The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (13 page)

“Maybe it’s time I got married.”

“Bern,” she said, “I knew you were going to say that. I could see the subtitles crawling across your forehead.”

“Honestly?”

“Well, almost. Why do you think you ought to get married? So you can have a lifetime of perfect nights with Marie?”

“Janine,” I said.

“For me, Bern, she’ll always be Marie of Romania, and I’d say that’s as likely to be her name as Janine.”

“She looked about as Romanian as you do.”

“Oh? My grandfather on my mother’s side was born in Bucharest.”

“Honestly?”

“No, and his name wasn’t Marie, either. Or Janine.”

“You’re mixing me up,” I said, “and I wish you wouldn’t. If I wanted to get married, it wouldn’t be to Marie.”

“Janine.”

“Whatever. She’s not the kind of woman I would marry.”

“Because she slept with you on the first date?”

“I wonder why we call it that,” I said. “Believe me, there was no sleeping involved. But that’s not why.”

“Then why? Because no man wants to marry a girl who does all the things he’s spent his whole life hoping she would do?”

I frowned. “Two drinks ago,” I said, “I would have been able to make sense out of that sentence, and I might even have been able to respond to it. Look, I wasn’t what Janine was looking for. She wanted a man of substance.”

“ ‘A breakfast-eating, Brooks Brothers type.’ ”

“That’s from something.”

“
Guys and Dolls
.”

“Right. Well, I usually eat breakfast, and my blazer’s from Brooks Brothers.”

“You told me you got it from a thrift shop.”

“Well, it didn’t start out there. The first person who owned it got it at Brooks Brothers. It’s in beautiful shape, too. I wonder why he got rid of it.”

“He was cheating on his wife, and she gave away all his clothes.”

“I hope so. I always figured he died, and I’d much rather believe he was out getting laid. What were we talking about, anyway?”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” I said. “Hardly anything does.”

“You know,” I said, “
you
could get married. It’s legal now.”

“Remember Randy Messenger? She wanted for us to get married.”

“That was years ago. It was nowhere near legal then.”

“Well, it’s not like it was a criminal offense, Bern. They didn’t lock you up for it. They just wouldn’t give you a license. But there were plenty of gay weddings, and you and I went to one together.”

“Ginger and Joanne,” I said, remembering. “In that church at the corner of West Thirteenth and Seventh. One of them wore a floor-length white gown.”

“Ginger.”

“And the other wore a tuxedo.”

“No, it was during the summer, and Joanne wore a white dinner jacket.”

“They looked sensational. Then they moved somewhere.”

“Rhinebeck.”

“And didn’t one of them want to get pregnant? I suppose that would have been Ginger.”

“It was. They were looking for a sperm donor, but you weren’t interested.”

“It seemed too weird. It doesn’t seem that weird now, for some reason. Maybe I missed a good chance.”

“Maybe not,” she said.

“Oh? It might be nice to have a son. I could teach him my two trades.”

“Bookselling and burglary.”

“That way I wouldn’t be the last of the gentleman burglars. He could creep along in my footsteps.”

“And if Ginger had a girl?”

“Who says a woman can’t sell books? The guy who owns the Strand, his daughter’s in the business with him.”

“And your other line of work?”

“So? Who says a woman can’t break into houses?”

“Instead of the last of the gentleman burglars,” she said, “she could be the first of the lady burglars.”

“Why not?” My glass had somehow emptied itself. I took care of that. “What did Ginger wind up having? A boy or a girl?”

“A sex-change operation.”

“Huh?”

“It was after she and Joanne broke up,” she said, “and they sold the house in Rhinebeck, and they both moved back to the city, but to separate apartments. Ginger realized she’d been suppressing her true self all along, and that was why she’d been such an over-the-top femme. Deep down inside, she’d always felt herself to be a man.”

“So she went and had the surgery.”

“The hormone treatments, and the counseling, and finally the surgery.”

“And it worked?”

“The person who used to be Ginger,” she said, “is now a man named Jim. Matter of fact, you’ve met him.”

“I have?”

“At the Poodle Factory. We were in the middle of lunch and he brought in his Dandie Dinmont for a wash and set.”

“I remember the dog,” I said. “Oh, Jesus—I remember the guy, too. That was Ginger?”

“Jim.”

“He came across as a regular guy.”

“He
is
a regular guy, Bern. He may not have started out that way, but that’s what he is now.”

“Does he date? I mean, who does he date? I mean—”

“You mean does he go for boys or girls, and that hasn’t changed. He’s attracted to women.”

“Oh, he’d have to be,” I said. “Nothing queer about our Jim. What does Joanne make of all this, do you happen to know?”

“Joseph,” she said.

“I’m drinking.”

“You’re sipping,” I said. “I should have bought the Glen Kirkatchacallit after all. But you talked me out of it.”

“What we’re drinking is fine, Bern. Why waste the money?”

“It was only a few dollars more, and look what we saved by skipping dinner. And it would have been worth it. Remember what Thorstein Veblen wrote about conspicuous consumption?”

