"But he didn't seem to have any real inner resources. You couldn't trust his word. You couldn't count on him. One reason I didn't want children is that I couldn't imagine him being a good father. I couldn't imagine him working at whatever job he had to because his kids needed to be fed. I couldn't imagine him actually being a man. I would have said he didn't have the courage to shoot someone."

"Doesn't necessarily take courage," I said. "Weakness would do. Fear. Desperation."

"Yes," Susan said, "of course."

She smiled. I could tell she was smiling as much from the sound of her voice as I could from the look of her face in the rain-dimmed car. It didn't sound like a happy smile.

"Did he have a gun when you knew him?" I said.

"I don't think so, but it would have been a nice accessory for his self-esteem."

"Which was a little shaky," I said.

"Yes."

"Was he in the army?"

"No."

"Does the name Buffy mean anything to you?"

"I think she was my successor," Susan said.

"Carla Quagliozzi?"

"No. Brad's been married several times; I only knew the next woman. But you must understand that the Brad I knew needed to be with a woman. Since many women would find him initially attractive, but finally insufficient, I imagine there have been quite a few."

"His parents alive?"

"No."

"You mentioned a sister, went to Bryn Mawr."

"Yes, Nancy."

"Know where she is?"

"Bedford. She's married to a dentist."

"Know her married name."

"Ginsberg."

"I guess she's not trying to pa.s.s," I said.

Susan didn't comment. She ate a clam instead.

"Any other family," I said.

"He has children," Susan said, "from other marriages. I don't know anything about them."

We finished our supper. I got out and emptied the clam cartons and other debris into the trash barrel. The rain seemed a little harder now, and the wet smell of it mingled with the strong smell of the salt marsh. I stood for a minute and smelled it, and felt the rain, and looked at the swamp water, its obsidian surface dappled by the rain. Then I took a deep breath and got back in the car.

"Obviously none of my business," I said. "And obviously a sore spot, but if you knew what he was, why did you marry him?"

Susan didn't reply for a while. I could see her imposing control on herself. I knew her so well I could think along with her. Hard questions were part of what she did every day. If she could regularly ask them, she ought to be able to answer one or two. And even though the question was out of line, she had opened the door to all of this by inviting me in that evening when we sat in the Bristol Lounge listening to music and liking each other. She imposed patience upon herself and it showed in the tone of her answer.

"Of course I didn't know his failures when I married him," she said. "He seemed a great catch. Football player. Big man on campus. Money in the family. I learned of his shortcomings during our marriage and finally they were enough to cause our divorce."

"How about me?" I said.

"Excuse me?"

"What was there about me that made you love me, besides my reputation as a world-cla.s.s lover?"

"I didn't know that about you," she said.

"But you soon learned, didn't you, my proud beauty."

"Oh my," she said.

"But besides that?"

"I've never thought about it," she said.

"Aren't you in the think-about-it business?" I said.

"About other people," she said softly.

I waited. This was risky. But the whole thing was risky. If I was going to help her get through this, I needed her to think about herself. She was smart as h.e.l.l, and she was tough as h.e.l.l, and if she thought about herself in this context for a while good things would emerge... Maybe. The rain came down hard on the roof of the car. A station wagon with fake wood sides pulled in beside us and a man and woman and three children piled out and scooted through the rain for Farnham's. Far out at the edge of the salt marsh I could see the running lines of a power boat as it edged along toward where Hog Island would have been had the day been sunny and clear. I waited. Me and Carl Rogers.

"You were, are, the most dangerous person I've ever known," she said.

"'That was it?"

"I don't know. That's what seems to bubble up when I think about you. I'd never met anyone like you. You were obviously a good man, and you were nice, and I found you attractive, but you were so dangerous," she said.

"So it wasn't just my open Irish punim."

"No."

"Did you know that when you, ah, consummated our relationship?"

"I knew it the second time around."

"After Russell," I said.

"No, after Dr. Hilliard."

"The San Francisco shrink."

"Yes. It was Russell's attraction too."

"I turned out not to be dangerous enough?" I said.

She shook her head.

"Not that," she said.

"What?"

She shook her head again and didn't speak.

"You want to stop talking about this?"

"Yes."

So we did.

On the drive home, she seemed to go quite deep inside herself. I sang all the lyrics to "Lush Life" for her and she didn't even ask me to stop.

chapter twenty-six.

I TALKED WITH Nancy Ginsberg at ten in the morning in the living room of her semi-colonial home which attached via the garage to another semi-colonial home with which it shared a one-acre lot in a development called Bailey's Field in Bedford.

The room was bright. The colors were quiet and coordinated. The pieces of furniture went together calmly. There was a piano in one corner of the room and a large color photograph of the children, two boys and a girl, sat on top of it. There was a fireplace on the back wall, faced in gray blue slate. It was clean and new and looked as if no flame had ever soiled it.

Nancy was appropriate to the living room. She had on a pink cashmere sweater, a single strand of pearls, a gray wool skirt, and low heels. Her hair was dark and medium long. Her makeup was understated, except around the eyes where there was a lot of bluish shadow. Her figure was good. Her nail polish matched her lipstick. She wore a very large diamond ring and a wedding band encrusted with diamonds. She served coffee in small cups on a red lacquered j.a.panese tray. The cups were decorated with j.a.panese landscape art.

"Most of my cups have advertising slogans on them," I said.

She smiled.

"You must be single," she said.

She was sitting very straight on the forward edge of the sofa with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. The coffee was on a low table in front of her. I liked her knees.

"Sort of," I said. "I'm with Susan, ah, Hirsch. But I buy my own cups."

"Susan Hirsch? Brad's first wife?"

"Uh huh."

"Is that how you know Brad."

"I suppose it is," I said. "He was facing a lawsuit and Susan asked me to help him out."

"You're not an attorney?"

I had told her on the phone that I was a detective.

"No," I said.

"What sort of trouble is Brad in now?" she said.

"Well, the ah, precipitating occasion was a lawsuit alleging s.e.xual hara.s.sment."

Nancy Ginsberg smiled and shook her head.

"Why am I not surprised," she said.

"He have a history of s.e.xual hara.s.sment?" I said.

"No, not really. He's just so unaware. He probably doesn't know what s.e.xual hara.s.sment is."

"Have you seen him recently?" I said.

"No."

"Do you and he get along?"

"Oh we get along. He's my big brother and I have always had a kid-sister crush on him. But..."

"But?"

"Well, we've had to sort of cut him off," she said. "Joel likes him. Everybody likes him..."

"Joel is your husband?"

"Yes."

"And everybody likes Brad, but...?"

"But n.o.body can afford him. He always needs money. We gave him money, thinking maybe if we bailed him out once..." She shook her head. "Finally we had to say no."

"How did Brad take it?"

"It was awful. Brad pleaded with Joel..." She paused, thinking about the scene. "But we've got three kids to educate," she said. "We had to say no more."

"When was this?"

"Oh last year sometime, maybe longer, maybe a year and a half."