“Being in love with Hawk would be stressful,” I said.
“I don’t think I’m in love with him yet. But I will be soon, and I want to figure this out before it’s too late.”
I nodded. Susan watched.
“You were saying?” Jackie said.
“You have a sense of who you are,” I said. “And you’re determined to keep on being who you are, and maybe the only way you can keep on being who you are is to go inside, to be inaccessible. Especially, I would think, if you’re a black man. And more especially if you do the kind of work Hawk does.”
“So why do it?”
“Because he knows how,” I said. “It’s what he’s good at.”
“And that means he can’t love anybody,” Jackie said.
“It means you keep a little of yourself to yourself.”
“Why?” Jackie said.
“Suze,” I said, “you want to offer any interpretation?”
“No.”
I looked at Pearl. She appeared to be fantasizing about buckwheat pancakes.
“I don’t suppose,” I said, “that you’d settle for an eloquent shrug of the shoulders?”
“Not unless you’re willing to admit that you’ve gotten bogged down in your own bullshit and you don’t know how to get out,” Jackie said.
“It’s not bullshit,” I said. “But it is something one feels more than something one thinks about, and it’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t live Hawk’s life.”
“Like a woman?” I shook my head.
“Hawk sometimes kills people. People sometimes try to kill him. Keeping yourself intact while you do that kind of work requires so much resolution that it has to be carefully protected.”
“Even from someone who loves him?”
“Especially,” I said.
We were all silent.
“This is probably as much of Hawk as I will ever get,” she said.
“Probably,” I said.
“I don’t think it’s enough,” Jackie said.
“It might be,” Susan said, “if you can adjust your expectations.”
Jackie looked at Susan and at me.
“You’ve been lucky,” Jackie said. “I guess I’m envious.”
Susan looked straight at me and I could feel the connection between us.
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Susan said.
CHAPTER 38
Hawk and I were sitting in my office in the late afternoon on a day that made you feel eternal. All the trees on the Common were budded. Early flowers bloomed in the Public Gardens, and the college kids littered the embankment along Storrow Drive, soaking up the rays behind BU.
We’d been asking around after Major for a couple of weeks now. And the more we asked where he was, the more no one knew.
“He’ll show up,” Hawk said.
“He’s maybe killed three people,” I said. “Be good if we found him rather than the other way around.”
“We’ll hear from him,” Hawk said. “He’s going to have to know.”
“Know what you’ll do?”
“What I’ll do, and what he’ll do when I do it,” Hawk said.
“You’ve given him a lot of slack,” I said. “I’ve seen you be quite abrupt with people who were a lot less annoying than Major is.”
“Kind of want to see what he’ll do too,” Hawk said.
“I sort of guessed that you might,” I said.
“We’ll hear from him,” Hawk said.
And we did.
The phone rang just after six, when the sun had pretty well departed, but it was still bright daylight.
“Got a message for Hawk,” the voice said. It was Major.
“Sure,” I said. “He’s here.” I clicked onto speakerphone.
