'In the peanut butter jar in the refrigerator.'
I got it out and put it to warm in a saucepan. Then I measured equal parts of cornmeal and corn flour into a bowl.
'You're not happy with this April Kyle thing,' Susan said.
'No.' I put in some baking powder. 'No, I don't like the way we can't find her, and then we went back and looked for her pimp and we couldn't find him.' 'There's more,' Susan said. 'There's something else. You are not…'
Susan thought a minute. 'You're a little inward.'
I beat two eggs and some milk together with a whisk.
'It's the scene,' I said. 'I am not new to misery, but it is the flat unalterability of it, I guess. You spend a couple days in the Combat Zone and you feel like you've eaten a bowl of grease.'
Susan nodded. 'It's not like you've never encountered depravity,' she said.
I added the milk and eggs to the flour and made a batter.
'I know, but it's depressing. Maybe there's a depravity tolerance and I've reached it. There was a black whore, maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty, and her pimp was going to beat her up for no good reason and I said I'd take her with me and she laughed.' I added a little corn oil to the batter. 'And she was right. Where in hell was I going to take her? Look in the yellow pages under C for convent?'
I oiled the griddle and turned the heat on under it.
'And there was a black kid about fifteen screwing some middle-aged white guy in a chemical suit on a bare mattress in an empty room. He took off when we showed up looking for April, and the kid wanted to know if I was interested.'
I put four small circles of batter on the hot griddle and watched them spread and begin to rise. When the bubbles began to show through I flipped them and after another minute I put two on Susan's plate and two on mine. Susan put on butter and homemade maple, syrup and took a bite. 'Yum,' she said.
'Only one yum?'
'I don't want you to get arrogant.'
I ate a pancake. 'Carbohydrate replenishment,' I said. 'After the exhausting run.'
'It wasn't the run that exhausted you,' Susan said.
'Maybe I should have scalloped some oysters.'
We ate two pancakes apiece and I put on four more.
'It makes you feel helpless,' Susan said.
'Yeah.'
'Hawk have any reaction?'
I shook my head. 'Far as I can tell, the world amuses the hell out of Hawk.'
'What fools these mortals be?'
I put two more corn cakes on each plate. 'Yeah,' I said, 'him and Puck.' 'Does the fact that so many of these women are black make you feel more of an outsider? More… narve's not the right word, but somewhere in that area.'
'Possible,' I said. We ate. Susan poured me some more coffee. I put on another quartet of corn cakes. 'How many do you suppose we can eat before we hurt ourselves?'
'I can't speak for you,' Susan said. 'I'll stop with these two.'
'But mostly,' I said, 'it's spending time in a world where fifteen-year-old girls are a commodity, like electrified dildos, or color-coordinated merkins, and crotchless leather panties. It's a world devoted to appetite, and commerce.' I sipped some coffee.'I think we are in rats' alley,' I said, 'where the dead men lost their bones.'
'Well,' Susan said, 'we are bleak about this. You want to stop?'
'No.' I said.
'I know you're doing this for me. I care more about you than about April Kyle. If you drop it, I'll understand.'
I shook my head.
'You can't,' she said.
'No.' We were quiet. 'Maybe just two more,' I said.
Susan nodded. She looked at me with that power of concentration that she had. 'Why can't you?' she said.
I shrugged. 'It's what I do,' I said.
'Even when it bothers you like this?'
'If you only do it when it's easy, is it worth doing'?'
She smiled. Her mouth was wide, and when she smiled her whole face smiled and her eyes gleamed.
'You never disappoint,' she said. 'You and Cotton Mather.'
