Some Can Whistle (20 page)

After two or three unsuccessful attempts to resume my life, I gave up, went back to bed, and waited as patiently as possible for the migraine to get bored and leave. I could tell that it enjoyed interrupting what few patterns I had; it seemed to me that the only way to get rid of it was to make myself as vacant and patternless as possible. After a while, if I did that, the migraine might go look for someone more interesting to torment.

Shockingly, for the whole three days I didn’t call my message machine even once. Jeanie, Nema, Marella, Viveca, not to mention Godwin, Gladys, my agent, were temporarily abandoned to their fates. I knew if I called and got the messages I’d start to feel things; I’d want to respond to the chatter of the
machines. Perhaps new boyfriends had appeared; perhaps old boyfriends had been behaving even more terribly than they had been behaving when the headaches moved in with me. Perhaps exciting or depressing career developments had taken place. Undoubtedly
something
had taken place; my lady friends were nothing if not active. Their volatility had provided the counterweight to my passivity for years and years.

“You’re always the same,” Jeanie said often. “You’re
always
the same.”

Sometimes she sounded glad about that, but in this instance it clearly annoyed her.

“Yep, that’s why you call me,” I said, just as she hung up in disgust.

But this time I didn’t check the machine. When I felt well enough to be amused, I was mildly amused at the thought of the annoyance this might be causing in several interesting boudoirs. In less ebullient moments I could not but reflect that in all likelihood it was causing no annoyance at all; none of the women might have noticed that I’d beeped off the radar screen. They might all have fallen in love simultaneously, or decided to go to Venice or Hong Kong. Their message machines might be my anchor, but the reverse was far from true; those ladies were mostly unanchored, apt to take off for anywhere, at any time, with anybody.

Several times I was on the verge of calling my machine, but each time I drew back, given pause by a certain tight, low-barometer feeling in my head. I knew that getting re-involved in the distant swirl of life was exactly what the migraine wanted me to do. We were playing a kind of cat-and-mouse game, the migraine and I, and the headache was the cat. I had to be a very cautious, very devious mouse if I were to outwit it and make my way back into life again.

Meanwhile, true to my word, I never shut the door between my suite and the Guinevere suite, where T.R., Muddy, and the children had settled. Except when the gang were out on one of their sprees, a constant river of sound flowed through the open
door, voices chattering or quarreling, children babbling or screaming, the sound of TV game shows, the sound of rock videos, the sound of people splashing in the Jacuzzi.

I liked hearing the sounds at all hours of the day and night—I was never tempted to close the door. The sounds were a kind of rope I could cling to in order not to sink too deeply into the quicksand of the headache—they didn’t really pull me out of it, but they were cheering for me.

Once in a while I sensed that T.R. was in the room watching me. Once, when the headache had reclaimed the offensive and I was on the verge of nausea, I saw her standing just inside the door. I lifted my hand and waved weakly. She came a little closer.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like blowing my head off,” I said.

“You ain’t got a gun, have you?” she asked, looking worried.

“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m not really going to blow my head off. I just said that.”

“You better not,” she said nervously. “We’re running up quite a hotel bill. I doubt we’d ever get it paid if you was to die.”

Once when I was feeling a little better she peeked in, wearing a sequined pink baseball cap.

“I took your advice and bought everybody new clothes,” she said. “Wanta see a few of us dressed up?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s have a little fashion review.”

Jesse led off. She seemed to have mastered walking, after a fashion, in the last two days. She wore a purple bathing suit and she covered her eyes in shyness when she saw me looking at her.

“We’ve been swimming six times, now Jesse don’t want to do nothing but swim,” T.R. said.

She herself was resplendent in a yellow blouse and stone-washed cutoffs. Bo wore tiny camouflage pants; he immediately raced over and machine-gunned me with a tiny AK-47.

“Bambo,” he said defiantly.

“Muddy got him that gun to keep him occupied,” T.R. said a little defensively. She had to go back into the other suite and
virtually drag Muddy in for his inspection. Once I saw him, I could understand his shyness. He wore bright red cowboy boots, new Levi’s, and a rodeo cowboy shirt, but his hair had been dyed pink and cut in the latest Fort Worth punker mode. Unlike most punkers, he had a couple of Vegas-like gold chains around his neck.

