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    Monogamy: Book III of The Libertine
    Monogamy: Book III of The Libertine
    Monogamy: Book III of The Libertine
    Ebook370 pages5 hours

    Monogamy: Book III of The Libertine

    By Angus Brownfield

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    This is the third book of The Libertine trilogy. A mature Robert Gattling is unprepared for his mate of 26 years, Mardi Johnson, dying before he does. Just apprised of her decision to stop treatment for cancer, he is assailed by a woman he has been only vaguely aware of: Tan Xiaoqing, “Little Blue,” daughter of Gattling’s first wife, Mary Clare Morrison, by her second husband, a Chinese official. Blue, as she calls herself, is conflicted about her racial mixture and somehow blames Gattling for forsaking her mother for Mardi. But when she learns Mardi is dying, Blue’s compassion, plus a growing attraction to Gattling, keeps her in his life while he flails about, trying to make sense of Mardi’s death. He isolates himself in a mountain cabin, where he has a second woman, a retired call girl named Becky Piquot, blunder into his life. She needs rescuing and he obliges. While he’s away in the mountains presumably ordering his life, Mary Clare and Blue, long estranged, are patching things up while Blue sits Gattling’s house. When he gets back from the mountains the two of them are ensconced in his house, and he’s treated to two attractive women hinting they want him. Becky requires further rescuing (rescuing is Gattling’s forte) when threatened by a bad egg from her past life. It boils down to this: will Gattling do a second stint with Mary Clare, continue to rescue the retired call girl or enter a final monogamous relationship with the conflicted Blue? He’s no longer the randy libertine, so the question won’t be answered by hormones, it’s a matter of mind and heart.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAngus Brownfield
    Release dateNov 7, 2015
    ISBN9781310523458
    Monogamy: Book III of The Libertine
    Author

    Angus Brownfield

    Write what you know. I know me and I'm talking to you, reader, in the first person, not the anonymous third person, because when I write I write about me and the world that thrives around me. I wrote decent poetry in college, I couldn’t get the hang of short stories. I finished my first novel so many years ago writers were still sending their works to publishers instead of agents. My first novel was rejected by everyone I sent it to. The most useful rejection, by a Miss Kelly at Little, Brown, said something like this: “You write beautifully, but you don’t know how to tell a story.” Since then I've concentrated on learning to tell a good story. The writing isn’t quite so beautiful but it will do. Life intervened. Like the typical Berkeley graduate, I went through five careers and three marriages. Since the last I've been writing like there’s no tomorrow. I have turned out twelve novels, a smattering of short stories and a little poetry. My latest novel is the third in a series about a man who is not my alter ego, he’s pure fiction, but everyone he interacts with, including the women, are me. My title for this trilogy is The Libertine. Writers who have influenced me include Thomas Mann, Elmore Leonard, Albert Camus, Graham Greene, Kurt Vonnegut and Willa Cather. I don’t write like any of them, but I wish I did. I'm currently gearing up to pay attention to marketing. Archery isn’t complete if there’s no target. I've neglected readers because I've been compulsive about putting words down on paper. Today the balance shifts.

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      Book preview

      Monogamy - Angus Brownfield

      MONOGAMY

      book III of The Libertine

      The Libertine . . .

      Bread to the Wise asks whether Robert Gattling is the most amoral man in nine Bay Area counties, or just oversexed? He’s handsome and charming, but attracts women more because they believe he cares for their wellbeing and sexual pleasure as much as his own. Conversely, memories haunt him that make monogamy seem futile. He’s blown by an ever-shifting wind, and it will take a mentor of superior wisdom and a lover of superior sensuality to anchor him.

      In Río Penitente, as Gattling turns fifty, he has become a near caricature of himself—handsomer than at thirty-five, financially secure, still a magnate for women. He’s haunted by the death of that wise mentor and by that sensuous lover’s rejection, and a jolt of clarity binds those two losses to all the sins he’s committed since his mother’s death when he was six. So he goes on a quest for redemption, choosing as his venue Mexico, where he meets two kinds of fates.

      Finally, a dignified elder in Monogamy, Gattling has eschewed his libertine ways, settling down with a woman who returns his love with interest . . . until she dies prematurely. Now he finds himself tempted to return to his former life style, tempted by three women: an old love, a woman as dangerous as she’s beautiful, and one who is taboo but also the only person who can keep him from becoming a foolish, decrepit Don Juan.

