Twilight Girl

By

Della Martin

Twilight Girl

By Della Martin

First published in 1961.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce and redistribute this ebook or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. No part of this ebook may be copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the expressed written permission of the publisher.

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Visit us on the World Wide Web: www.vintage-pulp-ebooks.com ISBN: 978-1-936456-34-5

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Part One

KID STUFF

CHAPTER 1

It was on the day Lon Harris decided to spare the mutt that she met the girl with the violet hair. In the psychiatrically charted years to come, Lon might occasionally pause to reflect upon this fact, searching the seemingly fortuitous occurrences for some suggestion of ironic pattern—speculating, perhaps, on the alternate courses her life might have taken if:

(1) Miss Chamberlin's dog had eaten the greasy mound of hamburger, liberally loaded with the pulverized remains of a 7-Up bottle, and

(2) If Lon had not made the acquaintance of a shapely car-hop whose name, translated from Czech, meant Violet Soup.

But throughout that day in mid-June—the last day of school—Lon Harris lacked the composure for musing on the vagaries of fate. She did, as she had always done, the things it occurred to her to do.

English III was Lon's final period. Today it amounted to no more than a tension-charged killing of time for the Wellington High junior class. Books had been turned in on the previous morning and Miss Chamberlin staved off the mounting restlessness by inviting the students to discuss their plans for the summer. Listening to this recital, Lon was tremulous, her eyes chained to the wall clock. She was longing for and yet dreading the electric bell that would eject her, perhaps forever, from the warm presence of Netta Chamberlin. Waiting, Lon listened impatiently to the self-conscious voices.

HELEN LANG: I'm going to Oregon with my folks for three weeks. We've got this darling aqua trailer that just matches our car and it'll be my first time out of California.

And, waiting, Lon wondered. Had Miss Chamberlin read the note? Read the revealing words? Yes, she had read it, she must have read it. But what would she say? When this hour was ended, what would she say?

RALPH ALVAREZ: My uncle got a body shop in San Fernando. I'll be workin' there if he don't can me.

I held it in the palm of my hand all during class yesterday, Lon thought. Held it so tight that maybe the paper soaked up sweat—maybe the ink ran. And I held back to let everyone out of the room before me, so I could drop it unseen on her desk. But, oh, God, what if it was too blurry to read?

MARGIE McCANN: Oh, just horse around, I guess. Go to the beach. I don't know.

Waiting and remembering, that's what Lon was doing. Seeing the words as she hoped Netta Chamberlin had seen them: I am putting my innermost thoughts down because I know you feel the same way. (The last six words scratched out for a more impressive phrase.) I am cognizant of the fact that we share the same deep emotions and I have a plan whereby we can be together that I must tell you about. (The tiny slip of paper running out then, with still so much unsaid!) I would die if this was the last time I saw you. With all my love, Lon Harris. (Squeezing the last words uphill into the margin.)

DAN OSTERMAIER: Summer school. No comment!

Scattered applause, laughter. Then the switch-blade shrillness of the bell, the casual goodbyes, the cries of "This is it!" and, "Ye-ay-y!" The world that was not her world stampeded for the door and Lon lingered, paralyzed with the fearful hope.

"Lorraine?"

Eyes magnetized to the asphalt tile floor. "Yes, Miss Chamberlin?"

"I know you're anxious to go, but you can spare a minute, can't you?"

"It's all right. Sure."

"I'm a bit puzzled, Lorraine."

"You are?"

"By your note."

"Oh, that."

"Of course, they're quite common. Crushes on teachers. Or can we call it that, Lorraine?"

All the wrong words. Lon had rehearsed the dialogue carefully, ready with impassioned responses to cue lines that failed in this moment to come. Shame and regret bore down from the ecru walls, weighing her with an uncomprehended guilt. "I don't know."

"I don't want to upset you, but as we grow older, Lorraine, we outgrow these impulses. I've always thought of you as level-headed and mature for your years. You read a lot, don't you?"

"Quite a bit"

"What do you like to read?"

"Oh—poetry. Books about the islands. I read just about anything."

"Do you spend most of your time this way? Alone? Reading?"

"Well, I have a part-time job. Saturdays. This summer I might get to work weekdays, too.”

"Baby-sitting, I suppose?"

A rankling accusation. "No. I work at the pet shop. Washing dogs."

"Do you have a lot of friends? Close friends?"

"I get along with the kids all right"

"Boys, too?"

"I get along with them, too."

"But no special boy?"

"I used to play ball a lot with Bud Schaeffer. Baseball. I used to get along great with him."

"But you don't play baseball now?"

Stupid questions, getting more senseless by the minute! "Who with? That was a long time ago."

"Yes, and I suppose he's like other boys. Busy working on his car... dating girls…"

"He doesn't know the first thing about cars. I wouldn't let him change the oil in my Plymouth. I washed a lot of flea-taxis to pay for that car. Well, the down payment and my dad gave me the rest, I mean. It's old, but I take good care of it"

"I don't know how to put this, Lorraine. I seem to be saying everything badly. But what I'm trying to tell you is that when a girl gets to be... What are you, sixteen? Seventeen?"

"Sixteen."

"She's usually thinking about clothes and dates. Working on a jalopy is... uh... writing a sentimental, almost unnatural note such as the one you left for me yesterday…"

"That was just a silly thing. I forgot all about it."

"I hope you did forget it Lorraine. A note such as yours might be misinterpreted." From out of her grab-bag of meaningless phrases, Miss Chamberlin pulled another. "I'm a woman, Lorraine. I'm thirty-two years old and unmarried. People... If someone read what you wrote to me, they might misunderstand." And in a tone that implied deep significance where Lon sensed only absurdity, "I live alone, you see."

"I know."

"You really do know. You actually know?"

"You live in one of Hardesty's duplexes. The ones with the fenced yard on Orange Grove."

"You went out of your way to find out personal details about my life?" There was dismay and disapproval in the question. Wasn't it enough that she hadn't said the things she was supposed to say? Did she have to make inane statements and then act shocked at the obvious answers? Lon lifted her eyes to the doorway, yearning.

"Lorraine, I appreciate your... I'm glad, that is, that you like me and that you've enjoyed this semester in my class. I'm hoping you'll find outlets that are more—shall we say, normal? You're a very attractive girl. Your hair's naturally wavy, isn't it?"

"That's from cutting it a lot. I like it short."

"I'd like to see you walk more gracefully. Why, a girl as slim and tall as you are could be a model. Surely you must have some fondness for pretty clothes?"

Lon tugged at her brown wool sweater-vest Shut up! Just shut up and let me go! Oh, let me go!

"With dark brown hair, you can get away with wearing lovely colors. Coral pink, for instance. You don't want to look drab, Lorraine. Boys might find you very attractive if you set out a program for yourself and..."

"Is that all you wanted to tell me?"

"I suppose so. And I think you understand me. Do you, Lorraine?"

"I guess so."

"Then you don't think I'm saying these things to be critical? We're still friends?"

"I have to drive a couple of kids home," Lon lied. "They'll think I ditched them."

"Yes. Well, you run along, Lorraine." And, strangely confused, Lon thought, for one who had guided the whole conversation, "But you do understand about writing notes to... And about boys. You do understand what I mean?"

"Sure. I'll be seeing you, Miss Chamberlin."

And she hurried into the joy-filled corridor where someone yelped, "T.G.T.I.F.!" and a chorus responded, "You know it! Thank God this is Friday—the last Friday!" She hurried along the dark, warm hall, scalding moisture clouding her vision of the marbled walls until she was in the students' parking lot where the hot salt zigzag tears burned on her face. It began then; the thin trickle of sound that was not a sound within her head. It was deeper inside her body, where so much was compressed that could not be revealed, where the buried questions begged to be released. Not why am I unlike the others, but why are the others unlike me? And I want, I want, but what is it I want?

Some of the others sang now. Packed into cars and filled with the T.G.T.I.F. joy of singing:

Give a cheer, give a cheer,

For the boys who drink the beer,

In the cellars of Wellington High!

A raked Chevy screamed past her and the melody of the Caisson Song filled the dusty yard:

They are brave, they are bold,

And the liquor they can hold

Is the glory of Wellington High!

* * *

No one was waiting beside the beat-up Plymouth. No one waited for the gangling odd-ball with the hazel eyes, as no one had ever waited. Only the questions waited, as if in some seldom-dusted cobwebbed corner of her consciousness. And who would answer the questions? Who now? There were answers that some sphynx-like mother creature might know. Yet someone who, unmotherlike, would not advise, saying only, "This is why you ran to the bathroom and were sick when Bud Schaeffer touched your breast and kissed you; this is why you ache inside, running to the refuge of the Island, the secret you would have shared with the woman in English III; and this is why you trembled in tears and a violent gladness the afternoon her hand touched yours and she smiled—smiling, you were certain, for no one else."

Lon pulled open the car door. Far down the street the bawling voices receded:

And it's guzzle, guzzle, guzzle,

As it trickles down your muzzle,

And you hear them shout, "More beer!"

MORE BEER!

Lon turned the ignition key unsteadily, rammed an angry thumb against the starter button. Mother-creature, lover-creature, someone, someone! There had been someone, yet now no one was near. Now there was only the raging heat, the stinging pain of humiliation. That, and the thin minor wail, keen-edged. Transparent, quavering like her mother's edgy voice, yet dimly reminiscent, too, of space movies; the weird humming tone that sets the scene for some remote planet, horribly beautiful, breathlessly strange. No one near, and the only other occupants of the old tan car were familiar traveling companions—grown monstrously huge on this eighteenth day in June—confusion, hunger, and the shameful anger born of their union.

* * *

Lon parked the Plymouth, stepped out of it, and walked into the house.

It might be that the elementary school PTA was hosting a farewell tea for the teachers. Or maybe, even, the Brotherhood Week Committee was meeting at the church. Maybe, even, the Civic Betterment unit of the Women's Club was in session. Whatever the reason, Lon rejoiced. Her mother was not at home!

Wild, way out, crazy. No comments about the jeans Lon pulled on being belted too low. No shaking pronouncements about what people thought of a girl who tugged a red cotton T-shirt over her boyish chest and let it go at that. No queries about why Lon whacked a clod of half-frozen hamburger from a package in the refrigerator.

She took the ground meat to the open garage, laying it on the cement in a square of sunlight. Waiting for it to defrost, she knocked the neck off a 7-Up bottle with a hammer. Enjoying the process, she demolished the painted green bottle completely, pushing a few of the smaller pieces into an old leather glove. Then, breathing the short breaths of perverse excitement, the quick snatches of air that denote elation, she pounded the glove viciously with the hammer. When the glass was reduced to rough powder, she stuffed the hamburger inside the glove. She pounded meat and glass together under the leather binding. When the ingredients were one, she scooped the lethal mixture into a brown manila envelope, tossed the glove carelessly into a trash barrel, and returned, trembling with anticipated revenge, to the car.

It was not a long drive to her destination. She parked inconspicuously, sneaked even more inconspicuously to a point of vantage.

Watching Miss Chamberlin's dog race the length of the redwood fence, Lon wondered if it were true. That business Mr. Beckwith had told her about Dalmatians. "Most other breeds can't stand them. Other dogs just have it in 'em to hate Dalmatians." Saying it as though owning a stinking pet shop made him an authority. "It's the color of their eyes," he had explained sagely. And had added in an awesome voice, as though speaking the Great Hidden Wisdom, "And the spots!"

It was, Lon decided, a crock of the well-known article, hating herself immediately for borrowing her father's army phrase.

"Here, boy!" she called.

The dog, falling all over his paws, hurling his black-flecked body in a convulsion of joy at being noticed, ran to the corner of the fence.

I’ll bet she's crazy about this dog. Maybe she hasn't got a friend in the world except this dog...

Forepaws on the inside wall of the board fence, the dog stretched his head upward for human contact. Lon patted the sleek, sun-warm head. Her other hand dangled the brown envelope against her knee.

It'll crack her up to lose this beautiful dog. She won't have anybody...

"Here, boy. Got something for you."

The Dalmatian ducked his head, twisting it then into position to gnaw cautiously at her hand.

"You're sure you like dogs?" Mr. Beckwith had asked before hiring her. "No use taking on somebody that don't like dogs."

"I love 'em," Lon had said.

"What kind you got?"

"Oh. Well, I don't actually have one."

"That's a fine kettle of fish." Peering at her suspiciously.

"No, y'see, my mother's president of the Garden Club and we have all these begonias and junk around the yard. That's the only reason."

"Begonias!" He had spat the word across the counter. But hired her anyway. And taught her enough about dogs so that now she shuddered, knowing what would come—the twitching of flesh and agonized whine, the stomach walls grinding red and merciless in the cutting green dust, the eyes pleading silently. . .

Lon muzzled the dog's face and roughed it back and forth. "Quit slobbering over me, stupid." His tail whipped the air. "Big overgrown pup!" The Dalmatian shifted paws, scrambling against the fence. "Think you're a lap dog, I'll bet. Hey, you lonesome, pooch? All by yourself all day long? How come other dogs don't like you?" Pushing his face and grinning at the fake growls. "You different? Is that why? That why the other dogs don't like you?"

She grasped his paws firmly in one hand, then shoved him away from the fence and turned before he could resume the game.

A minute later she was back in the Plymouth.

Circling the neighboring blocks, as she had done so often before in the hope of catching a glimpse of Miss Chamberlin, Lon pondered the problem of what to do with the brown, grease-stained envelope. Throw it out the window and some other dog might get it.

At the corner of San Leandro Drive and Los Altos, she stopped the car. Climbing out, looking up and down the deodar-lined street, she dropped her package into the corner mailbox. When she heard the envelope hit the metal floor with a hollow thud, she leaped back into the Plymouth and drove home.

* * *

Lon said no more than was necessary during dinner, having learned that the shrill nasal whine of her mother's voice would eventually wither from lack of response.

Mrs. Harris held a trembling fork in her hand, recounting the day's events. "I told the girls, not one more committee! I'm swamped now, I told them. Supervising the Sunday School is a full-time job and don't you think I'm not going to hold my ground."

"And stick to your guns," Lon's father placated. "They expect too much of you."

Long ago, Lon had concluded that Edwin Harris had been born for no ostensible purpose except to be agreeable. She had inherited her slim, angular body from him, but had been spared the myopic eyes that blinked at accounting sheets through thick horn-rimmed glasses by day and were the scourge of the Little League in the evenings. It was rare in the years since Eddie Junior had been born that she could bear to look at her father.

"When they find a good organizer, they work her to death," Mrs. Harris said. "I told them that right to their faces."

"Good for you," encouraged the man behind the glasses.

"Verna had the gall to tell me I'll have more time with the kids out of school. Came right out and asked me if Lon didn't help around the house. Of course, what could I tell her?" Shaky hands left the table to pat the machine-frizzled hair. And the bright dark eyes turned accusingly toward Lon.

Lon counted frozen peas. And her father poured oil on the troubled waters. "Lon's not like Evie and Judith.' We're all different, Mother."

"She carried all the rocks." This was an unexpected defense from the potato-stuffed mouth of Eddie Junior. "She brang the rocks for the rock garden."

Lon threw him a wry thank-you with her eyes, sweeping in that moment the thin, simian face, wizened, somehow, far beyond its eight years. Mention of her sisters and the sight of Eddie's face stirred the buried recollections, the unburied resentments. Evie and Judith, married now, but in those days primping and giggling and bossing her around the house, with no Eddie in view. And Dad tousling her hair, teasing, "Counted on you to play with Brooklyn, y'little monkey!" Never really complaining because she was a girl. Joking about it that way. Playful, controlled punches in the arm, full-swinging pats on the back when she stole third or scooped a playground grounder. And proud of her, with the pride nurturing, growing inside her.

And all this was B.E.—Before Eddie, the family afterthought who squealed, bleated, kicked and raged his protest vainly, ignored in his protests by Dad, who now had a son to be buddy to. For above all that was sacred, Eddie Harris Senior believed fervently in his mission as Father, the Pal. So that After Eddie, there came to Lon the life-vital need to be more a boy, more a pitcher, more, more—until the gentle swelling under the smudged T-shirt proclaimed the odds insurmountable, the competition too heartlessly stacked against her. So that now Dad had Eddie, and L.A., not Brooklyn, had the Dodgers. And Lon had the Island, discovered in reverie between her twelfth and thirteenth years—the undetermined pin-point in the Pacific to be peopled with a painstakingly selected population. Excluding the Harrises, one and all. Except Lon.

"People are noticing the way she runs around, Dad." Her mother's flute-pitched lecture on the state of the belt-line of Lorraine Harris's jeans was usually channeled through a neutral source. "You'd think if she has to dress hike a hooligan, she could at least recognize where God put her waistline!"

The voice-sound blended with the whine in Lon's head. Shut up! Just shut up and let me go.

"It could be worse." Dad apologizing for her again.

"She could be painting her face like a barn and staying out late with boys. Am I right, Lonnie?"

Lon nodded yes to the milk glass. And when it was over once more, she washed and dried the dishes mechanically, then closed the door of her room behind her.

* * *

The room, like the rest of the new gingerbread-tract house, was furnished in an abortive maple—rag-rug— pepper-grinder—lampbase attempt to resurrect old New England in new Los Angeles suburbia. But the Polynesian masks Lon had whittled from fallen dried palm fronds were her own. The draped fishnet and cork floats were hers. And the papers she took reverently from the bottom desk drawer belonged to a world that none other traveled, except by invitation of the fertile mind. Carefully she chose them, the residents of this unsurveyed microcosm of her fantasy.

She passed quickly over the world map, the South Pacific circled in red crayon and marked: In This General Area. Nor was there need, this evening, to review the List of Supplies (fish-hooks, canned milk, thread, pencils, paper)—some day to be alphabetically arranged, but scrawled now in green ink. And no time for the Sacred Rites of {name of Island to be selected when we arrive). No interest now in the Secret Incantations, lists, charts, schedules, village layouts, codes, rules, menus, constitution, cultural and recreational plans—or the notebook devoted to Ideas on How to Get There, including:

A. Boat (Check costs)

B. Where to Sail From

C. Knowledge of Sailing (Find someone who knows about it)

* * *

With none of these details was Lon Harris concerned on this evening of the last day of school in June. From the imposing sheaf of papers she pulled the list of proposed inhabitants. For reasons she had never considered, accepting the fact as casually as she chose a gray sweatshirt over an eyelet embroidered blouse, none of the names recorded was male. Under the heading LON HARRIS, HIGH PRIESTESS was another name she had added to the roll call early in the second Junior-year semester. With a surge of something inside her that had wavered before friendly Dalmatian eyes, she picked up a ballpoint pen and traced a question mark after SECOND HIGH PRIESTESS. Then grimly, her revenge tempered by the solemn responsibility of her ritual, she drew a line through the name of Netta Chamberlin. And in that moment, the sound in her head that was not a sound abruptly stopped.

CHAPTER 2

Luigi's Drive-In jumped with cars. The cars jumped with kids and the kids' radios jumped with the beat of Fabian's mixed metaphor:

I'm your tiger, you're my mate!

Hurry up, buttercup, and don't be late!

Lon turned off the ignition and waited in the old Plymouth, wondering why she had come here alone, where no one came alone. Not knowing what she waited for on the outer edge of the parked cars. Still, a lonely voice inside was telling her she had pulled into Luigi's because this was one of the restless evenings when the Island was not big enough to hold her, and where else was there to go? So she had come where the music jumped and the cars bulged with kids delirious with the prospect of three undisciplined months spreading out before them.

Jumping, too—with menus for the heap with blinking headlights, and a tray of Luigi-Burgers and malts for the gang in the dago-ed Ford—was a curved and compact doll, all five feet of her crammed into the Air Force blue slacks and vivid red bolero that identified a Luigi car-hop. Her face was buried somewhere beneath layers of pinkish pancake. Yet Lon was certain that under the thick make-up, the girl's complexion would be genuinely pink and white. Mascara-weighted lashes fluttered provocatively over lavender-blue eyes that, like the rest of her, were round. For her face was round, the breasts that strained against the scarlet monkey jacket were round, and her hips in the tight gabardine slacks were just wonderfully round. Too, she had a round button nose. Her mouth, when she was not smiling to reveal even white teeth, formed a perfect 0. And under the round gray-blue cap, her face was a pretty pink moon.

But the hair, Lon thought. The hair out of some technicolor nightmare, untamed by the required hairnet and falling midway between the girl's chin and shoulders, assaulting the eyes with a shade that hovered between lavender and violet.

And it was, "Hey, you, Vi'let!" that the boys howled from the parked cars. "You with the purple mop!" "Wha' hop-pen' ta the ketchup fer my fries?" Roaring like the tiger looking for its mate: "Is it purple all over, Vi'let?" "Prove it, honey. I only want the facts, man!"

The girl replied with winks, responded with smiles. And the boys who asked for proof were rewarded with sidelong glances. She gloried in her upstage role and Lon thought, she's not beautiful. Not actually beautiful. But she acts as if she is and so nobody can be sure she isn't.

Not actually beautiful, but seeing the girl through the girl's round eyes, Lon shivered a little, felt her tongue turn to balls of wool as Vi finally got around to the old tan crate in the back row.

"Hi. Sorry it took so long." She shoved an oversized menu at Lon.

"It's okay. No hurry." Lon pretended to study the glossy card.

"They sure give me a hard time about my hair," the girl complained proudly. Wrinkling the little round nose, pleased with the hard time. Her voice was coarse and she spoke with a practiced attempt at sexy intonation. Lon felt an unaccountable swell of disappointment.

"I notice."

"At first Luigi said to let it grow out natcherl or blow. The crust! I said he could take his lousy job an' shove it One night, on'y one night I worked with it like this and he's beggin' me to leave it alone. Guys come around jest to see me an' don't he know it!"

The girl studied Lon while speaking, looking Lon over carefully. Faded red of the cotton T-shirt, mostly. Sizing me up as a weirdo, Lon told herself. And said aloud, "It's very pretty."

"I bleach it first an' then I put on this stuff I mix myself. Jest food coloring, that's all it is. Red an' blue. Holy Jeez help me I ever get caught in the rain, huh?" She laughed, catching Lon's eyes with the lavender-blue discs and holding them uncomfortably long. "It goes with my name. My name's really Vi'let. You dig?" She was quiet then, waiting for her order, staring in a strange, knowing sort of way.

Muscles tightened under the red shirt, a spasm of remembering for no special reason the agony of undressing in the gym locker with perspired, perfumed bodies crowding her against the steel cabinets, the gagging, hot-faced bewilderment of her own nakedness and theirs. "It's sharp. I mean, it goes together."

A horn sounded and the girl spoke again. Under the heavy black lashes, the pastel eyes looked vaguely amused. "Listen, I gotta go. What'll it be tonight—butch?"

Lon handed back the menu. "Large chocolate Coke."

Violet didn't move. "You heard me."

"I said, large chocolate Coke."

"Oh, Christ, come t' the party. You slow on the uptake, butch?"

"My name's Lon Harris."

"Lon. Hey, that's cute. You just cruisin' or did somebody tell you 'bout me?"

"I just got a taste for a Coke."

"Sure you did!"

"I did." Lamely, Lon added, "I hadn't much else to do.”

"I bet you didn't know I work here," the girl teased. "No, not much."

Helplessly, Lon sensed insinuation. "What difference would that make? I don't know anybody you know. Anyway, what difference would it make?"

Violet's eyes widened. "No kiddin', you don't know any of the kids?”

"Oh, I know kids, but..."

“Our kind a kids?" Then with something like awe. "Holy Mother, you ain't that dumb! I'd a swore...! Oh, Jeez, I woulda swore!" She looked over her shoulder as if to check the nearness of others. "I hang out at The 28%. Ever hear of it?"

"What's the 28%?"

"Gay joint Private, jest girls. I know all the kids hang out there." She lowered the hoarse voice. "Wanna go?"

"When, tonight?"

"Crazy. I get off ten-thirty."

"I don't know." Lon's glance fell to the low-slung jeans. "I'd have to go home and change." And added sheepishly, "I didn't bring... money."

"I get paid tonight Go on me."

"What is it some kind of girls' club?"

"Yeah, a gay club. Where the kids c'n dance. They have beer an' Coke—you know."

"I'd have to change," Lon said again.

"Nah, what for? Saturday night the butches wear good pants, but Friday night who cares?" She reached through the window to pat Lon's cheek. "Stick around, hon."

A blast from a front-row M.G. shook Violet from the window. "Ah, have y'self a hemrich, why dontcha?" And then to Lon, with the soft sound of old intimacy, "I gotta hop, sweetie. Don't go. I mean after, when you drink your Coke. Stick aroun'!"

Lon stuck around. Stuck after the syrupy drink tasted like melted ice and after three visits from the girl whose brows were a thin black pencil-line. Once she slipped into Luigi's phone booth to call home and tell her mother she had met some of the girls from school and was going to the show. And the fourth time Violet returned to the car, she had changed into purple toreodor pants, a bulky white sweater and spike-heeled gold slippers. Her mouth wore a fresh coat of orchid-pink lipstick and she smelled of violet cologne.

She bounced into the Plymouth, snuggling deep into the scratchy upholstery before she pulled the door shut "You're a doll, waitin' aroun'. This girlfriend of mine, she moved up t' Stockton an' I'm playin' the field nowadays. I sure am glad t' get a lift." Lon chugged the old car out of Luigi's lot into the street

She drove purposefully, following Violet's instructions, glad of the heavy Friday-night traffic that absorbed her wondering exultation. And Violet rattled on. The girl with the lavender hair seemed compelled to reveal in minute detail the story of her life.

She was nineteen. She lived in a rented house at the wrong end of the Valley. Her mother was out of town, workin' grab joints on the fair circuit which is what the old lady had been doing since they had left Cicero, Ill. That was after her old man beat the old lady up so bad and her an' the old lady had grabbed a bus for California, which was sure funny because one time in Chicago, before they moved to Cicero, they had lived in this flat on a street called California. How 'bout that? Violet was not insensitive to the strange twists of fate.

"I worked grab," she told Lon. "Jeez, I got so I come near pukin' if I smelled a hot-dog." But her old lady didn't trust her around the carnies or the carnies around her. Which was okay by Violet because she was makin' good hoppin' cars, not on'y in the fair season but all year. And which brought up another subject "We're Bohunks. What're you?"

Lon turned from the wheel, guessing at the question's meaning. "Welsh and English descent."

"Well, we're Bohem'an. My real first name is Fialka. That means Vi'let My last name's Polivka. You know what that means? Soup. Vi'let Soup. Ain't that a kill? Vi'let Soup."

Some of the tension eased away. Lon could laugh at this.

"Guys usta say, 'How's about a little hot soup?' Horka polivka. Jeez, it usta make me so mad." She remembered another important factor. "We're Cath'lic. You Cath'lic?"

"My folks go to the Methodist church," Lon told her. It would have taken too long to explain that God Tikitehatu and Goddess Hiuapopoia had produced life on the Island.

Violet grudgingly said, "I was scared maybe yez were Baptist Or them Witnesses. Methodist ain't too bad."

Lon laughed again. And to sober her, Violet said, "My old man froze t' death in a car barn. How 'bout that?"

"Froze?"

"You think it don't get cold back East? Wow!"

"Gee, what a rough thing to have happen.”

Violet laughed now, a tin-pan musical convulsion. "Oh, yeah? Try an' tell that t' my old lady." Then, evidently remembering, reporting dutifully: "Another reason I stay home, this carny got me in trouble. We had to adopt the baby out,⁻ this place called St. Vincent's Foundling. You think I don't cry about that sometimes? Never again, believe you me, kid. She woulda been two years old. Jeez, I talk like she's dead. I mean she's two years now an' you know how cute you c'n dress kids that age. But Holy Christ on a bicycle, I mean t' tell you I had a hard time. I bit clean through my hand, if you wanna know. I could show you the scar, even."

There was another world beside the other people's world and her own. Maybe there were thousands of worlds, millions of worlds, one of them in purple pants and who knew how many others? Lon gunned the Plymouth to be on the safe side—to be sure she by-passed the new Buick when the light on Vineland Avenue turned green. And listened to the mysteries of a world much stranger than her own.

