Mitchell Smith (22 page)

“Well,-what do you think? Poor old bag, got nothing left but eating?

Sort of greedy?” She laughed, showing an empty mouth, a still-coated tongue. “Dead right. -Not that I can’t get laid, but you should see the creatures that agree to do it!”

Ellie smiled and finished her bagel-half-self-conscious, now, chewing.

Had some tea. “You have a really beautiful apartment,” she said.

“Thank you. -Would you like to see the rest? Well, after we talk? You wouldn’t believe it to look at it now, but it used to be the most awful hole. I’ve put a hell of a lot of work into it, and money. Money.

Carpenters …

painters. You wouldn’t believe the scenes I’ve had with those people.

The cost of a love affair with rooms …

hallways . She drank some tea. `-Apartment’s gotten prettier as I’ve gotten the reverse. Time”—she made a fdcem’and goddamn changes. I was never the handsome creature you are, but I swear there was a time men-at least in Massachusetts-found me attractive.”

She leaned forward to spread cheese on another bagel. “I hate it. I hate having that power taken away from me. -You better brace yourself for that change-very severe when it comes to good-looking women. One year you’ll still be able to break their hearts, ‘go swimming in their dreams,’ as Ricki Misrahi puts it. -Have you read her?

No? -Well, you should. One year, a heartbreaker …

and the next year you’re only a person-and not much of a person at that, unless you happen to have money.”

She took two mouthfuls, chewed and swallowed, and drank some tea.

“You’re in for a real shock the day you realize even some desperate adolescent wouldn’t have ‘u on a plate in a peek-a-boo bra and black garter Felt. -That’s a loss, I think, a woman never really gets over.

From then on, too often, it’s only scheming. Scheming or slavery-that’s what I see in my practice.” She finished her tea. “Of course, that’s what you see in your practice, too, I imagine-with occasional action-from desperation thrown in.”

Ellie put her teacup down.

“Some people know other people for a long time,” she said, “and they’re close-but not really friends. They don’t really trust each other, you know? -Which kind of friend were you to Sally?”

“You have a pleasant style of interrogation,” Susan Margolies said.

“You’d have done well in psychology.”

She looked at the plate of bagels, but didn’t take another one. ‘—Sally and I were very good friends. I can’t imagine anything I couldn’t have told Sally. We’ve knownknew each other for years. . . . I met her through a patient of mine. And then I was able to recommend her to some other people.”

“Kind of a sex therapist?”

“Call me Susan,” Susan Margolies said. “-Can I call you Ellie? -It is Ellie?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Susan said, “I might have to deny it in court, Ellie, if it ever came up. -It’s a shaky situation, legally, although, God knows, it’s done all the time. And you’re really better off not using a prostitute, if you can avoid it ‘ But, just between us-yes, I did send some people to her, and she was wonderful with them. A perfect little creature in bed, or so I was told.” She sipped her tea, then put the beautiful cup down carefully. “I have to ask you something I don’t want to ask you.

Please be honest. -Please answer me honestly, if you can.”

“O. K.”

Susan Margolies sighed. “Was it as bad as the papers said? That awful?

—She didn’t suffer that much… ?”

“She had a very bad time,” Ellie said.

“It couldn’t have been any worse, is what you’re saying.”

Long pale face, mournful as a sheep’s.

“That’s right.”

“Oh, dear … oh, my God.”

“I’m sorry. It’s a terrible way to lose a friend. She must have been very nice-but, you know, Rebecca didn’t like her.”

“Poor Rebecca. -She only met Sally a couple of times.

I think she had dreams of taking her on-you know, shopping for her, spending her money for her. But Sally wasn’t one of Rebecca’s usual dumb bunnies. -By the way, Rebecca told me of your involvement with that thing about her child. The death.”

“She killed him,” Ellie said.

“Oh, yes, I think so.” Susan Margolies nodded, considering, small blue eyes dreamily fixed and looking away to Ellie’s left. “-She certainly didn’t like him. Did you know that Rebecca was seeing a married man at the time? A rich married man-apparently one of the store people where she worked.” The sun had emerged from clouds again, and the room, flooded through wide windows, lightened from shade to bright cream yellow. Susan Margolies’ face, in this light, looked like fine vellum, creased. “-I think she felt it would be opportune to get rid of her child-of her husband, too. She had hopes, I suppose. Not that her husband didn’t help her do it. I don’t think he liked the child, either. -Surprising, the number of parents who don’t like their children.”

