“Yeah,” I said. “I might.”
He said, “Thanks for the beer,” and closed my door, and I pulled away. It was almost an hour and a half in the snow and the near-motionless rush hour until I got to my apartment. Susan was there.
“I had an Adolescent Development Workshop at B.U. this afternoon, and when I got out it was too bad to drive home, so I left my car in the lot and walked down,” she said.
“You missed a golden opportunity,” I said.
“For what?”
“To take off all your clothes and make a martini and surprise me at the door.”
“I thought of that,” Susan said, “but you don’t like martinis.”
“Oh,” I said.
“But I made a fire,” she said. “And we could have a drink in front of it.”
“Or something,” I said. I picked her up and hugged her.
She shook her head. “They were talking about you all day today,” she said.
“At the workshop on adolescent development?”
She nodded and smiled her fallen-seraph smile at me. “You exhibit every symptom,” she said.
I put her down and we went to the kitchen. “Let us see what there is to eat,” I said. “Maybe pulverized rhino horn with a dash of Spanish fly.”
“You whip up something, snooks,” she said. “I’m going to take a bath. And maybe rinse out the pantyhose in your sink.”
“A man’s work is never done,” I said. I looked in the refrigerator. There was Molson Golden Ale on the bottom shelf. If we were snowbound, at least I had staples on hand. In the vegetable keeper there were some fresh basil leaves and a bunch of parsley I’d bought in Quincy Market. It was a little limp but still serviceable. I opened a Molson. I could hear the water running in the bathroom. I raised the bottle of ale, and said, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” in a loud voice.
Susan yelled back, “Why don’t you make me a gimlet, blue eyes, and I’ll drink it when I get out. Ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
In the freezer was chopped broccoli in a twenty-ounce bag. I took it out. I got out a large blue pot and boiled four quarts of water, and a smaller saucepan with a steamer rack and boiled about a cup of water. While it was coming to a boil I put two garlic cloves in my Cuisinart along with a handful of parsley and a handful of basil and some kosher salt and some oil and a handful of shelled pistachios and I blended them smooth. Susan had given me the Cuisinart for my birthday, and I used it whenever I could. I thought it was kind of a silly toy, but she’d loved giving it to me and I’d never tell. When the water boiled, I shut off both pots. I could hear Susan sloshing around in the tub. The door was ajar, and I went over and stuck my head in. She lay on her back with her hair pinned up and her naked body glistening in the water.
“Not bad,” I said, “for a broad your age.”
“I knew you’d peek,” she said. “Voyeurism, a typical stage in adolescent development.”
“Not bad, actually, for a broad of anyone’s age,” I said.
“Go make the gimlet now,” she said. “I’m getting out.”
“Gin or vodka?” I said.
“Gin.”
“Animal,” I said.
I went back to the kitchen and mixed five parts gin to one part Rose’s limejuice in a pitcher and stirred it with ice and poured it into a glass with two icecubes. Susan came into the kitchen as I finished, wearing the half-sleeved silk shaving robe she’d given me last Christmas, which I never wore, but which she did when she came and stayed. It was maroon with black piping and a black belt. When I tried it on, I looked like Bruce Lee. She didn’t.
She sat on one of my kitchen stools and sipped her gimlet. Her hair was up and she had no make-up and her face was shiny. She looked fifteen, except for the marks of age and character around her eyes and mouth. They added.
I had another Molson and brought my two pots to a boil again. In the big one I put a pound of spaghetti. In the small one with the steamer rack I put the frozen broccoli. I set the timer for nine minutes.
“Shall we dine before the fire?” I said.
“Certainly.”
“Okay,” I said. “Put down the booze and take one end of the dining-room table.”
We moved it in front of the fire and brought two chairs and set the table while the spaghetti boiled and the broccoli steamed. The bell on the timer rang. I went to the kitchen and drained the broccoli and tried the spaghetti. It needed another minute. While it boiled I ran the Cuisinart another whirl and reblended my oil and spices. Then I tried the pasta. It was done. I drained it, put it back in the pot and tossed it with the spiced oil and broccoli. I put out the pot, the leftover loaves of Syrian bread that I bought for lunch, and a cold bottle of Soave Bolla. Then I held Susan’s chair. She sat down. I put another log on the fire, poured a dash of wine in her glass. She sipped it thoughtfully, then nodded at me. I filled her glass and then mine.
“Perhaps madam would permit me to join her,” I said.
“Perhaps,” she said.
I sipped a little wine.
“And perhaps later on,” she said, “we might screw.”
I laughed halfway through a swallow of wine and choked and gasped and splattered the wine all over my shirt front.
“Or perhaps not,” she said.
“Don’t toy with me while I’m drinking,” I said, when I was breathing again. “Later on I may take you by force.”
“Woo-woo,” she said.
I served her some pasta with broccoli and some to myself. Outside it was snowing steadily. There was only one light on in the room; most of the light came from the fire, which was made of applewood and smelled sweet. The glow of the embers behind the steady low flame made the room faintly rosy. We were quiet. The flame hissed softly as it forced the last traces of sap from the logs. I wasn’t nearly as sore as I had been. The pasta tasted wonderful. The wine was cold. And Susan made my throat ache. If I could find Rachel Wallace, I might believe in God.
26
The sun that brief December day rose cheerlessly and invisibly over one hell of a lot of snow in the city of Boston. I looked at the alarm clock. Six AM. It was very still outside, the noise of a normal morning muffled by the snow. I was lying on my right side, my left arm over Susan’s bare shoulder. Her hair had come unpinned in the night and was in a wide tangle on the pillow. Her face was toward me and her eyes were closed. She slept with her mouth open slightly, and the smell of wine on her breath fluttered faintly across the pillow. I pushed up on one elbow and looked out the window. The snow was still coming—steadily and at a slant so I knew the wind was driving it. Without opening her eyes, Susan pulled me back down against her and shrugged the covers back up over us. She made a snuggling motion with her body and lay still. I said, “Would you like an early breakfast, or did you have another plan?”
She pressed her face into the hollow of my shoulder. “My nose is cold,” she said in a muffled voice.
“I’m your man,” I said. I ran my hand down the line of her body and patted her on the backside. She put her right hand in the small of my back and pressed a little harder against me.
“I had always thought,” she said, her face still pressed in my shoulder, “that men of your years had problems of sexual dysfunction.”
“Oh, we do,” I said. “I used to be twice as randy twenty years ago.”
“They must have kept you in a cage,” she said. She walked her fingers up my backbone, one vertebra at a time.
“Yeah,” I said, “but I could reach through the bars.”
“I bet you could,” she said, and with her eyes still closed she raised her head and kissed me with her mouth open.
It was nearly eight when I got up and took a shower.
Susan took hers while I made breakfast and built another fire. Then we sat in front of the fire and ate cornbread made with buttermilk, and wild-strawberry jam and drank coffee.