Ceremony

Chapter 17

I'm not a man who quits easily. I had planned on the Warren Tavern and, goddamn it, I went to the Warren Tavern. Susan went with me. "The old pee-in-the-bushes trick," Susan said, her eyes bright, "and you fell for it."

"The price of chivalry," I said.

Susan sipped some white wine. "At least we know her situation."

"We did," I said. "And we can speculate that her new situation won't be a big improvement."

Susan nodded. She was wearing a violet-colored knit dress and diamond earrings. Her dark hair was shiny, and she smelled of expensive perfume. I hadn't seen her since Saturday and it seemed a year. The waiter brought duck for me and scrod for her. The duck had a pecan stuffing beneath it. "Rolling Rock, a duck, and thou."

I said, "under the timbered roof."

"Poetry," Susan said. "Everything you say is poetry." "And in action?"

"Epic," she said. "What are we going to do about April?"

"We can remember April and be glad," I said. "She doesn't want to come home."

"She told you that?"

"Yes. She was happy to get out of the sheep ranch in Providence, but she wanted nothing to do with me."

"Do you have a thought on where she'll go or what she'll do now?"

"Red, maybe. Her job skills are limited and she's gotta eat."

Susan nodded, thinking. I spent a lot of time trying to decide whether she was more spectacular when she was serious or when she laughed. The energy level didn't change and in both cases the charge of her presence made breathing harder. I had never decided and maybe I wouldn't. The fun was in thinking about it.

"She'll be back in some kind of setting like that, I imagine," Susan said.

"The forces that made her become a whore probably haven't changed. The things she hated about her home and her school and her town and herself presumably remain, whether or not she spent time in a -what do they call it?"

"Sheep ranch," I said. "You know-because it's kinky."

Susan ate some scrod. "In a way it must be a kind of perverse belonging."

"To what?" I said.

"To the pimp, to the other girls who are no better than you, to"-Susan had her fingers cathedraled and tapped her upper lip-"to a world where she's desirable enough for people to pay."

"A way to be valuable?"

"Yes," Susan said, and smiled. When she smiled I always expected people to turn and stare. "You're quite intuitive for a man with a seventeen-inch neck. It's a way to be valuable, even if only as a commodity, a product."

I washed down a bit of pecan stuffing with a swallow of Rolling Rock. The bottle was empty. I gestured at the waitress and she went for more. Susan's glass was still half full. It was one of her few serious flaws.

"She's valuable to the customer," Susan said, "because he's willing to pay for her, if but briefly. She's valuable to the pimp in that she generates income, she's rental property."

The waitress brought my beer. I drank some.

"And-I'm right, am I not?-the pimp takes care of her. Sees that she's paid, gets a bail bondsman if she's arrested, sees that she's not maltreated by the customer -at least, to the extent that she can't generate income?"

"Yes."

"All of this is, of course, dehumanizing," Susan said. She wasn't eating or drinking. She was single-mindedly following the trail of her speculation. She was explaining to me, but she was also explaining to herself. Thinking out loud. As I often did with her. She had very little peripheral vision. But I had never known anyone who could concentrate the way she could, once some- thing got her attention. "But perhaps being dehumanized is a kind of sedative for someone full of self-hate. It's a way of desensitizing yourself, and of course, your every experience tells you that the rest of the world is pretty lousy too."

"Which makes you not so bad," I said.

"So maybe she's better off."

"Turning tricks instead of cheering for Smithfield High? Better not spread that around the guidance office. Wasn't it Smithfield where heretics were burned?"

Susan smiled. "That was Smithfield, England, I believe."

"You suggesting I stop looking for her?"

"I suppose I can't say that. I suppose her parents should decide." I shook my head. "I'm not doing it for the parents."

"I know. And we both know the parents. Kyle will say he doesn't want her darkening his door, and Mrs. Kyle will cry and want her back."

I nodded.

"What do you think?" Susan said.

"I think a couple of things," I said, "maybe several." The waitress brought dessert, menus. "I think there's no point finding her and dragging her home because she'll just split again, and as far as I can tell, I don't blame her. I won't make her go home."

"Indian pudding," she said to the waitress, "with vanilla ice cream. And black coffee."

The waitress looked at me. "Same," I said. She smiled and went away.

"However," I said to Susan, "I don't think her life is all that good for her whoring. She may feel better about herself than she would at home being June Allyson, but there's not much there, either. She could get killed or onto smack or graduate to something worse than the sheep ranch"-I drank the rest of my beer-"and," I said, "there's something funny going on. They shipped her down to Providence almost the minute I started looking for her. I talked with Amy Gurwitz one afternoon, and April was off to the ranch before supper. They didn't want her found."

"You mean Amy Gurwitz is involved?"

"Must be. Or someone in Smithfield. She was on the road before I ever started talking to management."

Dessert arrived.

"All of which means what?" Susan said.

"Hell, I don't know. I can barely keep track of the news, let alone analyze it. But I think we better locate April again and see how she is, and while we're doing that maybe we can figure out what to do with her if she isn't swell."

Susan was smiling. "Also," she said, "you can't stand to have lost her, and you won't quit on this until you find her again."

I swallowed some pudding. "I'm a very neat person," I said. "I never leave an unmade bed. Want to go back to my place for a nightcap and a bit of free love?"

"We might get your bedclothes all wrinkled," Susan said over her coffee cup.

I sighed. "I know," I said. "I thought of that, but life is a trade-off.

It'll be worth it."

Susan finished her coffee and put her cup down and leaned a little toward me. Her dark eyes were enormous. "You better believe it," she said.