      MONOGAMY

      book III of The Libertine

      A Novel by

      ANGUS BROWNFIELD

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      ***

      Published By

      Angus Brownfield on Smashwords

      Copyright © 2015 by Angus Brownfield

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this eBook.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of any products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please download an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this Ebook and did not download it, or it was not downloaded for your use only, then you should return to the eBook retailer from whom it was acquired and download your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

      I'd make my way through life

      On love and understanding

      From a rich and beautiful wife

      Some people

      Just never seem to get enough . . .

      Some people

      Want salvation, paradise and all that stuff

      But I'm so easy going

      Don't even keep the score

      All I want is plenty, but I will take more

      Mose Allison

      Methus'lah lived nine hundred years,

      Methus'lah lived nine hundred years,

      But who calls dat livin'

      When no gal will give in

      To no man what's nine hundred years ?

      Ira Gershwin

      CONTENTS

      The Libertine . . .

      Prime Blue

      Mardi Madonna

      Gattling In The Dock

      Gattling Blows ‘Taps’

      Fr. MacDonald

      The Blue Beyond

      Becky O’Clock

      Gattling at Siskiyou Summit

      Monkeys and Buzzards

      The Age of Wisdom

      Saving Becky’s Bacon

      Mary Clare Gets the Last Word

      If you enjoyed Monogamy, here are some other novels to sample:

      MONOGAMY

      Prime Blue

      one

      From Gattling’s point of view, I could have dropped out of the sky. A hippie-looking chick is sitting on his front steps with her guitar and backpack, her Apache moccasins and deerskin jumper, he could well believe that.

      I ambushed him coming out of a downstairs door into the postage stamp front yard, the sun not yet shining on Wiley Court, the hills to the east hiding the sunrise. He was in bathrobe and slippers and there I sat on his front steps, half asleep and needing a shower.

      I came out of my sleepy nod when it seemed—one stride closer, two strides closer—the man coming toward me wasn’t old enough to be my mother’s ex. That I might be on the wrong steps flashed through my mind. Then he came within range of my hereditary shortsightedness and I saw the crow’s feet and worry lines and the hairline starting to recede. I also saw, when he stopped short, he had what in a woman would be called a debutante slouch. So he was old enough up close but, at a distance, deceivingly young. Nothing my mother told me had prepared me for the here-and-now Gattling.

      I knew all about the Gattling my mother remembered, or at least I knew as much as she ever cared to tell me. He’s the age my father would have been if he’d lived, he and Mother used to be married, they split because he had an affair with one or more other women—or at least that’s her version. He lives in the Berkeley Hills in a house he bought when they were still married, which must be worth a mil these days. He’s published three novels that I know of—written four, he pitched the typescript of the fourth into the Pacific Ocean as atonement for the death of a dear friend. This meager output in a career that spans forty-odd years. Not what you’d call a prolific writer. He’s respected—one critic referred to his work as Pynchon Lite—but not thought great by the critics.

      I haven’t read his novels. I didn’t want to spoil the image I had of Mother’s great passion.

      What I learned when I confronted him was interesting in itself: though old enough to be my father, , he gave me a Lothario’s once-over. You know, if you’re a woman, that look in a man’s eyes: what’s under the makeup, what’s under the jumper, is there a wedding ring on your hand? What's more, you could see the wheels turning, groping for enough subliminal info to give him the upper hand with Miss X Unknown.

      Why would he need the upper hand? Just in case I turned out to be a slattern who couldn’t wait to be laid? That falls outside the scope of my knowledge of men. Let’s hope the once-over is just habit and he’s aged past the Don Juan years.

      So I took the upper hand before he could. I said, Why did you cheat on my mother? Not meaning to, but sounding stern anyway.

      His eyebrows went up as if I’d slapped him. He was silent a couple of seconds, trying to sort out what I meant. He had no knowledge of me beyond my presence on his steps. I don’t look my age—my kind tend not to—I do look as if I might be Apache or Cherokee or maybe even a Yurok. No dumb cluck, he quickly jumped to an alternative explanation: a halfling, a creole, (aha!) a Eurasian. Clickety, clickety click, the mother of mine he betrayed had to be Mary Clare Morrison. Voilà!

      He must have known I was laying one on him, but he chose to treat the question as a serious one. I was a very unhappy man in those days, he answered, looking out at the Bay, trying not to make it sound like spin.

      Did that give you the right?

