Sixkill

48

“I don’t think he’s changed,” Susan said. “You know him better than I do, but I think he has gotten rid of a lot of stuff that wasn’t really Zebulon Sixkill.”

“How’d he do that?” I said.

“He seems finally to have someone he can emulate,” Susan said.

It was Sunday morning, and we were having a breakfast that extended into the afternoon.

“Me?” I said.

“You,” Susan said.

She had drunk a small fruit smoothie, which had brought her past noon, and was now eating a single soft-boiled egg, with whole-wheat toast, which would probably take her to mid-afternoon.

“Well, who wouldn’t emulate me?” I said.

“Everyone at Harvard,” Susan said.

“Oh, them,” I said.

“Z is, from my admittedly limited vantage, becoming more like you every day,” Susan said. “Which suggests to me that he was probably a good deal like you to start with.”

“Big and handsome, with a magnificent physique?” I said.

“Sure,” Susan said. “It may be why he came to you in the first place.”

“Because he was like me?”

“Because at some unconscious level, he may have sensed that he might be,” Susan said.

“Think maybe that might be why I took him on?”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“Seeing beyond the magnificent-physique similarities,” I said.

Susan nodded.

“He did well at the shoot-out,” she said.

“Just fine,” I said.

She nodded.

“And so did you,” she said.

“Good as ever,” I said.

“In neither case was that because of how you looked,” Susan said.

“Who you are is not always how you look?” I said.

“Not usually,” Susan said.

“You look like a hot Jewess,” I said.

“I’m the exception,” she said.

“I’ll say.”

“Perhaps the booze and the broads and the bully-boy posture are all a kind of costume. If he learns what you know, and behaves as you behave, then it allows him to slough off the costume.”

“So I haven’t helped him change as much as I’ve helped him get out.”

“Might be the case,” Susan said.

“You Ph.D.’s,” I said.

Susan smiled.

“We both spend our professional lives mucking around in the human condition,” she said. “There is very little in there to be dogmatic about.”

“I know,” I said.

“Have a drink after the shooting?” Susan said.

“Quirk, Z, and I had two scotches each in my office, after everything was over with.”

“He seem to want more?” Susan said.

“Hell,” I said. “I wanted more.”

“But you didn’t have any,” Susan said.

“No.”

“I wonder if he did?”

“Did he go back to his room at Henry’s gym and drag a bottle out from under the mattress?”

I shrugged.

“No way to know,” I said.

Susan nodded.

“And if he did,” I said, “nothing to be done.”

“No,” Susan said. “He has to do it himself, but if you matter enough, you may be able to help him simply by mattering. For what it’s worth, I’m betting he didn’t.”

“I think he can do it,” I said.

“Do you think he’s right about Stephano Whatsisname?”

“Need to be ready for it, at least,” I said.

“Have you talked with Mr. del Rio about him?” Susan said.

“I thought I’d do that tonight.”

She stuck a piece of toast into her soft-boiled egg and bit off a corner.

“Good,” Susan said.