“There are dogs,” I said, “who eat Gaines Meal from a bowl on the floor.”
“There are dogs who are not treated properly,” Susan said. “Is she attractive?”
“Jackie? Yeah, she’s stunning.”
“Is she the most stunning woman you know?” Susan said. She put her fork down and picked up her napkin from her lap. She patted her lips with it, put it back, picked up her wineglass, and drank some wine.
“She is not,” I said, “as stunning as you are.”
“You’re sure?”
“No one is as stunning as you are,” I said.
She smiled and sipped more of her wine.
“Thank you,” she said.
I had cooked some buckwheat noodles to go with the chicken, and some broccoli, and some whole-wheat biscuits. We both attended to that, for a bit, while Pearl inspected every movement.
“Am I as stunning as Hawk?” I said.
Susan gazed at me for a moment without any expression.
“Of course not,” she said and returned to her food.
I waited. I knew she couldn’t hold it. In a moment her shoulders started to shake and finally she giggled audibly. She raised her head, giggling, and I could see the way her eyes tightened at the corners as they always did when she was really pleased.
“You don’t meet that many shrinks that giggle,” I said.
“Or have reason to,” Susan said as her giggling became sporadic. “What’s for dessert?”
“I could tear off your clothes and force myself upon you,” I said.
“We had that last night,” Susan said. “Why can’t we have desserts like other people-you know, Jell-O Pudding, maybe some Yankee Doodles?”
“You wouldn’t say that if I was as stunning as Hawk,” I said.
“True,” Susan said. “Do you think he’s serious about her?”
“What is Hawk serious about?” I said. “I’ve never known him before to bring a woman along when we were working.”
“Well, is she serious about him?”
“She acts it. She touches him a lot. She looks at him a lot. She listens when he speaks.”
“That doesn’t mean eternal devotion,” Susan said.
“No, some women treat every guy like that,” I said. “Early conditioning, I suppose. But Jackie doesn’t seem like one of them. I’d say she’s interested.”
“And he’s taking on this gang for her,” Susan said.
“Yeah, but that may be less significant than it seems,” I said. “Hawk does things sometimes because he feels like doing them. There aren’t always reasons, at least reasons that you and I would understand, for what he does.”
“I agree that I wouldn’t always understand them,” Susan said. “I’m not so sure you wouldn’t.”
I shrugged.
“Whatever,” I said. “He may have decided to do this just to see how it would work out.”
Susan held her glass up and looked at the last of the sunset glowing through it from her west-facing kitchen windows.
“I would not wish to be in love with Hawk,” Susan said.
“You’re in love with me,” I said.
“That’s bad enough,” she said.
CHAPTER 15
Hawk parked the Jag parallel to Hobart Street in the middle of the project. It was a great April day and we got out of the car and leaned on the side of it away from the street. Jackie and her magic tape recorder were there, listening to the silence of the project.
“How come in books and movies the ghetto is always teeming with life: dogs barking, children crying, women shouting, radios playing, that sort of thing? And I come to a real ghetto, with two actual black people, and I can hear my hair growing?”
“Things are not always what they seem,” Hawk said. He was as relaxed as he always was, arms folded on the roof of the car. But I knew he saw everything. He always did.
“Oh,” I said.
“This is the first ghetto I’ve ever been to,” Jackie said. “I grew up in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey. My father is an architect. I thought it would be like that too.”
“Mostly in a place like this,” Hawk said, “people can’t afford dogs and radios. You can afford those, you can afford to get out. Here it’s just people got no money and no power, and what kids they got they keep inside to protect them. People here don’t want to attract attention. Somebody know you got a radio, they steal it. People want to be invisible. This place belongs to the Hobart Street Gang. They the only ones with radios. The only ones noisy.”
“And we’ve quieted them down,” I said.
“For the moment,” Hawk said.
Jackie was standing between Hawk and me. She was leaning her shoulder slightly against Hawk’s.
“Did you grow up in a place like this, Hawk?”
Hawk smiled.
A faded powder blue Chevy van pulled around the corner of Hobart Street and cruised slowly past us. Its sides were covered with graffiti. Hawk watched it silently as it drove past. It didn’t slow and no one paid us any attention. It turned right at McCrory Street and disappeared.
“You think that was a gang car?” Jackie said.
“Some gang,” Hawk said.
“Hobart?” Hawk shrugged.
“So how do you know it’s a gang van?” Jackie said.
“Nobody else would have one,” Hawk said.
“Because they couldn’t afford it?”
Hawk nodded. He was looking at the courtyard.
“Gang would probably take it away from anyone who wasn’t a member,” I said.
Jackie looked at Hawk. “Is that right?” she said. Hawk nodded.
“You can usually trust what he say,” Hawk said. “He’s not as dumb as most white folks.”
“Does this mean we’re going steady?” I said to Hawk.
He grinned, his eyes still watching the silent empty place. Cars passed occasionally on Hobart Street, but not very many. The sun was strong for this early in spring, and there were some pleasant white clouds here and there making the sky look bluer than it probably was. To the north I could see the big insurance towers in the Back Bay. The glass Hancock tower gleamed like the promise of Easter; the sun and sky reflecting.
“Well, did you?” Jackie said.
“Don’t matter,” Hawk said.
Jackie looked at me.
“I grew up in Laramie, Wyoming,” I said.
“And do you know where he grew up?” Jackie said.
“No.”
Jackie took in a long slow breath and let it out. She shook her head slightly.
“God,” she said. “Men.”
“Can’t live with them,” I said. “Can’t live without them.”
Across the empty blacktop courtyard, out from between two buildings, Major Johnson sauntered as if he were walking into a room full of mirrors. He was in the full Adidas today, hightops, and a black warm-up suit, jacket half zipped over his flat bare chest. He wore his Raiders hat carefully askew, with the bill pointing off toward about 4 A.M. He was alone.
Hawk began to whistle through his teeth, softly to himself, the theme from High Noon. Between us, I could feel Jackie stiffen.
“How you all doing today?” Major said when he reached the car. He stood on the opposite side and rested his forearms on the roof as Hawk was doing. He was shorter than Hawk, and the position looked less comfortable.
Hawk had no reaction. He didn’t speak. He didn’t look at Major. He didn’t look away. It was as if there were no Major. Major shifted his gaze to me. He was the first person who’d looked at me since I’d come to Double Deuce.
“How you doing, Irish?”
“How’s he know I’m Irish?” I said to Hawk.
“You white,” Hawk said.
“You call all white people Irish?” Jackie said. She had placed her tape recorder on the car roof.
“We gon be on TV?” Major said, looking at the tape recorder.
“Maybe,” Jackie said. “Right now I’m just doing research.”
“Goddamn,” Major said. “I sure pretty enough to be on TV.”