"So this bookkeeper where I worked—that was in this supermarket before I started at Luigi's. She was butch, same as you. All she ever did was wanta sit around her place makin' out. Jesus, I like t' get out, so that's why we broke up, but she made sure I got wise. I got more kicks with her than that damn lousy carny, an' no hospital, no baby. You get wise, you don't get hurt You'll find out, kid."

Lon nodded vague agreement. "Straight ahead?"

"Yeah, but pull over left. You're gonna make a turn in a couple blocks."

"Are you sure this is all right? My going to this place the way I look?"

"That's the nice thing about the twenny-eight. Anything goes. Rags, she's this girl that owns the place, her an' her girlfriend t'gether, she sometimes don't dress. Other times, wow, she wears these real crazy clothes, like she has this p'ticular beatnik outfit. Black suede pants an' shirt, kid— talk about crazy! She can afford clothes, the dough she makes. Half a buck fer Coke, same as beer—how 'about that? But I don' hold it against her. I seen her wear jeans plenny times. Not stuck-up or anything, kid. An' hell! It's about the on'y place around here the girls c'n dance."

The questions were stacked in layers at the back of Lon's mind, but now there was time for only one. "Why do they call it that? 28%. That can't be the address."

"Jest t' show you how cute this Rags is. She read this book by some doctor, he took like a survey an' in this book he claims twenny-eight per cent of women had somethin' t' do with some other woman sometime or other. So that's the whole idea behind why Rags named the club that. Cute?"

The question left Lon as confused as before—repelled by her own raw ignorance yet fascinated by the need for answers She drove the remaining blocks with the self-assured recklessness peculiar to drivers who can take their-car apart and put it back together again. She drove harshly yet floated on with the promised delights of the club named to honor a statistic. And breathed the delicate air of Parma violets.

CHAPTER 3

It was Rags who peered cautiously into the night, opening the drab green door of the lonely cement-block building at the end of the dark, undeveloped street. Lon knew Rags by the sharp black tux, the cerise bow-tie beneath a pallid, acne-scarred face. Rags stood sullen in the doorway, behind her an amateurishly lettered notice: THE 28%—MEMBERS ONLY.

"What the hell's with the pounding?" Rags was no bigger than Violet, but the tough bass sound was enormous.

"Sweetie, meet this real good friend a mine. Lon Harris."

Unsmiling, Rags nodded. "Hiya, Lon."

Lon responded, "Hi!" And apparently being Violet's "good friend" meant open sesame. Friend and proprietress led Lon into the smoke-blue dimness. Lon blinked at the strangeness of the scene.

Rags hurried ahead, circling behind the long, home-built bar. She had been interrupted apparently, by Violet's hammering. But now she backed the girl Lon judged to be a barmaid-partner against a chipped and dented bottle cooler. Grimly, she clasped the taller girl in her arms. Kissed her as though it were a life-death matter. Lon watched, something forbidden stirring inside her. "Our kind of kids," Violet had said. "Our kind of kids!"

Violet led Lon to the far end of the bar. She pounded amiably on the linoleum top. "Hey, quit makin' out. How's about some service?"

The girl in Rags's stranglehold laughed and pushed herself free. "That's what I'm getting! Break it up, honey. Vi wants a drink."

She came to their end of the bar, and Lon was introduced to "a real swell kid—Betty." Betty from out of a black-and-white movie; colorless, pale, like shoots that spring up from under sidewalks.

"We need a couple beers," Violet told her. "How 'bout that, Lon?"

"Right," Lon said. Using a ruggedly deep voice that came instinctively because she knew it would sound right. Betty took two brown bottles from the cooler, popped them open with a church key and set them on the bar.

"Most of the kids are in the other room," Violet said, swigging. "I'll go see if I c'n find us a table."

She wriggled her way toward the opening in the divided wall, stopping to scream, "Hi, doll!" to a girl in fly-front slacks and white T-shirt, Lon's size. And Violet hugged another girl, a pug-faced peroxide blonde. Violet shrieked, "Sweetie-eee!" at another group and made her sensuous way to the rope curtains that divided the barroom from the room in which the shadow-forms of kids danced to a recording of Lonely Street. The kids, the kids... Violet glanced over her shoulder once to wink at Lon, to let her know, it seemed, that she knew the kids and the kids knew her and weren't they all having the craziest time? Like Eddie, thought Lon. Eddie going to Disneyland with the family after having gone before with the Cubs—anxious to point out the sights and let everyone know in a loud voice that he had been there before. Like a queer lavender Elsa Maxwell, Violet greeted the loved and the unloved, the staked and the cruising, disappearing finally into the packed room where the shadow-shapes clung to each other. Now she was singing in unison with the record: "Perhaps upon that Lonely Street, there's someone such as I..."

Lon sipped beer. Sipped the new bitter taste and marveled at the way dry palm fronds and a raffia backing on the bar had given an exotic air to a cement-block garage.

Someone had painted a Hawaiian hula scene on the wall above the bar. Someone had sketched a likeness of Rags on the opposite wall, and had framed it with bamboo. This is the way the clubhouse will look. This is the way we'll fix up the recreation hall on the Island! She swigged from the bottle again, mellowing with the sense of a long-gone traveler at last arrived home. For the threesome at the other end of the bar were not unlike the traveler she had seen in mirrors, her own self.

They wore tan peggers, nonchalantly unpressed. Two in plaid flannel shirts, one sharper in an open-throated white job with a turquoise sweater vest. Lon envied them the clipped haircuts, the strong scrubbed faces. And ignored the lazy eyes and droop-cornered mouths.

"I still claim you owe me two-bits," one argued.

"The hell you say."

"You remember that girl, right here at this bar?”

"Oh, Jesus, yes."

"You bet me a quarter I couldn't make her.”

"You didn't.”

"Oh, didn't I?”

"I'll be damned."

"I've got a witness." The first of them turned to the silent one. "Did I make her, Chuck?"

"If you don't know, I'm not gonna tell you."

They roared at this and then the loser paid her bill. "Here's your goddam quarter. Just tell me one thing. Was she butch or fem? Christ, I couldn't tell!"

"Smorgasbord. By the time she went home I wasn't sure which I was!" Eyebrows wriggled up and down, implying secrets that could not be unveiled. Regular guys, remembering a girl and laughing it up. Regular guys, flicking kitchen matches with their thumbnails for a light, burrowing hands in the front-zipped pants for a crushed cigarette pack and belting each other in the back to punctuate a bellylaugh. Regular guys, and less than twenty years before, unknowing nurses had checked the wrong box on the hospital form that offered only Male and Female. For perhaps the choice was incomplete.

Halfway through the brown bottle, Violet came back. "I got a place at their table. This girl, kid—Jeez, she's society an' everything. Boy, would I like to get next to her. She's here with some crazy dark one. I hate t' say this, but this girl, wow, is she sharp." Violet spilled the words breathlessly. "I got a spot at their table. Pray for me, kid." Leading Lon from the bar toward the curtained room, frenzied with her dim hope of a conquest that escaped Lon. "Make out like I'm your girl. Act real nuts about me."

They wove their way through the dancers. Pretty girls and crones at sixteen, old hands and neophytes, insatiable and satiated; Lon saw them in the darkened room where dreams were woven, seeing through the untutored, all-sensing eyes of the young, the clip-haired butches who looked as she herself must look, yet knowing the purpose of their maleness, shuffling to the agonized cry—"Where's this place called Lonely Street?" Big, brawl-sized butches and tiny Napoleons, out to prove to the world: we are not small; we matter, we count! Hands clutching their partners as though someone might doubt their talents to possess, hip grinding hip.

And Lon heard, through the unplugged ears of the young, their spicy, pungent talk, as she tacked her way through the crowd:

". . . took ourselves out on the lawn and I mean, almost froze..."

". . . told that witch, in the future you keep your hands off my girl. Fun is fun and I'm no prude, but I've got my standards, honey..."

". . . Okay, okay, we'll go home. I said we'll go home. Okay, so you can't stand to see me have a little fun..."

And the shriek with its aftermath of hilarious commotion; somebody gagging somebody, everyone game for one more laugh.

Lon saw and heard with the inner awareness that transcends callow ignorance, linking phrase and gesture. So that she knew why they danced with such gay desperation, why they gathered here where a green door barred the inquisitors of that other world with a sign that warned and pleaded: MEMBERS ONLY. And Lon sympathized with the unclassified kids who needed a place "to dance." For she was of them, so must be with them and for them. Of them, and belonging to their secret.

* * *

Four perspiring bottles graced the redwood picnic table provided by the limited budget of The 28%. Side by side on one of the benches, Lon and Violet faced a twosome conspicuous not only by their post-nineteen maturity but by the vivid contrast of their coloring. Violet had introduced them as Sassy Gregg and Mavis.

The Amazon's pale-yellow hair fell in short careless waves over the wide brow of a face once deeply tanned, now faded. It was a face with the unravaged ruggedness of one who has enjoyed the outdoors in solid comfort: playing dedicated tennis, perhaps, or swimming lengths of a country club pool. Her features were carefully spaced, her grey-blue eyes unflinchingly direct. And the simplicity of her tailored shirt and slacks spoke quietly of elegance. Any doubt of her affluence was erased by the wide bracelet clamping the cuff of her long-sleeved shirt and the matching wide belt-buckle of hand-wrought silver and Mexican lava. Her nickname, Lon suspected, was backwash from early childhood; Sassy looked and behaved like anything but her name. A few of her yawns were deliberate; the rest seemed genuine enough.

Violet was tying herself into tortured knots in a pathetic attempt to impress the girl. "Honest to God, I think it's terrif about you went ta collidge. Even if you on'y specialized in gym. Ain't that what you mean by P. E.?"

Sassy's gray eyes reflected more boredom than amusement. "Yes. I majored in physical education."

"Yeah, but along with that you had ta read up on other subjecks. I'm that same way. Books! Jeez, I read 'em by the carload. Anything that has t' do with education, or if it's artistical, it makes me flip." She reached over to squeeze Lon's hand in a show of familiarity and Lon flinched.

Sassy Gregg broke her cool reserve to wink subtly and knowingly at Lon. Who smiled a vague response to the compliment, grateful that Sassy was not seeing them as a pair.

Violet chattered on, parading her concept of intellectuality, and the analytical eyes of the older girl veiled with a patronizing contempt. Lon turned her attention to Sassy's friend. "Did you go to U.C.L.A. with Sassy?"

The colored girl spoke with a joyless calm. "No, we met this place I work. Used to come round, hear me play jazz piano. Come with 'er fiancé."

Lon had missed the sparkle on Sassy's powerful hand. "Oh, sure. She's engaged."

Mavis smirked. "Reason why escape me jus' now."

Lon stared at the girl, silent while Betty brought fresh beers all around and Sassy wrangled with Violet over the two-dollar honors. Lon had never exchanged words with a Negro before—nor gazed at enigma that surpassed mere physical beauty. Mavis was slight, loose-limbed, the cafe-au-lait flesh pulled tightly over bone structure well defined. Yet it was not the effortless grace with which she moved the languid wrists, floated the slender fingers when she talked. And not the uninterrupted sweep of features, from broad, intelligent forehead past high-rising cheekbones, downward below the cherry-tinted mouth to the defiant little chin. It was in the line of blue-black hair drawn rigid to the coiled bun from which black wisps played with the back of her neck. And in the fierce pride of distended nostrils, the Negroid nose. There, and in the regal tilt of her head, the impassable curtain of velvet black eyes. Eyes almond-shaped and weary from too much seen. If she rose, Lon knew, she would walk with a haughty bearing; Lon knew this with an unassailable certainty. Born to be a Second High Priestess, born to murmur the rhythmic incantations, weave the lithe body on nights when the sky is moonless and the sea beats the time for our chant. Lon dropped her eyes unconsciously to the heavy, snobbish breasts.

"You takin' style notes? You analyzin' my dress?"

Embarrassed, Lon shook her head. "No—I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

What could be seen of Mavis's dress was dull black and shapeless. Lon lifted the second bottle, drinking back the chagrin.

"This dress what you call a saque," Mavis said tonelessly. "Been with me a long time. Man, couple years back the modistes caught up with me. But I pass 'em up again. Now nobody in style but me!" Flashing a snowflake grin, the whiteness melting into brown repose. "Sassy say I look beat. Them beat cats jus' catchin' up with me, too. I beat befo' they latch on Zen. Long befo' they pick up on Gide. Baby, I beat from awa-a-y back. An' don't need to make some cafe expresso scene provin' it."

Now Lon faced the new bewilderment. Mavis fluctuated between a cultured enunciation and what seemed to be deliberate parody of minstrel show dialect. Finding courage in swallows of the tart beer, she said, "You sound like you know a lot. But you don't talk like—" And stammering in the self-induced confusion, "You perplex me!"

Mavis lifted a cigarette from Sassy's case, lying on the table between them. "Trouble is, you tryin' put me in some peg-hole. Baby, go 'head an' crucify me. Go 'head an' vilify me. But don't go messin' 'round tryin' to classify me! I one thing now. Tomorrow I gonna be something else."

"Don't you want anyone to know how sharp you are?”

Sucking in the blue smoke, Mavis said, "That way I get me invited into white-color brain circles. Them folks can go home, tell they neighbors they had tea with a colored gal could quote Spinoza. Big deal! Man, I take a good ole-fashioned down-South nigger-hater over them kind." Then, staring into the dim haze, "I talk my way. I read about some decadent French cats, that Proust talk. Read about some festerin', slime-ooze creeps down South, that Faulkner talk. Ain't for me." And in a sudden spurt of animation, the heat of white-hot, white-directed resentment burned like the tip of her cigarette. "Mavis talk. That all you ever gonna get from me!"

The juke broke out with Poison Ivy. And Sassy, obviously bored with the pressure of being impressed, lifted her brows at the Violet kid. "Dance?"

"Crazy!" Violet wrinkled the little round nose, laughed her delight.

Sassy was even taller than Lon had suspected. The statuesque and the stubby left the table to jiggle their way into the moving crowd.

An alien excitement fell over Lon. Alone with brown Mavis and too tense to express what had lain dormant in her, Lon tried to force herself. Now, now, when at long last the closed doors had strangely opened to her. Feebly offering, "I've never known anyone named Mavis. Mavis what?"

"Jus' Mavis."

"Everybody has a last name."

"Some born without 'em. Some lose the right to use 'em."

Lon sensed that she had treaded on shaky ground. And began again. "You said you play the piano."

"Yea-ah, Sassy got this Knabe grand. Used to be jus' furniture in that fancy pad where she live. That big ole piano cryin' its gut out f'lonesome till I come by."

"I thought you said she used to go somewhere to hear you play."

"Ruggio's. Baby, I play in more pi-ano bars 'n' you got years. That the last place I play before I git unemployed. Ruggio, he tie the can to me."

"Why?" Asking it indignantly, marking the faceless Ruggio a sworn enemy.

"Oh, couple gay gals start hangin' 'round. Ruggio don't want that. I tip these gals, but that don't stop 'em comin' on, comin' on, requestin' I play this numbah 'n' that numbah. Till one night he blow his stack. I gotta git!"

"But it wasn't your fault, was it? Just because he didn't like..." Lon swallowed the hard core taking form in her throat. "Were they girls like these?" Gesturing to indicate the dancers.

"Man, they don't come no gayer. These gals, they both on the make. They wear a big neon sign keep flashin' what they is. Same as these cats you seein' now." Mavis dragged deeply, exhaled, cooled the smoke with draughts from the brown bottle. "I say one thing 'bout you. You look the same. But you diff'runt. You don't wait till Sass leave the table, 'nen make a pass. Too young? Too chicken?" She laughed shortly. "I perplex you? Well, you perplex me!"

The dark eyes mocked, then softened as Lon looked to the beer-wet redwood. Lon lifted her face at last to drink, thirsty swallows, drowning her lack of understanding. And still knowing. Knowing that you can belong and not belong, knowing how much and how little she knew. Until Mavis, wearying, it seemed, of the jazz-man, end-man jargon, dropped her cigarette to the concrete floor, bent to grind it under her heel and spoke with the precise diction of a speech-department pedant. "Sassy happened to be at Ruggio's the night he fired me. Strangely enough, she had come alone that night for the first time. And I could have called the agent who booked me. Complained to the union. But I was beat. You know? Sassy's folks were in Hawaii. Like when people find themselves in Pittsburgh—it's raining—it's a drag, so they get married. Later they ask themselves why." She laughed again, the quick-dying jab of laughter. Amused by her story? More likely getting a laugh from Lon's stunned reaction to the abrupt change in delivery. "Sassy's got no imagination. You see, I have this dark skin. Types me with people like her folks. So we meet this housekeeper at the door. Sassy's got one idea. I'm the new maid. Trite, but that does it! I'm still living there, making with the dustpans. Fractures me, watching Sassy cover up for the way I do a bed. It's a funny hype."

"But you can work in some other night club. Why do you want to—to lower yourself that way?"

Almond eyes explored the table with a soft melancholy. And Mavis echoed again her cotton-patch talk. "Sass an' me, sometimes we dig each othah. Got a fine piano there. Got books. Don' know, baby. That butch needs me bad. Jus' don' know."

"You mean you're going to stay there?"

"Toss-up. Do I leave Sassy, or do she tell me leave? Don't look now like Sassy's evah goin' let up, but hard tellin'." Mavis shrugged an indifferent shoulder. "Don' nuthin' last."

"I've thought about that a lot," Lon said. The cold beer warming her inside, the words coming easily now. "I've thought about a place where people weren't always—spoiling things for each other."

"Keep tellin', baby."

"A place where—people leave you alone. I mean, where they aren't always stopping you from doing what you want to do."

"Fine place," Mavis encouraged. Picking up her rhythm from the juke.

"I decided it would have to be—well, an island.”

"Now yo' makin' sense!"

"Somewhere in the Pacific." And bursting like a bag of popcorn at the dusky girl's approval, "I've never told anyone, but I have it all planned."

"Swingin'!"

"Everybody could do whatever they enjoy doing."

'Take me at once to yo' leadah!"

"I'd... temporarily, at least, I'd be in charge. Because I know all the plans. I'm doing all the preliminary work."

"It figures, baby."

Then, with the beer and the beat drowning out, hammering down the earlier timidity, "Mavis, how would you like to be the Second High Priestess? If this thing really goes through, there has to be somebody ... I mean, I have all these chants written down. Really weird and... exotic. Do you think you'd...?"

"Secon' high priestess. Hot damn!"

A chill suspicion trickled down the length of Lon's spine. Was Mavis making fun of her? Fighting boredom, the way Sassy was killing time on the dance floor with Violet? They had danced by a moment before and the tall blonde had been yawning. With dampened enthusiasm, Lon said, "I still have a lot of details to work out. Transportation's my main problem. I have to figure out how to get a boat and where to find somebody that'll know how to sail it"

"Man, you talk to Sass. Her daddy, he got him a yatch. She know mo' 'bout yatches anybody you evah meet!"

And spurred again, Lon said, "Really? Does she really?"

"That cat's made the Catalina scene all by her lonesome." Mavis dropping her pose once more, like a seagull letting go of a fish. Then adding significantly, "Don't count on her, though, baby. The way Sassy's goin', don't anybody count on her for Thing One."

Lon would have asked for an explanation. But the girls returned to their table. Violet ecstatic, Sassy apparently disgusted. "God, what an obvious crowd of neurotics!"

"They neurotic," Mavis agreed.

"That's one a the kinds a persons I can't stand," Violet echoed.

And Sassy winked at Mavis, snickering behind her beer.

"They psychotic," Mavis added. "Pore chillun!"

Then Sassy, in sudden irritation, "God, will you cut that plantation bit? Talk about sounding neurotic! Where's your goddamn pride?"

Mavis sighed, shrugging once more. "Can't be queer, effen you ain't neurotic."

Lon watched Sassy's anger flare. "I detest that word, Mavis. Literally detest that word."

"Okay, baby. Yo' bi-sexual. Ain't queer nohow. Yo' bi-sexual."

Sassy leaped up from the bench, seething. "You make me so damned—" Her sudden motion upset a tray with which Betty was trying to wriggle through the narrow aisle between tables. A beer bottle toppled, rolled down Sassy's back, crashing to the concrete floor in a burst of glass and foam.

"You clumsy bitch!" Sassy whirled on the waitress in a scarlet-faced rage. "Goddamn clumsy—you did that on purpose!"

"Got her monkey wet" Mavis murmured senselessly. "That monkey gonna ketch pneumonia."

Sassy caught the muttered phrases. They meant something to her, Lon decided, for the fury turned on Mavis now. "Keep your nasty little mouth shut!"

Betty stared open-mouthed, shocked by the force of Sassy's outburst. A small, curious group gathered around the table, watching with detached interest.

And Sassy reached back to assess the damage, shrieking, "My back is soaked. Literally soaked, you goddam, stupid..."

"One more word, debutante, and you'll go home in a basket." The grim figure in the black tuxedo had materialized from nowhere. Rags, with menace written all over that pale, pitted face. Sassy towered over her. Like a eucalyptus tree in a poppy field, Lon thought But evidently Sassy caught the threat in that throaty masculine voice. She stopped in the middle of her sentence, violence suspended in mid-air. And then Lon saw why Goliath curdled in the face of this tiny David. The something that Rags turned slowly in her hand was a breadknife. And Sassy stood still, pulsating with the hateful silence, eyes helplessly drawn to the saw-toothed blade.

No one moved. They stood around, sat around, immobile in a tableau of motionless waiting, breath suspended. And Lon caught up in a tremulous excitement of heroic battle, siding with the underdog in a T.V. writer's struggle for truth, honor and justice. Still, it was Sassy who owned a boat—Sassy who knew how to sail. And Sassy who would bring Mavis if Mavis was to come again. Apart from the other spectators, Lon waited for the next move.

"I suppose one should expect this sort of thing in a place like this," Sassy said, breaking the impasse with lame defiance.

One of the observers hooted, "Hey, Rags—whyn't you pick on somebody your size?" Jeering laughter routed what was left of the drama. Slowly, Rags lowered the breadknife. But her eyes had preserved the glint of its blade. "Beat it, debutante. Go do your slumming somewhere else!"

Sassy threw back her head in a gesture of contempt. "Scum. Literal, uncouth, uncivilized, neurotic scum." She edged her way past the onlookers, pushing disdainfully against the rigid wall of unfriendly shoulders. Lon sensed the blood churning invisibly inside, the gray-blue eyes deliberately unseeing, as though by her unawareness Sassy had dismissed them all. "If I thought it was worth the bother, I'd have my dad pull the right strings."

"Before you start shutting us up," Rags said, her voice deadly level, "figure out a good excuse for your daddy-O."

And picking up the cue, another voice cried, "Yeah, tell him what you were doing here, rich-bitch!"

"Are you coming, Mave?" Sassy, halfway across the dance floor. Not bothering to turn her head.

Mavis sighed. "Don' make no never-minds to me, baby."

Rags wedged herself between Mavis and the narrow aisle. "We don't hold anything against you. We don't want you to think we aren't—well, democratic." Still wearing the unsmiling mask: "Don't think you aren't welcome here because you're colored."

Lon nodded approval. The T.V. drama was going according to all the principles. Truth, honor and justice. These were great kids. Really great kids, and Violet had not been wrong. Lon found time to drain the second bottle.

"Hot damn, you sho 'nuff democratic! You so democratic, man, I overwhelmed!" Mavis having herself a ball. "Heah I thought you Republican."

"If you haven't got a way home, I’ll drive you myself," the poker-faced owner promised, the dusky sarcasm escaping her.

And timidly, Betty piped, "Don't mix in between them, Rags. If you were that other girl, I'd stick by you. Even if you were wrong, I'd walk out of here with you."

Rags considered the protocol of loyalty and stepped aside. "I just wanted her to know how I feel."

Lon missed the next few bits of by-play. Violet clutching her arm and whispering desperately, "Jesus, kid, what'll I do? If I go out now, Rags won't ever leave me in again. But I gotta see that Sassy again. Kid, I jest went ape over her!" The lavender-blue eyes following Sassy Gregg out of the room, miserable. "If you was me, would you make up some excuse that she fergot somethin' an' follow her to the parking lot? Or what, kid?"

Mavis solved the problem before she left. "You gals give us a buzz now, heah? You call Sass an' me an' we have us a real swingin' time." Then with head held loftily, as befitted the Second High Priestess of Name-to-be-Selected-When-We-Get-There, she swept across the floor. Moving easy, as if, perhaps, at the far end of this chandeliered ballroom her ladies-in-waiting curtseyed in greeting to the Queen. Weary black sack dress drooping from the proud breasts—nobody in style but Mavis. And fat warm tears out of nowhere blinding Lon's view of her departure.

"I want to see her again," Lon said quietly. "I don't care about the other one. I want to see Mavis again."

Violet matter-of-fact "I know how it is, sweetie. You're like me, real emotional." Then, noticing her beer was gone, watching Betty blot up the puddle on the floor, Violet added, " 'Course, I should be jealous, you feelin' that way about somebody when you're out with me."

"Oh, I like you, too, Violet"

"It's okay, kid. I know how it is. Holy Jeez, wouldn't I love it if you got that chocolate girl away from Sassy? I could really go to town, hey?" She drummed the redwood table with bird-long lavender fingernails, the idea playing around the corners of her little 0 mouth. "Trouble is, hon, you got a lot t' learn."

CHAPTER 4

Still, having a lot to learn is not an insurmountable problem when the student thirsts for knowledge and the teacher is dedicated.

They stumbled into the airless living room and Violet switched on a lamp. Through the ruffled, velvet-ribboned red shade, a hideous light poured into the Polivka parlor, crammed to bursting with the monstrous mohair sofa, chair and ottoman; royal blue, the legs like a mastodon's—carved from imitation mahogany. Crocheted antimacassars protected the arms from elbows or elbows from the harsh scrub-brush fabric. A maroon carpet swirled with bilious tan feathers, a knee-high nude in simulated jade held an ashtray hopefully over her head, competing with the toilet-shaped tray on a blue-mirrored coffee table, its glazed surface inviting, "Put your ash here." An artificial fireplace held an artificial log. Across the mantel, sentimental hands had arranged cardboard-framed wedding pictures: artificial white faces over rented tuxedos and stiff tafetta gowns. Violet was represented, too; her plump little-girl figure ludicrously old in a white confirmation dress, the hair still naturally dark under the skimpy veil.

And crowning the mass of carnival bulldogs with sparkling eyes, the dime-store ceramics piled with dime-store roses, the lustrous glaze of panthers, the dancers, rosebud planters, kittens and gazelles, ersatz Hummels, genuine Tokyo parasols and bona fide blue-green abalone shells—crowning all these, a poignant Jesus looked out upon the grandeur from a mat of silver foil leaves and garishly dyed pressed flowers. The sacred heart was bleeding realistically red, the thorns were accusingly sharp.

Violet paused, proudly allowing the impression to register. Belittling the effect of splendor, as if modesty were called for in the face of so much opulence. "You wouldn' guess from the outside how it looks in here, would ya, kid?"

Lon shook her head dully. And found herself sinking into the overstuffed blue showpiece of the room. Her head felt hollow from the unaccustomed beer, yet every nerve had escaped the deadening effect and transferred to the flesh a suspenseful awareness, an acute knowledge of being alive and of wanting to be more so. She felt her breath accelerating as Violet's purple-tipped fingers rested on her jean-covered thigh, and waited through vaguely heard small talk until her hostess, softly lovely in the red-tinted light, reached at last the point where learning began.

"It's kinda mixed-up at first, but you get the hang of it. Like there's girls that're butch. I mean, they wish they could be a guy and they treat you same as they were a guy, on'y better. And there's fems, like me. See, like one is the guy and one is the girl—" And Violet laughed her beered-up starlet laugh. "So you don't have to stick to no damn rules. Like for instance. No lie, sometimes in bed I'm way ahead of those butch types." And she laughed once more at the private memories.

"Oh, Christopher, I wish I knew. Sometimes I just wish I knew," Lon said without knowing the meaning of her words.

"You're butch, Lon. You mean you didn' know it?"

"I never even heard the word before." Yet, how the softly rounded forms had gyrated on the shore of the Island... How, always, the dancers had been girl-lovely, and to be loved!

