Robert Parker: Hundred Dollar Baby

"You've not heard from the anonymous caller," I said.

"No."

"Business is okay?" I said. "Hawk isn't scaring the clients?"

"Business is as good as ever," April said. "Hawk has stayed pretty much in the background, and there haven't been any incidents."

The evening commuter traffic in this part of town was on Storrow Drive and the Pike. The traffic moving on Commonwealth was mostly cabs. The only other pedestrians on the mall were people with dogs.

"So," I said, "since I last saw you…"

"You mean when I was still a kid?"

"Yeah."

"After I left you and Susan, I went back to Mrs. Utley, in New York, and… she sort of brought me up."

"You worked for her," I said.

"Yes. She taught me how to dress, how to walk, how to speak. She showed me how to order in good restaurants."

"She did a lot of that before you ran off with Rambeaux," I said.

"My God, you remember his name."

"I do," I said.

"She taught me to read books, and go to shows, and follow the newspaper so I could talk intelligently. I still read The New York Times every morning."

"Any love interests since Rambeaux?"

"No," April said. "And she always gave me the best assignments. No creepy stuff-young men, mostly. Regular customers."

"But none you've met that matter to you."

"Oh God, you're still such a romantic," she said. "Whores don't fall in love. I learned that from Rambeaux."

"He was the wrong guy to fall in love with," I said. "Doesn't mean there isn't a right one."

She laughed. I heard no humor in the sound.

"Men are pigs," she said.

"Oink," I said.

"Except you."

"There may be another one someplace that isn't," I said. "I'm not even absolutely sure Hawk is or isn't."

She sighed loudly.

"Most men are pigs, okay?" she said.

"So what's your social life?" I said.

"Social life?"

"Yeah."

"I don't have much of a social life," she said. "Mostly I work."

"Friends?"

"I get along well with my employees," she said.

"Any free time?" I said.

"If I have free time I go to the gym. How I look matters in my work."

"Turn tricks anymore?" I said.

"Now and then, for fun, with the right guy."

"What would make him right?"

"He'd need to be interested in someone my age, for one thing."

"Anything else?" I said. "That would make him right?"

"Oh, leave me the hell alone," April said. "I almost forget what you're like. You're still working on me."

"Working on you?" I said.

"You're still trying to save me, for crissake. This is what I am. You can't save me."

"Except maybe from the anonymous caller," I said.

We paused at Clarendon Street and waited for the light.

"I guess I earned that," she said. "I came to you for help. But couldn't you just help me with that?"

"Sure," I said.

"You know something that occurred to me," I said to Susan.

"I know what usually occurs to you," she said.

"Besides that," I said. "Men, at least straight men, have no idea what other men are like during sex."

"Are you planning to ask me?"

"No," I said. "But presumably, conversely, straight women probably have very little idea what other women are like during sex."

"Are you planning to tell me?"

"No."

"Isn't it swell that it occurred to you," Susan said.

"You're not interested?"

"No."

We were sharing a Cuban sandwich at the bar in Chez Henri. Susan felt that Riesling was appropriate with a Cuban sandwich. I was drinking beer.

"Men think about stuff like that," I said.

"Women don't," Susan said.

"Are we both generalizing from our own experience?" I said.

"Yes," Susan said.

"April says all men are pigs," I said.

"Her experience may have contributed to that view," Susan said.

"Sure," I said. "But I have no way to know. Is it certain that the men she has encountered are pigs?"

"Not everyone patronizes whores," Susan said.

"And those who do so regularly," I said, "maybe have something wrong with them."

Susan nodded. She had cut a small wedge of one half of the sandwich and was chewing a small bite she had taken.

"I don't find you unduly piggish," she said.

"Wow," I said. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

She smiled and sipped her wine.

"Why are you so interested?" she said.

"I worry about April," I said.

"Probably with reason," Susan said.

"She seems so integrated, and calm," I said. "It's kind of heartwarming. And then we're walking along and I ask about her social life, and she says all men are pigs."

"Including you?"

"When I raised that issue, she said except me."

"If I may generalize," Susan said, "everyone generalizes. We just got through generalizing, you may recall."

"But this generalization seems to have cut her off from any possibility of… love?"

"She has spent her life in circumstances where love was a commercial exchange," Susan said. "As I recall the time when she got into the biggest trouble, where you had to in a sense buy her back, she did so out of love."

"You think that was love?" I said.

"She thought it was. It didn't make her more likely to feel love again."

I ate some sandwich and drank some beer.

"When I was about twenty-two," I said, "I went with two other guys to Japan on R & R. We stayed in a hotel near the Sugamo subway stop, with some girls we had rented for the week. We took hot baths, and they cooked us food on a hibachi in the room, first time I ever had sukiyaki, and we had what seemed at the time reasonable sex in reasonable amounts. It was very pleasant. After a week we went back to war."

"Your point?" Susan said.

I could feel her eyes on me. She was becoming interested. The force of her interest was always tangible.

"We liked each other. We weren't contemptuous of them. Maybe if we were, the language barrier made it easier to hide, but I felt no disdain. We didn't feel anything for them, either. We were sort of like new pals, having some fun… for a short while."

Susan nodded. "Yes," she said.

"It was the last time I was with a prostitute."

"Probably drank some during that week, too," Susan said.

"Absolutely."

"War, whiskey, and women," Susan said.

"The big three," I said.

"Can you say rites of passage?"

"I know," I said. "And it may look more charming in that context."

"So where are you going with this?" Susan said.

"I don't know. It's bothering me."

"April is better off than she would have been," Susan said, "if she hadn't met you."

"Yes," I said. "I think that's so. But it doesn't mean she's well off."

"That's true," Susan said. "It is also true that you are not God."

"You don't know that," I said.

Susan smiled at me with her eyes while she took another delicate bite of the small wedge she had cut off her half of the Cuban sandwich.

"After I talked with April the other night," I said, "I went home and looked up escort services on the Web. She's right, there's millions of listings. And pretty soon, as you would expect, they linked to porn sites. So I surfed the porn sites. I didn't sign up, I just looked at the marketing."

"And you always read Playboy for the articles," Susan said.

"Scan a few porn sites," I said. "After a short time, they become pretty repellent. What struck me was the contempt with which the product is marketed. It seems aimed almost entirely at people who dislike women. The women are always referred to as whores or sluts or bitches or whatever. They are voraciously eager to dangle your doop or flap your floop or whatever the site was selling. I even scanned some gay sites. Same thing. The object of desire, male or female, is treated with scorn, except for their uncontrollable willingness to bleep your bippy."