Lesbian Pulp Fiction. Katherine V. Forrest

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СКАЧАТЬ in the Chapter Room,” Kitten said. “Thought you were sick.”

      Leda said, “I am.” She found the door to the room locked, and she knocked three times fast and once slow.

      “Who goes?” she recognized Jane Bell’s voice.

      “Pledged in blood,” Leda said. “Promised in the heart.”

      “Enter.”

      The bolt was slipped off and Jane Bell stepped back. She was wearing a silky white gown with a deep red scarf on her hair, drawing her hair back behind her ears. There was a sharp odor of burning incense in the dark room, lighted only by five single candles on a small table covered with the same silky white material. Marsha knelt at the table, arranging a red velvet-covered book with a black marker on the open page. When Leda walked in the room, panting, her face damp and hot, Jane stared at her.

      “My gosh,” she said, “you look feverish.”

      “That’s what I came about. I can’t attend the meeting tonight. I feel lousy.”

      Marsha looked up from the book at Leda. There was an angelic look to her face by candlelight, a look that she was fully aware of, cultivated and practiced. When she conducted the weekly chapter meetings, this look lent an air of piety to the conduct of the service. With the members of the chapter standing in a solemn semicircle before her, she felt that there was something spiritual about her leadership, celestial and sacrosanct.

      “We’re having a formal meeting tonight,” she told Leda, as if to persuade her sickness to end.

      “I see you are. I’m sorry. I just feel lousy.”

      “You look feverish,” Jane Bell remarked again.

      “I hope you feel better.” Marsha smiled. “Did you know that Mrs. Gates, our Kansas City vice-counsel, gave us three new robes? Jane has one on.”

      Jane twirled and the robe floated on her gracefully. Inwardly Leda thought, Jesus! Oh, silly Jesus! but she pacified them by touching the material and exclaiming, then apologizing again. She backed out of the room just as the electric buzzer gave the signal for the members to line up in the hall and prepare to enter in single file.

      The halls were still, the pledges confined to their rooms for study hour. Leda found the room dark. Mitch had not come yet. She struck a match and lit a cigarette, and in the blackness she went to the window and watched the street. Ten dragging minutes later the convertible pulled up in front of the house, and Mitch slammed the front door and hurried up the walk. Leda lay down on the bed, watching the cigarette smoke curl to the ceiling, and waited.

      After the light went on in the room, Mitch felt a flood of surprise in her stomach as she saw Leda. She shut the door and set Robin’s large empty suitcase on the floor. Leda sat up and looked at her.

      “You’re going to pack now?” she said.

      “Yes. I thought you’d be in chapter meeting.” She tried not to look at Leda, but she could feel the girl’s eyes piercing her, stopping her attempts to avoid those eyes, and she went to the bureau and began removing socks and handkerchiefs and scarves.

      Leda let her click the suitcase open, and watched her while she placed the things inside it. She could feel the sharp edges of the letter against her chest there near her bra where she had put it before dinner. With her left hand she reached down and fished the letter out and stuck it under her pillow.

      “I decided,” Leda said finally, “that the least I could do was to say good-bye to you.”

      Mitch felt choked up and agonized with desire. She scooped out an armful of slips and panties and pajamas, and thrust them in there with the other clothes. Her lips formed the word “Thanks,” and she meant to say it, but there was no sound. On the floor of the closet there were fluffy swirls of dust near her tennis shoes, and she brushed them away with her hand. She tossed the shoes onto the bed, and took the chair from the desk over to the closet to reach the boxes at the top.

      Leda said, “Want any help?”

      “No. Thanks, though. I can do it myself.”

      “You’ve got an idea,” Leda said, “that you can do everything yourself. I don’t know where you got that idea.”

      “Sometimes it’s up to yourself,” Mitch said.

      “You’ve got a lot of ideas, I bet. I bet you’ve got thousands of good ideas.”

      The box slipped from Mitch’s hand and fell to the floor, spilling out two round hats, one black, one brown, both alike—round and plain.

      “Someday you’ll find out that most of the ideas don’t work. None of them work.”

      Mitch stopped tying the strings on the top of the box and looked up at Leda. “What are you trying to say?” she asked. “What are you trying to tell me? You never say anything right out. You always talk around and make it hard.”

      “I’m trying to say, don’t go. Going isn’t the answer.” The tears came in her eyes, and Mitch looked away at the shoe bag on the closet floor. She thought of Robin, her friend, of the swimming team, of other years and anything to keep them from being the same, but this made it worse and the sob started low in her throat. Then Leda bent and caught her shoulder and held her, kneeling on the rug, listening to the stifled crying.

      “Mitch,” she said, “don’t go. Don’t leave me, please.”

      “But you know what I am. I told you what I am in the letter.”

      “I don’t care. Mitch, I don’t care.”

      “I can’t stay with you. I won’t feel right, I—”

      Leda put her hand on the girl’s face and felt the tears. She turned her face and put her lips on the salty moistness. “Come on over to the bed,” she said. “Get up, Mitch, and come on over to the bed.”

      Mitch lay down with her face buried in the pillow, and Leda sat on the edge, her hands stroking Mitch’s hair.

      “Can you hear me, Mitch? Listen, it doesn’t help to run away. You don’t think it helps, do you? It doesn’t help.”

      “No,” Mitch sobbed. “I can’t stay here. I can’t bear to see you every day and know what I’m doing to you.”

      “What are you doing to me? What in hell are you doing to me?”

      “I’m a Lesbian,” Mitch answered. “That’s how I feel about you, too. I’m not like you—with Jake and everything.”

      “Oh, God, Mitch! All right, listen. I love you, you crazy kid. I don’t have to label my love, do I? Do I have to say that it’s Lesbian love? OK, then that’s what it is. It’s Lesbian love, pure and simple. Ye gods, I’ve known about myself for years. I didn’t run away. I didn’t walk out and run away. You gave me plenty of reason to. You were the first one to come along and blow up my little plan for hiding the way I am. You think you’re doing something to me! Oh, Mitch! If anyone’s doing it, I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I love you.”

      Mitch СКАЧАТЬ