Beebo Brinker Chronicles 1 - Odd Girl Out (24 page)

Laura obeyed her. “Now, answer me,” she demanded.

"Answer you what?"

Laura smiled. “Say yes, Beth. Say yes, darling."

"Yes, what?"

"Just yes. Never mind what. Say it.” She kissed her hard.

"Yes,” Beth whispered, smiling. “Yes, yes, yes..."

That was Monday night. Laura spent the next few days worrying about Charlie. She was afraid of any further contact between Charlie and Beth, though it seemed inevitable, the way Charlie was trying to see her. She wanted to prevent him from talking to Beth before he could do any real damage, before Friday came and Beth was safely on the train. But she didn't know what to do about it, how to go about it. Unexpectedly, Charlie solved her problem before the week was out.

BETH AND LAURA told their friends simply that they were going home for the weekend, a normal thing, especially in spring, for most of the girls to do.

By Thursday afternoon Laura was irrepressibly happy. Her only difficulty lay in trying to keep her excitement from showing. It was wonderful to escape from classes and campus and meetings and people, into her room and Beth's arms; wonderful to free her feelings and see how strong and deep and solid they were; best of all to know that after tomorrow Beth would be hers, irrevocably committed.

Beth, as the time grew closer, began to worry in earnest, but Laura's drive and devotion seemed to pull her inexorably toward the train on Friday. She was sure she loved Laura, but not so sure she didn't love Charlie. She wavered, she wondered, she weighed a thousand things in her mind: freedom against her college degree, a tormented conscience against the sweet warmth of Laura, and all the countless little details that trailed in the wake of either decision.

She tried to keep her mental seesawing from Laura; it would only hurt and confuse her. She felt that Laura had to be protected like a child. She had failed to see that every time she treated Laura to a little adult honesty, Laura responded like an adult. She didn't want to see. Laura was her baby.

By Thursday, Beth had an almost oriental fatalism about leaving for New York. There was nothing she could do to stem the tide of Laura's enthusiasm, no way she had any control over the situation any more.

That afternoon, Laura went over to Campus Town after class to get some last-minute supplies. She walked into the university drugstore and got some toothpaste—one for Beth, she was always running out—and some emery boards. She was standing at the counter waiting for her change when she heard Charlie next to her say, “Hello, Laura."

She looked up with a start. “Hi, Charlie,” she said. He smiled down at her while she faltered, a little confused. She had the distinct feeling that he had followed her.

"Your change, miss,” said the clerk, dangling a bored hand over the counter.

"Oh, thank you.” Laura took it and Charlie simultaneously pulled her books out of her arms and held them while she put the money in her wallet. She stuffed the money away and reached quickly for her books, but he held them out of reach.

"Let me take you home, Laura,” he said, steering her toward the door. She didn't like the tone of his voice. “My car's just a block away."

Laura protested; she didn't want anything from Charlie Ayers, not even a ride home. “Oh, please don't bother,” she said.

"No bother.” She understood then that he intended to take her home, no matter what she said. He had made up his mind and she resented his easy authority. It made her apprehensive.

She walked along beside him in nettled silence, dragging and wishing she could give a hard shake to get his hand off her arm. They reached the car and he held the door for her while she hesitated.

"Get in,” he said pleasantly, and when still she hung back he smiled and said, “I'm not going to attack you, Laura."

Laura blushed angrily and got into the front seat.

He watched her with a curious smile and then came around and got in and started the car. “I thought maybe you'd answer a couple of questions for me,” he said.

"In return for the ride?” she said. He must have been following me, she told herself.

He laughed. “No,” he said. “In return for the sympathy. You cried on my shoulder last fall, Laura. Now I'm going to cry on yours—figuratively,” he added when she gave him a cold stare. They pulled away from the curb.

"Well,” she said, I don't know if I can answer any questions, Charlie."

"I think you can,” he said. “I hope you will.” He paused and then looked at her out of the corner of his eye, amused to see that she was staring spitefully at his long legs. She looked up hastily, sensing his gaze. “Of course you re under no obligation,” he said.

