After the air-conditioned building the heat was tangible and startling.
His bright blue jeep was parked against the far wall. As he walked across the half-empty lot he felt obvious and isolated. As if a high camera shot were focused on him. He'd taken the top off the jeep for the summer, and with the big wheels and the high clearance he felt exposed still as he pulled out onto Commonwealth Avenue.
Christ I'm scared, he thought as he drove along Commonwealth. He wished he had a gun. He wished Croft were with him. Maybe he could tell the Smithfield police he'd had anonymous threatening phone calls.
Maybe they'd put a cruiser nearby. But if they're watching and they see the cops they'll get us.
He drove past Boston University into Kenmore Square. One foot was cocked up on the door frame. He wore a blue Levi shirt, washed often.
The sleeves were rolled, the top three buttons were open. As he moved the steering wheel the muscles in his arms swelled beneath his tan.
'Machismo,' he said aloud. Jiving it in self-mockery. He looked in the rear-view mirror at the thick brown column of his neck, the strong jaw, the square tanned face. In circles where there weren't any, he was thought a tough guy.
Past Kenmore Square he pulled onto Park Drive and drove through the Fenway. Automatically he looked, as he always did, at the light towers of Fenway Park as they showed above the apartment buildings. They had loomed for him, when he was a boy, like the towers of Camelot.
He went past the Museum of Fine Arts and pulled into the faculty parking lot at Northeastern University. His wife's parking sticker entitled him. Northeastern was an urban university of unrelieved ugliness. Janet's office was in a converted industrial building.
Inside, the brick walls and hardwood floors had been veneered with paint and vinyl and the open spaces partitioned with wallboard. It was air-conditioned. In Janet's office there were another woman and two men. Newman knew them. He didn't like them much. He was jealous of Janet's work and her friends at work and her commitment to both the work and the friends.
As he came to her door she was talking animatedly. Her eyes were bright and wide, her hands moved. Her color was high. Goddamn isn't she something. There was a faint red line on her left wrist, where last night the rope had marked it. He felt anxiety heavy in his stomach, but also faintly, around the edges, desire as he remembered her naked helplessness.
He stepped around the corner of her office door and said, 'Newman's the name, words are my game.' Janet stopped talking and smiled at him and waved.
'Margie,' he said, 'how are you? Jim? Charles?'
They spoke to him. He made them a little uneasy, he knew. He had been reviewed in Time and Newsweek and been on the Today show. For them he was a celebrity. And a celebrity in the field where they would care.
They were all English professors, he was a writer. Always inside them was the war; Newman understood it. Always there was the disdain for his popularity and envy of his success. He liked making them uncomfortable.
Janet said, 'What are you doing here? Did you have your appointment?'
'Yeah,' Newman said. 'I had it. It went okay. They were a little upset, but nothing they could do.'
Margie was small and very slim with perfectly black hair and good features. She was much younger than Janet. 'Anything wrong?' she said.
'No,' Janet said. 'Just some business that had to be done. It involved returning some merchandise and I was afraid it could be unpleasant.' She smiled. 'That's why I had Aaron do it.'
'Man's work,' he said. They were very liberated here in the English department. He loved to scandalize them. If only mildly. 'How about you and me, little lady, we go down to Chris's Place and have a few drinks and dinner.' 'Aaron, I have my car,' she said.
'So drive down, meet me there. Or drive down in the jeep with me and we'll come back and get your car.'
'I'm not riding in the jeep and having my hair blow all over the place.'
He took a big breath. 'Okay, then, ride down in your car and meet me.'
'Okay, but I'll be late. There's a curriculum committee meeting and it's important. I won't be able to get there for another hour.'
'Course, don't want to miss that curriculum committee meeting. Probably couldn't have it without you. What are you going to do at this meeting, plan the next meeting?'
'Aaron, don't be a pain in the ass. You go down and have a few beers with Chris and I'll come down after our meeting.'
'Yeah, okay, when can I expect you? You know how you are.' He looked at the two men. One was tall and willowy with a full beard and small round gold-rimmed glasses. The other was middle-sized and trim with a European-cut three-piece suit and a Phi Beta Kappa key on his watch chain. Half his salary on the goddamned suit.
'I'll be there in an hour, I already said that. The meeting will have to end at six because people have classes at six-thirty. Go ahead.
I'll be there.' He nodded, smiled at the four of them, and turned to go. He paused next to the medium man in the three-piece suit. 'Charles,' he said.
'You are a regular fashion plate.'
He was close to Charles and was aware of how much bigger he was than Charles. He wanted Charles to feel that, to let the sense of his mass sink in. Charles smiled vaguely.
'I wish I could dress as you do, Aaron, and stay home all day and cash big checks, but some of us aren't so lucky, or talented, maybe.' Newman grinned. 'That's true,' he said. He waved his hand at all of them again and went out. Jesus Christ, we got the biggest problem of our fucking life and she's got a curriculum meeting. Nice how she'd give up anything to be with me. Nice how she's always there when I'm feeling bad. Very fucking nice. He got in his jeep and drove toward the waterfront. His eyes stung as if he would cry. But there were no tears.
CHAPTER 5.
At forty-seven Chris Hood stood six feet tall and weighed 190. He had a black belt in karate, could bench-press 375 pounds. The skin on his body was too tight to pinch. In 1950 he had jumped into Wonson, Korea, with the Second Ranger battalion, been captured, escaped, returned to his unit, and won the Distinguished Service Cross. From 1956 to 1959 he returned punts and kickoffs for the Detroit Lions. He had been cut six weeks before he qualified for a pension. He came back to Boston and worked as a bartender and a bouncer in several different clubs and finally in 1976 opened a heavily mortgaged pub restaurant in the area of Quincy Market. He sat at the bar with Newman and sipped Perrier water with a twist of lime while Newman drank Beck's beer.
'Janet coming down?' he said.
Newman said, 'Yes. She's got a meeting first.'
The room was dim and air-conditioned. The bar itself was mahogany.
Behind the bar on the wall above the display of bottles was the mounted head of a grizzly bear Hood had shot in Alaska.
'Hear anything from Kathy?' Newman said.
Hood laughed. 'Every time I'm a day late with the alimony.'
'How're the kids?'
'Okay, I guess.' Hood looked at the grizzly head on the wall. 'I don't see much of them, to tell you the truth. You hear from Karen?' 'Yeah,' Newman said. 'She's in Amsterdam. And next week she's going to Paris.'
'When's she get back?'
'September, just before school starts.'
'How about Sandy?'
'She's in Cleveland, she's dancing in a road company revival of Carousel. They're supposed to be in Boston in November and she says she'll be able to come home a couple of days.'
Hood looked at Newman's glass, saw it was empty and nodded at the bartender. He brought a new bottle.
'Your kids are doing good,' Hood said. 'They're going where they want to. They're learning what they like. They're not hung up on supposed to and all that shit, You and Janet have done a good job. Hope Kathy doesn't fuck
