The Beebo Brinker Omnibus

by Ann Bannon

  Marie greeted Beebo with a big smile, revealing the shadow of the pretty face concealed beneath the fat.

  “Your accent is French, isn’t it?” Beebo said.

  “You got it,” Marie beamed. “Smart girl.” She moved about the kitchen while they got acquainted, eating, working, and talking incessantly. Pete slouched against the kitchen door chewing a wooden matchstick and watching Beebo.

  Marie worked hard and she ate hard and she was going all to hips. But she was friendly and cheerful, and Beebo liked her.

  “That’s a good boy, that Jack,” Marie said. “He comes in here two, three times a week, buys my food. Tells his friends, ‘Eat Pasquini’s stuff,’ and by God, they eat.”

  “He gave me some last night,” Beebo said. “It’s good.”

  “You bet.” Marie stirred her sauce and glanced at Beebo. “You live with him now?”

  “Well—temporarily,” Beebo said, taken aback both by the question and by Pete’s silent laughter.

  “About time he got a girl,” Marie said briskly. “Even one in pants.” And she glanced humorously at Beebo’s tan chinos.

  Beebo colored up. “Well, it’s not quite like that,” she protested.

  “Oh, don’t tell me,” Marie said, holding up two spattered hands. “A boy and a girl…well…!” and she gave a Gallic chuckle.

  “What you want to do, embarrass the kid?” Pete demanded suddenly with mock anger. “She don’t sleep with no lousy fag.”

  “Shut that big mouth, Pete,” Marie said sharply, without bothering to look at him. “She don’t want to hear dirty talk, neither.”

  Beebo was burning to ask what a fag was, but she didn’t dare. She could hear in her imagination the cackling it would provoke from Pete.

  Marie stirred in silence for a moment. “I never saw a boy put up with so much,” she said finally. “He got people in and out, in and out, every damn day, eating him out of house and home.” Beebo squirmed guiltily. “His only trouble, he got too big a heart. Don’t never take advantage of him like the others, Beebo.”

  “What others?”

  “You don’t know?” Marie looked at her, puzzled.

  “Well, I’ve only known Jack a little while. I mean—”

  “Oh.” Marie nodded sagely. “Well, he got too many fair-weather friends. Know they can have whatever he got they want. So they take. And he lets them. Can’t stand to see people go without. He’s a good boy. Too good.”

  “He ain’t all that good, Marie,” Pete drawled, grinning at Beebo. “You just like him because he comes in here and gives you that swishy talk about what a good-looking dame you are. All that proves is, he got bad eyes. Now, Beebo here might have trouble with him, you never know. If I was her, I wouldn’t climb in his bed.”

  “Pete, you got a mind even dirtier than your mouth,” Marie said. “Get out of my kitchen, I don’t want the food dirtied up too. Out, salaud!”

  Beebo was amused by her accent, comically mismated with the ungrammatical English she had learned from Pete.

  Marie threw a potlid at her husband. “See?” Pete shrugged at Beebo, catching the lid. “I try to say a few words and what do I get? Pots and pans. And she wonders why I go out at night.”

  “Out!” Marie stamped her foot and he left them, disappearing bizarrely like a wraith into the gloom of the darkened store. After nearly a full minute had elapsed Beebo became aware with a silent start that the fingers of his left hand were curled around the door frame: five orphaned earthworms searching for the dirt.

  Beebo stared at them with something very near loathing. She wondered if she was supposed to see them, and if he thought they would please her for some obscure reason. Or was he hiding, thinking the fingers out of sight? No, he knew damn well she could see them, and would. They were his gesture of invitation, unheard and unseen by his wife.

  Beebo began to sweat with alarm and revulsion. She chatted determinedly with Marie for almost fifteen minutes before those five pale fingers retreated from their post. Maybe it was supposed to be a gag, Beebo told herself. She didn’t want to mention it to Marie. It would make her look a fool, perhaps even hysterical, if the whole thing was only a joke.

