Lawrence Block - Warm and Willing

“I’ll walk.”

“It wouldn’t be out of the way-”

But it was a nice night and she walked. She drifted over to Washington Square first but the park was too crowded with tight knots of people forming and re-forming. She could feel an undercurrent of tension in the air. There had been trouble in the park lately, friction between the Village element and the local Italians, friction between neighborhood whites and Harlem Negroes off the A-train. She cut across the park, stopped to watch two men play chess, drank from the drinking fountain, then drifted across town to the apartment on Cornelia.

The apartment was lonely. She waited for Megan to come home, and Megan didn’t get back until a quarter to eleven. She had been running around all night, she told Rhoda, and she was so exhausted that all she wanted to do was get some sleep.

Tuesday was more of the same. That night she didn’t even see Megan at dinner. She didn’t want to cook just for herself, so she had a hamburger around the corner from the apartment and spent the evening trying to get interested in a scholarly hardbound work on female homosexuality. Megan had a fairly extensive library on the subject. The book kept boring her and she didn’t get very far with it. At nine-thirty Megan called and said not to wait up for her, that she would be late. They did not talk long. Afterward, she took a shower and crawled into bed and felt lost in the big bed, lost and alone. At one point she thought that she was going to cry. She felt tears welling up behind her eyes and waited for them to come spilling out, but they didn’t. She lay in bed and finally fell asleep.

She dreamed for the first time in weeks. Not the usual dream, the dream of being chased. This was a gentler dream and one which did not wake her, although she remembered it quite clearly in the morning.

In the dream, she was standing upon the peak of a small hill with rolling lawn stretching out in all directions as far as she could see. The sun was high in the sky, the grass flawlessly green. She was dressed in a formal gown and had a rose in her hair. And then, slowly but surely her clothes began to melt away, stitch by stitch and layer by layer. The gown went, and then her slip and her shoes, and her bra and panties and stocking until she stood nude on the top of the hill. And then flesh began to melt away in the same fashion, slowly dreamily, and then her bones, until she had gradually vanished and only the rose from her hair remained, floating a few feet in space above the crest of the hill.

It was not a frightening dream. The melting process had nothing fearsome in it. It was quite gentle. But when she thought about the dream the next day it bothered her. She wondered what it meant and decided it might best not to think about it. She never mentioned it to Megan.

“You’re a hard girl to get hold of,” someone said. She spun around and looked up at the man who had spoken. It was Ed Vance.

“I tried calling you,” he said. “Your number’s not listed. Then I tried to reach you at work but I didn’t remember the name of the shop, just where it was.” He grinned. “So I decided to take a long lunch hour and make another pilgrimage to the Village. Come have lunch with me and my labors will be rewarded.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? When’s your lunch hour?”

“In a few minutes. But-”

“Then what’s the problem?”

The problem was that she did not want to see him. He was pushy and she felt threatened when he was with him. As far as he was concerned, she was a manless woman who would be a relatively easy mark. And Tom had probably said something about her, something to the effect that she was frigid, a piece of ice. A man like him would take that as a challenge, anxious to prove himself as a man by melting the ice with her.

“I’m meeting someone for lunch.”

“Someone?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone I know?”

“I don’t think so.”

He looked at her. She turned away, avoiding his eyes. The store was empty now. If a customer had come in she would have had an excuse to slip away from Ed and make herself look busy, but customers only came when she didn’t want them around.

“So you’re meeting someone,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Well that’s what happens when a guy doesn’t call. I figured you might be free for lunch. And here it’s the other way around. You’re tied up for lunch, and if I had a dinner open and asked for that you probably would have been able to go, but I went and asked you for lunch. That’s the way it goes.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You don’t have a dinner date, though. Do you?”

“Well no, but-”

“Good.” A quick, predatory flash of smile. “I’ll pick you up here at five-thirty. Don’t forget, Rhoda.”

He was gone before she could think of anything to say.

There was one way to get him out of her hair for good, she thought. All she had to do was tell him the truth. He might have visions of himself bringing a heretofore frigid girl to Nirvana, but once she told him she was a lesbian he would stay away from her.

But how? Just blurt it out? She couldn’t quite see herself doing that. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of what she was but the idea of putting it into words for him didn’t set right. There had to be a way. But she couldn’t see it, not yet.

She could she have dinner with him. At four-thirty she told Mr. Yamatari that she had a splitting headache and couldn’t see straight, an excuse which was not entirely false. He told her to take the rest of the day off. She hurried straight home.

Let him come looking for her at five-thirty. Let him find out he had been stood up. Let him take the hint for once and leave her alone.

Her head was splitting when she got back to the apartment. She took three aspirins and stretched out on the couch.

That night she went to a gay bar alone for the first time. She waited until nine for Megan to come home, then gave up sitting around the apartment and walked over to Leonetti’s. She joined four girls at a table and drank three scotch sours with them. They were all girls she had met at Jan Pomeroy’s party the Saturday before, and they were in couples, so that none of them had more than a friendly interest in Rhoda. She relaxed with them and talked with them, and it was better than sitting home alone waiting endless hours for Megan.

No one at Leonetti’s made a pass at her. A few of the girl’s at the bar gave her long-drink looks that let her know they were interested, but when she didn’t gaze back they let it go. There was no heavy cruising. A little after ten she went back to the apartment. Megan was there.

“You had me worried,” Megan said. “I’ve been waiting for you for close to an hour. Where were you?”

“Leonetti’s.”

“With who?”

“Why? Are you jealous?”

“Yes.”

“I was alone,” she said. “I missed you. I couldn’t stand it, all alone. I sat with some of the girls. That’s all.”

“Oh, baby-”

They made good love for the first time in too long. This time Megan was not too tired, and this time Rhoda felt a need that was a living force within her. A new sort of lovemaking, with a degree of desperation in it that she had not noticed before. Afterward, she was more depleted than satisfied. She slipped out of bed and went into the other room.

She drank a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette. She sat naked in an armchair, the coffee cup on the table beside her, the cigarette smoldering in an ashtray balanced precariously on the arm of the chair. She smoked, drank coffee. She wondered what was wrong.

By the time she dragged herself to bed, she was tired enough so that sleep came quickly. She kissed Megan’s face before settling on her pillow. Megan did not stir. She closed her own eyes and let the world fade away.