"What's the matter, isn't my company good enough for you?" She turned on him suddenly. He would have to take her threats till Laura got there; she couldn't hold them back.

"It's just that I don't like prospective murderers," Jack said. 'They make me nervous."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You holier-than-thou b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You think you're so d.a.m.n superior because you're still on the wagon. You are on the wagon, I can tell. You look so G.o.ddam sober it's repulsive. Repulsive!"

"That's the word for it, all right," Jack agreed. His compliant att.i.tude only goaded her further.

"You hate me because Laura only comes to see you when she feels bad. She lives with me. But she doesn't give a d.a.m.n about you until she feels bad. Then she comes running to good old Jack!"

"Beebo," he said and did not raise his voice. "When I lost Terry I did a h.e.l.l of a lot of drinking and hollering. I came and drank your whiskey and told you my troubles and you listened to me. And it helped. Now you're welcome to my whiskeythere's still a little in the kitchenand you're welcome to cry on my shoulder. But you're not going to murder anybody, here or anywhere else."

"Only Laura," Beebo said, and her voice was low now, too.

"n.o.body," Jack said. "Now scram, or I'll throw you out."

Beebo grabbed the lapels of his sport jacket. "She cheated on me, Jack. You gave her the idea so don't try to squirm out of it."

"Cheated on you with who?"

"An Indian!" Her eyes were so big and her face so con-totted that Jack came very near laughter.

"What tribe?" he asked carefully.

"Not an American Indian, you owl-eyed idiot! An Indian Indian. A dancer! Jesus!" And she lifted her eyes to the ceiling. "A dancer!"

"Cla.s.sical or belly?"

"Oh, shut up! You think it's funny!" She gave him a hard shove, but Jack didn't shove easily. He just stood his ground and surprised her. "It doesn't matter who she is, anyway," she said and ran a distraught hand through her close-cropped dark hair that waved and rolled around her head and used to delight Laura. "What matters is, they've been sleeping together and that cheeky little b.i.t.c.h"

"Which one?"

"Jack, G.o.ddam you, quit interrupting me!" She paused to glare at him and then said, "Tris. The dancer. She had the nerve to come over to the apartment. Tried to tell me they met at the Hobby Shop. Oh, G.o.d!" And she gave a despairing laugh.

"Maybe they did." He offered it un.o.btrusively.

"Who're you kidding?" Beebo snapped. "Laura admitted she went to the girl's apartment."

"After you pounded it out of her."

Beebo held the diary out to him. "Read this, Jack. It's all in here," she said.

"Does it say they slept together?

"d.a.m.n right!"

"Did you read it?"

"No, but it's in here," she said positively, in the grip of the spiraling violence that possessed her. "Jack Mann, college graduate, engineer, former gay boy, former whiskey drinker, former human being. Current know-it-all and champion b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Greenwich Village. Read it!"

He shook his head without even glancing at it.

"Are you too proper? Too moral? Don't tell me you've suddenly developed a conscience! After all these years," she said.

He shrugged. "Why read it? You've told me what's in it."

"Maybe you'd like to know what she says about me." He saw her face color up again and a shivering clearly visible in her hands and he said, "No." But Beebo opened the diary, leafing through it for the worst slander she could find.

Jack took the book from her hands so suddenly that she let it slip before she knew what he was up to, and then he socked her when she reached for it, catching her on the chin. She reeled backwards and sank to the floor. Jack leaned down and picked her up, hoisting her over his shoulder. He carried her that way, head dangling in back and feet in front, down the hall and out the door to the apartment building.

There he set her dizzily on her feet. She hardly knew where she was and let him hold her up. He found a taxi for her on the corner of Fourth and Seventh Avenue and told the driver, "She's drunk. It's only a couple of blocks, but I can't take her home," and handed him five dollars. "Take her upstairs," he said, giving him the address. "Apartment 2B."

