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  “Why, Maggie?”

  “I don’t know why. Hold me close, Elly. Kiss me.”

  A kiss that made her head swim. Maggie’s hands, active, clever, one hand toying tenderly with her breasts, the other stroking her legs.

  “Maggie—”

  “What, Ell? What, my darling?”

  “Is it wrong, Maggie?”

  A pause.

  Then: “Do you like this, Ell?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And this? Do you like what I’m doing to you now, my darling? Do you like the way it makes you feel?”

  “Yes!”

  “And this?”

  “Oh, yes! Yes, God, yes, yes, yes!”

  “Then it can’t be wrong, Ell. It can’t be wrong.”

  The door opened. Linc Barclay came through the door, his shirt unbuttoned, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles. He came through the door in a hurry, and he reached Roz just as she rose to meet him, and his arms encircled her and drew her so close to him that she gasped. He kissed her, his mouth sure and demanding, and she returned his kiss with all the passion she felt for him.

  His hands roamed her body. She quivered with delight, and she went limp with lust, and his hands were clever.

  He said: “Good girl. Nothing under your dress, is there?”

  “Just me, Linc.”

  “That’s all I’m interested in. Bed, Roz.”

  No words. They raced up the stairs, and they tore off their clothes, and they were together. And the slump was over, the slump was most assuredly over, the slump was magnificently banished. He took her, needing her, wanting her, possessing her, and the world was aflame with beauty.

  This made everything, all of it, worthwhile. It was the whole world, and Roz felt herself submerged in boiling waters, tossed here and there, exploding in passion that was unlike anything that had ever happened. She was with her man, the only man she had ever loved, the only man she could ever possibly love. She was with her man, and this was the way it ought to be, this was the way it had to be, this was in fact the only way it could ever be.

  This justified everything. This made the world worthwhile, and it made the hard times worthwhile, and it made the dry periods and the slump bearable. This was everything, the total experience of humanity, and it was nothing short of perfect.

  It lasted almost forever.

  Then the end came. The end, with the world going up in bloody smoke, with bodies rising and falling, tempos increasing, everything emphatically right for once and for all. The end, and an end so perfect it was also a beginning, an end which was a promise.

  They stayed in bed for a few minutes. They shared a single cigarette in the darkness, and they said no words because no words were necessary. They had no need for words; words were a commodity of Linc’s, a marketplace item which he sold at so much a throw. Words were unnecessary between lovers, between man and wife. They were unimportant.

  And then he got up, finally, and dressed. He was going back to work; she knew this without having to ask. She waited while he left the house and returned to the studio. Then she went downstairs to get a fresh pot of coffee ready. He would be working all night, and he would need plenty of black coffee to keep him going.

  When she paused at the door of the study she heard the typewriter going a mile a minute.

  The Hasbrouck House was not far from Central Park, not far from where their driver let them out. Maggie paid him ten dollars, led Elly along the few blocks to the hotel. It was a primarily residential hotel, its prices moderate, its service quietly elegant, its rooms pleasant. Maggie had been there before, with a lesbian lover. The hotel, while not by any means specifically catering to the gay trade, cast a tolerant eye on homosexual love affairs. As such it was an obvious choice of a place to spend the evening.

  Because, Maggie knew, the seduction of Elly Carr was no long-range proposition, not now. It was something to be accomplished as quickly as possible, something to be attended to that very night. Elly was drunk enough so that her inhibitions did not stand in her way, and she was hot enough so that she would love what Maggie was going to do to her. And she was beautiful and desirable and sweet, so much so that Maggie had to have her or drop dead of desire.

  A bellhop showed them to their room. Maggie locked the door, and she turned to Elly, and the little brunette came into her arms at once, nuzzling her sweet face against Maggie’s big breasts.

  “Let’s get out of our clothes, my darling.”

  “Yes, Maggie. Oh, yes.”

  “I want to see your bare breasts again. I want to touch them this time, Ell. I want to kiss them.”

