Strange Are the Ways of Love Read online

“Stop—”

  He didn’t stop. He didn’t seem any more able to stop than she was to stop him, and she felt herself enjoying it, yet she had to stop, had to stop him before anything happened.

  “No!”

  His hands were all over her body, fumbling with her clothing, preparing her for what was going to happen. Still excited, she began to struggle, fighting to get loose. But she couldn’t get away.

  She had to stop him. There was only one way to do this, only one course open to her, and she took it.

  Hardly thinking, she drove her knee up into him, hard, hurting him. He let out a small cry and fell away from her, doubled up in pain. His teeth were clenched tight and she could see him struggling to get his breath, fighting to keep from screaming. He moaned again and slipped from the bed to the floor.

  “Mike! Oh, God—”

  “Jan, I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry.”

  “No, it was my fault. I—”

  “It was mine.” His teeth were still clenched and he was trying to talk over the pain. “I should have stopped when you told me to but I couldn’t, I just—”

  “You couldn’t help it.”

  “I should have,” he insisted. “Jan, I love you so much!”

  “No,” she said. “No, you can’t. You can’t.”

  When he looked up at her she could see the tears starting to form in the corners of his eyes. His eyes were begging with her and arguing with her and holding back tears all at once. She stood up from the bed and began straightening her clothing like a person in a dream while he was saying, “Jan, I love you. I love you!”

  “No!” The words came out in a rush and she didn’t attempt to hold them back. “You don’t love me. You think you love me but you can’t because you don’t know me. Mike, you don’t know what I am!”

  She turned and ran from the apartment, slamming the door behind her and rushing through the hallway and out of the building onto the street.

  15

  LAURA WAS WATCHING HER intently from the couch when she walked into the apartment. There was some new and unfamiliar quality present in her eyes, some emotion Jan could see but could not identify.

  “Where were you so long?”

  It was a question, not an accusation. But Jan felt guilty immediately. Her hands began to tremble and she couldn’t manage to control them even though she clenched them. What was the matter with her?

  “I got tied up,” she said, lamely.

  “What kind of rope did they use?”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s after eleven, honey. Where were you all this time?”

  “I—”

  She saw that Laura was staring hard at her, noticing the way her hands were shaking. “Jan,” she said, softly, “what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Honey, you’re shaking like a leaf. Come over here and tell me about it.”

  She walked to the sofa and sat down, knowing that she had to tell Laura what had happened but not knowing where to start. She knew that it was nothing, that it had happened because she was tired and that it didn’t mean anything. But how could she tell Laura?

  “Jan.”

  “Yes?”

  “Jan, something’s got you all in knots tonight. What is it?”

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  “That’s possible. But don’t you think you ought to tell me about it?”

  Silence.

  “Jan? Sweets, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Are you afraid you’re going to hurt me?”

  Silence. Her hands were shaking more violently.

  “Jan, it hurts me more when you’re afraid.”

  She closed her eyes. Laura was right—she had to talk, had to get it out of her system.

  Slowly, haltingly, she began. She started from the time she left the apartment while Laura was still sleeping and went over the early part of the day, leaving nothing out. As she spoke her words flowed more smoothly, until by the time she got to Mike’s appearance the words followed each other easily, fluently. It was no effort to speak, no effort to recount everything that had taken place.

  She did not look at Laura while she spoke. At first she kept her eyes shut, trying to lose contact with everything but the story she was telling. Later she focused her eyes on a lamp across the room.

  Laura held her hand while she talked but this did not distract her. By the time she finished her hands had stopped trembling.

  Laura remained silent, not moving at all, not saying a word. There was silence all over the apartment, hanging from the ceiling, pushing against the walls, weighing on the floor. A clock ticked mechanically in the bedroom and the rain lashed at the window.

  Jan had hardly noticed the rain on the way over. Now she realized that her clothes were damp.

  “Jan—” Laura’s voice seemed to be coming from far away as though she was speaking through a filter. “I’m glad you were able to tell me.”

  “It was nothing. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “But it did.” She smiled, a brief smile that left her face at once. “It meant more than you realize, honey, I guess I’ll have to draw you a picture.

  “Jan—” She broke off, looking up abruptly. “Jan, this is very hard for me. I don’t want you to interrupt me until I’m finished. Okay?”

  “But—”

  “Please?”

  “All right.”

  Silence.

  “First of all, I don’t want this to hurt you. It may hurt a little at first, but you have to realize that I’m not trying to hurt you. It’s just that I understand some things that you don’t understand yet. I’ve been here longer than you have. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve always been here, that my life started in this room and will end here. That’s why I know some things that you don’t . . . yet.”

  Laura, I don’t understand.

  “You . . . you don’t love me, Jan. Wait, don’t interrupt me until I’m through. You don’t love me and you never did love me, and I’m not saying this bitterly or angrily. I’m not blaming you in the least.”

  But I do love you, Laura.

