Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

One

I said to Spike, “Do I look as if I’m getting older?”

“This is some kind of trap,” he said.

“I’m being serious,” I said. “The UPS kid ma’amed me the other day.”

“I assume you shot him,” Spike said.

“No,” I said. “But I thought about it.”

We were seated at one of the middle tables in the front room at his restaurant, Spike’s, formerly known as Spike’s Place, on Marshall Street near Quincy Market. It had started out as a sawdust-on-the-floor saloon, before there even was a Quincy Market. It was still a comedy club when Spike and two partners took it over. Then Spike bought out the two partners, reimagined the place as an upscale dining establishment — “Complete with flora and fauna,” as he liked to say — and now he was making more money than he ever had in his life.

It was an hour or so before he would open the door for what was usually a robust Sunday brunch crowd. We were both working on Bloody Marys even though it was only ten-thirty in the morning, being free, well past twenty-one, and willing to throw caution to the wind.

Spike took a bite of the celery stalk from his drink. I knew he was doing that only to buy time.

“Would you mind repeating the question?” he said.

“You heard me.”

“I believe,” he said, “that what you’ve asked is the age equivalent of asking if I think you look fat in those jeans.”

I looked down at my favorite pair of Seven whites. Actually, I had no way of knowing if they were my favorites, since I had four pairs in my closet exactly like them. When any one of them started to feel too tight, I doubled down on yoga and gym time, and cut back on the wine.

“You’re saying I’m fat, too?” I said.

“You know I’m not,” he said. “And in answer to the original question, you always look younger than springtime to me.”

“You’re sweet,” I said.

“That’s what all the girls say. But, sadly, only about half the guys.”

Spike was big, bearded, built like a bear that did a lot of gym time, and able to beat up the Back Bay if necessary. He was also gay, and my best friend in the world.

“Only half?” I said.

“I’m the one who’s getting old, sweetie,” he said. “And probably starting to look fat in my own skinny-ass jeans.”

My miniature English bull terrier, Rosie, was lounging on the floor in the puppy bed that Spike kept for her behind the bar, thinking food might be available at any moment, the way it usually was at Spike’s. Spike called her Rosie Two. The original Rosie, the love of my life, had passed away the previous spring, far too soon. My father had always said that dogs were one of the few things that God got wrong, that they were the ones who ought to be able to live forever.

I’d asked Spike not to call her Rosie Two, telling him that it affected a girl’s self-esteem.

“I love you,” he’d say, “and by extension, that means I love your dog. But she’s still a goddamn dog.”

At which point I would shush him and tell him that now he was just being mean.

There was a sharp rap on the front window. Rosie immediately jumped to attention, growling, her default mechanism for strangers. There was a young couple peering in at us, the guy prettier than the woman he was with. They looked like J and Crew. Spike smiled brilliantly at them, pointed at his watch, shook his head. They moved on, their blondness intact.

“Where were we?” Spike said.

“Discussing my advancing age.”

“We’re not going to have one of those dreary conversations about your biological clock, are we?” he said. He trained his smile on me now. “It makes you sound so straight.”

“Pretty sure I am, last time I checked.”

“Well,” Spike said, sighing theatrically. “You don’t have to make a thing of it.”

“You make it sound like we have these conversations all the time,” I said.

“More lately now that you and your ex have started up again, or started over again, or whatever the hell it is you two are doing.”

My ex-husband was Richie Burke, and had long since turned Kathryn Burke into his second ex-wife. He’d finally admitted to her that he not only had never gotten over me, he likely never would.

At the time Spike said it was shocking, Kathryn being a bad sport about something like that, and racing him to see who could file for divorce first.

Now Richie and I were dating, as much as I thought it was stupid to think of it that way. But “seeing each other” sounded even worse. When we did spend a night together, something we never did more than once a week, we always slept at my new apartment on River Street Place so I didn’t have to get a sitter for Rosie. So far there had been hardly any talk about the two of us moving back in together, something I wasn’t sure could ever happen again. It wasn’t because of Richie. It was because of me.

The one time Richie had asked if I could ever see the two of us married again, I told him I’d rather run my hand through Trump’s hair.

“I keep thinking that maybe this time you two crazy kids could live happily ever after,” Spike said.

“I’m no good at either one,” I said. “Happy. Or ever after.”

“I thought you said you were happy with the way things were going?” Spike said.

“Not so much lately.”

“Well, shitfuck,” he said.

“‘Shitfuck’?”

“It’s something an old baseball manager used to say,” he said.

Spike was obsessed with baseball in general and the Boston Red Sox in particular. He frequently reminded me of the old line that in Boston the Red Sox weren’t a matter of life and death, because they were far more serious than that.

“You know baseball bores the hell out of me,” I said.

“I can’t believe they even allow you to live here,” Spike said.

We both sipped our drinks, which were merely perfect. I used to tell friends all the time that they could call off the search for the best Bloody Mary on the planet once they got to Spike’s.

“What’s bothering you, really?” Spike said. “You only have to look in the mirror to see how beautiful you still are. And having been in the gym with you as often as I have, we both know you’re as fit as a Navy SEAL.”

“Remember when Richie told me it was officially over with Kathryn? He said it was because he wanted it all. And that ‘all’ meant me.”

“I remember.”

“But the problem,” I continued, “is that I’m no better at figuring out what that means to me than I was when we were married. Or apart.” I sighed. “Shitfuck,” I said.

“You sound like the dog that caught the car,” Spike said.

I smiled at him. “That’s me,” I said. “An old dog.”

“I give up,” he said.

“What you need to do is open up,” I said, “and send me and my gorgeous dog politely and firmly on our way.”

“You could stay for lunch,” Spike said.

“And have Rosie scare off the decent people? Who needs that?”

“What you need,” Spike said, “is a case. A private detective without clients is, like, what? Help me out here.”

“You without a cute guy in your life?”

“Some of us don’t need men to complete us,” he said.

We both laughed and stood up. I kissed him on the cheek.

“Go home and paint,” he said. “We both know that is something that actually does complete you. Then get up tomorrow and somehow find a way to get yourself a client.”

“What if the phone doesn’t ring?” I said.

Spike said, “It always has.”

It did.