“No,” Hawks said. “But I don’t think you believe it’s true. You think it’s something you can use because it sounds plausible. It does. It’s true. And any time you grow afraid that a man may be about to find it out, you try to divert his attention with the only thing about you that you can imagine he’d be interested in. I think you’re afraid of being in a world full of creatures called men. No matter how hard you say you try not to be that way, you always have to cut men down to your size.” He took the handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped his mouth awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But that’s the way it seems to me. Connington works on the premise that everyone has a weakness he can exploit. I don’t know whether he’s right or not, but yours is that you only give yourself to men you think will find your weakness. I wonder if you knew that?”
Her fingers dug at the dress fabric over her tensed thighs. “You’re scared, Hawks,” she said. “You’re scared of a woman, just like so many of them are.”
“Would you blame me? I’m frightened of many things. People who don’t want to be people are among them.”
“Why don’t you just shut up, Hawks? What do you do, go through life making speeches? You know what you are, Hawks? You’re a creep. A bore and a creep. A first-class bore. I don’t want you around any more. I don’t want to ever see you again.”
“I’m sorry you don’t want to be any different, Claire. Tell me something. You almost succeeded, a moment ago. You came very close. It would be foolish for me to deny it. If you had done what you tried to do with me, would I still be a creep? And what would you be, making up to a man you despise, for safety’s sake?”
“Oh, get out of here, Hawks!”
“Does my being a creep make me incompetent to see things?”
“When are you going to stop trying? I don’t want any of your stinking help!”
“I didn’t think you did. I said so. That’s really all I’ve said.” He turned away toward the house. “I’m going to see if Al will let me use his phone. I need a ride away from here. I’m getting too old to walk.”
“Go to hell, Hawks!” she cried out, following him at his own pace, a yard or two behind him.
Hawks walked away more quickly, his legs scissoring stiffly, his arms swinging through short arcs.
“Did you hear me? Get lost! Go on, get out of here!”
Hawks came to the kitchen door and opened it. Connington was sprawled back against a counter, his beach shirt and his swimming trunks spattered with blood and saliva from his mouth. Barker’s left hand, tangled in his hair, was all that kept him from tipping over the high stool on which he was being held. Barker’s right fist was drawn back, smeared and running from deep tooth-gashes over the bone of his knuckles.
“Just passed out, that’s all,” Connington was mumbling desperately. “Just passed out in her bed, that’s all — she wasn’t anywhere around.”
Barker’s forearm whipped out, and his fist slapped into Connington’s face again. He said in a frantic voice, “This is just for wishing, Connie! I’m not going to stand for finding you in my woman’s bed. That’s all. I just can’t let you get away with that!”
Connington fumbled apathetically behind him for a handhold. He made no effort to defend himself. “Only way you ever would. Find me there.” He was crying without seeming to be aware of it. “I thought I had it figured out, at last. I thought today was the day. Never been able to make the grade with her. I can find the handle with everybody else. Everybody’s got a weak spot. Everybody cracks, sometime, and lets me see it. Everybody. Nobody’s perfect. That’s the great secret. Everybody but her. She’s got to slip sometime, but I’ve never seen it. Me, the hotshot personnel man.”
“Leave him alone!” Claire screamed from behind Hawks. She clawed at Hawks’ shoulder until he was out of the doorway, and then she raked at Barker, who jumped back with his hand clutching the furrows on his arm. “Get away from him!” she shouted into Barker’s face, crouching with her feet apart and her quivering hands raised. She snatched up a towel, wet a corner of it in the sink, and went to Connington, who was slumped back against the stool, staring at her through his watered eyes.
She bent against Connington and began frantically scrubbing his face. “There, now, honey,” she crooned, “There. There. Now.” Connington put one hand up, palm out, his lax fingers spread, and she caught it, clutching it and pressing it to the base of her throat, while she rubbed feverishly at his smashed mouth. “I’ll fix it, honey — don’t worry”
Connington turned his head from side to side, his eyes looking blindly in her direction, whimpering as the cloth ground across the cuts.
“No, no, honey,” she chided him. “No, hold still, honey! Don’t worry. I need you, Connie. Please.” She began wiping his chest, opening the top of the beach shirt and forcing it down over his arms, like a policeman performing a drunk arrest.
Barker said stiffly, “All right, Claire-that’s it. I want your things out of here tomorrow.” His mouth turned down in revulsion. “I never thought you’d turn carrion-eater.”
Hawks turned his back and found a telephone on the wall. He dialed with clumsy haste. “This — this is Ed,” he said, his throat constricted. “I wonder if you could possibly drive out to that corner on the highway, where the store is, and pick me up. Yes, I — I need a ride in, again. Thank you. Yes, I’ll be there, waiting.”
He hung up, and as he turned back, Barker said to him, his expression dazed, “How did you do it, Hawks?” He almost cried, “How did you manage this?”
“Will you be at the laboratory tomorrow?” Hawks said wearily.
Barker looked at him through his glittering black eyes. He flung out an arm toward Claire and Connington. “What would I have left, Hawks, if I lost you now?”
CHAPTER SIX
“You look tired,” Elizabeth said as the studio’s overhead fluorescents tittered into light and Hawks sat down on the couch.
He shook his head. “I haven’t been working very hard. It’s the same old story — when I was a boy on the farm, I’d wear myself out with physical labor, and I’d have no trouble getting to sleep. I’d wake up in the morning, and I’d feel wonderful; I’d be rested, and full of energy, and I’d know exactly what I had ahead of me that day, and I’d do it. Even when I was tired, I felt right; I felt as if what I’d done was proper. Even when I couldn’t keep my eyes open after supper, my body was relaxed, and happy. I don’t know if that’s understandable if you haven’t felt it, but that’s how it was.
“But now I just sit around and think. I can’t sleep at night, and I wake up in the morning feeling worse than I did the day before. It takes me hours before I don’t feel as if my body was cranky with me. I sometimes think it gets better during the day only because I go numb, not because the crankiness stops. I never feel right. I’m always full of aches and pains that come from nowhere. I look at myself in the mirror, and a sick man looks back at me — the kind of a man I wouldn’t trust to do his share, if we were on a job together.”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “I think you could use some coffee.”
He grimaced. “I’d rather have tea, if you have some.”
“I think so. I’ll see.” She crossed the studio to the curtained-off corner where the hotplate and the cupboard were.
“Or — Look,” he called after her, “I’m being silly. Coffee would be fine. If you don’t have any tea.”
They sat on the couch together, drinking tea. Elizabeth put her cup down on the table. “What happened tonight?” she asked.
Hawks shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure. Woman trouble, for one thing.”
Elizabeth grunted. “Oh.”
“Not the usual kind,” Hawks said.
“I didn’t think it would be.”