Free Painted Ladies by Robert B. Parker Page B

philosopher,” I said.
    “Covert and driven,” she said.
    “ ‘Covert’?” I said.
    She smiled sadly and swallowed some Pernod.
    “ ‘A life of quiet desperation,’ ” she said. “To borrow from Emerson.”
    I was pretty sure she was borrowing from Thoreau, but I felt my cause would be better served by not mentioning that.
    “How’s your poem coming?” I said.
    “I’m always working on poetry,” she said.
    “I was thinking of the one you were going to write about your husband’s death.”
    “It is still in the formative stage, but I know it will be free verse,” she said. “A long free-verse narrative of the soul’s journey through sorrow.”
    “I look forward to reading it,” I said.
    “My husband is so difficult to render artistically,” she said.
    “I’ll bet he is,” I said. “Tell me about him.”
    She fortified herself for the task by draining her second Pernod. I nodded again at the bartender. He brought her a fresh drink, and she nodded her thanks imperiously. I’d noticed that certain lushes get imperious after a couple of pops, trying to prove, I suppose, that they aren’t lushes.
    “He was . . . He was a tapestry of pretense. Nothing about him was real. A . . . a pastiche of deceit.”
    “You love him?” I said.
    “I thought I did. What I loved was the mask, the costume of respectability he wore to cover himself.”
    “I’m fascinated,” I said. “Tell me about that.”
    She snorted, albeit imperiously.
    “Prince wasn’t even his name,” she said.
    “What was it?” I said.
    “Prinz,” she said. “Ascher Prinz. He was Jewish.”
    “Oy,” I said.
    She paid no attention. I didn’t feel bad about that. I was pretty sure she paid no attention to anyone.
    “He was ashamed of being Jewish,” she said. “He never spoke of it.”
    “Do you know why?” I said.
    “No, I don’t,” she said. “For me, all ethnicity is an enriching source of authenticity, without which one can hardly be a poet.”
    “Did he want to be a poet?” I said.
    She looked startled.
    “Excuse me?” she said.
    “Did Ashton want to be a poet?” I said.
    “God, no,” she said. “Why would you think that?”
    “Just a random thought,” I said.
    “There was no poetry in him,” she said.
    “Was there something in him?”
    “You mean artistically?” she said.
    I could see that she was trying to nurse her current Pernod, and it was stressing her.
    “Artistically, professionally, intellectually, romantically, whatever,” I said.
    “I . . . I really can’t say.”
    I nodded.
    “When did his family come to this country?” I said.
    “Ashton’s?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I don’t really know that, either,” she said, and gestured to the bartender. “I do know that his father was in a concentration camp. So it would be after World War Two, I guess.”
    “You know which camp?” I said.
    The Pernod came. She drank some. I could almost see her tension loosen.
    “Oh, I don’t know. He never talked about it, and they all sound the same to me, anyway.”
    “You poets are so sensitive,” I said.
    “What?”
    “Just being frivolous,” I said.
    “Oh,” she said.
    I could see that she was losing focus.
    “Tell me about his, ah, sexual addiction,” I said.
    She sort of grunted.
    “I’ll tell you one thing,” she said. “He wasn’t addicted to me.”
    “Hard to imagine,” I said. “Who was he addicted to?”
    “I couldn’t keep track,” she said. “He liked college girls, I think.”
    “Well, he was in the right place,” I said. “Do you know any names?”
    “God, no. You think I cared? You think I kept track? He was just another prancing, leering goat, and the only people who could possibly have been interested in him were silly girls.”
    “Does the name Missy Minor mean anything to you?”
    “Sounds like a silly girl to me,” Rosalind said.
    Her s ’s were starting to get a little slushy.
    “But you don’t recognize the name?” I said.
    “Silly stupid