The High Cost of Living (36 page)

“What did she tell you?” He frowned, rubbing his knuckles.

“What did she tell me about what? She told me what's happening.”

“I wonder.” He grinned. He paced from the refrigerator to the window. “Oh, I have no doubts at all you believe you acted for the best throughout.”

“Not throughout.”

“Except for minor slips. But I'm sure through these last weeks you've been reasonable. Calm and dispassionate, like a doctor cutting a small malignant tumor in plenty of time to save the patient. Even I, the tumor, admire you.”

Leslie put her cup on top of the refrigerator. The coffee seemed to hurt her throat. “You don't see that what you want you can't have in this situation. It isn't me in your way.”

“You asked nothing for yourself except that there should not be too many melodramatics. I think you've even lost your feeling for Honor.” He stopped dead in front of her. “Do you love her still? You don't, do you?”

“I had to control it. Or like you I'd have tried to get what I couldn't.”

“So you won nothing. Your conscience is clear.”

“Who won anything? What is winning, you damn fool!”

He took hold of her arm and then looked startled that he had done so. They both jumped and then stood there bristling. “Why didn't you tell her? I kept waiting for you to tell her. You feel hurt, but you go out into the world to protect your sisterhood. Didn't you realize, you idiot, that you could have told her nothing, nothing at all that would have finished her with me more quickly?”

She nodded. Her throat was closed. She nodded again as if afraid he might try to shake words from her.

“It would have hurt her pride to know we'd slept together. You can't imagine how. And lied to her. Kept it from her. Why did you?”

“I wasn't protecting her.”

“Were you ashamed? Was that it?”

“I was ashamed.”

“Of me? Why? Was it that bad? Was it really so bad we both had to run off?”

It was all still there untouched. The pain, the outrage, the anger, the connection, it was all still there molten and raw and tangled. It was between them like an aborted baby. Maybe they hated each other. She did not know what to call the pain. “Why did you run out of the house? It was you who ran!” She heard herself speak as if it were someone else's high angry voice.

“I hurt! You pushed me away. How could you? And why didn't you tell her? I have to know. I kept waiting for you to tell her. It would have done so much damage. Why didn't you do that to me? Why didn't you, damn you? Why?”

She was braced so hard that his shaking simply did not move her. His face looked hot as the sun. “It belonged to me.”

“How you turn the knife!”

A knock at the door. It took them a moment to hear it. They both moved forward, paused, looked at each other—startled by how they were standing, bodies almost touching. Like conspirators, she thought. God, it's so strange. They were both getting control of themselves, as if they were twins, as if they were of some secret family, looking at each other almost with pity, almost embracing. The disengagement from the wrestling of anger was painful too. They were so passionately caught. Then Leslie went and opened the door.

“I could hear you shouting but I couldn't make out what you were saying. I hope I didn't miss anything exciting. Sorry I'm late, but I had to pick up a few books. I decided I should read up on history, Leslie, so I can understand what you're doing.”

“Oh, that's wonderful, but you should have let me make up a reading list—”

“I've asked Leslie to be present because you've made me feel I can't trust you,” Honor said, putting down her book bag. She was wearing her drawstring pants and a low-cut ruffly summer blouse. “And because I think she's really a party to what's been happening. Don't you think so, Leslie?”

She produced a throaty noise and looked at the stove.

“No doubt,” Bernie said. “How much a party you might be surprised yourself.”

“First of all, I told Leslie pretty much everything. I showed her your letters and mine.”

“No!” His face jumped. “They must have amused you. Did you roll on the floor giggling?”

“Don't look up, Bernie. The light in the ceiling's too high for you to reach in here.” Honor turned to Leslie to add, “Breaking light bulbs with his bare hands is one of his ways of showing mental anguish. Why not just bang your head on the floor? It gives as much proof of sincerity as breaking a bulb, and it's less of a nuisance with the glass underfoot.”

“It's lucky your mother kept you locked up at home these past two weeks, because I might have wrung your neck.”

