Bitter and sweet. You had to take them both together, she thought dully. But you should be able to blend them, to soften each with the other She said, “I love you, Megan.”
“Do you?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Then-”
“I don’t know, I was drunk, I was mixed up and Bobbie was nice to me. That was all. We danced and we talked a little. I don’t feel anything for her, Megan. Believe me.”
“I want to.”
She sat on the couch with Megan, put her arm around the blonde girl. Megan was avoiding her eyes. She leaned over to kiss Megan’s throat, Megan stiffened momentarily, then relaxed.
“Coffee?”
“I don’t want any.”
“Can I do anything for you, darling?”
“Just love me.”
“Forever, Megan.”
And now it was as it had been with that girl on the dance floor-she had to do the leading. Her hand moved upward over Megan’s back, touched the nape of her neck. Megan locked into her eyes, and Megan’s face held an expression she had seen there before. Wide eyes, an unsure upper lip. Little Girl Lost.
She drew Megan close, kissed her. Megan whimpered. She kissed her again, tenderly, then more intensely as passion born in desperation came into its own. Megan was in her arms, soft and blonde and warm, and she planted a field of kisses on Megan’s face, kissed the residue of tears from her eyes, kissed her mouth and throat, held her very close, discovered the luxury of Megan’s body under her hands.
Her hands sought, found. Megan sat with her and said her name in a small voice while she worked snaps and buttons to open Megan’s clothing. Her hands found Megan’s breasts and held them, hurried up Megan’s thighs to secret flesh.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand…
Bodies brushing together as they walked neatly nude over deep carpet to the bedroom. A light turned off, a light turned on. A sheet drawn down, a bedspring sigh of acceptance.
…eternity in an hour…
There was a moment which would stay with her forever, snatched out of time as if by a camera’s instantaneous eye. Megan lying upon the bed on her back, hand resting upon the rise of a thigh, the other arm stretched out across the bed. Breasts pointed proudly upward. Legs a little apart, one foot some inches over the edge of the bed. Blonde hair wild upon a pillow. Eyes closed, mouth just open.
Light from the hall played across Megan’s body. The whole scene could have been packaged and framed, a virtuoso performance by an airbrush painter. Shadows, curves, subtle flesh tones.
Then Megan said, “Why do we hurt each other.” The words made a question but were not spoken that way; there was no question mark in Megan’s voice. The six words hung in space.
Until Rhoda found her, joined her, pressed flesh to flesh, seeking sweet mystery with a hungry mouth, finding heaven that was partly pain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Monday, Megan picked her up after work and hurried her off to dinner. “I’ve only got an hour,” she said. “I have an appointment with a Third Avenue dealer at six-thirty and then I have to look at some draperies on East Sixty-Eighth Street. A swank little shop run by two very chic guys. Gay guys, of course.”
“Sometimes I think everybody is gay.”
“Everybody is, kitten.”
They had chicken and rice at the Picador on West Tenth. Their waiter was an olive-skinned Mexican who hovered over them constantly and flirted with them passionately. They ate in a hurry. Megan kept up a running stream of chatter about her work-the pieces she had seen, her plans for the apartment, what fee she could expect, on and on and on. Rhoda tried to stay interested but it was impossible. She didn’t have the background for it, couldn’t visualize what Megan described, couldn’t appreciate any of the detail. It was Megan’s work and she was glad Megan was able to throw herself into it so feverishly, but her own interest was limited.
Then they were outside. “I’d better jump in a cab,” Megan was saying. “Can I drop you off?”
“I’ll walk.”
“It wouldn’t be out of the way-”
But it was a nice night and she walked. She drifted over to Washington Square first but the park was too crowded with tight knots of people forming and re-forming. She could feel an undercurrent of tension in the air. There had been trouble in the park lately, friction between the Village element and the local Italians, friction between neighborhood whites and Harlem Negroes off the A-train. She cut across the park, stopped to watch two men play chess, drank from the drinking fountain, then drifted across town to the apartment on Cornelia.
The apartment was lonely. She waited for Megan to come home, and Megan didn’t get back until a quarter to eleven. She had been running around all night, she told Rhoda, and she was so exhausted that all she wanted to do was get some sleep.
Tuesday was more of the same. That night she didn’t even see Megan at dinner. She didn’t want to cook just for herself, so she had a hamburger around the corner from the apartment and spent the evening trying to get interested in a scholarly hardbound work on female homosexuality. Megan had a fairly extensive library on the subject. The book kept boring her and she didn’t get very far with it. At nine-thirty Megan called and said not to wait up for her, that she would be late. They did not talk long. Afterward, she took a shower and crawled into bed and felt lost in the big bed, lost and alone. At one point she thought that she was going to cry. She felt tears welling up behind her eyes and waited for them to come spilling out, but they didn’t. She lay in bed and finally fell asleep.
She dreamed for the first time in weeks. Not the usual dream, the dream of being chased. This was a gentler dream and one which did not wake her, although she remembered it quite clearly in the morning.
In the dream, she was standing upon the peak of a small hill with rolling lawn stretching out in all directions as far as she could see. The sun was high in the sky, the grass flawlessly green. She was dressed in a formal gown and had a rose in her hair. And then, slowly but surely her clothes began to melt away, stitch by stitch and layer by layer. The gown went, and then her slip and her shoes, and her bra and panties and stocking until she stood nude on the top of the hill. And then flesh began to melt away in the same fashion, slowly dreamily, and then her bones, until she had gradually vanished and only the rose from her hair remained, floating a few feet in space above the crest of the hill.
It was not a frightening dream. The melting process had nothing fearsome in it. It was quite gentle. But when she thought about the dream the next day it bothered her. She wondered what it meant and decided it might best not to think about it. She never mentioned it to Megan.
“You’re a hard girl to get hold of,” someone said. She spun around and looked up at the man who had spoken. It was Ed Vance.
“I tried calling you,” he said. “Your number’s not listed. Then I tried to reach you at work but I didn’t remember the name of the shop, just where it was.” He grinned. “So I decided to take a long lunch hour and make another pilgrimage to the Village. Come have lunch with me and my labors will be rewarded.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? When’s your lunch hour?”
“In a few minutes. But-”
“Then what’s the problem?”
The problem was that she did not want to see him. He was pushy and she felt threatened when he was with him. As far as he was concerned, she was a manless woman who would be a relatively easy mark. And Tom had probably said something about her, something to the effect that she was frigid, a piece of ice. A man like him would take that as a challenge, anxious to prove himself as a man by melting the ice with her.
“I’m meeting someone for lunch.”
“Someone?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone I know?”
“I don’t think so.”
He looked at her. She turned away, avoiding his eyes. The store was empty now. If a customer had come in she would have had an excuse to slip away from Ed and make herself look busy, but customers only came when she didn’t want them around.