McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (30 page)

 
          
 
"Why, yeah," Lilah said. "I
believe in fun. So did my momma and daddy. I enjoy fun. Ain't that's what life's
for?"

 
          
 
"No wonder
America
's in trouble," George said, twirling
his fork.

 
          
 
"Well, don't sound so happy about
it," Lilah said. "You are an American, George, even if you were born
in
Detroit
."

 
          
 
"If you were in
Russia
they would shoot you," Cunny said.
"How would you like dat?"

 
          
 
"He wouldn't like it because he's a
sissy," Lilah said. "Down in
Georgia
he was afraid to say anything because he
thought my brothers would beat him up. They might have, too. All he did was
talk communism."

 
          
 
"Your brothers are rabble," George
said. "And if you don't stop talking about
Georgia
I'm going to throw up, although I didn't
eat anything worth vomiting. You'll all have to watch a case of the dry
heaves."

 
          
 
Oblivia's eyes sparkled with hate for a
moment. "So contentious," she said. "Don't know why I ask
you."

 
          
 
"That's easy," George said.
"You ask me because I have a first-rate mind. Not too many of those
bopping around
Washington
. You hate my guts but you can't afford to leave me off your guest list.
At least when I'm here Jake has someone to talk to in the rare moments when
he's awake."

 
          
 
"Yes, but your precious mind doesn't
entirely make up for your deficiencies in other quarters," Lilah said,
with unusual crispness. She gave George the kind of look that in itself
constitutes a sexual insult.

 
          
 
"While your brain was swelling up the
rest of you was shrinking," she added, neatly driving home her point just
as the maids whisked away our plates and brought in the salad.

 
          
 
At that precise point in the dinner party,
while the maids were carrying out bowls full of lemony sauce and carrying in a
few leaves of endive on crystal salad plates, I stopped listening to the women
snipe at George Psalmanazar and slipped into a road revery. In this particular
road revery I seemed to be crossing the high plateau of northern
Arizona
, going west out of
Flagstaff
. It was a clear day, with a few high white
clouds, brilliant sunlight, and nothing to see along the road except an
occasional Indian boy sitting on a rock.

 
          
 
Usually in my road reveries I turn up not too
far from one of my favorite bargain barns, so that, added to the pleasure of
imagining myself on the road, I get the little tickle of anticipation that
precedes a chance to buy something.

 
          
 
I have such reveries all the time, and they
are not just wispy daydreams. Most of them are so intense that they create
little gaps in my life. Since most of them hit me when Pm involved in social
situations—such as Oblivia Brown's dinner party—my memories of social situations
contain many gaps. In effect, I blank out, and later have no memory of what may
have taken place at the party I was at when the revery began.

 
          
 
Fortunately I seem to have a sort of automatic
pilot that moves me along fairly smoothly at such times—it even prompts me to
make appropriate sounds to hosts and hostesses, so that I seldom disgrace
myself, even in the midst of a very long revery.

 
          
 
Something of this nature seems to have
happened to me at Oblivia's party. While I was dreaming myself in
Arizona
I somehow became popular with a number of
ladies. When the revery petered out, instead of finding myself somewhere around
Kingman
,
Arizona
, I was standing on a sidewalk in an unfamiliar part of
Washington
. Cindy, Lilah, and Khaki were with me, and
we were all watching George Psalmanazar yell at a very drunk black man.

 
          
 
I don't snap out of my reveries instantly—I
sort of fade in, like a television set warming up. As my focus improved I saw
that the black man was standing there quietly taking a leak against a telephone
pole.

 
          
 
"Button up, man, button
up!”
George yelled, but his yelling had no effect. The man went on
pissing. In fact, once I got the scene in focus, his pissing came to seem like
a remarkable performance. He seemed to go on at full flush for about five
minutes. At one point George went so far as to shake his arm, which only caused
the stream of urine to miss the pole for a second or two. It splashed against a
Volkswagen that happened to be parked very close to the curb.

 
          
 
The three women were watching all this happen
in bemused silence. It was clear that the sight of a man taking a leak didn't
bother them, nor did George's efforts to get him to button up impress them.

 
          
 
George eventually gave up. "He won't
button up," he said. The man had slowed a little, but he was far from
through.

 
          
 
"Isn't that interesting," Lilah
said. "I never saw anything like that happen before."

 
          
 
"This is a ghetto, Lilah," George
said.

 
          
 
"It is not," Khaki said. "This
is a perfectly nice neighborhood."

 
          
 
"Well, it's more of a ghetto than
Georgetown
," George insisted, opening his door.

 
          
 
Cindy was silent and seemed a little detached.

 
          
 
"Do you think that man was a
rapist?" Lilah asked, once we got inside.

 
          
 
"Who knows?" George said cheerfully,
yanking off his coat and flopping down full length on a long Danish chaise
longue. The whole spotless apartment was full of extremely modem Danish
furniture. The chairs all had lots of chrome on them. Coffee would have loved
the place.

 
          
 
"How about some Irish
coffee?"
George said, kicking off his shoes. "And see if
there's
any of those doughnuts left. Some cheese wouldn't be
amiss either, and a couple of pears. I hate dinner parties where I don't get
fed."

