“He’s like he seems,” Susan said. The waitress came and took our cocktail order.
“No, I mean in detail, what is he like? I am perhaps dependent on him to protect my life. I need to know about him.”
“I don’t like to say this in front of him, but for that you could have no one better.”
“Or as good,” I said.
“You’ve got to overcome this compulsion to understate your virtues,” Susan said. “You’re too self- effacing.”
“Can he suspend his distaste for radical feminism enough to protect me properly?”
Susan looked at me and widened her eyes. “Hadn’t you better answer that, snookie?” she said.
“You’re begging the question, I think. We haven’t established my distaste for radical feminism. We haven’t even in fact established that you are a radical feminist.”
“I have learned,” Rachel Wallace said, “to assume a distaste for radical feminism. I rarely err in that.”
“Probably right,” I said.
“He’s quite a pain in the ass, sometimes,” Susan said. “He knows you want him to reassure you and he won’t. But I will. He doesn’t much care about radical feminism one way or the other. But if he says he’ll protect you, he will.”
“I’m not being a pain in the ass,” I said. “Saying I have no distaste for her won’t reassure her. Or it shouldn’t. There’s no way to prove anything to her until something happens. Words don’t do it.”
“Words can,” Susan said. “And tone of voice. You’re just so goddamned autonomous that you won’t explain yourself to anybody.”
The waitress came back with wine for Susan and Beck’s beer for me, and another martini for Rachel Wallace. The five she’d had this afternoon seemed to have had no effect on her.
“Maybe I shouldn’t cart her around everyplace,” I said to Rachel.
“Machismo,” Rachel said. “The machismo code. He’s locked into it, and he can’t explain himself, or apologize, or cry probably, or show emotion.”
“I throw up good, though. And I will in a minute.”
Wallace’s head snapped around at me. Her face was harsh and tight. Susan patted her arm. “Give him time,” she said. “He grows on you. He’s hard to classify. But he’ll look out for you. And he’ll care what happens to you. And he’ll keep you out of harm’s way.” Susan sipped her wine. “He really will,” she said to Rachel Wallace.
“And you,” Rachel said, “does he look out for you?”
“We look out for each other,” Susan said. “I’m doing it now.”
Rachel Wallace smiled, her face loosened. “Yes,” she said. “You are, aren’t you?”
The waitress came again, and we ordered dinner.
I was having a nice time eating Rosalie’s cream of carrot soup when Rachel Wallace said, “John tells me you used to be a prizefighter.”
I nodded. I had a sense where the discussion would lead.
“And you were in combat in Korea?”
I nodded again.
“And you were a policeman?”
Another nod.
“And now you do this.”
It was a statement. No nod required.
“Why did you stop fighting?”
“I had plateaued,” I said.
“Were you not a good fighter?”
“I was good. I was not great. Being a good fighter is no life. Only, great ones lead a life worth too much. It’s not that clean a business, either.”
“Did you tire of the violence?”
“Not in the ring,” I said.
“You didn’t mind beating someone bloody.”
“He volunteered. The gloves are padded. It’s not pacifism, but if it’s violence, it is controlled and regulated and patterned. I never hurt anyone badly. I never got badly hurt.”
“Your nose has obviously been broken.”
“Many times,” I said. “But that’s sort of minor. It hurts, but it’s not serious.”
“And you’ve killed people.”
“Yes.”
“Not just in the army.”
