by Susan Isaacs
“Well, that happens here on the average of three nights a week. Larry usually winds up calling me a bohemian. He thinks that’s the cruelest thing you can say to anyone.”
“But we don’t fight. You know that.”
“I know that, Judith. But you have to understand that that’s almost beyond my comprehension. I mean, I cannot begin to imagine being in the same room with Larry for more than an hour without discovering at least five major flaws in his character. So we fight a lot. But then it’s over, finished. We can screw or go out for a pizza.”
“But our relationship is different. I mean, I don’t...”
“You mean you don’t have any lovers to take up the slack? Judith, I’m not saying my way is right and yours is wrong. Look, I average a new man about every eight months, and while it does add a certain degree of enjoyment, it surely doesn’t make my life any more meaningful. But I have them, and when I periodically get my act together and do an article, I have my work. I’m not saying I’m in any way measurably happier than you, but at least my energies are diffused. And I’m not putting all my eggs in Larry’s basket. He’s sweet and he’s interesting and I love him, but he’s in no way equipped to take responsibility for my happiness.” She sighed and scratched the slightly upturned tip of her perfect nose. “Look, tell me what happened. I want to be able to understand.”
So I told her, giving her a word by word, gesture by gesture account of Judith and Bob in Their Bedroom. She concentrated intently, nodding and saying “Mmm” at several strategic junctures. “See why I’m upset?” I asked finally.
“I see why you had the fight,” she said. “But I don’t see why you’re still so miserable. He didn’t pack his bags, did he?”
“No. He even gave me a peck on the cheek before he left for the office. But it wasn’t sincere.”
“It wasn’t sincere,” she repeated to the ceiling, a WASP Tevye talking to a blond God who might possibly comprehend why people behave with such gross excesses of emotion. Then, peering at me again, she added: “You want nooky and sincerity too?”
“Yes. And a flat stomach.”
“Done,” she proclaimed. “Now, would you care to tell me where you were last evening? I’d be pleased to listen.” She took her hands and pushed her long auburn hair behind her ears. “Unless you really were shopping at A&S, in which case you can skip it.”
“No. I was at the Duncks’ house, interviewing them about Fleckstein.”
“Well, I’ll be,” she breathed. “You really did something.”
“You didn’t think I would?” I asked lightly, trying to sound indifferent.
“Judith, I don’t have the energy to make assumptions and then deal with the consequences. But let’s say I find it interesting that you actually whipped it up to visit the Duncks. Now, I have to go upstairs and take a shower because the exterminator is coming.” She gazed at me seriously. “Larry was lying in bed last night and thought he heard termites breathing. That shows the level at which we concentrate on each other. Look, walk me upstairs and talk while I’m getting ready.”
We climbed the plastic staircase and ambled down the long hall to the master bedroom. I flopped on the bed, the room’s only piece of furniture, a huge square covered in a white furry throw that rested on a white lacquered platform, about a foot off the floor.
“You made your bed already?” I shouted to Nancy, who already had the water running in the bathroom.
“No,” she yelled back. “Larry makes it each morning before he goes to work. He’s afraid someone will come in and see I use pastel sheets. God, the shame of it. Now, what happened at the Duncks’?”
“Do I have to shout?”
“Yes.”
In my loudest voice, I gave a synopsis of the interview, as well as a finely drawn description of Dicky’s toenails.
“That has to be one of the most nauseating things I’ve ever heard,” Nancy remarked. She walked to the wall opposite her bed and kicked it gently. A door swung open, revealing a large walk-in closet with built-in alcoves for shoes, handbags, and sweaters. “I’d take two nose-pickers and an ass-scratcher to that any day. Oh, speaking of the Family Fleckstein, I saw Little Cupcake yesterday.”
“I don’t believe you. I really don’t believe you,” I said. “I’ve been here for at least twenty minutes and you haven’t said a word about him. You know how interested I am in the murder, Nancy.”
