Strange Are the Ways of Love

9

Sunday. That was the first thing that she was aware of, even before she knew quite where she was or even who she was. When she awoke in the morning she often lost herself completely, lost all awareness of time and place. One morning in Indiana she had managed to dress herself completely without quite remembering her own name.

Now when she realized it was Sunday, the second thing that occurred to her was the significance of the day. The Sabbath was not going to be a day of rest, not this week.

Sunday.

It wasn’t morning, she realized. It was past noon, one o’clock at least, and she crawled out of bed and hunted for her watch on the dresser. It was one-thirty.

She dressed in dungarees and a blouse and headed for the bathroom, yawning on the way. The reflection in the mirror didn’t even look like Jan Marlowe at first glance — her eyes were slightly bloodshot and her face drawn and tired and pale.

She was incredibly thirsty. She rarely had a hangover, but fairly heavy drinking left her thirsty enough to empty a bathtub. She filled and drained the plastic bathroom glass four times without ever really quenching her thirst.

In the kitchen she broke an egg into the stainless aluminum frying pan and spent several minutes fishing for pieces of the shell. She hardly ever managed to break an egg properly. Once years ago she had tapped one too hard on the stove and smashed it. The egg had dripped into obscurity within one of the burners, but had immortalized itself for weeks by giving off a burnt smell each time the stove was used.

That was in Indiana, the summer she had spent with her mother on the lake shore. She remembered it now, how they had gone swimming and slept on the beach in the sun, and how they laughed at the egg smell in the cottage.

While the egg was bubbling in the pan, she boiled water and made coffee and poured orange juice. She ate her breakfast at the kitchen table, thinking once again that she really had to get another table cloth soon.

Sunday.

She would meet Laura that night. Meanwhile there was time, time to do almost anything, and there was certainly plenty to do, plenty of things to see. But for some reason she didn’t want to do anything, and most of all she didn’t want to leave the apartment. The thought of meeting anyone, even a total stranger, was repelling.

But I have time to kill, she thought. How do I kill it?

As she washed the breakfast dishes in the sink she went over the previous night in her mind. It had been a good night, until all at once it went wrong and became a very bad night. Then, suddenly, it was good again, better than ever. It had been free and easy with every problem solving itself.

Now she knew what she was, and now that she knew it for a fact it seemed a good deal less frightening.

Be the best of whatever you are. That was the punch line of one of those insipid poems they taught you back in grammar school, something about being a shrub if you couldn’t make it as a pine on the top of the hill. But the line was beginning to make a little sense.

Okay, she thought. I’ll be the greatest dike in the Western world.

She dried the dishes and put them away, thinking that now the problem was solved and the course was clear enough. She wanted Laura and Laura wanted her and there was nothing in the way. The little blonde didn’t matter, Mike didn’t matter, nothing mattered. Mike wanted her, but that was immaterial now. He might even love her, but he would be able to get over it.

She poured another cup of coffee and carried it into the living room. The sun was streaming into the open window and she felt slightly exposed there, her apartment open to the eyes of any tourist who happened to be passing by. Curtains would end that, but at the same time she liked the view open as it was. She could sit alone in her own living room and still be a part of the city outside.

The apartment was stuffy now and she walked to the window and opened it. The weather was nearly perfect — sunny and cloudless but not too hot. Outside it was peaceful, with less of the continual traffic and noise that had been present during the past two days.

She pulled a chair over to the window and sat down in it. The sun came just a little way into the room, warming her legs pleasantly so that she wiggled her toes.

The coffee tasted good. Actually, she thought, it’s lousy coffee. It doesn’t really taste like coffee, and if I want good coffee I ought to learn how to make it. This is instant coffee and it tastes like instant coffee, and if it weren’t such a wonderful day it would taste like iodine.

But it didn’t. It tasted good, even if it didn’t taste particularly like coffee, and she knew that this was a sign that the day was going to be a good one.

She lit a cigarette, dropping the match out of the window to the pavement below. The cigarette and coffee went together perfectly. Like beer and pizza. Like coke and aspirin. Like love and marriage.

Like love and marriage. But love and marriage didn’t go together, not at all. Not for her, at least. Marriage? Marriage was something that would never happen, an experience she would have to pass up, a set of emotions she would not feel, not ever.

Love and marriage and children.

And that of course was another item to be passed up.

She was going to miss a good deal. No husband, no kids—

She dragged on the cigarette and inhaled deeply, trying to punish herself by drawing too much smoke into her lungs. Bad girl, she thought, coughing. It’s a beautiful day and you’ll think yourself into a headache if you don’t come off it. Give it up, kiddo.

Besides, wasn’t it better? She could have marriage and children, sure. But she wanted love and she was lucky enough to see a way to get it. And if she settled for marriage and kids she would lose the love, and didn’t love come first? Without it, weren’t the others a lie?

Yes.

