Gay Girl

by Joan Ellis

  "That's what I keep telling them." His arm rested casually about her shoulder as he guided her out into the dark garden.

  "Hmm, the air feels good," Phyl sighed with satisfaction, enjoying the fresh cool breeze that enveloped them.

  "You feel good." Pete's arms were pulling her close.

  "Now Pete, behave," she laughed self-consciously, pushing at his arms.

  "Let's shove the doctor overboard and talk about Phyllis," he murmured huskily.

  "You've had more drinks than I realized." He was stronger than she was, she recognized in surprise. She couldn't budge his firm, amorous body that was insinuating itself against hers.

  "Had to," he reminded. "I'm one of the hosts. Relax, baby—it's the doctor's night off."

  "This is a little too fast for me," she improvised, feeling the rush of color to her face. Thank heaven for the darkness that hid her revulsion. His hot male hands made her faintly sick as they roamed about her waist, then began the trek toward her breasts.

  "Come on, you're a woman," he chuckled. "You're not one of those dyke doctors. Career gal, but gorgeous, Doug said—and baby, was he right!"

  She couldn't make a scene—it'd be humiliating, Phyl realized as she wrestled to free herself. The windows to the apartment were completely blocked off by the floor-to-ceiling draperies. They were as alone here as though in a completely empty apartment.

  "Prove to me you're a woman," Pete chortled, guiding her back against the fence. "Doug bet me I couldn't make it. He thinks you're an iceberg, going to bed with your career!"

  Damn Doug for daring to make such a bet, Phyl thought furiously. Damn him for putting her in a spot like this! This Pete character obviously knew Ed Madigan, too. Ed's insinuations about her social life still bothered her. It would be so easy for them to step across the line in their thinking and label her for what she was—and that she couldn't afford.

  "I hardly know you, Pete..." She forced herself to be calm, though she wanted to beat his face in for thrusting that hard maleness of him against her tautly rejecting body. "Only dogs make love at first sight." Eve and she had made love at first sight, she remembered—but how different that had been.

  "Okay," he laughed ebulliently. "So I'm a great Dane and you're a French poodle! Oh, what you do to me, honey!"

  "You're drunk," she told him sharply. "Let me go and find yourself somebody who plays at first sight."

  "You're my type," he insisted, pinning her against the fence, his mouth suddenly forcing itself upon hers.

  She shut her eyes and told herself she'd have to go through with this. How far could he go, out in the garden this way? It'd be too easy to touch off an explosion about herself if Pete got angry and started to talk. He already harbored ideas about women doctors.

  His tongue pushed its way past her reluctantly parted teeth and drove itself to frenzy with hers. His body swayed with hers while her insides churned with nausea. A hand crept between the buttons of her blouse and inside her bra, finding its destination. She hated him, she told herself sickly! She hated his filthy hands on her, his thighs massaging hers this way. Horrified, she realized those hands were at her hips now, guiding her skirt upward. He was determined to miss nothing.

  "Pete, stop," she whispered frantically. "Somebody'll come out!" Surely he could understand that much.

  "Stop worrying," he insisted huskily, a hand finding cool bare thigh above the nylon, and pinching.

  If only she dared to yell, she thought impotently— but she couldn't afford anything like that. The doctor defending her honor. She could envision the snide jokes from those inside. She was a woman—she was supposed to know how to handle herself. That was how that wise-eyed crowd inside would figure it. She couldn't stand those eyes if she made a scene now. But she had to do something, she told herself desperately, feeling her skirt high about her hips, knowing his free hand was at his zipper.

  "Pete, the phone!" she shrieked as the sound pierced the night. "It may be for me."

  With superhuman strength she shoved at him, catching him off-guard. Her skirt slid about her thighs, pulled into place by her hands as she raced for the door. Let him think what he wanted, she told herself recklessly. She would have been sick right on his two-hundred-dollar Madison Avenue suit if he'd tried to force himself one step further. She felt dirty, her skin crawling with vermin from the touch of him. She smoothed her hair into place with nervous fingers as she moved through the narrow bedroom into the living room.

