Robert Parker - Family Honor

I grinned at her.

“It’s because they haven’t had you around asking them questions.”

“Do we have to take a shower here?” Millicent said.

“No,” I said. “We can take one at Spike’s.”

“I don’t like getting undressed in front of people.”

“A possible handicap in your former profession,” I said.

“I didn’t like it,” she said. “I didn’t think about it. I never think about stuff.”

Spike moved around the heavy bag, striking it with those odd precise movements that karate people use. Then he moved to the light one and made it rattle.

“Good for hand speed,” he said to us.

He finished with a flourish, making the bag syncopate.

“Well, it’s time you started thinking about stuff,” I said. “Want to try the bag?”

“The one Spike was just hitting? The big one?”

“Sure.”

“Can I just hit it, any way I want?”

“Sure. Just like at Marguerite’s office.”

Millicent looked at me as if she wanted to ask what Marguerite had said. But she didn’t. Spike took off the speed gloves he was using and handed them to her.

“They’re sweaty,” she said.

“Yeah, but you hit that thing without them and you’ll skin your knuckles.”

She shrugged and put on the gloves and began to flail at the bag. She lasted about twenty seconds. Spike looked at me.

“There’s a way to hit the bag,” I said.

“You said I could hit it any way I want.”

“You can. But now you can’t decide. You hit it that way because you have to. If you learn another way, then you can choose.”

“Jesus, you never get off it, do you,” Millicent said.

“Choice is good,” Spike said.

I took the gloves from Millicent and began to hit the bag.

“Shorter punches,” Spike said to Millicent. “See? Keep the arms in kind of close, so you get mostly body into it instead of all arm. Loop one, Sunny.”

I looped a punch the way Millicent had.

“See, all arm,” Spike said. “You swing wide like that and you get the weight of your arm. Maybe five pounds? Show her a good one, Sunny.”

I dug a left hook into the bag, exaggerating the shoulder turn to make the point.

“But, you punch short,” Spike said, “like that, and you get all of you, more than 100 pounds, behind the punch.”

He gave her the gloves back. She began to flail at the bag. Spike shook his head and opened his mouth.

I said, “Let’s get some water.” Spike shrugged and went with me to the water cooler.

“All you can do is show her the right way,” I said. “Once she knows, it’s up to her.”

Spike stared across the room at Millicent, flogging the bag badly.

“She’s just being stubborn,” he said.

“So are you,” I said.

“Yeah, but I’m right,” he said.

“She knows that,” I said. “What the hell do you think she’s being stubborn about?”

Spike grinned at me.

“Shooter, shrink, painter, and sex symbol,” Spike said. “You’re a broad for all seasons, Sunny.”

“Dog handler, too,” I said.

I left Spike and Millicent debating whether Spike should make lobster fricassee for lunch, or if they should go out for a sub sandwich. I took Rosie with me and drove over to my loft. My answering machine wasn’t working and I wanted to check on that, and check my mail, and, in truth, I wanted Rosie and me to walk around in our own space for a little while.

Alone.

I parked in front, put Rosie on her leash, and got out of the car. Rosie was excited. It was her home, too. She squatted a couple of times to reestablish herself, and then she and I went in and up the stairs.

My door was jimmied and ajar.

I switched Rosie’s leash to my left hand and took my gun out, and cocked it, and pushed the door open with my foot. Rosie sniffed in ahead of me, her tail wagging furiously. I stayed close to the wall and slid through behind her. The loft was chaos. There was no sound. I saw no one. Rosie strained on the leash, sniff, sniff, sniffing. I squatted with my gun still cocked, and my back to the wall just inside the door, and unsnapped her leash. She dashed into the loft and raced around sniffing everything. I knew her very well. If there had been anyone there she would have acted differently. I relaxed a little and stood. My front door lock was broken, but there was a slide bolt on the inside which still worked and I used it. With my gun still out, and the hammer still back, I checked behind the counter in the kitchen, and under the bed, and in the bathroom. Rosie was right. There was no one there. I let the hammer down gently and put the gun back in its holster and looked at the mess someone had made of my loft. It was more than someone looking for something. It was vandalism. Every drawer was emptied. My clothes were all over the floor. Olive oil and molasses and flour and maybe ketchup and who knew what else had been dumped on them. My answering machine was broken on the floor. My mail had been opened and discarded. All my files were dumped and strewn. Most of the paper had been torn up. The bed had been torn apart, and someone had slashed the mattress open. My makeup had been emptied into the sink. I walked to the studio section. My easel was broken, the painting of Chinatown slashed. The three other canvases I had were torn and slashed. The paint was squeezed from the tubes all over the floor.

In the kitchen my glassware had been broken on the floor. My spice shelf had been emptied. My refrigerator door was open and the half quart of milk I had left there was curdled. Rosie was very excited. She was dashing around happily lapping the oil and molasses that had been poured. I picked her up and held her in my lap and sat on the only chair still upright.

They had come in probably trying to find a clue to where I was with Millicent, and as they had searched and not found a clue, they had gotten excited and vengeful and this was what they’d left me. It was so unfair. It was like junior high school vandalism, simply mean. The vandals got no benefit from destroying my home, and all my things that I had so carefully picked out. All the things I had arranged and rearranged over whole evenings of puttering and reputtering, just me and Rosie, like a kid playing house, after Richie and I had separated. I was alone for the first time in my life, sipping a glass of white wine and standing back and looking, and seeing the way it all fit. The stuff I’d brought back from antique dealers in New Hampshire, the cookware, gleaming and virginal, that I had bought at Williams Sonoma, the things I had used to build a new life, art books, paintings, the nice set of useful tools in a neat metal tool box, that my father had given me when I moved in, all scattered among the broken shards of “good china” that my mother had offered, so I could entertain fashionably in my new place, even the very posed picture of herself that my annoying sister had given me. I had loved all of it. Too much, probably.

Richie had never cared much about stuff. But I did. I cared about the place I had made for myself, where I could be a detective, and be a painter, and be a woman, and be alone and take care of Rosie. The lousy bastards. Momentarily I had a passionate desire to call Richie. He’d fix it. But of course, I couldn’t call Richie. After the momentary madness, I didn’t even want to call Richie. I put my face down against Rosie’s broad little back. She smelled good. I began to cry. She turned her head and lapped my cheeks. I didn’t mind crying. This was where I was allowed to. My home. I could cry or get drunk, or make love, or be by myself, or do anything else I wanted with no one to approve or disapprove. I didn’t need to call anyone. I was enough. I kept my face buried in Rosie’s back, and my arms around her. After a time I didn’t feel like crying any more.