Strange Are the Ways of Love

4

Her name was Laura Dean. She was twenty-three years old, and she had spent four of those years at a girls’ prep school and four more at a girls’ college in Massachusetts.

Her father was the only man she ever really knew. She had lived with him in a big stone house in upper Westchester County ever since he divorced her mother for infidelity when Laura was ten, and until he dropped dead of a heart attack shortly after she began her first year in high school.

She cried a great deal when he died. Later that year she fell in love with her French teacher and spent many hours talking with her and more hours thinking of her in secret.

The following year she danced with her room-mate at the school dances and kissed her several times in their room with the door shut.

The year after that she began sleeping with another girl, a senior.

Since then she had gone with many girls, too many to remember. Each time the relationship was a shaky, tenuous thing that rarely lasted more than a month or so and frequently ended after a single night. After she graduated from college she moved immediately to the Village. She landed a bit part in an off-Broadway theater but gave up the role to sleep with an actress for four months. It was her only extended affair, and she was sick inside when the actress left her for another girl.

And the time passed.

She was with the little blonde now, Peggy. She felt Peggy’s hand on her thigh beneath the table, pressing gently but persistently, and she knew that Peggy wanted to leave. Peggy wanted to go out of The Shadows and around the corner to the apartment on Minetta Street. She wanted to get undressed quickly and throw her clothing on the floor and jump into bed and make love. Peggy wanted to be loved, wanted desperately to be held tight in Laura’s arms.

“Hold me close,” she would say, as she had said so often in the three weeks they had been lovers. “Hold me close. I’m afraid.”

What was Peggy afraid of? She didn’t know, and she was beginning to stop caring, just as she was ceasing to care for Peggy and ceasing to desire the slim, boyish body she knew so well.

Soon it would end. The affair would be over, Laura knew, and she or Peggy would be hurt for a while just as Kate was hurt now, and then each would find another and the parade would go on. They would play Musical Beds until they dried up inside and died, and there would be a funeral with Lesbians crying, and the ground would cover them and no one would care. No one would even remember after a year or two.

Kate was saying something and Laura nodded absently, not hearing her. Her mind was not on Kate’s conversation any more than it was on Peggy’s hot urgent hand. It was on another girl, a girl she had not yet met.

Jan Marlowe, Kate had said. Short for Janice or Janet.

Had she ever slept with a girl named Jan? She had to think back for a moment to be sure that she hadn’t, and she realized just how mad a game of Musical Beds she had been playing.

Kate was rambling on about the girl, speculating, guessing. Was the girl gay? Was she a tourist? Why did she run so? What scared her?

Laura knew. She knew why the girl was frightened and that she would be back, and she knew that they would make love. She had seen Jan’s eyes on her, gazing at her with a mixture of hunger and fear. She had sensed the eyes even before she had seen them, had been aware of the girl’s presence with that extra sense a person needed if he was radically different, the extra sense that could bring homosexuals an awareness of each other in the middle of a busy street or from two sides of a crowded room.

Jan Marlowe would be back.

They would meet and they would make love. Jan would come to her, still afraid but not so afraid as before. They would sit together and talk and drink and leave The Shadows and walk together to the apartment on Minetta Street.

They would lock the door.

With the door locked Peggy would become a memory and Jan would become a reality. They would be together — for a night or a week or a month — and Laura would hold Jan’s sweet body close and kiss her and love her. Until the music stopped and they switched partners once again.

Musical Beds.

“I hate this place,” Peggy was saying, making conversation and hinting at the same time.

“Why?” Kate asked.

“Touristy. People walk in and look at us and sailors make passes and people stare in the window. It’s a pain in the ass.”

I don’t like that, Laura thought. Why does she always have to talk like a truckdriver?

“But it’s the only place. God, you know what the rest of the spots are like. How about that hole over on Bleecker Street with the floor show? That’s better?”

“No, it’s worse.”

“Well, where do you want to go?”

Peggy squeezed Laura’s thigh again, making it quite plain where she wanted to go. “We should have a place of our own,” she said. “Without the tourists.”

“Good idea.” Kate finished her drink, getting into the spirit of the game. “What’ll we call it?”

“Sappho’s.”

“Too obvious. How about The Dikery?”

They laughed and Laura smiled.

“The Butchery’s better,” Peggy suggested.

“Too coarse.”

“The Nunnery?”

“Sacrilege.”

“The Convent?”

“Same thing.”

“I know — Halfway House.”

And they all laughed.

Laura drained her drink and put the glass down on the table, hard. She stood up, reaching for Peggy’s hand, and whispered, “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

As they walked to the door Peggy slipped her arm around Laura’s waist, leaning her little body expertly against her. The jukebox was playing So Long again and Laura knew without looking that Kate was crying or would start to cry in a minute or two. Then, within a week, she would fall in love again with someone new.

“I’ve been wanting to leave for one hell of a long time,” Peggy said, her voice brittle. “What were you waiting for? It’s not that bitch Kate, for Christ’s sake. Or is it?”

“No.”

“Well, I never know. Dammit, you know how much I need you right now. I was sitting there itching while those goddamned sailors were running their eyes up my skirt and Kate’s yammering away and you knew I wanted to get out of there.”

Laura nodded, wishing she would shut up, half wanting her and half wanting only to sleep, to sleep alone in an empty bed with clean sheets and a hard pillow.

“Then why in hell—”

“Can’t you say anything without swearing like a trouper?”

Peggy stiffened; then she relaxed and released her breath. “I’m sorry. I got in the habit but I know you don’t like it. I’ll try to stop.”

And Laura knew that she had hurt her, so she slipped her arm tighter around Peggy as they turned the corner of Minetta.

She’s really very pretty, she thought. With that blonde hair and those bright eyes. And I want her tonight. God, tonight I have to want her.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said softly.

“Do you really want me?” Peggy demanded suddenly. “We’ve been so close, but lately I keep feeling as though you’re a million miles away. What’s the matter, darling?”

“Nothing — don’t be silly.”

“You still love me?”

“Of course I love you. Idiot, how many times do I have to prove it to you?”

And even as she spoke the words sounded forced and artificial, as if she were an actress playing a role. How much longer would it be before Peggy saw the performer instead of the performance?

“You have to love me, Laura.” Her voice was flat and deadly serious. “You have to keep proving it to me, over and over. It sounds trite, but you’re all I have. I need you so goddamned much.”

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.