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She put a slice of cheese on a biscuit, handed it to me, took so kook out of Wonderful Town I call her the Village Idiot She's raised self-deception to the level of an art forrass to support the structure of illusion she's created More Coke?"

"No thanks"

"You sure you wouldn't rather have a glass of wine? Or soer?"

I shook round, tuned to one of the classical lasses, breathed on them, wiped them with a napkin

"And Donna," she said "Whoredom's answer to Edna St Vincent Millay I think the poetry does for her what the grass does for Fran She's a good poet, you know"

I had Donna's poem with me and showed it to Mary Lou Vertical frown lines appeared in her forehead as she scanned the lines

"It's not finished," I said "She still has work to do on it"

"I don't kno poets knohen they're finished Or painters How do they knohen to stop? It baffles me This is supposed to be about Kim?"

"Yes"

"I don't knohat ithere" She thought for a uess I thought of Kim as the archetypical whore A spectacular ice blonde from the northern Midwest, the kind that was just plain born to walk through life on a black pi I wasn't surprised when she was murdered"

"Why not?"

"I'uess I expected her to come to a bad end An abrupt end Not necessarily as a murder victim, but as some sort of victim of the life Suicide, for instance Or one of those unholy combinations of pills and liquor Not that she drank s as far as I know I suppose I expected suicide, but et her out of the life Because I couldn't see her going on with it forever Once that corn-fed innocence left her she wouldn't be able to handle it And I couldn't see her finding her way out, either"

"She was getting out She told Chance she wanted out"

"Do you know that for a fact?"

"Yes"

"And what did he do?"

"He told her it was her decision to ot killed Is there a connection?"

"I think there has to be I think she had a boyfriend and I think the boyfriend's the connection I think he's why she wanted to get away from Chance and I think he's also the reason she was killed"

"But you don't knoho he was"

"No"

"Does anybody have a clue?"

"Not so far"

"Well, I'e that I can't remember the last tileaot her into this She'd probably need another otten into it I hadn't thought to ask but I got to hear it anyway

So in SoHo, one of the West Broadway galleries He ith Donna, and whoever pointed hilass or two of the cheap wine they were pouring, she approached him, introduced herself, told him she'd like to write a story about him

She wasn't exactly a writer At the ti in the West Nineties with aincomprehensible on Wall Street The man was divorced and still half in love with his ex-wife, and his bratty kids ca out Mary Lou did free-lance copyediting and had a part-ti job, and she'd published a couple of articles in a feminist monthly newspaper

Chance met with her, took her out to dinner, and turned the interview inside out She realized over cocktails that she wanted to go to bed with hie stemmed more from curiosity than sexual desire Before dinner was over he was suggesting that she forget about soenuine inside view of a prostitute's life She was obviously fascinated, he told her Why not use that fascination, why not go with it, why not buy the whole package for a couple of months and see where she ith it?

She estion He took her hoed to remain oblivious to her sexual invitation For the next week she couldn't get his proposal out of herabout her own life seemed unsatisfactory Her relationship was exhausted, and she sometimes felt she only stayed with her lover out of reluctance to hunt an apart, and the h to live on

"And the book," she said, "the book was suddenly everything De Maupassant obtained huue and ate it so that he could describe its taste accurately Couldn't I spend a irl in order to write the best book ever written on the subject?"

Once she accepted Chance's offer, everything was taken care of Chance moved her out of her place on West Ninety-fourth and installed her where she was now He took her out, showed her off, took her to bed In bed he told her precisely what to do, and she found this curiously exhilarating Other men in her experience had always been reticent that way, expecting you to read theiryou what they wanted

For the first fewresearch for a book She took notes every ti down her impressions She kept a diary She detached herself fro her journalistic objectivity as Donna used poetry and as Fran usedwas an end in itself she went through an emotional crisis She had never considered suicide before, but for a week she hovered on its brink Then she worked it out The fact that she horing didn'tshe was doing for a while The book, just an excuse to get into the life,she really wanted to do It didn't really h, and the only thing that was unsettling hen she pictured herself living this way forever But that wouldn't happen When the tiht, she would drift out of the life as effortlessly as she had drifted in

"So that's how I keep my particular cool, Matt I'' You know, there are worse ways to spend a couple of years"

"I'm sure there are"

"Plenty of tiet to movies and museums and Chance likes to take me to concerts You know the bit about the blind rabs the tail and thinks the elephant is like a snake, another touches the side of the elephant and thinks it's like a wall?"

"So?"