He was headed up the steps to his apartment again when he heard Laura's voice calling him, and he turned around to see her running up the sidewalk, hair awry and face like chalk.

"Laura!" he exclaimed and caught her. She began to sob the moment she felt his arms around her, as if she had only been waiting to feel him for the tears to start.

"Is she here?" she asked, and he could feel her quivering.

"She left," he said. "I just put her in a cab. Your timing is faultless, Mother."

Laura looked at him out of big amazed eyes. "She's gone? How did you do it?" she asked. "What happened?"

"Come on inside," he said. He led her down the hall and in his kitchen at last, with the front door locked and no Beebo anywhere around and a comforting drink to brace her, she heaved a long sigh of relief.

"Now," said Jack, making himself some coffee. "Who is Tris?"

Laura clasped her gla.s.s in both hands and looked into the whiskey for an answer. "She's a dancer"

"I know that part. I mean, are you sleeping with her?"

"No!" Laura flashed.

"Do you want to?"

And after a pause she whispered honestly, "Yes."

"So Beebo's not imagining things."

"She doesn't have to," Laura cried bitterly. "She's got my diary."

"I saw it."

"Did you read it?"

"No, but Beebo did."

"What did she say?" Laura's throat had gone dry all of a sudden at the idea of Beebo perusing those private pages, and she took a sip of her whiskey.

"She wants to solve the whole thing by murdering you."

"I think she would, too," Laura said, unsurprised. "Oh, Jack, help me. I'm scared to death."

"All right." He came over, pulling his chair, and sat down beside her. "Marry me."

Laura covered her face with her hands and gave a little moan. "Is that all you can think of? Is that all you can say?" she said, and she sounded a little desperate. "I'm in love with Tris, and Beebo wants to murder me and you want to many me. What good will that do? I might as well be dead as married!" And she said it so emphatically that Jack was stung.

But he never let personal hurts show.

"Mother, you're in a mess," he said. "n.o.body has a perfect solution for you. And you have none at all for yourself. So listen to one from an old friend who loves you and don't stomp on it out of sheer spite."

"I'm sorry," she murmured, sipping the drink again. She let the tears flow unchecked, without really crying. Her face was motionless, but still the tears rolled down her cheeks, as if they had business of their own unrelated to her emotion.

"Tell me something," Jack said gently, putting an arm over the back of her chair and leaning close to her. And as always with him, she didn't mind. She liked his nearness and the fact that he was male and strong and full off affection for her. Perhaps it was because she knew he would never demand of her what a normal man would; because she felt so safe with him and so able to trust him. "Tell me why you went to live with Beebo two years ago," he said.

"I thought I loved her."

"Why did you think you loved her?" he asked.

"Because shewell, she was soI don't know, Jack. She excited me."

He lighted a cigarette with a sigh. "And that's love," he said. "Excitement. As long as you're excited you're in love. When it turns flat you're not in love. Lord, what a way to live."

Laura was taken aback by the selfishness she betrayed. "I didn't mean it that way," she said. It had never seemed so cheap to her before.

"Are you in love with Tris?" he asked.

"II" She was afraid to answer now.

"Sure you are," he said. "Just like Beebo. Fascinating girl. More excitement. Beebo's worn out now, let's try Tris. And when we wear Tris out, let's find another"

"Stop it!" Laura begged.

"Where's your life going, Laura?" he asked her. "What have you done with it so far? Does it matter a d.a.m.n, really? To anybody but you ... and me?"

"And Beebo."

"Beebo's more worried about where her next drink is coming from than she is about you." He knew it wasn't true. He knew if it ever came to a choice, Beebo loved Laura desperately enough to give up drinking. But Jack was fighting for Laura now.

Laura began to cry now, her face concealed behind her hands. "Please, Jack," she whispered, but he knew what he was doing. He had to make her see it his way so clearly, feel the hurt so hard, that she would turn away from the whole discouraging mess of h.o.m.os.e.xual life and come to live with him far from it all.

