Valediction

CHAPTER 5

Paul was with me for the summer. He had a job with a small company in Boston called the Tommy Banks Dancers. The pay was negligible, but it was a chance to perform and Tommy Banks was, Paul said, legitimate.

"Performance is different," Paul said. "You can take classes all your life, and rehearse forever, but you make more progress in one performance than you do in a year of lessons."

We were having dinner, in my kitchen. "Sure," I said. "Performance is the actual thing. The other stuff is getting ready." Supper was cold poached salmon fillets with dill mayonnaise, and boiled new potatoes and peapods. Paul got up to get a second bottle of Rolling Rock Extra Pale from the refrigerator. He held it up at me, I shook my head. He opened it and sat back down.

"You feel like working?" he said.

"Have to eventually," I said.

"One of the dancers in the company has disappeared."

"Cops been notified?"

Paul shook his head. "Tommy doesn't want them. It's his girlfriend."

"Why no cops?"

"I don't know. It's a little strange. But I told Tommy I'd ask you. Are you ready to do something? I don't want you to do it unless you're ready."

"Better than hanging around watching Family Feud," I said.

Paul drank some beer from the bottle. "I knew you'd be enthusiastic," he said.

The phone rang. I answered on the first ring. Susan's voice said, ''Hello."

It was difficult to get air in. I said, "How are you?"

Paul looked at me and then got up and walked to the living room and turned on the television.

"Good," Susan said. "I'm good. How are you?"

"Functional," I said. "Sort of."

"Paul still there?"

"Yes. He'll be here all summer."

"Are you working?"

"I haven't. But Paul's asked me to do something. And I said I would. I'm having a little trouble with my energy levels."

"Yes," Susan said.

"You got a nice apartment?" I said.

"Yes. It's small. But it's modern. I'm subletting it for a couple of months. You want my telephone number?"

"Yes," I said.

She gave it. "Are you going to be all right?" she said.

"Depends," I said. "Depends an your definition of all right. And it depends on how our relationship works out."

"When I left," Susan said, "it was not my intention to end the relationship. I have done what I wanted to do. I have gotten to be alone. Now I've just got to experience being alone for a while and see where it leads."

As there often is on coast-to-coast calls, there were echoes of my voice and hers, and a kind of transmission delay so that our voices tended to overlap. The call was like air to a diver, and the transmission distortions were like kinks in the air hose.

Susan said, "I'm in such a kind of tumbling series of changes that I hate to speak in absolutes. But I would be much less happy if you weren't in some sense part of my life."

"Okay," I said.

"Is this phone driving you crazy too?" she said.

"I get an echo," I said.

"Me too. Not a good time for a bad transmission."

"No," I said. "When my energy levels get up high enough I may go down to AT&T and bust up some executive's bridgework."

"Okay," she said. "I'm going to hang up now. I've been charging around since I got here, and I'm exhausted and I've been so worried about you I can't breathe."

"I'm okay," I said. "I'm much better now that I've talked to you."

"I'll talk to you soon," Susan said.

"I love you," I said.

"Yes," Susan said. And hung up.

Paul was watching the Muppets on Channel Nine. I poured some Irish whiskey into a glass and went in and sat down and sipped the whiskey and told him about Susan's conversation.

"That's encouraging," he said.

"Yes."

On the tube Floyd was singing a duet with Pearl Bailey.

"You ought to date," Paul said.

"How about I get a Qiana shirt and some gold chains and tight pants with no pockets . . ."

"And a bulger," Paul said.

"Yeah," I said, "and shoes with Cuban heels, and maybe have my hair styled and blowdried."

"On the other hand," Paul said, "maybe you hadn't ought to date."