She said, "Great. You're cute. I allow you to sit."
She put the mug down next to a plate bearing an oversized muffin.
"Fiber," she said. "The religion of the nineties."
A waitress came over and informed me the coffee of the day was Ethiopian. I said that was fine and received my own mug.
"Ethiopian," said Meredith Bork. "They're starving over there, aren't they? But they're exporting designer beans? Don't you think that's weird?"
"Someone always does okay," I said. "No matter how bad things get."
"How true, how true." She smiled. "I like this guy. Perfect mixture of sincerity and cynicism. Lots of women love it, right? You probably use it to get laid, then get bored and leave them weeping, right?"
I laughed involuntarily. "No."
"No, you don't get laid, or no, you don't get bored?"
"No, I'm not into conning women."
"Gay?"
"No."
"What's your problem, then?"
"Are we discussing that?"
"Why not?" Giant smile. Capped teeth. "You want to discuss my problems, jocko, fair is fair."
I raised my cup to my lips.
"How's the java?" she said. "Those starving Ethiopians know how to grow 'em?"
"Very good."
"I'm so veddy glad. Mine's Colombian. My regular fix. I keep hoping there'll be a packaging error and I'll get a little snort mixed in with the grind."
She rubbed her nose and winked, leaned forward, and showed more chest. A black lace bra cut into soft, freckled flesh. She wore a perfume I'd never smelled before. Lots of grass, lots of flowers, a bit of her own perspiration.
She giggled. "No, I'm just joshing you, Mr.- sorry, Doctor No Con. I know how touchy you healer types are about that. Daddy always had a bovine when someone called him mister."
"Alex is fine."
"Alex. The Great. Are you great? Wanna fuck and suck?"
Before my mouth could close, she said, "But seriously, folks."
Her smile was still on high beam and her breasts were still pushing forward. But she'd reddened and the muscles beneath one of the lovely cheekbones were twitching.
She said, "What a tasteless thing to say, right? Stupid, too, in the virus era. So let's forget about stripping off my clothes and concentrate on stripping my psyche, right?"
"Meredith-"
"That's the name, don't wear it out." Her hand brushed against the mug and a few droplets of coffee spilled on the table.
"Shit," she said, grabbing a napkin and blotting. "Now you've really got me spazzing."
"We don't need to talk about you, personally," I said. "Just about the school."
"Not talk about me? That's my favorite topic, Alex, the sincere shrink. I've spent Godknowshowmuch money talking to your ilk about me. They all pretended to be utterly fascinated, least you can do is fake it, too."
I sat back and smiled.
"I don't like you," she said. "Way too agreeable. Can you get a hard-on on demand- no, scratch that, no more dirty talk. This is going to be a platonic, asexual, antiseptic discussion… the Corrective School. How I spent my summer vacation by Meredith Spill-the-Coffee Bork."
"Were you there for only one summer?"
"It was enough, believe me."
The waitress came over and asked if we wanted anything else.
"No, dear, we're in love, we don't need anything else," said Meredith, waving her away. A wine list was propped between the salt and pepper shakers. She pulled it out and studied it. Moving her lips. Tiny droplets had formed over them. Her smooth, brown brow puckered.
She put the list down and wiped the sweat from her mouth.
"Caught me," she said. "Dyslexic. Not illiterate- I probably know more about what's going on than your average asshole senator. But it takes effort- little tricks so the words make sense." Another huge smile. "That's why I like to work with Hollywood assholes. None of them read."
"Is the dyslexia why you went to the Corrective School?"
"I didn't go, Alex. I was sent. And no, that wasn't the official reason. The official reason was I was acting out. One of you guys' quaint little terms for being a naughty girl- do you want to know how?"
"If you'd like to tell me."
"Of course I would, I'm an exhibitionist. No, scratch that. What's it your business?" She moistened her lips and smiled. "Suffice it to say I learned about cocks when I was much too young to appreciate them." She held out her mug to me, as if it were a microphone. "And why was that, Contestant Number One? Why, for the washer-dryer and the trip to Hawaii, did a sweet young thing from Sierra Madre besmirch herself?"
I didn't speak.
"Buzz," she said. "Sorry, Number One, that's not quick enough. The correct answer is: poor self-esteem. Twentieth-century root of all evil, right? I was fourteen and could barely read, so instead, I learned to give dynamite blow jobs."
I looked down at my coffee.
"Oh, look, I've embarrassed him- don't worry, I'm okay. Damn proud of my blow jobs. You work with what you've got." Her grin was huge but hard to gauge.
"One fateful morning, Mommy discovered strange, yucky stains on my junior high prom dress. Mommy consulted with learned Doctor Daddy and the two of them threw a joint shit-fit. The day school ended I was shipped off to the wild and woolly hills of Santa Barbara. Little brown uniforms, ugly shoes, girls' bunks separated from the boys' bunks by a scuzzy vegetable garden. Dr. Botch stroking his little goatee and telling us this could turn out to be the best summer we ever had."
She hid her mouth behind her mug, broke off a piece of muffin, and let it crumble between her fingers.
"I couldn't read, so they sent me to Buchenwald-on-the-Pacific. There's juvenile justice for you."
"Did de Bosch ever diagnose your dyslexia?" I said.
"You kidding? All he did was throw this Freudian shit at me: I was frustrated because Mommy had Daddy and I wanted him. So I was trying to be a woman, rather than a girl- acting out-in order to displace her."
She laughed. "Believe me, I knew what I wanted, and it wasn't Daddy. It was lean, young, well-hung bodies and James Dean faces. And I had the power to get it all back then. I believed in myself until Botch botched me up."
All at once her face changed, loosening and paling. She put the mug down hard, shook her hair like a wet puppy, and rubbed her temples.
"What did he do to you?" I said.
"Tore my soul out," she said glibly. But as she spoke she brought strands of hair forward and hid her face.
Long silence.
"Shit," she said finally. "This is harder than I thought it would be. How did he mess me up? Subtly. Nothing he could go to jail for, darling. So tell your police pals to go back to giving parking tickets, you'll never pin him. Besides, he must be ancient by now. Who's going to drag a poor old fart into court?"
"He's dead."
The hair fell away. Her eyes were very still. "Oh… well, that's okay by me, pal. Was it long and painful, by any chance?"
"He killed himself. He'd been sick for a while. Multiple strokes."
"Killed himself how?"
"Pills."
"When?"
"Nineteen-eighty."
The eyes tightened. "Eighty? So what's all this b.s. about an investigation?"
Her arm shot forward and she grabbed my wrist. Big, strong woman. "Fess up, psych-man: Who are you and what's all this really about?"
A few heads turned. She let go of my arm.
I pulled out ID, showed it to her, and said, "I've told you the truth, and what it's about is revenge."
I summarized the "bad love" murders, throwing out names of victims.