Beyond Eden

7

Taylor

He took a taped statement from Ellie the next day. He arrived in her private room at just after seven in the morning, early enough, he hoped, that her mother wouldn’t have yet made an appearance. Lord knew what the woman would say today.

Ellie smiled when she saw him and held out her hand to him, shy, as a child would to an adult who had been kind to her. He’d thought about his questions, about how to phrase them, and he spoke slowly and gently. Her pitiful tale nearly broke his heart. She’d been abused by her uncle since she was ten years old. He’d told her that she was his sweet little girl and she had to keep being sweet or she and her mother wouldn’t be able to live in this beautiful apartment and she wouldn’t be able to go to her nice private school and play with all her nice friends. At least he’d waited to rape her vaginally until she was nearly fifteen. Taylor didn’t know whether or not he’d sodomized her and he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Uncle Bandy always gave her nice presents, but he hurt her and she was afraid of him. This time he’d made her bleed real bad.

Taylor got all he needed and was just listening to Ellie tell him about her private school and the friends she had there. He delighted in the normalcy of her talk and wished he could take her home with him.

Mrs. Delliah arrived. She was subdued this morning and her clothing was less garish. She was wearing an expensive camel-hair coat over a plain wool dress of expressionless brown. Her face was scrubbed clean and he realized with something of a surprise she wasn’t yet forty. Her red hair, less dubious this morning, was drawn back in a bun. She looked even more like a domestic today, one who wasn’t a hooker on the side. To Taylor’s relief, she didn’t verbally attack her daughter. She was stiff with him, but at least she wasn’t cruel to Ellie. She kissed her and petted her and told her she wanted her to come home.

Taylor said, “I would like to speak with you, Mrs. Delliah, after you’ve assured yourself that Ellie is all right. I’ll wait for you in the hall.”

Ten minutes later, Mrs. Delliah joined him. She looked wary and defiant. He motioned her to a waiting room. He said without preamble, “Your brother is sick. He needs psychiatric treatment immediately. Hell, he probably needed it twenty years ago. He could have killed your daughter. You’ve got to stop this and press charges and see that he gets help.”

She was wringing her hands, scraping her knuckles on the heavy rings. “I can’t.”

“If you don’t, he will continue to rape Ellie. Surely you know that. Didn’t you know that he was abusing her for the past five years? Well, even if you didn’t know, this is different, this is the real kicker. She’s been completely violated now. She has nothing left and soon she will know it and not be able to deal with it. Is that what you want for your daughter? She’ll take the abuse only until she can run away, and then she’ll be alone and on the streets and then it’s drugs and prostitution and God knows what. Is that what you want for her?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“There are organizations to help you. You aren’t stupid, Mrs. Delliah. You can get a job.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand that you are pimping for your brother, using your own little girl. If you don’t press charges, I will report you to the authorities and Ellie will be taken away from you.”

She started crying. Taylor wasn’t moved. She disgusted him.

“Will you press charges or do I see that Ellie is given to a family who will protect her?”

“He’ll kill me,” she moaned, hugging herself now, rocking back and forth.

“Don’t be crazy. Of course he won’t kill you. Tell me his name now, Mrs. Delliah.”

“I didn’t know he was gonna rape her. I didn’t know he was doing things to her, I didn’t! I just thought he—” No, she wasn’t stupid. She was smart enough to stop herself.

He wanted to hit her, but said instead, “Will you press charges?”

In the end, she agreed. He took her to the precinct station and she signed a warrant and her statement. It was late afternoon when Taylor and his partner, Enoch Sackett, went to Uncle Bandy’s address.

Taylor supposed he really wasn’t surprised, but Enoch, tall and thin as a cane, just stood in front of the magnificent brownstone saying, “Shit, Taylor, this guy torments little girls? And he lives here? It looks like a set for the rich and famous. Why? A guy who has all this? Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Uncle Bandy was Mr. Brandon Waymer Ashcroft of the brokerage house of Ashcroft, Hume, Drinkwater, and Henderson, Water Street, New York, New York. He answered the door wearing a smoking jacket that shrieked London, with soft striped wool pants and leather slippers on his feet. He had a handsome angular face, was sitting firmly in his forties, slender, with a manner smooth as vintage Bordeaux. He appeared bewildered by their presence, a neat dark eyebrow edging up as he surveyed them on his doorstep, but utterly civilized. After inspecting their I.D.’s he stepped back and waved them in. They followed him over a beautiful old Tabriz into a study that was all smooth mahogany and built-in bookshelves with uncut heavy books covered in dark rich colors, and the smell of rich pipe tobacco.

