She was afraid. For a moment she started to think what it might be like with him, almost hoping, almost planning, and then she shook her head resolutely and banished the thought from her mind.
The song was over. For several seconds no one said anything, and then the other boy said, “That was good.”
“Thanks.”
“Damned good,” the other boy said. “When you cut a side, include that one.”
Mike’s eyebrows went up. “When I cut a side,” he said, “we’ll all be over ninety.”
“But you’re good enough to record.”
“Sure,” he said. “You’re my best fan. Almost my only fan, and unfortunately you don’t own a record company. Sad, but true.”
“I’m not kidding, Mike. You ought to be able to set up an audition.”
Mike shrugged and finished his coffee, making a face because it was cold, but drinking it anyway. He put the cup down on the table, struck a tentative chord on the guitar and looked up abruptly at Jan as if he were seeing her for the first time.
“What’s your name?”
“Janet Marlowe.” She answered automatically.
“I’m Mike Hawkins. And this—” indicating the girl — “is Saundra Kane. And these people are Sue and Bob Dallman.”
She nodded.
“You live around here?”
“Yes. I just moved in this morning.”
As soon as she had spoken she regretted volunteering the information. She didn’t want to get involved in any conversation, not with him. It was too dangerous. She should have just mumbled something and left.
But it was too late now.
“Like it here?”
She nodded.
He tossed his head back sharply so that his hair fell back into place. “Anything special you want to hear?”
“No,” she said, nervously, awkwardly. “I have to go now.”
She stood up, stepped back from the table, and smiled at the four of them.
“Wait a minute—”
She didn’t answer, turning instead and walking from the back room through the kitchen and the front room and out the door. All the way out she felt his eyes on her, following her, burning into the back of her skirt and blouse.
She was afraid of him.
And she knew she would see him again.
She wanted a drink, wanted one badly, wanted to hold a drink in her hand and sip it and think and try to figure things out. She wanted to drink in a bar, but first she had to select a bar.
She walked up and down Macdougal Street again, but this time she didn’t notice the stores or the coffee shops. She looked at the bars, trying to place each one mentally and pick the right one, the bar where the drink would taste good and where no one would bother her. She stopped to examine each bar and rejected each in turn for one reason or another.
She paused in front of a bar called The Shadows, a bar with a porch in front of it and a loud jukebox blaring in the rear. Something seemed particularly appropriate about this bar, and she wanted to analyze her reaction before going inside. What made it different? She sensed something, but she couldn’t pin-point it.
A couple emerged from The Shadows. The girl was a fragile blonde in a print dress; the man wore tight black slacks and walked with his shoulders thrown back almost pugnaciously. Jan watched them walk out of the door and down the steps and saw them pass her and continue on down the street.
And suddenly she knew why this place was different.
Because the man was not a man, but a woman, and the two girls were obviously lovers. The Shadows was a Lesbian hangout, a gay bar.
Now you know, she thought. That’s why it appeals to you. You should go home, but you won’t. You should pack up and get the hell back to Indiana and enter a convent, but you won’t do that either.
Quickly, almost desperately, she walked up the steps and into the bar. She realized at the doorway that she didn’t want to go in, that she had no desire whatsoever to enter, but she couldn’t retrace her steps.
Two sailors at the bar were the only men in the place. Girls, feminine and masculine in appearance, sat on stools at the long dark bar or drank at tables in small groups. She walked in and sat down at an empty table near the front, ordering Scotch-and-water and sipping it slowly when the waitress brought it to her.
She didn’t want to look around, but she did. She was afraid she would catch someone’s eye without wanting to, or that she would gape at the girls like a tourist. But the fascination of the room was too much for her; she couldn’t keep from scanning the bar and tables, running her eyes over the girls.
She didn’t like the butches. She heard them talk in their deep voices and watched them dance and snap their fingers to the jukebox, and she knew that they would never attract her. They looked hard and tough and coarse, and totally unappealing.
But the other girls did excite her. It was not a physical attraction so much as the knowledge of what they were and the vague feeling of kinship coupled with the awful fascination of fear that made them attractive.
On the jukebox Dinah Washington was singing So Long. The music was slow and sad, and Jan unconsciously compared it with Mike’s Danville Girl.
She looked at them all, the girls who could pass for men and the girls who could pass for girls, and she began to think, But I don’t want any of them. I really don’t. Maybe’
Then she saw the girl and a shiver went through her.
She was beautiful. She was tall with silky red-brown hair that fell to her shoulders and framed her face. There was a deep, haunting sadness in her eyes and a constrained beauty in her face that Jan knew could only accompany unhappiness. She sat at a table near the dance floor and the table obscured most of her body, but Jan was able to see that it was a good one, slender but with full curves.
She was attractive.
Attractive to Jan.
No, she thought. No, it can’t happen. It’s no good and I don’t want it to happen and I won’t let it happen. I don’t want to think about her.
She took another sip of her Scotch-and-water and turned away from the girl, but she could not think of anything else. When she closed her eyes the image of the girl’s face remained fixed in her mind.
She began to imagine the two of them together, imagined the girl kissing her and holding her, loving her, and she pictured herself holding that slender, graceful body in her own arms and doing those things, things that she was afraid of and didn’t want to do or even to know about.
I want her, she thought. Damn it, I want her and I can’t help it.
The girl looked up and her eyes caught Jan’s. Jan turned away quickly, guiltily, finishing her drink and setting the empty glass down on the table.
One of the two other girls at the table stood up suddenly, and walked to Jan’s table. Jan sensed her approach but didn’t look up until there could be no mistake, until the girl was standing just a few feet from her, looking down at her. Then she raised her eyes slowly to look at the tall, rangy girl with blonde hair that was almost sunflower-yellow.