'Did it bother you to have taken someone's life?'
Be careful what you say here, Matthew. Think before you open your mouth. I think the answer here is going to be important.
'Well, did it?' Susan asked, somewhat impatiently.
'I got psychiatric advice,' Matt said.
'You went to a shrink?'
'My big sister is a shrink. She came to me.'
'And?'
The waiter appeared with the wine and a plate holding crackers and a triangular lump of Roquefort cheese. While the waiter opened the bottle, Matt put cheese on half a dozen crackers.
He sipped the wine, nodded his approval, waited for the waiter to pour into first Susan's glass and then his own, then popped one of the crackers into his mouth and immediately took a sip of wine.
'What are you doing?' she asked in clear disapproval.
She had to wait until he had finished chewing for his reply.
'Don't tell me you never saw anyone do that before?'
'I never saw anyone do that before,' she said. 'It's gross!'
'But it tastes so good,' he said. 'Don't knock it until you've tried it.'
'No, thank you.'
'Oh, go on, take a chance. Live dangerously. Escape your mundane social worker's life.'
She looked very dubious and did not reply. Matt popped another Roquefort-on-cracker into his mouth, added some of the wine, chewed, and smiled with pleasure.
Curiosity got the better of her. She shrugged and reached for one of the crackers and then the wine. She took a tentative chew, then smiled. When she had finished, she confessed, 'That's good.'
'And you didn't want to have a couple of snorts with me. You would never have learned that-something you can use for the rest of your days-from good ol' Whatsisname. '
Her eyes showed she didn't like that.
'You were telling me what your sister the shrink told you,' she said.
'You really want to know?'
'Yeah,' Susan said thoughtfully. 'I suppose I do.'
'She said that I should remember that what I did was an act of self-preservation, rather than an act of willful violence. And that self-preservation is one of the basic subconscious urges, right up there with sexual desire, over which man has very little control.'
I just made that up. I must be getting to be a pretty good liar. Or, more kindly, actor. When Amy came to me in her Sigmund Freud role after I shot the late Mr. Warren K. Fletcher in the back of his head, I told her to butt out.
And Susie seems to be swallowing it whole.
'And, of course, in that case, the act of homicide had an undeniably desirable social by-product.'
'And what does that mean?'
'When he tried to run me over he had a naked housewife tied up with lamp cord under a tarpaulin in the back of his truck.'
'Come on!' Susan said, almost scornfully.
Matt held up his right hand, pinky and thumb touching, the others extended. 'Boy Scout's honor,' he said. 'And there was no moral question in that woman's mind whether or not I should have shot him. He had been telling her all the interesting things he was going to do to her just as soon as they got out of town.'
'In other words, so far as you're concerned, it's morally permissible to take human life under certain circumstances-for a greater good?'
Matt bit off the answer that started to form on his lips, and instead said, 'Have another cracker, Susan.'
'We're changing the subject, are we? What happened, did you run out of sardonic witticisms?'
Yeah, for some reason I sensed that it was time to change the subject. I have no idea how, but I knew that line of conversation was dangerous.
'I guess so. You can go home to Mommy and Daddy, Susan. I don't like the conversation anymore.'
Her face colored, and for a moment Matt thought she was about to push herself out of her chair and march out of the room.
But she didn't.
'Sorry, I–I just never had a chance to ask…'
' 'How does it feel to kill somebody?' ' Matt furnished, not very pleasantly.
She nodded.
'I'm sorry, Matt.'
Why don't you ask your pal Chenowith? Wouldn't you say that blowing up eleven innocent people would make him more of an expert?
Jesus, she didn't! She has never talked to Chenowith about what he did! How do I know that? I don't know how I know, but I know.
'What was it? Feminine curiosity?' Matt asked.
'I said I was sorry.'
'Like I said, have another cracker,' Matt said, and made her another one.
She took it, put it in her mouth and added wine, and chewed. And smiled.
'That is good.'
'I'm surprised your father doesn't do it. He takes his food seriously.'
'What you really said was 'Go home, Susan,' ' she said.
'I can't believe I said something like that,' Matt said. 'Not when we still have half a bottle of wine and two pounds of cheese.'
She smiled.
'I'm sorry I said that,' Matt said. 'I apologize. I really don't want you to go home.'
'I'm going to have to. I have to go to work tomorrow. And so do you.'
'Have another cracker,' he said, and made her another one.
She took it.
'I learned something about you tonight I didn't know,' she said. 'That may have had something to do with my uncontrolled curiosity.'
'Like what?'
Susan looked into his eyes. 'I never connected you with Penny before,' she said.
'I don't recall mentioning Penny,' Matt said. 'Oh, that's right. You're another product of Bennington, aren't you?'
'We were friends,' Susan said.
'How did you come to connect me with Penny?'
'This is awkward,' Susan said.
'Go ahead. If we're going to spend the rest of our lives together, we should have no secrets from each other.'
She smiled at him again.
'Oddly enough, I seem to like you better when you're playing the fool,' she said.
'Thank you very much,' Matt said.
'When I went to get my car from the garage? And my mother came to the garage?'
Matt nodded.
'Mommy told you?'
'Mommy said I should be especially nice to you because of your tragic loss,' Susan said. 'So I naturally asked, 'What tragic loss?' '
'Okay. So are you going to be nice to me?'
'What happened to her?'
'You don't know?' Matt asked. 'She got some bad shit, stuck it in her vein, and 'So Long, Penelope Detweiler. ' '
