I didn’t say anything.
“Because of these,” she said, cupping her enormous breasts in her hands.
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “Used to get it three times a day and now I don’t get it at all. Because of these. They used to be the reason he married me, and now—”
“Uh—”
“The hell of it is that I love the bastard. And he loves me. But I don’t turn him on anymore. Because he’s a tit man and that’s all there is to it.”
“You lost me,” I said.
She stood up. “C’mere,” she said. I stepped closer to her. She put the index finger of her right hand to the tip of her left breast. “Feel,” she said. “Christ sake, don’t just stand there. Grab yourself a handful. Go on, dammit!”
I cupped her breast with my hand.
“Don’t be shy. Give it a little squeeze.”
I gave it a little squeeze.
“Feel good?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Now the other one.”
“Look, Mrs. Henderson—”
“Althea, dammit.”
“Look, Althea—”
“Shut up. Feel the other one, will you?”
I followed orders.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Uh—”
“Both feel the same?”
“Sure.”
“Not from this end they don’t. Wait right here. Don’t go away.” I waited right there and didn’t go away and she came back with a hat pin about four inches long. “Stick it in my tit,” she said. “The left one.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Look, Mrs. Henderson, Althea, maybe I should come back some other time. I—”
“Oh, hell,” she said, and plunged the hatpin into her left breast. My stomach flipped a little but she didn’t seem to feel a thing. She drew out the pin. There was no blood on it. Her eyes challenged me and I began to get the picture.
“Foam rubber,” she said. “The other one’s real. Until a couple of years ago they were both real and Haskell was crazy about them. Then I had to have a mastectomy because some knife-happy surgeon decided I had the big C. Turned out it was benign but by that time he’d already done his cutting. Only half a woman now. Used to turn Haskell on. Now all I turn him is off. Still loves me, I still love him, but he takes all his vitamins and drinks his carrot juice and eats his alfalfa and walks around horny as a toad and I don’t do him any good. That’s why he needs his topless dancers.”
I stood there wondering why floors never open up and swallow you when you want them to. She went out to the kitchen for more gin. I thought she was lucky she wasn’t too drunk when she did her trick with the hatpin or she might get the wrong breast by mistake and it would probably hurt. When she came back I managed to steer the conversation back in its original direction. I asked her what she had been doing the night before last, and what her husband had been doing.
“He was working late at the store,” she said. “Do you believe that?”
“Well—”
“And I was drinking carrot juice and counting my nipples. Do you believe that?”
“Althea—”
“He was chasing women in New York. And I was here, sitting in front of the television set and drinking scotch. Not gin. I never drink gin after four in the afternoon. Only a pansy would drink gin after four in the afternoon.”
“I see. Can you prove it?”
“Prove it? Hell, everybody knows only a pansy would drink gin in the nighttime. What’s there to prove?”
“Can you prove you were home watching television?”
“Oh,” she said. She thought it over. “You think I went into New York and stuck a pin in that girl’s tit. What was her name again?”
“Cherry Bounce.”
“Why the hell would I do a thing like that? I don’t go around sticking pins in tits all the time like some kind of a nut. I just did it now to prove a point. Lessee. Kids are at camp so they can’t gimme an alibi. Oh, sure. My neighbor from down the street was over here. Got here about nine o’clock, left when Johnny Carson went off the air. Marge Whitman, lives just down the street. She’s in the same boat as me. Well, not exactly. She’s got two tits but she’s got a pansy for a husband. Leaves her out here and spends his night picking up sailors on Times Square, the fucking pansy. Drinks gin all night long, the goddamn fruit.”
I got the Whitman woman’s address and started backing toward the door. She asked me where I was going. “I have some other calls to make,” I said.
“I turn you off too, don’t I?”
“No, not at all, but—”
“You’re a tit man like my husband.”
“Not exactly.”
“You don’t like tits?”
“I like them fine, but—”
“You’re not a pansy are you?” I shook my head. “What do you drink in the evening?”
“Whiskey, usually. Sometimes a beer. Why?”
“Not a pansy,” she said. And then she took her blouse off, and then she took her bra off, and I just stood there. She had one absolutely perfect breast, and where the other had been there was smooth skin with an almost imperceptible scar from the incision.
“Sickening, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all.”
“Deformed.”
“No.”
“Turns you off, doesn’t it?”
The weird thing is that it was turning me on. I don’t know how to account for it and I’d rather not stop and figure it out. It probably just proves I’m kinkier than l realized, but why go into it too closely?
“C’mere,” she said. I did, and she opened my zipper and groped around. “I’ll be a sonofabitch,” she said. “Well, you’re not a faggot, are you?”
“No, and—”
“And I don’t turn you off, do I? Maybe you’re a sensible tit man, that’s what it must be. You figure half a loaf is better than none. Right?”
“Uh.”
Her hand clutched me possessively. She turned and began leading me toward the staircase. I had the choice of following her or leaving part of my anatomy behind, and I’ve always been attached to it. I followed.
If Althea had had her way she would have kept me there for hours. And I’ll tell you something. If we weren’t in the middle of a case I would have stayed She evidently had an enormous complex about her absent breast, which old Haskell must have done a good job of reinforcing, and as a result she did everything she could to compensate for what she regarded as a terrible deficiency. As far as I was concerned, passing her up because she only had one breast was like refusing to listen to Schubert’s Eighth Symphony because he never got around to finishing it.
I finally managed to get out of there after promising to return when I got the chance. Then I stopped at the Whitman house to confirm Althea’s alibi, although I didn’t really need confirmation. But Haig would be sure to ask and I would have to have the answers.
Mrs. Whitman was quick to recall watching television with Althea on the night in question. She was also quick to offer me a cup of coffee, which I declined because I was really in a hurry. And I got the impression that she would have gladly offered me a lot more than coffee. She was a good looking woman, a little older than Althea, but certainly nothing to complain about.
Back in the car, I wondered if Mr. Whitman was really homosexual. The fact that he drank gin in the evening didn’t strike me as sufficient evidence in and of itself. I know a lot of perfectly straight people who drink gin in the evening. I think they’re crazy, but it doesn’t make them gay.
Then I began thinking about the conversation with Clover, and how I’d told her there probably wouldn’t be much sex in the book. I wondered if our talk had had anything to do with the fact that Althea and I wound up in bed. I suppose it could have operated on a sort of subliminal level. Maybe it was my aspirations as an author that goaded me to respond to Althea’s advances.