  "Doug, was that call for me?" Phyl called with painful casualness as he talked into the phone.

  "Not this time, sweetie," he grinned speculatively. "What's the matter—the old war horse couldn't stay away from the action?" He put the phone down, obviously done with whatever conversation there was.

  "I see what my folks mean, old boy." Pete's voice cut in caustically from behind her. "I might as well go on a date with you as with a gal doctor."

  "You take second place with career gals," Doug said. "Whether they wield a paint brush or a stethoscope. Now give me that five bucks you owe me."

  "I have to be going, Doug," Phyl mumbled unhappily. "Best of luck in your new apartment."

  She pushed through the party crowd, not caring what they thought about her hasty departure. She couldn't wait to get into the clean night air outside. Let Pete say whatever he liked—he was drunk, they all knew that.

  She moved with her usual swiftness in the direction of her car, then decided on impulse to leave it there. It was tough finding a parking space at this hour. She'd walk awhile, then pick up the car later. Without her realizing it, she was walking with determined strides in the direction of Thompson Street. There was a coffee shop right near the corner, where she could sit and watch the passing traffic...

  CHAPTER 5

  Phyl walked into the coffee shop, her eyes quickly noticing the lack of empty tables near the window. She hesitated momentarily, on the point of leaving.

  "Table here," a bearded boy murmured cordially. "May I take your order?" He pulled out a chair at a tiny, squeezed-in-the-corner table for two, and Phyl couldn't make herself refuse.

  "American coffee," she said, and reached for a cigarette. She'd have coffee here, then go over to Third Street for dinner. Suddenly, she realized she was famished.

  A weird chanting to the accompaniment of a guitar captured her attention, as it did the other occupants in the coffee shop. The impromptu entertainment that was a feature of the coffee house was beginning.

  Phyl respected the honesty of the entertainer, though his talent was raw. Honesty, was such a rare quality, she thought with a touch of bitterness. She wanted to be honest with the world, but the world would have none of her if she were. She should have been honest with Eve, and she hadn't. The one time when it was so tremendously important, she'd resorted to childlike delay! Her eyes, troubled and restless, strayed from the entertainer out onto the street, though her view was all but blocked by the absorbed viewers at the other tables. She was impatient now for the impromptu entertainment to pause, at least momentarily, so that she'd have an excuse to escape. Her coffee sat before her now. A few sips would validate her presence. She'd pay her check and hurry off somewhere for dinner, by a window.

  * * *

  Eve traipsed slowly through the Square, then headed down Sullivan, walking aimlessly. A growing fear tied her stomach into knots. She'd thought it'd be so different here, away from Joe and the ugly memories of that horrible scene with Marian. She'd come here to the city, blossoming with hopes that life would be different. She was in the Village, where people didn't pry into your private life, where you could live the way you wanted—and yet she was so sickeningly afraid.

  Her money was low. She'd have to find a job in another week. But there were so few things she could do, she worried inwardly—and the way she approached a job! Why couldn't she face interviews with confidence? How could she expect to be hired, floundering and stammering the way she did? Phyl would never be that way, she thought wistfully—Phyl was so
strong, so sure of herself, so fine. How she regretted running off that way!

  After she had run from the studio, back in her tiny room on Thompson, she'd gone over the memory of Phyl, pieced together in her mind everything they'd talked about. Where had she dug up that insane notion that Phyl might be a policewoman? A policewoman wouldn't keep an apartment there. And Phyl had lived there, at least part time—the refrigerator should have told her that.

  What was it with Phyl, that had dragged her off that way? Was she married? Was there another girl? Was she a call girl? Marian had told her call girls were often Lesbians—they got a crazy lack out of taking men for money that way. But she didn't care! Whatever Phyl was, she wanted her. She walked past the coffee shop where she usually stopped in on these lonely evenings. It was cheap. For the thirty-five or forty cents they asked for a cup of coffee, she could sit among people, watch whatever floor show-the customers might get up to provide. Tonight, somehow, she didn't want that. She listened to the weird chanting to the guitar inside, and walked past. That belonged to the life before last night—before she'd met Phyl.

