Women In The Shadow. Ann Bannon

that she no longer loved Beebo. She got up abruptly and walked over to the stove. “Anybody want some coffee?” she said.

      “You and your goddamn coffee,” Beebo said irritably.

      “You could use a little,” Laura said, “both of you.”

      “I’d be delighted,” Jack said, speaking with deliberate care as he always did when he was drunk.

      Laura made the instant coffee and passed the cups around. Jack doctored his with a double shot of scotch and took a cautious first sip. “Delicious,” he said, looking up to find a storm brewing. Beebo was glowering at Laura.

      “I said I didn’t want coffee,” she said. “Nobody around here understands English tonight.”

      “If you’re referring to Lili, I don’t like to be classed with your old whores,” Laura said.

      “Why not? You’re in good company baby. You don’t think you’re any better than they are, do you?”

      “You should have told me you asked Lili! You should have told me, Beebo! And Frankie, too. God, don’t you think I have feelings?”

      “Good.” Beebo grinned. “I didn’t think you could get jealous any more.”

      “Oh, grow up, Beebo!” Laura cried, exasperated. “I can be humiliated. I can be embarrassed and hurt.”

      Beebo poured her coffee into an empty highball glass, which cracked from the heat with a loud snap. Her eyes looked up slyly at Laura, expecting a reprimand, but Laura ignored it, too angry to do anything. Beebo laughed and poured herself a watery drink from another glass. “Did I hurt you, Laura, baby? Did I really? How did it feel? Tell me how you liked it.”

      Laura didn’t like the way she laughed. “Does that strike you funny?” she said sharply.

      Beebo began to chuckle, a low helpless sort of laugh that she couldn’t control; the miserable sort of laugh that comes on after too much to drink and too little to be happy about. “Yes,” she drawled, still laughing. “Everything strikes me funny. Even you. Even you, my lovely, solemn, angry, gorgeous Laura. Even me. Even Jackson here. Jack, you doll, how come you’re so handsome?”

      Jack grinned wryly, twisting his ugly intelligent face. “The Good Fairy,” he explained. “The Good Fairy is an old buddy of mine. Gives me anything I want. You want to be handsome like me? I’ll talk to him. No charge.”

      Beebo kept laughing while he talked. She sounded a little hysterical. “No, I don’t want to be handsome,” she said. “I just want Laura. Tell your damn fairy to talk to Laura. Tell him I need help. Laura won’t let me kiss her any more.” She stopped laughing suddenly. “Will you, baby?”

      “Beebo, please don’t talk about it. Not now.”

      “Not now, not ever. Every time I bring it up, same damn thing. ‘Not now, Beebo. Please, Beebo. Not now.’ You’re nothing but a busted record, my love. A beautiful busted record. Kiss me, little Bo-peep.” Laura turned away, biting her underlip, embarrassed and defiant. “Please kiss me, Laura. That better? Please.” She dragged the word out till it ended in a soft growl.

      Laura hated Beebo’s begging almost more than her swaggering. “If you didn’t get so drunk all the time, you’d be a lot more appealing,” Laura said.

      Beebo got up and lurched across the room in one giant step and took Laura’s arms roughly. She turned her around and forced a kiss on her mouth. They were both silent afterwards for a moment, Laura looking hot-faced at the floor and Beebo, her eyes shut, holding the love she was losing with awful stubbornness. Jack watched them in a confusion of pity.

      He liked them both, but he loved Laura as well. In his own private way he loved her, and if it ever came to a showdown it was Laura he would side with.

      At last Beebo said softly, “Don’t shut me out, Laura.”

      Laura disengaged herself slightly. “If you didn’t drink so much I wouldn’t shut you out.”

      “If you didn’t shut me out I wouldn’t drink so much!” Beebo shouted, suddenly. “I wouldn’t have to.”

      “Beebo, you drink because you like to get drunk. You were drunk the night I met you and you’ve been more or less drunk ever since. I didn’t do it to you, you did it to yourself. You like the taste of whiskey, that’s all. So don’t give me a sob story about my driving you to drink.”

      “There you go, getting holy on me again. Who says you don’t like whiskey?”

      “I have a drink now and then,” Laura flashed at her. “There are so many damn whiskey bottles in this apartment I’d have to be blind to avoid them.”

      Jack laughed. “I’m blind,” he said, “most of the time. But I can always find the booze. In fact, the blinder I am the better I find it.” He chuckled at his own nonsense and swirled the spiked coffee in his cup.

      “Laura, you lie,” Beebo said. “You lie in your teeth. You just like the way it tastes, like me.”

      Laura had been drinking too much lately. Not as much as Beebo, but still too much. She didn’t know exactly why. She blamed it on a multiplicity of bad breaks, but never on herself. “If you wouldn’t drag me around to the bars all night,” she said. “If you wouldn’t continually ask me to drink with you….”

      “I ask you, Bo-peep. I don’t twist your arm.” She eyed Laura foggily.

      Laura turned to Jack. “Do I drink as much as Beebo?” she demanded. “Am I an alcoholic?”

      Beebo gave a snort. “Jack,” she mimicked, “am I an alcoholic?”

      “Do you have beer for breakfast?” he asked her.

      “No.”

      “Do you take a bottle to bed?”

      “No.”

      “Do you get soused for weeks at a time?”

      “No.”

      “Do you … have a cocktail now and then?”

      “Yes.”

      “You’re an alcoholic.”

      Beebo threw a wet dishcloth at him.

      “I’m going to bed,” Laura announced abruptly.

      “What’s the matter, baby, can’t you take it?”

      “Enough is too much, that’s all.”

      “Enough of what?”

      “Of you!”

      Beebo turned a cynical face to Jack “That means I can sleep on the couch tonight,” she said. “Too bad. I was just getting used to the bed again….” She hiccuped, and smiled sadly. “Don’t you think we make an ideal couple, Laura and me?”

      “Inspirational,” Jack said. “They should serialize you in all the women’s magazines. Give you a free honeymoon in Jersey City.”

      “Knowing us as well as you do, Doctor,” Beebo said, and Laura, her teeth clenched, stood waiting in the doorway to hear what she was going to say, “what would you recommend in our case?”

      “Nothing. It’s hopeless. Go home and die, you’ll feel better,” he said

      “Don’t say that.” Suddenly Beebo wasn’t kidding.

      “All right. I won’t say it. I retract my statement.”

      “Revise it?”

      “God, in my condition?” he said doubtfully. “Well … I’ll try. Let’s see … My friends, the patient is dead of the wrong disease. The operation was a success. There is only one remedy.”

      “What’s that?” Laura asked him.