told her. “We’ve checked up on her. Now if you want to plead self-defense and tell us what really happened it’ll easier on you, Mrs. Ayers. Nobody’ll blame you for saving your own life. Vega had threatened other people with the same gun.”
“What?” Beth cried, startled.
“A couple of people,” he said briefly. “We know it was her gun. It’s registered in her name in South Pasadena. Of course, she didn’t shoot the other people. But she might have scared you into thinking she would shoot you. If I had been you and I had a chance to grab that thing, I would have done it myself.”
“If I’d had a chance to grab it, Lieutenant, don’t you think I would have done something with it, too? I could have scared her at least. But I couldn’t have killed her. It’s true, she did threaten my life, and I had to wait there all night thinking she was going to kill me—”
“Without doing anything about it?”
“Doing what?” Beth said. “Every time I moved she aimed that damned gun at me and told me to stay still.”
“Okay, okay,” he said.
“And finally, at dawn, she got up and came to the bed and told me what she did she was doing ‘all for me.’ And I waited to die. But she shot herself instead.” She could never talk about it without breaking up at that point and they had to hold off the questions for a while to let her recover herself.
They allowed her one phone call when they took her in and she made it to Beebo. She didn’t think about this or weigh the sense of it. She simply called. Beebo would understand and she’d do the right things. Beth didn’t feel that way about anybody else.
“You’ve been in every scrape there is,” she said brokenly into the receiver. “Help me out of this, Beebo.”
“God, Beth. I—I couldn’t believe it when I read—” Beebo began, but Beth interrupted her.
“Call my uncle in Chicago,” she said and gave her the number. “He’ll get me a lawyer. And, Beebo, I didn’t do it.”
“I know, baby, I believe you. Who was she?”
“She was the one I ran off and left.”
“Jesus,” Beebo breathed. “She took it pretty hard, didn’t she?”
“Will you help me?” Beth said.
“I’ll do anything, everything I can,” Beebo said. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, if you’re innocent you’ll get off.”
“I’m not so sure. Nobody saw it. I can’t prove a damn thing.”
“Worrying won’t change things, Beth,” Beebo said, and Beth hung up somewhat reassured.
But after two nights in a jail cell she was almost unstrung with anxiety, nerves, even the fear she thought had been exhausted in her. The truth, unsubstantiated, simply wasn’t enough. They were going to hold her. They thought she did it, and it was her word against the word of a dead woman. She wondered miserably what Cleve and Mrs. Purvis thought of her now, who had liked her so well in the past. Cleve was probably dead drunk and cursing the both of them, and Mrs. Purvis, majestic in her infirmities, was probably dying quietly of the knowledge that her daughter was a Lesbian.
Abruptly, the morning after the second night in jail, they released her. A matron came and opened her door and said, “You’re free, Mrs. Ayers.”
Beth sat up on her cot, struck dumb for a moment with surprise. Her cell mate grunted at her, gave her one envious glance, and went back to sleep.
“On bail?” Beth asked at last through a dry throat, staring incredulously at the woman. “Do I have a lawyer? My uncle—”
“No bail. You’re free. No strings attached. Except we’d like you to stay in town until the last details of the case are straightened out.”
“How did it happen? Why?” she cried, collecting her things with hasty hands, almost afraid to believe in her luck.
“They’ll explain it to you up front,” the woman told her and Beth followed her down the clanging corridor and out the barred doors to the elevator. The matron took her to an office on the first floor and returned her coat and purse. They made her sign some release papers and then they led her into a waiting room.
Charlie stood up to greet her.
Beth stopped in her tracks, speechless at the sight of him. His presence struck her in the heart like a physical blow.
“Hello, Beth,” he said softly, his face heavy and serious.
“Charlie,” she whispered. And then she went to him put her arms around him and cried. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said, “Least of all here.”
“I wouldn’t desert you, Beth,” he said, holding her. “You’re still my wife. I love you.” It was awkward but determined, stubborn and proud and hopeless.
