“Hogwash! Hogwash!" Studs was shouting, the righteous light of the fanatic in his eye now. “Let me tell you something, you-you woman, you! Our day is coming! Man is waking up! We’re going to demand our rights! Equality of the sexes, nothing less! Sociology be damned! Psychology be damned! Biology be damned!”
“That last one figures,” Penny shouted back, her anger turning to rage at the threats he seemed to be hammering home at her.
“The hell with it! The hell with you!” Studs raised his fist and shook it to deliver the last of his oration to an invisible audience composed of the men of the world. “Arise ye prisoners of womanization! Arise ye wretched of this woman’s world! Arise and claim your rightful place in the delivery rooms and maternity wards of the earth!”
With this last speech, Penny had pulled on her bikini. Now she confronted him, livid and trembling. “Just you try to claim that place!” She spat the words at him. “Just try! The only way you get there is in some woman’s belly! But not this woman. I’ll bear no man-children. And certainly not for the likes of you!” She paused and shot her last arrow bull’s-eye to the groin. “If you ask me, your whole theory is homosexual!” she told him. And she wheeled on her heel and marched out the front door of the bungalow, slamming it behind her. There was the echo of Phil Spittalny’s all-girl orchestra playing the Marsielles in her wake.
However, once outside, Penny’s rousing exit speech was dimmed by the realization of the predicament she was in. Her overnight bag and her clothes were still inside. So was her pocketbook and the little purse containing her mad money. What on earth was she going to do, dressed in a bikini and without a red cent?
No matter! She squared her shoulders resolutely and looked toward the setting sun of dusk over the ocean. If necessary, she would sleep on the public beach. She would never go back into that cottage, never give Studs the pleasure of pointing out just how feminine it was of her to have stormed out without clothes, or money. Never!
And so, as the sun sank slowly in the west, this brave young girl, this latter-day Joan of Arc, this feminist fighter of the good fight, held her head high and prepared to battle a hostile world with nothing save the bikini on her rump!
CHAPTER THREE
ARVERNE. THE RIVIERA of the Rockaways. The Cote D’Azur of the Grand Concourse jet set. The kosher cooking Cannes of the Brooklyn vacationer. Arverne. Paradise perfumed by knishes frying in deep fat.
Walking the streets in the deepening dusk, Penny’s nostrils quivered at the odor. She was hungry. But she was broke. Chin up, rump still held high, she dismissed the longing for food from her mind. She was determined to be brave, yet —
Yet she was alone in a strange land; alone without money, without clothes, without friends. And the realization of her predicament sank in and sapped her courage. What was she going to do? What could she do?
She did what any red-blooded American feminist does when confronted by a knotty problem. She sat down and wept. She wailed, she cried, she tore her hair. Ah, me, what could she do? Poor woebegone figure huddled on a bus-stop bench and crying her pretty blue eyes out!
The car was traveling fast, but it braked sharply, swerved expertly and pulled up short alongside the bench. The woman at the wheel looked out at the pathetic Penny. “Trouble, honey?” she asked in a deep, husky voice. “Anything I can do?”
“No,” Penny started to answer, still sniffling. “I don’t think there’s any—” Then she thought better of it. She was in no position to turn down any help that was offered. “Could you lend me fifteen cents for the subway? No, wait, I mean thirty cents. I forgot it’s a double fare. If you could just do that, give me your name and address, I swear to you that I’ll mail the money back to you tonight, just as soon as I get home.”
The woman smiled at Penny’s fervent insistence on honesty. “I guess I can take a chance on thirty cents,” she said. “But you really don’t have to worry about sending it back. I can afford it. Here.” She fished out some coins and held out her hand to Penny. “Just take it.”
“No.” Penny resolutely put her hands behind her back. “I won’t take it unless you give me your name and address so I can send it back to you.”
“And me without my lamp.” The woman laughed. Penny looked at her, not comprehending.
“I mean like Diogenes, you know,” the woman explained. “Looking for an honest man. I wasn’t even looking, and it seems I’ve found one.”
“I’m not a man,” Penny said more vehemently than she’d meant to, still feeling her resentment at the argument with Studs.
“I noticed that first thing,” the woman cooed. “If you’d been a man, I wouldn’t have stopped,” she added in a tone of voice which seemed a little odd to Penny. She seemed to be saying something else. But her tone was quite normal when she continued. “All right, then, so you’re an honest woman. My address is 482 West 95th Street, Manhattan. And the name is Well.”
“Would you write it down, please?” Penny said, accepting the coins. “And thank you, Miss Wells.”
“Well. Not Wells. No ‘s’. Just Well.” She fished in her handbag for a pencil.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Well,” Penny said. “My name is Penny Candie,” she added.
“Hi, Penny. You don’t mind if I call you Penny, do you? Last names are so formal.”
“I don’t mind.” Penny paused. “But I don’t know your first name,” she pointed out. ‘
“It’s Wellesley. But nobody ever calls me that. It sounds so institutional-like being called Radcliff, or Vassar, you know? They call me Well.”
“Well?”
“Well.”
“Well, well, well,” Penny mused.
“No. Just Well Well. No middle name. Oh, I really have one, but I never use it. Just the initial sometimes.”
“What’s the initial?” Penny asked.
“W.”
“But it doesn’t stand for Well, right?”
“Right. It stands for Willa.”
“Wellesley Willa Well.” Penny spoke the name aloud.
“Just forget the Willa, will you? I told you I never use it.”
“I’m sorry. Just Well W. Well?”
“Just Well Well.”
“Well well.”
“Well to you. I told you, I don’t like formality,” Well said intimately.
“Well. All right, Well. And thank you very much for the loan.”
“You’re quite welcome. But what are you going to do now?”
“Take the subway home.”
“In that outfit?” Well Well stared at the expanse of Penny pulchritude overflowing the tiny bikini. “You Won’t get very far.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Well Well began narcissistically, “if you don’t get raped on the subway, you’re sure to get picked up by the transit police for indecent exposure.”
“Oh, dear, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Look, just where do you live?”
“Manhattan.”
“So do I. And that’s where I’m going. Why don’t you just get in and I’ll give you a lift back to town?”
“Oh, thank you,” Penny said gratefully. She carefully handed the thirty cents back to Well Well and got into the front seat of the little sports convertible beside her.
“My pleasure.” Well Well shifted gears and her hand fell quite naturally on Penny’s naked thing and remained there. Penny thought nothing of it. The car was so small that there really didn’t seem any other logical place for Well Well to park her hand. And besides, they were both girls, weren’t they? It wasn’t as if Well Well was a strange man. She was a strange woman, that was all. “Anyway, I’m glad of the company,” Well added. “All day today I’ve felt this welling up of loneliness.” She chuckled. “A Welling Well, that’s me today.”