Margaret's Bed
by William Inge

THE STORY: In MARGARET'S BED, Inge has written a tale of two people's inability to come together.

Elsie has a near pathological fear of sleeping in an otherwise empty apartment so she has picked up Ben at a concert, in the hopes that he will agree to sleep in her roommate Margaret's bed.

Ben had assumed, after all their flirting, that the evening would end with a sexual encounter, but Elsie cannot bring herself to sleep with a man she knows almost nothing about.

Ben, very disgruntled, is determined to leave, but Elsie manages to persuade him to stay.

As they talk, and Elsie learns more about Ben, she begins to find herself more and more attracted to him.

She kisses him and tries to get into bed with him, but Ben feels this is only out of pity, and he will not be pitied.

He decides to leave, and in the end neither of them get what they had hoped for.