Yes, and she was right and the day was beautiful. The day was beautiful and Laura was beautiful and the apartment was beautiful and she was in love. Jan Marlowe was in love. Miss Janet Marlowe of Barrow Street, formerly of Indiana.

Across the street a pair of small boys were playing handball against the brick front of a building. Two doors down the block an old woman with grey hair sat alone on the front steps. The woman wore a faded print dress and brown loafers, and Jan could see her stockings — thick, dark brown stockings that covered her heavy legs. The woman wasn’t doing any of the things old women usually did. Her hands were empty. And she didn’t seem to be looking at anything, either: her eyes stared blankly ahead.

A couple passed arm in arm, talking in whispers and pointing at things. Jan guessed that they were tourists. Strangely, she didn’t consider herself a tourist although she had been in New York only since Friday. She felt so completely at home that she thought of herself as a New Yorker, a Villager, and was aware of a vague resentment toward the tourists who were walking on her street and pointing at things.

Was Laura a New Yorker? She decided that she must be, and then she realized that all the people she had met seemed to be native to the city. She couldn’t imagine them in any other surroundings. Even the artificial ones so completely fitted into the pattern of the city that she hadn’t thought of the possibility that some of them might come from Chicago or California or New England.

Or even the Midwest, even Indiana for that matter.

Laura could be from Indiana. Jan started to laugh, amused at the notion of two little hicks rushing to New York to crawl into bed together.

The handball bounced out into the street and one of the boys chased it past the wheels of a car. There was a squeal of brakes; then the car started up and drove away and the boys went back to their game. Jan glanced at the old woman and saw that she hadn’t moved, hadn’t even looked up at the sudden noise.

She thought how terrible it must be to be old. Sitting around with nothing to do and no place to go. She shivered at the thought, but at the same time she felt comfort in knowing that she herself was not old, that she had places to go and things to do and would have them for a good long time.

Then it occurred to her that it was not just the woman’s age, that it was not age at all. It was the loneliness. She knew just by looking at the woman that she had nobody, and without knowing anything about her other than that her hair was grey and her legs ugly, she could tell that there was no one inside the building waiting for the woman and no one in the city who would come home to her.

No one would know when the woman died.

This was frightening. It was far more frightening than age or ugliness or the grave.

Was Jan alone? She was now. Only Mike and Ruthie so much as knew where she was, and Ruthie was in Mexico and she never wanted to see Mike again.

In that sense she was alone. She had never even met the girl she was to see that night, but she knew that from the moment they met she would not be alone again. She was alone now as surely as the old woman was alone, but she would not be alone after tonight. That was the difference between them: she was waiting to love and be loved, and the woman was waiting only to die.

She felt that she ought to read something. She picked up three books, one after another, reading the first few pages of each and replacing each in turn on the bookshelf. After the third book she decided that she didn’t want to read, that in fact she didn’t want to do anything at all.

If only it could suddenly turn into night, if four or five hours could drop from time forever. In a sense the anticipation was pleasant, but it was also agonizingly long.

And she was worried.

Would Laura like her? Would she, Jan, say the right things and smile the right sort of smile and keep her mouth shut at the proper time?

For that matter, would she do the right things in bed?

She was terribly ignorant. From the first moment years ago when she had suspected herself of being gay she had devoured every available book on the subject of female homosexuality. Every type of book but an instruction manual, she thought, laughing to herself. There didn’t seem to be anything in print along those lines. She knew what to feel and what to think, but the basic mechanics were outside of her circle of knowledge.

What would she do? What would Laura expect her to do; what kind of caresses would she want? Laura was experienced, of course. Laura had loved before and had been loved before, and Jan hoped desperately that she would be good enough. She had to be good — that was all there was to it.

Through the window she watched a boy saunter by with his hands plunged deep in his pockets, whistling something and shuffling his feet along the pavement. There were so many people in New York, so many people whom you could see a million times and never meet. She still hadn’t met anybody living in her building. All she knew was that somebody had a dog that barked in the middle of the night Otherwise the building might as well be empty.

Lighting another cigarette, she realized that she didn’t actually have a date with Laura. Once she made her decision it seemed obvious that they would meet that night, but it hit her that no arrangements had been made, no time set, no place designated for them.

She almost dropped her cigarette.

She would go to The Shadows. Laura would be there. Laura had to be there; that was all there was to it.

The boys weren’t playing ball any more. They had vanished and only the motionless old woman remained. Otherwise Barrow Street was empty.

The buzzer jarred her at a quarter to five. She had managed somehow to drift into a semiconscious state, half submerged in a book and half asleep in the comfortable chair. It took her several seconds to identify the buzzing sound and several more seconds to decide who it could be. For one wild moment she suspected that it was Laura coming to see her, coming to meet her and make love to her, until she remembered that Laura didn’t know who she was or where she lived.

Only two people knew where she lived. One was in Mexico.