Honor touched her throat with a shudder. For a moment she looked frightened. Bernie shook his head roughly, clawing his hair back. “I'm sorry. You know I don't mean that.”

Honor smiled, her lips pulling down. “I know. You're much too docile. I'm looking for a man who'll do what you only talk about.” She gave him a sly look and continued at once. “I mean a man who'll slap my face.”

“Nonsense,” Leslie said. “If someone really slapped your face, you'd be furious.”

“You judge by your own standards, Leslie, because you need to feel in control. I'm strong in a different way. I'm only interested in a man until I find out whether he's pushable. Pushable—that's a good word.”

Honor was torturing Bernie in some way Leslie could not grasp. She could only feel the sense of torture. Bernie said angrily, “You picked that up from Paul. ‘Pushable—that's a good word.' You have his tone down pat. Did you practice it?”

“How can you compare me to that old flop even
you
weren't attracted to! Really, when I met him I was too easily dazzled—by him and by you.”

Bernie recovered himself. He lit a joint, he strolled to the window and back with exaggerated ease. “You know, Les, old trooper, you didn't use half the ammo you had. Bet you didn't tell Honor I tried to rape you?”

Honor gasped. “What is this? You never said a word.”

“Bernie apologized afterward,” Leslie said limply.

Bernie started to giggle. He laughed too hard, sputtering smoke.

“Would you have forgiven him if he had succeeded?” Honor folded her arms.

Bernie stopped laughing. “No, she wouldn't have. Besides, she punched me in the belly.
She's
not pushable, Honor.”

“Oh, me and Ann-Marie?” Leslie said sideways, only to him.
“My
model Ann-Marie?”

“How could you keep that back, Leslie? When did it happen? You must have thought it was very funny when I confessed I had let Bernie … kiss me.”

“I wasn't amused, actually.”

“I seem to have been the subject of many busy hours retelling juicy scenes. What fun.” Bernie cut himself a big piece of cake.

“More fun than that dull session in your room with you screeching at me and hounding me out of my mind.” Honor screwed up her nose in disgust. “You practically ripped my clothes off. And then nothing! After all that build-up. All that carrying on about how you love me and you just have to. That seduction was a big nothing!”

“Wasn't it?” Bernie was eating cake. “For both of us, I mean. You lying there like an overstuffed pillow expecting to have wonders performed on you.”

They glared at each other. Leslie felt horrible, she felt mangled. They had tried to make love. She did not want it to happen, she did not want it to have happened. It was not jealousy, it was pure pain. They had mangled something between them and she was at fault, somehow she was at fault.

“We're embarrassing Leslie,” Bernie lilted. “She doesn't want to know.”

“What is there to know? Nothing happened.” Honor looked for a moment as if she would cry. “Nothing at all. Just nothing! After all that carrying on, you wouldn't do it. You couldn't! As if I'm not pretty enough, not good enough. Something's wrong with you, that's what's wrong!”

I mustn't let him tell her, I mustn't, she thought. Fast into the breach. What's a breach? She felt as if her head were flying apart from the inside. “We were friends,” she said suddenly. “Isn't there something left?”

“Wash your mouth out.” Bernie gripped her arm hard. Then he let go as if he had been burned. The painful grip of his fingers remained.

“After what we've said, do you think he and I could sit down and drink tea?”

“Why not? It's only words!” Leslie said desperately. “Words don't change anything.”

“Don't they?” Bernie laughed bitterly. “There's no difference between saying I love you and saying I hate you?”

“I have only one thing left to say to you, Bernie.” Honor picked up her purse and went to the mirror over the bathroom sink to comb her hair. With her back to the room she said, “Goodbye. I know you'll make sure we never meet again.” Her eyes were expressionless in the mirror, her teeth slightly clenched as she drew the comb slowly through the long lustrous hair.

“Sure. I got nothing left to gamble with, so I'll pick up my bod and go home—wherever that is. Bye-bye.” Looking straight ahead, he walked out, still carrying a piece of the cake. Leslie heard his steps cascading down. It was over so quickly her eyes remained on the space he had occupied in front of the refrigerator and she stood with the awkward bridled feeling of having been about to speak and having lost the occasion.