  “Sometimes a person can think she’s in love, Jan. Sometimes a person needs something, and when another person supplies that something—it appears to be love. You . . . oh, I’m not getting through to you at all, am I?”

  No. No, I don’t understand—

  “You were using me, Jan. Not consciously—I don’t think you could consciously use anybody. But that’s what you were doing. It’s as though your back itched and you couldn’t reach to scratch it. I wasn’t a lover, honey. I was a kind of back-scratcher and your back doesn’t itch any more.”

  You’re wrong. I need you. I still don’t understand what you mean and—

  Laura lit a cigarette and shook out the match elaborately, her eyes focusing on the end of the cigarette for several seconds. “Jan,” she said, forcing a little smile, “let me tell you why your back itched. It itched because you wanted a man.”

  That’s not true. That’s—

  “You wanted a man,” she repeated. “You wanted a man but you were afraid of men, so you had to settle for the next best thing. Men were too strong. Men were strong and you were weak and they might hurt you. So you were afraid of them.

  “I wasn’t a man; therefore I couldn’t hurt you. But at the same time you felt I couldn’t love you as well. You’re right—I can’t. Why do you think you were afraid to love Mike?

  Love . . . Mike? “You weren’t ready for him. That’s all it was. And now you’re ready.”

  Ready? Ready for what? Laura, don’t you know what I am? Doesn’t anybody know?

  “You are in love,” Laura said. There was a certainty in her voice that kept Jan from questioning the words. She had to take them in whole.

  “Jan, you’re not a Lesbian. Honey, you talked yourself into the whole thing and now I have to talk you back out of it. You got here because you weren’t ready to go all the way. Lesbianism was one of the rungs on the ladder. Now
you’re ready to climb up to the top.

  “Don’t try to argue with me, idiot. There are some things you still don’t know a hell of a lot about and this happens to be one of them. You’re not gay; you never were gay. You’re going to be happy and you’re going to have kids and a home, things that I couldn’t ever give you. You’re going to have a love with a future, honey, and I almost envy you.”

  Silence again. Jan wanted to say something because something had to be said but she didn’t know what to say or even what to think or feel. Laura’s words began to soak in and the thought came to her that Laura was right, that Laura had to be right.

  But she had loved Laura. And even as she thought this she felt the love fading away.

  “Okay, honey. It’s your turn now.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say that you love Mike.”

  “Do I?”

  “Of course you do. You know that now, don’t you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then say it.”

  The words didn’t want to come out. First she had to take a breath, and then she had to force the words from her lips: “I love Mike.”

  “That’s right, honey. Now tell me that you don’t love me and never did.”

  “Laura, I can’t say that!”

  “You have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s true. Because you have to know it and make sure you know it deep down inside you so you’ll never forget it. And you’ve got to make me believe it, honey. Because I have to let go of you and that’s not an easy thing for me to do, not unless I know that we never had anything and that whatever we might have had is over.”

  “Laura—”

  “Say it, Jan.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can. Come on, now.”

  She closed her eyes tight and turned her head to one side, mumbling “I don’t love you and I never did.”

  It sounded cruel. Harsh and cruel.

  “Again.”

  “Why?”

  “Say it!”

  “I don’t love you and I never did!”

  She shouted the words, no longer able to control the emotions within her. Sobbing, she threw herself into Laura’s arms and pressed her face against Laura’s shoulder. Automatically Laura’s arms went around her.

  But for the first time these arms weren’t strong enough to hold her.

  When she sat up she could feel herself withdrawing from Laura. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “I guess it’s all over.”

  “It never existed.”

  “Something did. I can still feel parts of it.”

  “Maybe, but it was never love. We needed each other and we took what we needed. We were two straws clutching at each other, that’s all. Now we don’t need each other any more.”

  “You don’t need me now, do you?”

  Laura only hesitated for a moment. “No,” she said. “I needed you because there was something you needed from me. Now I’ve given it to you and I don’t need you any more.”

  She nodded, understanding Laura and beginning to understand herself.

  “Laura?”

  “What?”

  “What should I tell Mike? Should I tell him about us?”

  “No.”

  “But is it right not to tell him?”

  Laura thought for a moment. “There’s an out for you, Jan. There’s a way to avoid telling him.”

  “How?”

  She looked away. “There was a novel I read a year or two ago,” she said. “By a man named Leonard Bishop. In it a boy named Ab made love to a girl named Rachel.

  “Afterwards she asked him how many women he had slept with. And he said ‘One—the rest were shadows.’ ”

  A pause.

  “Is that what you are?”

  “That’s all I ever was. So was that boy in Indiana, in his own way. Jan, nobody has ever made love to you yet, not really. You’re still a virgin inside. I’m a shadow—when the sun comes up I’ll go away.”

  “And am I a shadow for you?”

  For a moment she didn’t answer. Then, “I suppose you are. But all I’ve ever known are shadows.”