      No. No one has that right. You choose to chase skirts, you end the marriage. —So, what are you called?

      I felt I’d taken the upper hand. I’m called Blue.

      Blue, as in the color?

      I nodded.

      Where did you come from? he asked.

      The Number Seven bus. I gave a back-handed wave towards the bus stop where Wiley Court meets Shasta Road. It was a simple-minded answer, part of laying one on him. Almost fun.

      And before that?

      I hitchhiked from LA to the San Francisco Airport and took the BART train to Berkeley.

      Recovering some of his equanimity, he said, You came all the way from Los Angeles to ask me why I cheated on your mother?

      No. I had to get out of LA and it occurred to me I might crash with you for a while. Our having a connection through a third party and all.

      A puff of Bay breeze lifted a lock of his hair. Run a guilt trip on me as a means of getting me to put you up? That’s novel; that’s chutzpah. He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head.

      I was losing my advantage. I fixed him with a stony stare, he returned it with a chummy grin.

      Your mother lives in town; why not stay with her? he asked.

      So, he’d kept track of her, too. But of course; in his circle gossip would include the doings of professors emeriti. I said, I was in LA because my mother wouldn’t have any truck with me unless I submitted to her demands. She expected me to grovel; I do not grovel.

      Sometimes the only way to survive is to grovel—I know. And what did you do in LA?

      I stepped away from my pack and guitar. I figured I might as well look as if I were staying. I hustled; I busked. Mostly I sang on the street. Waitressed a little. Rolled a couple of rich drunks.

      Really. Mary Clare’s daughter. You any good?

      At rolling drunks?

      He said, I was thinking that, too, but I meant singing. Your mother can’t carry a tune.

      I said, In a land of one-eyed men, I was the blind man. I’m not bad on the guitar, though. —Can I stay?

      He stuck his hands in the pockets of his robe. Not a good time. The woman I, uh, cheated on your mother with—her name’s Mardi, just so you know—is upstairs; she’s in poor health.

      Damn. Without a word, and trying not to show disappointment, I picked up my pack and guitar, swinging them onto opposite shoulders.

      There’s a spare bedroom downstairs, though; you could hang out here for a day. Give you time to hunt up something more permanent.

      What was this? Did I signify something more than a nuisance who’d played the guilt card? I said, gambling, because I really was broke and homeless except for my untouchable poker stake, I don’t want to meet your honey.

      He said, She’s been my partner for many, many years, and if you met her under other circumstances you’d like her. She’s about as feisty as you.

      I said, Lots of people would call me crazy.

      A lot of reality will do that to you. I’ve been there and back. —Come on in.

      two

      Mother, hissing into the telephone: How old are you, Blue?

      Hissing back: Figure it out, Mary Clare. How old were you when you had me?

      Do not address me as Mary Clare. I am your mother.

      I said, What is your point, Mother?

      She said, Pouncing on my former husband. Were you trying to humiliate me? You’ve done a pretty good job of it if that was your intention.

      If you and Robert Gattling hadn’t split up, I might have been his daughter.

      He took me through the opening in the hedge. No labyrinth inside, just a compact house, a two story cottage, really. It would be humble were it not for the million dollar view. We reached the bottom floor through a door under a balcony that runs along the south side of the house. On this floor there’s an office—a man’s office, his office—with a large picture window—maybe five feet by seven feet. There is nothing but clear air between it and the Golden Gate Bridge, looming red and regal behind Alcatraz, at the gateway to the great beyond. To the left—it seems close enough to touch—is the top of the Campanile. Towards the center is San Francisco, the Financial District to be exact, the skyscrapers that went up after the BART bond issue passed—friends wrote Mother about it. And of course there’s San Francisco Bay, the center of a smug little universe.

      Across a narrow hallway from the office is a bedroom and bath. Gattling opened it and a smell of disuse wafted out. The room was chillier than the day outside.

      We were standing in the bathroom—or, rather Gattling stood in the bathroom and I in the doorway, when his Mardi appeared, wearing a bathrobe and turban. This turban was a bit like a towel you’d wrap about your head if you just washed your hair. A little too unwieldy for so slim a reed. She was smaller than I expected, smaller than my mother, even, half a head shorter than I.

      Mardi said, I heard voices. She manufactured a polite smile that all the same said, ‘Who the hell’s this strange woman?’

