'There were other men in her life at the same time?'
'I think so. This particular man was married and lived in the suburbs with his family. I doubt that he could have spent all that much time with her even if either of them wanted it that way. And I have a feeling she was leery of getting too involved with one man. It must have shaken her a great deal when the professor's wife took the pills. If he was sufficiently infatuated with her to leave his wife for her, she was probably committed to him herself, or at least thought she was. After that fell apart she was careful not to invest too much of herself in any one man.'
'So she saw a lot of men.'
'Yes.'
'And took money from them.'
'Yes.'
'You know that for a fact? Or is it conjecture?'
'It's fact.' I told him a little about Marcia Maisel and how she had gradually become aware of the manner in which Wendy was supporting herself. I didn't add that Marcia had tried the profession on for size.
He lowered his head, and a little of the starch went out of his shoulders. 'So the newspapers were accurate,' he said. 'She was a prostitute.'
'A kind of prostitute.'
'What does that mean? It's like pregnancy, isn't it? Either you are or you aren't.'
'I think it's more like honesty.'
'Oh?'
'Some people are more honest than others.'
'I always thought honesty was unequivocal, too.'
'Maybe it is. I think there are different levels.'
'And there are different levels of prostitution?'
'I'd say so. Wendy wasn't walking the streets. She wasn't turning one trick after another, wasn't handing her money over to a pimp.'
'Isn't that what the Vanderpoel boy was?'
'No. I'll get to him.' I closed my eyes for a moment. I opened them and said,
'There's no way to know this for certain, but I doubt that Wendy set out to be a prostitute. She probably took money from quite a few men before she could pin that label on herself.'
'I don't follow you.'
'Let's say a man took her out to dinner, brought her home, wound up going to bed with her. On his way out the door he might hand her a twenty-dollar bill.
He'd say something like, I'd like to send you a big bouquet of flowers or buy you a present, but why not take the money and pick out something you like?'
Maybe she tried not to take the money the first few times this happened.
Later on she'd learn to expect it.'
'I see.'
'It wouldn't be long before she would start getting telephone calls from men she hadn't met. A lot of men like to pass girls' phone numbers around. Sometimes it's an act of charity. Other times they think they enhance their own image this way.
`She's a great kid, she's not exactly a hooker, but slip her a few bucks afterward because she doesn't have a job, you know, and it's tough for a girl to make it in the big city.' So you wake up one morning and realize that you're a prostitute, at least according to the dictionary definition of the term, but by then you're used to the way you're living and it doesn't seem unnatural to you. As far as I can determine, she never asked for money. She never saw more than one man during an evening.
She turned down dates if she didn't like the man involved. She would even plead a fake headache if she met a man for dinner and decided she didn't want to sleep with him. So she earned her money that way, but she wasn't in it for the money.'
'You mean she enjoyed it.'
'She certainly found it tolerable. She wasn't kidnapped by white slavers. She could have found a job if she wanted one. She could have come home to Utica, or called up and asked for money. Are you asking if she was a nymphomaniac? I don't know the answer to that, but I'd be inclined to doubt it. I think she was compelled.'
'How?'
I stood up and moved closer to his desk. It was dark mahogany and looked at least fifty years old. Its top was orderly. There was a blotter in a tooled leather holder, a two-tiered in-and-out box, a spindle, a pair of framed photographs. He watched me pick up both photographs and look at them. One showed a woman about forty, her eyes out of focus, an uncertain smile on her face. I sensed that the expression was not uncharacteristic. The other photo was of Wendy, her hair medium in length, her eyes bright, and her teeth shiny enough to sell toothpaste.
'When was this taken?'
'High school graduation.'
'And this is your wife?'
