Painted Ladies

10

It was very odd,” I said to Susan.

We were sitting on her couch with our feet up on her coffee table. She was drinking some pink champagne I had brought. I was drinking some scotch and soda that she kept for me. We had conspired on a lamb stew for supper, and it was simmering in a handsome pot on Susan’s stove. Pearl was in the bedroom, asleep on Susan’s bed, which made it easier to sit with my arm around Susan. I was pretty sure that when supper was served, Pearl would present herself.

“Very,” Susan said.

The conspiracy on the lamb stew had been Susan putting out the pots and the cutting board and the utensils, and me cooking it while she sat at her kitchen counter and watched appreciatively.

“She even alluded to ‘Musée des Beaux Arts,’ ”I said.

“The Auden poem?” Susan said. “How’d she do that?”

“She wanted to know if, in effect, the universe took note of the murder or if the boat ‘sailed calmly on.’ ”

“Wow,” Susan said. “Isn’t that the poem which says ‘the torturer’s horse scratches his innocent behind on a tree’? Or something like that.”

I leaned forward on the couch and took the champagne from the ice bucket and poured her a little more of it.

“It is,” I said.

“Perhaps Auden knew things that Rosalind doesn’t,” Susan said.

“ ‘About suffering, they were never wrong, the Old Masters, ’ ”I said.

“Can you recite the whole poem?” Susan said.

“I believe I can,” I said.

“Don’t,” she said.

“You know,” I said, “she never asked me why I hadn’t done a better job of protecting him. She never asked if I knew who did it or if I thought we could catch them. Just wanted to experience it secondhand so she could make something out of it.”

“Many people would have,” Susan said.

“Many people,” I said.

“How’d she feel to you?”

“I know her husband has recently been murdered. I know grief makes people odd sometimes,” I said. “But she seemed to be dramatizing herself. She didn’t cry or, as far as I could tell, come close to it.”

“One component of grief, as I know you know,” Susan said, “is ‘What will become of me?’ ”

I nodded.

“Perhaps that feeling has somewhat overshadowed her others,” Susan said.

“Thank you, Dr. Silverman,” I said. “Would that be narcissism?”

“Maybe,” Susan said. “To make a thing for her out of his tragedy.”

She drank some champagne.

“Or maybe it’s a way of coping bravely with unspeakable sorrow,” I said.

“Maybe,” Susan said.

“Are you shrinks ever certain of anything?”

“Possibly,” she said. “Have you talked to Prince’s colleagues?”

“Cops have. They say there’s nothing there.”

“How about students?” Susan said.

“Don’t think so.”

“Office staff?” she said.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Both offer insights often unavailable to colleagues,” Susan said.

“Maybe I’ll go over there,” I said. “Talk to the coeds. Coeds can’t resist me.”

“As long as you can resist them,” Susan said.

“I value maturity,” I said.

“You should,” she said. “Is that stew done?”

“With stew,” I said, “if you cook it right, you have a done window of about six hours.”

“That should allow time for sex,” she said.

“If we hurry,” I said.

“Good. I like lovemaking on an empty stomach.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Or a full one. Or one partly empty. Or—”

She turned against me on the couch.

“Stop talking,” she said.

And gave me a large kiss.