“Yeah, the fight with Zachary. That was a kind of-what-sweating out the poison, maybe. I don’t know. For Hawk too, I think. Or maybe for Hawk it was just competition. He doesn’t like to lose. He’s not used to it.”
“I understand that,” she said. “I begin to wonder about myself sometimes. But I understand what you mean.”
“Do you understand that there’s more?”
“What?”
“You,” I said. “The shower assault. It’s like I need to love you to come back whole from where I sometimes go.” She rubbed the back of her left hand on my right cheek. “Yes,” she said, “I know that too.” The cab pulled up at the Post Office Tower. I paid and overtipped. We held hands going up in the elevator. It was early evening on a week night. We were seated promptly. “Touristy,” Susan murmured to me. “Very touristy.”
“Yes,” I said, “but you can have Mateus Rose and I can have Amstel beer and we can watch the evening settle onto London. We can eat duckling with cherries and I can quote Yeats.”
“And later,” she said, “there’s always another shower.”
“Unless I drink too much Amstel,” I said, “and eat too much duck with cherries.”
“In which likelihood,” Susan said, “we can shower in the morning.”
