Painted Ladies

15

Susan and Pearl were spending the weekend. Pearl was sprawled on the couch with her head hanging off, snoring faintly. I was making some green-apple fritters. Susan stood at the living-room window, looking down toward the Public Garden.

“When I took her down there this morning,” Susan said, “Pearl kept snuffing around, and stopping and looking at me, and then snuffing around some more. I think she was looking for Otto.”

“Love alters not when it alteration finds,” I said.

“I’ve noticed that,” Susan said. “Especially when Rita Fiore is around.”

“I’m not sure that’s love,” I said. “And I’m not sure I’m its exclusive object.”

“Probably not,” Susan said. “Have you seen her lately?”

“Talked to her today on the phone.”

“About the art-theft murder?”

I was peeling an apple.

“Yep. She’s going to find some stuff out from a lawyer she knows,” I said, “whom she says lusts after her.”

“I’m sure he does,” Susan said. “She’s very attractive.”

“She is,” I said.

“Great hair,” Susan said. “You don’t always see a redhead with hair that good.”

“That’s probably not why Morton Lloyd lusts after her,” I said.

Susan continued to look down toward the Public Garden.

“I’m going to take her to lunch at Locke’s,” I said. “As a payoff.”

Susan turned and looked at me.

“I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time,” she said.

“I’m sure I will,” I said. “Rita’s a lot of fun.”

“And she’s so good-looking,” Susan said.

“She is,” I said.

Susan was quiet. I peeled my apples. Pearl snored.

“Do you think she’s better-looking than moi?” Susan said.

What kind of idiot wouldn’t know the right answer to that? But in fact I did think she was better-looking than Rita, though the gap was maybe not as wide as I would imply.

“No,” I said.

“Do you think I’m better-looking than she?” Susan said.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Would you care to elaborate a bit?”

“Sure,” I said.

I tossed my sliced apples in a bowl with a little lemon juice to keep them from turning brown.

“You are the best-looking woman I’ve ever known,” I said. “Also, your hair is better than Rita’s.”

“Black hair is easier,” she said.

I measured some flour into another bowl.

“No doubt,” I said. “But it remains true. And if it didn’t, if none of it were true, would it really matter? We love each other, and we’re in it for the long haul.”

“Yes,” Susan said.

I sprinkled some nutmeg into the flour.

“So what difference does it make?” I said.

Susan nodded.

“You don’t think her ass is better than mine?” Susan said.

“No one’s is,” I said. “And I pay close attention.”

She nodded and turned back to the window. I broke a couple of eggs into my batter mix.

“What do you need to learn from this lawyer?” Susan said.

“I don’t know, really. It’s like what I do. I look into something and I get a name and I look into the name and it leads to another name, and I keep finding out whatever I can about whatever comes my way, and sometimes you find something that helps.”

Susan left the window and came and sat on a stool at my kitchen counter. She had on tight black jeans tucked into high black boots. On top she was wearing a loose aqua silk T-shirt, narrowed at the waist by a fancy belt.

“So what have you found so far?” Susan said.

I told her what I knew. She listened with her usual luminous intensity.

“The male version of Rita Fiore,” Susan said.

“How unkind,” I said.

“Horny?” Susan said.

“I was thinking of something a little more technical,” I said.

“Satyriasis?” Susan said.

“There you go,” I said. “Is it real, or just a term, like nymphomania, which ascribes an illness to behavior we disapprove of.”

“Both can be legitimate,” she said. “Though talking of nymphomania is sort of incorrect these days. But both are tied to a definition which depends to some extent on the observer’s view of normal and abnormal.”

“ ‘Nothing human is foreign to me,’ ”I said.

She smiled.

“Thank you, Mr. Whitman,” she said. “On the other hand, rape and murder are human, too.”

“Okay, we’ll give Walt some poetic license,” I said.

“To me it’s more a matter of degree, and effect.”

I poured some safflower oil into my big frying pan, and let it heat.

“Like booze,” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said. “You like to drink. But you can choose not to. You can stop when it’s appropriate. It doesn’t interfere with your work, or our relationship, or anything else. But if you had to drink and couldn’t stop and it was screwing up your life, and mine, then you have an illness, alcoholism, and you’d need help.”

“So if I’m that way about sex, have to have it, can’t restrain myself, force myself on people...”

“That’s just you being you,” Susan said.

“Wait a minute,” I said.

She laughed.

“I couldn’t resist,” she said.

“Maybe you have an illness?” I said.

“No doubt,” she said. “But your analogy is apt. If you are, so to speak, a sexual alcoholic, then you have an illness, and you need help.”

“Would someone like that be likely to seek help?”

“I don’t know. Most people with whatever problem don’t seek shrink help. I’ve had very few cases of either men or women with out-of-control sexual issues.”

“Would men be likely to seek help from a woman?” I said.

“They might,” Susan said. “It might excite them to think of talking about it with a woman. Are you thinking Prince sought help?”

“I don’t know. Certainly the college would have a shrink on retainer, wouldn’t they?”

“Most colleges do,” Susan said. “Why are you investigating Prince so carefully? He’s the victim.”

With a pair of tongs, I began to place the batter-coated apple rings into the hot oil.

“The fact that they planned ahead of time to kill him makes me wonder a little,” I said.

“Because they prepared the bomb and everything?” Susan said.

“Yeah,” I said. “They didn’t improvise that at the spur of the moment.”

“No,” Susan said. “Of course.”

“And,” I said, “more important, he’s all I’ve got. I don’t investigate him, and I may as well be sitting on the dock of the bay.”

“Yes,” Susan said. “It’s not so different than what I do.”

I took a few fritters out of the fry pan, added a little oil, let it heat, and placed a few more rings in there.

“Why so few at a time?” Susan said. “There’s room for more.”

“You crowd them and they don’t come out right,” I said.

“I didn’t know that,” Susan said.

“You would if you needed to,” I said.

“Would Rita?”

“Not as well as you would,” I said.

“Right answer,” Susan said.

“No fool I.”