Spring Fire (11 page)

She had been asleep somewhere in a rambling bed with Mitch beside her. They were naked, and covering them there was a brilliant red comforter, and snow was falling around them. Sleepily, and with that surging ache inside of her, she had turned to Mitch's back and cupped her hands around on Mitch's breasts and kissed the smooth white skin of her shoulders, and Mitch had turned instantly. She had said, "Leda!" in that startled, shocked voice, and the features of her face fell away and became Jan's features. And again, "Leda, what on earth are you doing?" The dream had ended there.

"Hell!" Leda swore, and Jake grinned, his eyes on the road. "You got yourself a little load on, miss. Too bad, too
—could have been a good night for it"

"Every night's a good night for it where you're concerned."

"That's why you love me," Jake laughed, "my insatiable queen!"

"What time is it?" Leda said.

He turned the corner sharply and she fell over against him.

"We're on time," he said. "It's only one-twenty now. We'll make it right on the dot."

* * *

The kitchen lights were bright at a quarter to two, and inside, Mitch sat on the stool, her eyes moving from the empty cocoa cup to the cellar stairs just outside the kitchen door on the left Marsha was rattling on about clothes and only Kitten had left the gathering to go up to bed. Leda was waiting, but there was no way to reach her. Because of Jake. When she thought of him, Mitch glowered at the floor, imagining in a fleeting series of mental pictures what they had done that evening, Jake and Leda. The pictures were sordid and painful, and almost compulsively Mitch forced them to come, and each one was worse. Leda did not love him, and yet she persisted in being with him, always, as if he were a medicine or a drug. He drove Mitch's car, and called up and asked Mitch to let Leda in, and the whole affair was tiresome and nerve-racking. Mitch vowed she would tell Leda not to see Jake any more. When she got in, and
if
she got in, Mitch would tell her that she didn't like it. She loved Leda and Leda loved her. There was no need for this fear and worry and frustration. Suddenly, Mitch realized that Marsha was standing there, speaking to her.

"I said, are you coming to bed? It's two o'clock."

Mitch jumped to her feet and hurried to rinse her cup and saucer at the sink. Then, after the light was switched off in the kitchen, she followed Bebe and Marsha up the stairs to the second floor. She would have to wait to run back and open the door for Leda if she was still there! If everything would only work out! Marsha waved good night, and Bebe wandered off down the hall, humming "St. Louis Blues" aimlessly.

The house was strangely quiet and still. Mitch waited ten minutes in the doorway of the bathroom, and then, softly, the tips of her slippers barely touching the stairs as she moved, she found her way to the cellar stairway, and reaching up behind the large square tin can, she found the rolled ball of clothing that she had left there. Her other hand grabbed the long silver flashlight, and she flinched at the strong creaking of the stairs as she made her way down and ran toward the door in the back room of the cellar. She unbolted it, and Leda, leaning up against it on the outside, nearly fell in. Jake was behind her. She held the door open an inch and whispered something to him before she closed it. Then she turned toward Mitch, and reaching for her waist, she came into her arms, and her kiss smelled heavily of stale liquor and tobacco.

"Get into your robe," Mitch said. "I'm petrified. You don't know how my stomach felt when it was time and everyone was still in the kitchen."

"I could see them," Leda said, "but I knew you'd come, honey. When you could."

She began to pull her sweater over her head and unhook her skirt "I'll have to undress here and leave my clothes under the pillows until tomorrow. Then if anyone sees us going back upstairs, we can say we came down for Cokes. Couldn't sleep. I even have two nickels. Look, you go get two Cokes out of the machine. God, my clothes are stuck to me!"

Mitch walked across the room and slid the nickels into the slot. "If I'd thought of the machine, I could have got here on time. I never thought of it."

She felt the cold ice feeling of the bottles as they hit the small case at the bottom of the machine. "Shall I open them?"

Leda said, "Yes," and then, "Look, Mitch"

Mitch turned the flashlight to look at her, and she saw her standing there, bare except for the spike-heeled shoes on her feet. "What are you going to do about it?" Leda laughed. "You aren't going to just stand there?"

