“Not shit,” I said. “Love doesn’t solve everything and it isn’t the only thing that’s important, but it has a big head start on everything else. If there’s love, then there’s a place to begin.”
“That’s romantic goo,” Pam Shepard said. “Believe me. Harvey’s preached the gospel of love at me for nearly twenty years. It’s crap. Believe me, I know.”
“No, you don’t know. You’ve had a bad experience, so you think it’s the only experience. You’re just as wrong as Harvey. It didn’t work, doesn’t mean it won’t work. You’re intelligent, and you’ve got guts. You can do therapy. Maybe you can get Harv to do it. Maybe when you’ve gotten through talking about yourself with someone intelligent you’ll decide to roll Harv anyway. But it’ll be for the right reasons, not because you think you’re frigid, or he thinks you’re frigid. And if you decide to roll Harv you’ll have some alternatives beside screwing sweaty drunks in one night cheap hotels, or living in a feminist commune with two cuckoos.”
“Is it that ugly,” she said.
“Of course it’s that ugly. You don’t screw people to prove things. You screw people because you like the screwing or the people or both. Preferably the last. Some people even refer to it as making love.”
“I know,” she said, “I know.”
“And the two dimwits you took up with. They’re theoreticians. They have nothing much to do with life. They have little connection with phallic power and patterns of dominance and blowing away old men in the service of things like that.”
She stopped looking out the window and looked at me. “Why so angry,” she said.
“I don’t know exactly. Thoreau said something once about judging the cost of things in terms of how much life he had to expend to get it. You and Harv aren’t getting your money’s worth. Thrift, I guess. It violates my sense of thrift.”
She laughed a little bit and shook her head. “My God. I like you,” she said. “I like you very much.”
“It was only a matter of time,” I said.
She looked back out the window and we were quiet most of the rest of the drive down. I hadn’t said it right. Maybe Suze could. Maybe nobody could. Maybe saying didn’t have much effect anyway.
We got to the motel a little after ten and found Susan in the coffee shop drinking coffee and reading the New York Times.
“Was it okay,” Susan said.
“Yeah, just the way it should have been.”
“He warned one of them,” Pam Shepard said. “And he got away.”
Susan raised her eyebrows at me.
“Hawk,” I said.
“Do you understand that,” Pam Shepard said.
“Maybe,” Susan said.
“I don’t.”
“And I’ll bet he didn’t give you a suitable explanation, did he?” Susan said.
“Hardly,” Pam said.
“Everything else was good though?” Susan said.
I nodded.
“Are you going home, Pam?”
“I guess I am. I haven’t really faced that, even driving down. But here I am, half a mile from my house. I guess I am going home.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to call Harv,” I said. “How about I ask him to join us and we can talk about everything and maybe Suze can talk a little.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m scared to see him again. I’d like to see him with you here and without the children.”
I went back to the room and called Shepard and told him what had happened. It took him ten minutes to arrive. I met him in the lobby.
“Is Powers in jail?” he said.
I looked at my watch. “No, probably not. They’ve booked him by now, and his lawyer is there arranging bail and King’s sitting around in the anteroom waiting to go home.”
“Jesus Christ,” Shepard said. “You mean he’s going to be out loose knowing we set him up?”
“Life’s hard sometimes,” I said.
“But, for crissake, won’t he come looking for us? You didn’t tell me they’d let him out on bail. He’ll be after us. He’ll know we double-crossed him. He’ll be coming.”
“If I’d told you, you wouldn’t have done it. He won’t come after you.”
“What the hell is wrong with them, letting him out on bail. You got no right to screw around with my life like that.”
“He won’t come after you, Shepard. Your wife’s waiting for you in the coffee shop.”
“Jesus, how is she?”
