Read Online The Housewife Blues by Warren Adler - Free Book Online Page B

about being neighborly. They had me trapped. All
they could talk about was their damned cat. Peter this. Peter that. You know
how these damned fags are. Everything trivial becomes so damned
important."
    "You mean the men who live downstairs?" Jenny
asked, somewhat surprised. It hadn't occurred to her that there was more to it
than their being roommates.
    "Two fruits," Larry muttered. "I wouldn't
even shower there. They finished their game the same time we did."
    "I had no idea," Jenny exclaimed.
    "I guess you wouldn't." Larry sighed, shaking his
head as she put the warmed-up omelet in front of him and sat down beside him.
    "We did have homosexuals in Bedford, Larry,"
Jenny responded. "I'm not that naive." But she apparently was and
knew it. She hadn't even suspected.
    "Right below us, Jenny," Larry said, pointing to
the floor. "Performing unspeakable acts on each other. I admit to some
lack of tolerance, especially when I imagine what they do in bed together. I
hope AIDS isn't caused by proximity." He chuckled joylessly.
    His remarks had triggered an odd, unwelcome sense of panic
in Jenny as she summoned up the image of Teddy letting himself into their
apartment with his own key.
    "Maybe you're reading something into it that isn't
there," she said hopefully. "They could be simply roommates. Such
arrangements do exist."
    "Trust me, Jenny. I can sniff them at fifty paces. We
have quite a contingent in our business. Take my word for it. O'Hara and
Schwartz are fags."
    "One of them, I'm not sure which one, came up here a
couple of weeks ago," she told him cautiously. "He was quite handsome
and not obviously effeminate. All he wanted was to find his cat."
    "Well, if the cat ever wanders up here, drown it.
That's all they talk about." He finished the omelet, but without relish.
"Micro-waving destroys the taste," he said.
    "I only warmed it up in there," she said with
some irritation. She could not get Teddy out of her mind. Apparently it
affected her, because when she poured Larry another cup of coffee, her hand
shook and she spilled some on his robe.
    "Shit, Jenny. It stains."
    "Sorry."
    She went through the ritual of pouring salt on the spot,
then soda water.
    "Never mind. Bring it to the cleaners tomorrow."
He looked up at her. "What is it with you today, Jenny? You seem upset
about something."
    He studied her face, and she turned away quickly, then
stood up to remove the omelet plates. She had always prided herself on being a
tolerant person, accepting all human beings at face value, whatever their race,
religion, ideology, sexual preference, or anything else that made them
"different."
    In Bedford she had encountered prejudice of every stripe,
and although she didn't preach or become militant at every sign of bigotry, she
considered herself the kind of person who could "live and let live."
It therefore annoyed her to feel this sense of menace concerning Teddy Stern.
    She hadn't given much thought to homosexuality. She had
heard rumors about some of her classmates in high school, but they had not been
part of her circle and, therefore, had been out of her frame of reference. Like
most people, she wasn't quite certain how people became homosexual, assuming
that they had either been born with the tendency or had been conditioned to it
by other homosexuals. This latter idea somehow became tied in her mind to Teddy
Stern.
    Why did he go into the ground-floor apartment? Did his
parents know? Teenagers were impressionable, easily influenced. Had the two men
designs on the boy? To tolerate gay people was one thing. It wasn't her mission
to approve or disapprove of the life they had chosen or that had chosen them.
But she could not bring herself to accept such a way of living as
"normal." Which didn't mean they were bad people. She tried to beat
away such speculation.
    It was too weighty a subject, too confusing. Above all, it
wasn't any of her business. Yet she could not rid herself of the troubling
memory of seeing this teenage boy