Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [43]
Bobbie said, “I knew a girl who killed herself. Once.”
She didn’t say anything. The sentence jumped in at her, tore her from her restful mood.
“In Cuernavaca. That was one of the reasons I came back, one of the things that made it impossible for me to stomach Mexico any more. She wasn’t exactly a lesbian. She was bisexual and would sleep with anything if she got in the mood. Her parents were very rich. Old money, a proper Bostonian family, all that.” Bobbie’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “She was the most depraved person I’ve ever met, in the real sense of the word.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I don’t know what to tell. She was thrill-crazy, I guess that’s it. Her parents should have sent her to a psychiatrist instead of to Mexico. She told incredible stories, but most of them may have been lies I don’t think she knew the difference.”
“Did you ever—”
“Oh, of course. Everybody was hysterically promiscuous down there, and she was working her way through everyone who could speak English, and an occasional Mexican for laughs, and she got to me after a while. I never liked her much but I found her…well, fascinating, in a pitiable sort of a way. We weren’t together long. Then a month later she killed herself. She was only twenty-two years old. She was messy about it, awful about it; it was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a party, everybody drinking. In the middle of everything she took a gun from her purse, a revolver, and she shouted something about this being the biggest kick of all, and she stuck the gun in her mouth—”
Her heart was pounding. “Don’t say it.”
There was a time while neither of them said anything. Rhoda finished her coffee, lit a cigarette. In her mind’s eye she could see that girl, faceless but very real to her, playing her little desperate scene in the middle of a party, picking just the right dramatic moment for announcement and, before anyone could do anything, the act itself.
“Rho—”
Bobbie’s eyes were wide, deep. They caught hers and held them.
“Rho, now.”
The bedroom was almost stark in its simplicity. A Hollywood bed, a maple dresser, a worn rug on the floor. Two chairs, a night table. Walls that needed painting. Bobbie turned on a small lamp on the night table, and killed the overhead light. “I used to be afraid of the dark,” she said. “Can you believe it?”
“But you’re not now.”
“No. But I want to see you.”
They lay down on the bed with their clothes on and kissed. Bobbie was the aggressor, which was as she had known it would be. Bobbie ran her hand over Rhoda’s face, let her hand trail downward to cup a breast gently through the layers of clothing.
This should be a tense moment, she thought. And yet it wasn’t. It took her a moment to realize why this was so. She was taking a new lover, moving from Megan and moving to Bobbie, and yet now, in Bobbie’s arms, she did not feel that any break was being made. But the reason was quickly obvious. She had already become as intimate with Bobbie as she had ever been with anyone. She had committed herself in every way but physically, had developed an emotional rapport with Bobbie that had been tempered by Peg Brandt’s attempt at suicide. What they did now, what pleasure they gave one another in bed, called for no basic change in their relationship. She was not betraying Megan now; she had already betrayed her by what she said and by what she felt. This was no new betrayal. This was only frosting on the cake.
She lay quite still while Bobbie undressed her, removing her clothing piece by piece. The air in the bedroom was cool on her naked flesh. She sighed when Bobbie held her bare breasts, moaned softly when Bobbie ran a hand over her slender legs.
Oh—
Then she was alone upon the bed. Bobbie had drawn away from her. Rhoda turned her head, opened her eyes. Bobbie was undressing by the side of the bed. She unbuttoned the gold blouse, shrugged it from her shoulders. Her hands reached behind her back to unfasten the bra and