Women In The Shadow. Ann Bannon

seclusion of the kitchen to speak confidentially. She went to Jack and stood beside him, facing the sink, while he watched the door for intruders.

      “She’s in there showing off with that damn dog again,” Laura said.

      “Nix is a nice dog.”

      “Jack, we can’t go to bed without that animal.” She turned away to blow her nose. “Sure, he’s a nice dog. But he eats more than I do, and he isn’t housebroken when he’s excited—which is right now. I swear Beebo loves that dog more than she loves me.” Nix gave a volley of excited barks from the living room and they heard Beebo’s throaty laugh. “Do it again,” she was saying. “Come on, Nix, do it again.”

      “He will, too.” Laura sighed. “He’ll do anything she tells him to. And wet the rug like a happy idiot. Do you know what that rug cost me? Seventy-seven bucks. And I paid for it myself. Beebo didn’t even have a rug in this place before I moved in.”

      “Okay,” Jack said slowly. “The dog isn’t housebroken and Beebo’s old mistresses are a pain in the neck. Still, she loves you, Mother. So much that it astonishes me. I never thought I’d see that girl fall for anybody. Maybe you don’t want her love, but you have to respect it. Real love isn’t cheap, Laura. When you give it up once you sometimes never find it again.”

      “If it has to be like this, I don’t ever want it again.”

      Jack finished his drink quickly, put it down on the kitchen counter, and turned Laura around to face him. He was the same height as she was but Laura looked up to him with her mind and heart.

      “Mother,” he said gently. “Don’t ever say that. Don’t ever throw love away. If it gets so you can’t stand it, move out. But don’t degrade it and don’t disdain it. You can’t stop her from loving you, Laura.”

      “I wish I still loved her. That’s an odd way to feel but it would solve everything.”

      “You do love her, in a way. Only she exasperates you.”

      “No. It’s all over, Jack. The only problem is how to get out without hurting her too much.”

      “No, the problem is to realize what your own feelings are and then have the courage to live with them.”

      “What you’re trying to say is, you don’t believe me. You think I still love her.”

      “Yes,” he said.

      “Why?”

      “It’s true.”

      “It’s not!” she cried, grasping his arms, and then she heard Beebo laugh again and looked up to see her standing in the other room against the far wall. She was strikingly handsome and for a moment Laura felt the old feeling for her, but the love left almost as fast as it had come.

      Beebo was a big girl, big-boned and good looking, like a boy in early adolescence. Her black hair was short and wavy and her eyes were an off-blue, wide, well spaced. She had come to New York from a small town near Milwaukee before she was twenty, and she had had a sort of heartiness then, a rosy-cheeked health that had faded too fast in the hothouse atmosphere of Greenwich Village. She took odd jobs where she could, anything that would let her wear pants. And she ended up running an elevator and wearing a blue uniform with gold trim. She had been there for over ten years.

      The manager took her for “one of those queers, but perfectly harmless.” But he meant a male homosexual, to Beebo’s endless hilarity. She was fond of remarking, “I’m the world’s oldest adolescent. I’m a professional teenager.” It was funny enough the first time, but Laura was sick of it.

      Now she stood in the living room of their small apartment playing with Nix, and her merriment brought color to her cheeks. She had begun to wear clothes that made her look sportier and healthier than she was: men’s jackets and slacks, men’s shirts. And even, to Laura’s dismay, a sort of riding habit, with modified jodhpurs, a slightly fitted coat, and boots. She had a pair of high black boots in butter-smooth leather with little ankle straps, boots made to fit the finely shaped feet that she was proud of. It made her one of the sights of the village.

      “You look like a freak!” Laura had exploded when Beebo first tried them on, and succeeded in offending Beebo royally. But the older girl stuck stubbornly to her outfit.

      “I’m no man. Okay. But I’m sure as hell no woman, either. I don’t look good in anything. At least these things fit me,” she defended herself.

      “Your underwear fits you, too, darling,” Laura said acidly. “Why don’t you parade around in that if you want to cause a sensation?” But though she needled her, Laura couldn’t make her change.

      Now Beebo stood in the living room, visible to Laura through the kitchen door, dressed in the riding clothes. She did not look mannish like some Lesbians. She simply looked like a boy. But she was thirty-three years old, and there were very faint lines around her eyes and mouth.

      Laura’s little flash of desire faded almost before it bloomed. And when she found that Nix had wet the floor, that Beebo had kissed Frankie Koehne and Jean Bettman, and that the police had appeared saying they had two complaints and the party would have to simmer down, Laura gave up.

      She stormed into the bathroom and locked the door—the one lockable door in the apartment. The guests took the hint and filed out, leaving the apartment a quiet shambles.

      When Laura came out, only Jack and Beebo were still there. They were sitting in the kitchen where they had collected most of the glasses, and were finishing up whatever liquor was left in them.

      Beebo looked up when Laura came in. She was quite drunk and through the mists she saw Laura, with her long blond hair and pale face, as a sort of lovely vision. “Hi, sweetie,” she murmured. “You sure got rid of the company in a hurry.” She grinned.

      Laura glanced disapprovingly at the used glasses Beebo was drinking from. “You’ll get trench mouth,” she predicted.

      “Will you make love to me when I’ve got trench mouth?”

      “NO!”

      Beebo laughed. “You won’t anyway, so it doesn’t matter,” she said dryly. “Come sit on my lap.”

      Laura leaned against the kitchen counter near Jack. “No,” she said.

      “Be nice to me, baby.”

      “Nix is nice to you. You don’t need me. Nix ruins the rug for you. He barks loud enough to wake the dead. He even sleeps with you.”

      But Beebo felt too much desire for her to be jockeyed so fast into an argument. “Please, baby,” she said softly. “I love you so.”

      And Jack, watching her, felt a pang of sympathy and regret go through him. She sounded too much as he sounded himself a couple of months ago. And Terry had left him anyway and wrecked his life. It was all so sad and wrong; unbearable when you’re mismated and desperately in love.

      “Go to her, Mother,” he said suddenly. “She needs you.” Laura was miffed at his interference. But she knew what was bothering him, and to soften it for him, she went. Once she was on Beebo’s lap, everything seemed to relax a little. Beebo held her, leaning back against the wall and pulling Laura’s head down on her shoulder, and Jack watched them enviously. He knew, as Laura knew, and even Beebo must have known in her secret heart, that the affair was doomed, that the party had celebrated an ending, not a new beginning. And yet for a moment things were serene. Beebo held Laura and whispered to her and stroked her hair, and Jack listened to it as if it were a lullaby, a lullaby he had heard somewhere before and had sung once himself. But it was a mournful lullaby and it turned into the blues—a dirge for love gone wrong.

      Beebo nuzzled Laura and Laura lay quietly in her arms and endured it. She relaxed, and that made it better. She didn’t want Beebo to excite her; she didn’t want to give her that satisfaction. So she shifted suddenly and asked Jack, “Do you think they had a good time?”

      “Lili