“What can I do for you, gentlemen? Please, be seated. Something to drink perhaps? A sherry? Forgive me. Beer?”

“Perhaps,” Taylor said, “you should put on your shoes and leave the Savile Row jacket in your closet. A nice conservative sport coat might be just the thing. An American label. You’re under arrest, Mr. Ashcroft, for the rape of your niece, Miss Eleanor Delliah.”

His bewildered look intensified, his brow furrowed. He appeared to be intellectually insulted. He never lost his smoothness. He worried with a pipe he never lit, a ruse Taylor recognized to give him time to think. He was content to let him think until hell froze over. It wouldn’t do him any good. “I really don’t understand, gentlemen,” he said at last, adding quickly, “I should call my lawyer, I believe.” He also thought he should see his sister, poor woman, for an explanation of this madness.

Taylor agreed.

Enoch winked at Taylor and smoothly cuffed Mr. Brandon Ashcroft, his hands behind his back. There wasn’t really any need, but Taylor wanted this touch of humiliation. The man deserved it. On the way to the station, Mr. Ashcroft told them freely that his poor sister had gotten pregnant years before and he had forced the man to marry her—paid him off, actually. But the man had left her and Ashcroft had freely and willingly supported her and her daughter for the past fifteen years. They had seen her apartment. It was very nice. Both mother and daughter were well provided for. Didn’t they agree? There had to be some confusion here.

Taylor turned in the passenger seat to face Mr. Ashcroft. “I do understand, Mr. Ashcroft. You provide housing and food in exchange for sexually abusing a little girl.”

If his hands hadn’t been cuffed, Mr. Ashcroft would have airily waved them. “That is nonsense, Lieutenant, utter nonsense. I am a successful man. I am a sensible man. I am an educated man. Why on earth would I, a man of high station, do something so despicable, something so completely incomprehensible, as to sexually abuse a child? It makes no sense, gentlemen.”

“Perhaps the shrinks will figure that one out.”

Mr. Ashcroft was never incarcerated. His lawyer was there within the hour, a judge duly called, a low bail posted, and he was out and free and on his way back to his lovely brownstone.

Taylor was disgusted, but it wasn’t anything new. Money was a man’s most powerful legal weapon. But he would nail Ashcroft. He had the mother’s testimony and Ellie’s. He had the doctor’s evaluation as well, Ashcroft’s sperm, and everyone involved in the case was mad as hell.

Still, Taylor fretted aloud to his captain, Dennis Bradly, a man of singular patience and goodwill, who watched him silently as he paced the confines of his office.

“The man is used to power. He’s used to getting what he wants because he’s got money. He’s going to intimidate his sister and Ellie. You know it. I know it. The D.A. knows it. The question is, how do we protect them? How do we get this bastard?”

“Look, Taylor—” Bradly stopped and ran his fingers through his thinning gray hair. “I know you’re up to your neck in this thing, what with you finding the girl and all and probably saving her life. You’re too close, it screws up your perspective, makes your thinking muddled. You’ve got to back off.”

“Back off what, Captain?”

“Ashcroft’s big-time.”

“He’s a big shit.”

“That too. We’ll see. Look, the case is strong, airtight for the moment at least. The D.A. will try to keep it that way, but—” He shrugged and reached for his cold coffee in a Styrofoam cup. “Don’t lose your head over this thing, Taylor. I know that Kreider case a couple months ago really got to you. You did the best you could, we all know that, but the law says that the accused has a right to face his accuser.”

“Yeah, what a pity that the accuser gets iced two days before the trial. A real pro job, and our boy walks away with a big smile on his face, and a twenty-one-year-old woman who never did a bad thing in her life, except see Kreider shoot another lowlife, gets shot in the head because I talked her into testifying against him.”

“It wasn’t your fault. Things like that happen. We tried to protect her, you know that. Sometimes it just isn’t enough. Hell, Taylor, you’ve been on the force long enough, what is it, six years now?”

Taylor nodded. “Ashcroft won’t get away with this, Captain.”

“I hope not,” Captain Bradly said, but he didn’t sound at all certain.

