Seated upon the other chrome-and-orange padded chair, she squirmed a bit, thinking that there was something wrong with the cushion. It was then she realized that her dress was tight.
“Social media for the advertising arm of the firm,” she answered, thinking, Am I getting fat?
“Like Twitter and Facebook?”
“And MyTime, Get It, Lost Treasure, and about a hundred more platforms.”
“You like the work?”
“Not really. I used to run my own business, but now I’m just paying the rent.”
“I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Ms. Frith-DeGeorgio—”
“You can call me Marilee.”
“Marilee. Do you know a Dr. Martin David Hull?”
“Yes.”
“I’m investigating him, the NYPD is.”
“About his wife?”
“He told you?”
“He said that his wife and some doctor guy ran away and the police were looking into it. But they showed up in Europe somewhere and the case was closed.”
Detective Wade sighed and, with his eyebrows alone, denied Martin’s claim.
“He brought us a letter,” the detective said. “A letter he claimed came in an envelope postmarked from Amsterdam. But he didn’t have the envelope, and there was no fingerprint other than his, nor were there any DNA markers to say that the letter actually came from his wife.”
“Didn’t she write the letter?” Marilee asked. “Couldn’t you check the handwriting?”
“The body of the letter was printed by computer, and the signature was close but different enough to cause concern.”
“And did you look in Amsterdam?”
“We found an address that a Sonora Simonson and Philip Landries had once possibly stayed in. But it was in a transient area, and there was no one who could identify their photographs. We have no evidence that they ever left the country.”
“So you think that Martin murdered them?”
“We don’t know what happened. Has he said anything to you?”
“Only what I already told you,” Marilee said. “Why are you only asking now? I mean, I’ve been seeing Marty for two months. He thinks the investigation is over.”
“My father had a stroke in Denver,” Odell Wade said. “I went to take care of him until he died. Another detective had the case, but he didn’t do much.”
“I’m sorry, Detective Wade, but I don’t know anything.”
The policeman gave her a slightly pained look and said, “Are you going to see Dr. Hull again?”
“Is it safe?”
“I really don’t know. But if you do talk to him or he calls you, I’d appreciate it if you would contact me.”
4
“Marty,” Marilee Frith-DeGeorgio said to her lover at 3:03 in the morning. “Are you asleep?”
“I never sleep.”
“Never?”
“Now and then I close my eyes and stop thinking for ten minutes or so, but life is very short, and we have a duty to future generations to make this a better world. So I stay awake as much as possible trying to finish my work before the dictum of mortality claims my soul.”
Before, when Marty made pronouncements like this, Marilee found them fetching, the thoughts of an awkward little man thinking too much of himself. But this time she got nervous. He might be a murderer; that’s what the handsome homicide detective, Odell Wade, had said.
After her meeting with the detective, Marilee cancelled her subscription to PFP and began seeing Martin almost every day. Her fear enhanced their sex life, and now she listened to him as closely as she used to heed her father when she was a little girl. The intensity with which she paid attention to the plastic surgeon brought about a feeling akin to love.
“What did you want?” Martin asked.
“Do you have a laboratory where you do your neuronal studies?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Can I visit it?”
“I’d love that.”
“You would?”
“Yes.” Martin sat up in half lotus, looking down on his naked lover. “A couple of weeks ago I thought that you were going to drop me. I mean I’m not much to look at, and brain surgeons make a lot more money.”
“Can you tell me something?” Marilee asked.
“What?”
“Would you have killed Sonora if you knew that she was having an affair with the gut doctor?”
“Philip,” Martin said, obviously pondering the question. “No. Given time I would have fixed her.”
“You mean hurt her in some other way?”
“Not at all. Sonora is an unhappy woman. When I met her she was fat and shy. When we got together, I paid for a personal trainer, and she turned her physical life around. She lost weight and looked great. But she was still unhappy. She will always be dissatisfied.”
“How could you fix something like that?”
“Long-term unhappiness is mostly a chemical and glandular imbalance. I mean, you might be unhappy on any particular day, because you lost a job or a favorite pet ran away, but continual sadness is something else. Most of us cannot live up to our potentials because there’s a biochemical war going on in our bodies — that and the fact that our knowledge of the world in which we live is usually subpar.”
“What’s the connection between sadness and knowledge?” Marilee asked. She enjoyed these talks with Martin, even though she was spying on him, trying to discover what had happened to his wife and her lover.
“Why would you put yourself in danger like that?” Angelique asked. Marilee had called to tell her sister to get in touch with Detective Wade if she went missing.
“I’m not really sure,” Marilee replied. “When we were just together, I liked him, but it wasn’t serious. I wanted to leave. But after talking to Detective Wade, the fear I feel gets me excited... in the bed.”
“That’s perverse.”
“And,” Marilee said, reaching for some knowledge she’d not yet articulated, “and for some reason his talk is making more and more sense. I don’t know... sometimes when we’re talking about his work I feel like we’re colleagues.
“The only problem is that I have less time to exercise and I’m putting on weight.”
“Knowledge is a form of culture,” Martin said that early morning, answering his informant’s/lover’s question. “Not what we know but how we perceive the forms of knowledge brings us closer together. And belonging almost always trumps sadness. Why, I don’t think I’ve had one sad moment since I met you.”
“But that’s love,” she said, feeling ashamed of using the word. “Knowledge comes from education.”
“That was once the case, certainly, but less so, and soon — no more.”
“But the only way you can learn is by applying your mind to that task,” Marilee said with conviction.
“But there are two types of learning,” Martin said, showing his gapped teeth. “One is just the simple concatenation of facts, data. But there is a part of the brain that contains geometric forms that are designed to prepare the mind to apply the endless list of facts. One day we will be able to stimulate these forms intravenously.”
“What are you talking about?”
Martin stood up and walked off of his low platform bed.
“You’ll see when you come to my lab,” he said. “I’m going down there now to get ready for your visit.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“I’ll take a cab. I’ll leave the address on the kitchen table. Come by around eleven. I’m sure you’ll be amazed.”
“Hello?” a woman’s voice said over the phone at 4:09.
Marilee had waited as long as she could, but finally she just had to call.