'No question. But sometimes it's not.'
'Maybe. I'll grant you it's the trauma du jour these days. Pretty soon women without incest memories are going to start worrying that their fathers thought they were ugly. You want to play I'm a naughty little girl and you're my daddy?'
'I don't think so.'
'You're no fun. You want to play I'm a hip slick and cool street hooker and you're sitting behind the wheel of your car?'
'Would I have to go rent a car?'
'We could pretend the couch is a car, but that might be a stretch.
What can we do that'll keep our relationship exciting and hot? I'd tie you up but I know you. You'd just go to sleep.'
'Especially tonight.'
'Uh-huh. We could pretend you're into deformities and I'm missing a breast.'
'God forbid.'
'Yeah, amen to that. I don't want to beshrei it, as my mother would say. You know from beshrei? I think it means inviting a Yiddish equivalent of hubris. 'Don't even say it, you might give God ideas.' '
'Well, don't.'
'No. Honey? Do you want to just go to bed?'
'Now you're talking.'
Chapter 15
Tuesday I slept late, and Elaine was gone when I woke up. A note on the kitchen table told me to stay as long as I wanted. I helped myself to breakfast and watched CNN for a while. Then I went out and walked around for an hour or so, winding up at the Citicorp Building in time for the noon meeting.
Afterward I went to a movie on Third Avenue, walked to the Frick and looked at the paintings, then took a bus down Lexington and caught a five-thirty meeting a block from Grand Central, commuters bracing themselves to pass up the club car.
The meeting was on the Eleventh Step, the one about seeking to know God's will through prayer and meditation, and most of the discussion was relentlessly spiritual. When I got out I decided to treat myself to a cab. Two sailed past me, and when a third one pulled up a woman in a tailored suit and flowing bow tie elbowed me out of the way and beat me to it. I hadn't done any praying or meditating, but I didn't have a whole lot of trouble figuring out God's will in the matter. He wanted me to go home by subway.
There were messages to call John Kelly, Drew Kaplan, and Kenan Khoury. That struck me as an awful lot of people with the same last initial, and I hadn't even heard from the Kongs yet. There was a fourth message from someone who hadn't left a name, just a number; perversely, that was the call I returned first.
I dialed the number, and instead of ringing it responded with a tone. I decided I'd been disconnected and hung up, and then I got it and dialed again, and when the tone sounded I punched in my phone number and hung up.
Within five minutes my phone rang. I picked it up and TJ said,
'Hey, Matt, my man. What's happenin'?'
'You got a beeper.'
'Surprised you, huh? Man, I had five hundred dollars all at once.
What you 'spect me to do, buy a savings bond? They was havin' a special, you got the beeper and the first three months' service for a hundred an' ninety-nine dollars. You want one, I'll go to the store with you, make sure they treat you right.'
'I'll wait awhile. What happens after three months? They take the beeper back?'
'No, I own it, man. I just got to pay so much a month to keep it on-line. I stop payin', I still own it, but you call it an' nothin' happens.'
'Not much point in owning it then.'
'Lotta dudes got 'em, though. Wear 'em all the time an' you never hear 'em beep because they ain't paid to stay on-line.'
'What's the monthly charge?'
'They told me but I forget. Don't matter. Way I figure, by the time the three months is up you'll be pickin'
up the monthly tab for me just to have me at your beck an' call.'
'Why would I do that?'
'Because I indispensable, man. I a key asset to your operation.'
'Because you're resourceful.'
'See? You're getting it.'
I TRIED Drew but he wasn't at his office and I didn't want to bother him at home. I didn't call Kenan Khoury or John Kelly, figuring they could wait. I stopped around the corner for a slice of pizza and a Coke and went to St.
