Never laid a mean finger on me. Paid my college tuition, gave me my apartment, gave me my work, took me to Europe, got me passing in the real world. I’d be way out of line to say I’m glad Ballz is dead, ’cause I sure as sugar ain’t. You better catch whoever did it, Lieutenant, and definitely make it never happen again. Like to me, for instance.”
“Are you afraid it will happen to you?” Flo said.
“Might. Why not? Could be somebody real jealous, right? And in that case, a lucky sister like me, well, you never know. Never mind Ballz was no saint. I owed him and I worked at paying him back, like I pay all my debts one way or the other. Here’s our building.”
For Flo, the question remained, was it possible to love someone—
Azalea loves Ballz
,
Ballz loves Azalea
—if the first interest was the use one could make of the other? Didn’t the profit motive, and any accruing guilt, however small, inhibit the growth of higher emotions? The mutual utility principle—sex, shelter, stroked ego—was only human, Flo concluded; maybe love could grow over time.
You adapt and you learn to overlook each other’s faults.
An eternally happy marriage? Really, Lieutenant, do you truly believe in such a thing? Ours was trouble-free, at least I can say that much…
And then the reverse side of the image, the difference between merely using and total exploitation was like the difference between eating fresh mushrooms from the store and eating the woodsy wild kind that might or might not kill you, the Ballz Busta potentially toxic kind. Azalea Butte was neither a heartless harridan nor a sweet, inadequate prop of a trophy arm piece. She knew more than a little about Ballz’s other women and granted him full clemency. Her resilience amazed Flo.
They entered the building on West Broadway. The ground floor housed a high-end art gallery of big-name painters and sculptors and an Asian-French fusion restaurant, the sort of place where you couldn’t get out for less than two hundred a head before the tip.
“Ballz owned the gallery,” Azalea Butte said, a touch of pride in her voice. “And he had a share in that restaurant, too, La Saison. I designed both. They insisted on gilt all over the restaurant, not my taste, but it’s supposed to justify the high prices and teeny-weeny portions on big plates. Guess his wife’s got it all now. You met her?”
Flo nodded, admiring of the young woman’s pep and drive, a supersized engine of energy in a pint-sized chassis, lithe and muscular like a graceful ballerina or a trapeze artist. Her eyes radiated intensity, conscientiousness, an acute awareness of her surroundings. Her eyes said,
I don’t miss a trick
.
They arrived at an elevator, and from a capacious shoulder bag, Azalea Butte produced a great metal ring jangling with dozens of keys, all color-coded with nail polish. The elevator was key-operated only. They rose straight to the penthouse, eleven floors up.
“This is the mayor’s friend. She works on Wall Street, a real big shot at Goldman Sachs. Only time she’s home during the day is when she has lunch with him here. Nooners, once a week. And just between you and me, whenever he comes over here, he dresses up in her underwear and gowns and stuff. Can you picture that? The mayor? Eating lunch in a bra and silk frou-frou. They ever get pictures of him cross-dressing, his career is down the toilet. Guaranteed. On weekends, they’re out at her Hamptons place. Otherwise, she’s your genuine worker bee, like me, nonstop. I know Ballz had a lot of money invested with her at Goldman.”
Yes, Flo thought, so often true in too many sex murders, sadistically streaked men sporting parallel masochistic drives, like the mayor. And it took their women with hooker instincts for an ashamed victim’s unspoken needs to spot this and make demands accordingly, tables turned and the public humiliator savored private humiliation’s fuller flavors, an artist recognizing the talents of a
“Are you afraid it will happen to you?” Flo said.
“Might. Why not? Could be somebody real jealous, right? And in that case, a lucky sister like me, well, you never know. Never mind Ballz was no saint. I owed him and I worked at paying him back, like I pay all my debts one way or the other. Here’s our building.”
For Flo, the question remained, was it possible to love someone—
Azalea loves Ballz
,
Ballz loves Azalea
—if the first interest was the use one could make of the other? Didn’t the profit motive, and any accruing guilt, however small, inhibit the growth of higher emotions? The mutual utility principle—sex, shelter, stroked ego—was only human, Flo concluded; maybe love could grow over time.
You adapt and you learn to overlook each other’s faults.
An eternally happy marriage? Really, Lieutenant, do you truly believe in such a thing? Ours was trouble-free, at least I can say that much…
And then the reverse side of the image, the difference between merely using and total exploitation was like the difference between eating fresh mushrooms from the store and eating the woodsy wild kind that might or might not kill you, the Ballz Busta potentially toxic kind. Azalea Butte was neither a heartless harridan nor a sweet, inadequate prop of a trophy arm piece. She knew more than a little about Ballz’s other women and granted him full clemency. Her resilience amazed Flo.
They entered the building on West Broadway. The ground floor housed a high-end art gallery of big-name painters and sculptors and an Asian-French fusion restaurant, the sort of place where you couldn’t get out for less than two hundred a head before the tip.
“Ballz owned the gallery,” Azalea Butte said, a touch of pride in her voice. “And he had a share in that restaurant, too, La Saison. I designed both. They insisted on gilt all over the restaurant, not my taste, but it’s supposed to justify the high prices and teeny-weeny portions on big plates. Guess his wife’s got it all now. You met her?”
Flo nodded, admiring of the young woman’s pep and drive, a supersized engine of energy in a pint-sized chassis, lithe and muscular like a graceful ballerina or a trapeze artist. Her eyes radiated intensity, conscientiousness, an acute awareness of her surroundings. Her eyes said,
I don’t miss a trick
.
They arrived at an elevator, and from a capacious shoulder bag, Azalea Butte produced a great metal ring jangling with dozens of keys, all color-coded with nail polish. The elevator was key-operated only. They rose straight to the penthouse, eleven floors up.
“This is the mayor’s friend. She works on Wall Street, a real big shot at Goldman Sachs. Only time she’s home during the day is when she has lunch with him here. Nooners, once a week. And just between you and me, whenever he comes over here, he dresses up in her underwear and gowns and stuff. Can you picture that? The mayor? Eating lunch in a bra and silk frou-frou. They ever get pictures of him cross-dressing, his career is down the toilet. Guaranteed. On weekends, they’re out at her Hamptons place. Otherwise, she’s your genuine worker bee, like me, nonstop. I know Ballz had a lot of money invested with her at Goldman.”
Yes, Flo thought, so often true in too many sex murders, sadistically streaked men sporting parallel masochistic drives, like the mayor. And it took their women with hooker instincts for an ashamed victim’s unspoken needs to spot this and make demands accordingly, tables turned and the public humiliator savored private humiliation’s fuller flavors, an artist recognizing the talents of a
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