"Well, you're butch awright. I c'n tell a girl that's straight a mile away. What I wanna know is, didn' you ever have a case on some other girl?"

"Sort of. Only it wasn't a girl, exactly."

"What the hell y'mean, not a girl exac'ly!"

"I mean, she was a teacher. Not what you'd call a girl any more." Lon spoke as if the remembrance had been buried in time. But now it prodded itself into life: This morning I was in love with Miss Chamberlin. Up until this afternoon I loved her, loved her!

"Was she gay?"

"You mean did she..."

"Did she go fer girls?"

"I guess not."

"Get anywheres with her?"

"No." Then, shoving the ache into the dim corridors of the past, "No, and I hope I never see her again."

Violet moved closer, her fingers tracing an indolent pattern across the faded blue jeans. "Did you ever kiss a girl, hon?"

"I used to think about kissing—this teacher. I couldn't help it."

Violet shook her colorful head incredulously. And broke the quiet enchanted spell. "Jeez, it's so funny to be aroun' a sharp-lookin' butch that don't know sugar from Shinola!" Then, as though she regretted having laughed: "Boy, I'd like t' get next t' you about five years from now. Wowie!"

"I was hoping," Lon said earnestly, "that we could get to be friends right away, Violet." Sassy Gregg would have said it in a more commanding voice, she reflected. And envied the other girl's height, though she, Lon, sat inches taller than Violet. And would stand inches taller than Mavis, too. "Why would you want to wait five years?"

Violet's eyes narrowed. "Hey, are you snowin' me? Is this some kinda line or somethin'? Not that I give a crap, kid. If you got it in your head t' make me, you don't ketch me fightin' you off. What I wanna know is, are you as dumb as you act?"

If she denied it, the lesson might end. Sheepishly, Lon said, "Nobody knows everything about everything."

"Well,, one thing you oughta know about gay kids. Some practic'lly get married. Even, they give a ring. But mostly the kids I know, 'specially the butches, they get fed up with one girl. Know what I mean? They keep cruisin', lookin' fer kicks."

"Mavis told me something like that. She said she'd get tired of Sassy or Sassy would get tired of her."

"Don't I know it, kid! See, even if you wear rings, who you kiddin'? The straight married people, they got kids or they're payin' on a house an' a car. They're stuck. But if you're gay an' you get fed up... pow! You take off. You don' have t' cruise long an' somebody else shows up."

Thinking—and it seemed stranged to be thinking of Mavis—She said, "But if you really love somebody, you wouldn't want to break up."

There was a momentary sadness, it seemed to Lon, in Violet's shrug. "Who wants t' be stuck? That's how you know, honey. I bet you never got it from a guy, even."

Got it. The words dredged up another fevered recollection; the thick brown medical book buried under nightgowns and girdles in her mother's dresser drawer. Lon remembered reading furtively and with a fascinated horror, wondering why anyone would want to perform the intimate and humiliating rites at which the secret pages hinted. And knew, in this moment the flushed exhilaration that had drawn her back to the book time and again when the house had been empty, feeling the tensed band around her chest that had constricted her breath in those forbidden hours. Yet free of the mystifying crudeness of the male body, here where the excitement concerned itself only with the graceful and familiar, Lon did not fear.

"You heard me. I bet you never got it from a guy."

"No," she told Violet. "One kissed me, though.'

"Is that all?"

"And started—you know—petting. That was all."

"Did you get a charge?"

"It scared me. It made me sick."

"If it was a girl, you wouldn' of got sick, sweetie," Violet said wisely.

"I don't know. I get this lonesome feeling sometimes. In a way, I'd sooner be friends with a girl, but in another way— well, I can talk to boys. That part's all right. We can discuss cars or sports, almost anything, and I feel sure of myself. But the other part of it, with boys—I don't know, it gets me disgusted just to think about it. Trouble at school was, most of the other girls acted like I was some kind of—" Lon swallowed the bitter taste. "Some kind of freak. Tonight was the first time I was around girls and didn't feel that way."

"Gay girls. Sure."

"And I kept having a peculiar feeling that somewhere, with somebody, I would fit in. I still don't know all I want to know, but at least, with you, I can talk about it. I never could talk about—about things like this—with anybody. I still feel mixed up, but whatever I've been looking for... Gosh, I won't say I've found it. But I think I'm going to." Lon made the sound of laughter. "Christopher, doesn't that sound whacky?"

"Don't be ashamed a havin' real deep feelings," Violet said somberly, surprisingly. "I don't look the serious type, but I take a lotta things serious like that."

Encouraged, Lon said, "Sometimes I think I'm going to bust up inside. I get these wild urges to..." And dropping her voice to a grim whisper, "I get to thinking about somebody and I love them so much, I want to—grab them and smash them. Oh, nuts, that's stupid! I don't even know what I mean. It's just that I have to love somebody, no matter how they feel about me." Lon spoke slowly then, with paced deliberation. "Before this teacher I told you about, there was a girl in my gym class. We weren't in the same squad, so there wasn't any reason for me to talk to her. I never got up enough nerve to say anything to her, just kept watching and finding out all I could about her from other kids. I guess it got to her that I was asking questions and she told another girl—and that girl told me that I was a creep and should mind my own business."

"Jeez! I know how you musta felt."

"It hurt a lot, but I didn't stop thinking about that first girl. I have a diary at home. I write everything down in a code that I made up, so my mother won't be able to read it"

"Whatta ya mean, a code?"

"Oh, you exchange letters. I use H for K and K for G. I'll explain it to you some time. Anyway, last year that diary was full of nothing but Joan, Joan, Joan. I never once talked to her. After vacation, last year, I didn't see her around and somebody said she'd moved back East."

Violet looked genuinely touched. "Jeez!" Then, curiously, "Didn' ya ever think about her that way, Lon?"

"What way?"

"Do I have to name it?"

"She was another girl, and I didn't know—" Lon wrestled with the new confusion. "All I remember is, she was a tiny thing and I always felt... Oh, this is crazy! I had a feeling I should take care of her. I'd think about some other girl saying mean things to Joanie—or sometimes it would be a boy. Joanie would be crying and I'd come along and belt the other person in the mouth. I thought about that a lot but nothing ever happened. I just thought about it a lot"

"Yeah. I usta think about I was a big movie star. I know whatcha mean."

"I almost—feel that way now."

"About me?" Violet asked, coy. Her hand moved, rested where no hand had rested before, and still the coarseness of thick denim between them. Lon shuddered.

"Maybe you'd rather be with Sassy—"

Violet shrugged once more. "Oh, I dunno. You're jest as good-lookin'. She got a better car, prob'ly, but you're jest as good-lookin'. The way you act so hard to get you get me all steamed up, honey."

"I'm not playing games, Violet. I'd like to be a friend of yours." But I'm haunted by a proud tan face, Lon thought by almond-shaped eyes staring indifferently.

"There's a lot more to it than jest that, hon." Violet's arms lifted to encircle Lon's neck. "Want I should do everything?"

And it was like poetry, suddenly, with Violet's coarseness melted away in the brush of the pink velvet cheek against Lon's face and the deep forest sweetness of violet cologne. Suddenly like poetry and music, this softly surprising glow of intimacy, with a wave of attraction beyond Lon's understanding undulating between them, rushing toward some destination fearfully, sacredly, irresistibly unknown. And she wondered in that hesitant moment, what would Sassy Gregg do? If Mavis should lift the cherry lips, what would Sassy do? And Lon trembled with not knowing.

"Jeez, honey, loosen up. I ain't poison."

"Oh, God, Violet—I don't know..."

"Go ahead an' kiss me, Lon. You wanna."

"I don't know. . .!"

"Holy cow, quit shakin'. Lookit how easy!"

The little mouth that was so like an 0 mashed against Lon's lips. Too late for a sudden intake of needed air. Violet's face fused with her own and the world around them floated in a nest of lavender spun-glass. It was like holding a delicate Christmas angel in your arms; pastel-tinted and yielding, when always before, when she had reached out to touch, her hands had met the unrelenting coldness of steel and the heart had returned, bruised and uncomprehending, to its hiding place. There to wait for this moment in time.

Twined and thrown off balance in the exquisite suffocation of their embrace, Lon emerged with a sobbing cry. Yet Violet's excitement appeared to be well-disciplined. Practically, she said, "This damn sweater's so hot. Lemme get it off, hon."

"Sure," Lon said, breath coming hard.

"How 'bout you, kid? Jeez, it's roastin' in here." Violet's words muffled in the bulky white wool as she pulled the sweater carefully over her vegetable-colored claim to glamor.

"Its warm, all right." Lon hesitated.

"It'll be okay, jest with me." And sliding with an economy of motion out of the purple toreador pants, taking with them all that separated her from Lon's eyes.

Lon was aware of the beer-daze, yet submitted to it in mechanical, zombie movement. Until, naked and fearful in her muddled anxiety, she stood opposite the Easter-egg roundness, the pink and white and lavender prettiness that flooded her eyes.

They faced each other for what may have been an eon or perhaps only a grace note in time. And then the coil-spring that had lain wound and waiting freed itself inside Lon. With a cry that culminated all the cries suppressed within her, that echoed the muffled sobs of lonely nights when the softness was only a pillow, she grasped at the proffered body. Her sudden movement threw them to the couch, Violet squealing her delight. And Lon's kisses were the repeated, thirsty gulps of a body parched, a spirit long dehydrated. Kisses prodded into frenzied repetition by the tinny, ecstatic sound that reached her ears: "Oh, Jeez, Lon! Oh, Christ, you're ketchin' on—" Violet voicing her approval, the beer-numbness shutting out Lon's fear of venturing to where Violet's approval became an inarticulate sound, like the moaning of wind.

* * *

Long afterward, like a dreamer shaken from sleep, she heard Violet speak again, this time with an awed reverence. "Holy Mother, you're the livin' end!"

And with a calm that had not fallen upon her in all the years she could remember, Lon observed that the bleeding heart on the wall had been treated with luminous paint. If the lamp light had been turned off, she thought, it would have glowed in the dark.

CHAPTER 5

There were moments in the last weeks of June, and in the early days of the July that followed, when the tiny pin-pricks of dimly perceived guilt would threaten to puncture Lon's lungs; times when the growing knowledge of her new and shrouded sisterhood would leave her gasping hungrily for familiar air.

She might be shampooing the Wilson's Pomeranian, or watching a ball game on television with a nervously eager father and a proportionately disinterested Eddie, Jr., when it would strike her that the Lesbian sorority went about its clandestine business behind higher and more forbidding walls than those she herself had constructed to shield the Island from others—and others from herself. Not once did she delude herself that what she shared with the gayest of all the gay kids transcended the senses to reach that inner void reserved for love. But on mornings after a rite of the flesh with Violet, Lon would revivify the scene, prodding her memory to bring it so clearly into focus that her thighs would itch against the rough-textured mohair sofa. And the taste of purple-plum lipstick would lie heavy in her mouth.

At times such as these, Lon would not think, as she had thought of the Island, I have a secret!—but, more precisely, I am a secret! For it was the very secrecy of her carnal bouts with Violet that excused them from examination by her conscience. Like the mystic rituals of her island, these moments of sensual pleasure were apart from that inhospitable world outside,—and, in this sense, they were experiences new, but not alien. Concerned as they were with her personal flesh, they were not mysteries outside herself. "I am a secret!" And what is less intriguing, less worthy of attention than an open book—which is what Lon conceived herself to be to herself?

If she devoted less and still less time to the Island, it was, she told herself, because Violet and Mavis—and others chosen from the gay crowd would some day fit into her long-range plans. It was essential to know them and know them well. So that getting to know them involved two, sometimes three evenings each week spent at The 28%—then the scarlet-lighted release with Violet following in what Lon accepted now as necessary routine. Ecstasy measured by the length of the carnival season. For they never discussed which couch would accommodate their passion when Violet's mother had dispensed the year's last hot-dog.

Evenings at the club were costly and more time was consumed in supporting them; Lon, happily, was needed on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at Beckwith's Pet Paradise. Bathing and Clipping our Specialty! Her salary was divided proportionately among the demands of her budding social life; gasoline, beer, cigarettes (though just for the effect), mints and Sen-Sen to counteract the latter two items before she drove home from Violet's, polished cotton peggers, white dress shirts and a violently red sweater-vest that Violet praised as looking sharp with Lon's now professionally clipped dark hair.

The wardrobe was Lon's most practical investment, for it was important, along with absorbing vocabulary and gestures, to dress in the sharpest butch fashion. Clothes, and the male swagger with which they were worn, established a competitive camaraderie with the other butches. They were as much a part of the pattern as the suggestive quips that never failed to produce the desperate gay laughter. Or dancing with a variety of fems only long enough to establish Lon's desirability, yet never long enough to let any one doubt that the popular, exotic, crazy, way-out violet girl who knew all the kids had staked a claim on her.

Already attractive by virtue of her freshness in the jaded hunting ground of The 28%, Lon improved upon the other butches' style by remembering and imitating the taciturn aloofness and strength of Sassy Gregg. Lon learned from the fem reaction—and gained a further confident appeal from the knowledge—that she was not "stuck" with Violet. But she continually searched with her eyes the amber dimness of The 28% in the even dimmer hope that one night Sassy Gregg's girl would come again. Mavis.

Mavis. Lon would murmur the name over suds-whitened boxers and shivering spaniels. The proud features would evade her memory, but not the essence of the girl whose skin was recalled now not as richly creamed coffee, but something less opaque. Tea with milk; translucent and delicate. A collie would whine in the flea-soap bath and a multi-colored mongrel bitch would spray the air with water in a frenzy of drying herself. And Lon would repeat the name. Mavis what? Jus' Mavis. She would come to the club one night and this time Lon would meet her on equal ground. For how long can a Second High Priestess stay away? And Mr. Beckwith, who knew more about sarcoptic mange than any man alive and was prepared to prove it if someone would spare the listening time—Mr. Beckwith would make of her a captive audience while she worked, unknowing that his wisdom fell upon deaf ears. Mavis!

* * *

Then, too, the time Lon had once devoted to contents of the bottom desk drawer was devoured even more voraciously by Lon's mother. The questioning face would look up from committee plans, nervous fingers would tug at stray ends of the chemically-fried hair. And the thin voice would climb a ladder of doubt and suspicion.

"Are you expecting me to believe that's all you do? Just sit around this girl's house? This girl that you never mentioned before and I've never seen?"

"That's about all. We see a movie at the drive-in once in a while."

"What are her parents like?"

"Nice."

"Is that an answer, Lorraine? Nice. I think we deserve to know something about her family, considering the time you spend at that house. Is that all you can say? Nice?"

"I don't talk to them much. They seem okay."

"Does this Violet ever invite anyone else over?" Pronouncing the name as though it had to be a myth. And wringing three syllables from the one-word question, "Boys?"

"No."

"I suppose you meet them at the drive-in?”

"We see some of the boys from school. Sure. You wave and say 'hi.'"

"But you don't sit in cars with them?" Her eyes asserting, "You do, you do!"

"Oh, Christopher!"

"I'm entitled to a decent answer, young lady!"

"No, we don't sit in the cars and neck with boys!"

"Don't shout at me, young lady! Last night it was until twelve-thirty. Saturday night it was one o'clock in the morning. Dragging yourself in like an alley-cat for all the neighbors to see. Now I'm asking you to tell me what it is that you do."

"I've told you. We sit around. Just talking.”

"Until one in the morning?"

"I had a flat that night. You don't have to believe me if you don't want to."

And there would be a tenuous silence before the nerve-scraping interview would proceed, Lon thinking, she expects me to lie. She wouldn't believe the truth and she doesn't believe me when I lie. But she expects it. And the next phase taking on the despicable confidential tactic:

"I don't see why you don't invite your girlfriend here. You'd think that your father and I didn't like young people."

"She doesn't have a way out. If she comes here, I have to go and get her and then drive her home. Four trips back and forth."

"She just might be interested in our young people's group at church. You should be interested, seems to me. It's very embarrassing to me, Lorraine, your not attending those meetings when your own mother supervises the Sunday School."

"Sorry."

"Don't you like the other young people?"

"Will you leave me alone? Please?"

"Is someone hurting you? Is it so terrible to have your mother ask a few questions? I have a right to know what you're doing when you leave this house."

"Okay, I told you. Can I go back to my room?"

"May!"

"May I go back to my room, Mother?"

"I have a few things to say to you first." Then, softening the shrill voice to the painfully studied mother-daughter tone, "You'll meet lots of nice boys at church, dear. You remember that membership contest... I was so pleased with the results. Everyone was amazed, though, of course, they never appreciated the work that went into the planning. And what I'm trying to tell you, dear, is that you don't have to sneak around behind my back to meet boys..."

"I don't sneak around behind..."

"… because it's a perfectly natural interest If you'd pay some attention to the way you look...”

"I don't give a damn about boys!”

"Lorraine!”

"Well, I don't."

"Don't raise your voice at me, young lady. Don't you dare raise your voice at me! You aren't leaving this house again until I know where you're going. Is that clear?"

"Okay, okay."

"That's understood?"

"Yes, yes, yes!"

"Catch me believing you spend all that time with a girl. I wasn't born yesterday, Lorraine. I've raised two daughters and I don't mind telling you I did a good job. When they went out at night I met their escorts at the door!"

"Why don't you hire a detective and have him follow me, while you're at it?"

"That will be enough, young lady!"

"Well, don't go accusing me of things I don't do."

Lon stamped away from the argument with her mother's clinching point shrilling behind her: "I know some things you don't know, young lady!"

She had been saying that for a long time, Lon thought, closing the bedroom door with pointed finality. Mother had always known things that no one else knew; why the custodian at the Junior High had been fired—the size of the mortgage on the Women's Club—who would preside over the PTA in the coming year. She knew everything except how to tear aside the curtain that separated her from a third daughter who could not be like the first and the second. She was a woman burying herself in her own excavation, digging out new inconsequential secrets, so that she could impart secret civic knowledge, but never finding time to listen, except to compare the called-for answers with answers preconceived. And never understanding a problem that could not be resolved by appointing a committee. Until now, at last—and Lon permitted herself the shadow of an ironic, satisfied smile—now, at last, while she assumed the sins of boy and girl in the back row of the drive-in, the third daughter of Mrs. Harris knew something that Mrs. Harris didn't know.

CHAPTER 6

"Yeah, maybe the cute colored one said fer you t' call," Violet argued, "but that society one didn't give me any come-on. I wouldn' take the chance a callin' an' gettin' snobbed!"

They sat at their favorite corner table among the 28%, with the restlessness playing between them more palpably than the cry of the juke. Someone, the record wailed, had stolen the keys to someone else's Cadillac car. And Lon considered Violet's logic carefully. If pride made a telephone call unthinkable, and since it was unlikely that Sassy would return to their hangout, what was the matter with looking for her, and for Mavis, elsewhere? Not that the present arrangement was not mutually satisfying. But as Violet amplified, "It's a good deal, the way we got it. But we're the broad-minded types, hon. I could even be broad-minded about you makin' a play fer dark cloud, 'cause I gotta admit she's sharp-lookin'. And, Jeez, how I could go fer that stuck-up butch!" Then, apologizing for Sassy, "She's gotta be snooty, kid. She's society."

Violet was an exception, Lon decided, for nowhere in The 28% had she encountered signs of prejudice. "Regardless of race, religion or color," a phrase hackneyed and insincere from too much use, was faithfully observed here, where the only ticket of admission was being gay. Still, Violet was not unreasonable. "Wanna go look aroun'?" she asked.

"It's up to you," Lon told her, squashing down enthusiasm.

Violet fluttered the weighted lashes. "Not jealous, sweetie?"

"Why should I be?" Then, in her newer vein, "Why the hell should I be?"

"Well, I'm pretty loyal to Rags an' Betty, but there's other gay joints."

"Where?"

"There's this mixed joint. The boys go there, too. Over on the beach."

"What makes you think they'd be there?"

"They gotta hang out somewhere, don't they? Then there's this place up in the canyon."

"What canyon? Mint, Topanga, Coldwater... I know a million canyons."

"Oh, some crappy Spanish name. I ferget. You have to go in with somebody who goes there regular, so that's out. Tonight, anyways."

"Do you know how to get to the beach place?"

"Yeah, I been there once. Wanna go?"

Lon arched her brows, feigning indifference. They finished their beers before they got up to leave.

"Hey, you're leaving early," Rags called to them. And then it was her turn to arch the eyebrows, stretching her mouth into a grim Rags smile. "I know how it is, kids. Have fun!"

* * *

The Mermaid, unlike the club from which Lon and Violet had departed, was not a teen-age hangout. In fact, a sign to the effect that minors were positively not admitted had been dutifully posted at the door. If the law were waived at the entrance of the Misses Harris and Polivka, it was not a deliberate violation of the statute, for the proprietor had retired to the beach with her current friend and the girls behind the bar were too entranced by lavender hair and the skin-tight white jersey dress into which Violet's roundness had been poured—much too startled—to concern themselves with the age of her pseudo-bored escort.

"Wow, am I gettin' the once-over," Violet whispered ecstatically. There was no room for them at the tiny tables, the little brown cigarette-scarred tables with their tincan-protected candlelight and the faces around them blurred in the smoke haze. So they pushed their way past others for whom there was no room and stood awkwardly near the bar, Violet eyeing the prospects and Lon noting that half the patrons looked so elegant that they must be slumming, the other half so deliberately stamped with the hoodlum label that they seemed crashers at a swank affair.

For the Mermaid was open to all brackets and all genders, and a mermaid illustrated in oils behind the bar was, according to the inscription, "Just another frail with a crazy, mixed-up tail." Here occasional males gathered to socialize with the gay girls. Yet when the man at the corner organ (licking his lips first, so that they glistened moistly in the candle glow) thumped out a provocative rhythm, the girls danced only with each other.

A big woman in a sweater winked lasciviously at Lon. Then the woman swept Violet into her arms, holding the smaller girl at a comfortable distance, fanny sticking out like a bustle. Violet giggled, everyone hooted. Or screamed or whistled or laughed. And Lon moved away from the bar, tight-lipped as Rags at The 28%, more lost than disgusted, more lonely than resentful. Thinking, if anyone's a freak, it's Violet. And left Violet to dance with the clown.

With nowhere to go, Lon made her way to the bright blue door of the powder room.

No library in all the land dispenses knowledge with the direct efficiency of the public washroom. Lon did not linger long in the three-stalled cubicle of the Mermaid. Only long enough to hear sophisticated chatter, arty phrases that escaped her—and bits and snatches that convinced her further that Violet was a true exception to the loose format of Lesbian society. From the conversations, she pegged one of the thirtyish women as a fashion executive. Another had something to do with script-selection at a major movie studio. A smartly dressed pair argued about the influence of Zen on the contemporary artist. Lon longed to understand and feel included. Among these people, Violet could only be regarded as an amusing but pitiable showpiece. A shame for having come with Violet rose within Lon, intertwining itself with the hopeful reason for having come at all. A girl could be proud to go out with Mavis, who knew so much and was so beautiful that beside her Violet looked like some cheap bauble. Made in Japan and cheap, cheap, cheap! Then, mentally apologizing to the Violet as her anger mounted, Lon stepped out of the line formed before the swinging doors, though someone smiled at her invitingly and said, "Were you next, hon?" Lon stepped aside, mumuring, "Changed my mind," and fled the washroom, feeling eyes on her back.

Across the jammed floor, she could see Violet living it up. The butches were more aggressive here than at The 28%, Lon decided. Well, good. So much for Violet. It was for another face that Lon's eyes screened the crowd; that haughty loveliness entrenched in her memory. Before I leave, she promised herself, I'll cover the beach. It would be painful not to find Mavis, more painful to find her among the couples making out in the Pacific sand. Lon cursed Violet's vanity, the vanity that had rubbed off on her, making the simple, invited phone call so frightening.

A dark alcove broke the symmetry of the room. In it were several booths, shielded from close view by dancing couples. Lon picked her way through the mob, twisting like a halfback to avoid impulsive table-hoppers. A group of girls, their faces barely discernible in the flickering light, invited her to join them as she peeked into their den. "Looking for someone," she excused herself. And a husky voice accepted her apology genially: "Baby, aren't we all?"

A second group, of a tougher species, ignored her completely. Laughing hysterically, they were busy dripping icecubes over the face of a pale, aesthetic-looking young man whose head rolled dizzily against the back of the booth. "We shouldn't laugh," one of the group admonished. "He only gets boiled because he's trying to forget Larry." The water rolled from the pale young man's face and he stirred like a sleeping dog with a fly on its nose. The girls were still laughing as Lon moved away, but one, controlling her merriment, was assuring the others that Larry was a real louse and not worth getting drunk over.

It appeared, at first, that the corner booth was unoccupied. Lon peered into the candleless darkness, seeing the couple then, locked in a jig-saw puzzle embrace. "Oh—sorry!" she said. And regretted in the next instant having spoken, for if she had gone away quietly, they would have never known she was there. Now they knew, and suddenly. They broke the impassioned grip and the larger shadow lurched toward the end of the seat. A throaty, drunken voice demanded, "What the hell you mean, spyin' on people?"

"I was looking for a girl I know," Lon said dully.

The drunk was on her feet, weaving under her enormous weight. Outside the booth, the smoke-screened light caught her face—gray and sharply pointed, as though someone had used it to shovel cement. "You got a goddam lotta crust..."

Something of her newfound male aggressiveness spurted up in Lon. "What makes you think I've got nothing better to do than watch you make out?" She turned to leave and the big butch staggered forward, grabbing a rough handful of Lon's shirtfront.

"Get smart with me, you punk bastard, you'll get a knuckle san'wich!"

"Hands off me," Lon threatened. The sound that had not whined inside her head since the debacle with Miss Chamberlin made itself known, irritating her fury at being stopped. Her fists tightened, one swinging automatically over her head and smashing down against the girl's forearm, breaking the savage grip in a shredding of fabric. The ripped shirt ignited the smouldering fury and she was ready as the thick fist swung toward her in a wild, wide arc. The blow grazed her protecting left arm and her right smashed against the mud-colored face. A smaller shadow inside the booth shrieked, "Gil!" and the big butch, spinning in a feeble effort to strike back, crashed across the booth table. Panting, Lon watched the burly form hang there for one sliding moment, then thud to the floor like a limp sack. The dark blotch forming under the open-hung mouth, she guessed, was blood.

No crowd gathered; it was just a fight. But the icecube girls stood in their booth for a quick look-see, and the butch's tiny friend wriggled out of her seat, sobbing curses, then kneeling to mop at the bashed lover's mouth with a wrinkled head scarf.

Lon walked past the icecube party with a heroic nonchalance, yet uncertain that they were not friends of the fallen foe. "Gil woulda knocked the hell outta you, kid, sober," one of them said. And another, more impressed, argued, "First time I've seen her take the count, drunk or sober." As if that settled the matter.

And Lon made her way to the bar, leaving the blubbering Florence Nightingale with her sprawling patient. Still shaking with the unchained anger and furious about the torn shirt, Lon was nevertheless pleased with herself. As though she had graduated to a higher status in the strange new world to which she belonged—belonged irrevocably now, having defended both honor and the right to search for Mavis. For Mavis was related in some mysterious way to her prideful victory. The right to long for and to search for Mavis...

CHAPTER 7

They gained access to the canyon club and they returned to the beach once more. They invaded another spot in the Valley, open to the public, so that the straight gawkers stared at them as they stared at the other girls who drank cautiously and spoke in quiet subdued voices. Dancing was not permitted in the "open" clubs. And, perversely, Lon dismissed the simple maneuver of phoning the objects of their search, immersed in the drama of seeking Mavis in the darkest corners. Later, she would solace on Violet's rumpled bed where the lace and tafetta boudoir doll watched the ministrations with solemn painted eyes. And a more solemn Holy Mother looked beyond them from the bedroom wall.

But it was in the beer-stale darkness of The 28%, after all, that Lon at last found Mavis. Mavis alone, as palpably alone as only Mavis could be. She sat unobtrusively in the same shapeless black dress, with her slim piano fingers caressing a Coke bottle. Seemingly at peace with her aloneness.

Violet saw her, too. "Oh, Jeez, honey, look who's here!" Her quarry-trained eyes swept the room for Sassy Gregg, yet at the same time she was saying, "Listen, Sassy wouldn' of come back here." Trembling with a new strategy. "Listen, I'll stay aroun' the bar so I don't cramp your style. But remember, fix it up fer the both of us."

