It's the best anyone gets. It's all I'll try to give her this time. If she's where she'd rather be, then that's where she ought to be.'
'Even if later on it will destroy her?'
'One day at a time,' I said. My cheesecake was gone. My pulse rate slowed. Patricia Utley paid the check.
On 26th Street we walked east. It was spring in New York, and the street litter was beginning to dry in the pale sun.
'Don't underestimate the impact that her pimp has on her,' Patricia Utley said.
'If she has one.'
Patricia Utley looked at me almost sadly. 'April has one,' she said. 'In spite of everything, in spite of all they know to the contrary, whores want love. It's not money. that they whore for. It's love, or the hope of it.'
'Why should they be different?'
'Because by the time they get to be twenty years old they have ample evidence that love is nonsense.'
'Put money in thy purse?'
'That's some kind of quote,' Patricia Utley said, 'but I don't know from where. Yes. Of course, put money in thy purse.'
'You management types are all the same,' I said. 'Anti-romantics.'
'But the whores aren't,' Patricia said. 'That may be the trick of it.'
'I'm not anti-romantic,' I said.
'You're male,' she said. 'You can afford it.'
'If I were female would it lead me to whoredom?'
She shook her head. 'No, I don't think so.' We reached Sixth Avenue.
'So it's not the whole trick.'
She was looking for a cab. 'Maybe not.'
'Everyone wants love,' I said. 'Not everyone whores.'
She gestured toward a cab. It zipped past us. 'Shit,' she said. She looked for another one. Downtown a block two guys in tan raincoats flagged the next cab. She exhaled softly and turned and looked at me. Under her careful makeup I could see lines at her mouth and eyes. Natural light is tough. 'I'm not a philosopher,' she said. 'You don't have to know how coal was made in order to mine it. But I think April's future will be a lot brighter if you get her out of that call service, and to do that, I think you're going to have to get her away from a pimp that she thinks loves her.'
'Pimps don't love anybody,' I said.
'You know that. I know that. Whores don't know that.'
'Did you always know that?' I said.
A cab angled across the traffic from the east side of Sixth Avenue and stopped.
'You want a ride uptown?' Patricia said.
'No, thanks,' I said. 'I like to walk. You going to answer my question?'
She said, 'No,' and got in the cab. I closed the door behind her and the cab pulled back into the traffic.
2
I went another block east to Fifth Avenue and walked slowly uptown to the St. Regis Hotel on 55th Street. I had a room there. I noticed that the glitz incidence intensifies above 49th Street and attributed that to the presence of Rockefeller Center. It was my most useful insight.
It was five o'clock when I got to my room. I turned on the TV and watched the news on WNBC. I studied the roam service menu. It was too early for supper but it's important to plan ahead. At five-thirty I called April at the number Patricia Utley had given me.
A woman's voice said, 'Tiger Lilies.'
'April Kyle, please.'
'May I say who's calling?'
'Spenser.'
'Thank you, Mr. Spenser, would you hold, please?'
Some easy-listening Muzak came onto the phone. I held it away from my ear. If you listened close for long, it gave you cavities. The Muzak stopped. April's voice came on the phone.
'Spenser?'
'With an's, ' I said. 'Like the poet.'
'Well… how are you?'
'Almost perfect,' I said. 'I'm in town and want to take you to dinner.'
'I… Well, I'm working tonight. I'm… we're not supposed to go out on nonbusiness dates.'