"Look at me, Laura," he said and lifted her face. "We can t think straight because we always think gay," he said. "We don't know anything about a love that lasts or a life that means something. We spend all our time on our knees singing hosannas to the queers. Trying to make ourselves look good. Trying to forget we aren't wholesome and healthy like other people."

"Some of the other people aren't so d.a.m.n wholesome either," Laura said.

Jack put his arms around her suddenly and pulled her tight against him and said, "Let's get out of it, Laura. Let's run like h.e.l.l while we have a chance. We could get away, just the two of us. But we can't do it alone; we need each other. We could move uptown and get a nice apartment and you wouldn't have to work. We could get married, honey."

"But"

"Please, Laura, please," he begged her. "Maybe we could even ... adopt a child. Would you like that? Would you?" He sounded a little breathless and he leaned back to see her face.

Laura was startled. "I don't know anything about kids. They scare me to death."

"You'd get over it in a hurry," he said. "You're female. You have instinct on your side."

"Do you like kids?"

"I love them."

"I don't. You're more female than I am," she said.

He laughed. "Flattery will get you nowhere," he said. "Seriously, Laurawould you like a child? A daughter?"

"Why not a son?" she asked him, sharp-eyed.

"Okay." He shrugged warily. "A son."

Laura slid back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. "I never even thought about it before," she said. "I just never dreamed I'd ever have anything to do with a child of my own ... with any child."

"Do you want one?" He seemed so eager that she was reluctant to hurt him. But she couldn't lie to him.

"No," she said. And when his face hardened, she added, "Because I'd be a terrible mother, Jack. I'd be afraid of it. And jealous, I think. I'd be all thumbs. I'd stick it full of pins and never be sure if I did it on purpose or by mistake."

"You won't always feel that way," he said, and she knew from the tone of his voice that there was no arguing with him.

"Maybe not," she said. "But if I marry you, Jack" And they were both startled to hear the words, as if neither had really expected Laura to consider it seriously. "If I marry you, I wouldn't dare adopt a child for years. Not till I was sure we were safe together and the marriage would last."

"It would. It will. Say yes."

"I can't," she said and drove him to his feet in a fit of temper.

"G.o.ddam it, Laura, do you want to grow old here in the Village?" he said. "Have you seen the pitiful old women in their men's oxfords and chopped off hair, stumping around like lost souls, wandering from bar to bar and staring at the pretty kids and weeping because they can't have them any more? Or living together, two of them, ugly and fat and wrinkled, with nothing to do and nothing to care about but the good old days that are no more? Is that what you want? Because if you stay here, that's what you'll get.

"Pretty soon you won't know any other way of life. You won't know how to live in the big world. You don't care a G.o.ddam about that world now when you're young. So when you're old you won't know a G.o.ddam about it. You'll be afraid of it and of normal people and you'll hide in a cheap walk-up with a dowdy old friend or a stinking cat and you'll yammer about lost loves. Tempting, huh?" And he leaned on the kitchen table, his eyes so bright with urgency that she couldn't look at them and only watched his mouth.

"Horrible," she said.

He straightened up and shoved his hands in his pockets, and when he started to speak again he was gazing out the window. "I want to get so far away from here," he said, "that"

"That Terry will never find you again," she guessed.

He dropped his head a little. "Yes," he said. "That, too. Terry and Joe and Archie and John and G.o.d knows who. We'd go way uptown and leave no forwarding address ... nothing. Just fade out of the Village forever. No Beebo, no Terry..."

"No Tris," Laura whispered.

"I told you, Mother ... I'm no bluebeard. If you want affairs, have them. You're young, you need a few. Only keep them out of the Village and keep them very quiet."

"Do you think Terry would really come looking for you again?" she asked. "After the way you threw him out?"

"There aren't many men stupid enough to put up with his antics as I did," he said. "I think he might try to put the touch on me between affairs."