Stardust

Chapter 20

It was one of my favorite times in winter, the part of the day when it is dark, but the offices haven’t let out yet. All the windows are still lighted, and people are at their desks and walking about in the offices-bright vignettes of ordinary life.

Susan and I held hands as we strolled down Boylston Street toward Arlington. The store windows were full of red bows, and Santa cut-outs, and tinsel rope, and fake snow. Real snow had begun again, lightly, in big flakes that meandered down. Not the kind of snow that would pile up. Just the kind of snow the Chamber of Commerce would have ordered pre-Christmas. After the recent chill it was mild by comparison, maybe thirty degrees. Susan was wearing a black hip-length leather coat with fake black fur on the collar. Her head was bare and she wore her thick black hair up today. A few of the snowflakes settled on it.

“No fur coat?”

“Last time I wore it someone in Harvard Square called me a murderer.”

“That’s because they haven’t met a real murderer,” I said.

“Still, I don’t feel right wearing it,” Susan said. “The animals do suffer.”

“You didn’t know that?” I said.

“No. I had this lovely little vision of them romping about in green pastures until they died a quiet death of natural causes.”

“Of course,” I said. “Who would think otherwise?”

“I know, it’s a ludicrous idea; but when they said ranch raised that’s what I thought.”

“Complicity’s hard to avoid,” I said.

“Probably impossible,” Susan said. “But it doesn’t hurt to try a little.”

“Especially when it’s easy,” I said.

“Like giving up fur,” Susan said. She banged her head gently against my shoulder. “Next I may have to reexamine my stand on whales.”

The snow was falling fast enough now to give the illusion of snowfall, without any real threat of a blizzard. The stoplights fuzzed a little in the falling snow, radiating, red or green in a kind of impressionist splash in the night. We turned left on Arlington and walked past the Ritz. Across the street, in the Public Garden, Washington sat astride his enormous horse, in oblivious dignity as the snow drifted down past him. To our left, the mall ran down Commonwealth Avenue. There was a man walking his dog on the mall. The dog was a pointer of some kind and kept shying against the man’s knee as the snow fluttered about her. Every few steps she would look up at the man as if questioning the sense of a walk in these conditions.

The next block was mine, and we turned down Marlborough Street and into my apartment. Susan looked around as she took off her coat and draped it over the back of one of my counter stools.

“Well,” she said, “fire laid already, table set for two. Wineglasses?”

She shook her hair a little to get rid of the snowflakes, her hand making those automatic female gestures which women make around their hair.

“What did you have in mind?” she said.

“I’d like to emulate the fire,” I said. “Shall we start with a cocktail?”

“We’d be fools not to,” Susan said.

“Okay,” I said. “You light the fire while I mix them up.”

“Jewish women don’t make fires,” Susan said.

“It’s all made,” I said. “Just light the paper in three or four places.”

“All right,” she said, “I’ll try. But I don’t want to get any icky soot on me.”

She crouched in front of the fire, smoothing her skirt under her thighs as she did so, and struck a match. I went around the counter into my kitchen and made vodka martinis. I stirred them in the pitcher with a long spoon. I used to stir them with the blade of a kitchen knife until Susan saw me do it one day and went immediately out to buy me a long-handled silver spoon. I put Susan’s in a stemmed martini glass with four olives and no ice.

I put mine in a thick lowball glass over ice with a twist. I put both drinks on a little lacquer tray and brought them around and put them on the coffee table.

The fire was going and the paper had already ignited the kindling. Small ventures of flame danced around the edge of the yet unburning logs. Susan had retired. to the couch, her feet tucked up under her. She had on a black skirt and a crimson blouse, open at the throat with a gold chain showing. Her earrings were gold teardrops. She had enormous dark eyes and a very wide mouth and her neck, where it showed at the open throat of the blouse, was strong. Susan and I clinked glasses and drank.

“That’s a very good martini,” Susan said.

“Spenser,” I said, “the martini king.”

“What time do you leave tomorrow?” Susan said.

“Nine A.M.,” I said. “American flight 11. First class.”

“You deserve no less,” Susan said.

“Mindy,” I said, “the production coordinator. She looked at me and said clearly I don’t fit well in coach. Then said everyone else travels first class at Zenith Meridian.”

“Nonstop?” Susan said.

“To L.A.,” I said. “I’ll drive down from there. Nothing nonstop from Boston to San Diego.”

“I’ll miss you,” Susan said.

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t like to leave you.”

The logs had begun to catch in the fireplace, and the fire got deeper and richer and both of us stared into it in silence.

“You ever wonder why people stare into fires?” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said. She had shifted on the couch and now sat with her head on my shoulder. She held her martini in both hands and drank it in very sparing sips.

“You ever figure out why?”

“No.”

“You’re a shrink,” I said. “You’re supposed to know stuff like that.”

“Oh,” Susan said. “That’s right. Well, it’s probably a somatic impulse rooted in neonatal adaptivity. People will gaze at clothes in a dryer, too.”

“I liked your previous answer better,” I said.

“Me too,” Susan said.

We looked at the fire some more. As the logs became fully involved in the fire they settled in upon each other and burned stronger. Susan finished her martini.

“What’s for chow?” she said.

“Duck breast sliced on the diagonal and served rare, onion marmalade, brown rice, broccoli tossed with a spoonful of sesame tahini.”

“Sounds toothsome,” Susan said.

“You have several options in relationship to dinner and other matters,” I said.

“Un huh?”

“You may make love with me before or after dinner,” I said. “That’s one option.”

“Un huh.”

“You may make love with me here on the couch, or you and I may retire to the bedroom.”

“Un huh.”

“You make take the time to disrobe, or you may enjoy me in whatever disarray we create with our spontaneity.”

Susan ticked off the various choices thoughtfully on the fingers of her left hand.

“Are there any other choices?” she said.

“You may shower if you wish,” I said.

Susan turned her face toward me with that look of adult play in her eyes that I’d never seen anyone emulate.

“I showered before I came to your office,” she said.

“Am I to take that to imply that you intended to, ah, boff me even before you arrived?”

“You’re the detective,” Susan said. “You figure it out. I opt for now, here, in disarray.”

And she put her arms around my neck and pressed her mouth against mine.

“Good choice,” I murmured.