"I'm serious. I'm even bored with liquor. By Jesus, I think I'll go on the wagon."

"When you go on the wagon, boy, I'll believe you're going mad for sure. But not before." She put her own gla.s.s down as if it suddenly frightened her. "Why do we all drink so much, Jackson? Is it something in the air down here? Does the Village contaminate us?"

"I wish to G.o.d it did. I'd move out tomorrow."

"Are we all bad for each other?"

"Poisonous. But that's not the reason."

"It's contagious, then. One person gets hooked on booze and he hooks everybody else."

"Guess again."

"Because we're queer?"

"No, doll. Come with me." He took her by the hand and led her on a weaving course through the living room to the bathroom. The dachshund, Nix, followed them, bustling with nonalcoholic energy. Jack aimed Beebo at the mirror over the washbowl. "There, sweetheart," he said. "There's your answer."

Beebo looked at herself with distaste. "My face?" she asked.

Jack chuckled. "Yourself," he said. "You drink to suit yourself. As Laura said, you drink because you like the taste."

"I hate the taste. Tastes lousy."

"Beebo, I love you but you are the G.o.ddam stubbornest female alive. You don't drink because anybody asks you to, or infects you, or forces you. You're like me. You need to or you wouldn't! Ask that babe in the mirror there."

"I can't live with that, Jack," she whispered.

"Okay, don't. I can't either. I just made up my mind: I'm quitting."

She turned and looked at him. "I don't believe you."

He smiled at her. "You don't have to," he said.

"And what if you do? How does that help me?"

He shook his head. "You have to help yourself, Beebo.

That's the h.e.l.l of it." He turned and walked toward the front door and Beebo followed him, scooping Nix off the floor and carrying him with her. "Don't go, Jack," she said. "I need somebody to talk to."

'Talk to Laura."

"Sure. Like talking to a wall."

'Talk anyway. Talk to Nix."

"I do. All the time." She held the little dog tight and turned a taut face to it. "Why doesn't she love me any more, Nix? What did I do wrong? Tell me. Tell me..." She glanced up at Jack. "I apologise," she said.

"What for?"

"For laughing about your kid". Your little girl." She stroked Nix. "I know how it feels. To want one. You just have to make do with what you've got," she added, squeezing Nix.

Jack stared a little at her. "You know, it comes to me as a shock now and then that you're a female," he said.

"Yeah. Comes as a shock to me too."

He saw tears starting in her eyes again and put a kind hand on her arm. "Beebo, you're trying too d.a.m.n hard with Laura. Relax. Ignore her for a couple of days."

"Ignore her! I adore her! I die inside when she slams that door at me." She dropped Nix suddenly and threw her arms around Jack, nearly smothering him. "Jack, you've been through it, you know what to do. Help me. Tell me. Help me!" And her arms loosened and she slumped to the floor and rolled over on her stomach and wept. Nix licked her face and whimpered.

Jack stood looking over her, still smiling sadly. Nothing surprised him now. He had lived with the heartbreaks of the h.o.m.os.e.xual world too long.

"Sure, I know what to do," he said softly. "Just keep living. Whatever else turns rotten and dies, never mind. Just keep living. Till it's worse than dying. Then it's time to quit."

"Ohhhh," she groaned. "What shall I do?"

"Stop loving her," he said.

Beebo turned over and gaped at him. Jack shrugged and there was sympathy in his face and fate in his voice. "That would straighten things out, wouldn't it?"

Beebo shook her head and whispered, "I can't. You know I can't."

"I know," Jack repeated. "Goodnight, Beebo."

CHAPTER 2.

THE BEDROOM DOOR opened and Beebo surprised Laura sitting on the closet floor fingering her shoes and dreaming. The party was two days past, the hangovers were still with them, but love was seven days behind them. Beebo didn't know how much longer she could take it. She had tried, since Jack's advice about relaxing, to keep her distance from Laura. It had not worked miracles, but it had helped.

However, Laura resented the love she could no longer return. Perhaps it was anger at her own failing, her own empty heart. Laura felt a sort of shame when Beebo embraced her. She blamed herself secretly for her fading affection. Beebo's love had been the strongest and Beebo's words, when she spoke of it, the truest. And yet Laura had said those same words and felt those same pa.s.sions and believed, as Beebo had believed, that it would last.

She could not be sure where she had gone wrong or when that lovely flush of desire had begun to wane in her. She only knew one day that she did not want Beebo to touch her. When Beebo had protested, Laura had lost her temper and they had had their first terrible fight. Not a spat or an argument or a disagreement, as before. A fighta physical struggle as well as a verbal one. An ugly and humiliating thing from which they could not rise and make love and rea.s.sure each other. That had been almost a year ago. Others had followed it and the breach became serious, and still they clung to each other.

Only now Laura's need was weakening and it was Beebo who held them together almost by herself. It was Beebo who gave in when a quarrel loomed, who took the lead to make peace afterwards, to try to soothe and spoil Laura. Beebo had the terrible fear that one of these days the quarrel would be too vicious and Laura would leave her. Or that she would go beyond the point of rational suffering and kill Laura.

