High Profile

“What was the problem,” Jesse said.

Levy examined one of his thumbnails for a moment.

“Mr. Weeks rarely ejaculated,” Levy said.

“He was impotent?”

“No. He had no trouble erecting. He had trouble ejaculating.”

“So,” Jesse said. “He could do the deed, but he couldn’t, ah, finish it off.”

Levy smiled.

“One could put it that way,” he said.

“Did he ever?” Jesse said.

“Infrequently. Too infrequently, it seems, to give him much chance of engendering a child.”

“That’s it?” Jesse said. “Just that? No biomechanical obstruction, no physical dysfunction, just didn’t finish?”

“Just didn’t finish,” Levy said. “Had it been something physical, it might well have been easier to fix.”

“Why?” Jesse said.

“Why didn’t he, ah, finish?”

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Yes.”

Levy leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head, and smiled at Jesse.

“How much time do you have?” Levy said.

“I don’t need to be board-certified,” Jesse said. “A concise summary would work.”

Levy closed his eyes and pursed his lips and tilted his head back and thought for a moment.

Then he said, “You are, I assume, familiar with ambivalence.”

Jesse smiled.

“My old friend,” he said.

“Weeks wanted a child,” Levy said. “And desperately did not want to share it with a woman.”

“That’s it?”

“There’s never an it, ” Levy said. “There are always several its. There were issues of power—if he could arouse a woman sexually, he had power. If she could cause him to ejaculate, she had power. There was rage against all the women who had failed to give him full sexual release.”

“Whom he punished by not achieving full sexual release,”

Jesse said.

“And punished him by denying him what he wanted.”

Jesse whistled softly.

“Craziness has a nice symmetry, doesn’t it,” Jesse said.