"Oh, no.” She looked down at her hands, knowing it would be about Beth and tempted to fear Charlie again. He was impressive competition; she had almost forgotten the lines or him. But tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow! And thinking of Beth and of the things she did and said and the way she looked, Laura felt a flush of strength and certainty. Beth loved her. You can't be in love with two people at once, and Beth loved Laura. She said so and she meant it. Laura was sure. She looked up at Charlie again. He was lighting a cigarette.

"I want to know,” he said, taking it out of his mouth and spewing smoke over the dashboard, “why Beth won't see me."

"Well,” Laura shrugged. “She's been terribly upset."

"So have I."

"Well, Charlie, I don't know. Emily was her best friend."

"Does her best friend mean more to her than the man she's in love with?"

Laura turned surprised eyes on him and then she laughed, in spite of herself. He gave her a quick inquisitive glance. “What's so funny?” he said.

"She's not in love with you, Charlie. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to laugh. You just—surprised me.” It was glorious to talk to him like this.

"The hell she isn't,” he said. “She's mad, she's insulted, yes. Maybe she hates me, I don't know. But I do know she's in love with me."

Laura smiled at his certainty, suddenly enjoying her ride.

"What's so damn funny, Laura?” he said.

"Nothing,” she said, but it was too tempting. “Your egoism, Charlie."

"My egoism?” He smiled a little, suddenly cautious, wondering at Laura's change of mood.

"Charlie,” she said solicitously, with the thought of Beth in bed the night before, of Beth's kiss in the morning, of Beth's arms around her that afternoon, “Charlie, I didn't mean to be rude, really. I'm sorry. I know you think a lot of Beth."

"I love Beth, Laura."

Laura smiled into her lap again. Charlie watched her and then pulled the car up. He had been taking the long way back to Alpha Beta. They were at the edge of the university's experimental farm on the south campus. Charlie switched the ignition off and turned in his seat to study Laura. She glanced out the window and then questioningly at Charlie.

"I want to know what's so damn funny about my being in love with Beth. Or Beth with me.” He looked straight at her.

Laura fought her smile down. “Nothing, Charlie. It isn't funny. It was wrong of me. I'm sorry.” He said nothing. “I think we'd better get back to the house,” she said.

"We will. When you explain the joke."

She couldn't feel any alarm, somehow. She just felt delightfully secure, smug as only a successful rival can feel in the presence of the loser. She looked out the window again at the adventuring green of mid-April. “There's no joke, Charlie,” she said.

"Then what are you laughing at?"

"I'm not. I just—I don't know.” She ached to tell him. Half the joy of a victory is the look on the face of defeat.

"Look, Laura,” he said, leaning toward her. “I thought we were friends, you and I. Maybe I was wrong.” He watched her narrowly.

"No.” She shook her head slowly, letting him work for every word from her.

"Well, then will you clear up the mystery for me? What's the matter with Beth? Or me, for that matter?"

"Nothing's the matter with you. Or her."

Charlie lighted another cigarette from the last leg of the old one. “What's the matter, Laura? Why don't you want to tell me?” She frustrated him, made him feel hoodwinked; he had never thought a transparent girl like Laura could be so enigmatic. “What's all this about my being egotistical?” He watched her. No response, except a little maddening smile. He put his arm over the back of the seat and leaned toward her. “Come on, Laura, deflate my ego,” he said cannily. “It seems to be the only way I'll learn anything."

Laura laughed again. “I don't want to deflate your ego, Charlie."

"Come on, Laura,” he insisted. “Don't I have a right to know?"

"Well,” said Laura, savoring each word, “it's just that Beth isn't in love with you, Charlie. She was never in love with you.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “That's all. I'm sorry."

He knew better. “Yes, she is,” he said. Laura shook her head with a smile. “How do you know she isn't?” he said.

She looked at her lap and finally Charlie sat forward and knocked some ashes out the window and said some words he had only thought of once before, vaguely, when he was very drunk. “She's in love with you, I suppose,” he said with a taste of sarcasm in his voice.

Laura looked up at him and smiled. It was intoxicating. Charlie gazed thoughtfully put the windshield, waiting for her denial, not taking his own words seriously until the silence forced him to review them. And suddenly, with painful lucidity, the light came; the sense and the reasons fell deafeningly into place.

