Weiss stood musing on a field of flowers. Dahlias, a carpet of yellow and violet and orange. Head hung, hands in his pockets, he gazed over them, all but unseeing. He was thinking about the letters, the e-mails to Professor Brinks.
Their phrases haunted him. I will remake you into your body…The world does’t need any more big ideas or grand theories…Why do you cling to them, woman? The moment of desire, Marianne! Don’t try to sell your cant to me. The world craves you naked on your knees…
He had reread the passages several times last night. He’d crept back to them as if they were an addiction. Their sensual images stayed with him, kept him awake for hours, blossoming into fantasies. Sometimes they were fantasies about Sissy or M. R. Brinks herself or other women he’d known or seen. Mostly, though, he imagined Julie Wyant, the angel-faced hooker he’d never even met. He lay in bed in the dark with his eyes open, thinking about her. Conjuring the touch of her body, the liquid silk of her red-gold hair. He would turn onto one side and onto the other. His pillow grew clammy with sweat. He told himself again that he could not try to find her because Ben Fry would follow him and hunt her down. But he felt if he did not try, he would die of his longing…
He lifted his eyes from the dahlia bed. The white dome of the Flower Conservatory rose out of the surrounding palm trees, the eucalyptus and the oak. Sunlight glinted on its spire where it touched the blue sky. He turned from it, looked down and west into the mistier depths of the park’s forest. He saw Professor Brinks striding toward him along the path.
She was much as before, a sturdy little figure with a marching stride. A gray jacket this time, but just as angular and slashing as the last one, the navy one. And her black slacks were creased for the kill. Still, Weiss, with all those fantasies in his head, all those images from the e-mails, got a sexy little jolt from the sight of her. Her grim, pretty features between curtains of black hair. The clap of her heels on the macadam.
The world craves you naked on your knees…
“Mr. Weiss,” she said.
She shook his hand briskly. With her free hand she adjusted the shoulder strap of her huge purse or briefcase or whatever it was. Weiss, hovering over her in that protective way he had with women, noted the tension at the corners of her mouth, at the corners of her eyes, too. She was worried about this meeting.
“Have you found him?” she said. There were no other preliminaries.
“I think so,” he told her. “I have to be sure before I can give you a name. It should be by tomorrow, the day after at the latest.”
“Well…good. Good, then.” She looked up at him uncertainly. Wondering, obviously, why he had asked her to come.
But he didn’t tell her. Not yet. He wasn’t sure how to put it yet. He’d rehearsed a lot of tactful phrases, but now they all seemed stilted and phony to him. Stalling for time, he began to stroll along the path back the way she had come. She strolled beside him, anxious, waiting.
After a moment, his hands went into his pockets again. He flashed a smile down at her, a kindly smile. For all she was dressed up as a man—so he thought of it—he found her compellingly feminine this time. Again, it was probably the effect of those e-mail raptures floating around in his brain. I will pour wine into the hollow of your throat and drink it as it spills down between your breasts and over your belly…Anyway, he felt very tender toward her.
“I just wanted to consult with you before I followed up on this,” he started. “I just wanted to confirm that you were…well…certain about going on.”
There was a hitch of silence. “Well, of course,” she answered then. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He didn’t answer. They strolled together slowly, big figure and small, he, in his wrinkled houndstooth jacket, as disheveled as she was crisp. The lush summer trees pressed in on either side of them. The path became a narrow green gallery under a strip of sky.
“Well,” he fumbled on. “There’s the money, for one thing. There’ll be expenses, more expenses, involved and…” His voice trailed off. “Uh…”
“And what?” said M. R. Brinks, her nervous, serious little face turned up to him.
“Well, you know. And the consequences,” said Weiss. “I wanted to make sure you had a good idea of the consequences, of where this could go.”
The professor’s laugh was a surprisingly fluty trill. “Oh, what’s the matter, Mr. Weiss? Are you afraid I’ll kill him?”
“No,” said Weiss firmly—this was the point he’d been trying to get to. “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed in him. I’m afraid he’ll…well…you know: break your heart.”
She stopped laughing, stopped in her tracks, stopped on what seemed the edge of a reply. She gaped up at him. Weiss gazed over her head, into the trees, studied the empty distance so as not to embarrass her. All the same, he saw her moisten her lips with the tip of her tongue.
“These cyber relationships…” he went on gently. “We’ve handled a few of them. They tend to end up badly in this sort of circumstance. I mean, when one of the people doesn’t want to be found.”
“What are you implying?” snapped Professor Brinks. Her voice dropped to a hiss as an ancient man and wife hobbled by on the path, going arm in arm. “What are you…Why are you saying this to me?”
And Weiss did look down at her now. His heavy features seemed all the heavier with the weight of his sympathy.
The professor seemed unable to bear his gaze, unable to bear the fact that, clearly, he had guessed the truth. She began to protest, but it petered out in a series of choking splutters. Finally, miserably, she just managed to say, “What business is it of yours? What business?”
“None,” Weiss told her. “But since you were concerned about publicity and so forth, I thought it was my responsibility to warn you before I go ahead. I mean, if you think you’ve fallen in love with this man—”
“Stop! Ssh! Stop!” Panicked, she looked every which way around her. But the old couple was gone, and there was no one else in sight on the tree-lined corridor.
