'I don't think it was the money,' Polly said.
'Exploit men?'
'Maybe a little of that,' Polly said. 'But…'
She rocked for a time, thinking about it.
'You know her husband's a chicken fucker?'
'I know,' I said.
'I think she was getting even,' Polly said.
SEVENTEEN
'SO WHAT DO you think?' I said.
I was lying in my shorts on the bed in the Holiday Inn in Lamarr, Georgia, talking on the phone to Susan in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She said she was in bed. Which meant that she had her hair up, and some sort of expensive glop on her face. The TV would be on, though she would have muted it when the phone rang. Almost certainly, Pearl was asleep beside her on the bed.
'I think you're trapped inside the first draft of a Tennessee Williams play.'
'Without you,' I said.
'I know.'
'You're in bed?' I said.
'Yes.'
'Naked?'
'Not exactly.'
'White socks, gray sweatpants, a white T-shirt with a picture of Einstein on it?'
'You remember,' she said.
'Naked makes for better phone sex,' I said.
'Pretense is a slippery slope,' she said.
Her voice was quite light, and not very strong, but when she was amused there were hints of a contralto substructure that enriched everything she said.
'Don't you shrinks ever take a break?' I said.
'So many fruitcakes,' Susan said, 'so little time.'
'How true,' I said. 'What do you think of Polly Brown's theory that Stonie goes to truck stops to avenge herself on her husband?'
'It would be better if I had a chance to talk with her,' Susan said.
'I'll be your eyes and ears,' I said.
'Have you talked with her?'
'Once, at a cocktail party, for maybe a minute.'
'Oh, that'll be fine then,' Susan said. 'No therapist could ask for more.'
'Gimme a guess,' I said.
'Her husband is actively gay, with a special interest in young men,' Susan said.
'Yes.'
'Would you say that she would experience that as him having sex in the most inappropriate way possible?'
'Yes.'
'And is that what she's doing?'
'Seems so. So it is revenge?'
'Could be. Tit for tat. People often are very crude in their pathologies.'
'Like me,' I said. 'I keep pretending you're naked on the bed.'
'On the other hand, it may be more subtle than that. She may be simply enacting her condition.'
'Her condition is smoking the cannoli in a parking lot?'
'It's good to know that you haven't lost that keen edge of your sophistication. Perhaps her activities in the parking lot are, at least symbolically, how she experiences herself.'
'Because of her husband?'
'Not only her husband,' Susan said. 'You said her father got her husband out of a couple of boy-love jams.'
