Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

Abruptly the smoky, pulsing sensual blur of the Sagebrush Lounge was replaced by the warm, silent night outside. Polly felt a tense, twanging apprehension — or was it expectancy? — as Mac drove along a dark side street, taking her — where?

“So you’re gay, huh?” he said abruptly. “Since when?”

“I’ve been living with a woman for two months,” Polly told him, accurately but deceptively, and realizing that even this didn’t sound like much. Or maybe it did, for Mac had just swung onto a broad, well-lit boulevard, edged on one side with movie theaters and drive-ins and motels, and on the other with a row of blowing palms and the dark choppy waters of the bay. “That is, I was living with her,” she added, unwilling to suggest that she was two-timing someone.

“You mean you aren’t anymore,” he said, or asked.

“No, not exactly,” she admitted.

“Ah.” They had turned onto a street that Polly recognized as not far from Artemis Lodge. There seemed to be nothing more to say, so she said nothing. It’s over, I’m safe; I won’t see him again, she thought, and was furious at herself for not being relieved.

“Listen, I’ve got an idea,” Mac said as he pulled up outside the guest house. “What if I was to get — I mean, I think maybe I could get the key to Hugh Cameron’s house, from the rental agent.”

“Oh, could you?” Polly gasped.

“Sure. Well, probably. I could tell them I had to check the bathroom pipes or something. Then you could meet me there tomorrow after I finish work and look for those paintings.”

“That’d be really great.” In her enthusiasm, Polly put a hand on his arm. “If it’s not too much trouble —”

“No. A pleasure.” Mac covered her hand with his. “So I’ll see you over there, say about four?”

“Great,” Polly repeated. She started to slide away across the seat of the truck, but he didn’t remove his hand; instead, he tightened his grip. “Well, hey, thanks for the drink.”

“Hey, you’re welcome.” Mac turned full toward her. He kissed her hard but very briefly, releasing her before she had time to react. “See you at four tomorrow,” he repeated as she scrambled down out of the cab.

The pickup truck roared off, and Polly, in what her mother would have called a State, stood on the porch of Artemis Lodge. The door was locked, and only one ruby-chambered electric lantern burned in the hall. Either Lee was out, or she’d already gone to bed. Polly let herself in and climbed the stairs to her room.

What are you so upset about? she asked herself. Your luck’s turned. Tomorrow you’re going to see Cameron’s place, and who knows what you might find there? Pictures, drawings — letters and notes even, if Mac doesn’t stop you —

Or, let’s put it this way, another voice said. You’re going to meet a man you hardly know in a town you hardly know, in an empty house, where there probably aren’t any paintings anyhow, because probably that was just his way of getting you there, and doing what he wants to you.

And what you want, said another treacherous voice.

The room felt hot and close and crowded; Polly shoved up the sash of the window, but the breeze that blundered in, sticky with the odors of tropical flowers and auto exhaust and tidewrack, was even more insidious and oppressive. Sex, it whispered.

All right, you feel something, the first voice shrilled in Polly’s ear as she paced the narrow strip of straw matting between the bed and the open window. But that’s just because you haven’t made it with anyone in nearly a month; naturally you’re susceptible. It doesn’t mean you have to fall into bed with whoever comes along, especially not with a man.

All right, you’ll be alone with Mac. But if he makes what your mother would call an indecent suggestion, all you have to do is say no; he’s not going to jump you. If you can’t control yourself, if you have to sleep with someone, Polly told herself, it doesn’t have to be Mac. There’s Lee, for instance — a generous and warmhearted (if rather scatty) woman, who likes you and is right downstairs in the guest house.

Polly fixed the image of Lee in her mind; mentally she removed Lee’s flowered muumuu and contemplated her low full leathery breasts, her thick waist, her sturdy brown Polynesian hips; her bushy black armpits, the probable black bush below. ... But she felt less than nothing. Lee wasn’t what she wanted; what she wanted —

It was her old ignorant desire for the Romantic Hero, recurring like some persistent tropical weed. Over the last two years this rank growth had been, she’d thought, thoroughly rooted up, and the earth where it once flourished raked hard, trampled down. But now, in the steamy, unnatural climate of Key West, the weed had sprouted again.

It was an addiction, really, like Jeanne’s addiction to cigarettes. There ought to be an organization for it, Heterosexuals Anonymous, it could be called, and when the uncontrollable urge came over you, you’d telephone their hotline and some nice woman would talk to you till you felt better. Jeanne had said she’d been through everything, trying to stop smoking: group meetings and individual therapy and hypnosis and clove cigarettes and nicotine gum, changing to a brand she disliked, tapering off gradually, going cold turkey. Eventually she’d realized that she was becoming obsessed with smoking-or-not-smoking; and that this obsession was crowding out the whole rest of her life. She couldn’t concentrate on anything else properly; she couldn’t finish an article, or give a decent lecture, she couldn’t enjoy seeing her friends or going to a film or having a good meal or sometimes even making love with Betsy, because she kept thinking about cigarettes. So finally she decided, the hell with the whole thing. It was a lot easier, Jeanne said, just to have a smoke when she wanted one and then forget about it.

Is that how Polly ought to treat her own addiction? Should she just sleep with Mac once — assuming that was what he had in mind — and get it out of her system? Right now, she not only found him attractive, she liked him. But probably it wasn’t really affection she felt, just disguised sexual need, aggravated by the climate. And probably it was only a matter of time before he’d do or say some ugly chauvinist thing, and then she wouldn’t have to care about him.

Besides, in a case like this it would be wrong to turn to Lee. You didn’t use another woman like that, you had respect for her feelings, her integrity as a person — where had she heard that phrase recently? Yes, from Jeanne. If Jeanne were here now, though, she would tell Polly not to do what she was in great danger of doing.

Eleven thirty-five. Late, but Jeanne often stayed up late. And even if she’d gone to bed, this was a crisis, she wouldn’t mind getting up. Unless of course she and Betsy — but then Polly remembered how, when she and Jeanne had slept in the same bed, Jeanne would always unplug the telephone before they “tumbled about a bit.”

Polly tiptoed downstairs to the lobby, stopping at each creak of the staircase, shifting as much of her weight as she could to the worn mahogany bannister.

In the sleeping house, the ringing of the phone in the apartment on Central Park West sounded so loud that Polly expected Lee to appear at any moment, followed by several of her guests. All right, let them come. Help me, she would say to them and to Jeanne. If you don’t, I’m going to do something irrational, something dangerous. But nobody answered the phone, and nobody came.

13

AT A QUARTER PAST four the following afternoon Polly sat on the wide leaf-littered steps of Hugh Cameron’s house, under heavy bulging clouds that had done nothing to lower the temperature. It seemed if anything warmer than yesterday; the light had a diffuse, oppressive purplish tint. Mac’s not coming, she thought for the fourth or fifth time. You should be glad; now you can’t do anything you’ll be sorry for afterward. But she didn’t feel glad; she felt ashamed and angrily disappointed, like a recovered alcoholic who’d tried to fall off the wagon in front of a package store that turned out to be shut.