Chapter 2

The weight room was being used for a fashion spread in a local magazine. I went back to the front desk to see if any racquetball courts were available. One was, so I took it and headed for the locker room. I no longer play the game seriously or often. Chronic knee and ankle injuries have seen to that. My orthopedist says I will make him a rich man yet.

I changed into my gear and thought about something to work on; judgment, that was what I lacked. I was always trying to do too much with my forehand, always attacking. Like the poster says: Patience my ass, I’m gonna kill something. I made my way up to the courts. They were all lit. I stood in the lounge for a second, watching a pair of older guys move the ball around with finesse and control. I could probably learn more by watching them than by playing myself, but I needed to work out. The morning with the Bensons had left me tense. I wanted to burn that tension out of my system. On another court a husband and wife were playing pitty-pat. The third was empty.

I ducked into the court, dropped the ball and hit a ceiling ball to the front wall. I waited for it to bounce, rise, drop and then let it rip off the front wall to my backhand. I moved over early and set up, turning my shoulders, cocking the wrist, watching the ball, timing the explosion. I moved into the ball, hips sliding, shoulders turning and snapped my wrist, hitting a rocket along the wall; not quite a rollout but better than I had been hitting. I picked up the ball and chanted my mantra: set up early, swing through, snap the wrist. I hoped my motor pathways were listening, letting the soothing sound seep into them, forever changing their structure. I hit a forehand off the front wall toward the side wall. Moving crosscourt I was trying to read whether to pick it off in the air or to let it hit the third wall and try to kill it. I waited, coiling. It hit the back wall and fell toward the floor. I waited and then released. It was maybe two inches off the floor all the way to the wall and intimate with it all the way back. I stooped over to pick up the ball when I heard a tapping on the glass back wall. A woman was pointing toward the door to the court. I nodded and waved her in. She opened the door to the court, ducked and entered.

“Listen, my partner is going to be late, and I saw you were alone. Would you be interested in playing a game?” She cocked her head like a question mark.

She was of average height, and lots of that was leg. Everywhere she was firm and rounded. I thought of Roethke’s line: “She had more sides than a seal.” Her chestnut hair was in a braided pony tail. But it was her face that transfixed me. The big dark eyes and wide mouth contrasted with the sculpted hollows and planes of her cheeks. It was a face of excess and denial, a face that promised all things.

She cocked her head again. “Well?”

“Uh, oh sure.” I felt sixteen again. With women I think I always will. They’re still a mystery to me. Maybe I’ve just been a poor student.

“Let’s play here. We’ll lob for serve,” she said.

“No, you take it.” I saw her mouth harden as if I’d insulted her. It was probably foolish of me to play with her. I just needed to work up a sweat, nothing more. I’d take it easy. I set up behind her. She looked back at me to check if I was ready. I nodded. She served a lob into the corner that rattled off the walls like a quarter in a deep pocket. I flicked a backhand toward the ceiling but it was not deep enough. She set, coiled to swing. I moved back to center court next to her, waiting for her to decide where to put it. She chose a kill to my backhand. I dug hard for it but barely got my racket on it. Her point. She was good. Too good for me to beat at less than full speed, if then.

“One serving zero,” she said and eyed me for the okay to serve. I nodded. She went back to the backhand lob. I guessed she would and was early, chanting set up, set up. I picked it off the side wall and hit a deep ceiling ball. She retreated, and I entered center court, crouching like a giant toad waiting to gobble the ball as if it were a rubber fly. Her return was short to my forehand side. I sized her up, coming back from the far left corner and waited for the ball to drop, getting ever fatter. I then drilled it into the right corner. Rollout. My serve.

I went to the service court, “zero serving one,” and awaited her signal. I hit a drive serve low and to her backhand. She got to it and hit a weak lob to the front court. I waited for the kill and hit a pinch shot off the far wall. My point.

“One serving one.” We began again. I hit another drive serve to her backhand. She hit a passing shot down the line. I hit a crosscourt pass. She was there, but she lifted her return. Dinnertime for froggy! She came back to center court. I hit my pass behind her.

“Damn,” she said and grimaced. “Nice shot.”

We set up again, but as I looked back, I saw another woman knocking on the glass back wall.

“Is that your partner?” She looked up and nodded.

“Well, I enjoyed it. Uh, by the way, I’m Leo Haggerty, and you’re—?”

“Samantha Clayton, and I enjoyed it too.”

She turned and walked off the court. I watched her volleying hips as she left. I finished my workout and left the court. I showered and shaved and headed out to the lobby, wondering where to eat. As I walked across the lobby I saw her fishing in her purse for phone money. I crossed to her. I thought about my father’s putting motto: never up, never in. It always worked better with golf.

“Uh, excuse me. Would you care to have dinner with me?”

She looked at me with those big eyes and cocked her head to one side. A characteristic motion. I hoped she graded on a curve. She nodded and said okay.

I asked her if she liked seafood and she said yes. I asked her if she’d ever eaten at Crisfield’s. She said no.

Since a friend had dropped her at the club we got into my car and headed toward the beltway. She was watching me as I drove.

“Do you play often?” she asked.

“No. I usually lift weights here, but today the weight room was occupied.”

“Oh, I work out here too. Usually in the afternoon. I’ve never seen you here.”

“When I come it’s usually first thing in the morning. But it’s erratic; my hours aren’t real regular.”

