Small Vices

In the quiet night a coyote howled somewhere in earshot. For a couple of city kids it was a startling sound. Susan made a face. Pearl the Wonder Dog remained asleep. If she heard the yowl she didn't care.

"Pearl doesn't seem responsive to the call of the wild," I said.

"No," Susan said. "But I am."

"That's what all the guys at the Harvard Faculty Club say."

"The guys at the Harvard Faculty Club say nothing that visceral," Susan said. "Would you like to make love?"

I was silent for a while thinking about that. Slanted diagonally across the lower half of the bed so that she took up twice as much room as she needed to, Pearl snored softly and made occasional lip-smacking sounds as if she might be dreaming of Devil Dogs.

"What about the baby?" I said.

"We could ask her to visit Uncle Hawk for a while."

I thought about that.

"I don't think so," I said. "I think it would be better to wait."

"For what?" Susan said.

"Until I can do something better than fumble at you with my left hand," I said.

"There's nothing wrong with your left hand," Susan said.

I shrugged in the darkness.

"I think we should wait until I'm together again," I said.

"He didn't kill you," Susan said. "You shouldn't act like he did."

"Hell, Suze, I can barely turn over by myself, for crissake. I can't even walk up the goddamned hill that you run up every morning. I can barely walk to it."

"Yet," Susan said. "You'll walk up it, and eventually you'll run up it and you'll run up it faster than I can."

"Maybe," I said.

"Hawk and I didn't drag you out here for maybes," Susan said. "You're not all you were yet. But you will be. But there's no reason to be less than you are now. If you can't move around as you might wish to, I can. And would be happy to."

I thought about that while Susan got out of bed and took off her green flowered pajamas and draped them over a chair. I looked at her naked with the same feelings I always got. I'd seen her naked thousands of times by now, and it didn't matter. It was the same experience it had been the first time. She was always like the first time, always the one that wasn't like anyone else I'd ever been with.

"Maybe the machinery won't work right," I said.

"Maybe it will," Susan said and came to the bed and lay down beside me.

In a moment she said, "It appears to be working."

"That's heartening," I said.

"Just lie still," Susan said. "I'll do everything."

"Lying still is more difficult than I thought it would be," I said.

"You may yell yahoo now and then if you'd like."

Pearl shifted at the foot of the bed and made a grumpy sound as if she resented being disturbed.

"What about the baby," I said.

"It's time she knew," Susan said.

Later in the night the moon moved its location so it was probably shining into Uncle Hawk's room. In the much deeper darkness I was pressed against Susan, listening to her regular breathing. Pearl had worked her way under the covers at the foot of the bed and slept silently except for an occasional snore.

"You awake?" I said.

"Yes."

"There's no guarantee I'll come all the way back," I said.

"I think you will," she said.

"And if I don't?"

"For richer, for poorer," she murmured, "in sickness and in health."

"You'll be here," I said.

"I will always be here," she said.

And she pressed closer to me and we were silent and I smelled her, and felt her and listened to her, and knew that if I had nothing else but this, this would be enough.

Chapter 38

IN THE MORNING it was raining, the low rain clouds covering the tops of some of the further hills.

When it rains in Southern California the television stations do the same thing they do in Boston when it snows. They pretend the sky is falling. They show the storm's path on radar. They give tips on how to survive the rain. They send out reporters in Eddie Bauer rain gear to ask people stuff like, "How are you coping with this rain?" Despite the emergency, Hawk and I did what we had done every morning since we'd gotten here. We walked up the road toward the hill. Hawk was wearing white Nike ru

The water drainage system all over Southern California was surface runoff, and surrounded by the subtropical growth of Montecito, babbling brooks formed along each side of the road. The water cascaded downhill through small ravines filled with trees and vines and thick-leaved green plants, went under the road in a culvert, and formed impressive waterfalls as it dropped into the cut below the roadway where flowers grew.

When we reached the bottom of the hill we stopped and looked at it, as we did every morning. It went up very steeply, turning two thirds of the way up and continuing even more steeply to the top. There were houses on the hill, and small gutters along each side of the roadway where the rain water churned downhill and spread out over the street where we were standing.

"I'm going up," I said.

"Today the day?"

"Yep."

"How 'bout we make it to that mailbox?" Hawk said.

The mailbox was maybe fifty yards up the hill.

"All the way," I said.

"Might take a while," Hawk said. "Hill's a bitch."

"Here we go," I said.

We started up. I was half dragging my left leg. Hawk walked slowly beside me. On the right there was a lemon grove, the wet fruit glistening among the green leaves. Nobody seemed to be harvesting it. The fruit was yellow and heavy on the trees and littered the ground, some of it rotting beneath the trees. I was gasping for breath. I looked up and the mailbox was still thirty yards away.

"No reason not to stop and rest," Hawk said.

I nodded. I looked back. The wet black road surface gleamed. I was twenty yards up the hill and I couldn't talk. We stood silently together in the steady rain. I was wearing an Oakland A's baseball cap, and white New Balance sneakers, jeans, and a bright green rain jacket that Susan said was the ugliest garment she'd ever seen legalized. In the left-hand pocket the Detective Special weighed about two hundred pounds.

"How… high… is… this… hill?"

"Never measured it," Hawk said. "Takes me 'bout ten minutes to walk up, five minutes to run."

"Run?" I said.

Hawk gri

"See that tree sticking out over the road? Let's aim for that, when you ready."

I nodded. My heart rate was slowing. I took in as much air as I could and let it out and shuffled up the hill a little further, dragging my left leg. Under the rain jacket I was slippery with sweat. I could hear my pulse so loud in my head that it seemed as if I could hear nothing else. I stared straight down at the wet roadway, concentrating on pushing my right leg forward, dragging my left leg after. I couldn't get enough air in, and by the time I reached the overhanging tree I was gasping for breath again. All that kept me from throwing up was that I lacked the strength. Hawk stood beside me. I turned and looked back at the glistening roadway and beyond at the subtropical greenery, the occasional red tile roof, and far down the hillside the Santa Barbara Cha