Laura watched him minutely; saw the tiniest line between his eyes grow and deepen; saw the hand with the cigarette start for his lips and drop slowly back to the steering wheel; saw his lips part a little and his eyes widen. And then he turned and stared at her and she looked full into his face and smiled. He stared, and all Beth's little mysteries and refusals and anxieties and half-finished sentences smiled back at him. Laura never said a word; she just smiled serenely at him.

Charlie shut his eyes for a moment, wishing he were stone drunk, and then looked unwillingly at her again, and then at the floor. Laura watched him hungrily, remembering every second, every detail of him, every sound.

Finally he said in a husky voice, “Laura—is it true? Is it possible?” He looked at her. “Beth?"

Laura didn't answer him. Her lips parted a little as if she meant to, but she didn't. Then she succumbed to temptation. “Is what true?” she said softly.

"Is Beth—is she—” It was hard for him to say, and Laura enjoyed his difficulty. She felt like patting his arm and saying the question for him and then answering it lightly as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Charlie breathed deep. “Is Beth—in love with you, Laura?"

Laura looked down for a moment and her smile widened. And then her eyes came up slowly to his face. Charlie took her shoulders and shook her.

"Answer me!” he commanded. “Answer me, Laura! Is she?"

Charlie's first thought was go to Maxie's and drink himself insensible. But he dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came to him. This time he needed a clear mind, uncluttered with alcoholic confusion. He turned the car around and drove slowly in the opposite direction. He was thinking, concentrating intensely in an effort to keep his emotions at bay. “A clear mind,” he thought over and over. It occurred to him to go to the library. He hadn't any specific idea why. The library was a temple of learning, of wisdom. He would go there and soak it up. He would find a good sensible book and discover what made Beth and Laura want each other. He would understand.

But he no sooner parked his car by the library and started walking toward the big building than he knew how futile it was. He would be unable to read a single line of print. He paused uncertainly on the steps, looking into the great dark hall beyond the doors, and then he turned around. He didn't know what to do.

He sat down finally in the shade of a statue and leaned against the base. Above him drooped a lush woman in rough stone, rich with female curves. Some feet away a sister statue straddled her pedestal with muscular thighs. Charlie glared at the two women of rock, so warmly shaped that he never passed them without wanting to reach out and touch them. He knew them today for their cold, hard, unknowable selves.

For a long time he sat on the library steps between the stone sisters, and after a while it became possible to think. Just a little at first. It was one thing to reconcile himself to Beth's mistakes of the past; mistakes that were over and done with, mistakes that were above all normal. But it was quite another to accept her strange transgression with Laura.

Charlie thought back over the year. He knew he had satisfied Beth, he knew she wanted him. He had not been putting up a front when he told Laura that Beth loved him. Beth did love him. That could only mean one thing: that her feelings for Laura were not true love, not the kind of love she had for him.

He began to breathe a little more freely. Beth was an iconoclast, he knew that. She was an experimenter. And her failures, her frigidity with men might have pushed her to make this most extraordinary experiment of all: to look for release with a woman. Coming at it from that angle it wasn't quite so shocking—and it gave him hope. If Laura were an experiment for Beth, she wasn't a permanent thing. She represented a phase Beth had to go through.

Charlie smacked his fist into his palm. He stood up and slapped the nearest stone woman on the rump. He had made up his mind. Beth needed someone to guide her, to talk to her and straighten her out. She needed someone to love, with real love. He would see to it that she got it.

BETH WAS PENSIVE that evening, but Laura was so gay that she had trouble concentrating on her misgivings. Laura was learning from her how to tease, and she could rouse and delight Beth very skillfully now. She rarely missed an opportunity to do it. Beth sat on the couch with a book in her hands, and Laura came up to her and pulled it out.

"What's that?” she said, glancing at it as she sat beside Beth.

"James."

"What's it for?"

"Class tomorrow."

"Class doesn't matter any more,” Laura said. “Nothing matters any more but you and me. You have to study me now, Beth."