Dream Girl(42)

“Sea urchin.” She laughed at the face he made. “Actually it’s even worse—they’re gonads. Not that I mind, but you might.”

Oh, wasn’t she a saucy one.

“Anyway, I don’t want to bore you—I’m a fan. We met briefly at that PEN benefit last year, although I doubt you remember. You were mobbed. And I was just another admirer.”

“I’m not bored. You’d be surprised how not boring it is.” He was sincere. If only all fans simply said this: I won’t bore you, I’m a fan. How lovely that would be. How lovely this woman was. “Remind me of your name?”

“Margot Chasseur,” she said. “Although it sounds as if I wrote Canterbury Tales, the spelling is French. C-H-A-S-S-E-U-R.” Her hedge fund date had approached and she tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow. “Enjoy.”

He watched her leave, taking note of the name, which was unusual enough to track down even in what the old television show had called the naked city, with eight million naked stories. From behind, she was practically naked above the waist and, despite the cold night, she kept the coat draped over her arm, so her shoulder blades remained visible. He could see almost to her coccyx, but it was the shoulder blades that caught his attention. They were sharp and beautiful. A man could impale himself on those shoulder blades. It would be worth it.

“Gerry?” Thiru prodded.

“No memoir. I’m still living, Thiru. I’m nowhere close to writing a memoir.”

“I just wanted to know if you were going to finish your gonads.”





March 15




“TGIF,” AILEEN SAYS cheerily when she brings him lunch. “With Victoria gone, I have three more days to put everything to rights.”

She has not left the apartment since Wednesday, except for errands. One of those involved fetching a small suitcase, as she says she needs to be here 24/7 to get everything done. He realizes he has no idea where she lives, or if there is anyone in her life—family, roommates, a partner.

“I’m sorry you have to, um, work this weekend.”

“It’s fine,” Aileen says. “I’ll put in for overtime. I’m going to assume no one has access to your checking accounts except you? You can just write me a check for overtime. Which is time and a half, by the way.”

Part of him wants to object that she is gouging him. But a larger part of him is so relieved that Aileen has taken over that he would gladly pay her anything. Money is for solving problems. Who told him that? Surely not his mother, who had worried constantly about her lack of money. And not his father.

Margot said that. “Money is for solving problems” was a Margot-ism. Said whenever she wanted Gerry’s money to solve her problems.

“I think I’ll have to tell my accountant, though,” he said. “So they can calculate the taxes. That’s how it’s always worked with my assistants. There’s withholding so they don’t end up having a big tax bill at year’s end.”

“You know what? Once we calculate the amount for this weekend, just write on the check ‘Supplies.’ So it looks as if you’re reimbursing me for something I paid out of pocket.”

“Ooookay,” he says.

Gerry doesn’t want to be a snob, but it seems to him that Aileen speaks differently since what he has decided to think of as the accident. Of course it was an accident. Gerry has never raised his hands to anyone, except in consensual, mildly kinky moments. Sarah had liked a little light spanking. It was her idea and he had to be persuaded. He had felt mildly ridiculous. He doesn’t like women with daddy issues. He has his own daddy issues and he prefers to keep them out of the bedroom.

“What are we doing, Aileen?” he asks.

“Buying time,” Aileen says. “Trying to figure out exactly what happened. Maybe in a day or two you’ll remember and we can take it from there.”

Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so. Gerry wants to do the right thing and he can’t help believing, childlike, that there is a way out of this dilemma that he just hasn’t been able to envision yet. He simply cannot believe he killed Margot, not even if she attacked him while he was in an Ambien haze. Buying time—yes, that’s all they’re doing. Affording themselves the time to figure out the best way to proceed.

“I wonder if I will ever remember,” he says.

“It must have been a horrible shock, something that didn’t even register as a dream,” Aileen says. “That woman sneaking back in here and doing God knows what as you slept. It was only natural to protect yourself. The letter opener was right next to you, as it usually is. What else could you do?”

“If only I had the presence of mind to call for you.” Had he been terrified of making a scene even while in a fugue state? Luke had always said that decorum was Gerry’s fatal flaw, that it would be his failure to ask for what he wanted that would kill him, in the end. You wouldn’t ask for a glass of water in the desert. Yet it was Luke, who never had any problem demanding what he wanted, who had been dead by the age of thirty-one.

“I can’t believe you didn’t hear anything,” he says, then feels guilty for implicitly reprimanding the woman who is now trying to save him.

“I am a sound sleeper,” she says, frowning, as if angry at herself, which makes Gerry feel even worse. This isn’t Aileen’s fault. Margot was crazy. That threat she made—he doesn’t even know what she was talking about. Gerry has an exceptionally clear conscience for a man in his seventh decade. He has hurt some people, yes, who hasn’t? But he did right by his wives; his fortune would be threefold what it is if he had not. Some of the things he has done would not pass muster today, but in the times that he did them they were socially acceptable.