Chapter 24 – Introducing My Special Friends
“I play,” he said, answering my question about chess.
“You have a board?” I said.
“No, I don’t pack a board when I go to investigate insurance thefts. I didn’t even unpack my bag between the last job and this job. You have one?”
I shook my head, No.
“You plan on playing chess when you came here to find me today?”
“No,” I said.
“You impulsive?”
“On occasion.”
“Like now?”
“It’s not the occasion, it’s the situation.”
“And what situation is that? Am I part of the situation?”
“You are.”
“Is this a business situation or a fun situation?”
“It’s not a business situation, unless you make it that way,” I said.
“You want it to be that way?”
“No.”
“You consider chess to be fun?”
“With the right opponent.”
“You do other things for fun?”
“I do, commensurate with the situation.”
“And as I understand it, based on our conversation the other night in the moonlight standing on top of the historic gun battery looking out over Charleston harbor after a breathtaking ride in a hot car during which at one point we lost contact with the asphalt, our situation is platonic in nature because you love your husband?”
I nodded.
He said, “And you want to engage in this relationship with me because you think you can do it, and you trust me at my word that I can do it, and you think it’s going to be worth all the trials and tribulations inherent in these two promises to not go anti-platonic?”
“I do.”
“How do you know I’m not a weak minded, caddish, philandering, semi-psychopathic goon with a below average sense of morality and a predilection and talent for insinuating myself into the lives of unsuspecting women and taking advantage of them monetarily and physically?”
I played this statement back to myself and smiled, then said, “First, you try any of that stuff and I’ll put a bullet through each of your goolies. Second, I’m not worried about the applicability of your self-description because I know you’re not that type of guy.”
“How do you know? We’ve just met. Psychopaths don’t advertise themselves. Even just semi-psychopaths. Most of the time you can’t tell them from the neighbor down the street. So how do you know?”
“Intuition.”
“It’s that good?”
“It’s the best. No, second best.”
“Who’s the best? Who’s got the best intuition?”
“Catherine Deneuve.”
“The actress?”
I nodded.
“You know her?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You know the icon of French culture well enough to understand her sense of intuition?”
“I learned it from her. We’re friends. Special friends.”
He didn’t say anything immediately, but stood looking at me. Then he said, “You got any other special friends?”
I debated my answer. Did I believe myself when I thought, ‘I trust this guy with the sandy hair and blue eyes and great voice?’ He waited patiently until I said, “Yes, I have a couple other special friends. I have a dog I talk to.”
“So? Lots of people talk to their dogs. Very therapeutic.”
“This dog talks back.”
If he had laughed at me I might’ve abandoned the whole project right then, but he didn’t. He looked at me seriously for quite a while and then said, “Any others? You have Catherine Deneuve, and a very special dog, and....?”
I decided if I was in this for a penny I was in for a pound, and said, “I have a friend named Gwendolyn.”
Now his look got more serious, his face draining of its interior humor. He said, “Gwendolyn Bedgewood?”
I said, “I call her Gwendy. She’s not like other girls. Not like other friends. Different, but special.”
“Can I meet her?”
I turned around and walked away from him, saying over my shoulder, “Let’s go play chess. I know where we can get a board. Unless you’re scared.”