Sex Between, The

THE SEX BETWEEN

BY

Randy Salem

The Sex Between

By Randy Salem

First published in 1962.

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ISBN:  978-1-936456-27-7

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CHAPTER ONE

Lee took a long drag on the cigarette and felt it burn between her fingers.

Behind her, Maggie sighed and settled back against the chair. Lee heard the soft complaining of well-worn leather, the impatient click of a pencil against a notebook's spiral. Still she remained a moment longer at the window, watching a fat dachshund lift its leg beside a tree, then waddle down the street after a squishing pair of heels. The smell of spring rain was heavy on the night air.

"You were in the middle of a sentence," Maggie prodded gently. "In view of your considerate endorsement of our campaign..."

She heard the faintly mocking tone in Maggie's voice and knew without turning around that the girl would be sitting with her head tilted, a smile playing around the corners of her eyes. It was the way Maggie always looked when Lee got stuffy.

"That smells," Lee said without checking Maggie's reaction. "Cross it out."

The half-inch butt scorched her lips. Irritably she rubbed it out against the bricks and flicked it to the sidewalk. A mist like heavy dew clung to her hand and sleeve. She slammed down the window and turned back to the too warm room.

"Would you like to try it again?" Maggie said quietly.

Lee glanced at her out of the corner of one eye. Maggie was too kind to laugh. And too bright not to want to. They had been trying since before noon.

"What have we got so far?"

"Well, so far," Maggie said, flipping back through several pages, "we've agreed on the opening and the close. Dear Mr., Mrs., or Miss Blank comma and Sincerely, Lesley Van Tassel, Vice President, etc." She looked up and smiled. "Now all we have to do is fill in the middle."

"Well, the hell with it," Lee said abruptly. She crossed in front of Maggie to a low walnut cabinet. "You want a drink?"

"No thanks."

She poured herself a triple scotch—straight—because she was too irritable and too tired to go all the way to the kitchen for ice. It had been a long day for both of them. Too long.

Maggie's pencil began clicking again, matching the chattering of Lee's nerves. She carried the drink without tasting it to the desk that made an office of one end of the living room. In the old days, before the advent of Maggie, Lee had done most of her work here. If you could call it work. The good-will letters, the words of thanks, the occasional letter of apology, all the junk that no one else had the patience for. She felt about as necessary as a third thumb.

"You know," Maggie said, her eyes sparkling, "if you'd just pretend we were selling gin, you could probably write this letter without thinking about it."

Lee smiled wryly. To Maggie, who never touched anything more potent than ginger ale, everything was gin. "You've got a point," Lee agreed. "Besides, what the hell do I know about cocoa anyhow?"

"I could make you some, if you'd like," Maggie said. "We've got about a case downstairs. Free Samples."

Lee balanced the glass on the palm of her hand. I’ll tell you something," she said. "I once tried one of our Old Dutch Miniature Chocolates and I've been drinking hard stuff ever since, trying to rinse the taste out of my mouth."

"I'm glad it serves some purpose," Maggie snapped. She pushed the notebook onto the edge of the desk and stood up. "It certainly isn't good for that lousy stomach of yours."

Lee flushed, but let it pass. In the six months since Maggie had moved into her house and her life, the girl had been sounding more like a mother hen every day. Or, worse still, like a wife. About little things, like wearing a scarf when it was snowing or boots when it rained. But always something. Taking care of Lee as if Lee didn't have sense enough to take care of herself.

Through the amber swirl at the bottom of her glass, Lee watched Maggie walk across to the typewriter and adjust a dust cover over the machine. It was damned aggravating that a girl with a behind like Maggie's should be such a nag—and yet, it was also a blessing in disguise.

She set down the glass and leaned her own bony frame against her fists. "You had enough for today?"

"No," Maggie said. "But it's close to midnight, in case you hadn't noticed."

Lee had noticed, but not in a way she would mention to Maggie. She had noticed hours ago, in the way she could not make her eyes behave. The way she had kept looking at Maggie, all that warm, soft flesh squeezed into a crisp green cotton dress. The golden halo of her hair and the deep blue of her eyes that were blonder and bluer than Lee's own. Oh yes, Lee had noticed, and she had known that she should not have stayed home with Maggie tonight. She had not seen Helga since Wednesday and the pressure had been building.

She snapped her thoughts back to the living room and Maggie, standing there waiting. "So it's almost midnight," Lee said sourly. "What would you like me to do about it?"

Maggie raised an eyebrow and peered at her for a moment as though readying a barrage of answers. Then her face softened and she said, "Nothing, Lee. But we haven't eaten since lunch and frankly, I'm starved."

The queasiness in Lee's own stomach had nothing to do with hunger. But she would eat nevertheless, to please Maggie, so that Maggie would not nag at her. And when they had eaten, she would send Maggie off to bed in her apartment on the top floor. And then she would go off to her own bed on the floor below and, if she were lucky, sleep. And maybe not even dream about Maggie
...
if she were real lucky.

She followed Maggie down the spiral stairs to the dining room and on out to the kitchen. It was the one room in the house in which the Old Dutch trademark was apparent. Long and low, its beams smoke-blackened, its fireplace neatly trimmed with Dutch tiles, its white plaster walls spotless, it was Lee's one concession to her wooden-shoed ancestry. And the bane of Maggie's existence.

"With all your money," Maggie said every other day, "you could at least put a modern stove in here."

