Unlike Others Page 6

  "For me, too." She leaned forward as Linda moved, unwilling to lose contact. Don't ask. But she had to ask, the words were torn from her. "Am I going to see you again?"

  "Maybe." Linda stood up. The space between them was suddenly cold and lonesome. She pulled on her panty girdle, fastened the tops of her stockings in four quick motions, reached behind her to hook her bra, and picked her skirt off the floor. Everything she did was neat and quick. Looking at her, Jo felt gawky and too tall. She watched while Linda found comb and lipstick in her clutch bag and neatly, quickly made herself ready for the day. Linda said, "I found towels and things in your bathroom. Thank you for everything, Jo."

  "You're welcome."

  Linda's face, made-up, took on the impassive look it had worn the night before. She's getting ready to go out and face people, Jo thought, feeling that something good was slipping away from her. She had to keep it from happening. "Linda, I have to tell you-it's never been this good before. With anyone."

  "I know."

  "Do you have a regular girl?"

  "I don't want a regular girl." Linda bent and kissed her, carefully so as not to smudge the lipstick. "There's a girl staying with me now, she's a drunk and she needs help, but she isn't my regular girl. If I had one, though, I'd want her to be something like you."

  She would have to be satisfied with that. She lay back against the pillow dented by both of their heads, pulling the sheet up against the cold morning air. Linda turned at the door of the bedroom. "I go to The Spot every once in a while," she said. "Mostly on Saturday nights."

  "I’ll see you. Take care."

  I'm going to feel terrible later on. Not because it was disgusting, like with that Marge—no, Madge, I picked up that time. But because it was so good. It was never so good with Karen, she was always holding back. Fighting herself. Or me. Or the fact of us together.

  She was almost asleep when the telephone rang. She got up, shivering, and made her way a little unsteadily to the living room. "Yes?"

  "Jo?"

  "What's the matter, Stan?"

  "Are you sick?"

  "I feel terrible," Jo said, crossing her fingers behind her back, "but I'll be down in a little while."

  "If you feel bad you better take the day off. There's a lot of this virus stuff going around."

  "I'm all right." She hung up before he could start an argument. Once Stan got onto a subject he hung on forever. Now I've got a virus thing, she thought, I better remember to act sick and not go around beaming.

  But her reflection in the bathroom mirror was clear and radiant, the eyes wide. I'm beautiful, she thought in surprise. That comes from being loved. Even an imitation of love will do it. She dressed with more care than usual, putting on silver hoop earrings. The hell with it, she thought cheerfully. I feel good, I'm going to look good. Maybe I'm no beauty but if I can make a girl like Linda happy, I can't be such a drip either.

  Stan was in a dither. He was waiting for her at the door of the Topix office, his hands full of proof sheets. "Everybody must have a bug," he said crossly. "Gayle acts like she's walking in her sleep, and Betsy isn't coming down at all."

  "What's with Betsy?"

  "How would I know? Gayle's just putting in time until she's deflowered. I wish she'd do it and get it over with."

  "Give me the galleys, I’ll rush them through."

  For all her loss of sleep, she felt great. If he'll shut up and let me alone, she thought, I'll have the book out in no time. But he trailed her back to her office and stood there propped against the door, his favorite place for confidences and confessions. She sat down, waiting for him to get his troubles off his chest

  "Have a good time yesterday?"

  She had to stop and think. So much had happened since yesterday. "Oh sure, I bought some new shoes. That is, I picked some out," she said happily, "They're beautiful."

  "Women!"

  "Well, you wouldn't want me to come to work barefoot."

  "My mother's always buying shoes."

  She made a mental note not to bring the subject up again. "Anything exciting happen after I left?"

  "Not especially. I’ll sure be glad when Gayle marries that guy and gets her mind back on her work. She's got a bad case of hot pants."

  Jo thought that Gayle would most likely start worrying about a possible pregnancy the minute she got back from her honeymoon, but she knew better than to say so. "Well have to send wedding presents. A small office like this."

  "I don't mind that." He looked past her at the gold curtain, rippling in the breeze. "I left a little early myself, last night. In fact, I took Betsy out for a drink."

  "Yeah?" She looked at him. "That was nice."

  "Why are women so inconsistent?"

  "Are they?"

  "One minute they're snuggling up to you, wide open for attention. The next they're ready to push your face in. It doesn't make sense."

  "Maybe you startled her. She hasn't been divorced very long. Maybe she's a little jumpy."

  "You don't think she's queer or anything, do you?"

  I should be so lucky, Jo thought. She said, "No, I don't think so. She's just a little nervous."

  "I'm taking her out tonight." He stopped, looking abashed. I will not ask for details, she thought stubbornly. But it didn't do any good, she was going to get them just the same. He said, "I told my mother I have to go to a meeting. As long as I'm in by ten-thirty or eleven she won't mind."

  Well, Jo thought, we've been over this before. But she was a slow learner, she had to try one more time. She said gently, "Look, you're a grown man. Why don't you simply tell your mother you have a date with a girl?"

  "She might have an attack."

  "If she can have an attack whenever she feels like it, then she's faking."

