He adjusted the shoulder bag. 'It's to hold my tutu,' he said.
At my apartment we had roast duck with fruit stuffing and three bottles of Pinot Noir and at 1:15 Paul and I sat at my kitchen counter drinking brandy with soda. Paige had succumbed to the wine and gone to bed.
'You've been to see Susan?' Paul said.
'Yes.'
'How is it?'
'It's okay,' I said. 'A little out of sync maybe.'
Paul nodded. 'She coming home for Christmas?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'We didn't discuss it.'
'You could go down there.'
'Sure,' I said.
'Paige and I would be fine here. If you want to go down, it's okay.'
I nodded.
'You ever think about dating someone else?' Paul said.
I drank some brandy and soda. 'Someone else?'
'Sure. That girl you used to go with before Susan. Brenda? You could go out with her.'
There were three ice cubes in my glass, and a shot of brandy and the rest soda, except I had drunk half of it. Part of the top ice cube was above the surface.
'No,' I said.
'Why not?'
'I love Susan,' I said. 'I want to be with her. Other people bore me.'
'Never, no one but Susan? You never met anyone else?'
'I liked a woman in L.A. Slept with her once.'
'Why don't you go visit her?'
'She's dead,' I said.
Paul was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. 'That one,' he said.
'Yes.'
The dishwasher finished its cycle and clicked off. The silence was nearly obtrusive in the aftermath.
'It's more than that, Paul. It's more than finding no one else so interesting.'
He nodded. 'If you could love somebody else, then what would it say about this great love you've been loving for ten years?'
'The new religion calls all in doubt,' I said.
'You pay a very high price, as I said last time, for being what you are.'
I nodded.
'It makes you better than other men,' Paul said. 'If you hadn't been what you are, where would I be? But it also traps you. Machismo's captive. Honor, commitment, absolute fidelity, the whole myth.'
'Love,' I said. 'Love's in there.'
'Of course it is, and, if need be, to love pure and chaste from afar. But, damn it, I'd like to see you get more back.'
'Me too,' I said.
'I don't mean from Susan. I mean from life, for crissake. You deserve it. You deserve everything you want. You have a right to it.'
I drank the rest of my drink and made another one.
'I am what I am, kid. Not by accident. By effort, a brick at a time. I knew what I wanted to be and I finally am. I won't go back.'
'I know,' Paul said. 'You can't even talk about things like this unless you're drinking.'
'I can,' I said. 'But unless I'm drinking, talking about things like this seems pointless. I can't be what I am and love Susan differently.'
'And you won't be something else?' he said.
'I worked too hard to be this,' I said.
Paul got up and made himself another drink.
'Maybe the question is can you be what you are if Susan's change of life is permanent,' he said.
'The way I feel about her won't change,' I said.
'How about the way you feel about yourself?'
'I'm working on that,' I said.
Chapter 29
Paul slept in my bed with Paige. I took the couch. In the morning I got up with a half hangover and an odd sense that somewhere last night I had turned a corner. I looked at my watch. 6:20. A few miles along the Charles and maybe the half hangover would go away.
I went silently into my bedroom, got my running things, and brought them out to the living room, where I dressed. Running with a gun on the hip is jouncy. But running without one when Joe Broz had speculated about dropping you in the harbor is shortsighted. My solution was to take the little.25 automatic that I used for a back-up. I pumped a shell up into the chamber and then eased the hammer back down and carried it in my hand. It was small enough so that my hand concealed it and other joggers would be unlikely to overreact.
The weather was superior for Boston in December. The temperature was nearly forty and the walkways along the esplanade were clear and black. I began to run along the river, westbound. To my left the backs of Beacon Street apartments faced out onto the river. A lot of small balconies, a lot of big picture windows, at ground level, and a narrow alley cleverly named Back Street, with parking spaces and occasional garages. Between me and Back Street Storrow Drive was still nearly empty in the slowly developing light. In an hour commuter traffic would fill it, and the air would be thick with hydrocarbons. An MDC police cruiser moved slowly up behind me on the pathway. I stepped aside to let it pass and it drove slowly on and disappeared as the pathway curved with the river.
Paul understood me in a way that few people did. He was only eighteen but he'd had to rebuild from scratch and understood self-creation. He'd explained to me once about how a dancer has to be physically centered in order to perform properly. He was centered in ways beyond dancing and I understood the effort that had gone into it. Some of the effort had been mine. But I hadn't done it. He had done it.
Ahead of me a man in a beige jogging suit unhooked the leash from a golden retriever and the dog dashed toward the river bank, its nose to the ground. Maybe I should get a dog. Man's best friend.
I was feeling pretty good. It was always easier to feel good when something I was working on was winding up. There was a sense of completion. Especially if the wind-up was orderly. The sun was up now, not very high, but fully above the horizon, and I squinted against it. I hated running in winter. In spring you worked up a good sweat and the muscles rocked easy in vernal heat. But when I didn't run I began to feel angular and stiff, as if I would make a clanking sound when I moved. Runner's high, where are you when I need you?
The way I felt about Susan was not Susan's problem, of course. I loved her not for her sake, but for mine. Loving her was easy, maybe even irresistible. It was also necessary, but it was my necessity, not hers. What the hell was she doing so bad? Devoting a lot of time to her work, being caught up in it even. So what, thousands of people cared deeply for their work and were able to love one another. Whether I came first with Susan, or second, I could love her as much as I cared to, or needed to. The trick was to do it with dignity. As I went under the Mass Ave bridge I saw a pale blue Buick sedan parked there and standing beside it were Ed and his fat friend with the van-dyke beard. Ed pointed a gun at me. So did Vandyke. With my hands at my side I thumbed back the hammer on the.25.
'Joe wants you wasted,' Ed said.
I shot him in the chest with the.25 and he spun half around and fell on his side. I hit the ground with him. Vandyke shot at me and hit me in the top of my left thigh and I fired three more shots at him. One of them caught him under the right eye and he was probably dead by the time he hit. I rolled over and checked Ed. He was dead too. I looked down at my left leg. The dark blue cotton sweat pants were black with blood. I undid them and looked