Honor snapped her purse shut. “Oh me, oh my, that was awful, wasn't it? Now cut me a little piece of that cake. I just couldn't eat with him here.” But Honor nibbled only half. “I don't know what's wrong with me, I don't feel like enjoying it.”

“He left so quickly.”

“He knew it was blown. Do you think he'll leave me alone now?”

“I think he will.”

“Leslie, look outside. Make sure he isn't hanging around in the street.”

She looked out obediently. “I don't see him. What would he be waiting for?”

“If you'd gone through these past weeks, you wouldn't ask. Is it really over? I'd better run.” Honor stood up, rather slowly, and looked around as if she had forgotten something. “Oh, my books.”

“Yeah.… What did you get?”

“Never mind. I'm late.”

“Oh, where are you going?” She had thought Honor might stay. But she didn't really care. She felt listless, exhausted.

Honor paused in the doorway. “I'm almost scared to go down. I just want it over and done with! I'll see you Leslie, soon.” Then she screamed. “Oh, look what he did!”

He had smeared the chocolate cake all over the wall. Leslie got a rag and sponged it off as well as she could, but the stain remained. Then she sat down on her mattress, her knees folding stiffly. She felt obsessed by a sense of cheated anticipation. All had gone off as it must that afternoon, and the struggle was over. But something she could not define had not happened.

nineteen

Finals were over, the streets sizzling all day. Night was a lid clamped on a boiling pot. Leslie kept hearing gunshots. She kept trying to persuade herself she was hearing firecrackers, but she had grown up in hunting country. Half the city must be at war. Yet the police had never looked more sinister to her, cruising by armored, as if from a different entirely mechanical planet. She was sweating in her tee shirt and working on interminable computer runoff, trying to catch up on the project work she owed George. When she discovered she was missing a whole file she needed to proceed, she felt a mixture of dread and pleasure. Her room was so hot that to walk outside would be a relief; yet walking on the streets at night was popularly supposed suicidal. Not even the men she knew used these streets where a predominantly white army of occupation fought it out with a predominantly Black population in a rotting network everyone with money had fled decades before.

She had to walk to George's office to pick up the file, or give up for the evening. She was behind, she owed him two weeks' work, and it was too hot to do anything pleasant. It was her own stupidity she must blame. It wasn't that the hour was late: nine Friday night. She had to go and that was that.

When she arrived a light was on in George's office, the inner office. She was startled and afraid. Burglars? But who would steal what from George? She felt like slipping away leaving the mystery to solve itself, but she forced herself to knock. It could be a cleaning lady. There was a longish silence and then George asked in a loud hostile voice. “Who is it?”

“Leslie. Just picking up a file I forgot.”

Conversation inside, a light female voice consulting. Oh, shit, she'd walked into it. But why on earth was he meeting his girlfriends in his office? She'd never known him to do that.

“I'm leaving now,” she called and started out. The inner door opened.

“Hold on,” George called. “Just a moment. Come on in.”

Reluctantly she crossed the outer office to the inner. He had installed a couch recently on which Honor was sitting, brushing her silky hair. “Hi, Leslie. I'm supposed to be watching a play Cam's in. Fortunately I went to rehearsals.”

“Foresight, that's what I like. Smart cookie. Listen, Leslie, could you walk Honor over to the play? Then I can take off. I'm running a little late. She can slip into her seat and Cam will take her home afterward and everything will be fine and cool and nice.”

“Sure,” Leslie said. Her face was numb with novocaine. She could not smile back at them. Her face would not work. It felt as if pain and anger were braided with spikes into her gut. She wanted to say, I'm a woman too. Why am I supposed to walk her around? And if you think lesbians don't get raped, you're crazy. But she could not help being aware
that
had nothing to do with her anger. Honor with George. No! She was very angry, and she had no right to be. She wanted to say to Honor that now she knew why she had been willing to get rid of Bernie suddenly, to let him go, to send him away. Yes, he had got in the way at last. Damn them both. Damn them.