Double Deuce

CHAPTER 37

Susan and I were eating blueberry pancakes and drinking coffee on Sunday morning. The sun was flooding in through the east window of the kitchen, and Susan looked like the Queen of Sheba in a white silk robe, with her black hair loose around her face.

Susan gave Pearl a forkful of pancake.

“Good for her,” Susan said. “Whole wheat, fresh fruit, a nice change of pace from bone meal and soy grits.”

“Almost anything would be,” I said.

“Are you going to put on a shirt,” Susan said, “before Jackie arrives?”

“Keep her from flinging herself on me?” I said.

“Sure,” Susan said. “Why is she coming over?”

“She didn’t say. Just that she needed to talk and would we be home.”

Pearl edged her nose under my elbow and pushed my arm.

“Of course,” I said.

I cut a wedge from my pancake stack and fed it to her.

“You think we might be spoiling this dog?” I said.

“Of course,” Susan said. “But how else will she learn to eat from the table?”

I looked down at Pearl. She was perfectly concentrated on the pancakes, her gaze shifting as one or the other of us ate.

“A canine American princess,” I said.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Susan said.

The doorbell rang and Susan got up to answer. I left my pancakes and went to the bedroom and put on a shirt. When I came back Pearl was still sitting gazing at my plate, but the plate was empty and clean. I looked at her. She looked back clear eyed and guilt free, alert for another opportunity.

“Ah yes,” I said, “a hunting dog:”

Susan came back with Jackie. I gave her a half hug and a kiss on the cheek. Pearl jumped around. Susan poured Jackie some coffee. Jackie declined pancakes. I had a few more.

“I’m sorry to intrude on your Sunday morning,” Jackie said. “But I have to talk about Hawk.” I nodded.

“Puzzling, isn’t he,” Susan said. Jackie shook her head.

“You know him,” she said to me. “You must know him better than anyone.”

I smiled encouragingly.

“I think I’m falling in love with him,” Jackie said.

Susan and I both smiled encouragingly.

“But I”-she searched for the right way to say it “I can’t… he won’t… ”

“You can’t get at him,” I said.

“Yes.”

Jackie was silent contemplating that, as if having found the right phrase for it, she could rethink it in some useful way.

“I mean, what’s not to like? He’s fun to be with. He’s funny. He knows stuff. He’s a dandy lover… But I can’t seem to get at him.”

I ate some more pancake. I’d made them with buckwheat flour, and they were very tasty. Jackie was looking at me. I glanced at Susan. This was her area, and I was hoping she’d step in. She didn’t, she was looking at me too.

So was Pearl. But all Pearl wanted was food. Dogs are easy.

“Part of what Hawk is,” I said, “is that you can’t get at him. Erin Macklin thinks that’s the price he paid to get out.”

“Out of what?” Jackie said. “Being black? Being black’s hard on everybody. I don’t shut him out.”

Susan remained quiet. She looked like someone watching a good movie.

“Well,” I said, “if you’re a certain kind of guy-”

“Guy?” Jackie said. “Guy? Is that it? Some fucking arcane guy shit?”

“Jackie,” I said, “I didn’t come over to your place and say, `Let me explain Hawk to you.”

She took a deep inhale and held it for a moment with her lips clamped together, then she let it out through her nose and nodded.

“Of course you didn’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m just very stressed.”

“Being in love with Hawk would be stressful,” I said.

“I don’t think I’m in love with him yet. But I will be soon, and I want to figure this out before it’s too late.”

I nodded. Susan watched.

“You were saying?” Jackie said.

“You have a sense of who you are,” I said. “And you’re determined to keep on being who you are, and maybe the only way you can keep on being who you are is to go inside, to be inaccessible. Especially, I would think, if you’re a black man. And more especially if you do the kind of work Hawk does.”

“So why do it?”

“Because he knows how,” I said. “It’s what he’s good at.”

“And that means he can’t love anybody,” Jackie said.

“It means you keep a little of yourself to yourself.”

“Why?” Jackie said.

“Suze,” I said, “you want to offer any interpretation?”

“No.”

I looked at Pearl. She appeared to be fantasizing about buckwheat pancakes.

“I don’t suppose,” I said, “that you’d settle for an eloquent shrug of the shoulders?”

“Not unless you’re willing to admit that you’ve gotten bogged down in your own bullshit and you don’t know how to get out,” Jackie said.

“It’s not bullshit,” I said. “But it is something one feels more than something one thinks about, and it’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t live Hawk’s life.”

“Like a woman?” I shook my head.

“Hawk sometimes kills people. People sometimes try to kill him. Keeping yourself intact while you do that kind of work requires so much resolution that it has to be carefully protected.”

“Even from someone who loves him?”

“Especially,” I said.

We were all silent.

“This is probably as much of Hawk as I will ever get,” she said.

“Probably,” I said.

“I don’t think it’s enough,” Jackie said.

“It might be,” Susan said, “if you can adjust your expectations.”

Jackie looked at Susan and at me.

“You’ve been lucky,” Jackie said. “I guess I’m envious.”

Susan looked straight at me and I could feel the connection between us.

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Susan said.