“Oh, no, please don’t say it,” she pleaded. “Please. I can’t take it.” After all she had been through to escape him she was wary even of the words that might entangle her again. She was glad, grateful, infinitely relieved to see him there. But she was not in love with him and her gratitude did not extend to a reconciliation.
“The children?” she asked before he let her go, and he nodded.
“Fine. Both fine. But they miss you.” She started to ask him more but he interrupted, “I’ve got a room at the Blackwell. Let’s get out of here, we can’t talk here.”
Beth clutched his sleeve. “Am I free?” she begged. “Am I really free? Did she tell me the truth?”
“Yes,” he said.
“But how—”
“Come on, I’ll explain.”
He hailed a cab outside and as soon as they were in it Beth asked, “Are Uncle John and Aunt Elsa here?”
“No,” he said. “They were going to come but I talked them out of it. There wasn’t any need, and it would only have been painful.”
“It must have been a terrible shock for them.”
“Yes. It was pretty rough.”
They sat side by side, Charlie in his lightweight blue summer suit, solemn and handsome and preoccupied, Beth in her rumpled clothes, the same she had worn on her Village spree. They seemed by now to be the only clothes she had ever worn. She sensed that be wanted to take her hand, even to kiss her, but also that he had a stern lecture saved up, a couple of months worth of grievances and loneliness and resentment to get off his chest. But still, he was not harsh with her or short-tempered, and she knew without his having to say it that he wanted her back. That he could, after what had just happened, warmed her heart and touched her, even though she understood that he was using her troubles to suit his own ends. He was taking advantage of her fear and confusion, using them as a lever to prod her out of New York. But she could not go back and start over with him, however she might have botched her efforts to find a new life here. She dreaded hurting him with her decision.
“My things,” she said. “They’re all at the Beaton.”
“They were. I picked them up,” he said.
“There wasn’t much.”
“No.”
Between their short exchanges hung a thousand things unsaid, a thousand things not for the ears of cabbies, things better left unsaid even to each other. But they would say them anyway, Beth thought with a shudder.
Chapter Twenty-one
HE CLOSED THE DOOR OF THE ROOM HE HAD TAKEN IN THE Bl
ackwell and turned to face her. Beth couldn’t look at him. She sat down on the bed—a spacious double bed that unnerved her slightly—and kicked off her shoes. Slowly she glanced up at him.
“I’ll order us a drink if you like,” he said.
“I’d love one,” she said thankfully, and he called room service and ordered two vodka collinses. Beth was burning to know by what miracle she had been released, but she didn’t want to drag it out of him. Let him tell her in his own good time. He understood how anxious she was. She supposed he was waiting for the drinks to come and lighten the atmosphere a little.
“I’m going to take a bath and change my clothes,” she said.
“Good idea.” He showed her where he had put her things and she took a change of underwear and a dressing gown into the bathroom with her and bathed herself, weeping softly with relief in her first privacy in forty-eight hours. Warm water, a leisurely bath, a refreshing drink on the way—all the foolish little symbols of a serious and necessary condition to her life: Freedom.
Only Charlie disturbed her. She had been so glad to see him that she had run to his arms and wept. And now she sat in her tub suddenly full of misgivings about him again. She knew enough now to know she loved him, in a way. Only it was the wrong way; it was not sufficient for him or for a marriage. It was enough to make her want him forever as a friend, too little to make her want him back as a lover. If only he could understand that. If only he could accept it. She tried, while she bathed, to clear her mind and think of a way to tell him her feelings which would not offend him.
When she came out, clean and fresh and powdered, the drinks had arrived. He lighted a cigarette for her and handed her a glass.
“How did it happen?” she said, sitting down again on the bed. She couldn’t hold it back any longer. She wondered why he was so reluctant to get started with it. The whole thing seemed slightly fantastic. A little less than an hour ago she had been a prisoner in jail, a murder suspect; now she was free.