A flutter of wings and an organ chord, resonant and tremulous. Lon approached the redwood table convinced that whatever words came to her would fall far short of her meaning. Mavis, eyes on the curved bottle, did not see her. Not until Lon had swung her legs over the bench on the opposite side of the table.

"I didn't think you'd ever come back here," Lon said. It was an abrupt thing to say, but she had not expected to be subtle or clever.

Mavis looked up then, but took the time to find a cigarette before speaking. "Nobody called to ask me to," she told Lon. Her voice sounded husky, yet softly modulated, with no trace of the Georgia pine-country dialect

"I figured Sassy might not appreciate it if I called you." Lon felt a rush of warmth at so precisely admitting her interest.

"I thought that. I thought, when you didn't call, that was it."

Had Mavis thought about a phone call? Had she come tonight because...? Because of me, Lon told herself. And the implications were almost unbearable; like dry matches inside her, waiting for the poof and the sudden flame.

"I called a cab," Mavis said almost listlessly. "Told the man to drive here. Must have had some reason."

"Sassy didn't come?"

"We fought. Sassy had a date with her fiance and I wanted to come here. I didn't mind her going out—he's living with his father in La Jolla for the summer. Only gets into L.A. alternate weekends. I didn't mind, but Sassy wouldn't drive me here. Came anyway." Mavis recited in a jerky monotone now, puffing at the cigarette between sentences, like some mechanical speaking-machine exuding smoke. Yet something more than smoke and lifeless words emanated from her. A something that stuck in Lon's throat: something hard and sweet, like candy half-swallowed.

"Don't you care when Sassy goes out with a—a man?"

"Didn't care tonight did I?"

"But she cares what you do. Will she know about tonight About you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, she'll know."

"What will she do?"

Mavis pulled lazily at the cigarette, then snubbed it out in the aluminum pie-plate ashtray—the only kind Rags' customers didn't take home as souvenirs. "You ask a good question, baby. Ask me that one later."

Her tone jarred Lon, implying a malevolence that made Sassy Gregg hateful, suddenly. "Will it be worth it? I mean—if you did come to see me?"

"Depends. I liked the way you talked. That island of yours—that got me. Dream islands, they shouldn't ever be found. Keep yours in the talking stage, baby."

"Oh, but some day I'm really…"

"My daddy had an island. Only his was Detroit. Man, he thought when he ran from Georgia he'd come to paradise just because he could ride the front end of a street car. Trouble with real islands, they're peppered with booby traps." Mavis turned her head to one side speculatively. "You diggin' this bit, girl?"

Lon waited for more before committing herself. Nothing forthcoming, she ventured, "I haven't given much thought to the Island lately."

"Shouldn't give up a refuge like that baby."

"Oh, I didn't give it up. I've been hoping to talk to you about it again. A lot of people would have laughed at me, hearing about it as you heard. In a way, you did laugh. I can't explain why it was different, coming from you."

"That was why you wanted to see me again? That was the big reason?"

Lon sensed the level, penetrating stare and averted her interrogating eyes. "Only one of the reasons, Mavis."

"Since then you've found that other island. Right, baby? Lesbos. Now there is an island!"

Lon confessed ignorance once more, and it seemed incredible to her, as Mavis wove the spell of words, that Lon had not read or heard of the lyric poems written six centuries before Christ nor of the true priestess of their cult who had written them. Sappho. The impassioned verses, Lon learned, had been addressed to lovely virgins whose preparation for high-born marriage included Sappho's tutoring in music, poetry and the dance. Poems Lon had read and loved, but none such as these. And islands... she had read adventure until she could have walked the distant beaches and known where she stood. Yet, Lesbos—and Sappho! They would have made pure and joyful beauty of that night in June when her own schooling began, there where the luminous heart bled from night-glowing thorns. Through the magic of the ancient story to which Lon now listened ran a contrapuntal theme—a surging, violent hatred of the teacher who had defiled this noblest of all loves! As if Violet, by her gross ignorance, had cheated Lon—cheated her cruelly.

"Crazy Greek island," Mavis concluded. "And Sappho... man, she had it made! Read somewhere that she jumped off a cliff out of love for some male cat named Phaon. But I don't buy this. That's the censor board steppin' in to clean up the story. Either that, or she went all-out to convince the neighbors she was double-gaited. The way Sassy's doing tonight."

Lon ignored Sassy's name and thus needed no explanation. "Lesbos," she whispered dreamily.

"Yeah, Lesbos. Named our whole club after that island. But it wasn't all gimmicked up then, baby. Butch, fem, straight, single-gait, double-gait. It's jazzed up now and we call it gay. Back then, it was love and poetry, natural as the night dew." Mavis looked across the room at the dance floor, rocking in frenetic movement. Looked her contempt and said, "We still mess with the poetry and we call this dancing. But something's gone, baby. And we've tried to compensate, making a thing out of being sick."

"It must have been wonderful in those old days," Lon said. "If you were the way I am, and you loved somebody, it wouldn't seem...." She waited a long while and then whispered the word, "Dirty. Somehow, I never thought about it that way. Until just now, hearing you talk about the way it ought to be." And blurted suddenly, "With Violet, it's dirty!"

"You're not thinking gay, baby. You're not calling it love."

Now Mavis approached ridicule again. Lon could never be sure she was not being laughed at—never even be certain that the girl as much as knew her name; saying "baby" impersonally, as Mavis might say it to anyone. And Lon longed to hear the sound of her own name from the girl who drew her with a magnetism removed from the words she spoke. "Do you call it love, Mavis?" Lon asked.

"Haven't used the word for a long time. Loved my mother. Till mama died of T.B., waiting for my daddy to take off his white collar and earn some doctorin' money. But he was out preaching brotherly love. Getting rocks thrown at him, being so brotherly. Just one more Georgia nigger spoiling Belle Isle for pure-white picnics."

"I used to wish I could love my mother. I don't know—she's never really hurt me. It's like she was never there. Like she didn't exist."

"You couldn't breathe and not love mama," Mavis said, not hearing Lon. "And he wasted it all. Wasted all that love. She'd teach piano to kids in the neighborhood, coughing so hard their folks wouldn't let them come back after a while. Loving him, too. But knowing he was wasting his words, wasting her love—and some day mine would be wasted, too. I bawled out my last love words over an installment-plan coffin." Mavis returned from that painful flower-smelling room in the past. "Love," she said, with controlled venom. "That's dying slow!"

And it was with a half-hopeful melancholy that Lon asked, "You must have cared about someone since then."

"Married a man. Educated black... good man. He had me with my head in a book more than in bed. And I tried, baby. Tried. But it was nothin'. Nowhere."

"And after that?"

"During that. His sister came around. School teacher. What was I? Eighteen? Not much more. She used to lean on the piano while I played, like Sass does now. Leaned closer all the time, all the time." And now Mavis closed her eyes to recall or to blot out a memory—Lon could not be certain which. "It was like Mama leaning there, counting out the beat, rocking just a little to keep my time. Then it was like mama holding her little kid. Pettin' her baby, saying, 'Never mind, honey, it's all right, it's all right.' And that's how they found us, a long lot of lovin' days after that"

"Who found you?"

"Bill and my daddy. Walked in, just like that We were never careful." Mavis opened her eyes then, slowly. And Lon blinked to hide the mist in her own. "It wasn't just a daughter breaking his heart, baby. I was a beauty, he told me. I had learning. Had a talent sewed up in my hands. I had a power to win some love for my people and I broke the faith. Well, Bill was a man. That makes understanding come hard, but he was big. He must have made it. But my daddy—he cried for a lost Joan of Arc and took back my last name. No place to go but the honky-tonks because, baby, I was dead."

"But there were others, weren't there?" Lon asked the question timorously, hating whatever others there might have been. "Other... butches?"

Rags came by then and they ordered Cokes, though the bottle before Mavis was barely touched. "I wasn't buying any," Mavis replied when the pasty proprietress had left them. "Sassy... Sassy's something else again. I wonder, is it because she carries a bigger woe? Is that why I stay with her? Or is some kind of hate in me making me wait around like a vulture? Maybe I've got all those Push Days saved up inside me."

Push Days. Was she expected, Lon wondered, to know what this meant? No, apparently not for Mavis stopped only for a quick sucking breath. "Woman in Chicago once told me... maybe it's just a story... one day a week back there, the colored women would shop downtown. Came in bunches, shoving white women aside in Kresge's aisles. Accidentally on purpose. Bumping anything on State Street with a light skin. Never really hurting, but getting some kind of release for what was inside. I never went and I don't know anyone that did. But I watch Sassy and her misery—sometimes it's like having all those Push Days rolled into one. It does me good."

And it was time, then, to wonder why Sassy Gregg, who had looks, money and Mavis, should be an object of pity—even a tormented, vindictive pity. "You must be wrong, Mavis. What reason would you have to gloat over Sassy… or feel sorry for her?"

"No reason I plan to talk about" Mavis said with unexpected firmness. Then, before Lon could react to the curt statement, Mavis went on, "But Sass and I have our moments. Except when I'm remembering she's a collector. Surprised she didn't flip over your purple passion-flower. Sass collects anything that's different. Jaded taste-buds, see?" Mavis laughed the quick needle laugh that always died as it started. "As she'd say—literally jaded. Then I cain't he'p remindin' her she's messed up wif a li'l ole nigrah gal who know all a-bout Miss Gregg. Engaged-to-marry Miz Gregg!"

"Don't talk like that. And don't talk about her so much!" The jealous impulse engulfed Lon too suddenly to be squelched. "Talk to me about—oh, Sappho. I'd like to read some of her poems."

"I'll see that you get them. Then there's Renee Vivien. She was born in Hawaii, come to think of it. Can't seem to get away from islands."

"What about her? Who—?"

"Gay poet. Either everybody who writes poetry is gay or everybody gay writes poetry. This one wrote in French."

"I wouldn't understand that."

"I remember one in English. Mentions another place where Sappho made out Mitylene."

"Tell me."

"Takes the right mood," Mavis said thickly. This time the soft black eyes captured Lon's with a fierce joy, a wild communication, at once tender and agonizing. Whose hand it was that moved first, Lon could not be sure. But in the meeting of eyes and clasping of fingers she found the words, the choked and swallowed words—setting them free now with an awed reverence. "I love you, Mavis." Their eyes held fast and something incendiary darted between them, but the older girl was silent. "You'll say I can't. Not this soon. You're thinking it's just an excuse—the gay excuse. But I knew that first time. Even before I learned what it's like... between girls. I knew." And the words exploded from her again in an anguished burst: "I love you!"

Slim, dark fingers tightened around hers. Pressure of the moist warm palm. Oh, God, someone so beautiful, so bad, so unloved—so hopelessly necessary to love! And Lon waited, breathless, for the response that would echo what could be seen in the almond-shaped eyes, felt in the delicate hand. Waited for the sound and no sound came. Until, at last, the soft voice whispered in on kitten feet saying what Mavis could not say in her own words, because saying it meant dying slow. And Lon listened not to the poem she had been eager to hear, but to a gentle voice, now beloved:

Those we love have scorned men...

And we have the power

To be at once lovers and sisters.

In us, desire is less strong than tenderness,

And our mistresses could not deceive us,

Because it is the unfathomable in them which we love.

Our days, without modesty, without fear or remorse.

Unfold in slow, majestic harmony,

And we love as they loved in Mitylene!

* * *

The lyric hung between them, leaving nothing more to say. And then, like the splintering of stained glass in a cathedral, Violet had joined them. Mavis drew her hand from Lon's to reach, she made it seem, for a cigarette.

"Oh, hi, doll," Violet squealed as though she had not seen Mavis earlier. "I said t' myself, Jeez, if it ain't that cutie pie that was here before with that... What the hell was her name?"

"Sassy," Mavis said flatly. "Sassy Gregg."

"Well, funny thing, I was jest talkin' t' some a the kids and they said how come I haven't had a party fer ages? I always give these real crazy parties, kid. So I thought why don't I invite you an' that what's-her-name?"

It was a new turn in Violet's one-track mind and it left Lon dumb. A party. Violet had been stewing at the bar, wringing her brains for a new maneuver and here it was. Here she was, too, ignoring her promise not to get in Lon's way and trusting Lon less with future arrangements now that the cotton-candy mind had spawned an idea.

"How 'bout that, Lon? We'll have a real blast!"

Lon cursed Violet with her eyes. Still, another chance to see Mavis soon...

"Next Saturday. My house. Here." And Violet shoved a cocktail napkin at Mavis, a childish map scrawled across it with eyebrow pencil. "I wrote out how you find me, doll."

Mavis was stuffing the instructions into a long, black, feed-bag pouch when the second interruption shattered what had been left of the mood. It was Betty, carrying a tray. "You ordered this at the bar, right hon?" She set a beer before Violet, Cokes before the others. Then, addressing Mavis, she said, "Don't look now, dear, but your girlfriend's outside. Better skip out the back door or go and pacify her. Rags is about to blow her stack!"

There was a stiffening of breath around the table. Only Violet came to life audibly. "Sassy? She here, no kiddin'?"

"I don't know her name," Betty told no one in particular. "That butch Rags threw out of here for giving me a rough go. She's been hammering the damn door down, yelling she won't leave until her girl comes out"

Lon exchanged a meaningful look with Mavis. Oh, hell—goodbye—let's see each other soon—my God, what’s with Sassy?

And then Mavis was moving across the dance-floor—walking slowly, with the exquisite face tilted upward and the long black feed-bag bouncing against her calf with every proud step.

"We oughta go out, too. At least say hello," Violet said. The predatory quality in her voice made Lon want to strike her.

Instead, Lon replied with measured deliberation, "I wouldn't mind going out—just to make sure everything's all right."

They waited long enough for Violet to fortify herself with a quick swallow of beer and a quick inspection of her face in a compact mirror. Then, with Violet rehearsing the slinky walk with which Sassy would be approached, they followed Mavis out of the club.

* * *

The searching glare of the naked entrance light found them for Lon. They stood at the door of a gleaming red Corvette, Sassy looking at once like a blonde goddess and a ludicrous athlete in a long-sleeved yellow cotton and high-heeled pumps. But goddess or muscled human, she was furious. Her scalding, imperious tone carried to the doorway. "… the most filthy, literally repulsive tricks. Cruising this goddam garbage heap. You were meeting somebody here, damn you! You had a date with some dirty butch."

Violet moved forward and Lon held her back with a warning command. "Wait."

Lon could barely hear Mavis, yet the taunting expression in her voice came through. She faced the muscular blonde with an amused defiance. "Yo' keepin' tabs on me, Miz Gregg? Whar yo' bloodhounds?"

"Don't antagonize me with that, Mavis. Damn you, I've had enough." And then, accusing rather than threatening, "I was jittery all evening, wondering if you'd really sink this low. Ruined my whole goddam date, telling Dur I had a headache and then coming home to find..."

"Yo' upset, honey chile," Mavis crooned.

Sassy's shriek ripped the midsummer stillness. "Stop that! I don't need that slut talk to tell me what you are."

"Yas'm."

The bland response seemed to goad Sassy's anger. Her arms shot out, grasping the dark girl's shoulders, shaking Mavis. "Haven't you done enough to me, you black bitch?" Mavis limp under the powerful hands, Sassy's hysteria reverberating through the parking area... And then it happened again. The hum in Lon's head, her mouth going dry, her fists clenching in sudden, mindless reaction.

She lurched forward and Violet shrilled, "Don't stick your nose in it!" But Lon was sprinting the short distance toward the others, rushing Sassy with a courage bolstered subconsciously by her encounter at the Mermaid and with the outraged fury of a protecting lover.

Violet's cry had spun the high-heeled Sassy around. She had let go suddenly of Mavis and was waiting for the onslaught. Her confidence betrayed itself in a contemptuous, crooked twist of her mouth. Lon's charge was blind, leaving no doubt of her intention, no suggestion of verbal preliminary. Sassy shoved Mavis aside and stood ready.

The first swipe of Sassy's arm caught Lon in the right breast. Unexpected pain numbed her and she toppled backward. Before Lon could regain her balance, Sassy reached forward in a surprisingly effortless move, clamping Lon's left wrist and forearm in an unrelenting grip. Her motion was that of a superbly coordinated jungle cat and her controlled ruthlessness was more an advantage than her superior size and strength. Lon felt herself balanced and upright for one dazed second. Then, as the blonde braced herself and yanked savagely at Lon's arm, the falling movement was reversed. Lon felt herself being swung in a stumbling half-circle and in the next instant grunted as the air smashed from her lungs, her body's impact against the convertible like a soundless black explosion under her belly. Her head and arms dangle'd inside the open car, the top of the door hard against her midriff.

She struggled to pull herself up from the blackness, the wrath at her helplessness more painful than the pain itself. She pulled her arms upward toward the support of the leather-covered arm rest inside the door. But Sassy's rage was unspent. Lon gasped as the other girl's hands dug into her shoulder, jerking her upward and whirling her around like an impotent toy. Pinned against the metal hardness with the doorhandle crushing her spine, Lon caught an audible, sobbing breath. Her arms hung at her side like weights. And something vicious and inexorable pounded at her face and chest like an animate, crazed hammer. Dimly, she heard Violet scream—or was it Mavis whose thin cry reached her ears through the thud of blows? She was truly conscious only of the pummeling, punishing fists. And of her own humiliating immobility. Thinking, the left fist cuts. The diamond—it's the diamond!

Almost gratefully, Lon felt herself thrust away from the support of the car door. She plunged downward, head reeling, eyes tightly closed. Instinct propelled her arms forward to break the fall and she hit the asphalt in a scraping of flesh as elbows and the underside of her forearms grazed the coarse pavement.

It had been wordless, breathless and hopelessly swift. Sprawled with her face pressed against the dusty blacktop, Lon stirred as if in a tortured dream, uncertain that the muffled sounds around her were real. Dreamlike, it sounded as though it was Sassy, not she, herself, who sobbed hysterically, choking out the question—"Are you... corning home with me... or do you want... to stay here with... her?"

Then, was it... Yes, yes it was Violet, placating and obsequious: "Jeez, don't feel bad, honey. She'll be okay. What the hell else could you of done, the way she blew her cork?"

A dull slam. That would be the car door. Lon lay still, her mouth and nose throbbing, but aching more inside, listening for the second door to signal departure and finality. She heard it at last, filling in the waiting time with an awareness of the warm, sticky salt taste in her mouth and of independent hurts so numerous that they blended into one agonizing whole that was her body. The sound of a motor starting up. Above that sound a gently venomous voice, not unlike a dagger sheathed in velvet: "Reckon y'all satisfy now, Miz Gregg? Reckon it bettah if I drives yo' home?"

Later, when the cool hands touched her cheeks, she knew they could only belong to Violet. For somewhere in between the words and the reviving touch, a motor had roared, gears had meshed and all that she loved now in the world was speeding away from her into the night. She was too benumbed now for tears of pain. It was only in the knowing that Mavis had gone that Lon Harris learned what it means to cry like an unloved child.

Part Two
SASSY

CHAPTER 8

The Gregg home, one of the show-places of a show-place area near a pass from the San Fernando Valley to Hollywood, was built on three levels, hugging the slope of a brush-covered hill. A tortuous road, graded at more expense than building the house itself had required, brought automobiles to the leveled hilltop. An expanse of dichondra lawn, professionally broken by groups of date palm, hibiscus, oleander and tropical plantings, framed a flagstone-bordered swimming pool whose designer had spared neither talent nor the Gregg assets in disguising it.

The pool looked quite like a storybook illustration of a rustic pond: sapphire-blue proof of the perverse and ingenious American disposition to make something appear what it is not. In the tract houses constructed by Warren Gregg Development Company, Inc., dens that would later become bedrooms were decorated with wallpaper made in the image of knotty pine paneling; here, thirty thousand Gregg dollars had been dedicated to a filtered, heated, rock-and-moss-edged, back-yonder-on-the-farm, ole swimmin' hole.

A glass-walled recreation room and adjoining cabanas looked over the pool and a sizeable portion of Los Angeles County. The room stretched itself luxuriously over the entire top level, and from it, a seemingly unsupported concrete stairway twisted downward to the wider bedroom level. The bottom floor was devoted to a starkly modern living room in which a minimum of living was done, due to the duplicated comforts and superior vista afforded by the uppermost level. This room shared space with a laboratory-styled kitchen that separated itself by means of an elongated bar from another spacious expanse that the architect, unfamiliar with Gregg temperaments, had innocently blueprinted as "the family room." Servants' quarters took up the rest.

It was a cleanly conceived and executed house, depending on natural materials, unscrimped footage and meticulously planned built-ins to produce the unostentatious, uncluttered effect of luxury. It was the sort of house one might expect to find occupied by the family of a man whose wealth was the result of shrewdly crowding lesser areas of the county with unspacious, ostentatious, cluttered gingerbread houses. Houses hung with scalloped shutters that were not intended to shut, charming wren-holes carefully blocked, for sanitary reasons, to preclude occupation by bird life, and whatever worthless ornamentation might be required to convert the Cracker Box to the Dream. The Gregg domicile was both a monument and a stratified reaction to Warren Gregg's no-money-down Paradise Valley Estates, Lincolnshire Plaza and Robin Hood Highlands. And if the engineer who installed the stereophonic sound system suspected the nouveau riche Mr. Gregg's addiction to Lawrence Welk and Gene Autry, he was discreetly silent; ten grand would have erased the sentiments of Beethoven.

* * *

It was in her second-floor quarters, sandwiched between rooms designed for living and recreation, that Sassy wrestled with life, and, when Mavis was approachable, achieved recreation. At one a.m., following her encounter with Lon Harris, her gnawing need for Mavis was equalled only by the other girl's indifference.

It had been a hell of a day, Sassy reminded herself. First that aggravating episode with Dr. Friedman, later the argument with Mavis, then the nerve-wracking hour with Durham Saunders, during which she could only wonder if Mavis had fulfilled her threat to visit The 28%. Finally, the fevered jealousy that culminated in a prideless drive to the club, with its revolting aftermath. Lon. Driving home, Mavis had referred to the infantile girl-hero as Lon.

God, as though there weren't enough racking her up without this senseless new development! Mrs. Knippel spying on her—that Friedman ass pretending he didn't know that she didn't know what they were talking about—Durham halfheartedly accepting the limping excuse about her headache... these were torments with substance. There was another, greater torment, but she could not permit her mind to verbalize it; it was a monstrous sleeping dog that she let lie, convinced that neither God nor Leonard Friedman would make it go away. Tangible problems, these. Yet why was she plagued now by the incomprehensible thought that Mavis might be attracted to a scrawny, snot-nosed adolescent?

To top it off, Sassy was positive that the woman was prowling outside the bedroom door, ears peeled. If I open the door suddenly, Sassy thought, Mrs. Knippel will come up with some inane excuse about looking for her damned cat or wondering if I need an extra blanket. If snooping housekeepers were in the best tradition, Knips was a paragon.

"Mata Hari is at it again," Sassy told Mavis.

Mavis worked an orangewood stick around the shell-pink nails. Oval nails and slim, delicate fingers. Sassy could never look long enough at those hands. "So she's hip." Mavis shrugged. "Told you she didn't buy that upstairs-maid bit."

"Shh!" Sassy jerked open the door. There was no one in the hall, but she was sure that she heard carpet slippers padding softly on the staircase. "She heard us talking about her," Sassy said, and closed the door. Damn the woman. Just two days after Mavis had been "hired," Sassy had overheard Mrs. Knippel whispering to Mums. "Something funny going on between those two," the old crone had said. Damn her. This, in spite of all precautions, like letting Mavis off at the foot of the hill tonight, making her walk up the road so that they wouldn't come in together. And warning Mavis on other nights to be sure Knips was asleep before coming up from the maids' quarters behind the kitchen. "If she comes up again, tell her I asked you to do my hair," Sassy advised.

"That's a right cool idea, Miz Gregg."

How Mavis could squash her self-respect with that phony Southern drawl!

"Look, Mave, my nerves are shot. I told you I was sorry about the kid. Stop putting on that silly act of yours just because you know I detest it"

"Yas'm."

"Goddamit, I said stop it. It's infantile. It's puerile."

"Fo'got to say liter'lly neurotic, Miz Gregg."

"Don't ridicule me. I'm depressed enough without being ridiculed." Sassy threw herself across the satin-quilted bed, stretching her arms before her until the long-sleeved pajama shirt drew taut across her shoulders. She fixed her eyes on Mavis, desire crowding out her annoyance as she studied the raw-boned, yet somehow fragile taffy-colored nakedness. "Let's not fight again, Mave."

"Ain't fightin. Filin'."

Some day Mavis would drive her out of her mind. "Are you going to sit bare on that goddam vanity bench all night? Is fooling with your nails so goddam important?"

"I'm having deep, significant thoughts," Mavis explained. At least she spoke normally—always a hopeful sign.

"Example?"

"Mrs. Knippe’s the one who put a bug in your mama's ear. Having you consult that analyst."

"Well, of course. But that was a kick. I didn't get a chance to tell you what a ball I had this afternoon."

"The ball's about over, Sass. Your mama's gotten hip."

The quick anger rose in Sassy once more. "Maybe that's the way you want it. You figured we're washed up, so you went out on the prowl."

Mavis had a way of replying with arrogant silence.

"All right, I'm sorry. We promised not to discuss it. And I don't care what Knips thinks. If she wasn't the only housekeeper we've ever had that can sober up my mother, I'd hide the goddam family jewels in her enema can. Frame her and get her thrown out of here."

"Besides, you liked the analyst bit," Mavis said, unconvinced.

"Oh, it was priceless. I made a complete utter fool of the man."

"Fo' shame, Miz Gregg!"

“I played it coy. Made him feel totally insignificant. One minute I was analyzing his sex life, the next minute I was as naive as a vested virgin."

"Vestal," Mavis corrected.

"Of course we avoided the reason Mums made the damned appointment. So there he sat, literally twitching to get at my early conditioning factors and probably wondering about my goddam endocrine balance. His poor little head all stuffed up with Freud and Krafft-Ebbing and Havelock Ellis... Oh, it was pathetic, really."

"Yeah," Mavis said listlessly.

"I toyed with him. Asked if it were possible to be somatically normal and obsessively homosexual. He picked up his ears, poor lamb, and that's when I told him I had read all those big words in a book—and what did they mean?"

"You had that cat reelin'!"

"At the end he explained there was nothing he could do to help me if I didn't want to be helped and wouldn't cooperate. He could just see all those lovely dollars floating out the window and I thought he was going to cry, really. It was a gas, Mave. A real gas!"

"Yo'-all so adjusted, Miz Gregg, yo' put one ovah on that analyzin' man?"

The words were like a sneer and Sassy's hilarious recital shriveled inside her. "Was that supposed to be clever, Mavis?"

"Jus' askin' ma'am."

"You implied there's something wrong with me!”

"Now, why I wanna do dat, Miz Gregg?”

It was too much. "God damn you, will you make sense? That was what you implied, wasn't it? You're one hell of a lover, literally telling me I need an analyst I"

"Nevah said I loved nobody."

Sassy leaped to her feet, driven by the girl's uncompromising aloofness. Pacing the room, she let Mrs. Knippel be damned and shouted her invectives. "You're the one who needs to be psychoanalyzed. You. You're so goddam disgustingly neurotic, I wonder how I dared bring you into this house!"

"Is it hard to live with, Sassy?" Mavis said quietly.

The change in tone stopped Sassy cold. Haltingly, she said, "That doesn't make sense, either."

Mavis looked up from her orangewood stick. "Must be a grind to be big, queer, butchy Sass, getting your jolts from a colored gal. What can you do but run and run? Wear a big diamond on your paw, love up a storm with a guy you probably hate..."

"That's all! That's all I'm going to take from you...!" Sassy heard herself shriek the words. Uncontrolled, her hand reached to slap Mavis's face. She was desolate in the next instant, standing beside the vanity bench, cradling the other girl's head against her thigh. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that, honey. I've had such a miserable day."

Mavis remained stoically quiet and unyielding under Sassy's caresses. A resigned hopelessness fell over Sassy and she moved away, tears burning in her eyes.