“Would like to see them gone.”

“That’s right. -You don’t have children, do you?”

“No.”

“I do. A son-who, by the way, got as far as possible from Mom as fast as he could manage it. Oddly enough, I love the son-of-a-bitch … like him, too.” She leaned forward to pour more tea into both their cups.

“And I get angry if he doesn’t call at least once a week. And I don’t like his wife.”

“I don’t call my mother, either.”

“Well, daughters and mothers .

“When did you see Sally last?”

“Oh … I think about a week ago; I’m getting lousy on dates. We had dinner at her place . . . calf’s liver and bacon. -She was a darling, but she was a lousy cook.”

“She might have kept some sort of an appointment book…. Did you ever see her writing anything down after she got a phone call, maybe?”

“Well-she had a little note pad by the phone, I think.

I really don’t know if she kept an appointment book. I doubt if she needed one; she didn’t see that many clients in a week, and she had an excellent memory-for which I envied her. It’s true, though, many of those girls did keep some sort of record……

“Beside sending people to her . Ellie said.

“Oh, I only did that a few times. We got to be too close friends for me to keep sending patients to her. -I’d be treating the patient, and going into the success or lack of it with Sally, and it simply got too damn incestuous.

Then-just between you and me-I found a graduate student who was interested in working with me as a therapist in dysfunctions of that sort. -Well, the girl enjoys it, probably, though most women really don’t prefer multiple partners.”

“Sally discussed her clients with you?”

“Oh, yes-every now and then she’d have some really unhappy individual, someone who simply wasn’t capable of being pleased by her, or any woman.

She’d ask me for suggestions, things to talk about with them, ways to make them more comfortable.”

“Talking?”

“God, yes!” The tall woman sighed, leaned forward, and picked up a bagel half, the butter knife. “-The damn things are cold, and I don’t care.

I’m a fool for cream cheese. —God, yes. Talking … I know, you think it’s all screwing for these women. Well, so did I, before I began to know them. For a few years, I had quite a practice of call girls, though Sally was never a patient. -This is the last one of these things I’m going to have.

Won’t you please have another one? -Share the guilt?”

“I really can’t,” Ellie said, “-I just finished breakfast before I came over.”

“Well, I saw a number of call girls for a while, had that practice for a while, then got terribly bored with it.” Two bites, then chewing. When she’d swallowed, she said, “Not only do call girls-mistresses, all expensive prostitutes, really-spend an inordinate amount of time talking to their customers, just being amusing company, listening to their troubles, giving them advice-more often than not, on how to get along better with their wives-but when they do have sex, they don’t much enjoy it. -Not that they don’t enjoy screwing-they do, most of them, orgasms and all, though that’s not popularly supposed to be the case.” She drank some tea. “It’s simply that there’s very little romance in their lives.

Very little in the lives of most successful career women, truth be told.

Doesn’t seem to be the leisure for it.” She put her teacup down.

“-Listen, you want to see the apartment?”

“O.K. Yes, I’d like to.”

They stood together-Susan Margolies much taller than Ellie, then stooping to pick up the two plates. “We’ll leave the tea . - .” and started off to the door to the kitchen, Ellie following the long, narrow back, the ugly dress. Peek-a-boo bra and black garter belt … Hard to imagine. “-Very little romance. They’re bored … they read a lot of cheap fiction, and they almost never have anything really interesting to complain about.”

This hallway was narrow, painted the same light cream as the living room. Ellie followed Susan through a swinging door into the kitchen, and felt less envious of the apartment. The kitchen counters had been done in butcher block; the cabinets were brushed chrome, and must have cost a fortune-and it should have been a beautiful kitchen.

But it was long and narrow as a subway car, and dark.

There was only one window, over the sink.

“-But those girls love to have some sort of therapy going from time to time, like a lot of women with money, and no kids to keep them busy.”

She opened the dishwasher (brushed chrome, like the cabinets) and stacked the two plates inside, dropped the butter knife into a bunch of other dirty silverware. “-And for them, I suppose I provided the sort of sympathetic ear they had to act out themselves, professionally.”

