“Often,” Levy said.
“Can we say concisely why he was like this?”
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H I G H P R O F I L E
“Not really,” Levy said. “No surprise—it had to do with his mother and his childhood encounters with women. Certainly his mother sexualized their relationship.”
“She molest him?”
“In the conventional way?” Levy said. “Probably not. But because of the inappropriate nature of their relationship, sex became the ultimate expression of love and, because it was his mother, horribly frightening. And it remained so, lodged there in his unconscious, all his life.”
“So what happened?” Jesse said.
“To bring him here?”
“Yeah. He’s fifty, he’s had three wives, a million women, no kids. What made him come to you all of a sudden?”
Levy looked at his thumbnail again. He didn’t answer. Jesse waited. Finally Levy looked up at Jesse.
“I don’t know.”
“Wow,” Jesse said.
Levy smiled.
“We don’t like to say that much.”
“I say it all the time,” Jesse said.
“I’m saying it more often,” Levy said, “than I used to. Clearly, it had to do with the woman.”
“Carey Longley,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“He wanted to have a baby with her.”
“Yes,” Levy said. “They talked of buying a home together.”
“Where?” Jesse said.
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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“In Paradise,” Levy said. “Unless they were being metaphorical.”
“What about his current wife?”
“It is my impression he had given her no thought. He was entirely consumed with this relationship.”
“Ain’t love grand,” Jesse said.
Levy smiled. The two men sat quietly for a moment.
“What do you think about love, Doctor?” Jesse said.
“I remain agnostic about love,” Levy said. “But there is clearly a connection between . . . there clearly was a connection between them that seemed to have been lacking in other instances.”
