Free Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence by Judith Viorst Page B

before he strikes again?”
    I loved her utter graciousness about the rape of her lawn. She loved my ardent apology and the homemade lemon pound cake I served with our tea. By the time she left my kitchen we had begun a conversation which we knew would never stop as long as we lived.
    •  •  •
    “So what makes you think Mr. Monti is seducible?” Carolyn asked me, as she climbed off her bike at the ding and removed her sweats. “For all you know he takes that ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife’s ass’ commandment seriously.”
    I quit biking too, and followed Carolyn into the bathroom, sitting on top of the toilet seat so we could continue talking while she showered. “I don’t think so,” I shouted over the din of her luxe eight-faucet stall shower. “Remember when the Montis came for brunch? Well, I had a few moments alone with him in the kitchen—enough time to melt a little ice—and he gave me this look and he said that people just don’t understand that a woman’s beauty is always found in her eyes.”
    “Sounds innocent enough.”
    “Yeah. Right. Except he was patting my ass while he was saying it.”
    Carolyn came out of the shower and started toweling off briskly. “God, look at these breasts. Why do they keep staring down at the ground instead of gazing up at the heavens?”
    “Only the left one is looking down. The right one is fine. Anyway,” I continued, “when, instead of slapping his hand, I gave it a kind of reassuring squeeze, he suggested that we meet in his office soon—very soon—to discuss the Wally-Josephine situation.”
    “I still think he’s bad news. Besides, don’t you feel guilty—just a little guilty—about her? Mrs. Monti?”
    “This from the woman who slept with her own sister’s husband?”
    Carolyn brushed some blusher across her alabaster skin and then went to work on her eyes with a blue-gray liner. “But I’m an Episcopalian. I can handle adultery.”
    “Well, so can I. And besides,” I added, in my stuffiest voice, “one needn’t conceptualize this as adultery.”
    Carolyn laughed. “Then how might one conceptualize it?”
    “As a scientific experiment. As a sexual byway. As a momentary”—I sprayed myself with her million-dollar perfume—“as a very very momentary lapse.”
    •  •  •
    Although I use a word processor when I write the final draft of my newspaper column, I always like starting out with a pencil and pad. I like to write by hand curled up in our big brown living-room chair, or sprawled on the flowered chaise upstairs in our bedroom, or settledon a bench in the Bishop’s Garden of the National Cathedral.
    The cathedral is right in our neighborhood, an easy stroll away, but Carolyn drove me there on the way to her waxing. I found my bench in the garden, which is sort of a Secret Garden—small, cozy, lovingly tended, hidden from sight—and checked out the greenings and bloomings that would shortly ignite into a spring spectacular. Spring is different for sixteen-year-olds than it is for forty-six-year-olds, I told myself. And what if you’re seventy-six—what’s it like then? On such idle musings, I’ve found, are some of my finest columns built. I fished out my pad and pencil and started writing.
    What does the old lady think about in the springtime? What, in a time of rebirth and new beginnings, can possibly be her expectations, her dreams? In autumn’s flaming finale, the old lady can find reflections of herself that speak to her glories as well as to her diminishments. But she will not find her reflection in the spring of fresh starts and everything-is-possible. So what exactly is springtime to the old lady? What does the old lady think about?
    Every now and then I open one of my columns on this sort of poetic-melancholy note, but fear not—I instantly move on to affirmation. My column is, after all, intended to put people in control of their lives and to help them to develop a can-do attitude. Thus