a nobler life. His poetry hinted of evolution even before Darwin's Origin of the Species.'
'Henry Drummond would approve.'
'Yes, and he also wrote of evolving to a new happiness. Man was still unfinished, still evolving. Tennyson was optimistic to the end. In his last poem, 'The Dreamer,' an old man speaks to a despairing Earth, which is wailing of its destiny, 'darkened with doubts of a faith that saves, and crimson with battles, and hollow with graves.' But the poet tells the Earth that 'less will be lost than won. Whirl, and follow the sun.''
I wanted to know more. I showed Prince the printouts from Pam's conversation of the night before.
Prince frowned. 'Someone's still using my handle. Perhaps I should sue. Know any honest lawyers, or is that an oxymoron?'
I ignored the insult. 'What about the poetry?'
He read part of it aloud:
'' Till back I fell and from mine arms she rose,
Glowing all over noble shame; and all
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe. ''
He considered it a moment, then said, 'It's from The Princess. It was written about ten years after the lesser-man diatribe of Locksley Hall. It's Tennyson's view of feminism, women's aspirations juxtaposed against the requirements of marriage. The poem raises numerous questions about sexual identity but the answers are left somewhat open.'
'Sexual identity?'
'In the beginning, the gender of the prince and princess are confused, each taking on characteristics of the opposite sex, perhaps even hermaphroditical, at least figuratively. The prince has blue eyes and hair 'of yellow ringlet, like a girl.' The princess is a dark and masculine woman. She wants to live apart from men. Her identity needs to be adjusted. At the end-'
''Her falser self slipt from her like a robe.''
'Right. She became womanly, he manly, but only in an androgynous way idealized by the Victorians.'
I read aloud from the printout:
' ' Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man.''
'That's it,' Prince said, 'man into woman, woman into man.'
'Would Professor Higgins agree?'
'Perhaps to the extent he believed in a relationship with a woman at all. When Eliza threatened to leave, he told her to come back for his good fellowship.'
'Not very romantic,' I said.
'No, not like his progenitor.'
'Shaw?'
'Pygmalion.'
It took me a second. 'But Pygmalion wasn't real,' I protested. 'He was a figure from myth.'
'And what was Higgins or the princess or the old man speaking to the Earth, or even Biff? Mythical characters who represent universal thoughts, common experiences. Do you remember the Metamorphoses? '
'Something from high-school biology?'
Prince grimaced. 'Ovid's Latin poems, written at the time of Christ. Surely you read of Echo's ill-fated love of the selfish Narcissus, Apollo's pursuit of Daphne, and of the sculptor Pygmalion.'
'I missed it in Latin,' I said, thinking of Charlie Riggs, 'but caught it in Classic Comics. Pygmalion carved a woman from ivory and fell in love with her.'
'Galatea by name. He prayed to Aphrodite to bring her to life, and she complied. He created his beauty and willed her to live.'
Now there's a sexual-identity issue for you, Tennyson. Statue into woman. Hang some rhymin' on that, Al, baby.
CHAPTER 34
Max Blinderman was right where he was supposed to be, next to the fountain with the statue of Citation.
'Hello, shyster,' Max said, taking the last drag on a cigarette.
'Hello, shorty,' I said.
Citation didn't say a word.
Max's shifty eyes flashed from me to Charlie Riggs and back to me again. The ex-jockey wore a baseball cap and a nylon jacket in the ninety-degree heat. 'Whacha want? I gotta lay down fifty on the turf feature, so hurry the hell up.'
'Blood, Max. Yours.'
'Whaddaya mean?' He flipped his cigarette butt into Citation's fountain.
I cranked up the volume a notch. 'I'm looking for an impostor, somebody logging in as Passion Prince. The women he talks to are ending up very dead. I'm giving you a chance to prove you're not the guy who bangs 'em and strangles 'em.'
His sneer wrinkled his mustache. 'I don't have to prove nuthin.' I know my rights.'
'Sure, you do. They've been read to you a few times.'
'Go piss in the wind.'
I heard Charlie's disapproving tsk-tsk.
'I've seen your rap sheet,' I said.
'Bad luck, a couple businesses went bad. Like a horse going lame, nothing you can do about it. An airline goes bankrupt, nobody gives a shit. A small businessman can't make it, he gets thrown in jail.'
'Issuing worthless checks, mail fraud, buying, receiving, and concealing…'
'Big deal. Restitution on one, probation another, dismissed on the BRC. I've never done time, you can look it up.'
I already had. A thief and a con man with no history of violence. But every killer has to start sometime.
From the other side of the bleachers a man in a red tunic and black boots was blowing a bugle. In the walking ring the jockeys mounted their horses and prepared to enter the track.
'C'mere,' Max commanded, and we turned toward the ring. 'Whaddaya think of number two, Radar Vector?'
'I think he's a big, brown horse,' I said. 'And he uses more tape on his ankles than I used to.'
Nobody knows something about everything.
'Good blood,' Charlie Riggs interjected. 'By Diplomat Way out of Hawaiian Love Star. Florida-bred. But out of the money the last four races. He did finish strong the last two, however, and at a mile and a half, he should like this longer distance. He may be overlooked and go off at ten or twelve-to-one. So…'
Almost nobody knows something about everything.
'Yow,' Max said, 'but you left out something.'
'Bellasario's up,' Charlie continued, 'in the money sixty-two percent of his mounts. Wouldn't mind laying two dollars across the board.'
'The jockey,' Max agreed. 'Never overlook the jockey. The horse gotta have the blood and gotta have the heart, and the horse carries the jockey on its back, not vice versa, but a lousy jock can still ruin a great horse, and a great jockey can get the best out of a fair-to-middling horse.'
Made sense to me. I nodded. So did Charlie. So did Radar Vector, who was prancing his way on the parade to the track.
Charlie started packing his pipe with tobacco and said, 'Mr. Blinderman, I saw you ride Pax Americana in the Flamingo a number of years ago. To this day I believe your protest should have been upheld.'
