Free Twilight Girl by Della Martin Page B

about her? Who—?"
    "Gay poet. Either everybody who writes poetry is gay or everybody gay writes poetry. This one wrote in French."
    "I wouldn't understand that."
    "I remember one in English. Mentions another place where Sappho made out Mitylene."
    "Tell me."
    "Takes the right mood," Mavis said thickly. This time the soft black eyes captured Lon's with a fierce joy, a wild communication, at once tender and agonizing. Whose hand it was that moved first, Lon could not be sure. But in the meeting of eyes and clasping of fingers she found the words, the choked and swallowed words—setting them free now with an awed reverence. "I love you, Mavis." Their eyes held fast and something incendiary darted between them, but the older girl was silent. "You'll say I can't. Not this soon. You're thinking it's just an excuse—the gay excuse. But I knew that first time. Even before I learned what it's like... between girls. I knew." And the words exploded from her again in an anguished burst: "I love you!"
    Slim, dark fingers tightened around hers. Pressure of the moist warm palm. Oh, God, someone so beautiful, so bad, so unloved—so hopelessly necessary to love! And Lon waited, breathless, for the response that would echo what could be seen in the almond-shaped eyes, felt in the delicate hand. Waited for the sound and no sound came. Until, at last, the soft voice whispered in on kitten feet saying what Mavis could not say in her own words, because saying it meant dying slow. And Lon listened not to the poem she had been eager to hear, but to a gentle voice, now beloved:
    Those we love have scorned men...
    And we have the power
    To be at once lovers and sisters.
    In us, desire is less strong than tenderness,
    And our mistresses could not deceive us,
    Because it is the unfathomable in them which we love.
    Our days, without modesty, without fear or remorse.
    Unfold in slow, majestic harmony,
    And we love as they loved in Mitylene!
    * * *
    The lyric hung between them, leaving nothing more to say. And then, like the splintering of stained glass in a cathedral, Violet had joined them. Mavis drew her hand from Lon's to reach, she made it seem, for a cigarette.
    "Oh, hi, doll," Violet squealed as though she had not seen Mavis earlier. "I said t' myself, Jeez, if it ain't that cutie pie that was here before with that... What the hell was her name?"
    "Sassy," Mavis said flatly. "Sassy Gregg."
    "Well, funny thing, I was jest talkin' t' some a the kids and they said how come I haven't had a party fer ages? I always give these real crazy parties, kid. So I thought why don't I invite you an' that what's-her-name?"
    It was a new turn in Violet's one-track mind and it left Lon dumb. A party. Violet had been stewing at the bar, wringing her brains for a new maneuver and here it was. Here she was, too, ignoring her promise not to get in Lon's way and trusting Lon less with future arrangements now that the cotton-candy mind had spawned an idea.
    "How 'bout that, Lon? We'll have a real blast!"
    Lon cursed Violet with her eyes. Still, another chance to see Mavis soon...
    "Next Saturday. My house. Here." And Violet shoved a cocktail napkin at Mavis, a childish map scrawled across it with eyebrow pencil. "I wrote out how you find me, doll."
    Mavis was stuffing the instructions into a long, black, feed-bag pouch when the second interruption shattered what had been left of the mood. It was Betty, carrying a tray. "You ordered this at the bar, right hon?" She set a beer before Violet, Cokes before the others. Then, addressing Mavis, she said, "Don't look now, dear, but your girlfriend's outside. Better skip out the back door or go and pacify her. Rags is about to blow her stack!"
    There was a stiffening of breath around the table. Only Violet came to life audibly. "Sassy? She here, no kiddin'?"
    "I don't know her name," Betty told no one in particular. "That butch Rags threw out of here for giving me a rough go. She's been hammering the damn door down, yelling she