“If you think looking at a guy who’s been hit with a meat ax is stimulating…”
“No, that’s not my point. I’m not trying to make any such analogy, although I do think there’s some truth to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, violence is stimulating. Even the results of violence are stimulating.”
“The results of violence caused me to throw up last Saturday morning,” Kling said.
‘“That’s stimulation of a sort, isn’t it? But don’t get me away from my point.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is…”
“I don’t think I’m going to like it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you said I inspired it.”
“Antonioni inspired it.”
“You said I did.”
“Not the initial impetus. Later, I connected it with you, which is only natural because there was a homicide involved, and because I’m madly in love with you and very interested in your work. All right?”
“Well, I like it a little better now, I must admit.”
“You haven’t even heard it yet.”
“I’m waiting, I’m waiting.”
“Okay. We start with a man — the detective — viewing the results of violence and guessing at what might have happened, right?”
“Well, there’s not much guesswork involved when you see two bullet holes in a guy’s head. I mean, you can just possibly figure out the violent act was a shooting, you know what I mean?”
“Yes, that’s obvious, but the thing you don’t know is who did the shooting, or what the circumstances of the shooting were, and so on. You never know what really happened until you catch whoever did it, am I right?”
“No, you’re wrong. We usually know plenty before we make an arrest. Otherwise, we don’t make it. When we charge somebody, we like to think it’ll stick.”
“But on what do you base your arrest?”
“On the facts. There’re a lot of locked closets in criminal investigation. We open all the doors and look for skeletons.”
“Exactly!” Cindy said triumphantly. “You search for detail. You examine each and every tiny segment of the picture in an attempt to find a clue that will make the entire picture more meaningful, just as the photographer did in Blow-Up. And very often your investigation uncovers material that’s even more difficult to understand. It only becomes clear later on, the way sexual intercourse eventually becomes clear to the child when he reaches adulthood. He can then say to himself. ‘Oh, so that’s what they were doing in there, they were screwing in there.”
“I don’t recall ever having seen my mother and father doing anything like that,” Kling said.
“You’ve blocked it out.”
“No, I just never saw them doing anything like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that” Kling said.
“You can’t even say the word,” Cindy said, and began giggling. “You’ve so effectively blocked it out…”
“There’s one thing I hate about psychologists,” Kling said.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Cindy asked, still giggling.
“They’re all the time analyzing everything.”
“Which is exactly what you do every day of the week, only you call it investigation. Can’t you see the possibilities of this, Bert?” she asked, no longer laughing, her face suddenly serious, suddenly very tired-looking again. “Oh, I know I haven’t really developed it yet, but don’t you think it’s an awfully good beginning? The detective as voyeur, the detective as privileged observer of a violent scene he can neither control nor understand, frightening by its very nature, confusing at first, but becoming more and more meaningful until it is ultimately understood. It’ll make a good thesis. I don’t care what you think.”
“I think it’ll make a good thesis, too,” Kling said. “Let’s go work out the primal scene part of it.”
He looked down into her face just as she turned hers up, and their eyes met, and held, and neither said a word for several moments. He kept watching her, thinking how much he loved her and wanted her, and seeing the cornflower eyes edged with weariness, her face pale and drawn and drained of energy. Her lips were slightly parted, she look in a deep breath and then released it, and the hand holding the drink slowly lowered to hang limply alongside the arm of the chair. He sensed what she was about to say, Yes, she would say, Yes, she’d make love even though she didn’t feel like it, even though she was depressed and tired and felt unattractive, even though she’d much rather sit here and watch the skyline and sip a little more Scotch and then doze off, even though she didn’t feel the tiniest bit sexy, Yes, she would, if that was what he wanted. He read this in her eyes and perched on her lips, and he suddenly felt like a hulking rapist who had shambled up out of the sewer, so he shrugged and lightly said, “Maybe we’d better not. Be too much like necrophilia,” and smiled. She smiled back at him, wearily and not at all encouragingly. He gently took the glass from her dangling hand and went to refill it for her.
But he was disappointed.
The Roundelay Bar was on Jefferson Avenue, three blocks from the new museum. At five-fifteen that afternoon, when Kling arrived for his business meeting with Anne Gilroy, it was thronged with advertising executives and pretty young secretaries and models, all of whom behaved like guests at a private cocktail party, moving, drinking, chattering, moving on again, hardly any of them sitting at the handful of tables scattered throughout the dimly lit room.
Anne Gilroy was sitting at a table in the far corner, wearing an open crochet dress over what appeared to be a body stocking. At least, Kling, hoped it was a body stocking, and not just a body. He felt very much out of place in an atmosphere as sleek and as sophisticated as this one, where everyone seemed to be talking about the latest Doyle Dane campaign, or the big Solters and Sabinson coup, or the new Blaine Thompson three-sheet, whatever any of those were. He felt shabbily dressed in his blue plaid jacket, his tie all wrong and improperly knotted, his gun in its shoulder holster causing a very un-Chipplike bulge, felt in fact like a bumbling country hick who had inadvertently stumbled into whatever was making this city tick. And besides, he felt guilty as hell.
Anne waved the moment she saw him. He moved his way through the buzzing crowd and then sat beside her and looked around quickly, certain somehow that Cindy would be standing behind one of the pillars, brandishing a hatchet.
“You’re right on time,” Anne said, smiling. “I like punctual men.”
“Have you ordered yet?” he asked.
“No, I was waiting for you.”
“Well, what would you like?”
“Martinis give me a loose, free feeling,” she said. “I’ll have a martini. Straight up.”
He signaled to the waiter and ordered a martini for her and a Scotch and water for himself.
“Do you like my dress?” Anne asked.
“Yes, it’s very pretty.”
“Did you think it was me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Underneath.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“It isn’t.”
“Okay.”