Still, for another moment or two, M.R. Brinks kept looking here and there—all over, only not at Weiss. She avoided looking at Weiss. Then—in a gesture that squeezed the detective’s romantic heart—she brushed a fingertip quick as quick against the corner of her eye. Before a tear could fall there, before it could even form. She shifted round that huge briefcase of hers. Unzipped it. Rooted in it, her nose twitching.
Weiss, of course, being how he was, would’ve probably slayed a dragon for her at that point. But the best he could do was fish out the little Kleenex packet he kept in his jacket pocket; offer her a tissue. She took it and tamped fiercely at one nostril, then the other.
“How did you know?” she asked him. “Did you talk to him? Did he say something about me? How did you know?”
He shook his head. “To be frank with you, the whole story wasn’t all the way believable from the start. Why would you let it go on for nine months like that and then suddenly hire me? Why was he the one who changed his address—unless he was the one avoiding e-mails from you? But basically, it was the letters—once I understood what they were. I mean, the first time you read them, sure, all the sex stuff sort of jumps out at you. But if you really go over them, it’s pretty obvious they’re half of a conversation or dialogue or what-have-you. You know? ‘Why do you cling to your grand theories? Don’t try to sell your cant to me.’ It’s one side of a…philosophical discussion, I guess you’d call it. It’s pretty obvious that someone was answering back.”
She sniffed harshly. Tartly, she said, “Well, I’m gratified you took the time to make such a close textual analysis, Mr. Weiss.”
He couldn’t help but lift one bushy eyebrow. She had no idea how close.
“I’m sure this is all just…very funny to you,” she said. “I’m sure all the boys in your office got together for a good patriarchal laugh…” But the end of this faded away to nothing. Because she looked up into his face. His weary, ugly, hangdog face. And it must’ve been hard for her to imagine him laughing like that. The curses she brought down upon her own head in the dark watches—that she was a hypocrite, a fool, a masochist, whatever—none of that would’ve echoed back to her from Weiss.
“Oh!” She broke finally under the weight of his compassion. She had to dab at her eyes for several moments before she could go on. “I don’t know why I ever answered him in the first place. That first letter he wrote me—well, it was just hate mail, wasn’t it? I get letters like that all the time. I never answer, but…but there was something in it…something…out of the ordinary. I don’t know.” She frowned, shook her head fiercely. “It was harassment. Pure and simple. I told him it was harassment. I told him to stop right then and there. I did. But he wouldn’t stop. He wrote back. And then I wrote back. And then, after a while…I didn’t want him to stop anymore.”
Weiss nodded. Sad-eyed, hands in his pockets. Hanging over her like some kind of great old tree.
“And it just snuck up on me, I guess,” she murmured. “I thought I was being so clever, you know. Deconstructing all the sexist assumptions behind the things he wrote. But all the while I was deconstructing, the things he wrote made me feel…well…”
“Sure,” said Weiss. “I understand.”
She brushed this off impatiently. “Anyway,” she said. “After nine months of correspondence, I thought…well, I thought it might be nice if we could meet, you know, in person. But he wouldn’t. I tried to convince him, but he became…adamant. He threatened to break it off. To stop writing. Change his address. That made me…I panicked, I guess. Got confused. I was afraid of losing him, but at the same time…I wanted more, you know. I wanted to go beyond just…just words. At one point, I actually had a friend—a friend who knows computers—try to trace him, but…” Her voice failed her here a moment. “Finally, I just…I pleaded with him.” She used the word purposely, glanced at the detective to see if he disdained her for it or pitied her. But there was just that face, that Weiss. And she found herself confessing to him: “I pleaded with him. These long…truly pitiful letters. Begging him. Literally begging him to please meet with me, to let me feel…anything…his hand on my face…anything. I guess that’s what did it. Scared him off or whatever. Suddenly—without even saying good-bye…” She finished the sentence with a forlorn gesture: He was gone.
Weiss began to speak, then stopped. It was a young couple passing this time, he a reed in faded jeans and a torn T-shirt, she bursting like fruit out of her halter top and her cutoff shorts. Weiss waited till they were well out of earshot before he said, “Look, Professor Brinks, you’re obviously a very smart woman—”
Professor Brinks snorted.
“You must’ve thought this through,” Weiss went on. “If he doesn’t want to meet with you he probably has a reason—I mean, it probably doesn’t even have anything to do with you. He may just be—”
“Married,” Brinks said. “Or gay or a woman or deformed or ten years old. Believe me, yes, I’ve thought of everything. And if anyone ever found out I was doing this…I mean, if, as you say, he ever made my letters to him public…” She stared down at the path, seemed to stare right through the pavement into the earth. “The things I’ve said. The things I’ve promised to do. My reputation…my work would be…” She pressed her lips together. Her whole narrow frame quivered like a plucked bowstring. “God, God!” she burst out, lifting her eyes now to the sky. “It’s all so fucking pathetic!”
Weiss shrugged. That’s all. As if to say, We are what we are. Then he paused for a moment. To let her settle herself. To let her run over again in her mind the consequences of going forward, the possible consequences to her work, to her life, to her dreams, the potential for catastrophe. Then, when he felt certain she had considered it all, held it up to the light, he asked her, “So what do you want me to do, Professor?”
“Oh, find him!” she answered without hesitation. Her eyes were blurry now, her face pinched, her mascara smudged. “Please, Mr. Weiss! I don’t care about the rest of it. I don’t care about anything anymore. I just have to find him. Please.”