Exes

"Maxie, bubele! How ya been, kid?"

Max Segal got hugged, not by his mother or father but by Dr. Tony Natale, police shrink, one of Max's closest friends--if, indeed, Max had any close friends at all.

Tony Natale had been a longshoreman in Brooklyn at the age of 16, a foot patrolman at 21 and, at 32--Max's age--a police shrink, the result of going to school at night for about a hundred years and earning his Ph.D. in psychology. Now, at 47, Natale counseled burnt-out cops and earned a fifth of what he could have made in the private sector. Natale had enormous, contagious energy and enthusiasm, a hopeless Brooklyn accent and happened to be the only adult male not a relative whom Max allowed to hug him. Max figured the hugging was an Italian thing, which was not to say the Jews weren't huggers, because they were, only with Tony, it was different.

Natale's office had been moved from the ancient hole in the wall he had occupied when Max met him seven years ago to a nice, modern hole in the wall at One Police Plaza, the impressive $58,000,000 red-brick building near the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. Max had brought along a brown-bag lunch, hoping to pick Natale's brains about the Smiley and Petlin cases, though he frankly doubted that Natale could suggest anything that Max hadn't thought of already.

"So, Max, how's the family?" said Natale. "How's that kid of yours, eh?"

"Terrific, Tony. Sam is just terrific," said Max. "You wouldn't believe the things he's saying now."

"And Babette?" he said. "How's she?"

"She's, uh, terrific, too."

A wicked smile from Natale. "Uh-oh," he said. "What's going on? Marriage on the rocks?"

Max shrugged.

"How long you guys been married now?" said Natale. "Five years?"

"Seven."

A throaty chuckle.

"The old seven-year itch, eh?" said Natale. "You playin' a little hide-the-pepperoni on the side?"

Max shook his head and managed a weak smile.

"No, no, nothing like that," he said. "It's just...I don't know...over, I guess. We don't seem to enjoy being with each other anymore."

Max was surprised. He hadn't intended to say that much to Natale. But then, he hadn't intended to say that much to Joanie Jarvis, either. Natale was looking at him expectantly, with an encouraging half-smile on his face.

"I don't know how something as great as, as ... hot as what I had with Babette could have degenerated to what it is we have now," said Max miserably. "I mean, I just don't understand how it happened. Do you?"

"Sure, I do," said Natale cheerfully.

"Yeah?" said Max. "Tell me."

"It won't do you any good," said Natale.

"Why won't it?"

"'Cause you're not ready to hear."

"Tell me anyway," said Max.

"OK," he said. "Well, what happened was fear of intimacy. The old incest taboo. Things got a little too cozy, OK? Babette started looking a little too much like family, and you heard when you were a kid that you weren't supposed to hump a member of your family, so you stopped feeling sexy with her."

Max smiled on one side of his face.

"You don't like that explanation?" Natale said. "OK, here's another way to look at it. You two got a little too close, OK? A little too vulnerable. Being vulnerable is scary. So, rather than risk being really hurt in case one of you ever dumped the other, you both pulled back to a comfortable distance, figuring if you ever got dumped, it wouldn't hurt so much. Only problem is, you can't maintain any marriage worth having from a safe distance. And the real irony is, pulling back didn't keep you from being hurt, either."

Max slowly raised his eyebrows and spread his hands.

"I don't know, Tony," he said and sighed. "I just don't know. Maybe you're right. Who knows?"

"Meaning," Natale said, "you ain't buying either one of those, right?"

"It's just that ... I don't know," said Max. "It's just that we used to be so much in love, and now we aren't. That's what kills me. I mean, what happened to love?"

Natale looked at Max a moment, still smiling, his gaze stopping politely at the surface of Max's face. And then his gaze continued on through Max, right through the flesh of his face and through his skull and out the back of Max's head, back toward the wall at the rear of the hole-in-the-wall office. His smile faded slowly, like an orange sun sinking gradually into the ocean, as he waded into his own private torments.

"Love," said Natale, the smile now completely faded, "is the self-delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex."

Max said nothing, uncomfortable with the seriousness of Natale's tone.

"When we meet a potential mate, we can see her quite clearly for a matter of minutes," Natale continued. "Then our view is obscured by a rosy fog made up of our own dreams, our fantasies, our expectations, our hopes. After we've been with that person for a while, for maybe a year, the rosy fog is replaced by another one, a gray one, made up of our collected hurts and grievances. After those first few minutes, we never see the real face of our beloved again."

