Inside the door, standing in the little court, the urgency left Laura. She stood gasping for breath, leaning against the brick wall by the door. She was where she wanted to be, next to a fascinating woman whom she wanted to make love to. It was a huge physical need, an emotional hypnotism, that drew her to Beebo. After the wild race she had just come through Laura wanted suddenly to slow down. To tease, to tantalize. She felt like somebody entirely different. Not the tightly controlled Laura who lived anxiously with Marcie, with an uncertain job, with the spectre of a hated father. Not the nerve-tortured cautious girl her roommate knew, but a warm excited woman on the verge of the ultimate intimacy. She wanted it, she asked for it, she accepted it. She stood watching Beebo, her eyes enormous with it, her nostrils flared, her lips parted. Beebo came toward her, smiling, but Laura slipped away. She moved, almost glided, to a circle of benches in the center of the court. Beebo followed her. And again when she reached for her, Laura slipped around the benches. Beebo reached again, and Laura faded out of her grasp. And suddenly Beebo was on fire. “Come here, come here, baby. Pretty baby. Pretty Laura,” she chanted like a spell. But Laura eluded her, moving just a little faster each time, until they were running again, and Laura felt the laughter coming out of her, soft and light at first, but growing wilder, uncontrollable. She fled, inches from Beebo’s hands, into the dark hallway, and scrambled up the stairs, losing her footing, and nearly losing her freedom, twice. Beebo was so close behind her near the top that she could hear her breath. With a little shriek of unbearable excitement, she fell against Beebo’s door, and felt within a second Beebo’s weight come hard against her. The laughter burst out of her again until Beebo got the door open and they almost fell into the living room. Nix was all over them instantly, but Beebo, dragging Laura by the neck and Nix by his collar, locked him in the bathroom. Then she turned on Laura. Laura, seeing her, suddenly stopped laughing. Beebo looked unearthly. Her black hair was tumbled, her cheeks were crimson, her chest heaved. But it was her eyes that almost frightened Laura. Laura let her jacket drop from her shoulders slowly, provocatively, and Beebo approached her. They stood motionless, so close that just the tips of Laura’s breasts touched Beebo, and they stood that way, without moving, until Laura shut her eyes, letting her head rock back on her shoulders, and groaned. “Do it, Beebo,” she said. “Do it. I can’t stand it, do it to me.” “Beg me. Beg me, baby.” Laura’s eyes opened. She didn’t know how hard her breath was coming, how strange and wonderful she looked with all her inhibitions burning up in her own flame of desire. “Beebo, Beebo, take me,” she groaned.