“It was his birthday, that’s why I got him the chains,” T.R. said. “He wanted to be disguised as a cowboy, but you can take one look at Muddy and tell he ain’t a cowboy, so I decided we’d just punk him out. The cops won’t be looking for a punker with pink hair.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “This county where we’re going is pretty conservative. Up there they’d probably arrest
me
if I had pink hair.”

“I got a hat,” Muddy said, brightening at the thought that it might be necessary to wear it.

He left and returned moments later, half hidden under a giant black cowboy hat.

“You look like a dipshit in that hat,” T.R. informed him. “It spoils the whole effect of punking you out.”

“If I was to get put back in the Houston jail with pink hair I hate to think what would happen to me,” Muddy said. “I’d rather take my chances with this hat.”

“You ain’t as much fun as you used to be—you know that, don’t you?” T.R. said. “Maybe I shoulda left you in jail—the pickings might be better up in this part of the country.”

“Just ’cause all them lifeguards over at the splash park have the hots for you don’t mean the pickings are that great,” Muddy told her. “Most lifeguards I’ve known have teeny little dicks.”

T.R. flushed and swatted his hat off.

“Watch your language, my daddy’s sick,” she said. “I don’t know why I even brought you here. You ain’t pretty and you ain’t nice.”

Muddy just smiled one of his faint, vacant smiles. Her obvious annoyance didn’t disturb him much.

“Uh, uh, uh, uh,” Jesse said. She was trying to crawl up on the bed. I reached over and lifted her up.

Dew wandered in at that point, flamboyantly dressed in silver pants and a bikini top of some sort.

“Ain’t you well yet?” she asked. “You’re missing all the fun.”

“Not anymore, I’m not,” I said. “Jesse’s here.”

Jesse, once on the bed, had again been overcome with shyness, but not for long; soon a pale blue eye was peeking at me through a web of small fingers.

“Where’s Sue Lin and Granny and Elena?” I asked.

“Sue Lin’s down playing video games, that’s all she likes to do now,” T.R. said. “Elena got homesick for her sisters and took the bus back—she can’t stand being away from her sisters. Granny Lin’s still trying to read magazines.”

Jesse crawled over my stomach and peered off the other side of the bed. Bo raced up and machine-gunned her loudly; he was about to brain her with the toy gun when I snatched her out of the way. She regarded her brother stoically, neither frightened nor amused.

“Cool it, Bo, you ain’t Rambo,” T.R. said. “I wish just once you’d make a good impression on somebody.”

“He’d rather gun ’em down,” Muddy observed.

“Well, you bought him the gun,” T.R. said. “I was just gonna get him some balloons.”

The low-barometer feeling came into my head again—the headache didn’t welcome the rivalry it was getting. It wanted me for itself. Although I was sort of glad to see everyone, I really had already begun to wish they’d leave—some of them, at least, except T.R. and Jesse.

“We could give him some cocaine,” Dew suggested, noticing that I looked dim. “Maybe he could snort that old headache away.”

“I don’t know if he even uses drugs,” T.R. said. “He gets along with Jesse, though, and you don’t see that too often. Jesse’s particular.”

“She ain’t, she’ll flirt with anybody,” Muddy said.

“Daddy looks awful, let’s go and leave him in peace,” T.R. said. “Just looking at him makes me glad I don’t have headaches.”

She stooped to pick up Jesse, but Jesse immediately flung herself on the other side of my body.

“Wah!” she said angrily. She turned red in the face and seemed to be gathering herself together for a squeal.

“That’s okay, just leave her,” I said. “I like having Jesse around.”

T.R. darted around the bed to try and catch her, but Jesse was just as quick, flopping over me again and squeezing herself between the pillow and my head.

“Wah!” she warned again, even louder.

“Hold your ears, she’s gonna squeal when I catch her,” T.R. warned.

“You don’t have to catch her, just leave her,” I said.

“Nope, she’s too quick for you,” T.R. said. “Next thing you know she’ll slip off the bed and pop into that Jacuzzi to show off her swimmin’. I ain’t riskin’ no drownded babies.”

She leaned across me and extracted a rigid little girl from behind my head. Jesse did indeed squeal. Before the sound receded to the depths of the adjoining suite the whole group had vanished, including Bo, who paused in the doorway and flung a few parting bursts of machine-gun fire my way.

