Folly Read Online Free PDF Page B

gave it to me, she’s the only other one I know for sure is a lesbian, she comes from San Francisco where there are gay people all over the streets, and she has friends who send her lots of odd books and things, and she says when we’re finished with them, we should pass them on to someone else, and then that person should pass them on, too, sort of like a chain letter. What I want to know is who in the world are you going to find in Victory that you can pass that Sappho book to? (Ha, ha.) Got any ideas?
    How’s Perry? I hope things have been going okay. I know how that tears you up. How are things at the store? Write to me soon. It makes me real happy to get your letters. Be taking good care of yourself.
    Love,              
    Betsy     

    P.S. What do you think of me changing this way? I suppose Victory is getting along just fine without me but I don’t know if it’ll be ready for having me back.
    P.S.S. Willy says hello. She feels like she’s getting to know you.

    Lenore put out her cigarette and closed her eyes. She left the letter lying in her lap and tried to picture Betsy. Having never been out of North Carolina it was impossible for her to imagine Alaska other than as a cluster of igloos and penguins and Eskimos eating hunks of fat as they’d been shown in the school books. She could see Betsy lying in bed, one arm up with her hand propping her head and her dark underarm showing. That was a soft spot. Betsy lying there in her bed on a Sunday morning while she was at the counter pouring the coffee. Betsy looking at her that morning after the first night they’d spent together when every time Betsy had looked up and caught her eye, Lenore’s heart had tripped, the feeling of missing a stair in the dark. It had been her first night ever sleeping with a woman and she had wanted to think out what was happening to her, but she couldn’t because each time she would look in Betsy’s eyes, she would get this warm feeling as if it were the perfect day with a clear sky and just the right amount of breeze, and she was all shook up with excitement but calm at the same time, and this smile would break away on her face that she couldn’t have stopped if she’d tried.
    â€œIt seemed pretty natural, didn’t it?” Betsy had said, speaking of their love making.
    â€œYes, oh yes,” she’d replied in a soft voice which she hardly recognized as her own.
    â€œHave you ever slept with a man?” Betsy asked.
    â€œOnce. It wasn’t like this at all. He was big and heavy, and I didn’t tell him, but it hurt. It sure wasn’t what it’s chalked up to be . . . . Have you?”
    â€œYeah. I’ll tell you some other time. Let’s just be alone now.”
    Lenore remembered nights when they lay side by side on their backs with all the lights out and talked until real late with maybe just their feet and their arms touching. She wondered about how the lodging up in Alaska was arranged. Did Willy and Betsy sleep in the same room? When they talked into the night were they already in bed or sitting up at a table somewhere? She imagined them in narrow beds arranged on opposite sides of the room. Somehow that seemed most likely. She tried to fix that picture in her mind so as to avoid having to think about them being any closer. True, it was good that Betsy had someone to talk to and could talk about them, but that didn’t make anyone for Lenore to talk to, much less give the book to.
    Lenore’s room was actually a sun porch with the addition of a small kitchenette at one end. A counter marked the boundary between the kitchenette and the remainder of the room which contained the chair with the stuffing hanging out, a bookcase, a step table, and the bed. Two walls of the room were made up of jalousie windows. Everything in the room belonged to Mrs. Henry right down to the sheets and the glass dancing