with me about dating.'
'Want me to take a look?'
'Yes.'
'Want to go with me?'
'Yes. I want more than that. I want you and me to find her.'
'She's probably just off on a little trip with somebody,' I said.
'Probably,' he said, and I knew he didn't mean it.
'Your father?' Susan said.
Paul shook his head. 'I haven't heard from him in maybe six years. I haven't a clue where he is. Once the tuition money stopped…' Paul shrugged.
'Okay,' I said. 'We'll find her.'
'I have to know she's all right,' Paul said.
'Sure,' I said.
'Funny,' Paul said. 'Ten years ago you found me for her.'
The dog uncurled from the chair and hopped down and stretched and came over and got up beside me where I was sitting on the couch and began to lick my face industriously. Her tongue was rough, which was probably useful for stripping meat from bones in the Pleistocene era, but served in the late
20th century as a kind of sloppy dermabrasion.
'It'll be even easier this time,' I said with my face clenched. 'We'll have a trained hunter to help us.'
CHAPTER 3
PAUL had gone off to the American Rep Theater to watch a performance artist smear herself with chocolate. Susan and I, feeling a little middle class and uptown, went for drinks to the Ritz bar. It had begun to rain when we got there and I got several raindrop spots on my maroon silk tie while I stashed the car with the doorman. Even with the raindrops, I looked Ritz-worthy with my black cashmere blazer and my gray slacks. I had wanted to complete the look by wearing the cowboy boots that had been handmade for me in L.A. by
Willie the Cobbler. But Susan reminded me that I tended to fall off them if
I had more than one drink, so I settled for black cordovan loafers.
As we cut through the lobby toward the bar, Callahan, the houseman, nodded at me pleasantly. I shot him with my forefinger and he looked at Susan and whistled silently.
'The house dick just whistled at you,' I said.
'At the Ritz?' Susan said.
'Shocking but true,' I said.
'Which one is he?' Susan said.
'Big guy with a red nose and gray hair. Looks fatter than he is.'
'He looks very discerning,' Susan said.
We got a table by the window in the bar, where we could look out through the rain at the Public Gardens. Susan ordered a champagne cocktail. I had scotch and soda.
'No beer?' Susan said.
'Celebration,' I said. 'I'm here with you and Paul's home. Makes me feel celebratory.'
'When did scotch become the drink of celebration?' Susan leaned her chin on her folded hands and rested her gaze on me. The experience was, as it always was, tangible. The weight of her serious intelligence in counterpoint to her playful spoiled princess was culminative.
'Sometimes it's champagne,' I said. 'Sometimes it's scotch.'
The bar was dark. The rain slid down the big window, and the early evening light filtering through it was silvery and slight. Susan picked a cashew from the small bowl of mixed nuts on the table, and bit off maybe a third of it and chewed it carefully.
'I was seventeen,' I said, 'the first time I had anything but beer. We were bird hunting in Maine, my father and I, and a pointer, Pearl the first. We were looking for pheasant in an old apple orchard that hadn't been farmed in maybe fifty years. You had to go through bad cover to reach it, brambles,and small alder that was clumped together and tangled. My father was maybe thirty yards off to the right, and the dog was ahead, ranging, the way they do, and coming back with her tongue out and her tail erect, and looking at me, and then swinging back out in another arc.'
'Did you train her to do that?' Susan said.
'No,' I said. 'It's in the genes, I guess. They'll range like that and come back; and they'll point birds instinctively, but you've got to teach them to hold the point. Otherwise they'll stalk in on the bird and flush it too soon, and it'll fly when you're out of range. Or, if they're really good, they'll kill the bird.'
Susan ate another third of her cashew, and sipped some champagne cocktail.
The light through the rain was getting grayer. The silver edge was thinning as the evening came down on us.
'All of a sudden I heard her bark-half hysterical bark, half growl-and she came loping back, stopping every few
