Lawrence Block - The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes

And Otterbein, while by no means a common name, was hardly unique. Two Midwestern cities bore the name, as did the college in Ohio and a residential neighborhood in Baltimore. So if George Otterbein could establish any connection to Otterbeins in Nebraska or South Dakota—

“It bothered him that he couldn’t,” he told Lisa. “He really wanted to be the missing heir, but his father was born right here in Florida to a family with all its connection in Maryland and Virginia. Then he managed to recall a sister of his grandfather’s who’d married a man and moved west, and when I pointed out that a sister wouldn’t have been able to pass on the Otterbein name, he decided that it might as easily have been a brother. I took down his information and we agreed that it was unlikely to lead anywhere, but there was no harm in seeing where it went.”

“God, that’s George. If there’s a nickel looking for a home, he’ll be happy to take it in. He told me once he’s not related to any of the Otterbeins, that his father was the only son of an only son. Of course that was when a young man named Otterbein applied for a job, and went so far as to suggest that they might be related. George didn’t encourage the speculation, nor did he hire the fellow, who he thought was looking to con him.”

“He had the same thought about me.”

“Oh?”

“He’d had a drink or two with lunch, and he took down a bottle and poured himself another. Talked me into joining him, either to be sociable or to loosen me up. I think he was waiting for me to offer to work up some credentials to support his claim. A lot of short cons play off that sort of premise, and most of them wind up asking for some kind of expense money, with the real payoff to come when the legacy comes in.”

“Which it never does.”

“The front money is the payoff, for the con man. And you’d think that’d be it, that he’d take it and disappear, but sometimes a good player can string a mark along for months. Getting an extra hundred here and there, a few bucks to underwrite a search of Cree tribal records in Manitoba, a few bucks more to bribe a vital statistics clerk in Mandan, North Dakota.”

“But you didn’t ask him for money.”

“Of course not. I got a few minutes of his time and an ounce or two of his single-malt scotch, and that was really all I wanted. More than I wanted, because I’ve never been much of a scotch drinker, and it was a little early in the day for me anyway. How old is George? I read it online and it didn’t stick. Well up in his sixties, gotta be.”

“Sixty-seven this past March.”

“He still looks vigorous, but I guess there’s no reason a man his age wouldn’t be.”

“Are we talking about sexual potency here? Because he can still get it up, if that was the question.”

“It wasn’t. He’s big and he looks strong. The drink shows in his face a little. Does he get any exercise?”

“He plays golf, but I don’t know if that counts as exercise. They all use carts, and how much exercise is it to swing a club a few dozen times?”

“They really don’t walk?”

“On some courses you’re not allowed to. You have to use a cart, because otherwise it slows things down too much.”

“I never played,” he said, “but I always thought the one good thing about it would be all that walking in the open air. I’ve seen them playing golf on TV, the different tournaments. I don’t remember them zipping around in carts.”

“Maybe it’s different on TV.”

“Maybe. You were going to tell me what made you cut your hair.”

“Right.”

“It doesn’t have to be now. If you’d rather wait—”

“No,” she said. “Now’s a good time for it. Especially now that you went and saw him. And had a drink with him. Speaking of which, you didn’t happen to bring any whiskey along, did you?”

“It never occurred to me. I could go get some, though I don’t know offhand where the nearest package store would be, but—”

“No, don’t go anywhere. If our love nest happened to have a stocked bar, I’d be a customer. But I’m probably better off without it. I’ve never told anybody this story, but then I’ve never told anybody anything, not really. Until I met you.”

He waited.

“I said I’d need you to hold me. Not now. You’ll know when.”

“The problem was I didn’t get pregnant. If I had his baby it would prove something. Don’t ask me what, but it was very important to him. And we tried and tried and tried, and we went to a fertility doctor and had tests done, and it just didn’t happen.

“His kids hated me before they even met me. I already told you that. They thought I was just interested in him for his money, and they weren’t entirely wrong about that. I was impressed with him, he’s a big powerful man and he has an aura, you know? A magnetism, even.

“But his money was a big factor. I always worked and I always got by, but I was getting tired of the struggle. It was this constant struggle. I was always sweating the rent or the car payment, always a day late and a dollar short.

“And here was this man who wanted to take care of me. He had plenty of money, he’d made something for himself on top of what his daddy left him, and his kids were grown and he wanted someone to take care of, someone to spoil.

“So I looked at what cards I was holding and I played them carefully. I wouldn’t fuck him because I was just scared to death of getting pregnant, that’s what I told him, which turned out to be ironic when my period showed up right on time every month. Instead I would give him hand jobs, until I let him talk me into using my mouth. I had to act like I didn’t know what I was doing, and bit by bit little miss virgin mouth figured out what to do, and even learned to like it.

“Maybe I should have been an actress.

“So he married me, and I finally let him put it in, and I think what ruined it all for me was the acting. I was never in love with him, but I think maybe I could have come to love him if I hadn’t sabotaged it. But when you play somebody that way you wind up having contempt for him, because he’d have to be a moron to buy your act. And because the number you’re doing on him is only justified if you tell yourself he’s an asshole and he deserves it.

“Anyway, it was okay on the surface for a while. I learned how to shop, and that was fun until it wasn’t, until the novelty wore off. Some women get addicted, they can spend their whole lives shopping, but it didn’t do much for me once I got the hang of it.

“I got tired of it. We got tired of each other. Trying to get pregnant was part of it. Having to do it on schedule, and in positions that were supposed to facilitate conception, that turned it into a job. And it was my job, you know, except I’d been trying to avoid facing up to the fact.

“Then we quit trying, and I was tired of his dick and he was tired of my pussy. And I thought, okay, the honeymoon’s over, and maybe that’s all right. I can still be a wife. I can run the house, I can show up with him at social functions and look good on his arm, I can remember the names of his friends and flirt just enough to make them want me but not enough so that they think they’ve got a chance.

“I thought we were okay. And in the long run, well, he was thirty years older, wasn’t he? More than that, he was exactly twice my age when we got married, sixty-two to my thirty-one, and he wasn’t a drunk but he was a man who drank, and you probably noticed the bloom on his nose and cheeks, the broken blood vessels. His daddy taught him to drink Kentucky bourbon, and he switched to single-malt scotch when someone let him know that was classier, and he didn’t get drunk but he pretty much always had a drink in him, and according to the charts the insurance men show you, he was thirty pounds overweight. He carries it well, but it’s there, isn’t it?