'Smart-ass shrink,' I said.
Susan ate another morsel of sushi, looking satisfied. 'Quirk and Belson back from vacation?' Susan said.
'Yeah.'
'Any apologies?' Susan said.
I grinned. 'Not hardly,' I said. 'Everybody is reminding everybody else that they agreed with Quirk right along.'
'What about the man they accused?'
'Washburn? They'll try him for the murder of his wife.'
'And Gordon Felton?'
'I assume he'll plead insanity, the court will believe him, and he'll go to Bridgewater State Hospital. Where he will not be cured.'
'Well, without arguing about legal insanity, Felton probably couldn't not have done what he did,' Susan said.
'And yet,' I said, 'there's lots of people who grow up with the kind of problems Felton had and they don't go out and kill a bunch of women.'
'I don't know,' Susan said. 'I mean, I could say some competent-sounding thing about the infinite number of variables in the human circumstance, so that no two people in fact grow up with the same kinds of problems. But that's really only another way of saying 'I don't know.'
'
'Can he be cured?'
'Not at Bridgewater,' Susan said.
'I know that,' I said. 'But under the right circumstances is he curable?'
Susan took her last bite of sushi, and a swallow of saki. 'Cure is probably the wrong word. He can be helped. He can probably be prevented from getting worse, maybe he can be relieved of the pressures that drive him to act out his pathology, maybe he can be redirected, so to speak, so that he acts out in less destructive ways.'
'Is this going to be on the final?' I said.
'I know it sounds so shrinky, but it's the only real answer I have. The other thing that enters into the question of cure is, of course, the severity of what he does. If his pathology manifested itself by, say, stealing pantyhose off the clothesline, maybe you could say, yes, he can be cured. Because if you're wrong, the consequences are trivial. But how can anyone certify that when released he will not murder someone?
No, I certainly could not.'
The waitress came and took our plates and brought us some shrimp tempura and steamed rice. She brought me another beer. When she was gone I said to Susan, 'I feel kind of bad for Felton.'
Susan said, 'Yes.'
'I feel even worse for the women he murdered.'
'Yes,' Susan said again. 'How about his mother?'
'That's hard,' I said.
'But not impossible,' Susan said. 'Think how desperately she's had to manipulate her life without any power but the uses of love.'
'And all for naught,' I said. 'Her reputation will be smirched anyway.'
'Cruel.'
Susan said.
'Well, I never had a mother,' I said. 'Probably makes me insensitive.'
'Probably,' Susan said, 'but you've got strong loins. It makes up for a lot.'
I reached over and poured more saki from the warm bottle into the little saki cup.
'You know what I like about this whole business?' I said.
'Not much,' Susan said.
'I liked you and me,' I said.
Susan nodded.
'I always like you and me,' I said, 'but this time had such potential for us being a mutual pain in the ass that I especially admire us because we weren't.'
'Yes,' Susan said, 'we were continuously in each other's way trying to do our business.'
'And we didn't get mean about it,' I said. 'We were kind to each other all the time.'
'Most of the time,' Susan said.
'Close enough,' I said.
Susan smiled at me and put her hand on top of mine as it rested on the table.
'It was a charged situation,' she said. 'You telling me what to do in my profession and me telling you what to
