Thin Air

"How'd it hit you when I left?"

"Hard to remember. It was awhile, you know?"

"Un huh. What was I wearing when you first met me?"

"Black silk blouse with big sleeves, white slacks. Blouse open at the neck. Silver chain around the neck. Silver bracelet. Small, coiled silver earrings. I think you had a hint of blue eye shadow. And your hair was in sort of a page boy."

"Un huh."

We were quiet for a moment. I broke off another piece of corn bread and ate it.

"Okay, Miss Shrink. I remember every detail of when we met, and not much of anything about when we split."

"Un huh."

"Surely this is fraught with meaning. And if you say `un huh' one more time I won't let you watch when I shower."

"Heavens," Susan said.

"So what are you getting at?"

"Men like Frank Belson, like Quirk, like you, are what they are in part because they are contained. They can control their feelings, they can control themselves, because they let nothing in. They don't talk a great deal. They don't show a great deal."

"Except to the woman," I said.

"Have you ever noticed," Susan said, "how little affection you have for small talk in general, and how freely you talk with me?"

"At times it approaches prattle," I said.

"I think it is superior to prattle. But aside from me, to whom are you closest?"

"Paul Giacomin and Hawk."

"There's a parley. Do you and Paul prattle?"

"No."

"Do you prattle with Hawk?"

"Christ no," I said.

"Or Belson, or Quirk, or Henry Cimoli, or your friend the gunfighter?"

"Vi

"Yes, Vi

"Probably to the woman," I said. "Except Hawk. I don't think Hawk ever prattles."

"About Hawk, I remain agnostic," Susan said. "Being male is a complicated thing. Being a black male is infinitely more complicated."

The blonde waitress came by and gave me another bottle of Rolling Rock without being asked. I knew she was taken, and so was I. But adoption might still be possible.

"Think about yourself," Susan said. "You're like a goddamned armadillo. You give very little, you ask very little, and the only way to hurt you is to get inside the armor."

"Which is what happened to Frank," I said.

"Lisa got inside," Susan said. "And he gave her everything he gave to no one else. He gave her all of himself. All of the self no one else sees, or hears of, or even knows exists. Which is probably quite a heavy load for her, or any woman, to have dumped on her."

"You seem able to handle it," I said.

"Able and eager," Susan said. "But in Frank's case, when Lisa found what he had given her, which is to say his whole self, insufficient, or he feared she found it insufficient, there was no armor to protect him…"

"The first marriage probably wore him down some," I said.

Susan smiled at me.

"It would," she said. "I gather his first marriage failed almost at once, and kept failing for twenty-something years. That would rob him of the thing that keeps you, not pain-free certainly, but"-Susan searched for a phrase-"on course," she said finally and shrugged at the inadequacy of the phrase.

I didn't think it was inadequate. I thought it was a dandy phrase.

"What's that?" I said.

She thought about it for a moment, the tip of her tongue showing on her sucked-in lower lip, as it always did when she is considering something.

"Self-regard, I suppose, is as good a word as any," Susan said. "At bottom you are pleased with yourself."

"Self-regard? How about saying I have an optimally integrated self? Wouldn't that sound better?"

"Of course it would. I wish I'd said it."

"Go ahead, claim you did," I said. "In a while I'll think so too."

"It's what made you survive our separation, the thing you got before you knew it, from your father and your uncles."

Di

"Heaviest rap I've had in a long time," I said.

"Were you able to follow the hard parts okay?"

"I think so," I said. "But the effort has exacerbated my libido."

"Is there any effort that does not exacerbate your libido?" Susan said.

"I don't think so," I said. "Shall we go back to your place and explore my vulnerability?"

"What about Pearl?"

"She's a dog. Let her explore her own vulnerability," I said.

"I'll ask her to go in the living room," Susan said. "Was I really wearing blue eye shadow when you met me?"

"Un huh."

"God, never tell the fashion police."

The first thing she was aware of as she came to consciousness was a silent voice.

"Frank will find me," the voice said. "Frank will find me."

Then she smelled the roach powder. She had once lived in an apartment where the janitor put it out every day to fight the roaches. She knew the smell; it seemed almost reassuring in its familiarity. She opened her eyes. She was in bed, with a purple silk coverlet over her, her head propped on several ivory lace pillows. She tried to sit up. She was still tied. The knotted scarf was still in her mouth. She could hear someone laughing. It sounded familiar. Silly laughter, happy and slightly manic. Around the room were television monitors, some on light stands, some suspended from the high ceiling, at least five of them. On each monitor Lisa saw herself, her head thrown back, laughing. She had on a daring swimsuit, and in the background the ocean advanced and receded. She remembered the day. They had been at Crane's Beach. She had brought chicken and French bread and nectarines and wine.

She heard herself shriek with laughter as he poured a little wine down her bra. The sound went suddenly silent, leaving only the noiseless images of her giggling on the silent screens. Suddenly, shocking the darkness in the room where she lay helplessly watching herself, there was the sudden white light of the video camera. She heard the whir of the tape moving, and the whine of the zoom lens. He came out of the darkness behind the monitors, with his camera.

"Don't you love Crane's Beach, Angel?" he said, the camera in front of his face. "We'll go there again… Look at us, is that great?… Me Tarzan, you Jane."

On the monitors, there was a shot of her home in Jamaica Plain, then a splice jump and her face appeared on the screen, close up, her mouth contorted into something almost like a grin by the tightness of the gag. The camera zoomed back. She was on the floor in the back of the van, her eyes shiny in the pitiless light. On the bed she turned her head away. He reached out and gently turned it back.

"I have to see you, baby, don't be coy."

And he filmed her in time present watching films he'd taken of her in times past.

Chapter 3

I sat inside the frosted glass cubicle where the Homicide Commander had his office and talked with Martin Quirk about Belson.

"Frank's taking some time off," Quirk said.

His blue blazer hung on a hanger on a hook inside his door. He wore a white shirt and a maroon knit tie and his thick hands rested quietly on the near-empty desk between us. He was always quiet, except when he got mad, then he was quieter. Nobody much wanted to make him mad.