Small Vices Part 36

She was holding herself from me at arm's length looking straight at me with the tears washing down her face.

"And when they did I would have been brave and when they left me I would have wanted to die."

I didn't have anything to say.

"And here you come, looking just like you always have, shaved and with your hair cut and your face smelling, good G.o.d, is it Club Man?"

"Yes."

She shook her head.

"And we're supposed to be all right again and just like we were."

"Yes."

"Well, maybe I can't rebound that quickly."

"I think you can," I said.

"Who gives a f.u.c.k," Susan said, "what you think."

"Good point," I said carefully.

"Yeah, well, maybe I do care what you think."

"I bet you do," I said.

"And maybe I can rebound. G.o.d knows I'm glad you're okay."

"Both of us have had to rebound," I said. "We'll be okay."

"Okay?" Susan said. "Just okay?"

"How do you think we'll be?" I said.

"I think we'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned sensational," she said.

"Would you like me to hug you again?" I said.

"Yes, but there have to be changes."

"Like what?" I said.

"Like you have to get rid of that G.o.dd.a.m.ned Club Man."

I pulled her slowly in against me and held her.

"Would you be able to love the man I'd be if I let you talk me out of it?" I said.

"Oh, f.u.c.k you," Susan said and put her face up and I kissed her and she kissed me back so hard that I was grateful I was bigger.

Chapter 51.

THE NEXT MORNING, clear eyed, clean shaven, close cropped, and contumescent, I went to see Clint Stapleton again.

He wasn't at his condo. I found him on the indoor practice court at Taft playing against a short red-haired scrambler who kept getting the ball back over the net without looking very good doing it. The tennis coach was watching them closely, and maybe ten undergraduates were in the stands. Stapleton had graduated from Taft last June while I was fighting the hill in Santa Barbara, but he'd redshirted his first two years and had another year of eligibility left. And, according to my research, his coaches didn't feel he was ready yet for the pro tour. Stapleton's game was serve and volley, and he looked overpowering. Except the red-haired kid kept returning his serve and lobbing Stapleton's volleys to push him back to the base line. It was annoying Stapleton. He kept hitting the ball harder, and the kid kept getting to it and getting his racquet on it and getting it back over the net. Sometimes he'd hit it on the rim of the racquet. Sometimes it would come back over the net like a damaged pigeon. But he kept getting it back and Stapleton kept hitting it harder. And the harder he hit it, the more erratic he became. They played three games while I watched. The red-haired kid held serve in the second one, and broke Stapleton's serve in the third. Stapleton doublefaulted on the game point and threw his racquet straight up into the air. It arced nearly to the top of the arena and fell clattering on the composition court five feet from the red-haired kid, who was grinning. I stood in the shadow of the stands for a while and watched.

"Control, Stapes, focus and control," the coach said to him. "He's not beating you. You're beating yourself."

"Control this," Stapleton said and walked off the court and out the runway through the stands past me.

I fell silently in beside him as he walked, and we were out of the indoor facility and into the bright fall sunshine before he took notice of me. His focus on being mad seemed good. On the walkway that led toward the student union, Stapleton stopped abruptly and turned and looked at me.

"Are you following me?" he said.

"I prefer to think of it as you and me forging ahead together," I said.

Stapleton recognized me. I could see the stages of recognition play on his face. First he realized he knew me. Then he realized who I was. Then he realized I was supposed to be dead. And finally he realized that I wasn't dead. The effect of the sequence was c.u.mulative. He stepped back two big steps.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing here?"

"We need to talk."

"I heard you were dead," he said.

"Where'd you hear that?"

"It was in the paper."

"Media distortion's a drag, isn't it?"

Stapleton started walking again. I stayed with him.

"I can talk with you this way, but we've got hard things to talk about," I said. "And it might go better if we sat on that bench there by the pond."

He looked at me for a time without stopping, then he sort of sighed and gave a big forbearing shrug and walked over to the bench and sat. I sat beside him. Several ducks waddled promptly over expecting to be fed. They were brown ducks for the most part except one which had a green head and was probably a male duck, though I wasn't sure. I didn't know a h.e.l.l of a lot about ducks.

"Your old man," I said, "hired a guy named Rugar to kill me."

Stapleton didn't say a word. He didn't look at me. He sat straight upright on the bench with his feet flat on the ground and stared at the ducks.

"He'll testify to that in court," I said.

Stapleton didn't speak. The abyss was starting to open in front of him.

"But the question still to be answered is why did he?"

The abyss opened wider. Stapleton stared harder at the ducks.

