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whether or not Marshall and I were committed to each other.
    I hadn’t particularly liked Del. Why did I care whether he’d died accidentally or on purpose?
    I’d told Claude that Del had been harmless. As I showered, for the first time I really considered Del Packard.
    He hadn’t made any of the jocular comments about my strength I occasionally got from other men. Del had been mildly pleased to see me when I was in front of him, hadn’t missed me when I was gone, would have been glad to help me do anything I’d have asked him to help me with, was overwhelmingly proud of being Shakespeare’s champion, would cheerfully have gone on doing his Del Packard thing the rest of his life…if his life had been allowed to run its natural course.
    He loved his mama and daddy, sent his girlfriend Lindy flowers, performed his job adequately, and went his own way without bothering a soul. All he’d wanted with any passion was to be a champion again, this time a number-one champion.
    If Del’s spotter had killed Del through carelessness, he should come forward. If he had murdered Del out of malice, that, too, should be paid for.
    I toweled my hair dry and put on my makeup, still turning over the questions about Del’s death to discover the source of my feeling I had a personal stake in the answers.
    The police were working to discover how Del had met his death, and that should be enough to satisfy me. I certainly hadn’t felt any urge to seek personal knowledge after the beating death of Darnell Glass early in the fall, or the shooting of Len Elgin weeks afterward, both of which cases remained unsolved.
    An answer came to me as I was getting in the car to go to my first job. I cared about Del’s death for two more reasons. Firstly, Bobo Winthrop was implicated, partly because of something I’d told Claude. Secondly, I was upset because Del had been killed in the gym , one of the few places I felt at home. So I cared about Del’s death, and I cared about payment for it.

Chapter 2

    AS THE PLAIN DAYS PASSED, I MISSED CLAUDE MORE and more.
    He’d taken care of me a few months before when I’d been hurt. He’d helped me take a sink bath, he’d helped me dress, he’d helped me get back in bed. It had seemed quite natural to put on my makeup in front of him, an act he’d construed as indicating a lack of interest in him as a man.
    I’d figured he’d seen the worst. The makeup had not been for him, but for the rest of the world.
    The only true thing I found hiding in my psyche was that I missed Claude, missed his dropping over to share my lunch, missed his occasional appearance at my doorstep with Chinese takeout or a video he’d rented.
    And another true thing was that I didn’t miss a dating relationship with Marshall. In fact, it felt good to slip back into comradeship and the teacher/student relationship we’d shared before. I found that disturbing.
    I’d seen Del Packard’s sweetheart, Lindy Roland, on the street today. Lindy was a strapping girl, with big brown hair and a ready smile. But when I’d seen her, Lindy’s eyes had been red and her whole body seemed to sag. At Del’s funeral, according to the grapevine at Body Time, Lindy had gone to pieces. Now, there was Del, under the ground at Sweet Rest Cemetery, and here was Lindy, alone and lonely.
    After my solitary supper that night, after the dishes were washed and everything neat, I paced the house.
    I took another shower and washed off all my makeup. I made sure I was shaved smooth and my eyebrows were plucked, and I put on all the usual lotions and a tiny dab of perfume.
    I stood in my bedroom, naked and irresolute. I looked in my closet, knowing before I looked what I would see: blue jeans, T-shirts, sweats. A couple of dresses and a suit from my former life. Even thinking about a seduction seemed incredibly stupid as I saw how ill-equipped I was for one.
    Suddenly I jettisoned the idea. It felt wrong. Claude deserved someone more—malleable, someone