"Yeah," said Max. He felt that he was talking not to his friend but to a dark entity that was using his friend as a medium, speaking through his lips.

Natale gradually pulled himself back from wherever he'd been. The smile returned to his lips, the twinkle to his eye.

"Hey," said Natale, "at least I ain't bitter, right?"

"Right," said Max. Natale's own marriage of 20 years had ended recently in a messy divorce. Max had been told it was Natale who'd done the splitting, but now he wasn't sure.

"I just follow John Dillinger's advice," said Natale.

"What's that?" said Max.

"Never trust a woman or an automatic pistol."

"I wouldn't carry an automatic if they paid me," said Max, focusing on the more comfortable caveat.

"Good boy," Natale said. "And listen, if things with Babette don't get better, get the fuck out."

"You serious?" said Max. It seemed odd advice from a shrink, odder yet from someone who knew Babette and presumably liked her.

"Hell, yes, I'm serious," Natale said. "Come and stay with me. I'm having the time of my life, kid."

"That so?" Max said dubiously.

Natale nodded, smiling wickedly.

"The singles world is a fucking seller's market for guys," he said. "I'm getting more ass than a toilet seat."

"Yeah?" Max said wistfully. He hated hearing about anybody who was having good sex. "Aren't you afraid of AIDS?"

"Nah," Natale said, shaking his head.

"You use condoms?" Max said.

"I hate condoms," Natale said. "Fucking with a condom is like fucking inside a goddamn scuba suit. I'd rather get AIDS than wear a condom."

Max frowned. Natale exhaled slowly, collapsing his lungs.

"That was a stupid thing to say," Natale said. "I don't know, maybe I got an unconscious death wish. To punish myself for all the great sex I'm getting now."

Max shrugged. Natale brightened again.

"Seriously, Max," he said. "These girls are totally unself-conscious about their bodies. To them, fucking is as natural as eating or sleeping or pissing. And they come in about thirty seconds. Do you know how long it used to take me to make Rochelle come?"

Max shook his head. He didn't know and he didn't want to. Before the Segal baby and the Natale divorce, the two couples had hung out together. And Natale's wife, Rochelle, had been like an aunt.

"Hey, Tony, I didn't come here to talk about making Rochelle come," said Max, irritable. "I came here to talk about a couple of cases we got."

Natale nodded. "I'm sorry," he said contritely. "I tend to get a little carried away sometimes."

"Right," said Max. "So listen, you been following the Smiley and Petlin cases?"

"Some," said Natale. "Enough to get the general drift."

"We've been proceeding with the idea it's the same perp," said Max. "And with the idea he's a fag."

"Sounds reasonable," said Natale, "seeing as how both victims were naked. It's unlikely the killer was a woman. Women don't tend to kill men. They aren't strong enough is the main reason. Now, as I recall, you never found a murder weapon, the cause of death in both cases was severance of the carotid artery, there was post-mortem disfigurement of the face and the killer is presumed to have taken his time before leaving the crime scene."

Max nodded. "Yeah. So?"

"Well, let's see," said Natale. "Killers who bring their own weapons to a crime scene are what the FBI calls organized. They're planners. Stalkers. They enjoy the hunt. Killers who disfigure their victims' faces tend to know them pretty well. Neck wounds are characteristic of homosexual homicides, by the way...."

"Yeah," said Max, "that was one I knew."

Natale nodded. "OK," he said, "killers who kill sadistically and slowly are older--in their thirties, say. They feel some mastery of the situation. That's unlike teenagers and killers in their early twenties, who feel threatened by their victims and need to dispose of them fast. Oh, and killers who spend lots of time at the crime scene usually live nearby.

(continued on page 166)Exes(continued from page 88)

"In mutilation murders, which are very common, as you know, whites kill whites and blacks kill blacks. And most killers by far are male and under the age of forty. So ... you're probably looking for a highly organized white male homosexual in his thirties who knows his victims well and lives nearby."

Max nodded, impressed. "All this comes from profiling, right?" he said. "The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit."

"Right," said Natale. "But the idea behind profiling started a long time before that. You remember the Mad Bomber?"

"Sort of," said Max.