It could only be Mike, then, and she didn’t want to see him, especially this afternoon when she was waiting to meet Laura. She half-decided to let the buzzer remain unanswered, but when it sounded a second time she remembered that he had undoubtedly seen her through the window on his way into the vestibule. She walked slowly to the answering buzzer and pressed it once, hearing the outer door swing open.

She heard his footsteps coming up the hallway. Then he knocked and she walked to the door, not wanting to open it.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me — Mike.”

“What do you want?”

“Just to see you. Can I come in?”

She opened the door part of the way. He was dressed in the same clothes he had worn yesterday and he looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept much that night. His guitar was slung over one shoulder.

“Can I come in, Jan?”

She opened the door the rest of the way and motioned him inside and soon they were seated in the living room just as they had been the afternoon before. She thought that there should have been some way to get rid of him, some quick gambit to keep him from entering the apartment, some conversational trick to hurry him out the door and down the street. But it was infinitely easier to open the door for him and follow him to the living room.

“I got the audition,” he was saying. “I called Henry just a minute ago and it’s all set.”

“What audition?”

He looked at her for a minute, puzzled, and then laughed.

“That’s right, I didn’t tell you. A friend of mine has been trying to set up an audition for me with Comet Records and it’s set now. It’s next Thursday night.”

“Mike, that’s wonderful!”

“It may be. It could be a break and it could turn out to be nothing, but it’s a chance. If I’m good it means a chance to cut a record.”

“You’ll be good.”

“I’d better.” He crossed his legs and leaned back on the couch.

“Let’s celebrate in advance, huh? Just to be on the safe side. What are you doing tonight?”

“I’m busy.” The reply came spontaneously and it didn’t seem like a lie to her. In her mind she already had a date with Laura.

“I see. I’d have asked you earlier but—”

“But you just called Henry.”

“Yeah. How’s tomorrow night?”

Stop it, she thought. And she said, “I’m busy then, too.”

He nodded. “The night after?”

She opened her mouth to say that she was busy that night and every night but the words didn’t come out. She wanted to tell him that as far as he was concerned she was busy for the rest of her life, but she didn’t want to hurt him. And yet he kept on, kept asking to be hurt.

“Jan,” he said slowly, “what’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“Cut it. You’re off-again on-again like an old crystal set. What’s the bit?”

She didn’t answer.

“You don’t want to go out with me. Why?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Is it because I kissed you last night?”

She shook her head.

“Well?”

He leaned forward staring at her and she thought, He’s trying so hard. God, he’s trying so hard.

“Jan, are things happening too fast for you?”

Yes, she thought fiercely. Yes, but not the way you mean. It’s a different way entirely.

“I think that’s it,” he went on. “I’m used to things happening fast and you’re not. For years now I’ve been on the go, moving from one room to another every week or so and changing my friends the way other people change clothes. Everything happens like a 45 record played at 78. You know what I mean?” She nodded.

“You probably think I’m working too fast. I can’t help it, Jan. I like you and I... but I have to give you more time, don’t I?”

She nodded, mainly because she didn’t know what else to do. He was all wrong. He had cause and effect mangled, his logic was way out in left field, but this was irrelevant. He was leaving. He would go away and leave her alone if she let him talk for a few more minutes, and the fact that he would be back in a day or so didn’t seem to make any difference. Only the present mattered, and anything that could get him out of the apartment was the right thing for the time being.

As if he had read her mind he stood up, the guitar still slung over his shoulder. “I’m going,” he announced. “I have to give you some time to think, Jan. I’ll be back, but not for a few days. Take your time.”

“I—”

“Don’t say anything now. It’s my fault. I’m not used to girls like you.”

“I’m not the right kind of girl for you.” She had to get through to him somehow but she couldn’t spell it out for him. She probably should say Look, I’m a Lesbian, but down deep it didn’t seem right that she tell him.

“Maybe you aren’t. I want to find out.”

He walked to the door by himself, quickly, and when the door closed behind him she picked up her book from the arm of the chair and hurried into the bedroom. She didn’t want to watch him walk off down the street.

At six she showered and dressed simply in a plain cotton knit dress that matched her black hair. She brushed her hair methodically, letting it fall down her back but loosely securing it away from her face with a few pins. She hesitated before using perfume, wondering whether Laura would like it or not and finally deciding in favor of it.

She had dinner alone in a tiny restaurant around the corner on Bedford Street. The food was good but she scarcely tasted it. The waiter was courteous, buzzing around her table constantly, recommending a good wine to complement the fish and even telling her how pretty she looked. But she hardly heard him, hardly noticed him at all, and once outside the restaurant she couldn’t remember what he looked like, whether he was short or tall, dark or light.

She had spent a long time at dinner and a longer time walking to Macdougal Street. She didn’t want to arrive too early. She was nervous almost to the point of trembling, lighting one cigarette from the butt of the last.

At precisely nine o’clock she was on Macdougal Street, mounting the steps of The Shadows.