with girls. The faces were different, but the crowd was the same.
Past a row of heads and shoulders she could see Mickey at the bar, rosy cheeked and as happy looking as ever, her curly dark hair combed flat and her Ivy League shirtsleeves rolled up. Frances felt better. Mickey never forgot a customer. Seeing a couple pocket their change and get up, she elbowed a path across the crowded room and took one of the vacated stools. She said in a low voice, “Hi, Mickey.”
“Well, hi. Martini?”
“That’s right.”
“You haven’t been around for a while,” Mickey said, swabbing a section of counter with a pink cellulose sponge. “You went back to your husband, didn’t you?”
She looked sharply at Mickey. Mickey met the look straight on. “I didn’t mean to be nosy, only you used to come in with that Baker chick all the time. I see her once in a while.”
With her new girl, Frances thought bitterly. She said, “Yeah, I went back to my husband. It hasn’t worked out very well.”
“Never does,” Mickey assured her cheerfully. She set the drink down and bustled off to the other end of the bar. Frances sat holding the cold glass in her hand, looking around hungrily. She had been away too long.
At the next table sat two girls who might possibly have been twenty-one, as the state liquor laws required, but she doubted it. One was small and delicate looking, with long fair hair hanging thick to her waist, the way only a hip type would wear it in a year of tortured and teased bouffant styles. The other, older, had a sharp knife-blade profile, Turkish or possibly Indian. They weren’t touching one another, but appeared to be set apart in a little capsule of time and space, existing only for each other. Here, at least, they could look their love and not be afraid of what outsiders would think. Frances’s eyes stung with envy and pity. They were so young—and so lucky—and so much sorrow still lay ahead of them.
Bake wasn’t there, or Jane. She was both disappointed and relieved.
The door opened and shut behind a new couple, a tall thin girl in the standard getup of tapered slacks, knit shirt, and loafers, her friend a slight redhead like the young Edna Millay. Behind them, alone, stood a third who was familiar to her even through the eddies of smoke and the shifting figures passing and re-passing. Kay.
She stood still for a moment, lighting a cigarette, sizing up the place as she always did, indifferent to what other people thought of her. Feeling she had to talk to her, Frances started to slip down from the bar stool. But at that moment Kay caught sight of her, signaled a greeting with lovely dark eyebrows and made her unhurried way across the room. People moved to let her pass. Her hands were warm and light on Frances’s shoulders. She said, “Hello, darling!”
“Hi.”
“Bring your drink to a table.” Kay caught Mickey’s eye. Mickey came over with a smile of real welcome. “Those fellows are about ready to leave,” she said happily. “Martini for you too?”
“Right.”
They settled down, beaming at each other.
“Kay, tell me everything.”
“Well, Bake and Jane are still together. Your girl and my girl; it looks like it’s lasting.” Kay unbuttoned the jacket of her office suit and relaxed against the back of the chair. “Jane looks fine. They both do. Naturally I hate to admit it.” She grinned. “Bake’s more or less on the wagon, and they’re talking about buying a place in the suburbs.”
Frances went silent. Three years with Bake, then the stormy breaking-up; had it all simmered down to this? Her throat hurt. She picked up her glass, seeing her hand tremble.
Kay went on talking. “I’m in the midst of packing. Got a government job in Iran. I’ve been cleared by security and everything, it’s lucky we don’t have as much trouble as the boys—if a boy looks the least bit swishy he’s had it, even if they can’t prove anything.”
“You’re going alone?”
“Sure. Maybe I’ll find somebody over there.” Kay accepted a glass from Mickey and gave her a dollar bill and a warm smile. “Losing Jane hit me pretty hard. I’ve played around a little, but it wasn’t the same. So I decided it was time for a change of scenery.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“So what’s with you? I suppose you’re not 100 percent happy or you wouldn’t be here. Or are you slumming?”
“I’ve done my best,” Frances said. She was thinking out loud; the bitterness in her voice came as a surprise to her. “You know, my husband took me back the day our son got married. He was so noble and so forgiving—Christ, I’ve gone on being forgiven for a whole year now, and I can’t take much more of it! I don’t think he realizes yet, but it can’t go on. I’ve worked like hell for a year—”
“And what have you got to show for it?”
“A whole lot of nothing.”
Now it was in words. She had not been able to admit it before, even to herself, but Kay’s eyes demanded honesty. She said again, confused but insistent, “I did try.”
“And how’s your son?”
“Fine. It’s his first wedding anniversary today. He’s still in college—just finishing his freshman year.” Frances hesitated. “They’re going to have a baby in the late winter. I hate to think about it.”
“Oh well, you married young. You’re a good-looking girl, Francie.”
Frances shrugged. “It does me a lot of good.”
“No fun in bed? With Bill, I mean?”
“It’s the same old rabbit routine. He’s finished before I start to get warmed up.”
“And you haven’t looked for anybody else?”
“Honest I haven’t.” This was serious. It was important that Kay know she had done her best—if it hadn’t worked out, someone else was to blame. She shook her head to clear it. “I’ve truly tried.”
“I’m sure of it.” Kay’s voice was gentle. “The trouble is, Francie, you’re gay. What you had with Bake wasn’t just a bored housewife having a fling—I know that’s what your husband thinks. It was the real thing. You belong on our side of the fence, 100 percent.”
“I know it now.”
“I married a man too, you know. It’s true my husband was a son-of-a-bitch, but that has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve never wanted another man.” She looked hard at Frances. “I honestly don’t think an unhappy marriage ever made a lesbian out of any girl. It just brings out what’s already there.”
“You left your husband to be with Jane, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and I’ve never been sorry. It was worth it.”
Frances sighed. “Maybe you’re smarter than I am. I thought I could make a go of marriage.”
“Maybe you could if you’d thrown away your whole
