Long enough, Laura thought.

"I'll bet I know her. She ever come in here? Come on, tell me," Inga said.

"I can't"

"You're silly, then. I'll clue you in on something, Laura. If you can't get her off your mind it's because you can't get her out of your heart. That sounds corny but it's true. I found out the hard way. Believe me."

Laura shook her head. "I never loved her," she said positively.

"You're fooling yourself, sweetie."

Laura looked at her, bemused. "I'm in love with somebody else," she said, thinking of Tris.

"Me?" Inga grinned.

"No. No, an Indian girl."

"Indian? What's her name?"

"Tris."

"Tris! Gee, I do know her. She comes in here a lot."

Laura stared at her, too shocked to answer for a minute. Finally she said hoa.r.s.ely, "Tris would never come in here. She hates gay bars. I know that for a fact."

"Well..." Inga looked as if she knew she had put her foot in her mouth and regretted it. "Maybe it's a different Tris."

"What's her last name?"

"Robischon, or something. Something Frenchy. I think she made it up myself. But she's a gorgeous girl. I was really smitten when I saw her."

Laura blanched a little and ordered another drink and drank it down fast, and Inga laid a hand on her arm. "Gee, I'm sorry, Laura," she said. "Me and my big mouth. I should learn to shut up. But I'm in here all the time. I come in after work and I see just about everybody"

"I know, I know. It's okay, Inga." She ordered another drink. "I'd rather know than not," she said. "Besides, I haven't seen the girl for eight months. It'd be pretty strange if n.o.body found out about her in eight months. She's beautiful."

"That she is. Somebody's found out, all right. A lot of people, I hear."

"Does she come in here alone?" The whole thing seemed incredible to Laura. Tris! So aloof, so chilly, so much better than the rest of the gay crowd. Tris, who wouldn't go near Fire Island for a summer vacation because it was "crawling with queers." It just couldn't be. But Inga certainly wasn't describing anybody else.

"She comes with somebody else," Inga said reluctantly. "Look, sweetie, why don't you come over to my place and have a nightcap. We can't talk in here."

"I'd like to know, Inga. Tell me. Who does she come in with?" Laura turned and looked at her, swiveling slowly on her stool, a little tipsy and feeling suddenly as if the situation were something of a joke.

"Oh ... a big gal. Been around the Village for years. You might know her. Beebo Blinker's her name."

Laura sat there frozen for nearly a minute. It was a jokecolossal, cruel, hilarious. She laughed uncertainly and ordered another drink.

"I knew you were going to say that," she told Inga. "Isn't that the d.a.m.nedest thing? Isn't that the G.o.dd.a.m.nedest thing?" And she began to laugh again, repeating, when she could get her breath, "I knew you were going to say that." Inga had to slap her face to stop the shrieking, irrepressible giggles that were strangling her. Then Laura's laughter changed, in the s.p.a.ce of a breath, to tears.

Inga talked to her quietly with that odd intimacy that springs up between h.o.m.os.e.xuals in trouble, and it helped. After five or six minutes Laura wiped her eyes and drank her drink and let Inga help her out of the Cellar. A few curious eyes followed them and Laura prayed again that n.o.body she knew had seen her.

The cold air braced her a little, and she stood on the corner weaving slightly and trying to get her bearings.

"Come on," Inga said. "Let's get some hot coffee into you. I live just a couple of blocks from here. Come on."

Laura let herself be led by the diminutive curly-head, but when she saw they were headed for Cordelia Street she began to get scared. "Beebo lives near here," she said, hanging back. "I meanshe used to."

"She still does," Inga said. "I see her now and then. I live right over there." She pointed.

Laura brushed the girl's hand from her sleeve and turned to her. "Thanks, Inga," she said. "Thanks anyway, but I think I'll..." And her eyes wandered back into Cordelia Street.

Inga followed her gaze, catching the idea. "I wouldn't if I were you," she said. "You'll be real sorry the minute you get there." When Laura didn't answer she asked, "Tell me, which one of them is it?"

"Which one?"

"That you just can't get off your mind?"

Laura looked back up the street where she used to live and said softly, "Beebo. It's crazy, isn't it? Beebo. And it's Tris I'm in love with."

"Yeah," said Inga with kindly skepticism. "Sure ... Have some coffee with me?"

Laura leaned over on a whim and kissed her cheek. "That's for being a woman," she said. "You don't know what a help it's been."

Inga stood on the corner and watched Laura walk away from her. "Any time you want that coffee, Laura," she called. "I'm in the phone book."

Laura stood in front of the door into her old apartment building for a long while on trembling legs before she turned the k.n.o.b and walked in.

What if they're together? she wondered. They'll just grab me and wring my neck. G.o.d, all those questions Tris used to ask me about Beebo. And it never entered my lovesick head!

She crossed the little inner court to the second door, opened it, and went to the row of mailboxes to press the buzzer. She found Beebo's name, with her own crossed out beneath it but no other added. And a weird, wonderful panic grabbed her throat at the thought of Beebo.

She left the buzzer without pressing it and walked up the flight of stairs to stand in front of the door that had once been her own, with Beebo still swimming before her eyes.