"Why do you drive me and drive me to do things I hate myself for?"

Mavis seemed to grasp that opportunity for her revenge. "Didn't yo'-all demand to know sumpin', Miz Gregg?"

She was pitiless. Pitiless and detestable. Sassy dropped to the bed again, burying her face in her hands.. She had asked a question and now Mavis, unmercifully accurate in an analysis that Dr. Friedman would have groped for and perhaps never found—now Mavis drawled her answer.

"Must get tired, running. Meeting that big, strong he-man nights. Coming home sick enough to vomit. But planning to marry him, come across steady. Have a man steady, Sassy, so's you can keep somebody like me on the side and tell yourself you is bi-sexual. Tell the world. Tell everybody, go ahead..."

"I am!"

"Tell it to Sassy. Get her to believe it!"

"I am! You don't know everything about me."

"You think I have to hear it from an analyst's couch? I know it in bed, baby. All right for me to know it there. But, God Almighty, don't you ever admit to Sassy Gregg that she's butch—butch all the way!"

The agony of that truth twisted itself in Sassy's gut. "You're vicious. You're a vicious, sadistic, pathological liar." In the violent passion of her delivery, Sassy almost believed herself. Mavis was sadistic. She did lie.

Yet Mavis remained unperturbed, almost casual. "Never does help to run, does it, Sass? What can you do but run some more—run faster?" She concentrated on the result of her manicure for a moment Then, in a whisper that approached sympathy, she asked, "Where do you meet that other man, baby? Ruggio's bar? Or do you change the meeting place when you can't run any more?"

It was like finding yourself caught in a vise—struggling for breath. Sassy attempted a careless dismissal. "I haven't the foggiest notion what you're talking about"

"How big is it, Sassy?" the level voice persisted. "How big a habit? Quarter-grain? Fatter? How fat is that monkey on your back?"

"That's a filthy accusation," Sassy cried. And, somehow, believed this, too, for the moment.

"What is it, horse? I know all about it Sassy. I've worked in cribs like Ruggio's before. Known more junkies than you've got years."

Sassy could only shriek now. "That's vile! Literally filthy and vile."

Mavis rose, standing in front of the dressing table mirror, inspecting her nude reflection without interest "Why don't you swim, baby? Never see you in the pool. Never see you in the light without those long, long sleeves."

It was useless to feign ignorance. Sassy dropped her head to the pillow, pulling her arms up to press them against her ears, hard. "You wouldn't say these horrible things to me if you loved me."

"Nevah said I loved nobody." Mavis moved easily in and out of dialect.

"Mave!" Sassy dredged the name up from a deep, buried pool of anguish in the pit of her stomach.

"Nevah did but once. Nevah could since."

Another time, Sassy would have demanded the name of the girl who had known that elusive love. Now she could only cry, "Why do you enjoy being so cruel to me?"

"Calls 'em as I sees 'em, Miz Gr..."

And Sassy was on her feet again, stamping away from the bed nervously. "That immature dialect! You make a goddam jackass of yourself." She looked for a cigarette in an ebony box on the dressing table. The box was empty and she slammed the lid against the marble table top, satisfied with the chipping damage she had inflicted. A full pack rested on top of the headboard, but suddenly a cigarette was the last thing on earth she wanted. For Mavis was not finished.

"Yo'-all wear them long-sleeve pee-jamas when dat big boy enjoyin' yo', Miz Gregg?"

Sassy whirled to face her. Grasped the frail brown shoulders, despising herself for groveling and unable to keep the desperate pleading tone out of her voice. "He doesn't know. Nobody—oh, God, Mavis, nobody's going to know." Mavis looked through her, soft-eyed, with an indefinable expression that combined those strange bedfellows only Mavis could combine; contempt and compassion. "I trust you, Mavis. I don't know how you found out but I trust you. Honey—swear you won't tell anybody. Swear you won't make any cracks, like that time at The 28% ... I nearly died. Promise me you'll never mention it again!" The steady gaze bored through Sassy. "No. No, you won't. I shouldn't even imply that you will. And I can kick it Mave. I can kick it any time I want to."

Mavis freed herself from the grip, crossing the room to find a cigarette.

"I've never taken it seriously, darling. One of the girls I knew at school... I was under tremendous emotional strain at the time. We went to a party and she introduced me to... Mave, it's just a matter of nerves. I'm high-strung, you know that! It's not like being hooked or anything ridiculous like that."

"No'm." Mavis lighted her cigarette, puffed smoke languidly into the air, her back to Sassy.

"Honey, you aren't helping me a bit. Be nice to me, Mave.”

"Yeah."

"I couldn't help what happened tonight I thought about that half-baked butch touching you and I lost my mind. It's your fault, Mave, as much as mine."

"Yeah."

"You went for her, didn't you? I noticed it the time we were there together—letting her light your damn cigarettes and drool over you. You went for her!"

"Do tell."

"God knows how many times you've been with her. What happened all those times? What did you do?"

Mavis turned slowly to agonize her with a satisfied grin. "Had us a cozy confab. Funny li'l kid butch, move quick, like a long, tall bug. Yo' stronger, Miz Gregg. Yo' prove yo' stronger. But she gonna make me Secon' High Priestuss, man."

The taunt and the sight of that perfectly formed body swept away pride and reason. Sassy moved behind the girl, slipping her arms around Mavis from the back, pulling her close. Mavis permitted the familiarity, but her body felt cool and rigid. The coldly permissive attitude, the acceptance that was more piercing than rejection came, as it always did, like a challenge. For a moment Sassy closed her eyes, drowning herself in the sensual knowledge of the warmth against her thighs, regretting the pajama top that separated her from this intoxicating creature. No slender fingers moved to touch her enfolding arms; Mavis was absorbed in slow, deliberate motions of smoking. Sassy could have killed her then—crushed the breath from her and been free of this final, degrading agony. Yet the need for this distant body was like that other painful hunger; unsatisfied, it would destroy her completely. "You're not serious about her, Mave. Any more than I could give a damn about that crummy little exhibitionist with the lavender hair. They're cheap, honey. No depth to them. And I know how you detest anything cheap." She was convincing herself now. "We're silly to quarrel about anyone that insignificant. All we need now is each other."

Again the withering silence, and now Sassy was willing to plead.

"Come over to the bed. Please, lover."

Mavis disengaged herself and preceded Sassy to the bed. The girl stiffly and dutifully, knowing, Sassy was sure, that fulfilling the plea dispassionately was the supreme insult They sank to the cool satin and Sassy wrapped herself around the unresisting body. How complaisant Mavis was in her awareness of that body—of its beauty and Sassy's insatiable need for it! She used it like a whip. But what was it that Mavis wanted of her? Mavis was, she really was, sadistic. She wanted nothing but to force Sassy to her knees. Some day, Sassy thought I'll have to kill her. I'll have to, and she'll be to blame. Aloud, nuzzling her tormentor's breast, she said, "Why can't I get next to you, Mavis?"

"Next to me now."

"No, I mean—truly get to know you. I try so hard to reach you and you deliberately set up a wall between us. I can't bear the way you know every little detail about me and you might as well be a stranger." She kissed Mavis's shoulder, the graceful curve of the neck. The hunger was spreading through Sassy like angry flame. "What makes you tick, honey? I don't know anything about you."

"Come from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Daddy was a voodoo man.”

"Don't lie to me, Mave. A couple of times you told me it was Georgia. Don't laugh at me." Then, afraid that her strident, critical tone might lose Mavis completely, she forced a deprecating giggle. "You're mad. Literally mad, honey. Why do I put up with you?"

Under her cheek, Sassy felt the noncommittal shrug of a shoulder. "Beats me, Miz Gregg. It beats me."

And burying her face in the unwelcoming flesh, Sassy cried, "Oh, Mave—Mave, darling, if you weren't around I'd... Oh, God, let go a little. Give, Mave. I don't ask for so much!" Her mouth pressed hard over the cherry lips and it was an ecstasy of devouring. "Love me, Mave. Please, love me." She moaned the words against the reserved mouth and her fingers dug voraciously into the chill coffee skin. "I've got to know you, honey. All of you—everything about you." And aware she could never draw the girl close enough to feel secure and wanted, "Mave, lover, lover... Why do you torture me this way? God damn you, why do you lie here and act like you're doing me a big, fat favor?"

The robot face accepted her kisses. The body that was like dry ice, frozen, yet searing to the touch, responded. But always with something held in reserve for itself. The desire consumed Sassy, gutting her insides. "Mave, love me. Love me, love me! You rotten bitch—love me!" She poured out her frustration in a hail of painful kisses, searching frantically for that place where the armor was thin, where Mavis, and all that Mavis was, would be exposed to her and vulnerable. She could not love Mavis enough, hurt her enough in her rage to possess what could not be possessed. The girl offered no more objection to Sassy's brutal handling of her body than to the intermittent love words, the occasional caresses that were adoring and gentle. It was more than a violent lovemaking. It was revenge reflected back and forth endlessly in two mirrors. Sassy's teeth made a painful mockery of kisses, Mavis ridiculed her attempt to bring tears with a retribution of silence, and the silence inflamed Sassy's hunger. "That goddam butch had it coming to her," she cried once. And, again, "You're thinking about her when I want you to love me." Screaming the words into indifferent flesh. "I could kill you... I could kill you! Love me... me..."

There was no way to judge when it ended; Mavis made it clear that there had been no beginning for her and no end. Enervated, not by a climactic moment in which her senses were drained of desire, but by a sobbing physical failure, Sassy fell back to the smooth satin bed. Still she held onto the other body, clasping it like someone drowning, clutching at a floating reed. Lon. The name stuck into her midriff like a barb. The name, and the certain knowledge that one day Mavis would not be there beside her at all. Lon. The suspense gnawed at her, and after a long period during which there was no sound but her own sobbing breath, she said, "You've got to care about something, Mavis. Everybody cares about something... someone..."

Mavis said nothing and another fear penetrated Sassy; the spectre that she rarely permitted to haunt her mind. It was the benumbing dread of a night when Ruggio's bar would be crowded with unfamiliar faces. The police might pick him up or the man might disappear into that gulping abyss that swallows pusher and pushed alike. If Mavis was gone and the man whose name she did not know was gone... what would she do then? "Don't leave me, Mavis. Promise you won't ever leave me. Oh, God, honey—you've got to promise!"

The other's breath came steady and even. And as Mavis rose from the bed, there was no doubt in Sassy's mind about the identities of victor and vanquished. "Now, now, Miz Gregg," Mavis drawled, "whut make yo' think I evah gonna go way from yo'?"

There followed one of those rare Saturdays when Warren Gregg had no golf game lined up—when his wife, Katherine, was not hung over from the night before. And Sassy was in neither the mood nor the condition to escape them.

On Saturdays like this one, weather permitting, they would have lunch on the cantilevered terrace outside the family room; a captive affair that substituted weakly for family tradition. Grim, Sassy summed it up in her mind. literally grim. For apart from their physical resemblance to each other—the impressive height, the sun-bleached blond hair and physiques that a geneticist would have selected for the launching of a Super-race—the Greggs brought to the glass-topped luncheon table no similarities except their separate, engrossed silences. And just as their outward appearances were distinguished, in addition to the obvious diversities of sex and age, by Warren's sagging pot, Katherine's expensively preserved youth and Sassy's economical handsomeness, their silences, too, were unique.

Of the three, Sassy was certain that only she could probe the mental processes behind their respective facades of silence.

Her father's sphere revolved in an orbit of sub-contractors, available acreage for subdivision and the reassuring symbols of his rocketing post-war success: the house in which he spent little time, the forty-foot ketch that rarely moved from its slip at Balboa, the startingly youthful wife whose impeccable tastes in clothes and liquor he could afford to satisfy. And me, Sassy thought. Me. For her mounting allowance demands were, she knew, his deepest source of satisfaction. Writing a check for his "spoiled baby-doll," with no questions asked, was the ultimate signpost of his success in life.

Her mother's private universe was more complex. Money had separated Katherine from her early-day beauty shop confidantes, but had not purchased (not yet, not yet, Katherine kept reminding herself) the social prestige for which she yearned. She loathed the more daring building tradesmen for whom shoestring gambles had paid off, despised their gauche wives, writhed in the quick-success social circle wherein her choice of escapes was so limited. For each affair produced, once the ego was satisfied, only another Warren Gregg. A lesser or a greater, an ascending or descending image of the ambitious carpenter whose vision and gambling instinct had coincided so accommodatingly with the post-war need for housing. Then, too, there was Sassy…

Sassy could almost feel a sympathy for her mother's hatred of her. For it was the engagement to Durham Saunders that represented, to Katherine Gregg, a step in the right direction. How transparent the woman was. How thinly she disguised her resentment of the fact that so many hopes were dependent on a daughter (a behemoth of a daughter; Katherine would think this way) whose size alone dispelled the illusion of youth the older woman strived devotedly to maintain. What else does she hate about me, Sassy wondered. She knows I'm too aware of her restlessness. I see through her bored tolerance of Daddy, through her psychological need for other men, through the reasons for her lushing. Reasons enough, Sassy thought with a charitable malice.

Seen so nakedly by her child, Katherine Gregg alternated between pretending that Sassy didn't exist and scheming to keep Sassy's "peculiarities" under control. At least until the marriage to Durham Saunders was assured. A hint at another postponement of the wedding was enough to start her on a week-long martini jag. This weak dependence amused Sassy almost as much as it turned her stomach. Though sometimes she would speculate on which of Durham's divorced parents her mother would cultivate first: Mrs. Saunders, whose nod could fling open innumerable, selective doors in Beverly Hills—or that terribly lonely, equally distinguished grass-widower in La Jolla. Whatever course Sassy's mother selected, a wedding would free her of six feet of "spoiled brat." Her life, Sassy mused, will begin in earnest the day Dur starts sleeping with me legally.

But these were aged, hackneyed introspections. And Sassy had come to the luncheon table with more potent ingredients brewing in her private cauldron. She was conscious of Mavis in the living room, inventing a musical message game as she cleaned the piano keys. Home Sweet Home unrhythmically plunked, with the wrong notes accented. What made her so sadistic? And Sassy was aware of Mrs. Knippel’s stern Prussian countenance as the meal was served. More intensely, of the strain between her parents, resulting from Knips' dutiful report to her mother after having seen Daddy press the requested check surreptitiously into Sassy's waiting hand. God damn them all… It was because of them, because of Durham, because of Mavis and now, because of that half-baked butch at The 28%, that she, Sassy, needed the money, needed the surcease and oblivion it would buy.

As if this business of being Durham's dearly beloved bride-to-be wasn't enough to wrack the nerves. Now even the necessary existence with Mavis was threatened. Not that L.A. wasn't crowded with girls who would give God knows what for the chance to shack up with Sassy. But when had any girl at all been necessary to her after she, herself, had become necessary to that girl? Damn them all, and Mavis especially. And that butch especially. What was her name? Lon.

The two hundred dollars—the check in her pocket—was good for at least three cures and some left over. She would be careful to spread the binges through the month, timing each speedball fix to the moments when living in the same world with all of them—her mother, Knips, Mavis, Durham—would reach that unendurable apex she had learned to recognize. It was a meticulously controlled therapeutic program, Sassy assured herself. Not at all like being hooked. She had caught a few glimpses of the weak-willed, miserable addicts who hadn't known when to stop. Hers would continue to be shrewdly engineered lifts, during which all of her tormentors could be scanned through impersonal, uninvolved, unemotional eyes. Projections on a screen, powerless to touch her. She would observe them, but remain apart from them, unhurt, invincible, not succumbing as at other times to remorse, guilt, the draining anger of which she was the ultimate victim while the target went untouched.

Not tonight, though. Not tonight, she cautioned herself. She would manage to get through the date with Durham without any soporific but her knowledge that he was a future convenience, not an immediate necessity. But the next time I make a pass at Mavis, she thought, I won't really need her. For the pacifying mixture of heroin and cocaine possessed a crowning attribute; it rendered her indifferent to sex. I'll leave her needing me. Do to her what she's done to me and then leave her begging. And Sassy thought of final retribution: I'll make her wish she'd never looked at Lon!

From the living room, three descending notes, repeated twice in the process of cleaning ivory keys, reversed themselves to form the opening bars of You'll Never Walk Alone. Mavis at her most vitriolic, playing the square, the way she mangled the language just to be irritating.

"Warren, how long are we going to put up with that?" Sassy heard her mother asking. "There's something insolent and unnatural about that girl. Mrs. Knippel's already given me an ultimatum. Either that jig goes or Knips goes."

"When," said Warren, "did we start taking orders from that battle-axe?"

"The day Sassy started hiring the help. Warren, I don't mind you indulging her with money, but foisting that—that thing on us!"

They argued as though Sassy were not present, as they always did, and Sassy retaliated by ignoring them.

"What's the difference between Sassy hiring a maid and you doing it? Explain to me."

"I'm only telling you what Mrs. Knippel reports. The girl is inexperienced, point one. I don't like her high-handed attitude, point two. Warren, she's made a nervous wreck out of Knips. Ignores her completely, she does."

"Good for her. I wish I could ignore the old bitch."

The whispered warning. "Warren, Mrs. Knippel is in the kitchen." Then, meaningfully, "You might be interested in knowing that the two of us are concerned—about—about the time that girl spends with Sassy."

It was time to withdraw from the neutral position. "Exactly what is that supposed to mean?" Mutual hatred crackled across the table as Sassy threw defiance into her mother's face.

"Just that you haven't been yourself, darling." And in that familiar blend of arsenic and syrup: "You're pale, you aren't swimming or playing tennis. A few times you've actually looked at me glassy-eyed. I'm worried about you, lovey. Naturally!"

"You were looking in a mirror, Mums." Sassy could sheath her claws and purr, too. "A morning-after mirror, angel."

Pained indignation. "Warren, listen to the way she talks to me. Did you hear what she just said?"

"Well, what the hell do you expect? You do the boozing, then you tell the kid it's she who's glassy-eyed."

Her mother's tone grew menacing to counter the rebuff. "That's not all I'm telling, Warren. Knips informed me that last night…"

Sassy watched her father slam his fork into the chicken salad then push himself away from the table. "I gave in last week. Goddamit, I swallowed all that crap you picked up from that filthy-mouth…"

Horrified whisper. "Warren, she's in the kitchen."

And he was on his feet. "Let her get an earful! Fine if she hears what I've got to say." Sassy glowed with inner warmth, righteously accepting the vindication which, somehow, seemed just. Of course her father's face would be crimson with rage under the sparse yellow hair. Why wouldn't he reach over to shake an angry fist in the hateful face? "You—you repeating all her dirty lies. Telling me your own kid is carrying on like a goddam queer with a black maid." He turned his wrath to the glass-walled kitchen and bellowed.

"Come on out here, you evil-minded bitch! Come out here and tell that to me—damn it, me—"

"Warren, for God's sake, she'll hear you."

Sassy nibbled on the Melba toast, gratified by the spectacle of Katherine Gregg backing down. Knips might even tear out of the house; he would put them both in their place—yes.

"Well, I've got news for you, Kitsie. By God, I've got news for you, for your goddam Mrs. Knippel, too. Sic-ing that crooked headshrinker on your own kid. By God, that burned me up!" He sat down, pausing significantly. Then, confident—as though assured that his next statement would obviate anything his wife could say—"You're so worried about Sassy putting off the wedding, you'd accuse her of anything filthy that comes to your mind. Well, I've got proof she's no dirty pervert. Proof enough to throw that lying female out on her fanny—sue her for libel, or whatever." He turned to Sassy, with a look half-apologetic, half-proud. Sassy lowered her eyes and he addressed her mother once more, enunciating each word with caustic precision. "I ran into Patsy Williamson at the bank yesterday. Just about the same goddamn time you had Sassy lowering herself in front of some phony doctor. You remember Patsy?"

"Williamson. Oh, they had their boat next to yours at Carey's Marina. I don't really know her, Warren"—hesitant, sounding as though she might drown the argument in tears. "I never liked going there, Warren. You know how seasick I get—and that fishy smell—"

And Sassy's pleasure in seeing her mother squelched gave way to a shocked suspicion of what would come next.

"Patsy's another goddam story-peddler for you. But at least what she told me proves your Mrs. Knippel is a liar. Listen! Sassy and Durham have been using our boat. And not to sail in! You follow me? Using the goddam cabin. Almost every Saturday night—that's what she said."

And, oh, God, the triumph in his voice. The pride in her exoneration.

"Now tell me some more of those dirty stories, Kitsie. The kid's just as normal—as you or me." Then he returned to his chicken salad with the nervous joy of exculpation. Sassy's honor had been redeemed in fornication. He could complete his meal with the smugness, having avenged the wrongly accused.

God, what a medal to pin on me, Sassy thought. And, revoltingly, her mother was not crushed, but suddenly elated. "Is that really true, lovey? Darling, don't be ashamed to admit it. We're your parents, Sassy, and we understand these things. Truly we do."

Sassy ignored her. The snub was mistaken for embarrassment and the enthusiasm soared. "Don't be upset, lovey. It's so much better than what we were afraid of. Don't you see, darling? We jumped to a dreadful conclusion, and under the circumstances... Well, since you're going to marry Durham anyway, we're terribly relieved. As a matter of fact, you may not even understand why I was concerned or why I wanted you to see Dr. Friedman."

"I haven't the foggiest notion," Sassy said, wide-eyed, pleased with the uncomprehending sound of innocence that came from her.

"Of course she doesn't know, goddamit! It's that dirty-minded fat-fanny in the kitchen that knows about crap like that."

"Warren, don't bellow."

"It was her idea, wasn't it? Trying to run a man's family instead of his house..."

"I thought of it, too. After all, you hear about what happens at some of those girls' schools. And between roommates at college."

"And whose idea was girls' schools?"

"Darling, I was only..."

"Only trying to get the kid out of your way so that you could..."

"... only trying to do the right thing, and I thought she might have come under bad influence in one of those places."

Then, dropping her voice to a throaty half-whisper, "I still can't say that I approve of that colored maid, Sassy. You might not be aware of her effect on you..."

"That's all the crap I'm going to listen to!" The roar again, the indignant roar that explained he had thought things were all settled and here they were at it again.

Tears started down her mother's expertly made-up face and Sassy knew, again, what would follow. "All right, all right, I was wrong. I'm glad I was wrong, but I'm completely unnerved. I need a drink desperately, Warren."

"Eat your goddam lunch."

"I can't. I need one little drink and I'll be all right And I'm too upset to go inside and face Mrs. Knippel. Be a darling and—"

Sassy's father rose, grudgingly, leaving his unfinished lunch. On the way to the kitchen, he stooped to kiss Sassy's forehead. "Don't worry about a thing, sweetheart Your daddy's on your side—remember that!"

Sassy reached up to pat his cheek, inwardly rejoicing over her mother's reaction.

"Come over and kiss me, too, darling. And let's not bicker, for heaven's sake." And after the self-conscious smack had been pasted upon Katherine's cheek, she said brightly, "We need a change of pace, lovey. We haven't been to Las Vegas in ages. Couldn't you get away, Warren? Say, next weekend?"

Warmth and sunshine were permeating the scene now and her father was laying on the good-life attitude, implying with a knowing wink that Las Vegas held delicious secrets that could only be hinted at, never mentioned out loud. "You never get any argument from me about Vegas, Kitsie. Maybe Sassy and Durham would like to make it a foursome."

Sassy shuddered inside herself, but not with fear. She could predict that her mother would relieve her of the burden of declining, which her mother did, indeed, with a lascivious giggle, saying, "Oh, they'd be bored, darling. I thought...

We'll have a lovely time, just the two of us, and the kids can have the house to themselves for a change."

It was like telling Sassy that driving to Balboa was a time-consuming nuisance when, with cooperation from her thoughtful parents, she could more conveniently share a bed with Durham in the comfort of her own home. You bitch, Sassy thought. Vulgar, hateful bitch! Though, except for the presence of Mavis, it would probably work out that way and save the monotonous drive down the coast. And thinking of Durham made her wonder if, perhaps, it wouldn't be easier to enact the weekend pantomime with him after a fix. He wouldn't know the difference, and—not that she didn't enjoy him in bed, really enjoy him. Oh, hell. Her mind rejecting the incongruous pretense, she thought again of Mavis, plunk-plunking with the lemon-soaked rag in the living room, and saw that it would be difficult now to delude herself, because she had not fooled Mavis. The dark-haired butch, the glutton for Sassy's own unleashed fury, crowded her thoughts next. God, with that one to worry about, too, things certainly would be easier after a fix. It wouldn't be a necessary thing. Just easier. Her hand dropped to her slacks, drawing a comforting crackle from the check in her pocket

"Just one little drinkie," she heard her mother saying lightly. Her father crossed the patio to slide open the kitchen door. Knipps would glare at him, but the martini would be mixed and waiting. Such was the old brown-nose's devotion to her mistress.

"I'm so relieved," that mistress sighed. She smiled her sweetly baleful, youthful smile at Sassy. "Lovey, you can't know how relieved I am. One little teeny drinkie and everything will be fine. I should have guessed that Knips was only using her imagination." She scowled then. And Sassy, running her index finger over the perforated edge of the hidden check, listened to the reason for her mother's annoyance.

The piano-cleaning satire in the background was working itself into a series of jarring discords. Then, apparently to let Sassy know that none of the conversation had escaped her, Mavis swiped out a perversely off-key, erratically punctuated message: It Ain't Necessarily So. Sadistic! But a masochist, too, Sassy thought. Trembling inside with the thought, "What does she want me to do—kill her?"

CHAPTER 9

“I like your thighs better white," Durham Saunders was observing. "They're not what I'd call white yet, but they look nicer than they used to, Sass."

He lay flat on his back, showing off the tanned skin he disliked on women and painstakingly cultivated on himself. The berth was barely long enough to accommodate his naked, six-foot-three bulk, so he had drawn up his legs and folded his hands under his head to prop himself up for a comfortable view of the cabin.

Sassy listened to him from an edge of the opposite bunk. Smoking. Wishing there had been time to stop by at Ruggio's and find someplace to boil the junk before coming here. It was only a wishful thought; she wasn't desperate and she wasn't going to be careless. But now, looking at the vapid, physical-culture-magazine-cover face, averting sight of the blatantly displayed body, she told herself that next time she would be ready.

"For a while there, before you outgrew that muscle-girl kick, you were so damn dark... It was like I was trying to change my luck." He laughed the full, deep-down irritating laugh. Then shifting from indolent observation to the more typical urgency, "Hey, honey. Do we get this show on the road?"

Sassy pulled on her cigarette. "Let me finish this."

"Take your time," Durham contradicted himself. "Never rush a good thing, that's my motto."

"You're so right." Humoring him. Stalling.

"Hey, how's about a little parade? Don't I get my parade?"

"You've seen all there is to see, Dur."

"Not enough. Honey, I could look at you from now on."

"Let me finish this cigarette."

"Okay. But take the blouse off first."

"I don't know. It's chilly in here."

"I've gotta see those gorgeous bubs. What's the use of those beautiful titties if you keep them covered?"

"It's too bright in here, Dur. Put something over that light and I'll do it."

Durham grinned. "Will that warm it up in here? What're you doing, practicing up to be a blushing bride?" It was a relief to hear his inane, suspicionless tone. "When we're married, remind me that you like dim lights and hot rooms, hey?"

The cigarette had burned down to the filter, like time running out on a condemned prisoner. She got to her feet, found a metal ashtray in the galley and ditched the butt, Durham's eyes following her half-naked body, she feeling them as palpably as she would feel the harshness of his hands soon.

"You're a man-sized view," he told her. "And, mmmm, I like a lot of what I like." Adding as she stared into the ashtray, "Come on, Sass. Let's see it all."

An old yacht-club burgee, remnant of her father's long-discarded enthusiasm, lay crumpled on the bunk. She draped the pennant over the shaded wall fixture. Through the marine-blue fabric, the single bulb cast a dismal light; dark enough, she decided. Then, filling the plastic glass next to Durham's bunk with bourbon (the routinely purchased bourbon), she swallowed quickly and handed the drink to him. "Stoke up, Commodore."

