“On the contrary, there are many places to go.”
“Anyhow, there is no place to go that I want to go, and therefore there’s no sense in going.”
“Perhaps if you tried it, you’d think differently. You should develop an interest in something to keep your mind occupied. You never read a book or look at pictures or listen to music or do anything at all that might divert you and give you pleasure.”
“I’m not clever like you. I’m no good at such things.”
“It doesn’t require a very clever person to read and look at pictures and listen to music. At least you’re not illiterate.”
“That’s something, isn’t it? Thanks for reassuring me.”
“Oh, please don’t imagine slights where none was intended, Ivy. I’m only trying to be helpful.”
“I don’t need any help. I only need to be left alone.”
“Pardon me. If that’s what you need, we should be able to arrange it with no difficulty whatever.”
She stood up in her shimmering white slip at the same moment that Ivy turned from the door. Lifting her hands to her head, she began to remove the pins from the black bun on the back of her neck, and the bun became fluid under her fingers and spilled down between her shoulders in a dark stream. In the movements and features of her body there was the hard and disciplined grace of a ballerina. Watching her, Ivy experienced again the intense and tortured reaction of adoration and submission that she had felt almost the first moment of their meeting.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said.
“Didn’t you?” How, precisely, did you mean it?”
“I didn’t mean anything precisely. It’s only that I’m always depressed and afraid of something.”
“Afraid? Afraid of what?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m afraid of what may happen to me.”
“Would you like me to tell you what your trouble is?”
“I don’t think so. I’d rather not hear it.”
“Nevertheless, I think I’ll tell you. Your trouble is, darling, that you have neither the courage to be what you are, nor to become what you are not. You would, I think, be better off dead. When you are like this, which is now almost always, you are not tolerable to yourself or to anyone else. I’m really getting rather sick of you. Did you know that? I’m sick of your moods and your whining and your sad, sad face. You are no longer a pleasure to me, and so far as I can see there is no other excuse for your existence, and certainly none for your living here. Why don’t you go home?”
“You know perfectly well that I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“They wouldn’t have me.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure. They might. They could lock you in your room and pretend to everybody that you had a lingering and fatal illness of some sort. And perhaps you have. Anyhow, it would be just like them.”
“I’ll not go back to them. I’ll go away from here, if that’s what you want, but I’ll not go back.”
“You’d never survive on your own. You’re too ineffectual.”
“I could find a job and another place to stay. I may not be so helpless as you imagine.”
“What kind of job? As a waitress? As a clerk in a store? Don’t be absurd. You are incapable of doing anything worthwhile. In the end, you’d have to find someone else to keep you, if you didn’t get yourself into serious trouble first, and where would you be then? Worse off than ever, I imagine. You would go on and on getting worse and worse off, until you had destroyed yourself and possibly others. If you won’t go home, you will have to stay with me, that’s all there is to be said about it.”
Lila walked over to her dressing table and dropped the hairpins from her black bun into a glass tray and went on without stopping into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. After a minute or two the shower began to run behind the door, and Ivy sat down stiffly on a frail brocaded chair and folded her hands’ in her lap and looked steadily at the hands. It was beginning to get dark in the court outside the glass doors, and darker in the room than out. Between five and six, that meant. Closer to six. It was true, she thought, what Lila had said. It was true that she, Ivy, could do nothing worthwhile and would surely come to a bad end if she tried. It was for her, after all was said and done, only a question of which end of possible ends was a little less bad than the others. The truth was, she wished nowadays only to sit quite still, as she now was, and do nothing whatever. The sound of the shower stopped, and she sat and listened to the silence where the sound had been. Pretty soon Lila came back into the room and turned on a light above the mirror of the dressing table and began to make a selection of clothing from drawers and a closet.
“Where are you going?” Ivy asked. Her attention locked upon Lila’s naked figure — the white, glowing flesh, the smooth curve of breasts that had known the touch of her fingers, the wide sweep of hips, the enticing length of thigh and calf.
“Out,” Lila said, turning to face Ivy so that the lush richness of her breasts were exposed to Ivy’s feverish glance. There was an odd, taunting look in Lila’s knowing eyes which informed Ivy that Lila was completely aware of the effect of her nudity upon her.
“Are you going to dinner?” Ivy asked. Her voice was a hoarse whisper and there was a dryness in her throat that came from the memory of all the times she had been together with Lila. She felt her breathing quicken and had to fight down an urge to run toward Lila and gather her soft, perfumed flesh in her arms. There was an ache deep inside her, an ache of remembrance of things past, a longing for the sure touch of Lila’s fingers on her body, a pulsating wish to lose herself in the perfumed mystery of Lila’s flesh.
“Yes,” Lila answered curtly.
“Who is taking you?”
“A man. Someone at the agency. I’m meeting him at a cocktail lounge.”
“Have you been with him before?” Ivy asked, forcing herself to stare at her hands, hoping in that manner to quiet the emotional disturbance in her.
“Yes. Several times.”
“Why do you go?”
“Because he’s useful to me. He’s been useful before, and he’ll be useful again.”
“I don’t understand how you can do it.”
“I know you don’t. You’d be better off if you did.”
“Is it possible to be two persons?”
“I’m not two persons. I’m one person who can adjust at different times to different conditions.”
“Is it necessary for you to go tonight?”
“Not absolutely. I’m going because I want to.”
“Please don’t.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because I want you to stay here with me.”
“No, thank you. You’re not very entertaining company these days.”
“I don’t feel like staying alone.”
“Only a little while ago you were saying that it was exactly what you needed.”
“I said I didn’t mean it. Sometimes when I’m alone too long. I begin thinking about killing myself. I’m afraid I might do it.”
“I don’t think there’s much chance.”
While they were talking, Lila was dressing, and now she slipped her dress over her head and stared at Ivy levelly across the distance that separated them. Her face softened, and she seemed suddenly to regret her words.
“Oh, well,” she said, “it’s not so bad as you imagine, and I don’t wish to be cruel. Just zip me up, darling, and I’ll make you comfortable before I leave.”
She walked over to Ivy and turned her back, and Ivy, standing, pulled up the zipper and locked it. Lila’s shoulders above the dress were as smooth and flawless as her cameo face.
“What do you mean?” Ivy said.
“About making you comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll put you to bed and give you a sedative. Something to make you sleep. It will prevent you from dreaming, and you’ll feel better in the morning. Tomorrow’s Sunday, you know. I’ll be home with you all day.”