“I suppose I do. But it’s hard being away from you so much.”
“Oh, is it?”
“Honey, did I do something wrong? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s the matter.”
But something was and she knew it. Something was very wrong between them, so wrong that they couldn’t talk like normal human beings without one of them getting on the other’s nerves. She felt wrong about it but that did not seem to change things.
After dinner they sat on a bench in Sheridan Square. The air was heavy, thick with the exhaust of trucks and cabs, rolling south on Seventh Avenue. They smoked cigarettes, and Rhoda thought that not long ago she had not smoked in public, on the street. There were a lot of things she did now that she had not done in the past.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“A show? Something like that?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Want to drop in on some of the girls?”
“Maybe.”
“I think we ought to,” Megan said. “A little company might do us both some good. We’re just getting on each other’s nerves, kitten, and that’s no good for either of us.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Rhoda? Should I call some of the girls?”
“All right.”
“Anyone special you want me to try?”
“You could call Bobbie. ”
“Why?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why, no reason, Megan. I just thought that she was a friend of ours.”
“You’ve got a thing for her, don’t you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Oh, damn it, you do. Do you have to be so awful to me, Rhoda? Do you have to-”
They sat in silence, and she thought that it was all falling apart at the seams now, that Megan was jealous, that she was irritable, that the two of them were not going to last forever or anywhere close to it. She took a last drag on her cigarette and dropped it to the pavement, covered it with her foot and ground it out.
Megan said, “I’ll call her.”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll call her. Wait for me.”
Megan made the call from an outdoor booth across the street. Rhoda sat waiting for her. She tool another cigarette and lit it with the small lighter Megan had given her; the one with her name on it in precise script. She held the lighter in the palm of her hand and thought about their exchange of gifts. An exchange of presents, she knew now, was a ritual in the formation of a lesbian relationship. All the gay girls did it, giving each other tiny engraved gifts along with vows of foreverness. Once she had seen Megan’s collection of the jewelry she had been given over the years. A pin with two circles interlocked, a bracelet inscribed Never Leave Me-H.R., a half dozen rings, each engraved on the inside-Megan and Sue, Megan and Rita, Megan and Charlotte… all those trophies of loves that would never die, but that had died after all.
When Megan came back toward her she dropped the lighter in her purse. Megan told her that Bobbie wasn’t at her apartment, but that she had called Grace and Alice. “You remember them, Rhoda. They were at Leonetti’s the first time I took you there.”
“They were at Jan’s party, too.”
“Yes, I guess they were. They want us to drop over. Grace wanted to know if we were dressed. She sits around in slacks and a tailored blouse when she’s at home, but I told her we were wearing dresses so she’ll change into something more feminine.”
“She doesn’t have to.”
“She’ll feel uncomfortable otherwise. You don’t mind do you? Grace and Alice are an old pair, but they’re pretty good company.”
“I don’t mind,” she said.
It wasn’t a bad evening. Grace had a quart of J amp; B scotch and nothing to mix it with, and the four of them sat around drinking the liquor straight over ice cubes. They talked about Allie’s cold, which seemed to be chronic, and about the place where Grace was working, and Megan’s decorating job. They talked, too, about people. “A heavy date this weekend,” Grace said. “Allie and I are doing the town. Dinner at L’Aiglon, tickets to Pearly Wine, and then a nightcap or three at the Living Room. Have you ever been there, Rhoda? Everybody sits on these little couches for two, and the lights are low, and they have some sexy cabaret singer, and everyone does a little genteel necking.”
“You must be crazy,” Megan said.
“Why?”
“Because that’s not a gay place. You’ll look great there, Grace. No matter how low the lights are-”
“Oh Megan,” Allie said. She laughed. “We’re going with a couple of gay boys. Billie Rudin and Ray Crane. You know them, don’t you?”
The three of them had to explain it to Rhoda. When you wanted a real evening on the town, and when you didn’t want people staring at you and knowing you were gay, then you doubled with a couple of gay men. That way you came on just like straight people and no one knew the difference.
“Of course it doesn’t work if you’re butchy, or if the boys you go with are screaming queens,” Grace explained. “But if everybody dresses straight, no one guesses a thing. It’s handy, too. Two girls alone can’t go to dinner easily enough, or even to a show. But you go to a nightclub or to any of the better straight bars without getting either a pass tossed at you or a load of funny looks.”
And she realized how very much there was to learn. The demimonde had special survival mechanisms, special ways to get along in an unsympathetic world. How much she was learning, she thought. And how little she had known before.
Just half an hour before they left Grace and Alice’s apartment, Bobbie Kardaman dropped by for a drink. She couldn’t stay long, she said. She was in a hurry, but she had passed by the building and wanted to stop to say hello.
One glance set the pace. Bobbie came into the room and saw her, and looked long and hard at her, and their eyes locked and something happened to Rhoda. She couldn’t deny it, couldn’t avoid recognizing what it was. She broke the glance as quickly as she could but that didn’t change anything.
Oh, God “I’ve been settling down,” Bobbie said. “I spend of most of my time just sitting around my apartment, usually with a glass in my hand. But not always. I met a girl this weekend after the party and I thought everything was going to start swinging again, but after a night I knew this was strictly a short-time affair, and she left this morning and I couldn’t be happier. She was fine in bed-I’m being vulgar, aren’t I, Meg?”
“A little.”
“I’m the vulgar sort. Dirty old Bobbie. She was fine in the hay, kids, but that doesn’t have much to do with things. It truly doesn’t. She was so very boring, one of the pretentiously intellectual types, the kind that likes to discuss Sartre between sets. She tried to come on strong like the dyke in No Exit. We parted company, thank heaven.” She sighed. “So if anybody ever wants to come looking for little Bobbie, you know where she can be found. Home, and alone.”
And then a brief but significant glance at Rhoda She was very nice to Megan on the way home. They had kept rubbing one another the wrong way earlier in the evening, but now everything seemed to have smoothed out. They walked arm in arm, and they talked easily, and there was only one thing wrong.
Rhoda knew that she was acting.
Acting, playing a part, fitting herself into a role. Because she was being very nice to Megan now, and she would continue to be very nice to Megan, and she felt very close to Megan, closer now, oddly enough, than she had felt when love was stronger between them.
They hurried upstairs to Megan’s apartment, a little lightheaded from the scotch, and they had coffee together in the kitchen. She did not say anything to Megan about Bobbie having been home that night after all, did not let on that she knew Megan had lied about calling her. And Megan did not mention Bobbie, either.
But afterward, in bed, waiting for sleep to come, she let herself think all the thoughts that might better have been left unthought. And she knew just what was going to happen, knew it with a quiet certainty.