ordinary lives!”
“We talked about this before.” He crushed the cigarette into oblivion. “We can adopt; we can have children.”
“I don’t know ….” She turned on her side, back toward him. “Any kid we adopted wouldn’t be our own kid. Somebody’s castoff. We drive used cars and we raise used kids? I don’t know ….”
She turned to look at him. “It’s that damned Green! I felt so good when he was dead. Why did he do that to me, Stan? Why?” It was almost a wail.
He felt exactly as she did about Green. But he always tried to soft-pedal his genuine emotion so as not to further upset her. “I don’t know. I suppose I can understand why he would take your baby. I mean, it was his, too. And he sure as shit didn’t want it. So that’s the part that makes some sort of twisted sense: He wanted an abortion and he did it.
“But, hell, it was in your body! You’d think you’d’ve had something to say about it.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m mad as hell about it. I could kill him for that. But he took my uterus too. He told me it had to go. At first, I was grateful he took it. I mean if it was cancerous, I was lucky to lose it. But from what that nurse said there was nothing wrong with the uterus. He took out a perfectly healthy uterus. Perfectly healthy! And now I can never have a baby!” Her body shook as she sobbed silently.
He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “That one’s got all hell beat.”
“And then he dumped me. How can anybody put that together? He takes my healthy baby. He takes my healthy uterus. And then he dumps me. Why? Why? Why?”
Stan shook his head. “I guess he just raises meanness to a science.”
“And the bastard isn’t even dead!”
With an unusual hardness in his voice, Stan said, “If I could-if I could get close to him, I’d kill him for you. I’d kill him for me,” he added almost as if to himself.
“You would?”
“I never even thought of killing anything but maybe an animal. Not a human being. But if I could get close to Green, I’d think of what he did to you, and then I could kill him. I know I could.”
She looked at him unblinkingly. She was utterly serious. “I was ashamed to tell you … but … after I called him and he just laughed and hung up on me … well, I actually started to plan on how to get to him. I mean, I know I can get through to him on the phone. I think I could arrange to meet him someplace. Then, with nobody else around, I’d kill him.”
Stan was shocked. “You could do that? You
“As long as I didn’t get caught. I’d have to plan it very carefully, but …” She shrugged. “Then I think maybe I’m daydreaming. But if it’s a daydream, at least it seems to help. I think of killing him. I think of him dead. And I feel better.”
“Maybe …” Stan said, “maybe we could do it together.”
“What?”
“Together. Maybe we could do it together. If you can arrange to be alone with him, maybe you could arrange for me to be there too. Maybe together we could do it.”
“You’re … you’re serious!”
“I think I am. I’d just have to keep thinking of what he did to you.”
“This is dangerous.”
“I know. We’d have to plan it carefully … very carefully. So we wouldn’t get caught. We don’t want to spend the rest of our lives in jail-separated.”
“That too. But … actually killing somebody? We’d have to search deep inside to see if we could really do it. Once we get him alone, that’s no time to wonder whether we could do it.” Her chin was firmly set. “I could do it as easy as stepping on a bug.”
They both laughed.
She started to stroke him. He smiled as he slid down into the bed alongside her.
Foreplay seemed unnecessary. They discovered that murder could be an aphrodisiac. “One for the road,” he whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I really think,” Betsy Dorsey said, “that the problem of Detroit is in the neighborhoods. The city administration should work from one neighborhood to the next-one area at a time. Paint and repair each house- or if the house is beyond rehab, tear it down. Fix the sidewalks, repave the streets, plant some trees. It’s the only logical way of doing it as far as I can see.”
Jake Cameron wiggled, trying to get comfortable. He was bored.
Betsy read … a lot. That had been established during the hot and cold hors d’oeuvre course. Through the piece de resistance the fact that she could hold-nay, preferred-an intelligent conversation on just about any topic was evident.
This disturbed Jake. It wasn’t that Jake wasn’t up on current affairs. Actually, he had an opinion on the rehabilitation of Detroit that was antithetical to Betsy’s. It was Jake’s conviction that clearing the city neighborhood by neighborhood was like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. Push them out of one ‘hood and the bums would land in the next. Much earlier, the city had tried something like that in cleaning up Michigan Avenue downtown. That created the slums in Second and Third Streets and Cass Corridor.
Jake was perturbed. Betsy was a woman; it was unseemly that she be intelligent and well read. In his life, he’d had only one intelligent mistress-Margie. And that hadn’t worked out well at all. He was going to do his very best to bed Betsy ere this night was finished. He thought it rather incongruous to expect a couple to move directly from capital gains taxes to pillow talk. And what sort of foreplay is Tudor architecture and interior design, anyway?
“Is this a great restaurant or what?” he nonsequitured.
Betsy looked about, seemingly for the first time. Actually, she had done a quick study of the place the moment they’d entered. “It is, indeed, Mr.- uh, Jake. I had no idea this was here. I mean in the city of Pontiac!”
“Yeah, this Pike Street Restaurant is one of the best in this whole area. Sometimes people don’t even consider it ‘cause it’s in Pontiac. But, just you wait, Betsy: Pontiac is on the way back. This place is gonna be jumpin’ one of these days.”
“I couldn’t argue with you, Jake.”
Somehow her agreeing with him made Jake a bit more sure of himself. He’d have to watch that; after all, she was only a broad.
“In fact,” he said, “I just nailed down some property here. Someday it’s gonna be Virago III.”
“No! What a marvelous idea!”
Her enthusiasm was invigorating. No doubt about it; he almost felt like going out and laying the cornerstone right now. He’d have to get a rein on this stuff.
He had finished his Delmonico steak. She toyed with the remains of her baked salmon.
“You don’t like the fish?”
“It’s fine … great. I just had too many hors d’oeuvres.” She smiled. “You don’t want me getting fat.”
The thought hadn’t crossed his mind. But now that she mentioned it, the image of an obese Betsy was enough to take away his appetite. He wondered if fat was in her genetic design. Her mother had been a dancer. Was Mama fat? Was fat inherited? “To be honest, Betsy, I figure fat on a woman is gross. God made women to be beautiful. And fat ain’t beautiful. Just the thought of a fat broad on one of my stages is disgusting.”
She made no response.
“Your mother,” he said finally, “you said she was a dancer.”
“Yes, she was.”
“What was her name? Her stage name?”
“Ginger … Ginger Dorsey. That was her stage name. Also her married name. Her maiden name was