  “Oh, God.”

  She unzipped Elly’s dress and helped her out of it. She unclasped Elly’s bra, then took off her own clothing. She watched Elly peel down her underpants and caught her breath at the sight of Elly’s beautiful naked body. The girl, stark naked, was even more lovely than Maggie had dared to imagine.

  “Kiss me, Maggie.”

  Maggie did not need an invitation. She took the girl close, held Elly in her arms and when their bare breasts came together both girls moaned as if they had touched a live wire. Maggie’s nipples were firm little jewels now that drilled fiery holes in Elly’s breasts. They stood up, and they drank each other in deep kisses, and then they were on the bed and in each other’s arms.

  “Lie still,” Maggie whispered. “I’m going to make you feel like an angel, Elly. Ell, Ell, Ell—I’m going to make you see the other side of the moon. Hold onto your hat, darling!”

  Her mouth touched Elly’s mouth. Her tongue sank in, kissing with passion. Then her lips brushed Elly’s closed eyes, nuzzled her throat. Elly was in the grip of passion. Maggie could take her time, could do everything as she wanted it to be done. There was no question of seduction. The seduction such as it was had been accomplished.

  She kissed Elly’s breasts.

  Maggie was a woman, and she knew what a woman’s body was, knew how to excite it, knew how to make it respond. She kissed Elly’s breasts with her lips and tongue, let her hot tongue glide over skin that was silk-soft, sucked the sweet nipples until they throbbed with passion.

  Elly was moaning now.

  She stroked and kissed Elly’s legs. Elly had lovely legs, lovely thighs, and she kissed them.

  And then the finale. Then the moon and the stars, and life and death, and the overall end of the world.

  They slept, body against body, breasts close to breasts. They slept in love.

  18

  TUESDAY morning was traumatic. Now you might argue that morning is by definition a traumatic state for most people, and you might well be correct arguing thus. But for Elly Carr, who opened her eyes in her room at the Hasbrouck House a few minutes after seven, Tuesday morning was infinitely more traumatic than usual.

  There was the hangover. That was fine for a starter. It was a hangover with bells on. Literally. Elly could hear the bells booming inside her skull, and with no effort at all she could imagine the hunchback Quasimodo doubled up somewhere in her cranial cavity, pulling a rope and giggling in hunched hysterics.

  A hangover is no picnic. A hangover like Elly’s, which is as much like an ordinary morning-after headache as a nuclear explosion is like a firecracker, is even less of a festive occasion. But in this particular instance, the hangover was nothing at all. Elly barely noticed it.

  Maggie eclipsed the hangover. Maggie was lying flat on her back, eyes closed, breasts pointing ceilingward, red hair sprawled out over a white pillowcase. There was Maggie, and there was Elly, and the room reeked with the pungent odors of stale sex.

  Sex.

  Sex with Maggie, yet

  Homosexual sex.

  Sexual homosexual sex.

  Lesbianism, for the love of God!

  Some people, when they drink to excess, experience what is popularly known as a black-out. In the morning, when their eyes unwillingly open, they remember very little of what transpired the night before. In place of memories, these
persons have huge spaces of blankness.

  This can be unpleasant. A man may drink, behave like a total ass, and wake up not realizing he has made a mortal enemy of a former friend. But there are good things about a blackout. Sometimes memories are not worth having.

  Elly Carr never blacked out. This morning was, in that respect if in few others, no different from many other mornings. Elly remembered everything she had done the night before, remembered every last detail from the moment Maggie picked her up at her house in Cheshire Point, driving to the railroad station in the little Volkswagen, to the last final and penultimate quiver of orgasmic fury in the bed at the Hasbrouck House.

  These memories were less than a delight.

  Elly shuddered violently. She tried to imagine what on earth had made her do what she had done, tried to figure out some vaguely rational explanation for the undeniable fact that she and Maggie had made love. There was no such explanation. It was impossible, ridiculous, absurd. It made no sense at all. But it had happened.

