Robert B. Parker - Valediction

One of the great series in the history of the American detective story!

The New York Times

[Spenser is] the sassiest, funniest, most-enjoyable-to-read-about private eye around today.

The Cincinnati Post

The story and characters are great, the end is smashing Robert Parker is clearly establishing a place among the finest of mystery writers.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

They just dont make private eyes tougher or funnier. The dialogue sparkles.

People

Robert B. Parker has taken his place beside Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald.

The Boston Globe

Spenser probably had more to do with changing the private eye from a coffin-chaser to a full-bodied human being than any other detective hero.

Chicago Sun-Times

The toughest, funniest, wisest private eye in the field these days.

The Houston Post

Dull sublunary lovers love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

John Donne,

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

There were at least three kinds of cops in Harvard Yard: a scattering of Cambridge cops, gray-haired mostly, with faces out of County Mayo; portly old men in brown uniforms and no sidearms who guarded the gates; and squadrons of Harvard University police who wore tailored blue uniforms and expensive black gun belts, and looked like graduates of the Los Angeles Police Academy. It was Harvard commencement, and if the WASPs began to run amok, Harvard was ready. I was ready too. I had a Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special clipped onto my belt just back of my right pants pocket where the butt caused only a modest break in the line of my silk tweed jacket. The jacket was off-white with a faint blue weave and came from Brooks Brothers. It wasnt my favorite, but the choices are not wide in off-the-rack size 48s.

On a folding chair among many many folding chairs set up on the broad lawn between Widener Library and Memorial Church, Susan Silverman sat in a black gown and a funny-looking mortarboard and waited for the formal award of her Ph.D. in clinical psychology. I was there to watch and although I had a seating ticket I found myself getting restless very early and began to wander around the yard and look at the preparations for postcommencement festivities when graduates are congratulated and classes are reunited and funds are raised.

All about me the subdued and confident honk of affluent Yankee voices, male and female, murmured a steady counterpoint to the Latin dissertation being delivered from the commencement platform and redelivered over speakers throughout the area. It had been the excitement of the Latin address that had initially got me up and walking around and eyeing the barrels of free beer hooked to the taps, ready to be broached when the graduates were official.

The Latin address gave way to an English disquisition on the Legacy of Confusion, which in turn gave way to an English address on the Moral Life. On the steps of Boylston Hall a bunch of men in top hats and tails were having their pictures taken with a bunch of women in white dresses and red sashes. I went into the basement of Boylston Hall to use the mens room. No one else was there. Maybe one didnt do that at a Harvard commencement. Maybe Harvard people didnt do that at all.

Finally it was over and Susan met me by the beer table, pushing her way past a procession from Quincy House that was being led out by a guy blowing bagpipes.

How do you like it so far, she said.

I kissed her on the mouth. I dont know that Ive ever screwed a doctor, I said.

She nodded. Yes, I knew youd have just the right thing ready to say.

Even in her cap and gown Susan looked like a sunrise, extravagant and full of promise. Wherever she went things seemed, as they always did, to organize around her.

She smiled at me. Shall we have some of the revolting chicken salad?

Your graduation, I said.

We had the chicken salad and a couple of free beers and watched everything and spoke very little. Susan was excited. I could see it in her face. She was looking at everything and barely eating. I looked mostly at her, as I always did, trying somehow to encompass the density and elegance of her. Never enough, I thought. Its like air, you never tire of breathing it.

Did you like the ceremony? Susan said.

I nodded. The Latin dissertation made my blood race.

But it really is wonderful, dont you think?

I shrugged.

I know its silly, but its very exciting. Its full of tradition and it makes me feel like a real part of something. Its what a graduation ought to be.

And you are now a doctor. Dr. Silverman. You like that?

She nodded.

Around the yard, hanging from old brick buildings, were signs designating class years1957, 1976and old grads were gathering under those banners to talk about how fast they could run when they were young, and get zonkered on bloody Marys and vodka martinis in clear plastic cups.

You going back to D.C.? I asked it casually, glancing around at the Radcliffe graduates. But my stomach wasnt casual when I said it. My stomach was clenched tight and full of dread.

Susan shook her head a little vaguely, one of those little head gestures she made that meant neither yes nor no.

Chicken salad really isnt very good, is it? she said.

No, its awful, I said. But the servings are small.

At six oclock we were sitting at the counter in my kitchen sharing a victory bottle of Cuve Dom Prignon, 1971.

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 Susans 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, Ive taken a job in San Francisco.

I put the glass down on the counter. I could feel myself begin to shrink inward.

Im leaving tonight, she said. I had planned to stay the night with you and tell you in the morning, but I cant. I cant not tell you.

How long, I said.

I dont know. Ive thought about it for a long time. All the last year in Washington when I was doing my internship.

It began 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 dont know. You cant ask me, because I really dont.

Ill visit you.

Not right away. I have to be by myself. For a while anyway, I dont 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. Ive 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.