God Save the Child

She turned toward me and began to unbutton her blouse. “Would you turn the spread down, please?” she said. I did. The sheets were gold with a pattern of coral flowers. As I undressed I looked at Susan Silverman on the other side of the bed. She unhooked her bra. There is something enormously female in that movement. I stopped with my shirt off and my belt unbuckled to watch her. She saw me and smiled at me and let the bra drop. I took a deep inhale and finished undressing. We were naked together then, on opposite sides of the bed. I could see the pulse in her throat. She lay down on her side of the bed and said, “Now you may kiss me.”

I did. With my eyes closed, for a long time. Then I opened my eyes and discovered that she had hers open too and we were looking at each other from a half inch away. With her eyes wide open she darted her tongue into my mouth and then giggled, a rich bubbling half-smothered giggle that I caught. We lay there pressed together kissing and giggling with our eyes open. It was a different beginning, but a very good one. Then we closed our eyes again, and the giggling stopped.

23

We ate cassoulet and drank Beaujolais at 2:15 in the morning in the dining room with candles and didn’t get to sleep till four. In the morning she called in sick, and we stayed in bed till almost noon. We had a cup of coffee together and cleaned up the dining room and kitchen. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before I was back to work.

Dr. Croft had an office in a medical building on one side of a small shopping center in the middle of Smithfield. Two stories, brick, pastel plywood panels, a flat roof, and maybe ten offices. Inside there was the cool smell of air-conditioned money. There were four people in Croft’s office, three women and a man. Well, you see, Doctor, I’m horny but my spouse thinks I’m a creep. Oh, yes, of course, I’ll make an appointment for you with Doctor Harroway, my horniness consultant.

The office was paneled in light plywood and carpeted in beige. A dark-faced girl with an enormous bouffant hairdo and a starched white uniform eyed me from behind a counter in the far wall. I said, “I’d like to see the doctor, please.”

She said, “Have you an appointment?”

I said, “No, but if you’ll give him my card and tell him it’s important, I think he’ll see me.” I gave her a card with just my name and address on it. The one with the crossed sabers on it might seem a little pushy, I thought.

“Have you ever been a patient of Doctor Croft’s before?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“And what is your complaint?” She was pulling out a little yellow record card and rolling it into the typewriter.

“Functional curiosity about a guy named Fraser Robinson.”

She stopped rolling the record form into the typewriter and looked at me. “I beg your pardon?”

“Look, ducks, why don’t you just take the card to the doctor, tell him my ailment, and let him puzzle out the proper response.”

She gazed at me with manifest disapproval for a long time. Then without a word got up and disappeared through a door behind the counter. In about thirty seconds she was back with her disapproval even more manifest and said icily, “The doctor will see you now.” She was hoping for a prognosis of incurable. One of the ladies in the waiting room said something about the nerve of some people, and I slunk in through the doctor’s door; no one likes a line bucker. Inside was a long corridor with examining rooms on either side. Croft stepped out of the last door on the right and said, “Come right in, Spenser Good to see you again.”

I went in and sat down in the patient’s chair in front of Croft’s big reassuring desk. On the wall was a big reassuring medical school diploma in Latin and several official-looking reassuring documents with state seals and such on them. Croft had a white medical coat over his wide-striped blue shirt and striped tie. He rested his elbows on the desk and cathedraled his hands in front of him with the tips of his fingers touching the bottom of his chin. He had a gold ring with a blue stone on the little finger of his left hand.

“How can I help you?” he asked and gave me his big predator’s smile. Consoling. Reassuring. Phooey.

“Fraser Robinson tells me you are pimping for Vic Harroway.” Croft didn’t move except for the big smile. It went away. He said, “I beg your pardon?”

I said, “Knock it off, Croft. I’ve got you. I caught Robinson in a motel with an adolescent girl, and he confided in me. It doesn’t have to be a long fall for you; I’m not with the AMA. Or the Vice Squad. You want to supplement your income by pimping while you heal, that’s your doing. But I want to know everything you know about Harroway and Kevin Bartlett and how Earl Maguire got his neck broken and that kind of thing.”

Croft reached over and pushed the intercom switch. “Joan,” he said into it, “I can’t be disturbed for at least a half hour. If an emergency comes up, switch it to Doctor LeBlanc.” He turned back toward me. “This is a mountain out of a molehill, Spenser.”