by Ann Bannon
“You get the hell out of my truck or I’ll roll you flat!”
He chuckled again. “Okay,” he said. “I just got one piece of news for you, butch. Listen: 121 McDonald Street—Paula Ash. Tonight. For those as wants to locate Mona.” He pulled away from the truck, and Beebo backed out in a rumble of dust and gravel.
It was nearly midnight before Beebo could bring herself to the McDonald Street address. She had debated it tempestuously throughout the evening, but without confiding in Jack. She could have gone to Mona’s apartment instead, or called her and demanded an explanation. But something told her Pete Pasquini had an interesting motive for sending her here. She might get hurt; but she might also learn the truth, whatever that was, about Mona. So she took the chance.
She was in a don’t-give-a-damn mood, expecting to find Mona with a man in the apartment, rented under an assumed name; or Mona making love to Paula Ash, whoever the hell she was; or even—best joke of all—Mona waiting for her alone, while Pete peeked through the keyhole.
She stood at 121 McDonald Street in a light drizzle, partially sheltered by an inset doorway, her hands shoved into the sleeves of her windbreaker, and tried to make up her mind to call the jest.
At last the chill drove her into the foyer to look at mailboxes. There was a Paula Ash, all right. Apartment 103. Beebo took a deep breath and pushed the buzzer.
The answer came after so long a wait that Beebo was just leaving in disgust, and had to turn back quickly to open the inner door. She had scarcely entered the hall when a door opened ahead and a girl looked out.
“Yes?” she said. She appeared very sleepy, as if she had been in bed for many hours already, even though it was not quite midnight.
“May I come in?” Beebo said. She walked down the hall looking Miss Ash over candidly. If Mona were going to stand her up, and Pete play jokes on her, the least she could do was fall into the pit with as much bravado as possible—and perhaps a pretty girl in her arms.
“I don’t know,” the girl said doubtfully, opening her eyes very wide as if the stretch would keep the lids up a few minutes more. “Who are you?”
“I’m Beebo.” Beebo looked at her, standing about three feet away in the door, wondering if her name would register. The living room behind Paula looked inviting after the gray rain outside.
“Beebo Who?” The girl was beginning to wake up, staring at her visitor.
Beebo smiled. “Didn’t Mona tell you?”
The girl gasped and rubbed her eyes open earnestly. “Mona!” she said, her voice husky. “Did Mona send you here?”
“Not exactly,” Beebo said. “But I was made to think I’d find her here.” The girl was so distressed that Beebo began to think Paula was the victim of whatever joke was afoot, and not herself. She was moved to apologize. “I’m sorry, Miss Ash,” she said. “There must have been a mistake. I came expecting some sort of practical joke. I guess nobody let either one of us in on it.”
“Will you come in, please,” Paula Ash said unexpectedly. She was shy and looked at Beebo’s shoulder when she spoke.
“Thank you,” Beebo said, walking past her into the living room. “It’s pretty cold outside.” She took off her jacket and handed it to Paula, who hung it in her front closet.
“Will you have coffee?” Paula said.
“Thanks, that sounds good.” Beebo watched her curiously while the girl busied herself in a small doorless kitchen. She had a delicately pretty face, different from Mona’s slick good looks and more appealing to Beebo.
Paula ran an uneasy hand through her hair and bit her underlip as she stood by her stove, waiting for the water to boil. “Would you tell me,” she asked timidly, “just what Mona told you?”
“I haven’t seen Mona for a week,” Beebo said. “A mutual acquaintance told me she’d be here tonight.”
“Well, your mutual acquaintance has a queer sense of humor,” Paula said. “Mona and I were never good friends. And lately we’ve been pretty good enemies.”
“So that was it,” Beebo said. “That’s a hell of a note. I’m sorry, Miss Ash, I—”
“Paula, please. Oh, it wasn’t your fault,” Paula said. “Mona has done crazier things than meeting her new lovers in my living room. I’ve known her almost five years.” She came back with two cups of hot coffee. She still seemed half-conscious, and when she stumbled a bit, Beebo got up and rescued the coffee.
