Whisper Their Love by Valerie Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

chuckled.
    "I grew one, once, but my first wife made me shave it off." Mimi frowned. "She had something there. How any woman can stand being scratched by whiskers!" Irv winked at Joyce, changing the subject. "The food is good here," he said.
    It was, too. She had been hungry all day. She ate shrimps in a biting hot sauce and filet mignon with mushrooms, and a salad with bits of bread in it and plenty of garlic. Aunt Gen wouldn't cook with garlic, she said onion was common enough. Mimi dabbled, breaking little edges off her food with a fork and then not eating anything. "Oh, could I have baked Alaska?" Joyce asked, seeing it on the menu, and Irv said, "You can have anything you want, baby. Do they feed you bread and water at that school?"
    "Hominy grits," she told him. He shook his head sadly. The baked Alaska was a letdown. It was only sponge cake from a bakery, not very fresh, with ice cream and browned meringue on it. The. meringue had scorched a little on its peaks and the ice cream tasted starchy. She ate it anyway, feeling bored and worldly, and drank black coffee and leaned back feeling lovely. The air the older girls at school had; it was all she could do not to smile idiotically over having achieved it. She composed her face to beautiful nonchalance.
    Afterwards they went to a movie. This was a letdown; color and the wide screen had reached Ferndell and so had air conditioning, and she was sleepy after so much food. Still, the auditorium was bigger than any she had ever been in and there was a sprinkling of glamorous people in evening clothes. But so am I, she thought in some surprise, crossing her knees under the stiff folds of net and swinging one foot in Mimi's sandal, clasped around the ankle with a thin strap of rhinestones. She dozed a little, and jerked awake to look at Irv and Mimi. They were sitting side by side like an old married couple, not even holding hands. They're bored, she thought guiltily, they're doing all this for me and I ought to be grateful. I am grateful, she assured herself, sitting up straight and focusing her eyes on the screen.
    Pushing out through the lobby, which was gray with cigarette smoke and shrill with voices, she couldn't help yawning. "Sleepy?" Irv asked. "I was going to take you beautiful girls to a nightclub."
    "Oh, all my life I've wanted to go to one," she told him, widening her eyes the way Holly Mae Robertson did. So he hailed another cab.
    This was more like it. The room was pink and fuchsia, with black and silver zigzags across the walls, and the Negro musicians sat on a little silver platform. The drums were fuchsia and the leader was in white, with a pink cummerbund. Some of the men at the little tables were in evening clothes, and all the women were beautiful. Or at least glamorous, she amended it—some of them weren't so very young, maybe, but they all had beautiful complicated hairdos and lots of make-up, and the more wrinkled their necks were, the more bosom they showed.
    Her eye was caught by two women at the next table, one fluttery in ruffles and the other solid in tweeds and flat heels. They were leaning across the table talking eagerly, letting their drinks get warm. Irv followed her look. "Those are Lesbians. You know, they go for women instead of men."
    "Well, sure, I know that." But she looked with fascination at the two until they went out, arm-in-arm. I should think they'd try to keep people from knowing it. And anyway how could they—It must be something I don't know about, she thought, baffled, or else what do they get out of it? None of the biological facts she'd heard or read about seemed to fit in, and she decided to ask Mary Jean about it when she got back to school. Most likely a girl who knew as much about men as Mary Jean did would have the answer to this one, too.
    Irv suggested having something to eat. "Or how about a drink?" Irv ordered Martinis for Mimi and himself. "How about you, lady? Are you old enough for a small drink?" Mimi gave him a