"In the Fifties, a guy they called the Mad Bomber had been terrorizing New York City for years. Sixteen years, I think it was. A Greenwich Village psychiatrist named James Brussel studied photos of the bomb scenes and letters the Bomber had written. Then he told the cops to look for a heavy, foreign-born, Roman Catholic, eastern-European man between forty and fifty years of age who lived in a city in Connecticut with a maiden sister or aunt, that when he was apprehended, he'd be wearing a double-breasted suit and--get this--that the jacket would be buttoned."

"So what happened?"

"The Mad Bomber was apprehended in Waterbury, Connecticut," said Natale. "His name was George Metesky. There was only one detail in his profile Brussel got wrong--Metesky was living with two maiden sisters, not one. And, yeah, at the time of his arrest, Metesky was wearing a double-breasted suit. Buttoned."

Max chuckled appreciatively and shook his head.

"Anything else you can tell about my killer?"

"Yeah," said Natale. "One."

"What's that?" said Max.

"He ain't gonna stop at just two," said Natale.

•

"Holy shit," said Natale, opening the door, looking Max over and seeing the suitcase in his hand. "You really did it. You left Babette."

"That's right," said Max. "I did."

"I can't believe you actually did it."

"Well, believe it," said Max, "because you've got a new roommate."

"Son of a bitch," said Natale. "What finally did it? What was the last straw?"

"A mocha éclair," said Max.

"A mocha éclair," said Natale admiringly. "Perfect. A mocha éclair is a valid issue over which to end a marriage. C'mon in. Make yourself at home."

Home was a small one-bedroom apartment in the West Village. Natale had been separated from his wife for almost a year, but his apartment looked as if he had just moved in. There were no pictures on the walls, no curtains on the windows, no homey touches. Unopened cartons of books stood everywhere.

Natale thought it best to lay down some rules: He and Max would go 50-50 on groceries and liquor. If Max stayed past a week, they would split the rent and utilities. Natale would sleep on the water bed in the tiny bedroom, but Max could reserve it on 24 hours' notice for sleep-over dates. The rest of the time, Max would occupy the convertible sofa with the worn armrests in the smallish living room.

"So," said Natale, studying his new roommate eagerly, "ya think this is really split city, or ya think you might get back together?"

"How the fuck should I know?" said Max. "I've been here only ten minutes!"

"You're right," said Natale. "Max, bubele, you've done the right thing. You are not gonna regret it; mark my words. There is so much pussy out there waiting for you, in six months you won't even want it anymore."

"I don't want it now," said Max.

Natale looked at Max, alarmed.

"Tony, I didn't leave my wife and child because I wanted pussy; I left because my marriage was intolerable."

"Of course, of course," said Natale. "But wait till you see what's out there. Have I told you about Cheryl?"

"Cheryl?" said Max. "Who's Cheryl?"

"Who's Cheryl?" said Natale and cackled wickedly.

He went to an ancient desk, opened the top drawer, withdrew a thick stack of Polaroids and thrust them at Max.

"This is Cheryl," said Natale.

Max looked at the Polaroids. They were all taken with a flash and they were all close-ups. Some featured a woman's small but nicely shaped breasts, with and without a lacy black brassiere. Some featured a woman's nicely shaped buttocks, with and without black bikini panties. Some featured perhaps the same woman's pelvic area, with and without the selfsame panties. Some featured internal views of a vagina that could have interested only a gynecologist. There was not one picture of the woman's face.

"These are all Cheryl?" said Max.

Natale nodded proudly.

"These are all tit, tush and pussy shots," said Max. "Why aren't there any pictures of her face?"

Natale frowned, walked over, took the pictures out of Max's hand and looked them over with great interest.

"You're right," he said. "There aren't any pictures of her face."

"Why is that?" asked Max.

Natale sighed.

"I dunno. I guess I must be unconsciously depersonalizing her to distance myself from her and any chance of deeper involvement."

Max nodded, as if he understood.

"Why distance yourself?" he said after a while.

"Because I know how seriously to take her," said Natale.

"How seriously?" said Max.

"Not at all," said Natale. "She's a nice girl and a great fuck, but she's...."

"Yeah...?" said Max.

"Kind of trashy," said Natale.

•

"I tell you about this new girl I met?" said Natale, cautiously wedging two more dirty dishes into a sink already stacked above the rim with dishes that were teetering precariously.

"Cheryl, you mean?" said Max.

"No, no, Cheryl was the one I showed you Polaroids of," said Natale. "This one's Cathy. I met her last week at the salad bar at the Korean's around the corner."

