The Revelation of Beatrice Darby Read online

  “Hey, Bea, can I get another glass of Chablis?” Paul asked, engrossed in Ellison’s Invisible Man.

  Beatrice nodded as she strode past him, annoyed that his presence had so impolitely intruded on her daydream. She also resented his recent habit of not even looking at her when making his requests at the restaurant. When she brought him a new glass, her hand shook at the temptation to empty it in his lap.

  “Thank you, my love.” His innocuous smile made her dislike herself.

  “I’m going to help with inventory tonight,” she said. “I could use the extra money.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t mind waiting. Ellison is fascinating.”

  “It could take hours after my shift, Paul,” she said in a huff. “I don’t want you waiting here all that time.”

  He looked up in surprise. “As I’ve said before, I don’t want you walking home alone.”

  “I won’t be alone. I’ll either get a cab or walk home with Ricky.”

  “Very well. Tell me what time, and I’ll come back for you.”

  She groaned at his insistence. Who was he to order her around like that? He wasn’t her father or her husband.

  “No, Paul, I don’t want to argue about this anymore. I can take care of myself.”

  She hurried into the kitchen, exhilarated by her immergence of backbone.

  “What’s going on out there?” Ricky asked. “You look like you just witnessed the Hindenburg disaster.”

  Ricky always made her smile with his kooky comments.

  “I kind of feel like I did.”

  “Hang in there. It’s almost closing time.”

  He aimed the hanging nozzle at her and shot her with a spritz of cold water. She screeched happily as she grabbed a tray of desserts.

  After serving a young couple a strawberry cheesecake that they fed each other, she rolled her eyes as she scurried off. How corny. Weren’t they a little old for such public exhibitions? She then noticed Paul was gone. Under the stem of his wineglass, she found her tip and a note scrawled on a folded piece of loose-leaf paper.

  Forgive my infringement on your independence, my love. Call me in the morning.

  Yours, Paul.

  Even his understanding nature got under her skin. Why couldn’t he have the decency to be a bastard about it so she wouldn’t have to feel so guilty?

  At the end of her shift, Beatrice went into the kitchen, ready to help with inventory.

  “Say, Bea, Mr. Francois is postponing inventory until Monday. How about coming out with me for a drink?”

  She regarded Ricky with surprise. He was about four inches shorter than her and, worst of all, Puerto Rican, not that his ethnicity mattered at all to her. She was merely anticipating her mother’s massive stroke at her bringing home some dishwasher—and a brown one at that.

  “Ricky, I have a boyfriend.”

  “I know that,” he whispered. “With any luck, soon I’ll have one, too.”

  She could feel her eyebrows shoot to the ceiling.

  “You’re not surprised, are you?”

  Beatrice smiled. “I suppose I shouldn’t be.” She’d always felt an affinity for Ricky. Now she knew why. “Where are you going for that drink?”

  “Dandy’s over on Christopher Street. Care to join me?”

  “Is that a homosexual bar?” she asked in a scarcely audible whisper.

  “Hmm,” he said with a sneer. “It used to be mostly boys until the lesbos started infesting the place. But we all play nice for the most part. What do you say?”

  She blinked away the kaleidoscope of faces—Paul’s, Donna’s, Abby’s—swirling in her mind. The night had been a conflagration of emotion, and by that hour she was simply tired of thinking and feeling.

  “Okay, I’ll go,” she said with tempered enthusiasm. “But I’m not a lesbo.”

  He studied her for a moment. “You’re not afraid, are you?”

  “Afraid? Of course not.”

  He nodded knowingly. “No one’s going think you’re a dyke. You’re too girly.”

  The word was familiar. “Dyke?”

  “You know, a butch,” he said, then added for clarification, “a female homosexual that looks like a boy.”

  Beatrice eagerly absorbed the lesson. “So lesbians are the ones that don’t look like boys?”

  Ricky glanced over his shoulder as their coworkers filed in to start punching out their time cards.

