Lawrence Block - Warm and Willing

“I don’t know.”

“I do.”

She lit another cigarette. Her hands were steadier now. She felt excitement percolating within herself, but she had no immediate fear, no odd feeling of anxiety. The discussion was a calm and cool one now. They were talking about her sexual impulses, analyzing her possible homosexuality in a slightly dispassionate fashion, and she was quite relaxed about it. The undercurrent of tension and excitement was not unpleasant or disturbing.

“You were made to love,” Megan told her, “You tried to give that love to a man. You know how impossible that is. Why don’t you try giving it to me?”

“I-”

“You can’t bury it. You’ve been trying to do that. You know how it works out.”

“It hasn’t worked out so badly.”

“Hasn’t it? You have the same nightmare over and over again. You live a lonely life and you feel the loneliness of it. You’ve been trying to starve your own need for love and you need to give love and you need to receive it. It’s a stubborn force, Rhoda. It won’t let itself be starved out. It’s too real a need to be dismissed that easily.”

She started to say something, to offer up some objection, then changed her mind. She smoked her cigarette and asked if there was any coffee left.

“I’ll get some.”

Megan brought back two cups of coffee. The coffee was hot and strong. Rhoda sipped hers, set the cup down in the saucer. She took a last drag on her cigarette and put it out. A line from Eliot- I have measured out my life in coffee spoons. In coffee spoons, in cigarette butts, in days awake and nights asleep. She had been measuring out her own life, parceling it out piece by piece. Years were passing, filled with nothing, and she was twenty-four years old and unutterably alone.

How much was Megan offering her? And how much would it cost her to accept Megan’s offer?

She sipped more coffee. “I’m all lost,” she said.

“Poor girl.”

“Poor girl. Yes. I had such a sweet time tonight. Dinner, the wine, being with you. I haven’t had an evening like that since I left Tom. Or since longer than that. I needed it, the friendship, all of it. I thought you would be my friend.”

“I am your friend.”

“I thought that was all you wanted.”

“I want that and more. I want to be your friend. And your lover.”

“My lover.”

“Yes.”

“What would we do? I don’t understand.”

“Does it matter?”

“I-”

“I would make love to you,” Megan said, “I would make you feel like what you are, like a woman made for love. I would show you the dark side of the moon, I would make you laugh and cry. And we would be close and warm and nothing would matter, nothing at all.”

“You make it sound beautiful.”

“It will be beautiful.”

“Will?”

“Will. Because you can’t deny yourself the world, Rhoda. You can’t cut out a part of yourself. And sooner or later you’ll realize this.”

“I can’t.”

“You will.”

“I can’t.” She lit another cigarette, nervous again now, afraid of what she might do, more afraid of what she might desire to do. She smoked nervously and missed the ashtray when she went to duck her ashes. She tried to scoop up the ashes and brushed them onto the floor in her clumsiness. Megan told her to forget it. She looked down at the ashes on the rug and thought that she was going to cry. She didn’t know why she ought to cry but she felt tears welling up behind her eyes and was afraid they would spill out momentarily.

“I feel so funny,” she said.

“Of course you do. Poor girl, you have to look at yourself all differently now. It’s a new world, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“A brand new world. Right now it’s frightening because it’s so unfamiliar. When you learn to know it you’ll find out that you belong in it, that it’s the only world for you. The world of shadows, the twilight world. There are a great many cliches for it. But it’s my world. And yours, Rhoda.”

“I feel like crying.”

“Go ahead.”

“I-”

“Let it out. Don’t try to hold it in, baby, just relax and let it out. You can cry in front of me, Rhoda.”

She cried. She couldn’t help it.

“I have to go home, Megan.”

She was standing now, her tears washed away, fresh lipstick on her lips. It was late and she was tired and frightened and she had to go home.

“Stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Sleep here.”

“Oh, Megan, no I can’t. I honestly can’t.”

Megan was holding her arm. “Don’t go now,” she said. “It’s late and the streets are dark.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“And you’ll go back to a sterile little room and lie awake all night. Or fall asleep and dream bad dreams. You can’t be alone tonight, Rhoda. Too much has happened to you already. You need a settling time, a time to digest it all, and you ought to have somebody near you. Letting yourself cry was part of it. Being with someone is another part of it. You’ve had quite a night. You got drunk and you got shocked, and you’ve been forced to start seeing things in a different light, and this is no time for you to be alone.”

“But I can’t-”

“What?”

“I can’t let you make love to me, Megan.”

Megan smiled. “You silly girl.”

“I-”

“Silly thing. I in not propping you, honey. No propositions. I want you to stay here. That’s all.”

“Is it?”

“Yes” Megan turned from her, walked over to the window. She said, “I don’t want that kind of a seduction scene, baby. I’m not the rapist type, really I’m not. I’m no sex maniac. If I had wanted it that way I would have let you stay drunk. I wouldn’t have poured a bucket of coffee into you. I would have poured in some more wine, and before you knew what was happening I’d have had your clothes off and I’d have had my way with you, as the books so coyly put it.”

Megan turned, faced her again. “But that’s not exactly my style. I don’t want to make sex to you, I want t make love to you. And I have to be honest. I’m not good at deception, not at all. I could have let tonight go by without tipping my hand at all, you know. I could have let a very firm friendship come first, and then by the time you found out I was a lesbian you would have been too emotionally involved to resist me. Believe me, I could have done that. But I’m not like that.”

Megan smiled gently. “I want you to sleep here. That’s all, Rhoda. You’ll take the bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s a comfortable couch. If you want to talk, I’ll be here to talk to. If you have bad dreams you can wake me and I’ll hold your hand and tell you that everything is all right. Whatever you want, I’ll be here.”

She didn’t say anything. Her heart was beating furiously now. She felt choked inside. A lump in her throat, tremors in her hands. She swallowed.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you trust me?”

“I trust you.”

“Then what are you afraid of?”

She swallowed again. “Maybe myself.”

“Don’t ever be. Will you stay?”

But she didn’t sleep in the bed. She insisted on that much. She took the couch and Megan took the bed. They sat talking for a few more minutes, and then Megan gave her a nightgown and she went into the bathroom and got undressed and washed up and put on the nightgown and went back to the living room. Megan had made up the couch as a bed. Megan looked at her, and she felt Megan’s eyes flash very briefly over her body in the nightgown, and she felt suddenly self-conscious, as though she were nude and a man was looking at her.

“If you can’t sleep-”