 
          
 
To my surprise all three women trooped off to
the kitchen, leaving George to the delights of his chaise, which he rolled on
like a baby in a baby bed. He had a fat little body, under his tweeds.

 
          
 
He popped up briefly, ran into another room,
came back with a brocade pillow, lay back down on the chaise, and put the
pillow under his head.

 
          
 
"I wish those women would hurry up,"
he said. "Not one of them would make an adequate housewife, you know.
Too selfish.
It's hard to find an unselfish woman in this
town. Lord knows I've looked."

 
          
 
Just as he said it the three women trailed
back in, bringing an array of goodies. These included cookies, doughnuts,
apples, and pears.
Also several cheeses.
Lilah had one
tray and Cindy another. Khaki brought up the rear, bringing the Irish coffee.

 
          
 
George was not terribly appreciative. He
grabbed a doughnut, ate one bite, and dropped it back on the tray, glaring at
Khaki as he did.

 
          
 
'Those doughnuts are stale," he said.
"What happened to the crullers?"

 
          
 
"I guess you ate them," Khaki said.
"I didn't see any."

 
          
 
"Shit," George said. "I want a
cruller. Go look again. They must be there."

 
          
 
"They aren't there," Khaki said.
"You ate them."

 
          
 
George threw a doughnut at her but missed.
Then he picked up four or five doughnuts and threw them all at her. His face
had suddenly gotten red.

 
          
 
"Don't talk back to me, woman," he
said. "Get your ass in the kitchen and find those crullers."

 
          
 
All three women stared at him with hostility.
Khaki's eyes were like little ingots of hate. Though all of them had trotted off
obediently at first and done a quick turn as harem girls, the role had suddenly
worn thin. The sight of George flinging doughnuts at Khaki from his reclining
position had evidently reminded them that they were liberated women.

 
          
 
"Don't order me around," Khaki said.
"I'm not your slave, you know."

 
          
 
George ran his fingers through his hair.
"Oh boy," he said. "This is what I get. I might have known this
would be what I got. This is really what I get."

 
          
 
"Hey, change the record," Cindy
said, snapping out of her detachment suddenly. "What do you mean it's what
you get?"

 
          
 
"In plain English it's what I get!"
George yelled. "I work my ass off year after year trying to be the
conscience of this country and this is what I get."

 
          
 
"Come again, honey?" Lilah asked, in
surprise. "What is it you been doin'?"

 
          
 
"Working my ass
off!"
George yelled. "Living down here in the ghetto, trying
to practice a little social justice, hoping in a small way to be a voice for
the oppressed, hammering away at the need for economic sanity and better
relations with the Third World, and now I end up with a woman who can't even
find a cruller in her own kitchen."

 
          
 
"It isn't the ghetto and it isn't my
kitchen," Khaki said. "It's your kitchen. Go find your own
crullers."

 
          
 
"I won't!" George said, stretching
out on the chaise like a defiant child. "This is a partnership we have.
You have to do your part, and your part is getting me crullers when I want
crullers."^

 
          
 
"Fuck your crullers," Khaki said,
with
a certain
vehemence.

 
          
 
Then the women exchanged looks. It was as if
the instinct for mischief had awakened at the same instant in the three of
them. Without another word they marched out of the room, in the direction of
the kitchen.

 
          
 
George exhibited no surprise.

 
          
 
"That's impressive," I said.
"It looks like you're going to get your way."

 
          
 
"I always get my way," George said.
"All you have to remember about women is that they have weak egos. People
with weak egos love to take orders from people with strong egos. I have a
strong ego. It's that simple. All this liberation bullshit makes me giggle. I
could boss Gloria around, if I wanted to. I could even boss Bella around, if I
wanted to."

 
          
 
At that he stopped, evidently startled by what
he had just said.

 
          
 
"Though I doubt that Bella would bring me
a cruller," he added, wrinkling his freckled brow.

 
          
 
Just as he said it the three women came
rushing back into the room empty-handed. Before George could open his mouth to
berate them for their empty-handedness all three flung themselves on top of
him.

 
          
 
This was a surprising thing to observe, and it
surprised George at least as much as it surprised me. In a second he lay pinned
to his Danish chaise by three bodies, two of which were fairly hefty bodies.
Cindy, who lay across his chest, glanced over at me.

 
          
 
"You keep out of this," she said.
"We're getting our revenge."

 
          
 
George said nothing, perhaps because one of
Cindy's strong
Santa Barbara
forearms was pressed against his Adam's apple.

 
          
 
"Hurry up," Lilah said. "Unzip
his pants."

 
          
 
This job fell to Khaki, who was lying across
George's midsection. When she started to unzip them George started to wiggle,
and wiggled violently for perhaps thirty seconds, before he wore himself out.
He was not in very good shape and grew extremely red in the face, a fact none
of the women took the slightest notice of.

 
          
 
Watching, I had a strong sense of deja vu. I
seemed to be seeing a scene the like of which I had not witnessed since my
pre-teen days in the
Texas
Valley
, when gangs of giggling girls were always
ganging up on some hapless boy and unzipping his pants.

 
          
 
In fact all three women were giggling, much
like girls. The object of their attack seemed to be to fish George's penis out
of his underwear and stick it through a doughnut. Khaki, as his lover of the
moment, was required to do the fishing.