Lawrence Block - Warm and Willing

A small dark coffeehouse on Sullivan Street. “No one ever goes there, Rhoda. Not for coffee or companionship. I understand they sell mescaline there. It makes you hear sounds and see colors, it creates psychotic hallucinations. It’s not strictly illegal, like narcotics, but it’s only handled on the black market. I’ve heard they sell marijuana there, too, but I’m not sure of it.”

A subterranean bar on Barrow. “One of ours, honey. A dyke joint. That’s one of the more compelling names for girls like thee and me, you know. Dykes, lessies, butches, lady-lovers-they call us the nicest things. This place is more refined than most. No dancing and not too much in the way of a butchy element. A lot of the uptown career girls come down here, and it’s all right for a quiet drink. Places like The Shadows on Macdougal are so cruisy that you have to be very hard-up or very scummy yourself in order to tolerate them, but this place isn’t bad at all.”

A girl passing by. “Did you see the way she looked at us? I’ve seen her around but I guess she doesn’t know me. She was trying to decide about us, whether or not we’re gay. You didn’t notice, did you? Gay girls can’t afford to be obvious. Just a glance, a stare held a moment too long, subtle signs like that. Like passwords.”

There was a whole world in the Village she had never known, a furtive homosexual underground with its special places and its own recognition signs, and she was becoming a part of it without ever having been aware of it. A men’s shop that catered exclusively to male homosexuals, a beauty shop where a crowd of gay girls got their hair done, gay bars, a gay coffeehouse, a gay restaurant. These weren’t necessarily meeting-places, Megan told her. They were refuges as much as anything. When you were more or less obvious about your homosexuality-a short-haired butchy bull dyke, a mincing queen-you ran into trouble even in the Village. You wanted a place reserved for your own kind.

And even if you weren’t obvious, you needed the relaxation of gay society. “I know a gay man who works at Manning and Roblin,” Megan had told her. “A public relations outfit, and a good one. He comes on completely straight up there, lives a masquerade five days a week from nine to five. When he’s done with work he wants to unwind. He doesn’t mince and he doesn’t wear lipstick, but he likes to go to a place where he doesn’t have to pretend to be something he’s not.”

The walks and the talks filled her in, let her see more of the Village as a whole and the little subculture of which she was becoming a part. But they did not spend all their time walking. For hours on end they were at Megan’s apartment-no, their apartment, for she lived there now. Mornings, she would awake before Megan and go into the kitchen to cook breakfast. Cooking had been that part of her marriage she had most enjoyed. She had a knack for it, could follow recipes or invent her own. But cooking for Tom had been a joyless pastime; he approached all food as if he were an automobile and the food were gasoline, mere fuel for his engine. There had been no cooking facilities in her Grove Street room, and with only herself to cook for, she had not missed them.

Now she was in her element. She cooked for Megan, a girl who was able to appreciate good food. And a girl who loved her, and whom she loved. This made a difference. Saturday morning she made omelets with crisp bacon on the side and a pot of strong fresh coffee. Saturday night, late, she tossed a salad together and they killed a bottle of chilled wine with it. Sunday she baked a cake.

“So domestic,” Megan said. “I ought to marry you, kitten.”

“We’d shock some poor judge.”

“Uh-huh.”

The best part was neither the walks nor the cooking. Even the lovemaking, deeply exciting, profoundly satisfying, was not the most important aspect of that weekend. They went to each other often that weekend, found new ways of giving and taking pleasure from one another, made the world go away and leave them alone in time and space. But even more important were the lazy silent times, the quiet and peaceful times when all that really mattered was the fact that they were together.

Lying in bed in the afterglow of love, sharing a cigarette, talking not at all. Sitting in the living room with a record on the hi-fi and a bottle of wine open on the table before them. Or sitting with eyes locked together, eyes proposing and eyes accepting in the preliminary overtures to yet another trip to the bedroom and to center of the physical universe.

She had not known it could be so fine. Not merely the sexual part, which was something very special, but the whole idyllic notion of being loved and in love. It had not been like this before, and she doubted that it could ever have been like this with any other person, man or woman. Only with Megan, only with the two of them together.

So happy.

Sunday night Megan said, “There’s a party tonight. But let’s not go to it.”

“What kind of party?”

“Some girls I know.”

“A gay party?”

“Of course. We’re a congenial lot, you know. None of us can stand being alone very well. Parties every weekend, more often than that if you really like to stay in the swim. I could take you and show you off if you like. Let everyone see what a lovely lover I have. You don’t want to go, do you?”

“No. Not tonight.”

But later she said, “These parties, Megan. What do you do at them?”

“Sit around. Drink. Chat cattily, talk about who is going with whom, and who just jilted whom, and other pertinent gossip. Speculate on the sex lives of political figures and Hollywood stars. Clever little bitchy chitchat like that. What did you think?”

“I just wondered.”

“No orgies, if that’s what you meant.”

“Why, I-”

“I’m kidding. Just parties. Some people usually drink too much, and some girl goes on a crying jag, and a couple may break up or two singles may decide to go home together and share a closet.”

So much talk about couples breaking up and new couples forming. She wondered at one point how many lovers Megan had had before her, how many girls like her had shared Megan’s bed and Megan’s love. She told herself it was silly to think about it, sillier still to be jealous. She couldn’t be jealous of a past love, or an affair that was part of a lover’s history. That was before she knew Megan. It was over and done with, it no longer existed.

Yet it hurt to think about those former loves. They paraded through Rhoda’s mind, a long column of girlish silhouettes, each one a symbol of love that had been designed to last forever and that had flamed briefly and died. Megan didn’t talk about them. Once, though, she alluded to the last girl she had lived with, the one for whom she had bought the green red-veined heart. “It won’t last,” she had said, “She’s a flighty thing. It won’t last a month.”

Could love end that quickly? And if those affairs could be so ephemeral, how long could she and Megan stay together?

Forever, she told herself. And she pushed the problem from her mind. This was easily done; she was in no mood for problems.

Monday, on her lunch hour, she stopped at a small jewelry shop, around the corner from Heaven’s Door. She spent a full half hour looking at everything in the shop until she settled on a small gold circle pin an inch across. On the back, she had the jeweler engrave Forever. And, on the lower rim, your rhoda.

She went straight home after work. Megan was waiting for her. She gave Megan the pin, and the blonde girl looked at it and kissed her and laughed and handed her a small, gift-wrapped package. Inside was a silver cigarette lighter, small and chic, with Rhoda Moore engraved on its side in Spenserian script.