Stranger in Paradise

60.

Miriam Fiedler lived on Sea Street a mile and a tenth past the Crowne Estate School in a shingle-style house with a large veranda. Jesse sat with her on the veranda and told her what he knew of her and the Crowne estate.

She looked at him as if he were speaking another language as he talked. When he was through she said nothing.

“What I want to know is where the money went,” Jesse said. “You used to be rich.”

She still looked blankly at him. And then, almost as if she were merely the conveyance for someone else’s voice, she began to speak.

“That was before I married Alex,” she said.

There was no affect in her voice. It sounded like a recording.

“I was forty-one,” she said. “My first marriage…”

They were each sitting in a wicker rocking chair. Neither of them was rocking. Jesse waited. Miriam didn’t say anything. It was as if she had forgotten what she was saying.

“And Alex?” Jesse said.

“He was a year younger,” Miriam said, “forty. He, too, had never married. I soon realized why.”

Again silence. Again Jesse prompted her.

“Why?” Jesse said.

“Alex is homosexual,” she said.

“But he married you.”

“For my money,” Miriam said.

“Which he spent?” Jesse said.

“Generally on his boyfriends,” Miriam said.

They sat quietly in their rocking chairs. Motionless. Looking at the slow unspooling of her story.

“He travels,” Jesse said after a time.

“Yes.”

“But he doesn’t work,” Jesse said.

“No.”

“And you pay.”

“He tries not to embarrass me,” she said. “That’s worth something.”

“Why not divorce him?” Jesse said.

“Then he would embarrass me.”

Jesse frowned.

“Embarrass?” he said.

“I cannot stand to be thought a dupe,” Miriam said. “I cannot stand having it revealed that I have been married all these years to a man who would only have sex with young men.”

“And spent all your money in the process,” Jesse said.

“Yes,” Miriam said.

It was the first word with a hint of feeling in it.

“If I will give him one million dollars,” Miriam said, “he will go away and get a quiet divorce—Nevada, perhaps—and I will be free of him.”

“If you had one million dollars,” Jesse said.

“Yes.”

Jesse nodded and was quiet. The wind off the ocean brought with it the smell of salt and distance and infinite possibility.

“There is a developer,” Miriam said, “Austin assures me, who will pay ten million for the Crowne estate, in order to build a resort. Austin says the town will not prevent him.”

“Austin Blake,” Jesse said.

“Yes.”

“The zoning board might have a problem,” Jesse said.

“Austin assures me there will be no problem.”

“He’s your attorney?” Jesse said.

“Yes. Do I need him here now?”

“I have no plans to arrest you,” Jesse said.

“Will you keep my secret?” she said.

“If I can,” Jesse said. “You’ll need to lay off the kids at the estate, though.”

“I know,” she said.

“I’ll use whatever undue influence I have to keep Channel Three from using it.”

She nodded. Jesse thought it might have been a grateful nod.

“What am I to do?” she said.

Jesse took it as a rhetorical question. But she repeated it.

“What am I to do?” she said.

“What if you got the divorce, without selling the Crowne estate?” Jesse said. “And it was still done quietly?”

“I would at least be free to live my life.”

“What would that mean?” Jesse said.

“I…” She stopped, struggling to say what she was trying to say. “I have a relationship with Walter Carr.”

“Which you would be free to pursue?” Jesse said.

“Overtly,” Miriam said.

Jesse dropped his head so she wouldn’t see him smile. This does not bode well for Suit, he thought.

“Does Walter know all of this?” Jesse said.

“No.”

“Any?” Jesse said.

“No.”

“Was his opposition to the Crowne estate project at your solicitation?”

“He was not hard to solicit,” she said. “No one was. Out here we were uniformly opposed to a bunch of little slum kids coming into the neighborhood.”

“Do you know anything about the Francisco woman’s body being found on the Crowne estate lawn?” Jesse said.

“No.”

Jesse looked at her. She looked back.

“I did not,” she said, with a small tremor of feeling in her voice.

Jesse nodded. And then quite suddenly she began to cry. For a moment it seemed to surprise her, and she sat perfectly still with the tears falling. Then she bent forward and put her face in her hands and cried some more. Jesse stood and put a hand gently on her shoulder. She shrank from it, and he took it away. I know the feeling, he thought. Sometimes you don’t want to be comforted.

“Maybe we can work something out,” Jesse said.

He turned and walked down the veranda steps and across the driveway to his car.

Like what?