'To give me until one o'clock. I knew he'd be on time, and I knew he'd be out of here within a half hour.
He always is. And I wanted a half hour after that so that I could take a shower and freshen up and be—'
'And be what?'
'And be nice for you,' she said. 'What the fuck is this, will you tell me that? Why are you attacking me?'
'I'm not.'
'The hell you're not. And why am I defending myself, that's the real question. Why the hell should I have to defend myself?'
'I don't know.' I picked up my coffee cup, but it was empty. I put it down again and picked up a piece of cheese and put that down, too. I said, 'So you already had your B-12 today.'
For a moment she didn't say anything, and I had time to regret the line. Then she said, 'No as a matter of fact I didn't, because that's not what we did. Why? Would you like to know what we did?'
'No.'
'I'll tell you anyway. We did what we always do. I sat on his face and he ate me while he jerked himself off. That's what he likes, that's what we always do when he comes over here.'
'Stop it.'
'Why the hell should I? What else would you like to know? Did I come? No, but I faked it, that's what gets him over the edge. Anything else you'd like for me to tell you? You want to know how big his cock was? And don't you dare hit me, Matt Scudder!'
'I wasn't going to hit you.'
'You wanted to.'
'I never even raised my hand, for God's sake.'
'You wanted to.'
'No.'
'Yes. And I wanted you to. Not to hit me, but to want to.' Her eyes were huge, brimming with tears at their corners. Softly, wonderingly, she said, 'What's the matter with us? Why are we doing this to each other?'
'I don't know.'
'I do,' she said. 'We're mad, that's why. You're mad at me because I'm still a whore. And I'm pissed off at you because you didn't send me flowers.'
She said, 'I think I know what happened. We've been under a strain, both of us. I think it's made us more vulnerable than we realized.
And we wound up casting each other in roles we couldn't play. I thought you were Sir Galahad and I don't know who you got me mixed up with.'
'I don't know either. Maybe the Lady of Shalott.'
She looked at me.
'How does the poem go? 'Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat.' '
'Stop it.'
The sky had gone dark outside her window. Above the lights ofQueens I saw the winking red lights of an airplane making its approach to land at La Guardia.
After a moment she said, 'We read that in high school. Tennyson. I used to pretend it was about me.'
'You told me once.'
'Did I?' Her gaze turned inward as she took a long look at an old memory. Then, crisply, she said,
'Well, I'm no lily maid, baby, and your armor's lost its shine. And it was Sir Lancelot the Lady of Shalott was hung up on, not Sir Galahad, and we're not either of them. All we are is two people who always liked each other and always did each other some good. That's not the worst thing in the world, is it?'
'I never thought so.'
'And now we've got a crazy man who wants to kill us, so it's the wrong time for either of us to get kinky.
Agreed?'
'Agreed.'
'So let's get the money part handled. Can we do that?'
We could and did. I figured out my expenses to date and she reminded me of some I'd forgotten, then rounded the figure upward and cut off my arguments with a sharp glance. She went into the bedroom and came back with a handful of fifties and hundreds. I watched as she counted out two thousand dollars and shoved the stack across the table at me.
I didn't reach for it. 'That's not the number you mentioned,' I said.
'I know. Matt, you really shouldn't have to keep track of what you lay out, and you shouldn't have to come back to ask me for more money.
Take this, and when it starts running thin tell me and I'll give you more.
Please don't argue. Money's what I've got, and I damn well earned it, and if you can't use it at a time like this, what's the point of having it.'