Paula made a hissing sound of pain, pulling air between her teeth and looking at her left thumb.
“Did you scald it? Here. Under the cold water, quick.” Beebo left the steaming cups on an end table and took Paula by the arm to the sink. She turned on the tap full force and held Paula’s burn under the healing stream. Paula tried to pull away after a few seconds but Beebo held her securely. “Give it a good minute,” she said.
And as they stood there, Beebo studied Paula at close range. She was a lovely-looking girl, even though she seemed non compos at the moment. “Are you sick, Paula?” Beebo asked kindly.
“No, no. Really. I’m just terribly tired. And then I took some sleeping pills. Probably too many. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“If you’re so tired, why do you take sleeping pills?” Beebo asked.
Paula’s dainty face contracted around a private pain. “The doctor gave them to me. It’s harder to sleep when you’re too tired than when you’re just tired.” She weaved a little, and Beebo put an arm around her.
“Are you supposed to take so many they send you into a coma?”
“No. But one pill doesn’t work. Three or four don’t work any more. I just keep swallowing them till I drop off.”
“That’s dangerous,” Beebo said. “One of these days you’ll drop too damn far.” She turned the water off and reached for a paper towel, blotting the injured hand gently. Suddenly, to her dismay, Paula pulled her hands away and hid her face in them to cry. Beebo watched, frustrated with the wish to touch and comfort her.
Paula’s sobs were short and hard, and she pulled herself together with a stout effort of will. All Beebo could see for a moment was the top of her head, covered with marvelous rich red hair. And, when she looked up, a trail of pale freckles across her cheeks and nose. Beebo handed her a tissue from her shirt pocket, and Paula blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
She was a fragile, very feminine and small girl, wearing a pair of outsized, plaid-print men’s pajamas.
Beebo took a bit of sleeve between her fingers with a smile. “You always wear these?” she asked.
“Only lately. They aren’t mine. A former roommate left them behind when she moved.”
“Oh,” Beebo said. “I didn’t think they were your type.”
“They’re not. They’re hers. And she’s gone, and this is all I have left of her.” Paula shook out her smoldering curls and cleared her throat. “I’m better now. Shall we have the coffee?” she said. It was obvious that she had humiliated herself with the unplanned personal admissions, and Beebo did her the courtesy of dropping the subject and joining her in the living room.
They drank the coffee in preoccupied silence a while. Beebo lighted a cigarette and offered it to Paula, who refused. Finally she said lightly, hoping to cheer Paula up, “Seems to me those pajamas are the answer to your insomnia.”
“What? How?” Paula looked at her as if suddenly remembering her presence in a room where Paula had thought herself alone with a ghost.
“Switch to nighties—your own—and get some rest,” Beebo said. “If I had to wear a plaid like that, I’d have nightmares all night.”
Paula smiled wanly. “I know,” she said. “They’re silly. I just needed somebody else to say it, I guess. It’s hard to break away from a person you’ve been close to. You hang on to the stupidest things.”
“Well, her old sleep gear won’t bring her any closer,” Beebo said. She pulled a sleeve out full length. “Did she play basketball?” Beebo said, and they both laughed.
“She wasn’t a shorty,” Paula admitted. Her
laughter made her wonderfully pretty. She stopped it suddenly to say, “That’s the first time I’ve laughed in a month.” She gazed at Beebo with grateful astonishment.
“Looks like I got here just in time,” Beebo said, not realizing till after she spoke what a hoary come-on that was. Paula’s pink blush clarified things for her.
“I suppose you want to be getting home,” Paula said shyly, rising from her chair. She was struck for the first time with Beebo’s size. Stretched across the sofa, with her long legs thrusting out from under the cocktail table, Beebo looked too big for a nine-by-twelve living room.
To her surprise, Beebo found she didn’t want to be getting home at all; not even to run interference between Jack and Pat. And thinking of Pat brought a flash of recognition to her mind. “You remind me of a friend,” she told Paula, sitting up to scrutinize her. “A boy named Pat. A lovable thing. Shy and just a little childish. In the nice way, I mean.”
“I remind you of a boy?” Paula stared.
