“No.”
“What kind of a person does that?” she said.
Susan was looking very closely at some of the decor in Rosalie’s. “That is a magnificent old icechest,” she said. “Look at the brass hinges.”
“Don’t change the subject for him,” Rachel Wallace said. “Let him answer.”
She spoke a little sharply for my taste. But if there was anything sure on this earth, it was that Susan could take care of herself. She was hard to overpower.
“Actually,” she said, “I was changing the subject for me. You’d be surprised at how many times I’ve heard this conversation.”
“You mean we are boring you.”
Susan smiled at her. “A tweak,” she said.
“I bore a lot of people,” Rachel said. “I don’t mind. I’m willing to be boring to find out what I wish to know.”
The waitress brought me veal Giorgio. I ate a bite.
“What is it you want to know?”
“Why you engage in things that are violent and dangerous.”
I sipped half a glass of beer. I took another bite of veal. “Well,” I said, “the violence is a kind of side-effect, I think. I have always wanted to live life on my own terms. And I have always tried to do what I can do. I am good at certain kinds of things; I have tried to go in that direction.”
“The answer doesn’t satisfy me,” Rachel said.
“It doesn’t have to. It satisfies me.”
“What he won’t say,” Susan said, “and what he may not even admit to himself is that he’d like to be Sir Gawain. He was born five hundred years too late. If you understand that, you understand most of what you are asking.”
“Six hundred years,” I said.
We got through the rest of dinner. Susan asked Rachel about her books and her work, and that got her off me and onto something she liked much better. Susan is good at that. After dinner I had to drive Rachel back to the Ritz. I said goodbye to Susan in the bank parking lot behind Rosalie’s where we’d parked.
“Don’t be mean to her,” Susan said softly. “She’s scared to death, and she’s badly ill at ease with you and with her fear.”
“I don’t blame her for being scared,” I said. “But it’s not my fault.”
From the front seat of my car Rachel said, “Spenser, I have work to do.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said to Susan.
“She’s scared,” Susan said. “It makes her bitchy. Think how you’d feel if she were your only protection.”
I gave Susan a pat on the fanny, decided a kiss would be hokey, and opened the door for her before she climbed into her MG. I was delighted. She’d gotten rid of the Nova. She was not Chevy. She was sports car.
Through the open window Susan said, “You held the door just to spite her.”
“Yeah, baby, but I’m going home with her.”
Susan slid into gear and wheeled the sports car out of the lot. I got in beside Rachel and started up my car.
“For heaven’s sake, what year is this car?” Rachel said.
“1968,” I said. “I’d buy a new one, but they don’t make convertibles anymore.” Maybe I should get a sports car. Was I old Chevy?
“Susan is a very attractive person,” Rachel said.
“That’s true,” I said.
“It makes me think better of you that she likes you.”
“That gets me by in a lot of places,” I said.
“Your affection for each other shows.”
I nodded.
“It is not my kind of love, but I can respond to it in others. You are lucky to have a relationship as vital as that.”
“That’s true, too,” I said.
“You don’t like me.”
I shrugged.
“You don’t,” she said.
