"Optional," she said.

"When I'm alone I eat it from the box," I said. "Standing up by the sink."

"I have no doubt of that," she said.

I picked up a slice. By the time I had finished it and washed it down with some wine, Susan had cut a small triangle off the tip of her slice and was conveying it to her mouth with a fork. I picked up another slice.

"You matter to me," I said, "more than what I do, or who I am. If you need me to quit, I'll quit."

She shook her head again while she carefully chewed her pizza. When she had swallowed and sipped some wine and blotted her mouth with her napkin, she said, "Yes. You would. But you should not. You are an odd combination of violence and concern. You contain the violence very well, but it's there, and I would be a fool, and you would be a fool, to think it was less a part of you than the concern."

"You're right," I said. "Sometimes I wish you weren't."

"No need to wish I weren't," Susan said. "You know yourself. You understand your violence as well as you understand your capacity for kindness, maybe better."

"Maybe it needs more understanding," I said.

"Yes, it does," Susan said. "Kindness is not dangerous. You have found a way to work and live which allows you to integrate the violence and the compassion. If you had no impulse to violence, your compassion wouldn't be so admirable. If you had no compassion, your violence would be intolerable. You understand what I'm saying?"

"As long as I pay close attention," I said.

"You are able to apply the impulse to violence in the service of compassion. Your profession allows you actually to exist at the point where vocation and avocation meet. Few people achieve that," she said. "I would not have you change."

I was quiet for a moment admiring the amount of time she had spent thinking about me. Even while I was doing this I was also thinking about how beautiful she was.

"Does this mean you love me?" I said.

She plucked a single julienne of green pepper from the top of the pizza and ate it slowly while she looked at my face thoughtfully. She didn't say anything until she had swallowed the green pepper.

Then she said, "You bet your ass it does."

Chapter 29

IT WAS TIME to talk with the eyewitnesses again. Glenda seemed a better bet than Hunt, so I went up to Andover in the middle of a cold, sunny afternoon and parked on Main Street out front of the Healthfleet Fitness Center. I was wearing a Navy surplus peacoat and a black Chicago White Sox baseball cap, and when I snuck a peek at myself in a store window I thought I looked both dashing and ominous. Up and down Main Street, Andover, there was no sign of the Gray Man, which didn't, of course, mean that he wasn't there. Healthfleet was up a flight of stairs above a coffee shop and a medical supply store. Inside the entrance was the usual desk manned by the usual upbeat teenybopper in designer sweats and a ponytail who urged everybody as they checked in to have a great workout. I'd never figured out why cheerfulness and exercise were so tightly linked in everybody's marketing system, but it was the official attitude in all health clubs. Made me think fondly of the old boxing gyms that I had trained in where people came to work hard, and concentrated on it.

On the wall by the desk was some sort of motivational gimmick with credit given for hours on the treadmill, and a bar graph showing people's various progress. The main workout space was banked with windows over the street and mirrors around the other walls. It was a bright room with some shiny weight-training machinery lined up in front of the windows and an exercise floor behind it. I could see Glenda at that end of the room wearing painfully tight black shorts and a bright green halter top. She was leading a class of women who stepped on and off of a plastic step to the throb of rock music while Glenda yelled, "Aaand over, aaaand back, aaand nine, eight, seven… aaand take it on down." The Gray Man was nowhere in the room.

I told the kid at the desk that I was here to see Glenda Baker, and I'd wait until she was through. There was a small waiting area in front of the desk, a low sofa, and a bentwood coffee table. And a long coat rack, mostly filled, on the wall by the door. I took off my coat and hung it on the rack and sat on the sofa with my feet on the coffee table and my hat on. The teenybopper eyed my gun covertly. She'd probably have told me to have a great shoot if she'd seen it when I came in.

When Glenda's class ended she started across the room toward the waiting area carrying a big bottle of Evian water and taking healthful sips from it as she walked. She went straight to the coat rack without paying any attention to me.

I said, "Hello, Glenda."

She stopped and smiled and said "Hello" vaguely.

"Spenser," I said. "The sleuth."

"Oh, hello."

"May I buy you a cup of coffee?" I said.

If she saw the gun, she was too well bred to pay it any mind.

She smiled without much enthusiasm. "Well, sure, okay."

"Good."

"Let me change and grab a quick shower," she said. "Ten minutes."

"No hurry," I said.

She went to the locker room, and I passed the time counting the number of women in spandex who should not have been wearing spandex. By the time Glenda came back out of the locker room in an ankle-length camel's hair coat and high boots, the count was up to All.

"For crissake," I said. "It really was ten minutes."

Glenda smiled faintly. She smelled of expensive soap and maybe a hint of even more expensive perfume. I stood and held the door for her. As we left, I said to the receptionist, "Have a great front desk."

She smiled even more faintly than Glenda.

It was always a pleasure to go into a coffee shop on a cold day and smell the coffee and the bacon and feel the warmth. We sat in the back in a wooden booth with blue checkered paper place mats on it. I started to slide in opposite Glenda.

"Sit beside me," she said. "It will be easier to talk."

Glenda slid in, I sat beside her, and a waitress with a white apron over jeans and a green sweater came over and asked if we wanted coffee. We did. The waitress poured it while we glanced at the menu. Since I had to stay alert for the Gray Man, I felt that caffeinated was a health necessity. In fact, it seemed to me that I'd best have more than one cup.

They were out of donuts but there were corn muffins and I ordered a couple. Glenda had decaf, black, and an order of whole wheat toast, no butter. I hung my jacket on a hook on the corner of the booth. Glenda kept her coat on.

"How many classes a day do you teach?" I said.

"Varies. Today I just had the one."

"Where'd you learn to do this stuff."

"I was a sports and recreation major at college," she said. "After I got married, I took a certification course."

"Better than sitting around the house reading Vogue?"

"I'm a very physical person," Glenda said.

"I could tell that," I said. "Is your husband equally physical?"

"Hunt is more business oriented," Glenda said.

The waitress brought the toast and the corn muffins and freshened the coffee.

"That's decaf?" Glenda said.

"Yes, ma'am," the waitress said. "You can always tell by the green handle on the pot."