Compelling Evidence by Steve Martini

Ben's office. They are too heavy. She will need help. I make no effort to move away. Finally she turns and looks directly at me standing there, lost in a philodendron. For an instant we simply look at each other. It's like ice cracking around our feet on a frozen pond. Each waits for the other to make the first move. I win the contest. She comes closer again. "How have you been?" she says. "Good."

    Her hands are clasped neatly together just below the waistband of her very tight, brightly colored skirt. With Talia, at least in private, there will be no pretense of mourning. This woman who bedded me for the better part of a year under the nose of her husband is now the picture of polite reserve. We stand here eye to eye, staring in silence at each other. Barbara, the epitome of clerical servitude, appears oblivious to the tension that fills the room. "Here for a visit?" she asks. "To see Tony."

    "Lucky YOU."

    "How are you holding upt' It's all I can think of to say, the obligatory caring question. She makes a face. "Making out," she says. "It's difficult." I nod. "The police just allowed us back into Ben's office yesterday. I pess it takes a long time for them to finish whatever it is they do after something like this."

    "Sometimes."

    "A lot of unanswered questions," she says. I suppose we'll never fully understand it," I flex an eyebrow in inquiry. "Why he did it? Den had so much to live for." With anyone else I would be surprised, but knowing Talia as I do, I have no doubt that she will be the last to hear that her husband's death is in fact now the subject of a homicide investigation. I do not shatter the illusion. I suppose," I say. "I've turned it over a million times in my mind. A Mend who I(St her son to suicide a year ago keeps telling me to stop asking Ox same question over and over again: "Why?' She says it gets worse every time you ask it. I think she's right." It's a true measure of the difference in how each of us five that before I was told that Ben's death was imvil another person, I had asked the same question of myself, once, and had had little difficulty arriving at a single and 1 sailable answer: This was no suicide. As she speaks, I listen. There's not a hint of reticenc .Le marmer, though her eyes wander, taking in nothing; in This is the Talia I know, standing here in a public place, unbridled with a former lover, her partner in adultery, 1w:1, muster even a single theory as to why her husband os%*ttaken his own life. Talia has a gift for viewing reai‐_
    torpid haze,.Iike a film shot through gauze. We stand, she speaking and I forming a listless face from the past approaches in the hallway behind Otrl@ seen this face but can't place it. A, "I need your help with some papers in the desk. A s 77 on what to do with ..."

    He cuts it off in mid‐sentence sees me. Talia turns. ‐41 "Oh, Tod." Her voice becomes brighter. "I want you i an old friend. Paul Madriani, Tod Hamilton. You lqjont" told you about Paul."

    He extends a hand. I give it a quick shake. There are glances exchanged between the two. A kind of invades the conversation as Hamilton looks for iowii 1 1‐," with his hands. It's clear that at some point I've been ke" conversation between the two. I sense that perhaps extolled my virtues. Tod, it seems, is my wo"11F77 M‐# Then I remember. The cleft chin, Wong's. Tod was at' the night I talked to Ben. "Tod's been helping me go through some of Ben's Is t been a lifesaver, my rock to lean on during this hot‐pink mourning atfire and the fact that she is here for latest flame speak to Talia's total lack of concern constraints that rule other, less self‐possessed souls. "I see." She looks back at him, over her shoulder, and i %I I'm, confident grin. The kind that says I'm no competition. T took of lust in Talia's eyes confirms his assessment.
    111 explain it, this hurts. I carry no torch for Talia, middle‐aged ego is crushed. Seeing the two of 1, there, virtually oblivious to my presence,