'I like the things he likes to do movies and going out to dinner. He takes me to Tanglewood in the summer, even though he'd probably rather go to a ballgame. He really does his best to be agreeable. I wouldn't think of asking him to take me dancing, but I'm sure he would if I did. He probably wouldn't be very good at it I doubt he had lessons when he was a kid. But he is good about doing things he isn't really all that keen about because they're things that I want to do. He's considerate of me when we're in bed, too, very gentle. He knows how to show a girl a good time, so that part's all taken care of. I tell myself I don't know how lucky I am; a lot of women'd kill for this guy.
'But he's oh, I don't know; he's still sort of a lout. I'm not sure how to describe him to you. He isn't like any of the boyfriends either of us had, when we saw each other all the time.
'He's a court clerk. Clerk magistrate. It sounds like less than it is. He's got three assistants under him, and there're over thirty people in the office where they work. It's really a medium-sized legal business. File clerks, bookkeepers; and about a dozen or so more who work out of it, constables, deputy sheriffs and so forth. So what it amounts to is that he's sort of a cross between the CEO and CFO of the Canterbury District Court, and he reports to the presiding judge, who's the chairman of the board of this little company.
'But what he really is, is a pol. That's how he thinks of himself and how he got his official title, when he was still in his twenties. He's never changed. I suppose that's to his credit. He doesn't pretend to be anything he isn't. Or not to be anything he is. Been a pol all his life and makes no bones about it. He's good at it. The proof is that he got this prize. He isn't a pol because he's the boss; he's the boss because he's a good politician. He's proud of it.
'If you met him he'd remind you of those men you used to tell me that your uncles hung out with all the time down in Chicago. Smoking cigars and drinking whiskey; telling dirty jokes and laughing all the time, except when they were snarling; talking about all the mean and nasty, awful things that they were going to do to people. Or'd just finished doing, croaked someone good. Probably not people that you'd want to spend all of your time with; every so often you'd hear that one of them'd gone to jail. But still and all, fun to be around them; they were raffish. You could tell yourself you didn't have much choice. It was your family duty. 'Crude as they are, they're also entertaining.'
That meant you could let yourself go and have a good time without feeling guilty about it. They made you laugh that made them pretty nice guys, all in all, if you could overlook their rougher edges.
'Rough but good-hearted.' Amby's like that.
'He's certainly not someone you'd expect to find me consorting with now, at my age, and in my widow's weeds. Nor would I. When Walter was alive I thought he was rather vulgar. Poor dear Walter just adored him, so it seemed as though we had to have him every time we had a dinner party, and I used to have to remind myself I had some friends I always asked that Walter wasn't fond of, and he never complained. So if he wanted to have Amby, and the guy that Amby worked for, with, he would say, Dan Hilliard, well, grin and bear it.
'You would not believe this Hilliard. He's a college president now. It sounds like more than it is: just a dinky little community college. But that's what he does in retirement. He used to be chairman of Ways and Means in the state legislature. A very powerful man, and that's what he still looks like now. The way he moves, how he dresses and talks; he shows you he's used to power. He would've become Speaker one day, if he'd been able to control his sex drive. I'm best friends with his ex-wife, Marcy Hilliard. I'm as close to her now as I was to you. He thinks I'm the reason she's his ex-wife. All those chesty young bimbos that he ran around with had nothing to do with it. But the memory of power's still there; if you tried to imagine what the president of a tin-pot community college would look like; what he'd act like; what he'd be like; well, you would not imagine him.
'So anyway, there I would be, having the three of them over for dinner;
Amby and Danny and Marcy; being the dutiful wife. Plus one or two other couples we know. I really don't know how I did it. I'd tell Walter to invite them, and sometimes they'd show up and Amby'd have a date with him, some woman who they'd both met in politics either their husbands weren't interested in politics, or they didn't have husbands; they weren't really old enough yet. That was the explanation anyway; one didn't ask too many questions. And Marcy would be with Dan, and wed all act like of course this new woman was with Amby. When it looked to me at least a couple times as though she could've been with either of them and most likely had been, too, one time or another. We were never completely sure.