"I don't think you've mentioned Cathy to me," said Max patiently.

"Anyway, I gave her my number at the Korean's and she's been calling me practically every day. She's taking me to the opera tonight. La Bohème."

"No shit," said Max. "I didn't know you liked opera, Tony. I see there's a whole side of you I know nothing about."

"You kidding me?" said Natale. "I hate the opera. But afterward, I plan to bring her back here and fuck her eyes out."

"Ah."

"So, if you wouldn't mind, kid," said Natale, "I'd appreciate it if you could arrange to be elsewhere between, say, ten-thirty and, I dunno, two o'clock."

Max sighed. "Sure, Tony."

"Thanks, Max. I appreciate it, I really do."

"Hey, it's your apartment. I'm the guest."

"No, it's your place, too, kid; I mean that," said Natale, continuing half to himself. "I figure after I fuck Cathy, I'll kind of sound her out about the possibility of having a threesome."

"With who?" said Max, frowning, trying to gauge the parameters of Natale's hospitality.

"With Cheryl," said Natale.

"Oh."

Max was both relieved and disappointed. "Tell me something, Tony."

"Yeah?"

"What if you go to the opera with Cathy, you come back here, you go to bed with her and you discover you really like her? What happens then?"

Natale shook his head emphatically.

"Never happen," said Natale. "Either she'll want to make some kind of commitment to a relationship that I'm not ready to make or else she'll want me to spend money on her that I don't have. I just want to get into her pants and then into a three-some with Cheryl."

"You know something?" said Max. "This is women's worst fantasy of how we talk about them."

•

About the time Max figured La Bohème would be getting out, he left Natale's apartment and began a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood.

He wasn't quite sure how he wanted to kill the three and a half hours and resented having to do it. Being asked to leave while Natale entertained ladies in bed was something Max didn't have time for in his life. If the separation continued, he was really going to need to get a place of his own, as much as he couldn't afford to be renting two apartments. Maybe he could handle a sublet.

Max realized there was time now to see a movie, which he hadn't had in months. Hell, he had time to see two movies, but he didn't really feel in the mood for movies tonight.

He walked along Sixth Avenue and turned east on Eighth Street, making his way past the largest assemblage of shoe stores in the free world, through throngs of people who by day sold insurance and airline tickets in New Jersey and by night put on black leather and chains and pretended they were heavily into kinky sex.

Max was depressed. The investigation of the Smiley and Petlin cases was going nowhere. If the killer were an attractive blonde, that would cut the number of suspects in the tristate area down to maybe 50,000. The only way they were ever going to find her was by an act of God. Murder, as homicide cops often said, was the easiest crime to get away with.

His separation was a source of constant anxiety. How he was handling it with his parents was to avoid telling them about it. If it progressed to divorce, he supposed he was going to have to say something sooner or later. He did not relish explaining it to them.

He missed his son. He missed holding the boy on his lap and reading to him and inhaling the fragrance of his newly shampooed hair. When Sam wasn't being a complete pain in the ass, he was unbearably wonderful. Max was always trying to sneak hugs, kisses and feels with him in the same way he'd done with girls when he was in high school.

When he got home late from work, he would often wake Sam up to take him to urinate, not so much to prevent bed wetting--Sam had never wet his bed since being toilet trained--but because it was a chance to cuddle with the sleepy child while carrying him to and from the bathroom. At such times, Max propped up his dozing son at the toilet, aimed his wee-wee hard-on down toward the toilet bowl and contemplated the no-longer-far-off time when the boy would be using his erections for more than pissing.

He was all too aware of how critical a period this was in the molding of Sam's personality. Although Max and Babette were struggling with their own present, it was their son's past they were now forming, the foggy period Sam would look back on decades from now in order to discover the sources of his unhappiness as an adult. Max wondered just how badly his leaving home would damage Sam.

He wondered what it would do to him. He wondered how he'd survive if the separation became permanent. He wondered how long it would take for Babette to acquire a lover and how he'd feel about it. He wondered how he'd feel if Babette's lover moved into the apartment. Their apartment. His apartment, for Christ's sake; it was his before he'd even met Babette. He wondered how he'd feel about another man's marrying Babette and trying to play father to Sam.

