Double Deuce

CHAPTER 9

When I got home Susan was in bed eating her supper and watching a movie on cable. Pearl was in bed with her watching closely. Susan was wearing one of my white shirts for a nightdress and her black hair had the sort of loose look it had when it had just been washed. I kissed her.

“And the baby,” Susan said. I kissed Pearl.

“There’s some supper waiting for you in the refrigerator,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

“Why don’t you get it and bring it up and we’ll eat together and you can tell me about your day.”

“I can tell you about my day now. Hawk and I sat for thirteen hours in the middle of Twenty-two Hobart Street.”

“And?”

“And nothing. We just sat there.”

“How boring,” Susan said. “Well, get your supper and we can talk.”

I took my gun off my belt and put it on the night-table next to my side of the bed. I took a shower. Then I went downstairs to the kitchen and found supper, a large bowl of cold pasta and chicken. I tasted it. There was raw broccoli in it, and raw carrots, and some sort of fat-free salad dressing that tasted like an analgesic balm. Susan admitted it tasted like an analgesic balm, but she said that with a little fat-free yogurt and some lemon juice and a dash of celery seed mixed in, it was good. I had never agreed with this. I put it back in the refrigerator. When I’d moved in I had brought with me a six-pack of Catamount Beer. I opened one.

In Susan’s refrigerator was a half-used cellophane bag of shredded cabbage, some carrots, some broccoli, half a red pepper, half a yellow pepper, and half a green pepper, some skimmed milk, most of a loaf of seven-grain bread, and a package containing two boneless skinless chicken breasts. I sliced up both the chicken breasts on an angle, cut up the peppers, sprinkled everything with some fines herbes that I found in the back of Susan’s cupboard, and put it in a fry pan on high. It was a pretty fry pan, a mauve color with a design on it, that went perfectly with the pillows on the love seat in the kitchen. As an instrument for sauteeing it was nearly useless. I splashed a little beer in with the chicken and peppers and when it cooked away, I took the pan off the stove and made up a couple of sandwiches on the sevengrain bread. I put the sandwiches on a plate, got another beer, and took my supper upstairs.

“Oh, I left some pasta salad for you,” Susan said.

“I sort of felt like a sandwich,” I said.

Susan smiled and nodded. I sat on the edge of the bed and balanced the plate on the edge of the night-table. Pearl shifted on the bed and nosed at it. I told her not to and she withdrew nearly a quarter of an inch. I drank some beer and hunched over the plate, keeping my body between Pearl and the sandwich, and ate. It was not a neat sandwich and some of it fell on the night-table. I picked it up and gave it to Pearl.

The movie was some sort of love story between an elegant rich woman from Beverly Hills, who appeared to be 5’10“, and a roughneck ironworker from Queens, who appeared to be 5’6”. They were as convincing as Dan Quayle.

I finished my sandwich and got under the covers. Pearl got under the covers when I did, and stretched out between me and Susan.

“There appears to be a German Short Haired Pointer in bed with us,” I said.

“That’s where she sleeps,” Susan said. “You know that.”

I took the Globe from the floor beside the bed and opened it. The ironworker and the elegant lady were playing a love scene on the tube. I glanced at it. In the close-ups he was much taller than she was. I went back to the paper. I noted in the TV listings that the Bulls were playing the Pistons on TNT.

“Why did you sit for all that time in the middle of the project?” Susan said.

“Hawk figures that it will make the gang react,” I said.

“Isn’t that sort of like being the bait in a trap?” Susan said.

“I raised that point,” I said.

“And?”

“It is sort of like being bait,” I said.

Susan was silent. Her eyes stayed on the movie. I read the paper some more.

“It is what you do,” Susan said.

“Yeah.”

“But it scares me,” Susan said.

“Hell, it scares me too,” I said.