“I think so.”
“But you still . . .”
“I’m still trying to fuck my way to the top,” Jenn said.
“But . . .” Sunny said.
“Jesse is like your ex-husband, you know? I can’t imagine life without him in it.”
“But . . .”
“Almost anything I know that matters, I learned from him,” Jenn said.
Sunny waited.
“I always needed to be somebody, and I always thought that what I had to offer was that I looked good and I could fuck,” Jenn said.
Sunny smiled.
“Most of us can,” Sunny said.
“But I do,” Jenn said. “Jesse was always somebody, you know? He was always so self-sufficient and complete and . . .
“Except for you and drinking,” Sunny said.
“Yes,” Jenn said. “I think I kind of liked the drinking. It was a weakness, made him more human, sort of.”
“And you?”
Jenn smiled and nodded.
“I thought that was a weakness, too,” Jenn said. “You’ve had some therapy.”
“Yes.”
8 4
H I G H P R O F I L E
“One of my shrinks said if it weren’t for his weaknesses,”
Jenn said, “me and booze, he would have been too complete, too . . . Jesse. If it weren’t for those weaknesses . . .”
“Of which you were one,” Sunny said.
Jenn nodded.
“Of which I was one,” she said. “Without those weak nesses, I probably couldn’t have loved him.”
Jenn moved her salad around with her fork, without eating any of it.
“How about you?” Jenn said to Sunny.
Sunny didn’t answer right away. She was looking out the window at the corner by King’s Chapel. The man was gone. She smiled without very much pleasure.
“Richie didn’t have any weaknesses,” she said.
8 5