“What, Bern?”

“I was hoping you’d remember.”

“I don’t even remember who he was.”

“Well,” I said, “if you ever make it through
Swann’s Way
with your eyes wide open, Veblen’s your man. You ever find yourself in the path of a charging rhisonerus—”

“Rhinoceros.”

“Thank you. If you do, just whip out Thorstein Veblen and start reading. One paragraph and you’ll stop that charging lion in his tracks.”

“A minute ago he was a rhino, Bern.”

“I didn’t want to get my tongue all twisted up trying to say it. But you figured out a way around that, didn’t you? Rhino. Two simple syllables, rhi and no. ‘Put ’em together and what have you got? Bippety Boppety Boo.’ Remember that song?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. Veblen wrote about conspicuous consumption, but the way you’re drinking is more like inconspicuous consumption. But don’t think you’re fooling anybody, Carolyn. I see what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing, Bern?”

“Playing the role of designated driver. We haven’t got a car and we’re not going anywhere, but that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

“I might be taking it a little bit easy,” she conceded. “Even so, I’m way too far along to get behind the wheel, which is just as well, considering that I never learned to drive.”

“You want to learn? I’ll teach you.”

“Not tonight, Bern.”

“No of course not,” I said. “Tonight I’m the designated drinker.”

“I campaigned for gay marriage,” Carolyn said. “I wrote letters to my congressperson, which some poor staffer had to read and respond to. I signed petitions, I went to fund-raisers. I marched, Bernie. I hate marching, I hate parades, I hate all that crap, and yet I marched for gay marriage.”

“I know you did.”

“And I danced in the streets when it passed in New York. If I’d been wearing a hat I’d have thrown it in the air.”

“You should have said something. I’ve got plenty of hats.”

“And then when the Supreme Court did the right thing, I celebrated all over again.”

“I remember.”

She leaned forward, lowered her voice. “And now I’m going to tell you something you must never repeat to another living soul.”

“No problem,” I said. “I probably won’t remember.”

“What I’m afraid of,” she said, “is that you’ll remember what I tell you, but you’ll forget that you’re supposed to keep it to yourself. Well, I’m going to say it anyway. I’m not so sure gay marriage is a great idea.”

“That’s the scotch talking,” I said, “and I guess you’ve had more of it than I realized.”

“Oh, it’s a right we should have, and we’re way better off for having it. And all the arguments for it are as true as they ever were. And maybe it’s different for gay men. But giving lesbians the right to get married is a dangerous thing.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Bernie, what does a lesbian bring to a second date?”

“A U-haul,” I said. “You told me that joke a long time ago.”

“And it still works,” she said, “because it’s true. We’ve got this nesting instinct that’s out of control. ‘Oh, you like me? Well, I like you, too. And we’ve got so much in common! I see you’ve got a cat. I’ve got a cat, too! Isn’t that great? And our cats like each other! Ooh, let’s get a third cat and we can put our heads together to come up with a really cute name for it!’ ”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Not by much. ‘Oh, let’s move in together! We can share a closet and wear each other’s clothes. Don’t you just love L. L. Bean?’ ”

“Those plaid shirts,” I said.

“And the worst thing about them is they last forever. ‘Hey, I got an idea! Let’s find a donor and a turkey baster and make a baby. We can be mommies together, and it’ll give us something to do when Lesbian Bed Death puts an end to our sex lives. Or maybe we should have
two
babies, so it’ll be easier to divvy them up when we both fall in love with other people.’ ”

“Oh, come on. That’s not fair. There are plenty of lesbian relationships that last a lifetime.”

“I know.”

“In fact I’m not sure the odds are any better for a heterosexual marriage.”

“And how good is that? Bern, every marriage ends either in divorce or death. Did you ever think about that?”

“No,” I said, “and I wish I didn’t have to think about it now. What did Jim and Joseph do? I mean, when they were still Ginger and Joanne?”

“What did they do?”

“Well, they were married. We went to their wedding, we saw it happen. When they decided to split up, what did they do?”

“I told you, Bern. They sold the house in Rhinebeck, split up the money, and each of them found a place in the city. Well, Ginger did. Joanne wound up somewhere in Queens. I guess Joanne took the cats, because Jim’s got a dog now.”

“The Dandie Dinmont.”

“Who happens to be show quality, though Jim’s not crazy enough to go through all that rigmarole.”

“That’s all there was to it?”

“Uh-huh, and that’s kind of my point, Bern. They had a nice church wedding and lived together as wife and wife, and when it was time to split the blanket they didn’t need to call their lawyers. But if a lesbian wedding has legal standing, when the marriage turns belly-up, you have to get a divorce.”

“A lesbian divorce.”

“Well, sure. A lesbian divorce used to be a simple matter of shouting and screaming and crying and figuring out who keeps the rent-stabilized apartment.”

“You’d still have that, wouldn’t you?”

“Plus a little added something. It’s not hard to understand why the Association of Matrimonial Lawyers was one of gay marriage’s strongest supporters, is it?”