Cold Service

57

IT WAS7: 30 on a chilly overcast Tuesday. We were at a table at Excelsior, with windows on two sides. We had a table in the back, away from everybody else. Cecile in the middle, Susan on one side, me on the other. Hawk across from Cecile.

"This is my way of a good-bye, I guess," Cecile said.

Hawk was watching the bubbles drift up in his champagne glass.

"I've taken a job at the Cleveland Clinic," Cecile said.

The menu had a gentleman's steak and a lady's steak listed. The lady's steak sounded better to me.

"An offer you couldn't refuse?" Susan said.

"Sort of," Cecile said.

She glanced at Hawk.

"And I… needed a change of scenery, I guess," Cecile said.

I knew Susan was fighting it, and I knew she was going to lose. She couldn't help herself. She had to try to help.

"Hawk?" Susan said.

"Yes?" Hawk said.

"I assume you are not moving to Cleveland," Susan said.

There was a glitter of self-mockery in Hawk's look.

He said, "My work be here, Susan."

Cecile was studying the menu. I wondered what she thought about the gentleman's and lady's steaks.

"So many to kill," Cecile said softly without looking up. "So little time."

Hawk looked at me.

"What that line about honor?" Hawk said. "From a poem?"

"Richard Lovelace?" I said. " 'I could not love thee half as much, loved I not honor more?' "

Hawk nodded.

"Oh, spare me," Cecile said.

Hawk nodded thoughtfully.

"Cecile," he said. "You know, and I know, and they know, you got a nice offer in Cleveland, but that you going because you mad at me for not being who you want me to be."

"I'm not mad, damn it," Cecile said. "I love you, and I can't stand that I can't have you."

"Not good dinner conversation," Hawk said. "But it's on the table. If you love me, you could have me. You love somebody else and insist I be him."

"Oh, shit," Cecile said.

She looked at Susan.

"You understand."

Susan nodded. I was hoping she would settle for the nod. But she couldn't.

"I do understand," Susan said. "But I'm not sure that means I agree."

"You don't think I should go to Cleveland?" Cecile said. She was finishing her second martini.

"I'm sorry to sound shrinky," Susan said, "but I think you should do what's in your best interest. Given who you are and what you need, it may very well be in your best interest to end it with Hawk."

"But?" Cecile said.

"But it's probably important to see that it is your doing, not his."

"What difference does it make?" Cecile said. "He won't change."

"Probably can't change; neither can you. But if you blame him, you'll feel victimized all your life."

Cecile caught the waiter's eye and ordered a third martini. She was silent while he got it. None of the rest of us said anything. Party hearty!

"I never quite saw that part," she said finally, after she'd gotten under way on the third martini. "He can't be what I want him to be, and I can't not want it."

Susan nodded.

"If I could change," Cecile said to Hawk, "what would you want?"

Hawk shook his head.

"Nothing," he said. "I don't mind you want me to be things I'm not. You don't change, I don't change. Be fine, long as we don't fight about it."

Cecile stared at him, then back to Susan. She nodded her head toward me.

"Would you change him?"

"Of course," Susan said. "If it were convenient. And I'm sure he would change me."

She smiled at me.

"In fact, I guarantee you that right now he thinks I shouldn't be butting in here."

"Good call," I said.

"But you don't change each other," Cecile said. "And you do things the other doesn't like. And yet here you are."

"That's probably why they call it love," Susan said.

Cecile said nothing. We all joined her. She picked up her martini glass and drank some and looked at the rest of us for a moment and put the glass down. She looked like she might cry.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't mean to be rude. But I have to go."

Nobody said anything. Cecile stood and patted my shoulder as she went by, and let her hand trail over Hawk's as she passed him, and then she was gone around the corner and down the stairs. Hawk didn't look after her. He took in a long breath and let it out slowly.

"We having fun yet?" he said.