Lawrence Block - Warm and Willing

“Everything’s fine.”

“Party tonight. Can you throw some dinner together? I didn’t even have lunch, I’ve been going full steam since this morning. This Warren woman. You’d have to see her to believe her. Honey, I would have called you earlier-”

“Oh, it’s all right.”

“-only I didn’t have the chance, I really didn’t. You’re not mad at me?”

“Of course not.”

And she wasn’t, couldn’t be. And couldn’t imagine how she had been jealous, how just moments ago she had been pacing and trembling hysterically. There was no reason for jealousy. Everything was as good as it had ever been.

“I’ll have dinner ready,” she said. “Hurry home, love.”

After Megan had hung up she stood for a moment holding the dead phone in her hand. She felt enormously relieved. And yet the mere knowledge that she been so irrationally jealous worried her a little. She never realized that she had that sort of capacity for jealousy. It was a new discovery for her.

Maybe, she thought, it was an index of love. Perhaps only those so deeply in love could be so blindly jealous.

She went into the kitchen and busied herself with dinner. Megan was working again, she thought. And that was good. She would throw herself into the job and get all wrapped up in her work. It wasn’t good for Megan to have too much time on her hands. Her jobs, she knew, were the type that made for a disjointed sort of life; she might go a month without doing any work all, then might land two decorating jobs at once and work fifteen hours a day for three weeks straight. But work would be good for her.

How very jealous she had been…

“Jan loves to play hostess,” someone was saying to her. “Her parties are never to be missed. Everything has a slightly phony smell to it, and in another twenty minutes or so Jan is going to turn the lights down low and recite a poem by Sappho, but she does know how to throw people together. And how to supply liquor.”

It was Bobbie talking to her, a more sober Bobbie than she had met two nights ago at Leonetti’s. And she looked prettier now; before she had been simply striking, but now her beauty seemed to blend into itself. The chestnut hair was done up in a beehive that made Bobby look even taller than she was. Her dress, a silk shift in black and white, somehow emphasized the curves of her body more than if she were wearing something and clinging. Her lipstick was a deep, dark red.

“I must have made a lovely impression the other night,” Bobby went on. “Boy, was I stoned! You should have seen me the morning after. I woke up and was afraid I would die, and then after a few minutes I was afraid I wouldn’t die. I didn’t, but I might as well have. Tonight, however, I am sober.”

“And happier,” Rhoda said.

“Uh-huh. Where did Meg go?”

“For more drinks, I think.”

“She’s a love, Meg is. Oh, lord. Look over there.”

She looked. Jan Pomeroy, their hostess, was setting a pair of candles on a massive Victorian pedestal. Jan was a dark girl with Semitic features and large gold hoop earrings. She wore a great deal of eye makeup.

“The candle routine,” Bobby explained. “God above, first time I came to one of these parties and saw her fussing with those things I thought we were going to have an orgy. Candles! She lights them and recites poems. I’ve never seen anyone make quite so monumental a production out of homosexuality. She gets almost religious about it.”

“Does it last long?”

“Homosexuality?” Bobby grinned. “It lasts forever, my sweet.”

“I mean-”

“I know what you mean, goofy. Here’s Meg. Meg, you didn’t bring me a drink.”

Megan sat next to Rhoda, “You don’t need one,” she said. “Jan’s playing with her phallic symbols again. Did you notice?”

“We were talking about them. And about Jan. Homosexuality As A Religious Phenomenon. I might write a paper on that sweet theme.”

“For The Ladder?”

“For the john. Poems to be read in the can. I think there was a book like that, come to think. Some phony nonsense. Dykery As The Highest Expression Of The Inner Self. Sound good?”

“It might to Jan.” Megan sipped her drink. “Jan’s right,” she said. “There are worse poses.”

“Name one.”

“I Am A Lost Lesbian And A Thing To Be Pitied. How’s that?”

“It’ll do,” Bobby said. “Except that we all use it now and then. Even you and I, sweet.”

“That’s what’s so tragic about it.”

Jan Pomeroy was walking around the room turning off lamps. Her eyes, Rhoda noticed, were slightly glazed. And she almost fell over at one point. “I think she’s drunk,” she said.

“Brilliantly put, Rho. Jan’s always stoned at her own sets. Drinking develops her appearance of intense sincerity. The funny thing is that she used to be ordinary enough. She never got over that thing she had with the actress.”

“Actress?”

“Moira Maine. Whose name, before Hollywood played with it, was something far less euphonious. I think was-”

“Moira Maine?”

“Uh-huh, I think it was-”

“But she isn’t gay!”

Megan and Bobby both laughed. “Oh, Rho honey, the hell she isn’t. You didn’t know?”

“But she’s married-”

“To one of the screamingest queens in Hollywood, sweets. Too many people were whispering about both of them, so they’re married. I’ve a hunch they never consummated that marriage, and that it wasn’t exactly made in heaven. Meg, you should have brought me another drink.”

“Get it yourself.”

I don’t really need it. Miss Maine was in hot water for awhile. You must have heard something, Rho.”

She shook her head.

“A big blackmail thing, the way I heard it. Some West Coast call girl slept with La Maine and let a friend of hers take pictures, and first they held her up and then they sold the pictures to one of the scandal mags. It got hushed up, I guess, but that’s the way it was.”

Bobby stood up. “I see an old friend,” she explained. “Catch you people after the Sapphic odes are over and done with.”

Rhoda sipped her drink. Megan was beside her, telling her a story that she couldn’t quite keep up with. Across the room, a blonde with dark roots had her arm around a much younger girl. The younger girl giggled and the blonde leaned over and kissed her. The younger girl put her arms around the blonde and the two got lost in the embrace.

Rhoda looked away from them. “I don’t like that,” she said.

“Bleached hair?”

“That either.”

Megan gave her hand a squeeze. “I don’t like it myself,” she said. “They might as well make love in Macy’s window. Some girls are funny that way. Exhibitionistic. Just because they’re among other gay girls they think they can do anything without offending good taste. I don’t mind dancing at a gay party. There will be dancing later, you know. Will you dance with me, kitten?”

“And with no one else.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll dance with whoever asks you, pet. It’s just part of the ritual, and quite sexless. But petting in public that way, that I don’t go for.” Megan shrugged. “The really militant homosexuals are all excited about campaigning for equal rights. I think some of them would like to picket lunch counters in Atlanta that don’t employ gays. But you’d think they’d realize that the same obligations as far as taste is concerned as straight people have. Sex is such a preoccupation with all of us. It’s silly, I suppose.”

The room was dark now. On the mahogany pedestal, the two candles burned. Jan Pomeroy stood behind the pedestal, her face framed by the yellow glow of the candles. There was a slender volume open on the pedestal in front of her.