  What had Phyl thought when she had come back and found her gone? Had she been angry or hurt, or perhaps a little of both? Had she brushed Eve from her mind as a one-night affair and promptly forgot her? No, Phyl wasn't that way, she decided instantly. Why didn't she bury her pride and phone Phyl? She could do that! She could walk into that corner drugstore and go into a phone booth and call her! Phyllis Talbert—that wasn't a common name. And maybe she'd find her at the Village apartment or that other secret place she kept somewhere.

  Eve quickened her pace, the hazel eyes alight with eagerness now. She crossed the street with reckless abandon, narrowly missing being hit by a cursing driver in a station wagon. She cut diagonally to the drugstore, impatient to feel the phone in her hands, to hear Phyl's voice at the other end.

  A woman was searching painstakingly through the Manhattan phone directory, and Eve sought to hide her annoyance. Why didn't the woman hurry? Then the woman found her number, and the heavy phone book was sliding down into its slot. Eve reached to pull it up again, thumbing hurriedly through the Ts to Talbert. There were over a dozen, but her first scanning indicated nothing under "Phyllis." But Phyl had a phone up there, Eve remembered with frustration. She must be listed, either at that place or wherever else she lived.

  Her finger moved laboriously down the list, while her eyes clung desperately to the first names and initials. Nothing, she admitted tiredly. Nothing under Phyllis Talbert—only that P. A. Talbert, M.D. Phyllis Talbert must have an unlisted phone.

  Eve moved slowly out of the drugstore, her mind reluctant to relinquish the hope of finding Phyl. She'd go up to the apartment, she decided. Phyl might be there. She'd explain how she'd been frightened, how sorry she was that she'd run off that way. She'd make Phyl understand it hadn't been through distrust. She was scared, it was all so new. She didn't want this thing between Phyl and her to end. Her brain worded phrases of apology as she walked in the direction of the house.

  This was the house, wasn't it, she asked herself nervously, hesitating before the old brownstone that reached a story above the buildings around it. Phyl's apartment had looked out on those other roofs, Eve recalled. This must be it. She opened the paint-hungry door and walked into the hallway. The light was barely strong enough to allow her to read the names on the mailboxes. Nobody named Talbert, but then some boxes were without names.

  Shoving down anxiety, Eve began the upward climb. Phyl was on the top floor. She'd paid little attention to how the place looked, climbing up those flights with Phyl. But reaching the top she knew this was the right house. This was where Phyl had brought her last night. She touched the doorbell with a wave of inner trembling. Please let Phyl be here, she prayed silently! Dear heaven, please let her be here!

  * * *

  Phyl left the coffee house, and headed north toward Third. There was a spaghetti place that was quiet and relaxing, and that faced heavy pedestrian traffic. She'd have her dinner there. Afterwards, she'd drop in to Ronaldo's, on the chance that Eve might wander in again. That was possible, wasn't it? And if she weren't at Ronaldo's, there were other places where people like themselves congregated. She'd try them all.

  The warmth of the late April evening had brought out the nearby dwellers. The streets were thronged with people enjoying the pleasantness of the air. And yet she felt so desperately alone, Phyl thought wryly. How you could brush shoulders, even exchange a neighborly word here and there, and still be so starkly alone!

  "You haven't been here for a long time," the fat motherly woman at the cash register chided Phyl as she walked into the aroma-filled Italian restaurant. "Not sick, huh?"

  "No, out of town," Phyl lied. This was what brought her down to the Village, too, Phyl told herself with the first feeling of warmth. There was a friendliness here that she rarely found uptown— and nobody cared which face she brought here, the uptown, tensely cautious career face or the real Phyl, stripped of pretense. She didn't have to say what she was—she didn't have to acknowledge it. They knew and dismissed it as inconsequential. "I just dropped in to ask how late you're open evenings," she lied with sudden alarm because at a rear table she spotted a pair of student nurses from the hospital. They would have to pick tonight to come sightseeing!

  "Like always, till midnight," Mama Pagano informed her good-humoredly. "Make sure you come to see us now."

  "I will," Phyl promised, keeping her head averted.