Taylor met with the assistant D.A., a young man who was bright enough but who didn’t have a whole lot of experience, a young man who was still capable of burning with righteous indignation. He was pleased with the preponderance of evidence against Ashcroft. He was certain they would have the man bound over for trial. He told Taylor that Ashcroft’s lawyer had already approached the D.A. but his boss wasn’t going to bend on this. Taylor felt good. He felt hopeful. At last there would be justice. As for his partner, Enoch just looked at him, shook his head, and told him not to expect too much.

A preliminary hearing was set for the following Tuesday morning. Taylor couldn’t wait. Ashcroft, with all his money and his slick lawyer, wouldn’t weasel out of this one. No way. He’d be nailed.

He was delighted to hear that Judge Riker would be presiding. He was tough as rawhide and mean as a pit bull. Nobody put a thing over on him. He hated violence and criminals. When it came to rapists, he became nearly rabid with fury. The story was that his niece had been raped some ten years before and the punks responsible had escaped because the cops had seized the evidence improperly.

Judge Riker strode into the small courtroom, his black robes flowing, his thick white hair making him look like Moses, and told the assistant district attorney to get on with it.

The assistant D.A. did get on with it, and it went downhill from there.

The samples of sperm that unequivocally matched Mr. Brandon Ashcroft’s to that found in Ellie’s body were missing from the lab. No one could find them.

Mrs. Delliah took the stand and told Judge Riker that her daughter, it turned out, had let one of the boys in her school play with her until he’d hurt her and that was what had caused all the bleeding. Ellie had been frightened and blamed her uncle because he was the only man she knew. It was too bad, Mrs. Delliah said, touching a handkerchief to her eyes, because Ellie’s uncle loved her very much. And now he had to go through this.

The defense attorney smiled and said there were no questions. He requested that the judge dismiss the case.

Judge Riker stared hard at the assistant D.A., then said quietly, “Do you want the girl to testify?”

“In chambers, Your Honor, please.”

“Very well.”

Taylor waited, pacing the corridor outside the courtroom for forty-five minutes. It was over quickly when Judge Riker returned.

“I am dismissing the charges against Mr. Ashcroft. Next case.”

It was over. Simple as that. Nothing more. Just over and the man was free. Taylor went to the men’s room and vomited up the three cups of coffee he’d drunk. Enoch tried his best to calm him.

“Look, Taylor, it happens this way. You know that, I know that. Hell, what else can you do?”

Taylor looked at him and pulled the small cassette tape from his suit pocket. “Play this for the judge,” he said.

Judge Riker sat still as a stone as he listened to the tape of Ellie Delliah telling Taylor about her rape.

When the tape was over, Judge Riker reached out a thick finger and pressed the erase button.

“Sorry, Lieutenant, but the girl swore that what her mother said was right. She did refuse to give us a boy’s name, however. I believe you. Of course I believe you. I believe the uncle is guilty as sin and he needs psychiatric help. But there’s not a thing I can do about it. Forget it, Lieutenant. I’m as sorry as you are, but the law’s the law. Get back to work and just forget it.”

Taylor rose, still staring down at the now-erased tape. “That little girl’s life will be hell, you know that. You can’t believe he’ll stop now. He’ll think now that he can do anything to her with impunity. He just proved he’s above the law.”

“No, I think the uncle paid off the mother to change her story. Paid her a ton of money, probably. You can take it to the bank that the mother and daughter will be decamping very soon now and heading for parts unknown. So you see, some good came out of it. The girl will be free from him.”

Taylor found little consolation in that, but he nodded, shook Judge Riker’s hand, and left the building. He prayed it was true. What with the case being dismissed, the social workers couldn’t get involved. There was no way to remove Ellie from her mother’s care.

Two weeks later, when Taylor had come off a cocaine bust that had left three teenagers dead and a nineteen-year-old dealer still loose, his captain called him into his office, closed the door, and told him that Ellie Delliah was dead.

“I’m sorry, Taylor,” he said quietly. The kid had jumped out of a rest-room window in her private school at Eighty-first and Madison. Three flights up. She’d landed on a concrete sidewalk.

The next day, Taylor resigned from the New York Police Department. Enoch Sackett, longtime partner and equally longtime friend, also resigned.

