"I do," he said, and she smiled.

"You didn't fall off the wagon," she said. "I'm so glad. I was afraid you might."

"I never get drunk over the women in my life," he said sardonically. "Only over the boys. And there are no more boys in my life. Now or ever."

Laura swirled the royal purple liquid in her long-stemmed gla.s.s and whispered into it, "Do you think I could make you happy, Jack?"

"Are you proposing, Mother?"

She swallowed and looked up at him with b.u.t.terflies in her stomach. "Yes," she said.

He sat quite still and smiled slowly at her. And then he got up and came to her and kissed her cheeks, one after the other, holding her head tenderly in his hands.

"I accept," he said.

The day was hot and muggy, one of those insufferably humid August days in New York. Laura and Jack waited together outside the office of Judge Sterling Webster with half a dozen other sweating, hand-clasping couples.

Jack wasted no time when Laura said yes. As fast as arrangements could be made, they were made. Laura stayed with him in the Village apartment a few days while they hunted for another apartment, cooking for him and getting the feel of living with him. During the days, when he was out, she went uptown. This was Jack's idea. He had no intention of making his bride a sitting duck for Beebo. It was only for four days, anyway, and much to Laura's surprise, Beebo made no attempt to reach her.

They had found the apartment on the east side two days after Laura got back from the disillusioning sojourn with Tris. It was too expensive, but it was newly renovated, l.u.s.trous with new paint, elegant with a new elevator, and bursting with chic tenants.

"We can't afford it," was Laura's first comment, to which Jack replied, smiling, "You're beginning to sound like a wife already."

And now, here they were, waiting on yellow oak chairs in the hall, while one couple after another pa.s.sed in and out of the judge's office with the cla.s.sic stars in their eyes.

Laura, who was sitting quietly in her chair, said, "They all look so happy," and drew courage from the fact.

"They're scared witless," Jack said, pacing up and down in front of her.

"Jack!" Laura exclaimed, appalled. 'They'll hear you."

"Ours will be a happier marriage than any of these," he said with a contemptuous wave of his hand. He sat down suddenly beside her. "Ours could be d.a.m.n near perfect, Laura, if we work at it a little. You know that? We won't have to face the usual pitfalls. Ours will be different ... better."

"I hope so, Jack," she said in a near whisper, and a little thrill of pa.s.sionate hope went through her.

"Will you try, honey?" he asked.

"I will. With all my heart I will." She gave him a tremulous smile. "I want this to work, Jack, as much as you do. I'll give it all I've got. I want terribly for it to be right." And she meant it.

"Then it will," he said and his smile gave her a needed shot of confidence.

Laura had had some bad nights since she said yes to him. Awful hours of yearning for Tris had tormented her. Stray unwelcome thoughts of Beebo had hurt her even more.

There were the lonely times when she thought about herself and Jack, so different, so dear to each other, and wondered if marital intimacy might not ruin it all with its innocent vulgarity. She tried to imagine Jack shaving in the morning ... the toilet flushing ... his wrinkled pajamas, still warm from sleep, tossed on the floor ... his naked loneliness mutely reproaching her. The idea of living with a man ... a man ... made her think of her father, her huge heavy domineering father, with his aggressive maleness stamped all over his body.

But for the most part, Laura tried not to think at all. She let Jack do her thinking. She let Jack make the plans. She let Jack take her by the hand and lead her where he deemed it best for her to go. And, trusting him, she went.

So here they were outside Judge Sterling Webster's door with its gla.s.s window and neatly stenciled name, and they were next in line. Their predecessors in the marriage mill were slower than the rest, or so it seemed. And by the time they came out Jack was very nervous.

He herded her in ahead of him, and Judge Webster, as dignified and antique as his name, stood to greet them with an extended hand.

In less than five minutes he p.r.o.nounced them man and wife and they signed the certificate of marriage. Jack turned to Laura and kissed his tall and trembling young wife on her cheek. He gave the Judge ten dollars, and then he took Laura's arm and steered her out again to let the next impatient couple take over.

Laura had to sit down for a minute on one of the limed oak chairs and cover her face with her hands. Jack leaned over her and said, "You're setting a lousy example, Mother. Every female here is watching you and figuring me for a wife-beater. Come on, Mrs. Mann."

She looked up and saw him grinning at her, and it gave her a lift. She grasped his hand and let him pull her to her feet. He was beaming, and Laura had to smile at all the nervous cynicism of half an hour ago.