She pulled on a pair of burgundy corduroy jeans and, zipping up the fly, gazed at me with an expression midway between mild pain and resigned tolerance. “It was you, not I, my dear friend, who dashed to my doorstep in a veritable snit because you had a fight with Bob. Therefore,” she cleared her throat, “I merely sat and listened to your plaint, virtually brimming with sympathy and warmth, while you spewed out all the venom in your system.”
“Eat it,” I suggested. She ignored me, turning her back and pulling a cream-colored turtleneck over her head. “Anyhow,” I continued, “what did Cupcake have to say?”
“He said ‘Hey, Nancy, baby, how’s it going?’” she replied, forcing her voice to its lowest register and putting on a thick Brooklyn accent.
“Is that how he talks?”
“No. But that’s how he thinks,” she said, her voice reverting to its flower of southern womanhood tone. “In any case, our beloved friend has managed to keep her bony ass out of a sling.”
“Who? What?”
“Mary Alice. It seems that our crackerjack police department, through unstinting devotion and tireless investigation, has come up with the names of four of Brucie’s fuckees.”
“Who? Who?” I realized as I said it that I sounded like an overwrought owl.
“Well, there was his nurse,” she said, holding up a thumb as she began her count.
“That’s Lorna Lewis.”
“Right. I hate alliterative names. They suck.”
“Okay,” I said, not daring to interrupt her flow to examine this latest addition to Nancy’s long list of strange opinions.
“Well, according to the precinct gossip, which, I gather, comes straight from the geniuses on the homicide squad, Brucie was humping her two, three days a week. Now, it seems she had the bad judgment to confide in one of the nurses who works in the office next door, and that broad told the cops that Lorna believed he was going to dump Norma and make her an honest woman. Lord, have you ever heard of such incredible self-deception?”
“All the time,” I said. “What else did Cupcake say about Lorna?”
Nancy disappeared into her closet and returned with a pair of brown leather boots. She placed them on the floor and sat next to them. Then she pointed her toes and aimed for the inside of the boot. “Well, not much else. He did say she didn’t seem so insanely in love that she wasn’t protecting her own ass. Apparently, she’s on her second marriage, and she was in no way going to say goodbye to number two until number three made the break with Norma. Lorna is not one to burn bridges, it seems. But according to this other nurse, she had given Brucie a deadline. If he wasn’t out of his house by Easter, she would stop playing with him and quit.”
“What was so significant about Easter?”
“How should I know? Judith, by now it should be screechingly obvious that all these people are totally off the wall, and that any statement they make is by definition fraught with irrationality. Who knows? Maybe he had plans to stick a cottontail up her ass and photograph it. I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“All right. Anything more on Lorna Lewis?”
“No. Let’s go downstairs. I want a piece of halvah.”
“Feh,” I remarked. “How can you eat halvah in the morning?”
“By opening my mouth, inserting a piece, and chewing slowly and carefully.” We returned to the kitchen, Nancy sprinting delicately down the plastic stairs, me clutching the handrail as I went gingerly from one slick step to another. “Want a bite? This is the marbleized kind. The best,” she declared, her mouth full of the rich, crumbly candy.
“No. Nancy, why don’t you eat something nourishing in the morning? Grits. You could eat grits.”
“Grits taste like ground-up horse shit. Want to hear more?”
“Yes. This instant. Chew fast.”
“Relax. Well, two of the other women I never heard of. One of them belongs to Brucie’s club. Her husband’s said to be the king of preteen fashions.”
“What’s her name?”
“I forget. Some Jewish name.”
“Great. That’s really terrific. I marvel at your powers of recollection. If it was Belinda Jo Slattery, Jr., you’d remember it.”
“Women can’t be juniors. Anyway, it was Naomi Goldberg.”
“Really?”
“No. But if you think I’m going to sit here and take shit from you, you’re whistling Dixie.”
“I would never whistle Dixie,” I vowed.
“I know that.” Nancy smiled. “Do you actually think I could sustain a fifteen-year friendship with someone who even knew the words? Anyhow, do you want to know how they came to recognize this petunia? It seems she’d been over to the Sixth Precinct a few times having fits because she said her neighbors had trained their dogs to crap on her lawn. She wanted them arrested and executed.”
