I am a woman
she turned away contemptuously, walking with a sure swift gait that soon
discouraged him. Something proud and cold in her unmanned him. At last
he stopped following and stood gaping after her. She never looked back.
Laura arrived home, her cheeks warm with the quick walk and with the
victory over the little man. _God, if I could do that to my father!_ she
thought wistfully. She walked up the flight of stairs from the twelfth
floor to the penthouse and swung open the front door. The living room
was lighted and so was the kitchen. The bedroom door was open, the room
showing a cool blue beyond the loud yellow kitchen. Laura walked in,
swinging her purse, thinking of the ugly little man and proud of the way
she had trounced him.
She stopped short with a gasp at the sight of Burr and Marcie naked
together in Marcie’s bed. “I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, and backed out,
closing the door behind her. She collapsed on a kitchen chair and cried
in furious disgust for half a minute. Then she stood up and went to the
refrigerator, pretending to want a glass of milk just for an excuse to
move, to ignore the hot silence in the next room.
For a while no sounds issued from the bedroom. Laura poured the milk
busily and carried it into the living room. She was just putting a
record on when the bedroom door opened and Marcie slipped out in her
bathrobe. Laura had put her milk down. Just the sight of it was enough
to make her feel green. She turned to Marcie.
“Hi,” she said, too brightly. “Sorry I had to go and break in.”
Marcie burst out laughing. “That’s okay. Damn him, I _told_ him to go
home. I knew you’d get home early. I just had a feeling.” She went up to
Laura, still laughing, and Laura turned petulantly away. Marcie didn’t
notice. “We took your advice, Laura,” she said. “We haven’t said a word
to each other tonight. Well—I said when he came in—‘All right, we’re not
going to argue. Don’t open your mouth. Not one word.’ And he didn’t. He
didn’t even say hello!” And her musical laughter tickled Laura
insufferably.
Burr came out of the bedroom, looking rather sheepish, rather sleepy,
very satisfied. He smiled at Laura, who had to force herself to wear a
pleasant face. He was buttoning his shirt, carrying his coat over his
arm, and all he said was, “Thanks, Laura.” He grinned, thumbing at
Marcie. “We’re not speaking. I hear it was your idea.” He swatted
Laura’s behind. “Good girl,” he said. He kissed Marcie once more, hard,
drew on his coat, and backed out the door, still smiling.
Marcie whirled around and around in the middle of the living room,
hugging herself and laughing hilariously. “If it could always be like
that,” she said. “I’d marry him again tomorrow.”
Laura brushed past her without a word, into the kitchen, where she
poured the milk carefully back into the bottle, closed the refrigerator
door, went into the bedroom, and got ready for bed.
Marcie followed her, laughing and talking until Laura got into bed and
turned out the light. She wouldn’t even look at Marcie’s rumpled bed.
But it haunted her, and she didn’t fall asleep until long after Marcie
had stopped whispering.
* * * * *
Jack Mann was small, physically tough, and very intelligent. He was a
sort of cocktail-hour cynic, disillusioned enough with things to be
cuttingly funny. If you like that kind of wit. Some people don’t. The
attitude carried over into his everyday life, but he saved his best wit
especially for the after work hours, when the first fine careless flush
of alcohol gave it impetus. Unfortunately he usually gave himself too
much impetus and went staggering home to his bachelor apartment under
the arm of a grumbling friend. He was a draftsman in the office where
Burr worked as an apprentice architect and he called his work “highly
skilled labor.” He didn’t like it. But he did like the pay.
“Why do you do it, then?” Burr asked him once.
“It’s the only thing I know. But I’d much rather dig ditches.”
“Well, hell, go dig ditches then. Nobody’s stopping you.”
Jack could turn his wit on himself as well as on others. “I can’t,” he
told Burr. “I’m so used to sitting on my can all day I’d be lucky to get
one lousy ditch dug. And then they’d probably have to bury me in it. End
of a beautiful career.”
Burr smiled and shook his head. But he liked him; they got along. Jack
went out with Burr and Marcie before and after they got married. And
after they got divorced. He was the trouble-shooter until he got too
drunk, which was often.
When he arrived with Burr on Friday night Laura was irked to find that
she was taller than he was. She had made up her mind that she wasn’t
going to enjoy the evening—just live through it. She’d have to spend the
time mediating for Marcie and Burr and trying to entertain a man she
didn’t know or care about. So she was put out to discover that she did
like Jack, after all. It ruined her fine gloomy mood.
Marcie introduced them and Jack looked up at her quizzically. “What’s
the matter, Landon?” he said. “You standing in a hole?”
Laura laughed and took her shoes off. It brought her down an inch.
“Better?” she said.
“Better for me. Very bad for your stockings.” He grinned. “Have you read
Freud?”
“No.”
“Well, thank God. I won’t have to talk about my nightmares.”
“Do you have nightmares?”
“You _have_ read Freud!”
“No, I swear. You said—”
“Okay, I confess. I have nightmares. And you remind me of my mother.”
“Do you have a mother?” said Burr. “Didn’t you just happen?”
“That’s what I keep asking my analyst. Do I have to have a mother?”
“Jack, are you seeing an analyst?” Marcie was fascinated with the idea.
“Imagine being able to tell somebody _everything_. Like a sacred duty.
Burr, don’t you think I should be analyzed?”
“What will you use for a neurosis?” Jack asked.
“Do I need one?”
“How about Burr?”