Lindsay

A passing cab sent black slush up in a wide arc, splashing Lindsay’s new light brown suede boots. She stared down at them, cursing under her breath. They were splashed, stained, and now bloody ruined. She cursed a bit more. She’d bought them with her last paycheck from Hoffman and Meyers, a small privately owned publishing house where she’d been a fish out of water in the publicity department for the past five months. Frustrated and angry and feeling so down she wanted to bite something or somebody, she went into a discreet-looking bar at Sixty-fifth and Broadway, just up from Lincoln Center. It was an old-fashioned Irish bar called County Cork, all dark and comforting on the inside, an ancient bar worn and lovingly shined that curved around, and a smell that permeated the place—welcoming and old and mellow.

She slid into a booth that was done in black leather, worn and soft and smelling of beer and whiskey with just a hint of salted peanuts. The large room was dim, nearly empty at this time of day. It was just before four o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday. Everyone was still at work. Except her. She’d just quit her job and felt relief and depression in equal amounts.

She looked up at the bartender and called out for a white wine. She looked down at her beautiful new suede boots, the stains now drying and ugly as slash marks on the soft golden brown.

She wanted to gulp down her wine when the bartender brought it, but she sipped it, slow and easy. She brooded, looking at the scarred, beautifully polished wooden table. She thought about her boss, the weak-chinned Nathan, and wished she had punched him out when she’d quit an hour before. But she’d been calm and very adult, she’d handled it well, telling him to find another poor soul with a psych degree to pimp for him. She’d left, only to wonder if he would see she was paid for the two days. Who cared? She was out of there. It had been part of her job to play escort and companion/guide to visiting authors, seeing that all nasty and inconvenient twigs were swept from their paths. She was the smoother-over. The last guy was a golfer who was writing a book about the scandals on the pro golf circuit. She’d removed every proverbial rock from the road, smiled at his stories, kept his spirits buoyed. And then he’d tried to get her up to his hotel suite. When she’d walked and reported what the jerk had wanted, her boss had told her to get back there and keep the man happy. She’d said that being a prostitute wasn’t part of her job description.

Well, it was over. During the interview with her boss, the golfer had called in a snit, complaining about her uncooperativeness. She had gotten to laugh then in her erstwhile boss’s face. She could smile for real again. She was free for a while until she found another job. She looked around the bar. She nursed her wine, looking up to see a man at the bar, by himself, tossing off a Scotch, if she wasn’t mistaken. He was carrying on a desultory conversation with the barkeep, a big-gutted man with an apron wrapped around his middle and up under his armpits, and sporting a big brown mustache. The barkeep wiped beer mugs with a soft white cloth, his movements slow and hypnotic. His dark eyes looked dreamy and old. She wondered if he was really listening to the man or was off into space somewhere.

The man was talking about his BMW and how the sucker hated the snow and slush and how it was rotting underneath from all the salt the city laid down after a snowstorm. The barkeep just nodded and kept wiping those beer mugs. The man drank down the rest of his whiskey and ordered another. He spoke again, but Lindsay couldn’t make out his words. He was mid-forties, olive-complexioned, a head thick with black curly hair, slender. He had boyish features and his smile held charm. His clothes were expensive. His voice was as soft and mellow as her white wine. She was distracted, and found herself listening without really intending to. Just to pass the time, she told herself, until her boots dried. No more walking on the sidewalks in this weather. She was going out to dinner with Gayle Werth, to her favorite Mexican restaurant on Seventy-first Street, and she still had a couple of hours to wipe out.

A woman came sweeping into the bar—no other way to describe her entrance. Lindsay could only stare at her. She was swathed in black mink and high-heeled black leather boots. She wore a huge mink hat and carried a Sharif bag, which probably didn’t hold more than a lipstick. She was gorgeous and self-assured and obviously on a mission. The man turned when the woman came to him and lightly touched her gloved hand to his shoulder. “Ah, redhead,” he said, turning to smile up at her. “I’m glad you’re here. You want a drink?”

“Yeah, thanks, Vinnie, a ginger ale. Then I want to talk to you. Glen told me you’d be here.”

“Glen’s got a big mouth. Dickie, make it a Perrier for the redhead. No calories. Look at those thighs, Janine. I can see the fat dimples through the coat. No more nothing for you today, sweetie, you got that?”

It was then that Lindsay recognized the woman. She was a model. Lindsay had just seen her on the cover of a woman’s magazine at her dentist’s office a couple of days before. She wasn’t quite so beautiful right now. She was fighting mad at the man. She was speaking angrily at the man, her voice rising with each word.

“. . . No more, Vinnie, no more, you hear me? Damn you, it was enough!”

