Double Deuce

CHAPTER 14

“So what’s she like?” Susan said.

We were having a supper, which I’d cooked, and sipping some Sonoma Riesling, in the kitchen of what Susan now insisted on calling “our house.”

“Well, she’s brave as hell,” I said. “When the guns came out this morning, she hit the pavement facedown, but she kept her tape recorder going.”

Susan moved some of her chicken cutlet about in the wine lemon sauce I had made.

“Smart?”

“I think so,” I said. “She asks a lot of questions-but that is, after all, her job.”

Susan cut a becomingly modest triangle of chicken, speared it with her fork, raised it to her lips, and bit off half of it. Pearl sat quietly with her head on Susan’s thigh, her eyes fixed poignantly on the supper. Susan put the fork down and Pearl took the remaining bite quite delicately.

“There are dogs,” I said, “who eat Gaines Meal from a bowl on the floor.”

“There are dogs who are not treated properly,” Susan said. “Is she attractive?”

“Jackie? Yeah, she’s stunning.”

“Is she the most stunning woman you know?” Susan said. She put her fork down and picked up her napkin from her lap. She patted her lips with it, put it back, picked up her wineglass, and drank some wine.

“She is not,” I said, “as stunning as you are.”

“You’re sure?”

“No one is as stunning as you are,” I said.

She smiled and sipped more of her wine.

“Thank you,” she said.

I had cooked some buckwheat noodles to go with the chicken, and some broccoli, and some whole-wheat biscuits. We both attended to that, for a bit, while Pearl inspected every movement.

“Am I as stunning as Hawk?” I said.

Susan gazed at me for a moment without any expression.

“Of course not,” she said and returned to her food.

I waited. I knew she couldn’t hold it. In a moment her shoulders started to shake and finally she giggled audibly. She raised her head, giggling, and I could see the way her eyes tightened at the corners as they always did when she was really pleased.

“You don’t meet that many shrinks that giggle,” I said.

“Or have reason to,” Susan said as her giggling became sporadic. “What’s for dessert?”

“I could tear off your clothes and force myself upon you,” I said.

“We had that last night,” Susan said. “Why can’t we have desserts like other people-you know, Jell-O Pudding, maybe some Yankee Doodles?”

“You wouldn’t say that if I was as stunning as Hawk,” I said.

“True,” Susan said. “Do you think he’s serious about her?”

“What is Hawk serious about?” I said. “I’ve never known him before to bring a woman along when we were working.”

“Well, is she serious about him?”

“She acts it. She touches him a lot. She looks at him a lot. She listens when he speaks.”

“That doesn’t mean eternal devotion,” Susan said.

“No, some women treat every guy like that,” I said. “Early conditioning, I suppose. But Jackie doesn’t seem like one of them. I’d say she’s interested.”

“And he’s taking on this gang for her,” Susan said.

“Yeah, but that may be less significant than it seems,” I said. “Hawk does things sometimes because he feels like doing them. There aren’t always reasons, at least reasons that you and I would understand, for what he does.”

“I agree that I wouldn’t always understand them,” Susan said. “I’m not so sure you wouldn’t.”

I shrugged.

“Whatever,” I said. “He may have decided to do this just to see how it would work out.”

Susan held her glass up and looked at the last of the sunset glowing through it from her west-facing kitchen windows.

“I would not wish to be in love with Hawk,” Susan said.

“You’re in love with me,” I said.

“That’s bad enough,” she said.