Katherine Forrest - Lesbian Pulp Fiction

“How?”

Leda reached in the closet for a fresh blouse, and straightened her skirt so that the zipper was pulled and on the side. She ran a comb through her long hair, and her hands were trembling.

“I’ll explain it somehow. Marsha’s gullible, and I’ll explain it. I have to go now, or they’ll have a chance to talk and spread the story.”

Mitch said, “‘I’ll go too, Leda, I’ll go too. What’ll we say?”

“No!” Leda put her hands over her face and shook her head. “I’m sorry I yelled. We’ve got to handle this just right. You stay here. It’s better for me to go alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Look, get into bed. I’ll turn the light out and you stay here. If anyone else comes by, pretend you’re asleep.

She waited while Mitch pulled her pajamas from the suitcase on her bed and threw the suitcase down on the floor, before she stepped into the pants and the coat. After she got in bed, Leda snapped the light out and went back by her own bed before she opened the door to go.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry at all. And stay here!”

In her hand, as she walked toward Marsha’s suite, Leda clutched Mitch’s letter, wrinkled and folded on the long sheet of notebook paper. Her eyes were set and determined, and there was a tight line about her lips.

Under the heavy violet and black quilted robe, Mother Nesselbush wore a voluminous peach-colored flannel nightgown. Her hair was rolled on large black pins so that it pulled at her scalp and gave her round face a bizarre expression like that of a mild Jersey cow. Her skin shone with “night cream,” and until everything began, it was with conscious effort that she stifled the great yawns that exposed her pressing lethargy, as well as her gold-studded molars.

Everything began when Marsha shut the door to Nessy’s suite and pressed the lock down to secure it. Beside those two, Casey, Kitten Clark, Jane Bell, and Leda shared the secrecy of the meeting that was about to commence. Marsha stood while the others sat in various positions around the small anteroom.

“I don’t need to tell you that this gathering is an extreme emergency. We must all pledge never to reveal what we hear. Our whole reputation as a national sorority is at stake, to say nothing of the reputation of Tri Epsilon on the Cranston campus. I’ve asked Jane to come because she’s a member of the Grand Council. Fortunately, our other two members were on the scene when this thing happened. And Leda will explain her part in it. Nessy, we’ve inconvenienced you tremendously, but this is too terribly serious.”

Mother Nesselbush protested that she was not disturbed, and that she was only too thankful that she was called on. She straightened her drooping shoulders and sat forward intently.

“Maybe you better tell how it started, Casey,” Marsha said, leaning against the small mahogany table with the vase of daisies set on it.

Casey was excited. Her face was animated and colored with the heat of her adventure. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward from the couch.

“It was right after chapter meeting. Kitten and I were going up to talk with Leda about her being nominated for Christmas Queen, and about the campaign we were going to plan. Well, we were kind of pleased and everything and I guess we just never thought of knocking, and when we got in there—well, this is kind of hard to say—we found Mitch naked and she was attacking Leda. I mean, she was kissing her and pulling at her clothes.”

“What!” Mother Nesselbush paled and caught her jowls with her pudgy hands. “Oh, no!”

Leda’s knees felt watery and loose, and her knuckles were white in a tight fist.

“Well,” Casey went on, “Kitten and I ran like the devil—”

“I’ll say we did,” Kitten broke in. “I was never so scared in my life. If you could have seen it! I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even think when I was running.”

“What did she do when you opened the door? Gosh, Leda, you must have been crazy with fear.” Jane Bell looked over at Leda after she said it, and shook her head and wrinkled her forehead in disbelief. “Absolutely crazy with fear!” she repeated.

“You poor, poor darling,” Nessy said. “To think of it!”

Marsha moved forward and held her hand up for silence. “After that,” she said when everyone settled down, “Leda came to me in the suite. Luckily, Kitten and Casey had come right there, so the story hasn’t spread.”

“What about Susan Mitchell?” Mother Nesselbush snapped. “Where is she now?”

“You better carry on from here, Leda.” Marsha sat down on the floor, close to Nessy’s chair, and waited while Leda found words. Of course, they believed the story. It had been easy to tell it, Leda thought; not easy, but the only way. It had been the only way to tell it. Strange how she had thought that she would do it just this way if they were found, in that quick flash of intuition a second before they were found. She remembered another day when she was a child alone in her room, and in the midst of it she had heard Jan’s footsteps down the hall. If they stopped, if Jan came in the room, then she would say that she had shooting pains from cramps, and that she had been tossing on the bed and was hot and out of breath, and she would even cry to show that the pains were bad ones. But she would not spoil that moment there with herself for anything. All of the thoughts came quickly to Leda, solved in seconds, so that there was never any defeat. Now again she was not defeated, because they believed her. There was Mitch upstairs, waiting, trusting, but the time was now, downstairs, and Leda began slowly, her words careful and well remembered.

“Mitch is upstairs in bed. She’ll stay there, and she won’t talk to anyone. I told her that I would explain it, and I’m going to try to. I can’t explain it so that everything is over and forgotten as I know she hopes I will do, but I am going to try to be fair to her.

“First of all, with everyone’s permission, I’d like to read a letter.”

When she finished the letter, Mother Nesselbush rolled her eyes in utter horror. “I declare,” she said. “I do declare!”

“You see,” Leda said, “I suspected that Mitch had a crush on me. She was jealous of Jake and of the time I spent with him. I knew that, but I never dreamed the kid was in love with me like this. You know how I am. I call everyone honey and darling, and I guess the kid took me to heart. Then, after I told her to get some boy friends, she got mad and tried to ignore me. I didn’t pay any attention until I found this note in my mailbox before dinner tonight. Well, you know how I acted at dinner.”

“And I thought it was just the flu,” Nessy said. “Land!”

“So I decided that the only thing I could do was to try to help the kid. At least persuade her to wait until morning. I didn’t know what kind of condition she was in. She might do something dumb like confiding in that Robin Maurer. Then the whole campus would know. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t wait till chapter meeting and talk it over with you kids, because she’d be gone by then. I tried to handle it myself.”

“Who’s Charlie?” Kitten said. “Is he that independent? What does she mean, he knows?”

“She imagined that, I’m sure,” Leda answered. “I guess they had a fight or something and she thought he knew. The kid is really naïve.”

“She didn’t look naïve when Casey and I saw her.”

“Let me finish, Kitten.”

“Well, Lord, we don’t want it all over campus that one of the Tri Ep pledges is queer. That’s all the independents need.”

“I tell you, he doesn’t know. No one does!”

“Let Leda finish,” Marsha said.