This thought made Max's forehead tighten, his chest constrict. The image of his son with another father was infinitely more painful than that of his wife with another husband. If another man tried to cuckold him with his son, Max would tear the fucker to pieces for his presumption, literally drag him out of the apartment and kick the living shit out of him.

Maybe Babette wouldn't remarry. Maybe she wouldn't even rush to find another lover. Because, despite the way she'd been acting toward him, underneath all the hurt and anger, he suspected she still loved him. Underneath all the hurt and anger, he loved her as well.

He thought about how they'd met. Another serial killer, a weirdo who called himself The Hyena, had been stalking and killing young women. Babette had gone downtown to One Police Plaza--an unexpectedly contemporary and tastefully designed building with a landscaped sculpture garden--with information about the killings, information that she claimed to have gotten psychically. She walked past Max in the courtyard of One Police Plaza, their eyes met and--whammo!--the thunderbolt struck them both. He'd never been so immediately or so strongly attracted to anyone in his life.

Then he'd made the unpardonable blunder of observing that she was staring at him. She'd fled, hurling herself into a taxi. He saw the cab start up and knew he couldn't let her ride right out of his life. He threw himself across the hood of the cab. The vehicle screeched to a stop, the driver burst out of it, ready to clobber him, so Max shoved his shield in the guy's nose and told him if he didn't shut the fuck up, he'd fucking book him for harassing an officer of the fucking law, which shut the guy up and made Babette giggle and get out of the cab. If ever there were such a thing as love at first sight, that had certainly been it.

So where had love gone? How had the passion and tenderness they'd both felt in that first year descended to the banal and ugly scenes that now made up their marriage? How had a king-sized bed, prized for the opportunities it afforded for sexual acrobatics, degenerated into a convenient place to hide and not risk accidentally touching while sleeping?

Perhaps it was just that the fresh white excitement of romance and lust had shriveled under the scorching banalities of running a household and raising a child. Or maybe Natale was right. Maybe love was merely the self-delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex.

Max went into a bar on Sixth Avenue and had several beers. When he finally got back to Natale's apartment, it was after two, and Natale was alone and looking pensive.

"So how was La Bohème?" said Max.

"Tuhriffic."

"And how was Cathy?"

"Tuhriffic. She just left."

"So you got into her pants."

Natale nodded without enthusiasm.

"Was it fun?"

Natale nodded. "It was fun," he said. "Predictable fun. No surprises, Max. I already knew everything she was going to say, before, during and after fucking. I'm too old for surprises. I already knew how she was going to smell, to feel, to sound, to taste. In the unlikely event I get to like her, I know how it'll go bad, too--the hurts, the guilts, the resentments, the accusations. I know the dialog, Max; I know every fucking word--I've heard it that often. I swear to God, I walk down the street and see a cute girl, I don't just have a sex fantasy about her like other guys, I have a fucking Reader's Digest condensed version of our entire affair, complete with breakup, before we've reached the end of the block. It's a special curse that comes with experience."

"Well, at least it saves a lot of time and money," said Max, hoping to lighten his friend's mood.

"Yeah," said Natale, unlightened.

"So did you sound her out about three-somes?" said Max, the dutiful high school buddy pumping for details.

"Yeah," said Natale. "She didn't go for it."

"Awww," said Max.

"She did allow me to handcuff her to the bed before we had sex, though. That was no surprise, either, by the way."

"Why'd you cuff her to the bed?"

Natale shrugged. "I dunno. I got two pairs of cuffs is why, I guess. You know something? I ask every girl I bring back here if she wants me to cuff her to the bed." Natale turned to look at Max. "So far, not one has said no, Max. Not one."

"Really?" said Max, impressed.

"Really," said Natale. "I don't understand that. I mean, we're talking first-date situations here. I'm a guy they don't know. I could be anybody. I could be a sadist, OK? I could be a fucking killer. Not one of them has said no, Max."

"Strange," said Max.

"I mean," said Natale, "is that due to their desire to surrender responsibility for the act of sex or to an unconscious desire to be violated? You tell me that."

"I don't know," said Max.

"Neither do I, Max," said Natale. "Neither do I."

•

"Tonight," said Natale, "is Cheryl's birthday."

"That's why you're wearing the suit?" said Max.

"Yeah," said Natale. "You know, I realized in all the time I've been seeing her, I never once took her anywhere decent. So, as a surprise, tonight I'm taking her to a real fancy Italian restaurant, Toscana."

"That's nice."

