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Background:  Spenser's girlfriend, Susan, who already spent a lot of time away from him while studying in Washington, D.C., is now leaving him in Boston and going to San Francisco after getting her Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard.  She is trying to "find herself."  Spenser's heart is breaking.

(Chapter 2)

    At six o'clock we were sitting at the counter in my kitchen sharing a victory bottle of Cuvée Dom Pérignon, 1971. (page author's note:  in celebration of Susan's college graduation).
    "Veritas," I said to Susan.  She smiled and we drank.  My kitchen window was open and the breeze that blew off the Charles river basin moved a few of the outer curls on Susan's dark hair.  It had been sunny all day, but now it was ominous-looking outside with dark clouds, and the breeze was chilly.
    Between us on a large plate there was French bread and wheat crackers and goat cheese milk-white with a dark outer coating, and some nectarines and a bunch of pale green seedless grapes.
    Susan said, "I've taken a job in San Francisco."
    I put the glass down on the counter.  I could feel myself begin to shrink inward.
    "I'm leaving tonight," she said.  "I had planned to stay the night and tell you in the morning, but I can't.  I can't not tell you."
    "How long," I said.
    "I don't know.  I've thought about it for a long time.  All the last year in Washington when I was doing my internship."
    It had begun to rain outside my kitchen window.  The rain coming straight down from the darkened sky, quietly, with a soft hiss.
    "I have to be alone," Susan said.
    "For how long?"
    "I don't know.  You can't ask me, because I really don't know."
    "I'll visit you."
    "Not right away.  I have to be by myself.  For a while, anyway.  I don't want you to know my address."
    Bubbles continued to drift up from the bottom of the champagne glass, spaced more as the champagne flattened, coming sparsely and with leisure.  Neither of us drank.
    "You have a place to stay out there?"
    "Yes.  I've arranged that already."
    Her hair stirred again.  The wind was cold now, and damp from the rain that moved steadily downward through it.  One lightning flash flared a moment at the window and then, an appreciable time later, the thunder rolled in behind it.
    "I called Paul," Susan said.  "He'll be here in the morning.  I don't want you to be alone."
    I nodded.  The curtains at the kitchen window moved in the cold breeze.  Susan stood up.  I stood with her.
    "I'm going to go now," she said.
    I nodded.
    She put her arms around me and said, "I do love you."
    "I love you."
    She squeezed me and put her cheek against mine.  Then she stepped away and turned and walked toward the door.
    "I'll call you," she said, "when I get to San Francisco."
    "Yes."
    She opened the door and looked back at me.
    "Are you all right?" she said.
    I shook my head.
    "Paul will come tomorrow," she said.  "I'll call you soon."
        Then she went out and closed the door and I was alone with my soul dwindled to icy stillness at the densely compacted center of myself.
 

(Excerpt from Chapter 4)
...
    "What she doing in San Francisco?"  Hawk said.
    "Job."
    "You going to visit?"
    "I don't know her address."
    We drank some more.
    "She going to tell you where she lives?"  Hawk said.
    "Maybe in a while."
    "Want me to find her?"
    "No.  She's got the right to be private."
    "She got somebody out there?"  Hawk said.
    "I don't know."
    "If she got somebody, I can kill him," Hawk said.
    I shook my head again.  "She's got the right to somebody else," I said.
    Hawk gestured another round at the bartender.
    "You too," Hawk said.
    "I don't want anyone else."
    "Thought you wouldn't."
 

(Excerpt from Chapter 12)

(Note: Spenser has finally taken a case to get his mind off Susan).

...
    It was the same pair of body builders who had ejected me the first visit I made.  The one with the thin hair combed over his bald spot was wearing horn-rimmed sunglasses.  The one with the crew cut said, "Get out of the car, please.  We'd like to speak with you."
    I got out and leaned against the car with my arms folded on my chest.
    Crew Cut said, "You've been hanging around here for several days."
    It didn't seem like a question so I didn't answer.
    "You've been asked," Crew Cut said, "not to interfere in our religious practices."
    Still no question.
    The bald one said, "So this time you're being told, not asked."
    I could feel the quick hot spurt of anger.  The exterior and objective part of me was surprised.  Well, well, there is anger in there.
    I said, "Is that actually your own hair you've got pasted down over your scalp or does somebody paint it on for you each morning?"
    He flushed.  Sensitive.  His buddy said, "You are very close to getting yourself in some real hot water, pal."
    The anger had enlarged and was working its way up from the pit of my stomach, spreading along my back and shoulders and down my arms.  I could feel my face getting hot.  I was careful with my voice, easing it out so it was steady.
    "This is different business," I said, "from pumping iron.  It's a business I'm almost sure to be better at than you are.  Don't make a mistake."  The muscles in my neck and shoulders were starting to bunch on their own.  My whole upper body was tense.
    The crew-cut deacon said, "You are going to have to be taught a lesson."
    He put his left hand out toward me and I hit him with the back of my right hand as I unfolded my arms.  I hit Baldy with the front of the same hand.  His sunglasses flew off and the genie was out of the bottle.  The energy release was immediate and large.  It fed itself and intensified as it enlarged so there was only the welter of fists and elbows and knees and feet and forearms.  Only butting heads, only gouging and biting, only force expanding in a kind of ecstasy, a frenzy released.
    It was over too soon.  A shame to waste the energy.  The deacons weren't that good.  I stood with my chest heaving and the sweat soaking my shirt, staring at them sprawled on the roadway.  I had broken at least one arm and shattered at least one kneecap.  When they woke up they would be in pain.
    "My fuse is awful short these days," I said.  "Not your fault."
 

(Excerpt from Chapter 26)

    "I have a friend," Susan said on the phone, "a guy friend."
    I felt vertigo, way inside.  I said, "Yes."
    "I've known him for a while," Susan said.  "Before I left."
    "In Washington?"  The vertigo spiraled down.  Bottomless.
    "Yes.  He's from here.  And he got me this job."
    "He must be a fine man," I said, "or you wouldn't be with him."
    "I don't live with him," Susan said.  Her voice was steady but I could hear the strain in it.  "And I don't wish to live with him or marry him.  I have told him that I love you and that I will always love you."
    "Is he content with that?"
    "No, but he accepts it.  He knows that he'll lose me if he presses."  The firmness in her voice was chilling.
    "Me, too," I said.
    Silence ran along the 3000 miles of line and microwave relay.  Then Susan said, "You have got to get over Los Angeles.  That's not a condition, or anything.  It is truth.  For your own sake.  You have to be able to fail, to be wrong.  For God's sake, you are human."
    "Yes," I said.  "I'm trying.  I met a woman, and she helps."
    "Good," Susan said.
    "What's his name?"  I said
    "You don't know him, no need to blame him.  He is not part of you and me."
    I said, "That cuts it pretty fine."
    Susan was silent.
    "You don't mind Linda?"  I said.
    "No.  You have to unlock.  You have to open up.  You're like a fortress with the drawbridge closed.  If Linda helps you, I like it."
    "And it makes you feel less guilty," I said.
    "Maybe, and maybe if there's someone with you, I worry for you less...sometimes I worry about you so that I can hardly breathe."
    "I care about her," I said.  "I guess I sort of love her.  But not like I love you.  Linda knows that.  I have not lied to her about it."
    "The only thing that would be awful," Susan said, and I knew from her voice that she was speaking of things she'd thought about often, "would be if you said to me, 'I never want to see you again.  I never want to look at your goddamned face again.'  When I think of that I get the awful anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach."
    "I will never say that," I said.
 

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