“What do you do in those irregular hours?”

“I’m a private investigator. And you?” We were volleying, hitting ceiling balls. Keep it high. Wait for the other person to commit.

“I’m a writer.”

“Oh, what kind of stuff?”

“You name it. Magazine pieces, interviews, literary journal essays, short stories. My first novel will be out soon.”

“What is it called?”

“No Snake in the Garden.”

“When is it due out?”

“A month or two.”

“I’ll look for it.”

She turned partway around on the seat. “I don’t mean to pry, but being a private eye—what’s it really like? Why do you do it? I keep thinking of Bogart.”

There were so many ways to answer her. The you-don’t-know-the-troubles-I’ve-seen-sister version: world-weary and wise. The hard case: cynical but with a soft spot. A two-legged Tootsie Roll pop. The last romantic: burnt out and needing the redemption of a good woman. The masked avenger: the .45 caliber messiah. I decided to play it straight—for her big eyes, her wide mouth and the empty place in my chest.

“I’ve changed my answer to that a lot over the years. I once thought I did it just so I could help people. I don’t believe that anymore, or rather that’s only a part of it. I really don’t have a very clear answer these days. I only know I’m obsessed with loss. Maybe I’m trying to inoculate myself against it. You know, get cowpox to avoid smallpox. I don’t know.” I flicked my eyes at her. She was looking at me intently. Maybe she cared about the answer.

“Have you ever lost anything yourself?”

“Good question. I’m not sure I’ve ever lost anything important. I don’t know why it’s so damned important to me. Believe me, I’ve chased myself around on this one like a dog with mange. With about the same degree of success. “How did you get into writing?” I tried not to sound too abrupt in moving away from myself as a topic.

“Bloodlines, partly. Habit. Not knowing or wanting to do anything else. All of the above. My father’s an English professor and an unpublished novelist. That’s part of it. I began to write stories when I was seven. I also used to tell stories to my little brother to help him get to sleep. Our mother died when I was twelve and he was six. He had nightmares a lot and trouble sleeping. Anyway, I had the usual tortured adolescent diary phase. I went off to college, majored in English and kept writing stories for my locked desk drawer. My best friend sent two of them to the school literary magazine. I could have killed her. They were accepted. I thought about graduate school, either a creative writing program or an advanced degree in English Lit. so I could teach. Anyway, to make a long story short, I did neither. I got a job waitressing and kept fiddling with writing stories. One day I read a novel that was so badly written I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘I can write better than that.’ It was put up or shut up time. I polished up some stories and submitted them. They were accepted, and I’ve been at it ever since. So far, it’s paid all my bills and lets me keep at it. That’s all I want right now.”

“Well, I’ll be very interested in reading your book.” There was a pause as our verbal gropings skidded to a halt. Fortunately, we were near the exit I had been looking for.

We had gotten off at Georgia Avenue and gone down into Silver Spring. Crisfield’s is a hole in the wall near the railroad overpass. It’s also the best place to eat seafood in Washington. The line on Fridays is insane: they take no reservations and every good Catholic in Maryland is there.

The floor is black-and-white tile, the walls hospital green. For many years shelves of antique beer steins hung on the walls. They were destined one day for the Smithsonian should it outlive Crisfield’s. Burglars stole them a couple of years ago. The police think a German collector financed the heist. The kitchen respects the bay and its creatures. Uncut by breadcrumbs or fillers and unperfumed with fancy seasonings, they’re allowed to speak for themselves. The place has won enough dining awards to sate a dozen downtown chefs. Crisfield’s will probably go on unchanged as long as the bay does. That worries me.

We were early and went right into the dining room and seated ourselves. Our waitress appeared with menus in hand and recited the daily specials: soft shells, shad roe, fresh rockfish with backfin stuffing. She left us with the menus. I decided on a dozen cherrystones, the mixed seafood Norfolk and a draft. I looked up at Samantha.

“I think I’ll have the chowder, the soft shells, and a draft,” she announced.

Our waitress returned and took our order.

Samantha looked at me and said, “I’d like to play racquetball with you again. It was fun. I think we’re pretty evenly matched too.”

I met her gaze. “Seemed like it. I enjoyed it too, but frankly my knees can’t take it.”

She furrowed her brow. “Oh? What’s the matter with them?”

“An old college injury.”

“That’s too bad,” she said.

“Maybe we’ll see each other in the weight room.” Believe it.

Our dinners arrived, and she turned out to be as businesslike an eater as I am. Between mouthfuls we talked. Exchanging facts and figures, years and degrees, siblings and forebears, locations and durations. The outlines for a pair of lives. Details to follow. Perhaps. For now it was enough. I stretched back and watched her pick at the remains of a crab.

“Shall we go?”

She nodded and we got up, left a tip, and settled up on the way out.

The drive back was silent, and I could feel tension spring up between us. “Where do you live?”

“Alexandria. Beauregard and Duke.”

We parked near the entrance to her building. I turned to look at her and found myself impaled between desire and deed. I searched her eyes. A silent signal passed between us. A widened iris perhaps. And that was that.

I looked down at her. “Can I see you again?”

“Sure. I had a nice time.” With that she slid out of the car, pirouetted and was gone into her building. I watched her all the way in and then turned on the engine. I whistled all the way home.

When I arrived, I called my service. There was one message: A Mr. Benson called. Please call back ASAP. Fuck him. Not tonight.