Slowly, Mitch came toward her and set the Cokes on the table. She put out the flashlight, and her hands found Leda's body. Then for the first time, she was the aggressor. The strength that was sleeping in her awakened. A powerful compulsion welled up inside of Mitch as she felt the pliant curves of Leda's body. Then they lay together, breathless and filled with a new peace. When she spoke at last, Leda said, "Mitch? Oh, God, I love you."

A feeling of power, and the knowledge of Leda's quivering submission, filled Mitch as she let her eyes stare up at the blackness in the cellar. When she had gone to Leda, she had not known what she would do, and it happened without thought or care for what followed, but it was easy and natural. She was the conqueror, and it was a sensation abundant in glory and desire.

"Want to stay here for a while?" Leda asked. "It's too late now for anyone to care whether we're in our rooms or not. I like it here. . . . Did you have a good time?"

Mitch said, "Pretty good. We went to a movie. Nothing special." She rubbed Leda's back and patted her hair. "How about you?" she said. "How come you were late?"

"Oh, Jake was in one of his usual carnal moods but I was too high and we argued."

"Then why do you do it, Leda? With Jake, I mean."

"What?"

"Why do you do it with Jake?"

"Who knows?" Leda said, stretching magnificently, pulling her robe around her. "I don't know. Maybe I'm trying to prove something."

"I don't like it, Leda"

"You
don't like it! What in hell does that mean?"

"It means," Mitch said, "that I don't like you sleeping with a guy when you're in love with me." Even to Mitch the words sounded unreal, as if she were playing a game or reading someone else's lines or living a foolish semiconscious daydream. Yet that was what she had wanted to say.

Leda sat up and moved from Mitch. "Listen," she said. "Don't get me wrong. I may be a little uncertain about it, but men come first with me. What do you think we are
— engaged to be married? Are you going to propose now, and then settle down with me in a little goddamn vine-covered cottage and raise kids? Sometimes you're Godawful thick in the head, Mitch."

"But you said you didn't even
like
Jake! Maybe I am thick in the head."

"Maybe you are! Who said anything about Jake? I said
men
come first. Men, as distinguished from women! Sure, I've got bisexual tendencies, but by God, I'm no damn Lesbian."

"You said you loved me. Maybe I don't understand
— Leda got up from the couch and picked the Coke bottle up. She took the flash in her hand, and then, turning around to face Mitch sitting there, she said, "You don't understand much at all. But get this! Jan is coming Wednesday. Lay off the love business while she's around. I'm afraid she doesn't understand much either, and she sure as hell wouldn't understand this. I’m tired. I’m going to bed."

"Wait a minute," Mitch said, catching the girl's wrist "Wait a minute, Leda. I love you. Don't leave it like this. All I know is that I love you."

"You better get to know men too, kid. I mean that. There are a lot of people who love both and no one gives a damn, and they just say you're oversexed and they don't care. But they start getting interested when you stick to one sex. Like you've been doing, Mitch. I couldn't love you if you were a Lesbian."

"I'm not," Mitch said, wondering what the word meant "I'm not. I
—I just haven't met a man yet who makes me feel the way you do."

"Maybe you don't give them a chance," Leda answered. "Come on now. Let's go to bed. God, it's three-thirty."

They tiptoed up the back steps and down the quiet, dimly lighted hall to their room. Leda pulled the covers back and fell into her bed. She murmured a tired good night, and her eyes closed and her breathing came heavily. Mitch did not sleep. She lay tossing about on her bed across from Leda, her mind running through the incidents of the evening to review them and examine them. There was only a fragmentary edge left to the sensuous memory of her loving Leda, and looming now in a sick foreground there was this word.

Slowly Mitch got up and went to the bookshelf, taking from it the blue book, and leafing through it, holding it near the flash that Leda had left on the desk.

Les'bian (lezTri-an) adj. 1. Of or pertaining to Lesbos (now Mytilene), one of the Aegean Islands. 2. Erotic;
—in allusion to the reputed sensuality of the people of Lesbos.

Mitch closed the book and stood staring at the bare light of the street lamp in front of Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon. She could hear Leda's breath coming slower now and more evenly, in deep sleep, and the dictionary had told her nothing.

Mitch sat in the stuffed chair near the window sewing up the burst seam in her coat.

