It’s safe to be hesitant, if you understand that.”
I nodded. “You also won’t shake me,” I said.
“I don’t want to.”
“And this isn’t free-to-be-you-and-me-stuff. This is free to be us, no sharesies. No dibs, like we used to say in the schoolyard.”
“How dreadfully conventional of you.” Susan smiled at me. “But I don’t want to shake you and take up with another man. And I’m not hesitating because I want to experiment around. I’ve done that. I know what I need to know about that. Both of us do. I’m aware you might be difficult about sharing me with guys at the singles bar.”
“I’ll say.”
“There are things we have to think about though.”
“Like what?”
“Where would we live?”
I was still lying flat and she was half sitting, propped up on her left elbow, her dark hair falling a little forward. Her interior energy almost tangible. “Ah-ha,” I said.
She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. “That’s one of your great charms, you understand so quickly.”
“You don’t want to leave your house, your work.”
“Or a town I’ve lived in nearly twenty years where I have friends, and patterns of life I care about.”
“I don’t belong out there, Suze,” I said.
“Of course you don’t. Look at you. You are the ultimate man, the ultimate adult in some ways, the great powerful protecting father. And yet you are the biggest goddamned kid I ever saw. You would have no business in the suburbs, in a Cape Cod house, cutting the lawn, having a swim at the club. I mean you once strangled a man to death, did not you?”
“Yeah, name was Phil. Never knew his other name, just Phil. I didn’t like it.”
“No, but you like the kind of work where that kind of thing comes up.”
“I’m not sure that’s childish.”
“In the best sense it is. There’s an element of play in it for you, a concern for means more than ends. It comes very close to worrying about honor.”
“It often has to do with life and death, sweetie.”
“Of course it does, but that only makes it a more significant game. My neighbors in Smithfield are more serious. They are dealing with success or failure. For most of them it’s no fun.”
“You’ve thought about me some,” I said.
“You bet your ass I have. You’re not going to give up your work, I’m not going to stop mine. I’m not going to move to Boston. You’re not going to live in Smithfield.”
“I might,” I said. “We could work something out there, I think. No one’s asking you to give up your work, or me to give up mine.”
“No, I guess not. But it’s the kind of thing we need to think on.”
“So a firm I-don’t-know is your final position on this?”
“I think so.”
I put my hands up and pulled her down on top of me. “You impetuous bitch,” I said. Her faced pressed against my chest. It made her speech muffled.
“On the other hand,” she mumbled, “I ain’t never going to leave you.”
“That’s for sure,” I said. “Let’s go have dinner and consummate our friendship.”
“Maybe,” Susan said as we drove back to the motel, “we should consummate it before dinner.
”Better still,“ I said, ”how about before and after dinner?“
”You’re as young as you feel, lovey,“ Susan said.
Chapter 29
We rang the bell at the Shepards’ house at seven-thirty, me with a bottle of Hungarian red wine in a brown paper bag, and Hawk opened the door and pointed a Colt.357 Magnum at me.
”Do come in,“ he said.
We did. In the living room were King Powers and Powell, the stiff I had knocked in the pool, and Macey and the Shepards. The Shepards were sitting on the couch together with Powell standing by with his gun out, looking at them, hard as nails. Macey stood by the mantel with his slim-line briefcase and Powers was in a wing chair by the fireplace. Shepard’s face was damp and he looked sick. Getting beaten up tends to take a lot of starch out of a person and Shepard looked like he was having trouble holding it together. His wife had no expression at all. It was as if she’d gone inside somewhere and was holding there, waiting.
”Where’s the kids?“ I said.
Hawk smiled. ”They not here. Harv and the Mrs., I guess, thought they’d have a quiet time together, ‘fore you