  "I know it. The thing is," Stan said miserably, "if anything serious happened, I'd never forgive myself."

  So there you are, Miss Bates. You can't very well tell this devoted son he'd be better off with the old girl dead. Or that he ought to put her in a nursing home with an attendant physician who knows the difference between real heart trouble and the kind you turn on and off. She said cheerfully, "Well, have fun. Buy her a couple of drinks, a girl always appreciates that."

  "My mother always waits up for me. She’ll smell it on my breath."

  Oh, Jesus, Jo thought, who unbuttons your rompers when you go to the bathroom? She turned away, spreading the galleys on her desk, reaching for a pencil, testing the point against her thumb. Stan said, "Let me know if you get snowed under, I’ll help," and moved away, his high forehead puckered with anxiety.

  He hadn't solved anything, but he felt better. Jo thought: poor weak-minded bastard, if he'd put his foot down just once he'd have it made. Maybe he doesn't want a solution. Maybe he just likes to suffer; lots of people do.

  But she couldn't waste this day worrying about Stan and his mother. Not when she felt like this, with the wonderful warm languor of after-love running through her like fine wine. She shoved the galleys away, stretched, and got up and went to the window. The familiar scene below was like a confirmation of her own well-being. The roofs of the cabs were bright and shiny, the buildings rose proudly above the street, the sounds of traffic and voices came up muted and harmonious.

  She didn't know Linda's last name, where she lived, what she worked at or whether she would ever see her again. She didn't know, really, whether she had a steady girl—it was possible, in spite of Linda's protests. Fidelity didn't always go hand in hand with love. It had taken her a long time to realize that. Now she no longer blamed a girl for lying, or at least keeping one side of her life secret.

  Linda might even be married. She might have a couple of kids. Plenty of women found out what they were when it was too late, and some of them were able to live a double life. She might be bisexual, taking love where she found it, with both men and women. That was a big subject for discussion with Rich and his boys, it cropped up every time someone in their crowd made a straight marriage.
Rich said it all depended on your concept of love. If you were really involved with someone, it was hard to tell where affection ended and passion began.

  Jo was sure of only two things. One was that Linda was a superb lover. No matter what the pattern of her life might be, she had the finesse that has to be learned as well as the capacity for passion that's inborn.

  The other was that if it was at all possible, she was going to see Linda again; she was going to take her to bed.

  CHAPTER 8

  She thought about Linda often in the days that followed. On Saturday she considered going to The Spot on the off chance that Linda would be there, but she was incapacitated (Karen's word for a simple biological process that she had always taken for granted until she discovered Karen's pathological resentment of it). She put in a dull weekend tidying the apartment, getting her clothes washed and ironed, cooking a Sunday dinner for which she had no appetite. This is how it will be when I'm old, she told herself. I’ll come home from the office every night and do my housework and maybe watch television for a while before I go to bed, alone. After a few years maybe I won't even notice it. What else is there for an old dyke?

  It was a disheartening thought.

  She wasn't sure what to think about developments at the office. Stan was going out with Betsy. Neither of them made any attempt to hide it. Even Gayle, wrapped up in last-minute plans for her wedding, noticed and commented. "Gee, they're having lunch together again. From the way those two act you'd think they had a thing for each other. You think she's the kinda girl that gets in solid with the boss like that?"

  "I don't know."

  "Believe me, I wouldn't let any man get away with that. I do my work from nine to five and that's enough. If a boss made a pass at me, Eddie'd make me hand in my resignation."

  Jo's private opinion was that Betsy was relieved and happy to be dating a man—any man. It restored her female pride, shaken by the divorce. She came to work on time and went through the motions, but it was evident that her heart wasn't in it. Jo admitted that she did her work as well as any of her predecessors, which wasn't saying much. Why should a girl put any enthusiasm into a business that meant nothing to her, that was only a source of income? Still, a little more interest on Betsy's part would have made things easier for everybody.

  Stan was lukewarm, too, and Jo's pleasure in her own professional achievement was constantly being threatened by a put-upon feeling she couldn't shake off.

  Damn it, she thought, I'm not going to get the magazine out single-handed. I could, but I'm not going to. I don't care what other people do after five o'clock. He can move in with her if he wants to. But when he hangs around all day whispering sweet nothings in the girl's ear, while I do three people's work, it's too much. I'm going to quit and go to New York if this keeps up.

  She didn't want to quit. She liked her job, even if some of the things she had to do were silly, and she liked the quiet and privacy of her own little office and the feeling that she was her own boss. She was safe here. In a big office full of cliques and chatter there would be the lurking dread, the ever-present fear that someone would know she was different. If Stan suspected, he hadn't said anything. Men were likely to be more trusting than women, especially middle-aged women. In a bigger place someone might realize that she was a Lesbian.

  Silly word, she thought, with the automatic rejection that the homosexual vocabulary always aroused in her.

