I shrugged.

“Best I can do,” I said.

“Susan?” Amy said.

“He admires people who can do things.” She smiled. “Hawk can do things.”

Amy nodded. It was moving on toward supper time. I looked around at the now crowded and lively courtyard. Even though we were right in the heart of Cambridge, there was a heartening absence of Birkenstocks.

“Okay,” Amy said. “Let’s talk about you and Susan again.”

“What is this?” I said. “Men and Women Who Dare?”

Amy smiled.

“I think maybe I can’t understand you without understanding you in her context,” Amy said.

“Probably,” I said.

“How did you meet?”

“I was working on a case, missing teenage boy, up in Smithfield. She was the school guidance counselor. I questioned her about the boy, and she was immediately taken with me.”

Susan rolled her eyes.

“What’s your version?” Amy asked Susan.

“He was working on a case, missing teenage boy, up in Smithfield,” Susan said. “I was the school guidance counselor. He questioned me about the boy and was immediately taken with me.”

“There seems a disparity here,” Amy said.

“Just say we were taken with each other,” Susan said.

“And you’ve been together ever since?”

“Except for when we weren’t,” I said.

“Can you talk about that?” Amy said.

“Nope.”

Amy looked at Susan. Susan shook her head.

“We aren’t who we were,” Susan said. “We’d be talking about people who no longer exist.”

I could see Amy thinking about how to go further with this. I could see her decide to give it up.

“You were married before,” she said to Susan.

“Yes.”

“And divorced.”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about that?” Amy asked me.

“I don’t,” I said.

“Don’t feel anything about it?”

“Correct.”

“No jealousy, anything?” Amy said.

I shook my head.

“A famous shrink,” I said, “once remarked, ‘We aren’t who we were.’”

“You can put the past aside that easily?” Amy said.

I think she disapproved.

“Not easily,” I said.

Susan said, “It’s quite effortful.”

“But you do it?”

Susan and I said yes at the same time.

“Earlier,” Amy said to me, “you said something like I don’t refuse to care; I refuse to let it control me. Now you say that with effort you can put the past behind you. You, actually both of you, seem to place a premium on, what, will?”

“Yes,” I said.

“First you need to understand why you do things that aren’t in your best interest,” Susan said. “Then, armed with that understanding, you have to stop doing them.”

“And that would be a matter of will,” Amy said.

“Yes. Given a reasonable level of acumen,” Susan said, “most people can be brought to understand their behavior. The hard thing is getting them to change it.”

“But some people can change?”

“Yes.”

“And you changed?”

“Both of us,” Susan said.

“Obviously,” Amy said. “Susan, you’ve had psychotherapy.”

“Of course,” Susan said.

Amy looked at me.

“Have you ever had psychotherapy?” she asked.

I looked at Susan.

“Every day,” I said.

“Any formal therapy?”

“No.”

“What would be unacceptable behavior?” Amy said. “A, ah, deal-breaker, so to speak.”

“An ongoing intimate relationship with someone else,” I said.

“Susan?” Amy said.

“That,” Susan said.

“What about a brief and casual dalliance?” Amy said.

“What did you have in mind?” I said.

I think she blushed, though it may have been the angle of the late-afternoon sun. She studied her notebook for a moment, made a little mark in it, and put it down. Then she stopped the recorder, took out the tape, put in a new tape, and started it.

“How about hopes and dreams?” Amy said.

“I’m in favor of them,” I said.

Amy shook her head in a faint gesture of annoyance, as if she were shaking off a fly.

“Is there,” she said, “anything you wanted to accomplish that you haven’t?”

“No,” I said. “I am everything I wanted to be. I’ve done everything I ever wanted to do.”

“Nothing else left to do?” Amy said.

“Let no fate misunderstand me and snatch me away too soon,” I said.

“Another poem,” Amy said.

“Frost,” I said. “More or less. I would be pleased to live this life and do what I do and be with her forever. But I have no need to improve on it.”

“My god,” Amy said, “a happy man.”

“Love and work,” I said. “Love and work.”

“Freud,” Amy said. “Right?”

“I believe so,” I said. “Though he didn’t say it to me personally.”

Amy looked at her notebook again and made another small mark. While she was doing that I managed to snag the waitress for another beer. Susan declined a refill, and I don’t think Amy even noticed the opportunity. Probably just so much iced tea you can drink.

Amy looked up from her notebook.

“What would you do if you couldn’t do this?” Amy said, and smiled. “Whatever this might be exactly.”

“I would think about international superstar, or maybe retiring to stud,” I said. “But if those answers didn’t satisfy you, I guess I’d say I could be a carpenter. I like to make things. I know how to do it. I could be pretty much self-directed if I took the right job.”

“And if you took the wrong job?”

“I’d quit.”

“Like you did the police?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you have friends who are policemen.”

“They’re good at their work, and they probably don’t have an extreme pathology,” I said. “They can work in a context where I can’t.”

“A man needs to know his limitations,” Amy said.

“He does.”

The waitress brought me my beer, and I asked her for the check.

“Oh, no,” Amy said. “This is on me.”

“Okay,” I said. “Bring her the check.”

The waitress produced it on the spot and put it facedown on the table.

“I have a sense that the interview is winding down,” Amy said.

“Me too,” I said.

“Just indulge me on one more subject.”

“Sure.”

Amy took out a credit card and put it on top of the check. Then she turned back to me.

“Does anything frighten you?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“What?”

“Same things that frighten most people,” I said. “Death, loss, pain, failure.”

“And how do you overcome those fears?”

“Same way most people do.”

“Willpower?”

“I suppose.”

“But you voluntarily chose to do things that involve the danger of death, pain, failure, and loss,” Amy said.

“True.”

“What’s up with that?”

I smiled.

“I figure those are part of the deal,” I said. “If I’m going to do what I do, I have to get around those fears.”

Amy waited. I didn’t have anything else to say. So I didn’t say anything. After an appropriate wait, Amy looked at Susan.

“One of the things you have to keep in mind is that he doesn’t expect to fail. And that diminishes the other dangers,” Susan said. “He knows intellectually he could be killed. But I think, deep down, he doesn’t think anyone can do it.”

Amy looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

“You’re that confident?” she said.

“So far, so good.”

“So,” Amy said. “Let’s say you are facing a man with a gun. Do you feel fear?”

“Yes.”

“What do you do about it?”

“Ignore it.”

“And you are able to?”

“Yes,” I said. “Otherwise I couldn’t do what I do.”

“How much does confidence enable you to do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I know I can shoot. I know I’m quick. And like anybody who used to fight, I’m pretty sure I can win one in the street.”

“And that’s what gives you confidence?”

“Some,” I said.

“I think,” Susan said, “that what gives him the most confidence is that he knows he can overcome his fear.”

“He has confidence in his confidence, sort of,” Amy said.

“He is convinced,” Susan said, “that he can do what he has to do.”