Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [47]
“But if she’s happy—”
“Megan’s the great artist,” Peg Brandt said. “Chockful of artistic integrity. Something I can’t afford to have, incidentally. We folks up at McClellan Products Gazette just do what we have to do. No long words in the crossword puzzle, no bosomy girls in the cartoons, and no expression of opinion that isn’t the precise opinion of one Harvey McClellan. I envy you, Megan.”
Lucia hurried to bolster Peg. “Now stop it,” she said. “You’re in a different field, that’s all. You don’t want to be artistic in your job, Peggy, because it’s something else. It’s being professional that’s important, in doing the job the way it ought to be done. And everybody knows you’re tops.”
There was a momentary lull. Rhoda drank beer straight from the bottle and put the bottle down on the table top. “I wish I could do something,” she said.
She must have said it more plaintively than she meant it. Everyone was looking at her.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I just don’t do anything. Megan is a decorator, Peg is an editor, Lu models—”
“And Bobbie drinks.”
There was laughter. “I’m serious,” she went on. “What do I do? Oh, Bobbie doesn’t work, I know, but she’s interested in a whole load of things. She reads like mad, she writes poetry—”
“Bad poetry,” Bobbie put in.
“And what do I do?” She shrugged. “Nothing. I go to work and stand there like an idiot selling ugly things to tasteless people, and I come home and relax, and then I go to work again. Anybody could do what I do. I have a college diploma, but I could work as well for Mr. Yamatari with a fourth grade education.”
“Not everyone works at something interesting,” Bobbie said. “I don’t. The only job I could get would be something like yours, and I don’t need the money, so I don’t work at all. And an awful lot of girls have jobs that don’t do anything but bring them income.”
“But I’m not involved in anything—”
“Oh?” Grace winked broadly at her. “And here we all thought you were involved with Bobbie.”
“You know what I mean.” She took a cigarette, lit blew out smoke. “I wish I were caught up in something, all excited about something. It wouldn’t have be terribly artistic or anything.”
“Maybe you could open a shop,” someone suggested.
“A shop? What kind?”
“Anything. Antiques, clothes, jewelry. Some little shop that reflects your inner self.”
“That’s a beautiful straight line,” she said. “I won’t bother with a punch line. But it takes a fortune to open a place, doesn’t it? And I don’t know the first thing about business.”
“What to know?” Jan Pomeroy was talking. “You buy things and sell them, and you try to sell them for more than they cost you. That’s all you have to know about business.”
“But—”
“Don’t you see? You and Bobbie could be partners. Working together, all united in this exciting venture.”
They didn’t stay on the subject for very long. Jan and Megan started talking about holiday plans and the table shifted over to that subject. Jan was having a Christmas party and there were half a dozen New Year’s parties already in the planning stage, and the holiday season looked promising. Not everyone would be in town, of course. Alice had to go home to visit her parents in Baltimore, and Grace was trying to decide whether or not she should go with her. Alice’s parents had told her it was all right to bring a friend but Grace was sure they would suspect something. “And yet I don’t want to be away from Allie that long,” she said. “She needs somebody to take care of her, and it would be a hard time for her to be alone.”
Rhoda only half followed the conversation. She was thinking about that idea someone had tossed out, of having a shop of her own. It seemed exciting and she let her mind toss it around.
The conversation caught her up again and she let go of the thread of thought. Maybe sometime she could think more about it, she told herself. But not now. She was too busy living the good gay life.
Terry Langer didn