Warm and Willing

CHAPTER SIX

Saturday noon, cold and rainy, Eighth Street clogged with wet and hurrying tourists. “Runch time,” Mr. Yamatari said pleasantly, if inaccurately, and she slipped into her trenchcoat and belted it snugly around her and ducked out into the street. She stood there for a moment, then turned quickly and headed for a lunch counter halfway down the block toward Sixth Avenue.

Someone was calling her name. She looked around uncertainly but couldn’t see anyone.

“Rhoda Haskell-”

And then he had reached her. He stood in front of her and held her arm in one hand. “My God, Rhoda,” he said. “How long has it been? Months. I didn’t even know you were still in town.”

He was Ed Vance and he was a bright young man in some public relations office, she didn’t know which. A friend of Tom’s, a person she had known fairly well during the two years of marriage. A bachelor, bright and good-looking in an Ivy League way. A ladies’ man according to popular report.

“Are you living here now? In the city?”

“Yes.”

“When was the divorce? About half a year ago, wasn’t it?”

“Just about. It was an annulment.”

“Well. Jesus, it’s pouring, isn’t it? C’mon, we’ll get a bite to eat. Across the street all right?”

There was a steakhouse across the street. She had never been there. She said, “I don’t have much time.”

“You’ve got to eat. And the service is fast. Come on, Rhoda.”

“Well, I was supposed to meet somebody-”

“Let ’em wait. Auld lang syne and all that. I’ll buy you a good lunch and you can tell old Ed all your troubles.”

They dodged cars, ducked across Eighth Street and hurried into the restaurant. The headwaiter led them to a small table off to the side.

Vance ordered a dry martini and asked her what she was drinking. She hadn’t planned on drinking anything but she wound up ordering a scotch sour.

“Rhoda Haskell,” he said.

“Rhoda Moore now. Again.”

“Uh-huh. What have you been doing? Taking it easy?”

“Working,” she said.

“Not around here?”

She told him where she was working and where she lived.

“Alone?”

“With a friend. A girl.”

“Dating anyone special?”

“No.”

“I guess you and Tom had a rough time of it, didn’t you?” He shook his head. “Well, it happens. I think the major reason I haven’t married is the spectacular examples all my friends set for me. Ray and Judy got divorced, you know. Or maybe you didn’t know. She took a jet to Reno and came back single. I was out drinking with Ray just a week ago. The poor son of a gun needed a shoulder to cry on. Still loves her, he told me. And she hooked him good. Alimony plus child support, with the whole thing leaving him about sixty a week to live on. If he makes more money the alimony goes up along with his income. He can’t come out ahead. And they were one couple I thought would last.”

And, over coffee: “Have you been dating much, Rhoda?”

“No.”

“Nothing serious? No big romance?”

A very big romance, she thought. But she told him that she wasn’t going with anyone.”

“Are you busy tonight?”

A long wind-up, then a fast-breaking curve. “Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid I am, Ed.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“I’m afraid I’m tied up.”

He looked at her, his eyes locking with hers. She reached for a cigarette. He gave her a light and she dragged nervously on the cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke.

“I’d like to see more of you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re a very attractive woman, Rhoda. And because I enjoy your company.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You don’t want to see me, do you?” He sighed. “You and Tom had a rough time. That happens. And you’re taking it hard. Well, that happens too. But you can’t let yourself go, Rhoda. You can’t crawl in a hole and pull the hole in after you. You’re a young woman. How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Pretty young to retire from the human race.”

“I’m not-”

“Have you been seeing any men at all?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Do you know what you’re doing to your life? Do you know how lonely you’re going be?”

Her face was burning. If she stayed at the table another minute something very bad was going to happen, she could feel it. She would either blurt out the truth to him or she would throw a big scene and tell him what he could do with his penetrating comments. Her head was spinning. She pushed her chair back and headed for the ladies’ room.

Sanctuary, she thought. She washed her hands, put on fresh lipstick, then sat for a moment on a straight-backed chair. Sanctuary. At least he couldn’t follow her in here. No man could. Here was one place on earth where she could be safe from men. Here, and in Megan’s arms.