  That’s what it is, Beebo told herself firmly. That’s what it has to be. She stood up and thanked Marie, accepting a bag of hot fresh-cooked chicken to take home for dinner, and walked through the front of the shop. She held herself together tightly, and if she had seen the least movement, heard the least whisper, she would have lashed out in abrupt terror. She had the uncanny feeling that Pete was somewhere waiting with those loathsome hands. But she couldn’t see him, she didn’t hear him, and she reached the door and the outside with a gasp of relief.

  The relief was so deep that it turned into a laugh, soothing her and making her a little ashamed of herself. Away from Pete she could scold herself for her aversion to him. Maybe it wasn’t fair. He was just a guy, not a ghost, not a snake. He was spooky, but Marie seemed as healthy and normal as her good foods.

  Beebo was disturbed by the strangeness of Pete’s manner, but she could never believe that any man would truly desire her, no matter how creepy he was. Not even a nut like Pete Pasquini. For his own reasons he was making a study of her, but beyond that he would never go. She began to feel safe and comfortable again as she rounded the corner to Jack’s street. She felt unassailable in the fortress of her flat-chested, muscular young body. It was not the stuff that male dreams are made of.

  As Jack explained to her later, it was himself and others like him who had talked the Pasquinis’ shop into a financial success. Rather abruptly, Pete and Marie found themselves making money, and Pete, after an adolescence full of alley wars and hock-shop heists, found himself taking a belated interest in the dough: not the flour kind, the folding kind.

  He had married Marie overseas when he was in the service and brought her back to his inheritance: the foundering grocery shop his father had left him. Undismayed, Marie set out to bear his kids and learn his mother’s recipes. By a combination of luck, sense, and skill, Marie pulled them out of the dumps.

  It was still nominally Pete’s business, yet he did little more than run his wife’s errands and pocket all the money Marie would let him have. He always demanded more, but he respected her French thrift. The money she refused to give him went back into the business and made it possible for him to insist on more gradually as time went on.

  This arrangement galled Pete, but he preferred it to poverty. Still, he had to get even with her. So he did it by openly sniffing up skirts around Greenwich Village. He would even flaunt a girl at Marie now and then and she, stung, would call him half a man, who played with other girls because he didn’t have what it took to keep one good woman satisfied. Or else she ignored him entirely, which enraged him.

  It was not a quiet cozy family. Pete did not know or like his children very well. He got on famously with his mother, but his mother and his wife were lifelong enemies. Beebo began to learn about them as she worked near them in the shop.

  Pete watched Beebo move around during the first week, making her feel clumsy as a young colt; getting in her way deliberately (she was sure) to make her dodge around him; turning up in out-of-the-way corners where she didn’t expect to see him. Her antipathy to him was lively, but fortunately she didn’t see much of him. Filling orders took less time than delivering them and she was out of the shop most of the day. In the truck she was disposed to be pleased with her job. She liked to drive. She liked to talk to people, and the customers were friendly. She even liked the chore of carrying the heavy cartons up and down all day. It pleased her to feel strong, equal to the task.

  A week ago all her hopes had been crashing around her. She had retreated in disgrace from a cruel predicament. Then she found Jack Mann, a friend; a job; and some self-respect, one right after the other. She was grateful, full of the resilient optimism of youth.

  Without any specific words on the subject, Beebo and Jack came to an understanding that she would live with h
im for a while, till she could afford a place for herself. “You’ll be better off with a roommate,” Jack advised her casually. “I’ll have to introduce you to some of my upper-class female friends.”

  “Sure,” she grinned. “‘Pamela, this is my lower-class female friend, Beebo Brinker.’ And she’ll say, ‘Dahling, you’re absolutely crashing, but I can’t possibly share my apartment with those pants.’” She made Jack laugh at her. “Besides, Jackson,” Beebo added rather shyly, “I’ve already got a roommate. He only has one fault—he won’t let me pay my half of the rent.”

  “I like to pay bills,” Jack said. “Gives me a sense of power.”

  “Marie says you’ve got too big a heart,” Beebo told him. “And she’s right.”

  “Marie’s a good girl,” he said. “How are you getting along with Peter the Wolf?”

  “Fine, as long as he’s out of my sight.”

  Jack grinned. “You can handle him, honey. Just keep a can of corn beef in your pocket. If he tries to lift your wallet, clobber him.”

