CHAPTER 4


Henry Cimoli had a full range of Nautilus equipment installed at the Harbor Health Club. The whole place was getting out of hand. There were women in there now as well as men. There was a lounge where you could sit around in a velour sweat suit and drink carrot juice, there had been complaints that the speed bag in the boxing room made too much noise, and some of the people working on the Nautilus wore Lacoste shirts. Hawk had told Henry that if anyone came in to work out wearing Top-Siders that he, Hawk, would demand a refund on his membership.

"Hawk," Henry said, "you come here free."

"Fucking place is full of guys in tennis shorts," Hawk said.

"Hell, you even get the tanning booth free," Henry said.

Hawk looked at him. "Wimp city," he said, and walked away.

"He just don't understand upscale," Henry said.

A club member stopped beside us to sign in. He was wearing a dark blue sweatband on his head and dark blue wristbands and a raspberry-colored Lacoste shirt and white tennis shorts and knee socks with red and blue stripes around the top and Fred Perry tennis shoes. There was a Sony Walkman at his waist and fluffy red earphones over the sweatband. He smelled of Brut.

I looked at Henry. "Wimp city," I said, and went after Hawk.

Hawk worked out in a pair of old boxing shorts and high boxer's shoes and no shirt. When I joined him he was doing chest presses on the machine. He had the pin in at maximum weight and was doing the exercises with no visible effort except for the glistening film of sweat. With the gym lights glaring down on him the black skin on his torso and shaved head gleamed like the wet asphalt had the morning Susan left. People watched him covertly as the muscles in his arms and chest bunched and relaxed.

I did some curls. It was hard to do what until recently I had done easily.

When I got through Hawk was off the bench press machine and we swapped places. In the boxing room I never did get a good rhythm on the speed bag and there was no bite in my punches on the heavy bag. Hawk made it dance, but I just bludgeoned it. We took some steam and then showered. We were the only ones in the shower room.

"Something wrong with you," Hawk said. It wasn't a question.

"You just noticed?" I said.

"Besides being a honkie and a preppie and a fucking bleeding heart. Something wrong with you."

"Susan moved to San Francisco," I said. Hawk let the hot water run over him and the lathered soap slid away.

"Get dressed," Hawk said. "I buy you a drink-"

We walked across Atlantic Avenue to the Market and sat at the bar in J. J. Donovan's Tavern, I had Irish whiskey on the rocks.

"You still drinking that stuff," Hawk said.

"True to my heritage," I said.

"What do I drink?"

"Rum."

Hawk ordered Mount Gay rum on the rocks. "Rum, religion, and slaves," he said. "Cradle of liberty."

The drinks came. We had a taste.

"What she doing in San Francisco," Hawk said.

"Job."

"You going to visit?"

"I don't know her address." We drank some more.

"She going to tell you where she lives?" Hawk said.

"Maybe in a while."

"Want me to find her?" he said.

"No. She's got the right to be private."

"She got somebody out there?" Hawk said.

"I don't know."

"If she got somebody, I can kill him," Hawk said.

I shook my head again. "She's got a right to somebody else," I said. Hawk gestured another round at the bartender.

"You too," Hawk said.

"I don't want anyone else."

"Thought you wouldn't."

The thing I like about Irish whiskey is that the more you drink the smoother it goes down. Of course that's probably true of antifreeze as well, but illusion is nearly all we have. The bar was half empty. Two young women sat at the bar near the door and kept in eye out. A young couple played Space Invaders behind us in the corner.

One of the young women at the door was looking at Hawk. There was interest in her look, and fear.

"Take some balance," Hawk said. It was as if he were thinking out loud. "Be like carrying a glass of water filled right to the top and not spilling any. Be a bitch."

"Yes," I said.

"This is something you can't fix," Hawk said. "You got to trust her to do it."

"It's my life, in some sense or other."

Hawk nodded. "I'd trust Susan with mine." he said.

I looked at Hawk's peaceful, deadly face. Obsidian skin tight over intricate muscle and prominent bone.

"Yes," I said. "I would too."

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