      All at once I got it. She was bald under the turban. She had undergone chemotherapy. I knew, because Mother had, too. I looked at her closely and saw signs of impending mortality, the melting flesh, the look of perpetual fatigue. Gattling’s ‘poor health’ was understatement.

      He said, I was showing the place to Blue, here. She needs somewhere to crash for the night. He turned to me, embarrassed, and said. What are you called besides Blue?

      I said, My given name is Xiaoqing; Blue’s easier. I use my mother’s surname, Morrison.

      This is Mardi— he started to say, just as Mardi said, I’m Mardi Johnson, holding out her dainty hand until I took it. And you would be Mary Clare Morrison’s daughter? She cocked her head like a little bird alerted to a morsel in the grass.

      I nod and frown. Any of what upper hand I was hoping to hold has been thoroughly trumped. I’ve walked in on a very delicate situation: dying is not a time for new people in your life. I need to get out of here.

      Blue’s at loose ends just at the moment, Gattling said. She thought we might put her up for a few days.

      Mardi tries but can’t hide a look of distress.

      I better go, I said, and slid past the woman, careful not to brush her with my pack.

      I promised you the night—

      —Of course, said Mardi. I didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just that I’m a handful right now. It’s not my style, but I can’t help it. She shrugs; you can tell she hates being sick. Perhaps Bobby told you.

      I take it you’ve had cancer. Mary Clare had cancer, too—maybe you heard: leukemia.

      Their expressions say they hadn’t heard.

      But she’s in remission. Or maybe even cured.

      Mardi changed facial appearance slightly, listening to me talk about Mother’s leukemia. It’s been two years in remission and it may be gone. Her skin turned orange for a while because of the drugs and later she lost her hair, like you, but it’s back now. You wouldn’t recognize her. She keeps it short and blond; she looks like Annie Lennox—sort of.

      I could tell they didn’t know who Annie Lennox was, but it made me feel good, knowing Mother looks like her—at least she did when I saw her last; it’s been over a year.

      So, you’ll stay? Mardi said. There is a warmth in her that defies death, it’s an ornament, earned in the trenches.

      If I can do something in return.

      Mardi asked, Can you play blues on that thing? Gesturing to my guitar.

      I couldn’t help but smile. I’d be missing a bet if I couldn’t. Strange as it seems.

      Why strange?

      I said, A Chinese chick playing blues?

      Gattling asked, Do you consider yourself more Chinese than Western?

      When I’m around white people. When I’m with Chinese I’m too white. Story of my life. Or a constant motif. I’m not sure I’m not madder at Mother for divorcing Gattling than I am at marrying Father.

      *****

      Mardi wore no wedding ring, although she had a significant diamond pinkie ring on her left hand and a big-as-an-acorn sapphire on her right. She was, despite the disease eating away at her, quite pretty—in a Blanche DuBois sort of way—and I can imagine when Gattling first met her the kind of woman any man producing testosterone would fall for. Maybe a pocket-sized Ginger Rogers with a square nose and curly hair. Much reduced by cancer. Kě xī.

      She insisted I take a tour of the upper story, lifting the hem of her robe and climbing slowly up the front stairs. There is an even bigger picture window in the living room, a kitchen like the galley on a sloop (Any time you’re hungry just help yourself), no dining room per se, off towards the back two bedrooms and another bath. Ah, but the sailboats on the Bay. The only thing cutting into a hundred and eighty degree panorama is the house across the cul-de-sac, and that cut off only a few degrees. I’d consider living there, if I had the money to buy it.

      I drank a glass of iced tea to be polite and retreated to the lower floor.

      Let me get you a key, Gattling said.

      I said, You’re a trusting soul.

      What are you going to do, cart off my computer?

      You never know, I said, and took the key from him. Can I borrow a phone book?

      He said, ‘There’s one in my office."

      I found the phone book in a bookcase, took it into the bedroom and plunked myself on the bed. Almost immediately I jumped up, drew the blinds on the side looking out on the lawn and opened the windows on the other side, the ones that looked out on the hills and the houses of all the other rich folk who can afford the real estate up here.

      In not much time the sound of a hedge clipper hummed outside.

      I slid off my mocs, pulled off my Levi’s, and plunked myself on the bed again. Once again I jumped right up, rummaged in my pack and retrieved a pair of yoga pants and put them on. Not that Gattling would walk in unannounced. Not that I’d care, it was just a good idea, though I’d have preferred to go bare.

      I was looking in the phone book for places nearby where you can play poker. I had a stash of dough large enough to get me into one pretty good game, and if I found a table with three or four fish, I could make enough to split.

