Bad Business

13

Dr. Silverman and I looked at the Gainsborough exhibit all morning at the Museum of Fine Arts. Then we went for lunch in the museum restaurant. Susan had salad. I had fruit and cheese. We shared a bottle of pinot grigio.

"I doubt that she was faking the hysterics," Susan said to me. "It is not easy to do."

"You ever do it?"

"No."

"Even when I propose sex?"

"Those are real hysterics," Susan said. I ate a seedless grape.

"Funny thing," I said. "She didn't get hysterical over her husband's death."

"They were estranged, after all," Susan said.

"First thing she wanted to know was if he was cheating, and did I get pictures."

Susan took a bite from a leaf of Boston lettuce. "Was he?" she said.

"Yes, I had him in a hotel room for several hours with a woman."

"You told her."

"Yeah. That's what she hired me for."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Pictures?" Susan said.

"No. I probably was never going to get the pictures she wanted."

"Because?"

"Because she wanted them en flagrante."

"And you found it repellent to get such pictures."

"I did."

"And why did she want such pictures?" Susan said. Susan had forgotten her salad.

"Said she wanted rock solid proof when she went into divorce court," I said.

Susan nodded slowly. She was in her focused mode. In her focused mode she could set things on fire.

"Divorces are often granted without such evidence," she said.

"Usually," I said.

Susan sipped her wine, and was silent. She would often stop like that, in the middle of a discussion, when she had come across something interesting. I knew she was thinking about it. I waited.

"It's a way to be part of it," Susan said.

"Part of ... ?"

"The partner of someone who is having an adulterous affair is excluded. Seeing pictures, having information, is a way of not being excluded, of becoming, so to speak, a part of the action."

"Knowledge is power?" I said.

"Knowledge is participation," Susan said. "A way not to be left out. And, probably, a sort of revenge."

"Because it would humiliate him to be caught on camera?"

"His every secret revealed," Susan said.

"You think that's why she hired me?"

"Things are never one thing," Susan said. "There are always several truths."

"So," I said. "She wanted to clean his clock in the divorce. She wanted revenge. And she what ... something else?"

"Well," Susan said. "She would be a third participant in a covert sexual liaison."

"So she'd get sexual pleasure."

"Yep."

"Voyeurism?"

"Well, sure, I suppose. If you define voyeurism as getting pleasure out of observing sex."

"That would cover a pretty good segment of the population," I said.

"I seem to recall somebody peeking in the mirrors on a hotel room wall once?"

"Voyeurism," I said.

"Which is why, Mirror Boy, putting a name to behavior doesn't always add much information."

"Will this be on the midterm?" I said.

She smiled.

"God," she said, "I do lecture, don't I."

"And beautifully," I said.

"Is she a suspect?" Susan said.

"Marlene? In her husband's murder? No more than the husband's girlfriend, or the husband's girlfriend's husband, or the wife of the guy Marlene was seeing if she was seeing anybody, or the guy Marlene was seeing if she was seeing anybody."

"Wow!"

"A serial gang bang," I said. "Maybe."

"So hiring you to clear her name seems a little premature."

"It's not the cops," I said. "It's her friends."

"How lovely," Susan said.

"You think in fact it's really the continuing quest for, ah, voyeuristic information?"

"Yes. "

"Even though he's dead?"

"Yes," Susan said. "He won't escape her that easily."

"What do you think about her own affair?"

"If there really was one, I'd guess it was a case of revenge fuck."

"That a Freudian expression?" I said.

"Actually," Susan said. "I believe I learned it from you."

"Glad you've been paying attention," I said.

"And, of course you have agreed to continue."

"Well, the pay is good, and she did cry-you know how l hate crying-and I'm sort of curious about who killed her husband while I was outside watching."

Susan smiled.

"What?" I said.

"Even if the pay were bad and she didn't cry," Susan said.

"You think I'd do it just because I'm curious?"

"Without question," Susan said.

"You shrinks think you know everything," I said.

"Am I right?" Susan said.

"Yes."