When I got through Hawk was off the bench press machine and we swapped places. In the boxing room I never did get a good rhythm on the speed bag and there was no bite in my punches on the heavy bag. Hawk made it dance, but I just bludgeoned it. We took some steam and then showered. We were the only ones in the shower room.
'Something wrong with you,' Hawk said. It wasn't a question.
'You just noticed?' I said.
'Besides being a honkie and a preppie and a fucking bleeding heart. Something wrong with you.'
'Susan moved to San Francisco,' I said. Hawk let the hot water run over him and the lathered soap slid away.
'Get dressed,' Hawk said. 'I buy you a drink-'
We walked across Atlantic Avenue to the Market and sat at the bar in J. J. Donovan's Tavern, I had Irish whiskey on the rocks.
'You still drinking that stuff,' Hawk said.
'True to my heritage,' I said.
'What do I drink?'
'Rum.'
Hawk ordered Mount Gay rum on the rocks. 'Rum, religion, and slaves,' he said. 'Cradle of liberty.'
The drinks came. We had a taste.
'What she doing in San Francisco,' Hawk said.
'Job.'
'You going to visit?'
'I don't know her address.' We drank some more.
'She going to tell you where she lives?' Hawk said.
'Maybe in a while.'
'Want me to find her?' he said.
'No. She's got the right to be private.'
'She got somebody out there?' Hawk said.
'I don't know.'
'If she got somebody, I can kill him,' Hawk said.
I shook my head again. 'She's got a right to somebody else,' I said. Hawk gestured another round at the bartender.
'You too,' Hawk said.
'I don't want anyone else.'
'Thought you wouldn't.'
The thing I like about Irish whiskey is that the more you drink the smoother it goes down. Of course that's probably true of antifreeze as well, but illusion is nearly all we have. The bar was half empty. Two young women sat at the bar near the door and kept in eye out. A young couple played Space Invaders behind us in the corner.
One of the young women at the door was looking at Hawk. There was interest in her look, and fear.
'Take some balance,' Hawk said. It was as if he were thinking out loud. 'Be like carrying a glass of water filled right to the top and not spilling any. Be a bitch.'
'Yes,' I said.
'This is something you can't fix,' Hawk said. 'You got to trust her to do it.'
'It's my life, in some sense or other.'
Hawk nodded. 'I'd trust Susan with mine.' he said.
I looked at Hawk's peaceful, deadly face. Obsidian skin tight over intricate muscle and prominent bone.
'Yes,' I said. 'I would too.'
CHAPTER 5
Paul was with me for the summer. He had a job with a small company in Boston called the Tommy Banks Dancers. The pay was negligible, but it was a chance to perform and Tommy Banks was, Paul said, legitimate.
'Performance is different,' Paul said. 'You can take classes all your life, and rehearse forever, but you make more progress in one performance than you do in a year of lessons.'
We were having dinner, in my kitchen. 'Sure,' I said. 'Performance is the actual thing. The other stuff is getting ready.' Supper was cold poached salmon fillets with dill mayonnaise, and boiled new potatoes and peapods. Paul got up to get a second bottle of Rolling Rock Extra Pale from the refrigerator. He held it up at me, I shook my head. He opened it and sat back down.
'You feel like working?' he said.
