Paul put his suitcase down and came over. "How are you," he said.
I shook my head. "Susan gone?" he said.
I nodded. "Last night," I said.
He started the burner under the hot water. "You sleep?" he said.
"No."
"You understand this?" Paul said. The water heated quickly because I had just used some. He poured the boiling water into a cup and added a spoonful of coffee, and stirred. He always made coffee that way.
"Yes," I said. I stood and went and looked out the window in the living room. It was raining out there too.
"I'm willing to listen if you want to talk about it," Paul said. "Or I'm willing to shut up if you want to do that."
"Talking may be overrated," I said.
"Maybe," Paul said. "But you'll think about it. Whether or not you talk is just whether or not you share what you're thinking."
"Smartass college kid," I said.
The morning was a dark background on Marlborough Street, people going to work carried colorful striped umbrellas, students going to summer school wore blue and green and yellow slickers, the flowers in the small yards glistened in the rain and the street itself gleamed wetly. The traffic was mostly cabs and the cabs were mostly yellow.
"When she went to Washington," I said, "and did her predoctoral internship she got a taste of being a full person, nobody's wife, nobody's girlfriend, nobody's employee, but a full professional person whose worth was in her knowledge and her insight and her compassion."
Paul sipped his coffee. I leaned my head against the window and watched the street glisten.
"She couldn't be that with you?" Paul said.
"I think she's trying to find out what she can be," I said. "I have . . . I have a view of the world that is pretty fully formed . . . and I cling to that view pretty hard. It doesn't leave Susan too much room. Or you."
"I don't think Susan disagrees with too much of what you hold to be self-evident," Paul said.
I shrugged.
"On the other hand, perhaps she'd like to arrive at those truths herself."
"Yes," I said. "Or maybe think her own thoughts and not have to compare them with mine."
Paul came and stood beside me and looked down at Marlborough Street with me.
"You wondering if maybe you've been a little too rigid?" Paul said.
"I'm considering the possibility that there are ways to be a good person that I hadn't thought of," I said.
"Might help loosen things up for you," Paul said. "It must always have been hard being you."
"Not as hard as this," I said.
"I know."
The wind had strengthened coming off the river and the flower petals began to litter the sidewalk, limp and wet.
"I won't quit on this," I said.
"Pressing her will make it worse," Paul said.
"I know."
"So what will you do?"
"For now I'll wait."
"Then what?"
"I don't know."
Paul nodded. "Hard," he said. "Hard as hell not to know."
We were quiet. There wasn't anything to say. Below me some of the wet flower petals on the sidewalk washed into the gutter. And the rain kept coming.
CHAPTER 4
Henry Cimoli had a full range of Nautilus equipment installed at the Harbor Health Club. The whole place was getting out of hand. There were women in there now as well as men. There was a lounge where you could sit around in a velour sweat suit and drink carrot juice, there had been complaints that the speed bag in the boxing room made too much noise, and some of the people working on the Nautilus wore Lacoste shirts. Hawk had told Henry that if anyone came in to work out wearing Top-Siders that he, Hawk, would demand a refund on his membership.
"Hawk," Henry said, "you come here free."
"Fucking place is full of guys in tennis shorts," Hawk said.
"Hell, you even get the tanning booth free," Henry said.
Hawk looked at him. "Wimp city," he said, and walked away.
"He just don't understand upscale," Henry said.
A club member stopped beside us to sign in. He was wearing a dark blue sweatband on his head and dark blue wristbands and a raspberry-colored Lacoste shirt and white tennis shorts and knee socks with red and blue stripes around the top and Fred Perry tennis shoes. There was a Sony Walkman at his waist and fluffy red earphones over the sweatband. He smelled of Brut.
I looked at Henry. "Wimp city," I said, and went after Hawk.
Hawk worked out in a pair of old boxing shorts and high boxer's shoes and no shirt. When I joined him he was doing chest presses on the machine. He had the pin in at maximum weight and was doing the exercises with no visible effort except for the glistening film of sweat. With the gym lights glaring down on him the black skin on his torso and shaved head gleamed like the wet asphalt had the morning Susan left. People watched him covertly as the muscles in his arms and chest bunched and relaxed.
I did some curls. It was hard to do what until recently I had done easily.
When I got through Hawk was off the bench press machine and we swapped places. In the boxing room I never did get a good rhythm on the speed bag and there was no bite in my punches on the heavy bag. Hawk made it dance, but I just bludgeoned it. We took some steam and then showered. We were the only ones in the shower room.
"Something wrong with you," Hawk said. It wasn't a question.
"You just noticed?" I said.
"Besides being a honkie and a preppie and a fucking bleeding heart. Something wrong with you."
"Susan moved to San Francisco," I said. Hawk let the hot water run over him and the lathered soap slid away.
"Get dressed," Hawk said. "I buy you a drink-"
We walked across Atlantic Avenue to the Market and sat at the bar in J. J. Donovan's Tavern, I had Irish whiskey on the rocks.
"You still drinking that stuff," Hawk said.
"True to my heritage," I said.
"What do I drink?"
"Rum."
Hawk ordered Mount Gay rum on the rocks. "Rum, religion, and slaves," he said. "Cradle of liberty."
The drinks came. We had a taste.
"What she doing in San Francisco," Hawk said.
"Job."
"You going to visit?"
"I don't know her address." We drank some more.
"She going to tell you where she lives?" Hawk said.
"Maybe in a while."
"Want me to find her?" he said.
"No. She's got the right to be private."
"She got somebody out there?" Hawk said.
"I don't know."
"If she got somebody, I can kill him," Hawk said.
I shook my head again. "She's got a right to somebody else," I said. Hawk gestured another round at the bartender.
"You too," Hawk said.
"I don't want anyone else."
"Thought you wouldn't."
The thing I like about Irish whiskey is that the more you drink the smoother it goes down. Of course that's probably true of antifreeze as well, but illusion is nearly all we have. The bar was half empty. Two young women sat at the bar near the door and kept in eye out. A young couple played Space Invaders behind us in the corner.
One of the young women at the door was looking at Hawk. There was interest in her look, and fear.
"Take some balance," Hawk said. It was as if he were thinking out loud. "Be like carrying a glass of water filled right to the top and not spilling any. Be a bitch."
"Yes," I said.
"This is something you can't fix," Hawk said. "You got to trust her to do it."
"It's my life, in some sense or other."
Hawk nodded. "I'd trust Susan with mine." he said.
I looked at Hawk's peaceful, deadly face. Obsidian skin tight over intricate muscle and prominent bone.
"Yes," I said. "I would too."
CHAPTER 5
Paul was with me for the summer. He had a job with a small company in Boston called the Tommy Banks Dancers. The pay was negligible, but it was a chance to perform and Tommy Banks was, Paul said, legitimate.