“I love you,” she said.
“Oh, Rho.”
“It will be good, won’t it?”
“I don’t want to hurt anybody and I don’t want anybody to hurt me. I just want everything to be wonderful. Will we be wonderful?”
“How can we miss?”
A kiss, soft and gentle. When she opened her eyes, she saw Bobbie’s face inches from her own and she kissed Bobbie again and felt her head swim.
“How will we tell Megan?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I can’t help worrying about it. Everything is complicated, isn’t it? I used to live all by myself and nothing was ever complicated, and I was so lonely I died inside every day until I was almost entirely dead, and now I am breathlessly alive and everything is a Chinese puzzle. What can I say to her? Do you want me to move in here with you?”
“Yes, if you can stand it.”
“Oh, I want to. What do I do? Just move everything from there into here? And what do I say to her? Megan, I don’t love you any more. I don’t want to hurt her. Some other girl had just hurt her when she met me, I don’t want to pile this on top of the other. Bobbie, help me.”
Silence. Then, “She already knows, Rho.”
“About us? How?”
“Not that we’re together yet, maybe. But that we will be, in a week if not now.”
“She loves me.”
“Yes. And she has been there before, Rho, and she’ll make that scene again. She knew last night. I saw her face, once when she looked at you with sad eyes and another time when she looked at me. She could have cheerfully throttled me last night. She knows.”
“Then how-”
“Don’t worry. You’ll manage.”
“I don’t know what I’ll say.”
“You’ll find the words.” Bobby took a breath. “I don’t know about you, but I need a drink.”
“Well, while you’re up-”
Bobbie went off to fill their glasses. Rhoda sat up slowly, blinked, reached for a cigarette. The cat had withdrawn while they embraced; he was seated on the floor now in front of a fake fireplace. He seemed to be studying her again. Little Claude, she thought. He lived there while the girls came and went. How many had he seen?
She looked at her watch. Megan might be home now, she thought. What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t call her. Nor could she let her sit home waiting and worrying. But maybe that would be better, maybe if Megan just came to the realization slowly So complicated. So awfully complicated.
Bobbie brought her a fresh drink and she took it gratefully. “I might become a drunk,” she said softly. “I think I am developing a taste for it.”
“You’re in good company.”
“I’m in marvelous company. Sit next to me, Bobbie.”
Bobbie was beside her now. Rhoda sipped the scotch and closed her eyes and thought how comfortable she was now. So much of life was devoted to the simple pursuit of comfort. She had never realized this before. And it was this hunger for comfort which had sent her to Bobbie. Not a craving for excitement, not some furious dark passion, but the basic desire to be where she could most comfortable. Bobbie was with her now, and the two of them might get a little drunk together, and they would be drawn closer and closer, until ultimately their lovemaking would climax the evening, symbolizing and emphasizing the bond that was growing up between them.
“You’re a funny girl, Rho.”
“Am I?”
“Uh-huh. A lot of the time you seem a hell of a lot younger than you are. Like a lost lamb, like a schoolgirl. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“That’s what I would have guessed, I suppose, but part of the time you seem about seventeen.”
“I was seventeen until a few weeks ago.”
“I know what you mean. Yes, that’s what I thought. You were just a girl all that time, weren’t you? And spent two years pretending you were a woman, only it didn’t take. And then became a woman overnight.”
“Yes.”
“And they say we get this way by being led astray at an early age. The horny hands of a lady gym teacher, or an inquisitive tongue in a boarding school dorm room, every little thing that can warp us and ruin us before we have a chance to blossom out as child-producing man-loving automatons. What crap that is. My mother sits in too large a house in Grosse Pointe and tries to forget she ever knew me. She can’t forget all the time, because once a month she has to send me my check. A combination of conscience money and insurance; insurance because as long as the checks come regularly she knows I won’t darken her upper middle class doorway, and conscience money because she sits there scratching her head and wondering what she did wrong. Because she’s damned sure she must have done something wrong. Her darling daughter is a lesbian, and Mumsie is dead certain something like that couldn’t happen by chance. She couldn’t believe I might be born this way. And she can’t imagine that I’m a person underneath it all. Like some people when they look at a Negro. All they see is black skin, they don’t see a person. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“All my mother sees is a dyke. She broke down one time and cried and told me that she couldn’t look at me without imagining me in bed with another girl. What the hell sense does that make? I can look at her without visualizing her in bed with my father. For heaven’s sake, Rho, we’re all human beings.” She stopped for a minute. Then, “That woman was terrified when I wrote her and told her I couldn’t stand it in Mexico any more. I wanted to tell her the truth, that everybody in Cuernavaca was hopelessly depraved, but that wouldn’t have registered. She thinks I’m hopelessly depraved, so she would have thought I belonged there. But I got a letter from her and I saw she was scared. She thought I was coming back home to Detroit. She wrote that it would be awkward, inconvenient-oh, she found a lot of polite adjectives. I didn’t write her again until I was here in the city. I wrote her then and said I had a long lease on an apartment and that I would be staying in New York for a long time. I never mentioned her letter. Sometimes I hate her.”
For a long time neither of them said anything. Then Bobbie finished her drink and put her glass down. The Siamese paraded slowly but confidently across the room, and seated himself sedately upon the floor in front of Bobbie. His eyes were steel blue.
“My man Claude,” she said. “I spoil him rotten, Rho. He’s an aristocrat, you know. Something of a gourmet. No cat food for this fellow, not at all. Do you know what he ate tonight? An entire tin of smoked oysters at eighty-nine cents a tin, purchased especially for him at the Caviarteria on Eighth Street. That’s near where you work-do you know the place?”
“I’ve seen it. It’s across the street from Heaven’s Door.”
“That’s the sort of food Claude eats. Spoiled rotten.”
“How old is he?”
“A year and a half. He’s sexually mature, incidentally. I never had him castrated. Do you think I should?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t like it,” Bobbie said. “If I were a cat, I mean. They don’t say castrated, you know. It sounds too vicious. They say altered. The last time I took him to the vet’s, it was for a distemper shot, and the vet asked me if I wanted Claude altered. I said that he was fine the way he is. But he leads such a monastic life. Do you think maybe he’s gay?”
“Can cats be gay?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. I suppose I should find out. If environment’s a factor, then this one is queer as Dick’s hatband, I’ll say that.”
They went on talking about the cat, offering up insane ideas for Claude’s sexual gratification. Bobbie said that maybe his expensive tastes in food were a form of compensation, and Rhoda suggested that Bobbie bought smoked oysters for him because she felt guilty about forcing the cat to lead a loveless life. Somewhere along the way Bobbie got the scotch bottle, brought it back with her, and filled their glasses again.