'You mean withPrejanian .'
'Do I?' She had finished her cigar, and now she took another from the teak box. But she didn't light it, just played with it. 'Maybe I don't mean anything. But look at the record. That's an Americanism I rather like. Let us look at the record. For all these years Jerry has been doing nicely as a policeman. He has his charming little house inForest Hills and his charming wife and his charming children. Have you met his wife and children?'
'No.'
'Neither have I, but I've seen their pictures. American men are extraordinary. First they show one pictures of their wives and children, and then they want to go to bed. Are you married?'
'Not anymore.'
'Did you play around when you were?'
'Now and then.'
'But you didn't show pictures around, did you?' I shook my head.
'Somehow I didn't think so.' She returned the cigar to the box, straightened up, yawned. 'He had all that, at any rate, and then he went to this Special Prosecutor with this long story about police corruption, and he began giving interviews to the newspapers, and he took a leave of absence from the police force, and all of a sudden he's in trouble and accused of shaking down a poor little whore for a hundred dollars a week. It makes you wonder, doesn't it?'
'That's what he has to do? DropPrejanian and you'll drop the charges?'
'I didn't come right out and say that, did I? And anyway, he must have known that without your digging around. I mean, it's rather obvious, wouldn't you say?'
We went around a little more and didn't accomplish a thing. I don't know what I'd hoped to accomplish or why I had taken five hundred dollars fromBroadfield in the first place. Someone had Portia Carr intimidated a lot more seriously than I was likely to manage, for all my cleverness in sneaking into her apartment. In the meantime we were talking pointlessly, and we were both aware of the pointlessness of it.
'This is silly,' she said at one point. 'I am going to have another drink. Will you join me?'
I wanted a drink badly. 'I'll pass,' I said.
She brushed me on the way to the kitchen. I got a strong whiff of a perfume I didn't recognize. I decided I would know it the next time I smelled it. She came back with a drink in her hand and sat on the couch again. 'Silly,' she said again. 'Why don't youcome sit next to me and we will talk of something else.Or of nothing at all.'
'You could be in trouble, Portia.'
Her face showed alarm. 'You mustn't say that.'
'You're putting yourself right in the middle. You're a big strong girl, but you might not turn out to be as strong as you think you are.'
'Are you threatening me? No, it's not a threat, is it?'
I shook my head. 'You don't have to worry about me. But you've got enough to worry about without me.'
Her eyes dropped. 'I'm so tired of being strong,' she said. 'I'm good at it, you know.'
'I'm sure you are.'
'But it's tiring.'
'Maybe I could help you.'
'I don't think anyone can.'
'Oh?'
She studied me briefly,then dropped her eyes. She stood and crossed the room to the window. I could have walked along behind her.
There was something in her stance that suggested she expected me to.
But I stayed where I was.
She said, 'There's something there, isn't there?'
'Yes.'
'But it's just no good at the moment. The timing's all wrong.' She was looking out the window. 'Right now neither of us can do the other any good at all.'
I didn't say anything.
'You'd better go now.'
'All right.'
'It's so beautiful outside.The sun, the freshness of the air.' She turned to look at me. 'Do you like this time of year?'
'Yes.Very much.'
'It's my favorite, I think. October, November, the best time of the year. But also the saddest, wouldn't you say?'
'Sad? Why?'
'Oh, very sad,' she said.'Because winter is coming.'
