I nodded. We both drank some scotch.
“You drinking much?” I said.
“Some.”
“Any help?”
“Not much.”
“Hard,” I said.
Farrell looked up at me and his voice was flat.
“You got no fucking idea,” he said.
“Probably not,” I said.
“You got a girlfriend,” he said. “Right?”
“Susan,” I said.
“If she were dying people would feel bad for you.”
“More than they would, probably, if she were a guy.”
“You got that right,” Farrell said.
“I know,” I said. “Makes it harder. What’s his name?”
“Brian. Why?”
“He ought to have a name,” I said.
Farrell finished his scotch and leaned forward and took the bottle off the desk and poured another splash into the water glass.
“You can tell almost right away if people have a problem with it or not,” he said. “You don’t. You don’t really care if I’m straight or gay, do you?”
“Got nothing to do with me,” I said.
“Got nothing to do with lots of people, but they seem to think it does,” Farrell said.
“Probably makes them feel important,” I said. “You been tested?”
“Yeah. So far, I’m all right-we were pretty careful.”
“Feel like a betrayal?” I said. “That you’re not dying too?”
Farrell stared at the whiskey in the bottom of the glass. He swished it around a little, then took it all in a swallow.
“Yes,” he said.
He poured some more scotch. I held out my glass and he poured a little in mine too. We sat quietly in the darkening room and sipped the whiskey.
“Can you work?” I said.
“Not much,” he said.
“I don’t blame you.”
chapter twenty-seven
HAWK WAS SKIPPING rope in the little boxing room that Henry Cimoli kept in the otherwise updated chrome and spandex palace that had begun some years back as the Harbor Health Club. It was a gesture to me and to Hawk, but mostly it was a gesture to the days when Henry had boxed people like Sandy Saddler and Willie Pep.
Now Henry had a Marketing Director, and a Fitness Director, and a Membership Coordinator, and an Accountant, and a Personal Manager, and the club looked sort of like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s hair salon; but Henry still looked like a clenched fist, and he still kept the boxing room where only he and I and Hawk ever worked out.
“Every move a picture,” I said.
Hawk did some variations, changed speeds a couple of times.
“Never seen an Irish guy could do this,” he said.
“Racism,” I said. “We never got the chance to dance for pennies.”
Hawk grinned. He was working out in boxing shorts and high shoes. He was shirtless and his upper body and shaved head gleamed with sweat like polished onyx.
“Susan need watching anymore?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Who’d you use?”
“Me, mostly. Henry sat in once in a while, and Belson did one shift.”
“Belson?”
Hawk nodded. From the rhythm of the rope, I knew that “Sweet Georgia Brown” was playing in the back of Hawk’s head.
“She caught on,” I said.