      It’s not that I felt uncomfortable with the situation—I’ve been in worse—it’s that I wasn’t going to hang around a woman dying and a mate grieving (I read it in his face before I knew why he looked that way) and not do anything to help.

      Even though a sneaky little thought seeped into my nasty brain: Gattling would be a catch—with a slight adjustment of expectations. I’d had a sugar daddy before I left China who was as old as Gattling but not nearly as handsome. He was a syndicate boss, a former war lord, and I was his half-breed plaything. If I’d been all white he wouldn’t have had me except as a concubine he put up in a flat somewhere, but since I looked vaguely Chinese I got to grace his arm in restaurants and casinos. Then he traded me away to Las Vegas in a business deal.

      I bet Gattling would never trade me away.

      three

      She must have held the phone away from her mouth, but I still heard a stifled scream. Look: you’re not six, Blue. Your middle-aged by most standards, you went to a world-class university and you know epistemology, cosmology, ontology and all that other crap you studied. If Bobby had got me pregnant the result wouldn’t be you minus the Chinese genes, it would be an entirely different person. Tan Xiaoqing, alias Blue Morrison, wouldn’t exist.

      I had to ask him anyway, Mother.

      I performed before dinner. My street-singing repertoire runs to songs requiring no great range, and in keeping with that I played and sang St. James Infirmary Blues. It occurred to me too late that the words didn’t fit the audience. Stretched out on a long white table indeed.I played as an instrumental It’s a Lonesome Old World in the only key in which I knew it, a key that strained my singing capabilities. That piece wouldn’t have been so good either, given that the singer laments that his ‘someone’ has gone back home, gone back home.

      Gattling and Mardi didn’t seem to notice and I didn’t bring it up. I was so embarrassed, though, I asked for a second bourbon on the rocks before it was offered. I sang a hammy version of Don’t Fence Me In to make up for my insensitivity.

      I set the guitar aside after that. Mardi, who was wearing a really good wig, asked me where I learned all the old songs.

      An old Jamaican musician played in a dive off The Strip in Las Vegas. We got to be friends and he taught me the guitar. He’d get drunk after our lessons and he always ended by telling me he was in love with me.

      Was he? Gattling asked.

      I shrugged. I saw him with other young women, and I think he loved us all.

      After we’d chatted for a while I felt comfortable enough with them to comment that my mother had had to give up alcohol when she was receiving chemo.

      I’ve suspended treatment, Mardi said. She looked me in the eye when she said it, not sad, just solemn.

      So she really was dying. I could think of nothing to say. She filled the silence by saying, The cancer’s everywhere, even in the bone. More chemo and radiation would only make my life, what’s left of it, more miserable.

      I’m so sorry, I said. I struck me, all of a sudden, how much braver she was than I, and what a sad situation I’d walked into. If I’d seen it in a movie I might have cried.

      Mardi sensed my feelings and said, Look at it this way, Blue: I’m in good hands, the hands of my best friend, I’ve had time to tie up loose ends, and the suspense that’s the root of the human condition is about to end. Aside from the pain, I’m almost lucky.

      Except it’s a few years premature, bunkie. Gattling wore knit brows.

      She said, "I didn’t say you were lucky, bunkie. She reached out and touched his hand, managing a smirk. Any guy losing so inestimable a mate as me is very unlucky indeed."

      Gattling didn’t fall for the joke. He looked ready to cry.

      She said, Chef, is dinner ready?

      He said, It’s been ready since yesterday. —It’s my latest mystery dish, Blue. I call it ‘The Green Stuff’ and it’s better the second day.

      As we sat down Mardi said, Bobby said you just came from L.A. Where were you before that?

      Las Vegas for several years. Before that I was in Macao.

      And you were born in . . . ?

      Beijing, naturally. Mother was at the university.

      And your father?

      I said, He was a policeman: not a detective or such, the bureaucratic kind—a manager or executive, I never know the difference.

      Mardi said, Ask Bobby, he was a bureaucrat too.

      Gattling cleared his throat. The executive says, ‘We shall make toothpicks.’ Senior management says, ‘We can make the most money by making wooden toothpicks.’ Middle management says, ‘We can get the best deal on the wood if we sign a contract with a Chinese supplier.’ And the shop foreman says, ‘You need to sharpen the blades on the milling machine every four hundred hours.’