  “It’s not my wallet I’m worried about,” she said. “There’s nothing in it, anyway. It’s just that he’s always under my feet when he should be on the other side of the store.”

  “I suspect it’s for Marie’s benefit,” Jack said. “Every female who comes into the store gets the once-over from Pete—provided Marie is looking. And most of the time, she is. She likes to keep score, I guess.”

  “There was a girl today,” Beebo said. “She came in the shop about noon, when Marie was fixing lunch. I waited on her.” Her face became intent as she summoned the girl’s image in her mind’s eye.

  “What about her?” Jack said curiously.

  But Beebo, coming to herself at the sound of his voice, said, “Oh, nothing. But she was more Pete’s type…any man’s type.”

  “What was she like?”

  “She had long black hair,” Beebo said, as if it were very special. “People don’t let their hair grow like that any more. It was lovely. She let it hang free down her back. And her face…” She was gone again, seeing it in her imagination.

  “She must have been a looker,” Jack said, frustrated by the reticence between himself and Beebo. He knew what hundreds of questions she needed to ask, what a wealth of help she would be wanting soon. But she didn’t dare start asking and because she didn’t, Jack dared not force the answers on her yet.

  “She was absolutely gorgeous,” Beebo said with a certain wonderment and innocence that touched him. “I never saw such a girl in my life before.” There was a small silence. Beebo’s words hung in the air like a neon sign and reduced her abruptly to confusion. To cover up, she said, “She wasn’t a very nice girl, though. Not by your standards.”

  “My standards?”

  “She’s not afraid of boys,” Beebo grinned. “At least, she wasn’t afraid of Pete. But I think they knew each other from somewhere. He called her…Mona.” She spoke the name self-consciously. “It sounds old-fashioned, doesn’t it?”

  “I wonder if it’s Mona Petry,” Jack said. “She has black hair, but I didn’t think it was that long. Still, I haven’t seen her for a while.”

  “Who’s Mona Petry?” Beebo asked, her eyes intent on Jack.

  “Old flame of Pete’s,” Jack said. “She used to come into the store a lot three or four years ago. She and Pete got quite a charge out of putting poor Marie on. Mona isn’t the charitable type. She likes to land a man who belongs to some other woman—more to spite the other woman than because she wants the man. As soon as she won Pete, she dumped him like a sack of meal. For some reason, Pete never fought back. Makes me think she really meant something to him. God knows, none of the other broads do.”

  “Is she one of those man-hungry girls that can’t get enough?” Beebo said. “I forget what they’re called, but there’s a name for it.”

  “The name is nymphomaniac,” Jack said. “But Mona doesn’t love men. She just plays around with them. They’re good ego builders.” He lighted a cigarette, seeing, without seeming to, the concentration on Beebo’s face. The question was there on her tongue, in her mind, but she couldn’t get it out. If Mona doesn’t love men, she was thinking…then who?

  “There’s another word for Mona,” Jack said. Beebo tensed up. “Bitch.” He threw her a grin and made her laugh with nervous relief. “Actually, Mona loves girls,” Jack went on, speaking in a smooth casual flow, a conversational tone that bespoke no shock, no disapproval, nothing but ordinary interest. He deliberately looked at the front page of the evening paper as he spoke.

  Beebo answered huskily, “What do you mean? What girls?”

  “Lesbians,” he said. “Want to freshen this up for me, pal?” He handed her his highball glass. She took it with astonishment still plain on her face. When she returned from the kitchen with the new drink, she asked him, “Aren’t they sort of—immoral? I heard the word once before. I thought you weren’t supposed to say it.”

  At that, Jack looked up. “Lesbian? You mean you thought it was a dirty word?” he exclaimed, and laughed in spite of himself. Beebo was momentarily offended until he cleared his throat and said, “Forgive me, honey, but that’s the bloodiest nonsense I’ve heard in a long time. Whoever in the hell told you it was dirty?”

  “Doesn’t it mean loose women?” Beebo asked.

  He shook his head. “It means gay women,” he said. “It means homosexual women. It means women, Beebo, who love other women. The way heterosexual women love men.”