"Yeah. She's getting all dressed up. She's really excited."

"That sounds really nice. You know something, Tony, underneath, you may not be such a bad guy, after all."

"Thanks, Max," said Natale. "By the way, you think it might be possible for you to kind of disappear from about ten-thirty to, say, one o'clock?"

Max shook his head and heaved a mighty sigh. "No problem," he said.

•

Max returned at half past one, figuring he'd give the birthday girl an extra half hour in the cuffs. Natale was sitting on the convertible sofa in his suit, his tie undone, looking drunk and dazed.

"Uh-oh," said Max. "What happened? Dinner a disaster?"

Natale shook his head. "No, as a matter of fact, dinner was great," he said. "Cheryl was knocked out by Toscana. I've never seen her happier."

"Then why are you looking like that?"

Natale shook his head almost imperceptibly. "I don't know," he said, "maybe there's something wrong with me. We were drinking champagne and having so much fun, I suddenly got this perverse idea. I told her to take off her panties under the table and hand them to me...."

"Yeah," said Max, trying to visualize it.

"She did, of course. Just reached up under her dress and slid them down and handed them to me. Which got both of us very turned on."

"I'll bet," said Max.

"But after a while, I started feeling bad about it, you know? I felt like I'd degraded her and I wondered why I'd done it. I figured it was because we'd begun to get kind of intimate in the past couple of weeks and it was too threatening to me, you know? I needed to do something to cheapen what I'd started to feel for her."

"Yeah...."

"So I had another glass of champagne. But the more I drank, the guiltier I felt. I couldn't stand the feeling, so I rationalized that she deserved being degraded because she was trash."

"Yeah...."

"Problem is, when my patients do that, I call it retroactive deserving and I don't let them get away with it. I can't let myself get away with it, either."

"OK...."

"So to make up for degrading her...I asked her to marry me."

Max's eyes widened. "You're kidding."

"Oh, no, I'm quite serious. She accepted, of course. We toasted our engagement with more champagne. I called over the owner and told him I had just proposed. He sent over another bottle on the house. Cheryl is more deliriously happy than any human being has a right to be. I think I just made the worst mistake of my entire life."

•

When Max opened the front door of Natale's apartment, he was startled to see the girl. She, on the other hand, did not seem at all surprised to see him.

"You must be Max," she said.

She was maybe in her early 20s, slim, blonde and rather pretty.

"And who must you be?" said Max.

"Cheryl," she said.

Cheryl. His roommate's fiancée. It was not surprising that he hadn't recognized her. He'd seen photographs of her, but they had not been of her face.

"Cheryl," he said. "I've heard a lot about you."

He was unable to look at her without getting bombarded by subliminal flashes of the Polaroid nudes.

"Did you hear our news?"

"Yes," said Max, intrigued that the engagement was still on. "Congratulations."

It made him uncomfortable that he'd seen her bare breasts and buttocks and a split-beaver shot of her vagina before he'd even met her. He felt an intimacy with her that might prove awkward, that might tempt him to behave toward her in an inappropriately sexual manner. He wondered if she knew Natale had shown the pictures to his buddies. He wondered if she'd care. Maybe she wouldn't. Maybe, as Natale had said, she was trash.

"I just think Tony's such a wonderful guy," she said.

"Really?" said Max. "Why do you think that?" They both looked startled, then laughed simultaneously. He hadn't meant the question to come out in quite that way. But he was often mystified why male friends of his who consistently pooped on women were so adored by them.

"I mean," said Max, "I know Tony in a much different way than you know him."

"Well, I should hope so," she said, giggling.

"Yeah. But what I mean is, what is it that you like so much about him?"

She furrowed her brow. "Well," she said, "he's real thoughtful. I mean, to propose to me, he took me to this real expensive Italian restaurant and everything...."

"Yeah..." said Max, tempted to point out that it was the only place he'd ever taken her and that the proposal was the fruit of guilt, not planning. "What else?"

"He's real smart about what makes people tick. He's told me stuff about myself that's been real helpful."

Natale entered from the bathroom.

"Hey, Max, I didn't know you were here."

"Yeah," said Cheryl, "we've been having a nice talk. Max has been asking me what I see in you."

"If you can't get your best friend to run you down," said Natale, "who can you get?"

•

"I got to be honest with ya, Max," said Natale, "I'm very disappointed."

"In what?" said Max, his mouth full of linguine and clam sauce.

