Bad Business

6

Susan and I were sitting on a stone pier at the beach in KenS nebunkport, looking at the ocean and eating lunch out of a wicker basket.

"So," she said, "if I understand it. You are, on behalf of Mrs. Rowley, trailing Mr. Rowley, who is having a clandestine affair with Mrs. Eisen, who is being followed by Elmer O'Neill on behalf of Mr. Eisen."

"Exactly," I said.

Susan had a lobster club sandwich, which she ate by taking the two slices of bread apart and eating the various components of the sandwich separately, slowly, and in very small bites.

"And after their rendezvous, for purposes of identification, you trailed Mrs. Eisen home . . ."

"To the new Ritz."

She ate a piece of bacon from the sandwich. I had a pastrami on light rye, which I ate in the conventional manner.

"And Mr. O'Neill trailed Mr. Rowley home."

"Yes."

"And encountered someone conducting surveillance on Mrs. Rowley."

"Yes. "

"How hideous," Susan said.

"Hideous?"

"A gaggle of private detectives," she said. "You assume that Mr. Rowley is also trying to catch Mrs. Rowley?"

"I do," I said.

Susan ate a part of a lettuce leaf. A fishing boat chugged in toward the river past us, a boy at the wheel. A man stood next to him. We watched as they passed.

"A veritable circle jerk," Susan said.

"Wow," I said, "you shrinks have a technical language all your own, don't you?"

"Bet your ass," Susan said. "Do you know the identity of the third snoop?"

"No. Elmer didn't get the plate numbers."

I ate my half-sour pickle and looked at the dark water moving against the great granite blocks below us.

Susan said, "None of this changes what you were hired to do, of course."

"Of course."

"Do what you were hired to do, collect your pay, and move on."

"Yep."

The movement of the immediate water sort of dragged me outward toward a bigger and bigger seascape until I felt the near eternal presence of the ocean far past the horizon.

"But you won't," Susan said.

"I won't?"

"Nope."

We had a couple of bottles of Riesling. I poured us some wine. "A jug of wine, some plastic cups, and thou," I said.

"You will have to know if Mr. Rowley hired someone to follow Mrs. Rowley and if so, why."

"I will?"

"Yes."

"Why is that?" I said.

"Because of how you are. When you pick something up, you can't put it down until you know it entirely," Susan said. "Your imagination simply won't let go of it, and, whether you want to or not, you'll be turning it every which way to see what it's made of."

"Do you have a diagnosis?"

"It's what in my profession we call characterological."

"Which means you haven't an explanation."

"Basically yes," Susan said. "It's simply how you are."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Because you know me so well?"

She smiled. "Yes."

"And ... ?" I said.

She smiled wider. "Because that's how I am too.

"Makes you good at what you do," I said.

"Makes both of us good," Susan said. "We are hounds for the truth."

"Woof," I said.

We sat with our shoulders touching and our backs to the land, and ate our lunch, and drank our wine, and felt the pull of the ocean's implacable kinesis.

"Should we walk back to the White Barn and have a nap?" I said. "And afterwards a swim in the pool, and cocktails, and dinner?"

"Is `nap' a euphemism for something more active?" Susan said.

"The two are not mutually exclusive," I said.

"No," Susan. "But its important that they don't coincide."

Which they didn't.