Pale Kings and Princes

It was probably fear more than pain. He’d be in shock now and the pain wouldn’t be much yet.

The other three men gathered around him, which was dumb. They made a nice grouping and I could have picked them all off without reloading.

One of them, a large fat man in a blue pea coat, said, “What are we supposed to do.” It was hard to tell who he was talking to.

I stood behind a tree about five yards from them, in the darkness.

“Put a pressure bandage on the wound,” I said. “And get him to a hospital.”

The fat guy turned toward the sound of my voice.

“You shot him, you bastard,” he said.

“And if you don’t get him out of here I’m going to shoot you,” I said.

“You bastard,” the fat guy said.

The guy from the pickup knelt down beside the red mackinaw.

“You okay,” he said.

Red Mackinaw said, “Jesus Christ.” Maybe he was praying.

From the woods I said, “Take a handkerchief or a piece of cloth or scarf, whatever, and make a pad and put it over the wound and take a belt and tighten it over the pad and put him in the car and get him to the hospital,” I said, “or he’ll bleed to death.”

They picked him up and hustled him toward the car. They put him in the back and one of them got in with him. The guy from the pickup came past my car, skirting carefully past my spot in the woods. He got in his truck and pulled forward next to my car. The truck paused for a minute, then he threw something against my car. Glass broke and fire flared. He put the truck in gear and spun the wheels pulling away. The sedan went too and I stood alone in the woods and watched my ear burn.

10

It was maybe a two-mile walk to the Reservoir Court, which took me a little less than half an hour. When I got there, Susan was sitting in the lobby with her feet on her suitcase.

We kissed.

She said, “They wouldn’t let me into the room because I wasn’t registered.”

“Can’t be too careful,” I said. “Once you got in there you might have undressed.”

“I think they were fearful of that,” she said. She was wearing a brilliant yellow coat of some glossy material that looked like a $700 slicker. Underneath was a suede suit the color of a green apple. She smelled of perfume and lipstick and her large dark eyes were full of knowledge and excitement. I’d never met anyone like her, and I didn’t expect to.

I picked up her suitcase and took her hand.

“Stay close to me, little lady,” I said. “I’ll get you through.”

The desk clerk looked stiffly past me as Susan and I went to the stairs and up to my room. I unlocked the door, and went in ahead of Susan. The room was quiet and empty. I turned on the overhead. Susan came in and closed the door behind her. She looked at me in a way that made me know she’d seen me go first. She glanced around the room.

“Isn’t this an ugly hotel room,” she said.

“It’s got a bathroom. It’s clean. Don’t be so demanding.”

“If I were demanding would I be weekending in Wheaton, Mass.?” she said. She took her coat off and dropped it across the back of a chair and opened her suitcase and began to hang up her clothes.

When she travels, Susan packs for all eventualities. An intimate dinner at the White House; a barbecue at the King Ranch; cocktails with Halston; white-water rafting. She had all of them covered. Not only outfits for all possibilities but full accessories, panty hose, shoes, lingerie, jewelry, hats, coats, gloves, belts. Her suitcase was like the clown car at the circus that keeps degorging occupants far beyond any possible capacity it might have.

While she unpacked she was entirely involved in it, fully taken with the task as she was with all tasks. It was one of her attributes as a psychotherapist, her capacity for laserlike concentration. She brought the concentration to everything she did.

“Isn’t it a sign of something,” I said, “when everything is equally important?”

“Anal compulsive,” Susan said without looking up. She was carefully refolding a blouse around some tissue before she put it in the drawer.

I sat on the bed and watched her. I loved to watch her. I loved to watch the bend of her arm, the attitude of her head as she paused to consider something. I loved the way she looked with everything exactly right. Her clothes fit just right, her makeup was flawless, her thick dark hair fell against her neck the way hair is supposed to fall. I loved the way her calf tapered to her ankle. I loved the way she chewed slightly on her lower lip as she decided which blouse to put on top. Watching her was timeless. Sound seemed to stop. Light seemed clearer.

Then she was finished.

“Now,” she said, “do we have a plan?”

“We were going to stay in and have a gourmet Italian dinner,” I said. “But it got burned up.”

“You were cooking?”

“No, it was in my car and a fat guy in a pickup truck set it on fire.”

“Your car?”

“Yeah, he didn’t know the gourmet Italian dinner was in it, though.”

Susan looked at me for a moment. “I expect you’ll tell me all about it in a while,” she said.

“Yes, but meantime I think we’re faced with the Reservoir Hunt Room for dinner.”