Sex.
Sex with Maggie, yet
Homosexual sex.
Sexual homosexual sex.
Lesbianism, for the love of God!
Some people, when they drink to excess, experience what is popularly known as a black-out. In the morning, when their eyes unwillingly open, they remember very little of what transpired the night before. In place of memories, these persons have huge spaces of blankness.
This can be unpleasant. A man may drink, behave like a total ass, and wake up not realizing he has made a mortal enemy of a former friend. But there are good things about a blackout. Sometimes memories are not worth having.
Elly Carr never blacked out. This morning was, in that respect if in few others, no different from many other mornings. Elly remembered everything she had done the night before, remembered every last detail from the moment Maggie picked her up at her house in Cheshire Point, driving to the railroad station in the little Volkswagen, to the last final and penultimate quiver of orgasmic fury in the bed at the Hasbrouck House.
These memories were less than a delight.
Elly shuddered violently. She tried to imagine what on earth had made her do what she had done, tried to figure out some vaguely rational explanation for the undeniable fact that she and Maggie had made love. There was no such explanation. It was impossible, ridiculous, absurd. It made no sense at all. But it had happened.
She sat up shakily. Maggie was still asleep, and Elly was glad of it; the morning was bad enough alone and could only be worse if shared with another human being. Especially, she thought, Maggie Whitcomb.
There was a pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. She reached for the pack, shook a cigarette loose, placed it between her lips. Lips which had kissed Maggie last night. Lips which had—
She found matches and scratched one. Her hands were shaking rather violently by now and she had a little trouble getting the flame and the cigarette end together. She managed it, eventually, shook out the match with a flick of her wrist and let it fall to the carpet. She sucked smoke into her lungs, letting it trail out from between slightly parted lips.
It had happened. And, what was more, she had enjoyed it. That was the most singly frightening fact of all. The act itself was tough enough to accept, but a person is never entirely responsible for what happens when he or she is drank, and if she and Maggie had simply fooled around foolishly for a few minutes, it would be easy enough to rationalize the whole thing as something which was meaningless and not worth thinking about.
But she had loved every minute of it.
And so had Maggie.
What in hell did it mean? That she was a... lesbian? God, it didn’t seem possible! She was a nympho, maybe; she was the easiest lay in the western hemisphere, perhaps. But a lesbian? It was only common sense to assume that a girl who yanked her skirt up every time a man was in the neighborhood was hardly the type to get hot for girls.
But—
Hold on, she thought. Leave us be logical, little girl. Painfully logical, if the need be. Because, no matter how many ways you find to avoid the issue, the fact remains that you went to bed with Maggie. And that you had a feeling, somewhere deep down inside you, that it was going to happen. And that you were pretty damned glad when it did happen, and that you loved it, and that now you wish it hadn’t happened but you still loved every minute of it while it was going on.
And that you want it to happen again.
She drew on the cigarette. Did she want it to happen again? Now there was a question. Questions were easy to find — they were cropping up all over the place. But answers were something else entirely. It wasn’t so very easy to pick out the answers to all those interesting questions.
Questions and answers. Problems and headaches, and the hangover in back of all of it, making everything worse. And a tremendous thirst, with her throat parched. There was a private bathroom attached to the room, and there was running water in the sink, but she didn’t have the strength to get up and slake her thirst.
She was on her third cigarette when Maggie awoke.
Maggie actually was awake before she opened her eyes. Consciousness returned slowly, and while it was returning she remained motionless, nude upon her back. She stayed there for several minutes, taking stock of where she was and how she had gotten there, listening to the quiet sounds of Elly smoking a cigarette.
Then, finally, she opened her eyes, stretched, and sat up.
Elly blushed.
Maggie looked at the girl. A whole rush of emotions came to her... pity for Elly, who was obviously tormented and miserable, guilt at having made a lesbian out of her, whether for a night or longer, and, beneath it all, the undercurrent of desire that refused to be dispelled.
She said: “Good morning.”
“Maggie...”
“Don’t say anything,” she said. “Not for a few minutes, anyway. Let me talk. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Maggie...”
“I mean it, Ell. Let me get it all out. It’s not easy to say. Then you can talk all you want.”
“Whatever you say.”
She swallowed. It was not easy, not at all. Because now honesty was going to have to be the best policy. She had been as cold-blooded as possible in the now-successful campaign to get in bed with Elly Carr; now, the battle won, she had to be honest. She was not fundamentally a cold-blooded person. Sexual conquest alone was not enough for her. She was emotional, and if this whole affair with Elly was going to amount to anything more than simple one-shot sex, she was going to have to play the game according to the rules, with no low blows and no concealed weapons.
So she said: “I’m a lesbian, Ell. I’ve been exclusively homosexual since I was a junior in prep school. I’ve never slept with a man, because my husband, David, is a male homosexual. We—”
“Maggie—”
“Hear me out. Dammit, I said not to interrupt. Will you let me finish what I’m trying to say!”
“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t mean to snap at you. Ell, Dave is gay and I am gay and we’re married to keep up appearances. And I... I seduced you, honey. I very willfully got you to accept me as a friend, and then I just as willfully got you to... to go to bed with me. Maybe it was wrong of me. I’m not certain, and maybe that’s something you can decide better than I can.
“I’ll tell you this much, Ell. I wouldn’t have tried to make love to you unless I thought you would be responsive. I got you drunk last night, but I still wouldn’t have done anything if I hadn’t known damned well that you wanted it as much as I did. And while we were making love it meant as much to you as it did to me. I know that.”
Elly didn’t say anything, and Maggie paused, searching the brunette’s face, trying to find some indication that her words were having an effect. Elly’s face was blank. It told her nothing. She reached for one of Elly’s cigarettes and lighted it, using the time the act of lighting the cigarette took to reorganize her thoughts.
“I knew you had... homosexual leanings,” she said finally. “All along, you were a potential lesbian. Otherwise nothing could have happened between us, Ell.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think back,” she said. “Remember the afternoon when we sat around — uh — a little exposed? Didn’t you feel anything?”
“Maybe I did.”
“And you suggested necking in the cab. It was just a joke, but you thought of it all by yourself. Deep down inside you weren’t joking, Ell. Subconsciously you knew what you were and knew what I was. And you knew what you wanted.”
“It’s hard to believe, Maggie.”