“Twenty-eight,” Susan said.

“Plausible,” I said. “But you’re far too smart to be only twenty-eight.”

“I try to conceal that.”

“You fail.”

“I wonder why Jackie sent a boy instead of coming himself,” Susan said. I watched her sip her wine. After an hour, the glass was still half full. “You’ll talk with Jackie?”

“If he gets in touch,” I said.

“What if it’s something illegal,” Susan said.

“There’s illegal and illegal,” I said. “I make part of my living from that fact.”

Susan nodded.

I turned up the heat under the pot of water on the stove and put some whole-wheat linguine in it and set my timer. I sat on a bar stool opposite Susan, who took another sip and said, “Let me see if I have this right. Slide is sent by this guy named Jackie, who may or may not ever appear. And although you don’t fully grasp the situation, something about Slide has got you interested in helping him, whether Jackie’s activities are legal or not.”

“Slide’s eleven going on thirty. So far life hasn’t been full of good times for him. He’s afraid. Somewhere along the line he got scared, real bad. Of who, or what?”

“And maybe Jackie is the key to figuring out what’s happening,” Susan said.

The timer went off and I went over and drained the linguine. “Whatever Jackie turns out to be, or whether or not he shows up, Slide is definitely in some kind of trouble.”

“Slide is a convenient cover for Jackie to hide whatever he’s up to,” Susan said. “And since he didn’t come himself, it would appear that at the very least Slide is being used.”

“A Boston version of Oliver Twist,” I said. I plated the pasta and brought the plates over to the counter.

“There wasn’t much Charles Dickens in our house,” Susan said.

“That’s because you spent your time reading the diaries of Sigmund Freud.” I picked up my fork. “A match made in heaven.”

“So deep down, we’re really just a couple of Victorians?” she said.

“Maybe not. Just that we were educated early in the analysis of motivation,” I said. “Dickens, Freud, they’re all alike in the dark.”

Susan laughed. “Mrs. Freud might disagree with you on that.”

It was quiet for a moment. Then Susan said, “Have you given any thought to how we should spend Christmas?”

“Only that we should be together.” I glanced over at the softly snoring Pearl. “With Pearl, of course. Hawk, too. Maybe ask Paul if he can join us.”

“We’ll do it at my place. You know how I love to set a nice table for Christmas.”

“A beautiful paradox,” I said. “But anywhere you are, it’s Christmas to me.”

THE NEXT MORNING I met Hawk at the Harbor Health Club. Hawk was doing combinations on the heavy bag and I was hitting the double-end jeeter bag with my left hand. Hawk didn’t break a sweat. After ten minutes I was sodden and winded.

“You do any more damage to that bag, we’ll have to get Henry a new one for Christmas,” I said.

“Fuck Christmas,” he said.

“Wow,” I said. “And people say you’re not sentimental. You still bitter that Santa Claus is a white man?”

Hawk began to hit the bag alternately with both hands.

“Whole holiday be a white man’s scam. All those rich honkies running in and out of stores like they might miss buying the last Rolls on the floor. Bentley’s beneath them.” He shifted his feet a little and started hitting the heavy bag with his left hand.

“This from a guy who drives a Jaguar,” I said. “I would think you’d appreciate a nice Rolls.”

“Jag be subtle elegance, babe. Rolls just someone tryin’ too hard to impress people who don’t know better. That’s Christmas.”

“Well, Ebenezer, you had better work on your holiday spirit, or Susan’s going to rescind her invitation to Christmas dinner.”

Hawk stopped, lightly tapped the bag with his left hand, and looked at me.

“Christmas dinner? At Susan’s?”

I nodded. “We could call it a Kwanzaa dinner, if that would improve your mood.”

Hawk ignored me. “Just the three of us?”

“And Pearl,” I said.

“How about Paul?”

Paul Giacomin had spent several Christmases with Susan and me in the years since I had helped liberate him from his parents.

“Susan called—Paul will be at his in-laws’ this Christmas. We may visit him in New York after the New Year.”

“So just us? And Pearl?”

I nodded. “Unless there’s someone special you’d like to invite.”

“No one special at the moment.” Hawk grinned. “’Course, it ain’t Christmas yet.”

“So can I let Susan know you’ll be cruising by in the Jag to join us?”

“Tell Susan I’m looking forward to it.”

“I can feel her blushing already,” I said.

Hawk went back to pummeling the heavy bag.

“Dinner better be at Susan’s house, though. Wouldn’t park my car in your neighborhood, even if it is just a Jag.”

After we wound down, we walked to the South Street Diner at Kneeland Street. Hawk ordered a coffee with skim milk and two Equals. No donut. I ordered a coffee and two corn muffins. Between the first and second muffin, I told him about Slide. “He’s the most terrified kid trying not to show it I’ve ever seen.”

“I knew a boy like that once,” Hawk said.

“You.” I said it without thinking, knowing I was right.

Hawk looked at me. To the world, Hawk appeared impassive and impenetrable. And mostly, he was. I had been around him long enough, though, that I could recognize subtle changes. Things most people didn’t see, or didn’t notice. But I knew Hawk—to the extent anyone could know him—better than most people did. And now it was Christmas, a time for revelations. Maybe Susan could explain it to me. Perhaps it was a vestige of our need to huddle by the cave fire together and tell stories, to ward off the darkness outside.

Hawk stirred his coffee. I watched the people come and go by the cash register, bundled up against the eighteen-degree weather.

“When I was about Slide’s age, I hit the streets. The winter was always the worst. I got money to eat any way I could.” Hawk looked at me. “Any way.”

“This kid is scared. I don’t see you being scared.”

Hawk took a sip of his coffee. He placed the cup back down on the saucer and leveled his gaze at me.

“All kids scared one time or other. You on your own, you learn how to take care of yourself.”

I nodded. “You survive long enough, you learn not to be afraid.”

“Or you don’t survive, and it don’t matter.”

Hawk drained the rest of his coffee, then counted out his tip.

“You have help?”

Hawk stood up and slid into his parka.

“Lotta help, ’long the way,” he said. He paused. “One day I meet a cocktail waitress and she help me grow up real fast. I was sixteen and she was twenty.” He grinned. “Haven’t been scared since.”