McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (23 page)

 
          
 
Bravado always backfires, with me. Every time
I make a bold claim, particularly if I make it with a woman, fate blows it back
in my face like a piece of wet newspaper.

 
          
 
The fact that Cindy had been up and ready to
hit the street at seven the morning before had misled me into thinking early
rising and the efficient dispatch of business was a pattern that could be
relied on.

 
          
 
The minute we got home from the Embassy
she
konked out and slept like a baby, while I sat on the bed
feeling restive and indecisive. Life was looking more and more complicated.
Cindy was even more beautiful asleep than awake—slumber added an almost
ethereal shapeliness to her face and body. Of course she was shapely asleep or
awake, but the minute she was awake enough for her impatience level to rise to
its normal mark on the gauge she stopped seeming ethereal and began to seem
like a big beautiful
Santa Barbara
girl who was used to getting her own way.

 
          
 
Cindy slept evenly, peacefully, untroubled by
the thought of tomorrow or the memory of yesterday, while I sat and fidgeted
for hours, worrying about all manner of murky eventualities.

 
          
 
When I finally dozed for a bit I had my
backward driving dream. It was early morning before I had it, because when I awoke
from it fall sunlight was filtering through Cindy's long windows. About that
time, Cindy, who had been sleeping with her back to me, turned over and curled
against
me.
She slept with her mouth partly open,
which for some reason made her seem far more helpless than she really was.

 
          
 
She might not have been helpless, but she was
warm. She
flopped
an arm across my chest and the arm
was hot as a stove. Having a long warm girl stretched out against you as the
October sunlight is beginning to come through the windows in the morning is a
good way to overcome the fidgets. After cooking for a while in Cindy's body
heat I became genuinely drowsy and went to sleep, only to have, once again,
little flash cuts of myself driving backwards.

 
          
 
Then I began to have a vague but sexy dream
involving Boss Miller. As it got sexier the flash cuts of backward driving
gradually stopped. Boss took the dream and it got sexier and sexier, although I
could not tell that we were actually doing anything. Unfortunately, as the sexiness
increased I began to wake up. I tried to stay asleep but I couldn't. I woke up
and looked at Cindy, only to discover that she had slipped down in the bed and
was quietly and rather speculatively performing an oral sex act, in which I had
been playing an unwitting but cooperative part.

 
          
 
I was very surprised, since in our previous
lovemaking she had been energetic without being either aggressive or inventive.
She went straight to the point and made it. After a bit she might recoup and
make it again, but it was essentially the same point. Her lovemaking was like I
imagined her tennis game would be: a matter of serve and volley. She was not
into drop shots, topspin, or
elaborate
baseline
strategies. She went for the ace, and then went for another ace.

 
          
 
But a change had come over her. Perhaps the
fact that I had been deeply asleep had made her feel that a little harmless
experimenting could be done. She was experimenting rather tentatively, as if
she hoped to learn a new game without the embarrassment of having someone watch
her practice.

 
          
 
Being compliant by nature, I went along with
what I judged to be the requirements of the situation and pretended to be
asleep, although for a time I watched what was going on through lidded eyes. It
only had the effect of making me feel like a peeping Tom. The longer Cindy's
experiment went on, the sillier I felt, though thanks to her natural impatience
it probably only went on a few minutes. The fact that it was early morning and
that I couldn't decide whether to be asleep or awake made it seem longer.

 
          
 
I guess Cindy concluded that oral sex might
have its interest but was not likely to get her any aces. She soon decided she
preferred the old game of serve and volley and hopped on top of me. I opened my
eyes just long enough to glimpse a narrow band of bright sunlight between her
body and mine. Cindy must have been pretty excited because she looked like a
big strawberry. She came in no time and collapsed on my cheek in a kind of
victor's trance. Her breath, warm from her exertions, ruffled the little hairs
on my arm while I cuddled her a bit.

 
          
 
As for me, I felt as distant as if I were in
the middle of
Wyoming
. My mind was as sere and dry as the flats along the
Wind River
, and they are very sere and dry.

 
          
 
Then she began to want to be kissed, which
surprised me a little. After all, she hadn't spoken to me at all the evening
before. But she definitely wanted to be kissed. Her breath was always fresh as
a green grape—breath that was blowing straight off some absolutely tiptop
cells. Even in the early morning she had a clean, grapelike flavor that was
very appealing.

 
          
 
After a while my
Wind River
mood passed and I began to feel not so
empty. Also I began to feel curious about what might be going on with Cindy. It
was true that we had made love on previous occasions, but there hadn't really
been much amorousness involved. Cindy had just wolfed down a little sex much as
she had wolfed down Brie and salami. The wolfing had had no real character. It
had been all vigor and no tone.

