'If I get him off, you have to ball my socks off,' I said.
'And if you don't get him off?'
'I have to ball your socks off.'
The something I had no name for flickered in Susan's eyes.
'Sounds fair to me,' she said.
'Okay, I'm on the case,' I said. 'Tell me about him.'
'His name is Brad Sterling.'
'Sterling?'
Susan looked down at the table.
'He changed it,' she said.
'From Silverman. As in sterling silver, how precious.'
'How un-Jewish,' Susan said.
'How come you kept his name?'
'When we were first divorced I guess it was just easier. It was on my license, my social security card, my checking account.'
'Uh huh.'
'And I guess it was a way of saying that even if I weren't married, I had been.'
'Like a guy wearing his field jacket after he's been discharged.'
'Except that the jacket will still keep him warm.'
'You wish you'd gone back to your… what's the correct phrase these days?'
'Birth name,' Susan said.
'Thank you. Do you wish you'd kept your birth name?'
'I suppose so, but by the time I was healthy enough to do that, I was healthy enough not to need to.'
'Susan Hirsch,' I said.
'Sounds odd, doesn't it.'
'Makes me think of sex,' I said.
'More than Silverman?'
'No, that makes me think of sex too.'
'How about Stoopnagel?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'That makes me think of sex.'
'I think I'm seeing a pattern here,' Susan said.
'That's because you're a trained psychologist,' I said. 'Tell me about Sterling.'
'I was a freshman at Tufts,' Susan said. 'He was at Harvard, my roommate and his roommate were cousins and we got fixed up.'
Susan was many things, and almost all of them wondrous, but she was not succinct. I minded this less than I might have, because I loved to listen to her talk.
'He was a tackle on the Harvard football team. The only Jew ever to play tackle in the Ivy League, he used to say. I think he was kind of uneasy being Jewish at Harvard.'
I made eye contact with the waitress and she nodded.
'He was very popular, had a lot of friends. Got by in class without studying much. I really liked him. We were married the week after graduation.'
'Big wedding?'
'Yes,' Susan said. 'Have I never talked about this with you?'
'No.'
'Didn't you ever want to know?'
'I want to know what you want to tell me.'
'Well, I saw no point to talking to you about other men in my life.'
'Up to you,' I said. 'I don't need to know. And I don't need to pretend there weren't any.'
She didn't speak for a time. She slowly turned her wine glass by the stem and looked at me as if thinking about things.
'I always assumed it would bother you,' she said.
'I'm entirely fascinated with you,' I said. 'And what you are is a result of what you were, including the other men.'
