Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [59]
In his apartment—three rooms, hypermodern, the typical bachelor’s dream—he put on records and poured drinks. They sat together in front of an elaborate fake fireplace. He put his arm once more around her, and he said her name, softly, and she knew enough to turn to him and be kissed. She closed her eyes when he kissed her and surrendered herself to him. Little by little, she told herself. Little by little and bit by bit, and then the bedroom, and the act itself, and that’s all.
No—
If she had not liked him, if she had not felt comfortable with him, she might have been able to go through with it. But it required too much acting and too much pretense, and it was all false and she couldn’t do it. He kissed her again and again and she tried to force herself to fake a response, but this couldn’t be, she could not pretend to feel something which she did not feel. It was phony and she couldn’t do it.
She drew away from him, got to her feet. “Listen to me,” she said. “Listen to me, I have to say this.”
“Go on.”
“I didn’t tell you everything. I’m not normal, I’m a lesbian.” The words just came, awkward, fumbling. She couldn’t direct them. “I’m a lesbian, the girl I live with is my lover. She’s out of town now. I thought that—that I could use you, that I could try and—I thought—I don’t know what I thought, it’s crazy. But it isn’t working. I don’t work this way, I can’t feel anything, I—”
He seemed stunned at first. But later she remembered going out on the terrace with him and standing with her back against the brick of the building, looking up at the thin sliver of moon.
She said, “I want to be fair. If you want, I’ll go through with it.”
“It’s not what I want, Rhoda.”
“It isn’t?”
“No.” He smiled briefly. “If you, well, give it a try…”
“Nothing will happen.”
“It might.”
She could not imagine a more dispassionate discussion of the sex act. They were deciding whether or not to go to bed together, and they both seemed to be utterly cold and unmoved.
“I’d like to make love to you, Rhoda. Maybe—”
He left the sentence unfinished. She hesitated, then closed her eyes and nodded. He took her hand and led her back inside and lay down with her on the couch, She felt his hands on her body, felt him remove clothing, felt him touch her breasts and kiss her face and run his hands gently, gently, over her hips and thighs.
She kept waiting.
And then he said, “Forget it, Rhoda. Maybe you’d better go home.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be.”
“But I am,” she said. And, from the doorway, leaving him there, “I am really sorry. I mean that.”
She did mean it, she was sorry. But she was what she was, she could not help it, and the date with this man had been a bad idea from the beginning. A stupid idea, senseless as whittling crazily at a square peg in order to jam it cruelly into a round hole. She was a lesbian. It did not matter how she had gotten that way, and it did not matter whether or not she was particularly pleased with herself. She was a lesbian. To try to be anything else was madness.
The cab seemed to take forever. But at last it stopped in front of her building, and at last she was paying the driver, leaving the cab. She went to the apartment, unlocked the door, stepped inside.
In the morning, Bobbie would return. They would love each other—for a day or a week or a month or a year. There would be fights, and there would be deep spells of unhappiness, and sooner or later there would be a break and they would go off in search of other loves.
She made herself a drink, opened a can of oysters for the cat. It would not be heaven, she thought, but there was plenty of time for heaven after death. It would not be hell either. It would be her life, and all she could do was live it.
THE END…
A NEW AFTERWORD BY THE AUTHOR
In 1963 I was living in Tonawanda, New York, a suburb