 
          
 
Now all of a sudden, on a morning when I was
supposed to go somewhere with Boss, she was developing an interest in tone.

 
          
 
"Let's fuck all day," she said.
"I never have."

 
          
 
"What do you mean?" I asked.

 
          
 
“I never have just spent a day in bed, doing
things," she said. She said it almost meekly, as if it were a shameful
confession.

 
          
 
"You never will, either, if you start
this early," I said. "Not unless you can arrange for a string of
fellows. No one fellow is going to last all day."

 
          
 
"It doesn't have to be just
fucking," Cindy said, still meekly. "We could do other kinds of
things."

 
          
 
"What other kinds of things?"

 
          
 
She shrugged her beautiful freckled shoulders.
"Orgy-like things," she said. "You probably know more about them
than I do. I never get to do those kinds of things."

 
          
 
"That's hard to believe," I said,
though in fact I could believe it perfectly well. A lot of brash girls who will
fuck you in an instant turn out not to have done much sexually— they often live
a life of very simple fucks.

 
          
 
"But you're the toast of
Washington
," I said. "How come you haven't
had better opportunities?"

 
          
 
"I told you," she said, wiggling a
little. "These are successful people. They can't
lay
around in bed all day."

 
          
 
She looked slightly depressed, as if it had
just occurred to her that she had missed a lot because all the successful men
she knew were off running the country, leaving no one to do what she called
orgy-like things with her.

 
          
 
"What about the reporters?" I asked.
"They don't have to run the country."

 
          
 
Cindy shook her head. "They always fall
in love and then they never leave their wives," she said. Then she reached
down between my legs to see if there were any signs of recovery in that region.
I could hardly believe what was happening. The efficient social-climbing woman
of the weekend was fading out and being replaced by an almost lovestruck,
partially innocent
Santa Barbara
girl who wanted nothing more than a day of slightly out-of-the-ordinary
sexual adventure.

 
          
 
"Come on," she whispered. In my
confusion I had not exactly launched into doing things.

 
          
 
Clearly I had to do something, so I repaid
Jier what might be called a favor—I guess it counted as an orgy-like thing,
because Cindy had an orgasm so strong that an observer might have thought she
was being electrocuted. After that she fell into a deep sleep and I got up and
shaved and took a shower. From the force of the orgasm I judged she might sleep
long enough for me to go off and spend a few hours in the country with Boss.

 
          
 
That plan had a life-span shorter than a
gnat's. While I was standing there, half adrowse in the shower, the door opened
and Cindy stumbled in, half asleep also. I woke up but she didn't. She hugged
me and resumed her nap. The shower poured down over both of us. Cindy didn't
have on a shower cap. I don't think she cared that her hair was getting wet.
She had just got out of bed and sought a body to be near. Some homing device
had brought her straight to me. She seemed to be sleeping soundly, her wet face
against my wet chest.

 
          
 
After that we stood there for a while, one of
us asleep and the other wide-awake and a little confused.

 
          
 
My confusion lasted over an hour, most of
which time I spent trying to provide Cindy with enough sexual pleasure to knock
her out again. In this I failed. Once she had her little nap in the shower she
became extremely wakeful and nothing I did in the way of orgy-like activities
put her back to sleep. Her hair was so wet that every time I put my face in it
I got water in my eyes. When things were going slow she rubbed at it vigorously
with a towel. Once when she was wiggling around I slipped out of her, only to
be immediately reinserted.

 
          
 
"Stay in there," she said.

 
          
 
It was only thirty minutes before I was due to
meet Boss. Although I seemed to be glued into a day-long embrace, I still had
faint hopes that I could somehow escape and keep my date. I had stopped feeling
romantic about the date—I seemed to have all the romance I could handle closer
to hand—but I was determined not to let Boss think I couldn't get away from
Cindy when I wanted to.

 
          
 
However, I was far from certain as to how I
was going to get away from Cindy. At the moment she had one hand on the base of
my cock, to see that I didn't slip out again.

 
          
 
Since she was looking quite friendly I decided
to try a frank approach.

 
          
 
"I have to tell you something," I
said.

 
          
 
I guess she was looking friendly because she
was sort of tuned in to her own pleasures, listening to them as if over a
radio. When I interrupted the radio she raised her head briefly and gave me a
kiss.

 
          
 
"What?" she asked. ' ~

 
          
 
"This is not a day we can spend all of in
bed," I said. "We could do that tomorrow," I added quickly.