'I never knew what to expect from Dan or Amby, what either one of them would do or say, so I sort of just learned that the best thing to do where they were concerned was just go with the flow. Whatever they did was all right. And keep telling myself all the time they were there:
'This's for Walter, this's for him. Walter's my husband and Walter's okay, and Walter likes these two guys. Walter thinks these two guys're neat. My dear husband is probably nuts.'
'Then Walter died. And both of them were so kind, and so good to me, so, well, sweet, to me, really. I couldn't get over it. The last people I would've expected. And then, Amby, he knew all about this complicated investment trust that Walter had, that I didn't really know anything about: he was a big help to me there. And so, well, what can I tell you? One thing just led to another, as it usually does. You know how it can be. Suddenly there you are in bed with some man and you're not really certain who he is, or if you were sure that you wanted to be naked in bed with him. But then figured: Oh, what the heck, kinda late now. Might as well see what he's like.'
'That's how it was between David and me,' Sally said. 'That's just how I felt the first time I slept with him: 'I'm very uncertain about this.
Not sure at all that I want to be with him, I even like him enough.'
And then he turned out to be good in bed. Not that I had that much to compare him with, only two or three guys, but I certainly wasn't a virgin. He made my lights blink on and off. He said I was the best that he'd ever had I think he was telling the truth. But we were healthy young horny kids; what the hell did we know? We thought great sex was all it took. Trouble was that it isn't, and that was all we had.'
'I think that's a good part of what I've got with Amby,' Diane said.
'But at my age, that may be enough. It's sort of like finding this great big dog around, when all I've ever been used to is cats; never had any interest in dogs. Never asked for a big friendly, clumsy dog, but now suddenly I seem to have one. And he gets into things all the time.'
She heard Sally laughing.
'Yes,' she said, 'well, all right. But that's what I'm saying: that may be why I keep him around. Sometimes I get impatient with him.
Sometimes I'd like to kick him, give him a good swift kick in the pants and see if that might shape him up. But I don't, or I haven't so far, at least. And I must say most of the time I do like having him around.
Even though I'm never really sure, from one moment to the next, what he's going to do, and sometimes it turns out to be something I don't like.'
'Amby,' she said, in the car again, 'come on now, let it out. That's what friends're for.'
'Okay,' Merrion said, exhaling heavily, 'sorry that I brought it up and it's against my better judgment, but okay, here we go. Yesterday morning, my day off, I start off by going to the office. This's because the judge and I, as I think I may've already told you, we've got one of our projects going on, only it's not going on exactly the way we had in mind when we started it, all right? So we've been getting a little concerned about it lately, some of the reports we've been getting.'
'This would be one of those jazz improvisations with the law you two enjoy so much?' Diane said. 'With absolutely no authority to do them?'
'Yeah,' Merrion said, 'a diversion. What we had in mind when we decide to do this one and having in mind like you just said: we don't have to do them was to see if maybe we can save this woman. She's basically retarded. Mildly, but retarded. If somebody doesn't at least try to do something for her, she's going to get so deeply involved in the criminal justice system where we're both convinced she does not belong that she's going to get hurt. And Lenny and I just decided we don't want that to happen.'
'Yes,' Diane said. 'This would be the woman that got involved with the evil gypsy. And I told you at the time I didn't see how you had any power to do this, and I thought it was a rotten idea. The woman who worked at the pizza parlor and she got herself mixed up in the swindle with the shrewd old lady and the bank account.'
'Well, the Burger Quik onna pike, but yeah,' Merrion said, 'that's the one I mean. And the judge and I know very well, going into this, what people would think of what we're trying to do here. We're not under the impression that the vast majority of people would necessarily approve, wholly if they knew what we were doing, completely on our own.
