“So Major is on his own,” I said. Arlene Rodriguez looked down at her folder again.
“At eleven years and three months of age,” she said.
“Anything else?”
“While we had him at Lakeville,” she said, “we did some testing. He doesn’t read very well, or he didn’t then, but one of the testers devised ways to get around that, and around the cultural bias of the standard tests, and when she did, Major proved to be very smart. If IQ scores meant anything, which they don’t, Major would have a very high IQ.”
We were quiet. Around us there were other cubicles like this one, and other people like Arlene Rodriguez, whose business it was to deal with lives like Major Johnson’s. The cubicle partitions were painted a garish assortment of bright reds and yellows and greens, in some bizarre bureaucratic conceit of cheeriness. The windows were thick with grime, and the spring sunshine barely filtered through it to make pallid splashes on the gray metal desk tops.
“Any thoughts on how to deal with this kid?” I said.
Arlene Rodriguez shook her head. “Any way to turn him around?” I said.
“No.”
“Any way to save him?”
“No.”
I sat for a moment, then I got up and shook her hand.
“Have a nice day,” I said.
CHAPTER 7
Susan and I were walking Pearl along the Charles River on one of those retractable leashes which gave her the same illusion of freedom we all have, until she surged after a duck and came abruptly to the end of her tether. The evening had begun to gather, the commuter traffic on both sides of the river had reached the peak of its fever, and the low slant of setting sun made the river rosy.
I had the dog on my right arm, and Susan held my left hand.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“One should do that now and then,” I said.
“I think it’s time we moved in together.” I nodded at Pearl.
“For the sake of the child?” I said.
“Well, I know you’re joking, but she’s part of what has made me think about it. She’s with me, she spends time with you. She’s really our dog but she doesn’t live with us.”
“Sure she does,” I said. “She lives with us serially.”
“And we live with each other serially. Sometimes at my house, sometimes at yours, sometimes apart.”
“The `apart‘ is important too,” I said.
“Because it makes the `together‘ more intense?”
“Maybe,” I said. This had the makings of a minefield. I was being very careful.
“Sort of a `death is the mother of beauty‘ concept?”
“Might be,” I said. We turned onto the Larz Anderson Bridge.
“That’s an intellectual conceit and you know it,” Susan said. “No one ever espoused that when death was at hand.”
“Probably not,” I said.
We were near the middle of the bridge. Pearl paused and stood on her hind legs and rested her forepaws on the low wall of the bridge and contemplated the river. I stopped to wait while she did this.
“Do we love each other?” Susan said.
“Yes.”
“Are we monogamous?”
“Yes.”
“Then why,” Susan said, “aren’t we domestic?”
“As in live together, share a bedroom, that kind of domestic?”
“Yes,” Susan said. “Exactly that kind.”
“I recall proposing such a possibility on Cape Cod fifteen years ago,” I said.
“You proposed marriage,” Susan said.
“Which involved living together,” I said. “You declined.”
“That was then,” Susan said. “This is now.”
Pearl dropped down from her contemplation of the river and moved on, snuffing after the possibility of a gum wrapper in the crevice between the sidewalk and the wall.
“Inarguable,” I said.
“Besides, I’m not proposing marriage.”
“This matters to you,” I said.
“I have been alone since my divorce, almost twenty years. I would like to try what so many other people do routinely.”
“We aren’t the same people we were when I proposed marriage and you turned me down,” I said.
“No. Things changed five years ago.”
I nodded. We walked off the bridge and turned west along the south side of the river. We were closer to the outbound commuter traffic now, an unbroken stream of cars, pushing hard toward home, full of people who shared living space they shared.
“Trial period?” Susan said.
“And if it doesn’t work, for whatever reason, either of us can call it off.”
“And we return to living the way we do now,” Susan said.
“Which ain’t bad,” I said.
“No, it’s very good, but maybe this way will be better.”
We swung down closer to the river so Pearl could scare a duck. Some joggers went by in the other direction. Pearl ignored them, concentrating on the duck.
“Will you move in with me?” Susan said.
We stopped while Pearl crept forward toward the duck. Susan kept hold of my left hand and moved herself in front of me and leaned against me and looked up at me, her eyes very large.
“Sure,” I said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
Pearl lunged suddenly against the leash, and the duck flew up and away. Pearl shook herself once, as if in celebration of a job well done. Susan leaned her head against my chest and put her arms around me. And we stood quietly for a moment until Pearl noticed and began to work her head in between us.
“Jealousy, thy name is canine,” I said.
“Tomorrow?” Susan said.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
Tomorrow… and tomorrow… and, after that, tomorrow… Yikes!
CHAPTER 8
Hawk and I sat in Hawk’s car in the middle of the empty courtyard of Double Deuce. The only thing moving was an empty Styrofoam cup, tumbled weakly across the littered blacktop by the soft spring wind. The walls of the project were ornate with curlicued graffiti, the signature of the urban poor.
Kilroy was here.
There was almost no noise. Occasionally a child would wail.
“This is your plan?” I said to Hawk.
“You got a better idea?” Hawk said.
“No.”
“Me either.”
“So we sit here and await developments,” I said.
“Un huh.”
We sat. The wind shifted. The Styrofoam cup skittered slowly back across the blacktop.
“You got any thought on what developments we might be awaiting?” I said.
“No.”
A rat appeared around the corner of one of the buildings and went swiftly to an overturned trash barrel. It plunged its upper body into the litter. Only its tail showed. The tail moved a little, back and forth, slowly. Then the rat backed out of the trash barrel and went away.
“Maybe we can keep the peace by sitting here in the middle of the project. And maybe we can find out who killed the two kids, mother and daughter,” I said. “I doubt it, but maybe we can. Then what? We can’t sit here twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, until the social order changes. No matter how much fun we’re having.”
Hawk nodded. He was slouched in the driver’s seat, his eyes half shut, at rest. He was perfectly capable of staying still for hours, and feeling rested, and missing nothing.
“Something will develop,” Hawk said.
“Because we’re here,” I said.
“Un huh.”
“They won’t be able to tolerate us sitting here,” I said.
Hawk grinned.
“We an affront to their dignity,” he said.
“So they’ll finally have to do something.”
“Un huh.”
“Which is what we’re sitting here waiting for,” I said.
“Un huh.”
“Sort of like bait,” I said.
“Exactly,” Hawk said.
“What a dandy plan!”
“You got a better idea?” Hawk said.
“No.”