  She didn't want anyone from the hospital to associate her with the Village. They might grow curious.

  Phyl turned instinctively toward the apartment. She'd make herself a pot of coffee and a sandwich from whatever was around in the refrigerator. But the prospect of the lone rooms repelled her. She didn't want to go up there tonight, to fight that lonely silence. She'd go back uptown, perhaps drop in at the hospital. It was about time she checked with her answering service, too, considering she'd been away from the phone for hours.

  Phyl turned into the first drugstore, checked with the service. No calls, she heard with gratitude. She swung firmly out of the drugstore, deciding not to go to the studio, heading instead northward to where the car was parked. She'd have to stop this psychotic searching! She'd never find Eve this way. Never...

  CHAPTER 6

  Phyl welcomed the rush of activity during the next few days. Four patients went into labor in a forty-eight hour period. When she wasn't at the hospital, she was seeing patients in the office. Twice she sandwiched in free time to drive in and out of the Village streets. She couldn't wash out of her memory the poignant face of Eve Slater.

  Walking down the hospital corridor, on the private maternity floor, Phyl asked herself why she couldn't make work enough. It wasn't—she wouldn't he to herself. Admittedly, it was a good feeling to know she was performing a useful job. Tonight she'd saved a baby even the operating-room team had thought was lost. That was one of the things that made obstetrics satisfying. But it wasn't enough.

  Phyl glanced at the hall clock. It was almost twenty of eight. Hardly night any longer! She hadn't realized how the hours had passed. She'd go in and grab an hour's sleep. There was a vacancy on the floor here, Alice Harmon had told her, almost as though reading her mind. With another patient up in a labor room there was little sense in leaving the hospital. Two hours, maybe three, and she'd be escorting another infant into the world.

  Phyl checked with the nurse on duty about the empty room, then headed wearily for it. It'd be good just to stretch out for twenty minutes or so and they would know where she was if any sudden emergency arose. Phyl opened the door and closed it behind her with a sense of relief. She could drop the fixed professional smile; she could be her exhausted, bitterly unhappy self.

  She kicked off her shoes, then stretched full length on the bed, a sigh of satisfaction escaping her as her body welcomed the firmness of the mattress. It was a joke—Phyl Talbert in a bed on the maternity floor. It was the only way she'd eve
r make a bed on a maternity floor, she thought cynically. Her mother must have hated being pregnant. They both thought and felt like men—why had they been cursed with women's bodies?

  Phyl remembered the times she'd seen her mother pretend to give in to her father—to be the subdued, obedient wife. Hell, it had made her sick, as it must have made her mother sick! Her father had been the woman in their family—weak and pliable, someone to be managed…

  Phyl woke with a start, her mind hazy with the jumbled dream that had protected her from wakefulness. Such a weird near-nightmare. She shuddered, fragments of the dream floating back to her. It had revolved around Eve—trying to reach Eve, who was floundering helplessly in a pond, and constantly just evading her. The way Phyl kept missing her in the aimless search of hers.

  Determined to clear her mind of personal problems, Phyl rose from the bed and slid her feet back into her shoes. It was past eight-thirty. She'd look in on Leila Rosen up in the labor room, and if nothing was imminent she'd have some coffee in the cafeteria upstairs.

  * * *

  "Mind if I join you?" Doug Johnston's voice broke into her somber reverie as she sat with coffee and a cigarette.

  "Of course not," Phyl said self-consciously, the memory of that other night suddenly assailing her.

  "Say, Phyl," he cleared his throat awkwardly as he dumped sugar into his coffee. "Pete wasn't sure, but he said he might have been a little rough the other night. He'd been drinking a lot more than he showed," he added ruefully.

  "He made the usual pass," Phyl tried to shrug it off nonchalantly. "I figured he was lit."

  "You aren't sore, are you? I mean, that stupid bet we made and all. I guess I was a little high myself."

  "It's okay, Doug. Forget it." She was impatient to brush it off.

  "Look, let me buy you a drink and make amends. Some evening when you can tear yourself away from duty," he chuckled. "Ed says you're great. Of course, he wouldn't admit that to you."