Free The High Cost of Living by Marge Piercy Page A

be her friend, I suppose.”
    â€œYou supposes and who disposes? Will you wait for her?”
    â€œCome on! I admit I fantasize that in a year, after she leaves home, when she knows who she is, then I might be good for her. But I’m not stuck there crouching like a cat outside a mousehole. Did you think that?”
    â€œThat you might seduce her? Why shouldn’t I think that?”
    â€œI never in my life seduced anybody to anything. I can’t. I’m not so stupid as when I was younger, when I could never even ask for what I wanted, but always had to wait suffering and in silence for it to offer itself to me. Now I can ask. But I can’t try to … push on others, to make them want what I want.… I can’t.” Maybe that was what had gone wrong at Christmas with Val, why she had not been able to get her to leave Grand Rapids and come to Detroit.
    â€œYou’re less calculating then I am. And more bourgeois. You’d really like to carry her off to a house in the suburbs and raise begonias.”
    â€œHow do I know?” She shook her head impatiently while her hair caught at the nape slapped the wall. “With Val I couldn’t even walk down the street with my arm around her without some ape wanting to cream us. What in hell do you want with her? Hey?”
    â€œI’m a little in love with her too.” He drank off the rest of his glass and poured more. “But you at least know you could make love to her.… Actually I don’t want to. She doesn’t move me that way.… I adore her, but truly as a sister. Don’t raise your eyebrows. Why can’t I desperately want a sister again? I’d like to keep house with her too. I’d love to get rid of Mama and move in and have a little warm house to hold me. Why not?”
    â€œAnd a moment ago you were calling me bourgeois.”
    â€œIt’s a state we both aspire to, in our various pitiful ways.” He smiled. “I want her to save me. From myself. My rotten life. My desperation. I want her to believe in me. Violins please.”
    â€œWe’re both crazy, and she’ll go to bed with that lecherous creep Paul.”
    Bernard rubbed his chin. “I think that can be stopped. I’d be furious, I’d howl for months! But Paul’s a busy man and Cam’s usually on the spot.”
    â€œBer—I don’t know what I call you. I can’t bring myself to call you Bernar’.’”
    â€œOh, Honor’s French phase. Call me Bernie—half the world does. I’ll call you Red.”
    Perhaps she jumped, for he raised an eyebrow. “Please don’t,” she said, “it has too many smells attached.”
    â€œDid your lover call you that?”
    â€œVal? Never. It was my high school name. Red—or Ready.”
    â€œWhat were you like then?”
    â€œVery chicky. Then bummed out and quiet. I was going to ask you something: Was Cam ever involved with Paul?”
    â€œCam? Why did you think so?”
    Leslie shrugged. “The way she was upset over him coming on to Honor.”
    â€œWill find out. I hang around there with Honor. Paul’s gone so far as to ask me if I want to try out for a part.”
    â€œYou don’t want to?”
    â€œNot all gay men want to be actors, didn’t you know?”
    â€œNo, but most vain men have fantasies about it.” She smiled, her head lolling against one shoulder.
    â€œI try not to be vain.”
    â€œDo you try very hard?”
    â€œI have no vanity, no respect for myself, nothing to stand on. You don’t know me yet.”
    â€œHow could I, even if you were transparent as a clean window? Instead of kinky and weird and sideways. I’m tired. Very tired. Go home, Bernie, we’ll talk again.”
    â€œWill we?” He stood over her.
    â€œSure.” She laughed weakly, her eyelids at half mast. “We have so much in common.… Truthfully I enjoyed