True Detective

'Oh. And you're sharing rent, then.'

'That's right. It's a nice big studio apartment, but it took the two of us to throw in together to be able to afford it.'

'Why Alonzo?'

'We're friends. He's an actor as well as a painter. We did a play together, with the Impertinent Players. You know… a little theater group.'

'Oh.'

'Would you like some more tea?'

'No. No, thanks.

She took the cup from me and went trailing out, flashing some more white skin.

I glanced around the room. Over the head of the four-poster was a pale electric quarter-moon, with a man-in- the-moon face, turned off.

She came back in the room, sat next to me.

'Do you smoke that stuff?' I said, gesturing to the other room.

'Muggles? No. I don't even drink. I was raised in a proper home; we never had that sort of thing around, and I never acquired an interest in it, let alone a taste.'

'But you don't mind him doing it?'

'Alonzo doesn't drink.'

'I meant smoke marijuana.'

'No, I don't mind. Alonzo's no dopey, no viper, mind you; he just does that once in a while, to relax. When he paints, or before he goes out to… well, to look for a date.'

'Does he… bring his dates here?'

'Sometimes. But he tells me first, if he's planning to. And I can stay in my room and study lines, if I'm in a play; or just read or sleep.'

'It doesn't bother you, what's going on out there?'

'Why should it?'

I didn't have an answer for that.

'The motto around here,' she explained, 'is live your own life. Live, don't just exist.'

'Most people these days find just existing tough enough.'

She didn't have an answer for that.

'I'm glad to be in your bedroom.' I said. 'You're a lovely girl, and that's a lovely kimono, and you make a swell cup of tea. But I'm still not going to look for your brother anymore.'

I thought that would make her mad; it didn't.

She said, 'I know,' a bit distantly.

'Then why did you bring me up here?'

Now she did get just a little bit mad; just a little. 'Not to bribe you, if that's what you think. There's plenty of other detectives in town.'

'That's right, and some of the larger agencies could track your brother nationwide, if you got the dough for it.'

'I'm psychologically connected to my brother.'

'What?'

'My psychiatrist says that most of my problems are connected to my being a twin. I feel incomplete because my brother is missing.'

'You have a psychiatrist?'

'Yes.'

'And he says you feel incomplete because your brother is missing?'

'No. I say that. He says most of my problems are connected to my being a twin.'

'What problems?'

She shrugged. 'He didn't say.'

'Why do you go to him?'

'Alonzo suggested it.'

'Why?'

'He thinks I'll improve as an actress if I get in touch with my primitive unconscious.'

'This is Alonzo's theory, not the psychiatrist's?'