was going to learn from her and I finally said good-bye and went back to Beverly Hills.
Chapter 27
THE HOTEL ROOM was awash with tissue paper and shopping bags. Amid it all, and somehow above it, Susan was trying on some new duds, and examining them carefully in the mirror.
'Would you have any interest in exploring my authentic untamed self?' I said.
'Your what?'
'My untamed self,' I said.
'God, if I haven't encountered it yet, I don't think I want to.'
'You got something against authenticity?' I said.
'No. I'm just afraid I'll get hurt.'
'Maybe later when I've calmed down,' I said.
'Maybe,' Susan said. 'What brought on this sudden attack of authenticity?'
I told her about Sara.
'We assume Sara was having an affair with Steve Buckman?' Susan said.
'Yes. But a fully authentic one,' I said.
'What would an inauthentic affair be?' Susan said.
'One which used a battery-powered device?'
'Do you like this skirt?' Susan said.
'I'm not sure,' I said. 'Better take it off and put it on again.'
'Is lechery authentic?' Susan said.
'You bet,' I said.
Susan put on a blouse.
'So if we are to believe What'shername…'
'Sara.'
'Mary Lou were fooling around with other people, and at least from Whosis's perspective…'
'Sara,' I said.
'From Sara's perspective Mary Lou was, and perhaps is, a bitch.'
'Sara's perspective may be somewhat skewed,' I said, 'by her being a nitwit.'
Susan examined in the mirror the way some new pants fit her. She smiled. Apparently she was pleased. Me too.
'That skews a lot of perspectives,' she said.
'Present company excluded,' I said. 'You wanna eat?'
'Let's go someplace I can wear my new clothes,' she said.
There was always something in her eyes that suggested we'd have more fun than we could imagine, whatever we did.
'Does this mean I have to cancel the reservation at Fat Burger?'
She said that it did. She also declined Pink's for a chili dog and we ended up at The Buffalo Club on a dark stretch of Olympic, in Santa Monica. We sat together on the same side of the booth and had a Ketel One martini, or two, and studied the menu. We ordered some oyster shooters and pot roast and ate them. That is, I ate them. Susan had two shooters, and half her pot roast, cutting the other half away before she started and carefully putting one half on her butter plate lest, God forbid, she should eat it by mistake and balloon to 130. I helped. I had her leftover oyster shooters, and the pot roast from her butter plate, and virtuously declined dessert.
Outside I gave the ticket to the valet and held Susan's hand while we watched the desultory traffic plod by in the dark. A silver Lexus pulled up and two men got out. The valet went forward and the first man shook his head. He looked like a mature surfer. Long blond hair, pale blue eyes, sun-darkened skin, which didn't fully conceal the broken veins of a boozer on his cheeks. He was wearing a pair of brown slacks, a brown shirt buttoned to the neck, a small diamond stud in his right earlobe and a camelhair jacket. The jacket was unbuttoned. The guy with him was all edges and angles. Small, lean, hard, pale, with spiky hair and a sharp hooked nose. His eyes were like the windows in an empty house. He had on big shorts and a flowered shirt that hung over his belt. The surfer stopped in front of me. He stood very close.
'How you doing tonight?' he said.
I nodded slightly. I'd seen these guys before. Maybe not these particular ones, but enough guys just like them so that I was pretty sure what they were. I could feel Susan stiffen slightly beside me. The small guy in the flowered shirt moved a little to my left, balancing off the surfer, who was a little to my right. The valets apparently knew these guys, too. They had disappeared.
'You Spenser?'
I hooded my eyes and spoke through my teeth.
'Who wants to know?' I said.
