Small Vices

"Nice to be able to count on something," I said.

"Besides, my legs are hideously pale, pale, pale."

"Never my problem," Hawk murmured.

"Your legs look great," I said.

"Are you aware," Susan said, "that as you walked down the road toward me you weren't limping?"

Progress.

It was raining lightly on a Tuesday morning, but Hawk and I were out hitting the bag anyway. The way we did it was to work on one punch at a time, banging the same punch over and over again into the bag, first with my left, then with my right. And even though the right did little more than twitch, I went through the whole process in the nervous system just as if the right hand moved. By the third week in January, I was starting to thump the bag pretty good with my left, and this morning, a Tuesday, in the light rain, I got a right hook into it. It wasn't much of a right hook. It wouldn't have knocked the lime slice off a margarita, but it was a hook. I did it again, and eight more times. Neither Hawk nor I said anything. But when I finished on the heavy bag that day, I put out my left fist and Hawk tapped it gently with his.

Progress.

A week and a half later, Susan brought home a bunch of Pacific lobster tails and we had them with lemon butter and rice pilaf, which Susan cooked. We ate it on a glass table out on the patio with white wine and a salad. The sun slanted in, low in the southern sky, edging down over the Pacific, highlighting the ridge line on the hills across from us. There was no wind, and the smell of flowers and trees and green grass hung in the quiet air.

"Want me to cut up that lobster?" Susan said.

I smiled at her and picked up the knife with my right hand and carefully sliced a bite off the lobster. It took me longer than it should have, and I nearly dropped the knife once.

"You've been practicing in secret," Susan said.

"Un huh."

She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth.

"Coming right along," she said.

But the sunshine was fleeting that year in Montecito. Most of the time it rained, while bits and pieces of the town washed into the ocean. There was mud clogging much of downtown Santa Barbara and the people on the tube were paroxysmal about it.

"You build on a flood plain," Hawk said, "you got to consider the possibility of a flood."

We were in the Montecito YMCA lifting weights. Or I was. Hawk was standing around with his gun hidden under a loose warmup jacket, trying to look like a trainer. I wasn't lifting a lot of weight. But I was actually moving the weights that I was lifting. Most of the equipment was Nautilus machines. There wasn't much in the way of free weights, but I couldn't do much with free weights yet. I was doing chest presses. They were very light chest presses, but I was using both hands.

"Aren't you supposed to say things like, `You can do it!' and `Atta boy'?" I said.

"Don't want people looking over, see what you lifting," Hawk said. "Be embarrassing."

There was a ravine between the Y and the parking lot with a wide, planked wooden bridge across it. When we left the gym, the rain was steady as it had been when we came. The ravine, bone dry when it wasn't raining, was snarling with flood waters only a couple of feet below the bridge.

"Keeps raining," I said, "Susan's going to start ru

We got into the Explorer and Hawk started it up. "She ain't had much to do here," Hawk said. "'Cept food shop and make supper, and cheer you up."

"All of which she hates."

We pulled out of the lot and out to San Ysidro Road and right up toward East Valley. The wipers were on steadily. There was something soothing, I thought, about windshield wipers.

"Maybe she don't mind cheerin' you up," Hawk said.

"Maybe not," I said. "But you know how rambunctious she is. She can't even take Pearl out ru

"Hell of a hunting dog," Hawk said.

"And she's got no patients to work with," I said.

"Cept you."

"And most of what I need you do better than she does."

"Like getting your sorry ass up and down that hill," Hawk said.

"Like that."

"You think you be able to handle all this weakness and pain without her?"

"I hope so."

"You handle it as well, you think?"

"No."

"I don't think so either," Hawk said.

When we got home, the door to our bedroom was closed. I could hear the television blatting inside. I opened the door quietly. One of the indistinguishable ghastly talk shows was on. The room was empty. The door to the master bath was open, and Pearl came out of it and wagged her tail and jumped up and gave me a lap. I went in. Susan was taking a bath. She had moved the shotgun in, and it leaned within reach against the laundry hamper. Pearl lay back down on the rug near the tub. I went to the tub and bent over and kissed Susan.

"Does this mean something good for me?"

"Not right away," Susan said. "I got us reservations at Acacia."

"Should I take a shower?"

"Unless you'd like to make a separate reservation for yourself." Susan said.

So I did. And Hawk did. And we dressed up with ties and jackets, and Susan put on a dress and some sort of high-laced, high-heeled black boots to subvert the rain, and Pearl got in the car with us, and we drove down to the lower village and parked and left Pearl in the locked car and went in to Acacia.

Acacia is the kind of place that people have in mind when they say they'd like to open a little restaurant somewhere. It's a small building with a patio in front and the look of bleached wood. Inside there are tables up front, a bar along the left wall in the back, and booths opposite the bar. There was a mirror over the bar, and I got a look at myself unexpectedly as we went to our booth. I was walking upright. I didn't limp. I had a hint of a tan from ru

I had fried chicken with cream gravy and mashed potatoes and a gentle Chardo

"For dessert," Susan said, "I think I will have something packed with empty calories and covered with chocolate."

"Good choice," I said and put my right hand out and covered hers for a moment. She smiled at me.

"Maybe I'll have two," she said.

She didn't. But she had one huge ice-cream-and-chocolate-cake-and-fudge-sauce thing, which for Susan was an Isadora Duncan-esque act of joyful abandon.

The rains abated in late February. By that time I was begi