The barometer in my head kept dropping; brief as the visit with T.R. and her gang had been, it had allowed the headache to regain quite a bit of lost ground. I lay very still with my eyes closed, hoping it would get bored soon. I may have slipped into a brief, oppressive sleep; then I felt the bed sag and I jerked awake.

T.R. was sitting there, wiping tears off her cheeks.

“Daddy, don’t die,” she said. She looked utterly miserable.

“I’m not dying,” I said. “I just have a headache.”

“You don’t look like you even want to live,” she said. I noticed she had a bit of a mouse beside one eye.

“What happened to your eye?” I asked.

“Muddy’s fist happened to it—the little turd hit me,” she said. “You sure don’t look like you want to live. It’s got me real nervous.”

“Nobody with a bad migraine looks too eager to live,” I said. “But in fact I am eager to live, now that I’ve met you.”

“Baloney,” T.R. said dejectedly. “Meeting me’d probably make you want to die sooner. I’m nothing but problems.”

I reached over and took her hand, which seemed to surprise her.

“Why’d he hit you?” I asked.

“’Cause I’m always saying horrible things to him. I don’t even blame him,” she said.

She lay down beside me and began to sob. I put my arms around her and let her cry. In time she stopped. I thought she might have slipped off to sleep, but then she lifted her head.

“I spent all that money of yours,” she said. “It’s ten times more money than I ever spent in my whole life put together. I don’t know what happened. I just started spending it and pretty soon it was gone. I guess I can work for you and pay it back in a few years.”

“T.R., you don’t have to pay it back,” I said. “I gave it to you. I’m not mad that you spent it. Money’s only to buy fun, you know. I hope you bought a little fun for everybody.”

“Well, Muddy had a nice birthday for once,” she said. “Them boots cost six hundred dollars. I just thought, fuck, why not buy ’em? You spoiled me, or something. I would never have bought no six-hundred-dollar boots before I met you.”

“Relax about the money,” I said.

“How can I?” she asked. “Now you’ve started something. I never realized I had such greedy friends. Dew’s bugging me to take her shopping right now.”

“Look in my pants pocket,” I said. “There should be at least another couple of thousand in there. Take them on one last spree. I should be okay by this afternoon, and we’ll go home.”

“I wish now I’d never brought any of them,” she said. “I’m thinking of calling the cops and having them come pick Muddy up. At least we’d be rid of that little bum.”

“Is he often violent?” I asked.

T.R. shook her head. “He ain’t big enough to be violent,” she said. “He just flies off the handle ’cause he don’t know what to do about me.”

“I’m afraid that’s common male behavior,” I said.

T.R. nodded. “If he ever hits me again I’ll kill him,” she said. “That’ll be the end of one stinkin’ little male.”

“On the other hand, he’s Jesse’s father,” I said.

T.R. looked at me neutrally. “He is, but it won’t save him if he ever throws another fist at me.”

Then she got up, rummaged in my pants, extracted my last wad of hundred-dollar bills, held them up for my inspection, and started for the door. I thought she was going to leave, but she changed direction and came and sat back down on the bed. She put the money on the bed table.

“There’s no reason you should waste your money on those people,” she said. “You don’t even know them. You just let ’em come along to be polite. All you really wanted was me and the kids.”

“That’s true, but it’s not particularly important,” I said. “Your friends are very likable, and there’s nothing wrong with being polite.”

“There could be such a thing as too polite, though,” she said. “It ain’t my failing, but maybe it’s yours.”

“You wouldn’t be the first to think so,” I said. “All my women friends think I’m too polite. They think it’s wimpish and it bores them shitless. They’d rather have men like Muddy who fly off the handle from time to time.”

“What do you say to that?” T.R. asked. She looked surprised.

“I say help yourself,” I said. “It’s not hard to find men who’ll fly off the handle.” I briefly replayed, in memory, hundreds of conversations in which various women, exasperated by my politeness, tried to goad me into something a little more forceful, if only into an expression of pique.

“Do you have a lot of girlfriends?” T.R. asked. Her mood was lightening; she seemed relaxed and curious.

“In a sense I do and in a sense I don’t,” I said.

“No wonder they get mad at you, if that’s the straightest answer you can give,” she said. “Is there some woman waiting in this place we’re going to if we ever get out of here?”