Slipping out of her blouse, reaching back to unhook the tailored bra, she worried. But looking closely, after the garments had been tossed aside, she drew reassurance from the barely visible punctures in her arm. The last was more than a week old; God, she was getting hypersensitive about needlemarks! It wasn't as though she had a habit—one of those impossible to disguise, daily, even three times daily habits. To be this concerned about a casual kick! Goodness. Besides, Durham high enough, excited enough, wouldn't be likely to make a microscopic inspection of her arm. Still, the burgee over the light was comforting. Besides, but, still, yet— she was weary of self-argument. It was time, hey, to get the show on the road...

She crossed the few feet to where Durham sprawled, waiting for her. Enormously proud of her body, she found a lofty, disdainful satisfaction in its effect upon him. Telling herself, arguing again, I wouldn't feel this way if I weren't bi-sexual. Would I? And refuting her point as he pulled her down to his firm, disciplined body, feeling the familiar chill take possession of her insides.

She felt no loathing for him, only a condescending tolerance of awkward hands kneading her buttocks, pinning her hard against him. She had known Durham too long, had even learned to like him in a detached, comfortable, permissive way, as one might like anything that draws attention, by comparison, to one's own superiority. She could not hate anyone so incapable of stirring her emotions; the reserve, the chill generated by his touch, were impersonal. She could patronize him for his passionate abandonment under these circumstances, while she remained self-possessed and aloof, but she could not hate him. Finally, there was something too ludicrous in the scene they were about to dramatize—something grotesquely laughable that precluded the strong, basic emotions. For to escape the ridiculous, it was she who should possess, not be possessed. She who, knowing a woman's secrets, knew better how to arouse the hidden fires—she who should play the aggressor. Durham's fumbling efforts were only those of an inept beast; in her case, too meaningless even to stir revulsion. And the monotony, the crudity of his approach made it difficult to manufacture ardor. Why do I bother? Sassy wondered. Why do I let him do this to me? Then, reminding herself that if she tried, really tried, response might come. I wouldn't have a worry in the world if that happened!

Trying meant taking part in the panting repartee that Durham needed as he needed the motion of flesh.

"You aren't with it, Sass. Let go!"

"Give a girl time, Dur."

"I'll warm you up, hey? Don't I always warm my honey up?"

"Oooh...!”

"I like you hotter'n a two-dollar pistol." Running his hands over her body like a county-fair judge appraising a steer. "You're my big baby! Plenty to warm up, hey?"

He dragged at her body clumsily, reversing their positions until her shoulders touched the mattress. Like a sweating, muscle-bound wrestler, pinning his opponent to the mat in a sloppily rehearsed television event. Oh, God...! Wriggling against her, handling his enormous weight without regard for her need to breathe.

"I know what you need, honey. You've got to be teased."

"Dur... you're heavy..."

"Don't tell me you don't like it. That. Tell me you don't like that!"

Oh, God. Get it over with, you damn fool!

"Honey, I'm gonna tease you till you're screaming for it. Tonight you're gonna let go—really let go. You're gonna scream, Sass...!"

What breath was left in her was stifled by the slobbering kiss. Automatically, a reaction from time after time of trying, desperately trying, her arms went around him, and under the pressures of his body and his smothering mouth, she tried to force the emotions that should be logical now; normal now. If once, she thought, if once I could feel something for him, I'd be able to take Mavis or leave her. The guilt would be gone then—the gnawing pain of inferiority expressed in never being able to accept her place in the clan that society reviled.

Her mouth finally released, Sassy shut off her critical senses and pretended. Pretended because there was no other way.

"Again, Dur...!"

"Oh, you like that?" Dur going through his tease routine.

"Love it, darling."

"Boy, you're wound up. You're gonna go wild in a little while."

"Don't I always?"

"Bite me if you want to. Don't hold out on me tonight, Sass." And with his face bearing down toward hers once more, "Try this on for size, gorgeous!"

Her lungs ached and she released herself from the second kiss, gasping. And Durham, breathless for his own reasons, crowed, "I've got baby all hot and bothered. Hey, we're wasting time. The mood you're in—"

Sassy closed her eyes. Thinking, this is going to be too much. But she musn't let herself compare, mustn't let herself recall her own patient, meticulous, passion-subdued technique, mustn't let herself be so sharply aware of the differences between girls searching for the same explosive release that Durham sought now, and this perspiring, ungraceful, demanding ugly body. She clamped her lower lip under her teeth to prevent an audible outcry. Ugly! Still, a sound escaped her and Durham mistook it, vainly, for a cry of passion.

"Easy, honey... easy. You'll get what you want. Right now... right-a-bout-now!"

And it was like all the other times before when the pretending had been lost in the alien violation of her body... neither painful nor pleasurable, but only gross... gross and degrading and stupid. And Durham like the determined bull she had watched once at a ranch (shuddering with nausea as she watched), but punctuating his animal rhythm with the choking, half-swallowed remarks to which she responded now only because words were a stimuli, a tried and true method of speeding the warm barnyard process to its conclusion.

"Oh, Jesus, you're terrific. Scream for me, Sass! Oh, honey, honey, what a bitch you are... what a gorgeous, beautiful bitchy...!"

And she stopped trying then, admitting the failure and somehow—somehow fiercely glad of her failure. Listen to him—oh, God, listen to him! She had heard identical mumblings from her mother's room that New Year's Eve when the party noises had awakened her. Eight. Yes, she had been eight. She had fallen asleep. She had groped her way to the bathroom, stumbling through the hall. Then she had heard the sounds like these that Durham was making now. And a man's voice had murmured querulously, "Are you sure he's passed out, Kitsie? What the hell would we do if he walked in here now?" And her mother's voice, laughing and barely coherent, "When Warren passes out, darling, he's good for eight hours."

What had possessed her, unknowing then of the reason for her tears or her hatred, what had possessed Sassy to pound on that door with clenched fists? Until Mums—pretty, young Mums—had slid into the hall, closing the door furtively behind her, wrapping the dressing gown to her body with shaky hands. And pressing Sassy against her in a stifling vapor of gin and perfume. "You were dreaming, lovey. Mumsie's little girl was having a bad, bad dream. Now back to bed we go."

And how had Sassy known then why she screamed and clawed and kicked at the pretty young woman who petted, pleaded, pulled her toward the frightening darkness of the bedroom? Beat at Mums with hard, desperate fists (and so had the fists found that same satisfying release... last night... last night... when Lon was someone pretty and young and someone shaking the foundations under Sassy's feet). Sassy, eight, had pounded and struck and hurt, until it had been too late and the warm soggy carpet under her feet had reminded her of the need to go to the bathroom—and there had been nothing to do in that moment of humiliation and rage but scream louder and strike harder. "Shh! You'll wake your daddy. Daddy doesn't feel well, angel. A good little girl wouldn't disturb her daddy when he's not feeling well." And then Sassy had been dragged toward her own lonely bed, hearing the final, vaguely understood but piercing indignity: "Sassy's Mums wants to be proud of her little girl." Then to lie awake, remembering the guttural sounds... the man sounds. To remember them forever after...

Oh, Mums would be proud of me tonight, Sassy thought. She remembered the squabble at lunch... Daddy would be prouder still. Look, look—see what Sassy's doing now to make Mums and Daddy proud. Doing it to prove she wouldn't rather be in bed with Mavis. Prove it to them. And prove it to Sassy Gregg! No. It was like opening an old wound to admit that Mavis had been right. But she admitted it; Sassy admitted it.

"Talk to me, Sass... tell me how you feel... ooh... mmmm ... let me hear!" God, the sickening sounds.

She cried when it was over. Almost felt sorry for the big, exhausted slob who fiddled with his stubborn zipper and pleaded for recognition. "Was I okay, baby? Enough for you? Have a drink—want more?" Pathetic. Reaching for a pat on the back, asking the sickening questions that made her wonder why men didn't carry a tape measure and chronometer to reassure themselves of their male prowess. Knowing with contempt that she had never asked a girl afterward for a recommendation. With every girl—except, lately, Mavis—she knew!

"What do you want to cry for, Sass? Like you'd just had it for the first time?"

She wiped her face impatiently with her hand. "I'm overcome."

Apparently the bitterness in her voice eluded him. "Sure. It's too much. You don't get it often enough and it knocks you for a loop."

While they dressed, he brought up the inevitable question. Why settle for this catch-as-catch-can proposition when they could make it legal, with a cash bonus from his folks for a wedding present?

"It takes ages to organize a big wedding, Dur," she told him. "We have literally hundreds of friends and relatives—"

The vague reply seemed to satisfy him and she took his mind away from the subject by asking him to hook her brassiere. Slipping into her blouse, she wondered what it would be like to have to stomach this wrestling match nightly without adding to the needlemarks. And how would she conceal the marks if he saw her every night, without a yacht-club pennant handy to drape over the light? The questions blended away into slurping sounds of water licking at the hull, gentle noises she had once loved as she had loved catching salt spray in her face. Long ago, when the ketch was a gull winging its way to Catalina instead of a floating motel. And when cruising meant something besides hanging around the gay bars, looking for new conquests. Without Mavis—but, no, Sassy was through with sailing.

Topside, the air was clean and invigorating, the stars inviting her touch. The Williamsons' sloop was gone from its slip and she visualized them sailing toward the island, wondered with added melancholy whether she would have even the strength for hoisting canvas if her energy continued to ebb as it had lately. Thinking of Catalina recalled a brief conversation she had had with Mavis, driving home after that first meeting with Lon. Something to do with ships and islands—Sassy had forgotten the details. But the memory sufficed to revive a frustration dormant during the bout with Durham. Lon. For the habit was no habit, nothing to be concerned about. And her mother and Knips had been quieted. Durham, beside her, looked once more like a satisfied bull elephant. Only one barbed hook remained planted in her insides. A girl who had willingly made a human punching-bag of herself for the sake of Mavis. Something, Sassy told herself, had to be done about Lon.

"Washed out the glasses, straightened the bunk... Nobody would know we were aboard," Durham said. "Had ourselves a terrific time and not a soul the wiser."

"Terrific time," Sassy agreed absently. "Literally terrific."

CHAPTER 10

Another terrific time was scheduled for the following Saturday night. The evening found Sassy, folded arms resting on the concave rim of the open grand piano, listlessly gazing into the cavernous interior where the hammers rose and fell at Mavis's whim, where the taut strings quivered in spasms of anticipation and recognition.

It was only one more Saturday evening, Sassy told herself. Mrs. Knippel had mercifully gone to wherever housekeepers go on alternate weekends. Mums was probably half-shot by now, laughing loud and young and eyeing anything in pants that crowded the Vegas crap table where Daddy, in self-defense, played with life-or-death ferocity. Durham would be by soon and then something would happen, swallowing up the intervening hours until she would return to find Mavis still here at the piano. For Mavis, surely, wouldn't honor the invitation of that dimwit with the absurd mannequin hair, Lon's girlfriend, who had phoned twice during the week, affecting a pitiful nonchalance as she asked Sassy and Mavis to some crummy party.

Six months ago, the idea might have promised a mild kick, though even then Sassy had deplored the unstratified Lesbian society. Wasn't it rough enough to be gay? Shouldn't it at least be possible to be selective? God, the way you were expected to mix with riff-raff just because of your sex life! She had given Violet the polite brush-off that astute hostesses recognize: "We'll make it if we can." And Mavis couldn't go, mustn't go, though here she sat in her black dress, after having let it drop casually that she was "going to make that Violet scene." A cab would take Mavis right to the door if Sassy were sure she didn't want to escort Mavis. A cab would take her right to where Lon would be waiting. Oh, hell!

Sassy pressed closer to the vibrating piano, closing her eyes in supplication, inviting the cool music to permeate her body. And Mavis, oblivious to Sassy's mangled spirit, padded out the chord skeleton of some mundane tune, ignoring the trite melody in a complex improvisation—defiant, personal, free of harmonic or melodic shackles, acknowledging nothing but a subtle, understated beat. Pirouetting around the implied rhythm, her right hand spoke the only genuine Mavis talk. For she might lie about her background, distort her language and lead Sassy through a maze of confusions, but when Mavis played jazz she was manifestly incapable of anything less than the truth. She played now the music that had filled the hours at Ruggio's, the agonizing chit-chat hours with Durham, while Sassy's eyes wandered the long bar, searching for the familiar, nameless figure. It was the music that had accompanied the time-worn excuse and the rubber-legged walk to the ladies' lounge, background music for the Houdini-like palming of folded bills and the white packet slipped into her hidden hand.

But last Monday Sassy had walked in time to someone else's music. She had spoken fearfully, meeting the man later in a closed parking lot, naively wondering (but not for long) why he expressed no surprise over her increased demand. Two of the three caps had been shot during the week. And even in the not-caring, not-wanting hours afterward, she had failed to break Mavis down. Sassy clung to the existence of that remaining capsule now, clung to it like a shipwrecked sailor to a rock. On this night, as on any night since she had lain rigid in her bed and tried to blot out the unimaginable horror that filled a bedroom down the hall, she could not bear to be alone. If Mavis should go out, if she, Sassy, had to endure the self-imposed bleakness with Durham, knowing that Mavis was with Lon, at least she would move through those hours under anesthesia. Nobody, nothing could hurt her.

Mavis stopped playing abruptly, a careless chord saying, "That's all from me."

"I'll call Durham and tell him I'm sick," Sassy said then. "We'll have the place to ourselves. You'll play and I'll read poetry—it'll be the way it was at the beginning, Mave."

"Too dressed up to sit around, Sass. I'm making this big bash. You know?"

"You'll be bored there. You'll wish you had stayed home."

"You come, too."

"Oh, God, that little tub with the hair—and that butch? She'll probably be there, bandages and all. It would be sticky, darling. Let's forget it."

"You got you a conscience, Miz G.?"

"She had it coming." Sassy turned from the piano, weak-jointed, needing a cigarette, not certain yet whether it was all she needed. When she had lighted up, she began a systematic pacing of the room, unsteady on her feet. Mavis curled her legs under her on the piano bench, watching with that enigmatic stare of hers, letting Sassy take the conversational lead. "I'm too tired to argue. I'm too tired for Durham and I'm not up to a cheap clambake. Stay home with me."

"Stayed around here long enough, girl. Stayed alone, too."

"Is that why you're going, Mave? To make me jealous?" A licking, hopeful flame shot up inside her. "Because you know how I feel about that crummy crowd?" She puffed nervously on the cigarette, then set it on the piano rim.

Mavis shrugged her reply. Sassy stopped before the piano bench then, dropping her hands to the slim shoulders. "Mave, you've got to understand about Durham. I can't drift around all my life. You've done it, but I'm not conditioned to anything but luxury." She stroked the hair of the girl on the bench. "Dur's the least obnoxious of the choices open to me, Mave. And, God knows, I can't stay in this house much longer. You know what I go through here. You and I... One of these days this thing is going to explode right in our faces, between Knippie and my mother—oh, God! And if you have to leave, it'll be hell for me, Mave, literally hell."

"You lose me, Sass. I don't dig, somehow."

"Look, I don't want to end up like those prune-faced Lizzies at the boarding schools. I don't want people snickering at me behind my back the way I used to snicker at them. First of all, I've got to shut up everybody—shut them up for good. Nobody's going to throw rocks at me if I have a husband. Are they? A place of my own. Are they?" Sassy moved one hand from the fragile shoulders, extending a finger to tilt the dark, questioning face upward. "We could stay together then, Mavis. Durham's not too bright."

"He's spotted me at Ruggio's. What would you tell him tonight—if he should walk in here and happen to see me?"

"So what if he sees you? He wouldn't dream—"

"You got him thinkin' you're the warmest piece this side of Tiajuana?"

Sassy whirled away from the girl peevishly, throwing the cigarette into a planter. "That's vulgar. Literally vulgar. Do you think I'm damn fool enough to marry him for anything but a front? He's been thrown out of four colleges. His dad's going nuts trying to teach him the securities business when all Dur can think about is—uh—well, all right, that's vulgar, too, but it's true. Mave, listen—Dur read a book by Ripley once. His idea of sparkling conversation is coming up with little gems about six-legged cows and a guy in Nairobi who plays the mandolin with his teeth. He's a muscle-happy jackass, Mave. Can't you see what I'm trying to get across?"

"Gettin' across he's not much."

"I'm telling you I'm willing to marry the stupid bastard only so that you and I can be together!"

Mavis made a snorting sound that might have been intended as a laugh. "Oh, man, man, that's a new hype. Don't you go pinnin' yo' man on me."

"I mean it, Mave. Try to see it my way."

"Trouble is, that's the only way you know, Sassy. Your way. But you were laying up that security before I came on. And any time you wanted out of here with me, I could have gone to work. Could have rented us a pad, cut out of here, blown town, maybe. Uh-uh, Sassy. This jazz I don't buy."

"We could do that," Sassy said, her enthusiasm hesitant. "If that's what you really want, Mave..."

"It's not what you want, girl! You want to be safe gay, comfortable gay, respectable gay." Mavis slid down from the piano bench. "I might support you, Sass. Planning on going back to work, anyway. But not like your daddy keeps you. Not like that lover-boy's going to. Not when you start shooting more junk in a day than I can pay for pounding all week in some crib. Uh-uh. Cain't affo'd you, Miz Gregg." Mavis picked up her long, slim pouch from the floor and started toward the stairs.

"Mave—don't go!"

"Taxi ought to be here. Called him long ago."

"You didn't tell me you'd already called a cab." The accumulated fears of all the nights alone, nights before Mavis, crowded over Sassy now. "Mave, listen to me. I don't need Durham. I don't need the junk. Just stay with me. Is that asking so much? Don't leave me alone. Not tonight. Please, Mave, not tonight." Despising herself for pleading, unable to stop her own prideless whine. "Please!"

Mavis stopped at the first step. "Other nights going to be worse, Sassy, you don't kick off that monkey soon." She shook her head in a hopeless gesture. "It's about enough, anyway, with us. You know? I need a job again. You—you get yourself rid of the junk, hear? Get into that respectable bed. Be fine then."

"Mave, I can't do anything if I think you're with that girl. I don't just mean tonight—any time. I've got to mean more to you than that." The thought of Lon and of her own loss tore at Sassy. An old, violent urge clawed at her and she thought of herself throwing Mavis to the floor, taking her with a wild, inspired possession that would obliterate everyone else from Mavis's life—everyone else! But the hollowness crept into her belly, the strange, malignant growth of emptiness and the first recognizable outer-edged twinge of pain. Her stomach twisted over, righted itself, churned again. "You've never liked crowds, Mave. Why tonight?" She trembled suddenly, the ice-veined chill riding through her body. And stood, watching Mavis, fighting the need to shiver, like a scantily dressed parade queen on a sleet-pelted Christmas float. The racing cold brought with it a bilious wave. By the time she reached the stairs, Sassy could only cling to the rail, her body not yet wracked by its implacable need, but knowing that this was the time... now the time. Still, one more try...!

"Mave—if you leave me now I'll...!" She tried to shake off the rising nausea, folded her arms against the inexorable cold. "She won't make you feel... the way I can. Mave, the way... I'll make love to you... if you stay..." Her head sank with the weight of its sickness, so that she could not meet Mavis's eyes. Yet felt the steady gaze—the penetrating, assaying, omniscient gaze. And heard the windy, echo-chamber sound of a voice so free of derision, so deeply compassionate, that she could only wonder whether it were Mavis or some departing stranger, benevolent stranger, who stood above her huddled body and spoke.

"Don't know why I have to see her tonight, Sassy. Nobody ever knows why they have to do something. Don't know why I came here, don't know why I'm going..."

"Don't, Mave. Mave, I'm only asking this one small favor."

"You won't appreciate it tonight," Mavis said through the swirling, cold mist. "You may never—unless you do what's right. But I did you a big favor, Sassy. Did it already." The words diminishing in another spasm of nausea. "Did it already, girl."

An automobile horn bleated somewhere above. Sass lost her grasp on time, her mind groping the fog for understanding of what Mavis had said. And suddenly in the timeless chill she realized dimly that Mavis had gone.

Short flight to the bedroom level. Now it was a formidable cliff. Rock-jutted, perilous, dark. She thought of her feet bleeding on the jagged rocks, the blood freezing before it congealed. Shuddered convulsively, inched her way upward, sobbing more in pity for her bone-chilled body than the cruel loss, the vicious betrayal. Soon it will be happening outside me. It won't affect me. I'll be warm... warm... and Mavis won't matter.

She reached her room, stumbling to the bed corner and falling to her knees. Her hands were barely controllable as they swept the hollow space between box spring and headboard. Feeling hopefully. And blindly. And then, making no contact but the smooth wooden surface, frantically. Now the full impact of Mavis's words penetrated the cold-numbed brain. I did you a big favor, Sassy. Did it already!

Sassy heard herself whimpering, "No. Oh, God, no." And she tugged with a desperate effort at the mattress, failing to lift it, but knowing with a sinking certainty that the packet, the needle, the bent spoon were gone.

The effort left her enervated, gasping for air. And now the monstrous fear poked icy jabs into the writhing, somersaulting entrails. Never before this ineluctable, inside-screaming need; and she had seen too much, read too much, knew too much. She had peered objectively, oh so wisely, into the hell-pit of addiction from the smug security of a protected ledge. And now she felt herself catapulting into that gaping blackness, terrified by her knowledge of its depths.

Hooked, hooked! Demon words cackled by the ice-fingered imps prodding, prodding. She kneeled, face down against the covers, sucking in the fabric of the bedspread, clawing at it with her fingers until she could wrap the slick satin cloth around herself greedily. But continued to shiver. "Make it stop! Oh, God, I'm so sick—make it stop!" Then, sorrowed by the pitiable sound, she searched the anguished brain for the villain. Someone was to blame. "She did this to me! She'll laugh... laugh about it tonight... with Lon!"

And she screamed their names then. "Mavis, you filthy, rotten bitch! Goddamn you... damn you... your filthy Lon!"

Long after she knew the taxi had gone, long after she had spent her strength tearing at the secret hiding places, long after she was too exhausted to scream out her frustration, the musical chimes filled the house. With so much to look forward to Durham Saunders was always early when calling on his bride-to-be.

Part Three

LON

CHAPTER 11

The purple-brown swelling on her face had subsided and the bruised mouth had almost restored itself to normal. Except when she chewed or yawned or laughed, there was little to remind Lon of her brutal encounter with Sassy Gregg. By the following Friday she had been able to survey her image in a mirror without wincing. Now, on the eve of Violet's party, the scabbed elbows under Lon's shirtsleeves were the most obvious outward records of her humiliation. The bruises that were not of the flesh would heal more slowly, she knew. If they healed at all.

She had hidden in her room as long as possible after the fight. And when it had been necessary to emerge, her father had clucked his tongue sympathetically after hearing her detailed and far-fetched explanation. Her mother, who always seemed disappointed if Lon's excuses had a plausible ring, was satisfied that the story was an outrageous lie, thus justifying her established conviction that Lon was a molding apple in the exemplary Harris barrel. She made it clear that never in a million years would anyone convince her that falling from a ladder while helping an improbable friend named Violet clean a high closet shelf could produce such drastic damage. She said it with her eyes every time she looked at Lon. And Lon had answered in a variety of ways, "You don't have to believe it. You never believe anything I say, anyway." Always adding under her breath, "Even when it's true!"

The week had seemed interminable. To break the confined monotony and because she could not afford to lose her job, Lon reported to the pet shop on Thursday, suffering the trite and inevitable cracks. Mr. Beckwith's expected chuckle preceded: "I'd sure hate to see the other guy." The "other guy" would sear her way into Lon's consciousness then. Her fists would tighten, the nightmare of her impotence would flood her senses and her hatred of Sassy would twist a constricting noose around her throat. Sensing that she had forced a wedge between Sassy and Mavis was a pacifying ointment. But the inner wound cried out for more drastic medicine—the balm of a rapacious vengeance. Soon. Maybe Saturday night. . .

She broke the news of Violet's party abruptly, shortly before it was time to go, pleading the fact that she had not left the house, except to work, all week long. Arguing, "It's just a pajama party. Violet's having a few of her other girlfriends over..."

"One a.m. isn't good enough any more. Now we've taken to staying out all night!"

"But, all the girls are going to stay overnight. It's safer than driving home late, isn't it?"

"That hasn't seemed to bother you lately."

"But that's the idea of a pajama party."

"She hasn't disgraced us enough. Oh, no. Now it's all night!"

Lon sent a silent appeal to her father. Acquiescence at any cost was better than a scene, his voice hinted. "Oh, now, Mother, we want to be reasonable. Lonnie's been home all week..."

"Why? Because she couldn't be seen in public looking like a battle-scarred alley cat."

"I know, but Judy went to these pajama things. Seems to me Evie did, too."

"They never came home looking like she did last Friday. You saw what she looked like."

"Well, of course, if the girl's parents are going to be there... I can't see the harm."

Lon decided upon a do-or-die gamble. "Call Violet's mother. Go ahead. Check up if you don't trust me."

The daring strategy succeeded. Lon left early for Violet's house, her spirit light with the promise of twenty-four hours of freedom. If Mavis and Sassy stayed away tonight, she would taste of two disappointments. If they came...? Lon drove as one drives to meet destiny.

* * *

It was so exactly right, Lon thought. Mavis had come, miraculously alone. Somehow the clasp of hands came naturally, as it comes to lovers. It dispensed with the need for another language, and they found a quiet corner of the congested parlor, sitting on the floor to nurse burning whiskey, to share a single intimate cigarette between them, to observe the unfortunate others. Lon, in her most impassioned reveries, would not have asked this of the most generous Polynesian gods. Yet it had happened.

Conversely, for Violet everything had gone wrong. She had greeted Lon at the door with recriminatory tears. "Look at my hair, kid! Oh, Jesus, I wanted to do it real special so I used this other kinda crap, not what I always use. It came out like so much snot, of all the times!"

Violet's lament was justified. The bleached hair swirled with undecided shades from cobalt to magenta. The total effect resembled raspberry-ripple ice cream.

And Luigi had told her, when she had phoned to plead illness, that she sounded okay to him and if she stood him up on a Saturday night, she could apply at another drive-in on Monday. She had told him what to do with his job then, needing the afternoon for preparation and the early evening to greet her guests. There was only one hope of consolation. "It'll be worth gettin' canned if only she'll come." But Sassy had not come. And Violet wore the vain expense, the wasted effort and the crushed anticipation like a heavy shroud. Wishing that she had died before the party had sprung up in her brain.

Ironically, though Violet's prime guest had ignored her invitation, the habitues of The 28% swarmed the house. The gay grapevine had probably cleared the club of everyone but Rigs and Betty, and someone hinted that they might be along later.

"Goddam free-loaders," Violet cursed them all, confiding in Lon after noting the dwindling liquor supply. And the final indignity: most of the crashing butches had arrived with ready-made fems; substitute pickings for the hostess appeared slim. Lon sympathized with her as Violet deplored the waste of cold-cuts and cut-rate bourbon. And sincerely regretted Violet's lack of a partner. But only because a neglected Violet might become a demanding Violet. Lon pressed Mavis's hand and watched the kids take possession of Violet's empty trap, which had not been potently enough baited for such game as Sassy Gregg.

* * *

Midnight had stalked through the Polivka parlor and gone its way. The red lampshades cast their seductive glow, the blue sofa held its fill of interlocked pairs, and a collection had been made to replenish the empty bottles lined up beside the kitchen sink. Now the maroon rug was decorated with more than tan feather designs; a heel-crushed cracker spread with pimiento cheese, a tooth-marked salami slice, dropped from a sandwich unheeded. "I wish we were somewhere else," Lon told Mavis. The second highball had been enough. The smoke was enough. The kids were too much. "Just the two of us."

"Some crazy island," Mavis agreed hazily. They remained glued to their corner, Lon raked by a mounting desire, afraid to move lest she destroy their tense, quiet rapport.

A croaking Delta voice rose above the Dixieland blare from the record player. Cheap booze had taken the edge from Violet's misery, yet she mourned, "I bought all these classical records, like waltzes about Vienna, but this friend a mine that I got them fer special, she couldn't make it."

"What'll we do?" Lon asked quietly.

"You tell me," Mavis replied. And still they waited.

The tempo picked up around them. Violet's guests, the invited and the uninvited, danced faster, sang louder, necked harder. And agreed that Violet knew how to throw a party, all right.