“And Sally was like that?”

“Oh, no.” The big woman bent to make sure none of the silverware was blocking the dishwasher door, then swung it up into place. —She wasn’t like that at all; she was never bored. Sally was a little older than most of them, for one thing. She was an exception-very bright, always taking classes. History and English-trying to make up for her

-childhood, probably. Her parents had been working-class people in Chicago. Well … mine were working-class from Boston. People fascinated her. . . .

Men. They were her field of interest. She was always exploring . . .

discovering. -You know what she’d say?

She’d say, ‘I’m an interior astronaut.” -And she was, too.”

“Then she found some alien in there, I suppose,” Ellie said. “-Some creature she couldn’t handle.”

“That’s a very good way to put it………

” It’s a beautiful kitchen,” Ellie said. “I love the cabinets.”

“Well, the shape is not ideal-but I couldn’t’widen it because the guesit bath is right behind the wall. Besides which, it would have cost a mint.” She went to the sink and washed her hands, dried them on a yellow paper towel from the roll. “-Those prostitutes were very conventional women, for the most part. -Very conservative, very cautious. None of them stupid. -And they were extremely boring as patients.

Fundamentally, very healthy young animals.” She opened a cabinet under her sink, and threw the paper towel in the garbage bin there.

“-Give me a monstrously married neurotic, anytime.”

“You’re describing a good profession to me? Good for women? -Is that it?”

“It’s an excellent profession-or would be, if Americans didn’t have shame on the brain.” She walked to a door at the end of the kitchen, by the refrigerator. The refrigerator was brushed chrome, too, and huge.

“Come on, I’ll show you the bedrooms. Both big success stories, decorator-wise.” And went through the door and out.

“I don’t believe that,” Ellie said, following her. “-I don’t believe being a whore is a great profession-not for a minute.”

“Shame,” Susan Margolies said, crossing an entrance way and walking into a small, very beautiful bedroom in pinks and dusky rose, “-shame, and, if you’ll forgive me, the despicable behavior of the police where these women are concerned. I know of several cases of the nastiest sort of sexual blackmail of these girls-one of which, by the way, took the amusing turn of true love, marriage, babies, and Massapequa…. How do you like this?”

“I love it. This is really a lovely room. -You decorated it-you did it all?”

“Every million-dollar inch.”

“It’s wonderful. Where did you find the beds? Have them made?” The two narrow, single brass steads, covered and bolstered in damask rose, were headed by crisscrossed slender bars of brass, polished to reflection.

“Nope. —Got ‘em in Rhode Island.”

“Well, they’re beautiful. . . .”

“You like this room better than the kitchen.”

“No … well, I suppose so.”

“So do I. I can’t fight that damn shape. A friend of mine-poor girl’s terribly ill, now-suggested I just make an old-fashioned diner out of it and leave it alone-like the Metropole.”

“It’s not bad; it really isn’t. But I love this…. And you were talking about happy women9 Prostitutes. Going with any man who comes through the door? Any kind of creep …”

S San Margolies laughed. She had a tiny bagel crumb u er of her mouth.

“-Have you taken below the right corn nd, lately? Mine looked a good look at the average husband anced at li0e a poodle-similar behavior, too.” She gl Ellie’s left hand. “I don’t see any ring.”

“I’m not married, but I was.”

“I know; Rebecca told me. ‘I have the impression of a handsome asshole’

was the way she put it. Ah, ha-I see sh ‘le? Well, at least he a smile! -Right? A handsome and had looks.”

“He was nice-looking……

::And you still have tender feelings ?”

No way.”

“Never lie to a professional lie catcher,” Susan said, and motioned Ellie before her out of the bedroom.

,-That’s why I haven’t lied to you. -Go to the right.”

“When she talked to you about her clients, did Sally mention names?”

Susan Margolies was following close, her footsteps echoing.Ellie’s on the hardwood hall floor.

“No, no.” Her voice coming high behind Ellie’s left shoulder. “She’d use their first names sometimes-Ted, Georgie-that sort of thing.” Ellie thought Margolies bent behind her and sniffed at her hair like a horse.