She could picture her more and more clearly: wearing pants and going barefoot, tired at the end of the day and maybe a little high; a cigarette in her mouth and a towel tied around her middle while she did dishes or cleaned up the apartment; the smooth skin on her face and the handsome features that used to fire Laura's imagination and make her tingle; the tired eyes, blue and brilliant and somehow a little sick of it all ... except when they focused on Laura.

Laura remembered how it had been and a sudden flash of physical longing caught her heart and squeezed until she felt her breath come short. She stared at the door, afraid to knock and still hypnotized with curiosity. Her hand was raised, quivering, only inches from the green painted wood.

Tris will open it, she thought, and together they'll strangle me. Oddly, she didn't care. She was too tight to care. She had a vision of herself falling into their arms and succ.u.mbing without a struggle. Just letting them have her life, her mixed up, aimless, leftover life.

She knockeda quick scared rap, sharp and clear. And then stood there on one foot and the other, half panicky like a gradeschooler nearly ready to wet her pants and flee.

Footsteps. High heels. From the kitchen, Beebo's voice. "Who the h.e.l.l could that be? After ten, isn't it?" Oh, that voice! That husky voice that used to whisper such things to me that. I can never forget.

The door swung open all at once, ushering a flood of light into the hall. Laura looked up slowly ... at Lili! The two of them stared at each other in mutual amazement for a moment. And while they stared, mute, Beebo called again, "Who is it, Lili?"

Lili, her candybox pretty face overlaid with too much makeup, as usual, broke into a big smile. "It's Laura!" she exclaimed. "I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned. Laura!"

For a tense moment Laura could feel Beebo's shock across the rooms and through the walls like a physical touch. Then her courage meltedfizzled into nothing but water on a hot skillet, and she turned and ran.

She heard Beebo at the door, before she got out into the court, saying, "Let her go, Lili. If she thinks I'm going to chase her twice" And that was all Laura got of it. It shot through her heart like a bullet.

Laura reached the door to the street, tore it open, and rushed out. But once there, with the door shut behind her and no sound of pursuing footsteps, she collapsed against the wall and wept. Between sobs, when she could get her breath, she listened ... listened ... for the running feet that would mean Beebo had changed her mind. Laura had to believe, at least for a minute, that Beebo would come after her. Because it was all tied up in her mind with Beebo loving her. If Beebo loved her she'd chase her. It was that simple. And it didn't matter a d.a.m.n what Laura might have done to Beebo in the past, or how she might have hurt her.

Tris, she thought. I've got to see her! She said this to herself very urgently, but curiously, at the same time, she felt no desire to go and find the lovely tormented dancer. She told herself it would be all fight and misery. But in her heart of hearts she knew that real love would brave that misery now, being so close and so starved for pa.s.sion.

She stood there for fully fifteen minutes before she was able to pull herself together and walk to Seventh Avenue. She went straight home in a cab.

Laura walked slowly up the stairs to her apartment. It was after eleven now, and Jack would be in bed. She had had too much to drink, but she was sober, a tired, bewildered sort of sobriety that made her want to lie down and weep and rest.

In the morning she would tell it all to Jack. Wonderful Jack. He would coax her back to living, coax her with his wit and his compa.s.sion and his incredible patience with her. And she would lie in a welter of dejection and let him work on her until she felt like lifting her head from the pillow and raising the shade from the window and going oh with life. It was one of the things she loved him for and needed him for the mostthis ability to revive her when she was so low that only death was lower.

Tonight was perhaps not quite that bad. But it was bad enough to have exhausted her. And Tris and Beebo! That had been the crudest blow; the one she should have foreseen clear as a beacon in a black sea. She shoved a trembling key into the lock and walked into the apartment.

It was warm and well-lighted. It was pretty and it was comfortable. It was home. And Laura felt a sort of grat.i.tude to Jack that needed words. She went to find him. But he wasn't in the living room, nor in the bedroom.

She stood on the threshold of the bedroom and said, "Jack? Hey, Jack! Where are you?"

"Here," he said from the kitchen.

"Oh. It's me. I thought you'd be in bed." She slipped her coat off while she walked through the living room to find him. "Hi," she said. He was sitting on a kitchen chair and he answered, "Hi."

Laura stood in the doorway and looked at him. And he stared back at her, and she knew something was wrong but she didn't know what. Her long fine hair had come loose when she ran from Beebo and she reached up and pulled it down in a shimmering cascade, watching Jack all the while through narrowed eyes.

"Have fun?" he asked.

"Beebo and Tris ... are ... shacking up." She threw it at him point-blank. She wanted his sympathy.

Jack put his head back and laughed, that awful bitter laugh she hadn't heard for months, and she knew with a sudden start of fear and pity that he was drunk. "That makes everything perfect," he said, still laughing, his eyes wicked and sharp behind the horn rims.

"Jack..." she said shakily, coming in to sit beside him and seeing now the whiskey bottle on the table in front of him, two-thirds empty. "Jack, darling." She took his hands and her eyes were big with alarm.