They went straight to the apartment to rest for a while before they went out to dinner. Jack had made reservations for them at the Stork Club.

"We'll have a proper honeymoon at Christmastime," he said, when they reached the house on East Fifty-third."I'll take a month off then. I have it coming."

Ignoring Laura's protests, he insisted on carrying her across the threshold. He swung her up easily, to their mutual pleasure.

'Jack, I think you're the world's worst sentimentalist," she teased him when he set her down, but he denied it at once.

"G.o.d forbid!" he said. "I just don't want anything to go wrong. We're going to do it all right, right from the start."

'And you're superst.i.tious."

He laughed with delight. "Laura," he said and came to take her hands. "I'm so happy. You've made me so happy."

"I haven't done a thing, yet," she said, wondering a little at him, at his uncontainable good spirits.

"You've married me. That's something," he said. "I'm a married man. G.o.d Almighty, think of it!"

"If you were any prouder you'd explode," she giggled.

"I just may," he said. And they gazed at each other with a huge, wordless approval and relief.

"This calls for a celebration," he said suddenly. "I got a little something"

"Oh, Jack, no drinking," she said. "I don't have to have a drink, really. I don't want you to get started."

"No nagging on our wedding day," he said and produced a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator. He poured her a gla.s.sful and himself a swallow. "Medicinal," he explained, and they toasted each other. He made her drink all of hers and kept pace with her with ginger ale. "I feel so good, by G.o.d, I don't even need it," he said, and laughed.

Laura watched him affectionately. She had never seen him so animated, so happy. He glowed with it. He was almost handsome, with his brilliant eyes and his proud smile. It made her feel a little like crying, and she stopped him in the middle of a delirious tirade of compliments to say, "Jack, please. You embarra.s.s me. I'm afraid I won't live up to it all."

"Oh, but you will. I'll beat you if you don't," he said, laughing, and kissed her cheek. And she caught his hands and kissed them.

"You'd think we were a couple of normal people," she said.

He sobered a little, sitting down on the floor in front of her. "They have no monopoly on happiness, Mother. We have a right to our share. We have a chance now. We can make something beautiful of it together." He stopped and chuckled at himself. "I sound like a bad poem," he said. "But mean it. I have so many wonderful plans, so many hopes." And the thought of that bright-eyed little girl he had cherished for so long danced into his head.

Laura couldn't look at his face. She got up and went to lie on her bed.

They stayed up very late and Laura had too much champagne and Jack had too much ginger ale, and they talked endlessly and held one another's hands tightly. And the next day they slept until four in the afternoon and got up smiling to treat Laura's hangover and make the beds and shop for groceries together. And Jack introduced her to the butcher with, "Meet my wife. She's a doll."

Laura blushed crimson and the butcher laughed at them and tried to sell them some oysters. "You want kids? Buy oysters," he advised. "Never fails. I know, I got eight."

It was smooth and sweet the first few months; smoother than either of them had dared to hope. Laura was naturally mild and yielding; Jack, efficient and good-humored and terribly proud of her. As soon as they had enough chairs and crates collected to seat a fair number of guests, they threw a party and Jack's office staff came to wish them well.

None of them knew he was a h.o.m.os.e.xual. Jack was a past master at deception. "You have to be if you're going to survive in the world," he said to her once. "It's either that or retire into a rotten little prison with the rest of the gay people and spend your life feeling sorry for yourself. No thanks, not for me. s.e.x rules my nights. But by G.o.d, as far as the world knows, I'm a normal man from dawn to dusk. And there isn't one guy in that office who'd question it."

She admired him for it. Her own vagrant sensuality had dominated her ever since the fatal day she first recognised it, and her efforts to hide it or deny it had always backfired sooner or later. Jack filled her with determination to make herself a part of what he called "the real world," the straight world. He made it seem very desirable to her for the first time.

Jack's office buddies brought their wives, except for two dauntless bachelors who spent the evening berating Jack for treason.

"Are they gay?" Laura asked him in a whisper. "The unmarried ones?"

"Not gay, just scared," he said. "Winslow is, though. That one over there with the gorgeous wife. Poor guy, I don't think he knows it. They aren't very happy." And he nodded at the suave young man in his early thirties with a stunning and rather bored young woman beside him. Laura looked at the girl without a trace of desire and felt a quiet little spark of triumph. The future looked bright if she could be around so lovely a woman without even a hungry glance.