When she returned to the table he was all apologies, very suave and smooth. “I’m damned sorry,” he said earnestly. “I must have sounded like Dear Abby after a bad night. I didn’t mean to hammer at you like that.”

“It’s all right.”

“I’d like to see you, Rhoda. That’s all.”

She didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help realizing that she was not interested, she thought. It was pretty obvious wasn’t it?

“I have to go now,” she said finally. “I have to be back at the shop.”

“Can I call you, Rhoda?”

“I think it would be better if you didn’t.”

“Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

“Maybe,” she said. He couldn’t reach her, she knew. The phone was listed in Megan’s name, so he couldn’t find out her number. She got to her feet, “Thank you for lunch,” she said.

“I enjoyed it.”

“So did I.”

“I’ll walk you back to your shop.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I can manage.”

It was still raining, steadily, persistently. She darted across the street. He didn’t follow her. She got back to the shop, hung her trench coat on a peg in the back. Then she went into the front of the store and walked up and down the aisles, dusting things.

The apartment was empty when she returned to it. She walked though the rooms calling Megan’s name but Megan was not there. She went into the living room, turned on the radio. A rock and roll station shouted at her. She dialed in classical music, stretched out on the couch. Megan was out and she didn’t know where.

She closed her eyes, kicked off her shoes, tucked a throw pillow under her head. They were supposed to go to a party that night, she remembered. Megan had said something about getting to the party around nine. It was close to six now. Plenty of time, and Megan would be back soon. She let her mind drift with the music, let herself get lost in it. They were playing chamber music, something familiar, a string quartet that sounded like Mozart. She ought to listen to more good music, she told herself. Start buying records, start spending a couple of hours every day listening to music, really listening to it. Like this.

When the quartet ended she swung her legs over the side of the couch, rubbed at her eyes, looked at her watch. It was a quarter after six now and Megan was still not home.

Jealousy came in a wave. Megan had gone out, Megan had met someone else. Megan was with some other girl now, some cheap and easy thing with a repertoire of cheap and dirty bedroom tricks. Megan didn’t love her. If Megan loved her she would have been home, she would have called, she would have left a note. Something. Megan didn’t love her. Megan was only using her, playing with her while she played around with other girls on the side.

Or Megan had actually fallen in love with some other girl. That could have happened. It happened all the time. Megan might have gone out for a walk, and she might have met another girl and it could all have happened that quickly. Love. It had happened speedily enough between her and Megan, and if something could start that quickly it could end just as quickly, and Megan would bring this other girl into their apartment and she-Rhoda-would be out on the street again, lonely again and That was crazy, she knew. It was mad. But she couldn’t shake the jealousy, the worry, the monumental anxiety. It was eating her alive, and the fact that it was illogical didn’t seem to change things much. She paced back and forth, wandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, closed it, poured herself a glass of water, sipped it, poured the water out in the sink. She lit a cigarette and took two puffs on it and stubbed it out angrily.

Damn it!

At a quarter to seven, the phone rang. She nearly tripped rushing to it. It was Megan.

“Honey, I’m sorry as hell. I’ve been working like a maniac, I should have been home hours ago. This was the first chance I had to call.”

“Where are you?”

“Way the hell up in the East Sixties. A job, complete decoration of an entire apartment, and she wants antiques-”

“She?”

“An old battle-ax living it up on insurance money. One Letitia Warren. Antiques! The hardest part of this job will be finding a chair older than she is. I’m going to have about two weeks of hard work and a hell of a lot of money to show for it, kitten. Listen, I’m in a phone booth. I was all set to hop in a cab but I wanted to call you first. Everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Party tonight. Can you throw some dinner together? I didn’t even have lunch, I’ve been going full steam since this morning. This Warren woman. You’d have to see her to believe her. Honey, I would have called you earlier-”

“Oh, it’s all right.”

“-only I didn’t have the chance, I really didn’t. You’re not mad at me?”

“Of course not.”