He'd had only about two hours of sleep between the night tour in which he and Caruso had cleared the Perfecto Gomez case and the following day tour in which they'd unsuccessfully interviewed four more women in Petlin's address book, looking for the blonde, looking for anyone at all whom Smiley or Petlin had known in common and coming up with a big, fat zero, and he was not in the mood for any of Natale's disappointments, whatever their source.

"I'm disappointed in the fact that you met my fiancée right here in this very apartment two whole nights ago and you haven't said word one about whether you like her."

His fiancée. Referring to her not as Cheryl but as his fiancée was a bad sign, Max thought, a very bad sign, indeed.

"I like her," said Max. "I do like her. I mean, what's not to like? She's young, she's pretty, she's, uh. ..."

"Yeah...?"

Max tried to think of more selling adjectives, then shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Tony," he said. "You just can't show a guy split-beaver shots of a girl and tell him she's trash, then suddenly announce you're engaged to her and expect him to accept her as this--what?--virgin goddess or something."

"Maybe you're right," said Natale. "Yeah, you're right. I never shoulda shown you those pictures. I don't know why the hell I did that. No, who am I kidding? I do know why I did it."

"You do?"

"Yeah," said Natale, "it's the classic male-bonding ritual--depersonalizing the female by focusing on her body, guaranteeing there'll be no personal connection by having no pictures of her face. It's the perfect misogynistic act, I swear to Christ. It's absolutely the perfect misogynistic act."

"If you say so."

"No, it absolutely is," said Natale. "The greater the threat, the more extreme the measures we mobilize to combat it. And this young woman, Cheryl, is quite a threat, Max, quite a threat, indeed. She's young, she's beautiful, she's sexy, she's smart--"

"She's smart?"

"Oh, yes, Max," Natale said, "she's very smart. At times, she's even profound. You oughta hear some of the things she comes up with."

"OK, tell me some."

"OK, let me think," Natale said, looking up and off to the side, doing a high-speed search of everything Cheryl had said in the past few days, editing for the trailer. "Well, just yesterday I said to her, 'God bless you, Cheryl,' and she answered, 'She has already.'"

Max regarded Natale warily.

"'She has already,'" Natale repeated, a look of fond reverence on his face.

Max nodded, prepared to let it go, then decided he cared too much for his friend to do so.

"Tony, I've got to tell you something," said Max, "and it may come as a big shock to you, in view of the state you're in, because I see now that you're a very sick puppy: Calling God She isn't smart or profound; it's stupid. It wasn't even smart or profound twenty years ago in the Sixties, when other people were doing it. I mean, I was twelve years old and I knew that calling God She was neither smart nor profound, it was only cute--spelled K-U-T-E--like signing your name with a little smiling face. Does she do that, too, sign her name with a little smiling face?"

"Why are you doing this to me?" Natale said, a pierced Julius Caesar to his Brutus. "Why are you being so cruel?"

"I'll tell you why," Max said. "Because I'm your best friend, Tony. Because I'm worried about you. I think you're in terrible trouble. You've divorced your wife and you've found a cute young girl who's a quarter century younger than you who's good to you in bed, and instead of just enjoying that situation for what it is, you've blown it up into something unreal that is going to burst right in your face and hurt the hell out of both of you. Frankly, I was a little uncomfortable when you started showing me naked Polaroids of Cheryl and obsessing about getting Cathy into a three-some with her, but you know what I am now, Tony? I'm nostalgic for those discussions. Do you remember what you told me in your office about love? 'Love is the self-delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex,' you said. You couldn't possibly have picked a better illustration of your point."

Natale stared at Max a moment, then laughed a mirthless, bitter laugh.

"This is really ironic, Max," he said, "you know that?"

"What is?" Max said.

"Your attacking my union with Cheryl so cruelly, tonight of all nights."

Union? His union? It was even worse than he thought.

"And why is that so ironic tonight of all nights, Tony?" Max said gently.

"Because tonight was the night I had planned to ask you to be"--Natale paused briefly for dramatic effect--"an usher at my wedding."

An usher at his wedding. An usher at his wedding. As stupid and kute as he thought Cheryl was, and as unutterably opposed as he was to their marriage, Max was absolutely devastated that Natale was considering inviting him to be an usher at his wedding, not his best man.

"Max looked at the Polaroids. They were all close-ups. There was not one picture of the woman's face."