"This is being gay," Mavis observed. "The gay are like everyone else, but tuned up a few decibels." She excluded Lon and herself from the analysis, increasing Lon's feeling of intimacy. We two are different. "When they're generous," Mavis droned, "man, they can't give enough. Nobody touches them, selfish. There's no laugh like a gay laugh, you know? But nobody means it more when they cry. When they dislike, they hate—and when they love... mmph!"

When we love, Lon corrected silently. When I love, it's like this. Hungry and wild with the hunger...

One of the butches was seized by inspiration then. Rennie—the fat one in the black jersey pullover—had started the evening by scowling at anyone conveniently close, sniffing at her glass and growling, "I just may vomit!" Apparently she had abandoned the earlier idea, for now she took the center of the living room to play master of ceremonies. Chuckie and Lee, she hawked, embellishing the announcement with suggestively wiggled eyebrows, Chuckie and Lee had kindly condescended to demonstrate their famous Apache dance. Everybody in favor signify by yelling yow! Everyone was in favor, everyone yelled yow. And Chuckie got into the spirit of the thing, leaping out of the gathered audience and swinging at Rennie in mock protest. The girl named Lee giggled, the kids applauded and Violet screamed for order: "Hey, you wanna wake up the goddam neighbors?" In response, the crowd began humming the dance music, My Man. Chuckie and Lee fell drunkenly into the slow, violent dance. When Chuckie sent Lee into the traditional spin across the room, Lee collided with fat Rennie, who retaliated by lifting Lee and throwing her back at Chuckie. The gang thereupon fell on Rennie to punish her, all in the spirit of fun. Rennie fought them off good-naturedly, controlling her flailing ham hands as the girls worked at pulling the jersey over her head. Laughing louder than the others as she lost balance, she thudded to the floor like a safe dropped from a second-story window.

"I love you," Mavis said. Pressing Lon's moist hand within her own. Mavis dragged on the shared cigarette. Watching the shrieking hilarity with expressionless eyes. And Lon watched, too, as the kids pinned down the wallowing walrus and Chuckie took over as the life of Violet's party.

She and the other kids now were working vigorously on the squealing Rennie, avoiding the fat-leg kicks, their laughter high-pitched and genuine. Somebody had re-started the phonograph. A trombone blared repeatedly where the needle had stuck in a record groove, and Violet, clinging to the arm of a likely red-haired prospect whose fern had passed out in a back-yard glider, wailed for order. "Jeez, watch the furniture. For chrissakes—you wanna bust the damn furniture?"

Twill slacks pulled from fence-post calves. And Rennie floundered on the floor like a beached whale. She flipped to her side suddenly, knocking down two of her hysterically gleeful assailants. The scrolled leg of an end table cracked under the assault of their bodies. One of the gilded ox-blood lamps toppled, exploding its bulb against the wall, leaving its red-shaded mate to light the smoke-hazed room. In the dimmer light, the luminous heart on the wall glowed feebly. Reluctantly.

"Watch what the hell yer doin'!" Violet raged. The table and lamp were shoved aside. Rennie lumbered to her feet, breathless and flabby in extra-large men's size cotton shorts. She began, then, the game of retrieving her trousers from a playful pair who had converted them into a ball.

"Here, Lee... catch!"

"Get 'em, Lee!"

"Gimme my damn pants!"

"Watch it... watch it... atta girl, Fran!"

"Wheeee!"

A beer can was jostled from someone's hand, kicked aside by one of the gamesters. Someone grated the needle across the record and the trombonist made up for his lapse.

"Let's go somewhere," Lon said.

The bedroom, occupied until now, had been vacated; no one wanted to miss the parlor fun. Lon rose tremulously, tugging Mavis to her feet. They evaded the ballplayers, Lon floating on a cloud of raw whiskey and anticipation. She loves me, she wants me, she's coming with me now.

Halfway to the bedroom and Violet's hand clawed into Lon's arm in a grip of panic. "Jeez, kid... that's a truck! In the drive... oh, Jeez, look!"

"Crashers," Lon said.

"No, no, kid, it's a truck. Them lights... I know it's a truck!"

Through the angel-festooned lace of the door curtains, Lon verified the fact. "It's a truck, all right So what? It's not a police car, if that's what's worrying you."

"Joe's concession truck. Oh, my God, kid, that's how she gets home—this guy always brings her. It's my ma."

Outside, a deep male voice called, "I'll see ya, Millie." Lon watched a gaunt female figure pass before the glaring headlights. Then a woman's voice: "Yeah, Joe. Thanks fer the ride." And as the light receded from the drive, "Hope ya feel better, Millie."

Violet's grip tightened. She seemed frozen by fear. Behind them, the keepaway game added to its defensive team, the shrieks rose higher.

"Fairs don't end till Sunday nights. How could she come home?" Violet's whispered terror infected Lon. "Kid, what'll I do? She'll kill me."

Footsteps sounded on the wooden porch steps. "Hey, cut it out. Everybody. Get with it. Violet's mother!" Lon shouted unheard orders to the funmakers.

"Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus God... Holy Mary...!" Violet's curses were prayers. And she stiffened, like a rabbit in a flashlight beam, as the door opened.

The woman was thin and haggard. She held a drugstore suitcase in coarse red hands and a travel-rumpled blue house-dress fell across breasts at half-mast, mourning lost youth. Above her bony chest, the veined turtle neck and the sallow, hollowed-cheeked face were traced with tiny purple-red lines of ruptured veins. Her eyes were the faded blue of a workshirt laundered too often in strong soap. And the eyes drank in the revelry with horrified disbelief.

Time, Lon thought, had paused to catch its breath. Neither the woman nor the silent revelers near the door moved. Then, gradually, their ominous silence extended itself across the room until the crowd, sensing the judging eyes of an accuser, became the soundless accused. It was as though someone had poured melted wax over the scene and under those alien eyes the wax had hardened them all into guilty immobility.

Then came Violet's nervous plunge forward to hug the staring shape. "Ma! Jeez, what happened? These girlfriends a mine came over... Don't worry, I'll get the place fixed up. Didn' expect you home on a Saturday."

The woman's arms hung at her sides, one hand still dangling the peeling paper suitcase. She shook off Violet's hesitant embrace with a lunge of angular shoulders. "Joe was comin' anyhow to set up someplace East. I was so sick, I said, 'Joe, gimme a ride home or I'm gonna croak.' " The words sifted through incongruously white and perfect teeth; sounds hoarse and incredulous. Then, a sudden fierce light blazing in the pale eyes, "Why?" Violet's mother screamed, "For why? For this I should come in my own house?"

"Ma, it's okay. Jest some girls, friends a mine. We'll leave everything nice, Ma."

"Dobitek. Svine!" The suitcase swung from the bony arm and slammed Violet's knees.

"I didn' do nothin', Ma," Violet howled. "Oh, Jeez, Ma!"

The washed-out eyes took in the smashed hors d'oeuvres on the rug, the broken table, the bulbless lamp. They caught the bedraggled salami slice under Rennie's bare foot and, then, Rennie herself—a puffy white mushroom in male underwear. Mrs. Polivka turned her gaze to one more shocking sight: Mavis, and the color of her skin. And this, Lon sensed, was the ultimate blow. The suitcase swung out in a frenzied arc as its owner crossed the room, the room in which the accumulated treasures of a hash-slinging lifetime were displayed. "Outsite. Outsite my house!" She spat her derision for all of them. "Ptui!" And the satchel slammed indiscriminately against someone's leg, someone's thigh, someone else's buttocks.

"You got the wrong idea, Ma. Ma...! Jeez, whatsa matter?" Violet clung vainly to the swinging arm.

"Go home! I should come so sick, and this should be in my house. Ptui!"

The kids shuffled toward the door, mute zombies, afraid to do more than exchange cautious glances. Breaking into faster movement as they neared exit. While Rennie retrieved her clothes and struggled to fasten recalcitrant buttons with shaking sausage fingers.

Lon guided Mavis through the door, red-faced with embarrassment for the streak-haired hostess. How could Violet face the kids after this? How could she return to bask in the friendly light of The 28%? No job, no Sassy, no place to flash the full round figure or call the kids her own.

Lon heard Violet crying. Crying first in shame: "It was on'y girls, Ma. What's wrong on'y girls?" And crying, next, for less subtle reasons.

"You sulumunbitch, I fix you. I fix you!"

"Don't Ma—Don't Oh, Jeez!"

Cars started up all around them. Headlights criss-crossed the crab-grass lawn. Inside the cars, the post-mortems would begin now and Violet's disgrace would be perpetuated through weaving drives home.

Lon held open the door of the Plymouth. "Gosh! Now where do we go?"

Mavis stepped into the tan jalopy, unperturbed, a princess of the night entering her carriage. "Can't go to hell, baby," she said. And, settling back into the seat, "Been there!"

CHAPTER 12

More than fifty-eight million square miles of land surface, and not one small, dim place on the earth has been set apart for unsanctioned lovers. Not one corner is allocated to the quiet whisperings, the repressed desires and their release. How zealously the private darknesses are watched. Long before dawn on this Sunday morning, there was no place for them to go with their awakening love. And so Lon Harris simply drove the deserted streets of the San Fernando Valley with Mavis beside her.

"I thought of the parking lot in front of The 28%," Lon suggested. She could speak openly now, for they were playing no waiting game. Her yearning, she was certain, was met and matched.

"Trouble with you, child, you don't know. This thing's a crime. Aren't you hip to the law, baby?"

"It's supposed to be a free country and you can't even park. I'm tired of driving around."

"Better drop me off at Sassy's."

"Not yet. We haven't even... I don't want to!"

"Be daylight, time we decide."

"I want to stop somewhere. I want to be with you, the way we would have been at Violet's."

"You dispossessed?"

"No, I've got my own room at home. But I... They don't expect me home until around noon."

"Expect you alone, too," Mavis added archly.

And Lon remembered that she had her own key. There would be explanations to invent later; why the pajama party had been interrupted, why she hadn't come home alone. She could manage this. And Mavis was a girl—Lon could gambit the same innocent argument Violet had offered to her mother. Had Mrs. Polivka known about aberrational love? Or had it been only the stained rug or the wrecked furniture that had fired her wrath? Lon decided it was the latter, wondering, then, if her own mother knew. Was it possible that her suspicions could be directed only at boys? It was incredible, yet Lon realized it must be true; love, sex and Mavis would not be linked together in her mother's mind. Then why not go home?

Lon thought of her bed, freshly made on Saturday mornings. Thought of Mavis cradled in her arms with long, secret hours of darkness still remaining. She closed the door on another recollection; the way Violet's mother had looked at Mavis. That unjust scorn might be relived in her own home. But not until daylight—and by that time it wouldn't matter.

Lon turned the Plymouth at the next corner. "We'll go to my house," she told Mavis. And pronounced the next words with a ferocity that startled her. "We've wasted enough time. I want you."

* * *

Oh, damn the neighbor's dog! And damn the key that stuck and had to be jiggled, clicking above the shrill, determined yelps from across the fence.

Mavis had followed Lon to the door with no apparent trepidation. Now she waited while Lon silently cursed the noises, magnified in the middle-of-the-night stillness.

"Christopher, that mutt'll wake my folks," Lon whispered. "Once we get inside, hang onto my arm until we get to my room. I don't want to put on any lights." Mavis said nothing, but Lon could hear her quickened breath. Of course she would be frightened. She might be remembering that scathing look from Violet's mother—might be remembering hundreds of looks exactly like it. A protective sense swept over Lon, an urgent desire to hold Mavis close, to reassure her, though Lon was finding it hard enough to bear the weight of her own uneasiness. She let go of the stuck key. "Hang on to me after we get to my room, too, Mavis." And it was so completely logical to pull Mavis into her arms then, to press lips against the dimly seen loveliness of the upturned face. Eyes shut tight, so that nothing could detract from the soft, singing wonder of their kiss. It was like the poignant ache of homecoming after distant travels—of knowing at last where it is that love lives.

Lon had to let go of the yielding body suddenly; let it go and hurry into that room where it would be reclaimed completely. And she regretted that impulsive pause in the next moment—regretted the impatience that had held them outside the door until the neighbor's terrier worked himself into a frenzy of warning, until every dog within earshot added to the din. Working her key in the obstinate lock, Lon caught, through windows, the flood of light inside the house. The bedroom light first, a second light in the living room. Then it went on: the searching light above the entrance door. She knew, in that instant, an empathy with Violet; understood Violet's shock now. Lon stared at her mother's face peering through the glass-topped door, the skin drawn upward by tightly coiled pincurls, the eyes filled with sleep and annoyance. The knob turned, the door opened. And the sleep vanished as her mother's quick darting glance over Lon's shoulder took in Mavis.

"What's going on?" Thinner, more nasal than ever, was the voice in its surprise. "Don't you realize it's nearly..."

"We were too crowded at Violet's," Lon interrupted. "Mother, this is ... a friend of mine. Mavis."

Her mother's hands fidgeted with the neckline of the seersucker wrap. Lips clamped, eyes avoiding Mavis now.

"We decided to sleep over here. Okay?"

"Lorraine, you know we aren't prepared for guests." The meaning was viciously clear, the expression too disapproving to be misunderstood.

"I'll have to drive Mavis home then," Lon said curtly.

"At this hour?"

"If we can't stay here. If you're sure we're not— prepared."

"You aren't going anywhere, Lorraine. I've had all I'm going to take from you, young lady. Now get into this house!"

"I brought home one of the young people you're always wanting to meet," Lon said. Anger boiling inside her, remembering that rousingly applauded lecture on brotherly love her mother had made to the youth group at church. Mrs. Harris was not rejecting a Lesbian; she was denying hospitality to a Negro. "I brought home a friend, Mother."

The cutting sarcasm was matched in her mother's reply. "Would your—uh—friend like to use the telephone? I'm sure there are taxis, even at three-twenty in the morning."

"She won't need to call a taxi," Lon said acidly. "I'll drive her home."

"You'll do no such thing."

"Let's go, Mavis." Lon turned, head lowered. Mavis looked at her hesitantly. "Let's go."

"You get into this house, Lorraine. Lorraine, did you hear what I said?"

But Lon was pounding toward the Plymouth at the curb, pulling along Mavis by the hand.

The other voice was shrill now, bordering on hysteria. "Lorraine, I said for you to come back here. If you go out at this hour, you need not come back. Do you hear me?"

They were in the car, Lon seething, hurriedly turning the ignition key. Shut up, shut up and let me go. From the doorway, the high-pitched cry stabbed at her ears. "Lorraine, don't you dare." It dissolved then in a loud wail—"Ed! Ed, get up and do something! Stop her!"

The roar of the motor smothered whatever else was shouted and Lon glanced back to see the cotton-robed figure run outside the door, then disappear into the house. And the canine chorus barked a frantic farewell to the old car churning away from the curb.

* * *

"Still say it. Hadn't ought to have talked to your mama that way," Mavis was commenting tonelessly. "Nobody ought to talk mean to his mama."

Exhaustion, desire and the need to plan: they had stopped for these. Lon had parked the car at the foot of the hill up which a black-topped road wound to the Gregg home. Crickets chirped in the brush around them. A scrub oak rose from the foothills, indefinitely silhouetted against the gently rising earth. In a few hours, the hills would be touched with pale light. Now they kept the Plymouth's windows rolled up against the moist night chill and Lon groped for Mavis in the darkness.

"Don't talk about her. I haven't been waiting all night to talk about her."

"You remember that, now, baby. Keep in mind what I tell you about your mama."

Impatient now, Lon directed the old anger against Mavis. "She wouldn't let you into the house!"

"It was late, baby. You see, it was late."

"That wasn't it and you know it I hate her for that. Christopher, I wish she wasn't my mother."

"Oh, now, don't go Uncle Tom on me, baby. I'm not my preachin' daddy's girl. Man, I don't expect thing number one from people."

"You're my girl," Lon said huskily. "That's all I've been thinking, all night. No matter what happens, you're my girl."

"Begins to shape up that way," Mavis said. And it was, Lon knew, the closest Mavis could come to saying "I love you."

Lon's arms circled the night-hidden loveliness beside her. Her hands found the softness under the shapeless dress, caressing the velvety body and pressing forward to kiss the cool lips with something akin to reverence. A gentleness fell over Lon's spirit, yet never in the most sensual exchange of kisses with Violet had she been stabbed with this implacable longing to have, to own, to possess. She fumbled to gain more access from the loosely draped fabric, fingers trembling. And a sudden, unfounded belligerence burned through her mind. God help anyone who tries to stop me now. Irritably, she said, "I want to see you. I want to touch you—all over.'' Tugging at the sack's neckline. "How do you get out of this dumb thing?"

"Too dark to see me," Mavis muttered.

"I'll be able to. I can't kiss you this way—enough of you." Shaking then, palsied with the truth of her statement. "I'm crazy, Mavis. Every time I think about you, I go crazy."

"Crazy little butch kid. Won't buy no for an answer." The quick, deprecating laughter darted upward and withered there. Mavis began a solemn ritual then, her movements slow and graceful yet efficient, until the limp dress and whatever she had worn beneath it were carefully laid across the back seat of the car.

Lon's eyes had become accustomed to the darkness now, so that she could wonder at the beauty of the exquisite breasts. Her hands followed her own fascinated gaze, cautiously tracing the delicate curve, moving shyly to become inflamed by the incredible smoothness of the thighs. "Do you want me to, Mavis? Do you really?"

Mavis slid downward on the seat until her head rested against the door—her legs curled, cramped against Lon's knees. "Nobody ask me what I want. Nobody could ever dig what I want, baby—never." Still, a sudden exultation caught Lon, hearing the subtle acceleration of Mavis's breath. It was an almost imperceptible change, expected in anyone else, but something of a miracle in the girl who would not, could not, let herself care. This was Mavis, who had steeled herself against emotion, had said love was slow death. "Mavis!" Lon cried out the name and buried her face between breasts cooled by the night air, realizing a dream that had crowded even the Island into hidden recesses of her mind. I love you, love you... Love me, too. Burrowing into the unresisting flesh, her lips said it in a hundred inarticulate ways. And knew from the tremor of the lithe brown body, knew from the wordless sounds that broke the stillness, that she had touched upon a buried ember that was Mavis. An ember that had slept so long under the sand, now breathed upon and ignited, so that its dormant fire might leap high and consume them both.

* * *

"You don't have to come up hill with me," Mavis told her a long while later. "I've walked from here before."

Lon would have welcomed sleep then. But the grain of protective instinct had been magnified inside her now. "Didn't you say you were moving out? All right, I'll wait outside while you pick up your clothes. Then I'll drop you wherever you're going."

"Not much to pick up," Mavis said, though not apologetically. She was dressed once more, but the dampness had crept into the car and she shivered. "And you don't want to see Sassy again. Not when I tell her I'm cutting out for keeps."

"What will she do when you tell her?"

Mavis shrugged. And shivered again. "Hard telling."

"She might get rough," Lon ventured solemnly. "If she does, this time I'll..."

"Nobody's home up there. Any other time, Sassy would be out somewhere. Or asleep. This time... hard telling." A somberness had fallen over Mavis.

"You aren't sorry?" Lon asked. "You aren't thinking about her and wishing you hadn't let me—"

"You think about somebody like Sassy," Mavis said, ignoring the more pointed question. She seemed absorbed in exclusive musings, disturbing insights. "The way I left her— who knows?" But in an unexpected gesture of aggressive intimacy, she patted Lon's knee. "You come along, baby. You wait outside. Then, you want to drop me off, there's this cat I know over in Benedict Canyon. Blows alto. He and his chick used to ask me out They have all kinds of room. You know? And Wish can steer me to the right job, now I'm ready."

'Will I be able to see you there?"

"Wish's place? Oh, man, everybody comes and goes. In and out that pad, day or night."

Lon nodded and started the motor. Before she began the curving climb to the hilltop, there was one final satisfaction to be extracted from Mavis. "You loved me tonight. You didn't say it, but that's true, isn't it?" Mavis stared at the floorboards. "Why can't you say it? You love me."

"Don't count on anything lasting," Mavis said. Why was she so cynical and evasive?

"All right, but I'd like to hear you say it!"

"Baby, I do and somebody's going to hurt. You or me. But somebody for sure. Love your mama. Drop me off, and love her."

Disappointed, Lon gunned the motor and wound the jalopy past the scrub brush, upward to where the road was lined on either side by young date palms and masses of earth-hugging ice plant. "Maybe you'd like it better if I didn't show up at Wish's."

"Wrong, baby. But only come see me after a good while. When you're sure I've waited"—and Mavis finished her sentence in a throaty whisper—"like I waited this time. Too long."

CHAPTER 13

Lon rested her head on the steering wheel, waiting. Numb from lack of sleep, muscles aching with fatigue. Yet, she wondered, how would she ever be able to sleep with this persistent, half-conscious memory to be relished? Why relinquish even for one moment the knowledge that something dynamic and wonderful had taken possession of her life? Nothing had happened before tonight. Nothing had touched her with meaning before tonight

And then she remembered that she was waiting for Mavis and that Mavis had been inside the house for ages. Impatiently, she lifted her head to look out again at the unfamiliar and luxurious surroundings. Even with a home like this, a car like the one near the mammoth garage, and a pool like a country lake, Sassy had been unable to hold Mavis. A patronizing pity for the big blonde came over Lon then, tempering the need for revenge that still rankled behind the newborn joy.

There was a third car in the circular driveway,—a new Buick sedan, and she speculated vaguely about its owner. The glass-walled house beyond the Buick seemed deserted. How long had Mavis been in there? Lon thought of Sassy's violent temper—of her explosiveness with Betty, the way she had shaken Mavis outside the club, the manner in which she had beaten Lon to the ground. I shouldn't have let her go inside alone. Propelled by some warning reflex, Lon got out of the car, cut across the closely matted dichondra ground cover, and peered into an enormous room. A rumpus room, she decided. There was no one in sight. Lon hesitated, then tried the sliding panel. It opened easily and she moved through the opening.

Faint conversational sounds drifted upward from a stairway to her left. Cautiously, acutely aware of intrusion, Lon followed the twisting, suspended steps. At the bottom, she stopped to listen. Mavis. Yes, and the other voice was Sassy's. Subdued, but Sassy's, all right And another sound—a loud, rhythmic snoring.

Lon followed the noises, sensing relief. Yet not positive yet that all was well with Mavis. Near the end of the thickly carpeted hallway, Lon caught sight of them through an open door. Mavis stuffing underclothing into a small valise, Sassy in turquoise-colored Oriental pajama tops, nothing more, sitting on the edge of a bed, watching the process without animation. The rumbling sounds came from a curled-up heap under the rumpled covers. Male sounds. An empty bottle on top of the bookcase headboard indicated that the guy was sleeping off a drunken jag. The girls, backs turned to the door, were unaware of Lon's presence.

They were speaking quietly now, and somehow the deadly calm was more frightening than the dissension she had expected—the violence she had feared.

"By the way, I saw your old boss last night, Mavis." Sassy drew the words out in a blurred, lazy intonation. "Thought you'd like to know I saw old Ruggio."

"You made your connection," Mavis said glumly. "Got yourself a whole new rig. Okay, Sassy. Okay, if that's the way it's got to be. I tried."

"I was sick. I was very sick, Mavis. I had to borrow money from Dur. I had to shoot that spoon in Ruggio's washroom."

"I had it figured you'd have to call a doctor, Sass. Figured wrong."

Sassy giggled. "Didn't think I could do it did you? Underestimated me. Well, it wasn't easy. No, it wasn't. And I wish somebody would explain to me what's happening."

"I'm buggin' out, Sass. I've packed everything. This does it."

"Oh, I know that. But give me a literal explanation." Sassy's voice rose. Drunk, Lon decided. To sound that bewildered and unnatural, Sassy had to be drunk. The bottle, the man in the bed—it added up. Almost.

"Quiet, baby," Mavis cautioned. "You'll wake your lover-boy."

Sassy gurgled—a sound like humorless laughter. "Oh, no. No, he's way out there. We're here, you see, but Durham is way, w-a-ay out." The hushed, floating quality of Sassy's speech was disturbing. Lon stood transfixed, wishing she had waited in the car. Feeling let down, yet fascinated by the trance-like voice. "Well, we came back here and had a wild night. I think. You can't ever be sure about these things. And now you're going somewhere, but I don't actually understand any part of it. It's extremely deep." Sassy turned then, slowly. There would have been time to run, to dart up the stairway. But Lon hovered like an entranced squirrel in an automobile headlight, until she knew it was too late to escape detection—until there was nothing left but to wait until Sassy's eyes locked with hers.

Lon could only return the gaze, feel the strange eyes boring through her with neither surprise nor disapproval. In that uncertain light, the normally grayish blue eyes looked weirdly dark, as though the pupils had dilated to cover the whole eyeballs. Yet this was only an eerie illusion of the light, Lon knew. And she stood, hearing the audible thumping of her heart, waiting for Sassy to cry out her recognition, to shriek out her demand to know what Lon was doing in the house, spying.

Still Sassy said nothing, did nothing. Only stared, with apparently a faint amusement lighting those birdlike eyes, and even that could have been imagination. At last the queasy silence became unbearable and Lon turned to hurry up the curved stairway, taking two steps at a time, feeling a terror that had no relation to physical fear.

And then Lon found herself at the pool's edge, her legs quivering under her. Why did I run? It had been embarrassing, of course, being caught like the intruder she was, eavesdropping. But she could have made some excuse—could have asked if Mavis needed help with the luggage—could have manufactured some subterfuge, any subterfuge, rather than flee like a discovered thief. Why did I turn and run? Nerves, she told herself. Big night. No sleep. Nerves. And as far as Lon knew, Mavis hadn't even been aware that Lon was there. But why hadn't Sassy said anything?

Lon did not know how long she had been staring into the slate-dull water before she became aware of someone's presence. Perhaps it was a footstep that had warned her. But it seemed more like an intuitive knowledge—that instinctive feeling of being watched. Closely watched, from behind. Lon whirled around, arms jerking upward protectively. And Sassy stood there, no more than inches away. So that she could only have approached stealthily, Indian fashion, not wishing to be seen. But the attack against which Lon's clenched fists had been raised did not come. Sassy's expression was almost benign. At their first meeting, Lon had been impressed by the clean, economical lines, the strong masculinity of the other's face. Now it looked bedraggled, like the rumpled bed on which Sassy had been sitting moments before. And the eyes! The glazed, cynical, yet conversely contented eyes! On close inspection, they showed less sign of the dark pupils than when Lon had been shocked by them earlier. Sassy had to be drunk. So hung up that she hadn't bothered with pajama bottoms. Lon tensed, speechless, waiting for the towering blonde's next move.

Senselessly, Sassy droned, "Sex. Who needs it?"

She swayed closer to Lon. Thinking she'll surprise me, Lon warned herself. Pretending she's forgotten about the other time. But I'll be ready—I've got to be ready! Lon's fingers curled, clipped nails digging into her palms.

"Mavis is packing, you know. She's going somewhere with you, of course, but I wish you would make a few points clear. I keep getting this ridiculous double-talk... and I know I hate you... well, that's obvious, but you understand I haven't been well at all... this situation has an element of confusion... you understand... literally confused." The low-spoken, monotonous babble seemed to fall from Sassy's mouth like a stream of spewed vitriol. "Not that I care, but sometimes I like things explained to me—"

She's planning something... It's got to be something ugly. Ready—be ready! And the readiness tightened up inside Lon like a third fist, her muscles taut and aching from the tenseness. Regretfully Lon remembered that she had not eaten dinner the night before, had not eaten any of Violet's party fare—had not tasted food for so many hours that maybe it accounted for the headache, the cold feeling in her stomach, the tremors of weakness.

"Now I simply want you to clarify this—!" Sassy raised her arms in a sweeping, hypnotic motion. She lurched forward. And it was all the warning Lon could wait for. She brought her cocked fist upward, smashing it hard into Sassy's midriff, hearing in the same instant the loud grunt of expelled breath. And danced aside with an agile step, prepared to avert the return blow, remembering the other girl's savage speed. But there was no return blow. Sassy only shuddered, mouth dropping open, eyelids fluttering grotesquely. Then with a long, deep groan, like a burlesqued imitation of a steamboat whistle, she folded, pitching forward into Lon's boxer-poised arms. Lon staggered under the weight, Sassy's wet, open mouth limp and heavy on her shoulder.

