Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

Betsy Bering lived in a very exclusive apartment building in Beverly Hills. Her apartment was simply, albeit tastefully furnished. It had two bedrooms and two full baths. The guest bedroom had a desk in it, and on the desk was a word processor that looked as though it was in frequent operation.

“I’m trying to write a novel,” explained Betsy after giving Ruth the tour and mixing vodka martinis. “You know, something awful that’ll become an instant bestseller like that Steel woman and Ivana. I read dozens of them before plunging in on my own, but they’ve left me intellectually paralyzed. Like when I go shopping, I find myself thinking in terms of heavy-breathing prose.”

“Such as?” prodded Ruth.

“Well, such as this.” Betsy got to her feet, breathed heavily, and then spoke in what she hoped were seductive tones. “ ‘Elvira entered Bullocks. Once inside, her chest was out of control. It took on a life all its own. He was there. The clerk at the ribbon counter. He didn’t belong there. Elvira could see him galloping across the desert, his steed snorting and puffing, ahead of him the oasis where Fatima awaited him. Instead he was measuring yards of ribbon for a middle-aged matron who was oblivious to his magnificent looks. Why was he a clerk at Bullocks?’ ” Betsy stood against a wall; her chest rising and falling like an ocean tide running amok. “ ‘Was he a spy? Had he been placed there by Macy’s?’ ” She burst into laughter. “It’s no use. I sit at that damned processor trying to write this stuff, but I can’t do it.”

Said Ruth, “My husband read those things. He doted on them.”

“Millions read them,” said Maxwell. “And like you, Betsy, I wish I could write them. I’m having enough trouble with my leper. The network warned me against anything falling off, you know, like his nose or his index fingers. Soap audiences don’t go for that sort of thing. They don’t mind suicides, car crashes, or latent homosexuals... but they draw the line at sophisticated physical disability.”

Soon the three were heavy into a discussion of mediocre writing. This led to another round of drinks and then the decision to dine together, and within a few weeks, Ruth, Betsy, and Maxwell were phoning each other daily, sometimes twice and three times. They learned that Betsy had come to Los Angeles from Toronto three years earlier following her divorce from a lawyer who not only came from wealth, but amassed a fortune of his own from representing a number of well-heeled shady characters, including a number of Caribbean dictators and South American drug dealers.

The three became inseparable, and soon, when Betsy realized Ruth and Maxwell were strapped for money, she insisted on helping. Ruth accepted Betsy’s contributions with alacrity, saying to Maxwell in private, “Well after all, Maxwell, Albert Schweitzer accepted donations.”

Betsy seemed to enjoy showering them with largess, though this largess never came in big sums. It was a tenner here, a twenty-dollar bill there, and once she let Ruth try on her tiara, a gift, she claimed, from a prime minister of Canada.

One afternoon, when Maxwell was busy at a television studio pitching an idea to a twenty-four-year-old production genius who ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches washed down with spring water, Betsy and Ruth were in Ruth’s apartment and the talk got around to the men in their lives.

Ruth asked, “The prime minister. Was it Massey? Were you very much in love with him?”

“Who? Massey?” Betsy seemed to be caught unawares. “Oh. Him. No. I promised him never to talk about him.” She sounded so reverential, Ruth wondered if she meant hymn. “The great love of my life is dead. And there will never be anyone to replace him. Never.”

Ruth cleared her throat. “I’ve never known a great love.”

“Armand wasn’t the great love of your life?”

“He was a fine person. He was fun at first. But I like to think there’s someone out there looking for someone like me.”

Betsy was fingering the strand of pearls around her neck. “You were married to him for twenty years and he was never ever your great love? Not even a great lover?”

“I have no way of making a comparison. He was the only man in my life. Like I told you, I was young, naive, and a slow starter. After the first three years of our marriage, it was Armand who accelerated, and I found myself marooned in a perpetual cloud of dust left by my accelerated husband.”

“How you must have hated him.”

“Oh no!” Ruth was quick to defend herself. “I never hated him. I don’t think I could have gone on living with him if I hated him. There were people in the past whom I grew to hate, but I dropped them. I don’t tolerate hatred, not in myself, not in anyone else.”

“Do you suppose you might grow to hate me?”

“Oh Betsy, what an awful thing to ask!”