The autumn months pa.s.sed uneventfully, and they got used to each other, and most of their worst fears abated. Jack never wandered around the apartment naked, out of instinctive respect for Laura. He did drop his socks all over the floor and leave his dresser drawers open. But he never lost his temper. He took her out to dinner once or twice a week, and he brought her flowers and books and pretty tilings that caught his eye in the windows of the stores he pa.s.sed.

And he loved her. It sustained Laura through her low hours of doubt and confusion. She was the weak one of the two, and they both knew it. There were times when Jack had to be strong enough for both of them; times when Laura would cling to him weeping and tell him it was all a horrible mistake and she couldn't live without Tris, no matter how G.o.dawful it would be.

And then he didn't argue with her. He only said, "If you have to go, go, but come back. I want you here tonight at dinner time. I want you here in the morning when I get up. There'll be women in your life, I'm prepared for that, honey. Tris won't be the last. But there's only one man, and there will only be one man and don't you ever forget it."

He sounded so sensible and firm to her that her unrest would disappear. Now and then, when she was not in a pa.s.sion for Tris, they talked about it. And she would say, "I know it'll happen one of these days, but I won't let it hurt us, Jack. When I can think about it like this, rationally and without fear, I know I can handle it. I won't panic when the time comes. I'll just accept it as quietly as I can. I won't let it touch our marriage."

"Good girl," he said and squeezed her arm.

There was no s.e.x between them. Neither of them wanted it, and that was the way they planned it. Jack would make her take his arm when they went anywhere because he was proud of her. And he gave her a friendly peck when he left in the morning and when he came back at night. When she was frightened or depressed he held her and stroked her hair and talked to her the way she had always prayed her father would. And he liked to lie with his head in her lap and have her read to him before they went to bed.

But that was the limit of their physical contact. It was affectionate and gentle but utterly s.e.xless. After the first few weeks, Laura began to like it. She had been shy at first and reluctant. But he didn't force her, and after a while she welcomed his little gestures of love. They spelled security and rea.s.surance to her. Suddenly it occurred to her that Jack was a man who was taking care of his woman. And she relaxed. She felt her nerves ease and her tension relax. The apartment was quiet and pretty, and Laura, who was lazy as a cat for the first time in her life, felt like a princess.

They felt a mutual grat.i.tude toward each other. Jack came home for the first time in his life to a warm kitchen and a charming young wife. And just the thought of Laura reminded him, with a deep fine thrill, that he was married; he was truly a man. It was worth a lifetime of h.o.m.os.e.xual adventures.

Laura went to pains to please him, to show him that she cared and that she was working to make things right as she had promised him. And they were, all things considered, happy.

It wasn't until Terry's letter came, forwarded from Jack's old address in the Village, that Laura felt even the slightest apprehension that anything was to go wrong. And the note was postmarked San Francisco and seemed so far away that she recovered promptly from the first shock and sat in the kitchen with the rest of the mail on the table in front of her, wondering what to do.

Laura and Jack had made a strict rule never to open each other's mail and never to ask prying questions. But Laura hated to think of the turn it would give Jack to have this ghost from his past rise up to haunt him.

She turned and looked out the window at the spa.r.s.e snow, falling that first day of December, and played with Terry's letter, letting it slip from corner to corner through her fingers. She burned with curiosity.

I could just steam it open, she mused. He'd never know the difference. d.a.m.n that Terry anyway! Who does he think he is! After the h.e.l.l he put Jack through, he has a lot of nerve. I'll bet he wants some money.

She could bear it no longer. She got up and went to the stove, where she had a kettle full of hot water left over from breakfast, and turned the heat on under it. The glued flap of the envelope surrendered to the steam in a quiet curl. Laura held the letter a moment longer before opening it, feeling very guilty. But she loved Jack and she felt a fierce desire to spare him more pain. Besides, her curiosity was smothering her. She rationalized that Jack had told her himself he had given up the gay life forever, and that included Terry. What if this set him to drinking again?

She sat down and pulled the letter out with nervous hands. It was rather a short note, folded twice, and she opened it and read it quickly. It was not dated.

"Dear Jack. Have been out here in S.F. since September. What a crazy town. You'd love it. Have a nice apartment on Telegraph Hill with a kid I met at a party a month ago. (Not the same one you beat up the night you kicked me out.)"