  She sat up shakily. Maggie was still asleep, and Elly was glad of it; the morning was bad enough alone and could only be worse if shared with another human being. Especially, she thought, Maggie Whitcomb.

  There was a pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. She reached for the pack, shook a cigarette loose, placed it between her lips. Lips which had kissed Maggie last night. Lips which had—

  She found matches and scratched one. Her hands were shaking rather violently by now and she had a little trouble getting the flame and the cigarette end together. She managed it, eventually, shook out the match with a flick of her wrist and let it fall to the carpet. She sucked smoke into her lungs, letting it trail out from between slightly parted lips.

  It had happened. And, what was more, she had enjoyed it. That was the most singly frightening fact of all. The act itself was tough enough to accept, but a person is never entirely responsible for what happens when he or she is drank, and if she and Maggie had simply fooled around foolishly for a few minutes, it would be easy enough to rationalize the whole thing as something which was meaningless and not worth thinking about.

  But she had loved every minute of it.

  And so had Maggie.

  What in hell did it mean? That she was a … lesbian? God, it didn’t seem possible! She was a nympho, maybe; she was the easiest lay in the western hemisphere, perhaps. But a lesbian? It was only common sense to assume that a girl who yanked her skirt up every time a man was in the neighborhood was hardly the type to get hot for girls.

  But—

  Hold on, she thought. Leave us be logical, little girl. Painfully logical, if the need be. Because, no matter how many ways you find to avoid the issue, the fact remains that you went to bed with Maggie. And that you had a feeling, somewhere deep down inside you, that it was going to happen. And that you were pretty damned glad when it did happen, and that you loved it, and that now you wish it hadn’t happened but you still loved every minute of it while it was going on.

  And that you want it to happen again.

  She drew on the cigarette. Did she want it to happen again? Now there was a question. Questions were easy to find—they were cropping up all over the place. But answers were something else entirely. It wasn’t so very easy to pick out the answers to all those interesting questions.

  Questions and answers. Problems and headaches, and the hangover in back of all of it, making everything worse. And a tremendous thirst, with her throat parched. There was a private bathroom attached to the room, and there was running water in the sink, but she didn’t have the strength to get up and slake her thirst.

  She was on her third cigarette when Maggie awoke.

  Maggie actually was awake before she opened her eyes. Consciousness returned slowly, and while it was returning she remained motionless, nude upon her back. She stayed there for several minutes, taking stock of where she was and how she had gotten there, listening to the quiet sounds of Elly smoking a cigarette.

  Then, finally, she opened her eyes, stretched, and sat up.

  Elly blushed.

  Maggie looked at the girl. A whole rush of emotions came to her … pity for Elly, who was obviously tormented and miserable, guilt at having made a lesbian out of her, whether for a night or longer, and, beneath it all, the undercurrent of desire that refused to be dispelled.

  She said: “Good morning.”

  “Maggie …”

  “Don’t say anything,” she said. “Not for a few minutes, anyway. Let me talk. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Maggie …”

  “I mean it, Ell. Let me get it all out. It’s not easy to say. Then you can talk all you want.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  She swallowed. It was not easy, not at all. Because now honesty was going to have to be the best policy. She had been as cold-blooded as possible in the now-successful campaign to get in bed with Elly Carr; now, the battle won, she had to be honest. She was not fundamentally a cold-blooded person. Sexual conquest alone was not enough for her. She was emotional, and if this whole affair with Elly was going to amount to anything more than simple one-shot sex, she was going to have to play the game according to the rules, with no low blows and no concealed weapons.

