Singer 02 - Long Time No See by Susan Isaacs Read Free Book Online

house’s guts would be ripped out and replaced—with all white walls, floors, and furniture. Or with a single, immense terra-cotta-tiled space that was kitchen-dining-room-living-room-den-library. Or with such rococo moldings and fixtures that even the downstairs guest bathroom looked as if a Bourbon king could be in there signing an entente.
    “Well,” I said, stopping to admire a miniature forest of knee-high ferns, “better Larry finds a new aesthetic when he gets bored than a new wife.”
    Nancy shrugged. “I am no longer certain that is true. What do I need him for?”
    “You love him.”
    “You are an incorrigible romantic, Judith.” She shook her head, saddened by my foolishness. “Of course, being a romantic is a cinch once you don’t have a husband. Tell me, how can I love someone who wants his creative legacy to be a Gothic media room? Do you know what he confided to me last night, post the usual coitus nauseus ?: ‘Nancy, the Gothic style is the only morally correct form of building.’ Any moment he’ll get a tonsure and a hair shirt.” She shrugged. “The man is fifty-eight years old. This is probably the beginning of dementia. I’ll be changing his diapers soon.”
    “Would it blight this day even more if I reminded you that the age difference between you and Larry is three years, not thirty-three? But so what? For a woman in her mid-fifties, you look fabulous. You even look fabulous for a woman in her forties. Why get hung up on age—”
    Setting her hands on the slim hips of her tight, low-slung jeans, Nancy snapped, “Hush!”
    “You know what my new motto is?” I asked her.
    “Regurgitate every syllable of psychobabble I hear on Oprah?”
    “No,” I said. ‘“Never be afraid of the truth.’”
    “The truth is, it’s Viagra three nights a week. The only thing not limp about Larry is his dick. His very essence is limp. And speaking of limp, it’s high time you reconsidered your adolescent fantasy about that cop. If you don’t think he has to put a splint on it these days you are seriously deluded. You’re deluded anyhow. A few months’ fling twenty years ago and he’s the love of your life?”
    I slammed my hands onto my hips. “I did not bring him up.”
    “He’s in the air. I can sense his continual presence in your head.”
    “You’re way off base,” I lied.
    “You wonder why you’re not meeting any decent men—”
    “No. I don’t wonder. You do.”
    “He’s married, Judith.”
    “Not to the same one.”
    Nancy stopped short before a copse of bamboo. “No. You’re right. To a new one.”
    “It’s not working.”
    “How do you know? You ran into him a year ago for a couple of seconds.”
    “But then he called,” I protested feebly.
    “And you had a four-second conversation.”
    “It lasted a few minutes. I could hear it in his voice: He wasn’t happy. Anyhow, he’s not in Homicide anymore. He’s head of some other unit, Special Investigations. Something like that. But if you’re thinking I’m obsessed, it so happens I was the one who said ‘Nice talking to you again’ and got off the phone.”
    “Sure. So you could faint.”
    “I don’t faint.” I hated fighting with her. It was one thing to be assertive professionally, to tell a history department chair you will not teach four sections of America from Jamestown to Appomattox the following fall, especially if he’s going to stick forty students in each section. It’s another thing to go head-to-head with your dearest friend. But Nancy possessed what I guessed was a journalist’s ability to withstand unpleasantness and keep going. In fact, confrontation seemed to refresh her. So I turned away and got busy studying her house. All that was visible was the roof and what I was pretty sure (but not a hundred percent) was the top of a linden tree. I didn’t really want to ask if it was, because it would clue her in that I wanted desperately to change the subject. Naturally, Nancy would know if