Hundred Dollar Baby

40

It had snowed, just to remind us that it was still February and we weren't in Palm Beach. I sat with Susan in the car in the parking lot at a Dunkin' Donuts on Fresh Pond Circle. The heater was going. We had a bag of cinnamon donuts, two large coffees, and each other. Life could provide little more.

"As far as I can see," I said, "Farnsworth worked the upscale bars in affluent neighborhoods in Manhattan. He specialized in reasonably attractive middle-aged women who had some money from a divorce settlement and were looking for some sort of sexual validation."

"It is a period of legendary uncertainry," Susan said.

"We had our own sort of divorce back a while," I said.

"Yes."

"I was pretty crazy, I think."

"Yes," Susan said.

"You were pretty crazy," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I was."

"And we leapt tall buildings at a single bound."

"We were probably leaping the wrong ones," Susan said, "In those days."

"Maybe," I said. "But maybe those days helped us to leap the right ones now, and more gracefully."

"You metaphoric devil," Susan said.

She put her coffee in the cup holder, took out a donut, broke it in half, put one half back in the bag, and took a small bite out of the other half, leaning forward so that the cinnamon sugar wouldn't spill onto her lap.

"He was cool," I said. "He had pretty good odds. Hang around, say, Sutton Place. See a woman alone at the bar. She's wearing good clothes. She's not unattractive. In a neighborhood like that, with a woman, say, over forty, you've got a fair chance of finding what you're after. He didn't rush things. But it worked out pretty well for him. They were paying for dinner and such, while he seduced them first for sex, and then for investment money."

Susan nibbled on her donut. I'd never seen anyone else nibble a donut. Sometimes she bought a single donut hole and nibbled on it.

"And if it turned out they didn't have money, or wouldn't give him any," Susan said, "he'd had sex for his troubles and could move on."

"Leaving no address," I said. "Or name. He had a different name with each of the women."

"Good memory," Susan said. "Keeping everything straight."

"So to speak," I said.

"An unfortunate choice of words," Susan said. "Is he attractive?"

"I think you'd find him sort of an Ivy League lounge lizard," I said.

"I'm attracted to hooligans," Susan said. "But I assume many women would find him attractive."

"Apparently," I said. "Probably why he specializes."

"Maybe," Susan said.

"Is that a shrink maybe?" I said.

Susan took another nibble on her half-donut. I finished my second.

"Maybe, or maybe he's attractive to women because he wants to specialize."

"Most straight men have some such impulse," I said.

"Think about it for a minute," Susan said. "In both the schemes we know about-the condo fraud and the boutique whorehouse trick-he gets women who are vulnerable and he fucks them."

"I love romantic talk like this," I said.

"Is he married?" she said.

"Not that I know," I said.

"Has he ever been married?"

"Don't know."

"Be interesting to know," Susan said.

She put the last small morsel of her first half-donut into her mouth and chewed carefully.

"Some of the women seem to have enjoyed it," I said.

"That is not to their benefit," Susan said. "But regardless, their response doesn't change his intent."

I nodded. "And you think his intent was cruelty."

"Or revenge," Susan said. "Or a need he doesn't understand himself."

"Or you might be wrong," I said.

"Or I might be wrong," Susan said.

We both drank some coffee. Across the parkway, the ice on Fresh Pond was nearly gone. People and dogs plodded or dashed along the trail that circled the lake.

"But you might want to look into his history with women," Susan said.

"Gee," I said, "I was thinking about just having another donut."

"Instead of investigating Farnsworth's psychosexual past?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Susan said. "Then I'll eat the other half of mine."

"Maybe after we finish," I said.