“Oh my God,” I interrupted.
“What?”
“I know who that is. Linda Berman. Fay Jacobs’ husband’s sister. You know Fay, the history teacher at Shorehaven High.”
“So?”
“So, Fay told me about her. She’s supposed to be very attractive and very crazy. And very rich. She’s had all types of plastic surgery, and just because she doesn’t look like Catherine Deneuve, she has about four malpractice suits going. None of the plastic surgeons around here will operate on her any more. The last I heard, she was going to Argentina or some place to get dimples put in.”
“On her face or her ass?”
“I didn’t ask. But Fay told me she’s really bananas. She actually hired a private detective to spy on her neighbors when they walked their dogs.”
Nancy stretched her legs and lifted her feet onto a kitchen chair. “Did Fay say anything about her and Brucie?”
I sat quietly for a moment. Fay had told me about Fleckstein’s overtures to her, about his affair with Jean Burns, and had alluded to others. But nothing about crazy Linda. Perhaps she didn’t have a confidential relationship with her sister-in-law. Or she felt constrained by family loyalties. Or her abhorrence of what Bruce Fleckstein stood for was so great that she simply didn’t want to discuss the subject further. “How did the police get on to her?”
“Well, the homicide people had given them copies of the pictures they found in Brucie’s drawer. They figured someone in the precinct might recognize one of the ladies, since we’re all one big, happy community. So after about forty-eight hours of salivating over the photographs, a sergeant, in a rare moment of lucidity, decided to have a look at the faces and recognized her—the Dog Shit Lady.”
“Did they interview her?” I asked. Nancy had left a small piece of halvah on the table. I ate it. It was delicious.
“Sure. It turns out the pictures were taken in her kitchen. The minute the homicide cop saw the clock over her stove, he realized it was the same one as in the pictures. It seems that she and Brucie were into produce.”
“Produce?” I echoed. “What do you mean, ‘produce’?”
“Produce. Fruits and vegetables. Maybe under all that silicone beats the heart of Mother Earth. There were some great shots of her with carrots and bananas dangling out of her assorted orifices.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “You know, whips are understandable. Leather, chains, all that stuff. But I can’t comprehend bananas. Anyhow, what did she say?”
“She denied the whole thing, even knowing Bruce. Naturally. Then they offered to show her the pictures, but she refused to look. But after a minute or two, she broke down and ’fessed up. She said she hadn’t seen Brucie in six months. She showed up one day at the motel—probably with a suitcase full of kumquats—and he wasn’t there. Then she called his office and he wouldn’t come to the phone. She called the next day, and his nurse told her he had a very busy schedule and he’d call her in a week or two. He never did.”
“Nice guy.”
“The greatest. Anyhow, that was it for Miss Fruit of the Month. The third one was someone named Ginger Wick. Now, come on, don’t ask me how I can remember her name. Did you ever hear of her?”
“No.”
“Neither did I. It seems she owns the lab where Brucie sent all his work. And her husband is some sort of hotshot specialist who only does very esoteric types of dental surgery. Anyway, the cops got her name from some dentist who saw them carrying on in a hotel in Las Vegas. It turns out that she and Brucie had done business over the phone for a couple of years, and one night they met at a convention in Las Vegas. It was love at first sight, according to her, and they broke up about a year ago.”
“How long had they been carrying on?”
“A few months. Brucie finally ended it by telling her that he couldn’t handle the guilt. But he continued to use her lab.”
“Any pictures?”
“She says no.”
“What does Cupcake think?”
“He doesn’t.”
“What about the fourth? You’re obviously saving the best for last.”
“Meg Brill.” A grin spread over Nancy’s face. Her green eyes sparkled.
“Oh, no!” Meg Brill was the class mother of Kate’s first grade. She was short, pudgy woman with fat red cheeks and curly mouse-brown hair, which she wore pulled back into a pony tail—tied with a large colored ribbon to match her outfit. Sweet and friendly, like an energetic beagle puppy, she talked ceaselessly and was always aflutter organizing PTA bake sales and car-wash days. “She’s so sexless,” I exclaimed, and then added, “but that’s not fair.”