“More of a child than a boy.”
Paula didn’t know quite how to take it. “In the nice way?”
“Yes. Trusting, affectionate. Still curious about people and life. It’s a very—endearing quality.”
“And you think I’m like that?” Paula asked.
“You obviously don’t,” Beebo chuckled.
“I’ve been told I’m nasty and spoiled and selfish…childish in the bad way.”
“Who told you that? Your friend with the plaid pajamas?”
“Yes.”
“If you were that way with her, she must have done something to deserve it. You look like a natural-born angel to me,” Beebo said, surprising them both with her frankness.
“That’s a very nice thing for a stranger to say,” Paula said. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Beebo said, blanketing her sudden confusion with an offhand nod.
There was a pensive pause while Beebo tried to remember the books she had read about Lesbian love. It wasn’t always a question of sweeping girls off their feet and carrying them away to bed, as Mona had made it seem at first. How did you approach a sensitive, well-bred girl like this one? Mow her down with kisses? Certainly not.
Beebo began to wonder how to make herself welcome for the night. It seemed far better than going back to Jack’s and stewing again until dawn about her future. She would be leaving Jack and Pat alone together all night for the first time, and yet it seemed less painful now than it had before. It would suffice Beebo if she and Paula did nothing but sit and talk all night.
“I suppose somebody’s waiting for you?” Paula said.
“Nobody.”
Paula frowned at her. “Your roommate?” she asked.
“My roommate is having an affair with a man,” Beebo said and shocked Paula, until Beebo smiled at her and made her think she was kidding.
“Well…Mona?” she asked.
“Mona could be on the moon for all I know. I thought I’d find her here.”
“And now you’re disappointed,” Paula said diffidently.
“Not at all. I’m relieved.”
Paula drained her coffee cup and put it down with a nervous clink. “It must be—awkward—if your roommate is really in love with somebody else,” she said, in a voice so soft it was its own apology for speaking.
“It is,” Beebo said. “I hate to go home. I’m too long to sleep on the damn sofa.”
“I’m afraid you’re too long for mine, too,” Paula said. There was a pause. “But I could sleep on it and you could take my bed, if you will.”
It was such a completely disarming—almost quaint—invitation that Beebo smiled at her, prickling with temptation. Paula’s bashfulness was enough to make Beebo self-assured.
“At least you’re not too long for the pajamas,” Paula said.
“I can’t put you out like that,” Beebo said.
Paula was flustered. She looked at her hands. “I don’t mind,” she said. “It’s long and I’m short. We’re used to each other.”
“You and the sofa?” Beebo said, and stood up. She went to the closet and found her jacket. You can’t take somebody’s bed away just because you told a lie about sleeping on your own sofa. She pulled the jacket on and zipped it.
“You’re a sweet girl, Paula,” she said, not looking at her. “Miss Plaid Pajamas must be nuts. Find somebody who deserves you, and she’ll never make you sleep alone on the sofa.”
She started for the door but Paula, recovering suddenly, jumped up and put a restraining hand on her arm. Beebo turned around, a shiver of sharp excitement radiating through her. She was not—she was never—as sure of herself as she seemed.
“Beebo,” Paula said, whispering so that Beebo had to bend her head to hear her. “I’d like you to stay. Make yourself welcome. Please.”
Beebo was afraid to believe her ears. It had seemed almost easy, in retrospect, to storm the Colophon. She was not unaware that Mona was something of a catch, and when she went over the events of that night, she was satisfied at the way she had acted. Nobody, not Mona herself, knew how inexperienced and uncertain Beebo was, and nothing she had done gave her away. Unless it was her exuberance when Mona kissed her.
But now it seemed incredible that this exquisite stranger should reach out for her from the middle of nowhere. “Paula,” she said, “I think we’re both just lonely. I think it would be best if I go. You don’t want to wake up tomorrow and hate yourself.” She was still hedging about the ultimate test with a girl.
“I was lonely. I will be again if you go.”
“Maybe you’d be better off lonely than sorry.”
“Beebo, do I have to beg you?” Paula pleaded, her voice coming up stronger with her emotion.