  His words put a focus on Beebo’s fascination. She stared at him from the sofa with her lips parted and her eyes fixed steadily on his. “You said Mona was a bitch,” she said finally, softly. “And then you said she was a Lesbian. Doesn’t that make her cheap? Q.E.D.?”

  “Some of the staunchest Puritan ladies I know are double-dyed bitches,” Jack said briskly. “And just because Mona is a bad apple doesn’t mean all the gay girls in the world are full of worms. Mona would be bitchy anyway, gay or straight.”

  “What’s ‘straight’?”

  “Heterosexual,” Jack said.

  “Where did you learn all those words?” Beebo said, bewildered.

  “I’m a native. I speak the lingo,” he said, but instead of catching his implication, she thought he meant only that he had lived in Greenwich Village so long he had picked it up, like everyone else.

  “Does it ever happen that a nice girl is a Lesbian?” she asked him shyly.

  “All the time,” he said, opening up the paper and gazing through the ball scores.

  “Did you ever meet any?”

  “I’ve met most of them,” he chuckled. “They’re just as friendly and pleasant as other girls. Why not?”

  “But can’t you tell by looking at them that they’re—” She rubbed a hand over her mouth as if to warn herself not to speak the word, and then said it anyway: “—Lesbian?”

  “You mean, do they all wear army boots and Levis?” Jack said with a smile. “Does Mona Petry look like a buck private?”

  Beebo shook her head. “That’s why it’s so hard to believe she’s what you say she is.”

  “Gay? Why hell, she’s slept with more girls than she has men. And let me tell you, that’s damn near enough girls to elect a lady president.”

  Beebo laughed with him, and yet she felt a strange obsession with the whole idea. She half resented Jack’s merriment on the subject, although she was relieved that he displayed no contempt for Lesbians as a group. Only for Mona Petry. She was surprised to find herself wanting to defend Mona, whom she knew so little. And yet she trusted Jack’s judgment. Still, what a pity to think a girl that pretty was that hard.

  Jack sipped his drink and picked up his cigarette, still with his eyes on the paper. “There are some nice little gay bars around the neighborhood,” he said. “We’ll have to take some of them in. Maybe this weekend, hm?” He didn’t look at her. His cigarette waggled between his lips as he talked.

  “Is it all right to go there?” Beebo asked. �
��Don’t the police make raids on those places?”

  “Now and then!” he conceded. “Of course, if you’d rather not…”

  “Oh, I’d like to go,” she said, so quickly that he smiled into the newsprint. “But aren’t they just for men—the gay bars?”

  “Men, girls, and everything in between,” he assured her.

  “Do you ever go there, Jack?”

  Again he was tempted to be honest with her, and still again he restrained himself. “I go when the mood is on me,” he said. Beebo became silent at once, as if she suspected she was trying to learn too much too fast. But she spent the remaining weekdays waiting impatiently for a tour of the bars with Jack.

  Jack took her to three or four of his favorite places, and to one strictly Lesbian bar where they admitted only the faces they recognized, through a window in the door. Beebo followed him around quietly, watching, listening, almost breathing in the atmosphere. She said little, and most of what she did say was interrogatory.

  Jack answered her calmly while he sipped one beer after another. He would order one for her and let her work at it, but he usually ended up finishing it himself. In every bar he was kept busy greeting people, trading jokes, laughing. Beebo trailed along in his wake, smiling and shaking hands with the strangers who were Jack’s friends, and promptly forgetting their names.

  But not their faces. Toward the end of the evening she began to feel that she had seen more faces in one night than she had seen in a lifetime in Juniper Hill. And these faces seemed different to her: rare and beautiful, sharers of a special knowledge. They had bright eyes and young smiles, no matter how old they were.

  “They make a big thing of keeping young down here,” Jack told her. “The men are worse than the girls. Nobody loves an old queen.”

  It was almost one in the morning when they left the last co-ed bar and Jack asked if she was game for one more. “This one is just for Lesbians,” he said.

  She nodded, and a few minutes later they were being admitted to a basement bar saturated with pink light, paneled with mirrors, and filled with girls. More girls, more sizes, types, and ages, than Beebo had ever seen collected together in one place. The place was called the Colophon and it was decorated with the emblems of various famous publishing houses.