Skin Deep

'So I did.'

'What's her name?'

'She's got a lot of names.'

'Not the best character reference, is it?'

'Eleanor, I'm not checking her out for a security clearance. She's a girl, that's all.'

'Ten years old? Twelve?'

'All right, a young woman.'

'How young? And what do you mean, half of one?'

'How's what's-his-name?' I said.

'Don't start,' Eleanor said. 'You know perfectly well what his name is.'

The salad arrived in the nick of time. We both chewed. It seemed safer than talking. While she was using her bread to mop up the plate, I said, 'So. You watch the show.'

'Sure. Who doesn't?'

'I don't, for one. What's it about?'

'The usual bang-bang. Screeching tires and breaking glass, ladies in distress, dope dealers, and Central American dictators. The same guest stars as every other show on the air. Stupid dialogue. Lots of commercials telling us what we're missing in life.'

'And you give it an hour of your time every week.'

'It's my time,' she observed. 'And that Toby's really something.'

'The premise,' I said. 'Swallow once or twice so you don't drool on your blouse and tell me the premise.'

She looked down. 'You gave me this blouse.'

'I know.' I'd felt a pang in my heart when I saw that she was wearing it. 'It goes with your skirt,' I said. I hadn't given her the skirt.

She glanced at the skirt. 'His name, as you know perfectly well, is Bart.' She sipped her 7-Up. 'You really haven't seen it? Not even one show?'

'Not even the credits.'

She pushed her salad plate to one side. 'Well,' she said, 'it's not easy if you haven't seen it. It's like Toby's not really human.'

'You're telling me.'

'No, listen. He's a machine, and so is this big black car he drives. It sounds terrible, and I'm sure it is, but Toby gets his strength from the car. Neither of them can do much of anything if the other isn't around.'

'Who?' I was getting confused.

'Toby and the car. It's like Hercules and Antaeus. Remember Antaeus?'

'Sure. He had to keep his feet on the ground. Hercules totaled him by lifting him first. A little like sumo wrestling.'

'Well, that's like Toby in the show. In the car or around it, he's invincible. But get him away from it and he's just normal. And if you keep him away from it long enough, he begins to get very weak.'

'Weak barely describes it.' The waiter delivered the entrees with a flourish: lamb for me and something that was all vegetables for Eleanor.

'A lot of people watch it.' She used her salad fork experimentally to pick up something long and green.

'A lot of people eat zucchini, too,' I said. 'That doesn't make it any good.'

She chewed a minuscule amount. Eleanor believed in tiny bites, spaced far apart. Something to do with the digestive juices that she'd attempted to explain to me over a number of meals. It had taken months to make her understand that thinking about my digestive juices actually slowed their work.

'If High Velocity were a vegetable,' she said a trifle maliciously, 'it would be a zucchini. A long, racy, highly phallic zucchini with metallic pinstripes.'

'That's very enlightening.' My lamb tasted like plywood. It had to be me. The Black Forest Inn's lamb is good enough to make you feel that sheep are superfluous.

'So,' Eleanor said, 'who's the girl?'

I put down my utensils. 'Is this why we're here? So you can conduct a pop quiz on my personal life?'

'You're the one who brought her up,' Eleanor said. She exhaled slowly and laid down her fork. 'No,' she said. 'We're here because I wanted to see you.'

'A girl got killed,' I said. 'No, not that girl, another girl. She got beaten to death. And she was a friend of Toby's.'

'Friend. That sounds like a euphemism. And what about the other one?'

'She's a euphemism, too. It's the career of the nineties. Professional euphemism. You can get a degree in it now.'

'Dispensing with my jealousy for the moment, you're saying that you think Toby might be involved.'

'I guess. I don't know. Do I look like I know? Toby's complicated.'

'He's an actor,' she said as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

'He's a white-knuckle sadist.'

'Gosh,' Eleanor said. She never swore. 'And he looks so sweet.'

'I wanted to see you, too,' I said.

She waved it away. 'Simeon, do you ever wonder whether this is a healthy profession?'

'You mean as in I could get killed?'

'As in you have to hang around with so much scum. You can't touch pitch without getting dirty, or something like that.'

'It's not exactly like that.'

'But you know what I mean, and anyway it's the Bible.'

The waiter arrived. He laid a third 7-Up in front of Eleanor as if the glass containing it were the Holy Grail, plunked my white wine down with a blunt thud, and retired. Every table in the restaurant fell quiet, the way a room full of people will sometimes. Eleanor occupied the silence by lining up her silverware in more precisely parallel lines. They were already as parallel as a railroad track.

'I'll bet you were a champion at dodge ball in elementary school,' she said. 'Do you know how long we've known each other?'

'Eight years, seven months.'

'And twelve days. And you still duck the issues.'

'What's the issue?'

'See?'

'Swell. The issue of the moment is whether I can do my job without being corrupted. Maybe not. And then, maybe I'm corrupt already.'

'We're all corrupt. That's the point we're supposed to work backward from.'

'Eleanor, you sound like John Calvin.'

'The average kid sees twelve thousand murders on TV by the time he's ten.'

'He?'

'Or she.' Eleanor shook her head impatiently. 'If nits were a cash crop, you'd get rich picking them. Simeon, we're too old to waltz.'

'And if that metaphor were any more mixed, it'd be an omelet. Cognac?'

'Oh, bull,' she said, startling me. 'I've never heard so much hot air.'

'There we are,' I said. 'So that's why they call it the Windy City.'

'Fine. Get some cognac. Get a whole bottle.'

'What do you want from me, Eleanor? Somebody's dead.'

'A lot of people are dead.'

'Here,' I said, holding out my bread plate. 'Have a nit.'

'Simeon.' She put her hand on mine. 'Why does it have to be you?'

'It doesn't. Somebody will do it, maybe. But I saw her.' I gently bent Eleanor's index finger back. 'All her fingers were broken. Three times.'

'Maybe you think your fingers won't break,' she said, giving mine a jerk upward. 'Maybe you think you can't lose blood.'