No more what? Lindsay wondered, her hearing tuned to high. Then the man cut her off with a wave of his hand, saying quite clearly to her, “Look, babe, you play by the rules, or you fade into obscurity.”

The barkeep handed the glass of Perrier to the woman. The man said now, “You’re getting lines around your mouth with all your tantrums and whining. Cut it out. No more frowns today, you got that?”

The woman threw the Perrier into the man’s face. The twist of lemon fell onto his lap. “Another thing, Demos, I’m marrying Arthur Penderley III and I’ll be able to buy and sell you, you no-cock little pansy bastard.” She pulled her gorgeous mink coat around her, tossed her head back in a magnificent gesture, nearly losing her mink hat, and walked from the bar.

“Wow,” the barkeep said. “That’s some lady. She must be wearing ten thou on her back.”

“She’s a lot of things,” the man Vinnie said as he wiped off his face, “but a lady she ain’t. At least this stuff doesn’t stain. Ah, hell, Dickie, I’m glad she’s getting out of the business. She’s tired of it, burned down to her wick, and it’s starting to show in her work. I’ve even gotten a couple complaints about her attitude, you know? When a director or a photographer starts to notice a model’s attitude, you know you’re in trouble. Usually they’re so wrapped up in themselves, they wouldn’t even notice God if he arrived on a set. Well, that’s that. Give me another towel, will you? Thanks.”

He was wiping at his pants when the bartender called out, “Hey, lady, you want another glass of wine?”

Lindsay, fascinated, and not wanting to leave just yet, called back, “Yeah, make it a double.”

The man slowly looked up. He paused in his wiping. He looked at her for a very long time, then nodded, raising his whiskey glass in a silent salute.

Lindsay smiled at him. Nothing like a little drama to make one forget one’s woes, she thought, delighted at what life unexpectedly dished up on rare occasions, and gave him an unconscious wide smile.

Vincent Rafael Demos couldn’t believe his eyes. It was too much whiskey, he thought. That was it. That smile of hers was something else. Electric, yeah, that was it. And that damp mop on her head—unruly as Medusa’s hair, but thick and filled with colors from the lightest ash to dark brown, colors that seemed to absorb all light, made more intense with deep natural waves. As for her eyes, well, he’d soon see. “I’ll take her wine to her. Oh, Dickie, put it on my tab.”

Lindsay watched the man approach, her wine in his right hand, his whiskey in his left. He was looking at her, no longer smiling, and up came a rush of fear. She quashed it. No more fear. At least no more unreasonable fear. If the man wanted to buy her a glass of wine, who cared? She was the one out of a job. It didn’t mean he wanted to attack her. Besides, she was depressed.

“My name’s Vincent Demos, or just Vinnie if you heard Janine yelling at me. Or just Demos, which I prefer. Here’s your wine. I bought it for you. Can I join you for a few minutes?”

“As long as you don’t talk about your BMW, sure.”

He grinned and slid into the booth opposite her. He raised his glass and she clicked hers to his.

“You a student?”

“Not anymore. I’m a full-fledged professional, newly-out-of-a-job adult. I just quit my first job this afternoon and a taxi ruined my new suede boots. My name’s Lindsay Foxe.”

They shook hands. His were dry and narrow, his grip firm.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

She nodded.

“You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. Sexy as hell and intelligent, a new combination.”

“And that’s a new line.”

“No line. Fact. They aren’t colored contacts, are they? No, I didn’t think so. How much do you weigh?”

“My fighting weight or in my Reeboks with thick socks?”

“Fighting weight.”

“One hundred and thirty pounds. What kind of prize do I win if I answer all the questions right?”

“You’re how tall?”

She cocked her head at him. “Just about five-foot-eleven.”

“I didn’t think you looked overweight. You got long legs?”

“To Mars.”

“Well, you’ve also got a smart mouth. I like that. My name’s Demos, like I said. I own the Demos Modeling Agency on Madison at Fifty-third. I’m legit, just ask Dickie over there, not some sort of punk who hits on women. I’d like to do some layouts on you. Won’t cost you a dime. I’ll provide the photographer and the outfits. You interested?”

“You don’t look like a punk.”

“I’m not, scout’s honor. And no, you don’t have to strip to your skin for these shots. I don’t do calendars or provide fodder for the skin magazines. I do fashion stuff, all legit, as I said. If you’re good, you’ll make a lot of money and so will I. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two, just graduated last spring from Columbia, degree in psychology. I know, worthless, but it’s something at least.”