"You know why he did that?" I said.

Stapleton shrugged, just enough to let me know he'd heard the question. The ducks waddled briskly back and forth in front of us, looking anxious about the possibility of scoring some stale bread.

"I think he did it to keep me from finding out that you killed Melissa Henderson."

The abyss was beneath him. Looking at the ducks didn't help.

"You want to talk about that?" I said.

He shook his head.

"You're going to have to," I said. "Sooner or later. I know you did it. And I know you and Miller and your old man set up a guy you didn't even know named Ellis Alves to take the fall for it. And you or your father got your cousin Hunt to testify that he did it. What I don't know is why did you kill her?"

Stapleton seemed frozen in his position, looking at the ducks but seeing the abyss. No more big man on campus, no more cold beer, no more women, no more picture in the paper, no more condominium in a nice section. No more leisurely Sunday mornings with oranges and a green c.o.c.katoo. The abyss was too wide and too deep and he was in it. He stood suddenly and began to walk away from me. I didn't bother to follow him. He walked faster and then broke into a run. I watched him running away until he pa.s.sed the corner of the gym and was out of sight.

I looked at the ducks. The one with the green head looked back at me with black eyes that held no expression of any kind.

"Yeah," I said to the duck, "I know."

Chapter 52.

SUSAN AND I were making dinnertogether at my place. The sublet tenanthad finally departed. Pearl wasdemonstrating why she is known as theWonder Dog by managing to sleep soundlywhile lying flat on her back on my sofawith all four paws in the air. I hadbought a Jenn Air stove a couple ofyears back and it had a rotisserie uniton which I was roasting a boneless legof lamb, which I had seasoned witholive oil and fresh rosemary. Afterit's seasoned and put on the spit thereisn't a great deal demanded of the guythat's cooking it, so I stood at thecounter while the roast turned slowlyand watched Susan as she made beetrisotto.

"I saw a woman on the Today show make this," she said.

"And you loved it because it was such a pretty red color," I said.

"Yes. Does this rice look opaque to you?"

I looked and said that it did. Susan ladled some broth into the rice and began to stir it carefully. While she stirred, she looked in the pot and then at the rice.

"Do you think I have to put this broth in a little at a time, the way the recipe says?"

I said that I did. She stirred some more.

"It has to all absorb before I put in more?" she said.

"When you see the bottom of the pan as you stir, add some more broth," I said.

She nodded. The counter around the stove and the s.p.a.ce on the stove not occupied by the risotto fixings and the roast was covered with pans and plates and dishes and cups and measuring spoons and forks and knives and a grater and two wooden spoons and a platter of grated beets and a dish of grated cheese and some onion skins and three pot holders and a crumpled paper towel and a damp sponge and her gla.s.s of barely sipped red wine and a lip-liner tube and a copy of the recipe written in Susan's pretty illegible hand on the back of a paperback copy of Civilization and Its Discontents. Susan was not a clean up as you go kind of cook.

"They always lie to you on television," Susan said.

"I know," I said.

"This woman never said you had to stand here for an hour and stir the d.a.m.n stuff."

"When you tear away the mask of glamour..." I said.

Susan stirred some more, studying the rice, looking for the bottom of the pan.

"Hurry up," she said into the pan.

I thought about explaining to her how a watched pot never boils, but it might have seemed contentious to her, so I skipped it and went and looked out the front window at Marlborough Street. There was an east wind coming off the water, slowing down as it funneled through the financial district and downtown, picking up speed as it came down across the Common and the Public Garden, driving some leaves and some street litter past my building at a pretty good clip. I watched it for a while, keeping my mind on the wind, trying not to think of anything, sipping red wine.

"Look how pretty," Susan said behind me.

I turned and left the window. The big white pot of bright red rice was in fact pretty, though had we been eating at Susan's house the pot it was in would have been pretty, too.

"Keep it warm in the oven," I said, "while I make the salad and then we'll eat."

"You didn't say it was pretty."

"The beet risotto is very pretty," I said.

"Thank you."

Susan set the table while I made the salad. Then we ate the lamb and risotto with a green salad and some bread from Iggy's Bakery.

"You feel sort of mad about having to sell Concord?" I said.

Susan shrugged.

"It had to be done," she said. "But yes, I probably resent it a little. If you were a stockbroker maybe I wouldn't have had to."

I nodded.

"How about the baby, any new thoughts on that."

"Yes."

"Care to tell me?"

Susan drank some of her wine and touched her lips with a napkin.

"I can't bring a child into this kind of a life," Susan said.