“A Shirley Temple, please” Paul said.
“A hard-boiled man like yourself?” Gard laughed.
Paul didn't answer the question. He told Henry not to forget the cherry. Gard shook his head.
“Oh, by the way.” Gard fished a check out of his suit pocket and placed it on the bar. “For today's meeting. I'll mail a check for double that every week, as agreed."
Paul didn't look at the check. I wanted him to, but I couldn't exactly force his eyes down to the bar top. “Thanks."
Richard was left holding the conversational bag, so he decided to leave.
There was a lot to learn from Paul.
I tuned out while Paul was enjoying his Shirley Temple and wandered back to my office. I could have ported myself there, but that kind of thing became disorienting after a while. The more the Brain Hotel seemed like real life, the better.
I poured myself a glass of Brain Chivas Regal and read through a notebook of some Association notes from last year. The notes were perfect; exactly as I'd recorded them months ago. But the Chivas was only as good as I remembered it.
After a while, the notes all seemed to blur together. A lot of numbers, a lot of places, a lot of words and letters. It started to bore me.
I made my way back down to the Hotel lobby in time for Paul to meet Gard's mistress up on the screen. It was not unlike watching a movie, especially when our new client entered the scene.
“Susannah Winston, Paul After."
There was a pause. A long, awkward pause. Hell, I was getting ready to say something when Susannah finally broke in.
“After what, Paul?” she asked, smiling.
“Charmed to meet you, Ms. Winston."
I noticed Paul's hand lingering on Susannah's. Mine would have too, believe me. I tossed back another gulp of Brain Chivas and took a closer look.
Susannah Winston had chestnut hair, fashionably bobbed to a sharp point on both sides of her prettily squared jaw. Her nose was slightly upturned, as if to clear way for her lips-full and dark red. A man in his twenties would consider her the antidote to marriage: one single, sensuous reason to stay single forever. And a man in his thirties or forties would think of her as a luscious packet of instant infidelity. Richard Gard looked to be pushing forty.
Susannah was much, much younger. Large round blue eyes and a mouth that curled upward like a smile, even when she wasn't reacting to anything. Even doing something as mundane as lighting a cigarette. I could detail the physical attributes below her neck, but it would be redundant. I could see the death-drop curves beneath those polyester slacks as clearly as if she was wearing a bikini.
“What can I do for you?” Paul asked.
“I used to date the wrong kind of boy, and now one them wants to murder me,” she said, then wrapped her lips around her cigarette.
Richard looked away, as if he didn't hear. Instead, he asked, “Anybody up for a drink?"
Susannah looked at Paul. “I'll bet you're a gin-and-tonic man, aren't you?"
“Just tonic,” Paul said. “No ice."
Good boy. I'd warned him about boozing it up on the job in the real world.
Susannah waited until Richard had returned with the drinks-plain tonic for Paul, two gin-and-tonics for Richard and Susannah. Apparently, these people were big on gin. Me? I couldn't stand the stuff-always gave me a wicked hangover the next day. Then again, this was probably because I only used to drink the cheap stuff.
The three made their way to the living room and sat down-Paul in a plush loveseat, Susannah and Richard on a long, spare couch without any extra pillows.
“I haven't even told Richard the entire story, to be honest,” Susannah said. “I wanted both of you to hear everything. I'm sure it hurts him as much as it hurts me."
Richard heard that, all right. He glanced at Susannah, gave her a warm, large smile, then looked back down at his drink.
“I'm from a small, yet substantially wealthy family from the suburbs of Boston,” she said. “My father made his fortune after World War II, when he invented a military tracking device that, to this day, is considered state of the art."
She let that sink in and continued, “I grew up in splendor, was sent to private academies. Smith College, eventually, where I majored in Victorian literature. A colossal waste of time. All of it. And I don't say that lightly. All I wanted was a real education-one that would teach me the way the world really worked. That's what I needed. Not emerald-studded bracelets and pretty pink dresses.
“I received that education soon enough. The year after I graduated Smith, I spent a week in New York City with some of my classmates-courtesy of my father, of course. We stayed at the Royalton, had our pick of restaurants and Broadway shows, four-star everything. It was a perfectly miserable trip."
“Yeah, I hear The Wiz is a real nightmare,” Paul said.
Richard's eyes narrowed. “Now look here…"
“No, it's all right,” Susannah said. “I guess it does sound like a pathetic sob story. Poor little rich girl doesn't get her way. But you haven't heard the part that makes me cry, Mr. After. At least allow me that."
Paul nodded deferentially.
“One night, my girlfriends and I decided to see the seamy parts of town, the kind we'd certainly never see at Smith. We took a cab down to the East Village and walked into a jazz club. I met a boy there-his name was Chris. He was skinny, his clothes were ten years out of style and his fingernails were dirty, but I let him buy me a drink. To be honest, it was exciting."
“And sure to anger your parents,” Paul said.
Susannah looked down at her shoes. “Precisely. I was looking for a different kind of education, and here was a man who presented himself as the crash course. So I never went back to Boston. I moved in with Chris-who turned out to be a pot-dealer, a television repair shop janitor, and sometimes, when he was in the mood, a novelist. Of course, all I focused on was the novelist part-even though he never let me read a word. For a sheltered Smith girl, he was Jack Kerouac. Until he raped me."
I'm sure she had been saving this for the right moment. Both Paul and Richard did the exact same thing: lowered their drinks and averted their eyes, as if ashamed for the entire male sex.
“Oh, he made such a fuss about apologizing, blaming the drink, his frustrations with being unknown. But nothing could explain away the act. The first chance I had, I ran to a nearby diner and called my father to beg his forgiveness and ask for train fare home. But my mother answered. It turned out I was too late."
“He came looking for you?” asked Richard.
“No. He'd already dropped dead from a stroke."
Susannah took a sip of her drink. I noted how much care she took not to leave any of her lipstick on the glass. Must be hard to drink that way.
“When I arrived home, I found my mother had pulled a Sylvia Plath."
Paul and Richard said nothing. They lowered their heads even further.
“But then I discovered Dad had forgiven me, in his own way. Weeks after I'd told him I was staying in New York, he had his will changed, and I soon discovered I was a half-million dollars richer."
“That was all he had left?” Paul asked. “For an inventor of something as important as…” He faked a pause, as if struggling to remember. He was trying to make her give away an extra detail.
It didn't work. “No, that was all,” Susannah said, and took another clean sip from her glass. “The government basically stole the patent, and probably gave him a million to shut him up. Part of me didn't even want to take the money-I didn't enjoy earning it through my parents death, or for that matter, that my father had earned it inventing a tool that sent thousands to their deaths in Vietnam."