Page 10 (1/1)

"Bobby, I want to talk to those people!" I said

"No, you don’t They’re dull and they don’t know anything "

As we passed a side table, I started to setit with you"

He grabbed a full bottle of wine out of a silver cooler and tucked it under his ar at a fair clip, li inelegantly as we moved toward the foyer I paused for a ht up with hih He was accusto people I’d been taught to respect My aunt would have been impressed by the company, but Bobby didn’t see by the smooth stone banister

"Your mother doesn’t use the name Wenner?" I asked, as I followed him

"Nope Callahan is her ed mine to Callahan when she and my father divorced"

"That’s unusual, isn’t it?"

"Doesn’t seem that way to me He’s a jerk This way, I don’t have to be connected to hiallery at the top for out on either side We passed through an archway to the right and into a wide corridor with roo off at intervals Most of the doors were closed Daylight was beginning to fade and the upstairs was glooation at an exclusive girls’ school that had this same air to it The house felt as if it had been converted to institutional use, someplace impersonal and chill Bobby knocked at the third door down on the right

"Kitty?"

"Just a minute," she called

He flashed ht with a shrug Seventeen

The door opened and she looked out, gaze shifting from Bobby to me with suspicion "Who’s this?"

"Come on, Kitty Would you knock that shit off?"

She moved away from the door indifferently Bobby and I went in and he closed the door behind us She was anoretic; tail and painfully thin, with knees and elbow joints standing out like Tinkertoys Her face was gaunt She was barefoot, wearing shorts and a white tube top that looked about as big as a man’s crew sock, one size fits all

"What are you looking at?" she said She didn’t seem to expect an answer so I didn’t bother with one She flopped down on an unarette and lit it Her nails were bitten to the quick The room had been painted black and looked like a parody of an adolescent girl’s room There were lots of posters and stuffed anihtroups in tartish ely hostile toomen The stuffed animals ran more to satyrs than Winnie-the-Pooh The air was scented with eau de dope and rass in there, you could bury your nose in the bedcovers and get high

Bobby apparently enjoyed her antagonis clothes on the floor unceremoniously I sat down and he stretched out on the foot of the bed, circling her left ankle with one hand His fingers overlapped as if he were holding her wrist instead It reminded ot fat, they’d put her in the cooking pot I thought they’d put her in a grave long before that point and it was frightening She leaned back on both elbows, ss All the veins were visible, like an anatoram with a celluloid overlay I could see how the bones were strung together in her feet, her toes looking al on downstairs?" she said to Bobby, her gaze still pinned on htly slurred and her eyes seemed to swim in and out of focus I wondered if she was drunk or had just popped so up booze as usual Speaking of which, I brought us wine," he said "Got a glass?"

She leaned over to her bed-table and sorted through the reen in the bottolass out to him The wine he poured into it became tainted with the remnants of liqueur

"So, who’s the chick?"

I loathe being called a chick

Bobby laughed "Oh God, I’m sorry This is Kinsey She’s the private detective I told you about"