Girls In 3-B, The (22 page)

Phyllis said equably, "Well, love does funny things to people." She tucked up a wisp of hair. "As long as she's happy."

"Oh, she's happy all right. It's enough to make you throw up. She hangs on every word he says."

Phyllis lit a cigarette. "How's your other friend, what's her name
?
"

"I don't see her any more," Pat said. "She's living up on the North Side with some girl she works with
--
I told you, remember? She's all wrapped up in her job. It's funny, because she always used to be a real tense, melancholy kid. I can't see her turning into one of those tailored types."

Phyllis added her smoked-out cigarette to the loaded ashtray. "Nobody ever knows what's in somebody else's mind. Everyone was so surprised when I had my nervous breakdown, and I used to be a terribly moody person really."

Well, I'll be damned,
Pat thought, watching her amble back to her own office with a fresh cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, to spend the next three hours dreaming up a blurb for a new book by a Swedish existentialist.
You never know.

Look at me,
she thought suddenly
. Good old pal Pat with the balloon hips. No worries, no problems. Maybe she's right.

She pulled open the desk drawer that held her collection of newspaper clippings. The approaching Hahn-Thomson nuptials, as the society editor of the
Sun-Times
elegantly called them, were scheduled in about ten days. The happy pair would go to Bermuda for a month, after which Mr. Thomson would resign his post as an editor with The Fort Dearborn Press and go to Philadelphia, where he would work for a major advertising agency owned and operated by a cousin of the bride. Pat had a complete collection of the articles that had appeared in the four daily papers, and had pored over them until she memorized every detail of the bride's costume at every luncheon in her honor. It was rather like biting down on a sore tooth, over and over again, but she didn't care. If she couldn't be happy she was going to be good and miserable.

Somehow, though, the last three or four weeks had taken the edge off her unhappiness. So much was happening in the actual three-dimensional world where she washed dishes and did castoffs that she had little time or energy left for emotional turmoil. Wearied by scrubbing woodwork and cleaning shelves
--
now that she was alone she would move into a single room
--
exhausted from packing and excited past relaxation by the things that were happening in the lives of her roommates, she had no chance to dwell on her own life. She fell asleep night after night almost before she could pull up the top sheet. In fact, she was finding out, as millions of other people have since the beginning of time, that it is almost impossible to earn a living and have your heart broken at the same time.

She stretched, watching the twelve-o'clock exodus; the men drifting out first, then the girls, who had to comb their hair and fix their faces before they felt ready for lunch. Sunshine poured in at the windows and lay across her desk. She put her head down and sat in a blissful half-asleep, half-awake state for a while, not really thinking of anything, but aware of the clock's ticking and muted sounds from the floor below.

After a while the door opened quietly and someone crossed the floor and stood in front of her desk. She looked up, blinking. Blake Thomson smiled at her. "Asleep on the job, huh?"

"Gee, I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. Can't work all the time." Since his resignation had been announced he had been in the office only two or three days a week; now he looked around casually. "What a rat race this business is. Can't say I'm sorry to be getting out of it”

"We'll miss you." She felt that her whole heart showed her eyes.

Blake Thomson sat down on the edge of her desk. "Take my advice and stay single. By the time this shindig's over I'll be a basket case."

"Worse for the bride, though."

"She seems to be enjoying it." He looked sulky. "She's in New York for a couple days, buying frills for her trousseau. Marshall Field's isn't good enough. Leaves me at kind of a loose end." He swung one foot. "Would you care to go out to dinner tonight? Show? Or anything you want to do. Come on, be a nice kid and keep me from being bored to death."

"Why
--
I don't know." In all her imaginings it had never happened like this. She felt the color rise in her face.

"If you don't feel like going to a show, well, we could find something interesting to do." He laid a hand on her arm. "Ill bet you're a lot of fun when you get going."

There was no mistaking his meaning. She sat shaking and tongue-tied, unable to find an answer. This was the man she had dreamed about night after night, hoping for a miracle that would bring him to her, ready to live in heartbroken loneliness the rest of her life if he didn't love her. She had been so pleased because she hadn't gone all the way with Johnny, because it meant that she could come into his arms with all her virgin pride and purity untouched. Sure, it was corny, it was old-fashioned, it embarrassed her to think about it. The great love of a lifetime, complete with nuptial Mass and a lifetime of bliss. But that was how it was.

She said awkwardly, "You're going to be married in a week."

"Hell, what's that got to do with it? A guy's entitled to a fling before he settles down." He moved his hand to her shoulder. "I bet you'd be a nice playmate. How about it?"

She looked at him.

"Think it over," he said, "and let me know." He sauntered into his own office and shut the door, casual, not concerned about the unfinished work he was leaving behind or the unasked and unrequited devotion she had been offering him, silently, all these weeks. Or
--
her heart swelled with sudden pity
--
for the woman who was making herself beautiful to marry him.

She shook her head.

Phyllis came in and found her still looking dazed. "Good God, it's beautiful out. Makes me wish I was seventeen and in love. Hey, baby, what's the matter? You got bad news or something?"

She motioned at Thomson's closed door. "Oh, Handsome in
?
" Pat nodded, unable to trust her voice. She was afraid that if she opened her mouth she would burst into loud, childish, idiotic crying. Phyllis took a quarter out of her left-hand jacket pocket and dropped it into her right-hand pocket. "I win. I've been making book on you for weeks. He finally got around to it, huh?"

