And, after the shock of her own thought had worn off, the reasons came to her. She had to try, had to see what would happen. Because she saw herself going on and on and on this way, living with Bobbie until, inevitably, she broke with Bobbie, living with another girl and another girl and a whole endless parade of other gay girls. And working for Mr. Yamatari forever, or quitting her job and taking another meaningless job after that, and another, always aching for important work but never finding it, and never really looking too very hard for it. And growing old, and killing herself like Peg Brandt, or being killed slowly by time itself. And burial somewhere, with six gays for pallbearers and a covey of lesbians to mourn her.
No…
Not all of this emptiness, all of this agony, merely because she liked to sleep with girls and did not like to sleep with men. She had been a frightened little girl when she was married to Tom Haskell. She was older now, ready to sustain more, ready to settle for less. Marriage with a man meant a home and children and a place, if not in the bright sun, at least out of the shadows. There might be no bells ringing when her husband made love to her, but you could live a life without hearing the ringing of bells. She could learn, if not to like it, at least to endure it and to give a halfway decent performance of passion.
And so she had let herself be picked up by a customer. He would take her to dinner, and then she would let herself be led to his apartment, and there she would be slept with. This was just experimental. If it worked at all, if it were only merely bearable, then she would be able to make her choice. She could go somewhere-to another city, probably. And she could meet a man who would make her a good husband, and she could get him to marry her, and she could live-well, decently ever after. And even happily.
But tonight-she shrugged, lit a cigarette. Tonight was just a test, of course, and that meant it would probably be a little crude and cheap. More than a little. She didn’t know this man, had never learned his last name, and had already forgotten his first name. He didn’t especially seem like her type, if she had a type, and she didn’t feel anything resembling a flush of rapport with him. But he didn’t have to sweep her off her feet, he only had to make love to her, that was all, and if she could live through it without wanting to throw up-which had never been the case with Tom, sad to say-then she might be able to make the move.
If she still wanted to.
There had to be a better way to live. The thrill of sexual pleasure was wonderful, certainly, but you couldn’t build a life around it. The warmth of Bobbie’s love was great and good, but you couldn’t make a life out of it, either. And the only life she had was one in which day followed day, endlessly and patternlessly and pointlessly, with nothing mattering very damned much.
At five-thirty she hurried home. She showered, made up expertly, dressed in a black sheath that showed off her figure to maximum advantage. Femme up, she told herself. This was no time to look butchy.
He was on time. “You’ll have to excuse the apartment,” she said. “It’s a mess.”
“It looks comfortable. You live here alone?”
“With a girl friend.” Which, she thought, was putting it mildly. “She’s out now.” She didn’t want to tell him that Bobbie was out of town or he might want to come back to her apartment afterward. She wanted to go to his place instead.
“I’d offer you a drink,” she lied, “but there’s nothing around. Shall we go?”
They walked over to Fourteenth Street to catch a cab. On the way, she wondered if anyone might see them together, any of the people who knew her and Bobbie, and she realized suddenly that she didn’t have to worry about Bobbie hearing anything. If her friends saw her with a girl, they might guess that she was cheating on Bobbie. But if they saw her now, with this man, they would automatically assume that he was a gay boy himself.
Dinner was quietly pleasant. He took her to an expensive East Side restaurant, ordered wine with dinner, and talked easily to her about very little. He was in advertising, he said. He was married and separated from his wife, who lived with their two children somewhere in Connecticut. He lived in the East Eighties now, near the river. His wife would probably divorce him within the year, but all of that hadn’t been quite worked out yet.
All at once she found herself talking about her own marriage. She had not counted on this, had meant to keep everything as impersonal as possible. But she let the words come, let him hear everything about her own pointless marriage.
“You had it rough,” he said.
“You live through these things.”
“Uh-huh.” He leaned across the table to light her cigarette. “We’re not kids,” he said. “Are we?”
“No.”
“I’d like to take you to my apartment. I think you’d like to come. Would you?”
“Yes.”
And she thought that this was just as she had hoped it would be. No love and no pretense of love, no feeling of being pursued, no fear of violation. In the cab on the way to his apartment, he put an arm around her and she forced herself to relax in his embrace. She tried not to think about what it would be like, the actual physical fact of it. She tried to put that out of her mind.
In his apartment-three rooms, hypermodern, the typical bachelor’s dream-he put on records and poured drinks. They sat together in front of an elaborate fake fireplace. He put his arm once more around her, and he said her name, softly, and she knew enough to turn to him and be kissed. She closed her eyes when he kissed her and surrendered herself to him. Little by little, she told herself. Little by little and bit by bit, and then the bedroom, and the act itself, and that’s all.
No If she had not liked him, if she had not felt comfortable with him, she might have been able to go through with it. But it required too much acting and too much pretense, and it was all false and she couldn’t do it. He kissed her again and again and she tried to force herself to fake a response, but this couldn’t be, she could not pretend to feel something which she did not feel. It was phony and she couldn’t do it.
She drew away from him, got to her feet. “Listen to me,” she said. “Listen to me, I have to say this.”
“Go on.”
“I didn’t tell you everything. I’m not normal, I’m a lesbian.” The words just came, awkward, fumbling. She couldn’t direct them. “I’m a lesbian, the girl I live with is my lover. She’s out of town now. I thought that-that I could use you, that I could try and-I thought-I don’t know what I thought, it’s crazy. But it isn’t working. I don’t work this way, I can’t feel anything, I-”
He seemed stunned at first. But later she remembered going out on the terrace with him and standing with her back against the brick of the building, looking up at the thin sliver of moon.
She said, “I want to be fair. If you want, I’ll go through with it.”
“It’s not what I want, Rhoda.”
“It isn’t?”
“No.” He smiled briefly. “If you, well, give it a try…”
“Nothing will happen.”
“It might.”
She could not imagine a more dispassionate discussion of the sex act. They were deciding whether or not to go to bed together, and they both seemed to be utterly cold and unmoved.
“I’d like to make love to you, Rhoda. Maybe-”
He left the sentence unfinished. She hesitated, then closed her eyes and nodded. He took her hand and led her back inside and lay down with her on the couch, She felt his hands on her body, felt him remove clothing, felt him touch her breasts and kiss her face and run his hands gently, gently, over her hips and thighs.