Once or twice she had dreamed of this, and when she had wakened in sweat and panic she had gone to the living room and turned the light on and spent the time until dawn staring at it, repeating the jingles of popular tunes in her mind as a sort of desperate gesture at sanity.

Now Beebo stood looking down at Laura and at Nix, who was chewing on a pair of slippers, and she felt a wrenching in her heart. It just wasn't possible for her to ignore Laura any longer. She had kept hands off since the party and her talk with Jack. There had been no begging, no shouting, no furious tears. Now she felt she deserved tenderness and she knelt down and took Laura's chin in her hand and kissed her mouth.

"I love you," she said almost shyly.

And Laura, who wanted only to leave her, not to hurt her, lowered her eyes and looked away. She could not say it any more I love you, Beebo. It wasn't true. And Beebo knew it and the knowledge almost killed her, and yet she didn't insist "Laura," she said humbly. "Kiss me."

And Laura did. And in a little wave of compa.s.sion she said into Beebo's ear, "I don't want to hurt you any more."

Beebo took it the wrong way, the way that hurt her least. She took it to mean that Laura was apologising and wanted her love again. But Laura meant only that Beebo had been dear to her once and that it was awful to see her so unhappy. "It's my fault," she said. "Only"

"Only nothing," Beebo said quickly. "Don't say it Say sweet things to me."

"Oh, Beebo, I can't. Don't ask me. I've forgotten the sweet things." Suddenly she felt like crying. She had never meant to wound Beebo. She had had the best intentions of loving her faithfully for the rest of her life. And yet now every pretty face she saw on the streets caught her eye, every new set of eyes or curving lips at the lunch counter.

Laura was afraid and ashamed. She had always protested hotly when somebody accused Lesbians of promiscuity. And yet here she was refuting her own argument, at least in her thoughts and desires. It was still true that in the whole time they had lived together, she had never betrayed Beebo with another woman.

Knowing how Beebo felt only made Laura's conscience worse. It made her resentful and gentle by fits. Either way it was nerve-wracking and left her exhausted.

Suddenly Beebo picked her up and put her on the bed. She sat down beside her and slipped her arms around her and began to kiss her with a yearning that gradually brought little darts of desire to Laura. She didn't want it until it happened. And then, inexplicably, she did. It was good, very good. And she heard Beebo whisper, "Oh, if it could always be like this. Laura, Laura, love me. Love me!"

Laura turned her head away and shut her eyes and tried not to hear the words. Gradually the world faded out of her consciousness and there was only the ritual rhythm, the wonderful press of Beebo's body against hers. It hadn't been like this for Laura for months, and she was both grateful and annoyed.

Beebo made wonderful love. She knew how, she did it naturally, as other people eat or walk. Her hands flowed over Laura like fine silk in the wind, her lips bit and teased and murmured, all with a knowing touch that amounted to witchery. In the early days of their love Laura had not been able to resist her, and Beebo had loved her lavishly.

Often Laura had felt an ache for those days, when every thing was sure and safe and certain in the fortress of pa.s.sion. She had taken pa.s.sion for love itself, and she had been secure in Beebo's warm arms. Now it seemed that Beebo had been just a harbor where she could rest and renew herself at a time when her life was most shattered and unhappy. She didn't need the safe harbor now. She was grateful, but she needed to move on. It was time to face life again and fight again and feel alive again. For Beebo the time of searching was over. It ended when she met Laura.

She had a small ten-watt bulb in a little bedstand lamp that shed a peachy glow around them, and she always had it on when they went to bed. Laura had loved it at first, when just the sight of Beebo's big firm body and marvelous limbs would set her trembling. But later, when she was afraid her slackening interest would show in her face, she asked Beebo to turn it out. It had been one more in a series of harsh arguments, for Beebo had known what prompted her request Now they lay beside one another, their hearts slipping back into a normal rhythm, their bodies limp and relaxed. Laura wanted only to sleep; she dreaded long intimate talks with Beebo. But Beebo wanted rea.s.surance. She wanted Laura's soft voice in her ears.

'Talk to me, Bo-peep," Beebo said.

"Too sleepy," Laura murmured, yawning.

"What did you do today?"

"Nothing."

"Shall I tell you what I did?"

"No."

"I got a new shirt at Davis'," Beebo said, ignoring her. "Blue with little checks. And guess who rode in my elevator today?"

Laura didn't answer.

"Ed Sullivan," Beebo said. "He had to see one of the ad agency people on the eighth floor." Still no response. "Looks just like he does on TV," Beebo said.

Laura rolled over on her side and pulled the covers up over her ears. For some moments Beebo remained quiet and then she said softly, "You've been calling me 'Beth' again."