  “I don’t know. I guess. Why don’t you ask one at the bar?” He gave her a playful grin.

  *

  Beatrice stopped on the sidewalk outside Dandy’s, tugging Ricky’s jacket sleeve. “I don’t know about this. What if someone sees me in here?” She shifted her body toward the building away from the leering faces going by in taxis and on foot.

  “Honey, there’s sort of a code of ethics in these places. Once you’re on the inside, if you don’t recognize them, they won’t recognize you.”

  She looked at him skeptically.

  “Come on, Bea. You’re safe inside. It’s loitering out front like this that puts a target on your forehead.”

  He dragged open the door with one arm and yanked her after him with the other.

  Beatrice glanced over her shoulders and all around the neighborhood bar packed with people milling in a haze of smoke. Although she’d witnessed women huddled so intimately before at Pixie’s, it still felt as though she’d stepped through the looking glass. She stumbled into Ricky when she saw two men slow dancing.

  “What the hell, Bea?” he shouted at her.

  “I’m sorry, but look at those men cuddling. That one playing the girl looks like a longshoreman.”

  Ricky shook his head. “No one plays the girl, Bea. Get with it.”

  “I knew that,” she said, snotty enough to dismiss the slightest hint of embarrassment. She regrouped, reminding herself why she was there—to have a drink with Ricky, one drink to relax without having to fend off the advances of horny college men, students and faculty alike.

  Sneaking into Pixie’s when she was a teenager was one thing, but being seen going into a gay bar now could have serious consequences. She would be graduating soon and beginning her search for a teaching position. What if the wrong person saw her in here? She could end up getting canned like Abby Gill and her high-school gym teacher before she was even hired. But as nervous as she was, Beatrice savored the placid sense of belonging as she followed Ricky to the bar.

  “You’re not going to be clinging to the back of my shirt all night, are you?” he asked. “They don’t bite, you know. We homosexuals are very nice, docile people by nature.”

  “You don’t have to pander to me, Ricky. I knew some homosexuals before I met you.”

  “Really? You have a secret past?” He sat on a barstool and signaled the bartender. “Suddenly, you’re a lot more interesting than I thought.”

  “I’ll have a Schlitz,” Beatrice said.

  “That’s all you have to say for yourself, ‘I’ll have a Schlitz?’ Start talking, sister.”

  Beatrice folded her arms across her chest like a plate of armor. Ricky was trying to get her to expose her secret, and she didn’t like it one bit. Abby and Donna were the only ones who knew for sure, and she wasn’t too keen on adding anybody else to the list. Sure, she’d known Ricky for about a year, but what if he opened his mouth and blabbed to everyone? What if he told their boss and Paul somehow found out? The fallout would be devastating. Paul would tell everyone at the university. She’d be expelled, and then nobody would hire her to teach.

  “I just knew a woman—I used to work with her in New Haven. She was nice.”

  Ricky’s knowing expression unsettled her. “It’s okay, Trixie. Don’t sweat it. I get it.”

  She propped her hands on her hips. “What do you get?”

  “You want to keep it in the closet. I understand. You have a lot more to lose than some swishy little Puerto Rican kitchen worker like me. But I really thought we were friends.”

  “Of course
, we’re friends. But I’m not a lesbian. I have a boyfriend.”

  “You see that guy over there with the beard?” He pointed to a man at the end of the bar having a martini with a group of young leather- or denim-clad ruffians. “He’s married.”

  “To a woman?”

  “Who else would he be married to?” Ricky wrapped his small fingers around hers. “Look, if you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t pester you. I want you to know I’m a loyal friend, and if you want to tell me anything, I’ll keep it in the strictest confidence.”

  She squeezed his hand in return, her eyes watering as she sipped her beer.

  “Listen, you’ll be okay if I take a walk around alone?”

  She nodded and took a larger swig from her glass. “Good luck.”

  “You too,” he said over his shoulder with a wink.

