“Vincent?”
She smiled as if I had prayed aloud.
“I saw him,” I said. “Handsome devil.”
“Oh isn’t he,” she said. “What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t stalk you.”
“What else.”
She was sitting on the pink sofa in the bay window of her beige living room. I was back in the uncomfortable gray chair.
“Nothing of consequence,” I said. “Could you run back over the breakup.”
Her eyes filled. She sipped some more white wine.
“I don’t think I can,” she said.
“Well, let me help you focus. Who said that you would no longer sleep together.”
“What difference does it make?” she said. “It’s over.”
There were tears now on her cheeks. She wiped them with the back of her left hand.
“It might make a difference,” I said. “I know it’s painful, but think back. Who decided that you’d stop making love.”
She drank wine again and looked down at her lap and answered me so softly that I couldn’t hear her.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I did,” she said. “I told him that if he wouldn’t leave his wife then I wouldn’t fuck him until he did.”
“Negotiating ploy?” I said.
She looked up and her eyes though teary were harder than one would have thought.
“I was desperate,” she said.
“But you meant it.”
“Well, he had to lose something too,” she said. “He couldn’t have everything. I have to leave my beautiful house and my beautiful daughter…” Now she was not just teary, now she was crying. “I have to live in this… this cell block. He can’t keep on fucking me. He has to give up something.”
“Fair’s fair,” I said.
Struggling with her crying she said, “Could you… could you come and sit beside me?”
“Sure.”
I went and sat on the couch beside her and she leaned over and put her face against my chest and sobbed. I put an arm around her shoulder and patted. Uncle Spenser, tough but oh so gentle. After a while she stopped crying, but she stayed with her. face pressed against my chest, and turned a little so she had snuggled in against me.
“So in fact you broke it off,” I said. “Not him.”
“All he had to do was leave his wife.”
“Which he wouldn’t.”
“He can’t. She’s too dependent.”
“But he’d have been willing to have you as his girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“Being the only one cheating in fact didn’t bother him.”
She shrugged.
“No,” she said. “Sometimes I say things because they sound right.”
“Most people do,” I said.
She seemed to wriggle a little tighter against me, though I didn’t see her move.
“You’re very understanding,” she said.
“Yep.”
“And you always seem so clear.”
“Clear,” I said.
“Have you ever cheated on Susan?”
“Once. Long time ago.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“She ever cheat on you?”