Laura woke up suddenly and completely. Beth ... the name, the girl, the love that wound through her life like a theme. The tender first love that was born in her college days and died with them less than a year later. The love she never could forget, or forgive or wholly renounce. She had called Beebo "Beth" when they first met, and now and then when pa.s.sion got the best of her, or whiskey, or nostalgia, Beth's name would come to her lips like an old song. Beebo had grown to hate it. It was the only rival she knew for certain she had and it put her in the unreasonable position of being helplessly jealous of a girl she didn't know and never would. Whenever she mentioned her, Laura knew there was a storm coming.

"If I could only see that G.o.ddam girl sometime and know what I was up against!" she would shout, and Laura would have to pacify her one way or another. She would have to protest that after all, it was all over, Beth was married, and Beth had never even loved her. Not really. But when Laura grew the most unhappy with Beebo, the most restless and frustrated, she would start to call her Beth again when they made love. So Beebo feared the name as much as she disliked it. It was an evil omen in her life, as it was a love theme in Laura's.

Laura turned back to face Beebo now, nervous and tensed for a fight. "Beebo, darlingI'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

"Sure, I know. Darling." She lampooned Laura's soothing love word sarcastically. "You just pick that name out of a hat. For some screwy reason it just happens to be the same name all the time."

"If you're going to be like that I won't apologize next time.

"Next time! Are you planning on next time already? G.o.d!"

"Beebo, you know that's all over"

"I swear, Laura, sometimes I think you must have a girl somewhere." Laura gasped indignantly, but Beebo went on, "I do! You talk about Beth, Beth, Beth so much I'm beginning to think she's real. She's my demon. She lives around the corner on Seventh Avenue somewhere and you sneak off and see her in the evenings when I work late. And her husband is out." Her voice was sharp and probing, like a needle in the hands of a nervous nurse.

"Beebo, I've never betrayed you! Never!"

Beebo didn't really believe she had. But Laura had hurt her enough without betraying her and Beebo, who was not blind, could see that Laura would not go on forever in beautiful blamelessness.

"You will," Beebo said briefly. They were the words of near despair.

Laura was suddenly full of pity. "Beebo, don't make me hurt you," she begged. She got on her knees and bent over Beebo. "I swear I've never touched another girl while we've lived together, and I never will."

"You mean when you stumble on a tempting female one of these days you'll just move out. You can always say, 'I never cheated on Beebo while we lived together. I just got the h.e.l.l out when I had a chance.'"

"Beebo, d.a.m.n you, you're impossible! You're the one who's saying all this! I don't want to cheat, I don't want to hurt you, I hate these ugly scenes!" She began to weep while she talked. "G.o.d, if you're going to accuse me of something, accuse me of something real. Sometimes I think you're getting a little crazy."

Beebo clasped her around the waist then, her strong fingers digging painfully into Laura's smooth flesh, and sobbed. They were hard sobs, painful as if each one were twisting her throat.

"Forgive me, forgive me," she groaned. "Why do I do it? Why? Laura, my darling, my only love, tell me just onceyou aren't in love with anybody else, are you?"

"No!" said Laura with the force of truth, resenting Beebo's arms around her. She wanted to comfort her, yet she feared that Beebo would pounce on the gesture as a proof of love and force her into more lovemaking. Her hands rested awkwardly on Beebo's shoulders.

"If you ever fall for anybody. Bo-peep, tell me. Tell me first, don't spare me. Don't wait till the breach is too wide to heal. Give me a chance. Let me know who it is, let me know how it happened. Don't keep me wondering and agonizing over it. Anything would be better than lies and wondering. Promise you'll tell me. Promise, love."

She looked up at Laura now, shaking her so hard that Laura gasped. "Promise!" she said fiercely.

"All right," Laura whispered, afraid of her.

"Say it."

"I promiseto tell youif Ioh, Beebo, please"

"Go on, d.a.m.n you!"

"If I ever fallfor somebody else." Her voice was almost too weak to hear.

Beebo released her then and they both fell back on the bed, worn out. For a long time they lay awake, but neither would make a move toward the other or utter a word.

The next day Beebo awoke feeling that they had come closer to the edge of breaking up than ever before, and she could feel herself trembling all over. She got up before Laura was awake and, taking Nix with her into the kitchen, she poured herself a shot. She was ashamed of this new little habit she was acquiring. She hadn't told anybody about it, not even Jack. Just one drink in the morning. Just one. Never more. It made her hands steady. It made the day look brighter and not quite so endless. It made her situation with Laura look hopeful.

She took the hot and satisfying amber liquid straight, letting it burn her tight throat and ease her. Then she washed out the shot gla.s.s and returned it to the shelf with the bottle.

"Nix," she said softly to the little dog, "I'm a bad girl. Your Beebo is a wicked b.i.t.c.h, Nix. Do you think anybody cares? Do you think it matters? What the h.e.l.l good is it to be a bad little girl if n.o.body notices you? What fun is it then? Shall I have another shot, Nix? n.o.body's looking."

He whimpered a little, watching her with puddle-bright eyes, and made her laugh. "You care, don't you, little dog?" She leaned down and picked him up. "You care, anyway. You're telling me not to be an a.s.s and let myself in for a lot of trouble. And you're right. Absolutely."