Other Men, I tend to do my favors for young men. How can they hurt me? I don’t own much. This house, which I bought thirty-five years ago, a few books-”
“They can hurt you,” I said. “For example, one of them could decide to cut you open.”
“And steal what? A year or two, after I’ve lived seventy-seven of them? Small change. And anyway, that’s not going to happen.” He gave me a benevolent smile. “Why did she leave you?”
“I screwed around. I’m a jerk sometimes. Listen, Max-can I call you Max?”
“I can’t think of a better name. And believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Your desire for intensity can get you killed.”
“I’m safe,” he said. “But you’re in peril.”
I ignored it. “Whatever you get from these kids can’t be worth the risk.”
“What I get?” He pointed a finger at himself. “You think I sleep with them?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Of course I thought he slept with them.
He laced his fingers together over one crossed knee and sat back a good half-inch. There were long ropes of muscle in the tan forearms. “Well, I do. But that’s all. Two heads on the pillow, maybe a little buddy talk before the light goes off, someone to squeeze an orange for in the morning. But sex, never. I just want to help. I thought you understood. I’m in love with Christy.”
I started to reply, and he said, “That was tactless of me.”
I’d missed something. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your relationship. You were in love, but that didn’t keep you faithful.”
“It takes all kinds,” I said. I was suddenly as hot as the day pressing itself against the windows.
“You were unfaithful because you were afraid of being in love,” he said. He looked past me, at the rows of books, and grinned. “Love is nothing to be afraid of, you know.”
“We’re not talking about-”
The grin broadened. “Most men your age don’t blush so easily.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got a lot to blush about.”
“A blush is just the higher nature showing through.”
“Poking its big fat nose in,” I said.
“The higher nature is always with you. All of you is always with you, the little dirty secret things and the big grand ones, too. Whatever snapshot you think you’re posing for at the moment, it’s all with you.”
“Max,” I said, “if you want to keep all of you with you, stop picking up street kids.”
“I’m safe,” he repeated.
“Christopher doesn’t think so.”
Max drained his unsweetened lemonade and gave me an encouraging look. “Maybe Christy knows more about what kind of danger I’m in than he told you.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d surprised me. “I considered that.”
“A cynic like you, I’m sure you did.”
“And I didn’t know then that he had a lifetime habit of ripping off older men.”
“Well, now you do.”
I replayed my conversation with Christopher Nordine. “I think he cares about you,” I said.
“And so do I, about him. But a sociopath-you know about sociopaths?”
“I’ve met a few.”
He beamed at me. “Interesting, aren’t they? They can hold two completely conflicting views simultaneously. Like politicians. Or saints.”
“The multiple murderer Emil Kemper,” I said. “Talking to the psychiatrists, he said, ‘When I meet a pretty girl, part of me is saying what an interesting girl. I’d really like to get to know her. And part of me is wondering how her head would look on a stick.’ ”
“I don’t think Christy wants to see my head on a stick,” Max Grover said seriously.
“Probably not. Emil Kemper was a special guy.”
“But still, let’s say Christy wants to kill me. Let’s say part of him says, ‘Oh, I love Max. He’s been so good to me.’ And another part of him is saying, ‘That disgusting old man, there’s nothing but his rotting body between me and his money.’”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Of course not. But think about it. First he hires a detective to tell me that my life could be in danger, and then he kills me. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Like most prophecies, actually; prophecies are no big deal. Makes him look good, wouldn’t you say?”
“Especially since he’d be the obvious suspect.”
“The will,” Max Grover said. “He told you about the will?”
“First thing.”
“Very prompt of him. A bit Victorian, the will. Still, people have killed for less.”
“But, as I said, you don’t believe it.”
Grover rattled the ice cubes in his glass and pressed its sweating surface against his cheek. “Not at all.”
“Then why bring it up?”
He wiped the moisture from his cheek and dried his hand on his blue shirt and smiled at me again. “I’m just having fun,” he said. Then he reached out the bejeweled hand and tapped me on the knee. “I see a wedding in your future.”
I fingered the ring in my pocket. “You certainly do,” I said.
3 ~ Point-Blank Lohengrin
Weddings seemed to be the theme of the day.
I’d grabbed the latest batch of mail on my way down the driveway to the car, and I thumbed through it as I sat outside Max Grover’s house, waiting for a breath of relatively cool air to bumble into the car through the open windows. It came as no surprise that marriage was a profitable enterprise for what economists like to call service industries-travel agents, department stores, florists, insurance companies-but I’d never realized what a boon it was for paper manufacturers and four-color printers.
YOU TIE THE KNOT, WE’LL GIVE THE BASH, prodded a group of professional merrymakers based in Santa Monica, couching their message in words of one syllable, thoughtfully printed in type big enough to read through cement. People of many ethnic backgrounds and several religions celebrated with decorous abandon in the accompanying color photographs. In one shot, the female guests were wearing saris: market research at work. YOUR MARRIAGE WILL LAST FOREVER, predicted another brochure optimistically; SHOULDN’T YOUR PHOTOS? This one was hawking a sort of stainless-steel album that would preserve the visual record of your nuptials against fire, flood, earthquake, and, by implication, atomic attack.
A third, less romantically, urged me to give thought to a prenuptial agreement. “All of us at Schindler amp; Spink share your joy at having found love,” it began before getting down to business. “In California, the
land of community property…” Beneath that, on a loftier plane, was a fanfold with an idealized drawing of a lamb on it, exhorting me to bring Christ into my new home: MAKE YOUR RELATIONSHIP COMPLETE.
Beneath the brochures was what I’d been looking for, my one and only tie, fresh from the cleaner. The last time I’d seen it, it had looked like the entire Mafia had used it for a tablecloth. When I unwrapped it and put it on, sweating uselessly against the dry heat, I was pleased to note that most of the spaghetti stains had vanished. Blooming yellow in the rearview mirror and knotted in a single Windsor, it almost made me look respectable.
Okay, I thought, starting the car, I’d done what I was asked. It had turned out exactly as I’d thought it would, and I was pleased that I hadn’t taken any of Nordine’s money. Max Grover’s house had been on my way to the real business of the day.
Max had been a surprise, though. From Christy’s description, I’d expected a gay version of the pathetic sixty- five-year-old movie executives who rent themselves a new eighteen-year-old every week. Instead, Max had revealed himself to be much more complicated. Cheerful, confident, and manipulative, he lived more dangerously than his insurance company probably would have liked, but he seemed to do it because he actually believed he
