I had no feelings one way or another about Hugger, but horse people are like that and she'd just called me a lovely man.
"Sure," I said.
"Give him a carrot," she said, and handed me one.
We walked in the now more insistent rain along the stable row until we came to Hugger's stall. He looked out, keeping his head stall side of the drip line, his big dark eyes looking, I suspected, far more profound than he was. I handed him a carrot on my open palm, and he lipped it in. I patted his nose and turned and Penny stood on her tiptoes and put her arms around my neck and gave me a kiss on the lips.
"Take care of yourself," she said.
"You too," I said.
The kiss was sisterly, with no heat in it, but she stayed leaning against me, with her arms still around my neck, and her head thrown back so she could look up at me.
"I'm sorry things didn't work out," she said.
"Me too," I said.
We stayed that way for a minute. Then she let go of me and stepped back and looked at me for another moment and turned and walked back to the stable office. I watched her go, and then turned the collar of my jacket up to keep the rain off my neck and headed for my car.
TWENTY-ONE
I ARRIVED BACK in Boston around three-thirty. By quarter to five I was in Susan's living room, showered and shaved and aromatic with aftershave, waiting for her when she got through work. I was sitting on the couch with Pearl, having a drink, when Susan came upstairs from her last patient.
She saw me, and smiled, and said hello, and patted Pearl and gave her a kiss, and walked past us into her bedroom. I could hear the shower, and in about fifteen minutes, Susan reappeared wearing a bath towel. She flipped the towel open and shut, like a flasher.
"Y'all want to get on in heah, Georgia boy?"
"That's the worst southern accent I've ever heard," I said.
"I know," she said, "but everything else will be pretty good."
"How could you be so sure I'd be responsive?" I said. "Maybe I'm tired from the long drive."
"I'm a psychotherapist," Susan said. "I know these things."
"Amazing."
When we made love, Susan liked to do the same things every time, which was less boring than it sounds, because it included about everything either of us knew how to do. She was also quite intense about it. Sometimes she was so fully in the moment that she seemed to have gone to a place I'd never been. Sometimes it took her several minutes, when we were through, to resurface.
As usual, when she had come back sufficiently, she got up and opened the bedroom door. Pearl came in and jumped on the bed and snuffled around, as if she suspected what might have happened here, and disapproved.
There was the usual jockeying for position before we finally got Pearl out from between us. She settled, as she always did, with a noise that suggested resignation, near the foot of the bed, and curled up and lay still, only her eyes moving as she watched Susan and me reintegrate our snuggle.
"Postcoital languor is more difficult with Pearl," Susan said.
"But not impossible," I said.
"Nothing's impossible for us."
I looked at the familiar form of the crown molding along the edge of Susan's bedroom ceiling. On the dresser was a big color photograph of Susan and me, taken fifteen years ago on a balcony in Paris, not long after she had come back from wherever the hell she had been. We looked pretty happy.
"We were pretty happy in that picture," I said.
"We had reason to be."
"Yes."
"We still do."
"Yes."
"Would you be happier now if Mr. Clive hadn't been killed in Georgia?"
"Yes."
"Even though you were not responsible for him getting killed, nor could you have been expected to prevent it?"
"Yes."
"Send not therefore asking for whom the bell tolls," Susan said.
"Well, sometimes," I said, "it actually does toll for thee."
"I know."
"On the other hand," I said, "we do what we can, not what we ought to."
"I know."
"And you can't win 'em all," I said.
"True."
"And all that glitters is not gold," I said.
"And a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,"
Susan said.
"I always thought that saying was sort of backwards," I said.
I couldn't see her face: it was too close to my neck. But I could feel her smile.
"Well-bred Jewesses from Swampscott, Massachusetts," she said, "do not lie naked in bed and talk about bushes."
"Where did you go wrong?" I said.
"I don't know, but isn't it good that I did?"
At the foot of the bed, Pearl lapped one of her forepaws noisily. Susan rubbed my chest lightly with her right hand.
"Is there anything you can do to clean that up in Georgia?" she said.
"No one wants me to," I said.
"When has that ever made a difference to you?" Susan said.
"I have no client," I said. "No standing in the case."
"You think it was the person shooting the horses?"
"Reasonable guess," I said. "I had no clue who was doing that, and no clue really about where to go next."
"And?"
"And," I said, "I've been away from you about as long as I can stand."
"Good."
"So I'm going to put this one in the loss column and start thinking about the next game."