Vinnie and Hawk were there. Vinnie was cleaning his shotgun.
'Fucking barrel's going to rust through, we don't stop going to Port City,' Vinnie said. Hawk was reading his book. He nodded without taking his eyes from the page.
'What's the name of the book,' Vinnie said. He wasn't wearing his Walkman and he was restless.
'On Race,' Hawk said.
'Yeah. How come you reading that?'
'The brother's a smart man,' Hawk said.
'That racial shit bother you?' Vinnie said.
I was done with the throw-away mail and turned to the package.
The envelopes that might have checks, I saved for last.
'You got a problem with me being black, Vinnie?'
'No.'
'Me either. So at the moment I got no racial shit to be bothered by, you know? I try to work on that level.'
I opened the package. It was a videotape cassette. It was labeled 'Jocelyn Colby.' I turned it over. There was nothing else. I didn't have a videotape player.
'Either of you got a VCR?' I said.
Hawk shook his head.
'Already seen 'Debbie Does Dallas,'
' he said.
'I had one,' Vinnie said.
'Old lady took it with her when she split.'
Hawk said, 'Didn't know you was married, Vinnie.'
Vinnie grinned.
'I didn't either,' he said.
'Probably why she split.'
I picked up the phone and called Susan.
'I have a video tape that I would like to view on your machine,' I said when she answered.
'If I brought an elegant lunch, perhaps you'd like to take a break from healing the loony and watch it with ' me.
'It's not one of those disgusting porn thingies, is it?'
'I don't know, it came in the mail and it says Jocelyn Colby on it.'
'I have a two-hour break,' Susan said.
'One to three.'
'You disappointed it's not a disgusting porn thingie?' I said.
'Yes,' she said and hung up.
Hawk and Vinnie dropped me off and waited out front. I went in her side door and had fed some of the elegant lunch to Pearl while I waited. When Susan came up the front stairs from her office at five past one, I had the tape in the VCR. And the elegant lunch laid out on one of the upper shelves in her book case, to discourage Pearl. Susan kissed me, kissed Pearl, and looked at the lunch.
'Is this a submarine sandwich I see before me?' she said.
'Yes,' I said.
'No onions.'
'Elegant.'
When she was working she was much less flamboyant in her makeup and clothes.
'I am not the focus of the therapy,' she said when I once asked her about it. Today she wore a dark blue pants suit with a white blouse and pearls. Her makeup was discreet.'
'Even if I were sane,' I said, 'I'd spend $100 an hour just to come and look at you.'
'It's a hundred and a quarter, but I could get you a rate,' she said. She went to the kitchen and came back with two place mats, knives and forks, and cloth napkins. She laid out our lunch on the coffee table.
'There's napkins with the subs,' I said.
Susan looked at me pityingly, and then turned to glare at Pearl, who was stalking the sandwiches. Pearl seemed at ease with the glare, but she didn't get closer. I pointed at the cassette in the VCR.
'Do you know what's on it?' Susan said.
