Chapter 8 Breakfast at Tiffany's-8

"Too dirty?" "Maybe Ill let you read one sometime." "Whiskey and apples go together. Fix me a drink, darling. Then you can read me astory yourself." Very few authors, especially the unpublished, can resist an invitation to readaloud. I made us both a drink and, settling in a chair opposite, began to read to her, my voice a little shaky with a combination of stage fright and enthusiasm: it was a new story, Id finished it the day before, and that inevitable sense of shortcoming had not had time to develop. It was about two women who share a house, schoolteachers, one of whom, when the other becomes engaged, spreads with anonymous notes a scandal that prevents the marriage. As I read, each glimpse Istole of Holly made my heart contract. She fidgeted. She picked apart the butts in anashtray, she mooned over her fingernails, as though longing for a file; her interest, there was actually a telltale frost over her eyes, as if she were wondering whether to buy a pair of shoes shed seen in some window.

"Is that the end?" she asked, waking up. She floundered for something more to say. "Of course I like dykes themselves. They dont scare me a bit. But stories about dykes bore the bejesus out of me. I just cant put myself in their shoes. Well really, darling," she said, because I was clearly puzzled, "if its not about a couple of oldbull-dykes, what the hell is it about?" But I was in no mood to compound the mistake of having read the story with the further embarrassment of explaining it. The same vanity that had led to such exposure, now forced me to mark her down as an insensitive, mindless show-off.

"Incidentally," she said, "do you happen to know any nice lesbians? Im looking for a roommate. Well, dont laugh. Im so disorganized, I simply cant afford a maid; and really, dykes are wonderful home-makers, they love to do all the work, you never have to bother about brooms and defrosting and sending out the laundry. I had a roommate in Hollywood, she played in Westerns, they called her the LoneRanger; but Ill say this for her, she was better than a man around the house. Ofcourse people couldn't help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of courseI am. Everyone is: a bit. So what? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact itseems to goad them on. Look at the Lone Ranger, married twice. Usually dykes only get married once, just for the name. It seems to carry such cachet later on to becalled Mrs. Something Another. Thats not true!" She was staring at an alarm clock on the table." It can't be four-thirty!"

The window was turning blue. A sunrise breeze bandied the curtains. "What is today?" "Thursday." "Thursday." She stood up. "My God," she said, and sat down again with a moon. "It's too gruesome." I was tired enough not to be curious. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. Still it was irresistible: "What's gruesome about Thursday?" "Nothing. Except that I can never remember when its coming. You see, onThursdays I have to catch the eight forty-five. Theyre so particular about visiting hours, so if youre there by ten that gives you an hour before the poor men eatlunch. Think of it, lunch at eleven. You can go at two, and Id so much rather, but helikes me to come in the morning, he says it sets him up for the rest of the day. Ivegot to stay awake," she said , pinching her cheeks until the roses came, "there isn't time to sleep, Id look consumptive, Id sag like a tenement, and that wouldn't befair: a girl cant go to Sing Sing with a green face."

"I suppose not." The anger I felt at her over my story was ebbing; she absorbed me again. "All the visitors do make an effort to look their best, and its very tender, its sweet as hell, the way the women wear their prettiest everything, I mean the oldones and the really poor ones too, they make the dearest effort to look nice and smell nice too, and I love them for it. I love the kids too, especially the colored ones.