Beebo reached for her in one instinctive motion, suddenly very warm inside her jacket. “No, Paula, you don’t have to beg me to do anything. Just ask me.”
“I did. And you didn’t want to stay.”
“I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t understand.”
“I thought it was Mona. She can make herself so—so tempting.”
“I can’t even remember what she looks like.”
“Aren’t you in love with her?”
Beebo’s hands, with a will of their own, closed around Paula’s warm slim arms. “I met her last week for the first time. You can’t be in love with someone you just met.”
“You can’t?” Paula demurred cautiously, looking down at her big pajamas.
“I never was,” Beebo said, feeling sweat break out on her forehead. She pulled gently on Paula and was almost dismayed when Paula moved docilely toward her. Beebo became feverishly aware that the plaid pajamas did not conceal all of Paula Ash. The sweeping curve of her breasts held the cotton top out far enough to brush Beebo’s chest with a feather touch. Beebo felt it through the layers of her clothes with a tremor so hard and real it tumbled eighteen years of daydreams out of her head.
She held Paula at arm’s length a moment, looking at this lovely little redheaded princess with a mixture of misgivings and want too powerful to pretend away. Paula took her hands and held them with quivering strength, returning Beebo’s gaze. Beebo saw her own doubts reflected in Paula’s eyes. But she saw desire there, too; desire so big that it had to be brave: it hadn’t any place to hide.
Paula kissed Beebo’s hands with a quick press of her mouth that electrified Beebo. She stood there while Paula kissed them over and over again and a passionate frenzy mounted in them both. Paula’s lips, at first so chaste, almost reverent, warmed against Beebo’s palms…and then her kitten-tongue slipped between Beebo’s fingers and over the backs of her broad hands until those hands trembled perceptibly and Paula stopped, clutching them to her face.
Beebo reclaimed them, but only to caress Paula’s face, bringing it close to her and seeing it with amazement.
“I never guessed I’d feel love for the first time through my hands,” she murmured. “Paula, Paula, I would have done this all wrong if you hadn’t
had the guts to start it for me. I would have manhandled you, I—”
Paula stilled her with a finger over Beebo’s mouth. “Don’t talk now,” she said.
And Beebo, who had never done more than dream before, slipped her arms around Paula and pulled her tight. It was a marvel the way their bodies fitted together; the way Paula’s head tipped back naturally at so beckoning an angle, and rested on Beebo’s arm; the way her eyes closed and her lips parted and her hair scattered like garnet petals around her flower-face.
Beebo kissed her mouth and kissed her mouth again, holding her against the wall with the pressure of her body. Paula submitted with a sort of wistful abandonment. Everywhere Beebo touched this sweet girl, she found thrilling surprises. And Paula, coming to life beneath Beebo’s searching hands, found them with her.
It was no news to Beebo that she was tall and strong and male-inclined. But her voluptuous reaction to Paula shocked her speechless. Paula began to undress her and Beebo felt herself half-fainting backwards on the sofa into a whirlpool of sensual delight. The merest touch, the merest flutter of a finger, and Beebo went under, hearing her own moans like the whistle of a distant wind. Paula had only to undo a belt buckle or pull off a shoe, and Beebo responded with a beautiful helpless fury of desire.
It was no longer a question of proceeding with caution, of “learning how.” The whole night passed like an ecstatic dream, punctuated with a few dead-asleep time-outs, when they were both too exhausted to move, even to make themselves comfortable.
Beebo had only a vague idea of what she was doing, beyond the overwhelming fact that she was making ardent love to Paula. She seemed to have no mind at all, or need of one. She was aware only that Paula was beautiful, she was gay, she was warmly loving, and she was there in Beebo’s arms: fragrant and soft and auburn-topped as a bouquet of tiger lilies.
Beebo couldn’t let her go. And when fatigue forced her to stop she would pull Paula close and stroke her, her heavy breath stirring Paula’s glowing hair, and think about all the girls she had wanted and been denied. She was making up, this night, for every last one of them.
Paula whispered, “Do you still believe you can’t love someone you just met?”