Then Bobbie called that it was all right, that they could come in again. They went to the living room. Peg was stretched out on the couch, her feet propped up on a pair of pillows. Her face was still very pale. Both wrists were heavily bandaged with gauze and adhesive tape.
“It was a little close,” Bobbie said. “She got the veins but missed the arteries, which is good because it’s harder to stop arterial bleeding. It spurts and comes faster. She had four trial marks on the wrist. She must have tried four times before she got up the nerve to do the job, and then she just switched the blade and cut the other wrist on the first try. She was bleeding for a while before she opened the door, but I don’t think she lost too much blood. I got it stopped pretty quickly. She’s weak, though. Aren’t you, Peg?”
“I’m all right.”
“You goddamned fool. You’re just lucky everybody loves you.”
“Loves me?”
“Yes. All of us. And Lucia more than anybody. She hurts you because she can’t help it, but that doesn’t change anything. She loves you, Peg, and she was hysterical before. She still is.”
“I didn’t mean to scare her.”
“You didn’t mean to kill yourself, either. You just wanted to come close.”
“I-”
“Take it easy, rest.” Bobbie turned around. She looked exhausted. She said, “Get some orange juice from kitchen. That’s what they give you after you donate blood. To build you up again. Make sure she eats a lot of meat and drinks a lot of liquids for the next few days. Keep her away from liquor as much as you can. She’ll be all right but she’s going to be weak. She has to take it easy. Tomorrow’s Saturday. That’s good-she doesn’t have to work. Keep her home and keep her in bed. And for God’s sake, be good to her. She loves you, Lu. You ought to know that.”
“And I love her, Bobbie.”
“Yes,” she said heavily. “I guess you do.”
The coffee was strong and black and sugarless. Bobbie served it in heavy china mugs that were at least twice the size of an ordinary coffee cup. They drank it in the kitchen, sitting in captain’s chairs at a heavy round oak table, its surface worn with years of use. The kitchen itself was spotless. “I buy old furniture and let it crumble under me,” Bobbie had said, “but I run a clean ship. I may be crude but I’m neat, as the whore said to the sailor. And Claude doesn’t like dirt. It bothers him.”
Claude was in the other room now, sleeping in front of the fireplace. Rhoda sipped the hot coffee and put the mug down on the table. She felt strangely calm now. Peggy and Lucia were far away and their problems were no longer hers. Megan, too, was far away. She was not worried about Megan any longer. Megan would live through losing her.
Bobbie said, “I knew a girl who killed herself. Once.”
She didn’t say anything. The sentence jumped in at her, tore her from her restful mood.
“In Cuernavaca. That was one of the reasons I came back, one of the things that made it impossible for me to stomach Mexico any more. She wasn’t exactly a lesbian. She was bisexual and would sleep with anything if she got in the mood. Her parents were very rich. Old money, a proper Bostonian family, all that.” Bobbie’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “She was the most depraved person I’ve ever met, in the real sense of the word.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I don’t know what to tell. She was thrill-crazy, I guess that’s it. Her parents should have sent her to a psychiatrist instead of to Mexico. She told incredible stories, but most of them may have been lies I don’t think she knew the difference.”
“Did you ever-”
“Oh, of course. Everybody was hysterically promiscuous down there, and she was working her way through everyone who could speak English, and an occasional Mexican for laughs, and she got to me after a while. I never liked her much but I found her…well, fascinating, in a pitiable sort of a way. We weren’t together long. Then a month later she killed herself. She was only twenty-two years old. She was messy about it, awful about it; it was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a party, everybody drinking. In the middle of everything she took a gun from her purse, a revolver, and she shouted something about this being the biggest kick of all, and she stuck the gun in her mouth-”
Her heart was pounding. “Don’t say it.”
There was a time while neither of them said anything. Rhoda finished her coffee, lit a cigarette. In her mind’s eye she could see that girl, faceless but very real to her, playing her little desperate scene in the middle of a party, picking just the right dramatic moment for announcement and, before anyone could do anything, the act itself.
“Rho-”
Bobbie’s eyes were wide, deep. They caught hers and held them.
“Rho, now.”
The bedroom was almost stark in its simplicity. A Hollywood bed, a maple dresser, a worn rug on the floor. Two chairs, a night table. Walls that needed painting. Bobbie turned on a small lamp on the night table, and killed the overhead light. “I used to be afraid of the dark,” she said. “Can you believe it?”
“But you’re not now.”
“No. But I want to see you.”
They lay down on the bed with their clothes on and kissed. Bobbie was the aggressor, which was as she had known it would be. Bobbie ran her hand over Rhoda’s face, let her hand trail downward to cup a breast gently through the layers of clothing.
This should be a tense moment, she thought. And yet it wasn’t. It took her a moment to realize why this was so. She was taking a new lover, moving from Megan and moving to Bobbie, and yet now, in Bobbie’s arms, she did not feel that any break was being made. But the reason was quickly obvious. She had already become as intimate with Bobbie as she had ever been with anyone. She had committed herself in every way but physically, had developed an emotional rapport with Bobbie that had been tempered by Peg Brandt’s attempt at suicide. What they did now, what pleasure they gave one another in bed, called for no basic change in their relationship. She was not betraying Megan now; she had already betrayed her by what she said and by what she felt. This was no new betrayal. This was only frosting on the cake.
She lay quite still while Bobbie undressed her, removing her clothing piece by piece. The air in the bedroom was cool on her naked flesh. She sighed when Bobbie held her bare breasts, moaned softly when Bobbie ran a hand over her slender legs.
Oh Then she was alone upon the bed. Bobbie had drawn away from her. Rhoda turned her head, opened her eyes. Bobbie was undressing by the side of the bed. She unbuttoned the gold blouse, shrugged it from her shoulders. Her hands reached behind her back to unfasten the bra and remove it. Next her hair-she let it down, and the rich chestnut mane spilled over her shoulders and hung to the sides of her breasts.
She looked like a goddess, Rhoda thought. Bared to the waist, fullbodied and magnificent, wide-eyed and beautiful. And her face showed nothing-neither happiness nor sorrow, neither excitement nor boredom. Nothing at all.
Bobbie took off the rest of her clothes. The tight black slacks, the panties, the shoes. And then she turned to look directly down upon Rhoda, bathed in half-light by the nightstand lamp, and her expression went from blank seriousness to embryonic passion. “My Rho,” she said, “I love you so very damned much.”
“Oh-”
“How soft you are, how soft and warm. And how lovely. I could look at you and touch you forever.”
She had known it would be this way, with Bobbie leading while she followed, with Bobbie bestowing and Rhoda receiving, submitting. She lay still, eyes half-lidded at first, then completely shut. She lay still and quiet, and Bobbie did magical things to her.