Valediction Read Free

''Hello."
    It was difficult to get air in. I said, "How are you?"
    Paul looked at me and then got up and walked to the living room and turned on the television.
    "Good," Susan said. "I'm good. How are you?"
    "Functional," I said. "Sort of."
    "Paul still there?"
    "Yes. He'll be here all summer."
    "Are you working?"
    "I haven't. But Paul's asked me to do something. And I said I would. I'm having a little trouble with my energy levels."
    "Yes," Susan said.
    "You got a nice apartment?" I said.
    "Yes. It's small. But it's modern. I'm subletting it for a couple of months. You want my telephone number?"
    "Yes," I said.
    She gave it. "Are you going to be all right?" she said.
    "Depends," I said. "Depends an your definition of all right. And it depends on how our relationship works out."
    "When I left," Susan said, "it was not my intention to end the relationship. I have done what I wanted to do. I have gotten to be alone. Now I've just got to experience being alone for a while and see where it leads."
    As there often is on coast-to-coast calls, there were echoes of my voice and hers, and a kind of transmission delay so that our voices tended to overlap. The call was like air to a diver, and the transmission distortions were like kinks in the air hose.
    Susan said, "I'm in such a kind of tumbling series of changes that I hate to speak in absolutes. But I would be much less happy if you weren't in some sense part of my life."
    "Okay," I said.
    "Is this phone driving you crazy too?" she said.
    "I get an echo," I said.
    "Me too. Not a good time for a bad transmission."
    "No," I said. "When my energy levels get up high enough I may go down to AT&T and bust up some executive's bridgework."
    "Okay," she said. "I'm going to hang up now. I've been charging around since I got here, and I'm exhausted and I've been so worried about you I can't breathe."
    "I'm okay," I said. "I'm much better now that I've talked to you."
    "I'll talk to you soon," Susan said.
    "I love you," I said.
    "Yes," Susan said. And hung up.
    Paul was watching the Muppets on Channel Nine. I poured some Irish whiskey into a glass and went in and sat down and sipped the whiskey and told him about Susan's conversation.
    "That's encouraging," he said.
    "Yes."
    On the tube Floyd was singing a duet with Pearl Bailey.
    "You ought to date," Paul said.
    "How about I get a Qiana shirt and some gold chains and tight pants with no pockets . . ."
    "And a bulger," Paul said.
    "Yeah," I said, "and shoes with Cuban heels, and maybe have my hair styled and blowdried."
    "On the other hand," Paul said, "maybe you hadn't ought to date."

CHAPTER 6

    I watched the Tommy Banks Dancers go through a series of tap steps. Paul was one, not featured but clearly a necessary member. The room was small and hot and shabby, on a second floor on Huntington Avenue over a liquor store that advertised 10,000 cases of ice-cold beer. The dancers glistened with sweat. Paul rehearsed in a pair of gray sweat pants held up by a blue and red belt and a red T-shirt that said Puma on the front. The sleeves had been cut off and the neck cut out so that it was little more than a sleeveless undershirt.
    Now that I knew Susan's phone number, I could easily find her address. On the other hand, if she wanted me to know her address, she'd tell me.
    The dancers took a break in the rehearsal and Tommy Banks came over to meet me. Paul came with him. Banks wore a pair of black knit dance pants and a net polo shirt cut off the way defensive backs on Southern college football teams cut them off so that the stomach is bare. He was shorter than Paul and stocky for a dancer and considerably older than Paul, nearly forty, probably. His hair was cut short and receded from his forehead.
    "Mr. Spenser," he said. "Nice of you to come over."
    We shook hands. Whatever his age and height, he was in shape. Fine little muscle patterns moved in Banks's flat stomach. We got some coffee from an automatic drip coffeemaker on a card table in one