Now and Then

37.

We were in Susan’s spare room. Vinnie was asleep on the couch.

“Red did not look like so much to me,” Chollo said.

“He’s big and strong,” I said. “But he doesn’t know how.”

“Most people don’t know how,” Chollo said. “Guys his size don’t often need to.”

“’Cept they run into somebody that do,” Hawk said. “You think he’s a shooter?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “If I had to guess, I’d guess no. He sounds like a dope, except when he starts mouthing what Alderson taught him. Then he sounds like a parrot.”

“How ’bout if Alderson tell him to?” Hawk said.

“He might,” I said. “He thinks Alderson’s divine.”

“So are we,” Hawk said. “And there be four of us.”

Susan’s office door opened and a fiftyish woman in an anklelength black coat hurried out, not looking at anything. She went out the front door and down the steps and turned left toward Mass Ave without altering her gaze. Hanging around Susan so long, I’d learned that no eye contact was sort of de rigueur when departing from your shrink’s offi ce. Chollo watched her go.

“You looking at that woman’s ass?” I said.

“As I mature,” Chollo said, “my age limits loosen. We are very romantic, south of the border.”

“Age got nothing to do with it,” Hawk said. “Only two kinds of music: good and bad.”

“That would be Duke Ellington,” I said.

Hawk nodded.

“It would be,” Hawk said.

“I’m a Desi Arnaz man, myself,” Chollo said.

“ ‘Babalu’?” I said.

“Exactly,” Chollo said. “How you going to top ‘Babalu’?

Duke whatssis ever do ‘Babalu’?”

“God, I hope not,” Hawk said.

“You putting down the music of my people?” Chollo said.

“Whenever I can,” Hawk said.

As they talked neither one ever lost focus on Susan’s doorway.

“You need to open your mind, my African friend. Bobby Horse, now he likes Kiowa music.”

“What the hell is Kiowa music,” Hawk said.

“You know. They got those pipes they play.”

“You like it?”

“I never heard it. But Bobby Horse, he say it’s great.”

“Bobby Horse think he grew up in a damn teepee,” Hawk said.

“Sí,” Chollo said. “And ride bareback on a pinto pony when he is still a baby. It is how he got his name.”

“Only horse he ever saw he bet on,” Hawk said.

“Bobby Horse is maybe a little romantic about being a Native American,” Chollo said. “But he fi ghts good.”

“Yeah,” Hawk said. “He do.”

Susan came out of her office and walked across the hall. She was wearing a black sweater today, over a white shirt. Her pants were banker’s gray and fit her very well. Her black boots had high heels. When she came into the room it seemed almost to reorganize about her. I felt what I always felt when she appeared, the oh-boy click in the center of my self.

“Perry Alderson just called and asked for an appointment,” she said.