      Wow, I said, you should write a book.

      There are plenty of folks who could explain to you why businesses fail because the people who run them won’t cotton to my model. Micromanagers come out of the woodwork every day. So, I am a prophet in my own land.

      We were drinking wine. It was in a decanter and I don’t know that much about wines, but it stood up well against The Green Stuff, which was a stew with pork and chilies and other, pureed, green stuff. It was strong on garlic and chilis. I had something like it in Tucson once—not as good as Gattling’s.

      Mardi, who ate like a bird, said, Bobby got drummed out of the bureaucratic corps way back when, but he’s a damned good novelist.

      I said, Mother mentioned that.

      Mardi said, Would it be impolite to ask you why you aren’t staying with your mother?

      She doesn’t approve of my life style.

      Mardi said, Humpf. I’m imagining you, a few years ago, in your cotillion gown with the tiara and opera length gloves, the perfect young lady.

      While the debs were waltzing, I became a professional gambler.

      Oh.

      I played high stakes poker.

      Gattling said, Is that why you were in Las Vegas?

      I nodded and took a gulp of wine. It’s also why I’m not in Las Vegas anymore. I likewise was drummed out of the corps.

      Ouch, Gattling said.

      I tried to smile a make-light-of-it smile when I said, There was that, too. Oh brother, was there that.

      Mardi, whose frank nature I liked, said, So what’s ahead?

      I said, I’ve been a cardsharp since I left college. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll never be allowed in another game like the ones in Las Vegas. I’ve been banned. So, it’s time to change careers—or lower my expectations.

      *****

      Mardi, both tired and a trifle tipsy, went to bed not long after dinner. Gattling kissed her more desperately than tenderly.

      When the bedroom door closed he asked, You want a brandy? I’ve got Rémy Martin and Sempé.

      You probably want to get to bed, too.

      He said, I’m not the one who’s sick. It’s early yet.

      I’ll take a Sempé then.

      Do they drink Armagnac in China?

      I said, In Macao you can get anything you care to drink that you can pay for. My mentor preferred Armagnac to Cognac, so that’s what I drank.

      Mentor? He taught you how to play poker?

      He paid for me to learn. You have to lose a fair amount of money to learn to really play poker with the sharks. After that he took an agent’s share of my winnings.

      Agent’s share?

      Twenty-five percent.

      He said, Whoa, a mentor takes twenty-five percent?

      After Mardi’s cotillion remark I hesitate to say sugar daddy. He sort of owned me.

      Does that have anything to do with your winding up in Las Vegas?

      "He got tired of my independent ways. He blamed my mother, who had left Beijing while I was holding forth in Macao. He called me a xiǎozi."

      Sounds nasty.

      I said, It just means ‘brat.’

      Later, after I’d finished the brandy, I insisted on going downstairs. It just seemed right.

      He said, at the front door, Thanks for treating Mardi like a person instead of a victim.

      I said, I’m not smart enough to treat someone like something I don’t understand.

      He said, That makes you smarter than hell. He seemed to mean it, but he was a trifle tipsy too. Still, I smiled going down the stairs.

      *****

      This time I got down to panties and tee shirt. I stuck my legs under the covers and noodled on the guitar—cords and single note runs, some bluesy, some jazzy. I felt good. My stomach was full and I had a slight buzz on. I saw immediately what had drawn Mother to Gattling. Even at his age he had a hungry demeanor, as if there were things he still had to do in this world. I found myself smiling, remembering remarks he’d made at dinner.

      Then I thought about what was happening in his life. The one you love—and it was no trick to tell he loved her beyond the ordinary married couple—is expiring before her time, and there’s nothing you can do about it. When my father died Mother could say that he’d lived a full life and escaped some of the societal ways that could have made him dead sooner. Losing a younger mate must be a little like outliving an offspring.

      Don’t get maudlin, I told myself.

      But I reprised St. James Infirmary Blues and made up some riffs of my own—head music the Jamaican used to call it.

      When I finally turned the lights out, I couldn’t sleep. I lay there thinking impractical fantasies about assuaging Gattling’s hurts after Mardi was gone.

      What a ghoul, I told myself.

      I was a little, the slightest amount tipsy, and I used it to fantasize about the last man I’d made love with, and put myself to sleep the good old fashioned way.

      four

      You just walked up to him and said, ‘Why’d you boff cutesy little Mardi Johnson?

      I’m not that crude. Agitated past ire,

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