Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [16]
She dressed quickly, went back to the bedroom to look for Megan. The blonde girl was sleeping soundly. In the kitchen she found a pad and pencil. She wrote: My love, I’m off to work. Meet me for lunch, if you can. Or meet me after work and help me move in with you. She paused, chewed on the end of the pencil, then added: I feel so wonderful, so very wonderful. I can’t believe it. I did not think I would ever be this gloriously happy. See what you’ve done to me? You’ve got me running off at the mouth. Not at the mouth, I guess, because I’m writing this, not saying it. Running off at the pencil? Oh, I’m silly. I ought to tear up this silly note and start over. I love you, I truly do.
She was outside on the street before she realized that she did not know where she was. Megan had told her what street they were on, but she was bubbling with wine at the time and the street name had not sunk in. She memorized Megan’s house number, then walked to the nearest corner. Megan lived on Cornelia Sheet, she saw and she was now at the corner of Cornelia and Bleecker, which meant that she was only four or five blocks from her own room. She had probably walked past Megan’s building a dozen times, never dreaming she would know a girl who lived inside.
Not so strange, she realized. The Village was not so very large, and she had walked down all its streets at one time or another. Now she headed over to Seventh Avenue, found a diner and had a quick breakfast, smoked several cigarettes and drank three cups of black coffee. She had had hardly any sleep at all during the night, and yet she was somehow not at all tired. She paid her check and hurried off to work.
The shop was as she had left it, the work itself the same as always. And yet everything was entirely different this morning and she knew it, could feel it in the air and in herself. Her step was quicker and lighter, her voice firmer and easier when she spoke. People seemed different—more human, even. They were the same hurrying tourists with the same lack of taste as always, and she knew this, but she found herself relating to them in a different fashion.
It took no stroke of genius to guess what was responsible for the change. The world had not turned suddenly rosy; it was she who was wearing rose-colored glasses. And all of this had come about because of the night with Megan. It was that simple. All at once the words to all the silly popular songs seemed to make sense.
Megan met her for lunch. They sat in a booth around the comer and ate hamburgers. Megan said, “I got your note. You’re sweet.”
“It was a silly note.”
“I loved it. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You were sleeping so well.”
“I didn’t see the note at first. I was afraid you had left me.”
“Why? How could I leave you?”
“I thought you were sorry for what we had done. It’s hard to face the fact that you are out of step with the rest of the world. Society has a pretty picture of normal people and an ugly picture of us. Homosexuals are supposed to be sick or twisted or evil. When you grow up believing that, when the image is reinforced at every turn, it’s hard to wake up and realize that you’re one of the sick and evil and twisted creatures. I didn’t know how you would react.”
“I don’t know myself.”
“How do you feel?”
“Beautiful.”
“You should feel beautiful. Because you are.”
The morning had hurried by; the afternoon crawled. She kept waiting for it to be five-thirty so that Megan would come for her. Now that she was set to move in with Megan, the idea of remaining for an extra moment in her furnished room was horrible. The squalor of the room did not bother her. The room was sterile and shabby compared to Megan’s apartment, but this shabbiness had never seemed to depress her unduly. It was more that the move was a move from the old life to the new, from life alone to life with Megan.
She remembered