24

“In the ass?” Susan said. “I like to think of it as a hamstring wound,” I said. “I’ll bet you do,” she said. “Was it bad?”

“Undignified but not serious,” I said. We were eating deli and drinking champagne in her kitchen. I had my white ducks back on and my Pumas. She had on a bathrobe. Outside it was dark now. Nonurban night sounds drifted in through the open back door. Night insects pinged against the screen. “Tell me. All of it. From the beginning.” I put two slices of veal loaf on some rye bread, added a small application of Dusseldorf mustard, put another slice of bread on top and bit. I chewed and swallowed. “Two shots in the ass and I was off on the greatest adventure of my career,” I said. I took a bite of half sour pickle. It clashed a little with the champagne, but life is flawed. “Be serious,” Susan said. “I want to hear about it. Have you had a bad time? You look tired.”

“I am tired,” I said. “I’ve just been screwing my brains out.”

“Oh really?”

“Oh really,” I said. “How come you were doing all that sighing and moaning?”

“Boredom,” she said. “Those weren’t sighs and moans. Those were yawns.”

“Nice talk to a wounded man.”

“Well,” she said, “I am glad the bullet didn’t go all the way through.” I poured some champagne in her glass and mine. I put the bottle down, raised the glass and said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” She smiled. The smile made me want to say Oh boy, but I’m too worldly to say it out loud. “Begin at the beginning,” she said. “You got on the plane after you left me and… ?”

“And I landed in London about eight hours later. I didn’t like leaving you.”

“I know,” she said. “And a guy named Flanders that works for Hugh Dixon met me at the airport…” and I told her all, the people that tried to kill me, the people I killed, all of it. “No wonder you look tired,” she said when I finished. We were on the last bottle of champagne and most of the food was gone. She was easy to tell things to. She understood quickly, she supplied missing pieces without asking questions, and she was interested. She wanted to hear. “What do you think about Kathie?” I said. “She needs a master. She needs structure. When you destroyed her structure, and her master turned her out, she latched on to you. When she wanted to solidify the relationship by complete submission, which for her must be sexual, you turned her out. I would guess she’ll be Hawk’s as long as he’ll have her. How’s that for instant psychoanalysis. Just add a bottle of champagne and serve off the top of the head.”

“I’d say you were right, though.”

“If you report accurately, and it’s something you’re good at,” Susan said, “certainly she’s a rigid and repressed personality. The way her room was, the colorless clothing and the flashy underwear, the tight-lipped commitment to a kind of Nazi absolutism.”

“Yeah, she’s all of that. She’s some kind of masochist. Maybe that’s not quite the right term. But when she was tied up and gagged on the bed she liked it. Or at least it aroused her to be tied like that and have us there. She went crazy when Hawk searched her while she was tied.”

“I’m not sure masochist is the right word. But obviously she finds some connection between sex and helplessness and helplessness and humiliation and humiliation and pleasure. Most of us have conflicting tendencies toward aggression and passivity. If we have healthy childhoods and get through adolescence okay we tend to work them out. If we don’t, then we confuse them and tend to be like Kathie, who hasn’t worked out her passivity impulses.” Susan smiled. “Or you, who are quite aggressive.”

“But gallant,” I said. “How do you think Hawk will deal with her?” Susan said. “Hawk has no feelings,” I said. “But he has rules. If she fits one of his rules, he’ll treat her very well. If she doesn’t, he’ll treat her any way the mood strikes him.”

“Do you really think he has no feelings?”

“I have never seen any. He’s as good as anyone I ever saw at what he does. But he never seems happy or sad or frightened or elated. He never, in the twenty-some years I’ve known him, here and there, has shown any sign of love or compassion. He’s never been nervous. He’s never been mad.”

“Is he as good as you?” Susan was resting her chin on her folded hands and looking at me. “He might be,” I said. “He might be better.”

“He didn’t kill you last year on Cape Cod when he was supposed to. He must have felt something then.”

“I think he likes me, the way he likes wine, the way he doesn’t like gin. He preferred me to the guy he was working for. He sees me as a version of himself. And, somewhere in there, killing me on the say-so of a guy like Powers was in violation of one of the rules. I don’t know. I wouldn’t have killed him either.”

“Are you a version of him?”

“I got feelings,” I said. “I love.”

“Yes, you do,” Susan said. “And quite well too. Let us take this last bottle of champagne to the bedroom and lie down and drink it and continue the conversation and perhaps once more you would care to, as the kids at the high school say, do it.”

“Suze,” I said, “I’m a middle-aged man.”

“I know,” Susan said. “I see it as a challenge.” We went into the bedroom and lay close in the bed, sipping the champagne and watching the late movie in the air-conditioned darkness. Life may be flawed but sometimes things are just right. The late movie was The Magnificent Seven. When Steve McQueen looked at Eli Wallach and said, “We deal in lead, friend,” I said it along with him. “How many times have you seen this movie?” Susan asked. “Oh, I don’t know. Six, seven times, I guess. It’s on a lot of late shows in hotel rooms in a lot of cities.”

“How can you stand to watch it again?”

“It’s like watching a dance, or listening to music. It’s not plot, it’s pattern.” She laughed in the darkness. “Of course it is,” she said. “That’s the story of your life. What doesn’t matter. It’s how you look when you do it.”

“Not just how you look,” I said. “I know,” she said. “My champagne is gone. Do you think you are, if you’ll pardon the phrase, up for another transport of ecstasy?” I finished the last of my champagne. “With a little help,” I said, “from my friends.” She ran her hand lightly across my stomach. “I’m all the friend you’ve got, big fella.”

“All I need,” I said.

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