"How did you know?"

"Look," Phyllis said patiently, "that two-bit wolf propositions everybody. If they take him up on it, sooner or later the novelty wears off and they find themselves out on their can." Her lips thinned; her cheekbones stood out in sudden sharp relief. "Only one girl I know of who didn't get fired, and she had something on him. I feel sorry for that society babe he's hooked; she looks like a nice gal, and it's going to be an awful shock when she finds him in bed with the chambermaid or somebody on the honeymoon."

Pat said weakly, "Maybe he’ll change when he gets married."

"He asked you, didn't he? Practically on the way to church." Pat nodded. "You didn't tell him you would, did you?"

Pat's look was answer enough.

"That's okay, then," Phyllis said huskily. She took a Kleenex from the box on the desk and blew her nose hard. "You'll get over it."

Pat sat staring after her retreating back. She didn't have to ask whether Phyllis had slept with him or not. You don't go on resenting a man you've turned down. All the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place
--
the girl who had the five-hundred-dollar abortion, the insistence on learning a skill, the contempt that was always in her voice when she spoke of Thomson, and his conciliatory and flattering air towards her. She thought,
She's gone through it too, and she knew about me all the time.
The realization was humbling, but oddly comforting.

She looked out of the window, past the serried rows of windows of the Acme Building across the street. All this man and woman stuff, people wanting each other and being disappointed, or else getting what they wanted and finding out they didn't want it after all. It's too deep for me. I better start with somebody my own size.

She felt as though she had lost something cherished, long held precious and irreplaceable
--
and now that it was gone, it didn't matter as much as she thought. Losing it, in fact, was rather a relief. She didn't have to polish it up and worry about it any more. She saw now that she had been hanging on to a dream that had lost its glitter.

A crush,
she thought in sudden wonder, amazed at the revelation. Like the crush she'd had on Mr. Walters in high school, mooning at him all through chem lab and almost flunking his course because she couldn't keep her mind on the experiments. Then it was over, like snapping your fingers, and suddenly Mr. Walters was a small mild man with a reedy voice and a large bossy wife, who favored the prettier girls in class.

She felt good.
I
ought to feel terrible,
she thought vaguely, watching the gyrations of two white pigeons against the blue, blue sky. She yawned.

I'm me,
she thought
, and not no skinny society blonde with her bones showing.
She looked down with distaste at the black crepe dress
. What in God's name ever got into me? How come I've been trying to be somebody else all the time?

Anybody that likes me from here on will have to like me the way I am.

Her feet hurt. She pulled off the black pumps with their newly smart pointed toes and thin, spindly heels. Her toes ached with pure relief. From the bottom desk drawer, where she had thrown them last fall, she took the old raffia sandals with the dancing dolls, and slipped them on.

Stan came in from lunch. She turned her biggest, brightest smile on him. "You doing anything next Sunday?" she demanded.

"Why
--
no. I don't guess so."

"I thought maybe we could go to Mass together, and then maybe you could help me move my stuff in your car. If you'd like to."

"Hey, that would be swell. Tell you what, I'll pick you up and you can go to church with my folks. Mom would love to meet you." He hesitated, "She's always hollering at me, I don't bring some nice girl home to meet the family."

Pat said warmly. "I'd love to."

He grinned at her. "See you later."

She was still smiling as she took the stack of galleys out of her workbasket and ranged the sharp pencils beside them.
By next week,
she thought,
he'll think it was his own idea.

She looked down the years that stretched ahead, full of promises
--
love, job, marriage, children. It looked good.

Stan,
she thought. Very neatly, she drew a comma and put a roof over it. It looked, she thought, like a little house.

the end

A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America--a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them.

In 1939 a new publishing company--Pocket Books--stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. These books were cheaply produced and sold in numbers never before seen, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that soon after made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success.

Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures. Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II--mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage.

World War II proved to be a boon to the emerging paperback industry. During the war, a landmark agreement was reached with the government in which paperbound books would be produced at a very low price for distribution to service men and women overseas. These books were often passed from one soldier or sailor to another, being read and re-read over and over again until they literally fell apart. Their stories of home helped ease the servicemen’s loneliness and homesickness, and they could be easily carried in uniform pockets and read anywhere--in fox holes, barracks, transport planes, etc. Of course, once the war was over millions of veterans returned home with an insatiable appetite for reading. They were hooked, and their passion for reading these books helped launch a period of unprecedented growth in the paperback industry.

In the early 1950s new subgenres emerged--science fiction, lesbiana, juvenile delinquent and “sleaze”, for instance--that would tantalize readers with gritty, realistic and lurid stories never seen before. Publishers had come to realize that sex sells. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they tossed away their staid and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, books with sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.

With the birth of the lesbian-themed pulp novel, women who loved women could finally see themselves--their experiences and their lives--represented within the pages of a book. They finally had a literature they could call their own. Of course, that’s not what the publishers of the day intended--these books were written primarily for men… indeed shamelessly packaged and published to titillate the male reading public.

Some of the books were written by men using female pseudonyms and were illustrated by cover artists who never read the content between the covers. However, a good number were written by women, many of whom were lesbians themselves. For lesbians across the country, especially those living isolated lives in small towns, these books provided a sense of community they never knew existed… a connection to women who experienced the same longings, feelings and fears as they did–-the powerful knowledge that they were not alone.