"Well, darling, I wish you could
see
what Dwight has done with the studio. Of course, it's the only place in the whole goddamn office building where a body can get a good stiff drink during the day and Dwight says
—"

The words went on endlessly, like a radio playing in a room when you do not listen constantly, but now and then, catching illusive scraps of the whole meaning, the crumbs of an endless dialogue. Jan had been there for three days. They were funny days. Leda fastened herself to Jan, hanging on the words and laughing before the pause, compulsively, almost as though she were afraid Jan would not say something hilarious each time she spoke. Jan was beautiful, too, older, with faint lines in her face that became real under the harsh electric ceiling light in Mitch's and Leda's room, but still very fine and hardly there at all. Leda sat on the bed next to Jan that afternoon.

"I don't know if I'll marry him or not," she heard Leda say. "Do you like him, Jan?'

"He's a doll, darling. You know who he reminds me of? Frank Pierce. Member him? Des Moines. Member?"

"Oh, God," Leda shrieked, laughing. "Him! One perfect rose! Sure, I remember Frank Pierce."

Jan wore a tight print dress, high black alligator shoes that were strapped around her slender ankles, and her fingers flashed and sparkled with rings and glitter. Mother Nessy had said, "Your jewelry is exquisite, Mrs. Taylor. Why, it's fabulous!" when she met Jan on Wednesday and Jan had dinner in the dining room with the Tri Eps. Mitch sat at another table. From where she sat she could see Leda's face, her eyes avoiding Mitch and fixed on Jan's red lips and the whiteness of her teeth. When Jan left the house to return to the hotel for the evening, everyone had flocked to Leda's room to say how they liked her mother and what fun it must be to have such a young mother. Then when they were gone and it was late, Leda did not talk to Mitch or come to her there in the night. And Mitch worried.

She had found the explanation for the word in a thick volume on the psychology shelf in the library. A Lesbian was abnormal, a female who could not have satisfactory relations with a male, but only with another female, and Mitch knew it had been that way. A bisexual could love both sexes, and Leda loved Mitch, and she was with Jake like that too. Mitch thought back to the crushes she had had in boarding school, awful emotional orgies in which she had idolized certain teachers, and Miss English, the dietician, and there had never been any boys. Until Leda, there had been no one who had set her whole body pulsing with the sweet pain and the glory in the end. That was abnormal.

Jan was looking at Mitch, waiting for an answer to the question Mitch did not hear.

"I'm sorry. I didn't hear you."

Leda smiled. "Jan said, 'Who's your man of the hour?' It's Charlie, isn't it, Mitch? Isn't he the one?"

The needle came through the wool in the skirt and pricked Mitch's finger. She tried to force a smile, but her lips felt dry and stiff. She knew that Leda was baiting her, trying to indicate the proper answer to Mitch. "I guess so," Mitch said. "I guess he's the one."

There was a mixed look of repulsion and pity on Jan's face when she regarded Mitch. Mitch could feel it, like the heat of a warm sun, uncomfortable and sickly. She wished that they would go someplace and not stay here in the room and she felt that Jan knew she was abnormal.

"Well, what's he like?" Jan continued. "I bet he's a big wheel on campus and you'll be wearing his pin before long."

Leda jumped up to change the subject and grabbed a yellow envelope from the desk. "I forgot to show you the pictures," she said. "I forgot to show you the pictures Jake and I took on our last picnic." She fumbled with the seal on the envelope until the pictures fell out on the bed and Jan picked them up and riffled through them, laughing and screaming out her words the way she did. Mitch was grateful when Casey poked her head in the door and said, "Phone for you, Mitch. Want to take it in the hall?"

"Don't let us disturb you, honey," Jan sang out, but Mitch had already moved for the door and followed the blue hall rug down to the booth near the bathroom.

"Peculiar girl," Jan said. "Certainly is awkward."

Leda passed another snapshot to Jan. It would be over tomorrow. Jan would leave and it would be over, Leda thought, and then she could make it up to Mitch. It had been horrible, the last few days, treating Mitch as though she were a piece of furniture, Jan's presence heightening the guilt that Leda nurtured.

"Is she popular?"

"Oh, I don't know, Jan," Leda answered. "She goes out a lot. Really, she can be sweet"

"Well, I haven't even seen her smile. Not once. Her lips just stretch, but she doesn't smile. You don't even seem like friends."