Part 8 (2/2)
”I hate him,” Laura said with a little smile. ”And the rest of them.”
Tris gazed at her coolly. ”How very foolish,” she said. And made Laura laugh.
They parted with a chaste kiss, and for the first time since they had met Laura felt as if she had a slim chance with this odd and irresistible girl who was still so much a stranger to her. She went home to her angry Beebo, her body tense with need. And later, when Beebo demanded her body, Laura surrendered promptly and helplessly.
Beebo, since the night of her attack, had become unbearably suspicious. Everything Laura did, everywhere she went, had to be reported in detail. She called Tris once or twice from work and Tris had bawled her out for not showing up. Laura was more pleased than sorry when Tris sounded jealouswhile she bridled angrily at Beebo's jealousy, she was thrilled with Tris's.
Laura had strong doubts about Beebo's illness now. She could have gone to work weeks ago. The bruises were nearly invisible; only a pale yellow shadow stained the spot where the worst had been. Beebo was using it an as excuse to sit around another week and take it easy and drink and b.i.t.c.h over the phone to Lili about her problems.
”I always hated that d.a.m.n elevator,” she declared with her feet up on the coffee table in the living room and a drink in her hand.
”You make me sick!” Laura told her. ”You're well. Get up and go to work.”
Beebo looked at her watch. ”At six-thirty in the evening?” she said, and laughed.
”I'm not going to support us both, Beebo,” Laura said. ”And I'm sick and tired of playing nursemaid.”
To her diary Laura confided, I am in love. I'm sure of it. The more I'm with Beebo the more I want Tris. Oh, G.o.d, how much I want her!
Laura was desperate after two more weeks of Beebo. Beebo drove her frantic when they were cooped up together in the small apartment, as they were every night. And Beebo was wild for the love Laura denied her. The attack she had endured seemed to have touched off a burning core of violence in her that never went out.
When Beebo found the small steel strongbox on the closet floor with Laura's diary inside, she pounded it with a stone to get it open but the lock didn't break. When Laura got home from work and found the battered box on the coffee table in the living room she went pale with alarm, and Beebo, who was lying in wait for her reaction, exclaimed, ”d.a.m.n it, I knew it. You sure as h.e.l.l look guilty, Laura. What's in it?” She kicked the box.
”Nothing.” Laura walked across the room but her legs felt weak.
”Open it, then.”
”No.”
”Where's the key?”
”I don't know.”
”It's your box, G.o.ddam it. You know where the key is! Why did you hide it from me? What are you ashamed of?”
”I'm under no obligation to show you everything I own!” Laura said frostily. ”I'll hide what I please.”
”You tell me what's in it,” Beebo threatened, ”or I'll choke you. I swear I'll choke you, you b.i.t.c.h.” She slammed Laura against the wall with one hand to her throat.
Laura gasped in panic. There was only one thing to do with Beebo in these moods and that was go along with her, stall, anything but resist her. That was too painful and Laura even feared that one of these days, with Beebo as crazy as she was, it might be fatal.
”All right,” Laura said through a tight throat. ”Let me go.”
She rummaged for the key for ten minutes, knowing all the while that it was in the wallet in her purse.
”Don't tell me you can't find it,” Beebo said, watching her through narrowed eyes.
”I almost never use the thing,” Laura said as calmly as she could.
”You find it,” Beebo said. And something in the tone of her voice made Laura very frightened. I'm getting out of here, she thought to herself suddenly. If I can just get out of this somehow I'll leave her tonight and I won't come back. I'll go to Jack's.
She turned and faced Beebo, desperate. ”Beebo, it's just some personal papers. It's nothing you'd be interested in.”
”It's exactly what I'd be interested in. I'd be even more interested in why you went white as a sheet when you saw I had it. Explain that to me, Bo-peep.”
Laura pressed her teeth together in a small grimace of exasperation. ”It's my birth certificate and my baptism certificate and two insurance policies and some old love letters.” she said.
”Love letters from who?” Beebo demanded.
”Beth.”
Beebo put her head back and laughed. ”Oh!” she said. ”Beth! Good old Beth. Your college flame. I'm getting so I know that G.o.ddam girl.”
”She was a lot more” Laura began, her cheeks hot. She couldn't bear to hear Beth laughed at, to hear that perfect love ridiculed.
”I know what she was,” Beebo said acidly. ”She was beautiful. She was bright. She was a queen on the campus and a devil in bed. She was a success. She even liked men, the traitorous b.i.t.c.h. She was so gorgeous and so intelligent and so everything that she could do whatever she d.a.m.n well pleasedeven dump you like a sack of bricks. She loved you so much she got you kicked out of school and got married. To a man.” Beebo grinned at her, waiting for Laura to explode. But Laura only glared, too proud to spoil that memory with an ugly spat.
”Queen Beth was everything Beebo is not,” Beebo said. ”You'll never learn, will you? Love isn't pure roses and romance, Laura. You can't five with a girl, however much you love her, and still faint with joy every time she looks your way. It's a shame you never lived with Beth like you have with me. You'd find out fast enough she is a human being, not a G.o.ddess ... Now, show me the letters.”
”Why do you want to read a bunch of miserable old letters?” Laura said, angry that she had to beg. ”That's all over, Beebo. It can't do anything but hurt you.”
”I'm used to that, Laura. Anybody who lives with you has to be.”
”You lie!” Laura flared suddenly. They gazed at each other in electric silence for a minute. Then Laura said quietly, in a move to restore her safety, ”Let me fill your gla.s.s.” She came to take it from her but Beebo held it away. ”What are you trying to do, baby, get me drunk? Let's see the letters.”
Laura sat down on the bed beside her. Maybe she could sweet-talk her out of the box. ”Beebo,” she said. ”There's nothing in there you could possibly want to see or be interested in. Will you believe me?”
Beebo looked at her coldly and didn't move. ”The letters,” she said and held out a hand.
Laura sighed. ”After dinner,” she begged. ”Let's at least eat in peace.” And before Beebo could answer she leaned over and kissed her lips. ”I love you, Beebo,” she said, very softly and hopefully. And there were still times when she wondered if she might not speak the truth. But this wasn't one of them. She spoke out of the need to save her skin.
Beebo swallowed the last of the drink. ”Yeah,” she said. 'The letters.”
Laura kissed her again. Beebo submitted to it without returning the kiss. ”You're not very subtle, Bo-peep,” she said.
”I just want a stay of execution,” Laura said with a wry smile. ”If we have to yell at each other, let's save it till after dinner. Please, darling. The box won't walk away.” And Beebo, in spite of the obviousness of it, in spite of her own better sense and Laura's flagrant flattery, weakened.
”Are they that bad?” she asked. 'The G.o.ddam letters from Beth the Beautiful?”
”They're just love letters. They're old and stale and the affair is old and stale. It's over and done with.”
”Like our affair?” And Beebo said it so simply, without the histrionics and the swearing and the noisy misery she usually showered on Laura, that Laura was touched. She put her forehead down on Beebo's shoulder and whispered, ”I don't know, Beebo. You scare me so sometimes I swear I'll move out of here and run like h.e.l.l and never come back. Sometimes I really think you mean to kill me.”
”Sometimes I really do,” Beebo said and her voice was rough. ”If I did, I'd kill myself right afterwards, darling.”
”A lot of good that would do me!” Laura exploded. But she softened when Beebo's face went dark. ”You don't mean that, Beebo. You'd never really do it ... would you?”
<script>