The Genius

“Too late,” I said.

“No. Sorry. I can’t.”

” ‘The Procedure’?”

“Worse.”

” ‘The Decision’?”

“I’m not going to tell you. But I will tell you that there was a lyric comparing a woman’s body to a field of flowers.”

“I think that’s very poetic.”

“I thought so, too.”

“Although,” I said, “Dalf said that the first man to compare the cheeks of a woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it may well have been an idiot.”

“In bed.” “In bed. Well,” I said, “I think your parents got off easy.”

“By the time I was old enough to rebel they were too busy imploding to notice. It really pissed me off.”

“Did you write a song about it?”

“About their divorce? No. I wanted to write a poem, though.”

” ‘The Separation’?”

“I’d call it ‘A Pair of Assholes.’ “

I smiled.

“I took photographs, too,” she said. “God, what happened to me. I used to be so creative.”

“It’s never too late.”

She got very quiet.

“What,” I said.

“What you said. Ian used to tell me that.”

I said nothing.

“When I complained about my job he would tell me that.” She paused. “It’s not like that’s a very unusual thing to say, but I remember him saying it a lot. Maybe because I complained about my job a lot.”

I said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I can think about him now without getting hysterical. That’s a positive step.”

I nodded.

“I think about him now and it’s warm, rather than hot. You know? Like he was a really good friend. He was. You don’t want to hear about this.”

“I do if you want to talk about it.”

She smiled, shook her head. “We have work to do… .”

“What was he like?”

She hesitated, then said, “He and my dad were good friends. I think my dad took it harder than I did. I sort of expected that something would happen to him eventually. That’s the nature of the job. I didn’t expect that, though. Who expects that?”

I said nothing.

“Anyway, that’s that,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Now I’m on the rebound.” She grinned at me. “You were just a temporary stop on my road to recovery.

“Whatever I can do to help.”

She smiled, started turning pages again. I watched her for a little while. Eventually she saw me staring and looked up. “What.”

“I don’t know why you’re unhappy with your job,” I said. “To me it’s way more interesting than what I do.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“It is.”

“If you say so.”

“What would you do, if not this.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never had a good answer to that part of the question. I wanted to do this and now I’m here. I had an idea that this was going to distinguish me from my dad. His father was a cop. My uncle is a cop. My mother’s father was in the Secret Service. Naturally, I didn’t want to become a cop, so I thought, oh, yeah, well, but a DA—now that’s different.” She laughed. “That was my final attempt at rebellion. I’ve accepted my fate.”

I said, “I think I felt the same way about my father.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I mean it,” I said. “Growing up I saw him as basically soulless and profit-driven—which he is. Unfortunately I chose the one line of work possibly more soulless and more profit-driven.”

“If you really feel that way, then why don’t you get out?”

“Lately I’ve been wondering. I don’t know what else I would do.”

“You could become a prosecutor.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a little old to start over.”

“I thought it was never too late.”

“For me it is,” I said.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked. “Why do you resent him so much?”

“My father.”

She nodded.

I shrugged. “I can’t give you one single reason.”

“Then give me a few.”

I thought. “After my mother died, I felt like a pet that belonged to her, and that he got stuck with. He barely spoke to me, and when he did it was to give me an order or to tell me I was doing something wrong. She was the only wife that he didn’t divorce, and whether or not they would have lasted—I have my doubts—when she got sick, they were still getting along. That’s why he’s hasn’t gotten married since: he idealizes her. I feel bad for him. I do. But I’m not going on Oprah or anything to make up with him.”

“Your siblings get along with him?”

“Well, my brothers work for him, so whether they like him or not, they kiss his ass. Amelia lives in London. I don’t think they have much of a relationship, but it isn’t overtly hostile.”

“That’s your specialty.”

“Correct.”

“You know anger shortens your life expectancy.”

“Then enjoy me while I last.”

She smiled wryly. “No comment.”

AFTER FOUR WEEKS IN MARILYN’S HOUSE the situation had become intolerable. Taking me in was incredibly kind of her, considering that things had already been tense between us before the attack. Although, looking back, I have to wonder if she didn’t extend the invitation primarily to keep an eye on me. If there were clues I missed them. When I returned home late at night, having spent the evening with Samantha, nothing Marilyn said or did indicated that she was silently building a case against me. And really, she had nothing to build on; even if she had somehow been able to eavesdrop at the warehouse, she would’ve come up with nothing concrete to hold against me. Everybody flirts, don’t they? If I flirted with Samantha while we worked, I did so under the assumption that it wouldn’t produce results. She had made that plain. So then what was Marilyn thinking, those nights when she greeted me in a kimono, pulled me up to the “boudoir” (her word), and threw herself on top of me? Did she think she would catch a glimpse of me with my eyes closed and learn the truth? She may have a keen nose for betrayal, but she’s not a mind-reader.

Maybe I’m being uncharitable. But I can’t help thinking that she set up the whole cycle of guilt and expectation in order to trap me, to make me ruin us, so that she could stand back from the wreckage and accuse me. The longer I stayed with her, the more indebted I felt; the more indebted I felt, the more resentful I felt; the more resentful I felt, the harder it was for me to pretend I was excited when we made love, and the more obvious my detachment became, the more petulant and biting she acted—which in turn fueled my guilt, resentment, detachment, etc.

It’s amazing how fast things can collapse. For the longest time, I had been unable to imagine anybody better suited to me than Marilyn. Now, though, I had basis for comparison. When Samantha and I talked I felt better—about myself, about the world. She was no Pollyanna; perhaps more than anyone, she was familiar with the awful things people did to one another. But she believed that not giving up the fight was what kept us from devolving; she believed that right and wrong had no expiration date and that five dead boys were worth giving up her lunch breaks and evenings and spending them with a man who made her uncomfortable. She was her father’s daughter, and you know how I felt about him.

With Marilyn I found myself repelled by the effect we had on each other, the way we feasted on scorn. Irony has its place. But it can’t be everywhere. And it disturbed me greatly that I could not recall a single unironic conversation between me and Marilyn. Everything that had transacted between us—seven years of dinners and sex and arm-in-arm appearances and talk, reams of gossip—started to feel artificial. I never wanted to look stupid in front of Marilyn. How well could she really know me? How well did I really know me? I never wanted to feel stupid, either. And that’s simply not realistic, not unless you turn everything into a joke.