"Get away from me—you drunken slob." Lon shoved at the unwelcome body, threw the strength of her arms against Sassy's ribs, freeing herself of the disgusting burden. Lon leaped back to avoid further contact. And Sassy doubled, swayed for one unsupported instant and fell forward. Too late for Lon to catch her, to record in her mind that the blonde was unconscious. Too late for anything but the crack of Sassy's forehead against the flagstone coping—a sound that Lon absorbed through her own body like an internal rifle shot. And then Sassy lay still.

Lon waited, paralyzed, staring wide-eyed at the arched mound beside her feet. The shock passed through her then, and she squatted next to Sassy's head. Breathless and fearful, She turned Sassy's limp face, saw only inconsequential-appearing scrape on the forehead. Oh, God! The prayer whispered in Lon's mind. Oh, God—why doesn't she move? And Lon watched with sick horror the widening spot of red, the rich crimson pool expanding on the flagstone under Sassy's head, moving in an incredibly sluggish trickle from the corner of Sassy's mouth.

Then came the frantic shaking, the calling of Sassy's name. The desperate impulse of lifting an eyelid as she had seen movie detectives do. The long time before knowing, before acknowledging with that final, dreadful certainty that comes not from physical tests—the uplifted lid, the imperceptible pulse—But from some mystic, inner sense, knowing that Sassy was dead. Lon screamed it inside herself. Dead. She's dead.

Lon felt a child's panic. Saw herself as a little girl. Helpless amid holiday adultery. Humming sound that never had been really a sound whirred now in her head. And the fear-frozen child within told her. Make it look like an accident. It truly was an accident, but they won't believe you. Even when it's true, they never believe you. Make it look as though—

And Lon kneeled beside the crumpled form, away from the water's edge, burying her palms in the still-warm flesh. Burying her palms, crying for breath and pushing with all the strength she could summon to roll the horror from her sight.

The splash was gentle. Unprotesting, the slate water accepted its burden. And closed over it like a reverent nun's hands folding.

Lon trembled to her feet. To see close-cropped yellow hair undulate in slow movement, the way submerged sea plants wave in response to a current. To see other things. How dark the turquoise fabric looked when wet. How faintly pink that cloud of water there.

She started for the car and stopped, retracing her steps, grateful for a keen mind that knew clearly and efficiently what must be done. Kneeled once more, to scoop water from the pool with cupped hands. Dashed the water against the red puddle on the rough coping, repeated the cleansing ritual many times, arms moving with frenetic, mechanized speed.

The rock was only lightly tinged with color when finally she hurried toward the Plymouth. Cleaner than it had ever been, Lon assured herself. Soaked with enough water so that it would not dry red and caked.

* * *

Mavis was walking to the car, tugging a valise and juggling two cardboard cartons. Lon watched through half-closed eyes, head pillowed against the rim of the steering wheel, feigning sleep. And saw Mavis take a short route across the lawn, unknowingly avoiding the pool's edge and what would be better unseen. Mavis set down the bag and opened the door.

"Guess we can cut out, baby," Mavis said. She tossed all her worldly possessions carelessly to the back seat. "Sassy's painless. So junked up, she wasn't even around when I walked out." The brown girl sank into the front seat, shook her head dolefully and slammed the door.

They were at the foot of the hill, turning into the highway, before Lon felt sure enough of her voice to ask, "What's 'junked up,' Mavis?"

Mavis started to reply, hesitated, and then said, "Sick. Miserable sick." A long while later, she spoke again. Pensively, more to herself than to Lon. "Feel I owe her something, you know? One phone call, maybe. Monday, when her mama's home. Get somebody else to do for her what I figured she'd do for herself last night. Cross her. That's the only way. But I care that much—care that much about anybody, come to think about it." Mavis looked out at the scrubby hills, fresh in the morning light. She seemed to be pondering a secret problem of her own. "Man, Sassy keeps going the way she's going... Sassy's a set-up. Kill herself, that's all."

And no one sick should be struck—killed. A person should be able to tell when someone's weak and sick. Lon's hands tightened on the wheel. She concentrated on the white line dividing the winding ribbon of concrete before her, blinking bard to keep her eyes from closing of their own accord. Yet felt no need now for sleep.

CHAPTER 14

Somewhere in a tree-shaded canyon, Lon listened to the motor idle It was the wrong time to congratulate herself on the carbureter adjustment that had produced this pleasing, steady purr. Strange, the way insignificant thoughts had of coming to her mind when other, much weightier matters should be possessing her faculties. Did a body sink to the bottom or float? And who would find it? When? And the silly thought returned: it would have cost her plenty at Mageley's garage, but she had done the job herself—and just listen to that motor!

And then Lon remembered that she had said goodbye to Mavis, had looked up to watch the slim figure start up a steep concrete stairway embedded in a rocky wall that had been cut away to make the road. At the top of the stairway stood a picturesque house, or what could be seen of a house, built from fieldstone. Mavis wasn't going there and Lon wondered why she had not offered to carry the pathetic luggage with which Mavis struggled. Lon looked long and hard at the figure in loosely hung black, watching until the sting of tears forced her to rub her eyes and drown out the image. "I'll be over to see you soon," she promised hoarsely, although Mavis had already heard her say that once and could not hear her now. Mavis—how was I to know she was sick?

Lon put the Plymouth in gear. Soon was driving on through the canyon then, past the sign that warned drivers that this was a closed area and no smoking was permitted, headed in the logical direction. And she could not permit herself to think what it would be like to walk into her home where the questions would be hurled at her and the accusations heaped upon her shoulders. She refused to project herself that far into the future Thinking, she might turn the car around, drive to some other place—some other place. But where? Where can anyone go, at the end, but home?

Sunday was the right day for homecoming, the exactly right day. For how could Lon's mother prolong the inquisition, how many times could the thin, whining voice repeat questions and answer them vindictively in the next breath, when Sunday culminated a week of planning, organizing, telephoning? On this day, Mrs. Harris bathed in approval. On this day the Supervisor of the Sunday School reaped her reward.

Eddie was tugged unwillingly between televised Dodgers and the church; her father made stern noises and reminded Lon that she was being unfair to her mother. So much for them. And after the initial scene, during which Lon had responded with terse, tight-lipped answers—Yes, I did, Mother... I guess you're right, Mother... I guess I'm sorry, Mother—the worst was suddenly over and Lon closed her bedroom door as she had closed it against unpleasantness so many times before.

The sense of having found sanctuary after a long pursuit enveloped Lon then. Her head felt airborne, sickeningly light from sleeplessness and a hunger she had no desire now to satisfy. Yet here she was safe. She would think things out after she slept.

But when she fell across the bed, an inner pressure would not let her sleep.

She tried to review the events of the preceding night and of the morning, hoping to isolate the precise reason for the knotted growth in her belly. Examine the moment, the deed, the malignancy that must be specifically identified before the surgical knife can cut it from the pain-wracked flesh. Killed somebody. Murdered somebody.

Yet the briefness of her time with Sassy was whirled away in kaleidescopic views of lengthier, more vivid scenes. A tricky left turn on the way to Violet's—the heavy Saturday evening traffic—the unappetizing look of delicatessen macaroni salad in the Polivka kitchen—Violet's mother—the sinking luxury of that hall carpet under her loafers at Greggs'. Views, sensations, impressions unworthy of memory, indelibly stenciled upon her mind, recalled more sharply now than that flashing instant between Sassy speaking, moving and breathing—and Sassy face down in pink water.

Something as shatteringly final as death should have been alloted more time. More significance than the recollection of a bruised forehead. Lon felt a vague resentment, thinking of this. It had taken so little time to end Sassy Gregg's life. Something as terribly important as that, and it had taken no more than a few seconds. It wasn't right, somehow. And Lon thought then, with a childlike pity for herself, someone should have told me she was sick. Resenting Sassy next, but only mildly, for cheating her out of the fair and satisfying revenge, for letting herself die under such unheroic, un-memorable circumstances. Pow. Thud. Sounds from a comic book—and that was all! The thoughts spun around in her brain and suddenly Lon wished she could cry. No one told me she was too sick to fight. What will they say when they find her? Drowned. Fell, hit her head, fell into the pool. Why lie here and worry about it?

Lon lay rigid, her arms feeling like overfilled tubes, blood forcing into them, pumping, nearing the point of bursting. Her head throbbed. The sound was the minor twang of a tuning fork now, playing back and forth from her forehead to her crown. Ceaseless, tremulous sound. Why couldn't she cry?

* * *

Miraculously, she had fallen asleep. She awoke as she always did, before the rest of the household. It was morning, all right, she convinced herself, glancing at the electric alarm clock. She had slept, then, most of one day and through a full night. Monday morning.

When the realizations had registered, she noted the time. Ten after seven. In twenty minutes, another alarm clock in her parents' room would bring the house to life.

The morning paper would be on the front lawn by now. Lon slid out of bed, wondering when she had straightened herself out to lie on the pillow with the covers over her; she had slept in the shirt and slacks worn to Violet's party—such a long time ago. She padded through the house, opened the door in cautious, silent slow-motion and returned to her room with the newspaper tucked inside her sleep-wrinkled shirt.

She saw Mavis's picture before she read the captions. And refused to let herself be shocked by the familiar face staring out at her from the shaking newspaper. Her eyes drifted to the center of a column, skimming through a reported exoneration of someone named Durham Saunders, until late Sunday considered the prime suspect. Seems the man had sobbed as he recounted discovery of his fiancée's body, had disclaimed all knowledge of her drug habit. Her parents had rushed home from Las Vegas—wealthy contractor Warren Gregg had collapsed upon viewing the body of the couple's only child.

Nothing at all about red stain or a fight. Nothing about Lon Harris. And she noted this with a garbled mixture of relief and disappointment. They had it all wrong! How could she let it upset her, when they had it all wrong?

Her vision traced an upward pattern to the bold-faced type: PLAYBOY RELEASED IN MYSTERY SLAYING. She read the caption under Mavis's picture then: Maid Sought In Drug Murder. Oh, they really had it fouled up!

Strange, she thought, that she could read it all without going to pieces. The newspaper was held steadily now and she could study it with an almost anesthetized calm. Her mind was clear and alert, so that she could analyze:

First, the flagstone coping hadn't been mentioned, but it was the clue they needed. She should have done a more thorough job of washing off the blood.

Second, they had not found Mavis. Not yet But they would. There would be only one thing to. do then, and it would be more noble to do it before they dragged Mavis into it.

Third, it was just as well that her mother hadn't seen this newspaper. She would insist that she had seen the missing "maid" on her doorstep between three and four on Sunday morning. More arguments. More scoldings, questionings.

And while she was working out all this logically, Lon thought, too, that it would be less irritating to have someone in a police uniform explain the whole situation to her mother later. Because, that way, he would be the one forced to answer the whining questions. She felt sorry for the faceless police officer, but a malicious amusement went with her sympathy. Let somebody else listen for a change!

Lon folded the newspaper carefully, covering the photo. They won't do anything to you, Mavis. Did you think I'd let them? When it's all over, we'll get together—you'll be proud of me!

She opened the bottom drawer of the desk, started to tuck the newspaper under her Island plans. Then, on second thought, Lon lifted the sheaves of paper to the desk top, leaving nothing in the drawer but the folded newspaper. Leafing through the stacks of notebook paper, it occurred to her that police stations were not like business offices or stores, where you had to wait until nine o'clock before making a phone call. Her father would miss his sports page during breakfast, might even tie up the phone, calling to find out why his paper hadn't been delivered. No, this was the time to call. Now, while she could do it without the self-conscious feeling of being overheard by the family. There was a dramatic sense, an excitement, in thinking of what she would say. And Lon's only regret was that Mavis would not be there to hear her.

* * *

There was so much to be done after the call was completed. So much to accomplish before the alarm clock in the other bedroom sounded—before they came to pick her up.

Lon patted cold water on her face, rinsed out her mouth, dried herself with a towel. She found cold fried chicken in the refrigerator, washed it down with milk, rinsed her mouth again, then hurried back to the bedroom.

She changed her shirt hurriedly. She tucked a nail file, pencils, other small items she might need, into the pockets of her slacks. And there was still time to pack methodically the charts, the rules, the plans, into a worn, zippered briefcase that had belonged to her father and had been stored away on her closet shelf. Lon studied each sheet with critical, proud eyes before laying it into the case. For a while, it had seemed that none of this was real—that the Island was a distant dream with no hope of being realized, perhaps only a figment of her imagination. She had drifted away, only to return... and this, now, was the true homecoming. Though there remained endless work to be done: lists to arrange in alphabetical order, ceremonies to be worked out (the initiation rite was very sketchy), and names to be added. One to be subtracted. For the most pressing problem now would be to find someone else who knew how to sail a boat...

Later. Later, when her head stopped hurting, she would tackle the most urgent problems. Someone should have told me she was sick. Drugs must make you sick.

The shuddering thought brought out a pencil, and across the margin of the List of Rules, Laws and Regulations, Lon jotted a pertinent reminder: Another rule will be no drugs allowed and all drug fiends will have to quit it or be subjected to heavy fines. She underlined heavy fines twice. Fair warning to any Island inhabitants contemplating the outlawed stupidity of sticking themselves with a needle.

There was barely time to replace the penciled sheet before a racing motor and the squeak of abruptly applied brakes sounded outside. Carrying the briefcase, and with the inward exultation of an unseasoned traveler embarking upon a long voyage, she hurried to the front door.

She had not laughed in a long time, Lon reflected. But how could anyone fail to be amused by the delightful coincidence of a doorbell and an alarm clock ringing at exactly the same moment?

CHAPTER 15

The walls of this room in downtown Los Angeles had been painted a cool, restful green. And to shut out those voices she had no particular wish to hear, Lon imagined the taste of those walls. Fresh, minty flavor. The clarity with which she could produce sensations of taste and smell at will buoyed her confidence. Sassy Gregg had not been thinking clearly before something happened to her. As long as you could think straight, everything was under control.

The Island's Crime Control System, which she had devised during the early part of the inquest, was further demonstration of her mind's sharpness. When this exasperating session was over, she would write it all down. That is, if the gray-haired man with the steel-rimmed glasses was finished with her papers. She liked him. What was his name—Doctor Something? He had talked to her for a long time, asking questions that didn't make much sense but were no bother to answer, and he had known Sassy Gregg, except that he kept calling her Sally, but he didn't say that he had particularly liked her or disliked her, only that he had been interested in her. But he seemed more interested in the contents of Lon's briefcase—in fact, had been fascinated by the Island.

She had decided, then, that even an elderly male doctor would be better than no doctor at all, and he had sounded grateful and enthusiastic when Lon had suggested that he might work on plans for a hospital. This had been a neglected area in her planning, like the Crime Control System. She was compensating now for her brief infidelity, with new ideas coming thick and fast. Why had she neglected her work lately?

Lon drew back from the suddenly lime walls. They were not minty, she decided, but sour and sharp in the jaws. They had started asking more questions about Sassy and the swimming pool, then, and it seemed that they wanted her to remember details, answering whatever they asked completely and honestly. Which she did, knowing how impressed they must be with her careful explanations.

Mavis was in the room. She hadn't looked up at Lon yet, but she would notice how well Lon answered questions, even the ones that had nothing to do with the matter: "And after you had parked the car below the Gregg residence, you had Lesbian relations with Mavis Thompson?" Then Mavis would realize how much simpler it was to get everyone straight on what did happen, because the sooner they did that, the sooner it would be all over. Refusing to tell that other man what her last name was, earlier, had only delayed the whole process. And you see? They knew it, anyway. Even knew Mavis's last name.

Actually, no one was cooperating as well as Lon was. That big guy, the one who told about finding Sassy, interrupted Lon—Mavis—shouting, "That's a damned lie!" And the blonde woman who resembled Sassy, but was much too young to be her mother, stood up every once in a while and cried, "My baby... Why did you kill my baby?" And the man who held his hands over his face most of the time would get the woman to sit down and would pat her shoulders, but all he did when they asked him questions was cry and shake his head.

Lon's mother was even worse. (And no one could tell her that wasn't her mother, because Lon knew that gray dress— had seen it hanging in the closet hundreds of times.) She had to nod her head, agreeing with the woman in gray, because it was perfectly true that Lorraine Harris had a good home. And had never lacked for anything and had been taught right from wrong. But no one in the room seemed to be disagreeing, which made it all a complete. waste of time. Repeating that good Christian home part and all that business about Evie and Judith, as though anyone had said there was something wrong with her sisters! And Lon thought, further, shut up, shut up and let me get back to work!

Her father was there, too, but it was harder to recognize him, because Lon had never seen him without the double-lensed glasses. And had discovered, surprisingly, that his eyelids were puffy and red. All these years she hadn't known that his eyes were puffy and red! Then it seemed, for a moment, that he might not be her father at all, because of the way he kept shaking his head, as though he might be thinking, no, no, no; not like her father at all.

Tired of the disorganization—things outside her mind were not crystallized as they were inside it, not seen clearly—Lon thought of how sensible it had been to plan the Island, long ago, when the woman in the gray dress (Mother: it was important to know who was who) had kept repeating things and annoying Lon. And how pleasant it was now to think about the sunny, sandy beach. Because something else was bothering her. Though it was hard to remember exactly what it was. She had been so busy...

Later, when the session had ended, Lon saw beckoning a plump, unsmiling woman in plain dark blue. That was after the flash bulb blinded Lon's eyes and the big light-haired man who had cried so much leaped at some little yelling guy and tried to smash his camera, for no good reason. And after the woman in the gray dress screamed that she would never be able to hold her head up again and how could a child of hers have done all those filthy things. The woman in blue led Lon to another room. It was a room somewhere at the end of a long corridor, and it might be a room painted purple, with a sweet, grape taste.

Halfway down that hallway (hushed-voice hallway; why didn't they speak out? Was there some reason to be quiet and afraid?) Lon hesitated. And the woman in blue slipped a plump arm around Lon's waist. Warm pressure, gentle, reassuring, urging her forward. Still Lon did not move, but glanced to the side, to catch sight of that round, jutting bosom; undivided, like a full, firm pillow. And substantial, so that if you suddenly rested your head there, buried your face there, the other arm would rise to fold you in and press you closer. Nothing would be asked or demanded, everything would be known and understood, not mattering, not mattering for some sweet and secret reason that only you and she could know. Mother-creature, lover-creature—mother!

And it happened then, bursting inside her, crumbling a great, gray flagstone dam behind which the tears had accumulated, slate and cloudy pink in color. Crumbled the retaining wall, washing over the lies, the lies, the hunger, the deceits and the self-deceptions. And a rush of tears reaching further to swell over the rituals, the chants, the shamefully childish plans, washing them clean and stark, unlike the blood-soaked stone, so that now they were revealed in bright, white light. Unreal, unreal—lies, all of these, lies!

"Come along, now. Come along with me." The arm pressing her forward. Firmly, tenderly.

But, oh, the lies! Crude, laughable lie of the Island—crudest of all the deceits! And that inwardly sneering doctor pretending it was all real, laughing at her, laughing because he knew... he knew it wasn't true. The lie of Mavis and the pretty round breasts—all wrong, wrong, and not what Lon had needed and hungered for. Not that at all. But now, at last, here was someone. Someone who touched her gently, wrapped love around her with a firm, warm arm and was real, as nothing Lon had believed in had ever been real.

And Lon heard her voice and the echo of her voice in the whispering corridor. Crying, "What are they going to do to me?" Then heard through a gruff and indifferent tone the crooning softness that only she, Lon, who shared the secret, could hear. "Let's not worry about that now, dear. It's going to be all right."

"I didn't want to kill anybody. I didn't want..."

"I know, I know. Now come along..."

"You're the only one who cares. I don't have anybody else... oh, please, please..."

The arm tightened, comforting. "It's all right, dear. You cry if you want to, but we can't stand out here in the hall…"

"Oh, please!" And the breast was a cushion against Lon's face, warm-smelling and generous. Loving... loving. "Please!"

"All right, all right...!"

"Don't let them hurt me, Mom! Tell them I didn't want to kill her! Tell them you won't let them hurt me, stay with me, tell them you love me... Will you do that, Mom? Will you tell them?"

There was a silence to be filled with tears. And then the caressing voice, so gentle now that it was no longer a secret; the love between them could be heard by anyone who might listen. "I'll tell them, honey."

The heavy blue fabric was limp and wet now. But it had been meant to hold her tears and there would be times when Lon would press her laughter against that warmth, with the strong arms always there to hold her, protect her from all the others.

Protect her even from the gray-haired man who had made fun of her, lying and pretending that he wanted to run a hospital on an island that never had been and never would be, apologizing that he wasn't really that kind of doctor, but looking into her eyes and nodding, yes, yes, he would work with her on the plans—she would tell him all about her island and they would work on the plans together. Even when he came, she was safe, and when the kindly voice near her ear whispered, "What do you want me to do, Dr. Friedman?" the arms tightened, so she knew the arms would not let her go.

So she circled the beloved softness with her own arms, clinging there, and turning to look at the man through her tears, but confident and joyful now in her defiance. "My mother loves me no matter what I do. She loves me just the way I am. My mom won't let you do anything to me."

And whatever the man had been planning, he at least had sense enough to know that this was true.

"Of course she won't, Lon," he said. He looked at her mother then, to nod slowly, to let them both know he realized this was true.

He was a pretty smart doctor, at that, Lon decided. He could probably do smart things with the kids in this place.

~~~

AFTERWORD

A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them.

In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. These books were cheaply produced and, with a price of twenty-five cents on their light cardboard covers, affordable for the average American.

Prior to the introduction of the mass-market paperback, as it would come to be known, the literary landscape in America was quite different than what it is today. Reading was primarily a leisure-time pursuit of the wealthy and educated. Hardcover books were expensive and hard to find, so purchasing books was a luxury only the rich living in major metropolitan areas could afford. There simply weren’t many bookstores across the country, and only gift shops and stationary stores carried a few popular novels at a time.

The Pocket Books were priced to sell, however, and sell is what they did… in numbers never before seen. Availability also had a great effect on sales, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success.

Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures. Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II—mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage.

Like many of the early paperback publishers, Dell relied on previously published material for its early books, releasing “complete and unabridged” reprints under different titles by established authors. Within a couple of years it was focused exclusively on mysteries, identifiable by the Dell logo on the cover—a small keyhole with an eye looking through it. Many of the Dell mysteries also featured a colored map on the back cover representing the various locations pertaining to the story’s crime. These “mapback” editions became extremely popular and by 1945, Dell was publishing four new books a month.

The new paperback industry was faced with some difficult challenges during World War II. In particular, the War Board’s Paper Limitation order placed serious restrictions and rations on the use of paper. Publishers began to worry whether they would have enough paper to satisfy both the civilian and military appetite for paperbacks. Manpower shortages and transportation difficulties were also proving to be difficult challenges. In response, some publishers—Pocket Books, for instance—reduced their publication schedules and reset their books in smaller type thereby reducing the number of pages per book. Others simply rejected longer books in favor of shorter ones.

In the end, World War II proved to be a boon to the emerging paperback industry. During the war, a landmark agreement was reached with the government in which paperbound books would be produced at a very low price for distribution to service men and women overseas. These books—Armed Services Editions, as they were called—were often passed from one soldier or sailor to another, being read and re-read over and over again until they literally fell apart. Their stories of home helped ease the soldier’s loneliness and homesickness, and they could be easily carried in uniform pockets and read anywhere—in fox holes, barracks, transport planes, etc. Of course, once the war was over millions of veterans returned home with an insatiable appetite for reading. They were hooked, and their passion for reading these books helped launch a period of unprecedented growth in the paperback industry.

The reading tastes of these veterans were directly reflected in the popularity of certain genres at the turn of the decade. In the mid-to late 1940s, mysteries, romance, thrillers, and hardboiled detective stories seemed to sell better. In the early 1950s new genres—science fiction, westerns, gay and lesbian, juvenile delinquent and “sleaze”, for instance—gained in popularity as readers were presented with stories never before seen in print. Publishers also came to realize that sex would sell books… lots of books. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they ditched their conservative and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, books with sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.

Science fiction titles reflected the uncertain times during which they were written. The Cold War was just beginning, the threat of nuclear annihilation was on everyone’s mind, governments in Eastern Europe were falling to Communists, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was looking for “un-American activities” everywhere in the United States. Many science fiction stories in the early days of the paperback revolution were little more than soap operas or westerns set in space—good guys taking on bad guys while rescuing damsels in distress—that were short stories taken from the pulp magazines. In 1952, however, Ballantine Books changed all that by becoming the first paperback publisher to release novel-length science fiction stories that were sophisticated, intelligent and thematically serious. In 1953, Ballantine Book No. 41 was released—Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451—and the paperback’s science fiction genre launched like a rocket heading to Venus.

The popularity of this new genre wasn’t lost on new paperback publisher, Ace Books, which became known primarily for its publication of sci-fi titles. Not content with publishing one science fiction novel at a time, Ace came up with an interesting gimmick—the double novel. Priced at thirty-five cents, the “Ace Double” featured two paperback novels bound back-to-back with the back cover appearing upside-down in the racks. The stories contained within these “double” paperbacks were novellas or long short stories, rather than novels, but the reading public didn’t care—they loved getting two books for the price of one! The format also worked to the advantage of Ace Books, as they were able to combine the work of an unknown (and, therefore, less expensive) writer with that of a prominent and popular author. As a result, the careers of more than a few aspiring science fiction writers were launched via the innovative “Ace Double.”

Science fiction would not be the only genre with titles flying off the shelves in the early 1950s, however. And, it is unlikely that even Gold Medal Books knew, in 1950, just how successful its first lesbian-themed paperback original novel—Women’s Barracks—would be. Written by Tereska Torres, and based on her experiences in London with the French Resistance movement during World War II, the book was not intended to launch an entire lesbian genre—it was a story about women during wartime, some of whom happened to be romantically involved with other women. The story simply resonated with men and women alike—both straight and gay—and by the end of 1950 had sold more than a million copies for Gold Medal.

Women’s Barracks also caught the attention of the government, unfortunately, and was singled out by the Gathings Committee as an example of how the paperback industry was subverting the morals of America. The threat of fines and incarceration made the paperback industry skittish about publishing anything that could be considered “indecent” and before long, a sort of self-censorship was in full swing. Many stories featuring characters that lived their lives outside the rules of the prevailing morality of the times soon became dark and punishing, as there could be no happy endings for those who defied convention. Still, the lesbian titles were enormously popular and soon paperback publishers—beginning with Gold Medal—realized sales would skyrocket if they moved from reprints to “paperback originals.”

This move toward of the publication of original fiction by paperback companies created an immediate and strong demand for writers and provided unprecedented opportunities for women writers in particular. While it is true that some of the lesbian titles during the 1950s were written by men using female pseudonyms, a good number were written by women, many of whom were lesbians themselves. And although they were still required to write within the prescribed moral guidelines set by their editors, quite a few were able to portray the lesbian lives of their characters with a significant degree of honesty and compassion.

For lesbians across the country, especially those living isolated lives in small towns, these books provided a sense of community they never knew existed… a connection to women who experienced the same longings, feelings and fears as they did—the powerful knowledge that they were not alone. With the birth of the lesbian-themed pulp novel, women who loved women could finally see themselves—their experiences and their lives—represented within the pages of a book. They finally had a literature they could call their own.

We are excited to make these wonderful paperback stories… these pulp novels, as they have come to be known, available in ebook format to new generations of readers. We present them in their original form, with very little modification, so as to preserve the tone and atmosphere of the time period. In fact, much of the language—the slang, the colloquialisms, the lingo, even the spellings of some words—appear as they were written fifty or sixty years ago. We hope you will enjoy this nostalgic look back at a period in American history when dames were dangerous, tough-guys were deadly and dolls were downright delicious.

— Kathryn James, Editor

For more classic pulp ebooks, visit us online at www.vintage-pulp-ebooks.com!

Love the book cover? Get fabulous gift products featuring pulp cover art at our online store, Vintage Pulp Cover Art (http://www.cafepress.com/pulpcoverart) – posters, refrigerator magnets, t-shirts, notecards and more!

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