Jack took his hands back. Not roughly, but as if he simply didn't want to be touched. Not by Laura, anyway.

"Mother, you are a living doll. If I had known you could keep secrets so well I'd have told you a few," he said. He spoke, as always when he was drunk, with a slow precision, as if each word were a stepping stone.

"Secrets?" Laura said.

"You are the living picture of guilt, my dear," he said. "It is written all over your beautiful face."

Laura put her hands over that face suddenly with a gasp. "Terry!" she sobbed through clenched teeth. "Terry! If I hadn't gone out he wouldn't have come."

"He comes when the mood hits him," Jack said. "Which is most of the time, most anywhere. It had nothing to do with you going out, my little wifey."

Laura looked up, her delicate face mottled pink and white and wet from the eyes down. "He wrote"

"Indeed he did. He told me the whole romantic story."

"Jack, darling, I only kept it secret because I was afraid you'dyou'd start drinking, or somethingI"

"You hit the nail on the head. I'm indebted to you. Your solicitude is exemplary." He waved the fast-emptying bottle at her.

"Oh, shut up! Shut up! I love you. I did it because I love you!"

"You opened my mail because you love me?" He continued to drink while he talked ... slowly, but steadily.

"I knew it was from him, Jack. I just had a feeling. The handwriting and everything."

He laughed ruefully. "Just think what you've spared me!" he said. "I can drink in peace now. My wife loves me. Thanks, wife." He saluted her.

Laura slid off her chair to her knees and put her arms around him, still crying. "Jack, Jack, please forgive me. I'll do anything, I couldn't bear to hurt you, I'd the first. Oh, please"

"You're forgiven," he interrupted her. "Why not?" And he kept on laughing. But his pardon was so light, so biting, that she cringed from it. She lifted her face to him, streaming with tears, and he said, smiling at her, "You make a lovely picture, Mother. Sort of Madonna-like. If I could paint you, I'd paint you. Black, I think. From head to toe."

She put her head down on his knees and said softly, "You'll never forgive me, will you?"

"I already have."

"Never," she whispered, stricken.

"Oh, let's not get maudlin," he said. "I admit I would have been grateful for a little forewarning. But after all, it's a simple question of s.e.x. Maybe I should get rid of mine. That would solve everything." And his soft, insane chuckling underlined everything he said.

Laura felt terror then. It rose and fell inside her like nausea. Whenever she looked at Jack it surged in her throat. It wasn't the sweet guilty thrill of coming near Beebo that had cost her such sensual pain earlier in the evening.

"Jack, darling," she said.

"Yes, Laura darling." And the sarcasm burned her. But she went on, determined, raising herself back into her chair again with effort.

'Tell me what happened. Tell me everything."

"Oh, it was dandy," he said, "You should have been here. Incidentally, he asked about your health." Laura couldn't watch him while he talked. She looked at her hands. And all the while he told her about it she kept thinking, If only I hadn't gone out tonight. Every time I do something completely selfish I suffer for it. And so does he. d.a.m.n Terry! d.a.m.n him to h.e.l.l! He won't ruin Jack. I won't let him. This is once he won't have his way.

It had been so completely unexpected, so startling, that Jack would never forget it or recover from it. Terry was as far removed from his life as if he were dead. And his life, Jack felt, had become a good thing at last. He had Laura to live for, not a wild, irresistible, good-for-nothing boy who wore him out and broke his heart and his bankroll. He had a new stature in the world as a married man, a new security. And the sweet hope of a child someday...

When he heard the bell ring, almost an hour after Laura had gone out, he took it for a neighbor and stood with the front door open while the elevator ascended. But when Terry stepped out, Jack was speechless. He couldn't believe it, and he would have slammed the door and pa.s.sed it off as a nightmare if he could have moved a little faster.

But Terry caught him and from then on it was as degrading and overwhelming as it had ever been. Jack put up the best fight he could, but it was little more than a gesture of protest. He was helplessly angry, helplessly infatuated. And all the while Terry prated to him of San Francisco and the Beats and the fog and the styles in clothes and the styles in love-making, Jack kept wondering, How did he find me? And the answer was, had to be, Laura. Laura had failed him. Betrayed him. It almost tore him apart.

Terry didn't leave until nearly eleven, and Jack saw him out, still with the feeling that it hadn't happened, that it was all an incredible dream. It wasn't until he got the bottle and began to drink that he believed in it at all. By the time Laura got home he wished the whole d.a.m.ned world to h.e.l.l, with himself first in line.

"And that's all," Jack said. "Naturally, the only thing to do after he left was get drunk." He had nearly finished the bottle and it was all he could do to get the words out. They left his mouth slowly, discreetly, each one a pearl of over-articulation.

Laura took away what was lefta shot or two at the mostand he didn't even try to protest. She helped him up and half dragged, half carried him to the bedroom, where she dumped him on his bed. He was unconscious the minute she pushed his head down on the pillow. Laura undressed him, tears running down her face.

"Sleep," she said. "Sleep and forget it for a while. I'll make it up to you, darling. All I wanted tonight was to cry on your shoulder. And you can't even hold yourself up."