Stranger On Lesbos (6 page)

"What is it about fire?"

"It's a symbol," Bake said. "Home and safety
and other things too." She snapped on a light in the adjoining bedroom, plunged into the closet, and came back carrying a pair of soft flat slippers with elastic bands across the instep. "You're taller than I am, but I have bigger feet. Maybe you can keep these on."

"They're so soft."

"They're an acrobat's practice shoes." She wondered how Bake happened to have them, but she didn't want to ask.

"Sit down in front of the fire. I'll fix us a drink before I start the steaks."

Frances was looking dreamily into the flames when Bake came back with two full glasses. "Here, now let's put a real chunk of wood on the fire. Are you in any hurry to go home?"

"No," Frances said. She opened her eyes wide, smiled contentedly at Bake. "I'd like to stay here forever."

"I don't know why I used to think drink was a vice," Frances said, sliding down a little deeper into the cushions and flexing her toes in the thin slippers. "I feel wonderful."

"Maybe that's why," Bake suggested. "Life is real, life is earnest, and all that jazz. We can't have people going around here all full of euphoria." She sounded a little vague, and her eyes were narrowed as they always were after a couple of drinks. She set her glass on the floor with exaggerated care.

"Just as soon be full of euphoria, if it means what I think it does." Frances got up and walked to a bookcase. The bindings of the books, all soft bright colors, blurred a little in the flickering light from the fireplace. Bake had turned off all but one lamp, a small one on the corner of the desk, "so you can't see where I burned the steak." Now Frances said, pleased, "Oh, here's
The Rainbow.
I did read it, you know."

"You didn't tell me. How did you like it?"

Frances hesitated. She could find no words for the mixture of puzzlement and revelation she had felt, as though some truth unsuspected thus far was about to be revealed with the next page she turned.

"I'm not sure. I didn't understand some of it very well."

Bake looked at her intently. "What didn't you understand?"

"Oh, a lot of it." She took a restless step. "The fire's going out."

"I'll have to order more wood before you come again. Remind me, will you?"

"Good heavens, it can't be twelve o'clock."

"It probably is. I'll take you home if you really feel you have to go. Another drink first?"

"Please."

Frances wandered back to the studio couch and sat dreamily looking at nothing special, content to be there. Definitely, she thought, I've had too much to drink already. It's kind of a nice feeling, though
everything soft and fuzzy around the edges. She accepted the glass Bake brought from the kitchen. They sat side by side, drinking slowly, not talking. She felt rather than saw the warm solidity of Bake's thigh next to hers on the cushion, and the even rise and fall of her chest.

"You're the nicest person I know," she said sleepily, hearing her voice wobbly and small. "I like you too. Very much."

"I wish you could be my roommate in college, or something.

"Do you?" Bake got up and walked slowly across the room, glass in hand, leaving emptiness where she had been. Frances looked unhappily at her back. "I didn't mean
" She fell silent, because she was not sure, herself, what she had or hadn't meant.

"Look here. When you read
The Rainbow,
did you get to the part where Ursula and Winifred go down to the water together, in the darkness, before the storm?"

"Yes, but
"

"That's the part you didn't understand, isn't it?" Frances was miserably silent, turning her glass around and around in her hand. "Isn't it?"

"Well, yes."

"Frances, didn't you ever hear of women loving each other?"

Frances jumped up and went to stand beside her. "Look, Bake, that's not what I was thinking about. I mean, you don't have to worry about anything like that. I'm not like that." She seized Bake's hand in both of hers, almost crying. "Honestly, I don't even know what they
look, Bake, please don't give it another thought."

Bake pulled her hand away. "People do feel that way sometimes, you know. It happens quite often."

"I know, but don't worry about it. Even if I felt that way about you, I wouldn't say anything about it. Or make any trouble for you. I mean, I'd get over it. So that's all right."

Bake stood looking away from her, pondering, like a grown-up trying to put an abstract idea into terms a child can understand. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Do you mean
"

"For God's sake, don't you ever finish a sentence?" Bake moved away abruptly. She walked back to the couch and sat down, stretching out her legs in the mud-splashed navy slacks. "I do get into the goddamnedest situations."

"Bake, please."

"I love you," Bake said quietly. "I think I've loved you for quite a while. Come on, I'll take you home now."

Frances' eyes widened. They looked at each other steadily. In the silence she could hear the ticking of the clock on Bake's bedside stand, in the next room. She came and stood awkwardly beside Bake, wanting to touch her and afraid to.

"I don't want to go home. I think I love you too."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"I know how I feel. You could show me."

"I've always sworn I wouldn't do this," Bake said in a low harsh voice. She bent her head. "Apparently there are some things you can't help. They just happen."

"Will you let me stay?"

"Yes, of course. I don't seem to have any choice."

"You won't hate me if I'm
scared or clumsy?"

"Oh, good God."

They came into each other's arms like puppets moved by a single string. In the faint light from the desk lamp, Frances saw Bake's eyes close tightly, as though to shut away every sensation but touch. "I love you," she said again, and raised her mouth to Bake's in hunger and anticipation.

CHAPTER 5

“You have to go home now."

"I know." Frances raised up on one elbow, watching Bake as she moved around the bedroom. "I don't want to."

"But you have to." Bake's smile brought small creases to the corners of her eyes. "Come on, don't stop to think about it. The longer you put it off, the worse it gets."

"I wish I didn't ever have to go."

"Me too."

Her clothes lay where she had dropped them, on the floor beside the bed. She stooped to pick them up, and was at once aware of her body, as she had never been with Bill. As though she had been thinking along the same lines, Bake asked, "Will you run into trouble at home?"

"How can I have trouble? I called. It's not my fault there was nobody there."

But she wondered how she could hide the experiences of that night. She got up and looked into the dressing-table mirror, seeing her color deeper and her eyes brighter, a thin veil of boredom or resignation
the habit of years, a thing she had come to carry without being aware of it
stripped away. She looked like a girl; and she was glad, not for the sake of vanity but because she was a little older than Bake and afraid that the extra years would come between them.