  Silence. The clock still ticking and the rain still coming down hard against the windows.

  “Laura—”

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Laura, I feel like crying.”

  “Idiot. You ought to be happy. You’re in love for the first time.”

  “I know it. But I still feel like crying. I can’t help it.”

  “Don’t cry, Jan.”

  “I—”

  “Because I don’t want to cry and I will if you do. Please.”

  She swallowed and said, “I’m all right now.”

  “That’s the girl. You’re going to be happy, Jan.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You will, honey. Now . . . now I’m going to leave and I want to go before you do. I don’t want to be by myself right now.”

  She stood up and walked to the closet, taking a raincoat from a hanger and slipping into it.

  “Will I see you again, Laura?”

  “If you do I don’t want you to talk to me. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. It’s better that way, Jan.”

  “I understand.”

  Smiling quickly, “Now will you give me a kiss?”

  The kiss was very brief, very chaste and sisterly. Laura stepped back, her hand on the knob of the door, and Jan could see the tears flooding her eyes and at the point of overflowing.

  She said, “So long.”

  And then she was gone.

  16

  SOLONG. That was the song, of course. That was the song she had to hear, the song that was played in The Shadows at least a dozen times a day, day after day. How many times had she heard it? How many times had she been the one to play it, for that matter, or the one to cause some other girl to play it?

  Too many times, she thought, dropping her dime in the slot and pressing the proper buttons. She turned and walked to an empty booth, glad at least that there was a booth to be alone in, glad that at The Shadows she could be all alone by herself and yet have people in the room with her.

  The record. Such a sad song. Music and lyrics blending to create a mood which matched her own as no other song could. Some girls even cried to it, but it never had that effect on her. It summed things up so expertly that crying became unnecessary, as though the song did it for you.

  As those melancholy lyrics said, she would not forget. Not Jan, not even if all the others were someday forgotten, all the girls she had left and all the ones who had left her. She had said this about each of them in turn but this time she knew it to be true. Jan would remain. Jan would stay in her mind until there was no mind left.

  Such a short time. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And a part of Thursday. Four days, really—four days in a lifetime, and wasn’t that the title of a book? But all she could remember about it was that it drew four separate days from a man’s life and made them into a novel.

  Four days.

  They were such good days, such perfect days, and the tragedy was that they had to come all at once, one after the other. Days like that were so good that they ought to be spaced throughout a person’s life.

  Or was it better this way? Perhaps the intensity of it all compensated for the brevity. She had told Peggy something to that effect, that the acceleration was matched by the loss of love and the lessening of the pain. Did that make it any easier for Peggy?

  Probably not. The fact was important, but knowing it didn’t help in the least.

  Something was different. This was an altogether new sort of break-up, a new chapter in the saga of the Musical Beds. The sadness and emptiness was present as always, the deep feeling of the loss of something precious.

  But there was more.

  She had left many girls and many girls had left her. And on rare occasions nobody left anybod
y—the relationship simply withered away with no broken edges.

  But this was different.

  So many good-byes. So many times and so many times to look forward to, so many girls still to be known, to be loved passionately and lost with equal passion. And yet this one affair was different from all that had been and all that was yet to be.

  She looked around the room. The faces kept changing but the girls remained the same. And The Shadows never changed. It was supposed to have been a speakeasy during Prohibition, complete with peephole in door. And—in a sense it still was. It never changed and it never would change. The same records would spin forever on the jukebox while the same faceless waitresses served the same tasteless drinks. And the same tourists would stumble in to stare nervously at the dimly lit forms, leaving with the sensation that they had stepped into another world.

  Even the same people would drink at The Shadows. Their names and faces might change but this did not matter. Kate wasn’t around; neither was a whole host of the girls who had been present Saturday night. Peggy was sitting across on the other side of the room, she noticed, and she thought of Peggy for a moment with something approaching tenderness.

  But there was no time to think of Peggy. Later there might be time for her, later but not now.

  Tonight was Jan’s night.

  Tonight was a brand-new night. She had never felt quite this way before. She herself had never broken up an affair while still in love and she had definitely never felt the particular emotion that filled her. What was it, exactly?

  Relief? Hardly. Fulfillment? Not that. Nothing like that.

  What was it?

  Never mind. Whatever it was, she felt strangely good about it.

  She could have kept Jan with her, for a time. She could have fought with Mike and she might have beaten him. With a certain amount of effort she might have kept Jan in the shadows forever.

  But she hadn’t. She hadn’t even demanded that last fitful and desperate love that Peggy had requested and received. She could have, but she did not really need it.

  I must have loved her, she thought. I must have loved her one hell of a lot.

  She had lost so much. This time she had loved more intensely than ever before.

  Tonight would be empty and alone. Tomorrow morning there would be no one in bed beside her. But she would go on living, and then there would be another girl with brown hair or black hair or red hair—or blonde hair, she thought, looking briefly at Peggy.