“You ever done any modeling before?”

She shook her head, then said, “That woman who was in here. She’s a model. I recognized her. She was in my dentist’s office.”

“That was the Cosmo cover for last month. ‘Was’ is the operative word here. Yeah, Janine just retired. I still smell like Perrier and lemon.”

“You want a replacement Janine?”

He looked at her closely, silent for too long a time. Finally, “No, I want something entirely new and you just might be it.” He sat back, brooding now, and tossed down the rest of his whiskey.

“Actually, you’ve got ageless bones. That’s the key in most cases. Well? Do you want to give it a shot, Lindsay Foxe?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, say at one o’clock?”

“Why not? As of two hours ago, I’m no longer a publicist.”

“Are you tied up with any guy?”

She was instantly still. “No.”

“Good. Boyfriends can be a real pain in the ass when it comes to scheduling shoots at weird hours.”

“No boyfriends.”

“You sound like that’s permanent.”

“It is, Mr. Demos. It is.”

“You’re into women?”

“No. I’m not into anything.”

“Good. If things turn out, you’re going to have to knock off about ten pounds, maybe fifteen. The camera adds it on, you know.”

“I’ve heard. Ten pounds is a lot. Fifteen pounds sounds impossible. I’m not a featherweight. In fact, I’m on the light side right now. I don’t know if I could do it or if I’d even want to starve myself like that.”

“Well, I’m getting ahead of myself anyway. You might look like a geek on film. Those gorgeous cheekbones of yours just might fade away into the sunset. That jaw of yours might look like a ballbuster’s on film. Too, you’re a little old to be starting all this. You think about it, Lindsay. Call me in the morning and let me know. Don’t let those gorgeous eyes get bloodshot tonight, will you?”

“It’s hard to believe all this is for real, that you’re for real. It’s like a B movie.”

“I know,” Demos said, and grinned, showing a slight space between his front teeth. “But then again, I’ve always thought life was based on a B movie. But the thing is, Lindsay, successful models don’t just magically appear in my office. It’s the dogs that usually come to an office. I found Janine at a party down in the Village. She had crooked teeth and bleached-out hair, but I saw the possibilities. Two of my very successful models I found just like you—in bars. One of them had to have an ear job. One model I spotted at my aunt’s funeral, another one my mom had picked out for a blind date. You never know. If an agency is going to be successful—like mine is—why, then, the eyes are always searching. So, call me, all right?”

As Lindsay said later that evening to Gayle Werth over margaritas, chips, and hot sauce at Los Panchos, “Maybe I’ll be on the cover of Vogue by next year.”

“Sure, sweetie. And maybe you’ll get elected to the United Nations.”

“They don’t do elections, Gayle.”

“I’m just saying don’t get your hopes up, Lindsay. The man could be a real slime bucket, he could be a pervert, a wanted criminal. You’ll check him out before you head over there, won’t you?”

“I already did. He’s very well-known. He’s big-time. He’s in the phone book and his address is fancy and quite real. I even called Cosmo and asked about him.” She sat back in her cane chair and stared at the depleted basket of tortilla chips. “I’ve got big boobs. Don’t all models have to look anorexic and be flat-chested?”

Gayle shrugged. “I’m going with you tomorrow. I’m not taking any chances that you’ll be too trusting and sign away the farm.”

“Me, trusting?” That was truly a surprise to Lindsay. “You’re joking.”

“No. You’re naive as hell, Lindsay. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. I saw that psychology creep of yours, Dr. Gruska, this morning when I was on campus checking on gymnastics courses. He nearly ran to catch up with me. Can’t you just see him with his tweeds flapping? He wanted to know how you were. He wanted your phone number.”

Lindsay choked on a tortilla chip and grabbed for her glass of water. “You didn’t—”

“Don’t worry. I gave him a number, all right, made it up right then and there. He walked away a happy creep.”

“I wonder what he wants?”

“He probably wants what every man wants. He wants inside your jeans.”

“I don’t think so. His father wouldn’t allow it.”

Gayle waved a tortilla chip at her. “You’re an odd duck, Lindsay. I go along thinking you’re so unworldly, but then I see this other side of you. All cynical and funny, at least on the surface. Sometimes I just don’t understand you at all.”

“Nothing to understand,” Lindsay said, and called to Ernesto for two more margaritas, frozen, with salt.