  That brought her back to Betsy's ex-husband. She thought about him every once in a while, with a sort of exasperated sympathy. He would be about twenty-five, charming and intelligent like the gay boys she knew, a man with a lot of charm, probably handsome, not too swishy. Hindered at every turn, of course, by the dread of discovery. In large offices—most of all in the kind of company that gave placement tests and personality evaluations—the mere suspicion could lead to a discharge. No proof was required. "He's a nice person and a good worker, but." She wondered if Betsy's husband, his hope for marriage and a normal life shattered, had lost his job when the divorce proceedings became known. She hoped not. The poor guy had three strikes against him without that.

  Sometimes, she told herself, wiping the suds off her kitchen floor with clear water and watching the tile pattern of the linoleum come up clear and bright, sometimes I feel so sorry for the whole damn human race. Betsy and the poor kid she married, and Stan tied to that horrible old woman, and Rich so sweet and kind, always chasing some young punk he knows is going to take him for all he's got and then move out. Yeah, and some days I'm tempted to feel sorry for myself, too. She laughed at that, and scoured briskly at a spot of spilled grease, seeing with real pleasure the immaculate sweep of floor emerge from under her sponge. You poor kid, you lead a very sad life.

  Just the same, it was a relief to go back to work on Monday morning. Putting together a list of babies born to Plastix workers in the last month, with special mention for the twin grandsons of the shipping-room foreman, she didn't have time to think about personal matters. No wonder older women who lived alone were always so glad when Monday morning came; their weekends were a walking death.

  There was this feeling that shot through her every time she looked at Betsy. It was a small nagging pain like an intermittent toothache, dormant for a while and then hurting to remind her of its existence. She wanted a girl in her arms, a girl whose body would respond to the love she longed to give, who would accept her ministrations and give back the pleasure that made her whole body blossom into excitement. But even more than any physical relationship she wanted somebody who would come first in her life. A girl who would be more important to her than anything else in the world, a love that was emotional and spiritual as well as physical.

  She told Richard, mentioning Linda briefly but skipping the details because she didn't want to dwell on what she might never have again. He nodded. "Sure, you're looking for the love of a lifetime. We all are."

  "You don't think anyone ever finds it?"

  "So far I never knew it to happen." He thought about it, and shook his head. "It's the same with straight people, if that makes you feel any better."

  It didn't. She said, "Skip it. How's Michael?"

  "Interested in an Air Force man. He hasn't said anything about it yet, but I know the symptoms. I know the guy, too. I introduced them." Richard looked older, and tired. "I've been through it often enough. He's probably making out with the guy in the afternoon, while I'm out trying to sell houses."

  "I'm sorry."

  "It's all right."

  She decided not to bother him with her personal affairs again. He had enough to cope with. Sometimes she envied the gay men she knew, because they seemed to take things so lightly. Then something like this with Michael came along and it was evident that the pangs of insecurity weren't restricted to women.

  We've got all the handicaps of straight people, she thought bitterly, living in a crazy mixed-up world. And a few extra ones of our own.

  She walked slowly back to the office, reluctant to go in and settle down to the afternoon's work. Gayle will be painting her nails or fixing her face, she thought, or talking to one of her girl friends on the telephone. I wonder what she looks like with the makeup off? It could be frightening. And Betsy will be making eyes at Stan, and just when I get into the work, Stan will come wandering in and tell me how persecuted he is. I'm getting fed up.

  There was the old dream of escape. Save two or three hundred dollars—it wasn't easy, but you could do it if you didn't buy a single thing—and go to New York. That was the place for publishing. The city's full of gay girls, she reminded herself. There's less danger of getting your personal life tangled up with your business life.

  But her stomach pinched when she thought about it. She was afraid to make the change.

  She went up, feeling listless. Past Gayle, who was sorting out carbon copies for a change; past the other offices. Betsy and Stan would be taking a two-hour lunch, holding hands over the dessert, making verbal passes at each other. How adol
escent can you get? she asked herself savagely. Why don't they go to bed and get it over with?

  She shut her eyes and shook her head to shake out the picture of Betsy, undressed and moving with pleasure in a man's arms.

  It was after two when they came in. Stan came to her door, looked in, and backed away. Now what? Do I look like I bite, or something? She bore down on her pencil until the point snapped.

  He came back half an hour later, looking fatuous and ashamed at the same time. "Betsy says she'll drive over to Cal City with me on Saturday," he said, not looking at her. "Have dinner and a movie and maybe take in some of the gambling places. I told my mother I was going out with some customers. Maybe we’ll find a place with a good floor show, huh?"

  "That's nice," Jo said. She wondered why he had chosen Calumet City, the local small-time version of Las Vegas—but of course it represented glitter and gilded vice to squares like Stan. Nothing there you couldn't find in Chicago, if you knew where to look, but it was across the Indiana line and that made it seem safer. It was the old gimmick, take the girl to a burlesque show and get her warmed up. He doesn't know much about girls, she thought.

  The Travel Now, Pay Later sign across the street flashed off and on. That's a good idea, Jo decided. Maybe I will.

  Stan didn't notice her inattention. He stood looking at the floor, getting more and more embarrassed. "Look, I don't expect anything to happen. You know how it is though, people get carried away sometimes. I could get something—but that doesn't always work. I don't suppose—"