Stardust

Chapter 30

HAWK and I were in the boxing room at the Harbor Health Club. We were pretty much the only ones that ever went in there. There were people waiting to get on the stair climbers and bicycles and treadmills. There were platoons of young women with body stockings and water bottles in constant rotation on the chrome weight machines. But in the boxing room there was only Hawk and me and now and then Henry Cimoli, when he wasn’t conferring with some stockbroker on the best way to sculpt the gluteus maximi. On the wall was a picture of Henry in his boxing shorts, taken the year after he’d fought Willic Pep. It was Henry’s connection to his roots, that the boxing room still existed at the club. When Hawk and I started, it had been a gym, and as times changed and Henry changed with them, it had turned into a health club and spa. Hawk and I still went there because of Henry; and Henry didn’t charge us. But all of us remembered the times when you couldn’t get an herbal wrap where you worked out.

I was hitting combination cycles on the heavy bag, and Hawk was playing the speed bag, whistling soundlessly the way he did. I don’t think he needed to work on hand speed. I think he just liked the sound.

“We wouldn’t be in this mess,” I said, “if you’d just come across for her.”

“Man’s got standards,” Hawk said. The speed bag danced musically against the backboard.

“I didn’t know you had standards,” I said. I did two left jabs and an overhand right on the body bag. “I knew you insisted they be alive…”

“So how come you didn’t give her a jab?” Hawk said. He was wearing a pair of violet silk sweat pants and white Avia basketball shoes. He had no shirt on and the muscles in his upper body coiled and uncoiled under his sweat-shiny black skin like liquid. The speed gloves he wore were red and when he hit the speed bag his hands were a red blur.

“I am,” I said, “part of a fulfilling monogamous relationship.

”Holy shit,“ Hawk said.

”I knew you’d just forgotten that for a moment,“ I said. ”What’s your excuse?“

Hawk paused for a moment and picked up a towel and wiped off his face and head. I stopped too and got a drink from the cooler of spring water. Everyone in all health clubs had simultaneously decided that municipal water was undrinkable.

”Strange babe,“ Hawk said.

”Yeah.“

”Must broads want to fuck me for the usual reasons,“ Hawk said, ” ’Cause I’m handsome, manly, and slicker than goose shit.“

”Or because they want to get even with their husbands, or they were just separated and want to prove they’re still attractive,“ I said.

”Or because they heard about how once you go black you never go back,“ Hawk said.

”I never believed that one,“ I said.

”But Jill.“ Hawk shook his head. ”Jill wants to fuck me for reasons got nothing to do with me, got nothing to do with pleasure. Jill wants to fuck me ‘cause I’m black and it be a bad thing to do, you follow?

“Sure,” I said. “Help her feel bad about herself.”

“Un huh,” Hawk said.

“But it’d help her feel comfortable with you,” I said. “If you’d tag somebody as bad as she is, you’re not such a big deal either, and if she can get you to do it, then she’s still got the power, the only one she can count on.”

“Sigmund Spenser,” Hawk said.

“You think I’m wrong?”

Hawk grinned and did a paradiddle on the speed bag.

“Think you right on target,” he said. “You got no natural moves like me, but you learn pretty good.”

“So where’d she go?” I said.

“Meet some man,” Hawk said.

“That’s the easy part,” I said. Hawk began again on the speed bag. “Which man? Where?”

“You know some of the men in her life,” Hawk said.

“That’s about all there were,” I said.

“Check them out.”

I was hooking the heavy bag, three left hooks, one right. The bag bounced and swayed on the heavy chain. The shock of the punches went up my forearms. It had been one of my first surprises when I began to box, all that long time ago, punches hurt the wrists and forearms, you have to build up both to hit hard. Until you build them up you get not only arm weary, but arm sore.

“Cops are doing that,” I said. “They got more manpower and clout than I have. They can do it quicker.”

“They know all the names?” Hawk said.

“Sure,” I said. “Almost.”

“Figured you’d get sentimental ’bout one or two people.”

“Guy out in the Berkshires, be too tough on him,” I said. “Besides, she wouldn’t go with him.”

“Un huh.”

“Guy in L.A., married, he wouldn’t have her.”

“Un huh.” Hawk moved around the speed bag, hitting it in changing combinations like a man playing an instrument. “Maybe she threaten to tell the wife,” he said.

“She’s not that crazy,” I said.

“Bad man?”

“He’d take Joe Broz with a Q-tip.”

“Hell,” Hawk said, “we can do that.” I hit the bag.

“I don’t think she’s that crazy,” I said.

“She pretty crazy,” Hawk said.

We both worked on our punches for a bit. The room was hot, there was light coming in through an ocean-facing window, and dust motes danced in its bright stream. Outside there were people tightening the upper abs, expanding the cardiovascular piping, firming up the pecs. In here there were only two guys beating hell out of simulated opponents. It seemed sort of silly, in that perspective. But it felt good.

“I was wondering,” I said, when we were finished and the hot water was sluicing over us in the shower room, “how come you’re so sure she went amok when you turned her down.”

Hawk raised his head and stared at me. “You can’t be serious,” he said.