steak. For Susan to order steak was a breach of self-discipline comparable to masturbating in public. Salads arrived first. They were excellent. The steaks arrived shortly thereafter. Susan recovered herself sufficiently to cut her steak into halves and put one half aside.
“I guess we showed them,” Susan said as she chewed on a small piece of steak. “Sex, martinis, and steak. How much more carnality is possible.”
I took a bite of my steak. It was excellent.
“That can be our project while we’re here,” I said. “See how much carnality is possible.”
“Would you care to tell me exactly why we are here?”
“Haven’t been away in a while,” I said. “Lee offered.”
“Lee’s a cop,” Susan said. “He doesn’t spend all winter here either. Why now at the end of June?”
“Sure it’s out of season,” I said. “But everything’s air-conditioned.”
“I’m not complaining about the heat,” Susan said. “And so far I’m having a lovely time. But I think that there’s something lurking behind the arras.”
“A rat, maybe?”
“Or Polonius,” Susan said. “Shakespeare aside, I know you nearly as well as you know me. What’s up?”
I finished my martini, and in a burst of unbridled carnality, Susan finished hers. The waitress noticed our situation and came over. We ordered red wine. She went to get it. And brought it back and left.
“You remember Beecham, Maine?” I said.
She shook her head. I told her, all of it. She listened as I talked as she always did, with full attention, her eyes fixed on me. I could feel the charge in her. I could feel the energy between us. It made talking to her a lush experience.
“And you obviously believe them,” Susan said when I finished.
“That they’ll try for Hawk and me? You remember Clausewitz on war?”
“I should,” Susan said, “by now. You keep quoting him.”
“And what is the quote?”
“Something like ‘you must prepare for the enemy’s capability, rather than his intentions.’”
“Yes.”
“So you have to assume they might try.”
“If I assume they might try and I’m wrong, I’m inconvenienced. If I assume they won’t try and I’m wrong, I’m dead.”
“Which is why you brought me here. Because if we were to spend time together you wanted it where I wouldn’t be in danger by proximity.”
“Yep. I figure they follow us down here in late June and their bullets will melt.”
“And you still don’t know their connection with Amir?”
“Only that they sent a plane for him. And warned us away from him.”
“It’s the first time in this case that you’ve run into people who seem like they could have killed Prentice Lamont,” she said.
“Yeah, I noticed that too. Don’t know if they did, but at least we can assume they would.”
Susan had another bite of steak. I sipped some red wine. I had finished my steak and was keeping track of what happened to the half of her steak that she had put aside. It was still aside. I remained hopeful.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Keep pushing,” I said. “Something will pop out.”
“The police can’t help you?” Susan said.
I shrugged.
“We say they threatened us, they say they didn’t, what are the cops going to do?”
“You wouldn’t go to the police anyway,” Susan said. “And certainly Hawk would not.”
I didn’t say anything. Susan put her knife and fork down, and folded her hands under her chin and gazed at me in silence.
“Don’t let them kill you,” Susan said.
“I won’t,” I said.
She thought for a minute, looking at me, and then said, “No, you won’t, will you.”
“No.”
We sat and our eyes held like that for a long minute.
Finally I said, “You going to eat the rest of that steak?”
She kept staring at me and then began to smile and her eyes filled up, and then she began to laugh and the tears spilled onto her cheeks.