 
          
 
I meant it, too. I had nothing against a day
in bed with the new Cindy. But that didn't mean I wanted to lose face with
Boss.

 
          
 
"What's wrong with today?" Cindy
wanted to know. She didn't look mad. She didn't turn loose of my cock, either.

 
          
 
"I have to go somewhere," I lied.
"I have a very big deal lined up."

 
          
 
"Un-uh," she said.

 
          
 
To strengthen her point she wrapped her legs
around me and hooked her ankles. She was a strong girl, too.

 
          
 
"I don't know what's come over you,"
I said.

 
          
 
"I don't either but you can't go,"
she said.

 
          
 
"But this is important," I said.
"It's a deal that could make me as rich as Boog."

 
          
 
Cindy shook her head.

 
          
 
"Naw," she said. "You'll never
be rich. You aren't even successful. You better just stay here and fuck me.
It's the best you're gonna get.

 
          
 
"Don't try to be like everybody else,"
she said, raising her head for another kiss.

 
          
 
"Why not?"

 
          
 
"It will just spoil everything," she
said. "I don't want it spoiled. I want it like this. I'm tired of
everybody else."

 
          
 
That's when I knew the day was lost. Boss was
right, I couldn't get away. Cindy and I looked at one another for a while. I
didn't feel in love, but I felt extremely fond.

 
          
 
In ten minutes Boss was going to expect me to
start for Middleburg with her. Meanwhile Cindy and I were floating along on a
slow boat, sexually. We weren't doing much but we were definitely united.

 
          
 
For some reason I decided to be honest, a rare
decision with me. I guess it was prompted by the deep ephemeral feeling of
closeness I had with Cindy. I didn't feel like lying to a face that was only two
inches from mine.

 
          
 
"I have to make a call and break that
appointment," I said.

 
          
 
"I bet it was with a woman," she
said.

 
          
 
"You better not lie," she added,
looking at me closely.

 
          
 
I hadn't meant to, but she did well to warn
me. Sometimes I cut into a lie at the very last moment, even when I have every
intention of telling the truth. An instinct for the protective falsehood seems
to take over.

 
          
 
"It was with Boss," I said.

 
          
 
Cindy regarded me solemnly for a second. I
think she was genuinely surprised that I had told her the truth. I was
surprised
myself,
since I knew she was jealous of
Boss.

 
          
 
In terms of womanly power, Boss was far ahead
of her, and Cindy knew it. Boss had a husband, children, many lovers—a depth of
gesture Cindy just didn't have. Against Boss she was overmatched.

 
          
 
Thus it was kind of a big deal that I had told
her the truth. For once I had gambled on the potency of honesty. Cindy's only
immediate response was to flex her hips.

 
          
 
"I feel embarrassed," I said.
"I have to call. It's not fair not to break the appointment."

 
          
 
Cindy didn't say a word. She was leaving it to
me. So call, her look said.

 
          
 
"Put your fingers in your ears for a
minute," I said, in a cajoling tone. "Then I won't have to get up. I
can use the bedside phone."

 
          
 
"You're not getting up," she said,
flexing her hips again.

 
          
 
"I've never talked on the phone at a time
like this," I said.

 
          
 
For an answer I got a kiss. Then she wiggled
her head down between two pillows and raised her arms to squeeze the pillows
against her ears. She didn't really squeeze them very tight, though. Her
armpits were lightly stubbled. Evidently she had decided to rely on her eyes
alone to detect any treachery.

 
          
 
I called Boss, who answered on the first ring.

 
          
 
"I can't come today," I said,
wasting no words.

 
          
 
Boss was silent for a moment. In the
background I could hear Micah giggling and the outraged voice of Desi Amaz. An
early morning rerun was in progress.

 
          
 
"What a surprise," Boss said.
"How about tomorrow?"

 
          
 
"What?" I asked, surprised myself.

 
          
 
"Cyrus canceled," Boss said.
"Bessie couldn't come today and he won't do anything without Bessie. Do
you think she'll let you out tomorrow?"

 
          
 
"I don't know," I said, risking
another venture into truth. Further bravado seemed pointless.

 
          
 
I expected gloating, but Boss didn't bother.

 
          
 
"Give it a try," she said.
"Same time same station."

 
          
 
Cindy hadn't taken her eyes off me. She smiled
as she watched. Then she began to stroke one of my legs with one of her heels.

 
          
 
Boss seemed to have no more to say. Neither
did I. Desi Amaz was screaming at Lucy when I hung up the phone.