Small Vices

"Are you guys going to talk dirty all the way across the country?" Susan said.

"I was pla

"Me too," I said.

"Oh, good," Susan said.

"What about your patients," I said.

"I have two colleagues covering for me," she said. "I've had a bit of time to arrange things."

"Good we didn't adopt that kid yet," I said.

"Yes."

We were on the Mass Pike now, heading west slowly in heavy traffic. The dashboard clock said 5:27. It had been dark for nearly an hour.

"What route we taking?"

Susan said, "Hawk?"

"Out 84 to Scranton. Down 81 to Knoxville. Turn right, take Route 40 across. Figure to reach Scranton tonight."

"Route 40 replaces stretches of the old Route 66 west of Oklahoma City," I said. "I know all the lyrics to `Route 66."'

"Bobby Troup be glad to know that," Hawk said. We crept into the toll booths in Weston and Susan picked up a toll ticket. Then we were through them and the traffic thi

"'You go to St. Louie, Joplin, Missouri, and Oklahoma City is mighty pretty…"'

We slept in Holiday I

"'See Amarillo; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; now don't forget Winona; Kingman; Barstow; San Bernardino… "'

Susan and Hawk took turns driving. Susan drove faster than Hawk, and maybe faster than Mario Andretti. Pearl and I sat and gazed in semicatatonia out the window at the American continent as it scrolled past. Pearl had, quite early in the trip, edged over closer to Hawk whenever he was in the back, and leaned heavily into him and with her head on his shoulder.

"She ain't heavy, she's my sister?" I said.

Hawk sighed.

"Be a long trip," he said.

"'Get hip to this friendly tip, when you take that California trip…"'

Chapter 37

THE HOUSE WAS in Montecito, white stucco and red tile, up in the subtropical hills, off East Valley Road, surrounded by greenery, with the hills continuing up past it and eventually easing into the Sierra Madre Mountains. From the upstairs balcony you could see the Santa Barbara Cha

"Would they hurt her?" Susan asked.

"She's too big for them," I said.

"What if there's a bunch of them?" Susan said.

"We shoot them," Hawk said.

"The people around here have little slogans about them," Susan said. "Like, `You can't shoot them, they were here first."'

"So were the Indians," I said.

About a quarter mile from the house was a hill that went up sharply at right angles to the much gentler hill we lived on. Each morning, Hawk and Pearl and I walked up to the foot of the hill and looked at it. Actually Pearl dashed. Hawk walked. I shuffled. But after the first week I shuffled without holding on. Pearl would race up the hill, barrel chested and wasp waisted. Bred to run for hours, she rubbed it in every day, looking puzzled that I couldn't do at all what she did so effortlessly. Then we'd walk back to the house and rest. Then we'd walk to the hill and back and rest and walk to the hill and back and rest. We'd do that until noon. Then we'd have lunch. I would take a nap. And in the afternoon we would work on weights. I started with three-pound dumbbells. I would do curls with them, and flies and tricep extensions, and reverse curls. That is, I would do these things with my left hand. With my right I was barely able at first to twitch the three pounds. The consolation was that Pearl couldn't do this either.

In the best of times repetitious workouts are boring. When I could barely do it, the boredom became life threatening. I would reach the foot of the steep hill each time gasping for breath, the sweat soaking through my tee-shirt. I weighed less than 170 pounds and I walked like an old man. I wasn't much of a challenge for Hawk any more than I was for Pearl, but if he was bored he didn't show it.

Susan went with us once every morning and ran up the hill with Pearl. The thought of going up that hill at any speed made me nauseous. Susan took on the responsibility for feeding us. Fortunately she found a place in the upper village that had food to take out. So we dined on an endless assortment of healthful salads and cold roast meats and pasta and fresh bread, and drank wine from the local vineyards.

One of the oddities of life in Southern California was the sense of timelessness that set in. There were no real seasons in California and each day was about like the last one. People were probably startled out here to find that they'd aged. For me the days were barely distinguishable, a repetitive sequence of effort and sweat and exhaustion and failure, briefly interrupted by sleep and food. Drinking some of the local wine each evening became more exciting than anything I'd imagined.

Susan and Pearl and I slept in a very big bed in the master bedroom. I kept the Detective Special on the bedside table. A sawed-off double-barreled.12-gauge shotgun leaned on the wall near Susan's bed. There was a nearly full moon and at this time of night it shined directly into the bedroom, through the French doors on the upstairs balcony. It was almost daylight except for the opalescence of the light.

"Could you do it?" I said.

"Hawk showed me," Susan said, "while we were waiting for you to get out of the hospital. Cock both hammers, aim for the middle of the mass, squeeze one trigger at a time. He says it is pretty hard to miss with one of those things at close range."

"It is," I said. "But could you do it?"

She turned her head on the pillow and her big eyes rested on me silently for a moment.

"Yes," she said. We were quiet together in the bright flower-scented darkness.

"Are you ever going to shave?" she said.

"Not yet," I said.

"Is this some kind of guy thing?" Susan said.

"I won't shave until I've rehabbed?"

"Not exactly."

We were silent while Susan thought about this. Then in the bright darkness she smiled.

"You have a plan, don't you," she said.

"Yes."

"You are changing your appearance."

"Yes."

"So that when you're well you can find the Gray Man and he won't recognize you."

"Seemed like a good idea. Give me something to aim at."

"May I suggest that you let your hair grow and comb it differently?"

"You may."

"I do."

We lay on our backs, with our shoulders and hips touching.

"You're smart for a Harvard Ph.D.," I said.

"Yes," she said. "l know."