Community of Women by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page A

lesbian.
    To look at them, of course, you could never have guessed this cheerful little fact. Dave could hardly have looked less like the popularized concept of the homosexual. He wore his hair in a mud-brown crew-cut, didn’t swish when he walked, and wore standard latter-day Ivy League clothing, maybe a shade quieter than most of his Cheshire Point friends. He never minced, never lisped, and seemed on the surface to be one-hundred per cent heterosexual.
    Like the majority of American homosexuals, Dave worked very hard to keep his sex life and his business and social life as far separated as possible. His poker friends were heterosexual, his business acquaintances were also heterosexuals; as a matter of full fact, he was a homosexual with absolutely no homosexual friends. Once or twice a week, when he wanted to meet a lover, he would go to any of several homosexual bars in New York, either in Greenwich Village or around the intersection of 72nd Street and Broadway. There he would meet someone, proceed to the other man’s apartment or to a hotel room, and have sexual relations. He was always careful never to permit his lover to learn his real name or address. He was an up-and-coming man in the television industry, a rising star in the production end; public knowledge of his sexual tastes could not possibly do him any good.
    Sometimes, when he had little time to fence around or when his usual haunts failed to turn up a prospect, he would go to a male prostitute. He would meet any of a number of overgrown effeminate juvenile delinquents at a cafeteria on the north side of 42nd Street at Times Square, and for anywhere from five to thirty dollars he would enjoy the young man’s favors. He didn’t like to do this. It was sordid, for one thing; for another, he risked a beating or a robbery. But there were times when he had no choice.
    On the surface, Dave Whitcomb’s life was eminently normal, eminently respectable. A happily married man with a beautiful wife and a good position in a dynamic industry.
    If Dave did not fit the public image of the homosexual, Maggie in turn could not have less resembled the stereotyped lesbian. Her hair was long, not butch-cut. Her dress was feminine and in perfect taste. She used quite a bit of make-up. She looked, as one male country club member had remarked to another in a wistful voice, as though she might be a joyful nymphomaniac. Every pore of Maggie seemed to ooze sex. The sex, however, was directed solely at other women.
    The Whitcombs finished dinner. Dave paid the check, left a large tip, and led the way to the Buick, which was parked in The Gables’ parking lot. He put a quarter into the attendant’s hand, opened the door for Maggie, closed it, walked around the car, opened his door, got behind the wheel, fitted the key into ignition, turned key, stepped on the gas pedal, and drove off.
    “Well,” he said finally. “So you’re putting on the make for little Elly Carr.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “You don’t have to,” he said. “Not in so many words. Be careful as hell, Mag.”
    “I’m a careful person.”
    “I’m not kidding,” he went on. “All you have to do is tip your hand before she’s ready to play ball and we’ve had it. The odds are about eighty-three to one that she’ll tell all the world just how gay you are. You know what that would mean?”
    “Leaving Cheshire Point, I suppose.”
    “Leaving the country,” he said, “would be more like it. We’d be in a pretty little spot. I frankly wish you’d stick to New York lesbians instead of trying to make converts. There’s a maxim—Don’t crap where you eat.”
    “You don’t have to worry.”
    “Don’t I?”
    “No,” Maggie said. “I can be very subtle, David.”
    “You’ll have to be.”
    “Very subtle. Elly will be the one who thinks she’s dragging me to bed, not the other way around. You want to know something? I think she’s one of those gals who’s gay without knowing it. I was