G.o.d. He just has to rub it in. He's just the kind of guy to mention such a thing, Laura thought, hot with indignation. "Don't know how long I'll be out here. I sort of miss the Village. And you. Why don't you come out for a visit? We've got lots of room."

He doesn't seem to realize it would d.a.m.n near kill Jack, Laura thought. He's hopeless. It never occurs to him that Jack would go crazy in a situation like that. Or does it?

Laura was used to the idea of Terry as a good-natured scatterbrained boy who hurt people, mostly Jack, with monotonous regularitylargely because he didn't think about what he was doing. Usually, this was true enough. But the rest of his letter made her wonder if he weren't deliberately needling Jack, trying to get him to come out to the coast. She continued to read the tidy blue ink script.

"I do miss you, lover. I was always so unsettled before we met." Before, after, and during, Laura fumed.

"And now it's worse than before. I used to feel so safe and comfortable with you, like you'd always watch out for me, no matter what. I guess that's a selfish way to look at it, but I wish we were back together. If you by any chance want it that way too, write to me. Write to me anyway, I really want to hear from you. Love, Terry."

He signed his name with an elaborate flourish, like a fifth-grade child drunk on the possibilities of fancy penmanship. Laura folded the letter and stuck it back in the envelope and wrote a brief sizzling note in answer. She said: "TerryJack and I are married. You are not welcome here, now or ever. Jack asked me to write and tell you that he does not want to be bothered with any more letters from you and he will not answer any if you do write. Please leave us alone. Laura."

It sounded sharp and cold, and she had a momentary feeling of misgiving. Terry was a nice kid, in spite of it all. Every body liked him, even Laura. But she couldn't risk having him torment Jack. It had to sound mean or he wouldn't believe it. She put the note in an envelope, sealed and stamped it, and copied his San Francisco address on it. Then she burned Terry's letter over the stove.

When Jack came home that evening Laura's note was in the mail and Terry's was in ashes in the wastebasket.

"Any mail?" he asked her.

"Just a bill from the laundry," she said.

But it bothered her. It came to her at odd moments and it seemed ominous and frightening to her, like the first sign of a breakup. She had broken her promise to him, and it didn't help much to tell herself she did it only to protect him. I'm not going to let anybody hurt what we've got, least of all Terry Fleming, she thought.

The thought of having it all end between her and Jack, suddenly and cruelly, in one big drunk on Jack's part or wild romance on hers, scared and depressed her. It mustn't end that way. They needed each other too much. Their marriage had helped them think of each other as normal. They felt as if they knew where they were going now and life was much better.

Laura missed women. She missed them desperately sometimes. But she was sure now, deep within herself, that the time would come when she and Jack would be secure with each other for the rest of their lives; when they would be able to trust each other without reservation and trust the strength of their union. When they reached that point, it would be safe to satisfy her desires.

As for Jack, he was through with men forever. He had said it and she believed him. The thought that he might take a lover himself some day never occurred to her. It just wouldn't happen. Nor had she asked him about Terry. Jack was so determinedly happy with her that she was afraid to mention Terry.

It seemed strange to Laura, however, that Beebo didn't try to find her. She might have found them, one way or another. But there was no word from her. Laura couldn't help wanting to know what she was doing. She didn't feel the old, urgent, painful need for Tris, but there was a persistent want that was strong enough to make her wince now and then.

Jack told her once, "If anything bothers you, tell me about it. Don't sit around letting it eat you up. Better to talk about it and get it out of your system."

And when he saw that she was pensive he made her talk. But when he didn't see it, she kept it to herself. There were times when Laura couldn't share her feelings, when she just hugged them to herself and brooded.

Several times she had nearly talked herself into going down to the Village to wander around. She wouldn't go near her old apartment. Or Tris's studio. Or even Lili's apartment. She wasn't a fool, she wouldn't risk being caught.

But she was tempted, sometimes almost hypnotised, by the idea.

CHAPTER 8.

IT WAS CHRISTMAS eve. They had a fine big tree, freshly green in a sea of lights and tinsel. No honeymoon, as they had hoped; the office couldn't spare Jack. So they had a party instead.

"I hate those d.a.m.n pink trees," Jack had said when they picked theirs out. "Or gold, or white, or whatever-the-h.e.l.l color they're making them this year. Give me a nice healthy green."

They celebrated at the party and Jack drank eggnog without whiskey and Laura was very pleased with him. There was a lovely girl thereunmarried and probably gay. Laura fluted with her in spite of herself.