And she wasn’t, couldn’t be. And couldn’t imagine how she had been jealous, how just moments ago she had been pacing and trembling hysterically. There was no reason for jealousy. Everything was as good as it had ever been.

“I’ll have dinner ready,” she said. “Hurry home, love.”

After Megan had hung up she stood for a moment holding the dead phone in her hand. She felt enormously relieved. And yet the mere knowledge that she been so irrationally jealous worried her a little. She never realized that she had that sort of capacity for jealousy. It was a new discovery for her.

Maybe, she thought, it was an index of love. Perhaps only those so deeply in love could be so blindly jealous.

She went into the kitchen and busied herself with dinner. Megan was working again, she thought. And that was good. She would throw herself into the job and get all wrapped up in her work. It wasn’t good for Megan to have too much time on her hands. Her jobs, she knew, were the type that made for a disjointed sort of life; she might go a month without doing any work all, then might land two decorating jobs at once and work fifteen hours a day for three weeks straight. But work would be good for her.

How very jealous she had been…

“Jan loves to play hostess,” someone was saying to her. “Her parties are never to be missed. Everything has a slightly phony smell to it, and in another twenty minutes or so Jan is going to turn the lights down low and recite a poem by Sappho, but she does know how to throw people together. And how to supply liquor.”

It was Bobbie talking to her, a more sober Bobbie than she had met two nights ago at Leonetti’s. And she looked prettier now; before she had been simply striking, but now her beauty seemed to blend into itself. The chestnut hair was done up in a beehive that made Bobby look even taller than she was. Her dress, a silk shift in black and white, somehow emphasized the curves of her body more than if she were wearing something and clinging. Her lipstick was a deep, dark red.

“I must have made a lovely impression the other night,” Bobby went on. “Boy, was I stoned! You should have seen me the morning after. I woke up and was afraid I would die, and then after a few minutes I was afraid I wouldn’t die. I didn’t, but I might as well have. Tonight, however, I am sober.”

“And happier,” Rhoda said.

“Uh-huh. Where did Meg go?”

“For more drinks, I think.”

“She’s a love, Meg is. Oh, lord. Look over there.”

She looked. Jan Pomeroy, their hostess, was setting a pair of candles on a massive Victorian pedestal. Jan was a dark girl with Semitic features and large gold hoop earrings. She wore a great deal of eye makeup.

“The candle routine,” Bobby explained. “God above, first time I came to one of these parties and saw her fussing with those things I thought we were going to have an orgy. Candles! She lights them and recites poems. I’ve never seen anyone make quite so monumental a production out of homosexuality. She gets almost religious about it.”

“Does it last long?”

“Homosexuality?” Bobby grinned. “It lasts forever, my sweet.”

“I mean-”

“I know what you mean, goofy. Here’s Meg. Meg, you didn’t bring me a drink.”

Megan sat next to Rhoda, “You don’t need one,” she said. “Jan’s playing with her phallic symbols again. Did you notice?”

“We were talking about them. And about Jan. Homosexuality As A Religious Phenomenon. I might write a paper on that sweet theme.”

“For The Ladder?”

“For the john. Poems to be read in the can. I think there was a book like that, come to think. Some phony nonsense. Dykery As The Highest Expression Of The Inner Self. Sound good?”

“It might to Jan.” Megan sipped her drink. “Jan’s right,” she said. “There are worse poses.”

“Name one.”

“I Am A Lost Lesbian And A Thing To Be Pitied. How’s that?”

“It’ll do,” Bobby said. “Except that we all use it now and then. Even you and I, sweet.”

“That’s what’s so tragic about it.”

Jan Pomeroy was walking around the room turning off lamps. Her eyes, Rhoda noticed, were slightly glazed. And she almost fell over at one point. “I think she’s drunk,” she said.

“Brilliantly put, Rho. Jan’s always stoned at her own sets. Drinking develops her appearance of intense sincerity. The funny thing is that she used to be ordinary enough. She never got over that thing she had with the actress.”

“Actress?”

“Moira Maine. Whose name, before Hollywood played with it, was something far less euphonious. I think was-”

“Moira Maine?”