  She grew restless sitting stock-still at the bar for nearly an hour as Ricky danced and socialized with numerous men. Clutching her third glass of beer and fondling peanuts in a bowl, she tried to stop staring at everyone. They seemed so free and at ease, like guests at a masquerade ball uninhibited in the anonymity of their disguises. How did they manage that? Didn’t they have jobs, the fear of God? Or mothers?

  “Are you gonna eat those or just play with them?” A woman sat beside her and gave her a playful smile.

  “I guess I have to eat them now since I contaminated them.” She piled a handful onto a napkin.

  “So what’s her name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Huh? Who?” Beatrice asked, munching the peanuts.

  “The girl that’s doing this to you,” the woman said, rubbing a rose tattoo on the outside of her bicep.

  Beatrice cocked her head with a wry smile. “I have a boyfriend.”

  “Ah, that was my second guess. My name is Judy.” She held out her hand.

  “Beatrice.”

  She shook the woman’s hand, captivated by her Rita Hayworth smile. Judy might have looked like a “butch,” as Ricky would say, but those lips were uncompromisingly feminine.

  “Does your boyfriend know where you are now, Beatrice?”

  “My hope is that nobody knows where I am right now.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Judy said, tapping her beer bottle into Beatrice’s glass. “Is this your first time here?”

  Beatrice nodded.

  “Can I buy you your next drink?”

  “I’ve already had three. I should slow down.”

  “What fun is that? When we slow down, we die. Maybe I can interest you in a dance?”

  Beatrice’s heart began to pound. She was sure the beers were getting to her when she almost said yes. Instead, she blurted, “I don’t dance.”

  “Me neither, but I figured when in Rome.” Judy offered a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

  Beatrice grinned, drawn into the flirtation. “Don’t smoke either.”

  Judy lit a cigarette and exhaled a billow of smoke. “Don’t dance, don’t smoke. What do you do, Beatrice?”

  “I think. I think an awful lot—sometimes too much.”

  “You never just let down that beautiful hair and act on impulse?”

  “Yeah, I’ve done that a few times, too. But I’ve learned from my mistakes.”

  “For me, making mistakes is when I’m having the most fun—especially if they’re made with the right person.”

  Beatrice’s face grew warm. Judy’s eyes were boring into hers. Straining to hear, she and Judy moved closer as they chatted. Seemingly out of nowhere, another beer slid before her.

  “In case you get thirsty,” Judy said, her lips touching Beatrice’s ear.

  Beatrice grabbed the fresh beer and displayed it like a prize on a game show. “Here’s one thing I do.” She grinned as she gulped it down, beginning to understand how everyone seemed so free.

  Judy laced her arm through Beatrice’s, and they clumsily drank. “You’re adorable, you know that?”

  Beatrice smirked. “No, I didn’t know that, but thank you.”

  “Doesn’t your boyfriend tell you?”

  “Who cares?” she said in a drunken whisper.

  At that, they broke into giggles, teetering on the bar stools, falling into each other.

  Judy rested her hand on Beatrice’s knee. “What do you say we get out of here?”

  Although Beatrice was attracted to Judy, leaving the bar with her would be taking it to a dangerous level. Not that Judy was a dangerous woman, but Beatrice felt too willing to go with her.

  “I don’t think so,” Beatrice said. “I actually came here with my friend, Ricky. I should go look for him.” She stood and needed a moment to secure her land legs.

  “Easy, girl.” Judy braced her until she was steady. “Can I call you some time?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Beatrice slurred. “I have a boyfriend.”

  “You said that before.” Judy lightly rubbed Beatrice’s back.

  “But this time I mean it.” Straining against the urge to kiss Judy, she shuffled through the crowd toward the ladies’ room before she fell victim to her impulses, as she had so infamously done in the past. Ricky was nowhere to be found.

  Inside the bathroom stall, Beatrice sucked in a deep breath, her heart still pounding. Judy was very attractive, but kissing those luscious lips would be a mistake. She was with Paul and at the moment was rather tipsy. Retreating to the ladies’ room had been a smart move.

