'Okay,' I said. 'I get the point.'
Pam said, 'All of us are born bisexual and have those tendencies until puberty. The heterosexual merely sublimates his homosexual cravings in friendship and other social engagements with the same sex. Some don't sublimate it.'
'I understand,' I muttered.
'So why are you so…threatened?'
Bobbie sat down on the sofa and crossed her legs, hiking the leather dress toward her hips. What was it she told me that day in the courthouse? That I really didn't know her at all, and the less I knew the better.
'Hey, I don't care if people are homosexual, bisexual, or if they like inflatable dolls or rubber duckies,' I said. 'It just gets personal when somebody I'm involved with, somebody I thought I was involved with, turns out differently than I had supposed.'
'Would you be as upset if I left for a man?'
'I don't know, maybe not.'
'Why?'
I was getting tired of her analyzing me. 'While we're talking about why, tell me why you're the way you are.'
'Do you really want to know or do you need reinforcement that your manhood isn't diminished by my choices?'
'No. I want to know. I came here today because I missed you, couldn't understand why you left. So now I know part of it, the tip-of-the-iceberg part…'
'I suppose I could tell you about the positive and negative Oedipus complex. For a girl it's very complex. To become heterosexual, she has to transfer her love from her mother to her father, then must repress that love and transfer it to other men while still identifying with the mother. If the girl has incomplete identification with her own sex, she combines characteristics of both sexes. If she cannot resolve the positive Oedipal complex, if she cannot transfer her love for her father to other men, she will become homosexual or bisexual.' Pam studied me to see if I was following the lecture. I just looked out the window and watched the tanker steam south, black puffs belching from its smokestacks.
'You get an A-plus for clinical psychology,' I said, 'but I want to know about you. Your childhood, your parents. What made you what you are?'
'What I am!'
'Wow,' Bobbie breathed. She squirmed on the sofa and turned toward Pam. 'He thinks you're a thing, an it, a lesbianic creature from outer space.'
'You two are having fun with this, aren't you? Baiting me.'
Pam stood and walked toward the balcony. The tanker was gone.
'Jake, it doesn't greatly concern me what you think of me, though I should like to enlighten you. A hundred years ago, Dr. Krafft-Ebing declared that heterosexual cunnilingus was a perversion of fetishists.'
'He probably didn't like oysters, either,' I said.
'My point is that attitudes change. In ancient Greece-'
'I don't care about ancient Greece. I really don't. But I care about you, or I wouldn't have come here.'
'Good. I care about Bobbie. And there is no reason we cannot all care about each other.'
'Before we start caring too much,' Bobbie said, hoisting herself up on long legs, 'I gotta go to work.'
'Me too,' I said. 'Too much enlightenment before breakfast gives me a headache.'
'Your sarcasm is readily apparent,' Pam said.
I shrugged. The two ladies said ta-ta and their lips brushed, Pam giving Bobbie a little squeeze on her burnt- orange behind.
I examined the tops of my shoes as Bobbie Blinderman and I shared an elevator. A middle-aged man with a fresh sunburn, an aloha shirt, and a conventioneer's tag identifying him as a risk-loss specialist from Omaha stopped talking to his wife and stared at my six-foot-tall orange lollipop. Bobbie showed her hundred-watt smile, and then turned to me. 'I'm gonna be sore for a week, you big moose.' My risk-loss friend snickered and slapped me on the back when the doors opened at the lobby.
It took the valet ten minutes to coax the Olds out of the stable. If you drive a Rolls or a Jag convertible or if you arrive by limo, they leave your machine out front in the shade of the palms. Impress the tourists, justify the room rates. If it's a convertible older than the valet, they often put it on a concrete deck in the broiling sun where the salt spray can speckle it.
A sleepy-eyed teenager in a red vest was opening Bobbie's door as I got in on the driver's side. I had my right foot inside and my left foot on the ground when I saw the blur.
The blur hit the side of the door and slammed it into my shin. The pain shot through me and I fell backward into the car, my leg still pinned by the door to the frame. The blur opened the door a few inches and slammed it back again, smashing me harder. It felt like a sledgehammer had crushed me.
Then my leg stopped hurting but only because my head ached. Something hit me above the eye. A fist.
A left fist that did it again. Not much of a punch, but I couldn't move. My leg was on fire, still pinned in the car. Red flashes streaked across my brain. Then a flurry of punches bounced off my forehead and chin. Quick combinations, pop, pop, popping off my skull. I felt two hands reach for my neck, and I heard Bobbie screaming. Somewhere on the edge of my peripheral vision I had the impression of people staring. Parking attendants, tourists, a crowd frozen by the sight.
I pivoted with the leg inside the car, got both hands on the door, and shoved. It tossed him backward into the driveway, and he stumbled but didn't fall. I struggled out of the car, one-legging it toward him.
He glared at me, dark eyes blazing with hate. 'Nobody fucks with Bobbie,' Max Blinderman declared.
CHAPTER 36
The Harman and Fox receptionist didn't bat an eye. She just wished me a pleasant afternoon and tapped a glowing button on the phone with the tip of her polished nail. A law clerk stopped in the corridor, started to ask, thought better of it, and ducked into the copying room. My partners were either at a late lunch or an early golf game, so I was unmolested all the way back to my two-window, bayfront office where Cindy sat in her cubicle, pretending to type.
'Holy shit! Did you get the license number?'
I lifted my standard-issue, rubber-tipped aluminum cane and said, 'It's not as bad as it looks.'
'It looks like you stuck your leg in a manhole and your head in a beehive.'
True. I could barely walk, little welts were popping out of my forehead, and my right eye was swollen shut. Max's jabs had left more marks than pain. The leg wasn't broken, but not for lack of trying, and the foot still hurt from where Carruthers danced on it. I stretched out the leg and eased into my high-backed chair.
'Musta been a mean hombre,' Cindy said, fishing.
I didn't bite.
'I mean, he musta been one big nut crusher.'
'Right. Runs about a hundred twenty, including his saddle.'
'C'mon. Probably a whole gang of thugs with chains and clubs.'
'Cindy, it was a tough morning. Bring me the mail and the messages and any work you may have inadvertently done, then leave me alone.'
'Okay, okay, I been working. The usual pleadings to sign. Motions to continue, motions to defer, motions to forget. Nothing in the mail to interest you except a trial lawyers' convention in Aruba.'
'Great winds,' I acknowledged, wondering when I would be able to put weight on my left leg. If I couldn't windsurf in the Aruba-Bonaire classic, maybe I could qualify for the wheelchair races.
'Bunch of calls piling up since you been out of touch. Charlie Riggs says the bass are biting. Granny Lassiter
