The Judas Goat

30

The Thames was glistening and firm below us as Susan and I stood on Westminster Bridge. My left arm was still in a cast and I was wearing my classic blue blazer with four brass buttons on the, cuff, draped over my shoulders like David Niven. I could get the cast through my shirt sleeve but not through the coat. Susan had on a white dress with dark blue polka dots all over it. She had a wide white belt around her waist and white sling high-heeled shoes. Her bare arms were tan and her black hair glistened in the English twilight. We were leaning on the railing looking down at the water. I wasn’t wearing a gun. I could smell her perfume. “Ah,” I said, “this sceptered isle, this England.” Susan turned her face toward me, her eyes invisible behind her enormous opaque sunglasses. There were faint parenthetical smile lines at her mouth and they deepened as she looked at me. “We have been here for about three hours,” she said. “You have sung `A Foggy Day in London Town,‘ `A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,’ `England Swings Like a Pendulum Do,‘ `There’ll Be Blue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dover.’ You have quoted Samuel Johnson, Chaucer, Dickens and Shakespeare.”

“True,” I said. “I also assaulted you in the shower at the hotel.”

“Yes.”

“Where would you like to eat dinner?”

“You say,” she said. “Post Office Tower.”

“Isn’t that kind of touristy?”

“What are we, residents?”

“You’re right. The tower it is.”

“Want to walk?”

“Is it far?”

“Yes.”

“Not in these shoes, then.”

“Okay, we’ll take a cab. I got a lot of bread. Stick with me, babe, and you’ll be wearing ermine.” I gestured to a cab. He stopped. We climbed in and I gave him the address. “Hawk wouldn’t take half the money?” Susan said. In the cab she rested her hand lightly on my leg. Would the driver notice if I assaulted her in the cab? Probably. I said, “Nope. He gave me a bill for his expenses and the fee for his time. It’s his way of staying free. As I said, he has rules.”

“And Kathie?” I shrugged, and my jacket slipped off my shoulders. Susan helped me slip it back on. “Dixon got her released and we never saw her. She never went back to the rented house. I haven’t seen her since.”

“I think you were wrong to let her go. She’s not someone who should be walking around loose.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “But she got to be one of us. I couldn’t be the one to put her away. When you come down to it, Hawk shouldn’t be running loose either.”

“I suppose not. So how do you decide?” I started to shrug again, remembered my jacket, and stopped. “Sometimes I guess, sometimes I trust my instincts, sometimes I don’t care. I do what I can.” She smiled. “Yes, you do,” she said. “I noticed that at the hotel while I was trying to shower. Even with one arm. ”

“I’m very powerful,” I said. “A lot of people died this trip out,” she said. “Yes.”

“That bothers you some.”

“Yes.”

“This time worse than many.”

“There was a lot of blood. Too much,” I said. “People die. Some people probably ought to. But this time there was a lot. I needed to get rid of it. I needed to get clean.”

“The fight with Zachary,” she said. “Goddamn,” I said. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”

“I don’t miss very much about you,” she said. “I love you. I have come to know you very well.”

“Yeah, the fight with Zachary. That was a kind of-what-sweating out the poison, maybe. I don’t know. For Hawk too, I think. Or maybe for Hawk it was just competition. He doesn’t like to lose. He’s not used to it.”

“I understand that,” she said. “I begin to wonder about myself sometimes. But I understand what you mean.”

“Do you understand that there’s more?”

“What?”

“You,” I said. “The shower assault. It’s like I need to love you to come back whole from where I sometimes go.” She rubbed the back of her left hand on my right cheek. “Yes,” she said, “I know that too.” The cab pulled up at the Post Office Tower. I paid and overtipped. We held hands going up in the elevator. It was early evening on a week night. We were seated promptly. “Touristy,” Susan murmured to me. “Very touristy.”

“Yes,” I said, “but you can have Mateus Rose and I can have Amstel beer and we can watch the evening settle onto London. We can eat duckling with cherries and I can quote Yeats.”

“And later,” she said, “there’s always another shower.”

“Unless I drink too much Amstel,” I said, “and eat too much duck with cherries.”

“In which likelihood,” Susan said, “we can shower in the morning.”