TWELVE


SINCE IT WAS evening, and I wasn't being feted at the Clive estate, I had the chance to lie on the bed in my motel and talk on the phone with Susan Silverman, whom I missed.

"So far," I said, "only one sister has made an active attempt to seduce me."

"How disappointing," Susan said. "Are there many sisters?"

"Three."

"Maybe the other two are just waiting until they know you better."

"Probably," I said.

"I have never found seducing you to be much of a challenge," Susan said.

"I try not to be aloof," I said.

We were silent for a moment. The air-conditioning hummed in the dim room. Outside, in the dark night, thick with insects, the full weight of the Georgia summer sat heavily.

"Are you making any progress professionally?" Susan said after a time.

"I'm getting to know my employer and his family."

"And?"

"And I may be in a Tennessee Williams play… The old man seems sort of above the fray. He's separated, got a girlfriend, looks better than George Hamilton, and appears to leave the day-to-day management of the business to his youngest daughter."

"What's she like?"

"I like her. She's smart and centered. She finds me amusing."

"So even if she weren't smart and centered…" Susan said.

"Actually, that's how I know she's smart and centered," I said.

Susan's laugh across the thousand miles was immediate and intimate and as much of home as I was ever likely to have. It made my throat hurt.

"What about the other sisters?" Susan said.

I told her what I knew.

"You have any comment on a woman married to a man who prefers little boys?" I said.

"It would probably be preferable if she were married to a man who preferred her."

"Wow," I said. "You shrinks know stuff."

"In my practice, I know what my patients tell me. I know nothing about Stonie and whatsisname."

"Cord."

"Cord," she said. "And there is no one-fits-all template for a woman married to a man who prefers boys-if what SueSue told you is true."

"SueSue says that Stonie is so sexually frustrated that she is a threat to every doorknob," I said.

"Maybe she is," Susan said. "Or maybe that's just SueSue's projection of how she herself would be."

"And Cord? You figure he married her to get cover?" I said.

"Maybe," Susan said. "Or maybe he married her because he loves her."

"I could not love thee half so much, loved I not small boys more?"

"Sexuality is a little complicated."

"I've heard that," I said. "What bothers me in all of this is that I've got a series of so-far inexplicable crimes, committed in the midst of this family full of, I don't even know the right word for it-dippy?-people. I mean, there ought to be a connection but there isn't, or at least I can't find it."

"You'll find it if it's there," Susan said. "But most families are full of dippiness. Perhaps you don't always find yourself so fully in the bosom of a client's family, and thus don't have it shoved in your face from such close range."

"Maybe. Do you think there's a connection?"

"I have no way to know," Susan said.

"Do you think a man who prefers boys, or a woman who is married to a man who prefers boys, would have a reason to kill some horses?"

"As I've said, mine is a retrospective profession, as is yours. We're much better at explaining why people did things than we are at predicting what they might do."

"Our business is generally after the fact," I said.

"Yes."

"You're not going to solve this for me, then."

"No. I'm not."

"And what about my sexual needs?"

"I could talk dirty on the phone."

"I think I'm too old for that to work anymore," I said.

"Then unless you're coming home soon, I guess you'll have to mend your fences with SueSue."

"And if I do?"

"I'll shoot her, and swear I was aiming at a horse."

"I thought you shrinks had too much self-control for jealousy," I said.

"Only during office hours."

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