Bad Business

45

I met Susan at Copley Place, which is a high-rise mall in the middle of the city. She was looking into a shop window, studying a manikin in a red leather pantsuit when I found her.

"I know a place would sell you a matching whip," I said.

"I'm sure you do," she said and gave me a kiss. "You have this Adele person's list?"

"Adele person?" I said. "Do I detect a hint of repressed hostility?"

"Yes," Susan said. "Do you have the list?"

I handed her the list. She scanned it like a specialist reading an X-ray. Every time I was in Copley Place I was dazzled by how successfully it avoided any regional identity. In here you could be in Dallas or Chicago or Los Angeles or Toronto or Ann Arbor, Michigan.

"Okay,"Susan said. "I can get most of this at Neiman's."

I followed Susan through Neiman's while she bought makeup and underwear and jeans and tops and hair-care products and pantyhose and a pair of fashionable tan loafers and various items of personal hygiene. While she was there she bought herself a sweater and some pants. After I had paid I had just enough left for lunch, so we went downstairs to The Palm.

"So why the hostility?" I said.

"To this Adele person?" Susan said.

"Yes," I said. "That hostility."

"She strikes me as a sexual predator."

"Sexual predator?"

"Yes."

"That seems unsympathetic," I said.

"Um," Susan said.

She had a glass of iced tea from which she took a sip.

"I mean you have often made yourself sexually available," I said.

"To you."

"Yes."

"I have the right," Susan said. "And she doesn't."

"No."

"Maybe she'll make herself sexually available to Vinnie or Hawk," I said.

"That's her right," Susan said.

"But not to me," I said.

"That would not be her right," Susan said.

"Even if she did," I said, "I would remain steadfast."

"I'm sure you would."

"Then why do you care?"

"In one word," Susan said, "how would you describe your state of mind if I told you one of my male patients was living with me for a while."

"One word?"

"Yes."

"Frenzied," I said.

"Thank you."

I took a drink of my Virgin Mary.

"I can't ask her to leave right now," I said.

"I know."

"She'll be there for a while," I said.

"I know."

"I won't succumb to her blandishments."

"I know."

"But you're still going to be hostile?"

"Yes."

"But not to me," I said.

She smiled the luminous smile. The one that makes her whole face color, and clocks speed up.

"Of course not, my large kumquat," Susan said. "I love you."

"Even more than Pearl?" I said.

She kept the smile. "Don't go there," she said.