“Christ, would you stop being so guilt-ridden, Judith. She is sexless. By normal standards, anyway. And she’s a royal pain. Lord, she’s always calling me, asking me if I can make southern fried chicken for some damned bazaar.”
“How did the police find out about her?”
“She volunteered the information.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. The cops came calling because she was in his file. A patient. Anyhow, they asked her if she knew anything about Brucie, and she began weeping copiously. Well, they calmed her down, and she told them she had had an affair with him about two years ago. According to her, it was your average, run-of-the-mill adulterous liaison. No chains. No clever little torture devices. No pictures.”
“Did the police believe her?”
“Sure. Why not? According to this old detective on the homicide squad who’s taken a fatherly interest in Little Cupcake, they were embarrassed by the whole thing and wished she hadn’t decided that confession was good for the soul. Anyhow, that’s it, at least in terms of what the cops already know. But there are still a few beauties in the pictures that they haven’t identified.” Nancy explained that the police had not yet discovered the identities of either three or four of Fleckstein’s subjects. The reason they were unsure about the precise number was that two of them had their faces covered: one by a mask and another by her hands, placed peek-a-boo style over her eyes. Although Miss Peek-a-boo’s body was startlingly similar to one of the unmasked lovelies, the police maintained a reasonable doubt as to whether the two were indeed one.
“So what have they done?” I asked Nancy. “It seems that all they’ve accomplished is to widen the scope of the investigation. They keep on discovering more and more suspects. Any one of them could have slipped it to Fleckstein. They all had a motive, God knows.”
“I know. But look at it this way. All your information is coming from Little Cupcake.” She stressed the “your,” disassociating herself from the investigation, stressing her role as a conduit.
“You don’t think he’s reliable?”
Nancy put her feet down a
nd shifted back in her chair so she was sitting upright, her posture elegant, regal. “Shit, I don’t doubt that he’s reliable. He’s just limited. Seriously, besides his intelligence, or lack thereof, he’s just another cop. All he’s getting is the station house gossip and a few tidbits from this homicide fellow who’s become his big-ass buddy. And the only reason he’s keeping his ears open is that he thinks I find it amusing, and he does want to keep me amused. Now, if you’re serious, the guy who’s heading the investigation is the one to talk to. For all we know, he might have the case practically wrapped up.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “And what difference would it make if I did?”
“None, I suppose,” I answered thoughtfully, “although I think it was in one of the newspaper accounts.” I picked up the halvah wrapper and began to shred it into an ashtray. “So, in other words, everyone is still a suspect.”
“Yes. I did ask him if anyone had an airtight alibi.”
“So? What did he say?”
“Well, he said that no one could prove that they were in one place with a flock of reliable witnesses between five and seven that evening. See, that’s the problem. Brucie’s office is no more than five or ten minutes from most of the suspects’ houses. An irate husband could tell his wife he’s going up to the can and sneak out and commit murder and then tippy-toe back and flush the toilet. Nobody would ever know.”
“Right. And if some woman’s children are sitting around and watching television, they’d swear she was home, while actually she could have slipped out without anyone knowing. God, I could take on ten men on the kitchen floor while Kate is watching The Flintstones.”
“Why don’t you?”
“That’s when I give Joey his bath.”
“I see. Well, at least you’re growing up. It’s better than your old tune about adultery being ethically repugnant.”
It was getting late, nearly time to meet Joey’s school bus. I resented the intrusion of obligations on my relationships; I wanted to live in a purer world. One of the reasons I adored Bette Davis movies was that she had time, time for Celeste Holm or Miriam Hopkins. I would watch her, cigarette smoking, those glorious protruding eyes focusing on her companion. She would sit back in a restaurant or put her feet up in the living room, and she and her friends could indulge in hours of conversation, uninterrupted by strangers telephoning to inquire if she would collect for the Heart Fund, or by children demanding to be fed or bathed or soothed or tucked in. She could enfold herself in the luxury of friendship undiffused by pediatricians’ appointments, uncomplicated by trips to the dry cleaners and Sunday school car pools.