  So she said: “I’m a lesbian, Ell. I’ve been exclusively homosexual since I was a junior in prep school. I’ve never slept with a man, because my husband, David, is a male homosexual. We—”

  “Maggie—”

  “Hear me out. Dammit, I said not to interrupt. Will you let me finish what I’m trying to say!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t mean to snap at you. Ell, Dave is gay and I am gay and we’re married to keep up appearances. And I … I seduced you, honey. I very willfully got you to accept me as a friend, and then I just as willfully got you to … to go to bed with me. Maybe it was wrong of me. I’m not certain, and maybe that’s something you can decide better than I can.

  “I’ll tell you this much, Ell. I wouldn’t have tried to make love to you unless I thought you would be responsive. I got you drunk last night, but I still wouldn’t have done anything if I hadn’t known damned well that you wanted it as much as I did. And while we were making love it meant as much to you as it did to me. I know that.”

  Elly didn’t say anything, and Maggie paused, searching the brunette’s face, trying to find some indication that her words were having an effect. Elly’s face was blank. It told her nothing. She reached for one of Elly’s cigarettes and lighted it, using the time the act of lighting the cigarette took to reorganize her thoughts.

  “I knew you had … homosexual leanings,” she said finally. “All along, you were a potential lesbian. Otherwise nothing could have happened between us, Ell.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think back,” she said. “Remember the afternoon when we sat around—uh—a little exposed? Didn’t you feel anything?”

  “Maybe I did.”

  “And you suggested necking in the cab. It was just a joke, but you thought of it all by yourself. Deep down inside you weren’t joking, Ell. Subconsciously you knew what you were and knew what I was. And you knew what you wanted.”

  “It’s hard to believe, Maggie.”

  “It’s true, though.”

  “Then I’m a … a lesbian? I’ve been one all along?”

  “Yes.”

  And Elly was leaning forward, unconscious of her own nakedness, intent solely upon making a point. “Then you listen for a moment,” she said. “Because I’ve got a thing or two to tell you.”

  Maggie listened. She listened to an absolutely incredible story of nymphomania, of sordid trysting, of blatant adultery. She listened to the recounting of a saga starring deliverymen and handymen and door-to-door salesmen, a story of a phantom lover on a black stallion, a story of deep impulses and frighteningly intense emotions.

  “My God,” she said. “I wouldn’t have believed it, Ell.”

  “Nobody knows. I’ve never told anybo
dy. I almost went to a psychoanalyst once but I knew I would have to tell him what my problem was and I couldn’t bring myself to say a word to anyone, not even a doctor. Now do you think I’m a lesbian, Maggie? Maybe I’m just oversexed. Maybe I’m some kind of sex maniac or something.”

  “You’re a lesbian, Ell.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t you see?” She leaned forward, ready to make her point. It was so obvious and Elly couldn’t understand it. “You’ve never really been satisfied by men, Ell. Not inside, not all the way. That’s why there’s this phantom lover image in the background. That’s why you keep searching for the perfect lover, letting these rotten men walk all over you. And that’s why it never worked, why you couldn’t straighten out. Deep down inside you wanted a woman. You wanted me, Ell.”

  “You make it sound sensible.”

  “That’s because it is sensible. Whenever you had sex with a man, you thought about this phantom lover fantasy. Did you have that last night?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You remember,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Did you or didn’t you?”

  “All right, so I didn’t. What does that prove?”

  “That you don’t need fantasies any more, Ell.”

  “Then I am a lesbian,” Elly Carr said slowly. “That’s what you mean, and that’s what you’ve been telling me. And I suppose … I guess you’re right, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then where do we go from here, Maggie?”

  Maggie shrugged. “We get dressed,” she said. “And we leave this hotel, and take a taxi to Grand Central, and catch the first train to Cheshire Point. You go to your house and I go to my house. And then we wait and see what happens.”

  “Will we be lovers?”

  “I don’t know, Ell. We may. You’ve got to do some thinking, honey … You’ve got to decide just where you want to wind up. You may hate me.”

  “I couldn’t hate you.”

  “You might, Ell. You might decide that a lesbian’s life is something you couldn’t bear to live, that even a secret gay existence is too much for you. And you might repress everything by hating me.”