“Uh-huh, I think it was-”

“But she isn’t gay!”

Megan and Bobby both laughed. “Oh, Rho honey, the hell she isn’t. You didn’t know?”

“But she’s married-”

“To one of the screamingest queens in Hollywood, sweets. Too many people were whispering about both of them, so they’re married. I’ve a hunch they never consummated that marriage, and that it wasn’t exactly made in heaven. Meg, you should have brought me another drink.”

“Get it yourself.”

I don’t really need it. Miss Maine was in hot water for awhile. You must have heard something, Rho.”

She shook her head.

“A big blackmail thing, the way I heard it. Some West Coast call girl slept with La Maine and let a friend of hers take pictures, and first they held her up and then they sold the pictures to one of the scandal mags. It got hushed up, I guess, but that’s the way it was.”

Bobby stood up. “I see an old friend,” she explained. “Catch you people after the Sapphic odes are over and done with.”

Rhoda sipped her drink. Megan was beside her, telling her a story that she couldn’t quite keep up with. Across the room, a blonde with dark roots had her arm around a much younger girl. The younger girl giggled and the blonde leaned over and kissed her. The younger girl put her arms around the blonde and the two got lost in the embrace.

Rhoda looked away from them. “I don’t like that,” she said.

“Bleached hair?”

“That either.”

Megan gave her hand a squeeze. “I don’t like it myself,” she said. “They might as well make love in Macy’s window. Some girls are funny that way. Exhibitionistic. Just because they’re among other gay girls they think they can do anything without offending good taste. I don’t mind dancing at a gay party. There will be dancing later, you know. Will you dance with me, kitten?”

“And with no one else.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll dance with whoever asks you, pet. It’s just part of the ritual, and quite sexless. But petting in public that way, that I don’t go for.” Megan shrugged. “The really militant homosexuals are all excited about campaigning for equal rights. I think some of them would like to picket lunch counters in Atlanta that don’t employ gays. But you’d think they’d realize that the same obligations as far as taste is concerned as straight people have. Sex is such a preoccupation with all of us. It’s silly, I suppose.”

The room was dark now. On the mahogany pedestal, the two candles burned. Jan Pomeroy stood behind the pedestal, her face framed by the yellow glow of the candles. There was a slender volume open on the pedestal in front of her.

The room quieted down. The dark-roots blonde and the younger girl were still kissing on the divan across way. Someone said something short to them. They separated.

“I’d like to read some poetry,” Jan Pomeroy said. “ I hope you all enjoy this.”

“Little chance of that,” Megan whispered. Rhoda felt a laugh forming and smothered it. She squeezed Megan’s hand in the darkness.

“The first poem was written by Sappho on the Isle of Lesbos,” Jan announced. Her voice had taken on a theatrical tone. “Lesbos had been renamed since then. Mytilene is its present name. And Sappho’s little colony has long since been dispersed. There are some of us who dream of returning to that little island in the Aegean, of forming a society where we can be alone with people like ourselves. Some day, perhaps that dream can be realized completely and perfectly.”

“Picture it,” Megan whispered. “All of us frolicking nude in the sun, with nary a man around. I wonder if she really believes all this.”

“It sounds that way.”

Jan stared their way and they stopped whispering. She took a deep breath, leaned over so that the two candles stood on either side of her face. Her eyes, circled with heavy make-up, looked hollower and deeper than ever in the candle light.”

She read;

Oh Chryseis

The budding beauty of your Cretan soul

Echoes from hill to hill.

Come to me.

Night is a barren notion

Fitting the heart

For love in shaded places.

Teach me of torment

In Sweet hysteria,

O Chryseis!

There was a scattering of embarrassed applause. A candle flickered briefly but did not go out. Jan Pomeroy closed her hollow eyes momentarily, lowered her head reverently. The applause died out. Jan straightened up, opened her eyes, turned a page of the book. “Thank you,” she said. “This next work is also Sappho’s. It is a somewhat longer poem, an ode to one of the young girls Sappho loved so deeply. It-”

Megan groaned.