“I’m taken,” Burr said. “Besides, you talk like a nitwit, honey. You
don’t go to an analyst like you go to the hairdresser.”
Marcie’s eyes flashed. “Thanks for the compliment,” she said. “I’m not
as dumb as I look.”
“Come on, Mother.” Jack took Laura’s arm and steered her out the door.
“I see a storm coming up.”
But it was dissipated when Marcie grabbed her coat and hurried after
them.
* * * * *
After the play they walked down Fourth Street in the Village, meandering
rather aimlessly, looking into shop windows. Laura was lost. She had
never been in the Village before. She had been afraid to come down here;
afraid she would see someone, and do something, and suddenly find
herself caught in the strange world she had renounced. It seemed so
safe, so remote from temptation to choose an uptown apartment. And yet
here she was with her nerves in knots, her emotions tangled around a
roommate again.
Laura pondered these things, walking slowly beside Jack in the light
from the shop windows. She was unaware of where she walked or who passed
by. It startled her when Jack said, “What are you thinking about,
Mother?”
“Nothing.” A shade of irritation crossed her face.
“Ah,” he said. “I interrupted something.”
“No.” She turned to look at him, uncomfortable. He made her feel as if
he was reading her thoughts.
“Don’t lie to me. You’re daydreaming.”
“I am not! I’m just thinking.”
He shrugged. “Same thing.”
She found him very irritating then. “You don’t say,” she said, and
looked away from him.
“You hate me,” he said with a little smile.
“Now and then.”
“I messed up your daydream,” he said. “I’m rarely this offensive. Only
when I’m sober. The rest of the time, I’m charming. Someday I suppose
you’ll daydream about me.”
Laura stared at him and he laughed.
“At least, you’ll tell me about your daydreams.”
“Never.”
“People do. I have a nice face. Ugly, but nice. People think, ‘Jesus,
that guy has a nice face. I ought to tell him my daydreams.’ They do,
too.” He smiled. “What’s the matter, Mother, you look skeptical.”
“What makes you think you have a nice face?”
“Don’t I?” He looked genuinely alarmed.
“It wouldn’t appeal to just anyone.”
“Ah, smart girl. You’re right, as usual. A boy’s best friend is his
mother. Only the _discriminating_ ones, my girl, think it’s a nice face.
Only the sensitive, the talented, the intelligent. Now tell me—isn’t it
a nice face?”
“It’s a face,” said Laura. “Everybody has one.”
He laughed. “You’re goofy,” he said. “You need help. My analyst is very
reasonable. He’ll stick you for all you’ve got, but he’s very
reasonable.”
Burr, who was walking ahead of them with Marcie, turned around to
demand, “Somebody tell me where I’m going.”
“Turn right at the next corner,” said Jack. “You’re doing fine, boy.
Don’t lose your nerve.”
“I just want to know where the hell I’m going.”
“That’s a bad sign. Very bad.”
“Cut it out, Jack,” said Marcie. “Where are we going?”
“A little bar I know. Very gay. I go there alone when I want to be
depressed.”
It sounded sinister, not gay, to Laura. “What’s it called?” she said.
“The Cellar. Don’t worry, it’s a legitimate joint.” He laughed at her
long face.
Marcie laughed too, and Laura’s heart jumped at the sweetness of the
sound. It made her hate the back of Burr, moving with big masculine
easiness ahead of her in a tweed topcoat, his bristling crew cut
shining.
A few minutes later Jack led them down a few steps to a pair of doors
which he pushed in, letting Laura and Marcie pass.
Laura heard Burr say, behind her, in an undertone, “It _is_ gay,” and he
laughed. “You bastard.” She was mystified. It looked pretty average and
ordinary. They headed for a table with four chairs, one of the few
available, and Laura looked around.
The Cellar was quite dark, with the only lights placed over the bar and
glowing a faint pinky orange. There were candles on the tables, and
people crowded together from one end of the room to the other. Everybody
seemed reasonably cheerful, but it didn’t look any gayer than any other
bar she had been in. She looked curiously at Burr, but he was helping
Marcie out of her coat.
“No table service,” Jack said. “What does everybody want?”
They gave him their orders and Laura tried to catch his eye, hoping for
more information about the place. She was curious now. There were
checkered table cloths, fish nets on the wall, a lot of people—all
rather young—at the tables and bar. The juke box was going and somebody
was trying to pick up a few bucks doing pencil portraits, but no one
seemed very interested. The customers looked like students. There were
girls in cotton pants, young men in sweaters and open-collared shirts.
“They all look like students,” she said to Burr.
He grinned. “I never thought of it that way,” he said. “I guess they do,
all right.”
She stared at him. And then she looked around the room again, and
suddenly she saw a girl with her arm around another girl at a table not
far away. Her heart jumped. A pair of boys at the bar were whispering
urgently to each other.
_Gay_, Laura thought to herself. _Is that what they call it? Gay?_ She
was acutely uncomfortable now. It was as if she were a child of
civilization, reared among the savages, who suddenly found herself among
the civilized. She recognized them as her own. And yet she had adopted
the habits of another race and she was embarrassed and lost with her own
kind.
They looked at her—her own kind—from the bar and from the tables, and
didn’t recognize her. And Laura looked around at them and thought, _I’m
one of you. Help me._ But if anyone had approached her she would have
turned away.
Jack came back with the drinks and sat down, passing them around. He
drank a shot of whisky and said to Laura, “Well? How do you like
tonight’s collection?”