Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [52]
Fifteen minutes later she found Bobbie in a corner with a married woman, holding her wrist and whispering into her ear. She let out a yell and went for Bobbie, ready to strangle her. It took three boys to pull the two of them apart.
She was sitting on the edge of the bathtub and Peg Brandt was sitting beside her, stroking her forehead. She had just been very sick and her head was still rocky.
She said, “I hate her. She doesn’t love me. I hate her.”
“Easy, Rhoda.”
“Did you see what that bitch was doing? Did you see her?”
“She didn’t mean anything.”
“Didn’t mean—”
“She was a little drunk, that’s all. She’s very sorry now, Rhoda. Really she is. I know Bobbie, I’ve known her for years and she’s crazy about you. You know that.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Maybe she was just trying to make you jealous. My God, Rhoda, look at the merry-go-round Lu keeps me on. It’s the same kind of thing. Except she doesn’t just flirt, she has affairs. But she loves me inside, and I love her and we stay together.”
“Peg—”
“Bobbie loves you. And you love her, don’t you?”
“Oh, of course I do! But—”
“Just take it easy now. Bobbie wants to see you, she wants to apologize. Will you see her now?”
“Give me a minute. Oh, I must look like hell.”
“You look all right.”
“I’m a mess. And I feel rotten, I really do. I hate to get sick like this. I made one hellish scene out there, didn’t I?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“They had to pull me away from her. Peg, did I hurt her?”
“No.”
“But I must have scratched her.”
“Bobbie’s all right. She just wants to make up with you.”
“Peg, why do we do things like this to each other? Why?”
“God knows.”
She waited in the bathroom. Peg left, closed the door. She fixed her makeup, freshened her face, washed her mouth out. Her head was throbbing. She found a bottle of aspirin and took two tablets. She went to the door, opened it.
Bobbie was there. She said, “Rho, I’m sorry. I was drunk I didn’t know what I was doing. Forgive me.”
They kissed. In the living room, the fat man was playing his guitar again and the hi-fi was competing with him. They went into the kitchen to get fresh drinks.
After they left the Barrow Street apartment they stopped at the Pam Pam on Seventh Avenue for food and coffee. Roz and her girl had wandered off to another party and Grace and Allie had gone home early. The six of them sat at a table in back. They were all pretty drunk. They had ham and eggs and drank a lot of black coffee. Megan knew a party uptown that she wanted go to, a crowd she knew from her work. Jan said she was sick of gay boys and wanted to go to an all-girl party. “The boys get on my nerves,” she complained.
Lucia Perry knew where there was a party. The six of them piled into a Checker cab and rode across town to a tenement on Saint Mark’s Place. It was the right address but the party had ended. The hostess, who’d changed her name from Claudia to Claude, was there with another girl. They had one round of drinks and left. Claude told them something was doing at a loft on First Avenue and they went there.
On the way, she said, “Every time I had to say her name I thought I was talking to our cat.”
“Claude the cat. I was thinking the same thing.”
There was a party. Rhoda knew some of the girls there, had run across them at other parties, and at Leonetti’s. She did a lot of drinking and didn’t remember very much of what was happening. She looked at her watch once and noticed that it was a quarter after two. The next time she looked it was twenty minutes to four and they were leaving the party.
Stretches of blackness—
And clarity: They were walking down a narrow street. A taxi sped past them, took