And always Lee said, "But I don't want a modern stove in here. It would ruin the feel."

As a compromise, she had let Maggie move in a counter top four-burner, so they didn't have to stoke the big, black monster in the corner every time they wanted coffee. It had been a hard won point, but Maggie hadn't gloated. Maggie never did.

Lee sat down at one end of the long oak table and watched Maggie move from the refrigerator to the counter, from the counter to the sink. Never before in her life had she been a soft touch for any woman. And it frightened her, in a way, that Maggie somehow managed to get exactly what she wanted. It told Lee things about herself that she would rather not know.

"I've got a salad," Maggie said. "And some cold chicken. Or would you rather wait while I make something warm?"

"That'll be fine," Lee said. "And coffee."

Maggie tilted her head and smiled. "Of course coffee," she said. "Would I dare serve you a meal without?"

Maggie's usual banter—innocent and well meant—yet Lee's nerves jumped with every word out of the girl's mouth.

She picked up the fork Maggie had just set before her and turned it end over end on the table top. It wasn't fair that she keep taking her nerves out on Maggie. It wasn't Maggie's fault, after all, that...

"I thought you had a date tonight," Maggie said suddenly.

The fork slipped from Lee's limp fingers and clattered against the plate. She glanced up quickly and saw that Maggie had been watching her, sizing her up.

"I cancelled it," Lee said crisply. "I wanted to get finished with that damned letter."

"Maybe you shouldn't have," Maggie said gently. "We didn't get the letter done anyhow."

Lee's stomach knotted into a ball of anger. Not so much with Maggie... she'd told Maggie the score right from the start, so that neither of them would have been to be embarrassed by an accidental discovery. And Maggie didn't give a good damn if she went to bed with kangaroos, so long as she came home happy. But she was angry with herself, for being transparent, for sitting there quivering in her shoes for Maggie to see.

Roughly, she pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. "Skip the dinner," she said harshly. "I just lost my appetite."

Without giving Maggie a chance to protest, she strode through the dining room and into the vestibule at the front of the house. In the closet she found a dirty trench coat and pulled it on over her jacket. For one second, she hesitated, looking down at the boots Maggie would yell at her for not wearing. Then she slammed the closet door and turned to leave the house.

Maggie's fingers caught the edge of her sleeve. "Lee, what on earth have I done now?"

Lee shook Maggie loose and shoved her hand into her pocket. "You haven't done anything," she said, hearing the tiredness in her own voice. "I just need to go out for a while."

"But it's late. And it's raining," Maggie said plaintively. "Where are you going?"

Lee sighed. "Just out," she said. "Where I don't have to listen to you telling me what a mess I am."

Maggie's shoulders sagged a little, but her expression was calm. "Will you be back tonight?" she asked quietly. "Daddy'll be here early and you promised...

“I’ll be here, if I'm here," Lee said curtly. "And if I'm not, I’ll be somewhere else. And if 'Daddy' doesn't like it, he can—" Without finishing the sentence, she wrenched open the front door and squeezed outside.

She heard the door slam behind her and knew that she had finally managed to disturb Maggie's calm. She had been trying to for months, and she grinned with satisfaction, realizing that the air between them would clear a little.

It had taken her an hour to find a parking space close to the house, and not even to appease Maggie by keeping her feet dry would she lose it. Besides the rain had long ago settled down to an all-night mist that made the city streets hazy and soft and, for a change, inviting. She knew that Maggie would be watching from the dining room window and she turned to wave at the small white face pressed against the pane. Then she set off crosstown, walking away from the car.

Despite the trench coat, the April chill bit into her flesh and she jammed her hands into her pockets, hunching her shoulders against the cold. For just a moment, she considered calling Helga and spending the night forgetting that Maggie even existed. But Helga would already be in bed... alone maybe, but not necessarily. She didn't feel like taking the chance.

She remembered a bar on Lexington in the Sixties that would do nicely for a couple of drinks—keep her out of the house long enough for Maggie to simmer down and maybe even go off to sleep. She turned the corner and headed south, listening to the squish of her shoes against the wet pavement.

And all she could think of was Maggie... Maggie, who would be annoyed because she had wet feet.

She had known Maggie De Groot since the girl was two months old. Since Uncle Andrew had brought the red-faced, bunting wrapped motherless baby to Grandmother Kate's. Lee had been just five then and Uncle Andrew had set the baby into her lap and told her to hold up the back of its head. Maggie was the first baby she had ever seen, an ugly little thing with pinkish fuzz all over its head. But even then the bawling baby had stopped crying when Lee held her, had drooled a little and fallen asleep. And in a way, it had been like that ever since.

They had seen each other often when they were kids, being part of the immense, sprawling family that hover-around Grandmother Kate. Weekends and holidays and summers, they had been together, played together. And always Maggie had smiled when she looked at Lee Van Tassel. And Lee had smiled too.

But then Lee's parents had died within months of each other and Lee, as the only direct descendant remaining, had been taken under Kate's iron wing. She had been sent to schools here, there and everywhere, picking up more than a liberal education. She had seen little of the family, except for Kate—and thought little enough about it, too.

For Lee's personal interests had developed along lines she preferred not to flaunt in front of the family. And when finally, at twenty-one, she had finished school, she had refused to move back to Ravensway, Kate's estate. Kate had given her the house on East Sixty-eighth Street and wished her well.