'And we got the rest.' Newman's color was high and he drummed on the table edge with both hands.
Janet Newman said, 'I'll be interested to see how you feel about it tomorrow.'
'Why,' Newman said, 'cause I been drinking? I'm not drunk.'
'Why not sleep on it. And you might want to think what you're trying to involve Chris in.'
'For cris sake don't you want me to do it? A minute ago you were talking like you wanted me to do it. You want me to do it, I'll do it.'
The waitress appeared, looked at Newman's empty glass. Hood shook his head very slightly and the waitress went away.
'Because I want you to?' Janet said.
'Yeah. You want it. I'll get it for you.'
'Not because you want it?'
'It don't matter what I want. I do whatever you want, babe. You want something done, I'm your man.'
'So it's all up to me,' Janet said.
'Some of it is up to me, Janet,' Hood said. He was sitting back in his corner, and the shadow of the booth hid his eyes. 'It's up to me how far I get involved in this.'
'Of course, Chris. If you don't involve yourself, I very much doubt if Aaron will. Even if he thinks so now.'
'Bullshit,' Newman said. 'I'll do it with him or without. I got you, babe, I don't need anything else.' Hood smiled and was silent.
'Always self-sacrifice, always the martyr to love,' Janet Newman said.
'If you do this it will be because you want to. I'm not going to be the one.' 'Fuck this,' Newman said and stood up. 'I'm going home. You coming?'
'I have my car,' Janet said, 'remember?' Newman said, 'Yes, so you do,' and turned and walked out of the bar.
In the booth Janet and Hood were silent. Then Janet said, 'Chris. He's going to do it, the son of a bitch. Or I'll do it myself. Those bastards. They will not do that to me again.'
'You're thinking about revenge, Janet, and safety.'
'So what.'
'He's thinking about honor and courage, maybe justice.'
'Shit.'
'Not to him it isn't. They're hard things to think about. Being the kind of man he thinks he ought to be is hard. It's a burden.'
'Being the kind of woman he thinks I ought to be isn't very easy either,' she said. 'I just think that killing Adolph Karl is the only intelligent solution to the problem we've got. It will serve as justice for the young woman he killed, it will prevent him from doing it again, it will take our own lives out of jeopardy, it will, I admit this, ease my own sense of violation. And it will solve Aaron's problems of honor and manhood or whatever you think is bothering him.'
'What do you think is bothering him?'
'Oh God, Chris, I don't know and I'm sick of trying to figure it out.
He's not a man, he's a big child. Everything has to be romance and chivalry and…' She gestured aimlessly with her hand.
'And a code of behavior,' Hood said. 'I read the books. That's not always a bad thing, Janet.'
'Live with it a while,' she said.
Hood was silent.
'Would it bother you to do it, Chris? To kill Adolph Karl?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'I agree with your summary of the situation. It seems your best move.'
'It'll bother Aaron, I can assure you.'
'He's never done it before,' Hood said.
'Kill someone?'
'Yes.'
'Neither have I,' Janet said, 'but it doesn't bother me.'
'I've got another edge on Aaron,' Hood said.
'You're probably in better shape,' Janet said.
'No,' Hood said. 'I kind of like it.'
CHAPTER 7.
Newman woke in the morning uneasy and feeling guilt. As always after he'd been drinking he ran back in his mind to see if he'd done anything bad. He felt hot with embarrassment that he'd tried to swagger with Chris about being a bouncer in his pub.
The air conditioner was humming, Janet was still asleep, her back to him, her hair up, a blue scarf tied around it. There was an old maple tree in the front yard. Its trunk was four feet in diameter. The thick healthy green leaves moved gently against the sky outside the bedroom window. He felt the stab of fear as he thought of Adolph Karl.
Two cops had called him a psychopath. He'd talked with such conviction last night about killing him.
He slid under the covers over against Janet. His pelvis pressed against her buttocks. He put his left arm over her and put his hand on her breast. She was wearing a bra. Like armor, he thought. Always a bra, underpants, pj's, socks, no matter how hot it is. Must be security or something. Sometimes a fucking bathrobe. She rolled over onto her stomach away from his hand.
'I gather,' he said, 'you don't care for a little nooky?'
'Un-unh,' she murmured, still half-asleep.
He rolled back over to his own side of the bed and lay on his back. His throat felt tight and again his eyes stung but no tears came. He thought of her as he had seen her on the bed the night before. Naked and helpless. Couldn't even spit. Desire buzzed in his stomach. He looked at her beside him. She was on her stomach, her face turned away. Except for the slight rise and fall of her back as she breathed she was inert. One of her hair rollers had come loose and was half hanging out from her blue scarf.
'You want me to kill some guy for you,' he said.
She moved slightly, still asleep, and said, 'Ummm.'
He laughed without humor, or sound, and got up. He slept naked. In the bathroom mirror he looked at himself. He had the weight lifter's mass. Pectoral muscles, deltoids, triceps, all over-developed. But there was fat, too, a roll around his waist that thickened his whole body, flesh that softened and sagged his chest over the big pectoral muscles. His upper eyelids had sagged so that the top round of his eye was covered, and the flesh under his chin was loose so that if he tucked his chin back at all his neck disappeared.
He flexed at the mirror. He looked better when he flexed. What seemed soft was suddenly revealed as hard, what might have been fat was in fact shown to be muscle. Not bad for forty-six. If I could only drop twenty pounds I'd be splendid for forty-six.
In the shower he thought about Adolph Karl. But would it be right, he thought. Do I have the right to take the law into my own hands.
Christ' I sound like a comic strip. Who was that masked man anyway?
But do I? But if I don't, how can I stand being dishonored so? 'I could not love thee half so much loved I not honor more.' I wonder if Robert Lovelace was married. Was he just worrying about the ethics of it to avoid doing it? Was he simply scared?
He lathered his hair with apple-scented shampoo and let the hot water run over him rinsing the shampoo away. Let's look at the problem of scared. He tried to examine himself, to study his spiritual condition the way one might examine a painting. But his spiritual condition was evasive. It wouldn't stay in frame, it shifted. Like looking at an electron, he thought. The act of observation changes its behavior.
