“You know what’s funny? I’ve been doing this for three years now, and when I started I had the same thought. I mean, a majority of students are women, a majority of everything is women, and these are women with an interest in literature and I’m up there, the designated authority, and how can you miss, right?”
“And?”
“Somebody, I think it was Samuel Johnson, read another writer’s book. And he said, ‘Your work is both original and excellent. However, the parts that are original are not excellent, and the parts that are excellent are not original.’ ”
They looked puzzled.
“In the classroom,” he explained, “the women are both attractive and available. However, the ones who are available are not attractive, and—”
“And the ones who are attractive aren’t available,” Slaughter said. “Was Marilyn Fairchild one of your students?”
“You know,” he said, “I don’t recognize the name, but I don’t know all their names. It’s not impossible. I have a list of them someplace, hang on and let me see if I can find it.”
It was where it was supposed to be, in the New School file folder, and he checked it and handed the list to Slaughter. “No Marilyn Fairchild,” he said. “There’s a woman named Mary Franklin, but I can’t believe anybody went home with her Monday night. She’s writing her memoirs, she was a WAF in the Second World War. The last person who got lucky with her was Jimmy Doolittle.”
“So I guess it’s not the same woman.”
“Evidently not.”
“And you’re covered from seven-thirty to ten, but that leaves the whole rest of the night, doesn’t it? And the thing is, John, you fit the description we’re working with, right down to the cigarettes you smoke. Unfiltered Camels, there’s not that many people smoking them anymore.”
“We’re an endangered species, but...”
“But what, John?”
He took the cigarette out of his mouth, looked at it, put it out in an ashtray. “ ‘The description you’re working with.’ Who gave you a description?”
“Sort of a group effort,” Slaughter said. “And it included the fact that you were a writer, and your name was Blair Creighton.”
“So we wouldn’t likely mix you up with the other John,” Reade offered.
“And I’m supposed to have gone home with Marilyn Fairchild. Home from where?”
“A bar called the Kettle of Fish, John. You wouldn’t happen to know it, would you? It’s a few blocks from here on Sheridan Square.”
“On Christopher Street,” he said. “Of course I know it. I probably go there three, four times a week. I went there when it was the Lion’s Head, and I stopped going there when it reopened as the Monkey’s Paw, and then the old Kettle of Fish, which was on Macdougal Street just about forever and then moved around the corner to West Third, well, they moved into the old Lion’s Head space, or at least the name moved there...”
“And you started drinking there again.”
“It’s one of the places I tend to go to. In the late afternoon, mostly, when the writing’s done for the day.”
“And sometimes at night, John? Like the night before last?”
“The night before last...”
“Take your time, give it some thought. You just think of something, John? You have the look of a man who just now thought of something.”
“Oh, for Chrissake,” he said. “That dizzy bitch.”
“You remember now, huh, John?”
“If it’s the same woman,” he said. “Short hair, sort of reddish brown? Lives on Waverly?”
“I believe it’s Charles Street,” Reade said.
“But you’re right about the hair,” Slaughter said. “The length and the color. You’re doing great, John.”
Patronizing son of a bitch. “Charles Street,” he said. “We walked up Waverly from the Kettle, but I guess she was around the corner on Charles. Must have been Charles. What’s her name supposed to be? Marilyn Fairchild? Because that’s not the name she gave me.”
“And what name did she give you, John?”
“I might recognize it if I heard it again. I don’t think we got as far as last names, but the first name she gave me certainly wasn’t Marilyn.”
“You met her in the Kettle of Fish, John.”
“I was having a drink at the bar. She walked in and picked me up.”
“She picked you up.”
“Why, isn’t that how she remembers it? If I’d have been looking to pick somebody up, I wouldn’t have gone to the Kettle.”
“Why not?”
“People go there to drink,” he said. “And to talk and hang out. Sometimes you might go home with somebody, but it’ll most likely be somebody you’ve known forever from a whole lot of boozy conversations, and one night you’re both drunk enough to think you ought to go home together, and it generally turns out to be a mistake, but the next time you run into each other you both either pretend it never happened or that you had a good time.”
“And that’s how it was with Marilyn Fairchild?”
He shook his head. “That’s the point. She wasn’t a regular, or at least I never saw her there before. And she walked in and scanned the bar like she was shopping, and I guess I was close enough to what she was looking for, because she came right over to me and put a cigarette between her lips.”
“So you could light it for her.”
“Except she took it out,” he remembered, “and saw my cigarettes on the bar.”
“Camels.”
“And she said how she hadn’t had one of those in ages, and I gave her one and lit it for her, and I said if she was going to smoke she’d better drink, too, and I bought her whatever she was having.”
“Wild Turkey.”
“Is that what it was? Yes, by God, it was, because the next thing I knew she was saying she had a whole bottle of the stuff just around the corner, and she whisked me out of there and up to her apartment, and I might like to flatter myself that I picked her up, but it was very much the other way around. She picked me up.”
“And took you home.”
“That’s right. What does she say happened? I picked her up?”
“Why do you figure she would say that, John?”
“Who the hell knows what she’d say? She was a dizzy bitch. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m too fucking old for barroom pickups, I really am. I’m forty-seven, I’ll be forty-eight next month, I’m too old to go around sleeping with people I don’t know.”
“Sometimes, though, a couple of drinks...”
“It clouds your judgment,” he agreed.
“And you had more drinks at her apartment?”
“A drink. Then I went home.”
“One drink and you went home?”
“That’s what I just said. What’s her story?”
“Right now we just want to get your story, John.”
“Why? Did she make a complaint? If she did, I think I have a right to hear it before I respond to it. What does she say I did?”
They looked at each other, and he took a step backward, as if someone had struck him a blow in the chest. He said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“What makes you say that, John?”
“That’s why you’re here. What happened to her? What did she do, go out looking for somebody else?”
“Why would she do that, John?”
“Because she was still horny, I guess.”
“What did you do, John? Turn the lady down? Had a glass of her Wild Turkey and decided you didn’t want to get naked with her after all?”
“The chemistry wasn’t right.”
“So you kept your clothes on?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You took them off?”
He stood still for a long moment. They were asking more questions but he had stopped listening. He turned from them, walked to his desk.