  “Everything all right, Beatrice?” Judy’s voice echoed off the tile.

  Beatrice opened the stall door and found Judy blocking her path to the sink. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”

  Judy pushed her inside the stall and shut the door. She trapped Beatrice against the wall and began kissing her. The thought of resisting might have occurred to Beatrice, but by that point, her hormones were taking charge of the situation. Judy’s lips were soft and moist, a tangy residue of beer on her tongue as she flicked it around Beatrice’s. Judy’s hands touched, squeezed, and caressed her all over. In all the time she’d been dating Paul, her body had never responded like this in any situation. She could deny who she was to other people all she wanted, but not to herself. Suddenly, nothing else mattered as she threw her arms around Judy’s neck, allowing the exquisite physical abandon to wash over her. When Judy reached under Beatrice’s work skirt, it happened before she had a chance to stop it—not that she wanted to.

  “Let’s go have some privacy,” Judy whispered in her ear. “My apartment’s down the street.”

  Still shuddering and now enveloped in shame, she gently pushed Judy’s hands off her. “I’m sorry, Judy. I can’t,” she said, looking down. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “What are you sorry for?” Judy picked up Beatrice’s chin. “Was this your first time?”

  Beatrice nodded. Her beer buzz completely evaporated, she felt claustrophobic in the tight stall. “I’m sorry. I really have to go.”

  Judy attempted to kiss her, but Beatrice shoved past her. “Beatrice, wait. Why don’t you calm down for a minute before you leave?”

  But she was already out the door, sprinting down the sidewalk to her Irving Place apartment, the crisp night air never touching her skin. She slammed the door shut, fastened the deadbolt, and collapsed facedown in a pillow on her sofa. It was well after two a.m., and sleep couldn’t have been further from her mind. As queasy as she felt, she didn’t have the need to run into the shower and wash herself clean like she had after being with Paul. Her head was pulsating, her body still trembling as she came down from the adrenaline rush. She revisited the encounter now that she was safe at home. How could she enjoy an intimate experience like that with a stranger more than with her own boyfriend? The answer had been right in front of her. Judy was the final piece of the puzzle.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning Beatrice was on the telephone with Ricky as soon as she got home from Sunday mass at Saint Patrick’s cathedral. She had gone in there numerous times since moving to New York, mostly
for the love of its hallowed silence and architectural brilliance, but that morning a different need had impelled her.

  “You went to mass?” Ricky asked. “Wait one doggone minute. What happened last night?”

  Beatrice attempted to laugh off his insinuation. “What do you mean? What’s so unusual about a Catholic going to Sunday mass?”

  “You and I have discussed our Catholicism before. Come on, Trix, spill the beans. You left without saying good-bye last night. Did you leave with someone, you lucky dog?”

  She wanted desperately to confess her powder-room rendezvous in some vain hope that it might ease the burden of shame, but it was so hard to utter the words. Secrecy was an issue of concern, but Ricky had more or less proved that once classified information was deposited in his ear, his lips sealed like a bank vault. No, the roots of her reticence went much deeper. There was permanence in a confession, some part of herself she would lose. Once she revealed the truth in her own words, her own voice, she wouldn’t be able to reclaim it.

  “Hello?” he said. “Should I take your silence as an admission of guilt?”

  “Oh, Ricky, do you swear you can keep a secret?”

  “My whole life is a secret—of course I can. I’d pinky swear if we weren’t on the phone, swear it in blood.”

  She exhaled deeply into the receiver and watched her fingers quiver. “I did something awful last night.”

  Ricky’s brief pause startled her. “How exciting,” he finally breathed. “What? What?”

  “Oh, God, I can’t even say it out loud.”

  “Look, honey, we’re on the phone. You can’t act it out in sock puppets.”

  “I don’t know, Ricky. I have so much to lose.”

  “We all do, Bea, but you have to be able to trust someone. You’ll go crazy if you don’t.”