Dream Girl(27)

Not that time is a precious commodity for him now, stuck in bed, not writing.

“That’s a legal issue. The attorney I work for—he’s not really much on intellectual property, but he could find someone—”

“I don’t think someone is actually going to come after me for money.”

“Then I’m sorry, Mr. Andersen, I don’t understand. What do you think is happening?”

“Someone is harassing me. Someone wants to upset me. But I don’t know why. I thought, maybe, my second wife—she waived all her rights to my writing income, which proved not to be the smart thing to do. Technically, Dream Girl was marital property.”

“And where is your second wife?”

“In New York, as far as I know.”

“So for her to call from the local radio station or to mail a letter with a Baltimore postmark—” The private eye was smiling, sympathetic, but he still feels foolish.

“There’s another woman.”

“Well, there were two more wives, based on your Wikipedia page.”

He doesn’t like this, although he supposes it’s pro forma for an investigator to investigate. “No, we parted on good terms.” Close enough to the truth. “But I had a girlfriend”—ugh, the word sounds so horribly teenage. “We were living together in New York until about a year ago, but it wasn’t really a formal arrangement. She sort of showed up and never left. Then I sold my apartment and bought this place. My mother was ill and I assumed I would be here caring for her for a while. She died.”

“I’m so sorry.”

There is a refreshing frankness to everything she says, but maybe it’s because he’s been spending so much time with Victoria, whose voice is always sliding up into uncertainty, and Aileen, whose responses are always a little off, as if she’s in a slightly different conversation.

“Thank you. Anyway, my ex—Margot—showed up here recently.”

“And?”

“And she went back to New York on the train. With a ticket I bought. But Margot’s very sticky.”

“Sticky.”

She repeats the word without judgment and yet he feels judged. He is judging himself. He sounds silly and paranoid. He sounds not unlike Margot, who was always convinced that people were speaking about her, plotting against her. “What was that woman saying to you?” she would demand when they got home from a party. Or: “I happen to know for a fact that someone on the committee changed my table assignment at the luncheon.” Manufactured drama in a life where the only drama was who was going to pick up the tab for Margot’s lifestyle. Which, it now occurs to Gerry, is a pretty big dramatic conflict, Maslow’s hierarchy.

“Margot is an unusual woman. She’s sort of like a virus, a cold, that moves from host to host. The only way to get rid of her, usually, is to introduce her to her next—” He doesn’t want to say victim, because he hates thinking of himself that way. Besides, Margot isn’t a conscious schemer. She is helpless, in her own way. One can’t blame her for how she is. It’s like faulting a flower for trying to get water.

“Do you know the Cheever story?” he asks abruptly.

“I know quite a few. I majored in English.”

“Where?”

“No place as fancy as Princeton.” Another reminder that she looked into him. “Washington College in Chestertown.”

Why hadn’t he found a woman like this, Gerry thinks. Someone who reads, but is capable and down to earth. Such broad shoulders—she’s probably very strong. She should be his nurse.

“I’m thinking of ‘Torch Song.’ The woman who shows up when men are dying. I think that’s why Margot is always being … jettisoned by her men. She’s quite beautiful. She can be good company. But she always seems to be waiting—”

He did not want to finish his own thought.

“For men to die? Is she a black widow? Does she have a string of dead men in her past? Does she inveigle her way into people’s wills?”

“No, no, of course not. She’s harmless. Relatively.”

The PI sighs, although not in a mean way. “Look, I could take your money. I like money. I always need money and you seem well fixed. But, alas, I’m too ethical to take on a job where I don’t think I’m going to get any real results.”

“There must be something you can do—”

“I could generate some reports on your second wife, or this Margot—get their financials, check around to see what they’ve been up to recently—it would be more than you’d get from a Google search, but not that much more. Or I could sign you up for the big ticket, surveillance. Maybe twenty-four/seven security, which is costlier still. But—this building is pretty secure. I don’t know what kind of security system you have in here, but there’s a front desk and the elevator has a camera. No one’s coming and going here without being seen.”

“Do you believe me? About the calls, the letter?”

“Sure,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

Because my mother had hallucinations before she died of dementia and I could be headed down the same path. But Gerry, having presented such a physically depleted self to this woman who radiates health and competence, does not want to reveal that his mind could be going, too.