“No, twenty dollars,” she said. “Now that you have money, the price goes up. Now that you’ve told me about your mother, you have a choice. Either tell me a joke or tell me something else about you that I don’t know.”
Lew was standing, head down in front of her. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, handed her a twenty-dollar bill and something small and flat and neatly folded over with thin white tissue paper. She carefully unfolded the paper and looked at what was inside.
“Catherine?” she said.
“Catherine,” Lew said.
“She was lovely.”
“Yes,” said Lew as Ann carefully rewrapped the photograph with tissue and handed it to Lew, who put it back in the sleeve of his wallet. “She was lovely and I got her killed.”
“Abstract guilt, Lewis.”
“No,” he said. “Real responsibility.”
“Sit,” she said gently.
“You’ve got someone…” Lew said, looking at the door.
“The person sitting out there can wait,” said Ann. “She is too docile. That’s part of her problem. If I have her wait, she may get angry, which would accomplish more than fifty minutes of talk.”
Lew was sitting again, cap on his knee, looking at Ann’s desk, seeing nothing.
“Why do you think you are responsible for the death of your wife?”
“The night before she died we had an argument.”
“About what?” Ann prompted.
“I don’t think I’m ready to talk about this,” he said.
“Not ready? You drop a small bomb of guilt. You sit down. You wait for me to become gluttonous in my search for information and then you say you’re not ready? You are ready.”
Lew looked around the room for something to distract himself, an uneven pile of mail on the desk, a slightly crooked small print of a seascape, a beam of light through the single high window, a bookcase filled with psychology and history books.
“We had an argument about ambition,” he said. “I was happy where we were, where I was. Catherine was ambitious. She was good and she was getting recognized. She wanted to consider some offers from outside Chicago.”
“Political?”
“Some. I was willing but not enthusiastic. She wanted and needed enthusiasm from me. She deserved to have it, but I’m not good at lying.”
“You lie to yourself like a professional,” Ann said.
“There was no shouting, crying. There were no threats. Nothing was resolved when we went to bed. In the morning we didn’t say a word till after we had coffee and buttered toast at the window.
“We went to work, didn’t see each other much,” he went on. “We had lunch together at a deli on Monroe. She told me a District Attorney in Tennessee was pressing her for an answer to his offer. Catherine was admitted to the bar in six states and working to get admitted in others. Tennessee was one of the first states after Illinois that had-”
“Lewis, are you going to start chewing your hat now?”
“No,” he said. “She needed enthusiasm from me. I wasn’t enthusiastic about moving to Tennessee. Chicago was… all I knew or wanted. She packed up her work for the day and told the secretary she shared with Michael Hawes that she was going home to work. She didn’t tell me.”
Ann said nothing. She looked at him, waiting. He knew what she was waiting for.
“I’ve been telling you I didn’t know why Catherine was going home at three o’clock that afternoon. Catherine left work early that day because of the argument. She left early and was killed by a drunk driver.”
“You are a wonderful hysteric,” said Ann with what sounded like sincere admiration. “You have, until the last five minutes, displayed an ability over the past two years we have been talking to block out reality. It’s a challenge. Maybe I’ll write an article for the Florida Journal of Psychopathology. I would focus on your depressive hysteria. With your permission of course.”
“Permission granted.”
“Do you have any idea of why you have given me all these secrets, this cornucopia of bitter fruit at the very end of our time together today?”
“I just wanted to tell you. I don’t want to talk about them. Not today.”
“Congratulations,” she said. “We’ve made a significant move. We’ve added guilt to your depression. What we need now is a long session and a reasonable supply of biscotti without hazelnuts. My confession. I really don’t like hazelnuts. I’ve got you down for next Monday. Can you make it this Wednesday too?”
“Yes.”
Lew got up and put his cap on his head.
The phone wasn’t ringing when Lew got back to his office. There was no new mail under his door. He had no papers to serve for the Sarasota law firms that he regularly worked for. He needed something to keep him from climbing back in bed. He decided it was time for Joan Crawford. He had selected A Woman’s Face and Daisy Kenyon from his stack of tapes.
Someone softly knocked at the door. Lew considered not answering. Another soft knock.
Lew opened the door.
The man looked tired. He needed a shave and a haircut and a clean shirt. His right hand tightly gripped the handle of a duffel bag. Under his left arm was a painting of the jungle of a city night.
Lew stepped back and Victor Lee stepped in.
