Lesley Evans - Strange Are the Ways of Love

She swore again, Laura thought. But it’s all right. I shouldn’t let it bother me.

They reached Laura’s building and walked slowly up the winding staircase, not speaking and hardly thinking. When they reached the room Laura turned on the light and bolted the door, taking the little blonde in her arms and holding her close.

Then their clothes were off, tossed on the floor as she had predicted. Then the light was off and they were in the bed with the covers over them, and Laura forgot everything but the soft and beautiful and exciting body she held in her arms.

Later she lay on the bed with her head on the pillow and Peggy in her arms, with Peggy’s face warm against her breast. She felt relaxed against the cool sheets.

She closed her eyes in the darkness and thought of Peggy and tried to picture Peggy’s small girlish face in her mind.

But the face she saw was Jan Marlowe’s.

It was Saturday morning. Jan woke up slowly, stretching and yawning like a cat, slowly pushing the bedclothes back and pulling herself out from under them.

It was late, almost noon. She sat up in bed, unconscious of her nakedness, her mind slipping back to the previous evening.

She remembered leaving The Shadows, half walking and half running along Macdougal Street and Third Street and finally reaching her apartment, exhausted. She threw herself headlong upon the bed without bothering to remove her clothes, trying desperately to sleep, shutting her eyes and saying sleep, sleep, sleep, over and over to herself. But she couldn’t.

So she read, lying on her bed and racing through a book and starting another book when the first one was finished. The books came from Ruthie’s bookshelf, but that was all she could remember about them now. Titles, plots and characters escaped her completely. She only remembered that she had read swiftly, with a vengeance, attempting to bury herself in the books, to think about nothing else, to lose her mind completely in the rhythm of the prose and the flow of the narrative.

It had worked in the past. She discovered reading the year her mother died and had read everything, racing through libraries, reading not books but complete works of her favorite authors, reading totally incomprehensible poetry for the sound and meter alone. Reading constantly, forgetting everything but the book in her hand, even shutting out the world and the light and the presence of other persons in her room.

But last night it did not work. She plowed on and on through the books, turning pages automatically. Her mind kept wandering back to the coffee shop and to the bar, and suddenly she would catch herself, realizing that she had read three or four pages without noticing a word or remembering what they were about.

Mike Hawkins, who frightened her with the invitation in his deep eyes. Who scared her with the promise he made, the empty promise of fulfillment she could never find with him.

Peggy or Laura. The beautiful Lesbian who could bring her the pleasure she wanted but was afraid to accept.

In one night she had met two fires, two persons who attracted her and repelled her and frightened her at once. In one night in Greenwich Village she had been awakened severely.

She almost longed for Indiana. She almost ached for its emptiness and loneliness, for the fresh air and two-story buildings and quiet people who never did anything, who never made her think about anything more upsetting than whether or not it might rain that night.

She almost craved this emptiness, and then, just before sunrise, she fell asleep.

Now she was awake and hungry. She was also naked, and she realized this fact with a start, flushing with embarrassment and thinking that someone was watching her, that somewhere a pair of eyes watched her, burning over her skin. It was ridiculous, of course. There was no one near and no way for anyone to see her. Her window faced a blank wall and the door to her bedroom was shut.

What was she afraid of?

She wasn’t sure. She stood up abruptly, taking a deep breath and holding it in her lungs, throwing her shoulders back, expanding her chest. She released the air in a rush.

Naked, she walked to the bathroom and turned on the shower. When the water reached the right temperature she stepped into the tub and soaped herself thoroughly, working the lather into her skin. Then she stepped under the shower, enjoying the way the water beat down on her, hard, pelting her skin and waking it up.

She soaped and rinsed again. Then she rubbed the soap into her long black hair and rinsed it and soaped and rinsed, repeating the process until her hair squeaked between her fingers.

When she had rubbed herself dry with the heavy white towel, she returned to the bedroom and began to dress. The shower had intensified her hunger, and she wished that Ruthie had left food in the refrigerator, or that she had had sense enough to buy breakfast food the day before. At least Ruthie left a houseful of staples — sugar and salt and flour and all the rest, and a full stock of pots and pans and dishes. That was something.

She ate at the diner again — ham and eggs and orange juice and black coffee. It was good, but when she paid the bill and tipped the counterman she realized that eating out was costing much too much money, that she would have to do her own cooking from now on. She could always get a job, but that would be a great waste of time.

She had little enough time as it was. Three months, and that wasn’t nearly enough time for a city like New York, not at all enough time to explore it and get to know it, to go every place and do everything there was to do. It would be foolish to waste eight hours a day working.

Let her father pay for it. Let the old bastard pay and pay and pay—

Sure, she thought. Another indication, another typical reaction.

My father .

I hate him .

He’s good to me and he loves me, but I hate him. He was good to mother, but I can’t help feeling he killed her.

Another sign. Another complex the doctors could label. Another clue.

Why didn’t she give up? Why didn’t she quit fighting and join the three of them in The Shadows and go home with one of them and find out, finally? Why?

She hurried out of the diner and walked to the supermarket down the block. She pushed a cart up and down the long aisles, filling the basket and deciding while she shopped that she wouldn’t cook dinners at the apartment. There were so many restaurants to try. Economizing on breakfasts and lunches was enough.

She’d be spending enough time in the apartment anyway.

She shopped slowly, buying a large quantity of food. She stocked up on eggs and coffee and bacon, and bread and sandwich meat for lunches, and fruit juices and milk and everything else that caught her eye. Shopping could be an end in itself. She had learned long ago that it could provide as perfect an escape as reading, that a person could lose sight of herself completely when she tried on pair after pair of shoes or pushed a market basket or simply stared into store windows.

The hell with it, she thought angrily. The hell with it, whatever it was. I don’t care what I am or who I am, but I can’t go on escaping forever. I can stand it, whatever I am. But I can’t stand running, always running.

The hell with it.

Back at the apartment she unpacked the groceries and put them away. The refrigerator looked better now, filled with food and ready for use. The shelves were not so empty any more. She put a pot of water on the stove for coffee and made the bed while she waited for it to boil.

The apartment was beginning to feel more and more like home. Somehow the mere act of working in an apartment, of straightening it up and buying food for it, made it seem to belong to her. It had been Ruthie’s and it would be Ruthie’s once again when Ruthie returned to the city, but now it belonged to her, and she lived in it.